How Jeremy Pugliese turned lifelong familiarity with the trades into a powerful advisory niche built on trust, insight, and real-world understanding.
What if the most powerful niche for your advisory practice is one you already know better than you realize?
In this episode of The Advisors Business Hour, Sherry Sarver Johnson and Jeff Mount sit down with Jeremy Pugliese of Planning Alliance to explore how a lifetime of exposure to the trades became the foundation for a highly specialized advisory practice.
Jeremy grew up in his family’s plumbing supply business, later owned a plumbing service business, and helped friends launch their own service-based businesses. That firsthand experience gave him something that can’t easily be replicated: an intimate understanding of the challenges construction, plumbing, HVAC, and other trade-business owners face.
The conversation goes well beyond simply “choosing a niche.” Jeremy explains how he helps business owners understand job profitability, improve business value, prepare for an eventual exit, retain key employees, structure compensation, and navigate complex transactions with the right professional team.
He also shares how case studies, professional relationships, speaking engagements, CPAs, associations, and centers of influence have helped him build his practice without relying on a traditional niche website.
Perhaps most importantly, Jeremy explains the principle that guides his approach to referrals and client service: radical responsibility. His philosophy is simple—make promises, keep promises, and take ownership of the outcome.
For advisors wondering how to identify a niche, deepen client relationships, create meaningful referral partnerships, or become more valuable to business-owner clients, this conversation offers practical ideas rooted in real-world experience.
Why Client Trust Starts With Understanding
Jeremy’s niche didn’t begin with a marketing strategy. It began with his childhood.
Growing up around a family-owned plumbing supply business exposed him to plumbers, HVAC contractors, maintenance contractors, and other tradespeople from an early age. Later, running his own plumbing service business and helping friends start service businesses gave him direct experience with the challenges his future clients would face.
That experience became a competitive advantage because Jeremy wasn’t simply learning about his clients’ industries from the outside. He had lived around them.
The Financial Challenges Behind the Trades
Jeremy discusses several issues that can significantly affect trade businesses, including inventory management, hiring decisions, job costing, profitability, employee benefits, and retirement plans.
One of his central points is that business owners often have an instinct about which jobs are profitable—but instinct isn’t enough.
By job-costing work consistently over an extended period, owners can begin to understand exactly where they are making money and where they may be losing it.
That information can lead to a surprisingly valuable question:
What should I stop doing?
Sometimes the Best Strategy Is Knowing What to Say No To
Jeremy describes working with construction companies to understand the profitability of different divisions and types of work.
Instead of simply asking how a company can grow, he encourages owners to understand which areas of the business actually contribute to profitability. With better reporting, accounting support, and recurring reviews, owners can make decisions based on actual numbers rather than assumptions.
The goal isn’t growth for growth’s sake.
It’s understanding the business well enough to make better decisions.
Finding a Niche That Already Exists in Your Life
For advisors trying to identify their own niche, Jeremy’s story provides an important distinction.
His niche wasn’t something he invented.
It was something he recognized.
Before becoming an advisor, Jeremy went through an intensive professional and personal development process that helped him recognize his calling. He then deliberately worked on his communication and professional development so he could bring that passion into his advisory career.
His advice is to look for the intersection between familiarity, experience, and genuine affinity.
He gives another example from the conversation: an advisor who grew up around doctors because his parents and other family members were physicians. For that advisor, working with doctors could be a natural extension of an environment he already understood.
Your Competitive Advantage May Be Closer Than You Think
There is a difference between saying, “I work with doctors” or “I work with contractors” and actually understanding the world those clients operate in.
Jeremy’s experience with plumbers, HVAC contractors, and other trades gives him an understanding of their environment that comes from decades of exposure.
The content of the advisory conversation may change, but the familiarity remains.
The niche may already be hiding in plain sight.
Case Studies Instead of a Traditional Niche Website
Interestingly, Jeremy doesn’t have a separate website specifically dedicated to his niche.
Instead, he uses case studies.
His marketing process involves identifying real situations from the previous six or twelve months—business sales, exit plans, partnerships, increases in EBITDA, and other client challenges—and turning those experiences into educational stories while protecting client confidentiality.
One case study followed a client relationship that lasted nearly ten years and involved partnership dissolution, business-value improvement, bringing a family member into the business, an eventual sale, compensation planning, and real estate disposition.
Exit Planning Doesn’t Always Start With an Exit
Many business owners don’t initially approach Jeremy saying they want to sell their business.
Often, they arrive because someone they trust told them they should meet with him.
Jeremy explains that when an owner specifically comes in looking for exit planning, the timeline can already be compressed. More commonly, the relationship begins with another issue—such as an executive retention challenge—and eventually develops into broader exit planning.
This illustrates an important aspect of advisory relationships:
The problem that brings a client through the door isn’t always the problem they ultimately need to solve.
Advisory Work Beyond Investments
Jeremy’s work extends considerably beyond traditional investment recommendations.
He estimates that roughly 60% of his time is spent on strategy, with approximately 20% focused on business development and 20% on financial or product recommendations. His strategic work can include increasing business value, preparing for an exit, retaining key employees, and developing compensation packages.
He also describes several ways these services can be compensated, including fee-based planning, hourly work, and defined scopes of work.
Building the Right Team Around the Business Owner
When a business enters an M&A or exit process, Jeremy’s role is not to become the M&A firm.
Instead, he advocates for the business owner and helps assemble the right team.
That can involve the business owner, CPA or accountant, estate-planning attorney, business attorney, M&A professionals, and other executives or key employees depending on the transaction.
Jeremy describes himself as an organizer and coordinator who helps make sure the process keeps moving, including helping manage the extensive information requests that arise during due diligence.
Business Value Is About More Than Profit
Jeremy also discusses what can influence the valuation of construction businesses.
He points to factors including geography, company size, profitability, market position, potential as a regional hub, brand recognition, and technology systems.
For example, a larger company backed by private equity may use acquisitions to establish a regional hub and then acquire smaller companies around that hub.
That means the strategic position of a business can affect how attractive it is to potential buyers.
Quality Over Quantity
One of the most valuable lessons for advisors comes from Jeremy’s approach to professional relationships.
He works with CPAs, attorneys, M&A firms, and other professionals throughout the advisory process. But he isn’t focused on building the largest possible referral network.
He’s focused on building a high-quality network.
Jeremy explains that when he introduces someone to a professional, he takes responsibility for the introduction and the experience that follows. If something goes wrong, he doesn’t simply distance himself from the situation. He takes ownership.
His philosophy:
“We’re not in the quantity game. We’re in the quality game.”
Radical Responsibility
Perhaps the most memorable idea from the conversation is Jeremy’s concept of radical responsibility.
His approach is to take ownership even when something technically falls outside his responsibilities.
If a meeting needs to be scheduled, he makes sure it happens.
If a professional needs preparation before meeting a client, he helps make sure they’re ready.
If something goes wrong, he doesn’t wait for someone else to notice it.
He raises the alarm and gets the right people involved.
For Jeremy, trust isn’t simply something an advisor asks clients or referral partners to give.
It’s something demonstrated through consistent behavior.
Key Takeaways
1. Your niche may already be part of your story.
Look at the industries, communities, businesses, or professional environments you’ve known throughout your life.
2. Experience creates a different kind of credibility.
There’s a meaningful difference between studying an industry and having firsthand familiarity with the people and challenges within it.
3. Job costing can reveal what a business should stop doing.
Understanding profitability by job or division can help owners make decisions based on actual numbers rather than instinct.
4. Exit planning often begins before an owner thinks about exiting.
Issues such as executive retention, compensation, business value, and succession can become entry points into a longer-term exit strategy.
5. Advisory value can extend beyond investments.
Jeremy’s practice demonstrates how financial advisors can become strategic resources for business owners.
6. Case studies can communicate expertise without a niche-specific website.
Real examples can demonstrate how an advisor solves problems while protecting client confidentiality.
7. Build a network around quality, not quantity.
A smaller group of trusted professionals can become a powerful ecosystem for serving complex clients.
8. Take radical responsibility.
When an advisor takes ownership of the entire client experience, trust can become part of the value proposition.
Transcript
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Hi, Jeremy. Welcome back to The Advisors Business Hour, where we dive into the heart and hustle of building your ideal advisory practice. I’m Sherry Sarver Johnson with Beneficial Business Solutions, and I’m here with my co-host, Jeff Mount, President of Caddis LLC, and he’s also the guy affectionately known as the advisor to advisors.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Today, we have a very special treat for you. We have Jeremy Pugliese from Planning Alliance with us, and he’s going to help us dive into picking a niche and how he’s done that so successfully. If you’re listening and you’re a business owner in the construction niche, this may be something you want to listen to, because he’s got a lot of gems he’s going to be sharing with us. Welcome to the show, Jeff. Welcome to the show, Jeremy.
Jeff Mount: Thanks, Sherry.
Jeremy Pugliese: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Well, it’s good to see both of you. Before we start diving in, because I’ve got a long list of questions here, Jeremy, I want to ask you this now and also later at the end of the show: how can folks get ahold of you after we speak today?
Jeremy Pugliese: My name’s Jeremy Pugliese, that’s with a P, and the name of the firm is Planning Alliance. A quick Google search will find me, or you can find me on LinkedIn. A lot of people message me directly on LinkedIn. I also have a professional Facebook page, but LinkedIn’s typically the best.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Awesome. I’ll ask you again at the end so hopefully we’ll get all that information, because I know folks are going to want to reach out to you after hearing what we have to go over today. So, the first question I have for you is always the origin story. How in the world did you get into this business and pick the niche that you did? Give us a little bit of backstory on how you got to be where you are today.
Jeremy Pugliese: I was raised in upstate New York, in the Hudson Valley, and my family owned a plumbing supply business. From a very young age, I was helping put plumbing parts in boxes and shipping them out to customers, and I was working with people in the trades: plumbers, maintenance contractors, HVAC contractors.
Jeremy Pugliese: I got very familiar, just as a child going through the family business, with that type of clientele. As I got older, I had my own plumbing service business, and I helped a lot of my friends start their service-based businesses too. That really cemented what I would say is my calling. I feel like in my heart I have a real calling to work with people in the trades. I know a lot of the problems. I’ve seen them firsthand, and I’ve made the mistakes, truthfully, before I was in this industry. That’s a lot of the origin that got me so passionate about this marketplace.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Wow. As a family business, it’s almost like you learn things by osmosis and you know it in your bones when you go through something like that. Starting out as a child, seeing the business, seeing your family, and then being in it yourself, you bring a wealth of inside information and an ability to empathize with business owners who are in that same space.
Jeff Mount: I’m curious, Jeremy. Along the way, as you’re growing up and watching everything go on around you, were you able to identify some of the financial challenges that were unique to this group, or did that come after you got in the business?
Jeremy Pugliese: Inventory management. For a distribution company like my family had, inventory management was a very big issue. Being able to find the right products, test the market, and know that you weren’t going to go on a hunch and make a purchase of an item you think you can sell. For anybody that’s buying and selling things, that’s a huge factor because it’s literally all of your capital sitting on a shelf.
Jeremy Pugliese: On the service side, it’s really understanding what the numbers are. Who’s my hire? Who am I looking to hire next to help me? That’s something I find people get really conflicted about: what role do I fill next so that I can really expand my business on the service side?
Sherry Sarver Johnson: That’s interesting that you brought that up, because that was part of our topic in the last episode. When businesses, whether it’s a business or a financial advisor, get into the growth phase, how do they go from doing things catch-as-catch-can to having systems where they can really predict and know, and actually have the numbers behind their decisions? Would you dive a little deeper into how you advise your clients to manage that piece?
Jeremy Pugliese: Do you want me to talk about how I tell construction companies to manage the numbers side of understanding their business, or expanding and who they hire? Which side of that?
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Let’s do both, because I think both are really interesting and so critical.
Jeremy Pugliese: I find that a lot of construction company owners know the types of work they do. Right now I’m working with somebody who’s a concrete specialist. He does certain types of foundations, and he also does residential stamped concrete. He has different divisions of work and different types of jobs. But if you asked him which one he makes the most money on, or which one he should not be doing because he probably shouldn’t be doing all three, he might have a gut reaction, but he wouldn’t know the exact numbers.
Jeremy Pugliese: From the numbers side, job costing is a really important component. And I don’t mean just picking a couple of different jobs you’ve done and testing those out. Subconsciously, business owners know where they made money and where they didn’t. You want to job cost everything for a quarter or six months, or all of your jobs, so you really understand if you’re missing the boat.
Jeremy Pugliese: That’s very important on the numbers side. Then, how do we help? We help in a few ways. We help with the benefits side, meaning employee benefits and retirement plans. We can have input on how they structure the contribution method, or how much money the business owner is putting toward employee benefits. We can help them get the cost per employee.
Jeremy Pugliese: Then we would also encourage them to find a company we can work in tandem with that does accounting specifically for construction companies. There are great companies that are QuickBooks pros. They’ll help build proper dashboards using QuickBooks, and they’re not really expensive. You can get into a rhythm of recurring monthly meetings and ask, ‘What did we close last month? How much did we make on each job?’
Jeremy Pugliese: If you do that for a while, you’ll understand really quickly which types of business you should not be doing. That’s some of the most important information: what should I not do? What should I say no to? So it’s really not just me. It’s tandem. It’s usually a couple of different people working on that.
Jeff Mount: Jeremy, I have no doubt you get a lot of referrals given the details of some of the challenges you’ve identified in this niche. How else do you get that message out to prospective clients?
Jeremy Pugliese: We work with CPAs, because a lot of CPA firms want to do taxes and they might not do that level of bookkeeping, or they’re very expensive and they know it. There are other ways that kind of number crunching can be done more affordably. So they will refer us business, and a lot of it is word of mouth.
Jeremy Pugliese: I also do a lot of speaking at associations. It might be a local Master Plumbers Association or Associated Builders and Contractors. Different associations always want to know what they should be doing to be more efficient. That’s a good way for somebody like me to get out and spread the message.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Interesting. On the flip side, for advisors listening and thinking, ‘It is so cool that Jeremy has dialed in his niche like that,’ do you have tips for figuring out what that niche is for them? You came to it through your childhood and what you were exposed to.
Jeremy Pugliese: Before I was a financial advisor, I went through an intensive professional and personal development program. As I went through that, I realized this was my calling. I didn’t know I wanted to be a financial advisor until after I had done that work.
Jeremy Pugliese: After I transitioned to being an advisor, I didn’t know what my network was. I was into plumbing and HVAC. I wasn’t doing this. But I knew that I had to learn how to communicate my passion to people. So I put myself into a really strict development program. There are a lot of them. Right now, even, I’m in Strategic Coach. That’s a different program, a little more elevated for people who have a practice at a certain level.
Jeremy Pugliese: I’m a firm believer in staying in some sort of coaching, leadership program, or developmental process. I really believe in becoming a better quality person for the people, for the customers.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: What you just said is really golden: stay learning, stay growing, stay developing. To have something you’re familiar with and also have a love for the people doing that type of work, that’s kind of the ideal sweet spot.
Jeremy Pugliese: For me, I feel very comfortable communicating with that marketplace. I’ve been doing it my whole life. The content is different now, but the affinity is there.
Jeremy Pugliese: We have another advisor who grew up around doctors. His parents are doctors, and he has a lot of other family members in medicine. He’s been talking to doctors his whole life. Well, guess what? You should probably go work with doctors. You know it. You’ve been around it. It’s natural.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: There’s a big difference between saying, ‘I work with doctors,’ on your website and actually having talked to doctors your whole life and knowing the trials they go through and the ins and outs. The same thing applies to you with HVAC, plumbers, and the trades. You know that stuff at a cellular level.
Jeff Mount: Jeremy, do you have a website that is specifically for this niche, and do you share the unique challenges they have on that website?
Jeremy Pugliese: No, I don’t. You would think I do. What I do is share case studies.
Jeff Mount: How do you do that?
Jeremy Pugliese: I have someone who helps me with marketing. A couple times a month, we’ll talk on the phone while I’m driving, and I’ll think about some of the cases, exit plans, or deals that have closed in the past six or twelve months. Or we’re working with a company and were able to help them increase their EBITDA by a certain amount, and here’s what we did.
Jeremy Pugliese: Obviously, we don’t give anybody’s personal information. It’s all redacted and repositioned, let’s say. But we do a lot of case studies.
Jeremy Pugliese: We’re putting one out now. I was brought in because two gentlemen were partners in a service business in the trades. One did all the work, and one was kind of absentee, but they were both 50/50 owners. We were brought in originally in 2016 to help them negotiate the dissolution of the partnership: how does one buy the other out? Then we were kept around to increase business value.
Jeremy Pugliese: We also helped bring a family member into the business with the remaining partner, who was now the sole shareholder and owner. We helped him exit and sell his 100% ownership. The family member who was running the business stayed behind, so we helped negotiate his compensation package.
Jeremy Pugliese: After the business was sold, we helped them get out of all their real estate too, because they had accumulated a lot of real estate. That’s very common in the trades. We tell people, if you’re owning a construction business, you should probably own some real estate. You have a natural inclination to take care of something tangible, and you should use that.
Jeremy Pugliese: That case study happened over the course of just under ten years, with about four different stages of working with the client. It was really great, and it’s fun to look back at it.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Do owners come in knowing they need to prepare for exit planning, or do they come in for help with their business and then learn from you that they need to plan for the exit?
Jeremy Pugliese: If they come in thinking they need to plan for an exit, typically their timeline is very truncated. It’s not too late, but the timeline is compressed. Most people meet with me because they’re told to by somebody they trust. They’re not even sure why they’re there. It’s kind of, ‘Why am I sitting with you? I’m just here because so-and-so told me I need to meet with you.’ Then we have a conversation, and it develops over time.
Jeremy Pugliese: I would say 90% of the people I meet with the first time may have that third party who introduced me in the room. That’s how I bring people on. Even when I’m making introductions, I’m always there. I want to create the stage for that. They’re not typically coming in thinking, ‘How am I going to get out of my business?’
Jeremy Pugliese: Sometimes a specific topic that involves exit is executive retention: ‘I have this key employee. What do I do to keep them around?’ That’s very common when people don’t want to work as much. They want to know how to keep a few key people in their chairs while they’re not there. I get brought in specifically on that topic, and it leads to exit planning.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Listening to you talk, it seems like you’re doing a lot of business strategy. Of course, it’s rolled into the financial aspect of planning, but a lot of it sounds like strategy. What are your thoughts on that?
Jeremy Pugliese: When it comes to making an investment recommendation and where we put the money, yes, I do that, but I would say that’s maybe 20% or even less of my time. The majority of my time is spent helping people increase the value of their business, or structuring and implementing a plan so they can get to an exit, retain a key employee, or put together a compensation package because they need to fill a position and bring in candidates.
Jeremy Pugliese: They’re all leading toward exit. Maybe 60% of my time is strategy, 20% is business development, and 20% is financial recommendation or product recommendation.
Jeff Mount: The advisory work that’s not related to insurance and securities, are you getting paid for that?
Jeremy Pugliese: Yes. There are three ways we get compensated. We can do a fee-based plan, hourly work, or a defined scope of work. Just like a construction company doing an addition on your house, you know the scope and you might pay them a third, a third, a third. I structure a lot of it like that because customers are comfortable with that model.
Jeremy Pugliese: For many of our clients, they’re serial entrepreneurs and we’re already managing good sums of money. If somebody has sold a business and we’re managing the money, and then they’re going to start a new business with their son, am I going to charge them a separate fee? Probably not, because we’re already in a relationship and we already know the backdrop, unless it’s going to be a very large time commitment.
Jeff Mount: That was my question. It sounded like you were spending a lot of time helping them with strategy in their business, and I was thinking, ‘I hope you get paid.’
Jeremy Pugliese: Right before this, I was on a call with the CEO, the controller, who’s also the CEO’s father, and three people from an M&A firm. I was on the owners’ side. I want to be very clear: I do not participate in M&A. We don’t do that for a living. However, I am on the advisory side with the owners, talking about strategy: what do we need to do? Should we buy out our smaller competitor? What are the things we should do? In that situation, I’m on a retainer and an hourly fee, and I bill them monthly.
Jeff Mount: When you start talking about M&A, what other types of professionals do you have sitting around the table? You mentioned the M&A professionals. I imagine you have a CPA and that sort of thing. What’s a typical deal look like? How many parties are involved, and who are they?
Jeremy Pugliese: Before the deal, there’s typically me and the owners, an estate planning attorney, and the business owner’s current CPA or accountant because we want to understand the finances before the deal. The state of the business will determine if anybody else gets involved.
Jeremy Pugliese: If there’s another C-suite executive or key person who’s going to be involved in data and fact-finding during the exit or sale, whether it’s a third-party sale or an insider transfer, that person would be involved too. Then we’ll typically interview a lot of M&A firms and see who we like.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: So you’re really advocating for the business owner.
Jeremy Pugliese: Yes. It will be me, the business owner, and maybe one other person, and we’re going to talk to whoever has expertise doing this kind of transaction.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: You’re going to help them find the right players to help make it happen.
Jeremy Pugliese: Exactly. We want to know who they’ve done business with. Whose business have you sold in the last year that we can call? If they’re good at their job and they’ve sold businesses, they have good relationships and they can say, ‘Here are three referrals for businesses just like yours that we’ve sold in the last three years.’
Jeremy Pugliese: Maybe that’s another meeting or phone call. Then we narrow it down and have another meeting with the M&A people. It’s like interviewing for a position in a business. Once we decide which M&A firm to work with, they’re a new team member.
Jeremy Pugliese: They’re going to send us an engagement, and we’ll bring in our business attorney to look at it before we sign. We’re going to negotiate the terms. We may make sure the compensation is structured on a sliding scale, so if they sell the business and the owner makes more money, the M&A firm can make more because they’re doing a really good job.
Jeremy Pugliese: The business attorney helps with contract negotiation. Then the M&A firm has their financial people and they begin due diligence. At that point, you typically start a weekly meeting cadence and a lot of fact-finding.
Jeremy Pugliese: There’s usually a very complex spreadsheet with hundreds of things they’re asking for, and everybody gets assigned items. My role, for example, if we meet with the M&A firm every Tuesday morning at 8:00, is to reach out to everybody in the business between Tuesday and Tuesday and make sure they downloaded the reports and did their homework. I’m that person on the business side because the owners don’t have time to do it.
Jeff Mount: So you become the engine for that. Jeremy, you’re obviously familiar with the consolidation going on in the RIA business and the differences in valuations. I don’t know the construction business. Is it like that on the construction side? Is there a big difference in valuations based on different methodologies, or are they fairly consistent?
Jeremy Pugliese: The methodologies we find are fairly consistent. The fluctuation in value is often geographic. Somebody in the Midwest compared to somebody in the Northeast, or someone on the East Coast in a less densely populated area compared with someone near a dense market, may get a different multiple because of the market.
Jeremy Pugliese: It also depends on size and profitability. If you’re making 10, 11, or 12%, that’s pretty healthy, at least from what I’ve seen. How big are you, and can you become a regional hub for the people who buy you?
Jeremy Pugliese: Let’s say you’re a roofing contractor and there’s a big roofing business in the Midwest or Chicago that’s now funded with private equity and wants to expand to the East Coast. They don’t want to rebrand everything on the East Coast. They want to find the biggest roofing contractor on the East Coast, buy them, and give them a premium because they already have brand recognition. Then they can find smaller companies, buy them, and rebrand them to the bigger hub. If you can be the hub, you’re going to get a premium.
Jeremy Pugliese: If you’re that size company and want to be the hub for a local trade business, the software programs you’re using also matter. There are a few big programs, and buyers may want to make sure you’re using one of them because they don’t want to go through a software change with a company that’s already very large. Those kinds of things can increase value a lot.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Great examples. There are a lot of factors. Let’s flip this around and talk about some of the lessons advisors can take from what you’ve shared. We already touched on how to decide on a niche, and that was a great example. I’m also thinking about centers of influence. You’re working with so many different professionals to put these deals together. How do you turn those relationships into centers of influence so later the CPA may send somebody to you, or the M&A firm may bring you into something they’re already working on?
Jeremy Pugliese: That’s a great question. How do we expand and create these referral sources? One of the things I learned through Landmark Education was to take full responsibility for everything I’m involved in. If somebody needs to book a meeting, unless somebody else insists, I’m going to book the meeting. My team is going to handle the calendaring. I’m going to make sure everything shows up on time. Everything is going to be handled with a very high level of integrity.
Jeremy Pugliese: Make promises and keep promises. When I sold plumbing supplies, the worst thing was when someone was relying on a part to show up and it didn’t get delivered. I don’t sell plumbing supplies anymore. We don’t sell the materials. We sell promises. Keeping those commitments is what we sell.
Jeremy Pugliese: When people see that, you don’t have to push hard for referrals. People want to look good. When I introduce a client to a good attorney and that attorney does great work, they look good. If I introduce them to an attorney who doesn’t do good work, I offer to be the one to fire them because I’m the one who brought them in. It wouldn’t sit right with me if my customer had to go have an uncomfortable conversation with somebody I introduced. I’ll do it with them and give them a list of reasons. I want to take ultimate ownership.
Jeremy Pugliese: I find that when I have that behavior or habit, referrals are pretty easy. And if we’re touching ten different professionals during a deal, it’s not hard to have a big Rolodex. It’s hard to find really good people. After you find a couple of good attorneys, CPAs, or M&A firms, depending on the industry, you focus on quality.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Quality versus quantity.
Jeremy Pugliese: Exactly. We’re not in the quantity game. We’re in the quality game. I say that when I’m with my team in the office and it feels like there’s a lot of work to do. I like to slow the pace down and remind everybody that it’s about quality. If we can’t get to somebody today, just let them know we’re working on it. That’s okay, but we have to make sure the quality is good.
Jeremy Pugliese: And one other thing, Sherry: when we’re working with an attorney, we want to make sure they show up ready to do the job. If we have to meet with them without the client to make sure they’re ready, we want them to show up and shine too. The same goes for the CPA. Maybe we hop on a phone call before tomorrow’s client meeting and make sure everyone knows what the client is expecting. I want the attorney to show up ready. It makes all of us look good, and professionals appreciate that.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: When you were talking earlier about all the pieces you handle, now it makes sense. This radical responsibility is where you become the engine driving everything. Even if something isn’t technically your responsibility, you make it your responsibility. Then you have fewer surprises and fewer things that can go wrong, or you anticipate them in time to course-correct.
Jeremy Pugliese: Or I hit the alarm. If I don’t know how to fix it, or I don’t know what’s going on, I can say, ‘Hey, something’s wrong. We have to figure it out. I don’t know what the answer is, but somebody on this email needs to figure this out.’
Sherry Sarver Johnson: That’s so powerful. Very good, Jeremy. Thank you for sharing that, and thank you for sharing your story today. It’s helped me just listening to you, and I believe our listeners are going to agree. Jeff, is there anything else you’d like to ask Jeremy before we close it out today?
Jeff Mount: No, I’m really impressed. Obviously, we’ve talked about creating a niche, and we support that concept for just about every advisor we talk to. We’re big fans of it. We certainly love the idea of being able to share our experience and identify the challenges that face people from personal experience. The fact that you were able to get so deep into detail with examples was really valuable. Thank you so much, Jeremy.
Jeremy Pugliese: Thank you.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: You’ve given us a lot to think about today from both perspectives. Before we go, Jeremy, let’s let the listeners know again how they can reach you.
Jeremy Pugliese: I’m Jeremy Pugliese with Planning Alliance. You can find me on LinkedIn, send me a direct message, ask to connect, or ask to book a meeting. We can always hop on Zoom and talk.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Awesome. And Jeff, thank you for helping us look through the lens of the advisor on this today. Let’s let our listeners know how they can reach you as well.
Jeff Mount: You can reach me at jeffrey@caddis.biz, or just check our website at caddis.biz.
Sherry Sarver Johnson: Thank you both today. It’s been so enlightening, and I love that radical responsibility. Until next time. Bye-bye.
