Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Luke Sonnen: Hi, I’m Luke Sonnen. Welcome to The COO Roundtable powered by PFI Advisors. Here’s your host, Matt Sonnen.
[00:00:24] Matt Sonnen: Welcome, everyone, to Episode 35. That means that next month is our three-year anniversary of conducting these interviews. Time really does fly when you’re having fun. I have really enjoyed these conversations. I hope that we’ve shed some light on the amazing work that COOs and operations professionals are performing on a daily basis throughout the RIA industry. We have two more fantastic guests today, both with some unique stories to tell, so let’s dive right in.
Joining us from Matrix Private Capital Group is Amanda Green. Amanda works out of the headquarters in New York City, but Matrix also has offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Palm Beach, Florida. Amanda, thank you so much for being here.
[00:01:05] Amanda Green: Thanks, Matt, it’s great to be here. I’m very excited.
[00:01:07] Matt Sonnen: Cool. Then joining Amanda is someone that I’ve known for almost a decade now, talk about time flying. Gary Davis Jr. is the COO at Satovsky Asset Management, which is also headquartered in New York City. Gary, welcome to The COO Roundtable.
[00:01:23] Gary Davis Jr: Thank you, Matt, happy to be here.
[00:01:24] Matt Sonnen: Awesome. Amanda, I’m going to go to you first. Why don’t you give us a little overview of Matrix Private Capital Group?
[00:01:30] Amanda Green: Of course. Matrix Private Capital Group is a $600 million privately owned diversified asset management firm. We were founded in 2016 and we really specialize in wealth and strategic advisory as well as private equity. Our wealth management side really focuses on providing high network individuals and families with holistic solutions really tailored to their needs. Matrix differentiates themselves by offering our advisors as well as our clients’ proprietary access to our deals that are private equity side sources.
We currently have 18 employees around the country, like you’ve said, we have offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, LA, and we just recently opened one in Newport Beach, which is super exciting. About 11 of the employees are just focused on wealth management, so we are really dedicated to the wealth management side and our RIA business. Historically, we’ve really grown organically and inorganically. A few years ago, we onboarded a team that’s based in Chicago, and since then, we’ve seen our advisors have tremendous success and really grow organically from there, gaining new clients pretty much every day from what I’ve seen.
Looking forward our plans are really to grow inorganically. We understand that landscape is super competitive right now, but we believe we have a unique proposition and attract advisors to our firm and we’re really super excited to be doing that going forward.
[00:02:54] Matt Sonnen: Perfect, and, Gary, give us the story behind Satovsky Asset Management.
[00:02:58] Gary Davis Jr.: Satovsky Asset Management was founded in 2007 by Jonathan Satovsky. We manage about $700 million of assets as of the end of September. We have about eight employees today and I actually have three open positions that we will fulfill shortly. All ideal clients that we work with are individuals who are open to our collaborative process. They’re not solely focused on investment performance. They see the value in our comprehensive financial planning process, they allow us to be their financial coach of the client’s financial team. And we’re focusing on, from an asset level, of clients with about $3 million or more in investable net worth.
Historically, we’ve grown through clients and center of influence referrals, and we will continue to grow organically through that funnel. In the future, we are looking at inorganic ways of growing the firm as well and actually, I’m really excited about I’m leading my first offsite meeting with the leadership team in about a week and very excited for those conversations and the decisions that we’re going to make.
[00:04:07] Matt Sonnen: That’s great. Gary, you joined the firm this summer, but as I mentioned, you and I have known each other for years, so walk us through your career progression and how you arrived at the Satovsky this year.
[00:04:18] Gary Davis Jr.: Yes. August 9th was my first day at Satovsky. I’ve worked in the industry since 1996 and I started in the industry as a financial planning analyst. Before graduating in 1996, I got an internship my junior year of college where I got my Series 663 in my life and health license. I did an internship at a branch office of New England Life. I learned quickly that summer that my role in the industry was not going to be sales or client acquisition focused, but we’ll be more internally focused.
In doing that, I’ve held almost every job function within an investment advisory firm you can think of besides being an actual investment advisor. I have a similar educational background that advisors do. I actually have an undergraduate degree in financial planning from Purdue University. I also have a master’s degree in accounting and financial management. I’ve held the COO, the chief operating officer, and chief compliance officer role throughout my career at several firms before joining Satovsky as their inaugural chief operating officer this past August.
As Matt knows, prior to my life working within investment advisory firms, I actually spent some time, about nine years or so of my career was spent as a consultant. I actually started a consulting practice from the ground up back in 2006, 2007, where I focused on operations, compliance, and business management consulting. I then merged that in with a larger consulting firm, MarketCounsel, where, Matt, you, and I met, and I had the pleasure of working with you while I was at MarketCounsel. Of course, I continue while there providing my type of consulting, operations, compliance, and business management consulting.
In 2015, I left MarketCounsel to go work for one of my clients as their inaugural chief operating officer, as well as taking on the CCO role. In my role at Satovsky, as their chief operating officer, I’m responsible for the culture of the firm, infrastructure, technology, operations, profit procedures, strategic planning, financial reporting, and tracking, and I partner with our CCO with overall risk management and vendor mentor.
[00:06:27] Matt Sonnen: That’s great. Amanda, you also joined, I don’t know if August 9th was your start date, but it was right around that time, so you joined Matrix this summer as well, but you’ve had some very interesting experiences in wealth management, and in particular, in the RIA space. Tell us about your career.
[00:06:42] Amanda Green: Yes, definitely. I actually started, I think, the week before. I think I started the last week of July, so just before Gary. I took a little different approach; my path was a little bit more unique. When I graduated college, I graduated Binghamton University with a bachelor’s of science in human development with a minor in sociology. So I fell into the financial services industry and started my career at Merrill Lynch as a client associate, where shortly after I joined, we decided to go independent and join Hightower Advisors, which was exciting because I was able to learn a completely different view.
Back then, it was 2015, the independent space was fairly young. I still remember my father being like, “Are you sure you want to leave Merrill Lynch? It’s a solid place to start your career and really learn.” I took the risk then and really fell in love with the independent space and was able to transition our book of business over from Merrill Lynch and really oversee the day-to-day responsibilities of our team and manage our platform providers on integrations to really make sure that the transition went smoothly, but as well as our client experience was really truly important to us.
The way I approach the financial services industry is with a bit more of a human aspect and a psychological background of understanding people’s needs and their situations and how that goes into their decisions they make from a financial standpoint. After Hightower, I decided to take a position at BNY Mellon Pershing specifically in their RIA channel where I held multiple roles. My first role was in their conversion team where I was facilitating multiple implementations of new business onto their platform and really working across the whole division to be sure that all those transitions went really smoothly.
The last role I held at Pershing was really focusing on collaborating across the enterprise and developing new processes to enhance the client experience and support senior leaders and that was our relationship manager position. I really bring my experiences from Hightower and my Mellon Pershing to build a strong operational foundation to allow our current advisors to grow and really facilitate that growth, but as well as prepare our firm to continue to grow as we’re moving into the inorganic space and allowing us to be successful at it.
[00:09:14] Matt Sonnen: Perfect. Being that you’re both in your first couple of months, almost started the exact same day, what advice do you have for other operations professionals who may be new to their firms? What should they be looking to evaluate first? I know you both are in this big evaluation process. Amanda, I’ll go to you first on this one.
[00:09:30] Amanda Green: I think the biggest advice I think I can give is to really listen and understand what has occurred so far at the firm, and really do a deep dive into the current processes of platform providers and look at it at a very holistic way and understand how to prioritize from there. When I first came in, I told everybody I don’t have an agenda. I really am allowing our teams to provide feedback on our systems, our integrations, our operational processes to really drive the change that we’re going to make in the future, as well as what we could do better.
I think the biggest advice is to almost take a step back and really listen and understand the full context of, for me, Matrix, and build out from there and evaluate all the little operational things that we can do better.
[00:10:23] Matt Sonnen: Gary, you talked about this is your second time being an RA’s first COO, and I know you had a pretty aggressive 100 day plan when you first joined Satovsky. Talk to us about your evaluation process.
[00:10:36] Gary Davis Jr.: [chuckles] Oh, man, you’re giving away everything, you already talked about the 100-day plan.
[laughter]
I have held this initial COO role or director of operations role for a few firms, and listen, I’ve learned a lot by doing this throughout my career, and I’ve learned by doing things really poorly and I’ve also learned by doing things well. I think Amanda would agree with me, there’s no one right way of doing it. There really is one wrong way though and that one wrong way is you come in like a bull in a China shop and trying to force a lot of change onto the firm without you fully understanding the firm and the culture first.
That’s what I’ve done coming into Satovsky is really working what I call my “first 100-day plan” and it starts by building rapport and trust with the staff and with Jonathan, the owner. I sat in one-on-one meetings with all the staffs, I sat in several meetings with the staff. I focused some of those meetings on just the business and understanding their roles and responsibilities, how long they’ve been in the firm, what they’re seeing that works and doesn’t work, what improvements would they make if they were in my position.
Then other, I’ve made one-on-one calls more personal in nature, just getting to know the staff more on a personal level, and of course, me asking them questions as well as me giving them information about my professional and personal life. I also have implemented some team-building events and we’re going to build those out. Obviously, it is very important for me to first begin to understand the firm’s culture – its culture, its business practices, the firm’s way of being, and how to empower the staff and Jonathan. I have been focusing my time on integrating myself into the organization first before recommending any material or major changes.
Now, I’ve done this, and I agree with Amanda, some of how I’ve been doing this as well has been really conducting audits of the firm and conducting that audit in areas of operations and business practices, services. This is going to take you a few months, and you don’t want to really rush this, you want to take your time, but once you’re now comfortable, again, I’m coming into my third month at Satovsky and I’m now getting to a comfortable point and I mentioned holding my first off-site with the leadership.
There are going to be some recommended changes that I am going to be posing, I now feel that I’m in a comfort level now and I’ve built rapport and trust and I’ve gotten to understand the firm enough where I can start to make some of these suggestions.
[00:13:05] Matt Sonnen: You both touched on it a little bit in that last answer, but change management is always so crucial to everyone, all of our listeners, whether they’re new to the firm or they’re plugging away at an existing firm, they’ve been there for a while, but there’s always change that needs to happen. I always like talking about strategies for implementing change. Amanda, how do you get buy-in from both above and below? How do you get buy-in from management and from the staff when you’re suggesting change?
[00:13:32] Amanda Green: I think Gary hit on a lot of things in his previous answer. I think you need to build a really great rapport and demonstrate that you understand the culture, understand the dynamics of the firm. For me, it was all about taking an objective standpoint on everything, and really understanding what’s going on, understanding people’s motivations, where they’re coming from, and really taking in all that feedback and gaining their trust. For me, the first few months has been a lot of the easy wins; if I can advocate for our employees, if I could go out and make little changes to make their life easier.
It’s not anything big, but I think that’s how you start gaining that rapport and that trust and it’s all about transparency and communication, I think. Personally, I’ve developed documents that have detailed all of my ideas, everything I’ve taken in from a feedback perspective, and put it in a document and almost a project plan and I’ve shared that. I’ve said, “This is what I’m hearing from all of you guys, am I on the right track? What can I change? Is there something I’m missing?” Then from there, it’s about setting realistic expectations. Change is slow, it’s not going to happen overnight.
Some of these items are big-ticket items that are going to take a long time to really move the needle on. It’s setting that expectation that this is on the radar and we’re going to work towards our ideal state that we’re coming up with together and collaborating on together, and then we’ll get there. It’s just it’s not going to happen overnight.
[00:15:11] Matt Sonnen: We had David Canter and Scott Slater from Fidelity, they were on a while ago, well over a year ago, and they said something similar, they said get a few easy wins under your belt, do some small stuff first. The low-hanging fruit, get that under your belt, that’ll build that trust, and then start with bigger initiative. A lot of people make that mistake of, “I want to make a big impact right out of the gate, and so let’s do some massive change,” and people just haven’t quite gotten that trust level with you yet. I love that suggestion that you had there.
[00:15:41] Amanda Green: I feel like sometimes when people want to make a big impact and really prove themselves, they think they need to go over the top and do anything crazy, where I think keeping expectations realistic, and little things go a long way and I think we all need to take a step back and realize that the little things are going to help us.
[00:15:58] Matt Sonnen: Yes, exactly. Gary, you had a great answer before, so maybe you’ve given a lot of your answer to this question, but what other change management techniques do you rely on?
[00:16:06] Gary Davis Jr.: First of all, everything that Amanda said, I completely agree with 100%. With having your other previous guests on, I will admit I have fallen into that trap at certain points in time in my career. Amanda could probably agree, she’s done the same and that’s the one thing, listen, as humans, we learn by making mistakes. Quite frankly, it’s not a mistake if you’re learning from and you’re growing from it. I’ve made some big mistakes in this area of change management. One thing I think is really important to note before I answer is I recently read something about the top two things that motivate people.
It’s not power and it’s not money, it’s empowerment and it’s respect. I really think about this a lot when I’m thinking about change management. I’m thinking about how to, not just listening to people as they are giving me feedback, either feedback or frustration on what’s happening within the organization, but also how I’m presenting, whether it’s to the leadership team or to the staff, how I’m presenting the change, and how I’m involving everybody in that change.
When it comes to the process that I’ve vetted out over my career, first, I like to get really deep feedback from the people who are doing the work; “Yes, tell me what’s working and what’s not working. If you had the ability to make change, what would you do and why would you do it and how would you do it?” I really love getting that feedback. Again, taking that and then also, taking my experiences and knowledge. Then coming in I think it’s very important that if you’re making changes within an organization, you need to get alignment from the top.
Leadership starts from the top and it works its way down. First and foremost, I make sure that I present the change, the reason for change, the value add to the organization, present that to the leadership team, then we have a discussion. Sometimes what I’m presenting is what is decided upon, other times what I present is then discussed and negotiated to a final output. Once we have that final output, I then present what we as a leadership team, what we have decided, and why we have decided. Again, what is the value add to the organization and I get the staff, I present that to the staff, and I get the staff some time to absorb this.
Some time to think about this and some time to come back with their feedback. When we’re making major changes like this, I’ll give a week or two, I say, “Listen, here’s what we’re doing and why, the target date for implementing this new process or technology, what it may be, it’s going to be on this date. Now, let’s say it’s going to be a week or two weeks from now. So please, I encourage everybody, Come to me, I’m happy to hear anything right now as we’re in the meeting, or if you’re more comfortable one-on-one, please call me right afterwards, let’s set up a meeting. I want to hear your voice.”
Listen, sometimes there’s feedback and sometimes there’s not. Sometimes from that feedback, I realize that “Oh, wow, we need to think about some of these things.” Then we go back and we discuss that and make some changes, or sometimes that feedback is, “I appreciate that, but here’s the reason why we don’t think that’s going to work,” but making sure that I’m not dismissive to an individual whilst they’re communicating that with me to make sure that I am empowering them and respecting them because I want them to continue to give feedback.
Because as all the three of us as we know on this phone, what we all think will work in terms of change, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, and we want to make sure that we continue to get feedback from the boots on the ground up. “Hey, this change is great. Wow, it’s adding a lot of value. Wow, the client is serious. I have more time in my day, whatever it may be,” or, “You know what, wow, we’re a few weeks into this and I got to tell you, it doesn’t seem to be working. It seems to be doing opposite of what we thought.” That’s how I handle it.
[00:19:48] Matt Sonnen: You talk about the implementation date, in my experience, you also have to keep reminding them that, “That date is coming, that date is approaching. I’m serious.” It’s comical almost. If you don’t laugh, you cry. I’ll say it’s comical that you’ll say, “This change is happening on January 1st,” and on December 31st, people will come to me and say, “I didn’t know you were serious. We’re really going to make this thing? I haven’t actually got into this yet.” Reminding them of the looming date of change is important in my experience.
[00:20:22] Gary Davis Jr.: I agree.
[00:20:24] Matt Sonnen: I mentioned we’re coming up on our three-year anniversary with the podcast. One of the things that we’ve talked about a lot on many episodes is this concept of profit versus growth. The COO or the director of operations is often brought into an RIA because the owner of the firm realizes, “Geez, we’ve been growing like crazy, but nothing additional is hitting the bottom line. We’ve figured outgrowth, we can grow, but now we actually need to bring someone in who is going to help us grow in a profitable fashion,” and that’s the million-dollar problem there, quite literally.
I know that’s a big part of both of your jobs. Gary, I’ll go to you first on this one. Talk to us about how you affect both growth and profitability at Satovsky.
[00:21:04] Gary Davis Jr.: Listen, I think this is a great question and a great topic. First and foremost, one of my primary roles is making sure that all of our advisors and our client service staff have the tools and support they need to provide that exceptional client experience that we provide to our clients. Also, holding the firm accountable to our business development plan, reviewing targets versus actual at some frequency and making sure that we are on target. Managing our operating budget and making adjustments where needed for major events like major market shifts, staffing, exceeding our targets early on in the time frame.
Managing the expense side of the P&L to ensure that we’re using our capital as efficiently as possible. I’m very, very thankful Jonathan is very, very involved with technology and always looking for innovative ways from a technological standpoint to help us grow and be more efficient. I am the same way, I’m always looking for ways where we could have technology help to improve our processes and efficiency, which obviously is going to provide a better client experience. Again, have happy staff. If our staff is fulfilled and valued, our client experience is going to be the same way and our organic way of growth is to just be very natural. We’ll have a steady flow of referrals coming in the door.
[00:22:28] Matt Sonnen: Amanda, how are you tackling the profit versus growth conundrum at Matrix?
[00:22:32] Amanda Green: I think I echo a lot of Gary’s comments. My goal is to create an ecosystem that’s comprised of platform providers and efficient processes that will foster the growth with our advisors. With that, really comes evaluating what I call our platform partners, our technology stacks or custodians, everything that’s under our foundation and really understanding the services and challenges we face in addressing those head-on.
Sometimes that’s managing the cost and making decisions about, are we leveraging systems and providers the best way we possibly can and looking how we could do that more efficiently and more productively and working with those partners to do so. I think our job is to really make sure that we’re equipping advisors with the best technology and the best processes to allow them to serve their clients in the best way possible and have a great client experience to allow them to grow.
For me, because we are a diversified asset management firm with a lot of access to alternative investment providers and our private equity side, it’s allowing access to information and knowledge sharing is really important at Matrix because we really depend on all sides of our business for that growth. It’s really a combination of access to information, making the client experience really joyful and really allowing our advisors to grow and fostering that growth.
[00:24:01] Matt Sonnen: Yes, I think that’s exactly right. We know that a big driver of growth in RIA space right now is M&A. It’s every headline you see in the industry press, and you both have already touched on it a bit. Amanda, you said that Matrix has already done some acquisitions, tuck-ins, whatever terminology you guys are using for it, but you’ve brought on advisors. In your role, specifically, your role as director of operations, how are you preparing Matrix and building out the infrastructure that will attract advisors?
[00:24:28] Amanda Green: I think, for me, technology is huge. I think technology should be intuitive, I think it should allow us to do ease of business, it should allow great client experience, and that’s where I’m spending a lot of my time. I want to be sure that we are offering our advisors and any advisors that we’re bringing on, intuitive systems that will allow them to continue to grow. That’s part of our infrastructure that we’re really invested in is building out that foundation.
When they do onboard, it’s understanding that they have access to all these things, but if there’s something out there, we’re open to looking at other items on the street and other vendors, it’s really being sure that we’re going to be prepared for that growth. For me personally, with the background in transitions, another item is planning. Planning a transition is huge. I think everyone on this call has seen a transition go pretty poorly and also seeing transitions go really smoothly.
For me, I want to be super thoughtful when we are looking to onboard another team or tuck in a team or whatever term you would like to use for that. Now, we’re planning accordingly, understanding that other firm that we’re merging with, that we’re acquiring, I should say, is a right fit for Matrix. Then we can do it smoothly to avoid any hiccup or just getting out in front of any issues that we could possibly have.
[00:25:45] Matt Sonnen: My dad always used the cliché, I always hear his voice in my head, “Measure twice, cut once, measure twice, cut once.” The planning is so crucial, that’s exactly right.
[00:25:55] Amanda Green: It’s so true. I think sometimes it gets overlooked, and then all of a sudden, you’re in the middle of this chaos and this transition and you’re like, “Oh my God, what did I get myself into?” We’re trying to avoid that. We’re trying to really plan ahead and be sure that anybody we bring on has a really good experience and we’re planning for everything.
[00:26:14] Matt Sonnen: Gary, you mentioned Satovsky is just getting ramped up now in thoughts of inorganic growth, where are you guys in that process?
[00:26:21] Gary Davis Jr.: Look, we’re very early stages. First of all, I agree with everything Amanda said, and I’ve been thinking as I’ve been preparing for my offsite because we’re going to be talking about some of this. I actually wrote down a few other things that I didn’t think about from Amanda, so thank you very much. Yes, we’re just thinking about this and a lot of thought has to go into this. I’m sure, Amanda and Matt, both of you have probably seen this.
Again, there’s one right way of doing things, but there’s also some pretty common ways of doing things wrong. Where I’ve seen a lot of firms do this wrong is just say, “Hey, look, everybody’s out there doing M&A, I’ll also go acquire an advisor,” but there was no thought process behind it. It’s already from what that initial checklist is in terms of what must that advisor have in terms of a client base or assets, personality, or philosophy, geographic location, whatever it may be. You got to have that. You have to have your infrastructure.
Again, I’ve seen it where people go out and just hire advisors, but then they don’t have the infrastructure to support them and now they’re playing catch up and it just leaves a really sour taste in that advisor’s mouth. “Hey, I was promised all these things, but it’s not even here.” Unfortunately, you’ll see a lot of these kinds of relationships that start like this end very quickly and very poorly, but that’s what we’re doing right now is just trying to figure out, do we want to be doing, whether it’s M&A or tuck-ins? If we do, okay, great, well, let’s start to find, what is that ideal advisor? What are we looking for in that person?
Then where are gaps in our infrastructure that need to be filled, and then how we go about filling that and setting that project plan in a timeline to improve or get the infrastructure improved to a point we can now go out and start to recruit? How are we going to do that? Are we going to hire somebody internally to do recruiting? Are we going to go externally and look at recruiters? Also, where are we going to recruit? Are we going to try and recruit other advisors from other existing independent RIA?
Are we to go the BD wirehouse route, the private banking route? There’s a lot of questions that I have written down that we’re going to be going through so that we can start to make some decisions on what we think is best for Satovsky.
[00:28:27] Amanda Green: I think you raised a good point. I think it’s really in how you plan and how you execute and having a defined value proposition for a firm is really important. I think it really helps with your recruiting and really just helps the process that you know exactly who you’re going after from an advisor standpoint and how that process will really flow throughout the transition or the M&A process.
[00:28:49] Matt Sonnen: This is such a simple question, but I feel like well over 50% of the time it’s forgotten, why would an advisor want to join your firm?
[00:28:58] Gary Davis Jr.: Exactly.
[00:28:59] Matt Sonnen: Everyone gets so hung up in valuation, deal structure, do they get equity, do they not get equity, what’s the earn-out, what’s the multiple, what are we putting the multiple on? Let’s just take a huge step back and just answer that question, why would they want to join here? Obviously, this is an operations podcast, so I’m speaking to the choir here, but it really is an operations story that you’re telling.
If the advisor was entrepreneurial and was willing to figure a lot of this stuff out for himself or herself, they’d go start their own firm, they don’t want to deal with that. They want to hear what your firm has to offer, how they’re going to grow faster, how much can they take off of their plate and handoff to you and the firm, and they can just focus on their clients and prospects.
[00:29:41] Amanda Green: I think to add to that, it’s also, from our perspective, we look at it a little bit more granular. We want to get in the weeds of, are they the right fit? Do they have the right makeup from a book of business standpoint? What are they invested in? How would that really look coming into our firm? Whereas, sometimes people just say they’re so profitable, they have whatever in revenue and they get lost in that. Where if you break it down in a more granular way, which Gary and I probably look at a bit more, they may not be as profitable as we think.
[00:30:13] Matt Sonnen: That’s exactly right. To wrap things up, I want to throw a topical question at you both. When COVID first hit, no one would’ve predicted the success that our industry was going to experience over the next 18 months, but we should have seen it coming. Financial advice, obviously, was in massively high demand during that very uncertain period. I remember coming home on March 17th and just putting my head in my hand and said, “Oh, man, this is not going to be pretty,” but it’s been a fantastic year and a half of growth for our industry and for all of our individual firms.
My question for you guys is where do you see the biggest opportunities in the next year and a half for both of your firms? Gary, I’ll go to you first on this one.
[00:30:51] Gary Davis Jr.: We have decided to be a hybrid firm for the long term. We don’t require any of our staff to be in the office at any point in time. We have some staff who like going in the office every day and working, we have some staff who are in the office a few days a week, and we have other staff who only are coming in when they have to come in. We have said before we have three open positions.
Some of our opportunities over these next 18 months or so is going to be, number one, filling those positions and because of our decision to be a hybrid firm, being able to expand our geographic location a little bit to find some quality talent maybe outside of our original geographic area, which has been just the tri-state area. It’s also, giving us an opportunity to evolve our new hire experience and our new hire onboarding and our new hire training.
We are going to have to evolve this within the organization if we’re going to continue to be a hybrid firm, as well as continue to evolve how we are collaborating, communicating, and how are we just staying tethered to each other while we’re not in an office every day seeing each other every day? What is the right mix of a Zoom video chat and phone calls and on-sites and check-ins? What is the good mixture there? We’re really going to be focusing a lot of effort, not only, obviously, in developing business but also in just making sure that our staff is supported, feels valued, continue to see their career paths, continue to grow within their positions.
That’s going to be really, really important. Of course, I think you hit the nail on the head, Matt, with respect to COVID. I think some of the biggest reasons why our industry has been so successful going into and coming out of COVID are those firms we’re already innovating from a technology standpoint and continue to look to innovate from a technology standpoint. Allowing us to be able to work more efficiently and more effectively with as little risk as possible no matter where we are.
It’s not just our staff being able to work from their homes, but also we have some staff who travel throughout the year and they go spend a month visiting family in other states or they want to be able to go travel for a few weeks. In that time, they’re going to be traveling for three weeks, but two of those weeks is really going to be a vacation and the other they’re going to be working. Our real focus is going to be on that, we’re doing that, that’s going to help with our growth goals, help to continue to promote our staff from within.
Again, if your staff is valued, they’re empowered, they’re respected, they are happy, they enjoy coming into work every single day, that organic growth is going to come and should come very naturally. It’s the inorganic growth that, again, we have to make some decisions on what is the best way for us to do that as Satovsky.
[00:33:40] Matt Sonnen: Amanda, what are you most excited about if you look at your crystal ball for the next year or two ahead?
[00:33:47] Amanda Green: I’m trying to pick up on all the signals from the crystal ball, hold on. I think it’s an exciting time. I think that there’s a lot of uncertainty. I look at it in two ways. I think from our industry perspective, we still have a lot of volatility. We have a lot of uncertainty out there and I think from an advisor standpoint and an organic growth standpoint, if you were able to keep calm under the pressures of all the uncertainty and the volatility, I think you could do really well gaining new clients right now. I think people are looking for the advice.
As we were prepping for this, I told you my view on the financial advisory industry. I look at it as if you were sick, you would go to a doctor. Right now, people are looking at advice from a monetary standpoint and you go to a financial advisor. I equated that to a doctor because you want to go to an expert, you want to go to somebody who really understands the markets. You want to be able to go to somebody who can navigate all the chaos right now, and I think the best financial advisors will see that growth organically right now.
As well as from a business standpoint, the firms who are open to innovation and change and adoption to technology I think are the ones that are really going to benefit. The ones who can move quickly and say, “Okay, this is working, let’s continue with it,” or more importantly, if it’s not working, let’s change and let’s do something else. As well as Gary hit it, we are a hybrid model as well, we have some individuals in the office, but we also allowed our teams, our advisors to decide if they would like to be in the office. We have four individuals in Chicago.
I think one of the four goes to the office, others are not comfortable with it or if they decide to relocate, and that’s perfectly fine. We’ve really allowed them to have the freedom and flexibility to decide their schedules because we’re not really here to force anybody to go to the office when we’ve all been working from home for the last 18 months really successfully. It’s being open to change and being open to adopt new policies and procedures. I think really allow the RIA area to grow and allow our firms to grow.
[00:35:58] Matt Sonnen: Here in Los Angeles for years I would brag; if your commute was under an hour, it was a big deal. It’s very hard in LA. It’s so spread out. We’re not really a city, it’s just so spread out. Plus, obviously, traffic is horrible, so you would always brag about, “Oh, I have a 45-minute commute.” It was last weekend I think it was, someone was bragging to me about his commute was 55 minutes and he thought that was fantastic, and I just thought, “Wow, the whole world has changed.” I was guilty of it for many, many years bragging about it, but I was like, “That sounds odd. That’s two hours that I’m never leaving my desk. I’m never leaving my house and going forward.” It’s just too darn efficient.
[00:36:39] Amanda Green: I would say the silver lining of COVID was there was no traffic. I really missed no traffic. I think being in New York City, traffic is back and I don’t know, I kind of wish the days of everybody staying home and be able to just navigate areas quickly would be really nice.
[00:36:58] Gary Davis Jr.: That’s the same thing. It’s funny, Matt, I think I was bragging to you when I first started that I was able to get door to door from my house into New York City and into the office in an hour and 15 minutes. I was just blown away. I was so impressed that it only took me an hour and 15 minutes to get into the office, but I completely agree with Amanda. I don’t know what has happened, but over the last eight to four weeks, everybody started coming back from New York City and my hour and 15-minute commute in turned into a two-hour commute in, so now I’m back to taking the train, I’m not driving into the city anymore.
Again, I’m going in when I need to go in. I’m very thankful that we’re able to work in an environment where we can be able to work from home and be as productive as possible and be able to give that to our staff as well.
[00:37:45] Amanda Green: Yes, now with everybody back in the city, I want them out of the city so I can go to any restaurant and don’t need to make reservations. Everybody’s back.
[laughter]
[00:37:56] Matt Sonnen: This has been a fun one. Thank you both for being here. It’s been interesting with both of you relatively new to your firms. Obviously, you have tons of experience in the industry, but being new to your firms and doing that evaluation process, I think that’s been a very interesting perspective to share with our audience how you’re evaluating and positioning the firms for growth. Amanda and Gary, thank you so much for being here.
[00:38:16] Amanda Green: Thank you.
[00:38:16] Gary Davis Jr: Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Amanda.
[00:38:19] Matt Sonnen: That is a wrap on Episode 35. Thank you, everyone, for listening and we will talk to you soon.
