How does business infrastructure contribute to the success of your RIA? Jared Machen went from $14 million to more than $67 million in AUM in two and half years, and he’s a leading financial advisor in Texas. How did he do it? Jared joined forces with another advisor and created a repeatable, efficient infrastructure. Tune in to learn how building the right infrastructure for your firm can lead to exponential growth. ABOUT ALTRUIST: We’re on a mission to make financial advice better, more affordable, and more accessible to everyone. Altruist is an all-in-one platform built exclusively to help RIAs start, run, and grow their practices. Our platform saves you time and reduces your costs: You can manage your entire book of business, get performance reporting, and bill your clients with ease and efficiency. Want to find out how Altruist can help you grow? See more at www.altruist.com/advisorjourneydemo STAY CONNECTED: Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/altruistcorp/ Twitter ► https://twitter.com/altruist Linkedin ► https://www.linkedin.com/company/altruistcorp/
How does business infrastructure contribute to the success of your RIA? Jared Machen went from $14 million to more than $67 million in AUM in two and half years, and he’s a leading financial advisor in Texas. How did he do it? Jared joined forces with another advisor and created a repeatable, efficient infrastructure. Tune in to learn how building the right infrastructure for your firm can lead to exponential growth.
ABOUT ALTRUIST:
We’re on a mission to make financial advice better, more affordable, and more accessible to everyone. Altruist is an all-in-one platform built exclusively to help RIAs start, run, and grow their practices. Our platform saves you time and reduces your costs: You can manage your entire book of business, get performance reporting, and bill your clients with ease and efficiency.
Want to find out how Altruist can help you grow? See more at www.altruist.com/advisorjourneydemo
STAY CONNECTED:
Instagram ► https://www.instagram.com/altruistcorp/
Twitter ► https://twitter.com/altruist
Linkedin ► https://www.linkedin.com/company/altruistcorp/
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
How a partnership helps create an enduring brand: 0:48-8:16
Modular planning and process development: 8:17-10:45
Guardrails to ensure your firm’s growth: 10:46-12:11
What is infrastructure, how does it affect your practice, and when you should consider it: 12:12-17:40
How infrastructure helps drive demand: 17:41-23:27
Rapid-fire questions with Jason and Dasarte: 23:28-25:54
RESOURCES IN EPISODE:
ADDITIONAL ALTRUIST RESOURCES:
A purpose-based planning approach for the modern advisor
Digitizing a legacy financial firm
Why it is hard for some to grow their financial advisor business
For more tips on how to grow and scale your RIA, subscribe to The Advisor Journey on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
ABOUT THE ADVISOR JOURNEY:
Real-life strategies for the modern financial advisor who’s ready to scale. Join Altruist founder and CEO Jason Wenk, Altruist’s Head of Community Dasarte Yarnway, and guests as they share proven tactics, unfiltered advice, and hard-won lessons you can apply to your own practice. These conversations will propel your career to the next level—don’t miss it.
ABOUT ALTRUIST:
We’re on a mission to make financial advice better, more affordable, and more accessible to everyone. Altruist is an all-in-one platform built exclusively to help RIAs start, run, and grow their practices. Our platform saves you time and reduces your costs: You can manage your entire book of business, get performance reporting, and bill your clients with ease and efficiency.
Want to find out how Altruist can help you grow? See more at altruist.com/product
STAY CONNECTED:
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Twitter ► https://twitter.com/altruist
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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this podcast by the participants are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Altruist Corp or its subsidiaries. No compensation was provided. Altruist Corp offers a software platform that helps financial advisors achieve better outcomes. Nothing in this communication should be construed as an offer, recommendation, or solicitation to buy or sell any security. Additionally, Altruist or its affiliates do not provide tax advice, and investors are encouraged to consult with their personal tax advisors. All Copyright 2022 Altruist Corp
Jared: I would say Tech is definitely not where you start, because Tech helps you memorialize your process. A lot of people adapt a technology tool thinking it's going to fix bad process. No, all the technology doesn't helps you memorialize it right? Garbage in garbage out. So, where you need to start is on a whiteboard.
Jason: Welcome to the Advisor Journey, a podcast by Altruistic dedicated to giving advisors the edge they need with proven RIA growth strategies. Each week Dasarte Yarnway and I will have hard-hitting conversations about the topics that matter most to the modern RIA. How to scale, how to maximize efficiency, and how to effectively reach your goals. It's real advice from people who’ve really done it and we're so glad you're here. The thing that I think is fascinating as we talked to advisors, people are always told, find a niche and that's really hard, people struggle with it, right? And then even if they can figure it out, then they say, okay, now you got to focus your marketing and your services, right? What you do for clients on that niche and then finally you have to stay committed to it because it's not a one-time thing, and you can switch the niche every 2 or 3 years ago. It kind of doesn't work. You have to really own it. So those three things people really struggle with it's really hard. So when I first saw the Brownlee Wealth Management website, we're talking about a second ago, I thought I was so cool because it says right on the main page, helping oil and gas professionals plan for retirement, simplify your investments, lower your taxes, grow your family's wealth, whatever that is, 10 to 12 words is so perfectly, this is my niece, here’s exactly what we do for them. Those three things that you do for them are top of mind for people who are actual professionals at oil and gas companies. So those things are so hard. You guys have done it really well. So, I'm really stoked to dig deep into, how did that all happened? I'm sure it wasn't entirely by accident, but there's a bit of serendipity I think there and then there's also something really unique to. They have a lot of clients that are heavily concentrated in the Houston, Texas area yet and yet Jared and his partner, Justin neither live within, even a couple hours’ drive of Houston, Texas, right? In fact, you live in a different state all together. So again, this is just breaking down these reasons advisors would say hey, I can't succeed because of this is hard because then you guys are doing it at a really high level. Executing, growing really fast. So, Jared super excited to learn more about your business, what makes it so special, welcome to the assent man.
Dasarte: Welcome.
Jared: Thank you, thank you. I’m excited to be on.
Jason: So, Jared, you and your firm have a very specific niche client. Why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit more about who you serve and what you do for those clients?
Jared: Yeah, we serve oil and gas professionals and to add some color to that, we serve primarily people with publicly traded companies that are navigating equity comp and employer benefits decisions. You’re typically 1 to 5 years from retirement and you have decisions about pensions, net unrealized appreciation, all of those things and kind of figuring out what to do. And so that's our demographic. And we serve some of the largest oil and gas companies throughout the Houston area. But that's really who we’re after and who we’re in the best position to serve.
Jason: In your own words tell us a little bit about the practice. Would love to know where it was a couple years ago, where it is today, what that growth curve has looked like. And then, even your story, how you got involved with Brownlee, because I know it's a little bit different then some earlier stage RIA’s that had to start a firm from scratch, so I will pass the mic to you, Jared. Fill us in.
Jared: So, yeah, Brownlee Wealth Management. We’re two and a half years old so we're really new in terms of RIA space in and I will say that we haven't always been remote. Justin started his career or was in Houston which you know was how we identified the niche. He was working for a larger firm and if you're in north Houston, a lot of people just have that need, right? There’s a lot of people. It's just the primary economic engine of the area. So, he identified all of the complexity of that. But he was within a framework where he couldn't go all in on it. He was serving anyone who came to the door. So he identified the need and said, hey what if what if I went all in on serving this demographic and I think there's enough complexity and enough ways that we can add value to where it's really worth planting our flag in the ground. So that's kind of how it came to be when he started the from two and a half years ago. So he brought me on probably about a year after he started and we were having a lot of conversations preliminarily. I’ve known him for close to a decade now. He was talking about the practice he was building, the way he was serving clients, the goals he had, and I got I got really excited about it. And he was sitting on a gold mine and had this opportunity, was beginning to have some early success by really just committing to this niche and so he brought me on to help say, answer the question. How do we serve these people at scale? How do we continue to grow these things? How do we continue to go all in? And what does that look like? And that was about a year-and-a-half ago and we've grown pretty tremendously. We're currently working with about forty families, and we managed just south of 70 million dollars in assets under management. So, it's been a really fun journey. And the real reason why Justin brought me on was help with infrastructure. One of the things that I really credit him for just thinking two, three, five, ten years ahead. And so, he recognized his shortcomings and brought me onto kind of help institutionalize and really build an enduring brand that can go the distance. So, it's been a fun journey. We're still just in the early innings.
Dasarte: I love it. I love that so much. Now I want to just rewind a little bit. You chose to join the firm rather than starting your own firm. Talk to you a little bit about that, right? Because a lot of the times when people are fed up with their situation or they think they can double down on a niche, like Justin did their first instinct is to go independent like, I'm just going to do it all by myself. Obviously, that's easier said than done. But you came in here like I think I'm going to attach myself to this mission with my good friend and we're going to scale. Why did you decide to partner with him versus starting your own firm?
Jared: For me it ultimately came down to why do I want to be independent right? And I've been working with RIA’s my whole professional career and I've loved every minute of it and if I think about what I really love, it's working for a small business, having my hands in everything. It being a puzzle that is constantly evolving, right? So, I wanted to have autonomy over building the process of determining how we serve clients. in the ways. and kind of building the operational side of the business and creating an enduring firm. So that was kind of like my why for independence. And then I found somebody who I already knew who had the infrastructure and the idea of doing that. So, for me, my why was really building in a meaningful way that changes lives at scale and Justin was a good person to partner with to do that. And I think, you know, Howard Marks has a great quote, talking about a good partnership, it's shared values and complementary skills. And so, I identified somebody with kind of share values in a desired future state but different kind of technical areas of expertise within that. So, it was a no-brainer for me because I got to do all the things in pursuing independence for the reasons I wanted to, but I had support and collaboration and somebody to fist bump with when we brought on a new client, albeit virtually because we're not in Houston.
Dasarte: Virtual fist bump.
Jared: Virtual fist bump. Slack fist bump.
Jason: What did you do before this firm?
Jared: Yeah, so I've worked at an RIA as an employee. Just kind of doing client service planning. getting my COP designation. In the most recent role, I was at outsource paraplanner, so I did plan development for advisers and then a lot of times that often times turn into consulting, right? Because throughout my career, I’ve probably worked with half a dozen RIA’s and gotten to look under the hood of their businesses, and it's one thing to talk shop, but it's another thing to actually see how advisors do things. You get a pretty decent sample size of like, okay this is a place where a lot of advisers are getting stuck, or this piece of technology seems to be lacking in most practices or people that don't know how to get documents from a client or create a follow-up when a client inevitably doesn't upload their documents, right? So, you kind of identify these similar pain points or hey, here's where advisers are crushing or here’s where they’re messing up. So that experience really kind of grew my sample size of people who I’ve gotten to work with and exposure to really help me kind of crystallize my vision of, if I were to build a firm, what would I change and cherry-picking the good things and trying to change the bad.
Dasarte: Can I ask you a question on that? What were those things that you identify that, I would change this, right? Because a lot of advisers probably have the same pain points that you saw. What were those things? Like, if I do it, I'll do it this way. I'll change these things about my practice.
Jared: I think one of the big things is it didn't meet clients where they're at, right? Like a lot of people's process assume that everybody does everything when they're supposed to, which it's not real life, right? Like so you need to follow cadence of okay, how much time I going to let pass before I reengage the client right? To where I keep the ball rolling. So, a lot of processes create this idealistic state, right? Where I'm going to do, I’m going to do A, I’m going to do B, and I’m going to do C. And if I get to B and the client’s supposed to do B and they never do B, we're just going to kind of get stuck there and we have no framework for re-engaging and keep the process moving, right? So, having a structure to meet humans where they're at because humans are going to human, right? And we have this idealistic sense of everything to be perfect all the way through. But inevitably things slip through the cracks. And one of the other things I’ve come to really like is modular planning. So, what I mean by that is tackling financial planning components over time, right? So, a lot of historical financial planning has been, let me get every single thing I can about you and we're going to do one comprehensive plan that tells you every single thing we need to do, right? And I'd say, it's operationally more efficient for the advisor because they just get to brain dump everything on the client. But I've found that the more work we give clients the higher odds that they could be overwhelmed to do follow through on anything, right? So, I kind of like this modular component to where the pace is a little more digestible, right? So, having a process that makes it more digestible and kinder of ongoing, you know, these are decade-long relationship, so we don't need to do everything all in the first month, right? Let's keep the pace manageable and make sure that clients feel conviction about the things they're doing implemented and then kind of tackle things. And it also helps you have to start with what's important to them, right? Because they came to you for a reason and if you're answering all the questions, they didn't ask it doesn't really add value to them. So, you know, just continuing to work through the modules over time, I think, it's something, from an infrastructure perspective, has helped us.
Dasarte: I love that. In the good words of my friend in Emlen Mattingly he says that advisors don't die from starvation, but that digestion. If you think about that from a client standpoint. Clients won't be, your relationship, won't be harmed by the lack of recommendations that you give them, but probably digesting the information over time, right? Just like, this is way too much for me to take right now. I can't for you for help and then you gave me 20 things that I should do. That's really going to overwhelm me. So, I like the idea of modular financial planning. You said you wanted to build infrastructure. Talk to us about those guardrails that you put up on the practice to make sure that you were sticking to that and growing, right? Because I see that a lot of advisors do that. They're like, hey, this is how we want to grow. How do we put in place, the structure, the rules that were going to abide by to see that growth come to fruition. What did that look like for you?
Jared: Yeah, there's a kind of a few pieces to that, right? There's one of really identifying who are sweet spot is right. And even with an oil-and-gas we can get more granular then that and say, okay there probably within two to three years of retirement, they're going to work for one of these 10 companies, and they have A, B, and C complexity that we need to work through, right? So, before we bring our on people making sure that they are in our sweet spot, right? Because I think that the thing that's going to dilute us long-term is, is if we stray from our niche. And it's easy to get distracted with the shiny object, where the client who's not in our target persona, you know, that would be a nice revenue bump for us, right? So, having questions and having a conversation before we bring on any client and setting expectations of okay, what does our ideal client look like? And is this person our ideal client? And just continuing to check in on that, right? And I think the other thing is from a building infrastructure perspective, it's really about setting up systems and rules and just ways of doing business so that there’s continuity so that, you know, the clients getting the same outcome and that you're doing all the things that you say you're going to do.
Dasarte: That’s awesome.
Jason: Totally. What I want to get a little nerdy and tactical on is we've used the term infrastructure and some people might be going like, what the hell is infrastructure, right? What is infrastructure? Give us a really specific example, like a piece of infrastructure you put in place that had a meaningful impact on Brownlee?
Jared: Yeah, so I would say infrastructure philosophically, it's tools to help you keep your promises, right? When you're starting a new firm it's so easy to just bring on clients. Hey, we're going to do this, we're going to do this, we're going to do this and then have no mechanism to hold you accountable to doing that. And as a business owner, you're getting pulled in a bunch of different directions. So unless you have a system to remind you of what you're going to do and then how you do it, you're not going to do it. So, we didn't have a CRM or any really centralized technology to kind of manage tasks or to build-up workflows, right? Those are two tools to help you build infrastructure. So, I kind of helped memorialize our process in this tool, right? To create continuity of experience, right? Because it's really just in the software, spell out, okay, we send this email. Here is an email template for that email. When a client comes on board, then you do this, then you do this, then you touch base and have a call, right? So really just spelling out, okay, what is done? And how is it done, right? And then okay, what tools help us to do that, right? So, one of the things, I pretty much revamped our tech stack, right? I added a new portfolio accounting solution to where we can manage assets at the household level and kind of streamline our performance reporting and billing because you're using all different tools for that. And I added a CRM and really just kind of revamped everything to see okay, what tools can help us and support us and doing that? But really comes down to making promises, keeping promises, and having reminders of hey, here's what we're going to do. Here's when we're going to do it. And then yeah, brand continuity, right? Like if somebody comes in the door and we're doing a 401-k rollover for them, it should feel the same for every single person and we also shouldn’t have to spin our wheels of, you know, what are we going to do for this person, what’s the communication? And so, building email templates and all that.
Jason: So, what do you use? It sounds like your building workflows inside of a CRM that are automating this, so what tools do you use?
Jared: Yeah, so WealthBox is the CRM, but we use Hubbly that sits on top of it. One of the things we found with financial technology workflows is their super, they don't accommodate one offs. So, if I want to do this for the 1 client and be reminded to do this, the software doesn't really accommodate that. So Hubbly is a much more digestible way to get all the information from what’s sitting in WealthBox and also kind of make one-off customizations, right? Because the thing about being a young firm is we have an idea what our stat is but we're still iterating on it, right? We haven't arrived. So, having a tool that sits on top of that that makes it easy to kind of pivot and make minor tweaks as we continue to refine has been helpful for us.
Jason: Cool, that’s super helpful.
Dasarte: How early should an advisor start to think about infrastructure, right? It seems like you had the benefit of working at different firms, working with different RIA’s. And when I talk to other RIA’s, I see that that's what's missing, even from my own practice. I’m like this, I can do better on this, right? So how early should they start thinking about it and what are the two or three piece of advice that you have for them so they can look under their own business hoods, right? And begin to look at the infrastructure of their friends?
Jared: Yeah, I mean, it's never too early to start, right? Business development gets all the attention because when you start an independent firm, you need the revenue, right? So, it's really easy to get caught up in that, but infrastructure should happen at that same time because the problem is, the best way to build a firm is to bring on some clients and get incredible buy in from them and make them raving fans and then all your future content ideas come from that. Are highly engaged fans and a lot of referrals. So, early on building really meaningful relationship matters, and the way to do that is by, you know, developing the business and then having a system for bringing them on, right? So, I think it's never too early to start, and I would say, from an infrastructure perspective, things are non-linear, right? If you said, hey, I want to bring on 15 clients a year. That means 1.5 clients a month are going to come on. No, that does not mean that. That means 6 or going to decide this one random month. And then you're going to go three months without any clients, right? It's any advisors knows it's really lumpy, right? So you have to build with that in mind, understanding the lumpiness of it and seasonality. And I guess the other thing I would add is right, we have like a seasonality to our business. We know in the spring we’re going to meet with clients, in the fall we’re going to meet with clients, summer is going to be dead. So there's kind of these points where we can really go all in different parts of our business, right? So, the only way you're going to commit to building operational infrastructure is by ear marking time because there is always going to be more urgent things, right? Operations are really important but not urgent so building a season in your calendar, right? Of, hey, we're going to review our processes in the summer when we know client engagements are lower and everybody's kind of gone off for vacation, right? So, building it in your calendar early on I think ca help you.
Jason: You know, I don’t know if you picked this up Dasarte but so far, it is 100% of everybody we've had on does basically surge type meetings. Everybody's kind of got like a similar, something happens first half the year, something happens second half the year, that intentionality with how you manage your time is what gives you the capacity to create again, these frameworks, which then allows you to scale, sort of the ability to attract new clients, fill your calendar, right? And continue to grow the business. So, great lesson, I think that I've already picked up, and, and I think advisors that are not doing that sounds like they're probably not going to have that hyper growth, that seems to be a common theme. This is assuming, right? Like somebody is signed up to talk to you, they've engaged in a planning process, right? And now you're delivering on those promises. A lot of advisers just struggle getting appointments. Just how do I get someone to schedule that introduction call? That is my biggest problem. So, what kind of infrastructure have you put into place that helps drive new demand? Because it's something that I see. When I looked at your website, I could see it, but I'd love to hear it in your own words, like some of the very pragmatic steps you put in place that are actually getting calendar filled with his ideal prospects.
Jared: I think it comes down to adding value, right? How do we add value and a lot of that's been content, right? Creating ways where people can get to know us and where we can help them by applying like some high-level general principles related to some of their complexity related to their employer plans. So producing all this content and we've used, we’ve experimented a little bit with Facebook and LinkedIn in terms of getting it in front of people. But a lot of its happened organically via sharing and then infrastructure in the ecosystem. So, once they get into our ecosystem continuing to nurture them, right? So, we also have a podcast and a newsletter, so people can hear from us every week because those really alternate weeks. So, continue to build ways to nurture that relationship. So, that they are continuing to get to know us, learn about us. Hopefully glean some wisdom that they can apply to their situation. And then when they do become ready, we've already been communicating with them on a regular cadence, maybe not person to person but through our content and then we just got to move down through the sales process once they reach out. But yeah, it's really just getting in front of them and adding value and that’s through white papers, blog posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, just really trying to educate.
Jason: Are you guys putting a CTA in those pieces such as a blog post or a podcast? You're saying hey, you know if you like this here’s how to get in touch with us. Are you being direct about it?
Jared: Occasionally, right? We found the call to action should be, join our ecosystem, right? Let us continue to add value. Let's not make this a one-time thing.
Dasarte: Yeah.
Jared: Just get in our ecosystem. So, have an email, right? And so too, its kind of guarded so that the way you get access to the content is by providing your email and then we use that as a way to continue to add value, right? And every once in a while, we'll ask but we don't want to be overly salesy, we want to be overly helpful, right? And so sometimes we do need to remind people, hey, there's nuance here and these are general principles, and these don’t, you know, how it applies to your specific situation and meeting you where you're at. You need to contact a professional but adding value and having a way for people to opt-in, as we found it, it’s worked.
Dasarte: Now, walk me through, just put this infrastructure together for us, right? Now, I'm a client, I'm on the website. You need my email; I give it to you. What happens next, take me through that funnel and take me all the way to the end.
Jared: So bi-weekly, we're going to do a newsletter and it'll be about some pertinent topic. Whether it was a question of client asked us and we kind of have a bank of ideas that we want to do so we’ll write a piece there and then we’ll also put out podcasts and will usually announce those via that newsletter. So, you'll continue to kind of chew on those and then eventually we’ll create calls to action in our newsletter occasionally or people will just reach out from our website organically and then schedule, what's called, an intro call. And then we have that intro call and if there's a mutual fit, we’ll go to a discovery meeting where we just really get to know them, what their needs are. And then the final meeting is what's called solutions and pricing. So, we’ll kind of translate, hey, here's what you said is important and here's all the ways we can add value. And here's what it's going to cost you with a transparent price quote. And then they decide if they want to move forward with us. And then sometimes it's not, sometimes it's not yet. So, they’ll just kind of go back into our ecosystem and continue and sometimes it's yes. And if it's yes, then we have a have a new process for kind of the new client experience.
Dasarte: Awesome. So, three touches before that kind of talk. Do you want to work with us? Here’s the price quote. That's a lot of rapport-building. So, I know tech is important in your infrastructure building for your firm. And obviously, that's been proven to be successful. But for the advisor trying to build infrastructure, right? Outside of tech, where do they start?
Jared: Yeah, I would say, tech is definitely not where you don't start, right? Because Tech helps you memorialize your process. A lot of people adapt a technology tool thinking it's going to fix bad process. No, all the technology doesn't helps you memorialize it right? Garbage in garbage out. So, where you need to start is on a whiteboard, right? Figuring out, okay, start to finish. When a client comes on, what are the interactions? What are the touchpoints? What are the emails? What are the desired outcomes, right? What does the communication look like? When do they interact with tools and really just flush that out on a whiteboard, right? And once you see it all for the first time you'll probably have, you know, a bunch of tweaks to make. And then at that point, once you've begun to identify, okay, this is what my desired process looks like then you can put it into technology, but technology definitely isn't where you start. You need to start with the white board or really just, you know, whatever blank canvas you need to think through everything.
Dasarte: I love how you said you have a bunch of tweaks to make. Somebody made the analogy when they hire golf coach, when they hire nutritionist, you obviously go backward before you can go forward. Change your habits, you figure out what you need to do. And then after making those tweaks, which is essentially the hard work, right? You begin to see the benefits of focusing and leaning into your niche and leading into what exactly you want to do.
Jared: I love the golf analogy because, there’s no arrival point, right? We are still iterating on this, and we're continuing to learn, continuing to grow, and continuing to tweak, so, you know, it'll be much easier, right? When you start golfing, you know? It's pretty tough going, but there will always be ways to improve and make it better. So, this is not, it's not an event, it's a journey, right? And it's just the same as building a firm, you’ll continue to learn. Okay, I can add more value here. We can tighten things up here, so, you know, by no means have we arrived. But I feel like we're on a great path, and it's going to be fun to continue to iterate.
Dasarte: Nice. Let's talk about rapid fire Q and A. Alright Jason, you want to take the first question?
Jason: What is the most interesting you read in the past week?
Jared: Okay, I'm going to say the Crypto Guide by Treyton DeVore. He’s another advisor, I follow him on Twitter. He's great, he published this long-form piece just about the nature of defy, web 3 crypto, all of that. And it's really digestible and approachable but it has a ton of great resources linked in there where you can kind of chase the rabbit down the hole. So that's been a really good resource and not only tackling the technological components of it but like the behavioral, humanistic, what are the implications for society moving forward? So, and it's free and it's online and I read it on the plane over here and then I got a kick out of it.
Dasarte: Nice. Alright, next question for you. I know that we're looking long-term. You said the best businesses aren't thinking about just today. They’re thinking about 10-20 years from now, which is something that I think we all share that sentiment here in this room. But what is one thing that IRA can do this week to grow their business?
Jared: So, I’m going to answer it with two thinks. Content if you’re not doing it, right? Because that scales really well in relationship-building or doubling down on a niche, right? Like if you don't know who you want to serve, look at who you currently serve, Where do you have inertia? Where do you get really excited about serving them? And why is that the case? You know, once you’ve taken that inventory, where is my practice not built to serve this person well? And just kind of tinker with and begin to iterate on that, but even if you don't have a niche, just follow your inertia, right? Where are you excited? Where are you adding value? Where are things working?
Dasarte: Love it.
Jason: Yeah, that's awesome. Alright, finally. For someone looking to go independent. Again, your path to independence is really cool. It's really unique. And actually, it's part of what makes I think the practice scale so fast is those complimentary things. I mean, it's so hard for us to be great at everything but your path is unique. So, someone whose looking to your independent. What's one thing they could do to start their journey?
Jared: I would say unearth your motivation. Why do you want to go independent, right? For me it was I want to have creative autonomy to build a really cool practice that serves employees and clients, right? And I didn't need to start my own firm and have my have my name on the wall to do that, right? So, really unearth, okay, what is my motivation for this? Is there anybody doing it well? Just learn from them and then decide, okay, does that mean I need a partner? Does that mean I need to do my own thing? But really start with your motivation because reinventing the wheel and doing all the things that go in a small-business ownership. It's a lot. So, you know you need to have conviction as to why you're doing isn't whether or not you need to go at it alone because independence does not necessarily mean going at it alone.
Dasarte: I love it. I really appreciate you, where can people find you if they just want to catch up with everything that you're doing with your firm and for the people down in Texas?
Jared: Yeah, you can find us, BrownleeWealthManagement.com. I'm also active on Fin Twit, financial Twitter at Jared Machen and yeah, those are the two places.
Jason: Cool. Well, we’ll be signing off. I got to say, you know, like any good mid funnel activity, like a podcast, make sure that if you’re an advisor and you're trying to grow your business, your emerging, you’re trying to scale up, make sure that you subscribe to the podcast. However, you’re listening hit that subscribe and download. You can also find us at Altruist on YouTube ourselves, you find us on Twitter, almost everywhere you can find us at Altruist. Please make sure that you give us a follow. And, a big, big part of the show is helping again, advisors that are, they want to do what you're doing Jared. They want to be able to find that niche, right? They want to know how do I market those people? How do I build the foundational scale? And so, this show will have a lot of other folks on, kind of sharing their experiences. I thank you so much man for just opening up? Flying out here to LA, recording with us. This has been incredible for me. So, thank you a ton.
Dasarte: Until next time, we'll see you here again soon.
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