Ep 10: 10. Rethink: Moving Firms – Captive vs IBD vs RIA – featuring Ryan Shanks

Episode 10 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). (32:28)

Episode 10 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or Acast.

Episode Summary

Ryan Shanks joins Adam Holt and Derek Notman for the question they say they are asked most often and have deliberately avoided answering: which firm model is actually best, captive, independent broker-dealer, or registered investment adviser. Shanks profiles the two advisors who move most often. The first is an earlier-career advisor tied to an insurance platform who wants to do planning and fee-based work and finds the ability restricted. The second is an established advisor with a few hundred million in assets and one move left, choosing between a lateral transition with a large upfront check and going independent. The hosts then push back on Shanks’s view that most movers end up better off, pointing out that recruitment is measurable while retention and post-move success are not. Their own conclusion is that advisors often carry their problems with them.

What this episode covers

• The two advisor profiles most likely to change firms, and what drives each one
• The trade between a large transition check and long-term independence
• Why post-move success is harder to measure than recruitment, and what that obscures
• Renovate versus relocate: fixing processes and advocating internally as the alternative
• The client portability question that determines whether any move actually works

Full Transcript

Machine-generated transcript of this episode.

Welcome to Rethink, the financial advisor podcast. My name is Adam Holtz. And this is Derek Notman. We are your hosts, both veteran advisors and FinTech CEOs who challenge the status quo, question everything and have fun doing it. Hear honest commentary on the challenges facing advisors today and be part of a community where we can all rethink the profession. Now on to our episode. What is the best type of firm for a financial professional? Is it captive? Is it pure RIA? Is it independent broker-dealer? Is it hybrid? Is it some combination? What is it, my man? And hey, like nice to see you again. Nice to hear you too.

Thanks, I think. Do you know how many times we get this question? As if we know the answer, right? I mean, having been in the business for 20 some years each, it’s a sticky question. And we’ve been hesitant to talk about this one to some degree, although as we mentioned before, we’re going to do it anyway. This gets some attention, doesn’t it? Why do you ask? Well, man, there’s so much rhetoric around this. And I think that there are some stronger opinions out there that like to say some things, but then like the data may not support that. But yeah, like, man, I get this either individually or we see posts about it and it’s everywhere.

And so, yeah, we’re going to unpack it a little today and we’ve got a special way to do it. It’s true. And, you know, both AssetMap and Connector have many clients in this space that are affiliated with all of these questions that you asked, right? But it’s interesting how many kind of off we’ll call it behind the scenes questions we also get because people are curious about what’s on the other side, right? What are other people doing that are using your products? And are they better? Is it better for me? Should I be there? And so forth, right? Do I feel like a refugee stuck in a camp and I need to find a place to land?

Or am I living in a palace and I’m happy and I just want to know what else the Jones are doing? I mean, so it’s important. So let’s kind of let’s address what kind of social surveying and research we did to try to answer this question for our listener group. Yeah. So I, I’m a big fan of data and I like, I like using the polls on LinkedIn. Specifically, you can get a lot of data pretty quickly. Now, obviously there’s always some margin of error here, but we asked a couple of questions. One of them, which I think will resonate with a lot of us is like, what is the best way to start as a financial advisor and the options available to pick from were like a wirehouse BD employee, a non-captive wirehouse or broker dealer, a fully independent RIA slash IAR or something else.

Now from the rhetoric you would, you would think, wow, everyone should just be an RIA and start that way. In fact, only 49% of the people that voted on this said that fully independent is the way to start. So I find that really interesting. I don’t know what you think about that Adam. Well, I’m, you know, I’m actually surprised about that because most of the time when we, started in the business, there were no RIAs independence, right? You actually were either forced to go to a wirehouse, an established organization, an insurance carrier that was moving towards wealth management and those were the two that hired, especially people which that had no book of business and no assets to bring.

So to learn the business and cut your teeth and also maybe even get some small stipender salary to be able to pay the bills those early years, you tended to have to go with a company and learn the ropes. It’s interesting to see how many people, I’m surprised actually that 49% said that you could actually start at a fully independent RIA. I’m wondering what, what business do you bring to the table? That’s a tough one, right? Cause you’re, you’re other than maybe coming with like a strong natural market. You’re, you’re not coming with much. And let’s face it, the majority of RIAs are small shops.

And even if you look at some of the dialogue in that post in the comments, like the idea in asylum makes sense. I get it. But who’s going to pay that person to come on board to build up assets over three years or five years? That’s a really expensive run for a shop that’s got one advisor or maybe three, right? Right. Begs the question though, whether they bring them in as employees first and then make them para planners. And then you learn the business for the next three, four years. And then maybe you were in the right to start working with clients. It does beg the case that an established firm is going to have to have revenue and invest in their infrastructure.

So that needs to be the right fit. What else did you see? What other surveys did you run? Well, the founder also interesting. So Finra released this in 2019. We don’t have the numbers for 2020 yet. I don’t believe, which is kind of funny given that we’re almost done with 2021 here, but they looked at the decade from, was it 2010 to 2019 through that period there at like the type of advisors and the trajectory. We can’t speak today. Yeah, that trajectory, that thing of all the different types. And what basically the data supported was, Hey, the broker dealer type of advisor has actually decreased by about 20% over the last decade where the RIA side has increased by about 20%.

Now in total numbers, the BD types of advisors far outweigh the RIA space, but the numbers are clear. And so what I asked is like, all right, well, what type of advisor is going to lead the next decade? And only 4% said broker dealer reps. But what’s interesting is like we’ve got 55% that said investment advisor only, so pure RIA, but 41% that said dual, duly registered. Why do you think that is? The BDs still have a really big hold. And we have a special guess where that’s actually probably going to touch on this a little bit today, but the pain of leaving a broker dealer environment where most advisors are can be quite high.

So if I don’t have to leave, but I can bring on some RIA type stuff to my current broker dealer situation, that feels pretty good. And it’s not as hard to do. Yeah, it’s true. I’m looking forward to talking about that one, especially with Ryan. And we led this with what’s the best place to land as an advisor. You’d recently done some surveying on this. What did you find? Yeah, so this survey is still running. It’s not even 24 hours old, so the data is a little premature. But right now I ask, what’s the best type of advisor? And I misspelled it. So instead of wire house, it’s wine house.

So if you want to go drink wine as an advisor, we do have that position apparently. Oh, I thought it was complaining wine, like wine house. That too. Or Amy Winehouse could be that. Amy Winehouse. Right. Very dark scenarios, but that’s interesting. They got the least votes. But what’s happening here, again, it’s tilted towards RIA space, and I get why. But only 57% so far are saying that the best type of advisor is an RIA. There’s 29% that are saying hybrid, and then there’s some margin for error. They’re just saying other things. So again, it’s still early on in this poll. We don’t have a ton of data yet, but I find it pretty interesting where it’s trending.

That’s great. So that’s interesting. So RIA tends to dominate the kind of the commentary of what’s going on, at least on the social side. But there’s still a holdout for broker dealers and roles. And of course, a lot of us that sold BD products, it’s not just typical mutual funds and tamps and so forth. It’s also the variable life and variable annuity. And these things are very sticky and hard to unwind, nor would you probably want to after they’ve been so seasoned. And so there’s going to be a need to continue to service this line of business as well as I think write more and more longevity style products in the future given the demographics.

So I think that the BD will still have a very prominent role, but there’s no question that the pressure for advisory or advisory mostly instead of advisory only is a big theme. And we have to be really attentive to this. We recently talked about with Michael Kitsis on episode nine. And so that’s something to think. One of the things that we figured out there, because we wanted to go searching for an expert who’s actually dealing with these transition questions, because instead of us trying to answer what we think our friends are doing and who’s better off, we decided to reach out to someone who we know who’s been in the business for 20 years, Ryan Shanks, who’s the and founder of FAMatch.

We kind of think of it as he’s built as a recruiter of financial professionals along all of these firms. com of financial advisor fit. So the technology platform helps people figure out where they are today. And so the first question we asked him is a three part. We actually asked him three questions. Who’s looking to move and what is the typical profile of a financial professional considering a move today? So let’s listen to what Ryan had to say. It’s there’s very specific needs or wants that they have, I guess. And then we start to try to unpack it. So, you know, a next gen advisor, a lot of those conversations are around, you know, look, I’m plugged in and Derek, you can appreciate this.

I’m plugged in with an insurance platform and I want to do financial planning and I’d like to do more fee based business. And frankly, they’re restricting my ability to do so. Right. So that’s one particular use case. Another use case is, you know, I’m at a warehouse, I’ve got 250 million in assets, I’ve got one more move left in me. Do I go to a lateral firm that’s going to give me some really big check in the same comp level and that’s it? Or do I look to roll that into independence? And what does that risk look like for me? And then on the opposite spectrum, it’s that older advisor that’s like, look, man, I love this business.

I’d like to keep doing it for another five to 10 years of my health holds up. But there’s a lot of sort of administrative items and things that I’m running up every single day that I would like to see if I can’t sort of outsource that to someone else in the interim. And then also have that be someone who can be my succession when I decide to hit the button. So I heard three things in there, right? We were trying to quantify who’s actually talking about moving these days and then reaching out to a recruiter and actually making a move. And I heard three there.

So I’m going to try to do this personas. One is a person who’s been in the business for 10 years and has kind of gotten past needing, you know, call it the internalistic help. They want to create identity brand. They want control. They want maybe tech. Maybe they want to sell crypto. They want to do more planning. They want to change their fee base. They figured out what worked and what didn’t work. And now they’re looking for their next landing spot. The second was they’re looking for money. They’re a wirehouse jumper and they’re going to basically get paid to bring their book of business. We see this happen a lot.

And then lastly, is that veteran who’s kind of in that later stage thinking, I want to make my life simplified, simplified. I need a succession plan, maybe an exit plan. And so I’m looking for the place I’m going to have finish out the last bunch of years. Is that what you heard? I did. Yeah. It’s interesting. I like, it’s actually quite diverse, but it totally fits. And it’s nice to have someone like Ryan on the front lines, validate that. Cause he’s having some, I’m sure, some really interesting and very private conversations with people looking to make these changes. So he’s got some insight that we just can’t have on the outside looking in.

Well, the thing that we needed to figure out from Ryan, which was, you know, who is actually winning the favor of advisors and why are they winning? And this is what he had to share with us. This was really insightful. It comes back to sort of that persona of that advisor, right? So if they’re money motivated, it’s a captive or a lateral move, or it might be inside of a firm that’s got some capital backing it. Right. But what we tell folks is, you know, if an advisor cares a lot about culture, not about the people fit in the equation, the RIA side of this industry is the absolute best in upholding that culture.

You know, the independent broker dealers are winning at a really fast pace. But if you look at it, a lot of the IBD success and recruiting for the most part is recruiting from a comparable independent broker dealer, right? They may just have a little less that they offer. Maybe they’re not helping that advisor recruit or acquire. And that’s sort of the next stage in their career. The OSJs of the independent broker dealers are very aggressive and competitive. Their culture is still not as in sync as an RIA though. So, you know, everyone’s winning, frankly. I mean, you’re seeing, you know, wire houses winning big teams, right?

Now we all know that the reality there is they’re paying a lot of money to win. So, it’s across the board. You know, I say everyone’s winning. We’re having a lot of fun talking to the small and mid-tier firms, sort of the RIAs that are kind of up and coming, but they’re under the radar. No one knows about them. And they’re really trying to get it right, right? They’ve integrated technology. I was talking to a group this week and they’re like, look, we’re kind of old school. We actually really care about the advisor. None of us work with clients. We get up every day and that’s our purpose.

And I’m like, as ironic as it is, the industry has moved away from something like that, right? It’s gotten almost to the margin and it’s, you know, listen, you’re ahead. We want to bring you in. As long as you don’t have compliance risk for us, we’re going to take a scrape off the top line of the revenue and we’re going to have some built-in expenses. So, the profitability is nice for us. Right. We tend to talk so much about investment advisors and I know that’s a big part of the business, but certainly there are whole teams that are doing different lines of business, whether it’s business succession to state, insurance, annuity.

Are you starting to see these groups getting attracted by the financial outlets that are hiring you? We are. And we love it because, you know, we always say, what’s your niche, right? What’s so special about you? Any firm that I get on a Zoom with, I’m like, give me your pitch, right? Why am I going to move across town to come to your firm versus the 25 other firms in a five mile radius? And there’s some of them that are really starting to get smart about that, right? Can we help you bring on new clients? Can you help? Can we help you in organically if you have that desire?

Or can we help you with some of these higher market, upper market items such as estate planning? You know, some of those types of strategies. What do you think the advisors that are considering or contemplating moving? What is the question they’re not asking? I mean, obviously they consent to talk about compensation, upfront equity, maybe technology. What do you think is the missing question that they’re not asking themselves? I think one of the singular questions that most advisors we interface with, that’s all I can really speak to, that are not asking is how can you help me evolve in this business beyond my scope, right? We tend to sort of get up every day and we sort of see kind of right outside in front of us.

And that’s sort of our vision. We don’t have a vision for 24 months and certainly not 60 months down the road. So I think that if they could start to engage in that type of strategic discussion, that this is what I’m doing today because it’s kind of what I’ve known forever. But are there things I’m missing? Are there blind spots? Are there things that I could lean into that could help increase the business that I’m running? It almost sounds like the transition to move or go independent has been somewhat commoditized. So how are you going to add value to that, right? I’ve got options. So what are you going to do from a strategic value perspective that’s really going to say, okay, this is where I got to go.

This is what I got to think about. You know what? That is 100% accurate if the advisor is thoughtful enough to evaluate the real marketplace. Keep in mind, a lot of times what happens is someone is calling into that advisor and they’ve got their head down and they’re not overly happy where they are, but they’ve got a high pain tolerance. So they’re just going to stick it out, right? Because moving is the absolute worst scenario for them to consider. And that individual that called them got them to lift their head up and they baited with something shiny and they decided to go and jump and they went and jumped and they didn’t really do any sort of comparative research, right?

You guys sound great. You seem like good people. I’m all in with this and they move and then six months later, they’re going, wait a minute. You told me you could do A, B and C and I haven’t seen A or B since I’ve been here and C is a bunch of BS, right? And you know, in this business, Eric, you know, in this business, if you move your clients, I tell folks moving your business in this industry is more difficult than any other industry. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Right. I mean, it’s, you got to get clients. First of all, you have to ask yourself to the clients, love you, trust you, and want to stay with you.

And we have seen scenarios where they have thought that’s the case and they’ve made the move and that’s not how the clients felt about them. So there you have it. So that was pretty interesting, Derek, right? Everyone’s winning, according to Ryan. Why do you think everybody’s winning? You know, I apologize, Ryan. I don’t know if I can go with that. This is part of the rethink tank. Sorry, Ryan, we’re supposed to try to, you know, pick apart what you had to say. I think that a lot are winning, but well, how do you define winning? It’s one thing to recruit somebody over, but how long are they staying and how successful are they afterwards?

We don’t know. We don’t, I don’t know that data, right? And so I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of really interesting nuggets there. I like how he has, he’s basically calling it out like, Hey, like the industry is somewhat of a commodity. There are plenty of firms to pick from, you know, so like, why should I go to you versus the other 25, as he said. And what’s neat is that the industry is starting to recognize on some levels that like, all right, I got this whole like basic stuff down. Like what’s the experience and value add you’re going to give to me.

And like the world in general has really kind of gone to this more experience, like value system philosophy. Why would I go to your firm versus another one? You both sell the same products. So why is yours better than the other one? I find that very, I find that very interesting, but it’s also encouraging that, that that is, you know, something that’s being asked now. But the advisor does have to get their head out of the, you know, out of, out of the, you know, just, you know, in the zone mode to be able to look at this stuff. You know, I, it’s funny, I was thinking about that too.

And I think everybody’s winning because marketing is really excellent, right? People, people all move for reasons that don’t always make intellectual sense. And what I loved, what he said is that, that the scope, right? Of understanding that this is not a 24 month decision, right? The 24 months of transitioning of bringing over a book from one BD to another AK firm, whatever it is, but actually thinking 60 months out, 180 months out and thinking, how does this really affect my ability to deliver so that I’m not doing this again in four years? And I know plenty of advisors who have moved because they were aggravated or frustrated.

They weren’t getting something and they just, they were impetuous. Of course it took time. They couldn’t just make a decision like that. And they moved three years later because they were disappointed, right? And that’s because we all know, coming from the sales world, if you call somebody in their biggest moment of need or pain and you catch them with the right shiny object, sometimes they actually move or they move their money or they move their firm or they marry you. I don’t know. The point is, is that we all make decisions, right? That made sense in the moment. Now, the question is, I thought it was quite interesting that he talked about culture because there is, as you already said, this real big push to align the culture and the positioning and how I want to be represented and my reputation with a firm.

We are starting to see technology solutions that we know of effectively try to disintermediate this entire infrastructure because they realize that it is getting commoditized and the cost of delivering a larger firm is going to get compressed just like everything else. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that we all, most of us who’ve been in financial advisor for some time, typically brand ourselves, right? We’re rebranding, we’re doing business as, we’re not usually using our larger organization unless we’re getting something from that, some form of credibility or reach or connectivity, right? If we’re with a large bank, we might really enjoy the benefits of being with the bank because the consumer values it.

Many of the growing areas of financial advice, an independent or single person advisory firm is their own firm. It’s John Smith Financial, Mary Egan’s planning, we’re really branding ourselves. It begs the question of whether I need a big brand behind me that’s recognizable. That is a huge question. I think part of it’s going to be driven by the type of clients you’re going to work with. Some clients, and I don’t mean to generalize here, but I would say that older generations I think would probably be more comfortable with large established brands where the younger generations are probably going to shift more to like, I don’t care so much about the brand as I do about the person behind the brand or the person representing the brand.

I really like Joe. Joe happens to have this other company he’s tapped into, but I just like Joe, so I’m going to go work with Joe. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s hear how Ryan finished it up as we asked him. What was he trying to build to try to solve a lot of these problems so that we had to help understand where it’s going? What we’ve done is, I’ve been doing this for 22 years. So keep in mind, I’ve done it very old school, one-to-one, love the business, but it’s a scalability option. But what we’ve decided was we wanted to go out and create a very unique set, we call them avatar types, for every advisor type and firm type in the industry.

Then we built an algorithm that drives compatibility on your ability to do business together. So the only thing that’s really left from that point is do you like each other? Do I get on a call with you, Adam, or a Zoom with you? And I like the response you have to my questions. I like the forward thinking that the firm has. I like the fact that you understand that the advisor is your client, all of those different elements. So we’re just automating that. And our belief is that there’s a lot of conflict in this industry, especially with traditional recruiters, where they get in front of someone with a big book and all they think is, my buddy Bob will pay me the most money, so I’m going to give him this lead.

And the advisor doesn’t know any bit different. And so our sole focus in terms of the compass that drives us in everything we do is to fit. That matters. And we’re trying to reduce the cost so that those small tiered firms that I spoke about earlier, it’s actually affordable. They’re up and coming. They’ve got a phenomenal value stack. No one knows about them. But one of the worst things they can do is go out and start paying traditional recruiting fees because it doesn’t model out financially. So there you have it. So what FA Match is trying to do, they’re actually trying to build the subscription service for recruiting between advisors and firms.

So that’s interesting what you’re starting to see even in that industry as well. So thanks so much, Ryan, for everything you’re doing and to shape the industry and for, of course, contributing some of your time to the Rethink tank. Derek, what’s the takeaways that you have of that for advisors? It’s time for us to tell our friends where some things they can actually do or think about. What type of advisor do you want to be? Get comfortable with that and know that there’s not one right or wrong answer. It really depends on what you want to be. So define that. And then once you figure that out, can you be that type of advisor or as Kitsis said, advisor, depending on what you are, where you currently are?

Can you do that there and do it well and be comfortable and happy and be profitable and all those things? Or do you need to make a move? And if you are going to make a move, as Ryan suggests, like make sure that that culture fit is good. That’s not just like, hey, we’re going to pay you the same, but our brand is better or whatever. Like really dig in. If you’re going to move, like why are you moving? Can you actually do what you want to do at this new place? And does the culture fit all those other things that come with it? Those would be things I would say write down, think about, do if you’re at this stage of your career.

That’s good advice. That’s good advice. At least we’re consistent in the identity side of it. My, you know, my, my intend to be more, I don’t want to call it fear-based or like question or challenging. All right. I tend to believe it’s almost Halloween. So I guess that’s okay. You’re based. That’s true. I’m going to dress up as a full body hot dog, just so you know, for the benefit of my child, I’m going to be like the biggest idiot. Okay. It’s a kosher hot dog, right? Absolutely. Nathan’s kosher hot dog. You know, I look, I tend to think that we, when we’re making big decisions, like moving the grass is always greener.

Right. And you tend to bring yourself with you and your issues with you when you move. Right. So sometimes we have to look inward and say, what is the real reason that I need to move or I’m thinking about making move. And I very much think of it kind of like your home. Right. You could, you could try to move. Right. Or you could try to renovate. Maybe there’s an opportunity for you to renovate processes or influence your larger organization to make some changes because otherwise they risk losing you. And so therefore it’s a, it’s a meaningful investment. And maybe you build coalition, talk to your other peers at your organization, find out if what you want to change in that, that organization is really, is it just process?

Is it technology? Is it access? And then go and advocate for it. Because we all know if those clients don’t move with you, it’s going to be a big change. And it could be incredibly disruptive unless you’re intentionally leaving the clients who don’t want. And that’s a big one too. And I heard him say this. I would, I would be curious if you’re ever going to consider this thing, are your, are your clients really going with you? I’ve had, I’ve heard scenarios where literally the clients didn’t want to go that the advisor just thought they had more preeminence with the client than they realized. And it turns out that it was actually the administrative staff that the clients loved and they had relationship with because advisor never called them anyway.

And they’re not going with you, right? They’re staying with the admin or the, or the, they’re the, they like their website. They like, I think this is a pretty good app. So I’m not leaving. If you leave, cause I like the app, I know how to use it. So I’m not leaving with you. Like really? Yes. You’re staying for the app. And then the last thing is, is this, if, if you are going to move and there are a lot of promises made to you, get it in writing. In other words, if it’s support you’re leaving for or access to certain tech or a commitment to transparency, an acquirer should be willing to sign on your expectations.

Otherwise it’s just a dream and our hope, right? Think about the, think about the expectations that clients have for us these days as advisors, right? We have to put it all on ADV. Here’s what you’re going to get. Here’s what it’s going to cost. Here’s the transparency. Why don’t we hold our acquirers to same expectation? If they can’t put it in writing, why, what’s the promise? I think that’s something to really consider. That’s a great last tip. Write that one. If you’re going to take anything away from this podcast, write that one down. That’s huge. Put it in writing. You know, this question came to us right after last week’s podcast, where many of you know that we had featured Michael Kitsis in episode nine.

We received a lot of feedback from this. So thank you for those of you that participated. But we got this, this comment back from Joe in Pennsylvania and Joe shared, he said, he wrote to us and he said, on your podcast, you discussed lowering asset management fees and offsetting those fees with advisory fees. Now this sounds great, but unless you have clients that are willing and able to pay the equivalent of let’s say $5,000 a year effectively to compensate the advisor, that’s going to leave a lot of people out of the marketplace that have, you know, average or lower incomes, but now a significant amount of assets that came from the savings and market performance and matching.

So the point is that his concern is that people will have assets that could pay for the advice through an AUM fee, but not necessarily the incomes to support paying directly a fee and may start balking on it. So what’s your gut on this one, Derek? Well, this is a bigger conversation, but I think that this just reiterates things like Kits has said both on his podcast, even when he was at Riskalize recently, is that there is a shift happening amongst the consumer and that there’s this shrinking population that wants even to have help with their AUM and have to pay for it where they would rather pay subscription or per hour, you know, planning type fees.

So I think this goes to what type of an advisor am I? We’ve talked about that before. And am I thinking as a business owner or not? So like, I understand, like if you’ve got someone who has half million, million bucks in their 401k, but they’re making 50 grand a year, maybe they can’t afford that 5k a year in fees that you were charging them, but they don’t want you to charge them an AUM fee. So how do you get that client? Well, maybe they’re willing to pay that subscription cost, even if they have to stake a distribution, I don’t know. I think the point here is that there’s a shift happening.

And if we’re not thinking about it and changing how we are getting compensated and providing our services, we’re going to get left out in the Yeah. And it’s true. And, you know, someone actually had a call this morning with Chris from New Jersey, a financial advisor of the past 20 some years. And he said it to me, great. He said, he said, we’re the only industry that requires that level of transparency that you itemize basically what you’re getting. He says, when you go buy a can of soup, you don’t actually pay that dollar 29 and say, okay, this much is going to the bean farmer.

This goes to the tin manufacturer. This guy goes to the chicken stock maker, right? We don’t break that apart. Right. And I think the question for all of us in this space is, can we actually itemize what, what amount that they’re paying in that AUM fee is really advice? And can they choose to pay it differently? Or can they continue to pay it from their assets? Because frankly, the assets probably should be paying the fee, not the income. Right. Oh, the client is going to perceive it as being a budgetary cost in my annual budget. Ouch, that feels I need to pay for Netflix and my cell phone.

Right. But when the assets paying for it, it’s just, it’s just a fee on the actual fee. It should pay its own way, in other words. And I don’t know that that’s necessarily going to have to change. We just need to disclose that they’re specifically getting advice for that money. So that’s, that’s kind of what I think, but it’s going to really lead us into is actually episode 11, coming up, which we actually did another interview and it’s all about entrepreneurship and thinking like a business owner. And a lot of this does tie together, doesn’t it Derek? Is there really differently when you’re a business owner versus an entrepreneur specifically versus just an advisor and, and running a practice.

There is a huge mindset difference. And typically you actually kind of have to wear both hats depending on what you’re doing, but yeah, we’re going to have fun with this episode. I’m looking forward to it. I agree. Well, that’s all for today. Everybody. Thank you so much for participating. Joe will send you a t-shirt. Hopefully you’ll wear it with pride and remember to please interact with us on LinkedIn. Send us your questions, your challenges, your disbelief and your debate. We want to hear it. And of course, hopefully we’ll turn into an episode. Let us know the topics you want to touch on because we’ve got a whole list, but we want to, we want to make some waves.

So thanks for being here and being part of it. Derek, a pleasure, my friend, always spending time with you. Likewise, brother, all the best. Thanks everybody for chiming into another awesome episode of what are we doing again? Oh, yeah. We’re rethinking it all. All right. Cheers guys. Bye everyone. Thank you for listening to Rethink, the financial advisor podcast with Holt and Notman. Be sure to subscribe now and join the ongoing conversation. The information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of asset map or connector. The content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only.