Leaving on Your Terms: Planning Your Exit

Your advisory practice may be the most valuable asset you ever own. So why do so many advisors wait so long to plan how they’ll exit? 

In this episode, Brendan Ryan talks with Ryan Alessio, National Consultant at AssetMark, who has worked with hundreds of advisors on succession planning. He shares what he’s learned about when to start, how to increase the value of your practice, and why finding the right successor is often the hardest part. 

They cover: 

• When to start planning your exit • How to optimize your practice for a transition
• The role of recurring revenue and client segmentation • How to find (and trust) the right successor
• Why many advisors delay succession planning 

If you want to leave on your terms — both financially and personally — its never to early to start having these conversations. 

Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, everyone. My name is Brendan Ryan. Thank you for joining us on another Advisor Turntable podcast where we talk to financial advisors or financial advisor adjacent participants about topics relative to you and your practice. This week I've got a longtime friend and colleague, Ryan Alessio, national consultant for Asset Mark, with me. Ryan and I have known each other for far longer than probably either of us even realize at this point, but we could talk about anything. I think we're going to try to focus on one specific topic in secession planning today, but we'll probably have Ryan on at another time to talk about other things. I think before we get started, the obvious topic that we have to talk about is Super Bowl last night. You were on the other end of an embarrassing loss last year. Patriots fans are on the end of an embarrassing loss this year. I don't know if you have any words of advice for them.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Act like you've been there before. Appreciate the success, but realize there's opportunity for growth and uh for more success in the future. So it, you know, it's tough to take it on the chin. Um, as I've been there a couple times as a uh Chiefs fan, but uh you you just gotta like move forward. It's like it it must it's a pain in the moment, but you realize there's opportunity for growth. And uh, you know, it that's kind of the corny way to say it, but I I think that's the right way of uh you know understanding where you're at. And you know, you can only get better.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

That was that was very that was like you were an assistant coach being interviewed after the game right there. That was very, a very well-coached response, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

I think that's like from the old school like Belichick don't really show your cards at all and just say, yep, yep, you know, we're gonna work hard to get better, and and that's about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

No, no insight, no I don't think I don't think net uh national sports fans have a whole lot of sympathy for Patriots fans anyway.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Oh no, definitely not. Like the woe is me. Wow, you had a you know, like you've lost the most amount of Super Bowls ever with six losses. Must be rough to lose that many and still have to be.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

And this team, like this team had uh, in my opinion, just no business being in the Super Bowl at all. And I think that just showed itself last night, but you've got a young quarterback, pretty awesome coach. Like maybe they'll actually start another new dynasty. Who knows? Yeah, you never know.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

You know, there's other areas that they need to improve, uh, especially the offensive line. Um Drake May was running for his life last night. Uh, maybe some younger playmakers as well uh in the past game for Drake. Uh, you know, the defense held up as best as they could, but the offense just kept putting them in a um precarious situation, I felt like every drive.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Yeah, defense looked awesome. I think that was funny in watching, like, you know, I live in New England, not a Patriots fan, but I'm forced to basically watch all their games. But like all year you heard about Drake May in the playoffs. It was like, well, this is an amazing defense, and that that is why they're a good team. Drake May, you know, maybe he'll be great. He seems fine, but it was the defense that was kind of got them where where they were. Anyway, uh, we talked about a number of different potential topics, but I think today we're gonna try to focus on secession planning. Um, you outlined kind of three big ideas for me I I think that you wanted to

Optimizing Business Value

SPEAKER_00 3:38

how you wanted to structure this, and those were basically the when, how to optimize, and then the who, um, which maybe is maybe the trickiest of all three. If you want to just dive into it, talk about some examples, kind of how you're seeing this. I think one last thing I'll say that from my perspective, I think this is a a major thing that's that's changed in this business over the years. Financial advisors started with a job, it became a business, and now it's an asset because suddenly there is a lot of capital flowing into this space for succession planning. Uh, and it's probably forced advisors to to change the way they think about their everyday job and also just the fact that they now own this asset, it's become bigger than they are.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Yeah, there's several different issues or concerns or areas to focus on when talking about a succession plan. And and I listen to advisors uh daily. I I have 10 to 12 uh in-depth conversations about their business. A lot of advisors are starting to realize your book of business, your practice, that's your one of your largest assets in your life. You could have real estate, whatever it may be, but your book of business is really, you know, your lifeline to retirement. And uh you always have to come up with a the when. When am I gonna move on? And the when really there's a lot of moving parts to the when. You know, you can think I'm gonna retire in 2028, no matter what. You know, it's so easy to say that, but to get there, there's a lot of work to do.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Yeah, that I think it's ironic that, you know, this whole conversation is basically around retirement plans for people whose job is making retirement plans, and it's it's trickier than it sounds like. Um, it is.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Yeah, you know, you we we always hear you're setting up for your clients to retire on their own terms, you gotta do that for yourself as a business owner and as an advisor.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Yeah, so one thing when we were kind of talking about the pre the pre-um discussion of this call uh in regards to the when was it sounds like from your perspective, no matter what the when is, you should probably start preparing right now. Um, because getting ready to sell your business or transition your business someone else requires a lot more work than people realize. I think the analogy you use was it's kind of like selling your house. You got to stage it, you got to prepare and everything. Uh, it's not as simple as just handing over the keys on day one. And if you're if you're thinking you're gonna do this at all, you might as well start today.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah, you have to start today. It's never too early to think about what the next steps of your business journey is gonna be or when that end of that journey is. So, similar to that analogy, I'm gonna try to take credit for for now, but someone else didn't I worked with is that house analogy. If you're gonna sell a house, you don't just put it on the market tomorrow. There are things that need to be done in that house. You know, whether it's wallpapering, uh a new roof, uh the HVAC systems, you know, the hot water heater, um, whatever it may be. There's a lot of things that you can do to optimize the value of your home before you put it out there. And sometimes that takes a year or two before you're ready to actually put that home on the market to optimize its value.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

And I think a lot of the things we can kind of branch a little deeper into this, but but start with some of the stuff that's directly revenue relevant that you've seen today.

Revenue Relevant Strategies that Can Add Value Now

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Because I think when we were talking about this before, as you and your team are working with advisors on this stuff, I mean, half of the things maybe you're uncovering are actually just relevant revenue-wise today, improving their business. Um, it kind of doesn't matter if you sell or not, you're getting value immediately.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Yeah. So a lot of advisors have numerous sources of revenue, advisory business, old mutual fund business, annuities, uh, planning and consulting fees, et cetera. But if you're looking to just optimize all your sources of revenue, you need to take that step back and take a look at where are my greatest sources of revenue and where can I optimize that? Where can I increase that multiple that they're always talking about in the industry? A share business, mutual fund business, you know, it's just a little bit more archaic. Yeah. You want recurring revenue. Yeah, the recurring revenue. You know, you get the A-shared, it's you get the upfront and get the trail. But if you can get that business, A, you start with a conversation with the clients, coming up with a good value proposition to make the change. And then once you do that change, all of a sudden you're going to see your revenue multiples grow immensely.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Yeah. Have you seen uh situations where an advisor makes a conceivably hard trade-off for some revenue today and it ends up, you know, being worth 5x that difference? Like if maybe I have to sacrifice some sort of short-term transactional revenue, convert a client to a more, you know, a fee-based revenue traditional RIA model, and then that ends up, you know, yielding fivefold when they make the sale. They're giving up a few dollars today, but they're getting a multiple on that when they sell. Are there any specific instances where it seemed like a hard decision and it ended up being a no-brainer?

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Yeah, definitely. There's a lot of um examples I have of advisors, even with eight to twenty million dollars of um mutual fund business that they did, you know, 15, 20 years ago, adding that 10, let's just say 10 million dollars to your overall uh AUM, you know, instead of getting 25 basis points on that, and you can sell it for uh at the multiple of 75. So you're getting 25 bips straight up as your drip, and the it's worth 0.75 in the assessment of it. But if you're gonna sell your practice and make an advisory, you could triple the revenue on that source. So it's gonna be you know 10 million at 75k to get it to uh 2.5 mil over the short term. You know, you're tripling your uh practice or the amount of that you're gonna move over pretty easily.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

How have you found advisors received like that exact information you told me?

SPEAKER_01 9:53

I think they're it's it's kind of it's jarring because you you realize you know what all these different publications put out there about your multiples, advisory versus uh Ashare, you know, outsourcing studies, etc. But I think the issue where a lot of advisors get stuck is actually executing on it a game plan of how to see that number, that opportunity for the growth in that multiplier to actually happen and put in practice to the opportunity to actually sell it. So that's when you there are certain actions and activities and tasks that you have to do yourself to get to that number.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Right. Yeah, I was gonna say, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but would you say what that's one of the big advantages you and your team has in that once the advisor makes that decision, you can kind of keep them honest on following through with it. Whereas I'm an individual advisor on my own, that's probably the hardest part is maybe I even create a checklist of steps I need to do to move this business to something that's saleable, but then you know, I have a job. You know, it's not easy to to follow through with that. How are you guys keeping advisors on track? And and if if if someone doesn't have a team like AssetMark providing all this help, um do you have any tips for

Putting in the Work Now Can Lead to a Higher Multiple

SPEAKER_00 11:15

the keeping advisors on track once they come up with the plan?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

So once you have the plan to execute on it, AssetMark, we have a lot of resources here. We do uh different assessments, segmentation activities. Um, we have a transition team that helps with pre-filling documents and aggregating data. But if you're an advisor that understands that they have to take action, that they don't know where to start, you can work with your BDs, your RIAs. Um, usually there are certain consultants that uh are hired by those particular firms. If not, you could do some uh research yourself online of uh practice management consultants. But yeah, having a game plan in place that we can execute upon and you have someone else holding you accountable, we let the advisor run their practice, but realizing it's okay to take a couple hours a week to work on these activities, knowing two to three to four years down the line, that little bit of work each week is going to lead to so much more for the time in which you are ready to sell your practice. So put in a little bit of work now. Well, let us hold you accountable to taking those action items and you know execute it on them, but let you still go, you know, handle your business. Go achieve that growth that you're looking for, but also being able to service your current clients.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Yeah, I would imagine you guys see once advisors make this decision that they're they're kind of on the path to sailing or retirement, do you see it remotivate them to get out there and market a little bit harder because they know that every dollar they raise is worth three to five times that in a couple years? It's probably kind of an interesting motivator.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Yeah, so sometimes it's a good motivator and it's uh a blessing at times when an advisor realizes this type of work is so worth it. Once you start seeing the numbers actually start working in their favor, we do have progress reports of the actual task. If we were gonna move that $10 million of uh A share business, let's keep track of it, let's show that growth of what your AUM is now, what it could be worth, etc. So not only is the work to get there um motivating for the advisor, but then finding new clients. So this is a so I I have a good value prop down, I understand my message, and I'm I'm giving myself a little bit more time a week to start growing outside of my normal uh ventures.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

So from a non-revenue standpoint, what do you see as like the big required optimizers uh to make a business

Client Service Models and Segmentation

SPEAKER_00 13:58

saleable?

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Yeah, having a like a client service model in place really helps providing different services to different clients based upon their engagement with you and their AUM with you. So you you could come up with a system of calling it gold, silver, bronze. So different AUNs, that they're gonna be entitled to certain types of activities, different reporting, uh, the depth of their relationship with the advisor. So we want to make sure that A, you are optimizing your time on the clients that bring you the most revenue, uh, but also segmentation. You know, that comes hand in hand with the client service model. You're gonna segment your clients a certain way to ensure that you are following through on certain promises you make within your client service model. Um, so having those structures and systems in place allow you to get through different activities like transitioning assets over or just pure growth in general. You can talk to your clients about uh your different thresholds, like, hey, I have a uh, you know, for a million dollars, you know, I do these types of services, but for 2.5 million, I'd do a little bit more in-depth ABCD, which could open up the door for that client who probably has more money understanding all those services that you provide. Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Yeah, that makes sense. I want to move on to maybe

The "Who" of Succession Planning

SPEAKER_00 15:22

what I would think is the hardest part of an in this entire secession idea is the who aspect, the who you're selling your business to or who's kind of replacing you. When we were first talking about this, I I would I was thinking how if I'm if I'm an advisor, I've got these relationships, people I've known maybe for decades, and suddenly, and I've probably really taken the responsibility of managing these people's money very seriously over the years. I'm I'm really tied to their their outcomes. How do you get comfortable releasing yourself from that? Um and who you're selling to, I think obviously you want to maximize that sale price, but then I'd imagine that this is a massive consideration for advisors. And then also maybe you can touch on if and what ongoing involvement typically the selling advisor has after a transition like this.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Yeah. So you you really need to be comfortable with quote unquote letting go. Um, my father, um, I don't know if he's ever gonna retire. Uh the guy just keeps on personal working.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

But yeah, he guy doesn't like golfing, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:30

If you don't like golfing, there's just never that huge incentive to retire. No, not at all. Like, you know, yeah, well, what else am I gonna do? Yeah, exactly. There's only so many times you can mow your lawn, you know? But you gotta find that right person, the right uh personality, the right work ethic. Oftentimes you are naturally building a practice where you may have junior advisors that you're bringing on, but you want to bring on those junior advisors, understanding that, hey, are these folks gonna be someone five, eight, 10, 12 years from now that um I would trust to uh take over the business? So you've got your junior process, right? You're gonna hire that person, they're gonna be in the mold that we're talking about, different client service models, segmentations, et cetera, that it's a natural, easy transition. But there are times where advisors are by themselves or uh really don't know where to start to find that. You know, they just should just leverage their broker dealer RAA partners, uh, even some of their investment partners may have the capability of matchmaking for that individual. Uh, but you need to, you know, find that person that's gonna allow you to let go.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

How often are you finding that when you're dealing with these type of situations, that it is an organic relationship versus a more matchmaking, maybe the financial relationship of all right, I'm ready to retire. I want to get paid as much as I can for this business. Obviously, I'm gonna want to learn about who's taking it over afterwards, but that's kind of my primary motivator versus maybe the guys who have an idea of who they want to take it over, and it's more just structuring how that works.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

There's so many moving parts there when it comes to that if there's a junior compared to an inorganic type of transition. So I would say it's almost 50-50. Um, where I feel when I'm having conversations with advisors, whether they are on the junior side or looking to um expand their horizons. There are certain times where there's the advisor that's been in the industry five to 15 years, give or take, that's looking to grow another route, uh they want to buy a book. So there's gonna be some resources there that we're gonna need to make sure that's aligned, um, whether it's from a financial standpoint or a personality standpoint. So I'd say it's 50-50 of kind of a natural progression and natural succession uh for that new partner, but sometimes it's not that easy.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

Have you ever seen a like a hybrid transaction? I was just thinking how you go through your segmenting process and maybe you realize the B or C, the lower tier clients who may also be younger, you can transition those to your junior person, but then the A people that are maybe the most neatly bundled up for a peer or someone who can pay basically afford to pay more and also has more industry experience. Have you ever seen a situation like that where one part of the book gets sold one way and another gets transitioned another way?

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Oh, yeah, there's a lot of uh situations that don't fit in a box per se. And I think those are the most successful, is that you've got this individual you brought into a practice that you've given your C and D clients, or you start doing joint work where it's literally you're in on every client meeting with that individual. You start splitting the revenue the first year, and maybe you uh phase out over the three-year period, whatever it may be. There's a lot of different ways that you can be creative to uh not only win from a financial standpoint, but for the experience for your client standpoint, where you finally feel comfortable after a year and a half of this quote unquote phasing out that you're ready to move on. You put in the work, you trust the person that they're gonna be putting in the same type of care and effort towards those clients that you did.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Where

Where Succession Planning Can Fail

SPEAKER_00 20:34

have you seen kind of the biggest examples of this secession plan failing? What are kind of the what are the worst outcomes you've seen and and why did they end up that way?

SPEAKER_01 20:46

I think it's just preparation and just understanding that it's gonna take time to figure out who is next in line. I I would say that is very, you know, that is imperative, yet you got to get yourself into a situation that you're comfortable letting go. You know, you've got to take a look at your practice to see if there are opportunities for optimization. You know, talk to your uh business partners in the field, your BD, your RIA, different individuals like myself, or even some of your investment partners may provide you some insight of where to start. Um, hopefully, if you've been doing this for 20, 30 years, you have a lot of those systems in place, the suck, the client service models, uh taking a look at your fees, looking at all your sources of revenue. So if you're already there, that's great. Now it's just a matter of finding that next person and and when to do it and figure out that creative time to finally let go. Where those people fell, it's just that preparation. Uh we're just putting a hard date on saying, you know what, I'm gonna retire at the end of 2027. I'm just gonna let it ride till then. Or are you gonna try to find ways to make sure you're getting the most value? out of your practice so that when you do retire at the end of 2027, you're making the most you can and do that in the comfortable way.

SPEAKER_00 22:07

I think it comes it's pretty much exactly what you said at the beginning of this call. It's never too early to start planning for this. So the the preparation, the planning, getting ahead of it is really what almost guarantees the best outcome. What do you find is the biggest impediment to getting

Getting Advisors to Start Planning

SPEAKER_00 22:22

advisors to recognize that, getting them to start that maybe maybe letting go, like you kind of phrased it?

SPEAKER_01 22:29

I oftentimes have game planning calls for the current year or that next year with the advisors, regardless of how long I've worked with them, two, three, four, five years, it's always good to still have like a State of the Union call every year.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

So are you finding that oftentimes you're you're kind of like putting this idea in advisors' heads a little bit more than they are thinking about it themselves? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

I I I try to bring it up as often as I can regard where that advisor is on their journey, just because I want to make sure that they understand that time flies. All of a sudden you can blink and you know like you're talking that we've known each other for almost 10 years. It literally seemed like the other day is when we started working together at another firm. Time flies. So if you're preparing now at any point there's going to be times to take that step back, look at your practice from a whole standpoint rather than just what what you're doing this week or your goal is AUM-wise. There's a lot of different tools and activities you can do to set yourself up for success. And like I was saying I have that conversation with my advisors at least once a year. Well they may get sick of hearing from me about it, but I just like hey I want to make sure that when you're ready to go, you leave on your terms at the best value you can get with to the right person.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Yeah one other

Market Conditions and Timing

SPEAKER_00 23:58

thing that's just kind of crossed my mind as we've been talking is it seems like a major theme maybe in a lot of businesses but really acutely in financial services is consolidation. You suddenly have these big RAA platforms, places like AssetMark are aggregating tons of advisors as well. Scale seems to be just immensely important going forward. From your experience in these secession plans do you think do you think this I mean we're probably maybe in the first couple innings of what I would assume is a massive period of succession of advisors, you know, aged 50 to 75 that are transitioning their businesses are the as that business transitions, is it is it typically going to a bigger entity? Is it is it enabling the shift or is it actually letting um smaller advisors grow their practices independently for other advisors as as this thing as this whole period gets digested and and big advisors get bigger, do you think that's going to make life harder for other advisors? Is there going to be a need to join groups or or be part of this consolidation? Or do you think it's actually going to maybe help the advisor's own story of kind of a personalized care model versus you know a robo advisor or someone that's just plugging you into a spreadsheet basically?

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Yeah there when it comes to thinking about the scale and that growth within the industry uh we try to stay agnostic to the who at first because we want to first get that advisor fully baked into the philosophy of let's find ways to optimize my practice. The who at the end is very interesting because there are a lot of folks out there that are aggregating AUM with large checks um without the similar experience that we try to envision for an advisor where it's a nice smooth handoff. You're comfortable with what you're leaving to this next person or next group of advisors. So there's a lot of moving parts and a lot of momentum either way and it kind of depends on the quarter almost uh sometimes the large aggregators get a lot of momentum and they're providing a nice you know bolt-on solution that you're gonna phase out in X amount of years and you're gonna get X amount of dollars. I feel sometimes it's almost too easy that way, but sometimes it works with advisors. Some some advisors are okay with that. But I want to at least give the advisor a chance and the opportunity to do it on their terms, listen to that individual, understand their personality and find that right fit, regardless of if it's a larger aggregator body or just a uh one other advisor to take over do you find that um either party the the buyer or the selling advisor are kind of thinking about market conditions at all when they're making these decisions?

SPEAKER_00 26:56

Like is there some is there any sort of maybe this is my perspective but is there any sort of fear baked in that the market's been really strong the last few years their AUMs probably really benefited from that. And if you enter a choppier period it's going to make maintaining those relationships much harder for the acquirer and also maybe just there's a little bit of risk to their revenue in general that there hasn't been or they haven't had to deal with for at least three years.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Yeah. So there is definitely a retention risk um for the individual that's acquiring that practice. So that's where we try to come in and get that advisor comfortable with setting up their practice so that the right person can swimly take over that practice yet like I said there's a retention issue. Once you let go, the market conditions may be very volatile and tumultuous yet if we set up this story of success succession over the like a two to three year period to ensure that all parties involved understand the roles and responsibilities in keeping the clients at the forefront, having the clients achieve their goals there's going to be a seamless uh transition of personalities that that client's going to deal with but as long as you set up a plan with for success that uh retention rate actually improves.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Mm-hmm do you think that um like the strong market do you think advisors at the moment feel like right now is a great time to sell or is it just kind of been steady?

SPEAKER_01 28:32

It's been pretty steady. A lot of advisors keep kicking the can down the road and what I mean kicking it down the road is they don't want to retire. And it's more because of all these other issues rather than just the financials it's everything else uh not trusting who's in place or not being able to let go because you don't have that comfortability that who you're who's going to be taking over is going to run a practice similar to how you have. So uh the timing, I think it's there it's always fluid. You know, we're getting more advisors retiring than new advisors coming on and that's just from the amount of people getting registered in the industry. So that that's why I feel advisors need to take a few steps back to take a look under the hood. You know take a look at your practice see if there's different activities, different systems you can add to making your practice more scalable and more attractive not only just from an AUM standpoint, but a client interaction standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Yeah that just made me think of one other thing too what would your advice be say I'm a maybe I'm someone my age I'm an enterprising wannabe financial advisor and

Younger Advisors Can Use Planning Early as a Competitive Edge

SPEAKER_00 29:44

I see this massive opportunity of retiring older advisors like you just said there's seemingly a dearth of new advisors coming in and I think part of that is because the assets are kind of held with this older group that's transitioning now. So it's pretty hard to raise assets presumably and have a scaled business as a younger advisor. And maybe that was always true. You need to be patient how would you recommend someone go out and and maybe like entrepreneurially look for an older advisor to transition the business to them and how how might someone like that be useful where have you seen the junior advisors provide a lot of value beyond the secession or that kind of enables them to be a part of this secession discussion?

SPEAKER_01 30:25

So you we can go back to making sure it's the right person. So this junior advisor if they have all these systems that we're talking about that we want to enhance and optimize if you start from square one day one understanding where you want to go as part of your journey whether it's 20 to 30 years that you're gonna build a practice uh you're gonna want these client service models in place you're gonna want segmentation you're gonna want you know a pretty robust uh fee structure based upon the uh relationships that you're gonna have so if you can get your systems in place then you just want to open up your network you know be a sponge there's a lot of advisors that have so much experience out there that you know through your broker dealer RAA through uh folks like myself at AssetMark and at other you know investment providers there's numerous opportunities just to talk to other advisors try to get a feel for what's working what hasn't you know find out those best practices and find that personality that you may want to um join or purchase in the future you're gonna have to come up with some capital but that's a different discussion I think we can probably talk about in another episode is um you know the acquisition side of succession of how to get yourself in a situation to have the liquidity and the capital to do so but overall that younger advisor um just being a sponge being hungry for growth being hungry for knowledge um these people who you're talking to who have been doing it for 20 30 years something's worked for them obviously some things haven't but find out what has and has not and see if you can apply it to your own practice so that when you're ready to buy a book of business it's a nice smooth transition because you'll already have your scallible practices in place when systems in place that it'll just latch on as part of your advisory business very smooth and uh succinct.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Yeah it sounds like I mean even for a younger advisor or an advisor who's more in the growth phase thinking about what needs to be done for secession maybe a competitive advantage it may enable them to take advantage of some of these inorganic opportunities for growth and it's probably something that they weren't thinking about

Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_00 32:49

at all if they're not going to retire for 20 or 30 years.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

But yeah that's is there anything else um you want to get off your chest uh while you've got the airwaves here Brian uh well I could talk about football for hours upon hours but uh when it comes to succession planning like I said and we've emphasized so often in this conversation it's never too early um use your resources use your network there are plenty of people that are willing to help you for your practice and your overall value so that you can retire on your own terms. So there's plenty of resources be open to it take as much advice as you can when you are ready to retire.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

It's it seems like this is your chance as an advisor to be the bell of the ball. Exactly you gotta take you got to capitalize on that. Exactly all right thank you Ryan I'm sure we'll uh talk again soon awesome well thank you for your time is probably maybe even colder than here today.

SPEAKER_01 33:51

Yeah it's a little chilly here in Chicago but I'm so used to it that I walk to work every day uh six blocks and sometimes that cool air is uh refresher. Wakes you right up yeah all right thank you for your time