Financial Advisor Success Podcast Archives

Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the 63rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Kevin Kroskey. Kevin is the founder of True Wealth Design, an independent RIA based on Akron, Ohio, that has grown to nearly $125M in assets under management with 6 employees serving 160 clients, built over the span of the last 10 years.

What's unique about Kevin's practice, though, is that he's been able to persevere in building his practice despite what for many advisors would have been a "catastrophic" setback in his early career... the fact that in his mid-20s, just a few months after his first job at a broker-dealer, he went to prison for 17 months after the law finally caught up with him for selling ecstasy back when he was in college.

In this episode, we talk in depth about Kevin's journey, from starting out as a high school physics teacher straight out of college, to switching into the financial services industry by working at that  independent broker-dealer in his mid-20s, then finding his entire career and life brought to a halt by his criminal conviction for selling ecstasy – despite the fact he had already stopped and left that life behind several years earlier  and how he began the process of trying to rebuild a path back into the financial services industry after he got out, starting with a 3-year ordeal with multiple appeals just to try to get a license to become a mortgage loan officer as an ex-con, before finally switching to hang his shingle has an independent RIA.

We also talk about how Kevin actually built his advisory business, by falling back on his early teaching skills to begin doing local adult education classes on personal finances, borrowing money with a bank loan to be able to send out 10,000 mailers at a time to get participants in the class, and then slowly and steadily accumulating a client and asset base over time, supplemented in more recent years by trying to further establish himself more visibly in his community, including by writing a regular financial column in a local community newspaper.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Kevin shares his advice about what any advisor can do to try to persevere through the highly adverse challenges that can hit us in life, and how he handles the situation today when prospective clients still sometimes ask him about a crime that is still a felony disclosure on his U-4, despite being completely unrelated to the financial services industry, for events that happened in his life nearly 20 years ago now.

So whether you are interested in learning more about visibly establishing yourself within your community through writing, how advisors can address talking through disclosures with prospective clients, or are interested in how advisors can persevere through highly adverse challenges more generally, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the 58th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is David Armstrong. David is the co-founder of Monument Wealth Management, a hybrid RIA in the Washington DC area that serves 120 families and oversees nearly $300 million of assets under management with a team of 11 people.

What's unique about David's business, though, is the way that he's evolved the business over time, having built his early career under a broker-dealer, then shifting to a hybrid arrangement with an outside SEC-registered RIA that is separate from his broker-dealer, and steadily dialing down his amount of broker-dealer business over time as he shifts increasingly towards an AUM-based wealth management model to serve his clients.

In this episode, we talk in depth about the way that David has focused the firm over time towards clients who have created their wealth through a business or other liquidity event, their Ensemble approach where every client is truly a client of the firm and not just a particular advisor, the way Monument Wealth Management has structured their team into Client Services, Financial Planning, and Asset Management, and how the firm has systematized everything from their financial planning deliverables, to their path to partnership, the using of an engagement letter before taking on a client, and even their data gathering process.

In fact, we talk in depth about the way David structures his data gathering process with clients in particular, by creating an interactive experience using a series of conference room white boards to collect information – and help clients actually see and visualize their own financial situation – in a physical space in his office that was first built as a "thinking room" and then become the planning and discovery room specifically to support this process with clients... culminating in a physical deliverable to clients that David calls their "Monument Blueprint", and becomes the basis for subsequently building out the client's entire financial plan.

And be certain to listen to the end, where David also shares his unique hiring process to find great staff to join the firm, which includes a job description that explains not only the nature of the job and the tasks that it entails, but an in-depth discussion of the values of the firm that every candidate should be interested in before they work there, and a lengthy list of all the reasons that a potential candidate should not take the job... just to ensure they really screen out those who wouldn't be a good cultural fit anyway!

So whether you are interested in learning more about transitioning away from a broker-dealer business to an AUM-based RIA business, curious how you can grow your business through a more interactive data gathering process, or simply want to learn more about how you can find great staff to join your team, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!