Speaker: Adam Blumenthal
What’s one of the most interesting changes you’ve observed in the industry recently?
Adam Blumenthal : So I think one of the big things I wanted to talk about uh just in the industry is cross selling. I think that many advisers stuck at the wirehouse are still, we call it a cross selling confliction. Pretty much the product, pushing the cross selling pressures. The they we talk about driving honest and ethical advisors pretty much to a breaking point. And I think that's something that's a very hot topic. I know somebody that's at a warehouse right now. I just spoke to, that was so frustrated that nothing else mattered besides cross selling mortgages to their current client base. And he's like, I didn't become a financial advisor to cross sell mortgages for my um for my firm. So that's one quick little thing that I felt like is a hot button right now. And we're trying to solve that by working with 17 going independent as we say, you don't have those pressures. It's your business to run it the way you want to. There's nobody telling you you have to cross sell or um forcing you to sell products or certain types of products because that people above you are making money off of it or your firm is making money off of it. That's not how we operate.
What do you expect our industry to look like in the next 5 years?
Adam Blumenthal : So my personal opinion where I see the actual industry going in the next five years is um I call it the haves and the have nots. So the haves are what I call top performing firms. These top performing firms are going to concentrate on client retention. They're gonna concentrate on helping their advisors, especially in the Ria space, helping their advisors grow. They're gonna grow through their advisor network growing. Um Not necessarily just through acquisition, acquisition of uh new uh firms to their RIA is one part of it, but I think helping those current firms grow is another. Um obviously it doesn't have to be one or the other. But I think what we the haves and the have nots come into play is a structured way to do it. Our firm seven works on E OS entrepreneur operating system. We have a very structured way. We run meetings, we make decisions, we use opportunity filters. Um Every marketing plans laid out in quarterly uh rocks as well as annual plans. One year, three year, five year, um big area um goals that we're looking at that are um real big picture. 10 year, don't know. How you're gonna get there, but you're gonna get there all the way down to, what are we gonna exec in the next 30 60 90 days? Um, so I think having the difference of a top performing firm, having a game plan and figuring out how to get there and measuring it versus firms that are like, oh, we're just gonna go buy a firm and figure it out. We're gonna go, um, keep finding more recruiters or keep spending a lot more money and, and just trying to grow through acquisition, new advisor, not just, and almost forgetting about their current advisors. And I think that's where you're going to see a lot more turnover.
What advice do you give to others in the industry?
Adam Blumenthal : I get asked this question, a lot of like what advice I'd give others in the industry and it depends where you are in the industry. But if you're at as a financial advisor and you've been at uh one of the warehouses for quite a while, built your business through that, gone through their training programs, gone through that. I think it's time now to at least open your eyes to see what else is out there. Not saying it's always a good fit to, to jump to an independent platform or an Ria or whatever it might be. Uh But there's lots of different levels of completely captured to complete independence in, in a Highbridge, anywhere in between. So my advice would be open your eyes. Uh try and see what's out there, look at your options. Um I think culture is extremely important. A lot of the advisers that have left and come over to 17, the small firms that are 10, 2030 50 million under management to the bigger firms that are 2, 304 100 million in teams that are moving over to our platform. Um A big part of it is culture. Um And the last thing I would say is technology, you know, with A I, with T GP T and everything else that's growing. I think um the firms that are embracing the efficiencies of A I and of machine learning and everything else are gonna be light years ahead of the firms that are just not even paying attention to it. And I think that's uh being the Chief growth officer at 17 and being in charge of all of marketing and all of sales. I think anything we can do to help our advisor um with all of the new technology, it's moving so quickly. Our job is to filter it and then get, you know, get the noise out of the way, but get to our advisors and our future advisor, what is actually really good technology and how to utilize it and how to help them grow their, their practice.
