Establishing The Operational Systems It Takes To Truly Serve Ultra-HNW Clients Effectively: #FASuccess Ep 460 With Stephanie Hughes

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Full Transcript:

Michael: Welcome, Stephanie Hughes, to the "Financial Advisor Success Podcast."

Stephanie: Thank you so much, Michael, for having me. I'm super excited to be here.

Michael: I really appreciate you joining us today. I'm excited to just really dig into, as I think, what it truly takes operationally to serve ultra-high-net-worth clients…of our family office, multifamily office world. We've seen for years, advisors have a tendency to gravitate upmarket to higher-dollar clients over time. Some of us pursue that as a proactive strategy because you find that it's more remunerative to work with higher dollar clients with higher stakes problems. And to some extent, that's just an expertise thing; learn your investment stuff and your tax stuff and your financial planning stuff, or bring together a team of experts and hire that within the business to be able to deliver on it. But I find it's more than that because even if you've got a firm full of really smart attorneys and accountants and investment folks and financial planners all working together in this wonderful team-based approach for high-dollar clients, you still have to actually work together on a coordinated basis amongst all these clients.

Stephanie: You hit the nail on the head.

Michael: You need the expertise, but that's not an expertise thing. That's a systems and process and operations thing.

Stephanie: Absolutely. The operational aspect of dealing with complex clients is extremely nuanced, and it's super interesting. You've got to be ultra collaborative, but also, really step into the shoes of the other professionals, how they think. Of course, it's so fun to all be working for the same client, all have the same vision, and everybody's on board. That's the most important thing. But yes, building the operational piece and the structure around that is extremely complicated. It takes a herculean effort to really get it to the point where you're really scaling for these clients.

Michael: So, I'm excited just to dive into the nerdy operational guts of...

Stephanie: Oh, I love it. I'm so excited.

What Stephanie's Practice Looks Like Today [05:13]

Michael: How do you literally execute on that? As a starting point, just to help everyone get oriented in the first place, can you take a few minutes and just tell us about the advisory firm itself so we understand the context of the business that you do and who you serve. And then we'll roll up our sleeves and get in the systems and process.

Stephanie: Sure. So, we are a multifamily office. And the backbone of our company is an accounting firm that's been in business since 1969. It's called Wiss & Company. And the accounting firm has been helping middle market businesses and their families since then. We do about 10,000 tax returns. We've got different niches: real estate, food and beverage, and the investor-backed niche, engineering and construction. And the clients are all from the accounting firm. We end up helping them with all things financial. And when they have some complexity, whether that's a transition in their business, they sell a business, they just need help with building their personal wealth on the side of a business to diversify their risk. As you know, these business owners have very complex tax situations and complex estate plans, and we built the advisory practice around that.

Michael: Okay. So, then just help us, I guess, think of just core metrics of the firm of clients' AUM, if you're AUM-based, revenue. Help us understand the overall scope of how many are there and who you're serving.

Stephanie: Sure. So, we have currently about 220 ultra-high-net-worth households. And the households are multi-generational. They have very complex tax situations, as I mentioned, and they have to navigate this complexity. So they need a place which is one stop, which understands the nuances in their business, how their business was built, how their wealth was created, and also the nuances of the family and the estate plan. In terms of AUM, we're just over a billion in AUM. We've got $1.4 [billion] roughly in AUA. We started seven years ago. So we're growing very rapidly, which has also been a pain point on the operations side. It's been an incredible journey. But we're working to keep up with that growth. We are very selective with our clients. We're not looking for all clients, if you will. If they're not the right fit for us and we know we can't be the right partner, meaning they don't have that complexity, then maybe they don't need us. And we're very, very honest about this. We want to work with the right people who really need a family office like ours.

Michael: So, that massive growth, a billion of AUM in seven years, that's starting from scratch, what happens when you turn on a wealth management business into a sizable accounting firm?

Stephanie: Right. Exactly. It's interesting because not all accounting firms have this vision and the collaboration on the leadership team where they trust the wealth management advisors also. It's also a risk for them to go from a trusted advisor, an objective advisor, their fiduciaries as CPAs. They are the most trusted advisor, which is something that I think it's the world's best-kept secret for a new financial advisor, is, the CPA really does hold the keys to the kingdom and all the data, all the information. They've grown up with the clients and their business, and they know all the secrets, really. And when they get on board with a wealth advisor, I'd say they took us in, in a way. They were very trusting with us. And of course, we worked very hard to have that trust. But we collaborated and it was a real joint collaboration to come up with the vision and the strategy. We are fully integrated, and that's why it works.

Like I said, it doesn't work in all accounting firms because there isn't that integration and that collaboration and that joint vision and that joint trust. But here we have it, and we have something very, very special. We are servicing these clients. I would say if you're an individual advisor, you never meet these types of clients on your own. But here, it's just part of the structure. It's part of the platform that everybody is...we've worked very hard, obviously, to make sure everybody understands internally what we're doing and make sure everybody is aligned. And we spend a lot of time on that. Make sure everybody understands what the vision is and why we're better for clients. That's why we've had such success.

Michael: So, I want to understand a little bit more about the firm background, and then really start diving into, how do you make sure everyone is aligned? So, what is the staffing side of the business? How many of you are there serving these 220 ultra-high-net-worth households?

Stephanie: So, there's about 40 of us in the multifamily office. That's one of the four practice areas. So, that's including the actual people in the RIA, plus other professionals who do everything for the high-net-worth individual and family. So, ultra-high-net-worth and high-net-worth tax, bill pay, trust and estate professionals. These professionals, everybody is collaborating very closely, working together. We have client teams. No one person can serve any of these clients. They're so complicated that we end up having many internal meetings prior to any external client meeting, just to make sure everybody really understands the nuances on the tax side, what's going on behind the scenes in the business, what's going on with different people in the family, budgeting, spending, tax payments, all of that stuff goes into the planning for every single meeting, I would say. So, the staffing is...it's a very collaborative environment, I would say, for anybody working in our business.

Michael: So, I think I heard you say you're segmented. There's the people in the RIA and then there's the people in the practice area. Can you, I guess, explain or distinguish what those are and what the difference is?

Stephanie: Yeah. So, the RIA is governed by the SEC, and this is why there's a legal separation, but we're fully integrated when it comes to the client and the actual service offering. But because the SEC monitors people who specifically give investment advice, those people are in a different legal structure than the rest of the folks in the practice area. But the whole thing, it's family office.

Michael: Okay. Interesting. So, I guess, from the accounting firm's end and from the external client, it's a 40-person multifamily office serving these 220 ultra-high-net-worth households. Internally, entity-wise, nobody really likes to invite regulators into more of their business than they need to, so the people that do the investment things are under the RIA and the people that do the other things are under the accounting firm from a management and a regulatory...

Stephanie: A regulatory standpoint. Exactly.

Michael: So, who or which functions actually live and have to stay in the RIA?

Stephanie: So, the functions that have to stay in the RIA are the investment advisory, investment advisors.

Michael: So, that's basically it? Whoever actually has to mention investment things in their client conversations or give recommendations, I guess, anyone dealing with the trading and implementation part?

Stephanie: Correct.

Michael: So, how many of the 40 are actually on the RIA side?

Stephanie: Twelve.

Michael: Interesting framing unto itself. So, 30% of the headcount is doing the investment things.

Stephanie: Yes.

Michael: And 70% of the headcount is all the rest.

Stephanie: Correct.

Michael: That says a lot unto itself.

Stephanie: And then, on top of that, we're collaborating on a day-to-day basis with the rest of the accounting firm, meaning people who aren't specialized in ultra-high-net-worth and high-net-worth things, but who are, for example, on the real estate side, or on the food and beverage side, or on the construction and engineering side. And they happen to refer a client to the family office. So, they're still involved in the relationship because they're the main trusted advisor, so they're fully integrated into this. And that's why this actually works and is very effective.

Michael: But I guess I can also infer from that the 28 people in the practice area, but not part of the RIA, they are fully dedicated to and employed in the multi-family office offering. This isn't just a, "Well, we're an accounting firm, there's a bunch of CPAs centralized that also prepare some returns for clients." This is dedicated staff.

Stephanie: Yes.

Michael: Specifically serving the family office center.

Stephanie: They're serving ultra-high-net-worth clients. Yeah, they're specifically serving ultra-high-net-worth clients.

Michael: Interesting. So then I've got to ask, because now my brain starts going to the nerdy technical operations systems questions. So, do they have to sign multiple agreements?

Stephanie: Yes.

Michael: Do you have to build these from multiple entities? How does that work?

Stephanie: Yes. They are signing different agreements for the wealth management side and the other side.

Michael: Okay. So, clients will get two agreements. I just imagine in practice, it's pretty straightforward explained, like, "This is the investment things, this is the other stuff."

Stephanie: Yes. A lot of the time, the client is already involved on the other side of the business. Unless it's a new client to both, they've already signed the agreements that they would have had to be clients of the accounting firm.

How Stephanie Charges For Her Multi-Family Office Services [16:22]

Michael: Okay. And then fee wise, do you have an advisory fee...

Stephanie: We do.

Michael: ...and a rest do of the family office services fee?

Stephanie: Yes. There's an AUM fee for the assets. We always say we feel like we're very reasonable because for that fee, you're getting the full integration, which is really the painful piece that clients miss when they're not with us. And they have, let's say an accountant, and a consultant, and someone helping them with their business growth, and then they have a lawyer, and they're complex, and they're very, very wealthy, let's say over $20 or $50 million, that's painful, that integration. And they typically would have to do that themselves if they don't have a multi-family office like ourselves with the accounting firm as the actual backbone of the operation. I think they're they feel the pain, and so the fee is... we say it's pretty reasonable on the AUM side.

Michael: So, does AUM cover everything and you internally account some of the AUM fee back to the other services, or is there a multiple services, multiple fees kind of thing...

Stephanie: Yeah, it depends. Typically, it is different fees, but there might be exceptions to this.

Michael: So, can you give me some sense at least of what's typical and then what exceptions crop up that…

Stephanie: Yeah. If something is in scope of...you can get very complicated on the tax side. Typically, a large client with a business and with entities and with a complex estate plan will have a pretty complicated tax situation where the tax work can be a majority of the time spent in the relationship. And in that case, we wouldn't say, let's do internal journaling and internal accounting to make this happen under one fee. So, on that front, you can have, let's say, a death in the family and that tax return could be several hundreds of thousands of dollars just to prepare it, because of the hours spent, because of the complexity. Typically, it's separate, but if it's something that's very simple on the accounting side of the practice, if it's a client that's less complicated, then that could be a conversation. Our typical client is pretty complicated on the tax side.

Michael: And so then, what's the advisory fee you have to charge to make this math work?

Stephanie: Yeah. It's a standard fee schedule. So, at a million dollars…which we typically don't have standalone clients of a million dollars, they would be under a family where we'd aggregate fees and we'd aggregate assets in the back office and they would all count towards the AUM fee. But at $1 million, it starts at 1.1%, $4 to $10 million, it goes to 0.90% per annum, $10 million to $20 million is 0.85%, and $20 million and above is 0.65%. So, I say we're middle of the fairway there.

Michael: Okay. And those are graduated fees, so even if I'm at $11 million, only the last millions at the 85 basis points, the first 10 is still at the higher tier?

Stephanie: No, the whole thing is at the lowest tier.

Michael: Okay. The whole thing?

Stephanie: Yeah.

Michael: So once I hit that threshold, my whole fee notches down?

Stephanie: Correct.

Michael: I just got to ask, do you get concerns around situations? I'm pretty sure if I math that out, a $21 million client actually pays you less than a $19 million client because they just notched across the threshold.

Stephanie: Not really. We're concerned with just having the right clients overall.

Michael: Okay. I guess I would interpret internally then, that advisory fee doesn't just cover the investment management services provided by the 12 and the RIA, this fee needs to cover the total services from the 40 people in the practice area.

Stephanie: Typically, it doesn't. It's separate because of the separate fees.

Michael: Okay. Because the depth of the tax returns that you get into actually really won't cover it even with these advisory fees at these other levels?

Stephanie: Exactly. That's why it's separate. That's why the fees are separate. Or there's something in the business, there's a valuation needed. These clients have so many things going on in their businesses typically that it has to be separate.

The Typical Client Profile For Wiss' Multi-Family Office Services [21:47]

Michael: Okay. So then, can you help us understand a little bit more of who the typical client is? What the profile is of a typical client that is hitting your version of complexity sweet spots that you serve them more?

Stephanie: Sure. Yeah. So, typically, again, we're getting these clients internally. We don't go out and externally look for people. We call it a B2B2C model. The client comes into the accounting firm, they become an accounting firm client, or are an accounting firm client, and then they come over to the family office. It's the business that is the first client. And while building that business relationship, the business owner becomes close to the CPA, and that's how the relationship is initially built.

Michael: Sorry, I just want to make sure I understand that. So, it's not even just you're a tax firm, the business owner gets their tax return prepared first and then gets referred over the family office, if I'm hearing this right? The business is usually the client first?

Stephanie: Correct. Exactly.

Michael: You're doing accounting, you're doing outsourced CFO work, valuations. It's that kind of work.

Stephanie: Exactly.

Michael: Interesting. So, what's the typical, I guess, size of a business that employs the accounting firm?

Stephanie: Yeah. It's big. It's middle market. So, typically, revenues of anywhere from $20, $50 million to half a billion.

Michael: Okay. That constitutes the middle market segment in the accounting world?

Stephanie: Yes. And then there are the owners of those businesses and their families. Those are the clients that would come over to the family office.

Michael: But they're hiring the business first for CFO, audit something like that.

Stephanie: Typically. Tax, structuring.

Michael: Very non-advisor things, businessy things.

Stephanie: Business advisory, tax, for example. Right now, if they do come into the firm and are not related to a business, it becomes a wealth management client. We're not looking to onboard individual tax clients necessarily, unless they're a single-family office or extremely complicated.

Michael: Okay. So, just given businesses at that size, you're talking about firms that may be valued at tens of millions, up to hundreds of millions, and maybe even a billion or few. Obviously, not every firm has one single founder owner who still owns the whole thing, but...

Stephanie: A lot of them do. We have a lot of family businesses where it's a couple people in the family. That's a big part of the organization.

Michael: So then, the broader net worths of households that you're working with, these are decamillionaires and hundred-millionaire kinds of folks?

Stephanie: Correct. Typically.

Wiss' Service Offerings For UHNW Clients (And How They Get Done) [25:06]

Michael: So now, share with us a little bit more around what the service offering itself is. You've highlighted all the different experts and we're integrated in what we do. Can you now go into more detail? What really do you actually do for these clients, and the fees that they pay?

Stephanie: So, we are truly providing these ultra-high-net-worth concierge services. So, we do everything for them. They lose their paperwork, they lose a passport, we're redoing all of that. We are truly trying to help them in any way that we can. And we take risk on doing that. We pay tax payments for them directly to the IRS for the entire family, for all the trust accounts, for the LLC accounts. We have what we call standing instructions to do that. And this is a service that is not something that the banks want to take on because of that direct line and that risk. Obviously, now, the IRS is going to move to not having paper checks, so it's going to be direct debits, but we have internal controls to make sure that things get done smoothly.

So, anything from making sure that we're doing their entire tax plan and their entire estate plan, doing all of that also around transactions and modeling out different scenarios so that they could save on the tax side, whether that's through charitable planning or other vehicles. We are also mapping out a financial plan that's tax-efficient as well. And the big word here is tax, always. We are investing according to the tax plan, and that takes very close collaboration with all the professionals in the family office and their relationship manager, whether they're outside the family office or not, and really, really close integration, I would say. That's a difficult thing to pull off operationally. It also makes it very difficult for us to hire because advisors aren't used to that. They're not used to paying attention to tax and collaborating with 10 people every time they have to have a meeting. Or they're not used to digging through a tax return, or having other advisors in the meeting, or being so worried about the estate plan.

It makes it really interesting, but also, it's very difficult to just eat, breathe, and sleep all of these dimensions every day as an advisor. So, I think when it comes to hiring the talent pool where we hire, it's smaller than I would say, if you're hiring in a wirehouse.

Michael: So, can you just describe for us further how you actually make sure all these little things in their details get done. You mentioned there's all sorts of controls in place around paying clients' tax bills to the IRS for them, and the family, and the trust accounts, and the LLC. The right account has to pay the right bill at the right time. There's a lot there. So, for those of us who don't come from a background of accounting firms with internal controls, explain more. What do you do? How does this work? How do you structure it? How do you make sure it doesn't get screwed up?

Stephanie: Yeah. Every time we built something, and again, we started with this big vision and we went backwards from there and we said, "Where's the client pain? Okay, let's build that. Let's build around that. Let's do this. It'd be great if we could do this. It'd be great if we could do that." And we worked backwards, and we set up our own internal controls. I'm not going to lie, there's a lot of effort and very, very detailed people who help us. We have accountants in the RIA as well who are very good with details. Sometimes there's no way to get away from the “four-eye check”. But everything has these approvals that, again, it's something that's not usual on the RIA side, or even on the wirehouse side. I came from Merrill Lynch, and you would just send payments out and there's nobody double-checking the details.

Here, every time you enter a money movement or a client service associate enters a money movement, somebody else approves that money movement, and has to go through the entire thing to verify not only the value, but every other detail and cross-check that with a backup of what is supposed to happen. So, this is for trading, because God forbid, we put a trade in, we sell something and we create, or we realize a $200,000 or a million dollars of capital gains just from entering a trade, that's on us. We're an accounting firm, we can't do that. And that would be mortifying. So, we have controls on the trading side as well, which is also something that I haven't seen in other RIAs or on the wirehouse side like we do here. So, every operational function has a control or has a control function as well.

Michael: So, control in this context means someone else that has to review and approve the thing?

Stephanie: Yes, correct. So, any money movement, tax payment, adding standing instructions, even client paperwork because you have things like trusts that own LLCs, layered entities, disregarded entities. You've got all sorts of complex things going on. That paperwork has to be correct. And the account has to be opened correctly. And that's something, again, the stuff that people struggle with in other RIAs or at the banks, we built here. And we have these controls in place so that these functions could be carried out very seamlessly for the client. The client doesn't feel that pain, which they do when they're not in this structure.

Michael: Interesting. So, I'm just envisioning CRM systems or some effect where every workflow…client service administrator does this, then client service manager reviews it and clicks yes to actually clear it every time there's a money movement, every time there's a trade, every time we're doing paperwork on behalf of the client Essentially, there's always a second set of eyes always to make sure the thing was right.

Stephanie: Correct.

Michael: All right. So now, my next natural question is, how do you track it? And how do you staff for that? Because that sounds a ridonkulous amount of busy work oversight. I understand why it's there, I'm not negative. That's a lot of things for every...

Stephanie: It is a lot of oversight.

Michael: You people look at everything every time.

Stephanie: It absolutely is.

Michael: And you have to track it all. So, how does that work?

Stephanie: Yeah. We're in the process right now of looking at every area in the firm, and doing some transformation and creating our own workflow tool. So, that's stuff we're working on right now automating these processes more.

Michael: Wait. So, you're building...

Stephanie: We're building a tool because it's not out there. You meet one family office, you meet one family office, as they say.

Michael: So, what do you use now or what have you used historically to do this?

Stephanie: CRM, we use Redtail. So, we do have a lot of the information in Redtail combined with Excel. We already have our own...it's a ShareFile that we're using. But we have our own internal things at the moment, but we're getting them more to work across these functions now, if you will.

Michael: So, you're looking to build some kind of workflow tool out outside the CRM system?

Stephanie: Yes.

Michael: So, can you share more about that? Are you building from scratch? Something out there?

Stephanie: We're building from scratch. We already have these processes built. Look, it works how it is. And the level of approvals that we have is, again, because some of these money movements and trades are so big that we can't really take any risk with that side of things. To build it out, it starts from really when we have a prospect, and we know certain things about outside accounts. And then, let's say that prospect, which is a client of the accounting firm, but not yet a client of family office comes over to the family office, becomes a client. It all starts with, do they need standing instructions to the IRS? Do they need a cash account standing instructions to wherever they're doing their checking? And where are they transferring their assets from? We're building out this template for the advisors to really fill out so that the onboarding gets automated.

And then you've got the financial planning software. We use eMoney, we use Orion, which on the backend is very strong technology-wise. We did explore other tools as well. This tech stack does work very well for us at the moment, but it's the integration of all these different processes which are particular to the multifamily office and are particular to these larger clients that create the complexity. We haven't found a tool and we're building that. From the onboarding, the onboarding template where it's going to help us really fill out paperwork with the custodian instead of having different areas where we're recopying information for the approvals, the tool is going to feed different templates and the approvals will be done on that.

There still has to be a manual check until we feel comfortable that there's AI that can help with these things. But we have used AI for other things. We use Holistiplan, that software to look at tax returns, but it's limited as well. We have VRGL where we're scanning investment statements, and that's cutting down on some of the labor hours that we had before. But we still have a ways to go with AI to fully use it to help us. We're not fully there yet in terms of what we have there to help us with all of our processes.

Michael: But it sounds like AI for you is very heavily around document extraction things, scan the client's existing tax returns with Holistiplan, scan the client's statements with VRGL.

Stephanie: Right now, yes. That's how we've been using it. And obviously, we've got Copilot which we use for other things, but yes, currently those are the tools that we have. We're exploring other tools for onboarding as well. But there's so much out there that we...we have Fathom as well, note taker. We are looking at everything coming out, we just haven't found anything yet that operationally we can fully adopt.

The Imperative To Use An Advanced Workflow And Monitoring Tools To Manage Complex Client Transactions [37:08]

Michael: So, help me understand further just where the gaps are from using Redtail for CRM and some of the workflow capabilities they have there, and what you're still trying to do that still can't do it that you just need to build your own tech to do it.

Stephanie: Yeah. That's a great question.

Michael: Tell me more where the gaps of the pain points are.

Stephanie: Yeah. So, I would say when you have collaboration between different departments, for example, the tax team is using their own software to populate tax returns and to determine any estimated quarterly payments, for example, and then that's not something that we're on. We don't necessarily think that advisors should be in tax software entering different things. We could make a mistake in there, and that's not the right thing to do. So, when it comes to integrating two different areas, then we have to build our own tool. Like these approvals as well, we're using Redtail to assign the task, but we're not necessarily documenting a full approval in there. It just hasn't worked for that. It's not built for that necessarily. So, that's where we're building around it. Or the steps in the onboarding process that we're using with the standing instructions. We are using Redtail in a way, but then it's beyond that when we're doing an account transition and we have other templates that are going to feed through to the trading system and to the approval system, which is why we want to build our own.

The other thing we're building that we have already to an extent is our own internal compliance checks on the accounts. For example, let's say there's a change in phone number, a change in an email address on a client account. The tool that we have that we built scans differences and it pulls all the emails across all of our accounts, and it scans it against yesterday's emails because that's a check for fraud. So, we're going to be building that out for standing instructions added by clients, and other things that happen at the custodian level that we wouldn't necessarily know about. So, for us, it's super important to build out this cybersecurity, if you would call it. But at the custodian level too, we want to bring that in house, so we're working on that as well.

Michael: Interesting. So, you're essentially building a monitoring tool to monitor for any notable changes in address, phone number, or standing instructions, etc.. Because at your client level, one of the precipitators to fraud is you change the client's phone number on record and then heist their account with multi-factor authentication to the new phone number that's not actually theirs, it's the hackers.

Stephanie: Exactly. So, all of these things, it's something that definitely occupies my mind, especially in this new environment that we're in. But we're always thinking about it and we got to do everything that we can to just make sure that our clients are safe and it's on us to just add these extra controls, really.

Michael: So, new environment we're in, meaning more AI-driven environment?

Stephanie: Yes.

Michael: So, has that cropped up for you in practice with clients? Are you seeing a shift in, I don't know, wire fraud or other attempts or attempts to compromise them?

Stephanie: Thankfully, no. We've been very lucky. We've had a client, just one client, who has had their email hacked and notified us immediately. But other than that, we haven't had any situations where this has become a reality. But we've heard from clients that have been at other places, we've heard of things happening. So, it is a reality. When we have clients of this size and complexity, we just want to make sure that we're taking extra precautionary steps to keep them safe. And also, we're small enough to...again, we're fanatical about all this stuff and the money movements and wires. We're fanatical about calling people, making sure it's them, we know their voices, that kind of thing. We've got different controls on that side as well. So, again, we're just taking the necessary steps to make sure that we're doing right by these clients and that if there's anything that we could do, then it's on us to do, it's our fiduciary duty.

Michael: Now I'm just genuinely intrigued. What else do you have on the controls end of just making sure the client is the client. I think you just said something there about voice checks or calling.

Stephanie: Yeah. So, if somebody does want to send a wire, we are typically only sending a wire for a house closing. We try to do a lot of paper checks because it's not a wire you're sending it and the account number's floating around, and god forbid, the client sends the wrong instructions, that wire is instantaneously gone. So, any wire, we have a test wire that we send that's necessary. So we have to send a test wire.

Michael: So, even if you're wiring somewhere, you'll send a dollar and make the other side confirm the dollar showed up and then send the $7.2 million or whatever it is for the big transfer.

Stephanie: Exactly. Absolutely. Yep. And then we also, the instructions have to be written and they have to be in a certain way. They can't just say, "Send to this account." It's almost we try to find another way to send money because it can...typically, obviously, we know we do this every day, but on the client's side, it's different, or when there is a large transaction…it's on the other side to send us the wire, but we encourage them to send us a test wire. No one wants to send $50 million to the wrong place.

Michael: It's really awkward, egg on your face.

Stephanie: Yeah. So, send $5 the day before. We're very, very into that stuff. And that's what people who have $50 million-plus really want, because it's that stuff that really is risky and really does matter. You have to master the basics before you go on to the financial planning, the trust and estate planning, and the tax planning. You have to get this operational piece right. And this is the piece that nobody really wants to do. It can make or break the entire relationship, quite honestly. The banks and other houses, they don't have this level of scrutiny when it comes to the operational piece, which is why we said, "You know what, this is a pain point." The clients always get asked their account number when they're going to the banks, they have to go through this and that. Here, any paperwork we send them to sign gets prefilled by us. They don't have to do anything. We're making sure it's correct. That's been reviewed. We have accountants in-house. The accounts are set up properly. These are very basic things that on the operations, it sounds very basic, but that's what goes a long way with them because all that risk is on them when they go outside of here. That's the pain. That's where the pain is.

Michael: The pain for the client of...

Stephanie: Exactly.

Michael: Otherwise, I have to double check and triple check everything all the time, which at some point takes up my mental bandwidth and mind share that if I'm running a billion-dollar business, I'd like to focus on other business things and not have to triple check my person's transfer instruction. Can't they triple-check themselves?

Stephanie: Exactly.

Michael: Interesting. So, I'm struck to see you frame it as you said, it's getting the basics right, but they're not that basic because they're actually hard to do in volume at scale.

Stephanie: Yes, absolutely. The basics at this size, when you have this size and the complexity, the basics aren't so basic. That's true.

What Wiss' Team Structure Looks Like [46:13]

Michael: So then, how does the advisor structure or team structure work? I'm not even sure how you frame them. But you've got all these different experts across all these functional areas serving these clients with all the support that goes with it. How do these teams get structured? Is there a lead person who wrangles everyone else? Is it more team-based?

Stephanie: It's a great question.

Michael: How do you do the thing?

Stephanie: It's structured by two different things. One is skill and expertise, meaning you need training. Let's say you're a tax preparer or you're in charge of tax planning for a client, you need that skill and that expertise. And that is under the tax department. But then in terms of the client experience and the practice area, that's different that you're under the family office practice area, you're under this umbrella. So, one line is the training, the skill, the expertise, you're preparing returns, you have these deadlines, you have that process. So, you're learning that from that department. You are providing white glove service to a client, and the tax department is as well, but here, you're really working for the benefit of that one client on this client team, so you are also following the client experience of the clients in the family office. So, it's, I would say, a dual mandate if you are, let's say, on the tax side.

Michael: So, how does this team structure work to the end client?

Stephanie: Good question. So, typically, there's a client relationship leader at the firm who is really the lead liaison to the firm. And that's for your business. That's typically the person that you have the strongest relationship with, who you've known the longest. And then these other services, once family office gets in, then you're managing your wealth here. Typically, the family office really becomes the person on the personal side that's quarterbacking your family and your family's situation. Now, if it's personal stuff, it's family office typically. And then the wealth management would rope in, let's say, somebody on the tax side.

Now, if they have personal, very complex tax needs, then they're also talking to a professional on the tax side in the family office. So, it just depends on the type of client, but typically, there's at least two people at least or two disciplines that are quarterbacking, one for the business, one for the personal. But then in the meetings, you've got a plethora of people from all these disciplines because we're going over tax, we're going over investments, we're going over other things typically.

Michael: So, then on the personal side, within the family office, how does the team structure work?

Stephanie: That's a good question. So, there's typically one person on the tax side who's in charge of any tax engagement. And then on the wealth management side, for clients that are above $10 million, typically you've got at least two main advisors working on the client. And it's really a team effort, and we're talking all the time. We all sit in the same area in the family office, and we're coordinating on any conversation that has a tax component and an investment or a financial planning component. It's all day we're talking. So, the integration is very important.

Michael: So, if I'm the client, I'm calling one of my two advisors assigned to me on the wealth management side just for my family office stuff.

Stephanie: Yes. Or you might have a group email. A lot of our families have, let's say, it's [email protected]. And you ask a question and that goes to the tax person, that goes to the wealth management people, that goes to the client relationship leader. And for the larger accounts, that's a really the best approach because, honestly, these are loaded questions that you get asked that involve...

Michael: Well, they ask questions and don't even realize how many departments it could actually involve.

Stephanie: Exactly. "My daughter is bidding on this house. Where should I take it?" And all of a sudden there's a meeting with five people internally because they have so many entities. This is stuff that if you talk to a single family office, somebody in the family office has to handle, and sometimes they have to call like an attorney, an accountant, and the wealth manager. Then they have their own internal spreadsheets, and it's really painful. And that's what we try to alleviate. So, having that one email, they can ask the questions, and we streamline it, of course, depending on the client, but typically when it has to do with like a transfer of money, the person answering is typically in the family office, but wealth management, because we're pulling it out of the account now. Again, if we didn't check with everybody, we want to make sure we're doing the right thing. And that's why we have these client teams. It's not that simple. Every question takes a lot of people.

Michael: I'm just fascinated by the idea that there's so many folks who might want to chime into a client question that clients literally just have a group email

Stephanie: Yes.

Michael: For all the team members assigned to them. That's really cool.

Stephanie: Yeah. It's necessary, and it also teaches you about you just never know if there's something ... There's so much complexity in each one of these disciplines that some little thing can throw it off and you realize you're better off checking with everybody.

Michael: I'm just trying to still envision, who are the stakeholders on a group email for a client?

Stephanie: So, you've got typically one or two client service people. One person who really is on the investment side, maybe a CFA or somebody who really is responsible for rebalancing and trading and withdrawing money. Then you've got one anywhere from two to three more senior advisors, financial advisors. You've got whoever is handling them on the individual tax side in the family office. Let's say they're a real estate client, you've got the client relationship leader on the... let's say that person is in the real estate niche, you have that person on there as well. So, that's kind of the crew I would say for let's say a real estate, an ultra-high-net-worth real estate family office client.

And that person may also obviously has other people on the business side who help them in their business, and that's another crew of people. It's funny, we sent a client a gift the other day, and we all signed and there were 30 people that signed. And that was across the firm just to say, "Congratulations on your son's wedding." And I was like, "Wow, this is incredible." That's not uncommon for us, but these professionals are needed. And it takes a village, really to service any one of these clients. And their families are typically larger, many people there, siblings, kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, maybe aging parents as well, and any question, like I said, it's a loaded question.

Finding The Right Match Between Client Service Staff And The Clients They Serve [54:57]

Michael: So, are team assigned to specific clients that become their dedicated assignee on a firm? If I'm a client service person, these are the 10 clients or 30 clients, or however many it is, are the clients I'm responsible for doing the service things for?

Stephanie: Yes, exactly. That's based on fit. It's based on different things. But we try and match the best people to that client.

Michael: So, what goes into the matching formula?

Stephanie: Yes, the thought process. That's a great question. So many different variables. I'd say complexity of the client whether different types of details involved in the client, the account setup, number of money movements, what kind of money movements? Who's calling for money movements? All of that stuff goes into it.

Michael: How do you end up with different people based on volume of money movements, because some have more capacity than others, or there are other nuances to how you drive this decision?

Stephanie: I think it's capacity, but also some people are...it's capacity definitely, but also, different people are good at different things. That's how you build a team. You've got your financial planners, you've got your investment advisors, and people who love investment analysis. You've got people who love service, who are excellent at service. Now, we all have to be excellent at service. But there's a spectrum where different people, they lean more towards one thing, and they have more expertise in one thing. And then that's how we match them up. But also, on the money movement side, it's really like you have a lot of money movements and they're big, then you need to match them with somebody who has that high attention to detail.

And honestly, most people in the family office have that. That's, I would say, the hardest thing when we are hiring client service associates. So, we do a lot of training on our own because this is a hard thing to hire for, "Oh, hi. You're doing 50 money movements a year for this one client and everyone is over a million dollars. How do you feel about that?" It's not something that you typically get service associates that are skilled in that because it doesn't really exist, I would say. So, we had to, I'd say, experiment with this. And just because you have experience as a client service associate doesn't mean that you're going to be good at this, because this is not your typical client. And so, that was a real tough thing to realize, was like, we're looking for experienced people because we think that's the way to go. But that wasn't always the right thing to do. And we learned some tough lessons with that.

Michael: So, what was the version that didn't work then?

Stephanie: I'm having flashbacks right now, but hiring people from wirehouses on the service side, we said we need people who are really great at service. We're talking to these ultra-high-net-worth clients and we want to provide this exceptional service. But what we found was the ones that we had hired, they didn't necessarily have the same experience because they weren't opening 200 accounts for one family. That's just not a normal thing in the industry. And they weren't going through these transactions, and they weren't necessarily having to open these different types of entity accounts. That's not something you necessarily go through at a wirehouse, nor is it at an RIA, like, "Oh, we're growing at 50% a year. Are you okay with opening all these accounts in one day?" That's just a different level of work, I would say, and detail too.

Between the different types of accounts, the number of money movements, the size of the money movements, the size of the family, the pace at which we're growing, we realize we're a different animal and we're kind of a unicorn and we have the platform, and we have this incredible pipeline of amazing clients that need help. And they're incredibly appreciative. They're lovely people, and we want to service them right. So, that's when we realized, all those things I just named is not something we're going to find...we're not going to find people who have this experience because it's very rare on the client service side. So, we decided to train our own people and that's been a great decision. We want to have people grow in-house and have people who have the same vision and the same passion for clients and who love this idea, love what we're building. That's the path that we decided to take after having really tried the other way.

Michael: So, then, where do you hire them or where do they come from internally to figure out who's ultimately going to excel in this unique role with the new clientele?

Stephanie: So, the people with a little bit of experience in the financial services industry or people coming out of master's in finance, or master's in accounting, and CFP programs, are all kind of great candidates for us. They love the business, they want to be in the business, and they're not coming with habits that are from somewhere else. And then we have senior advisors that have worked that we've hired externally, and that's different. But there is, I would say, a learning period kind of phase where you're trying to learn more about the other services and the firm. So, we do have senior people that we've hired from the external market. It's the service people that we've gotten a lot internally or hired them from these different programs.

Michael: Still, we're talking about service people doing...I was going to nominally say, paperwork. That may be understates it because paperwork's different when you're opening 200 accounts for one family with 17 entities and 11 trusts and such. But I just want to make sure I'm understanding. You're ultimately talking about, you're looking for people with master's degrees to do just this level of work because it's actually pretty complex.

Stephanie: Yeah. And they're growing into CFPs and advisors. Everybody is on track to become an advisor. And most of our staff, they are advisors.

Michael: So, this is like the entry to the career path. You want to really learn how to serve these people in the long term, like spend two years doing the service paperwork that's required, and now you'll really learn exactly what it takes to serve them well.

Stephanie: Yeah. Because when you know that side of things, it's a lot easier to become an advisor, but we push people to do more to become advisors. Everyone's licensed. The firm is growing so quickly, we can't afford to have people who don't want to grow. So, this is a steppingstone to learn the business, to learn the ropes, learn the trading side of things, learn the money movements. You can't become an advisor in our family office if you don't know this stuff. It's not going to work because a lot of times the day-to-day is about this stuff, and you can't just say “I don't know” as an advisor. So, you come from the outside, you have to know about this stuff.

It's exciting. You get to work directly with the client, you get to be in these meetings with these incredibly inspiring business owners. And they all have amazing stories, and they're so grateful that we're helping them as well. That's another thing that is very different than being at a wirehouse. Here, you're appreciated because you're taking this pain away that these clients have experienced because of their wealth. So, we empathize with that, and we take that very seriously. And they love what we're building for them and how we're really taking that quarterback role away from them because that's where the pain was.

Michael: I'm striking how you're framing that because, for better or worse, there's certain stereotypes out there about ultra-high-net-worth clients. So, it jumps out to me that when you frame it of these tend to be very positive relationships, they've had pain of difficulty coordinating and managing the wealth, and they really are grateful and appreciative of the fact that you're solving their problems.

Stephanie: Yes, absolutely. Our clients are very appreciative, very nice. And it all stems from the relationship that they've had with the accountants. The accountants have helped them through their struggles and they've really helped their families and help them oftentimes grow their business into something spectacular that they've sold, for example. And now they're passing their wealth on and we're advising them on their legacy. It's just a cool full-circle story. And so, that makes the relationship great, is that some people tell the accountants, "I'm more worried about you dying than me dying." Because they know where everything is. For these complex families, life becomes just a burden, I guess if you could call it that, when they don't have that person or they don't have that family office and that CPA really to help them coordinate everything.

Handling Client Capacity For The Team's Advisors [1:05:51]

Michael: So, how does this work from a client capacity end? How many clients does a senior advisor have when you're in this level of high touch and involvement and a second set of eyes on everything?

Stephanie: As you can imagine, we're hiring. We're always looking for good talent, and we're constantly interviewing because it might take a while to find the right fit. It depends on, I would say, the onboarding and the initial phases we're meeting all the time with the client. And after a while, they might get sick of meeting us monthly, and we're meeting them less. So, you cannot handle too many of these relationships, as you can imagine. Also, their families grow, so you're constantly doing things for new people in the family, or there are changes in the family, or somebody gets married and somebody gets divorced. There's just a lot of moving pieces with these families.

So, depending on the relationship and the complexity, it gets easier as time goes on. I would say the first couple of years is pretty hefty, and like I said, we don't have one advisor on these relationships. There's always at least two advisors, so the work is definitely shared. And then we've got that service team who's really key in these relationships, and they handle the creation of the presentations. Everything is obviously reviewed by the senior advisors, but they do a lot of things behind the scenes that we're very grateful for as well.

Michael: So, ultimately, what's a typical client load for a two-advisor team? I just have no context in your world. An industry site would say the average two-advisor team has 150 clients. Clearly, that's not your numbers.

Stephanie: No. It's going to be less than that. That's a good question. Probably around, depending on the client, 100 clients. But not all of them can be...also, I would say, we don't really base it on asset level, it's on complexity. But if it's ultra complex, it could be like the partner on the tax side is handling a lot of the issues that can arise. So, I would say it depends on the client, but the more complex it's going to be, you're going to have...every client is as different as every person's fingerprint. I would say that's something I've learned is, there are not two complex clients that are the same. But I would say the more complex, you've got less of a chance of having more clients per advisor. But I would say 100 is a high number, but it's doable.

Michael: For two people who are sharing it?

Stephanie: Correct.

Michael: Okay. And then, you mentioned earlier, meetings may be monthly at the beginning for a while because there's just so much to onboard or get through. I guess I'm wondering, what is typical meeting cadence or frequency of interactions for ongoing clients once you're out of the intense onboarding? I'm just trying to visualize, what are the service expectations?

Stephanie: I would say some of them, it's still monthly, depending on, if they want that, then we offer that. Some of them want them to move to quarterly after a couple of years. So, it's anywhere from monthly to quarterly really is the typical cadence if they're ultra complex

Michael: And what's getting covered at that frequency? That's a lot more than just what did the markets do this month?

Stephanie: Yeah. What did the markets do this month. Everything from unrealized gains, realized gains, and losses, that's a big one, "We have this much in tax savings." Let's say they're in the year of a transaction and we're able to harvest losses to offset some of those gains. So, that's something that we cover at those meetings. It's also sometimes when they go from having a business and not having that business anymore, and they want to know, where's my steady kind of cash flow coming from? So, we're covering not only unrealized gains, realized gains, or losses. And then that's something the tax professional may be in the meeting with us as well, to talk about, let's say, the tax payments coming up. "And this is the money we put aside for the tax reserve for anything from now until, let's say, April 2026, when you have to pay the tax for your transaction from these entities, from the personal side as well."

And then let's say there's income, people love talking about income as well. So, we always cover like, "God forbid, this is what happens in your portfolio. You always have this steady stream of income." So, all of that gets covered. Other things on the personal side, whether that's somebody's building a home or anything financial planning-wise for their kids, or gifting, charitable planning, we'd like to, "This stock has appreciated, let's put it in your donor-advised fund," that kind of thing. Any questions they have on anything that's happening outside, whether they might have real estate assets that they're going to have cashflow from. Cash management services, that's another, moving money around and investing in, whether it's treasuries or VRDNs [Variable Rate Demand Notes], or ultra short-term munis, and changes in the yield curve. That's a big one.

We've got a lot of cash on our books, which is why that's always going to be one of our businesses is because of the tax payments. So, we talk a lot about cash. Anything happening that they need to know on the tax side is going to be covered in that meeting as well. Changes in their family, anything that they're concerned about. And that's it. It's nice to have these structured meetings set up just so that they know it's coming up, and they might have questions that they can bring up then. And it also helps them kind of build trust in us to keep getting in front of them, and this way, we get to know each other.

What Surprised Stephanie The Most Building A Multi-Family Office Business [1:13:01]

Michael: So, as you reflect on all of this, what surprised you the most about building out and executing in this multifamily office environment?

Stephanie: I would say, what surprised me the most is the level of trust that we have. Being with an accounting firm, you're part of the trusted advisor clan and it's really a special thing. And you said, "Oh, it's great that you guys have such nice clients." But I think it's because the accountant is the ultimate fiduciary and the ultimate trusted advisor in their life. And I think being part of that and really being knowledgeable about their business and their pain, that's their baby, that business that they grew. Just being able to talk about that, gives you that data, that knowledge where you're really understanding what they've been through.

If you're in a wirehouse, for example, you don't necessarily have that information, and you haven't been through that. You're coming at it from a completely different angle. And I think that that's something that I really appreciate coming from that wirehouse environment, where I didn't have that trust immediately. Here, again, you're just really in with what they've been through. And that's the best part about being here.

Michael: So, relative to being in the wirehouse world, how different the implicit trust is on day one, because you're with Wiss, the accounting firm that does all of our business accounting and audit already.

Stephanie: Yes, exactly. We have clients that the first time they meet us, a lot of them are like, "Oh, this is such a relief, thank God. Send me the paperwork." It's like day one. And that's not the case at a wirehouse. And the types of clients that you're attracting are very different.

Michael: And that's all because Wiss was this large, longstanding accounting firm that decided to start the family office side and had something like pent up demand, as it were, so they could drive a lot of activity quickly?

Stephanie: That's part of it, yeah. That's definitely part of it. People who've been with Wiss for so long, and Wiss has done such a good job for them as their accountant.

Overcoming Hiring Challenges By Going Beyond A Candidate's Skills To Understand Their Personality And Motivations [1:15:36]

Michael: So, what was the low point on this journey of building out the multifamily office?

Stephanie: I would say having to figure out how to hire. Given we're, I would call us kind of a unicorn in terms of what we've built, you have to hire people that are highly collaborative and that can not be afraid to learn and to be vulnerable and say, "I don't know. Let me go talk to the tax person on the account," and be able to know enough to be dangerous on the tax side and make sure that you are understanding the estate planning side, and make sure you're understanding the details. I think trying to find that person, at first, we didn't know what that really looked like, and I got here and learned it from scratch, and just assumed people would learn it too.

But it's not always like that because advisors are trained differently. So, I think the low point was really just trying to figure out who to hire and where to hire from. And I love people. I love meeting people, and I'm extremely optimistic, and I can always find something good in people. And our leaders are like that at Wiss as well. Again, like I said, we're always interviewing, but just trying to really make sure that we have someone who's dedicated to the vision, dedicated to what we're building, who loves clients, who loves collaborating, because if they can't collaborate, it's going to be very hard to do business here…who's honest as well. We've got a lot of integrity and we trust our people as well.

So, finding people who are financial advisors, who are all of those things, or even on the service side, just trying to find the right crew of people to hire, I would say, was a challenge. Also, really finding people that appreciate what we built and the model. The actual platform we have is incredible. We have these incredible clients, you're part of the crew, you're trusted as an advisor. The CPAs are incredible people as well. Our culture is very collaborative. These clients are very complicated, so you have to work with other advisors and other people in the CPA firms. So, that's very different. And you're given these clients, the platform is here.

So, it's a really good situation, I would say, for an advisor. So, we have a lot to offer, so finding the right people, I would say, is very hard. And it's something that, I think, we did hit a low point there when we were just looking and saying, "Where are they? Are they out here? How do we find them? Where do we go?" And also building the operation, that was also, as you mentioned, very difficult thing. And trying to get that right was hard. We're a lot smarter now, and I think that we know that we have something really special and we know what we want now, but there was a point at which...we had a lot of hope for the future.

Michael: So, can you explain further just what changed that it got better for you, in principle, like, "We want people who are on board with the mission and vision of what we're building and clients and collaborating." Cool. But what wasn't working about finding those people before that's suddenly working so much better now? What did you actually change or do differently?

Stephanie: We figured out, I think, what worked and the characteristics that we were looking for in people and things that we were not looking for in people as well.

And that's how we started hiring is by making sure that we had certain things in people and just being very honest with ourselves that, "Hey, this person may sound great in the interview, but they don't have this, this, and this." Or, "We feel like they're from the wrong environment and they have the wrong idea about the business, or their motives are different, their motivations for being in the business are different." Although somebody may be very skilled, if they don't have the right motivations, then it's going to be very difficult for us to work together. So, it's that. We figured out, we need skilled people, but the motivations and their story became very important when we were hiring. And then having many people in the organization meet them, that was also helpful because different people pick up on different things. And then just kind of taking a breath and making sure that we're taking our time when we're making these critical hires as well.

Michael: So, were there particular screening factors or questions you started asking to filter these out or figure out who really are the right fits or not right fits?

Stephanie: Yeah. Absolutely. We have a whole process. We have an internal recruiter as well. First, they meet myself, they meet the other advisors in the family office. And then they meet more people if those interactions are positive. But the questions we ask are obviously what kinds of clients they serve, the growth of their firms. We very rarely find that other firms are growing like us. So, we know that that's going to be a challenge off the bat and that we're going to need to give people time to acclimate and to drink from the fire hose and figure out how we can help. So, everybody has some time to adapt, but aside from those questions, just about their day-to-day and about the actual outfit that they're at. We ask about, any leadership experience that you've had. Have you ever been on a team?

The team thing is such a big thing for us because honestly, if you can't be on a team and collaborate, that is, I would say the number one thing that we might pick up on. Some advisors like to work on their own, and here it's going to be very hard because of the size of the clients and the way we're organized to do that. So, I would say, asking questions around, have they ever been on a team? Are they on a team now? How is that structured? And trying to pick up on that vibe, their own story. Have they been through any adversity and difficult low points in their life? How have they gotten past that? What have they learned? We want to see growth and evolution of the individual because they're going to come here and it's going to be not like their other place. And that's a good thing.

So, I think these specific things and really trying to get to who the person is rather than just the skill... We get very personal when we're trying to get to know somebody. We want to know, who is this person? Because we're going to commit to you and we're going to commit to helping you, we're going to commit to being in it with you. Making sure that you're successful, ultimately, as leaders, that's what we do here. So, we're going to go through a lot together, and do we want you on the team? Do we believe in you enough to commit to you and make sure that we can get you through those tough times as well?

And do you trust us ultimately? Do you have what it takes to trust somebody else as well? Because again, we're very different. We also have an assessment. It's a test of attentional and interpersonal style that we give to people. It's a lot of random questions that help us. It's just a procedural thing at the firm that we use as well.

Michael: Is that like a third-party tool, or this is a series of internal questions you created?

Stephanie: This is a third-party tool.

Michael: So, what's your tool of choice then?

Stephanie: It's called the TAIS, the Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style. It's something that our recruiter delivers to them and they do this at home. And this is really just another step in the process. We do this, we do the interviews, and we've got several rounds of interviews. And quite honestly, I think we do pretty good job now hiring. You can never get it 100%, but you can get it pretty close if you take your time and you're collaborative and do all these different things.

Stephanie's Advice For Her Younger Self And For Firms Looking To Serve UHNW Clients [1:24:55]

Michael: So, what else do you know now you wish you could go back and tell you five-plus years ago as you were or earlier in launching this with Wiss?

Stephanie: Just knowing that there's going to be bumps when you're building something out and being patient, I would say. Because what we built has been an incredible success. I think we had the vision right from day one and we stuck to that. And I guess I wish I knew more about the operational side, but we wouldn't have done it any other way. We built it around the client. And I think that the operational side of it was something that day one, we just said, "Let's go backwards from the vision." But that's an area that I would say... Look, talking to different operators and peers, I feel like an area...it's interesting that we're honing in on it, and I think that's great because it's an area that nobody feels like it's easy. Building the ops, the operations of an RIA, more specifically in an accounting firm, it's very challenging. And I think that's an area that having more expertise and knowledge on different things could have helped us.

Michael: So, what advice would you give other advisory firms that want to come in the direction of moving up market, as it were, into ultra-high-net-worth families?

Stephanie: I would say, make sure that you have accountants. Make sure that you're really focused on tax and estate planning and integrating those areas. And that's really hard to do because we've got the backbone as an accounting firm with all these different areas of expertise. I would say, for an RIA, you might want to partner with an accounting firm because hiring one accountant might not do the trick. But I would say the tax piece and the estate planning piece, when you're moving upmarket, those are areas that you absolutely have to focus on. It doesn't work to just ignore those areas. The client is not going to be fulfilled really by what you're helping them with if you don't also integrate those dimensions.

What Success Means To Stephanie [1:27:34]

Michael: So, as we wrap up, this is a podcast about success, and one of the things we've long observed, that word success means very different things to different people. And so, you're on this wonderful track and growing the advisory firm itself as you're, I think it's crossing a billion of AUM in seven years, and this is monstrous growth rate. So, the business seems to be in a wonderful place now. How do you define success personally for yourself?

Stephanie: That's a great question. I think it's different for everybody, but I think as we're growing and as we're past this startup phase, success personally would be really making an impact in people's lives. And that could be clients, that could be my team, that could be my family, my kids, making sure I'm present and making sure that I'm building my own personal impact. That what I'm doing every day is impactful, I would say, is what I'm very focused on right now. Making sure that I'm helping clients, let's say, carry out their legacy. And making sure that I'm creating these stronger connections, whether it's with clients, with my team, with my family. Just making sure that I have that impact is really what is most fulfilling to me at this point.

Michael: Very cool. I love it. Well, thank you so much, Stephanie, for joining us on the "Financial Advisor Success" Podcast.

Stephanie: Thank you for having me. This was great.

Michael: Absolutely. Thank you.