How One RIA Created a Path for Next-Gen Talent to Become Partners

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This is Greg Bartalus for Barron's The Way Forward. My guests today are David Armstrong and Jessica Gibbs of Monument Wealth Management, and our focus today will be the path to partnership and how RIAs can successfully transition employees to owners. David, Jessica, welcome.

Hi.

Thanks. Hi.

Hi. Let's start with an introduction. Tell us about yourself and your firm, and then let's jump into the stated topic.

Sure. So we're— I'm Dave Armstrong, and Jessica Gibbs is one my business partners at Monument. We're located in Alexandria, Virginia, which is essentially Washington, D.C., just across the river. We started the firm in 2008 with 2 original partners. My other original partner's first name is Dean. Then a couple of years ago, we met Jessica and decided that we were going to add some partners to the firm. I thought it would be fun to talk about that process and how we did it. We're an RIA, so no broker-dealer affiliations anymore. We're 10 people. One of the things that makes us unique is that we are what's traditionally called an ensemble firm, but to put some more clarity to that, every client is a client of the firm. We don't have producers or advisor books, or even the traditional title of advisor in the terms of like, I'm the business generator. We just don't, we don't have those. So we kind of look at everybody as everybody at the firm is an advisor to the client in some form or fashion.

Mm-hmm.

Right. So Dave and Dean started the firm in 2008. I joined in 2015, but, uh, first as a financial planning associate, um, and, and rose through, uh, leadership roles within the organization and became a vice president and partner along with Emily Harper, um, in 2021.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

And you became a partner, was that last year?

Yes, last year.

Okay. Congratulations.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Um, so you should be congratulating me too, by the way.

Congratulations for having the wisdom to do that. Yes. Uh, tell me a little bit about the, the path that you took and also what your thinking was in terms of what you were looking for and the timing and when you felt confident enough to say, let's do it.

Right. So we'll start that out, um, by just talking about what the vision of the firm was when we created it, because one of the things that was really important to Dean and I was that we could create an enduring enterprise. And so almost immediately upon conception, we took off the table that we would ever want to grow through mergers or be acquired or, or even steward the firm to a position where we would be acquired someday. We always envisioned having a firm that would endure through having next-generation leaders come along.. And we didn't really know what that meant when we said it when we started the firm, but we knew we wanted to do that. And so that was, that was really important to us. And like I said, the ensemble practice was really important to us, but it was that, it was that growth and growing, let's just call it, and emerging leaders, the emerging leaders, the next generation leaders. And then that led us to meeting Jessica, which I'll let her tell that part of the story.

Right. So, um, as I said, I joined Monument in 2015 and I was actually a career changer. Um, I had previously worked for a large nonprofit think tank in DC called the Brookings institutions. I was working with their donors on their charitable giving, but decided that wasn't necessarily going to be the career for me for the long term. And I, while at Brookings, I enrolled in evening classes to become a certified financial planner. So I came to Monument with not necessarily experience working at a wealth management firm, but a lot of passion for the job that I was going to be doing. So I'd say, you know, for my story, if I look back, you know, the first few years that I was at Monument, I really focused on financial planning tactics. So, you know, I attained my CFP designation and was very focused on client management, client retention, and acquisition. Also looking at our meeting experience and our financial planning product that we were delivering to clients and finding ways to enhance that. And then after being at the firm for a few years, I started to broaden that focus, you know, growing not just in as a financial planner, but also starting to look at firm tactics and firm strategy. So I did a few things such as working with Dean and Dave to create a path for advancement, which at Monument, you know, we're very much rooted in leadership and advancement within your role is important for everyone, regardless of whether you're on the path to partnership or not. So this is something where every team member can look at and say, these are, you know, it's very transparent. These are skills and things that I need to work on and demonstrate in order to advance within the firm, regardless of what your job description is. Also creating things like an employee handbook. I mean, I know that sounds simple, but as a small business, you know, it sounds obvious for a really large company, but we didn't have one. We didn't have something that said, you know, these are our HR policies in one central place, these are our benefits, something where the team could reference it if they had questions, but also could be given to new employees. And related to that, we didn't have a parental leave policy. And so that was something that I got my hands into, did research as far as what other organizations are, and crafted a policy for Monument. And then working with Dean and Dave, I started to get involved in our annual strategic objectives. So they would share, hey, this is kind of what we're thinking as far as our big objectives for the year and strategies that we want to accomplish that. What are your thoughts on these? So started to kind of give my perspective on that to add to what what they were thinking. And then also looking at ways to improve our hiring practices and revamping our messaging. So throughout this whole time, see one, do one, teach one is fundamental to how we operate at Monument. That's the idea that, hey, you watch someone do something, then you do it yourself, and then you teach someone else to do that. So whether I kind of realized it or not, I think Dave and Dean, as the founding partners, were see one, do one, teach one to me throughout this whole journey, were giving me a little bit more, hey, can you work on this project? And then slowly seeing, you know, how I would handle that. And these were projects that, you know, are important how you run the business. So kind of then going forward, 2019, I enrolled in the Ensemble Practices G2 Leadership Institute, which highly recommend. It's run by Philip Pallavive. It's designed for people who are either new partners or on the path to partnership. It was an incredible experience for me because I benefit from really specific, targeted education. You know, that's why I love the CFP® coursework, because it's very specific of like, here's what you need to learn to be a good financial planner. And I see the G2 Leadership Institute as here's what you need to learn to run a wealth management firm. It was very targeted things looking at pricing, target market, messaging. Those were things that were really important to me to learn. And I think Dave and Dean, from their perspective, is they looked at the end of that, And they looked at how I handled that opportunity, not just from like, hey, did you go to this and you learned some stuff and you thought, yeah, that was great, or did you actually come back and say, hey, I have these ideas that I learned in this program. I want to implement them at Monument. And that's what I did. And I think that was very much a decision point for them on whether or not to extend partnership.

Yeah, it was the major decision point when you came back and you started saying like, here's how I want to take what I've learned and improve the firm. That's when Dean and I knew like, you know, there was something, yeah, actionable.

It wasn't just theoretical.

Right. We caught a tiger by the tail here. So yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Excellent. What other attributes did she bring to the table that you—

Well, she's way smarter than I am, so that was really great. So Jessica and I have very complementary skill sets with each other, and I think that that became pretty evident right away. And Jessica also had very complementary skill sets with Emily and Dean. So it's just sort of like, you know, when you met your friends in high school, you just kind of knew you liked them. There was a lot of that, I think, between all 4 of us. But it was also her passion for wanting to run and grow the financial planning portion of the practice and mentor younger people. So the other thing that we got to see her do in the see one, do one, teach one was we have a pretty robust internship program at Monument. And we had a woman come in and she had interned for us for 2 summers and Christmas breaks and all kinds of stuff. And Jessica came and said, "We need to hire Heaven," is her name. "We need to hire Heaven and make her a part of the team because she's a star." So once we saw her looking at, the enterprise from, from the perspective of an investor, you know, investing in the business, that's when it really became clear too. So she's very talented at that as well.

What's next for your firm? Is it more of the same or do you have any new things coming down the pike?

So one of the things that's really interesting about our firm right now, um, and this is really a function of our, our, our partnership, is that, um, we make decisions equally. So even though there's, there's some legacy business that's valued one way and some profits distributions. We can talk a little bit about that, but one of the things that we do really well is the 4 of us, we all make decisions together. One of the decisions that we've taken recently that's really been interesting has been our embracing of the digital marketing in our firm. I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole because I know it's not really totally the topic here, but that is one of the things that's really coming down the pike that's really driving new business. We had recently fielded fielded a question from a colleague who said, "Well, if you've got all these new partners, who's in charge of business development?" We were like, "You know what? The digital marketing is in charge of business development right now because we're just not doing business development the way I grew up." So I'm coming on my 23rd year in the business and you could never start a business today like I started back 23 years ago.

In terms of digital marketing, what are some things that you found to be particularly effective?

Definitely, one of the things that we have found to be— there's a couple of things. One is just our content. We have the saying that we say, "Our value proposition is our unfiltered advice, our unfiltered opinion which drives the advice." That's kind of our value proposition because nobody can really copy our opinion or our advice. We embrace that and we say, "Well, if we have opinions and we want to give advice, let's start doing that in the digital medium." We're very opinionated out in the digital space either through content marketing or blog posts or our podcast that we have or just social media efforts. And all of that combined really kind of has created this digital marketing machine that has allowed people to actually discover us.

And what are people reacting to?

Is it—

I saw you had a pretty funny headline that was— Not Too Kind to Hedge Funds. I'm forgetting what the exact one is. It was pretty refreshing. It was funny.

I'm not sure that even the word I used can be used on the podcast, but so I will refrain from the actual title.

It oozed authenticity. So is that what you're finding, that if it's a little more not so corporate, that it's resonating coming from an honest and unguarded—

Yeah, I think when you hire an advisor, you have to remember like you're not hiring an organization or an entity. You are choosing to trust a person and to invest your money, you know, potentially your life savings with that person and to trust that person is going to give you good advice. It's a very personal connection. And so we found that, you know, through our content, whether that be our written content where, you know, we try to have our own individual personalities and voice come out through our writing or the podcast that Dave and I host, we started that last year. It's an opportunity for people to to just get to know, like, who are these people that potentially I might want to work with? And do I like them? Do I like their personality? Do I like how they think? Do I like the type of questions that they ask? Do they seem smart? Like, is that applicable to me? It's like, do they know about my situation? Have they worked with other people like me? And so these are opportunities where once people look at that content, they're like, yeah, that, that resonates with me. I kind of like you. I'm going literally because I was Googling around the internet and I found your firm and I watched your stuff. Hey, I like that. I'm gonna call them, which literally happened, you know, this week. Someone called up and said, "Hey, I saw your website. I'd love to talk to you." Right.

Right. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. I've seen your videos. I mean, you come to life in a way that your average, you know, wealth manager's website doesn't, where you'll see, you know, retirees looking over a mountain, an eagle in the distance, people running on the beach, and a phalanx of people looking the same. And it's like, okay, you might be great, I don't know, but they don't seem differentiated in any way. And you can go through website after website, and I think there's a huge opportunity, as you're showing, that if you just humanize things a little bit to give a sampling, or it just breaks a barrier, and they could say, oh, you seem sensible, you seem smart, you seem reasonable, accessible, and what have you.

Yeah, it just— We have one of the most popular parts of our website, and we just know this because people mention it more than any other part of our website, is every financial advisor and every wealth management firm has this about us kind of page, and we call it our "Are We a Fit?" page. And on that page, it specifically says, "We will not—" Basically, it says something like this: "We won't like each other if you act like this." And it lists personality characteristics, which we're like, if you— If you feel like you're anything like any of these 4 or 5 bullets, it's a bad fit. And people come to us and be like, you know, I read that thing about, like, you're basically telling people that you don't want to work with them. We're like, well, nicely, we're just saying, like, probably won't get along if you're like this. But it's that authenticity where people are like, you actually own it on your website. And I just, there's something about that where people say, like, these guys are kind of straight shooters, right? Sorry, I'm from New Jersey, so I do a lot of guys, you know, like, but you know what I mean?

Yeah, no, I think, I'm just thinking back, like, a few years ago, we worked We worked with a woman named Terry Traspicio to completely rewrite our messaging playbook. That was an exercise that I felt like we were kind of like dancing around what is our messaging, what is Monument, how do we frame it? And it was hard, right? So I acknowledge that that's something that for other advisors may be really difficult to do. So to have Terry come in as an outside voice, someone who is not in the financial industry, so she's very apparent, or she's very clear when she says, she's like, I have no idea what you just said to me. Straightforward. Whereas we think, oh yeah, that was clear. She's like, no, that made no sense. So she helped kind of cut through all the jargon, all the BS, all the sort of institutional knowledge that people think, oh, is super obvious to every person, and helped us craft language for our website that really speaks to our personality. And that's where I think the root of content that resonates with people— we just picked up on that, picked up on that work with Terry, and kept going forward with it.

Yeah, you know, one thing you mentioned about stating who you don't want to work with, right? On the face of it, it's like, well, you're going to limit business. Why would you do this? But it makes me think about what Amazon decided long, long ago when they launched and put reviews where you could write negative reviews and put 1-star rating. A lot of people said, what the heck are you doing? People aren't going to buy your products. But Jeff Bezos saw that letting— being transparent or empowering the readers to tell their truth will help people navigate, and you're actually buying more trust because of your transparency. Transparency.

Yeah, I think it's also— this is just a prediction, but in the old world of trying to network with centers of influence to get referrals from them, I think that's being replaced by Google reviews and our ability now as an industry to start adopting those online reviews, which is slowly happening, and some channels are able to embrace that faster than others, but eventually, there's no stopping somebody from going online and posting anything they want to. So at some point, it's all going to have to get figured out. But we're discovering that that is becoming the replacement for the referral. When people are looking and they're saying, do you know somebody? They say yes, check out Monument. And that's, that's it for the referral at this point. It's just name mentioning. The referral comes from, they go on to your digital, they look at your digital diary. Are you posting things? What are you saying? Do you, are you current and always, you know, they just want to get a feel for you. And then they go to those Google reviews and they say like, okay, there's And the most recent Google review is 3 weeks ago. So these are current people telling me this. I really think that that's gonna be a massive game changer in the industry. Yeah.

And, and are most firms navigating this alone to the extent they're aware that this is even important? Or is it to people like you who are, who understand this, who are just self-starters and saying, we're gonna do this? Like, I don't know if they're like consultants or people helping firms manage this.

So we use a lawyer. All right, let's not go there. Right. Nevermind.

Yeah.

No, we get it. Right, right. But, but, um, yeah, I think,— I think anybody that's serious about doing anything in the compliance world is seeking advice from a credible consultant or lawyer or something like that, and that's what we did. We said, "Where are our boundaries here?" and he said, "Here are your boundaries," and okay, great.

So speaking about your podcast, titled Off the Wall— Mm-hmm. Kind of catchy, right? Great title. Thank you. I love it. Yeah, it works on a couple levels, and tell me a little about that and what listeners who in wealth management who don't have a podcast, if they're thinking about this, what would be some of your advice about dos and don'ts?

So we started the podcast in 2021. Truthfully, it was because Dave said to me, Jessica, I want to start a podcast. Will you do this with me? And I said, sure. What's it going to be about?

So I was like, just, who cares what it's going to be?

Let's just do it. Golden doodle.

Yeah.

Where it's me, the planner is like, no, I need to know what is the theme? What is the content? Who is the audience? So, You know, I sketched that out. We decided that our podcast would be focused on, you know, trying to reach a high net worth audience, but we know, you know, that's not our exclusive audience. And the theme of our podcast is the belief that wealth is not the sum of its parts. It's not about having this product or that, or, you know, watching the market go up and down. It's really about having, being able to do something of meaning and value to you. So that's kind of the general theme And so the podcast does touch on a variety of asset management and financial planning topics. You know, we look at, we did a great episode of looking back at the market in 2021, and we've been doing quarterly market updates with our portfolio manager. So it's a way for people to, who like to, you know, they don't want to read, right? The people who are listeners to get that type of information of like, okay, what just happened in the market last quarter? What do I really need to know? So thinking about that, but also looking at topics, you know, as broad-ranging as we had a valuation expert on who talked about, okay, you're going to sell your business. What is the things you need to be thinking about? How far in advance? Questions you should be asking. We just had a fantastic episode with Rich Orlando, who is of Legacy Capital, and he focuses on how to help high-net-worth families successfully pass on wealth to the next generation. We also had a great episode with Daniel Crosby talking about behavioral finance. We've had trust and estate lawyers on, you know, really we are looking looking for, you know, who are the fantastic people in our network who we have worked with for years, who we know deliver great advice, and let's get them in front of ears. So whereas the podcast, I think when Dave and I started, you know, it was just kind of like, well, let's just try this. It's become something that's become really enjoyable, a great new creative outlet for us, and also, as I said, a great way for us to get in front of people who may potentially be interested in hiring Monument and want to get to know us better.

And what are you finding resonates? I mean, if someone is well-known, you have a bit of a running start there. But putting aside the extent to which someone has a following, are there any high-level takeaways, or is it a little bit hard to tell and unpredictable?

It's a little bit hard to tell right now. I think the, the, the stats on the episodes are pretty consistent from episode to episode. I think what I find very useful is when I'm talking to a client or prospective client to be able to like shoot them the episode that is relevant to them to be able to like, hey, go listen to this. So our intent is some of the content, you know, related to the markets, that's obviously very of the moment, but the rest of it we're trying to really make evergreen so that it can apply to people regardless of whether they're listening to it when the episode drops or whether they're going back in the catalog.

That's a pretty smart use of content to basically have it. I mean, the ROI is great because if it's evergreen content, you save it and then share it when appropriate and they can listen to it when right?

It's convenient for them. It can spider all the way down to— I know what a lot of people are doing is they're turning their podcasts into also video. So if you think about that, or even just this, the audio version of a podcast, you can really start to rip it out into other pieces of content too, right? So we're doing a podcast right now, so you can transcribe it, you can load the transcription up into your website. Now search engine is crawling it, looking for keywords, and then you can take that transcription, you can pull paragraphs out of that, that becomes your blog posting or small social media posting. You can take 60-second sound clips out. You can do reels on Instagram. So with one piece of content captured in the digital medium, you can really start to repurpose it all over the place. And if it's an evergreen thing, you just turn that into your content calendar and now it's just going and going and going. But we have found— so it's interesting because our podcast, we're not trying to resonate with everyone. Person per episode. We're just trying to resonate with somebody. Then that somebody is different almost every single episode. So if you're a podcast consumer and you come across our podcast with Rich Orlando that talks about family dynamics and legacy, and you're single, it may not resonate with you. But then you may see the podcast with Dr. Daniel Crosby and be like, "Oh yeah, behavioral finance. I know his book. I'd love to hear that." Or sometimes people say, Oh, they do a quarterly review where they kind of talk about the markets once a quarter. Well, I'll listen to that because I kind of like commentary about the markets. I think the one thing that doesn't resonate with everybody is if you're just taking information that can be found in the news every single day and regurgitating it through a microphone.

It doesn't really resonate. Or something that could be answered on a basic internet search. Yeah, I think, you know, someone, a prospective client made this comment to me. You know, again, she found us by Googling. And she, I asked her, I said, was there any content that you saw that really resonated with you? With you, and she talked about a piece that we wrote about 529s and how if you sort of look around on the internet, the advice is, oh, just start somewhere. And our piece was about how to take advantage of the Virginia state income tax deduction, talking about front-loading, you know, things that she was like, hey, that speaks more to me and my questions. It's not just general. So I think that's something that does throughout Monument's content is we do try to have a clear point of view. And that also speaks back to what Dave was saying about that's our value proposition in our eyes. It's that unfiltered opinion and straightforward advice. Okay.

David, you were a Marine. I am a Marine.

You are a Marine. I'm sorry. Yes.

So once a Marine, always a Marine. Thank you.

Thank you.

It was an honor to serve. Tell me, how does the military leadership translate into running a business? What lessons, the mindset, et cetera, what carries over?

Boy, that's a scary question. Jessica's—

Yeah. I'm like, what's your answer going to be? No, before you answer, I will say there's one thing that's definitely carried over there are a lot of acronyms. So if you know the military, there's a lot of acronyms. And when I joined Monument, a lot of acronyms. Yes.

Just like the short— I'm about brevity of language, right?

So will Monument one day be something like just MMT?

Or are you going to keep shortening it? Right, exactly. Especially if it comes out with a really cool word, you know, you can kind of— you know, it's funny, my leadership style, the foundations of it, my formative years were spent learning to be be a leader of Marines, and that it would be impossible to say that that hasn't completely impacted my leadership style. But, however, my leadership style is totally different now than even 5 years ago or 10. In what way? Well, I think I'm a lot less directive now. How do I put that? As a Marine, I don't tend to throw out a knife hand and say, "Here's our mission, and then we're going to go conquer that hill and do this." I think I've— it's a little bit more tempered now. We collaborate a lot more, but I'm still— I still have those basic tenets of leadership. The Marine Corps, we talk about these 14 leadership traits, and there's 21 different leadership traits and principles. I think they've all kind of impacted a little bit. But one of the interesting things I've learned as I try to relate my military experience to leading in a business is that there's a lot of common ground between leading, but the one thing that's different that I've learned about leading outside of the Marines that really should be applied back to the Marines is this whole thing about empathy, just being empathetic towards people and their perspectives and their lives. And that's really led us back to, even back to the partnership idea with Jessica. Like, Jessica is a mother. And so we figured out a way to make all of that work And I think my, my experience there with trying to really be empathetic about people's positions has really helped nurture a naturally fostering culture. I didn't create the culture, it created itself, um, about just looking at like, how can we be flexible and empathetic and have a really great work environment that everybody really likes coming to work every single day? Because Here's the thing a bank won't lend against: the people that work there, which by the way are our biggest assets. So we're a business where every single day at 5 o'clock in the old world, 5 o'clock, everybody, my best asset walked out the door every single day and I'm hoping they come back the next day. Right? So, um, yeah, it's, uh, my memory now, if there were other people here from Monument, they would say like, oh, one of the worst days at Monument Wealth Management would be when Dave came back from his Marine drill on the weekend. You know, like sometimes I had to taper off that a little bit, but Yeah.

We are unfortunately almost out of time, but I did want to ask you for an actionable idea.

So my idea is hire military spouses. Dave, obviously, as we just talked about, he is a Marine. But my husband is an active duty Army officer. And I've known him for over 10 years and have met really incredible military spouses along the way that are smart and dedicated. And just by the nature of having to move around a lot, they haven't been able to stick with and grow with the company. Company. And I think obviously this whole shift to people working remotely, I think, has really changed what people are willing to think about in terms of who their team is and where they are. So, I'd really encourage people to go seek out websites like Instant Teams, which is a great website where you can post a job and find military spouses who work remotely who could be a good match for what you're looking for. Just really embrace that flexible work environment. We didn't talk about this, but part of my story was, 2018, I actually became a remote employee. My husband received orders to move from the D.C. area to Texas, and obviously I didn't want to leave Monument and they didn't want to lose me, and so we made it work. It was a great experience, and obviously I still advanced despite being a remote employee. I'd encourage everyone to think about military spouses.

Hire a military spouse.

Okay, thank you. Mine's related to that as well, and it is asking everybody in this industry to get more creative about supporting women as advisors as a career in this industry. I think that if, if Dean and I can create two new partners out of young 30-year-old women, one of who wanted to become a mother, if we can figure out a creative way to add partners in that environment, everybody should be able to figure out how to support women in their quest to be successful advisors and members of a team. And if a little bit more creativity is given towards how can I, or how can we as an industry, support this almost like this dual role of raising a family and being successful in a client-led business, it can happen if you just put on your creativity hat and work on it and maybe look at it from less of a greed perspective and more of a, I want to build a team that's diverse and really represents all of my clients. And in order to do that, I may have to make some adjustments to the way we used to do business.

I want to thank you both for joining us today.

It was a really, really enjoyable conversation. Yes, thanks for having us.

This is great. Thank you. Well, my guests were David Armstrong and Jessica Gibbs. For more advisor-specific podcasts, please check out barons.com/podcast. For The Way Forward, I'm Greg Bartalus.

This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.