Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Welcome to the Advisor Advocates Podcast. I'm Garrett Lail. Really appreciate you taking a few minutes to check out this episode. I want to introduce and talk about a new resource that I've been developing over the last few months to really try to speed up the search process for advisors who are considering a transition in their business. Whether you're thinking about switching firms, moving your business to a different firm, selling, merging, whatever you may be considering. I know there's a lot of challenges out there for advisors trying to figure out exactly, you know, what their best needs next move is. And I really think this is something that is going to help to speed up that search process for you. So I'm really excited to share it with advisors and firms. So if this is your first time checking out the podcast or if we've not spoken before, I thought it was worth taking a quick minute just to kind of review my resume as it, as it is relevant to this conversation today. So I was a financial advisor for 13 years and I joke a lot of times that I lived the financial advisor life cycle and fast forward. I was with a wirehouse for three years, an independent broker dealer for two, then I left there and started my own, ran, had that for seven years and then sold that, went through a short transition period and then landed in the recruiting world as an independent third party recruiter. And then after a short time with the recruiting firm, I started doing independent consulting work for advisors and firms and eventually that led to my own independent recruiting activities in business. So I've seen the advisor transition, business transition landscape from just about every possible perspective. In fact, even rewinding back to the very beginning of my career. Very shortly after I started with the wirehouse, we had a situation where an advisor left to go to another firm and I was tasked with trying to retain that business. So I've seen transitions literally even from, from that perspective as well. I really have seen it from every angle. So it's really allowed me or enabled me to be a great resource for advisors that are in that position because there's not a whole lot of questions that you can have that I haven't at least asked myself somewhere along the way. So I really was excited to kind of dump all of that information into one resource that advisors could tap into to help answer these questions for yourself. So in the last several years working as a consultant to advisors and firms, it's funny to me how common you get the same questions over and over again and it's got to a point where I can very easily summarize most conversations that I'm going to have with both advisors and firms from the advisor side, almost any phone call that I get is going to be some version of I just don't know what's out there. I know I'm not happy where I'm at, or I know I need to make this change, or I know that I'm.
[00:02:47] I don't know what I don't know, but I know that I don't necessarily like where I'm at. I just don't know. Is the grass really greener on the other side? How green is the grass on the other side? I've heard this, I read that.
[00:02:58] Is this true? I get that so much from advisors. And it's funny, I get that because when I was an advisor thinking about making a change, you really advisors, we tend to know our own firm very well, but we tend to also have a pretty vague view of the, the outside world. I mean, we, we know who our competitors are and we know in the ballpark of what their payouts are and we've got friends in the industry and we can hear that kind of stuff. But as far as really knowing what is going on with firms outside of ours, a lot of times we don't have the whole picture. And really just good example of this, when I went, when I made my first change and went to the independent broker dealer, no fault of anyone's, and I don't say this in a derogatory way at all, but there were things that they didn't tell me before I made the transition that I wish I would have known. It may not have necessarily changed my mind, but they were relevant details that they didn't tell me. But it wasn't bad intentions on their part. They didn't know that I didn't know that from their perspective, in their world, this was normal.
[00:04:06] And they thought that that was normal in every world and from the world that I was coming from, that wasn't normal. And I didn't know to ask if they did it this way because it never even occurred to me that this was a possibility because I only knew my own firm's culture and my own firm's way of doing things. So there's just a lot of times that you don't know what you don't know and you don't even know that you don't know it. That's maybe too redundant there. But it's not even necessarily bad intentions. It's just sometimes you don't know what you don't.
[00:04:38] That's by far the most common thing that I get from advisors. What is really out there? And tell me the whole story top to bottom. Then from the firm's side of the equation, the most common thing that I hear is we know we have a good firm, we know we have a good culture. We think that we pay very competitively, or maybe even we know that we pay very competitively. But we don't know how to cut through the noise and get our story out there to advisors. We know that if more advisors knew we existed and knew where to find us, that they would be interested and we could grow really quick. But unfortunately, we don't know how to let advisors know. You can do your marketing efforts, you can hire recruiters, you can do a lot of different things to try to help get it out there. The thing that you're struggling against if you're a firm is just the supply and demand is so imbalanced right now that advisors don't have time to research every single firm that comes calling them, even if they are interested. Now, I've heard closer to 50 to 1, and from my experience on the recruiting side, I think that's riding the ballpark. I mean, it's not hard to find 50 firms interested in one advisor's business when it's in play.
[00:05:44] So if you're an advisor and you want to do a decent due diligence process on everybody who's interested in you, you can't do it. There's just not enough time in the day for you to be able to do that while continuing to service your clients.
[00:05:58] You need some type of a filtering process to get that down to the three to five that are really worth your consideration.
[00:06:04] So that's really the problem that I was attempting to solve in creating this platform. As I built this. I was really trying to say, okay, if I'm an advisor and I'm searching for a new firm, how would I like this process to look and feel, and how can I make sure that I'm protected up until the point in time that I'm ready to make a decision to move forward? So that was my entire process in building this, was to build it from the advisor's perspective to give you the ability to get the answers that you need quietly, conveniently, and then give you a way to connect with the firm when you're ready to move forward on your terms. The platform is conveniently called the Advisor Advocate. We just took the S off of the domain. It's the advisoradvocate.com and you can Go straight there. And it's from the advisor's perspective, it is an awesome resource to be able to window shop very conveniently and on your own terms. You can explore firms without registering, without sharing any email addresses or any contact information. We don't need to know anything about you for you to be able to shop and see what's out there. Firms can complete a profile that I've put together, asking them to answer the questions that I know advisors are asking. These are the questions that advisors are most commonly asking me or the questions that I had when I was considering a transition. I put together these questions. Now, firms have the discretion to answer whichever questions they like. You don't have to answer every single question. You don't have to necessarily provide every detail if you don't want to. And sometimes that makes sense. I don't want to say this in a, in a bad way like if you don't answer all the questions, there's something for you to hide. Sometimes the answer may be simply it depends. And there may not be a way to, to put it depends into a profile as an optional answer or option. But I do encourage firms to be as transparent as you can, because this is your tale of the tape that you're putting out for advisors to use to compare and to search for options. So I do encourage firms to be as transparent as you can, but I don't require it. I give firms the ability to upload a short 3 to 5 minute promo video to kind of tell your story in your own words. It's, you know, someone who's done a lot of podcasting and video work. I've learned that there's, there are certain things that you can convey in a video that you just can't do in text or in writing. So I give firms the ability to upload a video to tell their story in their own words.
[00:08:28] Now, from the advisor's perspective, when you go to the advisoradvocate.com and you go to explore firms, all of the firms who are signed up and have created profiles are put at the top of the page. And you can then filter and search based on your criteria, what you're looking for, whether that's location, business model, type, custodian, affiliation, there's all of the. Anything that's in a profile is something that you can filter and search by. You can do all of this again without any, you know, without registering, without signing up. We don't need to have your email address.
[00:09:02] Once you see a firm that you say, I'd like to Know more about that. If you want to connect with them and send them a message, we do ask you to sign up at that point, but that's not so that we can add you to our marketing list and blow you up. It's actually for your protection because once you sign up, you're going to be assigned an anonymous username, and that is going to allow you to communicate with that firm without sharing any of your own personal identity, without sharing your name, so that if you don't want them to know who are, you can do so anonymously and still ask all of your questions. From that point forward, you drive the process. The platform is not going to try to drive you to this firm or that firm. You're going to put in your search criteria and it's going to objectively put on the screen the firms that fit that criteria. And then once you message the firm, you ask them your questions, whatever you want to know. And from there, it's just a communication between you and the firm that you drive and you control. When you're ready to speak with them one on one and reveal who you are and actually share your personal information, you do that on your own terms and at your discretion. I also have added into the, into the platform an AI agent that you can chat with along the way. If you do have questions or you're not really sure where to even start the search, or if you have questions about, you know, I'm thinking about switching firms. Should I go independent or should I start my own firm? That AI agent is actually trained from my own experience and my own podcast. I actually told the AI agent, go back and listen to every episode of the Advisor Advocates podcast, watch every video on the Advisory Advocates YouTube channel, and read every resource available on the Advisory Advocates.com so that whatever advice and guidance is giving you should be referencing that information, which is obviously coming from my own experience as well. So I'm not saying that it's perfect and absolutely it is not giving legal or financial advice in any way, shape or form. I hope that that's been properly disclosed in every way possible on the website. But you're getting a more customized AI tool than if you just go to Google or you go to ChatGPT or wherever, because it's actually drawing directly from my own podcast, my own experiences. Now, looking at this from a firm's perspective, I think that there are a few subtle benefits to firms that you may not immediately necessarily pick up on because I think I've done so much in this to protect the advisor.
[00:11:17] But A lot of the things that I do in building this platform that protect the advisor, I think is actually a, it's going to give a benefit to the firm as well just by attracting more advisors to the platform. I know that there are some firms out there who may prefer to be able to have access to all the advisors information, for example, or there may be some firms who would say, hey, I don't really like that advisors have to contact me first. Why can't I see every advisor who signed up so that I can send them messages and try to pitch them? I get that. And I know a lot of firms are really hungry and I know that they want to get out there and proactively get their story out there. But in addition to, I believe, attracting more advisors to the platform by, by protecting them and making it more convenient for them, I also think that this approach is going to help firms not waste effort on advisors who aren't interested. There's, you know, for every firm out there who's looking to, to recruit, there's going to be some very small percentage of potential recruits that are really going to be interested in your story. And it may not be anything that's a fault of your own. There's going to be some who are looking for an independent and you're a W2. There's going to be some that are looking for a base sal you don't offer one. There's going to be a lot of advisors out there who just your story fundamentally does not connect with them. So rather than having to go out there proactively, seek out as many advisors as possible to catch that small percentage who may be interested. Now you set your profile up and that small percentage who's going to be interested in you is going to find you, reach out to you, and every conversation that you have on this platform is going to come from an advisor who has at least some level of interest in talking with you. It's an opt in to a conversation rather than an opt out, if you want to put it that way. So I think that there are some subtle advantages even to the firms in this process by putting the advisors in control of the process. The other thing that I think is a benefit for both sides on the platform is the cost structure and the economics of the platform. It is a very simple, very straightforward cost structure where firms pay $2,500 a year to have a license to use the platform and to list your firm and have your profile out there. And that's it. There's no other costs or fees associated with using the platform. For anyone, it's free. For advisors. There are no connection fees, there are no success fees. If an advisor transitions to your firm, it is $2,500 a year to have a profile out there. And what I'm trying to facilitate here is the most open and fair competition that I can, because that's what's best for advisors. In a perfect world, every single firm would have a profile on the platform so that advisors would be able to take every single firm into consideration when they're searching. That would also create a pretty cool world for me too, right? If every single firm out there was paying me 2,500 bucks a year, I don't think I need any additional success fees or connection fees or anything like that. So in the interest of trying to create the most fair and most competitive marketplace that I can for advisors, I wanted to make sure that it was set up in a way that was cost effective for firms and also as simple and transparent as I can make it. So as we're getting this rolled out, I have a few benefits that I'm throwing out there for firms to try to expedite the initial launch and get as many firms on here as I can very quickly. So first perk that I'm offering is from now to the end of the year, every new sign up in 2026. The license will expire at the end of 2027. So right now, it's June.
[00:14:50] If you sign up now, you're getting six and a half extra months for the same cost. So the sooner you sign up, the longer you're going to get, the more free months you're essentially getting there. Also, for the first 10 firms who sign up, I will be inviting them to join me on this podcast to come on and do a firm spotlight where you get a 20, 30 minutes, usually how long those will last, where we have a conversation about your firm, give you an opportunity to tell your story in your own words and a conversation with me. And then any firms who come on the Advisor Advocates podcast, in addition to me putting it out there, obviously on my own channels, I also provide you those recordings as well. So you can share them on your website, you can put them on your social media, anything you'd like to do to be able to use that for your own marketing efforts. And for those first 10, I'll also work with you if you'd like to create the short video for your profile. We can hop on a recording to be able to record virtually and I'll kind of guide you through that process and also help you with the editing and getting it uploaded for you, all that stuff. So if you're interested in learning more or checking it out for advisors, that's super easy. You just go to theadvisoradvocate.com and check it out. There's not much more to it than that. I tried to make it as low of a barrier for entry for advisors as I could for firms. If you would like to speak with me, you can give me a call or shoot me an email and I'd be happy to set up a time for us to have a conversation and answer any questions that you may have. You can also book a demo with me directly from the homepage if you want to go there and just access my calendar through the website. Or if you're already sold and you're ready to get going, you can sign up straight from the website. It's very straightforward. It takes about probably 15 minutes to start to finish and that's including completing the profile. But if you do have questions you can shoot me an email to garrettadvisoradvocates.com I will emphasize there my email address is the Advisor Advocates plural with an S on the end of it. The website for the platform is theadvisoradvocate.com so I own both domains. Just the plural was the legacy website that I have my email tied to. You can also give me a call directly to my cell. My number is 919-561-2436. I encourage you to shoot me a text before you call if you don't mind. I don't usually answer phone calls from numbers that I don't recognize, so if I don't know you're going to call, I'm probably not going to answer. Shoot me a quick text. Give me a heads up. So I'll be looking out for your call, but would love an opportunity to chat with you at your convenience if you'd like to learn more. Really appreciate you taking a few minutes to listen today. Hope this is something that is helpful and hope to be talking to you very soon. Thanks a lot Sam.
