Welcome back to the 361st episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today's podcast is Peter Tiboris. Peter is a Partner of Park Avenue Capital, an advisory firm affiliated with Northwestern Mutual based in New York City, that oversees $2.4 billion in assets under management for 1,377 client households.
What's unique about Peter, though, is how he and his business partner have built up their firm through a combination of organic growth, and a series of mergers and acquisitions all conducted within the Northwestern Mutual ecosystem, where Park Avenue Capital's size as one of the largest Northwestern Mutual offices in the country, and their ability to access debt-financing, provides a unique acquisition differentiator that is just further accelerating their growth.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Park Avenue Capital has grown to $20 million in revenue through a combination of organic growth and M&A activity, their approach to evaluating and valuing potential acquisitions, and the unique bank financing arrangements they made to be able to fund serial acquisitions over time, the way Peter and his firm build out 3-person advisor pods – including the lead advisor, an associate advisor, and a client service associate – and structures team support around the pods so allow them to increase their client capacity and productivity with a target of 50% gross profit margins, and how Peter and his business partner built a service-oriented culture at Park Avenue Capital, including hiring the former general manager of the St. Regis hotel in New York to bring a new mindset to the firm about what it really means to provide a personalized client experience (and bind the client to the firm's brand, rather than to their specific advisor).
We also talk about how Peter started in the industry in New York city in the aftermath of 9/11 as an insurance salesperson charged with cold-calling potential customers (and how he took inspiration from the work of author Nick Murray to overcome the challenge of hearing "no" from prospective clients on a regular basis and push through to grow his book of business), how Peter still thinks of his firm as being in the early stages of a startup despite all the growth and acquisitions because the business challenges that arise continue to be new and different as the firm grows, and why and how Peter created a business decision approach for himself by consciously considering what his older self would think of a potential choice, rather than just what his current self would prefer.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Peter discusses how he and his business partner came to the decision to hire a full-time CEO of their advisor enterprise so that they can focus on their strengths of generating new business and looking at the big picture of their business (rather than needing to manage the day-to-day operations of the firm), Peter's advice for advisors starting out as they try to generate prospects and build their initial book of business, and why Peter remains so upbeat about the advisory business, as one of the few high-income careers in America that can be achieved with very little in business startup costs (especially since large firms will often 'front' you a desk, a computer, and a phone), where success is determined primarily by your ability to control and manage through your own visceral reaction to hearing the word "no" from prospects until you get to the next "yes".
So, whether you're interested in learning about building a firm through M&A, using a pod structure to maximize the number of clients an advisor can serve, or how to create a service experience that ties clients to the firm's brand rather than to their individual advisor, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Peter Tiboris.
