Partnership Mindset And Advisor Growth

SPEAKER_01 0:00

My experience, Paul, has also told me that there is no perfect firm or perfect fit in the industry. Every firm's doing a lot of things well. Some have more things that they do well than others, and everybody's got something that they could probably do better. What my role is with the recruiting team is to really teach them how to be good consultants, how to ask good questions. It's really, really similar to, I think, the consultative approach that most advisors use, which is let's find out first what your needs are, Mr. and Mrs. Client. Then I can explain how my team and I work and we can see if this is actually a good fit. One of the most interesting questions to examine in your partnership with your RIA, with your broker dealer, is not the question of, am I permitted to merge or acquire other practices? The better question is, can you demonstrate to me how you help your advisors do that? That's what real partnership is. You need more than a platform that says, sure, Marcus, good luck out there. Go build the practice and acquire and merge. You need someone that could demonstrate to you that they have a process. And I think it's a really important one for advisors that want to grow via that strategy that really examine what type of partnership do you need to make that happen.

Brian’s Path From Advisor To Recruiter

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Welcome back to the top 50 most innovative voices in advisor growth. I'm your host, Paul G. McManus. In this episode, I'm joined by Brian Mora, Senior Vice President and Head of Experienced Advisor Recruiting at AmeriPrize Financial. Brian started his career as a financial advisor 25 years ago before moving into coaching, field leadership, and eventually national recruiting. That journey has given him a unique perspective on what helps financial advisors grow, and why even successful advisors sometimes need to rethink the partnership surrounding their business. In our conversation, we explore what causes advisors to consider a change, from technology and AI to team building, acquisitions, succession planning, and the resources required to reach the next level. Brian also explains why there's a big difference between a firm that simply allows an advisor to grow and a partner that can demonstrate how it will actually help make that growth happen. We also discuss why successful advisors need to spend more time in their unique abilities, why recruiting great advisors requires a compelling value proposition, and why a strong digital presence has become essential for both growth and credibility. Before we jump in, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel or wherever you're listening so you don't miss a new episode of the top 50 most innovative voices in advisor growth. And now, here's my conversation with Brian Mora.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Brian Mora, how are you doing? Paul, I'm doing great. Blessed day. Grateful to be here and excited to have this conversation with you. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

I've been looking forward to this conversation and I want to talk about your journey a little bit in terms of where you started. I always like to say the Cliff Notes, but I've I've been told by a couple people that that dates me. So I don't know what the, you know, maybe it's the Google AI summary version today versus Cliff Notes. I don't know what the lingo is, but tell us a little bit about where you started in the industry and take us through that journey to where you're at today.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yeah, I'm happy to do that. I I think that's a creative way of saying if you go year by year, you're really old and you'll lose everybody's attention. So keep it brief, right? So uh uh and uh while I make my home in Florida today. I grew up in southern New Jersey in the Atlantic City area along the Jersey Shore. My mom and dad still live in the same house that I grew up in, and I went to college there and got started in the business there uh 25 years ago. I've been with the same firm since I got out of college. So as a 22-year-old, getting out of school and getting into our industry, I became a financial advisor. Americans is where I did my licensing, my training, and uh where I built my practice as an advisor, becoming a CFP, and ultimately was invited into what our company calls field leadership, uh, which is an opportunity to learn about and experience not just working with clients as a financial advisor, but to coach and mentor and help develop other advisors. And Paul, that's really where I found my passion. For a number of years, I had my practice working with clients, like many of your listening audience. But I was also working with coaching advisors. And I really just love that even more. I mean, I love my clients, don't get me wrong. And working with clients and, you know, investments in financial planning is what really led me into the industry. Uh, but I found as I got that experience of having another advisor talk to me about the challenges they were facing or the goals that they had, the dreams that they were trying to accomplish, I just found so much uh my passion and my interest in being able to help them do that. And so over the past 20 years, you know, what I feel like for me has been a really interesting journey at the firm, moving through different roles in field leadership, coaching advisors, developing advisors. And as those roles became more senior and more progressive in nature, then having a leadership team of my own. So I've learned a lot, not just about the financial advisors and coaching them and their teams and their businesses, but I've sort of gained a real appreciation and a real understanding of developing leaders and how to lead through other people. As I mentioned a little while ago, my you know, my current role now with the firm is I lead all of experienced financial advisor recruiting. So that's given me an enormous appreciation just for the industry as a whole, what advisors are doing at warehouses and regional firms and independents and RIAs. And so I think that's the brief version versus the year-by-year version.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Yeah, fantastic. You were recently inducted into the Hall of Fame at the recent conference in Denver. Share a little bit more about that and what it meant to you.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Well, I appreciate that. Now you're gonna ask me to talk about myself, which we all like to be recognized. I don't know that I want to want to do all of that, but yes, I will say it was it was an incredible honor. I've been at the firm for 25 years, and the firm has a recognition process to acknowledge leaders. I've spent most of my career in leadership. They have a recognition process to acknowledge leaders who've made an impact and it and our top advisors who've made an impact. And after enough years of of achievement and good performance over consistency, there's a process where uh they may in fact induct you into the company's hall of fame. And the firm was so generous to me uh earlier this year, they let me bring, you know, let me bring my family and and and really make it a real honor for me. So it was it was really quite a treat.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

In in your career, you've gone from being starting out as an advisor and your role has switched. Who have been some of the from a leadership perspective, who have been some of the influences you've had? I mean, like any, is there any books or thought leaders that that kind of have inspired you along the way that stand out to you?

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. So, I mean, there's a lot. Yeah. So he doesn't always have the cleanest language, but as someone who I think shows just incredible perseverance and stick-to-it-ness and a great mental toughness, I've been really inspired by David Goggins over the years. I like to listen to his motivation and he gets me pumped up. But most of my inspirations have come from people that I I genuinely know, you know, mentors that I've had a chance to work with and people that have, you know, poured into me, many of whom I've met either directly at AmeriPrize or I met through introduction as they came in to speak or coach or consult at AmeriPrize. Um, you know, I've been fortunate to be mentored directly by people like Doug Lennick, who many of your listening audience would probably know, people like Ray Kelly. I've had great leaders inside of our firm that have been like my actual direct bosses, so to speak. And, you know, one in particular is a friend of mine. His name's Hector Picard. I'll tell you a quick story about how I met Hector and why I draw inspiration from him. I don't do it anymore, but for about 15 years, I competed in triathlons. And on this one particular morning, standing on the beach, waiting to get into the ocean, I hear a voice from behind me and he says, Excuse me, would you help me put my swim cap on? And I turn around, meeting Hector for the first time. He's become a friend of mine now. I turn around to see a gentleman asking me to put his swim cap on who has no arms. Paul, we're about to get in the ocean to swim a couple of miles, then to bike, and then to run, and he doesn't have any arms. Hector was an electrical worker in the 90s and out on a job. He had an accident where he was electrocuted and set on fire. And when he woke up from a month-long coma, his right arm was amputated at the shoulder and his left arm was amputated at the elbow. And his wife left him. He's now since remarried to a wonderful woman, has a wonderful family. But he had like this unbelievable tragedy in his life where he went from an able-bodied person who lost his arms, he lost his career, he lost his wife. And I draw inspiration from people like that because anytime I think, man, I'm having a really tough day today, and I'm a little bit down on my luck, I go, wait a minute. Um, there are people that have overcome and dealt with a lot more, and the problems I'm facing are not really that big of a deal, you know?

SPEAKER_00 8:33

Yeah.

Recruiting As Consultative Due Diligence

SPEAKER_00 8:34

So tell me a little bit more about that leadership role today. What's a day in your life look like in terms of is it mainly overseeing people internally, different leaders, or is it working with potential teams outside, recruiting, is it speaking? What does a day in the life look like or a week in the life look like for you today?

SPEAKER_01 8:51

It's interesting. This week, as I think about what happened in my business life this week, which was a really productive, fun, exciting week. Uh it was a variety show. I did a lot of things and a lot with a lot of different groups across the company and a few things in the industry. But, you know, as the head of experienced financial advisor recruiting for the organization, I would say that the primary focus of my work is leading my team. I've got about a hundred people in my organization whose primary focus is helping financial advisors at other companies who may be thinking about making a change in partnership and they are effectively entering or they're in the midst of the due diligence phase of thinking about is the partner I'm with right now the right partner for my business, both today and where it's going in the future? Or do I need a different partnership? And so we're helping to showcase what makes our company potentially relevant for them and helping them think about and even coach them on how to conduct due diligence. So on occasion, the reason I said it's a it's a bit of a variety each week, given the senior role that I'm in, there are a variety of things that I do within the industry. Speaking on a podcast like yours is a great opportunity for me to talk to somebody that's not at our company and who has listeners that are not at our company. And I've been invited to speak at different industry events and share my perspective, not only on our firm, but I'm just, you know, thought leadership on you know where I think the business is headed. There's a lot of interesting topics today with the emergence of private equity and AI coming into the world and all these types of things. So I try to share my perspective and a little bit of the firm's perspective on things like that too.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Yeah. Help me understand better the role of a recruiter. And I say that just because I don't have as much visibility or experience talking to people from the recruiting angle. And so I understand everything that you said, but I guess you're overseeing recruiters, you're leading them. What is it that they're doing day to day in order to create opportunities or to stand out or to interest people? Is this more people are reaching out from the recruiter that you oversee? What does their role look like? And from that, based on your experience, how do you mentor, coach, them so that they can do their job the best?

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Yeah, I really appreciate the question because I I think a lot of your audience who may be financial advisors would probably appreciate that their role by many is misunderstood, right? If you look at some of maybe the negative connotations in our business, you know, sometimes financial advisors have a perception or reputation is oh, they just want to sell something to the client or they just want to do something that's in their best interest. But my experience for 25 years, Paul, I bet you yours is the same, is that the far, far, far majority of advisors I've interacted with, their heart is in the right place, their integrity is in the right place. And while they're to make a living for themselves and their family, they are really doing 99.99% of the time in my experience is what is truly in the best interest of the client. I say that first to then pivot to your question about recruiting is I think the word recruiting or the word profession recruiter can sometimes carry that same assumed negative connotation, which is Brian just wants to tell me a lot of things that I might want to hear. Some of them may not even be true because he's motivated or paid or incentivized to recruit me. My experience has been at our organization that 99.99% of the time, yes, someone may be making their profession as a recruiter, trying to help attract someone to the organization. But what makes a really good recruiter is the ability to have a conversation with an advisor and meet them where they are, understand what their business looks like today, what their business plan is for the next three, five, and 10 years. And if that advisor is not feeling particularly supported or particularly happy with the current partnership, or maybe particularly confident that they have the right resources to accomplish their business plan, a good recruiter should be consulting them to see if there is a better fit and a better opportunity, not selling them and certainly not telling them lots of things that they just might want to hear to make it sound like, oh, there's perfection over here in our organization and lots of imperfection where you are. My my experience, Paul has also told me that there is no perfect firm or perfect fit in the industry. Every firm's doing a lot of things well. Some have more things that they do well than others, and everybody's got something that they could probably do better. And so what my role is with the with the recruiting team is to really teach them how to be good consultants, how to ask good questions. And then when somebody is willing to listen to what the opportunity is at our firm, how to be able to showcase that. It's really, really similar to I think the consultative approach that most advisors use, which is let's find out first what your needs are, Mr. and Mrs. Client. Then I can explain how my team and I work and we can see if this is actually a good fit.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

What initiates the conversation? Is this outbound activities that you guys do? Do people come to you? How does the conversation get started between one of your recruiters and a and a advisor?

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Yeah, but I would say that this is probably true across the industry, not just from our experience here at our firm, is that there's a multitude of ways that a conversation gets started between a financial advisor and a recruiter. A lot of it is outbound outreach to that financial advisor to ask them if they'd be open to a conversation to learn more about a different partnership. To ask, are you feeling completely happy and satisfied with the nature of your partnership today? But when it's not that type of activity that leads to a conversation, sometimes, like any good business, word of mouth and referrals are a big, big way we get started in conversations. If someone has joined us from another organization and now they're talking to people that they used to work with or used to know at another firm and about how happy they are and how this has helped change their team, their life, their clients, sometimes that phone call comes inbound to us that says, Hey, Paul, my name's Brian Mora, and you don't know me, but a friend of mine joined your firm six or twelve or twenty-four months ago and has had wonderful things to say. And here's kind of what's going on with me and my life. And I think I might like to have a conversation with you.

Prospecting Channels And Timing Lessons

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Yeah. In today's world, in terms of just, you know, communication, right? So I know for myself, and I think this is probably everyone, I don't answer my phone unless I know who it is. And I want to talk to them, right? So there's it's not just I know it is, it's I it's I know it is, and I want to talk to, let alone someone that's trying to call me who I don't know who they had. And this is pure curiosity. And so in this case, reaching out, calling, what do you find or what does your team find is the most effective to actually establish communication?

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Yeah, it's a good question. So I would say that every mode of communication that exists in our world today has some level of effectiveness and some level of ineffectiveness in in recruiting. And recruiting at its core is prospecting. So I draw lots of parallels. I've already done it a couple of times and I'll continue to do it. There are a lot of parallels to meeting a great financial advisor to try to bring them to your organization, as there are trying to meet your next great client if you're a financial advisor building a practice or who's already built a practice. Yeah, you're right. 25 years ago, this is where I'll date myself. 25 years ago, I built my practice sitting in a cubicle, cold calling pretty much out of the phone book. Even if I wanted to do that activity again, which by the way, Paul, I don't want to do that activity again. Even if I wanted to do that activity again, I think we all know the likelihood of success with that would be incredibly low because of what you mentioned. People don't even have landlines at home anymore, or if they're using their cell phone, they they screen out spam calls and don't answer if they don't have the number plugged into their phone. So we still do make a number of phone calls to advisors, but they're typically for purposes of being able to leave a voicemail and introduce yourself as a human being, as a local leader in the marketplace. So phone calls can be effective, even though, Paul, to your point, you may not answer and say, This is Paul, who's calling? Just the nature of being able to leave you a voicemail can be effective. Text messaging is obviously very effective. We do that in all of our personal lives in the spirit of ease of communication, use of social media, you know, communicating with somebody and leaving them a message in their LinkedIn that's you know non-threatening. It says, if you're open to a conversation, would love to be able to meet and know who you are. So it's not any one of those communication modes that is kind of the you know the silver bullet answer to everything. But believe it or not, the last one that I would mention that still has a level of impact is snail mail. You know, there was one point in the industry I had I used to hear the philosophy if you mail, you fail. Believe it or not, sometimes things come full circle where, you know, because everybody's using texting and everybody's using emailing and everybody's, you know, trying to spam call you. Sometimes if you send something personalized and meaningful in the mail, people will actually open it and look at it and read it and say, wow, what Brian sent me actually makes some sense and maybe I should have a conversation with him.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

It's interesting. It's the best technology in 2026 to actually get someone's attention, to your point, can be snail mail. I I was at the Denver Ameri Prize National Conference as you were, and I was at a booth and I had my book there on the table, and that's it's called the Short Book Formula, and several people came by and they said, Oh, I've I've seen that book, right? I have that book. I'm like, really, okay, so you know, how'd you get it? And they're like, it came in the mail. I'm like, okay, yeah. So, you know, at some point in the past, I probably send it. But it was so fascinating because, you know, you know, on one level, you know, technically I'm sending what could be considered junk mail, right? Because it was unsolicited mail that I'm sending to them. But they like had these vivid memories of it. It's like, no, I got the book and there was this great letter in it, and I have the book on my bookshelf, and I gave it to one of my team members, and we took the ideas, and it was like, wow, you know, it's like to your point, I mean, it's counterintuitive, but you know, putting something in the mail and physical and getting to someone today probably has more impact because it's so rare.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

First of all, I love that story because one of the things that I think is so challenging for financial advisors, for recruiters, for anybody, even if we disconnect from our industry, anybody that's building a business that's in marketing or it's in sales, they may be trying a lot of different things from an effort perspective. And sometimes the thing that actually is making an impact on someone, it's not showing up for you immediately. And so you don't know it. I mean, we have examples. We had a specific financial advisor who called us back and we looked in our database to see how many times we had left that advisor a voicemail over many, many, many years. And over many years, we had actually left him 16 different voicemails. And I mentioned the many years because I don't want you to think that we believe an effective technique would be to call somebody 16 times in a week or in a month, but 16 times over five or six years, checking in once a quarter to say, hey, Paul, just letting you know we're here and you know, we're we'd love to meet you if there's ever an opportunity. And what he what this particular advisor said when he called back is he said, I just want you to know I heard every voicemail you left and I was listening the whole time. I happen to be ready now, and so let's have a conversation. And so I think that's a powerful learning lesson, not just in recruiting, but in any form of marketing. You may be making efforts to acquire the ideal prospect for your practice, this prospect that you just know would be a mate an amazing fit in your practice, but they're very busy and very successful. And you just wonder, did the text I sent or the email I sent or the gift that I sent, did it make an impact? People are probably listening. They just may not be ready right now.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

So that's a perfect segue. It's it's timing, right? In the roles that any one of us do as an advisor, as a recruiter, and in what I do, it's like, you know, we're looking, okay, how do I get someone interested in what I do today? But to your point, it's, you know, the the circumstances have to show up in their life, or now they're ready to make a change for whatever reason. And then to your point, you know, it's like, oh, you know, this person there on my radar, now it's time to engage.

Triggers For Change In A Practice

SPEAKER_00 20:25

And so I guess the question I have is that what are typically those circumstances that an advisor faces? You know, they've been in the business. I mean, experienced advisor recruiting, they've been in the business, they've had success. And what are those kinds of situations that they're starting to encounter that leads them to now be more receptive or open to considering a change? Because I can imagine that making a change is it's not easy, right? I mean, there's transition costs.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Yeah. So let's establish and confirm that the last point that you made, which is no one would wake up in the morning on a given day and say, you know what would be really fun over the next month or two, uh, moving my entire client base from the firm I'm with or the affiliation I'm with to the to the next affiliation. That is not anyone's idea of signing up for a good time. In fact, I I would say that specifically, the physical aspect of the, you know, the 60 or 90 days of what we call a transition, we've had plenty of people who know they absolutely want and need a different partnership, but it's that the physical aspect of going through the move and contacting each client and getting established at the new firm that can sometimes make them pull back. But the question you asked that is a really good question for the audience to hear and to know and to contemplate for, you know, for themselves is what are the things that typically would make someone say, not even I want to change firms or change affiliation, but I might need to listen and think about and do some due diligence to even determine if that would make sense. Um, there's not a one size fits all of that. I'll attempt to be brief, but I would say the different things that we have seen. Sometimes start at a change within the company or within that advisor circumstance within the company. So these aren't all inclusive examples, but sometimes we've seen an industry right now of consolidation where an advisor is perfectly happy on a Monday, but on a Tuesday, it's been announced that the firm that they're with is going to be sold or acquired or absorbed by a different firm. And that's going to change the entire dynamic of the culture of the organization, the support infrastructure, et cetera. So one thing that could be a triggering event for someone is an actual change in the structure or culture or philosophy of the firm that they've chosen to partner with for their business. And then as you peel that onion a little bit, Paul, sometimes it's not that the company changed, but that the leadership, the human beings that they work with for resources, for advice, for support, they retire, they get promoted, they leave and change, they get fired sometimes. So sometimes the people, or I think of a company, it's really just a collection of human beings. I've I've been at my firm for 25 years. And while I like to think I'm loyal to the firm, like the name and the entity of the company, I think what I've really found the most connectivity to is people. And so sometimes the people change and that creates a different environment for you. But then the last one is how the industry changes and evolves. So let me use just a simple, simple example. The biggest buzzword in the universe today is AI. If you had current partnership at a firm that maybe you were thrilled with 10 or 15 years ago, but today you don't see them at the cutting edge of making meaningful investments to advance the technology, to create efficiency for you and for your clients to be integrated, to be seamless, to use AI not in a way that would replace you as an advisor, but in a way that would enable you to spend more time with your clients and grow your business more. That could be a triggering event where you say, wow, the firm was great 10 years ago, but they haven't skated where the puck is going or where it headed to. And that might be a reason for me to look around. Again, I can go on. There's probably five or six other things that your audience, if any of them, have ever changed that say, well, Brian, those are good points, but that's not why I made a change. It was because of this reason. But I think I'll maybe, yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

No, I was gonna say, I think this is great. Tell me more scenarios. I think AI is definitely one we can dig deeper on it, but what are some of those other common ones that you see?

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Yeah, I think a couple of additional ones would be as either the advisor, the complexion of their team, or just the nature of the industry has evolved, they may have different needs from a teaming perspective. You might have someone who has spent many years as a solo practitioner and now they're saying, I need or want to build a team in order to scale my business. And I may not have the right partnership in order to help me do that. I may need help finding the team members and onboarding and training and licensing or getting money to bring them on. And not every firm offers the same infrastructure and support. I also find that as advisors get closer to the end of their career, they may have been in the perfect spot while they were building and running their business. And then all of a sudden they realize wait a minute, I've spent 30 years helping people plan for their financial future, including retirement. I don't have a great plan for mine. And we've had a lot of people say, you know, 10 years ago, I might not have looked at coming to your firm just to run my business, but I really need to come today because I've got two years left or five years left, and I need a more supported infrastructure to plan my exit and to plan for great succession for my clients. So that whole team dynamic of what people you need, I kind of think of it, Paul, as up and down the ladder. I may be, I'm making up ages now. I may be 50 and thinking, I need to hire a 25-year-old as an associate advisor to scale my business and I need help with that. I might be 75 and thinking I need to find a younger person to be my successor. And there's lots of other scenarios, but that teaming dynamic is incredibly, incredibly difficult. Most financial advisors did not become a financial advisor to then become an HR department, a hirer of people, an onboarding of people, a trainer of people. And it's a totally different skill set that sometimes is best outsourced to the broker dealer you're partnering with if they have competency in that area. Most advisors, many of them have acquired amazing business ownership skills, but that's not the actual reason they became a financial advisor.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Help me understand from this lens. So I guess from my perspective, there's three broad camps: there's warehouses, there's independent broker dealers, and then there's RIAs. And I would say that you're in the independent broker dealer space. Are you finding that more people are transitioning from the wirehouse to you, from the RIA to you, or within the independent broker dealer space?

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Yeah, so it's interesting. I I think there's a variety of studies on this in the industry, and I think the majority of them conclude. I'm gonna hit just the headline on what I think they conclude is that there are more people joining the independent space, whether supported independence, where there's an infrastructure to help you be independent, or the far outreach of independence where it's like, you know what, you're totally on your own to figure all of this out, and you may enjoy some better margins on the business, but you also have a lot more work and a lot more risk and responsibility. But what's really interesting about the W-2 space, which our firm does have a wonderful W-2 branch system across the country, there are a number of advisors today who are in the W-2 space that really, really love that space because they still can be an entrepreneur, right? No one is setting their calendars, you know, setting their schedule, forcing them on what products to sell. So they're still an entrepreneur with their clients, but somebody else is taking care of the entire burden of real estate, administrative staff, payroll, HR, you know, retirement benefits, the whole gamut. And so we have a number of people, if you were asking me directly, when you see someone join your firm, where are they joining? We have a lot of people that are moving from a W-2 capacity and remaining W-2. Believe it or not, Paul, there's a small segment of the industry that is moving from the independent space into the W-2 space because they say thematically, it's been great being an independent business owner for the last 25 or 30 years. Now, in the final phase of my career, I just want to run my practice. I don't want to run the business anymore. It's almost like they've run out of steam and energy in running the business. And so they say, wow, I like your firm. And believe it or not, I'd like to actually be a W-2. I haven't been that way for 25 years, but I want to be in that space today because I can still be an entrepreneur and I can be supported. But yes, I would say that if I look at the math, 60 to 70% of the math says advisors are moving from either independent to independent. They're looking for different partnerships in the independent space, or they are part of the breakaway groups that are leaving regional firms and wirehouses and banks that are W-2 and looking to become independent.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

I have one client, his name is Marcus Rivera, and he was in the RIA space, and he recently moved to AmeriPrize, and I asked him, you know, based on what I do in terms of marketing, there's generally speaking a little bit more freedom when you're an RIA, right? And so everyone has, you know, compliance and restrictions. And so just from my point of view, oftentimes the RIA provides a little bit more flexibility for people. And so when he said that he was an RIA, but he decided to move to the independent broker dealer channel, I was like, tell me why. And specifically, what he's what he told me was that part of his growth strategy is that he wants to do more requisitions and that AmeriPrize had a really good track record program, what have you, for helping him support his growth. And so I thought that was fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Yeah. So if you think about the average age in the industry today of an advisor, in the the scheme of life, it's not old, but given how successful advisors are in our industry, it gets to an age where people say, I may choose

Independence Choices And Acquisition Support

SPEAKER_01 30:06

to do something else. So it's the late 50s today, right? Depending on which study you read, they say the average age of an advisor is 57 or 58. And there's been a there's already been, Paul, a tremendous amount of industry consolidation. What I think is really one of the most interesting questions to examine in your partnership with your RIA, with your broker dealer, is not the question of am I permitted to merge or acquire other practices? Because I can give you an enormous list of places you're allowed to merge or acquire practices. The better question is, can you demonstrate to me how you help your advisors do that? That's what real partnership is to me. I don't want to just be permitted. If I'm like Marcus and I'm young and I say I've got a 30 or 40 year runway in front of me in this business, and the way I think about growing it is not just organically with referrals and client events, but I want to be able to every few years find the right advisor that aligns to my values and it is going to look to me to be the acquirer of their business. You need more than a platform that says, sure, Marcus, good luck out there, go build the practice and acquire and merge. You need someone that could demonstrate to you that they have a process for helping you find these opportunities. So when I think about what does help look like, do you have partnership to help find these opportunities? Then the second piece is conducting due diligence on these opportunities because just because a practice is available to buy doesn't mean that you should buy it. It may not be the right fit for you, your values, your clients, your staff. And then the third and final component is all the economic things and all the window dressing related to economics, the contracts, et cetera. Do you have somebody that can give you guidance on what would be reasonable to pay, they can help you fund it and finance it, they can help you bring it on to your book of business. And so that's, I mean, that's an enormous, enormous topic. And I think it's a really important one for advisors that want to grow via that strategy that really examine what type of partnership do you need to make that happen.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Another client example is John Cutten. And and so I'm gonna have you share with the audience who is John Cutton from your perspective.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Yeah. What's if our friend John is listening, besides a fellow, a fellow bald guy like you and me, Paul.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

So I have to share this. When I met John Cutten, it's been about three or four years now. I I I had hair, but I joke with him. It's like, you know, Tony Robbins says that success leaves clues, and I'm looking at John and I'm like, okay, what is it about John that makes him so successful? And you know, just one day it hit me. It's like it I think this might be it. And so I shave my head and the rest is history.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

I hope your audience will appreciate the joke. If we're cutting this, just send him the clip that says, Who is John Cutton? He's a ball guy. That's it. Um, John Cutton, besides being a colleague of mine here at the firm, he's also a friend of John and his team, Cut and Wealth Management, which are a nationwide organization here at AmeriPrize Financial. John personally lives in Long Island, and the team Cut and Wealth Management was founded in Long Island, but they have a multi-state presence across the United States, more than 100 members of his organization. He is the largest team at AmeriPrize from a production perspective. And that's, of course, only one measure of someone's relevance in the industry. John himself personally is a mentor and coach to advisors and business owners at our firm. And he's frequently invited to things that are external to the industry. Your podcast being an example, Barron's conferences, Forbes conferences to actually speak and share his perspective. So I would say, you know, at Ameraprize, one of the many titles and measures he carries is the firm's top team and top producer. But from an industry perspective, I would say that he is a thought leader, a leader to people, and an innovator and an influencer.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Now, I do need to add to this story. I've helped him write a book a couple of years ago, and I'm in the process of helping him write a second book. And this is really, I would call more of a recruiting book, right? So it's a it's aimed at financial advisors. And but I can't help but share this. One of the stories that I've learned about John, you know, is like he's, you know, enormously successful today, obviously. But he was turned down by Miraprice when he first started. He said, he said that they they turned him down because he didn't have sales experience and he had to go get a part-time job at the gap to, you know, to fill in his sales experience. And he came back and he was able to get into the organization. But you know, it's like, how do you go from that to where he's at today? It's just it's hysterical.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

That's amazing. I mean, you wonder, right? How many people, all kidding aside, you really do wonder how many people that are highly, highly, highly successful had something that happened somewhere along the way in their life that created a chip on their shoulder. I was having lunch this week with an advisor who's at another company who happens to be joining our firm. I mean, that's not really the point of the story, but what he was telling me was sort of his journey to success. And he took me all the way back to, so he's not from America originally. He came here speaking very little English, and he kind of told me a few stories about how he was treated by teachers and by his school as he was learning to speak English. He graduated number one in his class out of 400 students and was not permitted to give the like the keynote commencement speech as valedictorian because of his language barrier. And, you know, I just had a few choice words that I won't say on your podcast about how I felt in terms of how ridiculous and how awful that was. But the point is, you look back and say, now you see him, and he's he's been in the business almost 30 years, he's in his mid-50s, a multi-million dollar producer. You know, that fire that lives within him to do a great job for clients and to build an amazing business was that the spark for that fire was actually set by someone underestimating him or not giving him the respect for his hard work many, many, many years ago. It's really kind of interesting, you know, when you look at that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

I don't have as much experience talking to someone strictly from a recruitment standpoint, but what I do have is a lot of I I know John Cunn very well. Again, I'm I'm ghostwriting his book, you know, that's really aimed at building out the Cun Wealth Management brands as a recruitment tool, mergers and acquisition tool, et cetera. Um, and so I so I really understand it well from his perspective. And some of the things I've I've learned from him and heard from him and seen from him is one, he's a person that believes in the the quote I'm gonna make sure I get it right, is you want to remove discretion at the operating level. And so what he talks about, and one of the reasons that you know he started at Ameritrise has been, you know, very MeritPrize has been good to him. He's you know, he's he's been very successful, and it's that he has told me, and I, you know, he really appreciates the resources and the support that he gets while at the same time he's able to build his own business, entrepreneurship, ownership stake, all those good things. And what that's allowed for him to do is to really, you know, focus what he does in terms of attracting advisors to join KWM, is that he focuses on leadership, he focuses on growth, he focuses on all the things that he's learned over the course of his career, he's uniquely able to provide because he has the platform in place and he doesn't have to make the decisions, such as, I mean, you're talking before about, you know, whether it's the website, whether it's the AI things of that nature, those things are taken care of for him. So just, you know, from whatever perspective you want to go there, I'd love to have you expand

Unique Ability Coaching And Accountability

SPEAKER_00 37:25

on that.

SPEAKER_01 37:25

When you look at the the choices and the decisions that an advisor has to make, when I think about sort of the extreme independent part of the industry where you do have to make some of your own choices, some advisors are incredibly motivated and feel empowerment in being able to, for example, sit down and interview all the different CRM vendors that could exist for your contact management system and interview all the different website design vendors for how to design your website and figure out who's going to run your social media and how to do that. There can be, for some people, a lot of empowerment in that. And then for other people, they can feel like, well, that's not really a great core use of my skill. I think about, you know, the coaching model strategic coach asks the fundamental question, you know, what is your unique ability? And I've always told people over time, I happen to be a pretty decent writer. So as a result, I could sit around all day writing the emails that come out of the company or come out of the organization, but is that actually my unique ability? Is it the thing that I am the best at that nobody else can do? And the answer to the second part of the question is the most important. I might be really good at it. I might even be the best at it. But other people could do that thing. There are some things in my skill set that I can't delegate that other people shouldn't or couldn't do. How do I spend more of my time on that? And so when I think about stories you share like John, he's not saying, hey, Paul, I'm too dumb to figure out the technology I should use. He's a really, really bright guy. He can figure that out. He's not saying, you know, I'm not smart enough to figure out my CRM system or my website design. Again, really, really smart guy with a lot of smart people around him. They can figure out all of those things. I think what he's saying, and what a lot of other successful people say is, what are the things that I should let other people take care of for me that allow me to spend time where I want to spend time, use my talents in the best place that I should be using my talents and actually have the most fun? Our industry is a really, really fun industry. I find sometimes I'm talking to an advisor and like the lights have been turned out a little bit for them. And it's because they're spending a lot of time doing something that they don't want to do. And so then a good consultant should figure out how we can get you doing more of what you want to do? Is that actually working with more clients? Is that leading and developing your team so that they can flourish? Like, what is it that would actually bring spark and interest and energy and fun back into this for you? And how do we get you away from the things that either you're not good at at all, or even if you're good at them, they're a really, really bad use of your time.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

I want to go in from that angle. I'll give another example, just top of mind. But do you know Mark Rasner?

SPEAKER_01 39:58

Oh yeah, yeah, no, I know Mark, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

So Mark's a client of mine, and he is a very successful guy. I think he's mid to late 50s and has his own practice, and at some point in the past couple of years decided to move his practice to become part of KWM. And I know Mark very well at this point. And it's like, what are the reasons to do that? And it's really, in his case, it was, I think it's seeing, wanting to get to that next level that sometimes on our own, however successful we've been, we become, you know, we're the product of the five people we spend the most time with, right? And so that's the famous quote out there. And so, you know, to get to that next level, you have to be around the people that are operating at that higher level. And so that was the reason that he decided to do what he did. And so I'd love to hear from your perspective, because I know leadership is is key to what you do. And I would imagine that for a lot of people that have been successful throughout their career, but you know, are hungry or or would be hungry if they saw the opportunity to get to that next level, but they don't necessarily know on their own how to do it. How can I actually go to work where I'm actually now re-inspired to, you know, put the put my best in because now I'm motivated, because I'm building something bigger, I have a bigger vision for what I want to do. I mean, I think, you know, not to get too much on a rant here, but you know, I think Elon Musk is like really good about setting a vision for the future and then inspiring people to rally around that vision. And, you know, I think it's motivating for a lot of people to be able to have that. Because I mean, you know, life is short, we need purpose, and you know, that was a lot, but you know, you want to jump in.

SPEAKER_01 41:29

It's it it it's it's not it's not a lot in a bad way, it's a lot in a really good way. And and so I think a few things that I think about related to what you said. The first is one of the philosophies that I subscribe to in life is that you if you always do what you've always done, you always get what you've always got. And and Paul, that that can work for better or for worse. So as an example, if you if you always get a good night's rest and you make good decisions about what you eat and going to the gym, you're most likely going to be in better health than than in poor health, right? So if you always do what you've always done, you always get what you've always got. Really, really, really good habits will result in long-term sustained, really good things. But sometimes in situations that have evolution to them, like the like the business world, if you always do what you've always done, sometimes you hit a plateau and you can't get to the proverbial next level because there are different things, different angles of the axe, different strategies, different resources you would need to take things off the top and to go to the next level. And while a lot of people can sometimes figure that out alone, most of the time for somebody to get to that proverbial next level with whatever it is. Usually when people say the phrase next level, I think they usually are defining that related to production. Like in order for me to go from a $1 million producer to the next level to a $2 million producer, I need to do X, Y, or Z. That's not really what I mean when I say next level. The next level could be your effectiveness, your impact. If you're leading a team of people, how do you become more effective in leading that team of people? Well, if I always lead the same way that I've always led, and I don't learn from anyone new, I don't pick up a nugget here or a philosophy there or a technique here, I'm always going to get the exact same result that I've always gotten. And so I think what's really interesting is some of the names that we are mentioning are amongst the most highly successful in the industry. And yes, they're really smart people and they're really hardworking people, but one of the things that they have in common is that they seek outside, proactively seek outside perspective. They hire coaches and consultants and they ask for accountability. Accountability is such an interestingly sort of negative word, but the more I've grown in my career, the more I have found out I actually do want some accountability. Now, let's be clear I don't want a manager or a boss following me around by the hour saying, Paul, what did you do in the last hour? Right. I I there's a difference. Difference between micromanagement suffocation and accountability. Accountability means I've had the chance to tell someone, hey, Paul, this is really, really important to me and I really, really want to achieve it. But there are some things that could get in my way, either my skills, my time, my motivation. Paul, would you help me stay on track? I'm giving you permission to keep me on track to what it is that I'm trying to accomplish.

SPEAKER_00 44:28

So there's, correct me if I'm wrong, there's roughly 10,000 advisors at AmeriPris, and you work with many, if not most, many successful teams, either directly or indirectly, and you help them to grow. So when it comes to successful teams, whether it's John Cutton or some of the many other teams that you work with, what is your role and what does it take for them to be successful in either recruiting the best talent from outside or whether it's growing through acquisitions? I love your perspective on what you're seeing on the ground working with the best teams to help them grow their practices in that way.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

Yeah,

Value Proposition For Recruiting Great Advisors

SPEAKER_01 45:05

I love this question. So the first thing that I would say is recruiting is not hiring. Let me explain what I mean by that. If I had a desire to have a marketing coordinator on my team, or I needed a new front desk receptionist and an administrative assistant, I might write a job description for that role, post that job maybe on some of the job boards, or circulate the job description to people that I know. I would intake some resumes and I would interview people and ask them all types of interview questions about their experience and their personality and their strengths and weaknesses, et cetera. Recruiting requires a true value proposition and a bit of consultative selling to that individual about why they would want to be part of your team. So, Paul, when I examine your question, and you're right, there are not just at our firm, but across the industry, your listening audience, there are a lot of really, really successful teams in our industry that have a desire to grow by adding other experienced and established advisors to their team, or by buying the practice now or in the future of an advisor that may retire now or in the future. The ones that are really, really good at this understand the parallel between what made them good at acquiring clients in their practice will also make them good at attracting financial advisors and acquisition opportunities. And it's this main point. You must have a value proposition and you must be able to articulate that value proposition. So just like if there was a high net worth client that said, I'm interviewing financial advisors and I'm talking to you, Paul, and I'm going to talk to one or two other opportunities in the community, you better have a great value proposition, be able to articulate that and make your compelling case to the client as to why they would want to move their portfolio and their financial life to you. The same thing is true. So when I examine the teams that are winning in this space, in our case here at AmeriPrize, they not only partner with me as the head of recruiting and my team that can help describe the AmeriPrize company resources. I think that's a big part of winning and recruiting, is there has to be a great value proposition from the firm to the advisors. So they not only partner with our firm and lean on my team to be able to describe the strength and stability of the firm, how the brand can help elevate, getting you clients, how we support you with teachings and trainings and resources, but they themselves are really clear on if you join my team, Mora and McManus, the greatest team that's ever existed in the industry, right? If you join MM, if you join our team, here's how we support your growth and development. Here's how we help you accomplish your goals, here's how we help you grow. If you're going to exit the business one day, here's how we protect you and your clients if and when you want to exit. And whatever else is important to that prospective advisor, they they have a great ability to articulate it. Some of them have gotten so good at it that they have really formalized it into like an experience where you can visit their office, meet their team, see almost a PowerPoint showcase, like a due diligence meeting of hey, if you want to join Eminem, come into the boardroom and we're gonna take you through our team, our resources, how we do things, how we help you. And they really put on quite a show that's very, very impressive.

SPEAKER_00 48:23

It reminds me, I think it was Netflix. There was a series or a movie on recently, and it was talking about different shoe companies, Nike, Adidas, et cetera, and what they had to do to recruit Michael Jordan.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

And so Oh, it's yeah, the movie, the movie Air, I think, right?

SPEAKER_00 48:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you're describing this, this gives me, you know, just that was the first picture that entered my mind and how they really had to compete to get the best of the best, right? And so, I mean, you know, for whatever you can share, I'd love to have you share some concrete examples. And so, as you said, there's the Mare Prize value proposition, but then there's the individual team value proposition. So, what is an example or examples of what those value propositions are that they're able to communicate effectively to bring in the Michael Jordans of the industry to join them?

SPEAKER_01 49:11

So, so a typical advisor, in my experience, would be motivated to join your team or make a change if you're gonna help them solve for one of the four or five most common pain points or interest points that matter to advisors. And these are in no particular order, but we have many advisors in the industry that are great advisors. I mean, they're amazing with their clients, but they really don't have the gift of growth. They don't know how to market and get new clients. So, some of those advisors that you would attract, you might attract them by being able to demonstrate that you would unlock growth for them to help them continue to do what they do well every day, which is serve clients, but you would be able to help them market and get clients in a way that they're not getting it today. That's number one. Number two, some advisors are not getting the appropriate amount of operation and administrative support, and they're spending a ton of their time not with their clients, but doing paperwork and chasing down operational things, and they may not even be talented at it, and it definitely takes them away from their clients. So your ability to demonstrate how you could help them spend more time doing the thing that matters to them, which is seeing and serving their clients. The third typically has to do with how the client is served. I'll give you a couple of examples. I've seen someone articulate and say, you know what, Paul, I'm pretty good at investment management, but I'm not really that good at financial planning and insurance and estate planning. Paul, do you have like a structure in your team that could help me serve my client better and actually do some planning, do some estate planning, do some tax planning? Because right now I'm sort of a one-trick pony. I just manage money. I'm pretty good at it, but I know that I'm not really doing the best thing for my client, and I could use some help with that. And then the last one has to do with like succession planning. There, I mentioned this earlier in our conversation. There are a lot of advisors that are solo practitioners, and that really was no problem for them for 10, 20, 30 years. But now they're starting to see the light at the end of their career tunnel, and they say, I better get into a position or a situation where I still want to work, fill in the number of years. I want to work three more years, five more years, 10 more years. But if something happens to me in the next three to five years, I need something for my family and my clients. And even hopefully, even if nothing happens bad to me, I want to retire in five years. I've got to get my clients and my team in a position. So you may not have to, as I speak to your audience, you may not have to articulate great value in all of those areas. But if if you're going to successfully bring a particular advisor onto the team, if they care about one or more of those things, if you can't demonstrate how you're going to help them with that, you're probably not going to be successful in adding that person to your organization. And you may be even confused why. My answer and experience tells me don't be confused. You probably didn't help them understand how you would close that gap for them.

Digital Presence Events And Referral Experience

SPEAKER_00 52:11

What are you saying in terms of growth? I would imagine that a lot of people are interested in growth, of course. And when they see a better way to grow, that would be attractive. Just from your macro view of working with all these different companies and having the view that you have, what are the best teams doing when it comes to growth?

SPEAKER_01 52:27

Yeah. So what's really funny is that over 25 years, there haven't been, in my career, that is, 25 years, there haven't been a lot of brand new marketing strategies that have emerged. However, one that is different than 25 years ago that is incredibly, incredibly important, is what I call the storefront to your business and to your practice, which is your website profile and what people can see online when they decide to look at you from a social media perspective, LinkedIn, professional Facebook, professional Instagram, and of course your website. And so, as much as everybody knows, oh, yeah, the internet matters, Google matters, now, you know, AI functions like chat and claud matter, there still is a level of talent and time that needs to be invested to create that incredible storefront and have a differentiated website to have consistently relevant content that's on the internet so that when someone looks you up, which is they're going to do before they do business with you. Um, so I find the best teams have actually invested in the infrastructure and we do a lot as a company to help the advisors make that easy, to have a really compelling online footprint from website to social media to videos to pictures. That's one that really, really matters a ton. The second is events. And what's interesting about events is I I'm not confessing here a new strategy in the industry, but one of the things that the best teams do that makes them an attractive destination for recruits is they actually help these events get executed. The typical financial advisor is not an event planner. So if you look at their skill set, what they've grown up and what they've been accustomed to doing, they're not used to calling a venue like a winery and booking the logistics and inviting their clients and inviting prospects. The best teams put the financial advisors in a position to have somebody on that team to execute events and just allow the advisor to show up and be able to be their best self at those events. And all of that leads into how do you have an incredible experience for clients in the practice that makes them more likely to refer to you. One thing that definitely has not changed is that the number one way a new client wants to find their new financial advisor is via referral. And it's the same way that an advisor would like to get their newest client. Teams are really working hard to elevate the client experience and do recognition things for clients on their birthdays and their anniversaries and their work retirements. Um, we've started a whole philosophy across the firm, you know, called retirement celebrations, where we make sure any client who's having a retirement, we throw their retirement party for them and let them invite their friends and family, and and we're there to celebrate them retiring. And that's a great way to meet everybody that's in someone's network. And so it's things like that, Paul.

SPEAKER_00 55:15

Fantastic. I would underscore from my my vantage point the increased necessity of your digital footprint. And before it was important, today I think it's 10 times more important. And I think probably most people today can or experience this at some level. It's when you go to find any service, information, etc. What do we increasingly do? And it's we go to Google, which we always did, but now they have the AI overviews and it's a summary of what it is. Increasingly, we go to ChatGPT or similar tools. And I think that's only accelerating. And increasingly, I find that you know, I want to talk about referrals for a second. I think referrals are have always been important and will continue to be important, with the one caveat that there was a study by a company called Wealth Tender that helps advisors with online reviews and things of that nature. And one of the things that they cited in their study was that 96% of people, even when given a referral, the first thing they're gonna do is they're gonna go look you up online, right? And so what they find online needs to, you know, needs to match the referral, it needs to tell a compelling story, it needs to show the value that you bring, differentiate yourself so that the person being referred doesn't go into to no man's land and you know never makes it to the other side, but they actually take the next step and make the call and do all those good things. So any additional thoughts there are in in terms of the importance of your digital footprint and and how perhaps AmeriPrize is helping to support that?

SPEAKER_01 56:48

The only comment that I would make, it's not an American comment, it's the comment that you may have to separate your personal feelings and beliefs and usage of digital and social from the importance from a business perspective. Like I've had people say to me, Oh, I don't have a Facebook account or an Instagram account. I'm not doing any of that. And I said, Paul, I'm not attempting to convince you to spend your nights and weekends scrolling through Facebook and Instagram in your personal time, but your business has to have a presence with a great website and a professional Facebook page and relevancy on LinkedIn and things like that. And so I think most people over the last many years have come around to that understanding. But for anybody that might be listening, it's really not a debate about what you should or shouldn't be doing in your personal time. Your personal time and personal life is yours. But for your business to be relevant today, anybody doing business with you is going to look to see what the footprint is online. And if it's very limited or nothing, that tends to lead people to not do any business with you. And I would sort of compare that or equate that to this might be a silly analogy. If you were going to take a trip someplace and you couldn't find any information on the internet about it, would you book a hotel and a flight to go there and say, I'm just gonna show up in this other part of the world and hope that it works out? No, you're gonna be well researched and see pictures and read reviews and go, Paul, we're flying halfway around the world and we feel pretty confident it's gonna be an awesome experience.

SPEAKER_00 58:14

Yeah, just to kind of bring it full circle to some of the things we've been talking about in terms of initially we talked, I asked about how to effectively get a hold of someone and just how you and I got introduced, it was through it was through text. And it was, I believe it was through text. It was through uh it was through a warm introduction. And of course, and you probably have some version of this, but what I did is that okay, I I went to YouTube and I said, Okay, Brian Mora, and I the very next thing I want to do is I want to, you know, experience someone, hopefully through video, so I can kind of get a sense of their personality, etc. And I found a video of you, you were at an event being interviewed. I'm like, oh, you know, looking forward to to meeting you. But but I knew that in advance of actually meeting you, right?

SPEAKER_01 58:55

Yeah, yeah, 100%. People want to get a sense and they want to feel comfortable and and they want to see that you're a real human being, and and the more that you can actually have out there to build some level of connectivity, you know. I haven't looked in a little while, but I I would want things on there that someone would be able to see that, you know, I'm a father or that I coach youth sports or that I'm a dog lover or a 49ers football fan. And, you know, they might not like the 49ers, maybe they maybe we have sports in common, right?

SPEAKER_00 59:19

You know, like see, as you were sharing that, you know, immediately I heard dog, and I'm like, I'm a dog lover too. Let's talk about dogs. So, in our pre-call, you said something to the fact that you were on a call and there were 10 questions, or there were 12 questions, and 10 of them had to do with some form of recruiting. So expand on that because that that that seems pretty critical. So, your role at AmeriPrize is important, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 59:46

Um I sure, I sure hope so. If you can tell everybody that you could tell my leader and the CEO of the firm, I appreciate you saying that, Paul.

SPEAKER_00 59:53

Your role, what you do, what you support, share what you shared with me in terms of the questions that are coming up and how they're all mission critical and what those are and what you do, et cetera.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:03

I think the the story that I shared was that one particular quarter, which was the third quarter last year, you know, every every public company reports quarterly earnings. When we reported earnings at the end of the third quarter, and our chairman was done with his formal remarks, he took questions from the analysts, and there were about 11 questions asked, and 10 of them were about recruiting. Now, that's not always the case in our industry. The interest from analysts in the street for the firms on recruiting ebbs and flows, but recruiting is really important to firms in the industry. And I do like to think my role is important because there's two fundamental things that that recruiting helps bring to a company. It brings really, really talented advisors. And we're a firm of 10,500 advisors, and the advisors are our clients. For us as senior leaders, they have their clients, but the advisors are our clients. And so when we successfully recruit someone and they choose to bring their their practice to the firm, they become a new client of ours. And that's a that's a really, really big, a big deal. And it helps bring a really talented person and typically a good pillar and steward in their community to our firm. So that's a huge deal. The other thing that it brings, of course, is their clients. It brings their business, their assets, et cetera, and it helps to grow the company. Think of it very similar to as a financial advisor, when they get new clients, they're growing their practice, and that matters. So there's a lot of interest in recruiting across the industry. And it's it's a highly competitive scenario because just like the advisors at our firm are really good people and great practitioners, there's a lot of really other good companies and a lot of other great advisors and practitioners at other firms. And uh every firm kind of tends to want those really talented people. So pretty contested, pretty competitive, you know, not underhanded or dirty or you know, a bloodbath or anything negative like that. But it it is very, very competitive. All the firms are are really interested in trying to attract the best people to them. And so each one of them puts their best foot forward to try to make that happen.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:55

Brian, I've really enjoyed the conversation. And as we wrap up, is there anything that we haven't talked about that would be important for you to share? Um, anything that you'd like someone to know about, whether it's your own story, journey, or Ameraprize more broadly.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:08

Today I think we've we've covered a lot of really valuable ground. Maybe on the next podcast I can learn more about your dog since I know you're a dog lover, but I'll tell you about mine. But but for today, I think we covered it and I really appreciate it. It's been great. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:18

But you know, it's like when you talk about something that's that's so important to me, I mean, we'll need to set aside, you know, three hours, you know, for me to share everything that I want to share about my dogs. Let's do it. Yeah,

Closing Thoughts And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 1:02:28

let's do it. Final question is where can people learn more about you? Where do you hang out online? And for an advisor listening to this that would like to learn more about AmeriPrize, what would be the best next steps for them to learn more?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:42

Yeah, thanks for that question. I I'd love to connect with anybody that's listening that just wants to, you know, be connected in in our community, say hello. I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me, you know, Brian Mora, and obviously business profile is AmeriPrize Financial, but I'd love to connect there. And anybody that wants to learn a little bit more about AmeriPrize, uh certainly we would handle that conversation in a very confidential fashion. You could always send me an email directly from your personal email and we can connect via phone as well. But my email address is Brian.j is in joseph.mora, m-o-r-a at ampf.com. Brian.j dot mora at ampf.com. And I would love to connect with you on LinkedIn. And thanks for that opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:20

Yeah, fantastic. I've enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much. Same here. Thanks, Paul.