Mike Betz is the General Manager at 11thEstate, a company specializing in processing securities class action recoveries for advisors and their clients. With over 20 years of experience in wealth management, he is a certified financial planner and has served on advisory boards for prominent financial firms like Morningstar and Orion. Known for his expertise in client relations, Mike is dedicated to simplifying the complex process of class action recoveries and delivering seamless customer experiences. He leverages cutting-edge AI and innovative solutions to ensure clients effortlessly receive the funds they are entitled to, turning what is often considered a cumbersome process into a straightforward service.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[1:48] Mike Betz discusses how 11thEstate aids advisors in claiming funds from securities class action recoveries
[2:22] The abundance of unclaimed class action funds available annually
[4:17] Why most investors are typically unaware of their eligibility for class action settlements
[5:14] The workings of post-settlement distributions and how funds are allocated
[8:07] Mike highlights 11thEstate’s streamlined approach for service delivery
[9:18] What protective measures does 11thEstate take to guarantee data security?
[14:43] Tax treatment of reclaimed money from class action lawsuits
[18:07] Future Proof conference and marketing strategies
[24:36] Mike's leadership lessons and empowering management style
In this episode…
In an industry where $8 billion in securities class action recoveries remain unclaimed, financial advisors and their clients miss out on significant opportunities. Most advisors are unaware of the opportunities within these settlements, and the intricate process of claims and manual documentation often deters them. Could there be a streamlined solution that educates and facilitates easy access to these recoveries?
Mike Betz, a certified financial planner, dives into the intricate world of securities class action recoveries. He sheds light on the vast, unclaimed financial recoveries from securities class actions, revealing how most investors and advisors are unaware of their slice of a multibillion-dollar pie. Mike discusses how he offers solutions to streamline the claims process with minimal friction by digitizing the process to make it as seamless as receiving dividends. His unique strategy utilizes AI technology and robust security protocols to seamlessly channel funds rightfully owed to investors directly into their accounts, streamlining the client experience.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Mike Betz, General Manager at 11thEstate, about transforming the securities class action recovery process. Mike discusses how 11thEstate aids advisors in claiming funds from securities class action recoveries, the workings of post-settlement distributions, the protective measures 11thEstate takes to guarantee data security, and the Future Proof conference.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Quotable Moments:
"There's billions of dollars out there in shareholder recoveries every year, and most of it goes unclaimed."
"Our goal is to take all the friction out of claiming funds and just make it easy."
"Less than 10% of advisors know about securities class actions or do anything about it. So, it's just an education and advocacy of what we're doing."
“Great service and great design can make up for deficiencies in products.”
"You have to start with what the customer's problem is, and fall in love with their pains and problems, then you delve into what it takes to deliver to solve that."
Action Steps:
Educate clients on securities class actions: By educating clients about these opportunities, advisors can enhance their service and potentially recover lost funds for their clients, thereby adding significant value to the advisory relationship.
Utilize technology for seamless processes: Implementing technology that automates and simplifies complex processes can remove friction, enhance efficiency, and improve the overall client experience.
Prioritize data security and privacy: Ensuring privacy and compliance with regulations builds trust with clients and meets the increasing demands of data security standards.
Explore partnerships for value-added services: Strategic partnerships can help firms expand their service offerings and differentiate themselves in a competitive market.
Adopt a customer-centric approach: By understanding and addressing the specific needs and pain points of clients, businesses can design solutions that not only meet but exceed client expectations, leading to increased satisfaction and loyalty.
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Today, I'm speaking with Mike Betz, the general manager at 11thEstate, and today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time manually reviewing the forms, instead, get Quik!. Using our Form Xtract API, simply submit your completed forms and get back clean context-rich data that reduces manual reviews to only one out of 1000 submissions. Visit quikforms.com to get started.
All right. I'm excited to talk to our guest today, who I met over a year ago, I believe, and we've always gotten along, so I'm excited to bring him on the show. Mike Betz is the general manager at 11thEstate bringing 20 years of experience and understanding and wealth management to the table. His prior roles include working at Summit Wealth Systems, F2 Strategies, SS&C, and who served on the advisory boards for Morningstar and Orion. Mike is also a Certified Financial Planner. Mike, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Mike Betz 1:29
Hey, glad to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Richard Walker 1:31
Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you today. So for those who haven't heard my podcast before, I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built and deliver a great customer experience and the challenges to growing their own company. Mike, let's understand your business a little better. How does your company help people?
Mike Betz 1:48
Yeah, so what we do is we process securities class action recoveries, and what that means is there's billions of dollars out there in shareholder recoveries every year. Most of it goes unclaimed. We help advisors and their clients make it easy to just go and get the funds that are entitled to them. We do a lot of stuff behind the scenes to make that happen, but our goal is just take all the friction out of it and just make it easy, because advisors don't need one more job.
Richard Walker 2:15
Okay, but why is this even a thing? I don't get it like, are there class action suits happening every day and people know about them, or what?
Mike Betz 2:22
Pretty much there's two to 300 new class action. Now what we're talking about is securities class action. So we all you know your vehicle. If you've owned this product or whatever we're talking about is securities, most of its public equities, but also fixed income and derivatives and digital assets. And look, these companies get sued by class actions all the time. There was $8 billion of it last year, two to 300 claims, and less than 10% of advisors know about this or do anything about it. So, it's kind of just an education and advocacy of what we're doing, and it's really difficult. The system's kind of broken to make it to go figure out if your clients are even eligible for this, and then figure out the documentation, and then navigate the claims process and manually fill out forms.
No wonder nobody does it. We've just come in and digitized the whole process, and the goal is, let's just make this as easy as getting dividends Right? Like, when a stock has pays a dividend, like we don't think about it, it just happens, right? It just shows up in your account. That's what we're doing for these class action recoveries. Wells Fargo, for example, had a the largest, I think, Class Action one of the largest in history, $1.3 billion for all those fraudulent accounts that they opened up that impacted the share price substantially. So advisors have clients that held Wells Fargo and they're entitled to funds. We just make it easy to figure out which clients they are, how much they were entitled to, and then we go out and get the money, collect it for them, and we direct deposit it right back in their brokerage account. It just happens, that's what we do.
Richard Walker 4:08
So I don't get it, though, if I'm holding on to Wells Fargo as a stock, why am I not notified that this class action happened?
Mike Betz 4:17
Well, you probably are. So I met with a bunch of advisors at Future Proof, and a lot of them are like, oh, yeah, I get these postcards in the mail. I get these spammy looking emails. That's kind of what they are. And one advisor was like, yeah, we just tell our clients to throw those away.
Richard Walker 4:34
Really, yeah, because it's just like, when you get one for your product and you expect to make 22 cents, you just don't care, right?
Mike Betz 4:41
You don't care. That's, right? It looks fishy. Is it worth the effort? It's a lot of work to do it, and is it even worth the squeeze? Well, the typical settlement is over $950 and there's a reasons for that. Is all that three-quarters of investors don't collect what they're owed. So the claims administrators, they got to pay out this money. So they just like, all right, we'll have to send it out proportionately to those that actually did show up. So here you go. You get 4x.
Richard Walker 5:12
How do they decide that is there a time period?
Mike Betz 5:14
Yeah. So the courts, we only deal with post-settlement. So as things are going through the litigation process. We don't have anything to do with that once it's already been wrapped, and the courts say, all right, this is how much money it is. This is who entitled. They hand it over to a claims admin, and they're the ones that have to notify potential eligible investors, and they collect the claims, and they figure out, there's formulas for figuring out, okay, I held this stock for how long during this window, and they calculate how much everyone's due. So that's how it works. And then they have, typically, a window to collect the claims, and by the end of that window, they have to distribute every penny of that settlement. There's no yet or returning it. It has to be distributed.
Richard Walker 6:01
So if only 10% of the people make their claims, or let's say 10% of the value is claimed, they're still going to distribute 100% of the claim to those 10%.
Mike Betz 6:10
Yeah. We call that participation rate, and in that case, yeah, all right. Well, it's 10x right?
Richard Walker 6:18
Oh my gosh. That's better than found money that's winning a lottery, in a way, because it's more money than you do.
Mike Betz 6:26
Well, we've been doing this since 2022 and we have lots of examples where people made more on the recovery than they lost in the investment originally. So, and one of the things that we do is we're deploying some legitimate AI tools, and we have patents on our technology to go out and find every, you know, we're going through. We're crawling court documents and Reddit and Facebook groups to find all these recovery opportunities. So we have this incredible database, and then we just get a data feed from advisors bounce it against our database, and we figure out, we know very quickly who's entitled to what, and then we just digitally file those for them and go collect the money. How we make money is really simple. We take a percentage of what we recover. That's it.
Richard Walker 7:10
Yeah, right. And that makes sense, because you're providing the service. I have a couple of questions about this. If an advisor and a client doesn't know you, you're not reaching out to them. So is this fully dependent on how many advisors your company knows and interacts with?
Mike Betz 7:29
Is, so we went to future proof, and we don't sell anything. In fact, we don't use the word sales in our business. We're partnering with advisors to help them add the service and do this for their clients. And really, we don't need to sell what we do is we just educate that this is out there. Nobody knows about it. We advocate that, look, this is something you should be doing. It's part of your fiduciary duties. It's worth it, and by the way, we can just do it for you and make it easy. So it's a no-brainer.
Richard Walker 8:01
So what does the advisor do when they enter into a relationship with you? What are they giving you to make this work?
Mike Betz 8:07
Yeah, so three things. One is we need a data feed. And a lot of times that looks like a custodian data feed, or even more effective, is the portfolio accounting systems, everything that we need to identify claims process them, comes from those data feeds. So we set up a data integration. The second is a recovery services agreement where advisors are partnering with us and giving us permission to work on their behalf and process these for these. And the third is up to the firm. Most firms disclose to their clients in their ADV like, hey, we're adding this on as our service now. You always have the right to opt-out if you want to, but just letting you know we're going to start doing this for you now.
Richard Walker 8:51
So in other words, if you don't want free money, you can say, no.
Mike Betz 8:56
That's right. Clients always have the right to do what they want to do. You always give them the option to opt-out. That's their right. We don't see that very often, as you might imagine.
Richard Walker 9:11
How do you handle privacy concerns when you're getting a data feed from this advisor? And did you get permission from the client to have this data feed?
Mike Betz 9:18
Yeah, so data security is obviously really important in what we're doing. And the SEC is starting to, I don't know, say, crackdown, but they're putting more responsibility on RIAs and wealth managers to do their due diligence on tech providers. And this is a good thing. We SOC two, type two, we have all of the protocols and controls in place. We have to take really good safeguarding measures take care of this data, or we don't have a business. And then on top of that, we build everything on top of AWS, so that checks a lot of boxes, as far as redundancy, and in the US and all of those things. Oh, we're doing it all right. That's usually the first question that I get. Yeah, sure, yeah.
Richard Walker 9:18
Well, okay, so forgive me if I go into too much detail here, and you can stop me from going under the covers too far. But are you taking custody of the dollars, or does your fee come from the claims department?
Mike Betz 10:19
Yeah, how it works is we get authorization from the advisors and their clients to go collect this on their behalf. We go collect the funds, and when the claims administrator pays it out, they're paying it to us, and we're putting it in escrow. We're isolating those. By the way, because this is class action, everything's public record, so you can track everything that we're doing publicly. We put it in escrow, and then we deduct our fee, whatever we've decided on for that, and then we direct deposit the funds right back into the individual's brokerage account where those securities came from. We're not issuing hard checks, not sending an advisor a lump sum, and say, here you figure out, right, that would be a nightmare. And that's really the secret of our business. It's you got to service the heck out of people, and just, you got to take all the friction out of it and just make it effortless. And then you got to have just a seamless experience. That's what we're doing, and that's how we're going to win.
Richard Walker 11:19
My gosh, I mean, talk about a customer experience. So I'm a client. My advisor signs up for this, which is really no effort to them, and suddenly money shows up in my account. I mean, it sounds like it's just super simple. Is it harder than that at all?
Mike Betz 11:34
Look, there's a lot of stuff that we're doing on the back end to make it look that easy. And sometimes the best products and services are highly tech-enabled, but you wouldn't know it. You get the tech out of the way, yeah, and you just say, all right, which clients are, due money, how much and when should I expect to receive that? That's it.
Richard Walker 11:56
You just said something that's so critical to customer experience and customer success, which is, you use the tech, but you don't start with the tech. You don't build your company and say, Hey, look at how cool our tech is. You talk about what you just do for your customer. Instead, you focus on what their experience is, and the tech is just, oh, yeah, that's just the engine under the frame. Like, let it go, let it be what it is. Because you guys have built this amazing AI tool set, right?
Mike Betz 12:22
Yeah. And we were chatting like, before this, and we're like, well, what are you guys like? Well, we're a service. We're a tech-enabled service. We use AI in our tools to help us do these things. AI and technology are wonderful force multiplier, but we're not a technology company. We deliver a service, which means we're delivering a business outcome for advisors and let us worry about taking care of all the complications of how to make that work. Yeah, just deliver the impact. That's what people care about.
Richard Walker 12:57
Right? All right. So a couple other questions that I think affect the client. Number one, do they have to hold the equity just as an equity, or can it be in a mutual fund? Or do they get money back held in a mutual fund?
Mike Betz 13:08
Yes. So this is public securities. It's not just equities. It's fixed income and all of the derivatives, commodities, digital, it's everything. But yes, it's whoever's holding the underlying securities. So of course, a lot of wealth managers are using passive securities like ETFs and open funds and things of that sort. And those apply. However, we work with the product manufacturers. We work for the portfolio managers at ban Eck or Franklin Templeton or Blackrock or whatever. We work with them and their portfolio managers all that. So it's for clients and end investors that actually hold the underlying securities themselves.
Richard Walker 13:48
Okay, so if the mutual funds holding it on behalf of their clients, does the client even know or is their portfolio just grow because there was an infusion of capital?
Mike Betz 13:56
They don't know that, and they don't really have any visibility. And some of these funds are doing it. Some of them are doing it better than others, but we know from the claims administrators reports that two thirds of this money is not going getting collected.
Richard Walker 14:12
Yeah, so maybe that 10 20% that's being collected is by the institutions, because they're perhaps more tuned into this, I don't know.
Mike Betz 14:22
Well, if we drill into that, it's 97% of individual investors don't claim the funds, and two thirds of institutions do not. So it's little better on the institutions, but not much.
Richard Walker 14:35
Okay, man, this is incredible. Is the reclaimed money taxable?
Mike Betz 14:43
Yeah, so it is a loss recovery. So and this is kind of up to the tax accountants. We don't provide, I'm reminded by our council all the time, we do not provide legal or tax.
Richard Walker 14:54
You're not a tax advisor, okay?
Mike Betz 14:57
But yes, it is considered a recovery of loss and goes into long-term gains offsetting those.
Richard Walker 15:06
Okay, nice. How did you learn about this opportunity to become the general manager?
Mike Betz 15:12
Yeah, so Evan Rappaport was the founder of Smart X, and we worked together when I was at Black Diamond, and he was just launching his camp, and we got to know each other. And this is just a wonderful business with lots of great people in it. That's kind of how we met, which is kind of organically. And I met Evan years ago. We just stayed in contact through the years, doing different things. And he's exited Smart X, and he joined Social Leverage, which is a really, really high-quality, reputable venture capital partner, and Evan is working with them as a limited partner.
One of the things with venture capital that people don't realize is, yes, they provide capital, but it's also advice and people. So Evan said, I've got the perfect guy to come in and help navigate this institutional side of the business, because there's so much nuance, and it's a quirky business, right? And there's lots of interconnected parts. So that's how I get introduced. I met with the partners. I didn't know anything about this either, and I asked the same questions that you're asking me, I asked the same questions that advisors and clients are asking us. And you do the research, and you're like, wow, how did I not know about this? This is wild.
Richard Walker 15:14
I think it's a fantastic business model, because you're helping people do something they didn't know about that's of real value. And I may have told you the story months ago, when we first started talking about 11thEstate that back in college, in the 90s, early 90s, I interviewed for a job where what this guy was doing was auditing the phone records for major companies, line by line, getting all these statements for two years, three years, line by line, no AI, by the way, yeah, finding discrepancies and saving companies hundreds of 1000s of dollars in refunds. And then he would take 25% or something like that. And the guy was just making bank, because there was this, call it arbitrage, if you want this opportunity.
Mike Betz 16:37
In a way. So you were doing that, or somebody was doing that.
Richard Walker 16:57
No, I interviewed for the job. I didn't like the guy, so I didn't take the job.
Mike Betz 17:03
Fair enough. Fair enough.
Richard Walker 17:06
Yeah, no, I think that's amazing. And let's talk about Future Proof, because you've brought it up a few times, and I unfortunately didn't get to go this year and see it in person. But you had told me that you guys were doing some pretty cool things to attract people. And again, I'm going to use this as just an example of how you think Mike in terms of building a customer experience that drives people and attracts them to what you do. So what was it you did at the booth to attract people?
Mike Betz 17:58
So first of all, Future Proof. Have you been before, or did you just miss it.
Richard Walker 18:03
I am not, and I'm not sure anybody on the audience is going to know what that is. So talk about the conference a little.
Mike Betz 18:07
So everyone's familiar with the traditional conference space, right? Everyone packs into the ballroom of Marriott in the basement Marriott for a few days. And a lot of that hasn't really been a lot of innovation in the last 30 years or so. Future Proof has come along, and they're like, well, what are people getting the most out of, out of conferences? Like, well, it's networking, having a little bit of fun, and typically, a lot of the business happens with the more informal conversations. People are relaxing, the guards are down, and you're just having real conversations. So their approach was, well, let's just build a conference that centers around exactly that.
And so it's out in Huntington Beach. It's all outside, right across the street from the beach, and it's very West Coast business casual. I mean, you have people wearing shorts and polos to Sun dresses, and it's just very casual. People are outside in the sunshine. It's kind of like Schwab IMPACT cross Coachella in a way, it's really fun. They do this one-on-one match-making of meetings, super effective. And they just promote networking, fun and great experiences. They've done a fabulous job. So at this conference, your booth is a tent, essentially. And so we did a tent. And there's a lot of swag at these conferences, and, gosh, I was like, what are we going to do for swag?
Richard Walker 18:07
Isn't that, like, the hardest question, I we struggle so much with swag. You're like, what's worked best are socks? Really?
Mike Betz 18:14
People love socks, but nobody needs another fidget spinner. Nobody needs another squeezy, a press ball or whatever. So we're like, okay, what is it that we actually do? And Evan is just a marketing genius, and you've got to make some noise. We live in a very noisy world, and you've got to do something bold to get people's attention. So they're like, well, what do we do? We essentially find money people didn't know they had. We give them free money, essentially, right? I mean, it's kind of reductive, but all right, well, then let's just give away money, right? So we put a postcard of very simple of what we do, and I put a $2 bill on it. Nobody spends $2 bills. It's kind of a novelty. In fact, there are a lot of young people there. They're like this real? This look fake, right?
I've never seen one of these before. So, so that's what we did. And the other thing we did at our tent was we set up this cash cube, where you get in money blows around you grab as much as you can. And we thought that would be a fun way to do this. We put fake money in there. And what we did is we picked three charities, Steve Zush rally for Rangers, Jamie Hopkins, Spencer Foundation, and then Charity Water, which Judd Mackerel, who you've had on the show, recommended, and we said, all right, for every dollar or bill that someone grabs in this cash cube, pick a charity and we'll have fun. And it was so anyway, we have fun. Got a lot of attention for it, and I think it was on brand for what we're trying to do. You got to make it fun.
Richard Walker 21:28
I love it. I love it because, yeah, you're right. Being on brand with how you give away something is actually really, really hard to do. And the idea that you give away money, and you're like, let's just give away money, it's an insane idea in a lot of ways, because people like, I'm not going to give away dollars. That doesn't make sense. How do you brand that? How do you recall people to that? But I think you guys just got, just understood that people will be attracted to it. They'll be blown away by and the choosing the $2 bill is brilliant. So yeah, guys, that's great.
Mike Betz 21:59
I wasn't even sure how we're going to do that. But turns out you can go to the bank and order them. They ship it in, and here you go.
Richard Walker 22:06
Can you reveal how many $2 bills you gave away?
Mike Betz 22:10
So I got 1000 bills, and we went through a lot of them.
Richard Walker 22:16
Nice. So here's another cool thing about your swag. It's returnable.
Mike Betz 22:21
Yeah, you're not going to return a fidget spinner, right? But we're going to be in Schwab IMPACT here, jeez, in just a few weeks. So we'll use that for that. But, yeah, it's completely returnable, yeah, but I had to do my research. Is like, all right, you can put a sticker on it, but it's got to be removable, so it's not considered defacing currency. Okay, we'll figure it out. But I like these, we have a really fun team, social leverage and understand, come up with ideas, and then it's like, yeah, let's do that. And then it's like, okay, let's figure out how to do that.
So I bought this cash cube on Amazon, shipped it to my house. We set it up in my garage and test it out. And we're like, all right, now, how are we going to get this to future proof? I'm in Minnesota, so my wife and I, we went to TJ Maxx, got this biggest suitcase we could find and jammed it in there. And that's how we got, we did check luggage, and that's how we got it there. So it's kind of okay. It's great to have. And I think this is kind of indicative of great products, too. And this is just a microcosm what I did, but it's one thing to have a great idea, but there's so much craftsmanship and problem-solving, figuring out how you're actually going to do it. And I think that happens with FinTech product. There's tons of ideas, but figuring out how you're actually going to do it and deliver it is really hard. That's where a lot of the work is, and it always twists a little bit right, like, what your idea going in, coming out, it's going to be a little bit different, and that's okay. It should be that way. If you're taking the voice of the client and learning as you go, it should be that way.
Richard Walker 24:00
So you remind me of two things that I think about in my business. So number one is efficiency stems from good design, which means you're not going to get efficiency if you're not thinking through how to really play out the parts and the process and the people and therefore the tech, which you guys are obviously doing. The second thing is the idea of simplicity is actually very, very hard to accomplish, because it requires you to fully understand your client. You have to understand what experience they're gonna have, how they think what they're trying to accomplish really beyond their side of the table, in order to then design something that is simple.
Mike Betz 24:36
Yeah. I mean, I know you love little quotes and anecdotes I do too. Mark Twain, I believe had a quote. It's like, hey, I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one, right? So, it takes a lot of work to make things so simple. And so I've done professional dog sled racing for over 15 years, and when you look at the equipment with dog sledding, it looks very simple and but there is an incredible amount of engineering that has gone in making it that simple. And there's some elegance to it in that the less complicated it is, the less failure points you have, right, the less weight that you have, yeah, simple things that you can fix quickly on the fly when things inevitably go wrong. And I've learned a ton about business life and leadership from running dog sled teams.
One of them is equipment and technology. So that's what we do with our product. Is how do you make something so simple? And some of our early designs were all this detail about the claims, where it's at in the process, and, okay, you've got to have all that reporting. But ultimately, as I guys, let's just give them a Domino's Pizza tracker. All right, like, let's just make it easy for them. I mean, Domino's is probably going to want to collect some royalties or something, but it's a brilliant everybody realizes, like, and maybe they're doing it behind the scenes. Maybe they're not, but the experience is great. We've received your order Catherine. Put it in the oven. It's on the rack, cooling, ready to pick up, right? Like, how can we take that idea from outside our industry, apply it to what we're doing? And that's really when you're making great products.
I was talking to a friend of mine last night who's a great product designer, you have to start with what the customer's problem is, and fall in love with their pains and problems, and then you back into what it takes to deliver to solve that. And we know that great design matters, especially in technology, because you could have the best tool in the world, but if it doesn't get adopted, doesn't matter, right? And design matters a lot, particularly for getting that adoption.
Richard Walker 26:49
Yeah, I love that. I love that thinking. No, it's great. I love that line of thinking, of bringing outside ideas in. It's one of the things I do with this podcast. I've had a magician, custom suitmaker, golf pro. I've had these people outside our industry. One of my favorite conversations was with the CEO of Alamo Drafthouse Movie theaters, one of the best experiences for movies you're ever going to find. And so I had Shelly Taylor on, and she came in and talked about how they did that, why they did that. And I think that's all inspiring for how we in our field can also use these experiences to give us ideas. Going back to your idea of dominoes, one of the ideas we've been stealing is Chipotle. If you've ever ordered on the Chipotle app, you get to build your meal and name.
Who gets this portion? Who gets this portion to write your name or type it out, whatever, on a sticker on your burrito and your bowl, and that's actually being infused into our new product, and how our user goes through the process of selecting forms and building accounts with those forms, like, here's Mike's account, here's Sarah's account, here's whatever. So I love that you're thinking that way, because I don't, I don't hear a lot of people say that they're so focused on this is how we do it in our industry, and they're not looking outside to say, how is it done best in class somewhere else.
Mike Betz 28:06
Yeah, I mean, there's a saying is actually came from Scott Galloway, got a great podcast, but one of his sayings is, it's really hard to read the label from inside the bottle. You have to step out of it to figure out how are your clients and customers actually living? What's going on, not only with just your product, but what else are they dealing right? And you got to understand that. And then back into everything that you do. It's all about experience. And we see this all the time, that sometimes, great service and great design can make up for deficiencies in products that will give you a lot of grace with your product if you give them a great experience and wrap them with love.
Richard Walker 29:01
Well, Mike, I'm going to give you kudos, because what you guys have been doing at 11thEstate, sounds like you've effectively removed most of the customer experience. It's so easy and seamless. There's just not much of an experience to have. Like, hey, you get free money. I don't know if there's anything better than that mailbox money.
Mike Betz 29:18
I was joking with someone at Future Proof last week. We have a client portal, right? You log in as an advisor, and you can see where all your clients are in the process and how much money. And we were thinking, though it's like, well, we need to improve our email sequence, because sometimes the best portal is none at all. Right, yeah. So the last thing an advisor need necessarily is yet another portal to log into. So how else can we deliver those few bits of information that they want to know without making them go through hoops and other things?
Richard Walker 29:54
Yeah, yeah, oh, man, I appreciate that. We're gonna have to wrap up. And before we do, I have another question. And before I get to that last question, what's the best way for people to find and connect with you?
Mike Betz 30:04
Yeah, so LinkedIn is a great Mike Betz, you can just search me on LinkedIn. That's always a great way to connect. Also, you can find me at 11thestate.com, which is 11thestate.com, and get in touch with me that way. But honestly, LinkedIn is a great way.
Richard Walker 30:24
Yeah, you're easy to find awesome. All right, here's my last question, who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today?
Mike Betz 30:31
Yeah, so I was thinking about this, and I think there's two parts to it. One is, I have been around this business, in lots of areas of this business, and I understand all the pieces of the business. I'm an expert in kind of nothing, but I understand all the pieces, and I know what good looks like, and I know what good doesn't look like, or what bad looks like, and I've learned a lot through the industry, just watching other people and, quite frankly, my own failures and missteps, of what you got wrong, and you learn the lesson from that, and you're like, all right, next time I have an opportunity to do this, I might make a mistake. I make mistakes all the time, but I'm not going to make the same mistakes that I saw someone else with. I'm going to make new mistakes. So I've learned an awful lot that way.
The other one of my favorite things I tell us all the time, and I take it to heart with how I lead people, is Bob can chiglia hired me for Black Diamond back in the day, and you know, when I was getting started, you know, we're figuring out, how are we going to work together? What are you going to delegate? And I was running the channel management program, a lot of the custodians, and I was like, I have this idea. I have that idea. Should we show this? Should I go there? And he was like, you know what, Mike, I got a lot of stuff on my plate, and these sound like great ideas. I don't know if they're going to work, but you should go out there. I hired you because you're a smart guy, you're creative and you're good at figuring things out. There is nothing, for the most part, that you could go out there and screw up so badly that we couldn't figure it out and fix it on the back end. So go out and swing the bat brother and let me know what you need. So I think there's a lot of richness to that, too.
And okay, go out and try things. It's okay to make mistakes and make sure you have leaders that have your back. And there's some psychological safety, if we're talking culture in a company, the number one thing that I've found, not even close, is that psychological safety. Bob Conchi Lee has been a really, really good friend and mentor over the years, and that's one of the best lessons that I've learned.
Richard Walker 30:31
Such an excellent one. What a great leader he must be. I mean, to give people that grace to go out and make mistakes is so important as a leader, and give them the safety net.
Mike Betz 32:56
Yeah, and also hire smart people, give them a job, let them own it and be accountable for the outcome, and then you support them. That's how it should be done. That's how I wanted to be managed and led. That's how I do it for other people. And I've learned it from people getting it right and seeing it done wrong.
Richard Walker 33:15
Yeah, you are singing our song. We talk about empowering people to do their best work. If I hire somebody do their best work, let them go do it, and if they screw up, they'll learn and do better. It just gets better and better with time. Yeah, and honestly, we could talk about this all day, because this is one of my favorite topics. Mike, so let's stop the recording and let's go do another one.
Mike Betz 33:34
All right, but you know what, we've been talking about this for a while that we just chat on the phone or Zoomers, like, jeez, we should have just recorded that. Well, those candid conversations, that's they're a lot of fun, and I think that's where some of the best insights come out of so.
Richard Walker 33:48
Yeah, oh, that's my goal with this podcast, is to have those type of candid conversations. All right, I want to give a big thank you to Mike Betz, the general manager at 11thEstate, for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Mike's website at 11thestate.com, and don't forget to check out Quik! at quikforms.com where we make processing forms easy. I hope you've enjoyed this discussion, will click the like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Mike, thank you so much for joining me today.
Mike Betz 34:17
Thanks for joining me. You're great hosts, and you always ask just dynamite questions. So thanks for doing what you're doing. Appreciate it.
Outro 34:26
Thanks for listening to The Customer Wins podcast. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.
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