Stan Gregor: What Changes When Revenue Reaches—Then Tops—$5 Million

This podcast is brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com. Building a profitable advisory business is hard, but turning that business into a durable enterprise requires an entirely different kind of leadership. Hi everyone, I'm Steve Sandusky, business coach and host of Barron's Advisor: The Way Forward podcast. My guest today is Stan Greger. Stan is the CEO of Summit Financial. Stan brings more than 3 decades of executive leadership experience across banking, private wealth management, investment management, fiduciary trust services, insurance, and capital markets. And over the course of his career, he's led and integrated some of the most complex financial organizations in the industry, including senior leadership roles at Citigroup, Bank of America, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, and Cantor Fitzgerald Wealth Partners. In today's conversation, Stan and I focus on advisory firms in what many people call the messy middle, which is roughly $5 million to $15 million in revenue. And we explore what truly separates firms from that plateau from those who actually successfully scale beyond it. We talk about the leadership shift required to move from a founder-led practice to an enterprise organization. We talk about why culture is not something that's soft, but it's actually a powerful growth lever. And we talk about what advisors often underestimate when it comes to building teams, reinvesting capital, and creating long-term strategic optionality. Stan also shares how he thinks about decision-making at scale, the risks firms must manage as they grow, and why consolidation is accelerating across the industry and what that means for advisors who want their businesses to be durable. Partnerable, and ultimately transferable. So if you're an advisor who has built something successful and you're asking yourself, what has to change for this firm to go to the next level, then this is a conversation you won't want to miss. With that, here's my conversation with Stan Gregor.

Summit is a, it's a 43-year-old wealth management firm that started out as a multi-family office service model. It was originally located out of Parsippany, New Jersey, And today we are across the country. I think we're in probably 25 states, if I'm not mistaken, close to 200 advisors, north of $25 or $26 billion of assets continuing to grow. And the way I view it is it, it's a multifamily office service model that is a private partnership. So for an advisor that is looking to service their clients with a much broader scope of products, services, and professionals, Summit is really a terrific turnkey solution for those advisors.

And tell me a little bit more about the advisors. So you mentioned you've got more than 200. Are they in X number of offices? How do they function? Are they independent? Are they employees? How's it all structured?

This is a partnership structure. So it's not the largest partnership out there, but it's definitely one of the older partnerships that, that exists within our industry. So it's a privately held company that's structured as a partnership. And our central, I would say, nervous system of support is close to 200 employees that are there to support the advisors. So everything from, from trust and estate planning, financial planning, tax oversight, investment management, risk management on the insurance side. And then in addition to that, a full-scale global marketing company that helps advisors market and promote their practices and businesses. And all of that is wrapped around with a technology company that features some of the best technology services and solutions that are out out there in the marketplace that I would say works very similar to the way we think of our iPhones, where you download an app and somehow everything synchronizes and works. That's pretty much our model. We do not have any proprietary technology, but we have proprietary integration with some of the best technologies that are out there. That's the way I would define it.

Well, you've got a tremendous background. You've been in this profession for more than 30 years, executive leadership roles with a variety of different companies. So I want to really tap into that leadership experience that you have. But I also want to talk about at the advisor level. And where I want to focus today is really more in, say, the $5 million to $15 million in revenue range for advisory offices or advisory firms, because that seems to be what a lot of people will call the messy middle. So, I want to tap into your expertise here and talk about what are some of the biggest challenges that firms in that section in that range, what do they run into? And from your experience, for the advisory firms that break beyond that and get to $2, $3, $4, $5 billion in assets under management, what's the difference between someone who stays stuck in that middle area versus someone who's able to grow beyond that?

We see that, I guess, group every single day in our marketplace. In 2024, I think we probably brought on about 30 different partnerships and teams. Almost the same thing again last year. So we're consistently seeing large teams of that size. Number one, a firm that has a $5 to $10 million or $15 million revenue stream, I would have already classified them as being successful, right? They've done something right to get to that point. The question may come down to how many advisors make up that money, make up that revenue. If it's 200 advisors, then no, that, that's not successful. But if you have a core group of 3, 4, 5, 6 advisors that make up that revenue stream, I would say that group already has been successful in winning business from from their clients. And the question that I always pose when those teams approach us is, what do you want to do next, right? Because generating $15 million of revenue is a pretty good lifestyle for a group of advisors that can cut up that profitability. But if you truly want to become what I call an enterprise structured organization, that's a different step. And that's really, you mentioned the 30-plus years of experience. I've seen so many successful practices and then I've seen so many successful enterprise firms, and there's a bridge between those two. If the group that you're describing, the $5 to $15 million group, really wants to grow and become an enterprise-style organization, there's a number of key steps they have to take. Number one, the most important thing you can think of is you better have a plan. You need to design a true business plan. And there's a piece of this that I'm hypervigilant around, which is an end-to-end business plan. So it's not just to say, hey, we want to be successful. Well, we want to be $10 billion or we want to be— you pick a number. It's usually a number that's tossed out versus a strategy. And that's where I see a lot of the disconnect take place. What's in the heart and mind is strong, but the execution piece, if it's not done right, you don't finish that journey. So number one, as I mentioned, a true end-to-end business plan. And the second piece of that business plan is when you're designing it, you have to have what I call the C-factor focus, critically going deep into what that business plan looks like. And if you're drawing the letter C, which is how most business plans are generated versus the letter O, right, the difference between good and great is most business plans are structured on the C focus, but the plans that really work out are the complete circle. So the difference between that letter C and the O, that little extra piece of writing makes the biggest difference in my opinion that I've seen from good to great organizations. If you're focused on that C factor, which is making sure you got the business plan laid out, go deeper. Do the what-if. What if this? What if that? And how do I go from A to B to C? That's the critical piece. Once that's in place, then you have to be realistic. Number one, I have never seen a budget go under budget, right? Whatever you think something will cost, believe me, it's like building a home. It's always 30, 40% more expensive than you than you initially thought. So plan for that. And where I see a lot of these plans go awry is most successful businesses that you described are accustomed to a certain income or cash flow. And to go to a growth stage, an enterprise stage, you have to be comfortable going backwards for a while on the income side because you have to reinvest. You have to be of the realistic mindset is of I can't do it all. So, I have to bring in experts that are smarter than me or more experienced than me to do the other things in this company to get the growth in there. So, those people cost money. So, most likely your income will go down and there needs to be a comfort level with you're going to go backwards before you go forward. So, that piece is critical. And once you get the people in place and once you get the business model that is crystal clear beyond that C factor, it goes into the O factor. You have to build a model, number one, that's that's scalable, that you can repeat over and over, right? Everything cannot be an exception. So you have to build a model that is repetitive. And last but not least, you have to build a model that is bulletproof from a risk perspective, right? Some of the best plans and best strategies blow up if you don't have the risk parameters in place. And again, risk takes strategy, but it also takes capital and money to build out. So all those things together is how I would look at going from a successful practice to a true enterprise business.

So putting all those pieces in place, what have you found is the biggest bottleneck? And what I mean by that is, yes, you've laid out the step-by-step strategies here. You've talked about the C to the O and basically closing the circle there, so to speak. The people, processes, risk management, all those good things. But it takes a leader to do that, or it takes leaders to do that. As you see people who say they want to do all the things that you just described versus the people who actually do what you just described there? What's the difference between those who aspire to do that versus those who actually do that? What's the X factor in there, if you can identify that?

I'm going to give you feedback from one of my mentors in a previous organization, which really showed me the way of how to take a successful business and make it a hyper scalable, successful business. It's— this is an emotional business model, right? And you're starting a business, you own it, you have, you have pride, you have ego, you have so much energy involved. One of the big things that I was taught is leave the ego at the door. Pick a sport, right? Other than golf and tennis, everything else is a multiplayer sport. You need multi-partners or team members to get it done. So you have to leave the ego at the door and identify the fact that I can't do it all myself. I have to bring other people around that are qualified, more knowledgeable, more experienced. And, and that's hard. It's hard to let go. It's hard to let go. The other piece that I noticed over and over, people underestimate not only the time and not only the amount of capital that goes in, but it's how long it takes to get there from an accomplishment standpoint. And many times you're better off partnering with somebody that's done it, has gone through the war wounds, has already experienced it. And once you have the right partnership, it's gonna get you there sooner, faster, and stronger versus trying to do it on your own. So it's all those things. And Steve, it's not one answer, right? It's the ego, it's the amount of capital, it's the amount of time. It's what's that strategy? It's, it's who do you partner with? There's so many decisions that go into this and that's why it's not easy. This winning is not easy. Winning is hard, right? Not winning anybody can do, but winning is hard.

Right. Are there any non-negotiables that you would say as someone who's listening to this and says that, man, I absolutely want to get up to $2, $3, $4, $5 billion in assets under management. As a leader making that shift from, "Hey, I was an advisor. I started this firm. Clients love me. I'm the rainmaker. I'm the cultural carrier here." They've got to make a shift in their role, perhaps a shift in their identity of, "I'm doing everything," versus to your point, "I'm doing things through other people. Well, maybe the buck stops with me, but the bottleneck doesn't stop with me that I'm distributing the leadership here." So, are there any other non-negotiables that you would say to really break through this plateau of this messy middle?

Yeah, well, the reality is nobody, nobody can do it all. I don't care who you say you are, it's impossible. Nobody can do it all. So that's check mark number one. But the non-negotiable, I call it a Sunday factor, right? And who I partner with truly matters. And my philosophy is, if I would not invite you to my house on a Sunday and spend time with my family and me and, and you and you, whoever the partners are, I don't want to partner with that person. There is something missing if you can't connect at that level. To me, it's a big factor. So I call it the Sunday factor. Every one of our partners in our firm I have personally met with. I will tell you that within a Summit organization, there's not one partner that I would not invite to my home on a Sunday. And that's an important factor. And that's a non-negotiable. So it's a phrase I keep saying, who you partner with matters. It's critical, whether it's marriage, friendship, business, you name it. Who you partner with truly matters.

Yeah. And I had another advisor frame that to me. He said, as he's looking at hiring people, he'll ask himself, would I want to spend a day in a canoe with them? And I think that's another good way to think about it too, because in a canoe, it's not like you're just sitting there. You got to, like, work together to row here and get this thing moving in the direction that you want it to go. And so it's also going to show how do you, how do you deal with teamwork too. So yeah, I think that's, that's absolutely critical.

Well, the personality thing is important, right? The teamwork thing's important. I did an interview a few months ago with Tony Siriani at AdvisorHub, and the article was called Tick, right? Having a tick partner. So if you go into a partnership and they're not providing value after, call it the monetary entry point, you become resentful and you feel like they're sucking the blood out of, out of you and your hard work or the life of the business. So I equated that to a tick landing on your body, just sucking blood out. It doesn't work. A partnership works when both sides are adding value to that partnership, whereas if one side's doing all the work and the other side's just basking in the glory, that relationship becomes strained pretty quick.

The all-new 2026 Toyota RAV4 is here, building on everything drivers know and love about Toyota with a redesigned look and modern tech that makes life behind the wheel easier than ever. The new RAV4 comes standard as a hybrid, providing smooth, efficient performance for both city streets and longer journeys. Enjoy the legendary reliability Toyota is known for in the all-new 2026 RAV4. Learn and shop more at toyota.com. Toyota, let's go places.

Quickly.

I want to talk about culture as a growth multiplier. So you've got all these partners that you've talked about. You brought all these teams that you're bringing in. Each of these teams has their own culture, and then they come into your organization, and now they're getting absorbed within the Summit at-large culture. And I'd imagine each of those teams is probably bringing some of their existing culture into the mix, and maybe some of that sticks and some of it gets absorbed or what have you. So how do you think about culture within your organization with all these disparate different advisors and advisory teams that you're bringing in? How do you— or do you want to create like one corporate culture, or is it like, yeah, we do have a corporate culture, but we also have each individual team has its own little mini culture, and as long as we share the same values and we're moving in the same direction, everything's okay with that. So how do you think about culture as a growth multiplier or even as a strategic operating system?

Yeah, great question. Culture is, is one of those other non-negotiable components, right? You, you need to have a great culture to grow as a company. When I look at that, so many teams coming in, they have a different style, I would say, right? They came up with a different style, a different approach, a different model. But if they have a collaborative mindset, right? A collaborative culture mindset is what I refer to where they are looking to come into a partnership. They want to add value. They want to learn from their brothers and sisters that are in the partnership. And they want to share when they see success of, hey, here's something that worked for me. I want to share it with a group. That's the culture that we want. We are not an organization that forces people to wear a uniform, come in on a certain day, and meet at a certain location. But we are a culture of collaboration. And I look at so many of our teams, how they spend free time together, whether it's activities like golf, going on vacation, going to, to social events. That speaks to more than just a work environment. So if you can create that culture of like-minded people having the same mindset, and it's not just about me, it's about helping you and helping me, right, that collaborative mindset, that is what I believe what's taken Summit now into 4 decades of success, right? This is not a new company. This is a company that's been around for over 4 decades. We've just become larger, but I would tell you that right down to the most recent partner, I think everybody's of the same mindset. Let's collaborate. Let me learn from other people in the partnership what's worked for them. Let me share some things that have worked for me with the partnership, and together we will go a lot further than individuals. So that piece is critical. Culture is a big role.

And you've been with Summit for how long now?

Over 9 years. Okay. Yeah. We, we invested in Summit 9 years ago. Okay.

So you didn't found the company, but you're the CEO of the company. So how do you view your role as the culture person? Like, what is the CEO's role, like in your case, you inherited a culture when you came in, but you're also— they hire you, I'm imagining, because they like what you stand for and what you want to do. So I'm imagining that some of the culture today has a little bit of your imprint on it. So how do you see your role in shaping the culture versus every other person in the C-suite versus every other advisor? What are their individual roles in the culture?

The buck obviously stops with the top of the house, right? So being in that leadership role, I'm responsible for all that. Myself and Merchant Investment Management, we both joined this partnership roughly 9 years ago. What we uncovered immediately was we love the culture. We love the way the company was founded. We love the values. We love the way they treated clients and clients were treated by advisors and how advisors were treated and how staff was treated. So that piece we did not want to change. What they were missing, I would say, is the executive leadership that myself and Merchant brought to the table, the vision of how do you take a great culture and now create a mega organization across the country, right? Create a tremendous franchise and tremendous partnership across the US. So those are the components that we brought in, but the values that were here from day one, we tried to keep them. We tried to replicate it over and over. The value add, as I said, was around the capital, around the executive leadership, around the visionary approaches that myself and Merchant brought to the table. Steve, when I look at the organization, we made a bold decision to shut down all growth and all recruiting for over 3.5 years. And in those 3.5 years, we took what was a, I consider a great organization into a that much better organization. So we looked at every facet of this organization from the people, from the process, from our technology. We shored up enormous capital in every one of those business lines. And 3.5 years later, we felt, you know what, this is what is the final product. This is what it should look like. And then we opened it up to really go out and expand our partnership. And if I look at the numbers in the last 5 years, Summit's grown over 7x. It's been a 7x factor, which is significantly higher than the market has grown. And that is all around the values, the culture, the investment in the partnership, the way we value each other, the way we treat each other, the way we respect our clients, the way we respect our employees. There's a lot of components in there that make it up.

I spent a lot of time talking about culture because I think it's so important. And I know some people think, well, that's just the soft stuff. And yeah, everybody talks about culture, this, that, and the other thing. But I think the people that get culture right, it is an incredible growth lever for the firm, which it sounds like you guys have done that as well. I also hear people talk about, well, we have a growth culture. I hear you talk about we have a collaborative culture. I've heard other advisors talk about we have a family culture. So, there's different ways to describe what a culture is. In your experience, are these all valid? It's like, yeah, it's whatever the advisor wants it to be. That's what it's going to be because it's going to be molded and shaped in that advisor's image, so to speak. So, as people are thinking about, hey, I have an opportunity to refresh my culture, if someone says that, like you guys did. You came in, you changed things, you stopped growth for 3.5 years, you retooled. Now you came out, now you're 7x better. So if someone says, gosh, maybe we need to do that at our firm, what advice would you have for them if they wanted to go through a similar process as you did, which is we need to break things down before we can build them back up again for the next stage of growth? What advice do you have? Because you've gone through that.

Yeah. So all those things you mentioned— family culture, collaborative culture, and growth culture— they're not exclusive. That is the Summit model. We are a collaborative culture of sharing of ideas and strategies and respect, but we're also a massively growth-focused organization where we want to help our advisors grow their practices. We want to give them the tools, the resources. We constantly are looking to bring on new experienced personnel, experts in certain fields to add to that. So all those components are not exclusive. They all can work under the same umbrella. But what I would say is the collaborative piece is there because of communication. If you have a dictator at the top of the house that is just command and control, that's not going to work. That is a destructive culture. And we could definitely open up any social media story out there and see people around the world that fit that profile. But when you have a culture of collaboration and communication, and yes, there needs to be a leader, but there does not need to be a dictator, right? There needs to be a leader that can take some of the best ideas of their people, of their partners, of what's out in the industry, put it together and bring it back home so it can grow. So the culture that we're describing is family style. Like, these people do get together on weekends and vacations. It's a growth organization. Every one of our partners has had significant growth compared to where the market has grown. So if the market's growing at, pick a number, we're at a factor of that. We're always looking to be inclusive. We're always looking for different ideas. We're open to feedback. We have focus sessions with our partners. What are you hearing? What are you seeing? As well as here's what we're hearing and seeing. And what do you think about rolling this out? Would this add value? So it's that constant, I would say, syncing of ideas, feedback, communication with all of our partners and our employees and the third-party partners that we have outside of here.

I'm glad you mentioned and said that these different types of cultures are not mutually exclusive. And I think that's an important point. I just want to dig a little deeper in that for a second here. The way that I think about what you just described there is this idea of polarities. And the idea is simply that someone might say, well, we have a high-performance culture, but we also have a family culture. Now, on the one hand, someone might say, well, if it's a high-performance culture, it's like we're not going to tolerate low performance if you're not If you're not making the grade, boom, you're out. We're going to do stack and yank kind of thing, and bottom 10% gets cut every year. There's still some firms out there that do that sort of thing. And so, I think one key of great leadership is the ability to hold things that may appear on the surface to be opposite each other, but hold them and identify the best of a high-performance culture is positive, but too much of that positive then turns into a negative. And then you've got the family side, which is, hey, we care about you as a person, as a human being. And you may have missed the mark on this thing, but what do you need? Do you need more training? Do you need more support? What do you need to give you every opportunity to get back to that level that we need you? So, a little bit of the family support there. So, I think this idea of knowing that not everything has to be opposite each other, that some things are interdependent and the best of leadership, the best leaders out there are the ones who can understand that. And integrate that like you're describing here with these types of different cultures are not mutually exclusive, but they're really mutually reinforcing.

I agree. What you're describing in many cases is an employee model, right? Again, command control at the top of the house, managing with a stick versus a carrot. Look, at the end of the day, you want to kill a good culture, leave people that are weak around you, right? You're going to demotivate the great people because the not-so-great people are going to bring them down. So yes, we do have a culture of quality. In order to achieve whatever we need to achieve to service our clients, we need to have competent people around us that can help us. So there is a corporate focus around, are you playing your A-game? Are you delivering the A results? Because it matters. We have a partnership that truly cares about their clients, and I can't think of one partner that would be okay with a an average service, right? They all want exceptional and extraordinary outcomes for their clients. So we, that kind of, we definitely demand that from our professionals that work with us. So there is a level of how do you overdeliver and oversucceed and overachieve. But from the partnership standpoint, it goes back to my early comments. The interview process, I would say, for them interviewing us to be partners and us interviewing them is critical.. And we look at people that have like-minded desires and goals and aspirations. And when that work is done on the upfront piece, the backend is, is a lot more successful. I will tell you, I've been at companies where I had 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 advisors. The door was always revolving. You lose 2,000, 3,000, you bring in 2,000, 3,000 and so forth. 15,000 advisors at one point was one of the firms I was with. I've been here for 9 years. We've lost 2 advisors. And unfortunately they passed away, right? I've never ever seen a culture where nobody leaves. And if something is really good, you understand why they don't leave. Every one of our partners is a free agent. They can pick up and take their toys at any given moment. And to be here 20, 30, 40-plus years, I think it speaks to— there's a value that was created here many, many decades ago. We continued that. We continued to refine it. And I think if you're giving advice to other organizations that want to do that, I would say create a culture where nobody ever wants to leave. Create a culture where there's so much value in being part of that partnership that if somebody even thought about leaving, somebody would ask them, like, why would you think of leaving? That is crazy. You have it all. And that's what we strive for every single day, Steve. It's how do we deliver above and beyond and even And that's just above and beyond, thinking so much ahead that even our partner's not even thinking of it. And when they hear and see what we're creating and what we roll out, they go, my God, that is fantastic. That's going to help me so much.

It's that mindset. Speaking of thinking ahead here, so every advisor at some point in their career is going to have to ask themselves, what's the endgame here for me? Am I just going to sell this to my existing team? Am I going to merge with another firm? Am I going to sell and stay? Obviously, there's lots of different options there, and I've always said to advisors that even if you're not in the market to sell your business right now, it should be sellable. And if you take that mindset, it's going to force you to make sure that I'm building my business all along to the point where it's ready to sell if I wanted to, because I think that'll help you make good business decisions. But from your standpoint, you're on the receiving end. You're the one who's actually going to be buying, acquiring, partnering with these other firms out there. So as you look at a firm that you want to partner with, What advice do you have for those firms to say, here's what makes a firm partnerable, here are the things you need to really have in place before you become attractive to a company like Summit?

Yeah, another great, great comment. So, I grew up through the wirehouse space, right? So, I worked for the big bulge bracket investment firms, wirehouses, and whatnot. And I look back at my career and I questioned, did those firms truly create create an enterprise value for each one of those advisors? And the answer is no. And it, it's, you could see advisors are voting with their feet. They're leaving the big bulge bracket firms and they're going independent. That is a critical piece. The industry has created a tremendous vortex for the ability to sell products and services, but they've not created a level of safety for the advisors who put their life on the line for so many years building their practices. And to your point, at some point you're going to question, how do I I want to monetize my life's work. The next route is obviously, how do I do that? And it's usually through an independent channel because the publicly traded companies are not doing that kind of monetization piece. But even now you go into the independent model, who you partner with again does matter. There's a lot of stories out there of small companies that have all these aspirations of going public and becoming the next Goldman Sachs or pick a brand. And they have— there's no revenue, there's no income. That company can never get listed on an exchange based upon the volume and revenue that they generate. Who you decide to partner with does matter. You better make sure the firm that you're with has a track record. The firm that you go and partner with, that it has professionals that have monetized in the past, that have that experience, that have significant net worth, that have the ability to scale. All those components are critical in that space. The model that we have chosen to roll out is a little different, Steve. It allows you to take and de-risk a significant amount of your enterprise value in the short term and allow you the flexibility of continuing to work or maybe even hiring a G2, right? A generational 2 person that can run your practice and you somehow get a recurring revenue stream off that for the rest of your whatever timeline you want. So it's a different model. But it is a question that advisors should be looking at. How do I monetize my life's work? And the decision's going to be, is it a full exit? Is it a partial exit? Is it a sunset exit? Right? Those are the questions you have to be thinking about.

And you bring on, I think you mentioned maybe 30 or 40 new teams a year. Roughly how many teams might you talk to in a year to get 30 or 40 that actually join?

Roughly. It's probably a 3x factor. So, So in '24, we probably had over 100 LOIs that were signed. We only went with 32 or 34 teams. So there is a selection process on our side and there's a selection process on their side too, right? This has to make sense on both sides. Our philosophy and our recruiting model is different. Our recruiting partnership model is we educate. We're not here to sell you. We share with you what the partnership model is, how it works. It is extremely detailed model. We pay dividends from day one. It's a true partnership. It's collaborative. If it makes sense, Steve, you'll know within 2, 3, 4 weeks if this makes sense. If it doesn't make sense, we wish everybody the best and we, we move on. It's an educational piece, not a sales piece.

Yeah. And I want to get a sense for what are some of the red flags that you see as the acquirer, and what are some of the red flags that the person that's looking to be acquired what do they need to be looking out for in the firm that they might want to partner with from both sides of the equation here? What are you seeing as potential red flags or things to look out for?

I'm going to speak to something that's near and dear to my heart. Merchant and Summit were, I would say, the pioneers of rolling out this minority purchase structure. And the reason why we rolled it out was very strategic. We felt if we were going into business with our family, how would we structure a model? Would, would you buy your son or daughter's entire business out? Out at a young age, have them work for you, and then sometime in the future you monetize and now they work for that person? Probably not. That's not something you would do. But what you probably would do is make an investment in your child's business, right? And say, here's an investment. We want to invest by buying— pick a number— 10, 15, 20%. Use that capital any which way you wish. And in the meantime, use dad's enterprise, right? Use my networks, my contacts, my technology, my people to grow your practice, to expand your enterprise value. At some point when there is an event of the ability to monetize, you can join the club. You can join dad during that process. But until that point, you want to have the ability to grow. What I have seen is many, many firms are rolling out this, oh, we do a minority purchase. And my question is, okay, well, what are you doing to help the people grow? Making a minority investment is easy, right? You write a check based upon a percentage, but What value do you truly provide ongoing? And that's where a lot of these stories fall flat. And we see on a monthly basis so many people that are coming to us saying, hey, can you get me out of my deal? Because I was sold a story on all these things that are going to happen and they joined the firm and they don't provide growth, they don't have technology, they don't have tens of millions of dollars of payroll to help me. It's critical if you're going to get into a partnership, make sure you understand the value add. Don't just buy the hype. There's a lot of hype and stories out there in any industry, and our industry is no different.

Let's talk about decision-making for a moment. Again, at your level, you've got a lot of big decisions that you make, and things don't get to your level unless it's a big, important decision that has to be made. So, do you have any frameworks or mental models that you use as you go through, how do I decide on this important decision that needs to be made that would be relevant to advisors running their practices as well?

Well, yes, the earlier comment I made about the C factor and the O factor, right? Every decision that we make as a firm, we look at in totality. It's the what if. When you think you have an answer, Steve, you start pushing out 3 more times, and then what? And if you have an answer for that, and then what? So after 3 or 4 times, you've vetted out a lot of the possibilities or the risk or the downside or the upside of doing so. But we don't just stop with an emotional decision. We go deeper. And my advice to anybody listening is, That's the way I would do all these decisions. It's, if it sounds good, great, vet it out even further. And then what? And after that, vet it out again a second time and a third time and a fourth time. And if, after 4 times, if it truly makes sense, you probably have a good scope of what you should be doing.

What would be an example of a difficult decision that either you're wrestling with right now or maybe a difficult decision that you made here recently and maybe walk me through the thought process and you came to that decision.

A lot of the decisions are around risk. The risk landscape is changing dramatically as within our industry, regulatory-wise, financial-wise, cyber-wise, you can go on and on and on. So that's something top of mind. What do we need to do to stay ahead of all of that? We lead with a, okay, that idea sounds great. How can it hurt us? How can this hurt the partnership? And if it's something that it could be potentially lethal, right, or a fatal result, we'll step away from that. But it's the first piece we look at is risk. The second piece is what does it take to, now that we've uncovered, we can mitigate or we're comfortable with that risk, what does it cost to get there in the right way? And that usually goes back to my earlier comments. Whatever you think it costs, think it's going to cost is probably 30%, 40% more than that number. So we try to plan for that. We try to plan for How does that impact our margins? How does it impact our business? If it doesn't work out, how does it impact the growth of the business? So it's a full dynamic process of risk, cost, value add, and how that turns out long term. So it's, it's that circle keeps going around and around and around for us on our side.

Well, you and everyone in your position have a number of constituencies that you have to to keep happy. So, you've got your partners, your advisor partners, you've got your team members, you've got merchant, you've got your investors, you've got the clients, of course. We can't forget about the clients here. So, how do you think about making a difficult decision that might advantage one of those parties and disadvantage the other when overall you're trying to make sure that everyone gets what they need here and what they deserve and what they're paying for? When they may— a decision may be in conflict with one or more of these constituencies. So how do you make a decision like that?

I guess that's where my position comes in place, right? So sometimes I got to tell the children, you can't have all that ice cream. Look, every one of those constituent divisions has a chief, has a leader, right? And that is their job to make sure that within their swim lane, that they are doing everything possible to achieve the results and the expectations from that swim lane. As a leadership team, right, we get together once a month at an executive level and we're sharing what's happening in each division, right? How does Division A affect Division B and Division C? How does it affect the client? How does it affect the advisor? So that communication piece that I mentioned earlier, it's not just in an email, it's not just in an org chart. We actually sit down, we hash it out, and we spend a day every month and sometimes longer strategizing how things affect other constituents in other parts of our company, from clients to advisors to staff, you name it.

So, you've had this long career and it's going to continue for some period of time. I would imagine that not every decision that you made in the past necessarily turned out as good as you had hoped. So, is there a decision in the past that you wish you could go back in time and make a little different decision in that case? And if so, What did you learn from that and how did you take that lesson forward as a leader?

Yeah, it's a great barometer that I check on myself almost every month, right? And every day of what can I do better? When I look at things I wish I, I did differently, it's acting faster on situations that I knew were not right. So you, you had the wrong employee in the wrong position. You try to have a humanistic side to everything, right? Thinking, hey, how do I help Johnny or Sally be successful? But sometimes you got the wrong people in the wrong jobs and And it just doesn't work out. So my advice to that is, is cut bait sooner. When you have the wrong people, you gotta move them out. It may create a short-term void, but it definitely preserves the culture of the company. It shows the company that you're serious and you care about quality and you care about the clients and the advisors and the staff. So those are decisions I wish in the past I would've been more decisive and quicker to act. But outside of that, I don't pretend to think every decision I made was the right decision. I've probably made more mistakes than I've done right decisions, but the ones that were wrong were not fatal.

Right. You're still, you're still here, right?

Still standing.

Yeah. So it's still, still certainly wasn't fatal.

Yeah. The decisions that I'm proud of and really the 7x factor and all of that, the enterprise value that was created for our partners and the additional quality services they were able to deliver to their clients. I'm very proud of those decisions. Those were smart investments on our side as a company, and they were expensive, but they were smart investments. That's how I look at it.

Let's put on your forecasting hat here, your ability to predict what's going to happen in the future. So let's get back to this advisory firm that's in the $5 to $15 million range that wants to break out from that. As you look at what's going on in this profession, what's going on in the world, what's going on with technology, What do you think are the 1 or 2 key things that a leader needs to make sure that they get right, that they're putting in place, that they're preparing for so that they are going to be successful and they are going to be able to break out regardless of what gets thrown at them over the next 5 to 10 years?

Well, let's look at reality. The average advisor now is north of 60 years old, right? When you look at size of largest population, I'm sure everybody's thinking of, right, how much longer do I do this for and when do I exit and how do I transition my How do I monetize my life's work and what does that look like? So that is there. AI, look, it's in the paper, every social post, every single day, it's all over the place. That is changing the landscape of our business. No different than when the internet was introduced, right back in 20, 30 years ago, what that looked like. So all of that is changing. I make a prediction, you are going to see massive consolidation in this space. And not because of fear. I think the way you get to deliver those quality services, you need to have scale. You need to have real, real scale of services, of professionals, and that is expensive for a small firm, right? A $5 to $15 million firm is limited to how much they can spend in getting those quality services that their clients most likely will need to compete against the firms that happen, right? So $5 to $15, it's a great practice, it's a great business. But if somebody from a— one of my partners at Summit was to call on those clients, I am pretty confident they would win that client over because of the level of services that Summit can provide where maybe that $5 to $15 million firm cannot provide. I do foresee consolidation and significant consolidation. And if those teams are really thinking about longevity and being smart about converting from a practice to a true enterprise, they should start thinking about that. Who do I partner up with to really be able to make this business bulletproof for a long, long time? The firms that do make those pivots, I think they're going to be rock solid. They will go on with that first generation continuing to grow, but equally as important, the next generation. That they can transition that business to their generation 2 team. And that team now is going to be equipped with the people, the resources, the technology, the capital to withstand the next 20, 30, 40 years of growth. Consolidation is definitely something I see taking place big time.

Well, let's wrap this up here with a couple of questions, and I'm going to turn these right back to you, Stan.

Okay.

What's your vision for Summit here? Let's say over the next 5 years, where, where are you trying to help this company go?

We hopefully get 2026 in that, call it, $40 to $50 billion target. We have significant interest coming in from so many different teams. And what we're frankly starting to see, Steve, is a lot of these independent firms that are in that billion-dollar to $5 billion range realizing what got us here is not what is going to get us there. And a firm like Summit can definitely help us get there faster, easier, with less brain damage of trying to figure out because Summit's already been doing it for 4 decades. So within the next call it 3 to 5 years, I'd like to see this firm north of $100 billion in size, but we want to do it with quality, right? It's not just to get to that number. It's the culture matters, the people matter, the quality of service needs to matter. We have a tremendous focus on client delight, right? How do we delight the client above and beyond what they've probably been accustomed to? And if the clients are delighted, the advisors are delighted, right? And then the employees are delighted. So this delight factor goes goes multiple layers deep. And the goal here is for all of us that this is the partnership that you never ever want to think of exiting. And as an employee, this is a firm that you want to be with for the rest of your life. It's probably how we started when we came into this workplace, Steve, years ago, right? Our parents were of a generation where you work for a company and you retire with that company. That's changed with our generation and obviously our kids' generation, but If we can create a culture and a structure where this is a great place to be for you as an employee, for you as an advisor, for you as a client, that's our goal.

You mentioned massive consolidation is a trend that's going to continue. And there's been talk in the industry here about at some point, one of these really large mega-billion-dollar firms is going to merge and consolidate. So you guys get up to $50 billion, you get up to $100 billion, and what's your endgame? Is it going public? Is it merging with another large firm to create a mega firm? How do you think about sort of the endgame for Summit?

It's all the above, right? So it's our goal is really providing exceptional service for the advisors so they can grow their practices. If we do that, the advisors grow, the clients are happy, they're delighted, and their enterprise value, the advisor's enterprise value gets enhanced. As a group of leaders, we're always focused on how do we help our partnership. So it can be a public offering, it can be a private monetization event. Everything that you discuss is on the table. From our standpoint, this is not a bang the bid and get out and just run for the hills. We view this as a generational style business model where it can go from the father and a mother and father to the children and so forth. And that is our mindset. So we want to provide those services, Steve, but we also want to create a situation where the owners of those practices have an ability to take chips off the table and monetize their life's work, whether it's a percentage, a full amount, a half amount, that's up to them. But if you create that avenue for that to happen, and then you can hand that off to the second generation and the third generation, that's what we're focused. It's totality. There is, is actually a full endgame approach here as opposed to just a monetization event.

And then how about you, Stan? You have a long career. What do the next 5 years look like for you?

Look, when I stop loving what I do, I'll do something else. But right now I'm enjoying it too much. I'm seeing the fruits of our labor come to fruition. I'm seeing people change their lives. I'm seeing people come in and just being so grateful for what they now have access to and what they're exposed to and what they can do for their clients. I don't have any plans of slowing down. I'm glad to be adding value. I'm glad to be meeting so many new partners. And taking this company to new heights. I love what I do. This is a great business. It really is. I'm blessed to be in it. I'm blessed to be with my partners and I'm blessed to be speaking with you today about this. This is exciting.

I appreciate that. What's the best way for folks to learn more about Summit if they want to find out more?

summitfinancial.com is our website. And obviously you can reach me through LinkedIn or you can reach me through any of the Summit portals as well. But thank you. I appreciate the opportunity, Steve. Great to see you again. And thank you for having me.

All right. That's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms. And for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast. Take care and be safe. This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending. 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.