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Your Success is in the Planning with Kelly Olczak · RIA Collective

• 0:16
  Charlie: All right, welcome everybody. You've tuned into the first episode of the social advisors podcast, which may have a different name at one point, and I have the best guest ever. I'm absolutely honored that my friend and full disclosure, client Kelly Olczyk co-founder of Lindley and company with her good friend and partner, Becky Gillette, Kelly, joining us for the first episode now, Kelly, first off. Welcome.
• 0:47
  Kelly: Thank you for having me.
• 0:48
  Charlie: My pleasure. My name's Charlie vendor, and I'm the president founder of social advisors. We're a firm in the financial services industry that helps advisors grow their practices. Now, the purpose of the podcast that we've committed to doing for the next year and, hopefully long beyond that is to bring some wisdom to a younger generation of advisors. I don't necessarily mean younger by age, but a lot of people second, third, and I even know some people who are in their fourth careers in financial services. Kelly, you are the perfect guest for this topic. And, and so again, thanks for joining me. What we're about to find out is, Kelly has played a lot of roles in our industry and she's got a lot of wisdom to impart. Here's what I find interesting about financial services, Kelly, amongst many other things. This isn't necessarily an original thought.
• 1:45
  Charlie: This my friend Blaine, we planted this in my head one time and it's run true. Financial services is unique in that if you survive, right, if you survive and you are a successful advisor, you grow your AUM, you hit a 25,000,030 million. You add an assistant, you hit 60, 70 5 million in AUM. You add a junior advisor, all of a sudden you're growing a team. Those skills that made you a successful advisor do not necessarily translate into making you an access, a successful business owner, right? As your practice grows and evolves into a business, you need a different skillset. Now I've watched you from, and we'll talk about it. I don't want to give too much away right? In the beginning, I watched you transition through several roles within the industry and now owning your own RIA and growing a team around that RIA.
• 2:47
  Charlie: You are the perfect guest Kelly. I know that you done a wisdom to embark. I want to thank you again for being with us.
• 2:54
  Kelly: Well, I you've been very instrumental in getting us here. It's been a very good coach, so I'm grateful for everything. I'm flattered to be the first tier. We haven't been through a lot and it was a lot of fun allows hair at the same time, I think.
• 3:09
  Charlie: Right, right. I've been, yeah, I've got to sit on the sideline for a lot of that. You got a lot of that firsthand, so we're to learn from your experience and hopefully it brings some awesome wisdom to the people tuning in. Kelly, as my friend, you also give me a chance to cut my teeth . So, first one's going to be a little I'll look back on this new year and go, oh my gosh,
• 3:30
  Kelly: It's got to be the best one ever, Charlie,
• 3:32
  Charlie: Best one ever. Kelly. I appreciate it. So let's jump in. Shall we, now I know you well enough to know that financial services was not your first career. Tell us a little, tell us about your first career, and now let's get to know you .
• 3:47
  Kelly: I, I really started to Polish my skill set. When I worked with sun Microsystems, I worked for sun Microsystems. I was a general territory manager. I covered upstate New York, which is from the Tappan Zee bridge all the way up to the Canadian border, all the way to Buffalo and Jamestown. It was a humongous territory. This is from, I don't know, 1999 to 2005. I was w they would call a relationship manager because it wasn't responsible for closing the deals. I was a connector, which I'm really good at. I always have the frustrating part for me during that part of my life was that I I'm. Okay. Truth be told, there might be of a control freak, and I couldn't close the business. I wasn't responsible for closing the deals. I was responsible for finding a client who needed help and then connecting them with the right tech partners in the country to help them close the deal.
• 4:55
  Kelly: Once that connection was made, I was off to another relationship.
• 5:01
  Charlie: Right. So, yeah, so you start the conversation and hand that off. I can see how that would be. I could see how that'd be very difficult.
• 5:10
  Kelly: We well enough and that I learned what I don't want to do there.
• 5:15
  Charlie: What an interesting time to be a technology though.
• 5:18
  Kelly: It was brutal. Tech bomb was exploding and, this equipment was not cheap. I mean, we're talking at the highest and $10 million, a single $10 million computer, the Cray computer. I mean, it was a very big piece of machinery and were, not at our region, but were, part of weather.com and E-Trade, I mean, it was running and got in. It was work hard, play hard for sure. It was also really tough, really tough. We S there were five layoffs between the time I started in when I left. And, oh man, if you were the last person holding that rope, you have a lot of work to do.
• 5:56
  Charlie: Yeah. Yeah. I, I started doing websites in this industry in 98. Certainly we saw a lot of that too. And were fortunate. We were fortunate to have a fairly turnkey product that was sought after, at the time. Right. The big wirehouses we're launching templated data-driven websites for their advisors. It was, were pretty good shape, but certainly we experienced that tech bubble too. Yeah, in 2002, 2003, certainly interesting times. In the history of technology, fortunate to be part of it, learn, learn a lot.
• 6:34
  Kelly: I changed it. I will tell you that if I hadn't done that, I would not be here. I know.
• 6:38
  Charlie: Yeah. Well, so that's, so that kind of leads me to the next question. Right. As financial services have that kind of always been a part of what you wanted to do, or how did that often, so how'd you evolve from technology to finance?
• 6:54
  Kelly: My dad was a general partner at Edward Jones. He was responsible for the software side of the firm. He did not have a practice and he was actually responsible for the Y2K transition, which was, doomsday software situation, needless to say his new year's Eve that year was not good. Nothing happened, but no one knew. Right. And, and some, I had started at sun in December of that year. Son, decided to the following year early in the following year, son decided to stop supporting the Intel based software, which is what Edward Jones was running their back office. And my dad was furious. He started saying, you should work for a firm that really cares about their clients. I'm like, daddy, I can't balance my checkbook. Are you kidding me? There's no way, there's no way I'm doing that. I just didn't understand what that meant. I thought that it was like, what, the Wolf of wall street, she's on the trade floor.
• 8:13
  Kelly: I didn't realize at that time that it was about helping people, ?
• 8:16
  Charlie: Yeah, yeah. W well, wealth managers, wealth management, as opposed to yeah. Trader.
• 8:22
  Kelly: Real bright. Eventually I got laid off the last riff three weeks before our second child was to be born.
• 8:31
  Charlie: Scary,
• 8:32
  Kelly: Terrifying. I knew I did not want to do the tech thing anymore because it was not, well, I was a relationship manager. There were no relationships. There were no relationships, not ones that you would keep, ? I just decided that, all right, if I'm going to learn something new, I might as well do this. And I literally walked in. Who's a gentleman, who's now a very good friend of mine, Edward Jones advisor, and said, hi, I'm Kelly I'll check. My dad says, I need to be an advisor hired. Poor Brian asked Ron was sitting there. Okay. You're a weirdo.
• 9:16
  Charlie: Yeah. Well, Hey, it's worked. Right. Sounds like there was a learning curve there did it, did your pre your prior time with sun, did that prepare you in any way, if if you could look back on it?
• 9:29
  Kelly: Yeah. I mean, I think it did because I knew how to take know a lot, when you're dealing with very big technology, you're not the only show in town. And again, it wasn't relationship based. It was very, data-driven very sterile, but I did not expect to be door knocking.
• 9:51
  Charlie: Well, I wanted, so I, I, as I'm thinking about the conversation we're about to have, right. I certainly, a lot of the questions I'm asking you, cause I've known you so long. I know this stuff, but of course my lay this out for our listeners and viewers will have video available this too. So, I know Jones pretty well, just from being around it for so long. Right now I've coached at coach. You had Jones. I coach a lot of Jones advisors over the years, the learning curve piece of that. Tell me about the training coming into Jones. How that, how that benefited you. I want to know about your door knocking experience because listen, that's so unique to the, to that firm. I don't think they do it anymore, but certainly unique to Joan. So tell me about the.
• 10:36
  Kelly: Training. They'll have to door knock now.
• 10:38
  Charlie: No, I think, listen, I think it's dangerous, right? I think I know some stories Kelly and we'll I'll show. Yeah. So I'm sure.
• 10:47
  Kelly: Yeah. I would tell you that. I feel this now I listen, I was second generation partner. I was a limited partner before I left Edward Jones. Yeah. I believe in their process. I believe they're they are probably one of the best firms to start out as an advisor because they do have a fundamental recipe that works.
• 11:09
  Charlie: Right.
• 11:10
  Kelly: We just outgrew Jones. Okay. And, but I'll tell you what, I would not be the advisor I am without the very consistent training that Jones gave us on how to ask open-ended questions. I mean, think about this, Eric, come walking up to your sidewalk and you're thinking, oh my God. And this is normally the second time. Like the first time I'm like, oh hi, nice girl. She leaves since they're like, oh God, she's back. I'm like, I am not trying to sell you anything or change your religion. It was a really effective way to humanize us.
• 11:53
  Charlie: Yeah.
• 11:54
  Kelly: It's hard that stuff's hard. Walk it up there first. I would do it again today, but the first couple of doors they stink. Cause you're like, this is what I would literally walk off and say, all right, I gotta do this. This is what I do. This is what I do. This is what I do. This is I do. This is what I do and got dropped back and got a lot of nos. Man, sometimes you have really great conversations.
• 12:17
  Charlie: Well, and Kelly, every Jones advisor I've ever worked with over the years had significant. I mean, as far as size significant clients and also relationship, right? Like great relationships with people that they say, listen, had it not been for door knocking, I wouldn't have these wonderful clients. Right. So that, so that it is effective. I also, I think it's a weeding out process, ? Not that not that I've ever had anybody at Jones corporate say, well, we do that for weeding out, but do you ever remember going to like, your 300 level classes in college, you just pick your, you just picked your major, you get all your generals done and you walk into that class. Like the first two weeks are so hard. If you get past those two weeks, so they just want to keep those people who really want to be there versus, picking a major because you've got to pick a major.
• 13:08
  Charlie: Do you think there's any truth in that with door knocking? Cause that's a really difficult thing to do.
• 13:13
  Kelly: Here's the thing, it's a numbers game. You have to be consistent. The 25 door knocks a day, the 24 contexts a day are vital. I was also a trainer and a mentor. I was on the leadership team and I could always tell you who was going to wash out because they thought they were smarter, but it doesn't really work that way. Let me do this, go right ahead and be up and be my guest. I'll give you five minutes to be gone. The whole thing, and this is fundamentally what I learned in the past cheaper. Oh five to how many years is that? I'm afraid to ask. Cause like that's 15, 17. I mean, we'll be starting our 18th year. At least I will awesome. You got to do the homework, you got to follow the recipe, just shut up and do the work. It's hard because nobody trusts anybody anymore unless they're consistent.
• 14:09
  Kelly: That's what the model really, really does is it helps the individual advisor know that you are part of the community and you are trying hard and you're trying to earn your keep and yeah, it's hard. There's a reason why they attrition is so high because it's hard.
• 14:32
  Charlie: Well, I think for, for most advisors now you walk in and I don't know if he inherited a book or how that necessarily worked out with, ,
• 14:42
  Kelly: Two and a half million dollars.
• 14:44
  Charlie: Okay. Most advisors and you at that time to it's survival.
• 14:49
  Kelly: Oh, it was brutal. So think about this. This is the bus 4 0 7 meltdown. And you were knocking on doors. Think I knocked on doors for two years solid.
• 14:59
  Charlie: Yeah. So you're walking right into a.
• 15:01
  Kelly: $65 million practice and 11 years doing that.
• 15:05
  Charlie: So good. So good. So, you spent a decade at Jones was in, I say it like that. It changes things a little right.
• 15:18
  Kelly: Suddenly I'm sorry. Children were 18. Liam was 18 months old and grace was three and a half years old and I looked back and I'm like, what the hell was I thinking? And then I got my CFP. You just did it.
• 15:33
  Charlie: Yeah, there.
• 15:33
  Kelly: Was no, there was no failure. You just did it.
• 15:36
  Charlie: Yeah. Yeah. Mine, mine are 12 and 14. Now I can share similar stories right. With the paycheck. Yeah. I can start a business. Telling me that time of Jones did you always know you wanted to be independent? When did that, when did that mindset change happen?
• 15:56
  Kelly: Honestly, I thought I never, ever, never Jones because I was a proud second generation partner. My partner, Becky and I, my current broker, Becky and I made partner on the same day. My office administrator made partner of the same day. I mean, it was like, okay, well now this is real. Now we get to experience the environment of being an owner. And that was really amazing feeling.
• 16:24
  Charlie: Cool,
• 16:25
  Kelly: But what started to happen? It wasn't Jones's fault. It was the industry's fault.
• 16:31
  Charlie: Okay.
• 16:32
  Kelly: The, the DOL rules were changing for sure. People were being told that commissions were bad advisors that charged commissions were bad, which really aggravated me because Edward Jones was really careful about compliance. They have really very unique way of monitoring and making sure advisors are compliant. By the way, that's important compliance is critical. Okay. The change was is that we outgrew the hybrid mindset. You could, you could have clients that wanted to be in fee-based and you could have clients that didn't want to be in fee-based. I think that we felt the firm was changing, get becoming very protective and very defensive and it just made no sense at all. Why would we treat your non IRA differently than we would treat your IRA?
• 17:36
  Charlie: Sure.
• 17:37
  Kelly: There were some other things that happened that were cultural, the changes were dramatic and it just wasn't the firm that I signed up for. I have to tell you, I literally, when Becky and I decided it was time ago, my mom and dad, so my dad retired from Jones in oh four. They were bailing hay in my about 35 miles from here. They live in South Carolina and I drove all the way down to the hayfield said, so I gotta do it. I gotta make a decision here. Yeah. I didn't want to do it until I got permission because I was still very committed to Jones. The, it was probably the most terrifying decision I've ever made. I will go through labor and delivery another three times and have to go through that again, but was for the right reason. We had good guidance, but it was terrifying.
• 18:33
  Kelly: It was also really sad too, because our region, we have the, well, I'm still friends with folks in the region, but it was definitely a change.
• 18:41
  Charlie: Yeah. And, and change is scary. I, I had another question lined up because I, I anticipated that leap to independence or as we'll talk about kind of quasi.
• 18:55
  Kelly: By the way.
• 18:56
  Charlie: Right. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. No, we're gonna find out aren't we, so, there's gotta be a catalyst, right. That's gonna, that's gonna force change. It makes sense that Jones changed or the DOL rules first off. I think it's the best thing that's happened to the industry.
• 19:16
  Kelly: I completely agree.
• 19:18
  Charlie: I, I, the reputation and it's still, the reputation is still this in a lot of, a lot of people's minds is, it's a industry of crooks, right? I mean, I, I I'll tell ya. This is, this is honest to God. I golf with a guy two weeks ago, retired gentlemen from Michigan who comes down to Florida, for the winters. I golf with him randomly. I didn't know the guy before we teed off. And he starts asking what I do. And I talk about servicing the industry. He said, literally, Kelly quote, a bunch of crooks. I said, I don't think, really what the industry is today. The commission-based structure was just kind of ripe for, I dunno fraud, maybe even right. I mean, just, yeah. So, I mean, anyway,
• 20:07
  Kelly: Hottest thing I can say is that I have a fiduciary always and I don't ever have to worry about any conflict of interest. We've we've fixed that. Yeah.
• 20:18
  Charlie: Awesome.
• 20:20
  Kelly: Yeah, it was terrifying, but I would definitely do it again. It's the only way I can be.
• 20:29
  Charlie: Well, and I think that's unique to you. We're going to have listeners, right. That are comfortable at Jones are comfortable at Oregon, but for those people who started their career and listen, I think it's a great training ground. Like you pointed out, right?
• 20:43
  Kelly: I still refer people to Jones. If I come across an advisor, then this is documented. If I come across as somebody who wants to be an advisor, I call my friend, who's a general partner and regional leader at my old region and say, I think this guy is a really good bet because I really in the training. Yeah. I really believe in that culture. I, we outgrew it.
• 21:09
  Charlie: Let me ask you Kelly, looking back on that time, preparing to leave Jones, those people who are listening that are having the same thoughts sitting at Merrill or Morgan or UBS or Jones or wherever they might be today, what advice would you give to yourself at that time in your career? Looking back on it,
• 21:30
  Kelly: We were very fortunate, Becky and I were very fortunate that we had an old advisor. I don't mean age old. I mean, an advisor that wasn't Joseph had gone independent a couple of years before went. He had made the transition away from, and at Edward Jones. So they're a non protocol company. I don't know how to explain that. You maybe you should explain that not protocol. So they, they, so, okay. Non protocol means they Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. If, if an advisor went from one firm to another and did not take anything, but their clients they'd be okay. Jones wasn't like that at all.
• 22:13
  Charlie: Yeah.
• 22:14
  Kelly: Okay. So that's not protocol.
• 22:15
  Charlie: Yeah.
• 22:16
  Kelly: God, it's been awhile. Since I've had to think about.
• 22:18
  Charlie: That. I didn't know how to answer it. So.
• 22:21
  Kelly: I put you on the spot. There you go.
• 22:22
  Charlie: Yep. Love it.
• 22:24
  Kelly: So this individual, great man. Great, great mentor. His Sage advice was, this is going to take nine to 12 months to get ready. Now this is June of 2015. He said, understand your non-solicitation agreement and never, ever violate it. There's a process that you can go by, that will keep you out of jail, which I would be very happy to help with explain to anybody on a one to one base one-on-one basis. There's a process to transition to keep yourself out of trouble and out of jail. That's part one that thing, if you mess that up, your host, but it does take 12, nine to 12 months, maybe a little more to get ready. What that means is not printing lists or anything, but knowing your clients really understanding who your clients are. When I started at Jones, I, I took over a branch. We had a lot of little accounts and by the end of, oh, I'm going to say by the end of oh eight, I had 480 households.
• 23:46
  Charlie: That's crazy.
• 23:46
  Kelly: With like $27 million. I was on the phone from Monday to Sunday through that meltdown. We didn't lose one client, but man, if you were the last person to talk to me at the end of the week, I got nothing left, but I pared that down. I, before I left, I had 160 families of which 90 followed me.
• 24:08
  Charlie: And.
• 24:10
  Kelly: That isn't so important, not just for you being safe for your clients, you can't advise her Canada support and service. Well, by themselves more than 150 feelers, they just can't. Yeah.
• 24:23
  Charlie: I, I agree with you and I, and that's one of the things in any Jones advisors that I've coached over the years rightsizing, and I don't think the firm would appreciate that, but rightsizing was always the task.
• 24:36
  Kelly: Well, they do, they have a good night program where you share assets. And I, I embraced that. I think I did three of them because I wanted it. I wanted to like the people, I want to know the people that I work with. I want to understand a story.
• 24:51
  Charlie: Since your time they've also got Jones connect now, which is somehow you retain that you retain credit for the assets, but it's serviced by home office. So I won't get into. Yeah. Yeah. It's, so they're doing things that advisors don't have to carry those 400 household books anymore with a model of one advisor in one branch office administrator. I mean, that's, it is, it is a little wild, right? So, okay. So nine to 12 months, anything else.
• 25:24
  Kelly: Don't take it with you and honest to God, just spend that time, really figuring out what, who you like and build deep relationships with them.
• 25:33
  Charlie: I love that we, we key a lot on social relationships, as much as businesses important, of course, spending time getting social with those clients, right. Developing, developing that relationship on a deeper social level so that when you do depart, there's a deeper connection there than just the, the, just the dollar figures.
• 25:54
  Kelly: Yep, absolutely. Yep.
• 25:56
  Charlie: Wonderful. So, all right. You, you set out not fully understanding, you said you didn't really fully understand what independence was. What was that first leap? I know you had a little, you had a little, you had a little landing spot before founding Lynne Lee. Talk about that time.
• 26:14
  Kelly: A lot of firms don't want their advisors to know that there's other ways. Jones Jones is one of those, but they're not the only one. We, I didn't have hallmark on what I didn't want. I always made sure that I, especially locally, but also, what, Becky and I went to the women's advisor conference in Boston, we just connected. We are connectors. And we really knew what we want. We knew what we didn't want. Right. We knew what we didn't want, but I wasn't perfectly convinced that I didn't want to let me just say it this way. I did not want to make my clients go advisory because only 5% of my book was advisor. Yeah. I, Becky went to Schwab immediately cause she had having been at Merrill for many years prior to Jones. She already understood that model. I wasn't so sure. I, and I wasn't going to just blindly follow Becky because that's what I wanted, which is what I really wanted.
• 27:32
  Kelly: I was doing it because I want to make sure my clients had a choice. Were lucky enough to find a group that was what's called an OSJ at LPL. They were also an RIA and LPL was the broker dealer. The firm that we worked with was the RIA. That gave us a lot of flexibility. The other nice thing is they were all well, mostly Edward Jones guys. They hadn't had a lot of success, transitioning, Edward Jones, clients safely without getting into trouble because they had a proven methodology, which is what I use today. I mean, it's just follow the recipe. We did that and we, but we also look at Raymond James, we looked at Commonwealth and Commonwealth was amazing. I was just worried about their size, but these were all things I didn't understand on that side. Hindsight being 2020, there are a lot of very good small firms that would have been just fine.
• 28:39
  Kelly: I'm the chicken. I believe it or not. I'm not that much of a risk taker when it comes to that. I want to make sure my clients are safe. So we transitioned to LPL. Again, I don't think our leaving LPL was LPLs problem. I think it was a part of the DOL that there were so many advisors leaving broker dealers and going to LPL. LPL could not scale fast enough. Our service was awful and we ended up leaving and that was adorable because we left Jones and summer of 16. Two years later, summer of 18, here we go again. The thing that I knew mostly that this was not a hot, this was not a hard decision as a fiduciary. If I know something's broken, it's my job to fix it. Yeah. That's exactly what we told the clients. Listen, we are not able to pivot as quickly as we need to, and this firm's not doing it.
• 29:36
  Kelly: Right. Being able to own your practice and have that kind of conversation with your clients really important structurally supportive type conversations to make sure they are okay. Yeah. They loved it. I mean, they didn't like to be repaid for it again. Right. But it wasn't, it wasn't terrible.
• 29:57
  Charlie: I, I enjoyed a front row seat for all of that. I got, I mean, there were a lot of late nights that you and I chatted about messaging, but how do we do this? Right. We we're we're 18 months in, we're ready to make another leap. Are they going to stick with us again?
• 30:14
  Kelly: Every single client followed us because we knew if it is. I live by this, if I know something's broken, it is my job as a managing partner and your fiduciary to fix it.
• 30:29
  Charlie: I would that, that's, it's an incredible mindset. Right. It, and it is your duty as a fiduciary, but it's an incredible mindset. With it, with that, as your guide, you can't do wrong.
• 30:42
  Kelly: No, there's only one way to do this. Yeah. It's the right way. Yeah. Be transparent. I mean, our motto, reliable guidance, financial wellbeing, and boldly transparent. How awesome is that boldly? Transparent.
• 30:57
  Charlie: We'll be transparent. I think I've, I think I've read that somewhere before, so great segue. Thank you for teeing that one up for me. I appreciate it. I read that on your website.
• 31:11
  Kelly: So I wonder where he did that.
• 31:13
  Charlie: Yeah. At Lynne Lee code.com, tell me about Lindley. I wanna, I, I want to know about the values and the mission that drive you and Becky every day, and maybe I'm a little early with that question, but we can start there because I also want to know, we make this leap from Jones to LPL and then Lynn Lee, tell me about Lindley values, mission. I want to talk about, what were the logistics of getting that RIA set up?
• 31:52
  Kelly: Becky and I spent our entire career at Edward Jones together, take a seat. We, she was probably the first person to call me while I was studying for my seven. Her youngest child is only six months older than our oldest child. We had a lot in common and we're both farm kids. We're not scared of hard work. We really focused even at Jones, especially at Jones. I always, it was always about the client. And, we only manage a handful of clients financed. It it's remarkable when I hear how many households advisors have, but to be able to have just a handful of families, allows us to do a lot of really good things to those families. Our values were really focused around like, everything we do is based on the integrity of the relationships we have with them. That's really where that reliable guidance, financial well-being and boldly transparent comes from because anybody can give you a financial plan to be able to say to our clients, there's no conflict at all.
• 33:17
  Kelly: If there is we're going to tell you that basically was the beginning of what we have now. When we laughed, we had about under $45 million and we're over 110 now, And I did not. And this will go on. I think we're going to talk a bit about the business part of this. I was really freaked out about not growing the business right away. Just give us no way to grow it. Just stop, just bring your clients over. Our focus for our clients who have been really it's all about them without them, we are nothing. There are things that we can't do or we can't do well. Like I hate life insurance. We've got great partners that help us with life insurance, right. Because I can't do everything. You're either going to be client facing or operations facing you can't be both. I, I couldn't, I mean, I know I'm slightly biased, but it's kind of neat to be a 100% woman owned RIA, for sure.
• 34:37
  Kelly: That's kind of cool, and actually I didn't come up with that. Somebody said, do you guys know that you're like a hundred percent RIA was like, holy crap. We are.
• 34:48
  Charlie: What's kind of cool about that is I know even before that, was, was part of the, the fabric of the Lee, let's say, I mean, you've been supporting women's organizations around Rochester for a long time. That kind of fits well, let's talk about, I know you work with families, so certainly you're, you're not exclusive of men, but I know that there is a focus on helping women to some degree. Talk about that a little bit.
• 35:21
  Kelly: Yeah. We have a lot of clients that I get. I don't, I don't, I can't put a, an exact pin in it, but we do attract strong professional women and they may be strong professional women. They're stay at home moms or taking care of their parents. I mean, I'll be the first one to say, I'm a big, giant dork. What you see is what you get.
• 35:47
  Charlie: I'll be the second one to say it,
• 35:50
  Kelly: I think there's something to that authenticity. Yeah. I mean, I actually cleaned my office for this. I don't have, I don't have my basket admitting here.
• 36:02
  Charlie: I haven't seen the Jack Russells at all. I did monitor through,
• 36:05
  Kelly: Oh, the other hairy dogs are great. That we look like, this is the real world,
• 36:12
  Charlie: 45.
• 36:12
  Kelly: Minutes after this and I'll be right back there. It was. But, I, we really focused on helping families. A lot of times those families are being led by moms or daughters that are helping their parents find out where their next home will be. It's just refreshing Becky and I have survived a lot through our childhood growing up. We connect with folks that have had struggles in their lives. And we celebrate that by the way. I've actually had gentlemen say, find us on the internet and say, I want to work with you guys because I don't want to work with a guy. And I'm like, okay, tell me why. He said, well, you guys tend to be more organized, which is why my office is so clean.
• 37:16
  Charlie: Well, and I could, I can, I, I'd like to expand on that. Right? Having worked in this industry as a vendor outside, looking at it, never sat on your side of the desk since 1998, right. 20, almost 25 years. Blows my mind a little bit. I know. Wow. Geez. I've seen the, the, the, the facts and the percentage of women advisors grow significantly. And even more recently, right. I don't know what we're at today at 13, 14%, but I know just a few years ago it was like nine or 10% of the industry. So.
• 37:57
  Kelly: 'cause, this is, this industry is built for women. It really is.
• 38:01
  Charlie: There is a nurturing component to women that a lot, and I'm not going to be so general as to say everybody, but there's a nurturing aspect of women and it's not every woman, but in a general sense, there's a nurturing component of women that most men, not every man, but most men do not have many of the, the male advisors I've worked with over the years. I kind of have to choose my words carefully here, because I'm not trying to put anybody off by this. They will literally, they will literally tell me I want somebody who's going to take my advice and not question it. I don't, as much as, okay, I get that. I understand why that's the case. Is that healthy?
• 38:49
  Kelly: Well, I have to say to you too, also a planner, so I'm a certified financial planner. So I come at it. Right. So, so I've seen men and women come at us, like we got to build a portfolio. Well, if you don't know what the portfolio is supposed to do, how on earth can you build a portfolio?
• 39:05
  Charlie: Wonderful point.
• 39:06
  Kelly: I come at this from, well, okay, you've got so much money. What what's it supposed to do? I don't know. Well, then we got to sit down and talk. Yeah. I think that's a very big differentiator. I've been through divorce. I know what it is to have a situation where you are worried. I didn't have any credit, how you build credit, and there's a long, long time ago, but that doesn't leave you. The planning for me, and this is when it clicked, when I figured out this was for me, when the planning helped me figure out what the dollars is supposed to do, and then the portfolio followed. Right. That's what I really decided that this was a really good fit for me. I approach it differently. I, some of the folks who have been referred to me, how do I prepare for this meeting?
• 39:57
  Kelly: You can't just go talk. Yeah. I don't know what you need. I don't know if this is an interview for both of us. I don't know if I'm a good fit for you. I don't know if you're a good fit for the firm. There certainly never nurturing is a good word for the way we approach things. I have seen really fantastic portfolios put together, but they're disconnected from what the money's supposed to do that. But again, I'm biased, Charlie. I only see it that way.
• 40:31
  Charlie: Yeah, no. And I, I get it. I love it. So, so Kelly.
• 40:37
  Kelly: For a second, pause for a second.
• 40:43
  Charlie: Okay. Restarting the recording with Kelly old check. Kelly, I want to go back to something I said earlier, right? One of the really unique things about the industry is successful advisors, build teams turn successful practices into businesses and successful advisors into CEOs, but the skill sets aren't necessarily the same. So, as, as your practice has evolved now into a business with a staff and, again, I've had a front row seat for a lot of this, Oh gosh, the HR aspect of it, not St. Same here, right? Nine years of learning this component. This piece of it. If we're talking to an audience here is thinking about that leap to independence and it's, it's a, it's a huge part of our industry today. A lot of, a lot of people evolving to an independent environment. What advice would you give yourself looking back on it? What are the skills that you learned as a CEO now running a business that, we can save some people, some learning time and some learning curve and have an idea of what it's like to run the business instead of a practice instead of just 81.
• 41:54
  Kelly: Yeah. Coming from Jones and moving into a non Jones environment was really weird.
• 42:04
  Charlie: Because.
• 42:05
  Kelly: You had, you had production requirements all the time. And when you're really good. And, and I, I would say that Becky and I were really good, you're bringing in new money, the back office is running a lot of stuff for you. Right. But your brain is set to yeah. Got to do production. The first thing that I realized after I knew that I was going to be, probably after the first month of like, it was hard. The first, the first month was like, oh my God, we have to do all this stuff. My brain was still production, production, production. I had to give myself permission to switch gears and say admin, admin admin, because my success was dependent upon transitioning these clients in a most elegant, high quality and care manner that blew them away. I was very focused on that client facing, but in my head, I was like, oh my God, I'm not prospecting stop.
• 43:32
  Kelly: That was a psychological thing for me. Yeah. Truly, the first 12 to 18 months, where were the toughest and they really required us to all of us to stay focused on the families that followed us because they deserve to have a fantastic experience. And, and that quality of care piece we, my practice was known for. I was in the top 25% of body of care two years in a row. That was a big wake up call. Like, Nope, I wish somebody had said, don't even worry about bringing a new client, just bring the ones in there, we'll follow you and stay out of jail and don't, follow your non-solicitation agreement. The next thing that was a big surprise was I had to be prepared to work on the business. Right. You are working for a firm that does a lot of back office support for you, there's a lot there that you're paying for.
• 44:44
  Kelly: Luckily, we had a dedicated chief compliance officer, which not many firms our size have. Right. At the same time, you really have to be prepared to work on the business. Right.
• 45:05
  Charlie: I, I would, I would say, and these, this is an experience I've had too is growth can be a bad thing.
• 45:12
  Kelly: I did not prospect for 18 months.
• 45:14
  Charlie: And you come out of an environment.
• 45:17
  Kelly: Terrible.
• 45:18
  Charlie: With the business Jones or, the, your OSJ at LPL, you come out of an environment where that was your role. Right. You get to a place where, oh, wait a second. Now I've got to handle operations and fulfillment before growth can even be considered.
• 45:36
  Kelly: What do you want it to look like?
• 45:39
  Charlie: Yeah.
• 45:39
  Kelly: What are your clients to feel it look like? You know what I mean? What does it, what does it feel like to be a quiet? I said to clients many times, I don't know what it feels like to be a client. Can you please give us some feedback yeah. Where where's our gap.
• 45:52
  Charlie: That leads me to something I wanted to talk about in the client counsel that you had. And, and I don't know how active that still is. Certainly it's a wonderful idea. Talk about that. That, that client council, you guys get together quarterly or twice a year or whatever it was. Yeah.
• 46:09
  Kelly: Yep. We had, COVID put the dampers on it and the fact that we're not meeting, but I'm still connected. So right away by the right away. I mean, like I said, we left in may, by January of 17, we had our first advisory council meeting and there were 10 people. You were one of them, thank you for firing up and being with.
• 46:37
  Charlie: Us anytime.
• 46:38
  Kelly: And, but a lot of the folks that were 10 to 12 people, only two of them were clients. We chose people like my dentist, not a client had he's since retired, but he had a fantastic employee retention level. I mean, it was crazy 15 years. Right. How do you do that? Had somebody who was exceptional in marketing, a woman business owner that was a mom of three kids, very strong growing technology company. She was, they were about 10 years ahead of us. Right? We hand pick people that it wasn't about them becoming clients. We were trying to find people that would HR. We had an HR person. She's still part of us, but like we didn't ever have w we've never dealt with HR before. We hand these folks and ask them to join us and be brutally honest. We would do like a quarterly state of the state.
• 47:57
  Kelly: Like, this is what we're doing. This is how we're doing it. This is why we're doing it. This is where we came from. The reception was remarkable because they all had financial advisors. They just didn't know what a day in the life of a financial advisor practice looked like, man, it was so amazing to get the feedback. Our intent was not to grow the business. Like I want you as a client, our intent was, give us free advice. I'm still connected to many of those people, but it's more zoomies. Like some walking, we have a very nice canal here in the summertime walking along, so I'm still picking brains and asking for advice, but that was really exceptional and very, it was a peer group. Like I know I'm a baby business owner, but please tell me I'm not doing anything stupid.
• 49:00
  Charlie: I don't think you can understate the importance of that. Right? You don't, you don't have a board of directors to help you make decisions. Right. Having a peer group, some clients that's great feedback. Even that it's, over zoom meetings now I'm sure at the time it was more important than it is today because it was such a foundational time for your.
• 49:24
  Kelly: Business.
• 49:26
  Charlie: So,
• 49:26
  Kelly: It builder, it was a great confidence builder for us too. Also, like we ran into a couple of problems. Like we didn't understand QuickBooks. We had somebody who said they understood QuickBooks and they did not understand what books. And that was a real problem.
• 49:43
  Charlie: It, that brings me to my kind of next question, right? Yeah. You, so your dentist employee retention was, some of the expertise that he brought to that now, again for a front row seat for watching your career evolve, listen. Well, no, I mean, I know that you have hired some home run team members and have hired some that struck out on three straight pitches, so advice again for, for our listening audience. Okay. Now I would echo that.
• 50:25
  Kelly: Yeah,
• 50:26
  Charlie: Listen, I would echo that. I would echo that's, we've, I do have a couple of friends on our staff still. And, and so that's worked out, we have had some really difficult times because of that,
• 50:39
  Kelly: It's hard to be nice,
• 50:40
  Charlie: Right? Yep. It is. It is a business you still have to conduct business.
• 50:45
  Kelly: I would also say one of the biggest learning curves was tech. The tech stack understanding the technology stack was critical.
• 50:56
  Charlie: Not.
• 50:56
  Kelly: Following the crowd.
• 50:58
  Charlie: You still use red tail to some degree. I truly believe CRM and not necessarily Redtail CRM, but I truly believe CRM is like your most important, at least business development technology. Now, when you get to the client service, obviously there's some, some other things we need to talk about there. What are you currently using? You've got, you are transitioning to a great platform. I know that. And speak to that a little bit. Yeah.
• 51:23
  Kelly: So just take one step back. We did a lot of research on if we're going to go with another firm, what's their payout ratio and all that stuff, which is adorable. Okay. So you get 90% of your payout. You're still paying 40% on other stuff. Right? Don't, don't use that as a metric. Okay. Red tail. Nope. The we've outgrown some of the technology we started with, but not in a bad way. Just because we're growing, we need more. Okay. So red tail was fantastic. We're not turning it off, but it was very inexpensive way for us to collaborate, even during COVID on client information, but just, just notes, just to dues. Right. That was critical. We started with Salesforce and that was our hairball because were part of the LPL stack elite or group. And we got no support. That was that decision I changed in three months, that was like, Nope, not doing it.
• 52:34
  Kelly: A lot of that had to do with my background in tech. I am definitely the technophile and I am the one that vets everything first. Risk assessments are critical and there are a lot. Okay. On the tech stack side, there's a jillion things you could look at, right? Which is for me like a bill, Jillian squirrels, I didn't know what we needed. Well, I shouldn't say that. I knew he needed someplace to keep our notes and document everything. I knew that we needed a place to keep our documents secure. Right. I knew that we needed something to help us understand a client's risk profile. I knew those things. What I didn't know was, and again, this is where, when you work for a very large firm, you're spoiled because they take care of all of this for you. Okay. So fast forward we got to Schwab.
• 53:39
  Kelly: Were at LPL, we didn't have a lot of choices, which is fine. We got to Schwab's back office was amazing. They had a few things they had gap on, which was like performance reporting and stuff like that. We made a very big commitment to Orion. At the beginning I was thinking, oh my God, what have I done? Because it's pretty. And it's, it could be amazing. You need a PhD in it now, three years later to really three years later, no, 18, 19 20, 21. So yeah, we're renewing this year. The thing is so massive. It was, you're not just going to walk in and plug it and go, wow, you gotta learn bets. Right. So rebalancing stuff, document everything. Where do you put your stuff? Where how's it secure? I mean, and part of Becky's job. And I T I chocolate with her. I wish she was here right now because she has to vet every single vendor's security process.
• 54:46
  Kelly: And I hate that stuff.
• 54:48
  Charlie: Yeah.
• 54:50
  Kelly: She loves.
• 54:50
  Charlie: It. She loves it. She's got a mind for it.
• 54:52
  Kelly: Yeah. We are now going from six vendors to three. Wonderful. Right. We're consolidating who touches our data, how we're keeping it, we're using it. One of the pieces of the same piece we've always used, but the tech staff is so important because you've got to know that scalable, which red tail, there are a lot of folks that will keep red tail. I want more of, I don't want to have set. I don't want to open seven applications to find a document,
• 55:29
  Charlie: Right.
• 55:29
  Kelly: Not working. And, we're hoping to grow the practice, not just through new clients, which remarkably through COVID we've done. I think I go to the practice 23%, just in one year COVID-19 I was shooting for 10 because of COVID, but we're also bringing on new advisors. We're trying to build a tech stack that is scalable. We craft it once and deploy it many times. Folks don't have to say, I don't know what to use. I believe me, I made some financial Googles on that because I'm like, oh, that's pretty. I think I want that didn't work.
• 56:09
  Charlie: Yeah. If you, if you listen to the vendor and the vendor alone, you can spend a lot of money because yeah. Anyway,
• 56:15
  Kelly: So.
• 56:17
  Charlie: Yeah, there's can be some bias there. So, wonderful. I think technology is a big question, mark, for a lot of people who are making a leap to an independent space,
• 56:26
  Kelly: It's been vast, and it goes back to any planning, any client planning, what's this money supposed to do? What's the software supposed to do? What are you trying to solve and work backwards?
• 56:40
  Charlie: Yeah. I dunno if I'm here to plug software at all, but I know you guys are excited about a recent transition to having a mix 365 tying all your Microsoft products together.
• 56:53
  Kelly: Yeah.
• 56:54
  Charlie: Yeah. Cool.
• 56:55
  Kelly: That goes back to the vendors. The firms that we work for, Edward Jones, like I'm sure Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch, these big firms, they have the resources to build out single sign on and just have these really comprehensive systems. Right? The RIA space is very different because you don't have to use just one system. We, we recognized that as an old friend of mine used to say, all of a sudden the chief gets expensive. When we started looking at the man hours that were spending, trying to find out what directory was at documented and which one was compliant. It was just very evident that the investment in this new stack, which is it's, I crossing my fingers. We found a vendor that w what we're trying to do is connect our document storage system, which is Microsoft, pretty much everything. We were using our using Microsoft, but connecting them.
• 58:02
  Kelly: So you only go one place,
• 58:04
  Charlie: Right?
• 58:05
  Kelly: You go to the client folder and you find the client stuff and workflows, and it's all in one place. And, the RIA space is independent for a reason. That's the wild west. You can do anything you want as long as you're compliant. Right. That is, that could get you into so many rabbit holes. Keep it simple.
• 58:27
  Charlie: Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. I, I'll comment on your right. You could go, I mean, w w one of the benefits 15 years ago, I don't know if 15, 10, 18, whatever. One of the benefits of working at a Merrill or a Morgan, aside from our Jones, aside from the recognizable brand, of course, and the trust that's built in that brand is the fact that they had world-class technology. Now, I think I speculate that one of the main reasons that we've watched this industry evolve to independence is because of the advances in technology, in an open market.
• 59:06
  Kelly: Oh man. Yeah. And Schwab has acquired TD Ameritrade. I cannot wait to get some, so this year they're rolling out a lot of things that TDA. So we did look at TD Ameritrade. We looked at Schwab after LPL and the tech on TDA again, technophile. I was like, oh, I really want I rebel. It just, the Schwab platform was like client here's the other thing, clients didn't know who else was.
• 59:36
  Charlie: Right.
• 59:37
  Kelly: They knew who Schwab was. They knew who Jones was. Right. Hindsight being 2020, I should've just gone to Schwab, but I was a chicken. It worked out, it just took the scenic route.
• 59:52
  Charlie: You're you're teeing them up for me Kelly. With that being said, you took the scenic route. What, what would you change? If anything?
• 1:00:04
  Kelly: I don't, well, hindsight is 2020, right? So what would I tell myself? No thyself. Okay. Right. Yep. They focus, follow the recipe that Joan's recipe, whatever recipe it works, you follow it. Don't stop, never stopped learning. The other thing is trust myself. And, it's starting Jones with a three-year old and an 18 month old. What was I thinking? The most terrifying day of my life was getting my key to my office manager and walking out the door and I left everything. I left all my baby pictures. I left all everything. Cause I never wanted them to come and say, you took something. Oh, by the way, they had to pack it up for me, which was awesome. I would say that we're just trying to, he hadn't been brave enough to just do Schwab.
• 1:01:04
  Charlie: Okay.
• 1:01:05
  Kelly: It's slowed us down. Didn't hurt anybody. You bet. No way. Cause I gave my clients the opportunity to understand, we can stay here like you are now. Or we can go fee-based and very quickly the clients went, oh, I want feedbacks, which was baffling to me because that was something that Jones didn't ever really start tooting their horn about until the DOL.
• 1:01:30
  Charlie: Yeah.
• 1:01:31
  Kelly: So, there's the other thing I wish I knew more I had known more about was the amount of time it takes to run the business. Right. You've seen me go, I hate it. I love it. I hate it. I love it. The growing pains were tough and what? I made my bed. I had to sleep in it. Now I can say literally, I, first of all, I cannot believe it's going to be 20, 23 here. Well, I should say rewind June of this year, we'll start our seventh year.
• 1:02:12
  Charlie: It's amazing. What.
• 1:02:13
  Kelly: The heck.
• 1:02:14
  Charlie: That's where I write. That's amazing. I look back and yeah, October will be our ninth. I blows my mind every time I think about it. So I love referring people to you. I talk to advisors all the time advisors going, it'd be going independent or, leaving a large wirehouse, go into a, an independent broker dealer, even RIA Kelly, are you okay talking to our listeners? If they've got some questions,
• 1:02:41
  Kelly: I wish somebody had talked to me. That's why we're, that's why we're doing this. Charlie. I wish that I had somebody that didn't want anything from me. Right. That would just say, okay, don't do this. That's stupid. Or if you're going to do this, I would look at that. I just, I think my passion is if there's somebody, anybody who wants to transition eat, I'll help. I'll answer questions. I mean, it's, I just wish somebody had been there that I could trust like this wasn't something you would see what you're doing. Wasn't around them. Right. Independence is not for everybody, believe me, but I can, I can share a lot of information around the broker dealers that I've been exposed to. There are really great or hybrids.
• 1:03:39
  Charlie: That said, what's the best way to contact you.
• 1:03:43
  Kelly: I can be reached at my email address, which is Kelly, K E L L y@linley.com. That's spelled L Y N N L E I G H C o.com. It's a very sophisticated name for the business. It's Becky's middle name and my,
• 1:04:08
  Charlie: I love it. I got to be involved in that part of the process too. I enjoy, I enjoyed that a whole bunch. And Kelly's last name is old cheque. O L C Z a K. And she's on LinkedIn. So easy to find her there. The website is Linley co L Y N N L E I G H co.com. Kelly old check. I have so much love for you. Thank you so much for being my first guest on the podcast. I don't know how we're going to cut this thing up. We've been on for about an hour, a little more than that. It may be. We rolled the whole thing. I had fun.
• 1:04:44
  Kelly: I'll tell you that I would not be here. When, when I met you in 2010,
• 1:04:52
  Charlie: Maybe.
• 1:04:54
  Kelly: For social media coaching little did I know?
• 1:04:59
  Charlie: 13? I think probably 13 or 14 minutes. Yeah,
• 1:05:02
  Kelly: Little did I know? I mean, you've been instrumental in our practice trusting by.
• 1:05:09
  Charlie: And you're, you're amazing. I cherish our friendship and our, thank you so much. Love you. Love you. Love your.
• 1:05:16
  Kelly: Family.
• 1:05:18
  Charlie: Yep. You too, Kelly. Thank you so much. This is Charlie van Dervin, founder, and president of social advisors and Kelly Olczyk co-founder of Lee co Linley and company signing off. Thank you for tuning in.
• 1:05:33
  Kelly: Thank you guys.