Making Your Mark as CEO in Your First 100 Days

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Some advisors evolve into the CEO role over time because they founded the company. But how do you handle it when you are promoted into the CEO role of a $4 billion RIA while you're still in your 30s? Hi everyone, I'm business coach Steve Sandusky, and today's episode is the second in a series of shows that I'm doing on the role of the CEO. In the first episode of this series, I talked to Scott Keller and Vik Malhotra from McKinsey Company. Scott and Vik are co-authors of a great new book called CEO Excellence, and in that conversation, we set the stage for what the CEO role is all about. Today, I'm joined by Mary Beth Storjohann. Mary Beth is the co-CEO of Abacus Wealth Partners, which is a $4 billion RIA firm based in Southern California. Mary Beth was promoted into the co-CEO role on February 1st, 2022, after being with the firm for just 3 years. I wanted to have Mary Beth on the show to discuss what it's like to be a newly minted CEO, how she prepared for the role, and how she plans to keep Abacus on a fast growth path while staying true to its core values for years to come. With that, let's get started with Mary Beth Storjohann. Well, one of the key differences between a good CEO and an excellent CEO is the way that they think. So I want to get into your head here for just a little bit. So let's go back to March 2019. You're running your RIA that you founded called Workable Wealth, but you're also contemplating whether or not to merge your firm with Abacus Wealth Partners, which at the time I think was about a $2 billion-plus RIA firm. So take me back to that point in time. What were you thinking? How did you go about the decision-making process to decide that you were going to give up your independent firm and merge it with a much larger firm?

2018 is when we began discussions. I had two little ones at home, and Workable Wealth was on an upward trajectory. The podcast, the book, all of the marketing things that one puts into place for their business— the machine was working and the business was growing. And I basically came at a crossroads when JD Bruce, the then-president of, of Abacus, offered me the role of Chief Marketing Officer with the firm. And I said, hmm, well, that's a little bit more interesting. And then I began to analyze and approach the situation from continuing to build my own firm with the prospect of building that machine with my face attached to it, or having a seat at the table for a larger company, not having it be all me, but then being able to contribute the knowledge that I have around sales, around marketing, and leverage Share that with 30 other advisors at Abacus and the impact that could have. And so I started to, I swear I had these giant Post-its that you can brainstorm on. They were all over the room about what I want, pros and cons of each. So it really came down to if I had all of the money in the world, where would I be spending my time? And it was always going to be about educating and empowering people around their finances, but it didn't have to be just under my face. How would I have much larger impact and how would I be able to reach a larger audience? I felt in my heart and in my gut that I would be able to have a larger impact by bringing my passion into Abacus and being able to lean on other advisors, grow their marketing platform, and, and share that goal.

One of the things that makes a great CEO is the mindset that they bring to the job. What do you think is your mindset that separated you from some of the other potential candidates? I know your co-CEO, with Neela Hummel?

I think there's a couple things. One, I would say my mindset is servant leadership. I live and, like, breathe servant leadership, wanting to make sure employees, clients, key stakeholders— I want to be of service. I want to make sure people feel taken care of, and I want to do right by them. And so I think the servant leadership aspect and how that shows up in the day-to-day and in the big picture is really important. And I think the other mindset is identifying the problems and being able to pull the story together. Like, what's the story? How does this all kind of play out? And really always going back to the impact and the story. And so my mindset is always around, like, how does this land for others? Like, distributed, communicated, empowering people. And I think that's the, the other aspect of, of us flying together. And we'll share more about that in a minute. But part of this, like, co-CEO thing is how are we making sure that our vision and our work is being best communicated again to our clients, to our employees, and to the greater industry? And I think that mindset of always Being able to pull the pieces and the puzzle together, not just working in a silo, is a differentiator.

And I'm also interested in how the co-CE role position and the structure evolved. So back in 2019 when you joined, like I said, I think the firm had about $2 billion in assets under management. Today, I think there are $4.5 billion.

About $4, yeah. $4 billion.

A little over $4 billion. So great growth here in just 3 years. So tell me a little bit about how the structure evolved. You mentioned J.D. Bruce was president of the company at the time. Tell me how you got to where the firm was structured in 2019 at $2 billion in assets to how they're structured today with the co-CEO. And what does the C-suite look like for a $4 billion RIA firm?

Until 2011, the Abacus used what was called a strategic council. So that was all of the owners plus JD Bruce and the COO at the time. So JD and the COO were the executing. That group got together 4 times a year offsite. In 2011, JD took over as president. Then they continued with the strategic council at that time. Instead of having 2 people execute, JD executed. So he was the one executing, the one person implementing the vision. Then in 2016, they went from 6 partners to 9 partners, and that's when they decided to put in the board of directors. So that was 5 people on the board, and then JD as president was reporting to the board. That basically stayed in place until 2018, when they decided to put the C-suite in place. Where it started was the president and CEO were sharing a seat. There was a chief marketing officer. I came in in 2019. We have chief of advisors. We have a chief operating officer, CIO, and then CFO. So during that time, the CEO and the president were two different people and they were sharing a seat. Somewhere in there, the board decided basically what they were going to do was vest the CEO with creating a singular vision for the firm. So which basically removed the need for a president. So that's kind of how that went, is they, they vested the CEO with creating the vision, and then the president role kind of went aside. So you've seen JD's role, you'll hear about what he's doing now in a moment, because he's, he's, JD's done all of the roles in the, in the firm. And in many ways, he moved into our innovation seat, chief of innovation in 2020-ish. And then now on our C-suite, he is actually the chief of growth. So that's how we got to where we are. Last year, Brent, our CEO at the time, decided he wanted to kind of step aside and lead broader impact initiatives at the firm, impact investment initiatives. And so he's focusing on like a larger and growing market segment for us. And that's where he wants to focus his time and energy, which is basically stepping aside from the CEO role, which opened the door for an internal CEO search process.

Do you know if the firm looked at some other structures? Because a co-CEO It's not unheard of, but it's not exactly common either. So how did they settle on a co-CEO role here?

So this is the unique part that I don't know a lot of people, um, people aren't aware of, but Neela and I actually chose to apply together. So they did— the Abacus, the board decided to do an internal search process. They opened it up to partners, employees, the whole firm. And if you're interested, apply. They hired a consultant for the process. So it was very well managed, very well thought out. There was 3 different rounds of interviews. And Neela and I had been throughout COVID, throughout the, you know, past few years working very closely. So Neela was a chief of advisories— advisory services now is what we call it— but chief of advisors. Me as CMO had been working very closely together. We started talking about the task at hand, what our strengths were, how we see ourselves as leaders, and decided to buck the trend and submit ourselves as co-CEOs. We were pulled aside separately, asked if we were willing to apply individually, if we were willing, and if the other person would do it, if we would do it. We were already prepared with our answers. We said no, it was both or neither, and it has proven to be the best decision that we could have made. But we really did a lot of planning and intentionality and work before we submitted that application together. But we went through the whole process, the two of us were able to lean on each other and the board ultimately chose us. And so they weren't seeking a co-CEO position, but us versus other applicants, they did choose us for the co-CEO. So I think we were able to communicate very clearly what our vision is and how we'd like to lead and what our priorities are, and the board supported it.

Well, that is actually very fascinating. I've never heard that type of thing happening where two people get together and say, you get a package or none.

Yeah, it was different. You know, and we just think about, You know, Neela and I both also, you know, we're incredibly hard workers. We have tons of passion. Our skills are very complementary. And we both have, you know, 5 children. I think they're 6 and under right now at home. And so what's going to make us both thrive? What's going to make Abacus thrive? And how do we create this position that's the best for Abacus and for our clients, employees, etc.? So this is it.

Well, that leads to the obvious question, which is how are you dividing up the duties here between the two of you?

Yeah, so I am covering strategic planning, growth, and communications. I have, so our chief of growth and our CIO report directly to me. And Neela is covering advisory and operations. So our COO and our chief of advisors reports directly to her. And then we have our CFO who reports directly to both of us. So that's kind of how those departments are subset. So we have each have a few. Me coming out of marketing, obviously I'll still maintain a heavy hand in the marketing, the story, the branding, the communication of our story externally. Nila coming from advisory still had like, you know, a knowledge and heavy hand there. So as we're getting and kind of like moving out of the roles, but that's how we divvied up the org chart so that we can make key and strategic decisions in those areas, you know, kind of like let each other know, but we trust the other to, to manage that.

So where does the head of talent, head of people, where do they report through?

Head of people is currently report is under the operations, but we, Nila and I meet with her together. So between the advisory, she's heavy on the advisory, in terms of HR, etc. There's— but we meet with her right now from an employee engagement standpoint, but that's— it's heavier on Neela's side than it is on mine. Some of the HR falls under the CFO. 2 to 3 people who do dual reporting right now with Neela and I, clear on which one of us is taking the lead on it. So our CCO, as of right now, our COO is still wearing the CCO hat, but we'll be giving that role to somebody new very shortly. And she will be reporting to both Neela and I, with me taking the lead on that though.

Okay, there are co-founders to Abacus, a couple still relatively young guys. So what are they doing? How are they still involved in the company?

So both are still quite active in the company. Spencer Sherman, he maintains client relationships. He actually is very involved from a mindfulness and mentorship perspective. So he leads mindfulness sessions for the company every morning, Monday through Thursday. He's a mentor to many of advisors, and we— and heavily leveraged for our sales training. If you look up Spencer, he's got his whole own like mindfulness kind of thing that he does. And he brings out to the local communities online. So he does a lot of teaching in that space too, which is sales for Abacus in terms of his presence. Brent again is leading the broader impact investment initiatives, focusing on large and growing market segments. And then he's focusing on continued diversification of team members, clients, et cetera. Also working with some of our higher level clients. Mentoring and being available to Neela and I if necessary, and sales perspective as well. I mean, both of our co-founders are great in terms of just relationship development management. And so being able to get them back out there doing stuff that's exciting for them out of the day-to-day management, but, you know, I hate to say shaking hands and kissing babies, but they're just so good for the relationships. And there you see them light up when they, when they get to be in that space.

I want to go back for a second here about decision-making. So now you're co-CEO. So tell me a little bit about how you make decisions at the executive level, how you share decision-making with Neela, and then how you think about what decisions you can make at your level versus what decisions have to go to the board. Because I think you still have a board. Is that correct?

Yes. Yep, we have a board.

And you're reporting to the board. And before you answer that, though, Is the board made up just of internal people, or do you have some outside board members?

Internal at the time. Internal right now. We have discussed and are open to having external members in the future, but at this moment in time, it's internal only.

OK. All right. So let's talk about the decision-making.

Decision-making. So Neela and I try to, if possible, make all of our decisions— make the decisions or debate decisions behind closed doors, because it is very important as co-CEOs to show up as a unified front, right? Whether or not we disagree, that needs to be between the two of us, but it's important that I back her up on any decisions that she's making and any decisions that I'm making. So that, that's kind of what we've— we have decided from that part is if there's a decision that does require both of us, that we make those decisions in private and then bring them to the team, or we gather the, you know, gather the input from our team as necessary, then make the decision and come together. So I think that's the number one thing about co-leadership is making sure we have each other's back, and it's not like a one's playing mom against dad, you know, it's not that situation of, oh, I can't get what I want from you, so let me go over here. In general, I think when we're making decisions, it's understanding who the stakeholders are in those decisions and who the decisions will impact. So we want to know, if I'm making a decision on something, what department is it impacting, what people, how is this going to impact clients? And so before we make a quick decision, I think a lot of us in the industry and a lot of us in the CEO seat, there's this like shiny object and we will make the fast decisions. But one of the things about our leadership is really being intentional, understanding any fallout that can happen from our decisions. So we may slow down a bit and think, okay, who is this decision going to impact and how are we going to communicate with them? So it's that perspective as well, understanding what the impact will be and the potential fallout, pros and cons, and then making the call.

So how are you dealing with the board?

Our board has monthly meetings to get together to talk about general company business. So right now we're actually in the middle of— we had done an initial— there was a lot of transition this year, for example. So we had rolled out a budget that was, you know, approved basically through the first quarter. So Neela and I are in the midst right now of redoing our budget projections for the rest of the year, making any adjustments. We're putting a presentation together that we'll bring to the board to say, hey, here's where margins are looking. Here's some of the key areas, you know, we're spending on, some of the metrics, etc. So it's ultimately up to them. Our job is to tell them what we want to do, how we're doing it, and the data that supports our decisions. And they can approve or, you know, if they want us to make margins higher, that's on them to make that decision or not. But we bring to them them our plan, and they ultimately approve or don't approve it.

Tell me a little bit about the planning process. So a lot of firms will have like an annual strategic planning meeting, and then they may have quarterly updates, and then they may have monthly management meetings. I think in your case you've got monthly board meetings, weekly meetings as well. How does the process look at your firm?

So one of the things that Neela and I submitted as part of our co-CEO application is the desire to implement the EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System, structure at Abacus. So we had read— Neela and I both read Traction over a year ago, I believe it was January of 2021. We both read Traction and we thought that it was an amazing and perfect fit for Abacus and what we wanted to, what we needed in order to move us forward. So what, so, so I'm telling you this because we're actually in a transition, we're in the middle of implementing that. So obviously we didn't have the power if we weren't CEO or at the time, but now that we are CEOs, we've been working on creating our org chart, our accountability structure. So Neela and I have been putting that together. Our strategic planning process is usually annually. We are now in the middle, beginning stages of building our strategic plan, like our 10-year plan of what we want to look like, setting our 10-year targets, where we would like to go, and then setting more clear kind of SMART goals around our 3-year vision. We are working through that process with our executive team, and we've actually just engaged an EOS consultant in the past 2 weeks. So we had our first session a week ago. We'll have our next session in a few weeks. And so we'll go through that process with her for strategic planning. And then our executive team meets weekly for what are called level 10 meetings. So we're still building up the structure of that because we're setting our rocks and our goals, but it, we basically, there's an annual planning process that will go with this. And we do what we call this a one-page business plan every year. So that rolls out, it includes our core values, our vision, historical and future revenue projection growths, the key areas of focus for the year. And marketing strategy and a few other items. But we roll that plan out to the company once each year, and we just completed that because, again, new CEOs trying to get everything organized. But we just rolled that out to the company about 2 weeks ago, and we will roll it out continually each year.

So I want to talk about the planning process here a little bit. I want to talk about the vision a little bit. And Abacus is a very unique firm because your 2 co-founders are Buddhists. And a lot of the culture and the brand seems to be infused with that. And I had a— I did a podcast with Brent Kessel a few years ago. So, we went pretty deep into what you guys were doing there. What I want to explore here is, is I think about Buddhism, you've got the Four Noble Truths, you've got the Eightfold Path, you've got life is suffering, you've got, you know, go the middle way. It's not about how much money we can make. You know, greed is a bad thing. So how do you deal with the tension between the two co-founders who are Buddhists and you? I don't know if you're a Buddhist or not, but you're the co-CEO. We've got these strategic plans, 10-year plans, 3-year plans, 1-year plans. We've got goals, profit margins. How do you throw all that into the mix and still stay true to some of the founding principles of the firm?

Yeah, I think one of the first things I will say is that Abacus has and always will be a purpose-driven business. We are purpose-driven to our core, and that is not changing. We wear our hearts on our sleeves, and you will continue to see that, if not even in an even more refined way with me and Neela in these seats. So in terms of that aspect of what Brent and Spencer bring to the table in terms of doing business and doing good, that is staying, and that is— there is no tension there because we are, we are fully on board. I'll speak for a moment to when I came in as CMO, because that was actually different. That was part of this, right, was understanding what was under the levels here at Abacus. What was— well, and I always referred to it as secret Abacus, right? What was secret Abacus? Because don't forget the mindfulness, the money meditations, the website that we have now, that was all part of my department, right? I've started to pull some of those aspects out and they were always there. And I think Brent and Spencer did a lot of speaking. But so now I'm— now I've put the wrapper on it in my CMO role and said, how do we highlight this even further? I know that Brent and Spencer were actually interviewed in an article recently, I think Barron's article, where we were profiled for being a Buddhist RIA. And Brent had a great quote in there where he's, he's talking more, it's about the mindfulness, right? The, the being present. And I think apart from the Buddhism, the mindfulness is a huge aspect of what we do as well. So again, starting each of our staff meetings, we start each staff meeting with a moment to arrive, a moment of mindfulness where Spencer leads us through breathing. And so it's really about being mindful with our money and what our intentions are. Being mindful of our impact. And I think that's where you, you won't see a lot of tension. I will continue to, to speak to the niche and the subset of clients that is part of our blue ocean, is being a Buddhist RIA, having Buddhist clients, being able to speak and understand the language and knowledge of that, of that group. And so we do do some unique things about advertising to that population as well. But what we also do is really focus on the mindfulness and the intentionality and the sense of enough and ease, which I think is overarching, like all of our clients, right? That is something that most of our clients come to us with is, do I have enough? Like, what do I have enough for retirement? Do I have enough to send my kids to college, to do this charity? It's always about a sense of enough. And so it's tying a lot of those things together, or say borrowing from the Buddhist practices and kind of interweaving that into who we are. Those components will stay and always be a part of us because it informs a lot of how we operate, who we are, and some of our decision-making and making sure that we just slow down. Take a deep breath. And are we, even as a business, as an RIA, are we comparing ourselves to others when we set our goals? Are we staying in our blue ocean as Abacus? And what is important to us? Are we just chasing the growth or are we creating an intentional impact while we're doing it? I think there's a lot of wisdom and a lot of benefits that we can get from leveraging that mindfulness component. So, so we do try to honor both. I mean, we have a meditation room in our office, so that stuff, those aspects are not going anywhere. They are part of our culture. Whether or not, I think we only have a handful of Buddhists, like actual Buddhist employees, but it's still like parts of our culture are tied into it. And I think they're really impactful.

Abacus came on my radar more than a decade ago. I was reading a Buddhist magazine and what do I see but a full-page ad from Abacus? And I'm like, who is this? What financial firm is advertising in a Buddhist magazine? And so of course I immediately went to the website And so that's how you folks first got on my radar a long time ago. And then a few years later had Brent on the podcast. So I've been watching you guys for a long time. I've been fascinated.

It's, it's interesting. Yeah. I mean, the magazine ads, I think, have attributed to a significant amount of our clients. And just in, in the recent years of my joining, I was like, hey guys, can we transition from magazine to online ads? And so just, you know, again, maintaining that presence and, you know, one of the, some of the work that we're doing now, even behind the scenes, I have the marketing team from SEO purposes, like who does financial advisor? How do we make sure that we're more, we're staying up to date there? Because again, It's not our full market segment, but it is a part of it. And it's something unique that we can do and speak to. And so we do want to make sure that people know that we are here.

So continuing on this thread here just a little bit, I want to talk about the vision for the firm. And certainly one of the key roles of the CEO is to help drive the vision. So I'm going to read your vision here as I pulled it off your website. It says, at Abacus, we expand what's possible with money as a purpose-driven, values-centric financial advisory firm We are focused on creating authentic and measurable impact in 3 areas. Now, I'm going to go through these 3 areas, and I want you to share what you're doing as the CEO, how you're trying to drive impact, measurable impact in these 3 areas. So, the first one is delivering values-aligned financial advice to improve people's lives. So, as a CEO, how are you doing that?

So, we have a really great client journey that we've created for clients that we're in the middle of rolling out to our advisors right now. And that's really about, again, the story, the messaging, and crafting what is the user experience. What is the experience of our clients when they're coming, when they're being onboarded? What are the stages that we're bringing them through? Not dissimilar to the CFP planning process, but really making it our abacus process and making sure that its value is aligned. What are the questions that we're asking them? How are we getting through to getting down to the root of what is important to them? So again, it's about their values from, you know, from a personal standpoint, and then also in terms of aligning their money with their values and our portfolio options as well. So we have a clearly defined process that we're in the middle of rolling out to firm, but that is one of our goals this year, is the integration of our— what we're calling it our client journey. That's one of the key areas, and continuing to refine that over time.

Well, and I was just reading a blog post this morning from Spencer, and it's titled Why Buddhism, Financial Planning, and Investing Belong Together. So yeah, talking about the values-aligned financial advice, and I think he did a great job. It's a really, really good article, and I think he did a great job just tying how all those pieces tie together within the brand that you have. So I thought that was really good. The second one here in the vision is managing investments that have a positive impact on society and the environment.

Yeah, so we have a variety of portfolios that we call their values aligned, so they have a positive impact there on this environment. We have ESG portfolio, we have a social justice portfolio, and so managing our investments in such a way that there is a positive impact on the environment, society, are a key factor. And then Our job as CEOs is to make sure that our advisors are empowered in telling that story and that our clients and our prospects are aware of the impact that their money is having. So while we have these great portfolios, there's always more work to do to make sure that our advisors feel equipped in telling the story and that our clients are seeing the impact that their dollars are having, right? So you're not just putting your money in a portfolio, sustainability portfolio, and saying, great, I'm doing good for the environment. What does that mean? What does that look like under the hood? How are your dollars actually making an impact? And so part of our role part of our job as CEO is make sure that we're better, we're doing a better job at telling that story and making sure that is exciting to our clients. It's exciting to our advisors because it's human nature. I think the tendency is to stay with something that we feel safe with, right? So it's very easy to anchor to one portfolio, which might be a sustainability or an ESG portfolio, because that's what everybody else is picking up on. They're like, okay, I know that thing, so let me stay over here. But what about the other options that are out there? What about the other lenses that we can be using to analyze these investments? And how can we better tell the story? So our job again is to make sure that our advisors are trained and feel equipped in telling that story and that our clients are knowledgeable and feel excited about, about what their money is doing and then also, you know, become our advocates and are sharing that story with others.

So let's talk about branding for a minute because I would consider you a branding expert. How should the advisory community be thinking about branding and what's the biggest mistake that you see people making when it comes to branding?

I've been saying this for years though, so it's not new. The biggest mistake that I see with branding is if you're putting an older retired couple walking on the beach, holding hands on your website or a lighthouse. If you have those two things, I'm so sorry, but those are still branding mistakes because everybody is doing it and you haven't done the actual avatar work. When I think about branding, I think it's, it's critical. It is critical to understand your story, your, I call it your brand personality, which I think is Abacus is definitely there, right? It's our brand is separate from Brenton Spencer. And that's, that was why I was brought in. And that's part of the story I've been telling is we have co-founders, but Abacus as a company, as an entity, that brand is separate from who they are. So thinking about your brand, What is the story? How is your message landing? How is your message pulling at your avatar's heartstrings? You wanna emotionally connect with the people that you are working with, and they should get that from being on your website, from listening to a podcast. They should know who you are and, and have that connection to you from, so from a branding perspective, you start with your avatar, right? That was the number one. That was the work I did when I joined Abacus. We created a market marketing strategy from from very early on, even before I actually took the CMO role, I was, I was working with JD and Brent. But you want to understand who your avatars are. You want to know the demographics and you want to know the psychographics. Like, you want to know those psychographics are very hugely important. And that's what your brand gets built around is what are the psychographics, where are your clients hanging out? What are they doing? What are they passionate about? And so from that aspect, that's important. And then for us, it's, it's pairing who who our avatars are with also who we are, right? We are purpose-driven. We wear, like I said before, we wear our hearts on our sleeves. We care about the environment. We encourage people to Uber, to walk places. We, you know, have— we order vegan menus and like regular menu, traditional menus when we're catering. There's— so we— DEI is a big part of what we do. We're constantly putting out messages. We're wearing our heart on our sleeve and creating that impact in the world. And our avatars are attracted to that, right? They want to do business with a business that's, that's doing good. For us, our avatars, the people that we want to work with, care about doing good in the world. They care about healthy lifestyles. They're shopping at Whole Foods, they're shopping at REI. Like, we know all of those things, and they're going to ask us these questions about impact. They're going to ask us questions about our values, and those are the people that we want to attract and work with. We're going to turn some off too, though. I will say we lose some clients as well, right?

Well, right along those lines, so one of the things about branding is if you're doing it well, you're going to repel people that aren't attracted to your particular brand. But let's just say that you get someone who is in— I'm going to say the fracking business or the oil business, something that is maybe— and I don't want to pick on the oil business, but let's just take some business that is not aligned with your values. They've got $10 million. They come in and they want to work with you, but they're not aligned with your values. Do you still work with them? How would you deal with a situation like that?

We land, I'm saying we as partnership, land in different areas on this answer, but where the firm and Neela and I have landed is that we accept you as you are, as long as you accept us as we are. We're not changing for you. This is, and that's how I led Workable Wealth too. I'm like, great. I had Democrats, Republicans, the whole spectrum, military spouse with progressive values, whatever all the things are. But as long as you accept us as we are, we accept you as you are. And so if you're going to come in and you want to invest in one of our values-aligned portfolios, fantastic. That's great. You're okay with us sharing about our DEI work every 6 months and giving an update, getting those emails. Great. We'd love to have you as long as you're accepting of us, because we are not changing. And so I think that is where we have landed because we have lost clients. We have gotten feedback on some of the work that we've been doing in the past couple of years. It hasn't landed for everybody, but we are not going to fold ourselves into a pretzel and we're not going to sacrifice our values to accommodate those people. So that's, that's what that is. Yeah.

And, and obviously it's worked because you've gone from $2 billion to $4 billion in 3 years. So obviously, and, and that, I mean, that's the beautiful thing about branding and about having clarity and about knowing exactly who you are. It's like, this is who we are. We, we wear our heart on our sleeve. We put it out there and we're gonna attract the people that like that and most likely repel the people who don't. Yeah. But it's a big enough pie out there.

And that's it. It's a big enough pie. And it's perfectly okay that if we lose employees or some clients, because we are clear on who we are and how we want to show up. And, and it's, it's being being okay and being accepting. And that kind of goes back to the mindfulness and the being present, accepting that we will lose people and we will lose business because of who we are. But there is more than enough out there and there are people who are really attracted to what we're doing. And there's ways for us to even get more into the details and like nittier and grittier in the work that we're doing and have even more of an impact. So, so I feel Neil and I both feel very confident in the direction that we're going and okay with, with those changes. If we have to sacrifice a little to have a bigger outsize impact.

Yeah. So back to the vision here for a second. The first two were delivering values-aligned financial advice to improve people's lives. The second was managing investments that have a positive impact on society and the environment. And the third one that we haven't talked about yet is affecting change in the financial services industry to create a more diverse and equitable profession and to serve a client base comprised of diverse backgrounds. Actually, I guess you have touched on that just a little bit, but anything else to add to that?

No, I mean, that's, that's one of our goals. And so one of the things that we are working on is actually refining that even further. We are doing the work internally right now to have— we understand part of the DEI work is having a fair and equitable, like, policies and procedures internally in the work that we can do. We've hired consultants, and so we're doing that work. And, and then part of our strategic planning process is really targeting what, you know, and defining what that means to us.

Let's go back to the CEO role here. So on February 1st, 2022, you and Neela became the co-CEOs. When was it announced internally, or when did you know that you were going to be a co-CEO? And then what did you do between the time that you knew it was going to happen and February 1st? What were you doing to prepare yourself for the role?

Neela and I were told towards the end of October. I know it was before Halloween. Halloween. So it was, it was right around there. So we, the board called us up, we had a phone call, hung up the phone, obviously did the appropriate thing, which was to call each other immediately afterwards and scream into the phone. And then, you know, so we had a minute of celebration and then I think the next week we immediately got to work. And so during that time we were rolling out and figuring out, okay, well, what does our org chart look like? What does accountability look like? Who are we changing seats? Right. Because we're inheriting a model, but that doesn't necessarily mean we keep that model? Do we want a new, you know, COO, CFO, CIO, whatever it is? We were spending that time really evaluating our org chart and the accountability structure there. And in addition to that, we were focusing on preparing for a town hall for our employees, which was kind of like the unveiling of our CEOship, if you call it that, but letting them know what to expect. So we were really focused on how do we want to lead this firm? What are we leading with? What are our values? How do we want to show up for our employees? Because Brenton Spencer obviously has such a big presence. JD has a great presence. How do we show up as our authentic selves? A little bit quirky, nerdy, but also moms and bring that to the table and make sure that our team is excited about the change ahead. So it was a lot of that. I mean, the holiday time flew by. February 1st, we got into the seat. And I think the very next week we did our town hall, which is what to expect. And so really we're leading with going back to that servant leadership mindset, spending time with our employees, getting to know what, what's happening in each department. I'm focused more externally than Neela is. She's obviously internally focused. So I'm understanding we're going through our M&A process, our strategy right now. What do we want to refine? What do we want to target? But it's been, it's been a lot of work. I mean, the days are long and fly by, and then you, you go home to, you know, you have two little kids here at the same time. So, you know, it's just, it's all a blur.

You're still mom at home.

Still a mom at home. And it's been a little, it's been busy and we've gotten a lot done, but there was a lot of preparation in between and we're still you know, what, 40, 45 days in here and, and building it. And it's been really exciting. Really exciting.

So when a company gets a new CEO, the new CEO wants to make changes. They want to put their stamp on the company. Oftentimes they want to be bold. They want to have maybe a 100-day plan. So how do you think about that? I know it's still kind of early, but how are you thinking about your vision, Neela's vision for the company, how things might be different? And oftentimes what got you here isn't going to get you there. How are you thinking about the next 3, 5, 10 years of Abacus?

The 100-day plan is really focused on clarity and communication. So getting everybody on the same page is our top priority. What is our vision? What are we looking to accomplish? Why are we doing it? Why are we growing? We're growing because we care about impact. We're not just growing for growth's sake. We're growing because more revenue we have, the more we can move different institutions, different types of things. We have larger impact that way. So getting our employees bought into the stories and understanding clear on the story is the number one priority. Communication, clarity, organization. And then from there, that's the really fun part, right? Because then we're just thinking about impact. And what I think that we've seen— we are— there is no shortage of visionary mindset here at Abacus. There— I mean, we are a completely innovative visionary company. That is, there is no question about that. And one of the things that I'm excited about, because I also have, you know, Neil and I both have big vision, we're We're going to focus on putting our arms around that though, because it's easy to just say we want to do good in the world. It's easy to say we want to create impact in the world, but what does that look like? What does success in that way look like? And how do we better tell that story? And so part of our vision is actually setting some targets and some kind of goals on, on where we're focusing our time. We are really great in charitable giving, but making sure we're putting a wrapper around where we want to create that impact so that we can measure it. So I think that's one of the things that I see us doing. I also have goals of like $100 million revenue in 10 years that I can tell you about, but I'm so excited about the stories and that we're going to be able to share by actually kind of putting our arms in a container around where we're measuring our impact at, because it's going to, I believe, lead to more growth. You hear a little bit, we talk about how we're impact-oriented, and I always call that the secret advocates because it's like little pieces of stories that people are doing underneath that aren't really highlighted, but by us kind of committing and doubling down of here are the key areas we're making an impact, Here's what it looks like. Here's what it means. Here's how we're going to measure it. And here's what our KPIs are. That's exciting to me because that leads to more stories, more press, more things, more clients, et cetera.

How did you make the shift from heading up a functional area, which was the CMO role, to now the C— the co-CEO, where you've got to look at the vision for the whole company? So from functional expert to the whole company, how did you make that shift?

So I think a couple things. One, you know, I've been in the industry going on 18 years and I've worn a lot of hats in the industry. So bringing the experience I bring into the seat is one thing. Plus I ran my own RIA, so I was CEO of a smaller, smaller piece of the RIA pie, but I was CEO and wore the hats. And I work— my, my subset of clients has actually been small business owners, right? So there's just a lot that happens around vision planning and budget budgets and intersection there. So from, from that functional shift, I joined Abacus. And as I mentioned previously, the goal was part CMO, part advisor. I got in there and I was like, oh, well, what about— can I, can I just take on sales too? So we just, you know, I want to code this marketing, but like the sales side of it is that we really need to hold the advisors accountable. They need to have clear goals. Let's like, let's— we can— what about, what about this? I started doing the what about this, and I'm a collector of objects and things. And so probably in the first 12 months sales. I was the chief marketing officer, but I had marketing and sales for the company underneath me. So it was already on like the revenue. I knew the revenue goal for the firm, and then I was helping to hold advisors accountable to it, meeting with team leads, communicating with the company from the sales perspective. So that was consolidated in, which was a big part of it. So then I have the story and the numbers that I'm being held accountable for. And then, and just working, and then again, the aspects of knowing some of the compliance issues from being a CEO previously of running my own firm. I already understand looking at the books, these knowledge, this, the skill set, I was already bringing this kind of like wider lens to the role in general. Also because I'm worried about the story, right? How does marketing land for the company? I was already looking at zoomed out for the company of how these pieces were connecting. So it was a pretty easy transition from a mindset perspective.

So you were an advisor, you had your own clients. Are you still working with any clients today, or did you give those up? And if you gave them up, at what point did you give them up, and how did that transition work?

So there was a little thing that started back in March 2020 called the pandemic, and I was about a year into Abacus and realizing the amount of work that was mounting before us in terms of transitioning the company to remote, being able to manage the messaging and the story throughout for COVID, the work that was happening there. So it was between March and July of 2020, I believe, that we were— that I started really evaluating if I am doing the best thing for for my clients by trying to juggle both. Also having that my kids were both preschoolers at the time, so they were here and trying, I had to pick, I had to prioritize and pick. And so I ended up, I picked Abacus, like the company as a whole would benefit from having my full focus as opposed to the clients. So when I merged in Workable Wealth, I brought another advisor with me, Ariel Ward, and she's an Abacus advisor now. So she was already the lead on a lot of those clients. So we went through transitioning them to her.. And I'm still involved in about 5 to 10 of them. Those, those are the key relationships that I am a part of, but otherwise, and I'll go to those meetings, you know, do that sort of relationship management type thing and help with those relationships. But otherwise everything is fully focused on, on the company. And same with Neela. Neela has a handful of relationships at this point in time, but the goal is that we are fully focused on, on the management of the company. And that's the best ROI for our time.

What was the hardest thing for you to give up up moving to the CEO role that you were doing prior to being in that role?

I love our team. I love all of our employees at Abacus. And I think the hardest thing moving out of the, of the specific marketing role— best and hardest— I love who's taken over. So we don't have a CMO right now, but we have a director of marketing who has stepped in to run the department. So she was fantastic. I'm so excited about her and her skills. But stepping out of those, stepping out away, because it's best for me not joining those meetings, as letting her lead that space and take over and kind of walking away from like that, that group that had— I'd been meeting with weekly throughout the pandemic. And like, there was like a little subset that I was really excited to lead, and we did retreats together. I think that was probably one of the hardest, was zooming back out and recognizing that was part of her space. But that was because I also— I work from San Diego. We didn't talk about that, but I'm in San Diego and Abacus is headquartered in Santa Monica. So, but they were my virtual kind of cohort that worked together as a team. Throughout the pandemic. And so stepping back from that was probably the hardest, if not— I mean, giving up my clients was the absolute hardest thing, but that was part of the other role, not necessarily this one.

Well, let's touch on the virtual work for a second here. So you're in San Diego, the office is in Santa Monica. Do you have to go into Santa Monica from time to time? How is this working, you doing this from San Diego?

Yeah, it's working great. I mean, with— I mean, with COVID everybody went online, so I was, I was running my own business virtual. I'd already had clients around the country, but I go to Santa Monica once or twice a month. I stay for a few nights up there. We do meetings and dinners and, you know, get employees together. Neela's in the office 2 days a week right now as well. So Neela and I, you know, we touch base every morning for a quick 30 minutes to go through what our priorities are, any big picture items. And our executive team, all of us are in Southern California except for one. He's in Northern California. So we just do, we do virtual meetings though. Not everybody is back to the office full-time. Time. So we meet via Zoom once a week, and it goes really— it's really great. Can do stuff like this.

Yeah, well, perfect. I mean, I, I feel like I was well trained for when COVID came, because when I was running Peak Advisor Alliance, I was living in Omaha for the first few years. It's now Carson Group Coaching. And in 2005, we moved to Wisconsin. And so we're thinking, okay, how are we going to run this business? I'm in Wisconsin. Well, we hired a general manager manager, and she was fantastic. And so she ran pretty much the day-to-day operations out of Omaha. I was in the greater Milwaukee area, and for the next, gosh, almost 7 years was running the business remotely while she was handling a lot of the day-to-day. And so yeah, it can absolutely be done. It also helps when you have a direct flight from Milwaukee to Omaha, which they had the whole time, so that was good. Yeah, so yeah, it can absolutely be done. And I think that's that's going to be a competitive advantage for advisory firms that will allow their team members to work virtually at least part of the time. And it sounds like Abacus is doing that as well. So, very good. Yeah, we're not going back full.

Yeah.

So, let's, let's touch on just a couple more things here before we wrap up. One is, what advice do you have for women who aspire to the CEO role or some other C-suite role?

The piece of advice I followed since I was 22 is this. No one will look out for you like you look out for you. That's just it. At the end of the day, you want to say what you want. You want to write down your goals. You need to know that you are in charge of your destiny. So I'd say, you know, get clear on your position, salary, the benefits and life balance that you want and advocate for yourself. It's really important that you advocate for yourself throughout my whole career. I've encountered and met so many women who are waiting to be noticed. They're waiting to be recognized. They're waiting for somebody to give them that raise as opposed to going out and asking for it. For it. So I think advocating for yourself consistently is really important because although you'll receive a lot of nos, the thing that will be, that will happen is that you'll also be able to ask clarifying questions and get clear on what it will take you to get you closer to that thing that you want. So by you asking, by me asking you for a $20,000 raise, and then you telling me, no, you need to be at X level, or no, not now because you need to accomplish these things, or here's the timeline for Then you're empowered with information to make decisions off of. You can decide if you're going to stay there and wait. You can decide if you're going to, you know, get those certifications or do that work that's going to get you to that next bump and follow up again. But you need to take the reins of your life and your career destiny. And the other thing is taking the time to assess decisions. So this for your career and for your life in general, trusting your gut, understanding and getting clear of like, why are you hesitating to walk through the door? So the work that I had to do to do prior to, you know, we got this, you know, we've got the CEO job and something, you know, also reflection, right, of like making sure, okay, is this why I want— why do I want to do this? Why am I hesitating? Am I scared? Is it new? Is there something that, you know, negative that could happen? So I think trusting your gut but taking time to assess the decisions ahead of you. And the third thing is to advocate for others. So I will, I will not lie in that I am a hard worker. I am a hustler. I've worked my butt off throughout my career. I've had a job since I was 15, paid my own way through college, all of the things that got me to, to where I am now. But I know that I did not get into this CEO seat on my own. I've had mentors, I've had leaders, I've had advocates and cheerleaders who are, who are guiding and pulling me along the way and pushing me along the way. And so I think it is to our benefit the more that we can lift others and advocate for them, the better that we all are, because the more the table expands and the more seats that are there for us to fill up along the way. So I think advocating for others and supporting others is really important because I don't think any of us truly gets to where we are alone. There's an element of luck and there's support and network that comes from that.

Let's look at the, the other side, which is who's running a lot of these advisory firms. So today it's very white and it's very male. Male. What advice, thoughts, guidance would you give to those folks in terms of creating greater diversity, greater equity, greater inclusion, having more people of color in the offices? What thoughts do you have there?

So I think first I have to recognize the privilege that I have in sharing this information as a white woman, right? So I am part of, part of that group. And I would say, so recognizing that, and I would say I would say one of the things we have to do is look to our networks and to our peers. If we're sitting around as a bunch of white people talking to a bunch of white people about what we can do better in the DEI space, oh, we don't have the right people in the room that we should be talking to. Like, there's no way that we're going to be able to do this work well if we don't have actually a diverse subset of people in the room representing the voices that we're trying to impact. So I think it's really important if you're looking around and everybody you're talking to looks like you, you need to go out and pull some external voices in. There's some great podcasts. There's 2050 Trailblazers. There's a lot of stuff that you can do to start doing the work and listening. I think Hello or Choir, I think, is a new thing that's just launched with Sonya Dreisler and Liv Gagnon. It's about lifting up voices of women and people of color. So I think there's resources out there for you. And then the other thing I would say is we talk about mentorship a lot, and I I think understanding, like, don't just be a mentor, but also be a sponsor, right? So while mentor is going to help you network, it's also about, I'm coming to you for advice. Like, how do you mentor? How— what would you do here? Give me some advice. I can take that and then implement it in my life. Sponsorship involves you grabbing somebody by the hand and advocating on their behalf, and you're bringing them to your network. You're introducing them to job opportunities. You're including them in your professional network. I think sponsorship, like, doing both is good, but don't just mentor. Also sponsor along the way and get involved in people's lives and make those connections and leverage your opportunities for them.

Tell us more about Abacus. What's the best way for folks to connect either with you or the firm?

I'm on social media everywhere at Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all of the things at maryb.storge. And you can find Abacus at abacuswealth.com. So please go to our website. You can subscribe for our newsletter there. There's a lovely financial archetype quiz at the bottom that you could take to find out what your financial archetype is. And you can follow, um, along with us there.

Excellent. All right. Thank you, Mary Beth.

Thanks, Steve. Thanks for having me.

My key takeaway from my conversation with Mary Beth is don't limit yourself. She's a great example of how hard work, determination, and doing the right thing can take you all the way to the top. And she said she wants to lead the firm to $100 million in annual revenue. And I have no doubt that she and the team will make that happen. All right, that's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms. And for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast. Take care and be safe.

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