Latest / Only Fee-Only / #87 - Finance Grit, Communication, and Adaptability with Jamie Hopkins

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#87 - Finance Grit, Communication, and Adaptability with Jamie Hopkins · Only Fee-Only

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: How's it going everyone?
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Only Fee Only podcast and thank you for bearing with us.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: While we took a little bit of a hiatus, a few things went on.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: We launched property and casualty, which was a big deal.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: We hired a new customer success specialist named Carmen she's doing a phenomenal job for us and a lot of you are going to see her around and also had a bit of an emergency with my wife and she is doing very well and doing much better healing up.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: For those of you who are following along and saw my post on LinkedIn, thank you so much for the overwhelming amount of support and everyone's kind words.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: In this episode we got the chance to talk to Jamie Hopkins, who most of you are going to know about.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: He's the co-director of the New York Life Center for Retirement Income.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: He is a CEO at Bryn Mawr and he also is an author and has been recognized as one of the top 40 financial services professionals by Investment News.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: This guy is doing it all and it was so cool to get the chance to talk to him and learn from him.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Stay tuned for Jamie Hopkins on the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: What's up everyone?
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only podcast.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: I'm Peter Travalo.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I'm here with my co-host, brock Buckles.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: How's it going today, brock?
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Doing well.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Man, Happy to be here.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, likewise, and today very excited to have on Jamie Hopkins, young, energetic guy, big advocate in the financial services industry and really looking forward to having him on and letting him share his story today.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: So, Jamie, welcome to the show.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: Well, thanks for having me on Peter and Brock, I appreciate it, you bet.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: So I know we got connected through Josh Passler and we've talked briefly, but for those who don't know who Jamie Hopkins is, you want to give a quick overview of your career.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: I know there's a lot to pack in there.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it depends on what story we're telling today.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean where I am today.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: I'm heading up a wealth team at Bryn Mawr Trust which has a whole bunch of different aspects of it.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: I mean from the fee-only RIA to a brokerage team, to a trust team to really a team that services mostly RIAs and other types of, I'll say, coi firms, law firms, in our trust division, and so I kind of get to see a little bit of everything out there.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Honestly, I was at Carson Group before and was leading up Carson Wealth for a little bit there, which was a blast, and I actually taught for 12 years.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: I'm really not teaching right now, but I was a professor for 12 years and then I also run a nonprofit, so FinServ Foundation, which we work with about 35 colleges and universities, about 500 students.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: Really, a core part of what I care about is that next generation of this profession and those students and young professionals that have come through there are really inspiring and it does give me hope about the future of this industry when you get to spend time with them.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: I mean, some of them are so much further advanced at that age than I was.
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: You know they actually have some technical knowledge and know things.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: And you know when I was 22, I didn't know anything.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: Have some technical knowledge and know things, and you know when.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I was 22,.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't know anything, so so let's go into that, man.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, when you were younger, you were a young, bright eyed Jamie right, Looking to maybe try to get into this space Um, what was going through your head?
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: What did you originally think it was going to be before you know, being where you are and publishing dozens of art, being in dozens of articles and all the stuff that obviously you've done now, I mean what?
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: What were you thinking when you were younger, getting into the space?
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so funny enough.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: You know I wanted to be since seventh or eighth grade, a private equity attorney.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: It's very odd because, you know, neither one of my parents graduated college.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: They're in the construction business and I didn't know we didn't have an attorney in our family, so it's not like it was like, oh, my uncle who had a cool car and I wanted to be more like him.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: So I don't really know where that came from.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: But that was really my journey.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: I mean I expected to do that and I was like poli-sci and religion double major and you know, went to law school and ended up in private equity really on the deal side of contracts, legal things like that and ended up going into the appellate division to clerk, just by chance and opportunity, worked on one of Bernie Madoff's cases and that one in particular kind of reset my framework on what I was looking at the world in particular.
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: Kind of reset my framework on what I was looking at the world.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: And it was because of that like abuse of trust in that situation and it kind of sent me, you know, I'd see commercials on TV being like do your retirement planning here?
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: And I was like, well, where does somebody like my mom go for that.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: You know there really are not advisors not very many that specialize in non-college educated construction workers as their specialty.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: So I kind of went down that path and fell in love with this idea of improving retirement income security for Americans like my mom, and that's really what set me on the path.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: But the writing part and media was interesting.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: It is a different world than it was then.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's been almost 17 years now so I sometimes feel young.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: But then I took my marketing team out last year and I realized I was older than everybody on my team by 10 years.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: I'm not the young person anymore.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: It's long since passed.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: But I just started writing stuff and sending them off to editors and I got published a couple of times in Yahoo Finance and then that led to other things and I would just ping reporters with ideas and just like find their emails and you know, the local ones is really where I started with with the Philadelphia Inquirer and a couple other things in my area.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: Just it kind of snowballed from there.
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: Now I really I still end up probably in an article a week or more, but I really don't do much outreach anymore.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: That's all been that multiplier effect of putting in the work when you're younger.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: And the reason I did that and I challenge young people, people starting businesses, to figure this out is what are the things you can control?
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: I couldn't control everything that was happening in my business world then, like deal flow or promotions, those things, but I could control my writing, taking my free time on weekends or nights, writing an article, taking my free time and pinging journalists, so I could control that activity cycle.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: And so I did that and I went to a lot of additional education programs because I could also control that cycle and so I did that and I went to a lot of additional education programs because I could also control that.
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: So those were two things that I realized were inside of my control, that could impact my career.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: That I didn't have to hope like, hey, the business is going to do well, hey, the economy is going to have to do well, like, hey, the top of this company and the sales team is going to have to do well, like I could control those.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: So I focused on those.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be those two things, but figure out what you can control and impact and focus on those.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: So I mean, like what are some like you know people they're gonna look at you, younger guy, where you're at.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Like what are some mindset things that you've just always kept in mind?
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Like, just there, I mean we can tell that you're like you, that you've just always kept in mind.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Like, just there, I mean we can tell that you're a patient guy.
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: You know that there's a process to it.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: You know a lot of people who they're just getting started in this business, whether they're young and fresh out of college, or they're a career changer or, you know, maybe they're trying to progress forward in their own career.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: Like what are some mindset things that you just keep in mind that have been working for you over the years?
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean process is important to me, Mindset's important to me, Grit is important to me and I, like Simon Sinek, start with why I usually I lean people back to that as understand your why.
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: It might not be fully developed at the time you enter into your career, but it's there somewhere and if you kind of focus on it and take the mindset that I do need to tie a why emotionally to what I'm doing, I will be a lot more successful.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: So going back to mine is you know I mentioned my mom.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: Like my mom's story and our family story is my why my dad passed away when I was eight years old on a construction accident and you know I went through that fear around money and loss at a very early age and that's my why is that I want to make retirement and financial security for people like my mom.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: In this business of if something's taking a while or you run into hurdles like I know why I do what I do and it's my mom and I'm never going to wake up one day and like not love my mom.
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: So like when people are like, hey, how are you going to?
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: You know, love this business for that long it's like, well, I'm never going to wake up and be like, well, I really hate my mom today, so I don't want to do that.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: So to me that makes it easy.
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: But I was probably 10 years into care but I did realize that sharing that story was important to people and you know I put it in my last book and then I learned a bunch of things after I put it in that too, which is funny enough.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: Like the biggest thing I learned during the whole book process was after the book was published, in a conversation with my mom.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: It wasn't during the writing of it or anything else, and it's.
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: It's a little unfortunate because, like, the biggest learning now isn't even in the book, so yeah, for sure I feel like, um, something I really liked that you just said there, jamie was.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: like you know, you're never going to not love your mom and you're never going to be able to go back and take back some of those hard trials and tribulations and experiences, but also those really shape individuals and people right.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: So one of the things I feel like I've noticed throughout my career is like people that have had to face adversity are oftentimes the ones that come out on top because there's that fire kind of inside that's burning constantly, like it's an ideal to chase, to be better, to try to make the industry better, because of those types of experiences.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Um, for you, obviously, that's the case.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Have you noticed, working with you know, other top professionals in the industry?
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: That's kind of been something for them as well, or or kind of what?
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Where does that kind of mindset come from?
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a hundred percent.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: You know, I I totally believe that adversity like with metal and other things hardens.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: It makes you stronger over time.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: I also think adaptability is really important.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: So I think grit and adaptability are two of the best traits.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: And then I'd put communication in.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: There is like when I talk to young people now and I interview people, like I don't ever ask where anyone went to college, I don't care what their GPA was.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: You know, the first thing I always notice is can this person communicate with me very effectively and do I think that they're going to be able to adapt and overcome hurdles?
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: I've run into really great people over time now that I've hired or worked with that I think are super brilliant.
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: They're hardworking.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: They're not adaptable and at some point that hurts their career because they're cruising along.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: But look, every company, every business, everywhere out there, you're going to run into some adversity that's going to kick your butt and you're going to feel like you failed and you're going to feel like the whole world's out to get you and you're the only one that's ever been there.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: And either you say look, that's not true, and you pick yourself up and you move forward with commitment and that's really what grit is, and that you're willing to change the way you do things.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: That doesn't mean you change the ultimate outcome, but you have to be adaptable and that's a lesson I learned from Ron Carson when I worked with him.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: Ron was super passionate about adaptability.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: That, like you know where he started in the 1980s to building a you know billion dollar plus valued firm, you did not go in a straight path right Like adapting over the years.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: And you know I think that's true you can learn that lesson through a bunch of different things.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: It doesn't have to just be through like loss of a family member growing up without money.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: You know, I think athletes learn it through playing sports, which is why I'm a big fan of athletes.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: But you know, there's lots of different ways to learn those lessons, but you have to learn them at some point.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I completely agree.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter where it comes from and it matters that you have it.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: And adaptability is one of the things I mean.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: For instance, when we were starting our business, it's like, you know, you find that there's a niche out there.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: You're trying to serve it and then you're like, okay, great, what do we do now?
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: And then you try something for a while and that works.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Then you're like all right, I think we need to pivot a little bit.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's try this, but it's all just a trial and error and process thing, and then, when something works, do a little bit more of that.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: When something doesn't, you know, back it up a little bit and try something new.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: So I, yeah, no, I, I completely agree.
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, interestingly enough, public companies that reallocate resources the most year to year actually grow the fastest.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: So there's actually just a proven strategy in kind of it doesn't mean that that's always bad, but you know, yeah, there's definitely some notion in business.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: you need to try things, test it fail quickly, then move on to the next.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Yep Got to pivot.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about your adaptability.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: You know so.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: You were in the appellate, you know clerking and you pivoted to private equity.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: But then when did the pivot to Carson happen?
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: You know when did you get introduced?
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: You know, you've been in the East Coast forever.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: When did you get introduced to this firm out in the Midwest?
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I would say, looking back now I've definitely shown some adaptability from a career because I haven't really stayed in the same role for very long anywhere.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: I've kind of jumped and moved and what I realized at some point is I'm really a builder of things.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: I'm probably not the best long-term manager of anybody or any process or system.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: I'm a builder.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: I'm going to push and create some chaos and try to come out with something new on the other side of it and that's really what I'm best at.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's from my background my parents.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: I started off doing construction.
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: I worked with their business, I went into private equity, I clerked in the appellate division, I was a professor for 12 years, but seven years full-time running a research institute.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: But there I built the RICP designation and that's really what I did.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: Right is, I built out a research center and I built a new program and deliverable.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: We sold a lot of it.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: We did really well with that and I got a little experience of everything there because we were a three person team and we ran marketing, we ran the content, we did the interviews, we did instructional design, we scripted it, we sold it, we went to conferences and presented it.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: We you know it was we and we were given luckily enough of that latitude to essentially run our own business.
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: We had our own P&L, we did our own fundraising, so we just ran our own business inside of this larger organization.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: And most people didn't get that opportunity of like the safety of running a business and the latitude to just go run it.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: And so we were kind of right place, right time.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: I during that process I met Aaron Shaben who at the time was president of Carson, and then I also met Ron Carson, uh, as a CEO and founder um of Carson, and he was a board member of American College at that point.
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: And a funny story about him is I was in that meeting talking about young people and he, like kind of this guy stood up I have no idea who Ron was at the time and kind of yelled at everybody in the board meeting that you haven't done anything different in 20 years.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: You're having the same conversations.
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: You were back in the 1990s, you haven't invested in the future of this profession and you know our, our ceo president at the time was like well jamie's in the room.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: Jamie, you want to handle this question and I'm like.
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm like 24 years old or whatever.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: This guy is screaming at everyone in the board meeting and you know, I gave yeah, gave some response and uh, then they asked me to draw up a plan.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: um, and it's still running the, the american college, uh, next gen group you see a lot of stuff probably on social about that.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: Um, that was born out of ron's uh, you know, whatever it was, their message passion and I drew up a plan for it.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: I delivered it.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: I gave a recommendation for this other guy, adam, to lead it and they came back and said Ron and somebody else at State Farm said you're running it and that's it.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: And I was like, but I didn't want to run it.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: So we built that and over time then I became close to Ron and he eventually offered me a job to come work with him.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that you just said that I really liked is you know you're a builder of things and you're not necessarily the best long term.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: You myself get frustrated sometimes, or have gotten frustrated before you realize it's okay to just be good at certain things and let other people do other things.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: For instance, I love talking to people, I love the front end of things.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: I'm not the most organized guy in the world.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Admittedly, I know what I like.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: I know what I'm good at.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: Was it ever frustrating to you that you're like I like to build?
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: I feel like I should be good at these other parts or stay around and like to do that as well.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Or were you able to just kind of embrace that mentality and attitude from the beginning, jamie?
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: No, I don't think I always embraced it from the beginning.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: I don't think I knew it for a while.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: Right, you know, early on I was just I picked the right job because it appealed to me.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: It's like, hey, I'm going to go get to build this program and that's what they were looking for.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: So I self-selected into that.
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: And one time there was this coach that was asking me about this and they were looking at one of my scores and I'm like I was like a 99 out of 100, far over on this spectrum.
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: They're like well, how has that impacted?
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: your career and it's like what really hasn't, because what I've done is I've self-selected every job, knowing they wanted somebody to come build something.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: I just that's what I've done.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: So I did that at that job and Ron and Aaron and Carson was like we're going to build this amazing thing here, come be part of this build.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: And they didn't even have a job description for me and my request was just whatever the next division that needs something built is, I want to run that division.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: So it was about nine months from starting.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: They were like here you go, go run the coaching program.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: We need to build this coaching portal and LMS system and go rebuild coaching and sell it.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: So I joined that team and worked with Sarah Kane, who's an amazing coach, and Carson Coaching is really solid, and we built that out really great partner with FPA and a whole bunch of other organizations and did really well with that.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: And you know, then I just kind of kept adding different parts.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: You know I built a lead generation or helped lead the lead generation.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: I didn't really build much but myself, right, but I led the team that was building that and built that with boston consulting group and bain capital and carson and it was a really amazing process.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: And then got the lead carson wealth and I in both of those two builds which was different than the other ones was I.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: One of my main jobs was to go find somebody that I thought could do that better than me.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: So Genevieve Smith, who came from Vanguard I hired her to come read the lead generation program because I was like I'm not a digital and acquisition based, you know marketer, like I don't know how to do that.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: So I didn't go find anybody to do that.
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: We had a great team in place that did know how to do things, but we needed a leader.
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: So we brought her in.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: And then, you know, carson Wealth we had pretty good leaders, but I needed somebody to kind of own the advisor development.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: So that was the first thing I did was like I need to have somebody who can own that top to bottom and drive the advisors.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: And a guy, thomas Pargett, came in and did that and he's amazing.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: He's leading that team now, today too.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: And I've told him.
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: I was like it was your fault.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: I left Carson because I wouldn't have left had I not been able to find you, because I couldn't have left the team.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: Like I love the team and I was like but you're the right leader for that and I've been able to do that in a bunch of different areas.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: Julie Raggetts came in and ran the NextGen program and you know, since I've been here, you know, probably the first at Bryn Mawr Trust the first three things I really did was hire three great leaders of three different teams and I got two new wealth directors, one internal promotion, one external.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: Angela came from Truist, guy Don we promoted internally Really awesome, he's actually boxing next month so I'm going to go watch him box.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Nice, very cool.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: So I'm like that's the type of leader you want, right, he's gonna go step into the actual ring, the fight for anything.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: I love it go ahead oh no, I was just gonna say and during this time too, at carson, when you're building, you know all these things on the professional side, um, that's when your non-profit started too, right, yeah, um, so you want, you want to touch a little bit on that, and I mean we obviously see things on the professional side.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: That's when your nonprofit started, too, right, yeah, so you want to touch a little bit on that, and I mean we obviously see your passion and probably why you started it, but what's the main goal behind it and how's it going?
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's gone better than we would have.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: If you were to ask me back in 2019, like, would it be as big and as well managed as it probably went?
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't have thought.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: So I do spend more time managing that than I would like.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: So, being one of the things of being a long term manager and stuff, I spend a lot more time on that than I would like, but it is really important to me, so I find time for it pretty much every day.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: I spend a couple hours on it, and so history of that is we wanted to build a bridge program that helped keep more of these students that were going through financial planning programs in this industry as advisors.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: So if you were looking at financial planning programs right, I was an academic.
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: A lot of my friends are academics.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: They have very diverse student bodies women, men, race, sexual orientation, all of it.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: It's fairly diverse.
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: You get to the industry and you're like, where did they all go?
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: And even if you look at the CFP numbers that come out annually, all go.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: And even if you look at the CFP numbers that come out annually, the college student body is so much more diverse than the group of new CFPs each year Now there are numbers that are improving, but the disappointing thing about their numbers is women are at 20% now.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: The problem with that number is that that's the next 30 years of that cohort, and so when people are like, hey, how's this industry going to change, I'm like, well, the 30-year group is 80-20,.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Right, that's the 30-year group right now.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: So we need to find a solve for that.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: And they're falling out somewhere in between.
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: So one of the things that we did was say, well, let's take kind of proven, research-backed best practices that help retention in industries and apply them to a bridge program that covers their time in school and then after they graduate.
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: Schools are pretty good.
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: Once you're there, when you graduate, you kind of disappear.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: Some alumni associations are better than others, but you're not really supported in the same way.
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: So we put together a six-month structured mentorship program, two years of group-based coaching, and then we say it's like access or exposure, which is we take the students, we cover the plane, hotel, food and conference costs, if there are any, and we take them all out to a conference.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: So what we figured was exposure, which is kind of building the community, that mentorship at an early age and some more professional coaching, so we don't try to teach anybody rough conversions.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: It's like how to interview, how to show up professionally at your job, how to write good emails, like those types of basic things.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: We even cover expenses and credit cards.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: We had a student one time send us a photo of their food versus a photo of the receipt, and that's a good mistake to make with us, probably not the best mistake to make with your first boss, right when they're treating you to breakfast and you see a photo of tacos and people always laugh about that one, like it's a little funny, but they had never gone through that experience yet.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: So like it was a good learning place to do that.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: Even people showing up late to Zoom meetings, and like we have lots of these development talks with them.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: It's like in a professional world, like you need to show up on time, you need to be responsive, like there's a lot of small things.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: And so we're at, yeah, kind of year four now it started.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: Our first interactions were 2019, but all of it wasn't really together until you know, really 2021 was the first time we could take people out to conferences because the world shut down.
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: But we're kind of nearing the four-year mark at the first cohort and industry average at five years, kind of ranges between 15% to 20% of people stay and we're still over 90% of that first cohort is still in the industry at year four.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: So I don't see any world where we're going to drop down to 20% in the next year, right?
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: So we've kind of proven out this ability that, hey look, these three things work.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: The interesting thing about it is, even if someday FinServ shuts down, the model that we built might be the perfect model for organizations to run.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: When you pull students in, that you give them a structured mentorship, you give them two years of coaching and you make sure you get them out to industry, events will drastically improve your ability at a fairly low cost structure.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: All this at about $2,000 per FinServ fellow student that comes in.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: Now all of our board members are volunteers.
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: We have 150 mentors.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: All of them are volunteers.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: So we get a lot of lift in the sense of time.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: But a company you kind of have that same ability, right.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: You can designate mentors without cost and coaching internally without much cost.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: So it's a pretty scalable program.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: And, yeah, we've impacted a little over 500 students, about 35 colleges and universities.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: Blackrock's been a great supporter.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: Carson's been a great supporter my new company, wispus and Bryn Mawr Trust, just sponsored for the next three years with Delaware State and Temple to kind of help bring 10 students from each through the program for each of the next three years.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: Delaware State and Temple to kind of help bring 10 students from each through the program for each of the next three years.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: So it's going well.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: We have a great board and volunteer group.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: So thanks everybody that volunteers out there and for FinServ fellows, we probably have a number that will listen to it.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: A lot of them are entering into things like XYPN and the industry.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: It's awesome, they're awesome.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just the sheer amount of companies that you just named and the hours that you're putting in a day and all these things that you're doing, um, made my head spin a little bit.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: So how, how are you managing to stay grounded, jamie, through all of this?
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Like, what do you do?
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Because a lot of times, like you said, you're like into self-development and kind of reading about that and finding your why and all of that.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Right, like, I've read a lot of those books, try to do meditation, practice, just things that I have to do on a daily basis so that I can do everything that I need to do for the day and keep a level head while I'm doing it.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Right, so what are some of the things that you've implemented and that you kind of do to keep your head on straight while you're doing all this stuff?
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I got really big into running for a while, and part of that was I did a lot of my writing in my head while running.
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: So, like, structurally, what did I want to say, what do I want to convey?
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: And so I was able to actually use that as a time, maybe, of self reflection.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: And writing and running is very efficient in the sense that you can do it anywhere, it doesn't take that long, you don't need a lot of money or anything for it.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: Right, you can generally run anywhere in the world.
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: I don't run as much as I used to since I switched to Bryn Mawr Trust.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: I go to yoga most mornings at 6 am and it's super close to me.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: I've enjoyed adding that into my life, to your point of it kind of operates a little bit like meditation and you can spend some time with yourself and still work out.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: You know, as I said, I'm not the youngest person anymore, so running every day, you know, kind of passed passed over one of my goals.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: But I actually ran for three thousand and four consecutive days in a row where I didn't miss a day, of days in a row where I didn't miss a day inside.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: So that's one.
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: I'm pretty good at switching between tasks, so I can jump like, if you look at my day, like I'll do a podcast, I'll hop on a business meeting, I'll write something I was editing a book for a friend earlier today talked to Daniel Crosby in the middle of it went back to editing and you know I'm able to do that which not everybody has the same transition time, so it's a really interesting thing.
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: You don't see a lot written about that, but actually understanding transition time for team members can be a useful thing.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: You'll have team members that can, you know, not maybe truly multitask, but they feel like they can multitask because they can switch between operations very quickly and that is honestly allowed me to do more things to that point Like I can hop on a podcast I you know, or my own podcast, or write an article or hop on stage without having like a whole bunch of down prep time.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: I know other people need the whole morning blocked if they're going to do that.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: But like I'll hop on NBC with five minutes notice because I feel totally comfortable doing that and switching between things.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: It is a.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: The science actually talks a lot about why you start off with small talk at the beginning of something is actually to give people a natural transition time from wherever they were before.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: So starting meetings with small talk is actually healthy for people that need more transition time into the new thing.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: So a lot of people want to hop right into like hey, let's hop right into this.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: Some people actually need time to transition into it.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: So it's okay Like you could actually give people permission to do small things.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: My impression yeah, yeah.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, love it.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: So let's say for a second that you were talking to one of these young professionals coming out of the FinServ Foundation.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: What would be just some guiding things?
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Let's say, if Jamie were to start his own RIA again out of college, where would you start looking?
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: Where do you see the industry going and how do you kind of match skill sets and product and client demand?
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: Those are a lot of people.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: Let me try to pick one or two things that I can talk about.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: So one thing I tell everybody is that I don't think there's been a better time in the history of the world to be in this profession than right now.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: You know taxes, technology, people's wealth is.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: You know, it's as much as it's ever been, it's as complex as it's ever been.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: We have more wealth than there's ever been in the history of the world and more people that need help with it than ever before.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: And actually if you look out there, people are about as stressed as they've ever been, at least in any recent time period.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Now I don't know that that tracks against like the medieval ages, but you know, in recent time periods, sure, people are very stressed.
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: So what we do as a profession is take all that fear, anxiety, complexity, package it up together, deliver a service back to take all that fear and anxiety and give them back hope and some degree of clarity and to me that's very noble of what we do.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: Now the details of it and the technology and platform.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: I have a lot of views on where I think that's going to go, but I think it's also an interesting profession, because there's not a huge barrier to entry in this profession.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: It's not like I want to go develop microchip processors and like I need to have a factory.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: I need to have raw materials.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: That takes five million dollars to buy one and can I even get that ship from.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: You know China today.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: Like you can go get a license and put up a shingle within the course of a month.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: And people literally do that.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: It doesn't cost a lot of startup capital.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: Now, depending on what your business wants to be, it might be more and more expensive, but there's not a huge barrier to entry.
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: I do think what we're going to see is kind of what's occurring today, but I think we're going to see it much more in mass in the future but I could be wrong about this one.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: I think we're going to see massive consolidation.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: It really hasn't occurred yet.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: In the industry, we talk about a lot of aggregation, but the total numbers don't really suggest there's been any mass aggregation.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: If anything, we're still seeing more new places pop up than places consolidate in.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: So that's kind of one thing to look at, but I do think we'll see it eventually.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: The main reason is that you're seeing efficiencies generated at the largest firms that are not trickling down, and what I mean by that.
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: For about 20 years, there was no data supporting that large financial service firms service clients any better than a one-person shop, that they weren't servicing more clients per advisor, they weren't generating better revenue per advisor.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: In the last say, since like 2016, 2017, the largest firms have started to differentiate there, in the sense they are starting to be able to service more clients at a higher MPS rating than industry average and be more profitable than the smallest firms, and if you read Michael Kitsy's stuff, for a long time he would always talk about how smaller firms grow faster than large firms, but it's finally started to shift.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: So technology does bring efficiencies, but it took a long time to get there.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: That doesn't mean, though, that like being smaller and nimble isn't good.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: We saw this happen.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: Other industries eventually get too big.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: You can't move fast and you fall behind where the industry goes, but I do think we're going to see that dynamic continue for the next five or 10 years.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: It doesn't change the reason to go start a firm.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of people should do that.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: Today.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: America is a great business owner country.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: It's kind of a macro level thing, but we're a very good place to start and own a business.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: It's not true everywhere in the world, but it's true here.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: We're very pro-business owner from tax rules, from ownership structure, from clarity that businesses can't just come in and steal your business overnight and because they're bigger, it's like, hey, too bad.
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: We have a lot of protections here, and it makes the United States very competitive still in the world because of you look at like the ratings on our business clarity and legal system.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: For all the bad news you might see out there, still one of the best in the world and super interesting that this is still the preferred market to start businesses.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: Just got to zoom out a little.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, man.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: Well, that's phenomenal, man.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: So many great points.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: It's very clear you have a good heart, You're very caring about the causes that are close to you and you have a tremendous perspective on so many different things.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: So thank you so much for taking the time to come on today.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: For those that want to follow along with what you're doing, what's the best way to do that?
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's still on LinkedIn and X, formerly Twitter.
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: Right, I'm not as active on those as I used to be, in the sense of, like you know, I don't have as much free time to interact with people.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: I still post on there, so updates, yeah, those are the best two ways.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: I mean LinkedIn.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: I'm probably more active now than I am on X.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: I'm on there.
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: If you tag me or ping me, I will respond.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: If you send me a message on LinkedIn, I will respond.
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: And then our firms at BrynmartTrustcom.
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: I do still have a personal website, jamiehopkinscom, so if you Google me, it'll probably be the first thing that pops up.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: You can find that.
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Jamie, thank you so much for coming on this afternoon.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Thanks Peter, thanks Brock for having me on and thanks everyone else.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: You know, uh, checking out this episode and hopefully enjoying your, you know, the only fee, only podcast.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Thanks a lot man.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Appreciate you.