Alisa Maute: Cracking the Organic Growth Code for RIAs

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Building a sustainable organic growth engine is one of the biggest challenges and greatest opportunities facing advisory firms today. Hi everyone, I'm business coach Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor: The Way Forward podcast. My guest today is Alisa Mahdi. Alisa is Executive Managing Director, Head of Client Development at Mercer Advisors, and Mercer was named the number one RIA firm in the 2025 Barron's Top 100 ranking. In today's conversation, In this conversation, Alisa and I dive deep into what's driving organic growth across the RIA industry and why it's so unevenly distributed. She shares how Mercer structures its client development organization, which includes more than 100 professionals across 3 distinct channels, which are community-based development, custodial partnerships, and direct-to-consumer marketing. Alisa explains how Mercer separates business development from advice delivery so their advisors can focus on serving clients while they have these specialized teams to handle lead generation, conversion, and advisor matching. We also discuss some of the key KPIs that top firms track. We talk about the role of firm culture in client acquisition, and we talk about some underrated growth levers that RIAs often overlook. If you want to understand what it takes to build a scalable measurable, and client-first growth engine, you've come to the right place. With that, here's my conversation with Elisa Mahdi. Well, let's start with getting your overall take on the state of organic growth. Now, clearly, for years now, we've been talking about organic growth. To some extent, I think it's been masked by the fact that the financial markets in general have done super well. So there may not have been that much attention on the organic growth. But from where you sit in your position there at Mercer, what are you seeing out there for organic growth rates?

So I do think it depends on how you define organic growth, and, and some firms define it differently. The way we think about it is really your existing operations, so new clients joining the firm plus your existing clients, looking at share of wallet expansion. But of course, you have to take out any distributions that they're taking from RMDs, as well as any of the clients that are leaving the firm altogether. And so that's how we think about organic growth. We don't look at market appreciation or frankly relying on acquisitions. And I think when you look at it that way, industry-wide organic growth has been pretty modest. I've seen studies that show organic growth around 2.5% to 5.5%, depending on what you're looking at. And really we've got a little bit of a structural growth problem going on here in the industry. And to your earlier point, so much of it is being masked by the markets, right? And the revenue that all these advisors are driving right now because of market appreciation. Now, that being said, there is a segment of the market that's doing very well. The Schwab benchmarking study for RIAs came out a few weeks ago, and if they look at firms over $250 million in assets under management, that top quartile of firms is growing organic growth over 12%, which is nearly double right, what we're seeing across the industry. So there's definitely pockets of firms that are doing really, really well and certainly happy to share some reasons why I think that's happening if it'd be helpful.

Yeah, and I think that's a really important insight in that the growth is not evenly distributed. So there's like a, some smaller percentage of firms that are doing really well, and then there's a large, and I would say probably over 50% of the firms that might actually have either zero or negative organic growth. So tell me, what are some of these firms that are doing really well? What are they doing that's making them successful there?

Well, it's really about what we're seeing in the data, at least, is really about size, right? So the firms that are over $250 million that have the ability to scale, that have the capacity to invest in business development, digital marketing, and advisor infrastructure. We're seeing these firms really investing in lead generation and thinking about multichannel pipelines. And really reinvesting each year in different growth initiatives. And then, you know, these firms, I would say another common trait is that they're highly focused on client retention and advisor productivity and really making sure that the current advisors and clients are staying with the firm and continuing to improve efficiencies over time.

So one of the things that makes it difficult to be an advisor and to grow dramatically is that when you're starting out, you wear every hat. You're running the firm, you're the advisor, you're meeting with clients, you're trying to develop new business, you're trying to pay the bills, you're trying to manage team and hire people. So you're wearing all these different hats. But at some point, you can reach a size— like Mercer obviously reached this size a long time ago— where you can really have a separation of duties here, where you've got an advisor who all they do is they just advise clients all day long. And then you've got a client development group, which is what you're heading up at Mercer where your focus is on bringing the clients in. So, there's a real separation of duty. So, walk me through, let's call it the scale of going from I'm an advisor and I got to do everything to the point where you're at Mercer Advisors where you have a clear separation of the functions. What are the different steps along the way to get there?

I can certainly share the journey that Mercer went on to get there because we used to have advisors doing everything and I think you're absolutely right. We've asked our advisors in this industry to wear so many hats. A lot of them got in the business because they loved helping people and they loved advising, and they didn't necessarily love running the business, right, or going out and finding new clients. And so this journey for Mercer started about 15 years ago, and it was really based on the core values of what we believe, right? And our top priority is honoring the commitments we've made to existing clients. And what we found is that, you know, when you're wearing all these hats, you're not putting as much time into that as we believe you should be. And so 15 years ago, we made this strategic decision to separate financial advisors from the client acquisition responsibilities. And the benefit, of course, is this allows our financial advisors to spend 100% of their time serving clients, right, without the distraction of prospecting or sales quotas. And this helps them deliver on these commitments that we're making. And then as it relates to the client development team, they're now empowered to match each prospect with the right advisor, which ensures a great fit and alignment from the start. And so we believe that this is the best business model in terms of taking care of our clients and really allowing each one of these groups to thrive with what they're great at and what they're passionate about.

Now, did I read somewhere where you have like over 100 people in your client development department that are just doing nothing but working with bringing in new clients to the firm. Is that accurate?

That is accurate. We are a large and growing organization. We actually separate the client development team. There's 3 different kind of sub-teams within that group. So we have a client development team that really focuses on the communities that they live in and building relationship within their local communities. We have a custodial development team, which partners with the financial consultants from the custodians to identify opportunities and support clients. And then we have a direct-to-consumer development team, which really drives leads through our national marketing efforts that are pretty expansive.

So those 3 teams, the local development team, are they like in the local offices all around the country then? And the other 2 are maybe in the home office or?

Yeah, so our local team, so our community team lives within the communities. That they are serving. Our custodial team lives within the communities they're serving as well. And so they are scattered across the country. And our direct-to-consumer development team is a virtual team. So again, they are scattered across the country. We have some in our offices and, and some are remote.

Okay. So you have over 100 people in that department. Now, the typical advisor listening to this is probably not in that position yet. They're wondering, how can I get my first or my second or my fifth or my 10th So do you have any thoughts on milestones that a firm should be thinking about where, okay, I'm finally of the size where it makes sense for me to hire my first client development person who focuses specifically on what your 100+ people are doing?

Yeah, I think it's a great question. And I think one of the hardest things to do when you are an advisor and you're building your business and you're wearing all of those hats is to kind of fire yourself at one of those. Items. So that's a very hard thing to give up. And I do feel that it's different for every single advisor and every single firm. I'm not sure there's like a specific, you hit this threshold, it's time to hire a client development person. So it's really about, you know, what are you trying to accomplish? What is your business plan? What are your growth projections and where do you want to be? And can you get there wearing all these hats, or is it time to fire yourself from one of these roles and really free up that time to go hire somebody to help you move faster.

Are you making a distinction between a marketing department, which is doing marketing activities to try and generate leads, from the client development person who may be on the receiving end of that lead and trying to turn that lead into a client, versus maybe a, quote, pure salesperson who maybe, you know, gets them that final 5% over the finish line? So what's the interplay among those three different types of functions?

Well, we all work very closely together, as you can imagine, at Mercer. We've got an incredible marketing team that is really driving all of the operations to help bring leads into our direct-to-consumer organization. And then we have salespeople that will close those leads when they come in. And we do things through like SEO, targeted content and keyword strategies, obviously digital marketing, social. We've got a few third-party kind of digital partnerships in that space. Space. And then our client development professionals, for example, in the community channel, they live within their communities and they are out there sourcing leads on their own. They're building partnerships with centers of influence and organizations throughout their community, and they're also partnering with our advisors within their market to help them optimize and operationalize their client referrals coming from those books of business. So we really— it depends on which channel you're looking at and which client development team that you're looking at in terms of where the leads are being sourced. But all of us play very closely together and we are tied at the hip with our marketing organization overall.

Okay, so you've got a marketing organization, then you've got client development. So the client development people that are attached to the direct-to-consumer piece, so that's, that's also under your group. And so those people, marketing generates a lead and then your client development person for the direct-to-consumer follows up on the lead. And works the same for the other two channels. And then once they say, hey, we got a person here, a couple here, they really want to work with our firm. How do you then go about thinking how you're going to match that lead with an advisor at Mercer?

I think this is one of the really key differentiators of how we think about this. When you become a large firm, you have a choice to make, right? Are you going to give that lead to whoever is next in line on your advisor side? To get the next lead, or are you only going to give it to your top people? At Mercer, we've taken a really thoughtful approach here. We have over two dozen specialties across the country. We have folks that are, you know, really in the weeds and work with Broadcom employees, right? Or NVIDIA employees, or maybe they have a special needs child and they really want to work with someone that has a deep core expertise in working with special needs children. And so we are incredibly thoughtful around who we match each prospect or lead with. Do they want a male? Do they want a female? Do they want them in town? Do they want them virtually? Maybe they speak, you know, Mandarin and they need somebody that will speak in Mandarin to them. And so we've built out an entire kind of advisor matching tool, which we just won an award for actually, to help us really be thoughtful around how do we find the right fit for these prospects. And we take that role very seriously on the client development team, and that's one of our core value propositions.

So I'm a bit of a numbers guy at times, so I'm going to give you like a numbers analogy here. So let's say the whole spectrum from an absolute cold lead to becoming a new client is from 0 to 100. So at 0, it's like a cold lead. At 100%, they now have signed on the dotted line. They're a new client to the firm. Is there a way for you to think about marketing goes from, say, 0 to— I'm just picking numbers here— 0 to 50%. They get them warmed up. They bring someone into the firm. Then your client development team takes them from 50— again, I'm picking numbers here— to 90% of the way. And then you match them with the advisor, and then the advisor gets them from 90 to 100%. Do you think of it in those terms? And if so, How would you allocate the percentages there?

It's a great question. I do think marketing plays a big role in this, right? Zero to getting them in the door. So call it 50%. I think our client development team is absolutely critical in understanding the needs of the client, really sitting on the same side of the table as the client to understand how do we help you? What are you solving for? What's important to you in a relationship with a financial advisor? And let us go take this back and go find the right match for you. So I'd give them, call it, you know, 40% of the pie there. And then, you know, the advisor at the end of the day is ultimately who the relationship's going to be with. So they play a critical part in this as well, making sure that they are connecting with the client, that they're supporting the client. And so the advisor will help us get them over the finish line. But all the hard work starts right when they become a client of that advisor. And that's really where they are delivering on the promises that we make.

And how closely are you tracking the metrics along each step of the way? For example, marketing generates a lead. That lead is then turned over to the client development team. Of the leads that get handed off to a client development person, 35% of them eventually become a client within 12 months of that handoff. How do you think about the metrics? How closely do you track those kinds of things?

We track them incredibly close. So some of the things that we look at, right, are lead-to-conversion rate. And we look across the sales stages, across the entire funnel, measuring what that conversion rate is in each portion of the sales process. We look at the cost per stage across the funnel, right? So how much money are we spending in each piece of the stage? Obviously, we're looking at customer acquisition costs and, you know, we're looking by lead source. So yes, marketing drives leads to our direct-to-consumer, but our community folks are out there drumming up their own business, right? And so each lead source has kind of a different profile. And so we have to look at each one of those differently. We're looking at things like lifetime value once they become a client, right? How valuable are they to the firm? We have an incredibly high retention rate. And so those numbers are usually very good. And of course, just content engagement from our marketing team. You know, when we do send out a cold, you know, message or we're finding people throughout the social media atmosphere, you know, how often are people clicking and engaging on that content? So we have pretty robust analytics that we monitor on a daily basis across all of those KPIs.

Well, I'd love to hear what some of the numbers are, some of the percentages along the way. So if you can share that, great. If not, do you have some like target numbers? Like, hey, if you want to be a top-performing firm, these are some percentages or some ratios that you should be shooting for when it comes to some of these things like, you know, lead-to-conversion ratio and those sorts of things.

I can share some of the industry data that I've seen around this topic. You know, Kitsis has published some data around the cost of consumer acquisitions, the CAC being anywhere from $3,000 to $4,000 per client. But again, everybody measures this stuff differently. So it really depends on, you know, how you're calculating that. On content engagement, it varies widely across the industry. I've seen, you know, 2 to 5% conversion rates happening from kind of content engagement through marketing, but very broad numbers based on exactly how this is being measured.

So how do you think about how you pay that client development person?

Yeah, our client development team is compensated based on the revenue generated. So think first year revenue generated, and that's how we compensate them, which aligns incentives with growth performance and most importantly, client success. So we do look at kind of the whole first year to make sure that the handoff and the advisor matching really went well, right? And the client's very happy to be at Mercer because we think that's an important piece for alignment.

One of the numbers that I've heard tossed about in the industry is that you can pay the client development team about 50%, 5-0%, of the first year's annualized revenue. And of course, you know, that could be paid out upfront. It could be paid out over time or whatever. So if an advisor says, hey, help me grow, is the advisor going to work with someone in your marketing department to kind of put a marketing plan together? Or do you say, nope, we just want you to meet with clients. Don't worry about, you know, trying to bring in business on your own. We got other people here to do that. Do they have the option or how does that work at Mercer?

Each advisor is paired with a community growth client development, what we call RVP. And that client development person would sit down with the advisor to put together a business plan on how do they want to grow and how can our client development team support them. Is that through events? Is that through campaigns? You know, really understanding how the advisor wants to grow and being that support function to help them not only put the plan in place, but also help execute on the back end, which has been really critical.

And I know some firms of your size, let's say, they do exactly what you just described and they get very specific, like, okay, we're going to get X% of new business for you is going to come from referrals. X% is going to come from our marketing efforts. X% is going to come from wine events or whatever the case may be. And then how closely do you hold the advisor accountable for hitting the targets in their growth plan? Is it like, hey, give it your best shot. If you fall short, it's okay. Or is it like, no, This is what you committed to. We need to hold you accountable. We need to get you back on track. How does that work for you guys?

Yeah, the partnership of our client development community team is really with our market leaders. So if you think about where the advisors kind of roll up to, they roll up into our market leader structure. And so our community RVPs are partnering very, very closely with the market leader in each one of our different geographic areas, and they are really driving that together. And the market leaders are holding the advisors accountable. But with a very close eye with our community folks that are helping them execute at the actual field level.

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We talked earlier about how just overall in the industry, the organic growth rate is, let's call it low single digits. And we talked about how there's a big disparity there, a small number of people doing really well, a large number of people maybe not so well. How do you deal with advisors who have been in the business for a long time. They're making, let's say, $500,000 a year in personal income, and they're really happy with that. They're like, hey, I got as many clients as I want. I don't really want to work any harder. I'm just going to continue to service my clients and do really well with that. But, you know, don't ask me to do a lot of work beyond that. So, A, is that an issue for you guys? And B, if it is, are you okay with that, or how do you deal with that?

Yeah, I've seen that. I mean, I've sat with thousands of advisors over my career and, and certainly you have kind of the lifestyle advisor. I think there's a few different things to think about as it relates to that. You know, if you're trying to drive growth from your advisor base, where are you spending your time? And so there's the folks that don't really want to grow. And then the question is, how can we do this for you? Or how can we help you be more successful here and actually do some of the work on their behalf? Then you've got kind of the, the movable middle that actually do want to grow. They might just need a little bit of help. They might need that business plan. They might need that support alongside of them. And that's a great place to spend time and think about how do you enhance that movable middle. And then of course, you've got kind of the bottom rung of folks and some of them will make it and some of them won't, but there's a lot of them in there that really just need handholding. They need education. They need guidance. They need modeling and practice.. And so we spend quite a bit of time helping those folks as well. So we really want to serve our advisors based on kind of where they are, what their needs are, and we apply different approaches based on the different life cycles.

So I've been in the industry since the early 1990s, and I've seen great evolution in the type of marketing that people do. So certainly back in the, the full commission days, it was, you know, a lot of cold calling and And now we have do not call us and all that stuff. So that's not necessarily that effective anymore. As you think about where we sit today with all the technology that we have and, and just the way that people want to be reached when they're looking for a financial advisor, what are you seeing today are some of the most successful channels for developing new clients for financial advisors?

It's a great question. And a lot of advisors and firms that I speak to still rely heavily on referrals, which of course is always going to be a great place to find new clients. But what's challenging about that is that sometimes referrals can't scale indefinitely, right? And they leave gaps. And we do have so much new technology and so many new ways to reach people. And so some of the areas that I see RAs underinvesting in, the first one would be around SEO and content strategy. And I find that a lot of RAs kind of lack a structured SEO strategy. Sometimes they're neglecting keyword targeting. Technical optimization and, and tailored content creation. And if you think about that channel, what's good about it is that it's attracting high-intent prospects. These are people that are actively looking for financial advice and searching things out on the web. So oftentimes they'll have a greater intent or be close to making a decision. So I think that's one place I've seen kind of underinvestment. The second one that where I see underinvestment, which is kind of a head-scratcher, is your current clients. Like oftentimes we see people that are so focused on finding and bringing in new clients into their business, but they're forgetting about deepening relationships with their existing ones, and they're missing opportunities for those referrals, upselling, and retention. And as I think about kind of the industry right now, it's what is your value proposition? Are you serving clients holistically and really being thoughtful around that so you can really generate more of those referrals? And of course, what makes it effective is the fact that it's cheap cheaper to do that. It's easier to generate a referral and lower cost than going out and finding a new client. And then the final technology one that I'll mention is digital communities, social proof channels, social media. Typically it's seen as a nice to have in a lot of the different REAs that I speak to, but we're seeing a lot of success in that space because really these platforms are building trust and visibility and frankly credibility even before the prospect meets us. And we're seeing this really play out amongst younger and niche audiences. And what we're finding, to your question, was how are people finding you when they need a financial advisor? More and more, I've seen studies saying people are starting online more so than they ever have in the past. And so if you're not there online and you're not there in the social media channels, you're missing out on opportunities.

Yeah, and I agree 100% there with the online piece. As you talk about SEO, how does AI play into this? Because what I'm seeing is sort of the traditional, let's write a really long blog post that's super in-depth. We've got the keywords, we've got to target markets. I mean, I think that still works. But now that we've got AI, it's like, okay, we need to really structure those in a way that they're really question-focused and answering specific questions that people might be typing into AI and then hoping that AI is going to identify that, oh, this person's answer to this question looks pretty robust. And so, you know, it's going to come through AI. So how should we be thinking about SEO differently in the age of AI?

So I think today where AI is playing, and we are still so early in this whole AI revolution, you've heard the term personalization at scale, right? And really tailoring content to what people are looking for, being thoughtful around niche markets, segments and really being in a place and writing some tailored content and serving it up at the right time. And AI, I think, is going to help with that right now. I think as you go out to the future and you look at how AI could help longer term, it's almost like this hyper-personalization, right, with dynamic content. So think about content that adapts based on what the person online is looking at, or frankly, what they're posting on their social media. And how do you get that really specific content that's dynamic to their behaviors and how they're searching the web. And so I don't think that's too far away, and it'll be fascinating to see how that changes how targeted and specific we can get online.

You also talked about the importance of referrals, and I've worked with advisors for decades, and many of them say, well, I still get quite a few referrals. I don't really ask for referrals. I don't have a targeted referral marketing strategy. They just sort of come because my clients like me and I do great work for them. And that's fine. Very passive way of doing it, but it works. What do you guys suggest if someone says, hey, I really want to be more effective, I should be getting more referrals from my clients. How closely do you work with your advisors to help them develop a more organized, targeted referral marketing program? And what might that look like?

Yes, that's the job of our community client development team. We work very closely on an individual basis. So not only setting up like the business plan of how many referrals would you like to get, But actually helping folks write the words down. Let's role play. How are you going to ask for these referrals? And really putting them in situations where they are practicing and feel confident about how they're going to ask, who they're going to ask, what specifically they're going to ask for. We're also working on a lot of ways through technology to be able to operationalize referrals where we think of, you know, moments of delight and when is the right time to help an advisor ask for that referral. And then most importantly is how are we tracking these? To your point, a lot of people are doing this passively and they don't have a great way of tracking who they've asked, who's referring, who's your biggest referrers, and how are you making sure that you're keeping them in the loop, saying thank you and continuing to go back around new client introductions. And so the tracking piece and the measuring piece is also critical.

Yeah, one of the things I often do with advisors when I work with them as it relates to the referral piece here, as well as getting additional assets from your existing clients, is I have them write down their top 20, 25 clients, let's say, and then answer a few questions, one of which is, when was the last time they gave you a referral? And oftentimes the advisor will be very surprised when they look at that list and they say, oh my goodness, out of my top 25 clients, maybe only 4 or 5 of them have given me a referral in the past 12 months. And so when you sort of put it down on paper, it really kind of hits them between the ears there that, gosh, maybe I should be doing something a little bit more here because if my top clients aren't giving me referrals, there must be some opportunity there. So I think having that referral strategy certainly is very key. Also, I've seen some numbers in the industry data that would suggest that in any given year, somewhere between maybe 5 to 10% of your clients should be giving you a referral, and that might be a benchmark to look at. So does that make sense to you? Do you guys look at those numbers too?

Yeah, I think that's an industry standard number that makes a lot of sense. It's kind of like, what is your natural growth rate? And I think it would fall in line with that kind of 5 to 10%. And how are you growing naturally through your client referrals? So we absolutely track those numbers at a market level and of course at an advisor level as well.

And then also between referrals from existing clients and getting new assets from existing clients. For most advisors, that, from what I've seen, accounts for the bulk of their new business. How closely do you look at and help advisors track with their existing clients other assets that they may have that they're not managing yet? And do you put together, like, okay, let's be real tactical or strategic here about— let's identify it, find out if they got other assets. Maybe it's with another advisor or maybe they're doing it themselves or what have you. Is that part of your marketing business development plan with your advisors too?

100%. You know, the benefit of doing holistic financial planning is you have a pretty good snapshot of understanding the full client picture. Every single one of our advisors has a dashboard to understand where assets are off platform from Mercer. And we work with each and every advisor on what is the plan, how can we help bring some of those assets onto the platform.

So let's switch gears here just a minute and not focus on the individual advisor or the client development team, but let's just look at Mercer in total and think about the culture of the firm. Now, every firm has a culture. Some firms are more intentional about developing a specific type of culture. And I want to relate this to like the growth of the firm. So you've been with Mercer since— for how long now?

Just the beginning of the year, about 9 months.

Okay. So tell me how you have experienced the culture at Mercer in your first 9 months. How would you describe the culture?

I have found the culture at Mercer to be one of the best cultures, frankly, I've ever been a part of. And I think it's because of a few things that really actually shows through and when we're meeting with prospects too. And so the first one is around making our employees owners. We have nearly 50% of our employees are shareholders at the firm, and every team member actually has the opportunity to be an owner in the firm. And this ownership mindset shows up in how we serve clients, right? We serve them with care, accountability, and long-term thinking, and that really actually pulls through even in the prospect conversations we're having. The other really core piece of our culture is around our fiduciary. We take it We take it so serious to have this fiduciary standard, and our commitment to putting the client's interests first is not just a compliance standard here, it's actually a core value. And our clients and prospects feel this when we talk to them in every conversation. And frankly, every recommendation we make is done with the fiduciary standard in mind. And then the other thing that's so fascinating about Mercer and something that we're incredibly intentional about is how we think about representation. Over 50% of Mercer's client-facing roles are held by women. Now, you and I know that the average across the industry is maybe high teens, maybe low 20s. To have 50% of client-facing roles be women, we believe it should mirror the communities we serve. And that's a very important intention that we have taken and really driven our business. And it's a key driver of how we build trust, you know, relevance and frankly how we're matching our prospects with the right advisor. So the culture has been incredible. I think it's really unique. And frankly, I think it's one of the keys to our success.

And as that relates to bringing in new business, so as we discussed, you're head of the client development team there. But what happens if someone who is in operations that might be having a conversation with a client Are they of the mindset that, hey, if there's an opportunity, maybe I could get a referral from this client even though I'm not an advisor, even though I'm not part of the client development team? Is the culture such that it would make that top of mind with that operations person that, yeah, it actually would be okay and it would be encouraged for you when an opportunity arose or to create that opportunity for that? Is that okay at the firm? Is that encouraged? Is it not even talked about? Is that part of the culture?

I think it's a great question. I think the number one most important thing in our culture is delivering on the commitments that we've made to our clients. And so that's top of mind for everyone as their first job is to take care of our current clients, right? But because so many of our employees are owners or aspire to be owners in the organization, everybody takes this ownership mindset. They think about the business, they think about the business long-term and what's going to help the business. And we're all rowing in the same direction and moving at pace. And it's just a really exciting time to be at the firm. And I think that's why we've had so much success because everybody's got that ownership mindset.

Let's talk a little bit more about you. So you mentioned you've been here at Mercer for about 9 months. Prior to that, you had a long career at LPL. Prior to that, you had a long career at WisdomTree. So you've been on both the product side at WisdomTree you've been on the broker-dealer side, now you're on the RIA side. So you've seen this business from multiple perspectives here. So think back to some of your earlier days at WisdomTree and at LPL, and now where you sit today after having all those years of experience. What changes have you seen? What things did you believe to be true years ago that maybe now you've changed your mind on because you've got more experience? I'd love to kind of trace how your thinking has changed and what insights you have today that you may not have had years ago based on that experience?

I would say what has not changed is that this is a relationship business and the importance and nobleness of this profession actually continues to become more and more important as the financial world gets more complex, as people's lives and situations get more complex.. And so the relationship piece of this business is as strong as ever, and it's the consistent across everything that, that I've seen. I think how my thinking has evolved over time, I guess it was about 5, 6 years into my career at WisdomTree when I really started working on the fiduciary side of the business with RIAs. And really that's where I fell in love with the fiduciary model. And I think that fiduciary is something that is really, really important. And for me, kind of like a North Star. I just love the REA business and I love the fiduciary aspect of it. The other thing that's changing a lot, and you know this, you mentioned that you kind of started in the business in the '90s. You know, certainly it used to be an investment-first business. People were brokers, they were selling products, you know, building solutions. What I've seen evolve and why I believe that Mercer is so well positioned is that it's all about serving people with a holistic experience now. You know, Mercer, we have a unified in-house team. We're doing tax planning, right? We're doing your estate plan. We're executing in-house. We're doing financial planning. It's such a holistic service that clients are so busy, they don't want to work with 8 different people. They don't want an insurance guy and an estate planner and an investment person and a tax person. They want to be able to come into one place, have their entire financial picture solved by one group that is acting in their best interest. And I think that's what's really compelling about Mercer. And I think we're going to see the industry evolve in that way where it really is kind of a one-stop solution for your entire financial picture.

And in that scenario, the one-stop solution, typically you're going to have a significant amount of wealth or complexity. So does Mercer have minimums of any type in terms of, hey, you got to have $1 million or more to work with us or generate $10,000 a year in annual revenue, or, or is it just left up to each advisor and they can determine what they want to do?

Yeah, the promise of Mercer and the original idea 40 years ago was to create a family office for everyone to be able to bring in this unified in-house experience and this one-stop solution for your entire financial picture for all. So we do not have minimums, and that's important to us. And, you know, all of our clients are getting estate planning work, right? No matter what size threshold, you know, we're thinking about really building customized portfolios no matter what your threshold. And really bringing all of these services together across the wealth spectrum is part of our core value proposition.

As we get ready to wrap up here, I've asked you a lot of questions. Are there any other things that you want to share that perhaps I haven't asked you about yet?

You know, I often get the question, you know, what do I do first, right? If I want to grow, what do I do first? And I think what I would just highlight is build the foundation, right? It starts with your current clients and making sure you're delivering exceptional service, that you are indispensable to your current clients in their lives, and that You're not giving them a reason to go find other providers because everything you're doing is holistic. From there, I would say thinking about how do you build a multi-channel growth levers. I've seen industry studies that say the most successful advisors have over 7 different growth levers working at once. You have to be intentional about the strategy. You have to know what you're measuring to make sure that the strategy is working, and you have to be willing to invest into the strategy as well. And then finally, just track, measure, iterate, and continue to try new things. But I think those are kind of the 3 steps, like make sure you have a strong foundation, put a great plan in place that has a multi-prong approach to growth, and then make sure you're tracking, iterating along the way.

Yeah. And I just want to highlight that third piece because I think so often advisors, they'll do some marketing, they'll try some things. And then they'll say, ah, it's not working, you know, let me move on, try the next thing. But they're not tracking and measuring and iterating. And I just want to reinforce how important that tracking and iterating piece is, because with the technology that we have today, as you well know, we have so many more ways to track response rates and click rates and time on website. And I mean, all these different metrics. And of course, with all the social media platforms out there, we've got great analytics that we can be looking at. So So it may not sound like a lot of fun, but if you can get into that data, I'm not suggesting the advisor should be doing that. They should be meeting with their clients, but hopefully you've got someone on your team who is analytical and can track all that stuff and know that, oh, well, let's do an experiment. Let's tweak this variable here, keep everything else the same, and let's see if that improves the results. Or let's change this headline and do some A/B testing or what have you. So, so many more tools available today to do that. You know, I'd love to hear your take on that, but doing those kinds of things, I think, are certainly going to enhance your results here.

And starting with the end in mind, like what does success look like that you want to build? And then tracking against that is really, really important. And to your point, using A/B testing, using the different technologies, trying new things. There's so many ways to reach clients now and new prospects and really trying and iterating along the way.

Alisa, this has been great. For folks that want to stay in touch with you or learn more, what's the best way for them to contact you?

Find me on LinkedIn, Elisa Maudy.

I would love to connect. All right. That's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms. And for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast. Take care and be safe.

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