About This Episode
Next Mile Episode 132: How Creativity Fuels Better Financial Leadership with Andrew Evans. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.
with Andrew Evans · February 17, 2026
Next Mile Episode 132: How Creativity Fuels Better Financial Leadership with Andrew Evans. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.
Feet compression is a red herring. All right, let's start that. Everybody out there, as soon as your firm says, "Ah, feet compression, leave. [laughter] Just go.
That's nonsense. There is no there. " No, there isn't. What?
They're just blowing money. Hey, I'll come out and say it. They're blowing money. And guess what?
If they're big enough, they can blow the money, right? But a lot of us aren't big enough. We can't just blow money. >> [music] >> Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Next Mile.
I'm your host Kyle Vampelt, co-founder of Milearker. And today I am joined by the evervescent Andrew Evans, uh, who is the CEO and founder of Rosby and all of the affiliated companies underneath. And also for those of you who don't know, but you'll probably find out pretty quickly, he has a bachelor in fine arts and musical theater. Andrew, thanks for joining the show, man.
It's always good to see you. >> Fantastic. And if you don't know, now you know. >> Hamilton reference for those of you.
>> Andrew, I ask everybody the same first question on this podcast. You're not going to be any different. >> Especially, I can't wait to hear this with the musical theater background. So, I've had hundreds of these conversations and I have found everybody has their own unique path to this industry.
Some people's unique path is traditional, following family footsteps. Some people didn't even know this was an industry to get into and they came in the side door. But whether your path is traditional or untraditional, I found everybody has what we call a money moment. It's that moment in your life where the light bulb clicks and you decide this is it.
This is what I want to do. So, for you, what was that money moment that led you to having this conversation with me today? So years ago, yeah. Yes, I do have a bachelor of fine arts in musical theater.
Not only did I perform and really enjoyed that, but then I also worked theater tech and then I worked some of the administration in there, too. And after my summer working for the Roundabout Theater Company in New York, and I was working in the business office and got to see all of these great things that that were going on from a business standpoint in theater. That's when something kind of clicked in my head to say, "Hey, this is really interesting on this side. What can I pursue further from a business standpoint that keeps me in theater?
" Cuz even though I love to sing and dance, like I'm not bad, but I am it just wasn't there for me. Like I wasn't going to do that. So, but I still wanted to be involved. And then over a small process of time, worked another administrative job, still performing.
And then I graduated. And then I started in I was like, well, I still need money, but I still like being around people. I still like presenting. I moved into doing mortgage brokerage in Florida.
Um, and that was in the early 2000s. So, I was I'm telling [laughter] you, mortgages in Florida, early 2000s, woo, in your early 20s, man. And that but but being the sensible person I was like I probably shouldn't be having $80,000 days at 22 years old. Something's not right here.
And mind you, this is just few years before that whole thing blew up. But by doing that and doing all that work, I really fell in love with working with individuals and helping them from a financial standpoint. And that very quickly then moved into I was like, well, I need something else, but I really like doing this. and I went and I interviewed at some of like the major firms and I got a shot at Raymond James and Associates as a trainee and I'll sum up and say and then the rest was history.
[laughter] Um but but really out of that out of that group back then big people still did large training groups. I think out of 47 in my training class, I ended up number three or four and that was behind people who had already been in the business. One guy had been in the business, brought his book over. Two other guys had been in with a little bit and yeah, one of them was just being fed business by a guy who was retired.
So, I was the only true rookie that walked in the door, but I finished third, maybe fourth in the class, and I was like, "Hey, I kind of know what I'm doing. " And then just over over a sequence of time finding my way. The the problem with being a creative is that deep in your heart, you are an entrepreneur. Every creative is an entrepreneur.
So, staying in the path of employee, it just was never there. So, I was never gonna have a I was never going to be a true W2 person forever. Fast forward, >> here you are. >> I got some companies.
>> There you go. I love it, man. That's a great story. It does incl Yeah.
So, I'll just leave it open-ended there and ask you that question. Well, even though we were getting sizable payments for being a mortgage broker, we still had to do a lot of, well, let me say it like this. I'll say it very my hubris, the good ones like myself. [laughter] Um, took time to collect and understand really the financial nuances of why somebody was buying this house, why they needed that money, and then how are they going to pay for it.
and we would have to build a really solid profile to get them under underwriting. What we wanted was essentially no NIGO. So we want to be the more electronic processing and the only way to get things through electronic processing faster is if you had a really solid docket of this is the information, here's the credit, here's explanations, here's the revenue, here's the savings and everything like that. So that piece right there parallels very easily into financial planning very very easily.
The ability to understand, you know, your debt to income ratios, how you can help somebody improve their credit, improve their savings, help them build something up quickly, be able to get, say, some more cash on hand for these things. But then another piece of that is that we sat in between the client. We were sometime a lot of times at odds with the realtor. >> So the realtor would get mad at us because the realtor just >> hey get it done.
All we care about is boom be done with it. I'm like this person can't afford this. >> I'm go somewhere else. I'm not comfortable doing this.
So you learn very quickly hurting cats. >> Like there's a lot of cat hurting and then there's a lot of emotion control. So those are your two big parallels is that technically it really was financial planning we'll say on like one to two modules for the e- money users out there but then that interpersonal psychological engagement is the exact same. >> It's the exact same.
Well, and then talk to me a little bit too about building a book of business as a mortgage broker and an adviser too because it does feel like there's a lot of parallels there where it's like, hey, most of your stuff probably comes from real estate agents you've built, you know, relationships with, so those are COIs. But also, I feel like mortgage companies, at least the good ones, are really good at marketing, right? So, they've just got a bunch of inbound. And then maybe one other thing I would say too that's that's interesting is it's like, well, everybody wants a house, but not everybody wants like a financial plan or not everybody wants to like manage their assets or whatever.
So you do sort of have that too which is like everybody aspires to go buy a house. You need to have a mortgage most of the time to buy that house. So maybe the leads are a little easier to come by. But I do feel like there's probably so many good lessons learned from like the the efficiency and the way that mortgage stuff runs that that can be brought over here where so many people hopefully this doesn't come across negative but in our space it is just way more about I just want to white glove plan and help serve these people.
I don't want to market. I don't want to figure out how to grow this thing. I don't want to be out there like making it happen. So talk to me a little bit about those parallels too, >> Kyle.
It's all of them. How many episodes do I get? Do I [laughter] get how many do I get? So on your very very first question, what I did now, you still have to fight for the leads and you still have to fight for realtor sending you stuff.
But the other thing you do, which is what I did, is you go the road less traveled. So, what I would do is I built out some flyers for and a couple people had some programs for this for any first responder and teachers. I would give a $1,000 pro closing credit to all of them. And I was down in uh Palm Beach County and Martin County, Florida at the time.
That's the Jupiter area for those of you who don't know. So, people always >> Yeah, he Yeah, he lived there. Hey, I when I'd go to Publix, I saw JLo a couple times. So [laughter] now she's not my friend, but that's okay.
But I still got to see her, you know, and I didn't pay $200 or whatever it is to go see your concert. So I win. But what I would do is I would go to all of the schools at like 5:30 in the morning and I was able to put flyers in all of the all the boxes. or I would leave out a flyer on the main desk or in the break room say, you know, for teachers only, $1,000 credit, buying your first home or refinancing, contact me.
And I did that every other week. I would hit I think it was around like half of all of the schools in Palm Beach and Martin County. >> And my name was just in front of them. My flyer was in front of them.
And so I would just get I'd get the leads of people who were trying to refinance or somebody were trying to buy a home. And what does that lead into? So that that was very grunty work. A lot of grunty work.
But then that leads into them telling their other teacher or otherwise friends them telling their realtor that realtor telling another realtor. >> So it becomes that you know well like my friend Tommy Anderson that that supernova. Okay. You hit those few points, that grindy, really hard stuff, and then it just starts to blossom.
And truth be told, I got to a point now I was younger and I got to a point where a lot of those leads started to dry up because I stopped doing the school drop off. >> So since I stopped that, then it just started to whittle away, whittle away, whittle away. But then as soon as I started it back up, it came back up. Interesting.
>> Okay. But then to to my earlier point, but then I realized like, well, this probably isn't the right thing for me. It's probably time to move on. That right there was certainly one of the best learned lessons.
And I think that's what carries over for everybody is that as long as you have any new adviserss that that are listening to this, hey, even existing ones. It's all about a plan process that's repeatable. Mhm. >> If you can repeat that process over and over again, make your little iter iterations, but if you have some massive marketing plan that you can't just turn on or off that it's oh, what I'm going to do is I'm going to then I'm going to go to this place and then and then if I do this and I'm okay, you're you're gone.
That you're done. >> You're done. What is repeatable? What is part of a plan?
What can you focus on? And that it just happens every day. What's something it can happen every day? And no, it's not cold calling.
I gave that up [laughter] like instantly. It is not cold calling. Please, and if you're somebody who hears, "Oh, cold calling works. " God bless you.
You're You win. >> Yeah, >> you win. >> Yeah, >> you win. >> Oh, man.
That's so great. I love that. So, I got to ask you, and I know you're super creative. Maybe I'm putting you on the spot.
What is the $1,000 closing credit equivalent for financial planning or for people who you're trying to get in and look at retirement stuff or whatever? And don't say a free steak dinner because we know people have done that for a while. So [laughter] >> no, I would say that that should be equivalent to if we're talking planning first, that should be something like call it free financial plan or initial assessments for free, something like that. You know, first 10 hours of planning are covered.
>> Yeah, >> it has to be something specific. If we're talking about asset management, I would say that you would if if you did on like a tier or breakpoint, you could say, "Well, no, the first 100,000 are discounted to 25 pips. " >> Yeah, sure. >> Like actually make it a thing.
Like this is actual. This is real. It is these dollars that otherwise would cost this. >> Yeah.
>> And give it away. You don't have it now. So why worry about it? You don't have it now.
Why worry about it? If you give that piece away, you're going to get it back 30, 40, 100fold. >> Yeah. Give that little bit away.
>> I love it. So Andrew, you were one of the more out of the box thinkers that I have encountered in a lot of conversations with this and I think that is absolutely on display with what you you guys just did, which was the unconference. So do you want to talk about the unconference? Give you the mic a little bit to share your thoughts on that.
How did that come to be? >> How did it go? >> Well, first off, thanks for letting Jud come over and play with us for a day, >> of course. >> So, that was great.
We like We always like seeing Jud and I'm sure Jud enjoys, you know, being out in the wilderness, so coming out to us. So, it's great. It's always great to have him. We've all done done conferences and there's so many out there that are many people.
Uh, a lot of the individual broker dealer conferences are big. Some do like to like keep it a little nichy, but for the most part, they all kind of follow the same theme. You and I being fans of of the future proof side of things. All right.
Well, that's totally different. >> Okay. And I actually guard against people who like are just going RAIA to go to that. I said, you're it's going to blow your mind.
You'd be better off going to say like wealth management edge where it's still nice, but it's still a little buttoned up. Okay. And so with this thought in mind, it's like, well, we're not going to do what everybody else does, which is that, okay, day one, all meetings, dinner, day two, half day, back end of the day, we're golfing. >> Yeah, >> that's everybody does that, right?
>> Y >> Okay. Or day one, day two, day three. Thanks for coming. Right.
So what we thought would make a whole lot more sense and two of my adviserss, Melissa Reenwald and and Jennifer Slinsky, we all collaborated on this. They they were a driving force behind this as well. So much big shout out to them to say, well, wait, why don't we get the best of both worlds? Where the best stuff happens is in the conversations on the edges.
Nobody gains great ideas by sitting there and being lectured at. >> It doesn't happen. And even when they're getting lectured at and then whoever's presenting says any questions, you're going to get some, but everybody's already burnt out. You're dealing with a bunch of people with ADD, right?
Everybody's already ready to go. They just want the nuts and they want to get a coffee. They want to get a, you know, salt or water, but they got it. So, what we decided to do was make it so it's more half and half.
So the presentations are not about product. They're about strategy and how to implement or what has been the most successful thing they've seen. Okay? And you do like two of those.
Then an advisor gets up and they speak about, you know, what they're currently active at. And then go away. That's it. Here's a box lunch.
We've got three or four events that you all can do. Pick from them. Go hang out. we'll see you at happy hour in dinner.
>> And that simple concept and you repeat that two days in a row. That right there sounds it's very very simple. But we wanted to really dig into the interpersonal the human connection between people because it's when advisers talk to advisers. Ask any adviser.
Every adviser out there right now listening to this, you know as well as I do, you get your most favorite ideas and your favorite time at these conferences when you're talking to the other adviserss that you are friends with or you just became friends with or when you're having your your vodka soda line and chatting it up while you're eating some shrimp cocktail. That's the best. So, we wanted to make that the focus but with a little bit of guidance as to what are we talking about. Okay.
So, that's it, Kyle. That's it. >> That's the magic. And so in that scenario, how did you come up with the content, right?
Like for the because you did have a little bit like so most of it was go and talk about it and discuss. We're trying to prompt some ideas. How did you select what the agenda was going to be for lack of a better term? Yeah, we looked at it through the lens of who helps drive business forward.
That's it. Who can help us drive business forward? So for the ones that were there, they were giving us or they were talking about ways that not their product but how this way of thinking put that into your practice and see where that can drive you. Kelsey McKenna of Seeds, they were there.
Great. Great. Everybody who came was wonderful. Okay.
So look them up. Go everybody follow me on on LinkedIn. You can see everybody there. But like she was talking about the heart of investing, the core, the wise behind the why, which is very different for any sort of we'll say legacy tamp that's out there.
I mean, we do business with all of them. They're all great. Seeds just has a different way of approaching it more from the interpersonal that's uh what's the phraseology that they say the what's the psychological >> thing that people talk about investing the >> behavioral psychology. >> Yes.
Thank you. Thank you. Behavioral investor. Thank you.
See, so they come at it more from that. And what she brought up was was talking about these great ideas of being able to clone your thoughts but in a more digital fashion that directly engages with the client. And it was just fascinating. And so things like that that drive you forward to say, I'm not on an island.
I'm not by myself. I don't have to figure it out by myself. I've got an organization like this that can step in and not just give me a manager but can give me essence like that kind of stuff. So that drives a business forward.
We love that. Love that. We had somebody Mick McClendon of Capital Square was bringing up really interesting programs that Capital Square is doing like new ways of looking at Roth conversions. Okay.
So like people will talk mix great in Capital Square you know 1031 DST shop things like that qualified opportunity zones but then when he brought up this Roth conversion which is adjacent to all these things wow >> everybody's like wait yes and Mick's mean's been in the business at least 10 years he's a little bit more that but we love you but like that really really caught a lot of attention so it's like those things like dig as opposed to like here's the product, here's how you sell it, this is my number, it's really good for taxes, uh, you know, appropriate, you make commission, okay, are we done if we go have lunch or play golf or whatever? No, it's, hey, look at this. So, drive business forward. That was the focus.
How do we drive business forward? >> So, I love that. I want to double click really quick just on that statement because I feel like it's broad. What does it mean to drive business forward?
Does that And maybe that's different for lots of people. Does it mean increasing revenue? Does it mean being able to bring on more clients? Does it mean being better at marketing?
Does it mean hiring people? Like I think it could mean a lot of things for different people. But when you created that prompt, what in mind for you was happening when you thought about driving business forward? So advisors that work with us in any of our companies have the benefit, here's my hubris, have the benefit of working with those companies.
We don't put a boundary on their imagination. Okay? We don't put a boundary around their winning aspiration. Okay?
So first think about like that there's no boundary to your winning aspiration. So let's use uh uh Fran in our Fran told her winning aspiration grow her firm get put in place intelligent call them director level people she is no longer the head she takes her top 70 or whatever clients and just gets to sit over here while everybody else has got it and they have this staff that supports it Okay? Cuz she could just make more money. Her aspiration is to see this legacy continue on for these people to have value, to continue on, keep working, for her to then service these clients and right off into the sunset wherever she damn well chooses.
Okay, there's that. But then you have someone say, let's use let's say Kelly. So, Kelly is more of how does she make an even more efficient financial planning practice for her clients. And that's not about hiring people.
That's not about legacy. That's about taking what she already does. >> Y >> and how does she even make that better? That's not a revenue goal.
That's an efficiency process goal, right? And then I I'll you I'll use me because why not? I own the firm and you're interviewing me. Um, we're we're using a phrase like it gave me a chance to present along with Jud about the cool things that we're doing to drive the oversight and the help of these offices forward, you know, with the help of my own to make the processing, review, absorption of all of this financial data faster so that we have fewer systems, fewer clicks and fewer surprises.
>> Okay. So, and by us talking about that, we just kept getting feedback from our adviserss as to, okay, yes, but can we do this? I need to do this. All right.
Well, did we remember that this this this Okay, yes, great. Yes. Yes. More more.
So, that was great because I used it as the as a quasi, you know, user focus group, which very few firms actually do. They say they do, but I don't [clears throat] think they do. >> Yeah. Yeah.
I love it, man. This podcast is brought to you by Turncast. We make game-changing content for fintech and financial services companies. Learn [music] more at turncast.
com. Hey, Next Mile listeners, Jessica here from Milemarker. You know, we talk a lot about reaching that next mile in your business journey, [music] but let's be for real for just a sec. If you're an adviser, how much time are you spending wrestling with data instead of actually advising your clients?
>> [music] >> I've worked firsthand with tons of adviserss over the years, helping them achieve real success and breakthrough growth. But I keep seeing the same roadblock everywhere. Brilliant advisers stuck spending hours pulling reports from their different systems, trying to create meaningful client presentations and struggling to get a clear picture of their firm's growth. Does this sound familiar?
Here's [music] what I've learned. The adviserss who are scaling and growing aren't necessarily smarter. They've just figured out how to get control over their data. That's [music] exactly why I joined Milemarker because they've built a solution that changes everything for how you manage and grow your firm.
At Milearker, we specialize in three game-changing areas for firms like yours. Streamlining your data management so all your systems talk to each other. Automating those repetitive reporting tasks that eat up your valuable time and creating seamless advisor and client experiences [music] that actually help you grow your firm. The difference is night and day.
Instead of spending your evenings pulling together client reports, imagine having that data automatically organized and presented [music] exactly how you need it. Instead of guessing about your firm's performance, imagine having real time insights that help you make strategic decisions. [music] If you are ready to stop being held back by your data and start using it to fuel your growth, I'd love to have a conversation with you. We're offering Next Mile listeners a complimentary consultation to explore [music] exactly how we can help you transform your advisory practice.
Don't let outdated processes keep you from reaching that next mile in your firm's growth. Visit milemarker. co and mention the next mile podcast and I'll personally make sure to get the insights you need to take control of your data and scale your practice because your time should be spent building your business, not buried [music] in spreadsheets. I love how intentional and thoughtful you are about this.
And then I think even that last statement that you made about fewer clicks, fewer surprises type of thing fits into one of the mottos I know that you have which is less but better. So how do you think about what you're doing with the unconference, what you're building at Rosby and then this sort of motto of less but better. >> I don't know everything. Here's a great book.
>> The design see the camera. The design of everyday things. We'll make sure it's in the show notes. >> Yep.
Okay, just you come up to a door that says push, but it has a handle on it. >> Who does that? [laughter] Put [clears throat] a plate on it. Push.
Right thing things like that. And Don Norman was worked for Apple, lead designer years and years and years. And so like a lot of the things that we feel and like why people like like Apple is that it's easy to follow. I think the the ubiquitous term anymore is intuitive, right?
And that's where we're trying to get to. Fewer clicks, less but better is I wouldn't say intuitive, but just like, hey, I've got a new client. I know I have to turn in this paperwork. Okay.
And this this could be docuign. All right. So, for everybody, I'm holding my hands up miniming if I'm holding paper, but I could very well just as easily be holding an Apple pen. Where do I put my Docu sign?
Right? We want to make that process to collect what we need from that document to be as streamlined as possible so that it becomes something you you just don't have to think about. The only people have to think about is that are the people doing supervision over that if something's missing and then they just simply hey simple note hey we didn't get X and you can just hit one button two buttons and it comes back to us. We want that's what we want as like less but better.
Like what's that design? What is the true design so that you're not going from here to here to here to here? And everybody tries to solve that, but everybody tries to solve that by daisy chaining a thousand different systems together. Whereas what we're trying to do is like we want to cut that out that we have one place where we collect our main repository of data that we need as the main firm and then you as the advisor can siphon off of that what you need knowing that we've got our source of truth for everything from you know being audit ready, review ready, getting you compensation information.
We've got it. And you could take that and put that into Red Tail or Wealthbox or Digit or Advisor 360 or E- Money or Black Diamond or Adise on. We don't care because we've collected everything that we need and that you need one place. Much like, you know, you've got your iPhone, put it in, and now you just download apps and then you tell the app, "Yeah, just take it from here.
There you go. Easy. That's where we're going to. " Does that answer your question, Kyle?
>> It absolutely answers my question, man. I think it was it was really eloquently put and selfishly at Milemarker. I mean, I love the entire vision of, hey, we need fewer tools. We need to aggregate them all into one place.
I actually really love the this phrasing of we're going to do everything we need as a firm, but then allow you to get what you need out of it, right? Whereas so many of the tools and everything today is just everything is available for everyone. So, some of these tools were actually built more for an operational lens, but you want advisers to go in there. There's 10,000 features because there's everything for everyone and they just rage quit out of there.
So, how do you actually curate and create better things, which kind of goes to that book that you were talking about? What is the experience made for advisers? What's the experience made for the owners of the firms? What's the experience made for the compliance people, the ops people?
But also, we need these things to communicate. And it's important the way that you you laid that out. >> I guess what I've learned talking coming back to my hering of cats, you can't satisfy everyone, right? Whatever you anybody listening to this, whatever you've decided for your firm is the tech stack, you're wrong.
You're wrong. And what I mean by that is somebody, a couple people, one person, everybody at your firm doesn't like it. They just don't. So that right there should be an instant understanding that like, well, if you can't please people, it is then up to you to decide how do you want to proceed with that.
So you most firms I'll say mo most okay give me some grace here will say well yeah but that's what we've decided because we've already paid the money and that's what it is so use it or go someplace else okay and that's completely acceptable that's general business right whereas in the where the world is today the rest of the world in technology is that that's not really true it's not take it and and leave it a marketplace. So that's where we say, well, no, if I just have if I take care of what we have to take care of at the firm level and we've got locked down on on this data and now if we have our data in a set, we take the unstructured data and we structured it here and then when we talk to other companies that we'll still do due diligence on on allowing you to use like still have to do that. All right, everybody like we'll We're still doing that, right? But now we can faster review and approve or deny a technology company because we know where the data is coming from.
We know what the quality of the data is. So when a a CRM company like Slant shows up, who we are assessing and they say, "Hey, we want to work with you and your advisor shoes. " Okay, I can assess that faster as opposed to like, "Well, how are we going to connect it? How are we going to use it?
How's it going to come in? Okay. Do you have your sock two in place? All right.
How does that jive with all of our cyber security rules? How's it hit with our, you know, we no, it's like we're locked down here. >> We are locked down. So the So what we have to do from a due diligence standpoint, it gets a lot shorter because we know exactly what they're going to get from us.
>> They're not going to get anything more, not get anything less, but we know it. >> Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I love that, man. Um, you have this great quality about you where you are.
>> It's my hairline. >> Yeah. [laughter] Uh, as great as your hairline is, that's not what I was going to say. I was going to go a different direction, which is I think you have this relentless desire to see things be better.
You have this relentless desire to improve upon things, to innovate, to be creative. Yet, you are also incredibly patient. Like, you don't expect it to just like be done at the snap of a finger. you know, things take time, like all of that type of stuff.
And I would say that you're that way with innovation, but also with the way you've built your brand, like I think you have this this very deeply held belief of the way you're doing it the right way, but compared against, you know, the Raymond James's of the world or other really big brands who might have big marketing budgets and stuff. So I guess my question for you in that beyond trying to flatter you is how do you maintain that that patience while things are germinating and happening and putting one foot in front of the other and making things happen and as you said building the business forward or pushing the business forward. >> It's a great question. It's difficult.
Patience is difficult. Okay. You have to continually remind yourself as to where you're going. >> And looking at at what we have built to now with some different iterations, but how we got to here, it really clicks to say we are dramatically disruptive to the rest of the industry.
And the patience comes from knowing that every time I talk to an adviser that has a desire to move themselves forward. That's always a great conversation. I'm just like, "Yep, >> yep. This is yep.
This is it. " But we are not huge. Like you said, we're not we're very close to crossing over a billion in total AUA. So that'll be I'll I'll I'll pop a thing and say, "Yay, we did it.
" You know, the first billion's the hardest, right? But, uh, we have patience because we don't we don't want everybody here. Okay. That now that maybe that sounds harsh like but like not everybody belongs with this firm.
Yeah. >> We don't have that huge marketing budget. We are not Reman James. We are not New Edge.
We are not LPL. We are not Kestre. We're not them. We're not, okay?
We're not Kovacs. We're not We're none of them. We're a very bespoke RAIA bespoke for an advisor, a certain type of adviser that really wants to maximize their client engagement and their ability to utilize their own capital. Not that I'm going to spend it for them.
That's what kind of everybody else is. But like use your capital to improve the lives of your clients, your business, your family. We're going to only bill for what for what we're doing. Okay?
So I have patience to find that advisor advisors or teams or other RAAS that say like I don't want to do this anymore. Can I just go back to being a producer? Sure, come on in. But patience is hard.
you know, as an entrepreneur, like, hey, why hasn't happened yet? Why doesn't everybody know how awesome we are? Because they just don't yet. >> Yep.
But they will >> all of a sudden all at once, right? That's like the the notion or the the whole like it's cliche now, but 10 years to become an overnight success, right? Is kind of the thing, right? >> Yeah.
How do you become a millionaire? You go to bed having $900,000 and you happen to wake up the next day with a new sale. [laughter] >> There you go. There you go.
All right. I want to give you an open floor here. So, I love to ask people to kind of get out their crystal ball and talk about the future of the industry in some ways, right? So, you know, look, AI is happening.
I know you've got a lot of thoughts on AI and all of that, but as as you're positioning Rosby, as you're looking at the future, as you're trying to build the business forward, what do you see coming around the corner? What are you trying to position the firm for in the future? What are you looking at? What dots are you connecting?
>> So, both companies, both focus companies. So we have the Rosby office platform just so if everybody doesn't know that is our fractional services business for financial services only. So anybody who's familiar with Upwork or Fiverr or something like that that organization is there to fill those gaps of capacity work capacity that you can't fill. You don't want to hire somebody part-time.
You don't want to hire somebody full-time. Come over here. Check us out. Get somebody in incremental.
Get them in fractional amounts. Okay. So part one part two is then the raia which is then built for again for also mass capacity but massive growth. So in both of them I see for the industry fee compression is a red herring.
All right, let's start that. Everybody out there, as soon as your firm says, "Ah, feed compression, leave. [laughter] Just go. That's nonsense.
There is no there. " No, there isn't. What? They're just blowing money.
Hey, I'll come out and say it. They're blowing money. And guess what? If they're big enough, they can blow the money, right?
But a lot of us aren't big enough. We can't just blow money. So feed compression is a red herring. But where I see the industry going is with AI, if you are not adopting it, you're wrong.
Okay, I'm being very demonstrative, but in a different way. You're wrong. You have to adopt it. You have to find ways to utilize it.
Notetakers, okay, we've already done that. Notetakers are done. So, if you don't have a notetaker, well, okay, you're already behind. Just grab a noteaker.
There's a thousand of them, right? But what you're going to have is more use of one-off services because you can utilize you can use utilize major data sets to clean up things with an AI agent, but you're still going to need a human to come in and help you out with certain things, help you flush out an idea, help you flush out your marketing, flush out your financial planning, flush out the all the nigos that you're still getting. Because what's not going away is paperwork and it still becomes more and more challenging even as we have agents that can do a lot. Paperwork will always still be the bane of your existence.
So having someone there to just pick something up, help something out for you, I I see that being a major part of it. So that's why we have this business. Okay. Pick things up as you need them, clean things up, but you don't have to buy it in whole units of employment.
And then really overall like the way I've set up our RAIA is we operate a lot like AWS or Google Workspace. We operate like a tech company in that I'm set up for massive expansion. Massive expansion because it's funny as firms that have a lot of basis points and payout and additional tech fees for all these things that they're offering that their adviserss for the most part don't use. and all those basis points and payouts start to cap your ability to keep growing, right?
That pressure down on them. I don't have that cuz we don't bill like that. But I then have that inverse of I can now expand basically indefinitely without losing quality because you could it's yeah I did the math but it's somewhere around like every 18 and a half firms that join us I need a half human to help finish out the compliance and the processing. So that number gets bigger and bigger and also by utilizing an organization a data lake company then that allows us to absorb so much more data and here in in the next few months layer in agents to help us you know CR it's funny we both use both firms we like to use the word telemetry so my telemetry is compliance telemetry so utilize agents to help us figure out compliance telemetry on where a client should be versus where the adviser says as they are.
So we can scan through things very very quickly and that eliminates the need for additional bodies inside of a supervisory set and operational set. It's then it's technology company that is actually servicing through compliance and oversight. >> Yeah, that's awesome, man. I love it.
I love it. Really well put. Really well put. And you know, I do think too, you kind of hit on this a little bit and I'll just stress it because of what we're seeing.
Everybody's using the term agent in this sort of ubiquitous I almost call it like magic fairy godmother type thing that oh these agents are just going to do everything and you know as as people who are living at it every day you need specific agents right there are agents for paperwork there are agents for compliance there are agents for we have a bunch of data agents right that are going and looking at things and they're but there there's very few agents that are just like really versatile like oh we I can just do all of these And so it's going to be interesting to see how that manifests itself as well because of course the financial planning companies are building agents and of course the CRM are building agents and of course the custodians are building agents and so then you almost get into this really interesting conversation of like okay well how do I integrate the agents right like if everybody's building AI how do I integrate all of the cool stuff they're building with their expertise and their context and knowledge into a unified experience so that I'm still not just further are extrapolating out to well now I'm still going to 18 different places to execute the things I need to do. >> Yep. Yeah. So, we're already there for a lot of advisers with all the different technologies that they're using, right?
And it'll flip and then all of a sudden they're now going to have a bunch of agents doing all the same thing again. I have like 78 agents. Okay. It's a correlation to when everybody, well, I've got I've got 200 cable channels, but there's nothing to watch, and I pay $300 a month.
I'll just get rid of it, and I'm just going to buy this subscription to Netflix. Well, this one to Disney Plus. Well, this one, and this one, and this one. Well, now you're back up to $300 a month, and there's nothing for you to watch.
>> Yep. >> You came right back to it. My viewpoint on that is this. That is human nature.
That's just going to keep happening. And for all adviserss out there, if you know it's going to happen, just be thoughtful and mindful when you are engaging agent after agent upon system upon system. We as a firm, I'm saying that we'll fall prey to that a little bit, but I am trying my absolute best to stay right here. Cuz if I have my data clean that I need in one location, then I can add a couple different agents for, okay, review the econ, tell us what's going on.
Okay, review the trade summaries, tell us what's going on. Okay. And then this agent say, "Okay, now pair econ versus trading activity and see if you see a correlation between heightened verbiage versus, you know, reduced performance, right? " And take that to our ENO carrier to say, "Okay, here's what we're seeing.
Can we make some adjustments or actually our issues are very low? Can we get a break on cost dot dot dot? " So if we have our agents living in one to the best of our ability that would be the greatest ever but we'll see that is just overseeing one set of data that agent can do everything it needs or agents can do everything needs to do just here as opposed to well e money has an agent and wealthbox has an agent and then Morning Star has an agent and well will and trust got an agent and this person got an agent and then I'm going to do this agent. Okay, you're just back to where you were again.
>> You're back to where you were. focus on where is your practice's source of truth meaning I would say notes values contact information communication with clients and just see that's where you really need the agent and then another one would be if you needed one for say like trading help that keep it keep it focus keep it tight >> yeah so good man so good all right we have come to the part of the show that we call the mile marker minute is a series of Lightning round questions. Are you ready for the mile marker minute? >> Big bucks, no whammies.
Big bucks, no whammies. >> I love it. All right, here we go. If you could travel anywhere in the world you've never traveled to before, where would you go?
>> Oh, that's good. I want to go to actually I want to go visit our sister city. I live in Melbourne, Florida. I want to go to Melbin, Australia.
>> There you go. I love it. Are you a beach or a mountains person? >> Beach.
>> Okay. What is the best book you have read or listened to in the past year? The Sylmerelion. >> Oh, okay.
Lord of the Rings. Lord of the Rings lore for those of you who are into that. >> Um, what is [laughter] >> what is the best road trip you've ever been on before? >> The best one I ever went on was spring break.
My wife and I, Lindsay, we were just dating. We came to Florida. We drove from Jupiter area up to Gainesville to see my sister who's in graduate school. We had a blast all the way up.
And on the way back down, we stopped at Disney. Her and I have just had a baller of a time and we're about to celebrate our 26th anniversary together and our 22nd anniversary. >> Oh, that's amazing, man. Great road trip.
Okay. What is the best flavor of ice cream? >> Yes. Dang it.
>> That I can eat all the time. >> Sure. >> Original BaskinRobins Mississippi Mud circa 1986. >> There you go.
I love it. I love it. All right. There is an alternate universe and in this alternate universe, Andrew does not work in financial services whatsoever.
In that alternate universe, what is the career that you have? >> Oh, I'm a sea captain. I'm sailing gigantic cargo ships across the Pacific around the world and that's what I do. I'm just there and you hit the huge storms and it's dangerous and you pull into port.
You're in a different country or in this country and you're just shipping stuff all over the world. That's I always say if I went back I would do that. I love it, man. I love it.
Well, you made it through the mile marker minute. You killed it. This is a really fun and interesting conversation as it always is with you. I love your philosophy of less but better.
I love the way you were constantly trying to figure out how to, you know, push the business forward, whatever that means. And I think you have taken a really interesting approach to building a unique and differentiated firm in the industry. So, thanks for coming on and dropping some insights, man. >> Absolutely, Kyle.
And I'll I'll say one other thing to to go away is that we're doing this because we have a viewpoint that pricing is ethics. The pricing of your firm is ethics. >> Not just everything you do, but it's the pricing of your firm that directly correlates to the ethics of your firm. >> What a way to end it.
All right, everybody. That has been another episode of Next Mile. Thank you so much for paying attention and listening to this great conversation with Andrew. If you could click follow or subscribe wherever you're paying attention to this, we would really appreciate it.
And if you'd also be kind enough, if the follow and subscribe wasn't enough to leave us a fivestar review, we would really appreciate that as well, so people could find conversations like this one if they haven't ever found it before. But until next episode, enjoy every mile.
See the platform that powers the conversations on Next Mile.