Episode Transcript
Matt Sonnen [00:00:24]Hi everyone! Welcome to Episode 9 of The COO Roundtable. One quick housekeeping item, I wanted to say congratulations to our announcer, Luke Sonnen, he started first grade last week. Other than losing his homework out of his backpack on the very first day of school and then losing his lunch card on the third day, I think we had a pretty good week. We call him the mayor because he struts around school waving and saying good morning to virtually every child and every teacher he passes. So, he was very excited to start class this year and meet new friends. So, we wanted to say congratulations to Luke. We continue to get really amazing feedback about this podcast. I want to thank everyone for listening and a lot of people have been sharing this with their colleagues. So, thank you everyone for doing that and spreading the word about what we’re trying to do with this podcast. Again, I am a recovering COO myself of a multi-billion dollar RIA and during my time at Focus Financial I predominantly worked with the COOs at all of the various Focus Firms and then most of our consulting engagements here at PFI Advisors, whether we’re doing an M&A integration project or we’re starting RIA from scratch or obviously our COO Resource offering, most of the time we’re interacting with the COO or the operations staff at all of these firms. So, I feel like I have a unique opportunity to understand the nuances of the COO role. And while many advisors assume the COO function is predominantly a technology position. They say, “Hey, I just need someone to come in here and clean up my tech stack.” We know that the role is much much larger than that and we’re hoping to draw attention to that fact with this podcast. And in fact, as I’ve been talking to people and getting feedback about our content a lot of people lately have been asking us for more details around HR and the human side of the role. Because at a high level, the role of the COO is to execute the owner’s vision through both people and technology. If you don’t have influence with the people, if you can’t foster a collaborative firm culture, if you can’t get adoption not only for your technology tools but for the workflows and the client service model, you’re going to have a really tough time in the role. So, for this episode I wanted to turn to Private Ocean, $2 billion RIA. They have several offices in Northern California and one in Seattle. We have with us today Susan Dickson, the COO and Principal of the firm, and Suzanne Williamson, also a Principal of the firm. She is also the Director of Client Services. So, we have a Susan and Suzanne. So, we’ll see how many times I screw this up. But in the meantime, welcome both of you and thank you both for being here.
Susan Dickson [00:03:13]Thank you.
Suzanne Williamson [00:03:13]Yeah, thanks.
Matt Sonnen [00:03:15]Perfect. So Private Ocean was recently named for the ninth time a “Best Place to Work” and they take their culture extremely serious. In fact, when you go to their website, the menu, at the top of the page, it doesn’t say “About Us” or “Team” or “Who We Are” which you normally see. It simply says “Culture”. There are drop downs below each of these main headers, but the website is very clean. The top menu, it simply says “Experience” which obviously is about the client experience. “Culture” which is the firm and the people. And then “Perspectives” and that’s their new section which is the blog, and podcast, and their “In The News Section.” So simply “Experience, Culture, Perspectives” and I really love that, just how clean that is. So, Susan I’ll start with you. Why don’t you just give us a little bit of background on the firm?
Susan Dickson [00:04:10]OK, so Private Ocean, the original firm started in 1983 and that was Salient-Financial Corp. Richard Stone was the CEO at that time of that organization. And he actually met up with Greg Friedman and around 2007, 2008. And they started talking about “Well you know what? Your firm Greg is right up here in Novato, our firm’s here in San Rafael, maybe we should try to bring the two firms together and merge.” So, Private Ocean, we merged as Salient-Friedman. Instead of—it wasn’t Private Ocean in the beginning it was Salient-Friedman in 2009. So, May 1st of 2009 we became Salient-Friedman and another year later we became Private Ocean. We changed the name, Salient-Friedman was a little awkward and odd. So, Private Ocean was the name that was chosen and primarily because we felt that our service was very personal and that our resources were powerful. So that was the impetus for personal, powerful wealth management at Private Ocean. We have 51 employees. Our ideal client is $2 million and above. However, that’s always a little bit of a gray area. We are always looking at NextGen, younger clients— how can we service them? What kind of an offering can we give to the children of our clients? So that’s always something that’s top of mind. But ideally our clients would have $2 million or more in investable assets. Historically we have grown organically for the most part, other than the merger. Because once we merged with Greg in 2009, we actually worked for several years on building the culture and the team that we have now. So, we did not look again at doing any kind of M&A until probably… Maybe 2016, we started looking at that opportunity again. And the growth vision at this point in time, we’re always interested in M&A. We acquired two firms in 2018 so we’ve had a lot to digest. And at this point in time don’t anticipate any additional M&A at least for the next couple of years. However, we do have a vision to be a $3 to $5 billion-dollar firm in the next few years. So how that happens, who knows.
Matt Sonnen [00:07:05]I think that’s fantastic that you are not going too quickly on the M&A front and making sure that you fully digested each of those acquisitions before you’ve moved on. That’s great. Suzanne not every RIA has a Director of Client Services, can you tell us a little bit about that role?
Suzanne Williamson [00:07:27]Sure, love to. So, I’ll tell you how I started out and move right into where I’m at today. My background, right out of college I joined a small advisory firm and was there for a few years. Then went to a large broker dealer, spent about nine years there learning all the various functions of a broker dealer, and then proceeded to go to a small RIA. And from there came to Private Ocean in 2015. The role of Director of Client Services, my main role is to manage the client service group. But more than that it’s really a role of being a liaison between the different departments. So not only do we want a great client service team who works really well together and learns from each other, and learns from everybody in the firm but, we also need to be sure that the team of our investment group, the advisors and the client service, all work really well together. And we’re continually looking at how we improve our processes. So, getting feedback from everybody and working together is kind of my role as the manager of client service.
Matt Sonnen [00:08:56]That’s great.
Susan Dickson [00:08:57]And Matt, do you mind if I jump in and add that one of the things that’s really great about Private Ocean is, we really try to empower the people that work here. And I think that something I’m very proud of was that early on in those days of Salient-Friedman we created what we call an Expanded Leadership Team. And that was where we started having the different directors in different areas really kind of managing their own people and creating this expanded leadership team that did work, you know, like Suzanne said she’s liaison for investment operations and advisors and they work well together in this expanded leadership role to refine processes and those kinds of things.
Matt Sonnen[00:09:46]That’s great. So, tell us Susan tell us your background. Obviously, you’ve, going back to the Salient-Friedman days, you’ve been with the firm a long time. What were you, where were you before joining Private Ocean and then how, in the amount of time you’ve been there, how did you kind of zigged and zagged your way to the COO position?
Susan Dickson [00:10:05]So I actually came in in 2005 so I haven’t been here since the day it was founded, that would make me even older than I am. But I started off early in my career, I’ve been running businesses forever. My ex-husband and I had garden centers. I then moved from garden centers to wineries. From wineries to nonprofit education, and during the course of time that I was working in nonprofit education I was getting my MBA. So, I was like well you know at the end of the day because it was a Catholic teaching order, there wasn’t a great opportunity for me to really spread my wings and do more in the business realm of that organization. And somehow fate had me land in financial services. So, I always believed that business is business. The language changes a little bit here and there but if you’re a CEO of one place, or a business manager in one place, you can certainly, you know, transition into a different industry once you’ve learned the language. I came in, I think my first year I was considered the Business Manager. Richard hired me to come in and institutionalize this business because he had a vision for growth. And within the next couple of years, really took on the COO role more from a strategic level. You know taking on, at that time we were fairly small, so taking on marketing, and human resources, and finance and administration, and all of that plus overseeing some of the technology-although I was never the expert in that. So, there were others that were much better suited to do, you know, work with portfolio center and do the work that needed to be done there. So that’s kind of the evolution. It’s been an interesting ride.
Matt Sonnen [00:12:10]So you’re $2 billion today. In ’05 what was, when you joined, how big was the firm?
Susan Dickson [00:12:15]We were $100 million.
Matt Sonnen [00:12:18]Wow. And so, you’re 51 employees today. Do you remember how many employees were on day one for you?
Susan Dickson [00:12:25]Well when I came in there were probably… They had just hired a couple of service advisors. So, I would say it was probably I think five or six employees at the time.
Matt Sonnen [00:12:37]That’s incredible. And then so Suzanne came from within the industry, you had that outsider’s perspective what pros and cons have you experienced as that “outsider”? What did you struggle with? What benefits do you think you got? You talked a little bit about “businesses is business” but I think a lot of COOs struggle with the lingo and just sort of understanding things. What’s been your perspective?
Susan Dickson[00:13:04]The cons I think have been just the idea that perhaps being an outsider you really couldn’t grasp the industry. You couldn’t grasp the complexity of the industry, the, you know, the ins and outs. And I think there’s some perception out there that that’s the case. I don’t agree with it because I do believe when I did come in, while I did not know the industry at that time, very quickly came up to speed with the lingo. Now to be quite frank I’m not an adviser. And oftentimes the expectation is that the adviser is going to evolve into a leadership role either CEO, COO, whatever it might be. And that wasn’t necessary for me to get a full understanding. I needed to know what the advisers did, but I didn’t need to know exactly how they did it in order to have my role be, you know, where it needed to be. So, I hope that answers the question. I think that there are a lot of benefits by bringing someone in from the outside because a lot of times in any industry you get a little bit myopic because you don’t see past the blinders of the industry that you know. I saw that happen quite a bit in the wine industry. I think that you know bringing in different perspectives can be really helpful for an organization because you bring with it, you know, some of the traditions and histories of other industries and integrated into in this case financial services.
Matt Sonnen [00:14:42]Yup. And Suzanne there really is no right or wrong answer. But what is your opinion? Is it better to find talent, not necessary for the COO role, but just finding talent for Private Ocean do you think it’s better to pull from within the industry or from outside?
Suzanne Williamson [00:14:57]I think it depends on the role. If we look at client service actually both work. If you bring somebody within the industry, they immediately come in. They’ve got experience, they’ve got knowledge that can hit the ground running. They can work with more complex issues. But bringing somebody in, which we have done successfully, who had no experience in the financial industry, they bring different experiences to the table. They have a learning curve to get up to speed. But you also have different needs. So, you have smaller clients that aren’t as complex, that are more transaction oriented. So, if somebody’s coming in with little experience, if they have great client service skills, can easily manage those relationships and work with those clients. And you have the more senior or more experienced people working with those clients that, like I said, have a more complex issue. So, I think both work and it’s just how you position them within the firm.
Matt Sonnen [00:16:02]Yeah and I think that’s a great answer. Susan so you’ve had such tremendous growth that you’ve witnessed $100 million up to $2 billion, 5 or 6 employees up to 50, what challenges has that growth posed for you as the COO and how have you managed it?
Susan Dickson [00:16:23]I think that the growth, I think that it has been a great adventure. Let’s put it that way. I think that the biggest challenge is always making sure you have the right people in the right seats, the right people on the bus, that things are going well, that they’re happy. You know, clients are both external and internal. And I think throughout the process of this growth that we’ve had; the most important thing has been to make sure that the people were taken care of as we went through a lot of challenges. Because it’s not just challenges for the leadership team, it’s challenge for everybody in the firm. Every time you do any kind of an acquisition you shake up everybody. It’s not just the firm you just acquired but it’s also the whole organization that they’re coming in to. And so it’s, a lot of the challenges—you know it’s funny, the technology and the systems, while they’re challenging and they definitely are hard sometimes to integrate and it takes time and a lot of work and people get frustrated and pull their hair out, if you can keep the culture in a good place and you can keep everybody bonding and bringing people together, and making sure that everybody knows that you know their participation is valued, I think that it works really well. So, we’ve had our moments. There were sometimes where things aren’t as easy as, you know, we might wish they had been both with people and with systems. However, I think that we’ve been able to overcome most of our challenges and really have built a solid, what we would consider, pretty much an ace team throughout the organization. Including both of the acquisitions that we made last year. I think that I feel pretty comfortable that they are, you know, they are Private Ocean and we are one team at this point in time.
Matt Sonnen [00:18:28]Yeah. I don’t know if it was you driving it or not, but I said it earlier, I think that it is very rare for a firm to do that. Between the first acquisition and the second there usually is quite a bit of time. Because it’s pretty shocking to everybody and you kind of have to digest it. But then the time between the second and the third is probably is usually much shorter, and then third or fourth is even shorter than that. The owners of the organization get deal happy and so I think it’s so great how you guys have really done this in a structured way of fully integrating each acquisition first. Getting it right. Making sure that everybody is settled in the right seats and then thinking about that the next one. I think that’s great.
Susan Dickson [00:19:13]Well realistically I think that Greg and I would have had a mutiny had we said, “Gee let’s do another acquisition right now.”.
Matt Sonnen [00:19:22]Right. Yeah.
Susan Dickson [00:19:22]I think that, you know. And to be respectful and respect all of the people, is so important because they’re, you know, they’re here. This is their home too and this is where they’re gonna be for their career. So, we, you know, we want to be respectful of what others are experiencing here.
Matt Sonnen [00:19:42]Yeah. That’s so important. Suzanne your bio on the website it says, “You ensure the clients always experience exceptional service and you’re focused on identifying better and more efficient ways to deliver on Private Ocean’s commitment to clients and colleagues”. So, your entire role is built around managing this growth. And finding ways, it’s the elusive problem that every RIA has, how do you serve more and more clients and still make them feel special? So, what strategies or tactics have you used to manage the exceptional growth that the firm has been experiencing?
Suzanne Williamson [00:20:20]I would say first off is building a strong team within, you know, across our offices. The client service team is really, has two roles supporting clients and supporting our financial advisors. So, we meet weekly, religiously we meet every week. We talk about best practices. We talk about how we can improve processes. We talk about new learnings that anybody had on the team. It’s a way to bring the group together so that remote, you know the offices that aren’t in our main headquarters, so they feel included in the process. And we reach out to advisors. You know. We say “What can we take off your plates? What is time consuming for you advisor? How can we the client service group better support you to deliver that excellent service to the client.?” We have these guiding principles that we all live by here at Private Ocean. And I won’t name them all, but basically, we do everything in service of our clients, we’re intellectually curious, we laugh. So, we create quarterly goals and those are all, they’re all based on what the company goals are. So, you know we’re all focused on ” How do we make it easier for clients to work with us? How are we delivering excellent service?” All the way from the way we talk to clients over the phone and the way we communicate via email. So, we’re constantly looking at that. And you know I visit the other offices consistently we have one on one meetings. So, it’s really like from the inside out if we’re focused on internally growing and you know, thinking “How can we make this easier for our clients?” We really look at that a lot. And I think that’s some of the tactics I’ve used.
Matt Sonnen [00:22:17]I love you’d said it earlier the “external versus internal clients”. Serving both the advisors and clients. Obviously, the advisors are being served well by the organization, the clients will be served well. So, I think it’s great. So, we talked about, I talked about culture a little bit in the intro. I know you protect your culture and you’re both very dedicated to not only preserving the culture but improving it on a day to day basis. As I mentioned you’ve been named nine times, that’s amazing, nine times “Best Place To Work” so you’re obviously doing something right. So, Suzanne talk to us a bit about the culture at Private Ocean. You’ve talked a little bit about the principles and things. How integral is culture to the client experience?
Suzanne Williamson [00:23:08]I would add, I have a couple of things to add to say there. I think if you have happy employees, that comes across to your clients. And so, I think being very focused on the employees and the culture here and having it be a place where people want to come to work, promote a lot of learning, we give employees the ability to get feedback, and share ideas. And then we do a lot of team building. We have community outreach that we do. We just did a great volunteer day. We have retreats where we’re offsite. We do team training. We just did one about Clear Conversation. So, we’re, we continually improve our skills to give each other really direct and clear feedback. So, people, they really love that. I mean the feedback we get- I had an employee just tell me yesterday “Oh my gosh, I just love that training we just had. I feel so much better.” You know it empowers employees to speak up and really be part of this one big Private Ocean team. So yeah, it’s a great place to work in.
Susan Dickson [00:24:23]Yeah it is. Yeah and to add on to that, I think, you know, one of the things when we first did the communication training, we were doing it for advisors. And we had a gentleman come in and work with them, and they enjoyed it so much and felt it was so beneficial that we said “Well wait a minute. Let’s get the whole organization and at least have a, you know, a shorter version of this. Even though they’re not going to do business development or anything like that let’s bring everybody in.” And that was really, it was it was a great training that we had just recently. And I think adding on to that we do something that we feel is very unique and special. And we have a family weekend every year where we take everyone out to a camp at the Russian River. And everyone comes, their kids, well everyone that can come comes, and some spouses and significant others, and children. And we’re there from Friday night until Sunday around noon.
Suzanne Williamson [00:25:22]And dogs.
Susan Dickson [00:25:23]And dogs. Dogs are there. We kayak, we cook together. One of the highlights is that we actually cook together. On Saturday night there are teams that have, you know, they work together on their dishes, their recipes, their ingredients, and put it all together. So, we tried one year to have it catered because we thought it was a lot of work. And everybody rebelled and said “No no no no. We love the team cooking.” So yeah, it’s kind of a unique thing that we do.
Matt Sonnen [00:25:52]That is unique. That’s great. I recently ran into Stacey McKinnon of Morton Capital. She was on the podcast a few months ago and she told me Susan that you have a personality test that you give shortly after hiring new employees. And this isn’t part of the application process, but once they’re hired, this personality test gives some feedback on the learning style of the employee and the communication style. Can you tell us a little bit of how this works and how you implement it?
Susan Dickson [00:26:29]Sure, so we use what’s called the Birkman Method. B-I-R-K-M-A-N. It’s a great tool, especially for helping organizations, helping teams in organizations communicate better. What it does is it takes a look, it’s not- it is a personality test. There are a lot of them out there. There’s DISCs, and Strengths Finder, and you know the Myers-Briggs, and all of those. The uniqueness about this particular tool is that it addresses needs which people can’t really see in any individual. And what happens if those needs aren’t met, and you go into stress behavior. And if you go into stress behavior it can be very, very toxic in an organization. So, we have been using Birkman since 2005 and we have talked about potentially using it in the hiring process. However, we’ve not really done that yet. What we do find though is just by keeping it aware, raising the level of awareness about Birkman and what it represents, we find that there’s, you know, it helps and aids in communication. It helps people understand that we’re all different. We bring unique things to the table and, you know, we receive information differently. And that, you know, when someone is under stress, we’re now more able to recognize that stress behavior in someone and say, “Well you know, you’re going into blue stress or red stress.” These are the colors that are used in the Birkman. Or, you know, it’s not really to be used as an excuse. Someone can’t say “Well I’m in red stress, too bad for you.” But what they can say is, or they can look at is, our hope is that they’re going “Oh I’m going into that stress behavior. Let me just stop a minute and bring myself back above the line.” And we’ve used it lot, a few times in conflict resolution. Where there was a time- if you don’t mind if I explain the story a little bit. It was a client service situation, so Suzanne was involved, and we had a couple of client service people. One under stress was just panicked and freaking out. And the other under stress went chill. Well what happens is the one under stress was assuming that the one that was chill was doing nothing, and not helping her, and not, you know, making her life easier. “Why isn’t he asking if he can help me?” Well it turned out that he actually had more clients and more AUM than she did and had just as much going on. But his behavior was, you know, made it look like he was just skating along. So, by bringing everybody together with the Birkman, and sitting down with it going “OK guys you know, let’s kind of look at what’s going on here.” They were able to really kind of understand each other better and resolve the, you know, this underlying conflict that existed. So that’s, it’s been a really valuable tool for us, and we keep it alive consistently in the organization.
Matt Sonnen [00:29:40]Thank you. Thank you for the example. That’s great. Perception is reality. And so if using these tools can help people’s perception of what really is happening- they said this it made me feel that way, it wasn’t what they meant, you interpreted it differently than what they really did say, what they meant by saying, I think that’s great. And that has to, obviously I’m an outsider but I just got to assume that has to limit the amount of conflict going on from a day to day. We do, we are in a stressful industry. So, I think that’s great. I hadn’t heard of this before. This is really interesting.
Susan Dickson [00:30:20]Yeah, it’s a great tool and I tell you there are some big organizations that use it. Which is really interesting too. I mean obviously I’m passionate about it and it’s something I got certified in on purpose just because I wanted to continue to use it in our organization.
Matt Sonnen [00:30:35]Perfect. So, I want to talk about M&A a little bit. We’ve already discussed it to some extent, but I did want to mention Greg Friedman the Founder and CEO of Private Ocean. He wrote an amazing book earlier this year with Shaun Kapusinski from Sequoia Financial. The book is called “The Financial Advisor M&A Guidebook” and it details the operational aspects involved in a successful acquisition. We preach this all the time- again we’re very ops oriented we’re preaching that the ops side of the M&A all the time. Most of our industry is just talking about valuation and deal structure etc. So, I gravitated to this book right away. We had Shaun, Shaun’s been on the podcast. He talked about the book a little bit during his session, but I’ve also written about the book on our blog. We have a dedicated blog post just to the to the book itself. Talking about how great it is and how it lays out. It’s a very logical, easy to understand progression through the entire M&A integration process. And I’ll put another link for this episode. I’ll put another link to the to the book. I just think it’s so great. But Susan the COO’s role in the M&A function, what do you think? What is your interpretation of the COO’s role in these acquisitions?
Susan Dickson [00:32:03]Well you know in our acquisitions, I mean I can really only speak from my own experience, I’ve been involved from the beginning, in the initial conversations. We have kind of created a list or a guideline to go through the initial conversation with a potential acquisition candidate. Definitely we’ve kissed a lot of frogs. Basically, we’re looking at the very beginning if they’re a cultural fit. And so, I’m in on those conversations, I have been in from the very beginning on all acquisitions. My role really has been that. And then of course all of the legal work that goes with it comes through me, to our corporate lawyers, our corporate attorneys all of that information. But primarily it really is really from the beginning to the end. Having the conversations. Having them again. It’s like, you know, it’s like going out to dinner and dating somebody. And there has to be several conversations before you really decide whether or not a marriage is possible. So, my role has really been- because I have, because of my background, because my doctorate is in organizational leadership, I think that that brings you know something more of a strategic role to us anyway than might otherwise be the case in a COO situation. But yeah. So, I I’ve been involved from beginning to end. And, you know, until the papers are signed.
Matt Sonnen [00:33:47]I love that.
Susan Dickson [00:33:47]And then the fun starts.
Matt Sonnen [00:33:48]Yes exactly once the papers are signed. Obviously, I’m totally biased. I have this operations mindset, but I love that you’re there in the very beginning. I just I see it over and over and over again. The thought process is “Oh jeez the last person I want involved during the dating process; I don’t want any operations people near this acquisition target. They’re going to complicate things. They’re going to slow the process down. They’re going to scare away the acquisition target.” Again, I’m biased but I don’t know how you can go down the path of a potential M&A transaction without thinking of “How”. How are we going to do this? How are our firms going to come together? How are we going to integrate your clients and your employees etc. To me it just seems like it makes perfect sense. But in my experience, your experience is in the minority where you’re involved very early on in the process. I love to hear this though this is great.
Susan Dickson [00:34:46]Yeah. And like I said I do think we’re unique in that way. Also, I like, and I’m glad it’s you know I gotta hand it to Greg. I mean he is the one that makes sure that you know I’m brought in but not only me. I mean a lot of times you know by the third or fourth conversation he’s bringing in other people in the firm also to introduce them.
Matt Sonnen [00:35:08]That’s great. So, Suzanne how have you best integrated your acquisitions into the firm from a culture and client service standpoint?
Suzanne Williamson [00:35:18]I think we’ve really tried to from the very start have a presence in the other offices. Everybody’s been to the main office here in San Rafael. We switch off each month. One of us is flying up to Seattle. I go to San Francisco once a week. So frequently visiting, bringing everybody together. You know we want everybody to have a voice. We’ve been pretty methodical in the way we’ve looked at processes and we’ve first said, “OK how do we onboard clients?” And we have many meetings incorporating everybody, the advisors, client service, and figure out how we can put best practices from all offices into one workflow. So, we work together. We haven’t just said it’s our way. We’ve actually really worked hard with everybody to make those processes work. And you know from a culture standpoint we have these retreats twice a year, we do the team building things, we use a program called Reflective so we give shout outs to people online where everybody can see, so if people do something that you know warrants somebody giving them a compliment everybody sees that. So, it’s really just making sure people are empowered and using their voice and offering input and working together.
Susan Dickson [00:36:51]And you know what Matt, we’ve just instituted what we call The Wave. And we have these glass waves or ocean waves that we give to an employee each month. And the employees are voted in you know, are nominated by their peers on something they did that was exceptional. So, it’s kind of like the Employee of the Month concept but it’s the Private Ocean Wave.
Matt Sonnen [00:37:23]Fantastic. Well as I said in the beginning, the people side of the COO role is so critical. I don’t think these soft skills that we’ve talked about today get nearly enough attention. So, I can’t thank you both enough for sharing your knowledge and your experience with our listeners today. Thank you.
Suzanne Williamson [00:37:39]Thank you.
Susan Dickson [00:37:40]Thanks Matt. We really appreciate it.
Matt Sonnen [00:37:42]Great. So that’s a wrap on Episode 9. Please continue to share this podcast with anyone in our industry that’s struggling with the business side or their RIA. We also write a lot of practice management articles on our blog. The last several articles we’ve written have been very relevant to the COO role. We’ve tackled profitability versus growth, designing and developing workflows. We had an article about technology integration throughout the back office and whether or not you should be charging clients for reporting on outside assets. So please check out the content there. That’s it PFI Advisors.com and thank you all for listening. We’ll talk to you soon.
