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Financial Advisor Success
Ep 458: Overcoming Perfectionism Burnout While Still Serving Clients Well With A Standard Of “Calm Excellence” with Lisa Brown
01:30:00
How leading with clarity, structure, and compassion helped transform a culture of “urgent perfectionism” into one of calm, sustainable excellence.
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast where you go behind the scenes with financial planner, speaker and consultant Michael Kitces to hear stories of how leading financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next level in your advisory business. And now, here's your host, Michael Kitces.
- [00:28]
B
Welcome everyone. Welcome to the 458th episode of the Financial Advisor Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is Lisa Brown. Lisa is the President of Greenwood Gearhart, an RIA based in Fayetteville, Arkansas that oversees approximately $1.8 billion in assets under management for 1070 client households. What's unique about Lisa, though, is how her firm has implemented an approach of calm excellence in contrast to a practice of urgent perfectionism that has allowed her firm to manage its rapid growth while maintaining a high level of client service and mitigating potential burnout among staff members. In this episode we talk in depth about how Lisa's firm made the transition from being investment centric to being planning centric, helping it avoid fee compression and maintain the same fee schedule it's had for its 43 year history how Lisa's firm experienced significant growth after developing its comprehensive planning model while also adding significant work for the firm staff and how Lisa found that striving for perfection in the planning process led to burnout amongst team members who sometimes would work past midnight trying to create the best possible plans and client experience. We also talk about how Lisa recognized that her team was likely on an unsustainable path and instead developed a framework of calm excellence which her firm defines as striving to be our best with measured and paced progress while allowing ourselves to learn and grow from challenges and mistakes How Lisa's approach has her team focus primarily on what matters most to the client and what's going to move the needle for them, reducing the number of supposedly urgent tasks they face during the day and how Lisa's calm excellence model has led to more efficient and fewer work hours for her staff and an element of mutual respect with clients as both the firm and the clients focus on what's most important and be certain to listen to the end where Lisa shares how her firm reduced the number of internal meetings to two, a daily huddle and a regular investment committee meeting, and only brought back other meetings on an as needed basis, freeing up staff time for more important tasks How Lisa's firm has boosted morale by implementing a kudos program that allows team members to publicly recognize peers and award them with a $100 gift card and how Lisa overcame her own perfectionist tendencies through coaching, reading and journaling, and ultimately embraced the Calm excellence framework. And so with that introduction, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast with Lisa Brown. Welcome, Lisa Brown, to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast.
- [02:51]
C
Thank you, Michael. I am thrilled and grateful to be talking with you today.
- [02:56]
B
I'm really excited to have you on today and to get to talk about what I can only think of as just the challenges of perfectionism. As a financial advisor. I mean, I have trouble even a little bit saying that because perfectionism itself, that's a very loaded word. It sort of implies a level of perfection effort beyond what was actually necessary or appropriate. It's not really a good description of someone you're a perfectionist because you're doing the exact right level of perfection focus just it's usually got a negative connotation. But when it comes to service businesses like financial planning, I mean for a lot of us there really is no such thing as giving a client too much good service. Like how do you argue against giving great service to clients and going out of your way to truly serve them as best we can, with the caveat that if you do that too long or to too much of an extreme, eventually it just, it creates the sustainability problems for the the firm. Like too much perfectionism leads to burnout. It can lead to rising costs to do all the work that is perfected to the nth degree. Which if we can't charge clients more for all that extra work, eventually it undermines the profitability or even just like the economic viability of the firm is staffing costs go up to beyond what clients are willing to pay and to even just like when the standards of client service are high in the first place. It's also not easy to adjust because you can't just come in and say like hey, let's stop working so hard for clients. We don't want you to burn yourself out. Like easy. Easy to say, very not easy to do when serving clients as well is deeply ingrained into the culture of the firm. And so I know your firm is. Lisa has gone through a version of this both like what happens when high touch service done to perfection potentially starts to become a burnout risk. And then how do you actually recalibrate away from less than perfect without undermining quality or like the culture of serving clients really well. So I'm really excited to talk about like how we as conscientious service minded advisors, like try to find this balance between great service that we want to give and the risks of over servicing and the burnout that can result.
- [05:12]
C
Absolutely. And I'm thrilled to talk about it. We've lived it, We've lived the burnout. And I think you're right. It's centered around this high standard that we set in our industry and we never want to get away from that. We've just got to learn the art of discerning what's meeting the standard and what's over serving or over producing. We have four core values in our firm and I think that's a great starting place for identifying how we've helped to manage it. It's client focus, excellence, integrity and fulfillment. And fulfillment is the one we've really focused on in terms of this conversation. Obviously the excellence pieces as well. But fulfillment to us means we're fulfilling client lives, we're helping them ultimately meet their goals, but we're also helping our team members live fulfilled lives. We're not robots, we're humans. And probably a couple of years ago we really started seeing a lack of team members experiencing fulfillment. We saw the burnout, we saw maybe lack of motivation and we started to dig in and understand what that means. And I think our job in leadership is to reconcile when you don't see the way we're living actually aligning with the values we say we have. And so we took some time to own the fact that we'd probably set those standards and then really start having one on one conversations with team members where we saw those acute symptoms start to crop up so that we could understand what was happening and then hopefully help to guide the ship in a different direction.
- [07:11]
B
So I want to dig in. Well, I want to dig into that a lot further to understand what was going on. But maybe just as a brief starting point, can you just paint a little bit of a picture for us of the advisory firm overall as it exists today, of clients or AUM or revenue or staff, just so we have some overall context for the business to then understand more of what was going on and how burnout related issues were starting to show up?
- [07:42]
C
Sure. We have today about 1.8 billion in assets under management. We serve about 1070 families in 38 states. We have 25 team members, all client facing roles, for little context. Over the last seven years, our average AUM growth has been about 22%. So I think that can point to some of the drive behind the perfectionism and the growth engine that we've had.
- [08:17]
B
Because ironically, it was working. You were serving people really, really well and going over the top and like yay. They're referring us and we're grow. But wow, this is a lot of work.
- [08:29]
C
Absolutely. And I don't think you would talk to any client who hopefully you won't that has been unhappy in that timeframe. We maybe just have overserved in an effort to sustain the growth and meet those high service standards.
- [08:46]
B
So can you explain a little bit more of just the 25 team members? Like who's organized where or how? Like what are those roles? Or at least like departments. We don't have to do every single one of the 25 people but like departmentally how, like how's the organization structured?
- [09:08]
C
We've structured it in terms of a centralized investment management team and there's four team members there. Part of our new strategic initiative that we've implemented this year actually means we have three different business units in terms of clients and those are family office, wealth management and advisory. Under those business units we have a five person advisor team. In addition to myself and Brock Gerhardt, we have an accounting services team made up of two people. We have an associate and planning team made up of four team members. And then we have a client operations team with six team members. And then we also have an intern who's wonderful.
- [09:58]
B
So the as you framed it, three business units, Family office, wealth management and advisory. So can you explain a little bit more for us? Like what, what those are, what the differences are?
- [10:11]
C
Yeah, Family office is, you know, more geared towards our higher net worth clients with more complex needs. Those clients typically have 10 million in assets under management or and have a need beyond pure investment management and financial planning. We have a lot of clients with 10 million under management who don't have more complex needs. And so they wouldn't necessarily fall in that business unit. Typically the clients in that unit need accounting services, facilitation, estate facilitation, alternative investment options and more coordination, maybe even some concierge services. Our wealth management clients, those typically, you know, fit in the 1 to $10 million and assets under management range. But really again there we're identifying client need where they're needing comprehensive financial planning and investment management. And then our advisory clients typically have less than a million under management. They have some planning needs, they maybe even maybe in an emerging wealth builder client profile. And so we're trying to meet their needs in a different way. And that segmenting the business as I mentioned is new to us, but we think it's an important part of really getting our team and our work focused on delivering the Right things to the right clients.
- [11:45]
B
So how does fee structure work across these business units?
- [11:52]
C
Right now, our fee schedule is the same across the business, and it's the same as it was in 1982 when our doors opened. It's a standard asset under management fee starting at 1% and then tearing down from there.
- [12:10]
B
So starts at 1%, where do you start?
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C
Tiering down at 10 million and then 20 million.
- [12:19]
B
Oh, so you're essentially like 1% straight through up to 10 million before you, you hit the first break point. And then how far do you drop down when you get there?
- [12:29]
C
It goes down to 75 basis points, then 50 basis points, then 25. But it's a tiered. For example, the first million under any client would pay that 1% fee, and then it would adjust down as you hit different break points.
- [12:45]
B
So if I'm 11 million, I'm still paying 1% on my first 10. My 0.75 is just like the next, the last 1 million. That's across the line.
- [12:54]
C
Correct.
- [12:55]
B
Okay. Okay. And I'm fascinated by that. So. And that is that like, literally the same fee schedule as when the firm in 1982, like, it was 1% then, and you haven't had to change it.
- [13:09]
C
It is. Which I think is incredible. And I attribute our founder, she was a visionary, and we've been a pure RIA since the day we opened a full fiduciary. The same fee schedule. You know, I look at where the industry is going today and where she was 43 years ago, and we've held true to those, those principles.
- [13:36]
B
I, I just chuckle as I hear, you know, we, we've spent, I mean, we basically, you know, like 1982, right. The, like, the firm is founded and the first personal computers start showing up, which were supposed to utterly, completely change the world and kind of did. And you have like, 43 years of the most unimaginably tremendous evolution of computers. To anyone you would have Talked to in 1982, that I think anyone back then would have said, will, like, obliterate fee schedules and cause mass fee compression. And you're like, nope, same fee schedule as 1982 hasn't changed.
- [14:16]
C
I would say the difference is. And, you know, we could look at the timeline. In 2016, when I returned to the firm, we were so concerned with fee compression and really challenged ourselves to say, hey, what. What are we going to do that's going to add more value to our relationships? If investment management is becoming more, you know, more commoditized, even, you know, some planning, it's it's, what's, what's going to add more value. And so while the fee structure has stayed the same, our services have changed, right?
- [14:56]
B
And I mean, to me, that's the fascinating thing about the business as a whole. Like when these technology disruptions happen, right? Personal computers, the Internet, the smartphone robo, like, now we're in the AI version. I mean, every single one of those instances had massive calls that advisors are going to be put out of business and fee compression is going to obliterate us. And I mean, again, literally, like, it's the same 1% fee for 43 years that the firm's been around, but you use the cool new technology tools to automate things that used to be really time consuming, and then you free up a bunch of time to do more and different things for your clients. And to me, the interesting effect, advisory firms run roughly similar profit margins for the past 30 years. Lots of industry benchmarking studies to show it. The median fee has been the exact same 1% for decades. But we do a lot more for that fee to earn that profit than we used to, which we can do because technology got better and made it possible to do so. Which to me just, it gets interesting. It means, like, we don't actually experience the fee compression. We don't, we haven't even really experienced profit margin compression. But clients over time accrue all these upgrades and quality and better services because we can just do so much more for them as the technology gets cooler. So it's the mid 20 teens, robos have hit the scene. The dominant media narrative is fee compression is coming and it's inevitable. The advisor narrative was largely different. It was, no, no, no, we like, we do more than those robos. So, like, we can defend, as it were, our advisory fee because of all the additional things that we do. But there was a collective like, oh, blank moment of saying, so what are our value adds going to be in the future? Like, okay, I think we do more than robos, but I think we do have to maybe take a hard look at exactly what we're doing for clients. And are we really doing all the things that are valuable enough to fully justify and validate the fees that we're charging? So what, what changed? Like, what started showing up for the firm as you were trying to figure out, okay, so what are we going to do to show our value here?
- [17:18]
C
Our first phase of the firm, really, until, you know, the early 2010-2016 range, was pure investment management and money management. And to your point, that's and we were really having the conversations about, where are we adding value to client relationships? And in 2016, when I returned to the firm, it was, everybody needs a financial plan. That's our answer. And we need to get in front of every single client at least once a year. And if we don't, we're going to lose them. Maybe that's a little extreme, but that's the avenue we started taking. Regardless.
- [18:01]
B
I think a lot of us went through that.
- [18:03]
C
Yeah, sure, sure. Regardless. If. If the client truly needed the financial plan or I have shared.
- [18:12]
B
No, you will have a meeting with me once a year. I don't care whether you want it, you're going to take it. It's like the annual physical with the doctor or the dentist. Like, come on, you have to.
- [18:21]
C
Not everybody wants that. Your episode in Kittis and Carl of are we trying to justify our fees or are we delivering true value? I can't tell you how many times I' shared that because that all ties to this conversation we're having today. It's why are we doing this? But it was all with really great intention. Oh, absolutely. Clients responded to it beautifully. And I think we really did start to deepen our relationships with clients. We were more than just their money manager. We got to know their families. We got to understand what the money was intended to do for them. And it was really a phenomenal turn for us.
- [19:03]
B
And, and so, I mean, you'd highlighted earlier that you've had this like 20 plus percent growth rate for the past seven years, which, if I do the math, is kind of aligned to when you did this. Like, okay, we're not pure investment management anymore. Every client's getting a plan and we're getting in front of every client every year. So am I appropriately linking those to, say, your shift away from just investment management to more financial planning for every client really did start to turbocharge the growth of the firm.
- [19:43]
C
I think that's fair. I think as a team, we've just got a really strong team. And at that time, we all linked arms and really cast a new vision together of we do want to do this deep work for clients. We have a tremendous Network. Prior to 2024, all the growth was organic. We've had one acquisition in our story. So in a lot of ways, yes, it was a launching pad. We refer to it as the secret sauce. And I think a lot of it was just bringing our collective talents together as a team and really figuring out that we wanted to do the deeper work.
- [20:29]
B
So then what came Next, as you started or continued down this path the.
- [20:39]
C
First year, that would be 2016, when I was starting to help with the planning practice, we, I think we did 50 plans that year. And we often joke, you know, Brock said, okay, now we have to do 250 plans. What are we going to do to be able to do 250 plans? And so it was, you know, harnessing the software. We use MoneyGuide Pro. It was teaching more team members, it was more and more meetings and just building. We often refer to it as, you know, working on a Ferrari While you're driving 100 miles down the road. As we got deeper with clients, we started to uncover more needs. And so just creating a financial plan then led to. It would be great if we could get on the same page with your tax advisor and your estate planner and any other advisor in your picture. And I think our work started to compound in a lot of those ways. All really great ways for our clients. But along the way we were also figuring out what the process should be, what it should look like, and really trying to actually build the machine while we were serving the clients.
- [22:03]
B
So I'm curious to hear more of. It's just like how, how this rolled, I mean, how this rolled out. Like just literally when you're a firm that has a lot of folks who have not historically done financial planning and you're setting forth this like leadership driven initiative, we're going to do financial plans for all, for all the clients now, like just share with us more. I mean, how did that literally get done, rolled out? I mean, you've got, you got tech issues, you got training issues, you got people issues. Like there's all sorts of stuff that, that starts to come to mind. Like how did that work?
- [22:41]
C
We started meeting with clients one on one and identified the clients we thought would need it the most and introduced it to new client prospects. So it was literally client by client. We didn't make a big announcement. We already have the software which looking back, you know, you look at your output versus what you do today and it's fun to reflect on.
- [23:09]
B
I felt really good about how we did the plan at that time.
- [23:12]
C
Yep, I thought it was really great. I have some good examples of that. And then we, at the time it was just me doing financial plans probably for a year.
- [23:26]
B
So like you, you doing it centralized for the other advisors or like you doing it for a client base that you had individually?
- [23:35]
C
We're a team based wealth management company, so we, we, we have advisors, but they're all clients of the firm. And at that time, Brock and I were the primary client facing advisors.
- [23:49]
B
Okay.
- [23:49]
C
And so he and I together really work to build the plans and deliver them to the clients. And then, you know, implementation was handled by other team members who now have grown into the planning practice and are now advisors and leaders within the firm. So it was pretty grassroots, just client by client.
- [24:11]
B
Okay. And so you were doing plans for your clients, Brock was doing plans for his clients. For his clients. And you were both selectively figuring out, like, who wants it, who's most ready to adopt, and let's put it in front of the new prospects as we go. So they'll just kind of come in only knowing that reality.
- [24:31]
C
Right, right. Except the difference is Brock and I together, we're doing the plans for each client.
- [24:38]
B
Okay.
- [24:38]
C
I was more of the, you know, put it in the software, get the output going, and then we'd present it together.
- [24:46]
B
So how many, how many clients was it at the time? So you've got a lot of folks now at a thousand plus families.
- [24:52]
C
Yeah, it was probably, you know, about 300 clients at the time, but growing pretty, you know, taking on, I'd have to do the math, maybe 50 or so a year.
- [25:04]
B
Okay, okay. All right. So that's very helpful for context. So now take us forward then over the next few years. So how does this start playing out in terms of capacity of the firm? And I guess what, what we eventually have kind of framed as a perfectionism problem that seems to start to. To rear its head at some point.
- [25:30]
C
Yeah. I think as client needs became more complex, as we started building in the accounting services, especially because we were doing a lot of facilitation work between tax professionals and our clients. We like to serve as the middleman when we can. We started bringing in more team members and they emerged in beautiful ways. There's so much talent on our team and the demands just grew up. And, you know, we would take, I mean, very tactically, you take a MoneyGuide Pro plan, you get the output. We think, oh, this detail really matters to the client. So we're going to make a custom page really specific to that, and a spreadsheet for this would really be helpful. Maybe we need to show the mortgage projection in a different way, whatever it is, and a team member would deliver that and it blow our minds because it was, you know, they thought of it in a different way and it was so wonderful and illuminating to us.
- [26:41]
B
Okay.
- [26:41]
C
And we glorified that. And so the next time that team member did a plan, there were two additional Analyses or spreadsheets.
- [26:51]
B
Right.
- [26:52]
C
And so, so many ways in hindsight, we were glorifying those behaviors rather than saying, this is what the client needs. I always preach to. I mean, this is, again, hindsight speaking and what we do today. But it's ask yourself what matters most to the client. You're meeting their need if you ask that question. And then what's going to move the needle for the client? And that's taking your advising technical expertise to move the needle and their financial life. And I think we were missing those two points then and just, you know, in some ways impressing ourselves with all the bells and whistles we could add to these documents rather than working on building a deeper relationship.
- [27:35]
B
Interesting. So it's. So it. So you were really going down this road of, like, more custom analyses, more custom deliverables, Like, I want to go further than what MoneyGuide does. And so team members would create something to do this. Everyone oohed and aahed because it. It was awesome, I'm sure. And then at some point, you maybe get stuck in the trap that you're making things that look really cool and amazing as outputs, and we all ooh and awe at them because it really is, like, beautiful and awesome. But maybe the client didn't really care that you spent, like, another three hours making that fancy thing.
- [28:17]
C
Yes. In my history, I've never heard a client say, that PDF you created with 80 pages in it was amazing. You know, it's. It's.
- [28:28]
B
You've almost like, you imagine that they're saying it in their minds, they don't verbalize it.
- [28:34]
C
It sure would make us feel good about our late nights doing it. And we were impressed with each other, and it's been fun. But there was a point where you go, is this sustainable? And. And what's the why behind why we're doing these things?
- [28:50]
B
Interesting. But I guess the corollary challenge is the firm's growth is accelerating. Clients are responding really well. Maybe not literally down to, I so love the 80 page deliverable that you gave me, but, like, they're just, again, as you'd said, like, growth has been very fast over this time period as well. So it sounds like, at least in the aggregate, clients were expressing appreciation over some amount of aggregate work that was being done because they're rewarding you with business and referrals and asset flows and other things that make growth happen. The caveat is, but maybe we started getting a little too disjointed between which things do clients really, really actually respond to and which Things are we doing because we think it looks cool and awesome and it's great additional work. But did the client really need it or care?
- [29:52]
C
Absolutely. Yeah. And it's figuring out where that, where that line is. Yes. During that time I think our clients greatly appreciate it and I do think that's something that makes us so different is we're, we're fanatically attuned to the client's details. My big desire now is again, let's identify where we really put our time and energy to work for the client, not for ourselves.
- [30:31]
B
So, so then share with us how this continued to play out. So you're, your plans are getting more detailed, you're doing more custom plan development, more one off additions, more things that, that look great for the client and you're growing more. Yay.
- [30:56]
C
Yeah.
- [30:57]
B
So what happens next in this journey?
- [31:02]
C
The growth continues. Our clients seem very happy. There's a couple of things that happened. One again, you know, we start to see symptoms of burnout.
- [31:18]
B
We've which, which shows up how for.
- [31:21]
C
You it's you know, sending emails at 2am and coming in exhausted. It's working on documents, client presentations 15 minutes after the client meeting has started. To me that's a big symptom that tells me you didn't have time or energy to do it the day before, the week before. It's maybe going down rabbit holes and tax returns and creating disjointed conversations among the team about where we need to spend time and what's important. Sometimes it's lack of motivation, like we were seeing things like that or lack of alignment with our vision maybe. And again, I think every single team member had great intentions and the results we produced were great.
- [32:20]
B
Well that's what makes it like, that's what makes the whole thing so insidious to me. Like just we're a, we're a service business that attracts service minded people who are very conscientious of others and like and want to serve. And we go and serve clients who respond well to being served well. Like it's almost fricking addictive of I'm doing all the servicey things and I'm getting good outcomes like who quits that race? That sounds awesome.
- [32:48]
C
No one. Until you have no time left.
- [32:51]
B
Right. Until it, until in the aggregate it adds up to, to problem. You know one, one chocolate bar is yummy. Chocolate all day, every day gets less yummy after a while.
- [33:04]
C
Exactly. And we started seeing people just, you know, we think it's fun to work here. Culture is, you know, One of our key priorities. And when, when it stops being fun for whatever reason, then, you know, we want to talk about it. I think the other factor that we started experiencing is we needed to grow our team because we did experience compression in terms of time and resources to serve our existing client base and our growing client base. And when you're so nuanced and customized in what you deliver to clients, it's really hard to train and institutionalize that work. And so a lot of these things became more apparent when we were bringing new team members on board and really trying to make, you know, spread our work across the team.
- [33:59]
B
Oh, so all the, all the one off customizations, right. Bob comes up with a really cool way to visualize a client's mortgage payoff. And everybody loves Bob's mortgage tool. But now Bob's the only one who can make that for clients because that's Bob's thing in Bob's special spreadsheets that others haven't built and aren't trained on. And you like multiply that against everybody's specialized one off. And now you've got really cool things that are all bottlenecked around individual builders.
- [34:33]
C
Right. And you know, I, I'll take ownership of making it even more fun for everybody because I love process and I love procedure. And we, we tried to create a process for all of that. And if this client had this one specialized thing, we're creating a firm wide process to address it if it ever happens.
- [34:57]
B
And so you were mindful to try to systematize these things as you went?
- [35:02]
C
We were probably two fault.
- [35:06]
B
So, so, so explain that further. So I mean, in theory, creating process around this is how we manage this as a large growing firm. And the way you're saying it, it sounds like that didn't go well. So what didn't work about trying to process and systematize this as you went?
- [35:27]
C
I think the biggest thing that didn't work is the way we built the processes and we made them so complex and down to the detail. And so it was never going to be repeatable across a client because it was so specific to one client. And again, that was in an effort to cover every single possible detail. I heard somebody say one time, you know, don't code for the error. And we're living by that now. But at the time we were trying to code for every possible error and it was hard to teach and hard to replicate.
- [36:04]
B
Okay, so you didn't just make the process for like, here's how we do a mortgage analysis. Like this maybe is the best example, like here's how we do a mortgage analysis and then here's the thing we use if there's a second loan and then here's what we do if there's a home equity line and then here's what we also do if it's a jumbo loan and then here's what we do if they've got a private mortgage. And like you, you start adding these layers and now you don't have a simple process. You have like a multi conditional branching process thing that is technically accurate but hard to follow and hard to train on.
- [36:41]
C
Yes, yes. And you know, speaking to systems, we tried to build that on a CRM that wasn't a great fit for us. And you know that that compounded it because we were trying to also engineer the software to serve the processes.
- [36:59]
B
So then like, I'm just fascinated of all the ways this is playing out. So keep taking us down this, this journey. So the we start doing planning, then we want to do more planning, then we get great team members who do deeper, fancier planning that goes great. We ooh and aah about it, but it's taking more time. So we try to make process around it. But because the plans are comprehensive and everybody has a really high attention to detail now the processes are getting pretty complex and hard to manage and train on because they're assuming they're long and there's lots of conditionals if this, then that kinds of things going on. So it gets harder. So then what comes next in this journey?
- [37:47]
C
We cry uncle. Yeah, that was about the point where I think we really kind of hit a bottleneck internally. And again, this was about two years ago.
- [38:04]
B
Was there a particular like breaking point or moment or trigger that was the like, enough's enough.
- [38:12]
C
We had two team members who we thought this is not sustainable. They're not going to hold on for much longer if we don't do something different. And a lot of that was centered around the late nights staying at the office till, you know, unbelievably late hours. And we could just see the wear on them physically. And we care about them so much we thought we just can't, we can't continue asking this of them. We want their careers to grow, we want their careers to be sustainable, but it's not, it's not going to go in the direction we want if we stay on this path.
- [38:56]
B
And just in your evaluation it wasn't, I was going to say just, I don't mean that negatively. Like it, it wasn't just a Staffing dynamic of, oh, well, maybe we just need more associates to do to do the support work, and then we'll have enough people to do all the things.
- [39:12]
C
Absolutely. There were a multitude of solutions that we needed to implement. And giving those two people in particular credit, they raised their hand and said, it's time to hire people. And, you know, I think every single leader has that challenge of hiring too soon or too late.
- [39:31]
B
And in that instance, is it a hiring problem? Is it a process problem? Is it a tech problem? Is it efficiency problem? Is it a thing that we don't need more staff for? We just need to stop doing right. Like all the stuff that has to go through your head as a business owner, as a leader, when you're trying to figure out what to do and the team raises their hand on a capacity constraint.
- [39:51]
C
Absolutely. And so we really spent some time trying to identify all the ways we could make it better. It was changing the language not too far into the process. We removed all internal meetings from the calendar. You know, we were taking so much time away from people doing client work again to have internal meetings. We. We just didn't need them. We were.
- [40:21]
B
You took all internal meetings off the calendar?
- [40:24]
C
We did an experiment. We are one sacred meeting. Well, we have two sacred meetings, the first one being our daily huddle. We do it Monday through Thursday, every morning at 9am and we started that during COVID when we were all spread out. But we all get onto teams, we do a market update, we talk about important money movement for different client relationships that's happening that day. And then we go through the prior day's calendar to debrief on client meetings and then set the stage for the current day client meeting so that everybody's aware that's really sacred to us.
- [41:03]
B
So is that. I'm fascinated. So is that firm wide? Is that like by advisory team? Like who's. Who's in that meeting?
- [41:13]
C
It is firm wide. The entire team wide. Yep.
- [41:17]
B
So just the whole firm, we're hearing, like, who did we see yesterday, who's coming in today? So everybody's got some awareness as to what client stuff is happening.
- [41:27]
C
Yes. And the goal is to, you know, we say we strive for the Ritz Carlton experience. You know, we want everybody to know when clients are coming in. We want to stay connected to our client stories. Especially when we're growing like we are, we get so bogged in work sometimes that we forget that there are real stories behind it. So I think that's really helped tremendously. In addition to just maintaining culture and rapport, especially as we're spread over different locations or, you know, working from home that day, whatever the circumstance may be.
- [42:01]
B
So, so for multiple locations or virtual team, like you're still in this, you may be doing, dialed in virtually, but everybody's, everybody's in, Everybody's in.
- [42:12]
C
Yes, there's, there's conflicts. You know, not everybody can come every day, but, but that's the general standard for us.
- [42:20]
B
And, and how long does the meeting run?
- [42:24]
C
The goal is to make it five to 15 minutes. It's pretty brief.
- [42:29]
B
Okay. So this is not, this is not a long in depth thing. This is brief market update. What's going on with, you know, important client tasks like money movements? Who did we see yesterday that we have follow up on? Who are we seeing today? So everybody knows who's coming. Is there anything else that you cover as a standard part of that meeting.
- [42:52]
C
Or like that's, that's occasionally it's a, it's a firm wide update, usually from Brock or myself if something important is going on at the leadership level. We used to have monthly all team meetings and we literally can't fit in one room anymore. And so we've shifted that to, you know, updating on the huddle or maybe having a specialty meeting. And then we also proactively try to recognize team members on the huddle when we've seen them, you know, displaying our values and doing exceptional client service. We have a Kudos program and we, we encourage the whole team to give each other kudos. And it's $100 gift card and accolades from the team and that's always really fun for us.
- [43:41]
B
Wait, wait, explain that more. How does that work?
- [43:43]
C
It's, it's as simple as that. We call it the Kudos program. And so, you know, just yesterday, Jet on our team recognized Mason because he, he took a tough client experience and communicated well with the client and took good care of him start to finish. And so we recognize that we give him $100 gift card so hopefully they can go out to dinner, do something fun with it and celebrate that across the team.
- [44:13]
B
And so how often do those happen? I mean, is that like every day someone's kudoing someone? Is that like culturally, hey, this comes up every week or two that there's something significant enough that we do this? Like, what's the, what's the expectation around it?
- [44:33]
C
I'm going to borrow kudoing as my new verb. I love that.
- [44:36]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love, as many people know, I love making up words.
- [44:43]
C
There's not enough kudoing in my opinion. But we're trying to feed it more and more. I would say on average it's weekly, just depending on the time. But it's really a fun way to celebrate. And especially now as we're trying to create positive behaviors among our team, it's a really good tool and morale booster.
- [45:08]
B
And so I'm assuming just someone centrally is like responsible for the kudos recognition. You tell the appointed person and they make sure the the right team member gets their recognition and gift card.
- [45:22]
C
Exactly. Yep.
- [45:23]
B
Okay. Okay.
- [45:26]
C
So that's the first sacred meeting and then the second sacred meeting is our investment committee.
- [45:31]
B
Okay.
- [45:33]
C
But beyond that, we did an experiment for a few months and took every other internal meeting off the calendar. And we told team members, you know, that's going to have to change the way you communicate because the work, internal work, doesn't stop. But we're going to be really intentional about how we use our time. When we do need to meet, we may need to form a subcommittee. For example, the new CRM, we've got a subcommittee on that, but we're only meeting when we have to talk about something. We don't have this set weekly cadence like we would have done in the past. Setting timelines, having more meeting structure when you do have a meeting. Because we were robbing ourselves of time and you know, there would be instances where we'd have a one hour internal meeting and we like each other so much, we'd stay behind for another hour and just shoot the breeze on, you know, a certain technology or other idea. And you know, that was just one of the many things that we saw we could do to, to help the team. And as we've done temperature checks with the team, the feedback has been really good. I think everybody's grateful to have the time back. I think we eliminated a lot of work that we just didn't need to be doing. Again, we were in different systems over engineering or making more processes that we didn't need. And so it's just really caused us to be more aware of how we're taking our time and using it more effectively.
- [47:14]
B
So did anything break when you went on this meeting hiatus or unfortunately, air quotes like or unfortunately. Did everything continue to work great?
- [47:24]
C
Unfortunately, everything continued to work great. And I think it actually was a great way to show the team that you can stop doing certain things and it won't break. As long as you're focusing on the clients and the work that's most important, it's not going to break.
- [47:50]
B
So what happened after the two month window ended? I mean, did, did meetings start coming back? Were there things that, were there some meetings that people missed and wanted back or like, has this now become the permanent culture and you have daily huddles and investment committee and everybody else has no meetings?
- [48:09]
C
Some meetings have come back, but they, they, they're more appropriate for what we need today. And we put them on the calendar with the understanding that we will remove them when they stop being productive. And the meetings we added coincided with, we call it Gigi 3.0. It's our new strategic initiative that we started in 2025. And with the way we're structuring our business units, our advisory teams, we thought that it was important to have a little more structure. And so we now have a reoccurring meeting every two weeks. The old us would have put it on the calendar every week, but we've stretched it out for the advisors to get together and talk about clients who are in onboarding, client review needs, any new client opportunities that we need to discuss, and then how we can work effectively with our planning team members. And the second reoccurring meeting that's come back on the calendar is a meeting specific for the planning team to dig in further on client needs and planning processes to help them hone their skills and give feedback candidly.
- [49:34]
B
So like a case studies, client scenarios kind of meeting, like that sort of structure.
- [49:42]
C
Exactly. And sometimes it'll be, you know, giving feedback on. We have a lot of newer planning team members and so it's still integrating them in the GIGI way. It's. Yes. Talking specific client scenarios to convey how we want to plan for this client profile. Maybe talking about a specific process that we're trying to refine. So that's the space where they can all talk about that and stay on the same page and just collaborate.
- [50:16]
B
So what about, I mean, leadership meetings, management meetings, team meetings, department meetings, all the other kinds of meeting structure, cadences that a lot of firms have when they're, they're 20 plus team members. So like none of that came back. You just, you found you didn't need it.
- [50:41]
C
We do, I should say we do have. Brock and I have an executive committee meeting. Okay, so we do. Yes, we meet periodically.
- [50:50]
B
That's just the two of you?
- [50:51]
C
That's not the two of us pulling all the firms.
- [50:55]
B
Okay.
- [50:57]
C
And that we just hold space to make sure that we're in communication. Sometimes he and I are meeting more frequently. Like when we were working on this strategic plan that was a little more Frequent. But again, we're staying needs based. If there's not an update or if we've, you know, had one off conversations during the week, we're giving ourselves the freedom to say that doesn't have to happen this week. We've given each team leader license to obviously put one on ones on the calendar with their teammates if they feel like it will be helpful. But the expectation is that it's not as sacred as it used to be. So if you look at our calendar today, yes, there are internal meetings, there are one on ones, but they're more on the needs basis versus the old way, which was all of these meetings are on the calendar and they happen.
- [51:55]
B
No matter what means meeting once it's there, it's sacred. You can't skip out on meetings. Part of our culture of excellence. Right. Yeah.
- [52:04]
C
So.
- [52:06]
B
So what else changed? I mean, sounds like just you, right? You got to this. We're doing planning. We're doing more planning. It's customized. It's more customized. Oh my gosh. The beast is taking all life of its own. We've got to do something. So, so me like the, the, like the. Taking a sledgehammer to meetings is sort of one. One big change to reset. So what, what else changed to try to manage to this hyper customization, perfectionism, client service thing that had cropped up.
- [52:42]
C
We've rolled out the calm excellence conversation and that was very intentional with the team. And I would say that's the biggest catalyst of change.
- [52:55]
B
So what is the comm Excellence conversation?
- [52:59]
C
So we sat down and a lot of this, you know, very transparently ties to my personal journey with perfectionism. I'm the enneagram one, you know, textbook. And so really about eight years ago, I started really digging into that and trying to understand it so that for.
- [53:22]
B
Those who don't know enneagram, just. Can you explain what a. What an enneagram one is?
- [53:26]
C
An enneagram one is in. In many textbooks, it says the perfectionist. It's. That's the word. I think the new phrase is we're the. We're the improvers, the constant improvers. Which I think is a little more friendly.
- [53:44]
B
That's a little bit more of a friendly way of putting it.
- [53:46]
C
Sure, sure. Yes. But it's. It's high justice. It's structure. It's, you know, you thrive on doing the right thing all the time. And so, you know, I embody that. I had to learn about it because I always thought being a perfectionist was good. And then I started to experience my own symptoms of burnout, you know, especially. I was 2017, I had my third child. I had just received a promotion here, and I thought, okay, I can't go at this pace forever. So I still really started to understand it so that I could, you know, maintain a sustainable life with career, family, all of the things that were in my world. And so I would say I backed into the calm excellence because what I identified was happening with the team is what I referred to as urgent perfectionism. There was a lot of urgency with our work, and we were seeking to achieve a standard that was impossible. And it was. It was counterproductive. I think it was defeating in a lot of ways. And it just wasn't helping people actually live those fulfilled lives. And so I sat down one day and I thought, okay, what's the counter to urgent perfectionism? It's calm excellence. And just backed into words I wanted to use. And I made a little chart, and at the top was a band that said urgent perfectionism. In the middle is what I called the band of excellence. And at the bottom was, you know, our competitors that may not exemplify the behaviors that would meet our standards.
- [55:44]
B
So these are literally, like, stacked on top of each other. So I'm noticing, like, so we're. There's a step between urgent perfectionism and still being better than everybody else, and.
- [55:58]
C
Can we live there in a really sustainable way? And within that grid, we put examples in each. Each part. So, for example, urgent perfectionism is a client calls in, and we run down the hall to find the person they're looking for, and if they can't find it, we're going to go in the next office, and all of a sudden, you know, five people's hair is on fire, and we've interrupted work and not accomplished anything. Calm excellence is telling the client, you know, that person is not available. Can I help you? Or help me understand what you need. And we're going to get back to you within 24 hours with the right answer. And the rest of the industry or our competitors that we hear our clients complain about may never call them back. And so we started to illustrate that at different parts of the firm. I really believe, and I preach this to the team, when you're creating a new process or you're integrating a new system or trying to lead people, you have to speak from a common language. And so what I was trying to do there was really create a common language that we could then take to every single team member and say, this is what excellence means to us. And this is what it doesn't mean and create that dialogue and start to build the muscle of discerning where we need to operate.
- [57:28]
B
Out of curiosity, can you give us some other examples of, you know, or urgent perfectionism versus Comm Excellence? It's like I found the one you just gave to be like very, very poignant, very salient. Like, okay, I get that that difference. Urgent perfectionism is the client calls and you scour the office for the person. Comm Excellence is like, I'm so sorry, she's not available right now. Can I help you with something? Tell me more about what you need and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Like very, very concrete difference.
- [58:02]
C
Sure. Another example, the 80 page PDF we talked about, you know, if that's not what the client needs, why are we doing that when Excelint could be 10 pages giving them exactly what they need? That was a big one for us and probably where we were spending the most time. Another one is we as leaders would email a team member and say, you know, I need XYZ or I have a question about this. And for some reason they perceived that, that they needed to drop everything and respond to us right away, even if they were working on something that was more important. So in a lot of ways we had to recraft our communication with each other to set better expectations, convey priority, set timelines and scope of work so that we weren't creating the constant energy of I've got to drop this and move on and come back to it. And again, that was really counterproductive and happening a lot.
- [59:19]
B
So share with us a little bit more. I guess just know how you created like how you created this, how you like how you process, institutionalize it. Because it sounds like you're a very process oriented person. So I'm sure there's a lot of process that came from this. So just please share more of that. Like how? Right. It's one thing to say, hey, okay, our culture isn't quite showing up the way that I think it needs to be. It's causing some burnout. Let's change it. And then there's how do you actually change a culture of high service perfection? Because high service is supposed to be good in a service business and clients keep saying they like our service, which makes it really hard to change.
- [60:03]
C
Exactly. The first thing we did was present that concept to the team in a team meeting that we were having. We printed it out and framed it and it sat on our conference table. Comm Excellence, we had it in every single Meeting. So it was just rolling out the idea and creating a definition for it, which we defined as striving to do our best work with measured and paced progress while allowing ourselves to learn and grow from challenges and mistakes.
- [60:40]
B
Oh, wait, wait. Just. Can you say that. Say that again? I'm processing. Because I'm sure these were very intentionally chosen words.
- [60:46]
C
Yes. Striving to be our best with measured and paced progress while allowing ourselves to learn and grow from challenges and mistakes. So we rolled it out to the team. We just started talking about it, probably to the point where people are tired of hearing it. We put it on our growth and development plan that we do with team members every single year and review quarterly, along with our purpose, vision, and values, so that we could all stay centered on what matters the most. I bring it to virtually every conversation I have with team members. We, we have spent a lot of time, one on one, with team members trying to identify where their specific tendencies may lie and how we can help. And it's okay, we see you steering here. Let's. Let's dial back and steer here and, and really understand what the client needs. Right here we're working on what I call right now a relationship evaluation tool.
- [62:10]
B
Okay.
- [62:12]
C
It's relatively new to us, but the goal is again, to dial in on those two questions what matters most to the client and what moves the needle. And so it's a one, one cheater. And when we're either at the onset of a relationship or on the cusp of an annual review, this is typically with our more complex clients. We have each part of the business listed a note section, you know, to identify the client need there. So, you know, tax, estate, investments, planning, whatever it is. Then we, we just simply rate in one column, how important is this to the client? And then we're identifying, you know, how working in that area is going to move the needle for the client. And that's also with the rating. And then we score it and talk about it and really help to understand, try to understand where, you know, where we need to focus at that point in time. If you look back, you know, on a client scenario, if we're applying that tool today versus how we would have done it before it was, you know, we can do all these things, so we should deliver them all to the client, even if they don't need it or want it. And so this has been a great way for us to start to exercise that discernment muscle of cleanly identifying where they need our help and where we can best serve them.
- [63:49]
B
So the idea here is to help the team dial back. I don't know that, like the. The client who's super focused around upcoming college planning because their kids are two years away from college and they're just not at all concerned about estate planning stuff to give permission to say, like, so let's just not go so deep on the estate part because they really said they don't care and they don't have an estate tax problem and they've got documents that are good enough, like, let's just leave it for now and do the thing they actually really care about. And we can always revisit this in a future review to say, is this the thing we're going to cover next year?
- [64:25]
C
Exactly. It's just really helping to prioritize where we dose our time now and allowing that relationship to evolve over time. And of course, if it does, if the client says that's not really important to them, but we identify it as something that probably should be, we're going to, you know, raise our hand. And that's where I think collaborating between the two questions creates an effective conversation with us as their advisor.
- [64:57]
B
But all built around the idea of essentially, like, how do we make this plan less comprehensive? How do we. How do we dial back a little bit so it's not quite so overkill.
- [65:10]
C
Yeah.
- [65:11]
B
And the phrase overkill is judgy. That's the problem.
- [65:14]
C
The phrase we.
- [65:15]
B
How do we make sure we don't create overkill situations?
- [65:18]
C
Sure. We call it proper dosage.
- [65:21]
B
Okay. Okay.
- [65:23]
C
And I think, you know, you know, in our heyday of over delivering, we maybe we ran the risk of overwhelming clients with, you know, to do lists that were a mile long when we could have dosed it over time. And so that's one thing. We have a page in term planning documents now that sets an expectation with the client on how our relationship unfolds. And this is for new relationships. But it's, you know, in the first year, we're getting to know you, we're getting your core set, and then we're hitting on your key priorities. And in the second year, you know, we see these things as being your next priorities, and we'll really dig in there. And that, I think that's relieved pressure on the team from feeling like they have to deliver everything in the first 180 days. And it's also setting clear expectations with our clients on how we're going to work together.
- [66:23]
B
I like the. I like the framing of that because, again, I'm envisioning those of us who want to do all the things for all the clients, because I, you know, see the need and I can't unsee what I've seen. And how is a comprehensive plan not comprehensive if I don't check all of these boxes? That. Is that like that metaphor, right? This is a dosage thing. Like, we're not going to give the, you know, we're not going to avoid giving them the medicine. We're just trying to give it in the proper doses. So it's okay in a dosing conversation to say, here's the portion that we're going to do this year and here's the portion we're going to dose into next year. So it's all there. It's on the roadmap. We're going to do all the things.
- [67:03]
C
We're covering it, we're covering it.
- [67:05]
B
We're not leaving stones unturned. But we can acknowledge, like, okay, but these are the parts that the client actually cares about. These are the parts that move the needle for the client. These are the things they want to cover. This is what we can reasonably dose and not overwhelm ourselves or the client. And that should be good because by definition, we made sure we're hitting the most important things first.
- [67:30]
C
Right. And I think the result is that on the things we are prioritizing, we're able to give the right amount of attention and energy to. And hopefully producing better results.
- [67:45]
B
So. So now share with us more like, how has this played out in the firm as you've done this?
- [67:55]
C
I think we've just seen tremendous progress. I've seen a lot of exhaling the very tangible things. We're not getting 2am emails like we were from team members. You know, I'm not seeing the alarm set at midnight. I check in with team members periodically and. And I've heard things like, I'm able to do more thoughtful work for clients. Okay, I. I called the client and had a really great conversation, but I didn't force them to come in for a meeting. And that was a really great result. One team member told me that he felt like it had created an element of mutual respect with clients. And to me, that was really powerful. We went from, in our minds, being their service provider, that had to hop to and be really urgent in our responses to no, we have a partnership, and we're professionals operating at the top of our game, and we have a mutual respect with how we're going to work together. I've heard feedback that there's less paralysis, paralysis by analysis. I think that's a great byproduct. I've also heard, and I think this is helpful, that where the urgent perfectionism probably compounded among the team members, because a lot of us have those tendencies. And it was just, you know, the power of compounding the calmness that we have tried to build in has also compounded in a really productive way. And to me, if we're achieving that, that's tremendous. And if we're allowing ourselves to stay aware as we operate daily, whether it's in client relationships or internal projects, we're going to compound our time and energy and we're going to deliver better value to the clients, and hopefully we have greater sustainability.
- [70:20]
B
So, Lisa, like, with. With all of this rolling out, I guess I'm also curious, like, were there holdouts? I mean, were there people who didn't quite fully get on board? I don't. Like, they. They don't want to sacrifice the perfectionism or I mean, just more practically like, yeah, sounds good. And then they slip right back into the old habits that were creating all the problems in the first place. How hard was to really get in? Same option?
- [70:47]
C
Sure. I think a lot of. I think the majority of the team welcomed it and knew that it was time to think about things a little differently because we're all different and because our team members are so wonderful. Yes, it was hard to modify some behaviors, and it's been an ongoing exercise to make sure we're helping to coach team members and according to what they uniquely need in terms of maybe helping to modify time and energy. And so I think it was welcome. But also it has taken some specific efforts to make sure we're guiding in the right ways.
- [71:37]
B
I guess just give us a little bit more context around that. It means, like, what does it mean to help them modify their time and energy? Like, what shows up? That's still a problem. And how do you actually try to remedy it?
- [71:52]
C
The most visible part is still in client work. If you get a new client on board or prospect in front of you, we're very intentional now after the initial meeting to have a debrief with whoever's involved in the relationship. And usually a member of, you know, the leadership team is in that meeting where we can say, you know, what are you thinking? What's the deliverable? And then we can give immediate feedback into. Yes, yes, spend your time on that. Spend your time on this. I think where it shows up is in that really detailed analytical work that we're also good at that this doesn't always need to happen. Like Maybe it's a tax scenario that our tax partner should actually spend the time on versus us spending the time on it and helping to frame up how we can be an advocate and a leader for the client in that scenario versus doing the work.
- [73:01]
B
But it, and so I guess it sounds so like part of the structure now is advisor comes out of a meeting with a new client and there still is like a moment of check in with someone more senior to say okay, no, but really which things are we going to do for the client here and which things are we not going to do for the client here? And like that's a conversation rather than an automatic we signed the client so we're going to do all the things that's in the all comprehensive plan automatically.
- [73:34]
C
Exactly. That's a checkpoint now and that's a great phrase. We've put more checkpoints in place. There's a checkpoint if the client commits and how we're actually going to handle implementation. And so it's making sure we've got those mechanisms in place to guide along the way.
- [73:56]
B
And I guess that means in practice like more, more pressure on managers and leadership that now like you, you have to be the discernment filter so they don't overkill which means you have to really put pressure on yourself not to go too far or you're. Are you going to take them with you when you're supposed to be the one stopping them?
- [74:15]
C
Exactly. We could easily take them with us. I do think it's building new leadership skills in our team members as well. As they see us live it and they're, they're starting to implement, you know, some of our efforts with their teams. And so I think it does have a trickle effect in that way. But we do have to be careful to manage ourselves.
- [74:40]
B
So are there like more like tools or changes or things that you're trying to roll out? I mean that you've talked about calm excellence and the relationship evaluation tool. Are you now feeling in a good place or is there a like what comes next? Additional things because this is still an ongoing journey.
- [75:03]
C
I think we're in a really good place right now. And in the spirit of being excellent, I don't want to put a bunch more tools in place that cause people to do work.
- [75:16]
B
That's a fair point. There is an irony that you could, you could urgently perfectionist calm excellence and defeat the purpose.
- [75:24]
C
Wouldn't that be amazing?
- [75:26]
B
It really would. It's just glorious.
- [75:28]
C
Sounds glorious to me in our. Where I can see our need to be aware and Manage as we move forward is in our new. What we're calling GG 3.0, our updated strategic plan. We're doing a lot of new things, and that's where I could see us drifting. And so it's not necessarily putting new tools in place, but it's making sure we're having the right conversation, especially as we're helping new team members emerge into leadership. As we're thinking about our business units. You know, we're having lots of conversations right now with our new CRM to be sure we're not over engineering how we're utilizing it. And so there's. There's a lot of opportunity for us to drift. And so I think it's just right now being aware and steering in the right directions.
- [76:23]
B
So what. What new things are coming down the pike in the strategic plan that might shift or expand some of this.
- [76:32]
C
The biggest components probably specific to this conversation are the business unit conversation, how we're going to effectively manage and implement that. The. We have a business development strategy. So much of our growth to date has been organic and through leadership's network, mostly Brock and we know it's the old phrase, what got us here won't get us there. If we want to continue to grow and expand and meet more client needs, we're going to have to have more people and mechanisms for. For building our business. So we're doing a lot of new things. We're working on a brand initiative. We have two new team members who are focusing more on developing relationships with new clients and centers of influence, making sure, you know, we're capturing the opportunity in our region that can be overwhelming, especially when it's new for somebody. So making sure we're staying attuned to that and helping lead those strategies. One of our Goals in the GG 3.0 is simplification across the firm. So I think that could actually be an antidote to perfectionism. And so every single team leader is tasked to look for opportunities across the firm.
- [78:01]
B
So as you. As you reflect on the. I guess just the journey overall, what has surprised you the most about this path of building the advisory business to this size and stage that you're at as a coming up on $2 billion.
- [78:21]
C
Firm, honestly, I didn't think I'd ever be a business builder. When I got in this business, I just loved helping people. And that's something we tell new team members all the time or somebody looking to get into this industry. If you like helping people, you're going to be successful and the business will come doesn't mean it'll come easily, but it will make it way more fulfilling. And so, number one, I've been surprised a little bit by the fact that I'm actually building a business, because that wasn't my goal, but I actually really enjoy it. I love the challenge of having to figure something like calm excellence out and how to do things differently. We're a firm that innovates. Tear things down, innovate again. And so, um, no two days are the same. Um, and it's. It's really fun to lead a team and, and help other people learn the art of what we do beyond just the technical skills.
- [79:28]
B
So what was the low point on this journey for you?
- [79:32]
C
Ironically, the low point was when I was promoted to my current role, which was about four years ago. That immediate moment wasn't a low point, but I personally reached a place where that could possibly be my last stop in terms of title and responsibility. And I had to redefine what value looked like every day. I'd been in a wheel of striving and seeking the next promotion, the next layer of responsibility. Responsibility. I also was working less directly with clients in my daily work. I still advise clients and work with them, but it just wasn't the same volume. And so, you know, right now I just had to recenter on the value I bring every day is creating this bigger machine that serves more people, serving our team in a way that I want to lead. And the results of that are less tangible and immediate than getting a promotion or a client saying, yes, I'll work with you. And so it was really redefining what fulfillment meant and how I was going to measure success every day.
- [80:57]
B
Because the role you moved up to was president of the firm. So there's not really career ladder, like, congratulations, you got to the top wrong.
- [81:08]
C
Exactly.
- [81:10]
B
Such interesting framing. So then all of a sudden, the. I mean, I hate to frame it this way, but, you know, like the. The ways that we try to keep score on our progress, like, am I making movement towards my next promotion and next layer of responsibility? Like, you can't really play that game anymore because you got there.
- [81:28]
C
Yes, the game has changed, which was. I mean, it. I'm glad I recognized it. And it caused me to really reflect and dial in on. On what's fulfilling. And it's. It's taking care of people and maintaining perspective that the work I'm doing is just on a different playing field. But it could potentially more impact more people, which in itself is super rewarding.
- [81:54]
B
How. How long did it take to process through that? I mean, was that a like you realized it and adjusted and move on or are you like summarizing a year of like mental processing gyrations to get to this like new, new, new place?
- [82:10]
C
Because of my perfectionistic tendencies, it took a little longer, maybe you know, three years. It took some time. It really took some time to dial in. But I'm glad I did that work to understand it.
- [82:27]
B
So how did you figure it out for yourself or come to the realization?
- [82:33]
C
Journaling, reading? I have an amazing coach. I've actually worked with her for eight and a half years now. And she's been a tremendous tool in helping me understand what fulfills me and what's going to fulfill me for the next several years of my career.
- [82:57]
B
Is that a person or name that you'd be comfortable to share just for others who might be looking for a good coach?
- [83:03]
C
Yes. Her name is Renee Fleming. She's based in St. Louis now. Her practice is called Reset with Renee. And she's just a tremendously intuitive and a great coach who's really just guided me in deep ways.
- [83:24]
B
Any books or other reading that were particular realizations or breakthroughs for you?
- [83:31]
C
The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown. That's the book I read when I was first starting to understand perfectionism. And that book was truly life changing. I think all of her books are wonderful. Dare to Lead is another great book that she's written. The Next Right Thing is a Concept by Emily P. Freeman. She's also written how to Walk Into a Room. I think I got that title right. But it's the Art of Discernment and it's really good. Countless others I love to read, but those are some really critical ones that have helped.
- [84:21]
B
So what else do you know now you wish you could take back to like you a decade ago to have maybe better prepared for the journey?
- [84:33]
C
I think if I were to give myself some advice, it would be you don't have to be anyone other than yourself. And I try to coach people towards that. Especially when you're talking about perfectionistic tendencies, I could easily become a chameleon to try to get it right and fit in and self protect. And if I had known that I could just chill out a little bit and just be myself, I think the road would have been a little bit easier.
- [85:12]
B
How did that show up for you in practice? Like where, where did it take you off the road or create problems?
- [85:22]
C
I think, I think the biggest area where it manifested is, is honestly probably being a female and you know what's historically been a male dominated industry. I, I've felt, you know, pressure to be a certain way or if, if I wasn't, you know, as assertive enough or whatever it may be that I, that I wouldn't be good enough to be an advisor and a leader. And so looking back, I had to adapt in a lot of ways and maybe a lot of the ways were really good. I just didn't quite know how to manage it.
- [86:09]
B
So any other advice then that you would give younger newcomer women coming to the industry today that want to go down this path of becoming a financial advisor?
- [86:25]
C
I would reiterate, you know what I just said about you don't have to be anyone other than yourself. If you pair that with a focus on taking care of people and staying centered on that, rather than being afraid of rejection or not getting something precisely right, I think you're going to leave energy to do better work for clients and enjoy the process a lot more.
- [86:57]
B
So as we come to the end here, this is a podcast about success. And just one of the themes that always comes up is literally that word success means very different things to different people. And so you've had this incredible career journey to the top of the firm, leading a firm that's now closing on $2 billion. Like the, the business seems in a wonderful place. How do you define success personally for yourself at this point?
- [87:31]
C
Success to me is all about making sure that I maintain focus on my priorities, that I'm present for my children and my husband and my family, that I'm aligned with my values and living that every day. It's not work life balance, because that's impossible. Many people say that and I agree with it. But it's, it's staying focused on priorities and making sure that, you know, I'm a wife and a mom first and I'm also very responsible for a lot of client outcomes and trying to, you know, divide the pie in all the right ways on any given day, but making sure that I'm staying aligned to my values each step of the way.
- [88:27]
B
I really like that. I like the alignment theme. The alignment to priorities theme.
- [88:34]
C
Sure. And I think it's easy to get misaligned when you work in a fast moving, fast growing firm. Our industry creates tremendous opportunity for financial success. There's lots of potential distractions along the way and I just never want to get again misaligned with what's most important to me as a person.
- [89:05]
B
I appreciate that. Appreciate that. Well, thank you, Lisa, for joining us on the Financial Advisor success podcast.
- [89:12]
C
Thank you. Michael, it's just been a true honor to be here.
- [89:15]
B
Thank you.
- [89:18]
A
Want even more ideas, tools and resources on how to break through to the next level of success as a financial advisor? Check out the leading financial planning industry blog, Nerd's eye view at www.kitsis.com, where Michael covers the latest practice management trends and financial planning strategies. And by joining the Members section, you can earn IMCA and CFP continuing education credits along with exclusive member content. Get it all now at www. W.kitsis. com.