0:00:04.2 Kurt Baker: What does it take to manage wealth with integrity and lead through service? Meet Donald J. Loff, a seasoned financial advisor with over 40 years of experience and a strong record of leadership in both private wealth and nonprofit governance. He currently serves as treasurer at Capital Health. Today, he’ll discuss how to build lasting financial strategies while leading with purpose, both in wealth management and in community service. Don, thanks very much for coming on today. I know you have a long, long career, over 40 years in management. So, how have things kind of changed over the years? And then the flip side, what’s kind of stayed the same? Anything?
0:00:51.9 Donald Loff: I’m definitely going to answer your question, but let me start out with a little caveat. I’m not treasurer of Capital Health. I’m the treasurer of the hospital board. It’s a little nuance.
0:01:05.2 Kurt Baker: Okay. We wanna be accurate.
0:01:04.4 Donald Loff: But the hospital system board.
0:01:07.5 Kurt Baker: Sure. Sure. Sure.
0:01:07.4 Donald Loff: So, how have things changed? Is that we are first…
0:01:11.1 Kurt Baker: Yeah. How have they changed and then how they also maybe stayed the same in some ways?
0:01:15.0 Donald Loff: Well, 42 years and actually a little more than that now since I’ve been retired for a few years. Call it 45 years ago, I went through as a Merrill Lynch person, went to a Merrill Lynch training program and learned that I would become an account executive. We were also generically referred to as stockbrokers, although the stockbroker really is the firm, not the individual. But back then, basically we were called brokers and our role and our functioning and what we did every day was talk to clients or potential clients about doing a transaction, about buying a stock or a bond or a mutual fund. And it was very transactionally, if not 100% in the beginning, for me, 100% transactional. The way we did that, there were a few different approaches that you could take. One would be to do seminars. Another might be to do mailings. There were cold call lists that you could call from and hope you’d get somebody that would even talk to you on those calls. Let’s get into the topics. And so what happened, Kurt, was it was a totally different business. And I’ll go from then to the end and then fill in the middle.
0:02:41.8 Donald Loff: Today, it is really more of a unique advisory experience for most individuals, most clients. And clients, and I like to think to this day, they’re clients, but titles have changed. Again, we were originally called account executives and we were assigned client relationships or we found our own to deal with. And then eventually that morphed into other titles all the way up to becoming a, say, wealth manager. So along the way, there were a lot of stops along the way, but it was essentially doing the same thing, which was working with individuals and small to medium-sized institutions to help them with their cash and investment management, wealth management generically. And so, my experience was I knew very little about the finance world and investing because I had not had too much experience in my prior work. So I had to learn from scratch. And going through the training program was a great experience. In those days, you went up to New York City and spent a number of weeks going through classes every day and going home on the weekends and coming back. And eventually, you took an exam and you hopefully passed and got a license. Started to go out and build a practice. And that’s, I think, today where I can talk a little bit generically about not just me but what happened with those of us who started when and how I did.
0:04:18.3 Donald Loff: It was really, again, about being able to get on the phone and pick it up or somehow connect with someone and get them to buy 100 shares of a stock or a $20,000 piece of a bond. And it was, again, all transactionally related. There was not a lot about, other than what was compliance-wise mandated, not a lot of time spent learning about the client, whether, again, it be an institution or an individual. It was more about, well, let’s see what bonds are in inventory today and see who we can sell them to. So it was just a totally different type of a business. And it served a purpose, and it was that way for decades. But as time moved on, and part of it is technology, but also the more and more compliance-related type activities that required not just a full disclosure but something called the Know Your Client rule, which essentially was before making a recommendation and trying to find a product to fit the client, we had to learn about the client. My personal experience was, I had been in a different industry for a few years before I got into wealth management or my stockbroker years. And so what happened was it was kind of very slow and creeping, the changes coming along. It was not creepy in the creepy sense, but creeping along with these changes. And what happened was, I just felt that it was not the most professional way to want to talk to wealthy people. And essentially, we did have high net worth individuals who were our primary target, again, along with smaller institutions, that there had to be a better way to do it. There had to be a different approach. So I decided the approach I would take is I would reach out, make a connection with a potential client, and make an appointment and go to see them. It was interesting because the seasoned and very successful advisors or brokers at the time were like, what are you doing? This isn’t what we do here.
0:06:35.8 Kurt Baker: It takes time, right?
0:06:37.6 Donald Loff: You can’t do that. You have to make so many calls a day and have so much production done each week or whatever. And I said, no, I disagree. I said, I think if I can really get to learn more about the client that I’m dealing with or want to deal with, rather, I’ll be able to make a better recommendation and hopefully receive more business and more relationship success in the process. But it was interesting how critical some of these folks were. They said, oh, you’re just not going to ever make it. But I did that, and I really put an effort into doing that, and I did get support from the firm and the local branch manager in how I was going about things to the extent that when I started, it was at the Trenton office of Merrill Lynch, which was located not too far from here in the Lawrence Shopping Center. And what happened there was, it was a big open boardroom and we all sat out in one big room, and we had a Lazy Susan, and there were four of us attached to that Lazy Susan, and that Lazy Susan machine was a quote machine.
0:07:52.9 Donald Loff: It was just a quote machine. You could get news, but you couldn’t do anything. It wasn’t functional. It wasn’t like it grew to later on. So, it really became a challenge initially to be able to go out and do it a little bit differently, but I did, and there were 24 brokers in that branch when I started. And the branch manager wanted to expand the footprint, so he did, and he opened branches in North Brunswick over Oxford Valley. There were Toms River. There were five locations, and in the process of building it out, the business started to change, and it became more about financial planning. It became more about wealth management generically, and I really embraced that. I was already a number of steps ahead of other folks because I was already doing that, and I’ll brag a little bit here and say that we went from 24 brokers to over 100 brokers and teams over my first three years in the business, and I was the top producer in the whole complex. I attribute that solely to doing it differently and approaching, working with individuals and institutions in a way that was not the most common way where they would just get those cold calls and hang up on you and so on. So, that’s kind of where things have changed so much today. You go into, if you physically go to see your advisor, you’re going into an office. Chances are they’re all private offices, and you’re making appointments. It’s very different. It’s more like most other professional services would have been or were and are now. And again, it was something that I didn’t get any credit for inventing all this, but I did get people who…
0:09:50.9 Kurt Baker: So, what were some of the feedback? I mean, if I’m on the other end, I’m a small business owner or a wealthy individual, and I remember the day because I used to get calls. It felt like constantly. Like three or four brokers would call you a day. It was like crazy sound. And then somebody says, I want to come in and talk to you. I’m just curious about some of the early responses from these business owners and maybe what their reaction was to this different approach. I know the brokers at your peers were like, that’s not going to work. But what about the people that you started talking to? Did they immediately say, that’s great, or did they still… I’m sure it was a mixed bag a little bit, but something had to like, oh, I’m a little bit encouraged. So can you tell me a few stories about some of your early clients that you tried to develop a relationship with?
0:10:41.3 Donald Loff: Sure. And you’re exactly right. The prospect and the prospective clients that I dealt with or wanted to deal with were used to getting those phone calls, particularly at dinnertime. We were told to call them at dinner because they’ll be home.
0:10:55.1 Kurt Baker: And the wife’s not going to be happy either. They’re like, what it is, put that on the table, what are you doing?
0:10:59.0 Donald Loff: Well, back in those days, we didn’t talk to wives, by the way.
0:11:01.6 Kurt Baker: Oh, you didn’t talk to wives, and you didn’t know who was calling you either, right?
0:11:04.8 Donald Loff: Exactly.
0:11:05.2 Kurt Baker: It could be your granddaughter or it could be somebody selling you something. Nobody knew.
0:11:09.1 Donald Loff: So I found it to be, from that side of it, very accepted by at least the cohort of potential clients that I dealt with. I found a way to get within, I’d say an hour’s drive of the office, a number of areas where there was, I’ll say, a group of retirees from some of the, maybe the pharma companies or other types of industrial companies where I was able to get access to maybe one of them and ask them about, who else could I talk to in your organization if you like what I have to say. And they were most of the time more complimentary about, well, we really feel that we like you and we like what we hear, and you’re the first one that’s ever sat down and talked with us or asked us these questions before. So, it was very positive. There were a few that thought I was just calling up on my cold call making.
0:12:24.6 Kurt Baker: Well, that’s great. They talk about in business a lot of times is that you don’t necessarily have to create the business. You want to produce a new opportunity for your client. Like look at the business differently, like what are we actually doing. And so, sometimes people, business owners get confused about what they’re really doing. In your case, you’re not really selling stocks, you’re really providing a wealth-building tool for a client. And so, I think the industry to its credit, has really evolved, the ones that are doing it correctly, I should say. Unfortunately, not everybody does it correctly, but the majority, at least the people I know that are successful, they really do care about the client and they really do try to dig deep into who they are and what are the best ways to serve them and to partner with all kinds of people. There’s lots of ways to do that. I mean, what are some of the basics? Now, you did it for 45 years. Did you see that would help maybe a family or a business like build that long-term wealth? What are some key factors that you saw over time that were similar with each of these groups that were successful over a long period of time? What attributes did they have?
0:13:39.1 Donald Loff: Well, if it’s okay with you, what I’d like to do is focus not on the individual investor side of that because I can answer that question a lot better on the institutional side, particularly on the nonprofit side, which will lead me to another part of this discussion down in a few minutes here. So, what happened, the reception was, again, pretty open. If I was able to get an appointment, I found that these small, and these were small business owners or professional law firms and a couple of auto dealers. It was a pretty interesting mix, by the way. But what would happen is I would talk to them about goals. It was the first time that anyone or rarely had talked to these individuals or these CFOs of these small companies about putting a plan together and having financial or investment goals. In general, the goals were always let’s make money. But getting very specific and more sophisticated, and that’s when designations like certified financial planner kind of developed and came about. The SEMA program, which I had gone through that program, which was great, that was on the asset management analysis side.
0:15:07.4 Donald Loff: And those programs really helped to go in and talk with one of these prospective clients. Again, I’m on the business side and try to hone in and interview with them on what their goals were, not their personal goals, their business goals were, what kind of timelines they had, and talk about their risk tolerance, all these things that really were not part of the first 10 or 15 or even 20 years of my career. And eventually I built a team where we had a certified financial planner on the team. Two of us had SEMA, not degrees, but certifications. I’m sitting here at a college talking about degrees. And what I found was, again, I was fortunate in that unlike today, I didn’t have a ton of competition, and it was different enough that when I asked for these appointments and we got into a discussion and I started asking questions, the biggest question I’d get back is, how many other people have you explained this to? They’d want some experience, my experience in doing it, of course. But it was pretty interesting in retrospect thinking about it, which I’m doing now, the goals that they might have had, the company might have had, were really never well-defined. And part of what the first step I have in the process in working with these potential clients would be to define some goals, to put some kind of a plan together. And that was, again, something that not everybody was doing back then. Today it’s different. Today pretty much every advisor out there has some kind of a certification or two or three.
0:17:08.7 Kurt Baker:Right.
0:17:09.2 Donald Loff: The way that the business is developed today is the way I started doing it way back when. And what I also started back then was networking. And the way I got involved with networking was getting out in the community and joining organizations like Chambers of Commerce and getting to meet people. And then from those meetings, see if there were certain individuals I might have met that made sense, that I said, yeah, I’d really like to sit down and get to know this person, see if there’s an opportunity there. That whole process and networking in general really is what I will credit with building a successful career because I tried like everyone else did in the beginning with cold calling and mass mailings. And I remember we used to have a saying that he who mails fails. I mean, there were all kinds of things that would come up. But yes, in general, I’ll say that the small business people, the high net worth individuals that I dealt with, if anything, were more surprised about my approach and my willingness to drive to see them, have a meeting, and then get back to them with recommendations. A much more, I thought, professional way to handle business than rather than just being dialing for dollars every day.
0:18:35.3 Kurt Baker: Yeah. What’s interesting to me is it sounds like a similar situation. I don’t know if you did… You probably have surveyed data. I’m sure Merrill Lynch did some surveying of data. But I know like a mastermind group I belong to, they have a survey arm of it. And they found that most of your higher net worth people, about almost two thirds of them, would consider another advisor, which to me is fascinating because you would think that somebody has, you know, 5, 10, 20, 50 million in liquid assets that they’re investing. You would expect the team to really be paying a lot of attention to them. But even today, a lot of them feel they’re not being provided the services. So, I know, and the other thing that comes up now, which might be another iteration of what you experience, is they want you to manage not just the wealth but really kind of their life, their whole package, like longevity. How do I do a multi-generational plan? So, I think wealth management just keeps growing where a lot more is expected from the industry. And many of us are kind of filling those gaps, so to speak, because we’re listening to people, kind of like what it sounds like you did back then. So this just keeps expanding. And the ones that are doing it correctly are listening to those clients and saying, okay, we hear you. Let’s put those pieces in place so we can make sure we do address all of these different issues, not just trading a stock. It’s grown significantly from that early beginning, 40, 50 years ago.
0:20:06.2 Donald Loff: And I’ll say today, as I meet the financial advisors in my continued networking for what I’m doing today in the nonprofit world, what I see is those advisors and brokers who are doing the kinds of things I did and that have become more common in the industry in terms of a focus around planning are the ones who are doing the best business. Those that are still not necessarily relying on transactional but are not presenting a more formalized planning approach are not doing as well. And again, I think that it keeps changing and I’m sure it’ll morph in the future to something even more refined.
0:20:56.1 Kurt Baker: You mentioned something really, just now, that I thought was… You talk a lot about like you’ve been in private wealth management with your small business owners, and then you’ve done nonprofit wealth management. And so what are some of the similarities and the differences between the two types of industries from your experience from dealing kind of from both of them? Because they’re similar, but they’re different. There’s some things that are a little different about them, but there are some things that are similar. So, what would you say about that?
0:21:21.0 Donald Loff: Well, what I would say is… And I do want to talk a little bit about the nonprofit side of what I’m doing now, but what I would say is that the, well, sounds like redundant, but the focus of these folks has changed to where they understand more about the plan even before I would get to sit down with them. They maybe had a friend or a colleague or another advisor talk to them about you ought to go see a financial planner. And what’s happened is, again, back to the receptivity, more and more of the advisors I see out there that are doing the network, that are looking for client opportunities, yeah, they are getting appointments. And just like you say, it’s because a lot of the higher net worth folks and some of the smaller institutions, they’re out there, and they’re out there really trying to be known and have visibility, and it works. They start developing a relationship, and it could take a matter of months or years before it becomes an actual client relationship.
0:22:36.6 Donald Loff: But I think that… I don’t know if that answers your question, but I want to come back to the nonprofit versus the business side. So in the nonprofit world, during our four decades plus that I was in that business, in the investment business, I spent a good amount of time doing a lot of pro bono work with nonprofit organizations, in addition to which we did handle a number of smaller nonprofit endowments and foundations. And so, what happened… Well, a couple of things happened there, and I can talk more about that.
0:23:21.7 Kurt Baker: Okay. So what were some of the things that happened when you were dealing with these nonprofits?
0:23:27.2 Donald Loff: Well, again, it was as if they, except that right now… Most of the ones I dealt with were smaller and many startups. The first thing they needed was a plan. Now, they may have had a strategic plan for their business or their organization. But that became the first hurdle, and the first hurdle with working with them was that a lot of nonprofit organizations and a lot of nonprofit leaders don’t and didn’t think about their organization as a business. And that is where I was able to come in, in a number of instances, then talk about different organizational responsibilities and departmental focuses and so on. And it all kept coming back to, well, but we’ve got to go plant another hundred trees for whatever the mission might be of the organization. And the focus seemed to be, with the nonprofits, was more about the mission and maybe a plan for the mission, but not about the plan for managing finances or even a number of them didn’t even have just a basic strategic plan. So, that was definitely a difference in there.
0:24:45.5 Kurt Baker: Yeah. One thing I always tell people is, nonprofits are just a tax designation. You still have to make money because people think, even people that start nonprofits, oh, we can’t make any money. I go, no, you have to make money because you’re going to go out of business. There has to be a revenue-positive situation. So it is a business. You just happen to have a tax classification, which is nonprofit, which means you’re not paying tax on the profit. So, I think it’s really important for people to understand that you still have to do business planning with a nonprofit. It’s just a different product, a different service, a different thing, and the revenue sources are different. So you have donors and you have different aspects of how you generate revenue. So anyway, that comes up fairly, because as you know, I have a nonprofit too, so it’s kind of like once people kind of get that, then you can actually sit down and come up with strategies and determine how are you going to cash flow this thing positively, where is your revenue coming from.
0:25:40.2 Donald Loff: Right. And that’s where it has to start. Yes, the nonprofit exists because somebody had a great idea that requires a bigger effort than one person, so they start an organization. They have a strategy that maybe they articulated, maybe they didn’t, but they really are at a place where they need to go back to the basics and build a business plan. But it’s a business plan as a nonprofit as opposed to a for-profit.
0:26:12.3 Kurt Baker: Okay. Yeah. So, speaking of the nonprofits, I guess hospitals, aren’t those considered nonprofits or? What are they? Is it a private?
0:26:20.8 Donald Loff: There are some privates, but…
0:26:22.9 Kurt Baker: Which is Capital?
0:26:23.5 Donald Loff: Capital Health is a nonprofit.
0:26:25.3 Kurt Baker: That’s what I thought. I didn’t want to assume. So that’s a pretty big one, and from what I understand, they do have a revenue flow for sure.
0:26:33.4 Donald Loff: Yes.
0:26:34.5 Kurt Baker: So, can you tell us a little bit about the challenges being in the treasurer position, I guess, to the board? Is that the board treasurer? Is that it? What kind of challenges do you see in that unique kind of position there?
0:26:45.9 Donald Loff: Well, it’s a tough question to answer because our finance group and department and our CFO are excellent. And not that we don’t have challenges that come up all the time, but there are different issues that you wouldn’t think of in a lot of ordinary businesses, but things like payers not paying the insurance companies, not being willing to pay on a timely basis maybe, or you’ll have issues with, depending upon the institution, the organization, with employee turnover is one, particularly on the doctor side. And having been involved where I am, I see a lot of, we bring in and recruit top doctors. It reminds me of when I got recruited to different firms in the investment business. And in that sense, I think that, again, it’s tough for me to come up with too much on it because everything works pretty well at Capital Health.
0:27:55.9 Kurt Baker: Right. Oh, I know they’re growing and they’re doing all kinds of great things. I understand that. But as an industry, I’m just thinking back, so you reflect some of the challenges I’ve read about in the news and I’ve talked to people that I know they’re doctors, nurses, whatever, is it seems like it’s the highest stress level. They feel like their compensation is being kind of squeezed because the reimbursements are kind of, you know, things are tight. So everybody’s like, hey. And I even know people that just said, hey, I’m tired. I’m going to just retire. I have enough wealth now. I don’t really want to deal with this anymore. They stopped loving the job, which is kind of a shame because we really do need the profession. It’s kind of important. So I’m hoping that it evolves in a way that’s beneficial to the people who actually provide the services as well as those who receive the services. And that’s kind of, I think, what most of us want. I mean, do you see anything occurring from your position in that, just the health care field in general, not necessarily Capital Health, but do you see any ways to address? I mean, how do you help those doctors and nurses say, hey, I want to stay and I want to keep doing it. Because many of them are very passionate about what they do. They’re really kind of cause-oriented. They really want to do this, this job.
0:29:07.5 Donald Loff: Oh, yeah. I mean, the best of them and many of them are really, really focused on succeeding and taking care of patients, saving patient lives, curing patients. And some of them are, certainly there’s always those that are better and stronger than others, but just like going, again, back to the analogy, back to the investment business and being a wealth manager or an advisor, here you’ve got doctors who are in demand too, a different kind of demand, but they’re there. And the organization, like a Capital Health, we’re a growing organization. As you probably know, we acquired St. Francis Hospital a couple of years ago, and there’s more growth to come. And our footprint has grown. It’s Mercer, Bucks County. We have a number of primary care offices and specialty offices over in Bucks County now. And so, the good news is the business is growing. The numbers keep getting better. But then you run into problems like facilities and location and space. And probably just generally, one of the biggest challenges I think a system like Capital Health has right now is having enough beds. And so it takes a lot of planning, and I know like a lot of good big organizations, we have a three-year, five-year long-term strategic plan to guide us, and we’re constantly tracking that and fortunately doing well with it.
0:30:47.5 Kurt Baker: That’s great. So what kind of, because you did this for like 45 years, so what advice would you give to maybe a younger financial advisor professional, let’s say? Because I mean, we all started our business, and you don’t just put your shingle out one day, and everybody just sends their mails and money to you. I mean, it’s a long process. People don’t realize this is probably the highest level of trust most people have. Some people rate above their marriage, like take care of my money, then I’ll take care of my spouse kind of thing. It’s kind of crazy some of the stats out there.
0:31:22.0 Donald Loff: Or their health.
0:31:22.6 Kurt Baker: Or their health. I know it’s crazy. I mean, to me it’s crazy, but the numbers don’t lie, so to speak. But this is almost like that highest level of trust of most professionals, which I don’t necessarily agree with the stat, but it’s the truth. And so when somebody’s younger, and let’s say I’m in my 20s, 30s, I’m going out to some guy or gal that’s like 50, 60, 70, whatever the case may be, what do I need to do to show them that I actually can manage some of that wealth or all of that wealth for them? What would you advise if you were starting over right now?
0:31:54.9 Donald Loff: Quite frankly, I’ve had that question asked. I meet a lot of new financial advisors, and they ask me if I’ll mentor them or whatever. But the first thing I tell them is think about joining a team, an existing team. It’s very difficult today with the way the business has grown and changed over time to be a “sole practitioner.” I’m sure there may be a few out there. And I’ve actually sat down and tried to give some mentoring, provide some mentoring to a couple of these newer advisors who I’ve met out in the community, and they’re out there networking, and I said, keep this up. You really need to continue to put the effort in here, but also think about longer term, think about joining a team, an existing team. And maybe that has a team that is looking to expand, and then there’ll be a succession plan in there. But to try and do it as an individual practitioner today in this business, I don’t want to say it’s impossible because nothing’s impossible, but it’s extremely difficult. It’s tough to begin with because we’re talking about broader stuff here, but when it comes down to it, the markets and what the markets do and the ultimate performance of an investment plan is going to drive success, but it’s also going to mean at some point, what’s the next step here? How do I get that level or bring my team to that level or bring more people onto my team? So there’s always, or not always, I know of opportunities where teams are actively looking for the right people. And to me, it’s a difference from a long time ago, but it’s also the kind of current advice I would give someone that asked me that.
0:34:00.6 Kurt Baker: So what do you think currently, with all the change that has been happening, do you think that high net worth clients, they look for now in an advisor compared to maybe what they looked for 30, 40 years ago? How is that different from a client perspective? What are their expectations? What attributes do you think they’re looking for in an advisor or advisory team kind of thing? Because it is mostly a team. Anybody who’s doing this now needs to have “a team” because you can’t know everything that a high net worth person or business owner needs. You have to have all these people that are experts in different areas. And anybody who’s successful knows that, and that’s absolutely required these days. So what are your thoughts about the expectations?
0:34:42.2 Donald Loff: Give me the question again.
0:34:43.8 Kurt Baker: A high net worth individual or business owner, what are their expectations? What are they looking for? Because as I said, almost two-thirds of them are considering changing advisors. That’s just the stat. So of those people, what would be a thing that’s like, oh, this is really something I feel like I’m missing now or something that would be helpful to my long-term plan, my business, my family, my charities, my impact. Whatever I care about, something is missing now. And that’s kind of what we see in the data. So what are some things that we can, as an industry, could go and say, hey, let’s make sure we’re taking care of these business owners? Because that’s really our job is to fill that. The stat says that we need to do a better job as an industry. What are your thoughts?
0:35:28.0 Donald Loff: And we haven’t talked about this, and I’ll mention it because I think this plays into it, is the self-help business. The fact that many individuals, not as much on the business or the nonprofit side, but certainly in the individual or high net worth market, are really using technology and doing it themselves more and more, particularly the younger folks who are more technologically savvy than some of us older guys. And what I think they’re looking for when they’re, most of the time they have an existing relationship, but the fact that they’d be willing to talk to someone else is a result of there’s something in that relationship that’s missing. And whether it comes down to the individuals on the team or the company or whether it’s a real need for better planning as part of it, and I think that’s where, and I’ve seen it, where those, again, those advisors who seem to be having the most success today, they have the team but they also really, really try to determine what is it that this organization, be it a company, a nonprofit, and so on, is missing.
0:36:52.4 Donald Loff: I don’t know that I have enough data in my own experience to be able to give you a good answer on that one. I think more often than not, it still comes down to performance. And I can recall about 10 or 15 years ago, I had a good client, good friend, and that’s the other thing. A lot of times you develop connections and relationships with the clients, but he happened to be both. And one year he called me up, and his return the prior year, I don’t know, let’s say he had a 16% return for the year, which is not a bad, if you could earn 16% every year, it’s not bad. But he called to complain because his son dealt with another firm, and he had 19% return. And I’m just pointing this out from the point of view of those, and these were both fairly sophisticated. This was a business, a big family business. But it’s interesting, when I think about it now, and that was… The relationship came about because initially of a friendship, which became a relationship. But when I think about that now, that’s tough. That’s, like I said, it’s tough, it’s difficult, depending on what people do. So, going back to networking, one of the things that I’ve done over time is network in circles or in groups of people that have similar interests, whether it’s sports or other types of activities, tennis or golf or whatever it might be. I think when you… That may be the door opener. That may be, okay, I like my advisor but boy, I sure wish I could play golf at his club. And that’s not going to be the determining factor. But intangibles almost like that, I think.
0:38:56.8 Kurt Baker: Yeah. Developing that relationship is very, very important. So, I agree 100%. You have to have a personal relationship because then you get to know the person better, then you can anticipate their needs better. And that’s what I’m seeing is that really getting to know your clients. I know, because some advisors, frankly, have too many clients, and they’re not able to focus enough on the individuals. So it’s kind of balancing that number of clients with actually providing the services because you can onboard people all day long, but you need to serve them once they get on board. And that’s really, sometimes advisors lose track of that is kind of what I’ve found. So, what are some of the most meaningful things, like moments you’ve seen? Because I know you’ve been on different boards and involved in different community activities. What are some memorable moments where you feel like you really…
0:39:42.3 Donald Loff: Memorable moments.
0:39:44.2 Kurt Baker: Yeah.
0:39:46.0 Donald Loff: Well, I think in my pro bono nonprofit work over the years, I had the pleasure of serving on a number of boards, and a handful of those boards, I actually was chair of the board. And I really enjoyed those opportunities because, obviously, I was out there in part of my networking strategy, but I also got to meet and got to know people. And in one instance that pops into my head when I think about it is Chambers of Commerce and the fact that the two largest clients I ever had in my 42-plus years in the business came about through somebody I met at a Chamber of Commerce event or someone I met who introduced me to someone. And I’m thinking of one that was a Taft-Hartley relationship, was a union fund, and another one just like that was an endowment, a foundation for a university. And in both of those instances, when I was awarded the business, they were high moments because it was like I had worked hard to get to the point where… And in those cases, you’re also bidding against other firms. You’re in there trying to win the business over. And I think about those two instances in particular. Both of them resulted from meeting someone, and I’m chuckling because it’s funny in a way, toweling off in the locker room after the event and saying, oh, let’s go sit together at dinner upstairs or something like that.
0:41:37.6 Kurt Baker: Personal relationships are huge. No matter how much all this tech goes or AI or whatever, I agree with that 100%. So, we’re going to wrap up here in a few minutes, but I have one last question for you. So, if you were to change anything during your career path or advice you would give your younger self, what maybe could I have done differently growing my business? You were very successful that I would like to have thought about, maybe done a little earlier or done it maybe slightly differently now that you kind of look back on your career.
0:42:07.2 Donald Loff: Well, I think two things. One would be that I would have started forming a team sooner than I did. And I started building a team in the mid ’90s when everybody wasn’t doing it like today, but I could have started sooner and I didn’t, and it was just not… There was some nervousness about it and some concern, would it be successful? So, that turned out to be one of those instances for me that I would do a little bit differently. And the other is I tried to define my target market better, and I learned a lot. And today, if I was out starting in the business and I knew what I knew then, so to speak, or I knew then what I know now, got a little tongue-twisted there, I think it would be focusing on the kinds of businesses and organizations in the institutional side of the business that I didn’t pay enough attention to or didn’t really understand what it would have taken to get that business in the end. So I learned that the hard way by not getting it.
0:43:32.0 Kurt Baker: Right. Wow. That’s awesome. So, I definitely appreciate you coming on. You did a fantastic job. I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule. I know you’re very, very involved in the community, and you’ve done a lot for everybody here locally. So I appreciate it, Don. Thank you very much for coming on.
0:43:46.7 Donald Loff: Well, thank you, Kurt. Thank you for having me.
0:43:48.6 Kurt Baker: Okay. You’ve been listening to Master Your Finances. Have a great day.
