Confidence & How to Manage Large Scale Change w/ Bob Bonfiglio | Power Theory Podcast

One of the things about having personal power is having some financial stability, right? I want them to have a little money so they can say, no, thank you. This isn't for me. And the power of being able to walk away gives them a sense of agency. Hi. Welcome to power theory. This is Russ Willette. I'm an executive coach and organizational consultant, and my whole mission is to build agency and people and build their personal power so they can be very successful. Today I happen to have a great guest, Bob Benfiglio, who's one of the principals at Rise private wealth management in Bedford, New Hampshire. And today, really, what I want to pick his brain about is the immense change that rise has been through. What happened is it only took us a year and a half to get from a billion in assets to 2 billion in assets. How the heck did you handle all that? But I quickly found out, you know, you have to influence people to take action if you want to survive. There isn't a leader I know that does not see influence in sales as not a problem. It's fun. It's almost like you just gotta reframe it. And from our perspective, how do you do that as a leader? We've made some mistakes. Yeah. Well, what were those mistakes? And, like, how'd you overcome them? I always knew that I wanted to, like, control my own destiny. So I learned as an engineer at Raytheon, and I always wanted to be in leadership. And as I looked at the leaders there, this is back, of course, 35 years ago. I looked at the people that were in management there, and they all. They didn't look very happy, right, to be honest with you. So I'm like, I gotta figure out something else. And like you said, I had my MBA. I liked investing. And what I did is I picked. I knew I wanted to change careers, and I wasn't sure which way to go. I picked up a book called what color is your parachute? It took me through a process to figure out what my strengths were and what the possible careers might utilize those strengths. You approached it like an engineer? I approached it like a total engineer. Total process. Did all the exercises, and it led me to this career, and I really didn't know anything about it. I thought it was going to be about investing, and it turns out, like, your job, probably, Russ, it's really about managing behavior and managing people's behaviors and helping them get to their goals. And that's. So that's what that's all about, is really helping people. You've done personality assessments before. Are you, like, an introvert? Are you, like, a thinker introvert? Is that kind of like, kind of, you know, have some extrovert tendencies to do this job? But, yeah, I mean, I'm totally happy fishing on my own at the lake or playing golf by myself. I love to do it with other people, too, but I love. I can be by myself, and that's what I think. Yeah. Well, I want to save some of this for later, but I'm just curious. When you made this engineering analysis and decided to go into this business and you thought it was about investments, how much of that did you think it was going to be about selling product? I did not. I never thought I would be in sales, and I didn't really realize that, to be honest with you. But I quickly found out, you know, you have to influence people to take action, you know, if you want to survive. And back in the day, in this career, it was an eat what you kill model. In other words, you don't sell something, you don't get paid. It doesn't work that way anymore, thankfully. But you had to. You had to convince people to take action or you didn't eat. Right. So I learned pretty quick. And I think from my perspective, it's like, when I talk about people's having people have agency, it's almost like it's not about sales. Yeah. So if you're. If you're a supervisor, you have to influence. I love the word influence. You have to influence other people to get. To get your goals done. You might have to sit with customers. You might have to convince engineering to do something differently. You have to influence. And I think there isn't a leader I know that does not see influence in sales as not a problem. It's fun. It's almost like you just gotta reframe it. And Kevin Hellenbach and I talked a little bit about this, like, the psychology of nobody wants to be in sales, but, you know, when you're advising somebody, you know, and I've tried. I've introduced you, some of my friends. Right. And, you know, you know, first you get a relationship going, and then. Yeah. And then the mission is to help them. Right. Like. And that's the way you look at it. You don't look at it as I'm trying to, you know. Right. Yeah. We have this mantra, leave people better than you found them. You know, so you just want to. That's what drives me, is helping people. So I want to figure out a way to help them. And I figure if I can help them take action, that's going to help. Yeah. So it's like, it's always do the next right thing, whatever that is. And which brings us to, like, I wanted to just spend a little time talking about, like, our relationship. And I, you know, you guys have been in Bedford for a while, but I didn't know who. I didn't know you, but I happen to be on the chamber of commerce board of directors. And you reached out to me and said, hey, I like to go to lunch. And I'm like, okay, you know, he's an investment guy. I know. I know it is, you know, I know what this lunch is about. And we went to lunch and we didn't talk about that at all. What we did is you were really curious about, you know, my business. You were curious, you know, you kept asking me questions. You were curious about me. And I, and I, you know, and I, we had a similar background as I worked at Raytheon, too, and I kind of understand that world a little bit, so I kind of, like, hooked onto that. And it didn't take long for us to be really, really kind of good friends, like good advocates for each other. And so through the years, of course, you've hired my firm, I've helped your firm. I mean, this is all, it's been a really great relationship. I'll make introductions to people I think I've recommended for boards same. And we do this, and it's really purely on the basis of, like, I'm not trying to get anything out of you. I'm just, you know, that might come out of it, but I really just like you and want to help you. I'm an advocate for you. And you feel the same way I do. And I, we have, we have had within ameriprise and within the community. Our mission is just to help people. Right. So if I can help you or other professionals like you do a better job, you know, I just, I just, I'm an advocate for doing. So you just followed the formula. It wasn't because you liked me in any special way. Well, you know, you're pretty good, Russ. Yeah. So listen, rise has been through a lot. I'd like you to talk a little bit about what's happened, like, you know, since you decided to grow to where you are now and what the future looks like. So, like I said, I've been in the business 35 years, done a number of different roles during that time. And I started out as an individual practitioner, like most people did in this business. And there was a lot of grunt work and you know, just to survive. Then, like I said, I wanted to be in leadership right from the start. So I became a training manager a year later, a district manager after that, and I ultimately became a field vice president with the firm. So I was working in the northern New England region and 200 advisors were in my charge to coach them and help them grow their business. And then as that role began to change and the compensation wasn't changing as well, I said, well, if I worked this hard and I did it for my own business, what would that look like? And I decided to make that change back in 2007 where I basically started over in my own practice a few years. And I started that at that point. And I had two pronged strategy. I had actually three pronged strategy. I did organic, just meeting new folks and bringing them on as clients. I decided to inorganically, like if advisors were going to be retiring, I would take over their business and pay them and take over that client base and help those clients. And the third thing is I was doing some coaching of other, other advisors that. So I had built a coaching group as well. And eventually I dropped that coaching piece to focus on the practice. And then a few years later, 2010, I hooked up with Brent Mye, the co founder of Rise, Brent Kiley. And we started Rise. He was also an Ameriprise advisor from Bedford. We got together and we had similar values, similar goals. At first we just kind of occupied the same space, but then as we started to grow, we decided to share staff. And then as that continued to grow, we moved in next door to where we are today. And we had seven people on the team, including the two of us. Today we're at including interns, we're at 68 people. And the real, I think the real shift was in 2018. As I said, we were kind of dating and being engaged up until that point. But in 2018, we decided to merge everything, including our revenue stream. Oh, so revenues weren't included. So we made a real company, started an LLC, and because this business that we're in has traditionally been an individual contributor business, but we decided to make a team. And with that, then we brought in a couple of other partners that were also Ameriprise folks, and we began to build a real business. As we call. We like to jokingly say at the time we were under a billion in revenue, but we had some big goals. We wanted to get to five, not a billion in revenue, billion in assets. We wanted to get to 5 billion. A billion in revenue would be really good. That would be really good. Billion in assets, we wanted to get to 5 billion. That was our ten year vision. And what happened was, when we merged and we started to build a business plan together, we all started to pick some. We all identified our unique abilities and our specialties. For instance, the reason you and I got together and we hired you is one of my roles is leadership development in the firm. And so we contracted with your firm to help us with some of that leadership development, which was excellent, by the way, but we can talk more about that if you want. So, anyway, all the five of us had specialist roles on the leadership team, and when we did that, we started to accelerate our growth. What happened is it only took us a year and a half to get from a billion in assets to 2 billion in assets, and we started to really explode. Yeah. So it's my understanding that, so since 2018, I think, is when you really combined everything, you've had a series of mergers and acquisitions. I'm curious to know about that, and, like, you know, where you are now and then. And really what I want to talk about is how the. How the heck did you handle all that? Because you're merging advisors, back office, you know, you know, functional abilities and partners, probably. So, like, talk a little bit about, you know, that growth and maybe some of the challenges that happen with that. Yeah. So the first thing is, you know, we have this vision together, and we do m and a. But job one is organic growth still. That's the, you know, from referrals and introductions from other professionals and things like that. So that's. That's our number one thing, that we want to have a solid, really, wow. Client experience so that people feel good about it, and they refer us to their friends, their colleagues, things like that. So that's in place. And we felt good about that. So then we said, okay, let's expand. Let's accelerate our growth by doing m and a, like you say. So the first thing is, we've done a lot of these, you know, between Brent and I and the other partners on the team, we've done a lot of these, you know, probably over 40. Wow. Yeah. Advisors that either have sold to us or merged in with us one way or the other. Yeah. And we've learned a lot, and we've made some mistakes, but luckily, not a lot of mistakes. Yeah. Well, what were those mistakes, and, like, how'd you overcome them? So some of the things, like, at first, some of it, we were so anxious to do deals that we ignored some signs that we didn't do the due diligence we actually did. The sad thing is we did the due diligence and we saw the data, saw the red lights and went right through the red lights. You wanted to win, right? We wanted to win. That's what hurts the most. But thankfully, we didn't do that a lot, and we learned pretty quick. So now the first thing we do is it's a values. Even when we're hiring somebody, we just. We share our values, our rise values, and we want to know what their values are. And if there's alignment, and if there's not, it's okay, still a great person. It's just not going to be a match. So we spent a lot of time on that before we get to any discussion about money or exchanging value, things like that, it's more, do the values match? So that if the values match and the, then we go on to, here's what our. Our vision is and what our goals are. And can you align with those goals? If that matches, then the details, we can figure that out. Even when you're successful and you've not seen red flags and you've gone through your character assessments and value and cultural assessments that you talked about, it's still. There's still buzz saws to run into. Right, right. So what were those challenges? Yeah, so we have a certain, what we call the rise way. Right. So we have a certain process on how we, the client experience, how we process business, how we interact with our team, the culture here. So we want to get people integrated into that. So are they just happily integrating? No, they just not necessarily. So one of the things, like. So you asked about, like, an advisor team comes over to join us. You know, they have clients wherever they are, and they need to bring those clients over here and get them acclimated. So in the beginning when we were doing that, we would just, like, say, okay, it might take three to six months to get those clients over here, get them all over here, and then we'll worry about, like, getting you acclimated more. And what we found is that that worked okay. But if we had people acclimate more sooner, we got better results. So one of the things we did, one of our structures and our team, because we have 30 professional advisors on the team. But what we do is we group those advisors into what we call diamond teams. So they're teams of four advisors. We call them diamonds. So if you picture a baseball diamond, the lead is on second base, or, I'm sorry, the diamond leader is on second base, two lead advisors, first and third and then an associate on home base. So the lead is someone who's doing a lot more business development, serving some clients. I imagine these would be integrated with existing advisors and new advisors, right? That's right, yeah. That's how you integrate it. The associate is the new advisor. So they're just going on meetings, taking notes and learning the business. But as soon as we started bringing those new advisors into those diamonds and integrating with that smaller team, so they had a smaller team to integrate with, their uptake was that much quicker. We've gotten much better results with that. Right. So I guess another thing we've done is we have, like, a buddy system where if there's a new employee on the team or someone coming over and we have like, a mentorship that we establish. So, you know, you have your traditional structure, your department you're in, but someone that. Another buddy that they can ask questions to when they're. When they join the team. Yeah. So I think what you're doing, which sounds, you know. Right. And you've learned to do this, is that so in change. Right. One of the first things that happens to people, even though I get married to you and I'm gonna go give my assets to you, I'm gonna be part of the firm, is that I'm in denial a little bit about what this change is going to be like. I wanted to win, too, so now I got my. I'm part of this team now, but still I'm a little in denial. And the longer people stay in the denial, the harder it is for them to get out of that. And I think by you accelerating that six months, you're saying, look, we're going to get you past denial as quickly as possible, which means, yeah, we have a new system. We have a new compensation system. We have. This is the way we process work through the organization. This is how we deal with clients. This is the diamond situation. And what. And there's no. You don't have any choice. This is how we do things around here. And if you do that as quickly as possible, they can go up that curve and learn and be a little bit more invested sooner. So here's a question for you. Like, how do you. You mentioned denial. How do you identify that? Like, as we're. And we're in the courting process, how do we. How do we identify what those points of denial might be in the courting process? Right. It depends on the. I guess I wanted to clearly. What are the motivations that this deal is going through? Like, are they. Are they financially underwater is there, you know, are they looking to retire? You know, why does somebody have a successful business and want to be part of a team? I'd really want to assess, assess what that is ahead of time. But odds are if the deal goes through, there is a mutual value in that. In that. So I'm sure that there is some mutual value in that. What denial looks like then is it's like you need to know right away. And I guess my, I don't know all the ins and outs of necessarily your process here, but I would be very clear about what it's going to look like in the next few months and what that transition is. And I would move as quickly as possible. What denial looks like is I don't want to be part of a diamond team. How is my compensation the same? If you start seeing these signs, it could be that they're just naturally resisting because that's what, you know, they don't want to change. If the new learn new sociology, they're new systems and there's a little bit of, well, I've been successful. Trust me, I know how to do this right. There's a little bit of that that happens and that might not ever go away in some cases. In some cases. But I think you identify that as quickly as possible. In most cases you can bring people around to that and how that, and again, this is like what I talk about agency and I talk about personal power and stuff like that. They need to be able to articulate that clearly and not be whispering around the organization. They get. They should have an outlet to go to you right away and say, this compensation is not working for me. Great, great. Well let's talk about what, what the realities are here and we have to coach ourselves through that. And I think most, most times, you know, people can, you know, as when we were afraid of something and you know, I don't know what change you're going through in your life, but some, you know, sometimes you go through change and the first thing is, well that's b's. I don't want to do that that way. Right. And I'm going to resist as much as possible. But the more you learn about something, usually eventually you say, okay, I can negotiate with this, but what has to happen is that there might have to be a little give and take on your end. But you know, if something is like we practice the diamond model and this is how it is, and if you can't do that, let's, let's discuss that now. So getting back to some of the mistakes we made and some of the people we brought over, we've gotten way better at doing exactly what you said to identify what those possible denials will be before people come on. And one of the ways we've done that is, as I said, one of the earlier deals, that was a mistake. We didn't have a big pipeline of things to choose from. So at this point, we've really built a great reputation in the industry and with Ameriprise and in the community. So we have a lot of people approaching us that want to be part of our team now. You have more choices. We have a lot more choices. We can be a lot more upfront to say, look, exactly what you did. This is how it works. We want your feedback and we want your ideas because you could make it better. But we're not going to change the whole structure just to bring you in. Yeah. Whenever there's a merger and acquisition, this happens all the time. I get a call and says, you know, my company just got bought and, you know, these guys are a bunch of jerks. And, you know, they came in and they think they know it all. And I'm, you know, I'm gonna. I don't know what's gonna happen. And it's like, true story. Like people are freaked out. I mean, the senior people, right? And I say to them, this is true. I say this to them, I say, I'm going to give you the most important advice you ever heard in your life. You ready? And they go, yeah. I says, kiss their ass. And basically I'm saying, you're not going to win this argument if it's a merger and acquisition. What you want to do is you want to say your piece, but then you're going to let them know that I'm on the team. I'm on the team. What can I do? And it's a lot more fun than resisting. And I've given this advice to family members, to clients, and when they don't listen to me, they end up leaving. It's like, it's a shame. It's like all you have to do is dig in, like, open your. Wait a little while, learn as much as you possibly can. Odds are they're not jerks. Odds are they have a mission. They want to be successful. They want to make money. If you show that abundance mentality and you're willing to learn and be coached, then you gain more influence. Who are you going to take on your team if you acquire a company, you know of ten people and five of them are like, all in. You're all in with these five people. Right? And I think that that's. So people go through a personal challenge, and that's this is like, the dynamics have changed. Personally. There's denial. It's almost like grief. They. Denial, then they have to learn about it, and then they eventually accept it. And eventually there might even be, like, a regret that it's gone. But eventually people go through, and there's also a corporate way of doing this. What we have to understand, what a lot of leaders don't understand, is that people go through this personal, and you can help them through that. If someone's really struggling with what's going on, it's amazing what coaching will do or you coaching them. And you've done this before. So, you know, like, spend a little time, listen to what, you know, let them hear themselves talk through the problem. They'll talk themselves right out of it. There's that, and then there's the corporate piece, which is people. You know, people need to know the burning platform, which is if you don't follow the diamond processes, you're not gonna be successful. That's the burning platform. How do I align them? You go to your best. You know, in your organization, you probably have five or ten. I call them influencers. They don't have to have any stature or big role. They're just people that people like. Right. They are the cool people in the company. Right. The people that people look to. Right. You get them aligned around this, and then that'll help other people. Right. You make sure you. Yeah. That whole change process was something when. When you coached us and helped us with our leadership development program, what we took to heart big time. That model that you shared with us. Yeah. And you're kind of ticking through it now, and that's helped us tremendously in a number of different areas. And part of it is, like you say, those influencers making sure you have the right people on the bus, and then they can influence other people in the organization. Yeah. And the other thing is just thinking with cement empathy, like, try to put yourself in that person's shoes. Like, what would they be thinking about if they're in a situation where they're going through a merger right now? We just signed a letter of intent last week or two ago. Pretty big deal. And we did kind of an announcement on their team meeting. And we had some things, we prepared some things. Like, if we're in your shoes, here's what we'd be thinking about. Like, is my job safe? Right. Right. And absolutely, we're not here. We're not doing this to cut any jobs. We need all of you, you know, so a series of issues we thought might be on their mind, so we could diffuse that right up front. And then, of course, took questions. And you asked the questions for them, which, like, why wouldn't they ask the questions themselves? Yeah. Right. Why? Well, this was in a group setting that we were doing this, but, yeah, but then the other thing we're going to do is we're going to meet with each individual on that team and find out. We call it Witty whiffy. What do you want for yourself? Witty whiffy. So what are your career goals? What are your personal goals? What are your unique abilities that you think if you could do one job, what would be your favorite job that gets you jazzed to do? And as our team grows and we can get more and more people doing 80 or 90% of their jobs in their unique ability, how fast could we grow? And that's, as I was describing earlier, that's what we've done on our leadership team, and we're trying to expand that to the whole team. So we spend a lot of time every quarter actually updating our team members. Witty whippy, what do you want for yourself for the next 90 days? What are you working on next year, next three years, next five years? Where do you see yourself? And, you know, my philosophy is, if I can help other people get what they want, you know, we're gonna get what we want. Right. Yeah. That abundance mentality. Exactly. So you're actually hiring. You're bringing on. What's good of this is you're not starting with, like, a bunch of college graduates and mention mentoring them up to the business. You're buying people that have. We're doing both. You are doing both? Yeah. Is there an age that you wait for people to be before they come here? Well, so we have advisors that are in our sixties, their fifties, their forties, their thirties, and their twenties. And the reason we have that is Brent and I decided, like, when we first got together, one of our visions was that we're going to be a firm that's here for generations to come. Most firms in our industry consist of a principal, maybe, maybe a junior advisor, a couple of team members. And when the principal retires, they sell the business, and that firm ends and they get absorbed by someone like us. Right. We decided we wanted to be a firm here for generations to come. So we have 60 people full time. We have eight interns right now, and of the 60 people, roughly 40% of them, are in our leadership development program. And the reason for that is we want to be here for generations to come. So we need to. So we have a generation two. We've already developed and continue to develop generation three, and we're working on generation four. Right. So generation four is, you know, interns coming in, and some of our brightest, young, talented interned here. We usually get interned. So they're really young. Yeah. 22 years old. They're in St. A's or unh, and they intern for a couple years, and then it's great for us because we get to see what they're like. They get to see our company, and then many of them have decided to come on with us. And we have, you know, bright, young CFP certified financial planners that are doing great work. Nice. So the reason why I bring it up is, like, does Ameriprise have statistics on the success rate of a 22, 23 year old coming to the company and staying? So here's the thing. So back when I started, I was 27. It was you. You got. I mean, there was a good training program, but it was cold calling, calling your friends, whoever you could get to sign a check, right? But there was no, like, there was a draw. There wasn't a base. It was a draw. So you know how a draw works? If you don't make your draw, you fall behind. And there was a 90% fall between starting and three years. If you made it three years, you kind of. You were good, because then you'd put the time in and you started the time in, you started to get repeat business. You get referrals. But it was 90% fallout in the first three years. Only 10% of us made it to year three in the business, and probably 80% of those didn't make it out of year one. Doesn't work that way anymore. So when we bring people into a team, so these folks starting that are interning with us right out of college and then joining us right out of college, they're sitting in on my meetings or my partner's meetings or other diamond leaders, and when they start, they're just there to take notes and do the follow up. They're observing our meetings. So it's a development process that we take anywhere from two to three years to develop them before we're expecting them to bring on their own. Now, would it be fair to say that the model that you're using versus the old model of, you know, here's your desk. I'm gonna teach you how to call people, make a list of your friends. Right. You're gonna have to kiss a lot of frogs over the next couple years. But then is it fair to say that that model is pretty. Still. Is still consistent in the industry, or is. It exists, but it's not the norm anymore. Not the norm anymore. It's, you know, on the warehouse side of things. There's some of that, but they also have people coming into teams now. It's more of a. It's more. People start out as a. In a team. Yeah, but it does still exist, but it's. It used to be the only way. So I think you and I are close to the same age, and I'm not gonna. We don't have to announce that, but we're close to the same age. And when you were 27, I was getting those. I was at finance and Raytheon, and I was getting calls, you know, come. And I met with some of the firms up here, and, you know, I was, too. I was a snob of the whole. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna do that. Right. But again, I've had. I've worked with, like, a dozen financial services firms over the last 25 plus years, and. And they're all very successful, and they all have great values, and they do good work. And, you know, I mean, like, I love my advisor. Yeah. I. You know, to me, it's like, that's the first call I made talked about that. They're my friends. Bring your money over to me because you like them, too. And I say, great. I. That's awesome. But so, if I look back, it's almost like, I wish I had done that. Like, I almost wish that I had said, hey, you know, because in your role, you're coaching people, you're helping people. I will tell you, if I knew how hard it was gonna be when I started 35 years ago, if I really knew what it was all gonna be, I probably wouldn't have done it. It sounds like you, like, checked it out, and you knew what you were getting into, and I said, no way, and you said, no way, and I was like, yeah, but when I started my own and do enough due diligence to know what I was getting into, but when I started my own business. Right. I'm gonna be a coach. Yeah. What do I have to do? Oh, yeah. I had to do the same stuff. Yeah. Right. I had to create. Create a bunch of relationships really quick, probably even harder. There's more lead time. Right, right. Yeah. So, anyways, it's like, you know, it's like, I know. So I bring this up because I don't. There isn't one client that I know that doesn't complain about. They won't even hire anybody under 25 anymore. They say they, Russ, we've had such good luck. I mean, we're not batting. So I know people right now. I know a 30 year old young man that has a degree from Unh. He worked at a bank. He works in your industry as an analyst. He's got a charming personality. He would kill it as being an advisor. He would kill it. Yeah. I don't want to. I don't want to sell. That wants nothing to do with it. And I don't think what he realizes is that the, you know, I have. It would be amazing. And I know. I know a dozen people like that. Three advisors on my team that started as administrative help for me, all women. They said to me the exact same thing, I'm Bob. I'm never going to sell, ever. So what happened was, then we learned about this model. The analogy is like a doctor nurse model where you're in the appointment together. So instead of me doing the meeting and then going out to the desk and telling them what happened, I said, you come in the meeting, you take the notes, and there's follow up stuff while you're in the meeting that you can probably just take care of right there. So you're in the meeting, you're seeing what I'm doing. And after seeing me doing it 100 times. Yeah. They're like, if he can do it, I can do it. And so they learn how to do it. So it's so readiness. As you know, in terms of leadership, readiness involves skill, and it also involves will. And if someone doesn't feel secure in their role, they're less willing to do it. But by us demonstrating, so we have this model demonstrate, observe, and confirm. So the new people that join our firm that aren't in the industry or aren't selling, they're observing, and they're in there taking notes, providing follow up. And then when I go to my next meeting, the client calls. They can take the call. Right. So the client experience is such that they're getting a relationship with two of us instead of it's just me, so they have more access when they need it, and that is a mentorship in a way, so that they can come up through the system. So after doing that for a year, year and a half, then we start allowing them to work with some clients slowly. And some of those clients might be people that they were with me on and there might be not. Maybe there's not a lot going on with that client so they can start working with them, so they can start in the business slowly in terms of demands to have clients, but they start in a more observation and support role and they're not expected to sell right away. Meanwhile, while they're. Maybe they're on ten of those meetings a week with me and others in the firm, and then we have, on the side, we have a training program going on so they can learn how to, how to present certain topics, like how do we manage people's taxes, tax control. We have a process for that. How do we, what is our investment philosophy? We have a process for that. How do we present a financial plan to a client? We have a process for that. So we have an advisor leader who does that training for those folks, and then they see it live with the client when they're in the meetings. So the uptake is just extremely fast. So the last, the latest person we appointed, he was at St. A's. He interned with us for two years. By the time he graduated, had all his licenses for our business while he was taking his exams. He's taken the exams to get licensed, and just this past few months, he passed his CFP exam. Certified financial planner. Nice. There's only, I think 5% of the CFPs in the industry are under 30. He passed his exam at 22, so he's the fastest. So the more and more we do this, things happen faster because we have this robust program. And so I talk a lot about how we have a, you know, we, you know, we live in a different society than we did 50 years ago, right? When you and I came up, you know, cold calling, right, you're accountable, otherwise you're going to be docked. Right? Worked 24 hours a day, you know, you were a slave to the company. There was no consideration. You were on your own to try to figure out stuff. And all the structures in a company are set up that way for the most part. But what you're articulating is exactly what I advocate for a modern organization, which means there's a, you help people trust their ability to learn. You bring them and you provide the training they want. You have psychological safety because they're part of a team. And I know this culture a little bit that you won't stand for that not being the case, the psychological safety. So there's a certain level of expectation of maturity and candidness and transparency that you advocate for. People can express themselves they can talk about their ideas. They got enough people mentoring them and coaching them along the way to get stuff done. It's okay to make mistakes. You're going to learn. It sounds like you have a long Runway to, whenever people are comfortable to jump off into something else, they can do that. We didn't talk about accountability, but, you know, maybe there's got to be, you know, if you, there's certain numbers and goals you're trying to make, you want to move up. There's certain thresholds and certain benchmarks. Yeah. And I guess the key here is when I hear you saying is I actually hear you saying that you, you spend most of your time as a leader building confidence and self, and kind of self respect and self accountability and self agency in people. And that, that's kind of the secret sauce. Yeah. I mean, but not everybody's gonna come along to that. So you must have had some failures along the way. Oh, yeah, of course. Nobody bats a thousand. But, you know, my, my instinct is this. Trust is a trust until instinct, in other words, I trust people. You give trust. I give trust. My dad was that way. Maybe to a fault, maybe me to a fault. But when I meet you, I trust you for your word until you give me a reason not to trust you. Right. You haven't given me any reason for that personally, but I trust you. So am I on like probation or something? No, no, no. But my point of that was my, when we have a new person coming into our team, I trust that they're coming to work every day wanting to do their best. They want to do their best. Now, will that happen every day? You know, maybe they had a bad morning, whatever, but I'm trusting they're coming to work to do their best. And the second thing is I want to put them in a position of success. So I'm not going to throw them to the wolves and to do something new that they've never seen before. So we have this demonstrate, observe and confirm process where, you know, if we're expecting them to do something, we're going to show them. We're going to demonstrate it first. So I believe, and I've brought this to rise, is that, you know, when I describe this model, this doctor nurse analogy, a lot of my colleagues in other parts of the firm and the industry think that's a waste of time. You know what, you have this other person in your meeting. Oh, it takes time. That's a waste of time. Right. Well, you know, if you never do that, how are you going to develop people. Right. It's part of development. And I would argue we're getting much, much better results in a shorter period of time because we've invested that in our people. Right. And I've heard this, you know, before from people that's actually heard an executive say, why should I be teaching people what their parents should have taught them? Motivation and stuff like that? And I guess, well, they have to learn from somewhere. I mean, why not spend time, the investment of time. I didn't learn this stuff from my people. And it doesn't take long. It does not take long for people to get, wow, okay. I can, I can, I'm comfortable here. I can learn here. I have people advocating for me. It doesn't take long for them to jump on board and say, this was good. So part of how they learned that is they, like, we had a woman join us, our team a couple, two or three years ago now, and she went to someone else who joined us a year prior, and she said to him, is all that stuff they're saying true? Like, it sounds too good. It sounds too good to be true. And they said, no, it's true. This is how it works. So we've been doing this long enough where we can say, you don't have to take my word for it. Go talk to so and so. Talk to them about their experience here at rise. And it's one of, you know, one of our values is growth. Now, when you hear growth, you might be thinking growth in the numbers and business results and things like that, but part of it, so that's part of it, but a big part of it is personal development and growth in your, in your ability. And so if someone wants to remain stagnant, we're probably not going to get along that well. They're not going to fit in because we're growing and we want you to grow with us. And so part of a firm that grows is retaining their people, which includes having career tracks, having a path to a track to run on. So they have to want to be ambitious as well. Yeah. Right. I mean, we're going to get along much better if they are. Right. Good. So you guys are at 5 billion now with this deal, we're going to be at about just shy of 4 billion. So where does, what's the, what's the growth goal? Our current business plan is for 10 billion in assets for, in, in ten years. But now we're probably gonna have to change that because we got this big deal. So we're gonna probably have to up the goal there you go. We haven't, I haven't told my partners that yet, but the next business planning meeting that's coming. Yeah. So. And the drive for this growth, measured by billions, is just to have a good impact. It's helping people, our mission. Helping people. Yeah, our mission is to help people and with confidence, simplicity and success. So they're, when we do a financial plan with them, they need to feel a sense of confidence. Simplicity comes from the fact that we're in a very complex investments and financial planning and taxes. There's a lot of complex things out there. And if you try to do it on your own, there's, all the information is out there. It's just too much. If you're trying to do it on your own, it's like me trying to work on my car. If I try to work on my car, I'm going to break more things than I fix. Right. So. And for me, it's always the first time doing it well. We help people retire every day. We help people put kids through college every day. We help people save on taxes every day. We're doing it all day long. And the other thing is we work with people from their twenties to their nineties, you know, and beyond. So if you're in your sixties, I know what you're going to face in your seventies, because I'm dealing with other clients that are dealing with that. And I know what you're going to deal with in your eighties. So if I can help you see that future and say, what if we did x, y, and z today? So we're ready for that. How cool is that? I still remember my first supervisor at Raytheon, my second job out of college. And my supervisor calls me in his office and he says, oh, we have a 401K plan here, and you can put 5% and we match. Like, I think it was 5%. It was like a, I don't know, it was a big match. And he said, I want you to put the minimum in. And I'm like, yeah, but John, I need that money. He says, for what? I said, I need to play golf. Listen, just do me a favor. I want you to put in the max, right? And then when I retired from there, I didn't retire, but when I left there, like 20 years later, I was like, like, wow, right? It was like, holy cow. But it took people mentoring me to do that. And, you know, I think that people certain, like, we should be teaching this stuff in school. I don't know why we don't teach this stuff in school, to be honest with you, some schools, they do, but, you know, the student has to be ready to hear the message, too. I mean, you know that one of the things about having personal power is having some financial stability. For example, you know, you want that new assignment, that there's a new job over there, but you're afraid to ask because you don't want them to think that you don't like your job, and you're afraid because they might change your job and you might lose your wage. Right. Or you're afraid to push back on the boss because the boss has full control over you and, you know, doesn't want to, you know, so you don't want to ask for stuff. So if people are feeling financial difficulties or financial pressure, right. It's. It stunts them. Right. So one of the things I like to say, and this is, right, I want them to have a little money so they can say, no, thank you. This isn't for me. And the power of being able to walk away gives them a sense of agency. What advice do you have for young people, mid career people, regarding finances, to kind of, you know, get that freedom? So I talked about, on the employee side, having a witty, whiffy, what do you want for yourself? And that's for on the client side. We go through that with our prospective clients and our existing clients. Like, what do you want for yourself? More than just the finances. But, you know, I always ask a question of clients, like, if I'm taking a video of a typical day in your retirement, what would I see? People usually smile and they picture themselves on the beach or fishing or golfing or something like that. So that's an example of a goal that we explore. And what does that mean to you? But someone could say, oftentimes they say, I want to get out of the grind and start my own business, or I want to have the money, financial independence by a certain age, so I can just do something for fun. I'll make money at it, but it'll just be fun. And so we, through our financial planning process, we help people, like, figure out, okay, what does it take to make that happen? Do you have dollars allocated to that? Now? If you do, great. Are you on track or you're not on track? And if you're not on track, what do you need to do to get on track? When you change, when you shifted from Raytheon to investing at 27 years old, do you remember how scared you were? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And how did you finance that? I. Well, I had saved money. I was a saver, right? Yeah. And my wife thought, so. We were. We just had our first baby, two months old. We. My mom thought I was crazy. My parents thought I was crazy. Like, you're leaving this job. I got the same thing. What do you do? This job? Pays you to the penny. I knew what I was gonna make every month. Yeah. And. But I. And I actually talked to people that were doing it, and they said, it's gonna be the hardest thing you ever did, but it's gonna be yours. Right. And so, Russ, I was an engineer, so it was a numbers game, right? Yep. So I knew the numbers, and no matter what happened, no matter how much abuse I took on the phone, because you had to, there's a lot of cold calling. Right. I said, I gotta do these numbers. I gotta call this many people to get this many people to agree to meet with me, and this many people will say, yes, I did the numbers. I was. I was too dumb to do anything different. Yeah. Meanwhile, all the other people in my hiring class were trying to figure out a quicker way. They were trying to game the system. And you were just. And they just fell off. They fell off. They were the 90% that fell off. Yeah. And I just did the numbers. I remember. I remember leaving, and I left because I really had this passion for this work. Like, I just, you know, I just. I just had this passion. I felt like I found my calling. And I also had babies and never saw my kids. Yeah. And I remember sitting down. I've told the story before, but I sat down with my oldest son. He was five years old. I came back from Raytheon Aircraft on a business trip, and I was working in OD at the time. I came back from a business trip, and I said, he's like, oh, dad, I love you. I wish you lived with us. He was like, what? You wish I lived with you? And that's when I, you know, I said, I want to go out like Michael Jordan, not like, you know. And so what I did is when I left and everybody dissuaded me, I had mentors in the company that said, who do you think you are? What do you think you're doing? How can you possibly do that? You know, it's. You're gonna fail. My father wouldn't talk to me for a little while. He was afraid for me. Like, what are you doing? The same thing. What are you doing? You're giving up all the stock options, your corporate job at a Fortune 100 company. Like, what are you doing? Like, what's wrong with you, right? And I'm like, I just want to do. And I remember, you know, sitting there at my desk in my living room, my little desk, calling, like, St. Joseph's hospital and calling local things and getting rejected. And, you know, I figured out quick, it's not going to be cold calling for this. But I went through this process one day. I was so afraid. I sat there. I was like six months into this, I was so afraid. I said, I got to get a part time job. And I used to do some security work. So I picked up. I found a security job. I picked up the phone, they said, come on in for an interview. I went for an interview. They hired me on the spot. And I go home and shelling. I got home. Shellen says, how was your day? I said, good. I found a job and I didn't do it. But what I did is I wrote down an envelope, and I was burning through money because I didn't have enough clients. Six months into this thing, I put an envelope, what level I wanted to be at financially. I wrote down some goals and I sealed it, and I put it for eight months out, and I stick it on the refrigerator. And eight months out, I picked it up, and I had surpassed all those goals. And so it's like, I think that, but I had to spend my, I had to invest my own money. And that's something people don't want to do either, right? It does take not only effort, but also takes, it takes resources. And I've, as I mentioned earlier, I've coached a lot of, as when I was field vice president, I coached a lot of other advisors. I work with a lot of business owners today as, as an advisor in the planning business. And I've observed a couple things. First of all, like, you start with why. Simon Sinek says, start with why. And what's your vision? So my why is I want to help people grow and prosper. I found that I had a mentor, I think, in my second year, third year in the business. You know, he took us through a values exercise and, you know, to find your mission and things like that, and that was to help people grow and prosper. So that drives all my decision making. So that's what drove me. My first goal coming in the business was to make it so my wife didn't have to work right. You know, we had a new baby when I started, and we had four kids by the time I, my oldest was five and a half. So within a few years, I was able to make it. So she didn't have to work. So that was a driver. But what's carried me through is to help people grow and prosper. And one of the things that I've always believed in, Brent's believed in, and as a firm, it's part of our culture is we believe in coaching. So I've always had a coach. It's part of, you know, we have several coaches now. You were part of that in leadership development. We have industry coaches, we have marketing coaches. You know, we believe in coaching. And so people should have a financial planning coach because there's a lot of choices out there, and if we can help someone make one less mistake per year, you know, all our fees are covered. You know, it's. There's a lot of big mistakes you can make if you make some of the wrong choices. And some of the issues we get into are not just financial. They're things like, hey, I want to start this new career. I don't know if I can do it, but I can show them, like, what if your salary goes to X or Y? What is that going to mean to you long term? And it provides security for them knowing that they can do it. We have some cover for them. Because of what? Because of the work they do. Yes. This is like, so in your business and in my business, we're helping people find that power to control their lives, to be happy, whatever that is, as we're doing. Right. What I like to say is that coaching, whether it's financial coaching or not. Right. Will, you know, if it's gonna take. If it's gonna take you ten years to get that promotion or ten years for you to buy that boat, that, or that beach house or, or ten, you know, whatever that is that you want. Right. Coaching significantly reduces time. I could get someone promoted in two years. That would normally take them ten years. Right. But they have to show up ready to work, really wanting it, and so on, so forth. But that's, that's what this does, is it accelerates the experience. Exactly. For sure. And the best people in their field, they all have coaches, but I'd say, too, that in the experience I've had working with business owners and folks, people that I've learned, there's basically three things you have to have a vision. Envision is an overused word, but what I observe in people that are successful is they have a vision, but you can point to things that they're doing, that their vision is drawing them, and it's like, I think it was like an intention. If you write an intent, if you make an intention, it'll come true. Yeah. So you can see that it's something that they can feel and they can taste and they're actually taking action. The other thing is you have to be willing to take risk. Successful people are willing to take risk, whether it's changing jobs, starting your own business like you did and like I did. But even when you're in business, willing to lay it out there, to say, I'm investing, I'm going to bet on myself, bet on my own company. We're doing this merger. It's a big bet, and it'll work if we continue to grow. Right. And why are we doing it? Because we're going to help more people. So we're willing to take that risk. Right. And then the other thing is being willing to reinvent yourself with it. And you reinvent your company every two to three years. So you asked earlier how we've done all this. We've done, gone through all this change. We are a different company than we were two years ago. We were a different company two years before that. And I'm not doing the same role I was two years ago. Two years before that, I had a different role. Right. So that's part of our culture is being willing to reinvent. And part of the way to do that is making sure you understand what people want for themselves and helping them get into their, as I said before, their unique ability. And unique ability is something you're really good at. And it gets you jazzed. Like, when you're doing it, you would almost do it for free because you're in the zone and, you know, you just love that work and you're great at it. Yeah. So, you know, if you're, if you're a great business owner, a great employee, you're probably good at great at a lot of things, but what, what are the one or two things that you're great at? And you would almost do it for free. You're just so jazzed when you're doing it. If you can get a company full of people doing that. Right. And that's in that. And that's my goal. Like, I want to make this change fun. Yeah. Change. We got this change. You get a merger. How exciting. Right? It's not, it's not bad. Let's. How do we make lemonade out of this? Right. Well, that can't come around to that. You can help them get, get to that. Right. And if everybody could learn that, you know, I have the power to control whatever comes at me, and I have that. I have the challenge, I find I like to get your take on this, though, is it's so growth. You say change is fun, but growth and change can be uncomfortable. Right. So how do you get comfortable being uncomfortable otherwise? Some people, when they see discomfort, they don't want to make the change, so they don't want to grow up. And the answer to that is practice. If you think about, you know, you've been through a whole lot of change and even you are uncomfortable with this new merger a little bit. Right. And you. But I'm comfortable. Right. You're comfortable saying uncomfortable, but because you've practiced. Right, right. Not only practice, but you've practiced and you've been successful. It's like one of the questions I ask is some, if someone's afraid to do something, I say, when was the last time, tell me it's story. When you screwed something up. And they can't, they go, well, I can't think of one, like, because you haven't screwed up. Yeah, right. But it's like this. There's always this performance anxiety that we're not going to be able to do it or I got to learn too many new things, whatever that stuff is. But I think if you've been through a whole bunch of change so many times, I mean, just think about, like in my business, I'm working with new clients every year right now. When I first started, I'm like, oh, no, there's a bank. How am I going to deal with the bank? And then I get in there and like, oh, this is, this is great. I love for him. Oh, my God, this is, these lawyers are great. This is fun. And it's like through the practice I've realized that it can all be fun and there's no fear involved. And guess what? And then also I can think of my feet and it's like, that's what I'm talking about. How do you get, you have, you have enough personal power and agency that you know that you can overcome these things, right. And so how do you get people to be comfortable with that? You have to build that confidence on some of those things I've mentioned, right. They have to, they have to, they have to be, they have to create their own safety, whether it's money or whatever it is. They have to, they have to, they have to find their voice. They have to be able to speak up. And they need to be humble in this. In this. I'm not going to be perfect. Perfection is not going to be the goal here. I need to trust my brain that I can continue to learn. I'm going to be accountable to myself. Those. Those are the things. That's how the thing is, too, I think, is as you practice, you realize, well, I can always readjust right. This is going the wrong way. I can. I can just make an adjustment. It's not all locked in. Right. So, you know, that stuff is taught. We're studying a book now. Ten X is easier than two x, you know, as our leadership team. And part of. So ten X is like, how do we ten X the company? And when you start thinking about those kinds of numbers, they're, like, daunting. Like, to think about overwhelming, you know, going from a billion to 10 billion, like we didn't really know, like, how is all going to unfold. But what we can look at and what they teach you in this book is look at how you've ten x'd up to now. So you call it, you know, you said I have practice. Well, in his terms, he looks at what have you. You've ten X'd already, you know, starting your own business from a. From a fixed job, fixed income job at Raytheon, when you started your own business, that was a ten X move. Right? Right. And then having all the respect you command in the community, being president of different boards, prominent boards in the community, to me, is huge. You know, it's ten x move for you. And you could do that because you knew you had a history of ten X. Exactly. And that's. That's what you have to. So a lot of people we, you know, have been sitting around in companies in the same job for ten years. Right. They haven't had that practice. Right. And now, you know, they don't trust their ability to learn. They don't trust that they have a voice. They lose this agency, and that they have to be retrained. But it sounds like you're doing the things built into the system. I will warn you about one thing, though. Okay? So this is the truth. This is the truth. The biggest challenge with companies going from small to big is that scale. It's the communication in that organization is not scalable. And you can't design a flowchart that's going to make it scalable. So, for example, how many. How many people? You have 50 people. 60. You have 60 plus eight interns. So when you go from 60 to 120. Right. Two x. When you go from. When you go to that, the systems inside are not going to work. And this is the complaint you're going to hear because when. Because when you guys were 30 people, when you were all just the four of you, partners and a few support staff, you could. Hey, Brett, what's going on here? Hey, I'm going, like, you could just go, you were in each other's head all the time. Right now you're at 60 people, and you've created some process flow maps, but you still probably hear, I don't understand what the strategy is, or I don't understand the diamond thing. You probably still hear confusion about this, because communication is one of those things that I want to hear directly from you. And the bigger you get, the further away you get from people. So there's no magic answer to that. The only answer I can give you is if you have to train people again to have their own personal power and comfort and knowing that what I'm doing does fit in somewhere, and if I don't know, I can ask. Right. And I have to gift the trust to the company that they're taking care of me for that. Yes. And the whole thing about gifted trust is really important. A lot of times it's like, you know, a lot of people don't have that mindset. They're saying, I'm going to come here. You have to prove to me that this is working. And until then, they reserve their efforts. Right, but if I know that, look, if I make a mistake, if you make. If you lie to me, that's not good. But if you make a mistake or you leave something out or you handled something with discretion or something happened to that, I have to trust that you handled it for a reason. And you have to train people that that's the case. And not everybody's come to the table ready for that. But you will have those growing pains, because I've seen it, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've seen that already. And, you know, it's like I said, the company we were a couple years ago, we're not the same company. We have to adjust for that. But, you know, in terms of our client experience and our employee experience, we have a mantra, the bigger we get, the smaller we want to feel, you know? So as big as we've gotten, we still. The core of our work is a one on one relationship with our. With our advisor, a client. One on one relationship. Every single client has a one on one relationship with their advisor, and that's. That's the core of what we do. We're not going to change that. And we just want to have more of those relationships and help more people. Good well, excellent. Yeah. Thanks for spending the time. It's nice to. And I do appreciate our friendship and our professional friendship. Excellent. I hope it was valuable and good. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Bob. If you liked this video, subscribe and we'll see you the next time on power theory.See all