Ep #10: The Significance of Processes for the Back Office of Advisory Firms

Caitlin Graham is the founder of the Admin Effect, a company dedicated to empowering operations professionals in the financial services industry. With a background in competitive gymnastics and coaching, Caitlin's passion for uplifting others has been a driving force through her career. She began her professional journey working for a large insurance marketing organization where she gained extensive experience in various roles including contracting and licensing, new business, case management and sales. Caitlin's life forever changed when her best friend passed away at the age of 30 from cancer. Sarah's passing gave Caitlin the courage to leave the corporate world to launch the Admin Effect. Caitlin's desire to provide operational support to top financial advisors, her deep industry knowledge and dedication to empower others created the foundation for her company.

Hi Caitlin, welcome to the Advisors Summit. We're so excited to have you and learn from you today.

Hi Molly. I'm pumped to be here.

Yes, this is going to be a fun one. I can already feel it. So I already like you as a person so that's really helpful. Just we already vibe so it's good to like dive into today is leadership and processes and kind of everything that you do at the Admin Effect. I think that you are so influential in this space because you're helping advisors. Kind of in my mind dot the eyes and cross the T's is what I always see is you're really the process driver behind it. Finding being that niche market was probably a challenge but also really cool things. So what inspired you to kind of launch the Admin Effect after being been in the financial services for over a decade?

Yeah, so I think it's important just to kind of put out there that I began my career working for a large IMO for the first portion of my career where it gave me a really well rounded background in the operation side of an imo. Then I was also a sales associate where I served advisors when it came to product illustrations, new business escalations, basically anything that they needed. I was kind of the catch all.

Yeah.

Well, in October 2018, my life suddenly changed where my best friend Sarah was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. For the next year and a half of her life, she fought every single day to beat this cancer. And I was by her side through all of that and ultimately coming up actually almost to the day, Sarah passed away five years ago. And that moment really changed my perspective on life in general. And watching her fight that courageous battle and realizing I was kind of complacent in my life at that time and kind of going through that, it showed me that well, I need to make a change. But what do you do with eight years of IMO experience?

Yeah, I've been too. The honor though that you really gave, took that and did something with that. You know what I mean? You didn't just let life pass you by. I think she would be honored to know that that was a huge driving factor in kind of your position to be an entrepreneur and a business leader.

So.

And then the admin effect was born. So you changed. How did you feel?

Yep. So I, I was like, well, what do you do with the 8 years of IMO experience? And I could work maybe for a home office or a financial advisor. So I started talking to a couple financial advisors and one said, well, can I split you with someone? Like I don't need someone full time. So that's where the concept came about. And I launched what was SES Enhancements April 1, 2021. It was named after Sarah.

I love that.

And that's kind of where the concept came about. And over an eight month period I built my book up to eight advisor offices. I was working as their virtual ops and just you. So eight different email addresses, all different phone numbers, working out of every IMO portal, RA platform, all different E applications. I was doing and seeing it all, every different CRM system. But I knew there was a concept and I kept on getting referrals. But the big thing for me was I was working now with offices that had staff already and the staff, they were awesome but they weren't always properly trained. And it became more of a. I realized that my purpose and I had a bigger, There's a bigger impact that I can make than just me working with the advisors. And that's where the concept of the admin effect. Admin effect came about, was through that. Fast forward to today. I have a team of 17 people that are opening accounts and funding policies to the tune of 75 million per month.

Wow.

And now we just serve on the AUM side and annuity side as well.

Okay, perfect. So you found your match, you found your goal, you kind of did the narrowing of that. So it wasn't this big broad platform. But to do that in just a few years I think is so commendable and amazing because that's a very quick progression and finding the right people was really key. And I know you talk a lot about, you know, on your website and kind of who you are, operational excellence, I think you are and I are like minded in that, that we do things with excellent. There's no kind of mid or fair boundary there how do you find that in a modern practice? And why is that more critical than ever? Is it just meeting deadlines? How do you kind of implement that excellence into your team?

Well, what I realized is there's just, there's. So there's key areas that drive the success of any business, but specifically in our space, the key factors are like your operations is your engine room. Or that's like, let's just call your engine. Let's say this is a sports car. That's your engine. The sales are the horsepower.

Yes. I love this.

But what happens if you neglect the engine?

Yeah, it doesn't go breakdown.

Exactly. So in our industry, I find a lot of our financial advisor clients are, are, you know, more sales driven and they, they run their business, but they don't necessarily want to manage a team and build out processes for their operations. Half the time they really even know how to do the operation side of it. So. So how do you, how do you know who to hire for that? How do you know how to train them? How do you know what to track and measure to make sure that they are performing to that level of excellence? And I've learned a ton through building out my team because I hired people with industry experience. But industry experience is very vague.

Yes.

And there's not a lot of people that know exactly what it takes to work in an advisor office. I mean, certainly I thought I knew working at an IMO what it took, but I didn't know until I was working all those offices of really what, what happens. So through that process, I really found out, well, why was I successful with building this in the first place and me being able to do the work well, the main things were my background and knowing product and the why behind things. There's. You have to understand it's not just checking boxes. It's not just, you know, following a process. It's understanding why we're doing this, why it's important to the clients. And that's why with the admin effect now we have our, we do the work side. But I have, I'm very passionate about our training course that we built as well.

Yeah, I think I want to dive more into that also is the training course. I think that's where I see a lot of advisory firms go wrong. And it's neither like anything against them.

It's more.

The process side is not everybody's forte, especially as an advisor. They're driven to sell, they're driven to be entrepreneurial. They don't necessarily want to stop and do the Process side of things. So let's talk about kind of the training. It probably came a little bit organically just watching all of these offices and having people in the weeds of that. What was kind of the challenges to create that and also when is that available if anybody does want to sign up for that training course?

Yes. So I was. It's. You'll probably, you'll appreciate this. So I had a concept way back when I launched what again is now the admin effect, where I was like, I wish I would have had certain resources when I even like four years into the industry. I mean I still didn't know certain things that I probably should have known, but I could do the job well enough to.

You didn't have to know.

Yeah, but I would have been that much better if I did.

Yeah.

So my first concept was this playbook that again, as a business owner, I've learned. So I had my we do the work product and I thought, oh, I could just put these materials in here, launch that and boom, we're off to the races.

Yep. Translate it. Nope.

I've learned a lot since. And so the concept was still there because I still wanted to provide those materials and the training in that sense. But in hiring my team and me having to train my team, I started piecing together all the things that you need to know in an advisor back office to actually do that job and support the advisor, work with that type of personality, but also support their clients and make sure that we have a process and a journey for that client that, that makes sense in a world that's very clunky. I mean there's. Things are getting a little better with certain things that have come out. But the new business process is clunky.

Yep. Yeah, it is. And I think that there's trying. There's definitely starting to see products and tutorials and stuff. You know, I think of Trainual and all of that, but it's. It's been a long time coming for sure.

Yeah. Well, and, and when I say clunky, I mean let's say I'm a holistic planner and I'm. I have a household that I'm opening accounts, accounts at Fidelity. I'm going to manage some money there. I'm put some of it to an annuity. I'm going to do some life insurance. You have to go to like seven different places just to facilitate this and think about that journey for the clients. Nothing is consistent. Some Sudaki sign, some's are firelight. This is through I pipeline. So you have to have a really good process and set proper expectations for your clients through that. But a lot of people don't understand or they have kind of a process, but they're not able to kind of put that on paper and present that to their clients and really walk them through that journey. Yeah.

And I think also from the scalability side, if they don't have that label down, it's. You have to almost recreate the real every single time. And every time you're going to have frustration on both the client side as well as, you know, your side too. That's a really difficult challenge there to have it from that side. You emphasize a lot too. On like client first. I think that that's a big theme, you know, just with who you are and also your business as a whole. How do you keep that front and center when the work is often internal facing? So on the work side, you know, you are in that office acting as the advisor's kind of main point there. How do you kind of keep that invite that client first mentality?

Well, at the end of the day, if they don't have clients, then we're not going to have work to do.

True, true, true. You're like, okay, guys, because I also want to stay in business.

For sure.

Yeah.

But really the client at the IMO level, I wasn't working with advisor clients, so I didn't know what that was like. But their clients are awesome. We love working with their clients. So it's kind of like you have this responsibility, but you have this want because they're putting their, their life's work in your hands.

Yeah. Honestly. And it's not a deal. It's not an easy thing to pass over. I was just on a call today and it's like the trust it takes to literally give everything that you've worked for, you've created your legacy over to an advisor. There is so much trust in that transaction that it' it's not for the faint of heart by any means, because you really have that, that purpose there.

Exactly.

And then so what's one thing, like, what's one advice, piece of advice that you would give a high performance advisor who's hiring their first operations person from day one? Like where would you begin? Would you really show them, hey, this is like the nuances of the industry. Would you, I mean, naturally you have a training course, but if someone maybe is just a solo advisor and couldn't necessarily spend money on that course, like what's one piece of advice that you could give them?

Well, the first place I would start is getting very clear on the number one, the type of person I'm looking for, what attributes do they have, what are their even personality traits, and then really clearly defining the role. So a lot of times people don't think about that piece and they just hire someone in to start delegating. But if you just start delegating and that person doesn't have a clear role coming in, then you grow a little more and then you hire another person. But then now they're doing overlap work and there's no role clarity there. And then you hire another person and they don't have. If you think about it this way, advisors have access to so many resources. They go to IMO events, they go to industry events.

Yep.

There's different. There's something I do love that our industry, especially in the IMO space and some of the carriers now have like KOP schools and things.

Yeah.

Which is awesome. But it's. That's once a year and it doesn't fully train on all of the things. So. Yeah, it's kind of like how they don't really have anything until what we've built out. They didn't have that either. Consistent support. People who are doing the job that really understand it to get them trained up because you. They just don't have that exposure to replicate that somewhere else. They're not getting introduced to like 17 different offices and hanging out with the people that are doing it to see what they're doing.

Yeah, fair.

So there's not that exposure.

Yeah, yeah. Until now. Until now. Until now in the training course. Yeah, absolutely. What's. And I know you specialize too in like new business and processing. Can you walk us through some of the inefficiencies that you've seen that kind of choke out the potential growth? I know we briefly mentioned a little bit of the clunky systems, but was there more inefficiencies that you see, you know, as people hire?

Well, and I think I can talk about the things that impact that back office and that process. There's key areas. So on our. We do the work side, when we onboard an office after four weeks, we provide an assessment of their operations. So what we look at is amazing people that are involved, but specifically what. What do they think their roles are? What are tasks are they doing and how long are those tasks taking? Is it. And then we look at the. Are they utilizing like their CRM system? What. What is. What does that process look like when they're gathering data? So if I'M an advisor and I'm meeting with my clients. My team needs to understand, like, at what touch points am I obtaining certain data from the clients? Because once they make that sale, you want to go. You don't want to keep going back and forth with clients for information because it gives them a lot of time to have more questions or potentially have to meet with the advisor again. So an example would be if I go into an advisor office and they're taking any more than 48 hours to facilitate the paperwork with the client after they make the sale, that causes issues, and you'll start to see exactly how many people are walking out the door. Or again, it just delays that process.

Yeah.

So it's. It's the people, the roles, the tasks they're doing. It's the cycle times on the new business side. So point of sale to facilitation of paperwork to funding accounts or an issuing policies, that those are the key areas that not only affect your bottom line, but truly affect that. That client journey.

Yeah.

So we start looking at all of those things. And so the data. That's why I love what you guys do and providing that data to people, because you cannot make good business decisions without the proper data.

Amen. Yep, amen. And when you see those cycle times, like, what is, like, what is an average cycle time from turnaround time to, like, issue time, do you track just through the end of it, or what are some, like, average cycle times that you have seen?

Well, what's interesting, and I think people look at offices that are doing 100 million to 200 million a year of new assets, and they look at that like, wow, they must have it all figured out.

Yep. And oftentimes it's not the case.

I've never seen anyone have it figured out yet. Like, I. I can't wait one day when I hope one day I can walk into an office and they have it all completely streamlined. But the bigger the office, a lot of times they're not utilizing their CRM system. If they are, they're also still working off of a spreadsheet and then half using the CRM system.

Yeah.

They don't even know how long it's taking between those cycle times. But a good example brought an office at the beginning of this year. It was taking five to seven business days to just reach out to the client after because there's so much volume that the person was drowning and all this other stuff. So taking five business days, there's. So by hiring us, we came in and helped take that workload off. And my other favorite part is just creating happy, healthy work environments. So to see someone who's super stressed, the work's piling on. But it's very hard for people to say. When you say this is too much work without the data, you can't really speak to what that means.

Yeah.

So when I was coming in, we're like, okay, this, this is what we need to do. We need to put plug someone in here. We got to start getting focused on this role. Moving the money. It was taking the same office about 40 to 50 days to fund the accounts.

Wow.

Okay.

We've cut it down to on average seven.

Amazing. That's huge.

But there's key levers to pull through that process. And so we analyze that with them and then we start helping them get their people in place. And you know, if we're doing the work, we'll plug into the area that we can serve best to get all that moving. And ultimately, I mean, the advisor's happy at the end of that, but so is the team. They're just feeling that relief because yes, again, like I said, it's not something to like just re replicate all the time, but we are creating that. So as we're doing this more and more, I want to continue sharing that and preaching it. So these offices can implement and relate.

To clients, but on the team, but also the clients.

Imagine how.

I mean, they probably didn't know if they weren't existing clients. But just the quickness, it shows that there's a trust value there. Think when you are a quick mover and in excellence also. And I'm so pro team. I always say that to Admiral. I have the best job because I get to be that team helper where it's like they come with us and it's like afterwards they're like, gosh, that was so much better. It's so much easier now. My advisor has the answers and it's so much off my plate, which I think is so critical. I mean, team members and offices do so much. I am always shout out to all the team members because they do everything. And yes, the advisor is obviously the founder. They're selling and there's a massive role there and responsibility. But the team really the end. Different roles, right? Yeah, different roles and makes it run.

Different type of responsibility and different type of energy that goes into it too.

Yeah, yeah, yep. How do you see operational roles evolving over the next several years? Do you see it being more similar in style to what you are doing? Where it's going to Be more of like a fractional operations person coming in, or do you feel that in the next few years, especially with the involvement of AI, that there will still be a need for someone in office doing the operations as a full timer for that size of office? Right. A little bit different.

Yeah. Well, you bring up an interesting question because I, I think, I think about this a lot, but I think I believe that people value personal connection so much that I, I don't think AI will take over all of that because I think people will be seeking that type of connection and I just think the jobs will, will eventually become easier, more efficient and not as clunky and ridiculous as it is now. But I believe to have a business you have to have people that you work with and a team. Now maybe the role will evolve itself, but I believe you still need those people. And when we work with the now, we work mainly with advisor offices that are doing anywhere from 15 million to over 100 million of new assets. Maybe our sweet spot's even 50 and above that as well. Like that's where we're kind of mainly bringing on those clients now. But it is always nice when they have staff that's in the office and we're a compliment to that. So we don't come in and like take people's jobs. We come in and we're an asset to them and we just work with their team and we works to have those people in the office there somewhat on the ground.

I always say this too, especially with AI. I feel like genuine connection is the new currency. Like it is going to be the trading factor. And realistically, financial as a whole is a people to people industry. They are trusting you as a person. They're not trusting this robot. And I know there's so much like out there that's like, oh, it's gonna take over. It's not, it's. There's no way there. It's a person industry.

Let me tell you real quick. What. So I just had a training session this week. I had five people in from all over the US to my new business intensive course. And it's, I do it in person. I have not transitioned it to online yet. But what I found, the connections that we formed and the vulnerability, the safe place to talk about things. It was so cool that I started thinking about, well, I mean, because I could expand it. I have a training space that below actually this office that I could start hosting in 20 plus people. But I'm like, I asked myself, I, I might, I might lose that intimate Connection and how valuable is that? And I think that's a big piece of the course. Like, the content's amazing. I built out this whole workbook. It's, yeah. Everything I wish I would have had for years and years. But this connection piece that we all have is. Yeah, it's, it's, it's priceless.

Totally. And I think too like having, especially in operations, oftentimes there may be an only operations person in that office, so they don't have a group of people to go, is this normal? Is, am I complaining too much? Or is this, you know, an actual legit problem that we need to solve and accomplish? And I think that's. I agree. I think, yes, maybe you could pack it out and do that. But that intimate connection is where ideas are born and where it really thrives. And maybe one day you get there. But I think for now it's. It's a of part perfect science group. Yeah, exactly.

I mean, it was so intimate. It was so nice. It's nice to just all. Yeah.

Be together. Do you find too, in most people. So for your business, specifically for the admin effect, do you find that most people, when they do hire you on, you come in and really help them and change enough processes that, that they get much more efficient, they get a lot more, you know, on the table and understanding of the processes? Or is there like an attrition rate where they kind of almost grow out of your services because it's like, great, now I already have it. Or do they typically keep you on because they're like, this is running so much more efficiently. Maybe when I level up again, I'm now going to still continue to meet.

You a little bit of both. So typically people keep us on, but there have been instances where even going into it, I've done shorter contracts because they're like, I want to hire this person internally. Like, let's say they have a couple of people and they're like, lost our annuity specialist. So we're hiring you on that side, but we want to, we really want that person in house. So would you come on board for six months, we'll hire that person. Then we build into the contract training and things. So then we phase out. We do some of that. What I don't do, which people get confused, is we don't plug in, plug out, plug in, plug out. We're either in a contract with us or we're phasing out of that contract. It's not, it's not. Oh, we have ebbs and flows. So Sometimes we. Because I run a business where I. I'm paying the salaries, I'm paying the benefits, managing the team. I can't be changing out business every five seconds. Especially with what it takes to work in those offices on board and all the resources to really have the impact that we have.

Yes.

It's just, you know, it's just worth saying because a lot of people ask me that on. I've had people ask me that on sales calls and things like, no, that's not how it works with us, but we are all.

Sure. Well, I have to understand an office. You need time to get in there. You need time to understand, you know, what is in place, what's not, what their current processes are, who are the key players. I think that's a big part of it. And it would be like not beneficial to them or you to go in, do all this work and then be like, okay, I'm gone. You know what I mean? I'll see you in six months.

Or.

And I could see too, like if they, if you're working with them and then they hire a new hire and then they come to your training course six months later. That's ideal. But I agree. Keeping them kind of on the shorter. The shorter contract. Yeah.

I will say when we were talking about the build of things so that we do the work, then we have the training. One thing that I've been kind of beta testing and working with some clients on is a little bit of consulting on that. The business and ops piece of it. Because that's really the full circle picture. It's just not a product that I've launched at this point. But that likely will be to come because that's kind of the missing piece to bring it full circle because we're already consulting on those things. But it's not a full offering.

It's just what you get when you're.

We do the work client where not everyone is a we do the work client.

Yeah.

But they need that. Those key pieces to run their teams efficiently and to get set up and everyone rowing in the same direction.

Yeah. Is that kind of what's next for the admin effects? Like, where's the next kind of track that you're moving toward? You've launched the. The training business, which is amazing. Also, we'll kind of talk as we here how people can get in touch with you and potentially like sign up for that if anyone is interested. Because I fully believe that somebody's training is so worth going to. Because it's going to save you so much time and money at the end of the day rather than trying to train yourself especially for fewer offices that don't really have processes in place. It's just a beautiful thing. But what's kind of next for Advent Effect? What's your next big goal?

What we're doing is we're consistently getting better and better on the we do the work side. We're consistently making that piece better. So what's working you do more of that and better the training same we launched that. We're going to continue to work on that, make that bigger, offer more courses. But what I really am seeking to build through this and we're already doing it on a certain level is build that community. I would love to have a community platform where people can ask questions after the trainings and right now we just have a little call it our. Some people call us Tay like the Advent Effect Taylor. So we have. It's called the Tay 11 instead of 411 to have a robust community. I mean that's really a full time job to manage that. So I would love to. To build that out fully and then launch a con. A consulting piece specifically more on the ops but really taking a look at the. The positions in the whole that big part of the the business.

Yeah, I think it also just speaks to your client first mentality. Not only like client of the advisor, but client in the terms of those operational people that do come to their training and have follow up questions. Because a lot of times too I see people will go to these trainings and they're like gosh, I really understand everything. I got this. And then you get back to office and you're like I forgot half of this. You know. So it's like having that follow up community that they can ask questions for is huge for sure. So Caitlin, if someone wants to sign up for Admin effect how do they find you? If they want to reach out to you personally on anything, how was the best way to get a hold of you?

They can go to our website so just the advent fact.com and just book a call through there or you can find me on LinkedIn my company page and reach out and we get a call book to set up our connect call.

Awesome.

Perfect.

Caitlin, well thanks so much for kind of diving in and bringing some insights to just clarity also to the operation side. I think it's so needed. So it was great to have you today.

Thank you Molly. I appreciate everything you guys do. You guys are awesome and it's. I just love strong females in our industry.

Yes.

Love it.