John Furey: When RIAs Should Rebrand—and How to Make the Call

This podcast is 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.

Building a brand that truly reflects your firm's vision, values, and capabilities is one of the hardest and most important things a business leader can do. Today's guest has recently gone through a rebranding process and emerged with a powerful new story about who his firm is and where it's going. Hi everyone, I'm business coach Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward Podcast. My guest today is John Fury. John is the founder and managing partner of Advisor Growth Strategies, which is a leading consulting and M&A advisory firm serving the RIA industry. In today's conversation, John shares the story behind his firm's recent rebrand, and we use it as a case study in how to elevate brand from a tactical exercise to a strategic asset. John draws inspiration from brand expert David Aaker, and John explains how a strong brand isn't just a logo or a website. It's actually a guidepost that connects vision, strategy, and culture. We discuss how his team used client and market research to identify where their old brand was falling short. We talk about the steps they took to bring the new brand to life and how the process reshaped the way they think about leadership, growth and client experience. Jon also offers practical advice for advisory firm owners on when it's time to rebrand, how to measure the ROI of branding, and why consistency might just be the new authenticity. With that, here's my conversation with Jon Fury. Why a rebrand and why now?

So why a rebrand? And I think any business owner can extrapolate this. We felt strongly that our existing brand, which was still a great brand, wasn't reflecting our capabilities in present day and really how we wanted our ideal client to think about us going forward. So we had a hypothesis that it needed to be updated. And what we wound up doing before we did the rebrand is we actually, I think, made a wise investment and went out to the market and did research. So we asked our clients, prospects, and even prospects that did not hire us a lot of things. What they thought of the firm, where they thought we added value, where we're good, and maybe where we're not so good, to keep it high level. So once that process was complete, we started the rebranding.

What did you hear in that feedback? What did you hear that you liked, and what did you hear that you didn't like?

So what we really liked is, one, is our commitment to the industry that we live in, the RIA industry and wealth management broadly. And then how we approach projects and our clients, which is really more educational in nature and really trying to drive outcomes. We also heard that our team keeps promises, deliver what we say we're going to deliver. So those were the main ones, felt really good. There were many others. And then on the constructive side, we heard that was, for me as a founder, was a little alarm ringing. The business is still maybe too concentrated with John Fury and his partner Brandon Kwal. They have an emerging young team. Maybe they need more senior people on the team. So that informs now our future hiring. And then the other piece, which was frustrating, I think, for us because we do market-based research, is that from our M&A capabilities, mergers and acquisitions, was viewed as not well known, then that hurt a little bit. But part of it was our ethos as a firm is to not shine the light on our work, but shine the light on our clients' outcome. So we're never really out there spreading the news that we did like this transaction. But from a branding perspective, it actually hurt us because the industry is telling us you're just not known for that. You're known for your management consulting work. So that's what really informed the brand.

So with your management consulting hat on, you decided, okay, I think we need to do a rebrand. So walk me through some of the steps. Once you made a decision that, yeah, we need to do this, what were some of the first few steps?

Yeah, so how it— the origin story of it, we use a strategic planning system called EOS Traction, which is fairly known in the industry. And at our annual planning meeting last December, here we are almost 10 months later, we decided that it needed to be done. And then we had conviction on what we thought it was, but step one was doing what I said earlier is hiring the research firm. That took us a while. And then the second piece was we're not gonna rebrand it ourselves. We had to go through a, a process to figure out an ideal agency for us., and then we did that. And then once those two processes were complete, it took us about 4 months to redo it. And it was pretty broad. So we, we, when we say rebranding, what does that actually mean? We did everything from traditional things like websites, social, but then deeper things relational to when we have a prospect, how we pitch them and how we position our offering, which we do more in our sales process. So there was a lot of fundamental work on positioning. And then the other piece where the agency was so incredibly helpful, and you can see it in our, our website is probably the best manifest of it, is new logo, which I think was hard for our team because everyone, you have a logo, you think you're married to it, but you're not. And we changed everything, the visual treatment, not only the logo itself, but just think like the color palette and brand standard of how we want the firm to reflect. So we're super excited about it. And then coming through it, it's early days, but we've gotten like very good compliments. The feedback has been sharp, new, modern, almost tech, maybe a little tech-centric, more grown up.

You mentioned new logo, new colors. Now you and I know that that's only a small part of the whole concept of branding. One of the things that I asked you to do as we were preparing for this podcast was, was there an excerpt, was there a book, was there an article that you read that sort of inspired or gave you some ideas on how you think about branding? So, this would be a great time, I think, for you to read through that. It might be a little bit long, but I do want to read through that.

Yes, Steve. So, one of the things about my background too, and you're aware of this, but for your audience, I was an executive at Schwab for many years, and Schwab is a brand steward at the highest level, right? One of the best national brands we have. So I, I always had conviction that a brand was organic and needs to be nourished. I think a good reference point for your listeners is to look at, now I think it's more of an old school brand person called David Acker, and you, you could Amazon him and there's a book 20 best practices or something similar on branding. And what you learn from that is most businesses essentially think of their branding as more tactical website. Now in today's world, direct marketing, maybe if you're doing that, but if you take a step back and think of it more strategically, then I think it drives the tactics versus the other way. So a little bit more detail about that, and this is from Acker, good point for your reader. Brand management is something that can be delegated in part to an advertising manager or agency because it's mostly about managing the image, creating an advertising campaign, managing distribution, sales, promotions, and so on. But when you consider your brand as an asset, the role of brand management radically changes from tactical to strategic and visionary. So, a strategic brand standard linked to both the current and future business, so that's looking outwards à la strategic planning, becomes more of a guidepost and then the programs underneath it are the strategic imperatives, not the other way. So, brand management becomes broader and informs strategic insights and also can drive innovation, growth, and then ultimately your long-term brand strategy. Pretty cool stuff and maybe a good framework for your listeners to consider.

Yeah, and I love that whole excerpt that you just read there. And one of the things that stuck out to me was he wrote, when brands are considered assets, the role of brand management radically changes from tactical and reactive to strategic and visionary. And I think that points out a problem that a lot of people have when they do branding. They think of it as a new logo, new colors, new website, but they don't look at it as a strategic whole. It's like that's a part of a much bigger picture. Branding is more, you know, it needs to support a larger strategy. And so again, from your management consulting background, and here we are at the Schwab Conference, you mentioned used to be an executive here years ago. How has the new brand informed your strategy and Are you thinking about your business any differently after having gone through this strategic rebrand?

Yes, that's such a great point. I, I think for myself in some ways, but really for my team, we were always pretty tactical about how we thought about our brand. We did things. We help wealth managers start a business. We help them through consulting with managing and growing, and then we did exit planning, M&A, things like that. Like that. So it was like start, grow, exit. It's like very, very tactical. And now what I think the new brand reflects is something different, which is we're utility for the ecosystem. We came up with this tagline which is called Move Your Business, which to me connotates many things. So it wasn't just this 3-solution set. It's wait a second, we're like business performers, let us show how we can help you, and then just as the article said, the tactics are underneath it versus the other way. The old brand was more, we did things for you as an advisor, and now the, the new brand is reflecting that we're trying to become more of a transformational business that is more strategic in nature, and then we have excellent capabilities in and around things that can get you as a business owner or as a team from point A to point B.

Was there an aha moment when that really crystallized with you, going from we're a company that does things to we're more of a strategic? Was it the outside firm? Was there like a question that they asked you, the, oh my gosh, I get it now? Or was it just a combination of everything and you just all came to the realization that, hey, we're more than just the sum of our things here?

Yes, Steve, that's such a good point. And I think it was a little bit through the research process, but also— and this is painful for me to say as a business owner, but I will say it— we, we found ourselves over the last 2 years before we did the rebrand of helping clients with our consulting work. And then when they went to do a transaction to Transact, we weren't even in the consideration set. And when we asked them, it's like, hey, why didn't you 'Would you consider us to do your M&A transaction?' They were like, 'Oh, we just thought you were this consulting firm.' So it became very frustrating to us, and that was when the light bulb went on. I was like, 'Look, we gotta do something about this because that cannot happen.' Even though we were keeping in touch with clients we've helped along the way, that they didn't even think of us in those terms.

And let's switch it from your firm for a second into the advisory firms out there. So if you're putting your management consultant hat on, you're putting— hey, we just went through a rebrand ourselves. Now with that new knowledge and the experience of having gone through it yourself, as you look out at the RIA world out there, what are they missing? What blind spots do they have when it comes to the brands that they're presenting themselves out to the public with?

Yeah, to take a step back, one thing our company does, we do so much management consulting work And it's also relational to an RIA or wealth management firm's reinvestment equation, how they think about investing in their business. Marketing and branding. Virtually every firm in our ecosystem other than these large aggregators, the large PBAC firms, woefully underinvest in their brand. Like you could look at a firm that has $10 million in revenue and they might spend $40,000 on their brands. Every year. So I, I think there's willful underinvestment. If you don't believe me, you could look at other cohorts in other industries. Think like consumer marketing with consumer-based brands spending tremendous amounts of money. I'm not saying RAS go out and do it like a million-dollar rebrand, but there needs to be more thought, more conviction around it. So that I think is step one is the case for reinvestment. Commitment that has to be done. And then once you commit to it, then it's okay, how do we get smart and allocate these resources? So I think the starting point is to consider, all right, we have capabilities. What is our value proposition to the ultimate consumer? I think the investor client and even maybe a little bit broadly our team and future team members and also our community that we live in and help. So then I think once you think through that, who do we want to be maybe when we grow up, or how do we want to modernize this, I think you come up with tenets of where the brand would ideally like to go. And then this is like a great way to maybe interact with a branding team and professionals is say, hey, we went through an exercise to think through what our brand maybe could be, and then share it. And And then I think you're in a spot to maybe engage an agency to help you. You should not try branding, rebranding alone.

It's not a do-it-yourself exercise. It is not, no. Model portfolios are no longer one-size-fits-all. In fact, 85% of investors want financial advisors to deliver models customized to their individual goals, investment preferences, and tax circumstances. Discover some of the top themes driving the shift in Seizing the Next Model Moment by BlackRock. Now, you said a few minutes ago what made you realize that your firm needed to do a rebrand. As you look out at the advisory firms, what are some signs that they might see that would indicate, ah, it's time for us to do a rebrand?

For firms that have maybe stagnant growth, and look, markets are up, they can mask stagnant growth. We feel growth is relational to flows— think new clients and adding assets. So if you're, if you're below 5%, there is an issue. It could be branding. If you're not growing at least 5% organic, organically uncorrelated to the markets, organic growth. If you're struggling retaining team members or finding new ones, you might have an issue. If you go to your website, I actually saw this this week, and there's a copyright that says copyright like 2023, or in the one I saw this week, 2018, you're probably in trouble. If you haven't nurtured or relooked at your brand in 5 years, you're probably in trouble. My company is 16 years in existence. This is our 4th rebrand. It's a little bit different because it's moving a little bit faster. I also think if you're— the trigger for a rebrand could also be in and around capability changes. Maybe you're a planning firm and then you started adding more wealth capabilities, tax, trust and estate, whatever that may be. You have to tell the story and that should trigger the rebrand.

You and I are both somewhat financial guys. So you mentioned the return on investment here. How do you think about the ROI on branding? Because it can be, I think, hard to figure that out, particularly if you think of branding more at the strategic level as opposed to just the tactical level. We're going to rebrand this, we're going to do a new website, and maybe that'll generate some new leads kind of thing.

Yeah, I think it's tricky because I think everybody would like direct correlation and build a return model. I spend $100,000 or whatever it is on I wanna see a direct return on that and maybe new clients or whatever it is. Unfortunately, I think brands, it's more indirect attribution. An analogy would be if your business needs a great operations manager, are you not gonna hire a great operations manager because you can't, you cannot prove the return on that investment? Very, very difficult to do that. So I think you have to buy into the fact that a brand actually indirectly drives your success. But there are direct ways you can do it. We collect anecdotal feedback that helps us. We're going to eventually go back out to the market and see if what I was referencing earlier where we fell short, if we've improved. So I think there's a way you can do it through survey processes, client satisfaction, to see if there's a likability factor to it that I do think drives success. But I think in the return model, direct attribution is tougher versus if you did like a marketing campaign, a direct marketing campaign. And you know this, Steve, that I think is clearer to measure because you're actually soliciting business. But I would also say once you do the rebrand, you should do things like that. You should tell the story, you should do outreach, you should do direct marketing in some format to make sure your ideal prospect and your clients are seeing it.

We can spend a boatload of money and a bunch of time doing this rebrand, and we can get a pretty logo and a wonderful website. But then if we have a team member who does something dumb that ruins the brand or the reputation, then we're in trouble. How have you approached the idea of how do we— I'm gonna use the word enforce, but that's not the right word because that sounds negative, and I don't want this to sound negative, but how do you ensure that the brand lives through every team member, that they are upholding the standards of the brand, that they are living and breathing the brand both at work and outside of work? Because you could argue they're still a representative of the firm when they're outside of working hours. So what are you doing to ensure that the team is living and breathing the brand?

Unbelievably important. Great question. What we're doing is a few things. One, we produce content, we produce deliverables, we produce models for our clients when we do our consulting work, and now it's in our brand standards. So to ensure that that's the case, we have multiple points of review on every deliverable that goes out the door. The second piece we've done, and this is so hard to do, you build the brand and you have templates like your website, what do you do with social, what you do with direct. But then of course you're in your business and you're gonna customize things and that's when your branding could slip, you become off message. You could think like graphical layout, it could not be what you intended when you did the rebranding or your brand standard. So we actually did, which is another huge investment, Steve, I don't think you're aware of this, but we just hired a graphic designer. The single-person role is before anything goes out of the shop is to make sure it's on our brand standard. So it's like a big investment. So that's what we're doing outside of the business. Like, we have 4 people plus me here at Impact. We, we talk about the event, we talk about our messaging and reinforcing what the brand is. So we do a lot of training on our end. And then also reminder of, hey, when we're at this particular forum, how do you reinforce it? And then I think outside of work, like how do we make sure people are living and breathing the brand? I think we're imperfect there, but I do think we've developed a good culture of mutual respect, accountability. And one thing I'm proud of too, as an owner, is we've had long-term contributors now that we've been doing this. Once we have a great contributor that buys into what we're doing and has a passion for the industry, they're staying. We also have career pathing, which also helps with that. So they know if they're living and breathing the brand, doing what they need to do to advance the business, they get to level up.

The word authenticity has been tossed around for quite a few years now, and just talking about the importance of being authentic and genuine. I could argue that as we're talking about branding here in this context, that consistency could be the new authenticity from the standpoint of you need to have that consistent message out in the marketplace so that people know who you are, what you do, what you stand for. And we're having our conversation today, and we'll make a little political reference here. So in New York City, there's a new mayor, Zoran Mondame. And one of the things that people say about him, whether you like his politics or not, that's not the point here, is that he was extremely consistent and on brand with his message all the time. It was always like the same 3 or 4 points. And so he didn't get off message. So I think that is so important for anybody, as you think about branding, is that consistency, being on message. And every time you do something different, it slips the image and impression of your firm in the minds of the people that you're trying to influence. Because now what do you stand for? I thought you were this, this, and this, but now you're, oh, that other thing over there. But just once in a while for that kind of person.

Yeah, Steve, what's happened in our business, we've actually become more specialized. So this rebranding we did is trying to get away from being tactical. But in the end, let's say we get to know an advisory firm and they need and if we're not the ideal firm to help them, we will actually refer them so we stay on brand. If we get engaged by a client, we have a process that we do the same time for our consulting work. We will never get off process, so it's always viewed as consistent. If you work with anyone on our team, a project will be run essentially in the exact same the same way. And then we have behind the scenes checks and balances to make sure that there's consistency. It's not easy to do what I'm saying. And we worked very, very hard to get there. But I think there is a— not a price for consistency, but there needs to be shared commitment or that could happen. And then before you know it, you're losing your sense of what you're trying to become. So I think it's super important. In our business, we've always been very consistent, but we're becoming even more specialized as time goes on.

Yeah, and the way I think about what you're just saying there is we have a system, we have a brand, we have processes, but we don't want to be robots either about it. We understand that there are situations that arise where maybe we have to do something a little bit differently. But if you start with, here's the framework, here's the methodology, Here's the way that we onboard a new client. Like, we've got a whole system, a whole process on how we onboard new clients. But what happens if something in that process or the client does something they weren't supposed to do? Oh, do we have a process for that or do I have to add lib? So we still want to give people the ability to, in the moment, make an adjustment to deal with that situation, but knowing that everything else is not going to fall through the cracks because we've got a system and a process and a procedure to deal with that such that when something out of the ordinary happens, we can deal with that in a personalized way while knowing the rest of the stuff's not going to fall through the cracks.

Yeah, that's such a great point. In our business, and I also think it's true in wealth management because all clients are different, not everyone wants the same outcome, but our process might be the same and extremely consistent for any engagement we do, management consulting, M&A, but underneath the sheets when we actually get into it, how we're educating the client, how we're talking to them and listening to them, we're trying to mirror their style and give them information in the way they need to hear it, not how we want to say it. So the process is consistent, but the advice we're giving and the outcomes are always different.

Customized.

Right. So that's like how we're doing it. So I think that's the way in, I think, the advice-giving business for any professional services firm.

Yeah, and since we are in professional services, one of the things we haven't really touched on is, yes, we can have systems, we can have processes, and we can have a brand, and we can be consistent, but ultimately the brand is, to some extent, how do you make me feel? Like, how do I feel when I interact with your firm? How do I feel when I interact with my financial advisor? How are you making me feel through the interactions, the engagement, dealing with your staff, the way that you answer the phone, how you respond to emails, the language, the tone that you use, those sorts of things? And so I think even though we do have systems and processes, we always have to keep in mind what is the feeling that we want to evoke in our clients when they deal with us because we want to reduce friction. We want them to look forward to their engagements with us. How do we make it easy and delightful for them to engage with us?

Yeah, I agree with that consistently. And in our business, I'll give you an example. If somebody approached us and wanted us to run their M&A process and they were like, my ideal outcome is to max out, get the most possible money and do XYZ and the clients and the team be damned, we're probably not the right fit and we're passing. So what you said resonates with me, Steve, because we're not only seeking to get ideal products for our company, but we want to work with clients that get what we're doing and want to see the brand. Because when we work with our clients, it's mostly about, hey, let's talk about the endgame in mind first. And will get you the financial outcome, but it's in a framework of the endgame. So again, it's the whole strategic tactical thing that we were talking about earlier with the brand, but that's how we do with our engagement. So if we sense somebody that just wants a tactical thing, it's kind of like, wait a second, we may not be the one for you. So that's like a way we're living day to day in our business based on the brand standard.

I want to go back to toward the beginning of our conversation. How did you prepare the team to roll this out? Was this sort of John's brainchild? Hey, I think we need to do this. You mentioned it was in your, your EOS Traction meeting back in December of last year, but was everyone on board with it? So that's question one. And then the second question is, how did you then roll it out once you did it? How did you roll it out to make sure everyone is on board with this.

So at the beginning, not everybody was on board. I would say it's like 50/50. And then they said, all right, John, in EOS Traction, there's a role, which is me, called the Visionaries. You're the Visionary, you want to do it, let's go for it. But what we did along the way, which I thought was helpful, I didn't mention it earlier, when we did the, the market research, we actually spent time with the team. Let's talk about the brand and our research agency, they interviewed the team and spent time with them. So we got their feedback, which helped also help inform the brand. And then early days when we started doing the initial sketches of where we're going to take the brand, we trial ballooned with the team and we asked them for feedback. So we tried to bring them along the journey versus John Fury and Brandon K. Wall just figuring out with a brand agency. And then telling everyone what we're going to do. And then on the training front, it's new. We still have work to do there, but we spend time with the team walking through with the agency. Here are the changes, this is why we did it. Here's the new positioning. We actually have a positioning platform that we use. So that's how we're rolling it out. But we're, we're a small business, so we, our training is more on the job, more evergreen, but how we do it practically in the trenches is we have biweekly meetings and the brand refresh, let's call it, took a couple of those. So we're like training in the, in those forums.

John, what haven't I asked you that you're just dying for me to ask you?

What a great question. If I would've asked me, when you think about the rebrand, when you're a year out from now, how do you want to be viewed? Yeah.

What does success look look like?

Yeah, what does success look like? So you want me to—

I'm asking you that.

Yes. All right, so to answer the question for me, what does success look like when we're next Impact, Impact 2026, here we are? What would success look like? I would hope our business will continue to grow. We're growing at a nice clip with our companies, 25% or so every year CAGR, compound annual growth. So hope that keeps up or gets better. And I think when we do the research I was referencing before, I want to close the gap on what we had. I think that would be great. And I would also think it would be awesome to get a little bit more engagements than we're doing now. That's always good. And maybe, maybe we'll get contributors in our ecosystems to be like, wow, I have alignment with that brand and I want to be a part of it. And they actually reach out and say, hey, I'd love to join your team. That would be success.

Excellent. All right. So one final question here. I'm going to start a sentence and I want you to finish it. And I think given your background in the industry and experience, I think you can have a great answer.

All right.

Let's give it a go. So here's the start of the sentence. The most successful advisory firms in the future will be the firms that blank.

That find the ability to tailor their message in a way that's viewed as proactive. And they really know me is the answer for me.

Perfect. All right, John, what's the best way for folks to connect with you if they want to learn more?

Yeah, I would just reach out to our website, advisorgrowthllc.com. Super simple. It's a way to reach out to our team. You could find me directly on LinkedIn too if you want to chat me up or anything.

I'm around. 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.

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.