From “Overservicing” Clients to Building a $1B RIA: A Merrill Breakaway Story

Speaker A: Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series for financial advisors. Today's episode is from over servicing Clients to building a one billion dollar A Merrell Breakaway Story. It's a conversation with Michael Smith, Managing Partner and Founder of Emerald Advisors. I'm Jason diamond and this is the Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors.

Speaker B: At Diamond Consultants, we help elite advisors identify the right environment for their businesses to thrive, whether that's at a warehouse, boutique or independent firm. With nearly three decades of experience, we've guided thousands of advisors and represented more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in assets transitioned and each year one in four advisors managing a billion dollars or more who change Firms are our clients. Our process is education driven and based on building relationships, starting as your strategic partner well before you're even thinking of a move to schedule a confidential conversation, call us at 908-879-1002. Wondering why advisors change firms and where they're headed? Are transition deals going up or down? Those very questions and more inspired us to create our annual Advisor Transition Report. It's the award winning data driven resource designed for advisors that connects the dots between the motivations around movement and the firm's appetite for top talent. Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to make smart decisions. Download your copy@diamond-consultants.com transitionreport.

Speaker A: Growth is often viewed as the result of better marketing, stronger referrals, a larger team, and even acquisition. And that's all true. Yet growth can be the byproduct of something else entirely. For example, Michael Smith built a successful practice at Merrill. Then one day he was told he was spending too much time with his clients or, as management put it over, servicing clients. For Michael, that wasn't a warning sign about his approach. It was a signal that he might have outgrown the firm and the model. Today, Michael is the founder and Managing Partner of Emerald Advisors, the independent RIA he launched in late 2019 with roughly 385 million in assets and 85 client relationships. Less than seven years later, the firm has grown to more than a billion in assets while remaining deeply focused on a highly specialized client base and an unusually hands on service model. What makes this story particularly interesting isn't just the growth, it's the thinking behind it. Michael's perspective was shaped long before he entered wealth management. After serving more than two decades in the Navy, he brought a leadership philosophy centered on accountability, discipline and what he calls steamboat people, those who keep moving forward regardless of conditions. That mindset continues to influence how he builds his team, serves clients and evaluates opportunities in this episode, we discuss the decision to leave Merrill, the realities of launching a fully independent ria, why specialization can accelerate growth, the evolving role of custodians in technology, and why he believes exceptional client service remains one of the industry's most durable competitive advantages. Because Michael's experience suggests that growth isn't always the result of finding more opportunities. Sometimes it's the result of creating the freedom to execute the vision you already had. So let's jump in. Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. For starters, can you walk us through your background and what brought you to the world of wealth management?

Speaker C: Jason, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today. I do listen to the podcast a lot, especially before I left Mother Merrill. But my background and how I got into financial services is really distinct. I was on the board of JDRF back in the day, and the national sponsor for JDRF was UBS Pain Weber. And they're like, Mike, why don't you be a financial advisor? And my master's degree was actually finance and accounting in portfolio management. Because I've managed my own portfolio for years and years. And since I couldn't get a job, I kind of just fell into it. Cause I couldn't get a job and I needed a job. That was 21 years ago, Memorial Day. So that's how I got into this industry.

Speaker A: It's a unique background. It's super interesting, and I want to talk more about it. You mentioned Mother Meryl. We'll certainly get there. Before we do, give us a little bit of context on the current business you operate, Emerald Advisors. Any context you can share on size, number of staff, types of clients you serve would be great.

Speaker C: Sure. So we launched Emerald in 2019, November 2019, with about 85 clients. And you always talk about this on the podcast, how scared it is to launch and go independent. And I would say we took over about 95% of our clients that we wanted to bring over. And today we're at about 230 clients. I think we're. We have some onboarding right now. We have just over a billion of assets. So we launched with the 85 clients in around 350. 385 million. Now we're over a billion.

Speaker A: Good for you.

Speaker C: Thank you. And I launched with four employees, and we're now at 11. And I would give a shout out to one of my key employees, because when I launched, I actually hired somebody that had no experience with us. And that was really a good thing because that allowed that person to really focus on operations. And back office stuff, while my business partner Emily and I were able to focus on, um, bringing on the clients and alleviating any issues that they may have thought.

Speaker A: So, meaning you hired somebody basically immediately upon launch to help you with the transition and with this kind of next chapter.

Speaker C: Correct. I hired them before, but they started the day we launched.

Speaker A: Brilliant. I love it. Oh, let's definitely talk more about that because I think that's a great strategy for. You're right. Like you said it in a joking manner now because you're seven years past. But it's a very real fear that advisors have, and I think it's worth talking more about. I want to mention too, you have obviously built this business and grown this business dramatically. I don't want to make this episode about the pandemic, but you moved the business at a certainly a unique time. Did it impact your growth at all? Did you feel like you hit a brick wall? Just curious about your thoughts now, Jason.

Speaker C: That's a great observation. I would venture to say that the pandemic was actually a good thing for us.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker C: And I say that because all of a sudden you could hit, uh, pause because everyone was relearning how to do business, how do we do client reviews, how do we communicate with clients in. So I think the pandemic allowed us to just really reset our expectations. Visiting with clients, because I used to fly a lot because I have clients in 38 different states. So this has actually been, uh, not just good for me, but good for the industry because I think it's reset our expectations that we don't have to be every day with a client facing.

Speaker A: I agree with that largely. And it's true of our business too, by the way. Like, it's certainly reshaped the way people expect to be communicated with. I think Zoom, um, has become much more mainstream phone calls. And we've heard from many other advisors who say something similar. I was just curious because you moved so close to, uh, there was like an impact. But I get. Honestly, I think you're right. It allowed you to have this nice, natural inflection point. And almost like flipping a switch of a clean slate, it allowed us to

Speaker C: learn the processes too. So we launched in November 1. By March, we were in lockdown. And so it gave us the opportunity to take several months of just learning the processes of how to be an RIA was pretty good.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So one of the things you mentioned in that was the way in which you serve clients. And I had read something funny, and I think it was around the time of your move, you were talking about that. Meryl, you had a manager who spoke about that you had overserved your clients. You serve clients too much. Tell me about that.

Speaker C: That was such an interesting topic because I got called down to the ops officer's office and they're like, uh, Mike. And it brought my admin down with me. And they're like, mike, these reports that you're taking care of your clients too much. And I'm like, what do you mean? Or you're over servicing them? Um, Jason, I literally had to go back and Google the word over servicing because I was like, how do you over service the client? I'm not making their bed. I'm like, it was just, uh, so funny to me that I got counsel for over servicing clients when we're in a client facing job. And I think that was part of the catalyst.

Speaker A: Tell me more about what they meant.

Speaker C: You think hindsight. I think they. I like to take care of people, which means I'm very intuitive towards taxes. I understand how the tax code works. I understand how it impacts how everything impacts their bottom line. So when we're doing deferred Comp enrollments or 401k enrollments or I'm a big believer in Roth 401ks and backdoor Roths, and I've been doing them for years, I think they. What Mother Merrill wanted at that time was us not to do that. And again, nothing against Merle, I get it. But this is how they wanted us to act. And I wasn't in that mold. I was taking care of clients to a, uh, much deeper depth is how I would say it.

Speaker A: And I think that speaks to. You outgrew the model, not necessarily the firm. I think Merrill does a lot of things really well. You would agree with that. I think given that you built 85 clients and 350 million in assets is nothing to sneeze at. But the model that it seems like you value client service and an integrated client service experience at that. And the wirehouse model oftentimes doesn't put a premium on that. Tell me about your ethos or your thoughts around client service today and what being independent enables you to do.

Speaker C: So that's an interesting observation because one of my clients actually just mentioned to me that the reason we're growing so much is because of our service model and the fact that we deliver a, uh, tremendous amount of value over just portfolio management. I said my master's is in portfolio management. I don't do that any longer. I have a staff that handles that for me. But it's really the servicing of the clients because they don't know what we know. And I think servicing the client is the most important thing that we can do today.

Speaker A: Give me some examples of what you mean by servicing the client in a more holistic way. I agree with you, by the way. Portfolio management, table stakes, financial planning. Table stakes. Tell me more about what you mean by that.

Speaker C: I mean we do a, uh, quarterly review on tax. So a lot of people don't understand how taxes work and how estimated taxes work. So estimated taxes are January 1st to March 31st, January 1st to May 31st, January 1st to August 31st. That's how you do your estimated tax payments. You figure out what that is. And for compensated employees, where they have RSUs that come in at different times of the year or different grants or exercise their options at different time, that can affect their estimated tax liability. And I'm not big on giving Uncle Sam any more money than they have to have until they need it, so. And then everyone doesn't uh, understand how the penalties and interest works on the irs. And I'm big on the tax payments because that's where we can add a lot of value for not a lot of time. And we integrate it with our portfolio so we know what we're doing with our gains. And I happen to reside in Washington State has a, which has a long term capital gains tax rate once you surpass about 270,000 of long uh, term capital gains. So it's super important for us to be aware of this. And that's how we service them. We also help them with their rebalancing of their 401ks, things that wirehouses cannot supposed to do. Right? I mean you're not supposed to be helping them with some of their aspects of life.

Speaker A: Yep, that's what I was alluding to earlier. It's limitations on the model. Not because they're bad models, it's just a different way a, uh, different ethos around client Service. You mentioned RSUs and corporate employees. I know that's a niche you have is around concentrated stock positions and equity comp plans. I guess. Let me ask you two different questions around this. First of all, why that niche interested? And then second of all, do you think a team needs to have a specialization to be competitive these days or do you think it's okay just to be like. My job is to be the best advisor and I want to service assets wherever those assets may come from.

Speaker C: Another great observation. I'm going to address the niche first and foremost, I think. And I talked to RJ Shook's staff just recently. And having a niche gives you a specialization and it also accelerates your growth factor. If you serve a niche and you're very good at that niche, then that word gets around. If you're a jack of all trades, you can do a, uh, lots of things, but I don't think you're focused and you're not hitting the right numbers that I like to see. And I think that would be my theme is the niche allows you to focus on a very specific type of ideal client. That's a Schwab thing where you have an ideal client Persona and our firm has an ideal client Persona. As far as having the equity comp. I absolutely was one of the teams at Merrill lynch that was equity compensation designated. I managed a couple of plans. My exposure to that, Jason, I haven't thought about this in a very long time. Came from ubs where I had a, uh, team members that were colleagues that were associated with the Nextel Sprint plan. And I always thought that you're taking care of the top executives. But really my background being in the military was how do we take care of the troops? Right? The troops, I call them sailors. And how do we educate those sailors? And one of the things I've always said in my entire career in the military, and I still say to this day is 50% of every bonus or promotion, uh, or something like that should go to long term savings. So I use that same mentality with our shoes, with stock options, with bonuses. Set that aside, let that grow. Because you're not used to spending it and you will learn to spend what you make.

Speaker A: I think that's a great reason. It's uh, super smart and it's. I love your explanation. It was a very simplistic way. Honestly, even I hadn't thought about that. Around your niche, I think becomes almost like a force multiplier for your own growth. Because it's much easier to become the guy in XYZ vertical than to be the guy in every financial advisor of America across America. Let me ask you a follow up question. You mentioned the ideal client Persona. I spend a lot of time at our firm thinking about this as well. Right. What does your ideal client Persona look like? How do you think about an opportunity though that defers from that Persona? So it's great. Obviously everybody, it's easy. Like you get somebody who's your perfect prospect, they walk in the front door, sign me up. But when you get something that's not down the fairway for you. Is it just I evaluate it on a one off basis or are you super disciplined to that approach because it's who your firm is?

Speaker C: I truly haven't given that a whole lot of thought, but I will tell you how I would handle that because I am handling it with some one offs. I like the opportunity because you're stretching your brain in that you're thinking about how somebody else is reacting. So you'd never know. So I like it from a learning perspective. But I also know it comes with a lot of other baggage. I'll call it baggage because all of a sudden they want to short the market, they want to go long. Only strides the long, short strategies. So all of a sudden they're not in our niche and all of a sudden they're taking a lot of time, they're draining our time. So I think you got to be very careful about what you wish for. And there's a lot of great advisors out there that will walk circles around these topics that I'm like, okay, I, uh, would rather refer somebody so they get the right experience than give them the wrong experience.

Speaker A: I absolutely love that answer. The bow you just put on it, I think is the appropriate way in my mind to put a bow. At the end of the day, wouldn't you rather service somebody more optimally, even if you don't believe it's yourself? Like, I agree with that. I want to ask you one more point. On the client service piece I was playing around on your website and on your service model. You have health as a component of the client experience of your kind of diagram. Why do you think health matters in a financial context?

Speaker C: I've always believed in a healthy mind and a healthy body will bring so much joy to you. And I think health is just part of your Persona. Uh, if you don't take care of yourself and your body and your mind, then it doesn't matter what I do. I think you got to start with health. So I'm very big on the executive physicals. I routinely require all of our staff to have an annual physical. And again, they're young people, but you got to have these annual. I live and breathe going to see a doctor every year to do my annual physical. Not because I think I'm pretty good health. I still run, I do a lot of things. But I think your life starts with being healthy.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's refreshing to hear that. No doubt. It's funny to think about, but 2019 is a long time ago now and in RIA world like, I almost think of it like dog years. You've been around the block now for a little while. So I'm curious. How have you seen this space change since you launched in 2019?

Speaker C: In 2019, I didn't know what I was doing. I could barely get out of a wet paper bag. But I do think it's changed dramatically. I would say the biggest thing I've seen In just the six and a half, almost seven years is the rise of the mega RIAs and how they're going to shape the industry. Everyone talked about fee compression at Merrill Lynch. When I was at Merle, we talked about fee compression. Then they talked about robo advisors, and, uh, now they're talking about artificial intelligence replacing advisors. I don't believe that, and I don't think that's going to happen in the RIA space. What I see the RIA space maturing is into these very big mega firms, as well as these independent RAs like myself, that serve a very niche market where we can walk in our lane. The ability to transact today is so much easier as an RIA than it was at a wirehouse as well, because we have instant access to technology. My military background, my Navy background says make a decision, right, wrong or indifferent if you don't like it afterwards, or you get new data, course change. So in our industry, we can change on, um, a notice. Right. I hired a tech firm last year. I didn't like to experience nine months into it, guess what? They're not coming back. So I can do that. But you can't do that at the bigger firms. And even the bigger mega firms would have a hard time navigating a change just like that on a dime.

Speaker A: You bring up an interesting point. To the extent you face competition, uh, do you find yourself competing more against traditional wirehouse type firms or RIAs like yourself? Mega caps RIAs. Like, are your clients attuned to any of this?

Speaker C: That's an observation I haven't thought of either there, Jason. I would say I don't feel that I have a comp. I know there's competition out there, but I have a, ah, we have a growth issue more than we have anything, uh, else. So I don't, I can't take on the clients that want to come. My clients. So I'm not competing with people. Too much.

Speaker A: Capacity issue, you mean?

Speaker C: Yeah, I have a capacity issue.

Speaker A: I think you're not alone in that. Like, how can I even think about competition and the like when a lot of advisors would probably say that I want to talk more about the capacity situation. But before I do, let's talk a little more about the RIA setup. Who do you custody with? Remind us and why or how did you arrive at that decision?

Speaker C: Yeah, so when I launched, I went with Schwab. Schwab is a phenomenal partner. They helped me get a lot of stuff done. I couldn't have done it without Schwab. During the pandemic, I realized that I should probably. Because, remember, during the pandemic, we had a lot of issues with. With the banking industry. It was almost like a financial crisis, but in a very compressed time. So during the COVID I decided to add Fidelity as another custodian. So now I have two custodians, and I open accounts on both sides of the house. But I like the custodians that are there to help you. They're very good at what they do. I don't even consider them a competitor. And they are competitors. Right. They have their own branch. So I don't consider them competitors. I think they're my partners. And both Charles Schwab and Fidelity are good partners.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think that's the healthy way to look at the custody relationship. That's a very common approach, I think, is launching with one custodian and then adding a secondary custodian or a tertiary custodian down the line for one reason or another. So I appreciate you sharing that because we get those types of nuts and bolts questions a lot. So I figured I'd ask you one last question on the setup and then we'll shift gears. Has anything been a, uh, negative? So you talked about leaving Mother Merrill behind and Mother Merrill, we use it facetiously, but obviously it implies a degree of comfort and like the homeland. So I'm curious if you miss anything.

Speaker C: I miss the camaraderie of being with a bunch of other folks. I mentioned this when I first launched. I mentioned it year over year with my team. The one thing that we miss as an ria, and again, Dynasty has their benefits as well. And the mega RAs have their benefits. But if you're a true independent like myself, we get to go to conferences that we want to. And that's a timing issue, really. It's a time constraint. But one thing Merrill and Morgan, JP Morgan and the other big wirehouses have, as well as the Megas, they have the ability to put conferences together for their advisors or their administrators and have this education. That's the one thing that I think would evolve in the RA industry in the future as well. They're not my competitors. They're my business colleagues. And if we think of them m as competitors, and a lot of people do, because I don't want to share my client information or what I do with my competitor because they may steal them. Um, if you're that insecure, then you're probably not the right advisor in the first place.

Speaker A: I don't disagree with that. It's interesting, too. I hear two common answers to that question. Not about Merrill, but just about somebody who's broken away. What do you miss about the captive firm world? Either on this podcast or just in conversations with advisors? Brand comes up a lot. And then the point you just raised, I'll even hear like, hey, forget the conferences and the trainings. Just being able to have an office where I've got eight other advisors on a row, for me, it's a little bit of a different setup than in the independent space. And I think that's just a reality of, you take the good with the bad. And for other advisors, by the way, like, one of the things I want to ask you about to this point is do you believe that there are advisors that are just better served in the W2 traditional firm world, or do you think that every advisor should be looking at the RA space?

Speaker C: I think that wirehouse serves a great purpose and.

Speaker A: Okay, me too.

Speaker C: And there's a lot of great people that are great advisors in that wirehouse. They need the structure. What I hadn't alluded to is, and I mentioned this to a former manager from Merrill lynch of mine just recently, actually. I. I was like, I don't think advisors realize what it takes to run a business. I'm not trying to sugarcoat it. Running an RIA is hard work. It takes a lot of your time, day in and day out, to run a business, as well as taking care of and servicing your clients. So I do think the wirehouse venue is. Is the right way to go. And, Jason, I want to go back to one other thing about your identity. I launched as the Smith Group because that's what I was known at Merrill Lynch. Within three or four months, I changed that name to a firm because I did not want to be associated with it. So when you're at one of the wirehouses, you're known as your team name or something of that sort. I didn't want to be known as that. I wanted to be known as Emerald Advisors, not the Smith Group, because all of a sudden, you have a single point of failure. So brand identity, it's not so unique inside the Wirehouse because it's a team name vs. Merrill or Morgan Stanley or something like that.

Speaker A: It's a good segue because I'll tell you where my mind goes when you bring that up. My mind goes is you're smart in a way that you might not even realize. Or, uh, maybe you do realize, which is that if and when it ever comes time to sell this business, it is probably more valuable without your name attached to it. Or maybe not. But in some way, shape or form, as an ria, you have an obligation to be thinking about that. Or it's probably on your radar. Maybe not an obligation. Have you given an ounce of thought to M M and A, either acquiring businesses growing in that way or ultimately when you succeed out of this business and what the RIA space enables you to do?

Speaker C: To answer that question, yes, everyone's thinking about merger and acquisition. I think about succession planning. From day one. I actually thought about I'm a big team person. I come from the submarine force where everyone is a key player on a submarine. Every single person has a job and responsibility on a nuclear submarine. So inside the financial services industry. I know Merrill lynch was very big on teaming. I understand Morgan Stanley is as well because teaming gives them a breadth of responsibility where the responsibilities are shared. So mergers and acquisitions are selling my business. I think if you're not thinking about that and I'm not thinking about selling my business because that's a distraction to me. If I needed the money, then I would have went to, and went to a wirehouse. And that's okay, right? I mean, you monetize your life's work. Today I'm all about what's right for the client, what's right for my team, and what's right for where I want to be in the next 10 to 20 years. So I am growing. I do want to grow. I'm looking at opening offices in probably three locations in the next 24 months or so.

Speaker A: Well, that's what I was going to say. Plenty of, uh, advisors I think would say the same. I have a lot of Runway. But what about the other side of this equation? Which is you've had tremendous organic growth. You've tripled your client base. You've tripled more than tripled, the asset base. Have you thought about acquisition as a mean to like jet fuel, the inorganic growth side of things?

Speaker C: I have, but not in the typical sense that you're looking at buying a book of business. I want to partner with like minded advisors that share that common thread of taking care of clients where you can serve as their trusted counsel and sit in the meetings with their attorneys and sit in the meetings with the accountants and give them sage counsel. That you can only do because you've been with the family for 20 years. Uh, right. You know, this family. And that's. And that. Not always, but I think that's missed a lot in other. In other firms.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's fair. I just thought of something else that you brought. You brought up Dynasty. So I'm going to ask. I'm, um, going to pull on this thread that implies to me that you're at least loosely aware of the supportive independence models that are out there, yet you chose a very independent, autonomous path. Why?

Speaker C: Because I didn't know what I was doing.

Speaker A: Fair.

Speaker C: Let's be honest. I like Dynasty. I talked with Dynasty when I left. I talked to them all. I talked to Rockefeller, I've talked to. I talked to Morgan, I talked to Dynasty. And then when push came to shove, I wanted to be Mike Smith and launch my own firm and learn. And I will tell you, uh, you learn drinking through a fire hose. And we did that. We learned. I know the mistakes. What I didn't want to do is just go to someplace where this is the stuff you're going to have to use. So I think Dynasty is a great launching platform. I think there's other ones out there that are similar to Dynasty or the Rockefellers or the Morgans. It's truly what you're trying to achieve in life. What do you want for you and your clients? And I always put my clients before me because I've always had this lifelong thing of, you, uh, do the right thing, you're gonna get taken care of.

Speaker A: Yeah. And, uh, that's a very common analysis, by the way. And it's very common, too, for big advisors like yourself to say, I did my homework across all of those different categories. I looked at the traditional wirehouses and regional firms and boutique firms. Uh, I looked at the independent broker dealers. I looked at the support platforms and the aggregators and the rollups. And here's ultimately what I landed on. And why did you always know that, though? Or was that something that, like, it took you a diligence process to figure out? There was plenty of advisors, by the way, who come to us, and they're like, I knew for the last five years that I was sitting there, I was launching an RIA someday.

Speaker C: Uh, I did not know that. And to be honest with you, hindsight, I think one of those partners probably could have made me a little Bit better at first because then I could have focused, uh, on clients versus focusing on, hey, how to open a business. Who's your technology? I mean, we talked about custodians and some other things, but we didn't talk about technology. How do you go find that technology? Where's your email address come from? Who's your chief compliance officer? When it resides on you, you gotta look in the mirror. So I think those parties out there that provide that for brand new advisors, launching could be very beneficial. I had in my mind what I needed to do and I knew I'm very frugal. So mine boiled down to how much money I wanted to spend. To be honest with you, I think

Speaker A: it is a cost benefit analysis. It is like, it's absolutely, um, because if you list the functions of a support platform on paper and you showed it to somebody who didn't know the industry, they would say, why on earth wouldn't you do this? They're taking off your plate compliance and tech and custody and the like. And the answer is because there's a cost associated with it. And plenty of advisors decide what you decide. I wanted or I just wanted a greater degree of autonomy and freedom, to your point, like the name on the doorpiece. Like, I wanted this to be mine.

Speaker C: And Jason, I think it also goes to the, um, uncertainty. I had never done anything since Navy Financial advising and then launching. So I mean, for me, I was launching with four employees I had to take care of. And here I was going to hire a third party that I was going to have to spend X amount on and I didn't know what my income was going to be. That's different if you're multibillion dollar FA coming out of a wirehouse. I mean, the monetary dynamics are different.

Speaker A: Agreed. Okay, here's a good one for you. We get this concept from advisors, from firms from private equity that a billion dollars in assets is like this magic number in our industry. Do you feel like anything's changed now that you're at a billion? And what's the next chapter for Emerald Advisors? Is it just continuing on this steady trajectory and serving clients and trust that everything else comes with that?

Speaker C: I go back and forth on a billion. Everyone thinks that's the right number, the biggest number that you need. But I think it's just an arbitrary number because it didn't define who I was. And a lot of people define success at a billion. Right? They define success that you're a successful firm at a billion. I think I was a successful firm at 300 million. I was successful financial advisor with 20 clients in 2005. I would say a billion is a multiplier. What I would tell new advisors out there today is gather assets. The more assets you have, the more revenue you generate. The more revenue you generate, the more money you can be putting your pocket, which means the longer you can stay in the industry. The problem with the industry is it's an attrition problem, not anything else. So assets just give us the ability to have revenue, which gives us the ability to grow.

Speaker A: And is that the plan? Keep adding assets? Keep growing one client at a time. With the focus though, obviously on what makes you. Which is a very client centric service model.

Speaker C: Correct. There's a lot of things I want to do in the next couple of years and uh, expanding our footprint is our biggest one. With the right partners and then just keep adding. I mean, I'm. I have a business development officer that I'm, uh, probably offer a job to here pretty soon. And things are going well.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's great. You mentioned the tech stack and the other components of the business, and I hear you on the frugal cost benefit analysis. But who did you turn to for some of those early decisions? Was it Schwab primarily who helped hold your hand through that?

Speaker C: Schwab was very good at helping me identify the tech stack at first. And the tech stack is actually the one consistent. There's a lot of things I've been consistent on, but tech is one that I've stayed with them. Um, they've, I. I launched with right size. Now they're advisory, they're very good, they do the right job for us. And I'm big on cybersecurity, so tech was helpful from Schwab. Schwab helped us with that.

Speaker A: So we spoke a little bit about your naval experience. But I'm curious, can you tell us how has your naval experience changed, shaped your perception or your experience in wealth management?

Speaker C: My navy path was a lot different than many officers. I served 12 years as an enlisted person before I got my direct commission as a Mustang officer, typically called limited duty officers or loud, dumb and obnoxious, as I like to say. But that experience gave me a unique perspective because I was able to be the enlisted side and officer, which are the workers, and then the management side. So I had both experiences, which was unique. When I was commissioned admiral Jerry Ellis, a submarine admiral that commissioned m me, he shared this lesson to the podium. He was just talking about me in this point, but he said there are three kinds of people in every organization, you have rowboat people who need to be pushed. You have sailboat people who move whenever the conditions are favorable. And then there are steamboat people. They move continuously through calm or storm. And he said, this is Ensign Michael Smith. He said, make your course. And that's always stood with me because you do have those three types of people in life. You got people that are just, they're robo people. They're just. They go until they get tired. You got sailboat people that go wherever the wind blows them. And then you got steamboat people that chart their own course. I would say for advisors out there, make your course or just be happy with what you're doing. But for some of us hard chargers, I think that analogy has stayed with me my entire career.

Speaker A: It's fantastic. I love the analogy. Great naval tie in also. Thanks for sharing that. We got time for one more question. You have a fascinating background, a fascinating path to the industry, obviously an incredibly disciplined approach around client service. Any parting thoughts? Words of wisdom, especially as it relates to growth. I mean, that's what strikes me most about your story is the growth that your move unlocked. And that's what every advisor who listens to our show is looking for.

Speaker C: I'm going to give another plug to, uh, Schwab on this. We actually were fortunate and got their consulting group to come in right afterwards. And I'm a big believer in having off site. So I've had an off site, two off site to year from my team and it's the entire team. Unlike, uh, the warehouses where you don't take your admins and stuff like that. I take my entire team to an off site and we group up on what we're trying to achieve and have goals and objectives for the year. CHAB allowed us to use their consultants and we came up with our idea. Client Persona teams or firms that have this model become high performing. When you become high performing, growth becomes the outcome. Um, I couldn't do anything but grow, Jason. I couldn't not grow because I had this ideal client Persona. I knew how I was going to do it. It was measurable. So growth becomes the outcome. Um, and if you hold people responsible, then we're all going to grow together and it's a fun outcome.

Speaker A: Fantastic. It's a great place to end. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us. I can't wait to see what the next chapter holds for Emerald.

Speaker C: This has been a lot of fun, Jason. Thank you so much. I appreciate everything you do for the industry as well.

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