Keith Jacoby: How to Build and Lead a Large Wealth Management Firm

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How do you remain humble, hungry, and smart while leading and growing a multi-billion-dollar wealth management business? Hello, I'm Ray Scalfani, CEO and founder at ClientWise. Welcome to Barron's Advisor: The Way Forward Podcast. I'll be your host, and my guest today is Keith Jacoby, CEO and partner at Clarity Wealth based in Naples, Florida. In today's conversation, Keith will share his insights on leadership, and we discuss everything from talent management, talent acquisition, growth, capacity, and even compensation while discussing what it takes to really build and lead a wealth management firm. Stick around to the end for Keith's actionable ideas and book recommendations on process. So let's get into it. So Keith, welcome to The Way Forward.

Thanks, Ray, it's a pleasure.

All right, so you've got a crazy background. Tell us, how did you get into the business?

It's a long story, but I'll give you the short version. Sounds good. I graduated from college, came back home to Naples, Florida. The plan was to fill out graduate school applications, and I thought I'd give financial services a shot. So I sent out 72 letters with resumes to every financial services firm in Naples, Florida, and ultimately got back 3 letters saying thanks, but no thanks. I did ultimately get in to see the branch manager at Prudential Securities. And he said, "Kid, you have no sales experience." I said, "I'll be right back." So I went out and sold copiers door to door for 9 months. I would get up in the morning, drive up to the copier place, throw a copier in the back of the truck that they made me buy in order to go sell copiers. That's great. Drive back down to the office, buy a Wall Street Journal and wait at the office for the branch manager to unlock the door, give him the Wall Street Journal and said, give me a shot, I won't let you down. So ultimately the guy said, I think it's gonna be easier for me to hire this kid than have to deal with him knocking on my door.

Well, that's a long way from selling copiers to running a $5.7 billion business.

So ultimately I made it into the financial advisor training program. They gave me a desk, a phone, a phone book, 2 grand a month and pat on the back and said, don't get too comfortable, kid. You probably won't be here in a year.

So then looking back now, now resenting all of those comments, I'm sure. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your business makeup today. You've got a really interesting business and you find yourself in the CEO seat overseeing quite a large ensemble.

Yeah, it's, well, it's been a progression through my career of really learning about the business. And I'm a process nerd, I'm a self-confessed process geek, and I've spent the last 30 years in the business, trying to refine what the client, the ultimate client experience should be. And that served me really well. And then there came a point in my career where I felt like it was Groundhog Day. I felt like I had more to offer. I had been working with a growing team and I found a passion for seeing them develop in their careers as advisors and saw an opportunity to really package and refine this process that we have to allow them to take the lead role as advisors. And it's been that transition for the last several years.

So I wanna get into the process and especially the developing of people here in just a minute, I'm curious, how do you describe your role as CEO?

Well, it's an evolving role, isn't it? I love being in the room with the families that we work with. So that's been the hardest part for me is kind of letting go of that vine, but equally, I love advisor development. So if I had to put a point on my role as CEO, it's process development, and advisor development.

Give us a little makeup of the business, if you don't mind, how large a team?

Well, in the last 2 years, we've scaled pretty considerably. We've seen our AUM and revenue grow about 150%. We've seen our headcount go up over 200%. So at this point, we're at 53 financial professionals across 3 offices, and we're knocking on the door of about $6 billion in AUM.

So I know you've got a couple of tuck-ins, but you've also got your own Ensemble. Tell us a little bit about your long-term strategy and how you're setting up the team for success.

Yeah, so the Ensemble concept always appealed to me because I love to be a part of a team. So we've executed 4 succession plans with retiring advisors. And as you know, you can't replace a retiring advisor with 30 to 40 years experience by just throwing the keys to the guy next to you. You really need to build out the capacity of an advice team. So that's what really we've been working on for the last several years is expanding the capacity of our advice team within our ensemble, which truly is a team concept. So everybody is compensated from the, the top of the house on that ensemble practice. It allows advisors to not run into the risk of plateauing because they always have support advisors that are engaged in the client relationship that they can transition to and continue to grow in their career.

So when we get into the ensemble kind of framework, it sounds to me like there's not a lot of silos in your ensemble. There's no individual book of business from one advisor to the next. It really sounds like it's truly integrated.

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. They're clients of ours and the firm that we serve together as a team.

So the big question I get from advisors who are thinking about transitioning whether it's continuity planning or succession planning or freeing up some time so they can create some capacity to help grow the firm. The big trick is this transfer of trust. Describe for us a little bit about how do you go about training these senior advisors, maybe transitioning either to go focus more on growth or focus more on succession to this young professional who's getting to know these clients?

It's all about process. And if you have a clearly defined, consistent, and repeatable advice and service delivery process that everyone on the team is fluent in, then now I can take a lead advisor and have a wealth advisor sit in a support role. They sit shotgun with the advisor.

Kind of a second chair position?

A second chair position. They're involved in creating, updating the deliverables for the review meeting. They sit second chair with the lead advisor. They get to absorb all that experience that the lead advisor has when they deliver the route. They're taking the notes, they're recording the next actions. The client leaves the meeting, the review meeting notes go out, all of the next actions are recorded. They're the— so the support advisor is the concierge to the service team. Then the service team closes the loop with the client on any of these open actions. So they're getting multiple points of contact. They're developing this trust and confidence in this support advisor. And then at a certain point, the lead advisor will allow the support advisor to run through different areas of the plan in the review. And it ultimately gets to the point where the lead advisor is just sitting in the room, and I call it counting ceiling tiles, because now we have created this lead advisor that can fly and they can run an entire review meeting. And it's that gradual transition. It's very seamless for the family that we're working with because they're getting the same experience, they're getting the same deliverables, they're getting the same messaging, and they know that they have a big team around them and they're already comfortable with the support advisor because they've worked with them, they've interacted with them for a certain period of time. So it's this nice, natural transition process, as opposed to just saying, you know, I'm not gonna be in there anymore and you're gonna work with this new face that you've never met before and they're gonna be doing something completely different than what I did previously.

And that never goes well anyway.

It never goes well.

Okay, so since you're a process self-labeled nerd when it comes to process, and I appreciate that.

I wear it with pride.

That's awesome. So you must measure the client satisfaction in some way, shape, or form. Absolutely. So what recommendations would you give other teams working on the transfers of trust to make sure that the clients are fully satisfied and appreciate the work that the team is doing?

Yeah, so, and in my mind, it's not just about the transfer of relationships from a retiring advisor or one in a succession plan. It's an opportunity for advisors to grow into larger and more complex relationships at a pace that they're comfortable with, right? We don't wanna give 'em a John Wayne swimming lesson lesson and be like, here, boom, here's a bunch of really complicated planning situations. So our goal at the end of these transitions is that for them to look at me or whoever was the previous lead advisor and say, you know, Keith, you were really great, we enjoyed working with you. But they turn to their new advice team and they go, but this is awesome, right? So we're always checking in with clients about how is your experience, is there any, you know, are you comfortable with the client experience? Are you Are you comfortable with the interval? Do you feel that we're on demand for you? Do you know that you have a big team around you? And we're always looking for that feedback from the client that they understand that they're working with a team of professionals that are in the right seats, operating in their unique ability, and they're able to come together and bring together a really good client experience.

So it sounds like this process works not only for a retiring advisor, It also works for advisors from a career pathing perspective to be able to level up.

Big time.

And it also sounds like it works if you're trying to grow the organization and you've got a more senior professional who has access to a large list of potential clients and have no capacity, this creates the capacity for them to go maybe hunt in the jungle.

Absolutely, yeah, because everybody has their unique ability. I'm a big believer in unique ability and building out unique ability teams. And unique ability to me is, when you can operate in that area, 80%, you know, let's say you spend the entire day in unique ability.

That would be amazing.

You leave the office with more energy than you came with, and everybody on the team looks at you and says, I don't know how you do that. And you say, well, that's just who I am. So we have advisors on the team that love spreadsheet analytical work. We have advisors on the team that absolutely love digging into planning strategy, but we also have advisors on the team that are, They're outside cats. They just like to get out and meet people and tee up connection meetings, and then bring in the rest of the team to show them our capabilities and our capacity.

You know, the firm that you lead, clearly Clarity Wealth sounds to me like an organization that has broken the mold on this eat what you kill model.

Would that be accurate? Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, we have an advisor capacity dashboard that we live with, And what it does, it allows us to see who, what advice teams and what advisors have capacity at what level of complexity. And as we're sourcing new relationships that come in, we're just looking for the best fit, the best fit for the client. And it all kicks up to the top of the house. They're growing through their career tracks and they're given that leadership and mentorship along the way. And the ability to scale their practice organically so that they don't plateau.

Got it. So I hear this a lot, and advisors are always struggling with segmentation strategies and how many clients can one advisor cover. And we at ClientWise have always thought about this 2,000-hour rule and making decisions about how much time in front of clients, how much time in front of prospective clients, and how much time team meetings, continuing ed, education, and all the rest of it. How do you break down the time that an advisor spends with clients, and how do you segment your client roster?

That's a great question. So as far as the career tracks are concerned, you know, if you think of an advice team as a 4-person team, so at the top of that team would be the managing director, and then on the corners of that team, let's call it first and third base, we have a senior VP and a vice president. And then at the home plate, you'd have a wealth advisor. In a lot of cases, we'll add a tail to that kite, which would be an associate wealth advisor. So constantly developing this talent, and it's an hourglass shape of the capacity that each person on that team can serve. So your maximum, I think that the maximum capacity for a senior vice president who's just crushing it as a lead advisor and has a full support infrastructure around them with a support advisor that's helping them create and prepare deliverables, a good service team is about 120 families. And if you back into the math on that, if you think as an advisor, if you were spending 8 hours a year with a client delivering advice, considering you have a full infrastructure around you, that's a considerable amount of time. So 8 times 120 is 960 hours a year.

It's about 50%.

It's about 50% of your time, which gives you 50% of your time to go into that natural market. Because as I always try to remind myself and the people on my team, every one of these families has a CPA, they have an estate planning attorney, and CPAs and estate planning attorneys like to make their job easier. How can we make their job easier? So in this, you know, in the fourth quarter, it's always an outreach to CPAs to give them fresh data. CPAs love fresh numbers, right? And they don't like to be surprised. So With that extra time, they can reach out to the client. I'd like to send a snapshot of year-to-date income, realized capital gains, send it to the CPA. And if the CPA replies back as little as thank you, then that's your opportunity to engage with the CPA, dig in a little more. I'd like to learn more about your practice, how we might be able to work closer together into that natural market. And having that 50/50 time spent where they can engage in the networking and the organic growth and also sharpen their saw, learn, go to conferences, get letters after their names. We're a real big proponent of the CFP designation. It's an important milestone in our career track. It gives them that flexibility. I always want the people on our team to feel balanced. To never feel like we're spread thin. And I would rather build out capacity in advance of the growth, always be prepared for the growth, so that the people on our team can do 4 things. They can do what they love, operate in their unique ability, with people they love, a team around them that they're, you know, high fives and fist bumps, for people they love, great clients that are right fit, and they're well compensated. And if you can do that and still have time to pursue personal passions and have balance, take some time off, not have to check your email, that's a, that's a winning combination.

It sounds like you're building a culture and you're a magnet for talent is what it sounds like to me.

Yeah, well, we spend more time with the people we work with than people that have the same last name, like it or not. So let's make it fun. And let's engage with each other. Let's do it together.

That's great. That's really, really awesome. I have a quick question for you on that notion of leadership. You obviously are still leading this big team, but you're also covering some clients. What's your career path looking like internally?

So what gets me really fired up is working with the largest, most complex relationships at Clarity Wealth. But really quarterbacking that and bringing in our A-team. There's advisors on my team that do better planning work than I do at this point because they've been able to just completely focus on it. I also love the advisor development part of it, and I'm just so fortunate to be surrounded by a team of people that I love to work with that do a lot of things better than me. And as long as it's fun, And I can still get into those client review meetings, still engage with those clients. I love that. If I can engage with my advisors regularly and we can just get that good energy of what does it mean to be a world-class advisor and also working with a lot of strategic partners. I really enjoy that collaboration with strategic partners. Strategic partnership to me is not just business development. It's really about creating this incredible team around a family when you can get everybody on the same page, right? So that your estate planning attorney or insurance planner or your CPA, they're all working towards the end goal of the client. But when you get them all together and they're all on the same page, I think that's really when the magic starts to happen. And that's when the clients really feel chin up, shoulders back, full of confidence. Like, man, I got a great team. This is awesome. I don't know what I would do without you guys.

So it sounds like you still have your hands in the client business. I always will. Okay, so that's a really interesting point. Some firms have chosen to full-time CEO. Do you imagine that 5 years from now you'll still be CEO with your hand in some client relations?

Absolutely. We have a leadership team, right? So I've got, I've been very fortunate to have some people around me in the C-suite at Clarity Wealth that don't have client-facing responsibilities.

So tell us about the org chart of those leaders.

That would be helpful. Yeah, so we have our integrator, 'cause we operate on the EOS system.

And for those that don't know, that's the Entrepreneurial Operating System.

That's Gino Wickman's.

That's right.

Excellent. My hero, big fan of Gino, shout out. Where I'm, in the EOS language, the visionary, where I'm kicking up all the dust and trying to figure out what the strategic initiatives are and looking at organic and inorganic growth and how do we build advisor talent and service capacity. The person that sits below me is the integrator. And we meet together as a leadership team every week And I same page with my integrator a couple times a week so that we can get that traction from what I'm trying to create as a vision organizationally and what the future looks like. He can take that and drive it down to the major functions of our practice. We have 5 major functions in the practice. We have advice, service, business development, HR, and finance. Okay, so we have a, on the leadership team is a person responsible for each of those functions of the practice. Perfect. And they're not client-facing. Got it. So that allows me—

That creates a lot of freedom for you.

It creates freedom for me, but it allows me to really dig into what I love most about this business.

Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so that traction word is important 'cause that would be a recommended read.

Would you agree? That's right.

That's the name of Gino's book, "Traction." Yes. That talks about visionary and integrator.

I'm such a process nerd. That was a page-turner for me. Yeah, that's great. But I got halfway through it and I realized that there's no way in the world I could implement this myself. So I did. I hired a professional implementer from EOS who's been really a partner of ours over the last 3 years. Ross Gibbs has been incredible in helping us drive this EOS process, which has kept everybody communicating well, on the same page, and focused, focused, great culture. Because as Gino says, vision without traction is hallucination.

You know, we've got two implementers client-wise that do that work. We have quite a number of clients who are engaged in EOS. We actually see many adopting the complement to EOS, which is the OKR methodology, John Doerr's Measure What Matters. Those objectives and key results tend to drive strategically down into that EOS model. So that's an interesting take on how it's working for your organization. Yes. Okay, so what strategies have you found most effective in sort of managing a large team? EOS is certainly one of them, having a strong leadership team where there's full functions in those 5 areas. Anything else come to mind that would be helpful?

Yeah, so the EOS system has been good for us as far as communication and keeping everybody on the same page and keeping the vision in front of us. I would— the career track development was a— and the advisor capacity dashboard was another really important step for us, for me and for the leadership team and for really the entire organization to get a high-level view of truly what our capacity is so that you can scale and you break this large practice down into sub-advice teams. And then within that, you have sub-lead advisors so that everybody has the capacity to really dig in and do an exceptional job and never feel overwhelmed.

That's a very powerful set of confidence for the team when they know exactly what they're expected to be doing and what skills and experiences they need to acquire in order to level up.

Yeah, that's when it really is fun.

Okay, so that's, that career path and the capacity piece make good sense to me. Let's talk about growth. If we could shift over and just talk about growth. There's interesting, I was reading some of the work coming out of Tiburon Strategic Advisors talking about growth, especially in the RIA channel, which estimates that about 70% of growth is due to the capital markets and 30% is inorganic and organic and acquisitive. And I find that sort of astonishing. So I went back and looked, the S&P over the last decade has returned about 12%. So for firms standing up and saying, whoa, we're up 14%, they're riding the wave of the capital markets. Your firm, as you mentioned on the onset, is growing extraordinarily. So how is your firm positioning itself? My sense is capacity has something to do with it, but what are your growth strategies and how do you define growth?

Let's be open and honest here. There's a bit of a pig in the python here. I mean, we've had 4 successful succession plans that we've executed. So that's been a very big part.

It's a lot to digest.

It's a lot to digest. So that's been inorganic growth, but what it has also allowed us to do is see a real increase in organic growth because here's what happens. You build out capacity, you increase efficiency, you're improving the client experience. Remember, this is awesome, right? So the clients are getting, we hope, an enhanced experience. All of a sudden, this inorganic growth, referrals, outside assets, introductions to COIs.

Serving the client more completely.

Serving the client more completely. You know, you do good things for good people and good things happen. And that's, that's been driving our growth in addition to the inorganic growth.

You know, it's interesting, I've observed this before and you're validating something that I've seen pretty consistently, which is so many senior and experienced advisors have gotten comfortable with their clients. And every now and then a little shakeup of client coverage uncovers lots of new opportunities to serve families.

It's absolutely true. There's 30 to 40 years of goodwill and trust and confidence built into these relationships if you've been in the business that long. And there's a tendency of what happens, they'll call or their client experience coordinator reaches out and says, you know, we'd like to have you come in for a view. Like, no, we're good. We trust you guys. Everything's okay. When you transition to an expanded advice team, there is a risk that there's going to be a dip in trust and confidence. And we account for that by increasing the contact, really broadening the planning scope, really freshening up the experience and the planning part of it. And what it does is it re-engages the client into this experience.

That's awesome. Yeah. Okay, so I've got a question. It sounds like then the acquisitive growth is happening, and these are some of the tuck-ins you're doing, but then some of the businesses you're acquiring. It sounds like there's some organic growth that occurs when you do sort of re-segment the client and bring on new people to look at that client relationship. What are your plans for inorganic growth? Any special strategies? I hear centers of influence and professional advocates. What are you doing in digital marketing and seminar event marketing? What's the hot inorganic, if anything at all, right about here?

So we're right at that inflection point. So obviously over my career, I've been heavily engaged in organic growth, 'cause that's all I knew. And that was through strategic partnerships, center of influence, referral networks, client events, client events, bring a friend. Ray, we'd love to have you come, but we, you know, these things are a lot more fun if you have a buddy with you, right? So bring a friend with you. That has been the cornerstone of my practice growth. We're getting to that point now where we're going to start to feel some slack, like the transition has occurred. We've got the two thumbs up from the client, we've got the capacity. And at that point, I'm really looking forward to re-engaging with this advice team and helping them drive that organic growth. And we've got some really exciting compensation structure that we're going to be rolling out. That is gonna really charge them up and give them an opportunity to succeed professionally, but also financially.

So do all of your advisors need to grow and find new clients and hunt in the jungle?

Absolutely. That's how these advice teams really thrive. I mean, if we can target an 8% top-line growth net of market, then your career track really starts to develop. Because what happens is the advice team reaches capacity. An advice team with 4 people on it, managing director, your VP, senior VP, and wealth advisor, can only handle so many households and so much revenue.

About 120?

About 120 for my senior VP. Maybe it's 85 for a VP, 65 for a wealth advisor. And when you get up to the managing director level, it comes back down to 80. Okay. Because now I'm dealing with just the most complex and I'm leading a team, okay? So you add all those up and, you know, give or take, once you start bumping up against that capacity, it's time to split that team. And splitting the team is a beautiful thing for the advice team because now we have these open spots. You take a managing director and a VP and your wealth advisor over here. Now your senior VP becomes a managing director, your wealth advisor becomes a VP.

Everybody levels up.

Your associate wealth advisor comes up. So they wanna drive this growth 'cause it allows them to continue to spiral up these career paths.

That sounds quite extraordinary. And does equity come into play and do LTIPs come into play, profits interest? What is the enthusiasm for long-term incentives in the company?

So that's in the garage right now. We're getting it buffed out and we're getting ready to roll that out first quarter of next year. So we'll save that one for another podcast, but Yeah, I would not be where I am in my life or my career without these people around me. And I want them to participate in that. And also, as we grow from here, I'm gonna be a much less, a bit less a part of that growth than they are. So they should participate even more in the future growth. So whether it's straight equity, you know, synthetic equity plan, stock appreciation right plan, LTIPs. I'm really looking forward to going through all these legal documents out to version K. It's one of my favorite things. I'm kidding.

Okay, I hear you loud and clear. Okay, so fairness and transparency when it comes to compensation, it sounds like you've done a good job there. Any details that you're comfortable sharing?

I would say that, well, our compensation plan again is based on career, track, wealth advisor, VP, senior VP, managing director, ultimately onto a passage of partnership. And it's clearly laid out what the milestones are to achieve each of those as far as amount of revenue served as a lead advisor and, you know, CFP designation, leadership attributes. So yeah, and then the incentive comp part of it comes from the top of the house, the pool. So let's say a wealth advisor, they're overcomped based on the amount of revenue they're serving. And we're really comfortable with that 'cause we're developing them. So maybe their base plus incentive comp is like an 80/20 split. But when you get to VP, maybe you're getting a 70/30. At senior VP, maybe you're 60/40. When you're managing director, you're really 50— you're driven by the top of the incentive comp, the revenue of the firm. And you really need to start thinking as an owner of the firm at that point, in my opinion.

So it sounds like the ladder of growth in the organization allows for folks to develop the skills, gain the experiences they need, so they can drive new business for the firm and understand that owner's mindset.

That's right. So I think in any career track or compensation plan, if it's clearly understood and has a sense of fairness, those are the two most important things that we really want to have. Perfect. That's really good.

So that seems to lead to what I'm curious about is your culture. How would your team describe the culture of your organization?

We're really big on our core values. We hire around the core values. We talk about the core values. We celebrate the core values. And look, I've worked for some big corporations and they have core values on their website and I'll read them and they don't look familiar to me as an employee. Our core values aren't aspirational. It was really more of a discovery process. Of what makes us us and what do we think really makes us feel really good about what we do and what do the clients see. So we're big on core values. And there's 3 things that I personally try to keep as my mantra and have through my career, and I try to drive across the organization. And that's, we just want people that are humble, hungry, and smart. So humble is, well, this business will humble you.

Well, selling copiers door to door.

Cold calling in 1995, schlepping copiers door to door, that, you know, so I'm humbled.

Yes.

I'm also humbled by the team I have around me. I would never be anywhere close to as successful as we are without them. So, and I always meet people in this, like people, you know, You say, oh, it's a really big business you got. Well, Vanguard's a big business, okay? Mine's somewhere, it's a business.

It's growing.

We're super proud of it, but let's not get, you know, a little over our skis, too puffed up or over our skis. So that's humble's part of that. Hungry is driven, big future, big vision, you know, make your future better than your past and be open about it with your team so we can help support you. Right? So that's hungry. And smart is become an expert, master your craft, be a master planner, understand behavioral finance, just always be learning, always looking for new ideas. So if you can stay humble, hungry, and smart, I think that keeps you really well based in our industry.

Tell us a little bit about the core values of your firm. The ones that stick?

Okay, so we have 4 core values. The first one is we care. We understand that a trusted advice relationship can have a transformational impact in people's lives beyond what we see. We get that and we love it. We care about the work that we do for people and we care about the people that we work with. Okay, and not everybody has a great day every day. So pick them up when they're down and help people take a victory lap and support them. So we care, we take ownership, we right people, right seats, unique ability, own it. That's where you are, let's be great at that. So we care, we take ownership, we do things right. That's different than saying we do the right thing. Doing the right thing is a prerequisite to even operate in this industry.

It's like integrity.

Yeah, right, integrity. We do things right means we're process-driven. We have thought this through from the client's experience. We want to follow that process because it's fine-tuned. Use the templates, use the checklist, use the process, use the team. If you find something that's a rough edge, kick it up to leadership or kick it up to the top of the function of that team. We'll sand that rough edge off.. But until we find a better way, this is our best way. So let's be process-driven. Let's do things right. And then the fourth is we go the extra mile, because there's no traffic jams on the extra mile, right? That's, you know, that's the secret sauce. People don't care what you know until they know that you care, right? Like, call people on their birthday. If a client calls in and has to cancel their review because they got the flu, you get them chicken noodle soup. We have this Grandma's chicken noodle soup, they'll deliver a spoonful of comfort for everybody out there. It is, I don't know how many spoonful of comforts chicken noodle soup is sent out. That's great. But you feel like death and you can't come in for the review. And then you go out to your door and you've got this homemade chicken noodle soup. Milestones, deaths, births, whatever it might be, help them celebrate them. So those are our 4 core values that we really, drive home.

You know, it's interesting. I appreciate hearing that from you because I often hear from advisor teams and their leaders that, man, I've heard mission, vision, value. These are the same concepts. They're not that important. And in fact, they begin to take their importance for granted. And I've heard this referred to as message fatigue or cognitive complacency. And it's interesting, I was doing some research around mission, vision, values, and according to a recent Gallup survey, Highly engaged teams show 21% greater profitability and 59% lower turnover than less engaged teams around mission, vision, values. So it's clear your team is executing and reaping the benefits of keeping that center stage for your firm.

You got to keep it fresh and you have to keep people growing. Otherwise, yeah, it can become like a Groundhog Day where you feel like you're just playing whack-a-mole.

So, The last thing I want to spend a little time talking about is this idea of talent. Your firm is doing an extraordinary job internally around process. Obviously you got a good growth strategy. What's your future look like 3 years from now? We're having this conversation. Where are you finding the talent?

We've been really fortunate. I have an incredibly talented president at Clarity Wealth that, has a tremendous network. He's been in the industry for a long time in senior leadership and management, and he's really our business development and talent development officer. He's been really excellent at finding great people that we can have a conversation with about helping them develop their career. And the big part of that that hiring choice is I come in and I give that core value speech. And the concept is I want to scare them away if it's not the right fit. I either want them walking out of the office going, oh my gosh, I have to work at this place, or this place is not for me. That was the weirdest conversation I ever had. I never want to go back. It's either all in or all out. So yeah, I really lean on my team and the president of our company to, bring us, and he continues to surprise me with some just really wonderful people that are perfect in this business. Maybe they're already in this business. They have their CFP. They're just in the wrong place. And when they see what we have and they see what we're doing, if they're all in, then it's a perfect addition and they just add to that culture and they spark that energy for us.

Yeah, that's pretty powerful when you get people thinking about career. You're describing, however, for me, with the president who has a network, who's consistently— consistently is the key— recruiting and seeking to attract new talent. I find the firms that struggle the most, it's lumpy. They sort of get in a recruiting binge, they hire a few people, then they stop, then they fill up their capacity. They're usually behind on capacity, then they go try to recruit some. And they seem to always struggle to find people.

It's in his DNA. Yeah. And he's very, you know, we're very transparent. Listen, we're scaling up and we're not hiring you today or next month, but just stay in contact with us because eventually it's gonna be perfect. So yeah, that's been great. I think that, This is a wonderful profession. It's a noble profession, as you've said, and it's a very difficult profession to get started in today. Why is that?

Because of— I don't think it's any harder than when you got started trying to get a job at a Prudential office.

Maybe I'm jaded. Maybe I just never want to go back, but fee compression and, you know, To come in as a solo trainee on your own with no service, no support, no mentorship. I mean, that's where I was. It was a John Wayne swimming lesson.

There are not call lists today. You can go to jail for calling the wrong people.

So that's my point. Now, I really believe, and I've had some good experience with this over really the last 25 years, specifically with one of my colleagues who, has shown me that you can do this. You can take somebody that has the core values, is super smart, super driven, and doesn't know a stock from a bond, and we can grow them into a managing director. And I feel that with a good process, a good support system, I get to sit shotgun.

Yeah, riding second chair and observing. Yes. And doing alongside of a senior professional as a mentor.

So you give me a newly minted 20-something CFP that has core values, is humble, hungry, smart, and driven. I think in 5 to 7 years, I can get them into just crushing it as a lead advisor in that VP, senior VP role.

You give me— 5 to 7 years? 5 to 7 years. Okay, walk me through, what are the steps? Come on, you gotta tell us what's the secret sauce to getting somebody. I believe it happens. My son Jonathan is doing that at, at Weilert Wunderlich and Associates in Dallas, Texas. He's a 27-year-old professional. He's been at it 5 years and I'm watching him second chair sitting at the feet of masters. So I get it, but give us the roadmap.

Tell us. Well, there has to be growth in the organization. There has to be lots of great families that are being onboarded that need to be served in a consistent and repeatable high-quality advice delivery process that is seamless across the organization. That's critical because now I can take a newly minted CFP and they can sit second chair, they can learn the process, they can become fluent, and they can create the deliverables for these families. So now they're really getting to know these families. They're sitting in the room with the families. And at a certain point in year 1 or 2 or wherever it is, they're now You know, how about you take them through this section of the review? It's exactly right. They're reaching back out to them. They're calling them on their birthday. They're taking them out to lunch. And their kids and their grandkids are connecting more deeply with the younger member of the team.

Yeah, that's—

so if you have lots of great families that are seeking your advice, they want to come on as clients, You need the capacity and you can ease them into the deep end. You don't have to throw them in.

So I've said for years, you know, the financial advisor role as sort of the industry has built it is kind of a unicorn role. And I think the evidence of that is, what is it? 1 out of 10 make it, maybe less, 1 out of 12. And if you strip the role apart, that's it. I think that's what you're saying here, right?

Yeah. I mean, there's not many people that can call strangers, encourage them to give them their life savings and hire people, manage people, manage a P&L, manage compliance, be an advisor, be a great planner, stay on top of all the estate taxes. Too big a job today. They are unicorns.

But if you strip it down to its component parts, each of them individually is not a unicorn. That's right. Okay, we're gonna leave it right there. As in typical Barron's fashion, let's wrap this up with an actionable idea, if you don't mind.

All right, well, in my true nature of being a process nerd, I'm gonna give 3 book recommendations, but under the same genre of process, okay? Okay, good. 'Cause look, some people, may resist process, and I get that. They resist it because they think it constrains them, it's constrictive. I find exactly the opposite. I think when you have process and you have structure, it allows you to free space in your brain that now allows us to think more creatively and confidently about the future. So As it relates to personal process, 3 books that have changed my life at the ground level would be "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. GTD. GTD, man, 18 years ago, that was another page-turner. I can tell you that I have an airtight system. Nothing falls through the cracks. I have, when I sit down with somebody, I haven't been pinging them with emails. I haven't been knocking on their door saying, hey, can we talk about this? No, Ray, you and I have a 1-hour meeting once a week. I pull up your agenda and we go right through it. It's all listed. You know, I have my waiting for list, I have my project list, I have my next. It has been a game changer. It allows me to empty my brain. When I go on my walks on Saturday or Sunday morning and all those good ideas come up, I'm just sending emails to myself and getting them out of my brain. So when I jump back in and I'm in work mode, Oh, here's all these great ideas, let me process these. So that's GTD, Getting Things Done by David Allen. At the higher altitude, as far as process and structure on the business, would be Traction by Gino Wickman. If you read it, if it speaks to you, I would encourage people to look at it and don't try to do it on your own, hire a professional to help you implement that. Perfect. And at the highest level, would be the latest book by our friend Gino Wickman, "Shine," which really takes to the next level of how can we be driven entrepreneurs, which is a blessing and a curse, and shed a lot of that stuff that we have and really be happy and really shine. There's a little woo-woo stuff in there, but it's a really, really great, book, there's the 10 disciplines that I continue to look at, work through. It's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. As soon as you think you're done with them, you gotta start back at the top. And, you know, being humble is one of those disciplines.

So, by the way, those are all great book recommendations. Do you have a written professional development plan yourself? Yes. Okay, beautiful. That's going to be my actionable idea. Anybody listening to this episode of The Way Forward, think about your own written professional development plan over the next 90 days, year, and 3 years. What skills and experiences do you hope to hone and improve and experience to make you a better professional and ultimately a better leader?

Yeah, you gotta have something to run for.

Keith, thanks for your time today.

It has been a pleasure.

Thanks, Ray. 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.