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Building an Enterprise Office · The Perfect RIA

0:35
Jamie Shilanski: Wait a minute, I just spent my entire career
0:38
grinding to make myself so important and single handedly
0:41
bootstrap this financial planning firm to a multimillion
0:44
dollar level of success. And now your advice for me is to make
0:47
myself as useless to the organization as possible.
0:50
Welcome back to TPR Nation. This is Jamie Shilanski, in an
0:53
episode of Worlds to Conquer. And today we are going to talk
0:57
about the third stage that a financial advisor enters into
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when they are running a successful financial advisory
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practice. So as you already know, as a longtime listener,
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Shilanski and Associates is our enterprise office up in
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Anchorage, Alaska. Our parents, Floyd and Rosa Shilanski,
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started a company back in 1981 and man, have we just not
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learned over those 40 plus years of all the trials, tribulations,
1:18
growing pains, you know, we grew to 20 plus people of support
1:22
personnel, and then decided, wow, this is really out of hand.
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This isn't what we wanted. And we cut a lot of the fat, and now
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we've sort of reemerged as a Phoenix coming out of the
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embers, because now we know how to do it better. Now we're
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taking a second crack at it and making sure we're defining how,
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why and when we decide to grow so as a financial advisor, there
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are only three stages of your career. There is the growth
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stage, and the growth stage is when you are not working with
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the number of clients that you want to have ideally, and it's
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when you're not earning the revenue that you want to earn
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now. We all want to earn more revenue. I want next year's
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numbers of even higher than this year's, but that's not what I'm
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talking about. Remember when you started out as a financial
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advisor and you were like, Man, if I could just make a quarter
2:07
million dollars a year, if I could just make a quarter
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million dollars in that a year, that would be amazing. And then
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you made 250 you're like, gosh, if I could just get to three or
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four or five, and that is where we talk about that growth stage.
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If you're not earning the revenue that you want and you're
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not working with the number of clients that you want to work
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with, then you should be completely blinded to all other
2:30
distractions in our industry and focused on nothing but growth
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and distractions. They're out there everywhere. Everyone is
2:37
telling you what to do, how to do it, etc. At the perfect Ra,
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we are about the pursuit of perfection. We are about making
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sure that there's more transparency for financial
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advisors and community to help each other grow from people that
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are talking from experience. We have a No BS policy. At The
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Perfect RIA what does that mean? That means if you come to me and
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say, Jamie, I would like to talk to you about, you know, merging
3:00
and acquiring practices, I'm going to say, Hey, I've done it
3:03
three times. None of those times were super successful. In my
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mind, I didn't hit my benchmarks. I'm not the right
3:09
person that you want to go talk to. You want to go talk to Joe.
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Joe has done it a dozen times, and it's had a radical success.
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That's our no BS policy. So if you don't have skin to gain, if
3:19
you don't have experience, if you haven't throw it and done
3:23
it, sit down and shut up and let the people that have had those
3:26
experiences talk about the pros and cons and help educate
3:29
others. A lot of times, we'll go to conferences and there's
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somebody standing up there that was a former wholesaler telling
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you how to talk to clients that's never once sat across
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from a client. Never once in their life have they sat across
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a client and had their livelihood depend on that
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relationship. So we're really big about listening to experts,
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making sure we're getting coached, incorporating different
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things, but then also filtering it through. How many times have
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you done this? Show me what you've been successful in this
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way. So if you're in that growth stage and you're saying, okay,
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you know what, I definitely am not where I want to be in my
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financial advisory practice, then reach out to us at
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lifestyle@theperfectria.com we've got courses designed just
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for you that will be focused on how to prospect, how to work
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with centers of influence, because that is the only thing
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that you should be focused on. You should be focused on
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marketing, development, introducing yourself to new
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leads, new prospects, and then also originally enhancing your
4:26
client deliver experience. Because if, and this is where
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people get confused, they think they have to go get new they
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have to acquire new people to come inside the top, what we
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refer to as the top of the funnel, they have to broaden
4:38
their exposure, and that is part of it. But you also have to
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enhance the experience that people are having with you
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already, because you already have that client, it is easier
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to keep a client than it is to go and try to secure a client.
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So making sure that you're balancing both sides of the type
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of experience, at least people raving fan. And if you haven't
4:58
read that book, you need to add it to your growth argument. That
5:01
will be an incredible book for you to digest, but you want to
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make everyone a raving fan so they can't stop talking about
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you. And when they can't stop talking about you, they're going
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to start referring you, and as they refer you, you're going to
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watch your clients start to naturally grow. But that's not
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just something that just magically happens. One of the
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things that Shilanski and Associates is I slap a we love
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referrals on every single out piece of gold correspondence.
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Why? Because I want to constantly let my clientele know
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that we are growing, and we love to talk to their friends. We
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might not be the right financial advisory firm for them, but it's
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probably worth an hour of time to figure out if we can help
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them. And that is the language that I give them, and it's also
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the filter. So if they send somebody that I wouldn't work
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with, then they know, hey, I'm not right for everyone. That's
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okay. I'm only right for the unique people, but I will filter
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those people out. You just send me everyone, and then if I send
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somebody, and we instantaneously know that they're not going to
6:00
be a good fit for RIA, guess what we do. We deliver so much
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value. We knock their socks off. We make sure that they know that
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we have provided so much value in their life, that they are
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like, Man, I really want to hire you. Really want to hire you.
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And then it becomes self selecting. Hey, you know, we
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can't actually help you right now. We're, you know, full, or
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we have these different things, or, you know, we're cost
6:22
prohibitive for you guys, but go and do these things and you'll
6:26
be in great set. And this is hard for people. They're like,
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if you knew that somebody wasn't going to be a good fit, why did
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you deliver massive value? Because what's going to happen
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when they get done meeting with me, they're going to talk to my
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existing client, and they're going to say, how was your
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experience? And if we didn't knock their freaking socks off,
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how do you think I just dried up that referral line Sure did. So
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we deliver so much value to them that they say, Wow, this was
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incredible. This was amazing. You know, I'm not the right
6:55
client for them, but they help me in these different ways. They
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problem solve for me. Think it means I think about ahead of
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time, and you knock their freaking socks off. If you enter
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into a conference room with somebody, you have one mission,
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deliver massive value, deliver massive amounts of value to
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them. So they leave an absolute raving fan of your
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professionalism. Because, remember, there are a lot of
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devices, machines, software programs out there that a lot
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smarter than all of us combined. People are hiring us for our
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opinion. People are hiring us for our advice. Make sure that
7:27
advice is worth listening to on every single occasion. So once
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you have the number of clients that you want, you have making
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the revenue that you want, you're still going to be
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growing. So it's never that you're coming out. It's kind of
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like turning your birthday right. How's it feel to be 16?
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Well, it felt the same as did yesterday when I was 15. You
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don't ever leave that you're just now leapfrogging onto a no
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place, and that new place is freedom, because when you're
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growing, you're freaking grinding your butt should be in
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the office, outworking every single other person. If you want
7:59
what other people only dream of, you have to work harder than
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they ever imagined was possible. So when you're in that growing
8:05
stage, don't you cry to me about having to work on Fridays or
8:09
having too many appointments. That's the only thing that you
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should be focused on, because if you want freedom, genuine
8:15
freedom, you must be committed to the discipline and the grind
8:19
that takes to get there. So now that you've got your deal number
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of clients, now that you're making good revenue, you're
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never leaving those principles behind, but now you got more
8:28
freedom. Now you've got things that allow you to take those
8:31
Fridays, to take vacations, take time, to not be in the office,
8:35
maybe as much as you had to do during your grinding phase, and
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when that becomes the case and you're in that freedom debate,
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the only things that you should be focusing on is systems,
8:45
policies and processes. So you grew and grew and grew. You've
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learned a lot of lessons from a lot of different clients and
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prospects and center influence now. Document, them. Document,
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document, document, yeah, no, what is that quote? You don't
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ride your goals. You fall to the level of your processes, right?
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We've been able to systematize things, so then you need to take
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this was one of the greatest exercises that we did in our
9:08
practice. We were going to hire somebody to come in and document
9:11
all of our processes, and they quoted us like $25,000 and I
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said, Okay, you're going to come in here, and how are you going
9:18
to know what the processes are? And I said, Oh well, I'm gonna
9:21
sit down. You're gonna go over them step by step. And I was
9:25
like, Wait a minute. I'm so sorry. My polish is shining
9:28
through a little bit. Did you just tell me I was gonna pay you
9:31
$25,000 to write down what I was gonna say? And they're like,
9:34
yes. And I was like, move over. I'll write it down. And so I
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began to document every single thing. Now, when I came up with
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a template, and this is where we got to jump from that freedom to
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that enterprise stage. So that's that's the next stage. The next
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stage of a financial advisor's career is enterprise, and that
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means building a practice that's going to be sustainable beyond
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your existence. So many times, advisors love to die at their
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desks. They bring in a junior, keep that junior and that junior
10:01
capacity for 510, 1520, years. And said, don't worry when I
10:05
retire. By the way, they're never going to retire. So if
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you're in that situation right now, and you're waiting for that
10:11
senior advisor to retire, and you don't have a contract
10:14
agreement that starts tipping the scales on commission that
10:17
senior advisor has an exit strategy. Guess what? Retiring?
10:21
They're dying at their desk, and they're fooling you into
10:24
thinking otherwise they're waiting for some catastrophic
10:27
event to befall them, and then they will stop working, and
10:30
otherwise they're going to continue to work if they don't
10:33
have a retirement date. And think about it with your
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clients. Think about with your clients, think about with your
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clients, when they talk about retirement, how excited are
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they? They're like, Oh man, I want to retire. I want to retire
10:46
the same date. I want to retire this age. I want to retire this
10:49
time year. I want to retire, etc. But if you're working with
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a senior advisor and they are not as excited about retirement,
10:56
that's because, guess what? They're not excited about
10:59
retirement, don't want to retire. There's a significant
11:02
feeling of purpose that goes around being able to work with
11:05
clientele, and they might not want to give that up, and that's
11:08
totally cool. In fact, as Shilanski and Associates, Floyd
11:11
Shilanski, who started the firm, who's our founder, Micah and I,
11:15
have been co CEOs for the last, you know, decade, but we don't
11:18
let them use the R word. In fact, when clients come in and
11:21
we're in a joint meeting, and they said, Floyd, you know, what
11:25
are? What are you thinking about retirement? I say, whoa, whoa,
11:28
whoa, Mr. Client, don't use that dirty R word in this office.
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Everything was going so nicely. And I make a joke out of it. And
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they say, Listen, our greatest ambition is to make sure that we
11:38
set you up for successful retirement and achieve your
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goals. But we just love what we do around here. We we don't want
11:45
to retire. And then I lean and I say, You know what? This is my
11:48
deal with my dad. He can retire the day he's no longer of use.
11:52
He can retire the day he's no longer useful to this
11:54
organization. And then for us, because we have such a family
11:58
firm, it resonates to so many people. And I'm like, Man, I
12:01
just they one, I respect my father. Two, they see his value
12:04
and worth despite his gray hair and three it also tells him how
12:07
passionate we are about changing lives and helping people. So
12:11
that's a good line for me. But if you're not in that same
12:14
situation, if you are waiting for a financial advisor to die
12:17
at their desk, you got to have strong conversations,
12:20
conversations you don't want to have, and then you got to ink
12:23
those conversations because paper, it's not in writing. You
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know, a lot of people, I'm gonna get a lot of flack from this,
12:30
from senior advisors, so I just know it, the best way to know
12:33
how serious they are about transitioning their book is to
12:36
see how much of their commission they're willing to give up.
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That's really where it comes down to, because they'll 100%
12:43
allow you to take on all the appointments service work,
12:46
building the plans and calls. Because, guess what? That's not
12:49
the fun part. The fun part is meeting with clients and helping
12:52
them achieve dreams. That's the fun part, doing all the data
12:56
entry, analyzing things, looking at portfolios, making different
12:59
moves. That's not fun for most financial advisors. Most
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financial advisors love, love, love, meeting with prospects and
13:06
helping them develop a financial plan. It is the conversation
13:09
aspects of helping them. It is not the sitting behind the
13:12
computer doing busy work. That's not what does it for most great
13:16
financial advisors. So of course, they're going to let you
13:19
come in and do all the service work, because that's not the fun
13:22
part. But the second that they start having to maybe diminish
13:26
the level of AUM and the commissions that they're getting
13:29
now you're going to know how serious they are about clients
13:32
to you, because now you're in their checkbook, you've created
13:35
a strategy. I like a five year transition plan. I think that
13:38
works best for clients, and that's what I'm solving for
13:41
number one. Two, it also helps both parties on the cash flow
13:45
side of things. And three, you know, you got to remember, like,
13:48
if you are somebody, that's a quote, unquote Junior advisor,
13:51
which is a term I don't like because it sets up this
13:54
hierarchy that maybe you don't have as much time and
13:57
experience. But this isn't playing so, you know, if you're
14:00
in this quote, unquote Junior we call them protege advisors. It
14:04
takes a lot of work to go get a client, and it takes a
14:07
tremendous amount of work to keep a client for several
14:10
decades. And we run on our KPIs, our key performance indicators,
14:13
the lifetime value of a client. And first landsca Associates, we
14:17
set our bar at 10 years as a lifetime. But I gotta tell you,
14:20
our lifetime could justifiably be 20 to 30 years with most of
14:23
our clients, because that is the type of firm that Floyd and Rosa
14:27
built, is that we have lifetime relationships, and we now work
14:30
with adult children. Because of that, I cannot tell you how many
14:34
times we've sat in Rome and they've said, hey, just so you
14:37
know, if anything happened to us, we already told the kids to
14:40
call you guys first. You're the first call. And that has
14:43
happened more and more, especially as my dad's older
14:46
book begins to age, is that we have adult children come in and
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said, No. Mom and Dad always said, to call you if something
14:53
happened. I'm so thankful that you guys have this all in order,
14:56
and it's so easy for me. So the important faucet of how we built
14:59
our practice. And so when you're in that protege capacity, you
15:03
don't have that 1015, 2030, years, you haven't watched their
15:06
first child be born, and then maybe you know them have to take
15:09
in a nephew because their sister is a drug addict, and now they
15:13
ended up fostering a kid that they didn't plan on. You don't
15:16
have that lifetime of living and working with these people to
15:19
solve certain situational things. You don't know that the
15:23
widow, who's been a widow 10 years, hired Floyd the day after
15:26
her husband died, they had already had an appointment set.
15:29
He died unexpectedly in his 30s. She came into the office, and it
15:33
was the first time that she had cried since she heard the news.
15:36
She was still in shock. And she's been a client for 35
15:39
years. Since you don't have that history with those clients under
15:43
your belt, you must earn it. And so I think a five year
15:46
transition is a good way for you to earn all I think a good way
15:49
for you to get up to snuff, if you will, on a client, is to go
15:52
through all of the notes and dictation and read back as much
15:56
as possible you can, and then sit down with that advisor and
15:59
say, Hey, tell me how you met Bob and Sue. And tell me how
16:02
what kind of guy are they? What kind of gal are they? You know,
16:05
do they have kids? They have grandkids? And let that senior
16:09
start talking, because what you're going to find is there's
16:12
a lot of information on a client not captured in tation. And then
16:15
I immediately go back after a conversation with a senior on
16:19
advisor of something I didn't know, and I open up my iPhone, I
16:22
get my dictation app, and I rattle off all that information
16:25
so it has a place to live, so that that way in the future,
16:28
somebody else knows this history. Somebody else knows why
16:32
this matters so much. Then very, very critical. So when we're on
16:35
a five year, if you will, buy out, one of our roles is that if
16:38
a senior advisor has to be in the conference room, you don't
16:42
get any of the money. Do you get the money when it starts to
16:45
transition? Maybe that works for you. Maybe it doesn't. If you
16:48
strike as a five year succession plan and says, you know, the
16:52
first year I'm just, I'm grinding, and I don't get any
16:55
money. So if I'm the quote, unquote Junior, I'm at zero, and
16:58
that other advisor, the senior one's at 100 the next year. Now,
17:01
we start raking up. I get 20, they get 80, and you start going
17:05
down the path until that fifth year where you've put in half a
17:08
decade's time of working that relationship with someone. And
17:11
then it also begins to allow that senior professional to have
17:15
the transition time to adjust to no longer having that because
17:18
cash flow is king. Cash flow is king, and it matters to us as
17:21
financial advisors just as much as it matters to the retirees.
17:25
So as you build out an enterprise office, you might
17:28
have more clients than you have time to necessarily work with,
17:31
so you're going to have to start bringing some people in, and
17:34
then it becomes your choice whether or not you want to
17:37
transition some clients to them. Maybe they need to go and feel
17:41
like what it's like to hunt for themselves most successful
17:44
enterprise, I'm going to raise my hand right here, and I know
17:47
PJ Denuzzo has a hell of a enterprise off as well. We've
17:50
got a really great one. We're constantly learning from danuzo.
17:54
He does a phenomenal job. Hell of an advisor, great coach. And
17:57
just, I can't imagine being a mentor if we were on that side
18:00
of the country. Just amazing person to be around. And they
18:03
built out a successful enterprise track, and I believe
18:06
that they even call a lot of their financial advisors
18:09
coaches, because that's what this is. It's coaching. It's
18:12
coaching people through different stages of their lives.
18:15
So as we built out at Shilanski and Associates, our enterprise
18:19
office, we wanted to do a lot of that as well. Now here's the
18:22
good and bad part. The good part is that when you become a
18:25
financial advisor with Shilanski and Associates we feed them
18:28
leads. Now the good part is, we feed them leads. We feed leads
18:32
constantly. I think most of our financial advisors, golly, I'm
18:35
going to underestimate it, because I don't want to over
18:38
inflate this number, but they meet with at least 20 prospects
18:42
a year. 20 prospects a year. They get set up on appointments
18:45
our relationship manager handles that. Micah and I and the
18:48
advisors play an active part in this too, but it's mostly Micah
18:51
and I driving. Micah is my baby brother. You'll hear him on
18:55
Mondays with Matt and Micah when they're on the pod together, but
18:58
we drive most of the content, and most of them for our
19:01
particular niche. So when you come on and as a financial
19:04
advisor, we're feeding you now, that's the good part, because
19:07
you don't know how to feed yourself. You know, if you want
19:11
to attend, it to a baby, a baby doesn't come out of the womb.
19:14
Annoying. How to use a spoon, you got to figure it out. Now,
19:17
the bad part of it is there is a lot of knowledge, and there is a
19:21
lot of lessons that you will learn when you have to learn how
19:24
to feed yourself and figure it out. Everyone could go the
19:27
grocery store. Not everyone cannot. And so we try to make
19:30
sure that we are in we are imparting the discipline lessons
19:34
because they're really, really important about how to feed
19:37
yourself, how to develop marketing, why content matters,
19:40
why delivering massive value, even if you know the person is
19:43
not an ideal client, is so important. So those are all of
19:46
the lessons that we are our financial advisors. And by the
19:49
way, Micah and I might be running the firm, but we are so
19:52
actively learning too. We are so and that is what sets us apart
19:56
from so many people, because we are more concerned about being
19:59
interested than interesting. When I meet you, I want you to
20:02
tell me everything. Tell me something, anything I want to
20:06
learn. You have some piece of knowledge that I don't have, and
20:09
I know it. I feel it down in my bones, and I want to learn from
20:12
you. And then I want to collaborate and I want to share
20:15
information. I want to take little tips and say, Great, now,
20:19
how can we go implement those? And that is what led us to our
20:22
enterprise level, and our enterprise level, that means
20:25
we're bringing on more advisors and more team members. That's
20:28
that next stage of leveling up, and when you hit that area,
20:31
that's really, really tricky, because now you have to do this.
20:35
You have to decentralize command. You have to make
20:38
yourself replaceable, and you just spent the last 1015, 20
20:41
years making sure you were the only one at your practice that
20:44
was irreplaceable. So yes, TPR nation, now I'm telling you,
20:47
once you've hit this drive, this area, you have to decentralize
20:51
command. You have to empower other people. So it's not just
20:54
you the helm. You might be the one that Captain running it, but
20:57
you need a whole entire crew making sure they're going where
21:01
they need to you chart the course they're pulling on the
21:04
horse. You got to have that in place. So how do you do that?
21:07
Freedom stage, we were documenting everything, but once
21:10
you document it, it's not documented and done. In fact, we
21:13
have a brand new batch of employees. We are really lucky.
21:16
For about seven years, we had the same staff. We didn't have
21:19
any turn on our new faces, really, and one or two here and
21:23
there, but we had the same core team members. So we all knew
21:26
what we knew. We all build this out together. We don't document
21:29
our processes. We all had a down in place, but now we have the
21:33
organizations that don't have that institutional knowledge.
21:36
And it's simple things, simple things like this. If you're on
21:39
phone with a client and the covid is getting frustrated with
21:43
the technology, can't find out what the way you're referring to
21:46
when they log in, the client should not give you their
21:49
username and passcode. Now, we didn't think about putting that
21:52
as part of a training, because why would you Well, who would
21:56
ever do this? But the second bad way? And that's what's kind of
21:59
beautiful about having so many people please. The second that
22:02
our employee was put in that position, it was instantly shut
22:06
down by somebody else's institutional knowledge. Sorry,
22:09
Mr. Mrs. Client, I appreciate you wanting to do that. However,
22:12
we are prohibited from accepting your user your passcode. We
22:15
cannot log into anything as you however, if you want to schedule
22:19
a service appointment with one of our team members and bring
22:22
your machine in at hotspot, because we don't allow anyone on
22:25
our network, even our own clients, and we would be happy
22:28
to sit down there with you and show you where these are. And it
22:32
was just updating a beneficiary. Website had completely changed,
22:35
and they didn't know where it was at. But we don't, you know.
22:39
We We had this institutional knowledge, but it took a team
22:42
being able to be like, Whoa, hold on, stop. Red flag. We do
22:45
not do that, because a brand new person isn't going to do that,
22:48
especially when that brand new person has spent the last 30
22:52
days drinking the Kool Aid of we deliver exceptional value. We
22:55
take care of our clients. We go above and beyond, and they might
22:58
not know what they don't know. We have to be able to train and
23:02
teach them. And so here's what we do differently than what
23:05
other people do. We didn't just flag it and grab it say, no, no,
23:08
we can't do that. It got circulated up and said, Hey, by
23:12
the way, I think we should add this to the training manual.
23:15
This is what occurred, and this is what we need to make sure
23:18
happens in our onboarding compliance training. Great. Pull
23:21
up the onboarding compliance training. Let's take care of it
23:24
right now. Let's do it now. We don't sit and have 85 meetings
23:28
on we talk to the employee, we make sure that it doesn't
23:31
happen, and then we make sure it doesn't happen again. That is
23:34
the decentralizing of command, and the more knowledge we put
23:37
into our learning management system, the more training
23:40
tutorials we compose, the better we make our team, the less
23:44
important it is to have one single person running that
23:47
organization, and that is the goal of an enterprise office,
23:50
because, like I tell my team every year at our retreat, I
23:53
know for a fact that Micah and I could touch X amount of
23:56
heartbeats and we could, we can make an impact. But I know that
23:59
if we bring up a group of financial advisors who still
24:02
believe that character and values matter, we can multiply
24:05
that by the 10s of 1000s, and that is what we are after. That
24:09
is what when you build the enterprise office that is your
24:12
core focus. These lines command and go impact as many heartbeats
24:15
out there as you possibly can, because there might be a lot of
24:19
quote, unquote financial advisors, but we all know
24:21
there's not a lot of really good financial advisors that will
24:25
lose sleep over your finances. TPR nation. This is Jamie
24:28
Shilanski, an episode of worlds to conquer. Go find people who
24:31
share your values and change the world.