2025, And Beyond!

After 3 years it feels like we not only have our feet under us, but we are starting to run forward.  

Our firm’s total assets under management has over doubled in size since we left Ameriprise in July 2021. Next year we are on pace to break $500mm of client assets. Our team headcount is up to 7, and everyone on staff has been on board since May 2023. The evolution from what was once a solo-advisor practice, to what is now a ‘mini-ensemble’ has been an incredible ride for us. We have been able to do more and make more meaningful impact in our client’s lives than I thought possible.

I remember when I started in this business just over 7 years ago with no job description thinking it would just be a temporary spot until I found the next thing. Well …. starting year 8 and I still haven’t found the ‘next thing’. I think I figured out the job description though.

Growing, and learning, this much in such short order has been a lot of work, and it’s required that we spend more time than ever carefully considering what it means to grow in a sustainable way.

Ie – can we really do what we have been doing in the same way, forever?

I’ve spent a decent bit of time thinking about what it means to grow sustainably.

Growing sustainably, to me, basically means 2 things:

1. Give good advice

2. Stay in business

It makes sense if you think about it. If our advice is bad, we won’t grow. If we don’t stay in business, we can’t give good advice.

Growing at the expense of client service = bad. This year we’ve been really conscious to make sure that we don’t compromise growth over serving our long-time clients.

We have continued to be referred to your family & friends, which has been an incredible honor. We met with 44 prospective clients (almost 1 a week!) last year. Of those, we were able to take on 16 as new clients (6 of which were family members of existing clients). For the rest we met we were able to refer them to other advisors that fit their situation better than we could.

We get this question often, so I think it’s important to outline here. Yes, we are still taking on new clients as a firm. I will be the first point of contact for new introductions, and the best way to introduce people to our firm is to direct them to our website and click the ‘Work With Us’ button on the top right of the screen. Whether we can work together or not, we always strive to make sure everyone has a good experience and is given some direction on any financial questions they have.

Quite honestly, the number of referrals has been so consistent over the years, we have yet to run a single marketing campaign. And I hope we never have to.

As we close out the year, a breakdown of our client base looks like this:

Total Client Count: 223 Core Planning Clients (down from 225), 47 Investment Only Clients, and 7 Corporate Clients.

37 Multi-Generation Client Relationship (6 with three generations)

And 110 Retired Clients

Retirement planning is, and probably always will be, our bread and butter.

Something I pay attention to a lot is our firm-level flows (how much money comes in vs what goes out) from investment accounts. Through the end of November we sent out $23mm of distributions to our clients from their investment accounts. That is $23mm this year to help our clients for retirement income, new home purchases, pay off debt, fund education, make charitable gifts, and so much more.

In many ways, sending money back to clients is the most rewarding thing we do. You trust us with your money, and our goal is to give you back more.

I’ll be taking on a more involved role in a number of the client relationships we have. For those clients specifically I’ll be sending out a more detailed email in the next few weeks.

We will do our best to continue to build on the solutions we’re able to offer, and hope to see you all (at our new Lake Austin Blvd office!) very soon.

William

My 10 Year Plan

As we approach the end of 2024 and look ahead to 2025, I wanted to share some insights into our vision for the new year and the decade to come. I have three main objectives for next year: a reduced role for myself, an expanded role for William, and a move to our new office.

Firstly, I will be turning 60 in February. While I have no plans to retire, I do intend to work less. The days of being immersed in the daily operations of the office seven days a week are behind me. We began planning for this transition in 2024 by expanding William's role and adjusting our calendar to focus client meetings in the first two months of each quarter. This allowed us to dedicate our efforts to taxes in March, team building in June, business planning in September, and focus on the new year in December. We will maintain this basic schedule in 2025, but I will be holding fewer meetings. 

For many of you, this means William will be your main point of contact and conduct meetings, a role he has excelled in for the past seven years. I trust him implicitly to continue providing outstanding advice. With this change, I believe I have a path to continue being involved in the future of ENZI for the next ten years.

Secondly, in addition to leading more meetings, William will assume responsibility for all day-to-day operations of the office. This will include staffing, technology, business processes, and new client integration. While he has been involved in these areas in the past, he will have full responsibility moving forward. This expanded role, coupled with his increased responsibility in leading meetings, means the entire team will be supporting you and him in continuing to provide the high level of service you expect and deserve. 

To that end, we have had great continuity with our staff in 2024, and the whole team is returning for 2025. Melissa is returning from maternity leave next week and will continue to be your first point of contact for all service related inquiries. She will also field tax questions as a conduit to Dean, who will be preparing your tax returns. Vanessa is completing her second year and is the primary contact for forms & applications as well as executing transactions and moving money to and from your accounts. Daniel Martinez's primary role is focused on preparing the necessary materials to ensure William and I are ready to provide actionable advice during your office visits. Daniel Snowden is entering his seventh year with the team and will expand his role to include assisting Melissa and Vanessa in providing outstanding service, as well as continuing to conduct investment research and execute trades to support your portfolios.

Thirdly, the move into our new Lake Austin office is imminent. Having purchased the property in November 2020, it has been a long journey, but we believe the result will be a first-class office experience. We are putting the final touches on the space, including a commercial-grade coffee bar, expanded office space for the team, and comfortable meeting spaces. While we plan to maintain our Bluffstone office for the time being, our intent is to have the majority of the team located at the Lake Austin office, while Dean will remain at the Bluffstone office to complete our 2024 tax season. We hope to move into the new office in March and will keep you updated on the timeline.

Thank you for your continued trust. We look forward to working together in the coming years.

David

Focus

 You should see my email inbox. It’s about 25% client emails, 25% people who want to buy us, and 50% people who want to sell us something.

I’ve gotten very good at the unsubscribe button in the last year.

Something I have tried to be really conscious of in my career is the idea that effort compounds. If I just keep doing this, without even trying hard, I can do more. I think it was Greg Lemond who said, “It never get easier, you just go faster.”

While that is nice in theory, I am starting to realize the side-effects of compounding effort. One is that you get better at your trade/craft, which is logical. The other is that more people start to take notice.

As effort compounds, opportunity compounds. As opportunity compounds, distraction compounds.

The late Charlie Munger had 3 basic rules for success in life:

1. Don’t sell anything you wouldn’t buy yourself.

2. Don’t work for anyone you don’t respect and admire.

3. Work only with people you enjoy. 

The most successful people I know can make decisions quickly. They also aren’t afraid to admit when they are wrong and reverse course, even if it makes them look like fools.  

My goal is to be laser-focused on what we have done really well to this point, and hope to continue to do really well. I don’t want to go to another conference, or wholesaler luncheon, or anything other than what we have done to get here.

A few new updates:

• On Friday we moved all investment ‘sweep’ cash in Schwab accounts to the Schwab Money Market fund. This is to allow your idle cash to earn a higher interest rate (currently over 5%) as it is parked for reinvestment. We expect to execute this sweep every month moving forward on or around the 10th of the month. As interest rates remain higher for longer, your investment cash will benefit.

• I’ve recorded about 12 podcast episodes in the last few months. I am hoping to have it relaunched by the end of this month. It’s been a lot of fun, and remarkably easy. I’m hoping it will be another avenue to help us streamline communication, and share ideas with you all. I’ve got a bunch of great guests lined up, and just had an interview last week with the former Global Chief Economist for JPMorgan Chase & Co. Hoping to have that one up and out soon for you.

Until next time.

The best advice I ever got

The nice thing about running your own business is you don’t have to answer to anyone. The scary thing about running your own business is you don’t have to answer to anyone.

When I was an English major my superpower was turning in a 6 page essay when the professor asked for 12, and still getting an A (okay… sometimes I got Bs). I found I was more effective in writing what I thought was useful and stopping, instead of hitting someone else’s stated threshold. Quality over quantity I guess you could say.

I figure it might be useful for me to start writing to our clients. I’ll try not to take up unnecessary space, but I realize we have an important responsibility in your lives and you guys might want to hear from us every now and again. Since we don’t have to answer to anyone (except you!) I’ll do my best to be interesting and useful. No dog and pony shows, just things we think are relevant to the people we serve.

I won’t bore you with the inside baseball, but last year was our best year ever by every metric possible. I think part of the reason is because we (finally) started to focus on a piece of advice I have heard a million times - Focus On What You’re Good At.

The last 30 months, since we launched ENZI Wealth, I personally have felt the effect of shiny object syndrome. In the post-Covid regime it felt like everything was an opportunity to do something innovative and exciting and change the way we delivered our client experience. I felt myself getting pulled left and right test driving every new piece of technology and peeking under the hood of every new investment strategy or listening to the latest business guru tell me how to run my business. By focusing on everything, I was focusing on nothing.

The 2024 focus is on clients. That’s it. That’s the whole story.

If we have an edge, it’s by knowing our client’s financial situations really really well, listening to their needs, and giving sound, actionable, and specific advice. If we can do that well, and over a long period of time, in our opinion everyone wins.

I’m in a unique position where I have a business partner who has been doing this for over 30 years - and I’ll get to be here for the next. I plan to continue the party by building up a team, and keeping the focus on you.

This year I’ll be writing more regular updates, as well as starting more YouTube/podcast content once our new Lake Austin Blvd office and studio comes online in the first half of the year.

More to come, we are excited for what’s next.

All for now,

William

A Year In Review

As we turn the page to 2022, and I enter my 29th year in the financial services industry, I can't help but reflect on the last six months and say how truly thankful I am for what we have been able to accomplish at ENZI Wealth. If you had told me that in our first 6 months we would welcome over 190 families and $260 million in assets I'm not sure I would have quite believed you.

William had been bugging me for years to go out on our own, and 2020 proved to be the catalyst for our transition. With the world turning upside down, clients were asking us to become more and more involved in their everyday financial lives. Throughout many discussions internally, and with a number of outside consultants, it became obvious that the right thing to do for us, and our clients, was to go out and start our own independent firm.

Discussions began in earnest during the summer of 2020, and after a number of false starts and stops, we were able to launch in July of 2021. The process was both thrilling and terrifying, but we stuck to our mantra - if we continue to provide excellent service to our clients, they will continue to trust us with their money. 

The early success has allowed us to launch ENZI Tax ahead of schedule. We hired Ryan Hall as our senior tax accountant and we are ready to help with tax preparation this year.

We have partnered with Matt King and set up ENZI Law to offer comprehensive legal advice in areas of estate, probate, trusts, and contracts.

William is working hard on the investment side, expanding the offering of structured notes and looking for more opportunities to offer outstanding risk-adjusted returns in 2022.

We hired Kimberly Yarnall to help with operating the office and perfecting the client experience. She has excelled at all things that need organization and we see her role evolving in 2022.

Zach Austin was brought on in October, having completed a Master's in Financial Planning from Texas Tech where he was also part of the football team.  

Daniel Snowden continues to be a key part of everything we do. He recently passed his CFA Level II exam and we see his role continuing to expand this year. 

We can't thank everyone enough for joining us at ENZI. We look forward to continuing to work together and striving to exceed expectations in the years ahead.

David