About This Episode
Next Mile Episode 128: How to Build a Firm That Outlasts You with Tyson Ray. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.
with Tyson Ray · January 20, 2026
Next Mile Episode 128: How to Build a Firm That Outlasts You with Tyson Ray. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.
when I started just throwing out the opportunity that is in front of us. We have almost a thousand households, but then we have almost 2500 client kids that we know of. And I'm sitting here going, "Wait a second. " Like, if we're going to be a multigenerational firm, we got to start thinking about what the workload's going to be when you go from one household to three with the same revenue or the same asset, assuming you keep all the assets.
>> [music] >> Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Next Mile. I'm your host Kyle Vanpelt, co-founder at Milemarker and today I'm joined by Tyson Ray. Tyson is the CEO and founding partner of Form Wealth Advisors and he is the eighth most important person in his family after his wife, three sons, and three dogs. He's also joining us today to talk about the lessons he's learned from growing form to over a billion in aum, building a multigenerational team and guiding clients through multiple transitions.
Because of this, he's developed this really cool thing that he calls the space framework, and it led to him writing a book called Total Succession. He's been recognized by Barren, Forbes, and Advisor Hub, and I'm so excited for him to share some lessons on growth, leadership, and preparing for what's next. Tyson, thanks for joining the show, man. I love your enth I feel like I'm coming into the ring.
Here he comes. >> Let's go. We need some pyrochnics. [laughter] >> Tyson, I asked every guest the same first question.
You're not going to be any different, man. So, I love that intro. I love that you've written this book. I'm excited to hear about the space framework.
But before we get to that, I have to understand how you got here. So, I've had hundreds of these conversations. People have their own unique path to the space. Some people it was really traditional.
They followed in family footsteps, some people didn't even know this was an industry that they could be a part of. And they came in the side door after maybe a career before this one. But what we found is whether your path is traditional or untraditional, everybody has what we call a money moment. And that's that moment in your life where the light bulb clicks and you go, "This is it.
This is how I want to spend my time. This is what I want my career to be. " So for you, what was that money moment that led you to having this conversation today? >> Yeah.
The short version, a long story was the explanation of what was the eviction notice that went on the refrigerator after dad left mom with four kids and nothing but bills. And >> so I got I went and got my job and uh was carrying five gallon gas cans. Thank god the the gas pump at the end of the pier broke so they needed someone to help gas things and I was carrying gas down to the peers and saving my money and literally my chubby chubby chipmunk bank account where I'd see the pennies get added because the interest rates back then were probably six or 7% off the top of my head and I got dropped off. You know, this was back in the day still this case.
You know, if you're water skiing, you have to have a spotter. So, I learned just to stick around at night because somebody needed a spotter. So, I got to learn how to water ski and at this marina. And I got dropped off one day by one of the guys that asked me if I would spot for him in his Ferrari.
And I lied at what house I lived in cuz I was too embarrassed. And while we're sitting in the driveway of somebody else's house, I asked him the question. I'm like, "What did you do? " Right?
What did you do? And he's like, "Well, I, you know, my business is all sort of stuff, but he's like, "I really made all my money in my investments. " And about a year or two later, the high schools play the stock market game, which is the worst fundamentals you can teach people. But anyway, they, you know, they give you fake money and you try and make as much money as you can.
And this is back in the day where you went to the library and you open up the paper to look at the ticker symbols because there was no internet as it exists today. And I wanted to buy a stock that had gone from 12 to 7. And I only knew the symbol was INTC. I had no idea what it did or what it was.
And Intel for those of you that don't know that are listening to this. And it wasn't inside anything. And I was like, I want to buy some of this because I'm gonna I have enough money I could buy 100 shares out of my chubby chubby chipmunk bank account and I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm in. And mom said, "No, you're not taking that kind of risk.
" And thank God she said no, right? Because if mom said yes, I might have bought it and then went on to do other things, but because you get told no as a kid, you're like, "You can't tell me no, right? " So I drag her into the stock broker's office that did the presentation to the high school. and the stock broker convinced my mom to let me put $100 a month in two mutual funds for and I did that for my 16th 17th 18th when I turned 18 I was like ha so I bought my first two stocks and learned a lot of lessons in my own little portfolio before I got into the business but it was early on trying to figure out how to break out of the poverty that was around me and I live in a town or live in an area where it was basically you have a lot of halves and you have a lot of have nots >> and I wanted to figure out how to get into the have category story, >> man.
Where was home for you? Where'd you grow up? >> Yep. Lake Shane, Wisconsin, which actually is where I am now.
I'm back in my home home roots. >> Wow. All right. So, you boomeranged out and then you >> That's awesome, man.
What a story. That's an incredible money moment. That was very vivid and descriptive. I can tell that you are somebody who who wrote a book because that was awesome.
I appreciate you sharing that. >> Yeah. The reason I got in the business is because I had spent my life trying to or my adolescence trying to convince my mom why this was working and a good thing and she wanted nothing to do with it. is a client now.
But yeah, that's how >> now you got to convince a bunch of other people's moms that this is the right thing to do and the smart thing to do with their money. >> Yep. >> And you've done a great job of that. So you've built this firm into over a billion in aumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumumum, which is nothing to scoff at whatsoever.
But I think that what we've found in a lot of the conversations we've had is in order to get there, you kind of have to make this transformation from being just a financial adviser into a wealth management executive and somebody who can run a whole business and a firm, not just a practice or not just a book. So what for you was one of the more valuable lessons you learned along the way of making that transformation? >> Yeah, I had strived early in my career. I had like written it down.
I literally tracked it every day. I wanted to be this million-dollar producer because at the time that was like the echelon to get to and I remember the year I got there actually the day the report came in it's just like I did it and then all of a sudden it was just like I thought it was going to feel differently right I mean there's certain things in our lives that don't fill the holes in our hearts or the or we're trying to put value where value really didn't exist or shouldn't exist and I just decided back then and that was in my late 20s I'm like you what I'm not going to put my focus on that anymore. I'm going to just put my focus on helping other people. And what's ironic is is that whether it's crossing the billion dollars, which I actually one day just went and like, what is it if we added Oh my gosh, we crossed a billion.
Who knew? >> I stopped tracking it, right? It was just about helping other people and doing what was right every day. And I wake up, I have a cup of coffee, I do a little devotion.
I kind of level set my perspective. I go do the best I can. And I go to bed usually exhausted and I kneel on the side of my bed and I give myself I forgive myself for all the things I didn't do right and I go to bed and just decide I'm going to get up tomorrow and do my best again. And and that's how we got here.
I love that. Well, one of the things about your book is so it's called Total Succession. So clearly that is about things lasting beyond yourself. So okay, you've done this.
I love that you're kind of like hey you know now it's just about helping people and if we do that it's going to take care of themselves. But what if we flip that from clients to team? Like at this scale now where you're at, how do you think about building a practice that lasts beyond you? >> Yeah.
Well, one, when I started realizing that I get out of bed in the morning excited to go help more people, but I was starting to have a team that didn't want to help more people. I started having a team that wanted to make more and do less, it seemed. And when I started kind of just throwing out the opportunity that that was that is in front of us. We have almost 1,000 households, but then we have almost 2500 client kids that we know of.
And I'm sitting here going, "Wait a second. " Like, if we're going to be a multigenerational firm, we got to start thinking about what the workload's going to be when you go from one household to three with the same revenue or the same asset, assuming you keep all the assets. I also started realizing, this was hard to realize, and this is true of entrepreneurs, is that as a visionary and as someone that wants to kind of go see a bigger picture and then make it happen, I can see what the vision is. We call that step 10.
I usually can see what the first step is. And I don't give a rip about steps two through nine. It turns out they're vital >> to get to 10. And so I started realizing that I needed to hire someone else to come in and help run what I had created so I can keep building cuz I kept getting sucked into the managing of things.
And it's just like, hey, Kyle, come, you know, can I have next week off? Kyle asked me. And it's just like, yeah, take it off, whatever. Great.
Let's go. Crush it. And I show up next week. And it's just like, where's Kyle?
Cuz I could totally forgot I let you have the week off. And then I'm told he's on vacation. You gave him permission. I'm like, wait a second.
We have this, this, and this. And no one backfilled Kyle's absence for this, this, and this. And it's like that's where it was just I started realizing like there's that accountability. I just kind of I live in the space of you give everybody what they want, you'll eventually be able to get what you want.
And that works really well with clients. But employees and team members, many of them who you need as an entrepreneur to do the steps two through nine also need some structure because if you give them a cookie by design, they want a glass of milk and then because they took a big swig, they want another quick a cookie and it just that keeps going and at some point you got to say no. And I don't like saying no cuz I don't want to be told no myself. I just want to go crush it.
I was warned if you're going to hire on someone to run the firm, you're going to risk losing everybody in the firm because they came to work for you and they don't want to work for someone else, especially if that person is going to put some boundaries in place. >> And that's what happened. Our entire team turned over but for one. And yet it was the best thing we ever did.
And it didn't happen all at once, but I also let it happen. I didn't let sacred cows stay on for whatever reason. It was and were so much better for it. And that's also what really catapulted the growth because now there's someone else managing the day-to-day.
There's someone else affirming what needs to be affirmed. There's someone else correcting what needs to be corrected. And everybody kind of knows where the lines are and they know the direction we're going. And we hired a team that's dialed into the bigger vision.
Wow. That's kind of ground shaking though, right? So I mean it's probably easy to say that now on a podcast years later like oh you know it was the best thing that ever happened. But I got to imagine, I mean, you're used to these people serving your clients and doing all of this stuff and now there's not enough hands to carry the water.
So, talk to me a little bit about what it felt like to go through that when it all happened. I mean, how did you actually make that transition and and all of that type of stuff? Cuz I'm sure a lot of people listening to this right now are going, if I lost, you know, 90% of my team, I mean, even if it was ultimately for the best, that would be catastrophic for a while. [snorts] >> Yeah.
I think one is is that you can't let fear prevent you from doing what's right and drop. >> We brought coaches in before we were starting to realize that this turnover was going to happen. And the coach said that you're going to lose everybody the direction you're going. And I said, "Well, I guess we're going to lose everybody.
I don't want that. " And they were all told I didn't want that. But at the same time, it's it is such a privilege. It's it's the ministry I feel I'm called into of helping people live the best life they could afford and not be taken advantage of of the propaganda and the financial services industry and the sales and all the things that the malpractice exists and yada yada they're trying to legislate ethics and you just got to be ethical.
But my other thing is I'm a big believer that we all have energy, right? I mean it's positive or negative. We either get things we do things that feed us energy and it's like we just we're in and then we do things that suck the energy out of us. And one of the things that gives me energy is I want to walk in the door and it's like high fives and it's like let's crush it.
We're going to have a great day. We're making the difference in people's lives. We get hugs from our clients. Like these are family to us.
And I said to the team at the time when this was all kind of coming to a head. I said, "If this isn't a fun place to work, I'll shut it down. " Right? It just it's not worth it.
I'll go find something else to do. Or and this was also true at the time. It's just like, you know, I can go and this is somewhat true to this day. And it's it was the reality for myself of realizing, you know what, I could be like other advisers.
I can grab my laptop, my cell phone, take the top 100 clients that would rather hear for me anyway, and probably make more money, >> grab one [clears throat] or two assistants, and just live a better life, but I wouldn't live a life that's making a compounded impact like that. you're having the ability to make a difference in multi-generations and being smaller and making more didn't interest me. And I think the other reason we got to the the billion dollar level was I stopped focusing on trying to pull all the money out and put it in my pocket. I constantly reinvested.
And there's probably a decade that I really went sideways from a compensation standpoint because I kept investing in other team members and investing in the building and laying the foundation that gave us a team of the size that we now have to be able to service what we have and have capacity to service more while we're having fun doing it. >> That's awesome, man. That's cool. And there really is a big lesson in there for whoever's listening to this to not let fear hold you back from what could be your future.
The fear of changing what is today for the future of what could be tomorrow. I think there's there's a huge thing in there. >> Well, they lock they I refuse to lock myself into a prison that someone else defined for me. A limitation or an inability to do something that I feel called to do.
>> Yeah, man. I love [clears throat] that. I think that that is that should be empowering for a lot of the people listening to this. Okay, I want to shift gears a little bit here.
>> I am I am a sucker for frameworks, for mental models, for things like this. and you have built the space framework. I am just super curious to hear what the space framework is. I want you to break it down for us.
I want you to teach us. I want you to educate us. So what is the space framework? Where did it come from?
Why'd you do it? Tell us about this. >> Yeah. So this is inside the concept of succession.
And so I went through a year ago. I was valuing the company and doing some different agreements within the team for ownership or equity or the future equity thereof. And and I just asked myself, I'm like, you really don't know what it's worth unless you have a bid from someone or indication of interest from someone to say this is what it's worth. >> And so I went through about 3 to five months of deep dives into a couple different firms, picked a few, went through the the NDAs, and then the indication of interest and realized, okay, this is kind of what it was worth.
But as I started realizing what the practice was worth, I also started realizing, wow, I really don't have this structured right. I certainly don't have it structured right if this keeps growing. And I certainly haven't structured right that I have a handful of 20somes that are going to be here when I'm not that it's like okay how to incentivize them or give them a piece of this growing puzzle or this business. So in going through that I realized we needed to redo all of our succession documents and I just I had learned a lot going through the process of what it would look like to sell the practice which I wasn't seeking to do.
I thought I'd just get a valuation but once I got the valuation I was like well do you want to take that? And I decided not to because I came back and decided I trust the business more than I trust a pile of money that I would get. But in learning what I learned, I'm a student teacher by nature. So I love to learn things and then teach what I learn.
And some adviserss make the mistake if you're listening to this, the mistake sometimes we make is we have all this knowledge and then we just tell. >> There's a difference between teaching and telling. So I wanted to teach it. And I also realized that uh I think it's you know almost a third of the industry with almost 40% of the assets in the industry is retiring in the next couple years and it's already happening like there's waves of retirement.
I had acquired when I got to this point last year seven different practices. Five of them were great, two of them were not so great but all of them had lessons in them. And I just realized that there was no manual. There was no guide to succession planning.
I think most people stumble into it and it's either they're some they have a predetermined thought in their head of somebody in their team or a friend at another adviser, you know, in the office next door or getting acquired by these different firms out there that are doing it. There's like it's become more options than there were even 10 or 15 years ago that was just always internal and it was either internal to the team or internal to another adviser in the same firm. And because plumbers pipes leak, shoe makers, kids don't got no shoes. Financial advisors, you're listening to this.
If you're a financial adviser, you suck at doing your own financial planning because you can't do it. If you could, then no clients need you because they could do it. We all know that we need advice, we need help, we need coaches. And so, I just realized there was this void of knowledge in the succession space.
So, hence total succession. Here's the book. The subtitle is how a financial adviser can retire, be fully compensated, aha, but keep your client's interest first. Because I think that [clears throat] was also missing when I was going through this transition.
And it was like, here's all this money and here's how this is great for me, but how is it going to be good for my clients that I'm going to bump into over the next 10 years and know that they're still being cared for in the ways that their interests are coming first. So, as I was thinking through this book and getting back to that's a long way to turn back to the space. Sorry. So, what I realized is the reason most of us don't do planning for ourselves is we don't create the space to do it.
We don't create the space in time. We don't create the space in our head to think about what do we really want? And so I played with that word. I'm a big fan of acronyms.
So for acronym for space is first, do you see it? Do you see what you want to do outside of this business? Or do you see you staying in this business for forever? Do you see what your spouse wants who's been waiting for you to at some point do something different?
Do you see what your family members want, what your friends want? Do you see what you who are you if you're not this title or this owner? Do you see what that is from that? Then as you see what this is, so you're basically this is planning, right?
You're seeing a vision of yourself into the future. What is that? Okay. Now with that vision, seeing that reality, what do you need to prepare for to make that happen?
What changes need to be made? In our case, it was like we had to redo our our buy sell agreements and our corporate documents. we needed to rethink how the team was going to be structured because I started seeing what I wanted for the future of my own company. Uh I started seeing what what do I need to do to make sure I keep options open because I would like to create a multi-generational legacy firm but in 5 or 10 years that may change.
So what do I need to do to make sure I that I can see other avenues so I'm not locked into one thing that I may be surprised wasn't the right thing. So what do I got to do to prepare for that? Like many things that's a list of things to do. So then what do I need to act on in what order?
Is it me? Is it someone else? Is it an attorney? Is it information I need to get?
And in the concept of succession, if you see these things and now you're preparing for them, you're taking action. This becomes key. You have to commit now that that's the vision. And you have to continually keep preparing.
You have to continually keep acting. And a lot of times committing is to stop doing some things that don't make that seeing a reality. >> That's where stress is. That's where disappointment lies.
And yet that's also where energy is because you're seeing yourself committing to things to make that vision that's what you saw of your best self in the future reality. And then the E is exiting. That's when the succession is either done or you're exiting from certain roles that wasn't what you saw yourself doing in the future. And so the book takes that framework and kind of breaks it out to help the adviser think through what's the beginning, the vision, the end, and then take you through the end of what is the actual exit that you're now going and living what you saw.
>> Well stated, man. You rocked through that. I can tell you've put a lot of thought into this. It makes me think about something you said earlier in the conversation, which was, hey, as a visionary, you're really good at seeing what step 10 is, and you might be really good at one, but two through nine were vital.
Does this space framework really speak to that as well? Like, hey, like you might be really good at that seeing part, but are we preparing? Are we acting? Are we committing?
And are we exiting? You know, through each of those 10 steps. Do those go hand inand or are they uncorrelated? >> No, I think they go hand in hand.
And and I also think that the this space framework isn't to be done in a individually. This isn't just for you. The space framework is getting input into those that count on you, your loved ones, your spouse, who you're going to retire with for the rest of your life. What do they see?
What do you need to prepare to see what to see that their visions a reality, right? That there's a both end of this. And then more importantly, not more importantly, as importantly, it's bringing your team into seeing what that is, that what that space frame framework is to to communicate what do you need to commit to, but what do they need to commit to? If you're letting go of some things or you're trying to exit some aspects of the practice that you don't want to do anymore cuz it sucks the life out of you, but you found somebody that loves that stuff.
It starts by taking the this limited resource that we have in the busyiness of life, time, and creating the space to then start working the problem. >> Yeah, I love that, man. Well stated. So, I want to tie that back to what we talked about before of like the team shifting over, you getting new people in there, all of this type of stuff, but I know you've really emphasized having a multigenerational team and you have used the phrase 20somes a couple of times and things like that.
Maybe there's nothing here, but I want to explore this. Is there something to explaining to them or the space framework of like why should a 20-some year old care about the succession plan or how things work or like what's next? Because obviously it's like oh well wait are you thinking about getting out of here? Am I going to have a new boss?
Is this going to be crazy? Is this going to be different? So how do you tie those two things together which is all right we built a multigenerational team. are really passionate about that, but we're also trying to be very purposeful on what the exit of this is using the space framework and how do those two things come together.
>> Yeah. So, I came into the business right out of college, which was pretty rare back in the boiler room stock market broker dealer days >> and I had to figure out why would in my when I was getting hired the branch manager times was like who's going to give you money? >> How could you compete against me? And I sat there for a second and thought about it and I looked at him and I said, I would tell your client, I'm not retiring in your retirement.
>> I'm in my 20s. I got 30 years. So if you're 65 and retired, I'm here till you're 95. So therefore, I'm accountable to you until you're 95.
Because the reality is is the industry age of the adviserss is they're not going to be accountable to their client 20 years from now. 20 years from now, the client can be very disappointed with the decisions that were made that that adviser is making today, especially if their values are misaligned. So, they're focused on making as much money as they can so they can retire. >> Yeah.
>> And then not be accountable. And so, I turned 50 in 2025 and realized that, okay, my first business I bought, I was in a partnership. I was the junior adviser. He was 68 when I started.
He was 72 when I took over the practice and he retired. that I realized that okay no I think we need to hire a generation or two younger than me so that they can be sitting in these meetings and the clients can have a comfort level of having more than just one of us and I'm finding that these one I would rather take someone out of college and teach them what we do than try and unbrainwash someone from what they what they were doing. >> Yeah. >> But [snorts] we've had a lot of success.
We started with an internship program which I thought was a great way of giving back and then started realizing that wait a second when you find and you got to go through a couple of them you got to be patient that it's a long game. It's not one intern as your solution. But what we found is is that when we screen these interns they come in for the summer you find out really quickly are they the front of the house they are comfortable in front of clients. Are they back of the house or they have gifts and talents they don't even know they have because the social media and the technologies blocked them from even knowing that they can be relational or communive with with a with someone that's basically their grandparents.
But what we've done is once we found the ones that fit and ones that want to work that are not logging off 15 minutes before the their day quote unquote ends those we actually you know start figuring out hey you know we usually try and grab them in their junior summer and it's just like hey your senior year do you want to have a part-time job? Do you want to work remotely? COVID changed how you can do business. >> And so we send them off with the secured laptops and give them work to do and and then we watch to see, yep, oh look at the Thanksgiving break they're coming in full-time.
The Christmas break they're coming in full-time. Their spring break they're coming in full-time. And when we see that pattern, we tend to then find the job for them when they graduate and they're stepping right into our system. And we're actually starting to have more interns that are successful and we have positions for them.
I feel like I could start a placement service for crying out loud. And I bring them in and I tell them, "Question everything. Ask why we do what we do. " If you think we can do anything better or different, let us know because we got here because we didn't pretend like we knew everything or we had to keep doing it the same way.
And I think you're listening to this, you fall into trends where you keep doing it the same way. And yet the industry and the expectations keep shifting. And what I've bottom line is what I found is clients love these little rascals cuz one, they're like grandkids to them. And two, shockingly, because they're in the meeting and because they're assigned as a relationship manager to the clients, these little rascals respond to emails faster than I'll read them, right?
And and return of like simple like it's amazing how customer service has become sitting on hold with a computer pressing a button trying to get to a human and it's going to get nothing but worse with AI. And so all of a sudden for them to get a returned phone call that is the human that was in the meeting that can't answer the question or can basically get the answer from me or other wealth adviserss on the team. It's just been a great model for building what we want to build which is someone that can as that client ages into their into what we call their utopia which is their best life that they can afford. And their utopia is usually discovered somewhere around 75.
and you've done a lot of things you're doing and you're not going to do them a second or third or fourth time and you get into a rhythm of life and retirement. You take the same vacation every year, you give the same amount every year, you do the same thing with the kids every year. Well, these 20somes can step into that relationship and just check in on the clients in a way that affirms the relationship, shows that we care, and can be responsive to the needs of the client in ways that that doesn't energize me. I love solving complicated problems, and these clients don't have any problems.
It's like I was told a long time ago and if you're listening to this and you're the entrepreneur or you're the builder of the firm, you get to the point that oh my gosh, okay, here comes another $2 million client and they're 65 years old and they're retiring and it's very simple and it's just like it seemed like it was the same thing over and over again. And a friend of mine said, hey, you know what? You're like an open heart surgeon now. You have all these certifications.
You got all this experience and you love complicated problems. and the open heart surgeon doesn't meet with the people that they've done the surgeries on. They do the surgeries. They fix the problem.
>> There's a different doctor that cares for the client thereafter and will identify if the surgeons need it again. And so I realized by shifting that model that gave me energy back which also gave me energy to grow and go do other things cuz why take on another 20 clients that you're going to basically just sit down and look at your watch as you're going through the annual review realizing there's no problem to solve and you care. Like I care. >> Sure.
But I was told a long time ago, I care enough to find other people that can care better than I can for clients I've helped. And so we're building out a team of helpers. And thankfully, that's an easier hire than the mistake advisers make. Or if you're listening to this, the mistake you're making is thinking you got to replace yourself or find another rain maker to grow the business.
When really, how to build your business is to hire caretakers of what you've built to free you up because most likely you are the rain maker. >> Yeah, there's so much to unpack there. I love that. I love that.
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Because they've built a solution that changes everything for how you manage and grow your firm. At Milemarker, we specialize in three game-changing areas for firms like yours. Streamlining your data management so all your systems talk to each other. [music] Automating those repetitive reporting tasks that eat up your valuable time, and creating seamless advisor and client experiences that actually help you grow your firm.
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We're offering Next Mile listeners a complimentary consultation to explore exactly how we can help you transform [music] your advisory practice. Don't let outdated processes keep you from reaching that next mile in your firm's growth. Visit mileilemarker. co 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 [music] because your time should be spent building your business not buried in spreadsheets.
>> Okay. Do you identify the helpers through the intern program? Do you train the helpers? Do you like what are some of the things you look for of like that's a great caretaker for what I've built?
Maybe the analogy I would use I don't know why I was thinking this. You're the heart surgeon. They're the cardiologist, right? They're just making sure that everything's okay and that the ticker is working well.
>> Yeah. Well, the intern starts, every intern starts at the reception desk and learns what comes in out in mail and phones and we see how their people skills are. Um, then they, you know, if this is a medical practice, they start making the appointments in the front desk and then they eventually become kind of an assistant, then they eventually become a nurse, then they eventually become a PA and they have the opportunity to grow up into that surgeon if if they have those skill sets or desires. it is how do we find them?
I hired a manager to find them. I actually meet the interns now once they're here because I was so optimistic I'd give everybody a job that came through the door and then be disappointed that I didn't call references right or didn't check in or so a lot of it became the as Dan Sullivan says in strategic coach a lot of it became finding the who to do the how of building out the team and what we do is like a medical practice if they're growing into a client advisor role where they're going to be assigned to help service clients they're sitting next to me in every meeting. And I've had some meetings where it's me, the client adviser assigned to the client, and the newest intern. And I just tell the clients, it's like, "Hey, I'm having Kyle sit in.
He's our new intern. He's, you know, because in a medical practice, these surgeons walk in with three or four people with them, and they just sit there and listen. " But there's so much that needs to be caught by seeing and and being mentored. And it's not learned in a book.
It's not learned in a desk when they're outside of things. the breakdown of communication where I used to sit in the meetings by myself with you and then I'd go try and tell the person out of the office, the registered assistant if you will, what the tasks were or what the two steps two through nine were, which I never really probably articulated as well as they wanted it. And then then they didn't do it how I wanted it cuz I didn't tell them exactly how to do it. By hiring the people that come in and sit in these meetings, they're taking notes.
They're listening. are watching how you do the job of helping people help themselves is how we're building out this team. And it's slow, but you go slow to go fast. Like it snowballed over the last couple years and it's just and now this thing's rolling.
We're to the point now that one of our interns is now responsible for the interns, right? So it's like you try and let those that have done now teach because they can say, "Oh, I I understand. " >> Right? I I just did it three years ago.
different from I haven't taken exams for the securities licenses in 25 years. So that's how it compounds. That's so good, man. That's so good.
So you guys have this great concept of never enter data twice and how that has been a pillar of the way that you've grown. Can you talk about or elaborate on what I think you call it Ned 2 or Ned D? Ned >> two. Yeah.
N2 never enter data twice. And the idea is first of all it's with it's trying to set up a text stack in such a way that we're not duplicating data entry because if you have to enter the data twice and then the data changes cell phone number, email, address, right? And you're putting in more than one system, it becomes you run the risk of now you have conflicting data. Which one's right down the road when someone identifies that one's not in the other?
And so we've been building a tech stack with the idea that we're having to put data in one spot which everybody on the team can see and from there it can feed into the other systems so that securely in one environment we can see what everybody needs to see instead of having to jump from one system to the next. And the more that we can aggregate data into one place for the CRM, for the portfolio management, for the financial planning and where the notes are being taken, all of that trying to centralize that is been key. And I think in this AI revolution that's coming is the more you can consolidate this data, the more that AI can work to help you be more productive and proficient and help prep and help do followup and help identify gaps and to some extent help identify that there isn't missing information in certain places. So I think the industry has been creating products that bifurcate data whether it's at your custodian whether it's your CRM whether it's your training platform and we've been purposely for the last decade trying to seek how we can link and bring together that place into one source.
>> I love it. I love it. I think that is the foundation for the future of firms like yours and and really firms in the industry as a whole. getting all of that data into one place, being able to leverage that to either see it in other systems, build your own portals on top of it.
That's the mile marker story. And so we are uh we're singing from the same song book band. But as we talk about that, you mentioned AI, you mentioned a couple of other things. I would love for you to get out your crystal ball and talk to me about some of the things that you see happening in the industry.
Doesn't have to be technology. I mean, it could be outside of technology. You can certainly talk about that, too. But when you look a couple years into the future as you're trying to position your firm for that, what are some of the things and trends and predictions you see happening that you're trying to get ready for?
It's being able to help more people with less people, which is one, you have a huge snowball of succession. That's why we wrote the book total succession. there's a huge transition of wealth supposedly something in the neighborhood of a third to 40% of the people are looking to retire or transition or or do something different in their business and they control something in the neighborhood of 30 to 40% of the assets in the industry. There's I think what's happening in the industry is effectively we're going back to where we were in the '9s, the late 90s anyway, where you had all these different regional firms that had all these different kind of tastes and feels and cultures that you kind of had choice that the financial crisis by the government's wisdom smooshed all these companies together and you had like five major firms.
The outside of that or the byproduct of that was the RAS really started taking off and now they're consolidating. Yeah. Yeah. And so what's interesting to me about that is that game of multiples can only go so far until you've consolidated everybody and then you have to get back to what the business always was, which is pure organic growth.
>> I've read some stats that there's an assumption that about 30% of the clients that again advisers are selling their practices. So they're selling their clients wealth to somebody else. It's not their money, right? They're renting it.
>> Yep. that about a third of those folks may choose to go somewhere else, may choose that, you know, you might be the financial adviser that's choosing what you want to roll your company up to, but the client in the end gets to vote with their feet. And do they stay or do they find someone that can sit down and still do eyeballs to eyeballs? And there was a study done that it projected there's going to be about 100,000 advisor shortage in the next 10 years for the number of clients that are coming.
And so it's just it what I see coming and we're seeing it in our own practice is that we're constantly growing organically and getting referrals and we just need to keep building that team using technology using things to help us be more productive to help more people because the old days where one adviser could be over a 100 to maybe 150 households is probably going to need to double. >> And yet we still want to be able to deliver that service and that knowledge and that that customer touch and bring that peace of mind. And that's going to come with automating tasks. That's going to come with subject matter experts in the team that maybe help with boarding clients and different things that you can do as you grow a team out.
But I really think what's going to happen is is the the one adviser with the two assistants is really going to struggle in this environment. And and it's basically whether or not you're going to roll up into a firm where you can have some independence and have some freedom and they can keep the client's interest first or you're going to roll up into some of these firms that I think the way the multiples are going to play out or the pressure the PE is going to put on them, you're going to have a model where and where it's one advisor for hundreds of clients that have like five or six assistants underneath them and it's basically you're just putting out fires all day long. But the proactive client service aspect of the business is the multiples I think are going to squeeze that out which creates opportunity again for these smaller firms to kind of compete again. And so, you know, I just it's a constant cycle of the same job, helping people, building relationships, creating trust, solving the problem that AI is never going to be able to solve, which is the situation where there's 70 answers, 68 of them are right.
Now, you got to pick the best one of the right. That AI is going to have a hard time doing. >> Yeah. >> And it's just a wonderful opportunity because you have a ton of people that want advice and you have fewer and fewer advisers able to do that.
>> There's a lot there that's so great. But I think your point on [clears throat] AI is is really good, which is I think what it will be wonderful for is, hey, I could as a person go gather those 68 things and do the research and figure it out. But one thing we've known the entire time this industry's been around is the textbook answer is not always the right answer. It's why personal finance is personal.
There's a lot of people actually there was a great book written by a collection of adviserss and things like that. It was called How I Invest My Money, right? So there's like, hey, this is what the textbook answer is for what you should tell clients to do or what I should do. I keep way more cash than anybody would ever say you should keep because that makes me sleep better at night or they're like, "So, I don't invest the way the textbooks say I should.
" And there's so many other cases like this where it's like, "Yeah, I know that's what the optimal AI algorithmic answer is, but I'm a human and I can't always be a robot. I can't always do things the way that is. " So, using AI to put together the options, but then actually work with the client to understand what's going to make you feel best psychologically. and we're going to be on the same page and feel affirmed about that I think is really really powerful because you know just referencing what we've talked about in the rest of this conversation I've heard for a long time people saying we've got to figure out how to serve double the amount of households or whatever but yeah you can serve them you can bring them under somebody who is overseeing them but are you actually serving them with purpose and with intentionality where they feel seen and heard and and valued the way that I know you've really mentioned in this conversation you want to do it form so it's like Hey, how do we use that technology?
Yes. To double the amount of households that we are overseeing, but doing it the way that we think our brand and culture should be doing it. >> Yeah. I've said for a while now to other adviserss, you're not going to lose clients to AI.
You're going to lose clients to an advisor that's using AI. >> Yeah. 100%. I think that's great, man.
Really, really well done. Okay, so let's move into the final segment of the show. We call this the mile marker minute. Yeah, you're ready, man.
You're ready to go. Okay, so here we go. First question for you. If you could travel anywhere in the world you've never been to before, where would you go?
>> Antarctica comes to mind for some reason. >> Oh, okay. That's a good one. I like that.
Are you a mountains person or a beach person? >> I don't mind being cold cuz you can put enough clothes on to be warm, but when you're hot, you're hot. Can't do anything about it. So, a little bit of both, but I live in Wisconsin.
So, there's your answer. >> I love it. All right. Do you think that Madison is the best college town in the United States of America?
>> Absolutely not. No. I I you know I have an office up there. It's a great town.
I'm biased to the college experience. I prefer the college. It's kind of in a campus off onto its own >> and Madison like a it's a great school but Madison's kind of embedded into the city of Madison and it's just different. So it's just personal preference.
No ding on the, you know, I don't want to get mail, right? >> So >> you shouldn't get any hate mail. They show up on all the top 10 lists of college towns and everything like that. But I had to ask you as a Wisconsin native how you felt about that.
What is the best road trip you remember in your life or that you've ever been on? >> Coming back from Arizona on a road trip through the desert hoping the 1978, I think it was, you know, Buick 3-speed V8, hoping the tire, we lost a tire. We put the spare on. You're in the desert.
You're open. You're going to make it through. I was like 12, right? They uh, you know, next gas station 100 miles near the [laughter] middle of nowhere.
Like that was an adventure. >> I love it. I love it. Everybody has a memorable road trip story.
What is the best flavor of ice cream? >> The got serious. [laughter] >> It's actually Madison. It's a vanilla caramel, huge chunks of dark chocolate, and I think uh cashews.
>> I love it, man. I started asking that question. I have found out about all kinds of unique ice creams that I never knew existed. My world is being opened.
It's amazing. Okay. There's an alternate universe and in this universe, Tyson Ray cannot be affiliated with financial services whatsoever. In that alternate universe, what career do you have?
>> I would be helping widows and orphans and those that are neglected. >> I love it. What a great way to end. Tyson, you made it through the mile marker minute.
This conversation has been jam-packed. Man, I appreciate your passion for succession, but not just succession in the sense of, hey, people are going to retire or whatever, but how do we thoughtfully consider succession? The way that we do that and continue to serve clients with that mentality and culture the whole time, that we're not just treating them as numbers on the balance sheet, but that they are real people with real relationships that need service and intentionality. Along with all of the other great thoughts that you shared, the book sounds like it's going to be amazing.
Everybody, please make sure that you order it. So the link is in the show notes for you to order it. But Tyson, this was a great conversation. Thanks for coming on the show.
>> Thanks for having me on, Kyle. >> Of course. Everybody, that's been another episode of Next Mile. Please make sure you click follow or subscribe wherever you're paying attention to this and drop us a fivestar review so more people can find the show and great conversations like this.
But until the next episode, enjoy every mile.
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