Herbert Kyles

VP Wealth Advisor, Farther

In this interview, Herbert Kyles, a wealth advisor at Farther, discusses his journey from starting in life insurance sales to becoming an independent financial advisor focused on providing tailored advice to clients without being tied to specific products. He highlights the importance of addressing both the assets and liabilities of clients, particularly in different life stages, to optimize their financial planning. Kyles emphasizes the value of using Sora's platform to efficiently monitor and manage client liabilities, enhancing the overall client experience. His approach to financial advising includes addressing both stated and unstated client needs, fostering long-term relationships with multi-generational families.

Full transcript below:

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): Welcome to Sora Spotlights, where we highlight some of the incredible advisors who are using Sora and delivering tremendous value to their clients. As always, you can reach out to our advisors highlighted in this interview directly if you are looking to drive growth in your personal finances. We're joined today by Herbert Kyles.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): Herbert is a wealth advisor at Farther. Welcome, Herbert.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Thanks, Siddhartha. I appreciate you having me and look forward to sharing more about my practice and experience with Sora and how you've been a valuable partner to myself and our clients.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): Appreciate that. We're excited to jump in.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): Maybe we kick off here with a little bit about yourself and your background. How did you come to being an independent financial advisor and maybe more importantly, why?

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Yeah, sure. I went about it the the old way, hopefully as as you're seeing the wealth management industry evolve, but really, I graduated college.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): I found a spot at agency 026 of John Hancock. So seven days after graduation in one week of training on insurance language, I was a financial advisor. I was a failed life insurance salesperson who started really studying financial planning as a way to hopefully generate some additional business.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Got into it, got hooked, saw the value add which was really from my college coach. Where he saw the old financial life insurance forecaster and thought it was the greatest financial plan ever. I look back on it now and it was pretty rudimentary, but I continued to evolve. I got my CFP - Certified Financial Planner.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Just went headfirst into it. Moved through a couple of larger institutions and found my way to being an independent financial advisor. So that way I could focus on giving my clients and their family members the best advice and thoughts that I can come up with. And not be beholden to a company's product, but rather the advice and guidance that truly makes sense for the family or the business as a whole.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): Wonderful. And you since joined Farther, which has seen incredible growth over the last few years as a, as an RIA.. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about your practice since joining Farther. What has been one of the best parts about your role since then?

Herbert Kyles (Farther): I think the best part has been the ability for me to efficiently and eloquently communicate those thoughts and ideas to clients and also be able to implement them as well. I have a lot of freedom and flexibility and in addition, free time now to be able to focus solely on that dedicated client base. And where that really matters is when you have that free time and that ability to focus on planning and you actually use it for planning, not watching Netflix from home. What you're able to do is delve into topics, deliver information and implement that within a span of a few days, versus when I was practicing more traditionally, it could take me a couple of months, right? And that just leads to a much better client experience and a much better mental health experience for advisors, as you can imagine how busy you get.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): I can completely imagine. We've partnered with plenty of financial advisors and, and for many of them especially ones who are off on their own in a single person shop it's really difficult because of the overhead of compliance and back office and everything else to actually get as much time as they want to with their clients or with potential clients.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): And and so it's great to hear that, to that extent, what is your process today of working with a potential client who comes to you? And maybe as an adjacency to that, why do your current clients love working with you?

Herbert Kyles (Farther): I would say that my current clients like working with me because I'm willing to go deeper and I'm not afraid to say, I don't know the answer, but I think I know someone who does and reach out to them to bring in additional resources and properly acknowledge the concern rather than just throwing it to the side and hoping it cures itself. And when it comes to the process of working with a potential client, I do the same thing.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Take the time to, to sit down with them virtually or in person. Chat with them about what their concerns are. Go over with them based off the information they've shared some of their stated and unstated needs. And I would say that maybe the reason that, that people do like to work with me is because my willingness to address the unstated needs.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Which are, if you don't know about a problem or a concern it's probably nice if someone shares that with you based off their professional knowledge and expertise. And then also helps you acknowledge it and even rectify it. And I would say that probably is and has always been the key to my success that I finally experienced after my first couple of years as an advisor.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Is being able to, or being willing to just dive right into a problem and not stop until it's addressed, concerned, and fixed regardless of honestly, if it pays me or not.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): That's great. I'm curious. Is there a specific type of client or profile of a client who you tend to focus on or work with? Or are you really open to clients, who are coming in from anywhere and everywhere? I'm curious on kind of that profile in particular where it makes the most sense.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Sure. So that profile for me over the past couple of years has really evolved. For about the first five to seven years of my career, it was pretty retirees and retirees, just like most other advisors, right?

Herbert Kyles (Farther): These people had saved up a nest egg for retirement and we're either in there or preparing for it. They wanted to know how to distribute income one to talk about taxes, maybe get a trust to will healthcare proxy and power of attorney done that they were supposed to do 25 years earlier, but didn't and make sure the retirements were set.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): However that client profile has evolved over the past 2 to 3 years as that clientele that I was working with their children have evolved. They've gone their first, second, third jobs in their career. They've started companies and founded them. They're working in, in, in healthcare and technology and getting equity compensation.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): So I've been transitioning over to being able to help those clients as well which has just opened up an entire nother avenue of growth for my practice. And what I would say if I had to pick a niche is I have a multi-generational. Wealth management practice where I have a subset of households that I work with grandma and grandpa.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): I work with mom and dad and I work with granddaughter and grandson, right? And that's really where my niche has become is I end up working with the entire family. Not just one segment. And I think where that's most helpful is being able to go across the universe and say, all right, grandparents need to do this for their Medicare insurance.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Parents need to do this for their retirement. Oh, just had birth of a grandchild. We're on the fourth generation. Here's the type of estate plan that kids need to have and delivering all that to them. And I would say that is probably one of the many value ads that an advisor can do. And honestly, it doesn't have that much to do with managing the portfolio, if anything.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): It's really more about doing the best things you can from a financial playing perspective for a family and making sure that that in the end that the family is making better financial decisions every day so they can live the lifestyle that they'd like. And protect their family from the expected and unexpected.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): I love that. I think that for so many families, when you talk about personal finances, it's not one person, it's not even necessarily a couple. It's a family affair to talk about personal finances and to have that fact that, there is going to be wealth that's passed on from generation to generation.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): So when you're thinking about taking care of someone's family wealth, it's, figuring out how to help people at every step of the way. Transitioning a little bit here. You talked briefly about how it may not always be about just the investment management. I think we've seen that with advisors today where the role has moved beyond just investment management into tax prep, insurance, estate planning and trust, and increasingly liability planning and management. And to that extent, let's talk a little bit about debt. Why is it important for you to incorporate liability planning and management into your practice today?

Herbert Kyles (Farther): When it comes to liability planning and management, look, we've all seen it.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): The cost of houses, the cost of homes have gone up, cost of cars have gone up. Everything's risen and income hasn't quite gone up with it. So a lot of times for a family to purchase that next home for their family or their kids or when they're getting ready for retirement, maybe they sacrificed paying down some of their mortgage so that way they could lessen the burden of student loans for their child and the importance of looking at both sides. The balance sheet depends upon the life stage. But if you were to break it down when you're a young family, if you want to get a home for your family, you probably are using a mortgage.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): And if you are, it's about understanding the different mechanics of that mortgage. Whether it's making sure you don't have any prepayment penalties should you use an adjustable rate versus a fixed term? And even more importantly, when you do get that additional bonus, should you invest it in the markets or should you use a recast to be able to accelerate the pay down of that liability and open up additional free cash flow?

Herbert Kyles (Farther): When you're in that kind of pre retiree stage, It's very disheartening, quite honestly, to meet people who feel like they can't retire until their mortgage is paid off, but their mortgage isn't going to be paid off until they're 72 years old and now they're spending that stage of their life working in a position that they're not happy with.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): And, when you look at both sides of the balance sheet, many times you can efficiently use your retirement savings, not just to replicate your lifestyle, but the one time interest payment to the IRS in the form of taxes might actually be less than the ongoing interest that you're paying to the bank.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Therefore you could tax efficiently shift some of your IRA money over to pay down some of your liability, still fund your lifestyle, claim Social Security appropriately and retire five years earlier than you thought you could simply by making a few adjustments. So I would say it's very life stage dependent, but in the end, by looking at both sides of the balance sheet, you might be able to help a family do something that they thought was going to take an additional five years.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): If ever and that's a very rewarding feeling for both the advisor and obviously for the client.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): I love that. And you certainly are speaking our language here at Sora. I guess to that extent why did you choose to start working with Sora? We obviously loved having you be an advisor who's utilizing our platform.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): Tell us a little bit more about, why you chose to do that. And for you, how has Sora created value for you and your clients?

Herbert Kyles (Farther): I chose to use Sora because it's efficient, it's effective and honestly, trustworthy, right? So when I chose to do this, I was looking at, all right, how can I efficiently monitor the liabilities of a client?

Herbert Kyles (Farther): How can I efficiently produce that into the financial plan and how can I turn around and very quickly deliver a liability pay down schedule? And the answer was Sora. So that's what has allowed me to do is to monitor existing liabilities because, they do get sold and banks do all of a sudden charge a different interest rate.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): That's wrong, and you have to call them. Planning efficiently. It's nice to be able to have a conversation on a Monday, and then by maybe even as early as that evening be able to say, all right, here's the liability payment schedule to pay down the the outstanding liabilities. We'll help your kid do the student loan planning too.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): So connect me with them in a month and tell them that they got to spend 20 minutes with Herbert. But also it does streamline inquiries across major institutions, right? So if you're receiving equity compensation, that most of the banks may not count. If you have outstanding student loans that some of them are wary about what you're able to do through Sora is send out that inquiry in that profile to a number of different institutions and then get a response back.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): And previously, that was a very manual task. It was hours, quite honestly, on Google, going to different banks, seeing what they would say, calling up different bankers, maybe getting one who doesn't fully understand underwriting. It was extremely frustrating. There were times where a client would get, three weeks into a mortgage inquiry, and all of a sudden, they're rejected because of something.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): We didn't even know. Didn't even get an answer. And that's a terrible experience. Sora helps minimize or even sometimes eliminate that. I love that.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): That's certainly what we aim to do. And our goal here is really to help you as an advisor to help your clients. And it's wonderful to see how you've been able to do that and appreciate you sharing some of those examples there.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): Absolutely. Maybe they start to wrap things up. There's a lot of uncertainty in the financial markets right now. We have the U. S. elections, the interest rate environment, AI and technology and frankly, multiple wars happening across the world. What would you say to a client or a potential client right now who's feeling a bit nervous about the broader situation?

Herbert Kyles (Farther): I would say honestly, look, there's two paths you can take. The first path is you can turn off the news, turn off the media, cross your fingers, and hope things work. But, in the end, hope, hope's not a plan, right? The approach that you want to take, or should be, is you sit down and realize, okay, you accept that.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): There are going to be uncertainties in every aspect of life at all times. And that's just how the world works. But once you admit that to yourself or your investment portfolio, then you say, all right, what really matters, right? There's specific goals that people have 99. 9 percent of people all have goals.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): So whether your goal is to retire to a beach or a golf course and never go back into the office, or if it's purchasing that next home, gifting to kids, whatever that may look like, I don't know, maybe you want to tour every single baseball park in America and watch a game, but you list those out.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): You put a dollar amount on them for what it's going to cost, and then you piece together in reverse a financial plan that looks at the amount and type of resources you have to fund that lifestyle. And then you piece together your investment portfolio to reflect that, regardless of the market cycle, to the best of our ability.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): And you hear a lot that ends up being a diversified portfolio, yada yada, which is fine. But you want to take that step of acknowledging the goals and working backwards. And then from there, the planning is just going to produce what you should do. And that's how you want to go about it.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): So admit that there's always going to be uncertainty, accept that uncertainty. And then control the controllables, right? Look at what you can control and what you want to do, and then figure out how to make it work. And that applies to pretty much every aspect of life.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): That's great. I think you're absolutely right.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): And to your point, there's always been some uncertainty, varying levels of it. I think one of the hard parts for most of us though, is is not only creating that plan, but then sticking to it. And I do think that there's an element of accountability that comes by working with with great financial advisors, such as yourself.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): And to that extent, what is the best way for someone to reach out to you, if they'd like to learn a little bit more about partnering with you as a, as their financial advisor.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Yeah. Best way is, and I promise, it'll be a Herbert response and not an AI response. You can give me a call at 508-978-9995.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): You can send me a message on LinkedIn or reach out to Farther at www.farther.com and say, Hey, can I speak to that Herbert guy and I'll be happy to talk to you. See if there's a way that I can help you. Or if I know someone else who I feel might be a better fit, happy to refer them over to you.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Fantastic.

Siddhartha Oza (Sora Finance): Herbert, thank you so much for joining us today on Sora Spotlights. It's been a pleasure chatting with you.

Herbert Kyles (Farther): Thank you. Likewise. Hopefully see you soon.