About This Episode
Next Mile Episode 126: Scaling White-Glove Client Experiences with Sarah Simmer. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.
with Sarah Simmer · January 6, 2026
Next Mile Episode 126: Scaling White-Glove Client Experiences with Sarah Simmer. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.
really in the industry, I think it's not as much about like what the fee is as much as it is what you're getting for that fee. And what you're going to start to see or have already seen is that a lot of these large organizations, they can add a tax practice. They can add trust services. They can do all of these things pretty easily.
And so, what does that do for the more boutique feel, the more personal feel for a client, right? for that client that doesn't want to get an 800 number. [music] Hey everybody, welcome back to Next Mile. I'm your host Kyle Vampelt, co-founder of Milemarker and today I am joined by Sarah Simmer.
Sarah is the managing partner of client experience at Heritage Wealth Advisors and we are very grateful that she happened to survive taking her kids to Disney World for the first time. So Sarah, thanks so much for joining the show and congratulations on surviving Disney World. >> Thank you, Kyle. I'm happy to be back.
We officially made it with not too many meltdowns, but maybe like a little too long in Orlando, but we're all him and and glad to be back. How many of those meltdowns were yours versus the kids, Sarah? It >> was my husband's. >> Oh, yeah.
>> Really? You know, >> we can struggle at places like that. So, all right. I've got to ask you.
We're going to get into all the Raa stuff and everything, but which parks did you hit? I know you said you might have stayed a day too long. What was the itinerary? >> Well, we actually only did two of the parks.
We were going to do three. I have little girls. Amelia's five, Eliza's almost four. And so we did Magic Kingdom, then we did Epcot for like Princess Bronson to explore Epcot.
And then we were going to do Hollywood Studios, but they loved the rides, which was unexpected. >> So we ended up just going back to Magic Kingdom, so they could kind of ride all those rides again. That's crazy. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah. That's great. That's great. >> And we did a pool day in there, too.
Hotel day. >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I've I've heard that's the pro move.
I've heard the single biggest mistake you can do when going on this is that you don't give yourself a day to like recover. or like just hang out by the pool and relax. If you go and you try and just go full itinerary the whole time, you're going to have a bad time. So, for all of those listening who've never done this before, don't make the mistake, you got to have a pool day or two in there to recover from the craziness.
>> Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. >> Somehow this became a how to travel with kids to Disney podcast. Maybe we should talk about wealth management a little bit.
What do you think? >> Yes, that sounds good. I am not a Disney expert. I'd like to make sure that is clear.
[laughter] So Sarah, I've had over a hundred conversations on air and off air with this and I found everybody has a unique path to our industry. Some people it's a really traditional path. Maybe they followed in family footsteps. Other people they didn't even know this industry existed and they come in through the side door after a career since or something like that.
But whether your path is traditional or untraditional, um I found everybody has what we call a money moment. And that's a moment in your life where the light bulb kind of clicks on and you go, "This is it. This is what I want to do for my career. " and how I want to spend my time.
So, what was that money moment for you that led you to having this conversation with me today? >> Yeah, I'll hit a couple of those examples probably in my money moment. So, I actually was a career changer. I started out in big four public accounting.
I was at PWC. I had done audit work. So, not even on family held businesses, but large publicly traded companies. And after being with PWC for about 6 years, I started to explore what's my next move.
Do I want to stay here? Do I really want to give that partner track a shot or is this the time to make a jump? And as I started thinking a little bit more about the things about my job that I actually enjoyed dayto-day, it shocking. It was not the underlying financial accounting.
It was the relationships that I was building with the client. it was getting to show up and figure out how to make that client want to talk to me. I mean, I was an auditor, so it wasn't like they were, you know, eager for me to come into their office. So, I enjoyed, you know, making those relationship inroads and then also project management, coaching my team, things like that.
So, as I started thinking about a career move and what a jump would look like, I narrowed it down to I wanted to work with individuals and families, not the big corporations, and I wanted them to be excited to see me coming, right? So really helping them with a problem that they had. I was also cognizant of like how difficult it might be to do a career change and a jump and what were the tangible skills that I could kind of up and translate into another industry and be able to market myself on. And this is where the second piece comes in.
I did grow up around the industry. So Deian Remo who founded Heritage in 2005, she's my mom. And so I watched her develop this firm. So, I wasn't just around the industry, I was around heritage for a lot of the time.
And despite my best efforts to forge my own path, I found myself wanting to come back into wealth management. I remember the conversation I had with her. I had just gotten married. I was ready to make this move, but we were committed to staying in Pittsburgh and Heritage's main offices are out of Richmond.
And you've likely seen this over time, Kyle, but the wealth management industry is so broad in terms of the type of clients served. What folks are really bringing to the table is their value proposition. And so what I did know about the industry was I wanted to do the work that Heritage was doing, the really deep level of client service, working with families on a lot of complexities, bringing together the tax element of it and the financial planning and how could I do that? And so I started the conversation with Deian.
and I'll just call her that moving forward for ease. But I started that conversation and said, you know, I'm looking, are there firms in Pittsburgh that you know about from the connections you've made that are doing something similar? And I still remember when she went, no, we have next generation clients that sit all over the country. You're not going somewhere else.
And so since then, it's been, I guess, six years now at Heritage. But that was kind of the the moment combined. >> That's amazing. I love that story.
Family story. Uh, also >> if I my notes are right, your mom was also a big four, like didn't she do KPMG before she started and then got into it? So, is there something I'm not going to try and say like is that the path she asked you to go down, but is there something about that, right, that sort of leads to doing this work really well? because big four accounting is notorious for like what a launchpad to start your career, to learn how to do things the right way, to learn project management, all of that type of stuff.
So, it feels like that's a pretty powerful place to start to cut your teeth. But then, what is it about that big four experience that translates really well into wealth management and serving families and clients? >> Yeah, that's really well said. It's a great place to start a career.
You're in this big company. you're kind of in it with a lot of people around the same age and you learn how to learn very quickly. So, it's kind of about figuring out what you need to know to serve a client. So, you're immediately coming into this professional services world.
Whereas, right, if you're starting in through the company or otherwise, you'd have to learn that maybe relationship management piece or that client focus piece. So, I'll say there's definitely a head start from that. for Deian's side of the house, she had a more a little more linear path to it. So, I was really doing kind of the big career shift from one to the other because the audit work isn't getting into the weeds of all of the individuals, right?
She was a partner at KPMG in their financial planning individual tax work group. I wish I knew the better name. And so in that she worked with corporate executives. She worked with business owners and she was doing a lot of detailed planning for them around their individual tax picture, their generational wealth transfer, all of these items that are now these buzzwords we hear in this wealth management industry or or she was doing this family office type of work already.
And so what happened was around the time you know the RAIA industry started coming up. It made her realize that there was this potential value you could add to the clients by not just giving that really deep technical advice, but actually being able to implement it on their behalf. And so that was kind of a task there. We continue to get really great hires though out of that public accounting space because >> to your point, it's a great place to learn the basics.
A lot of what I've learned comes through day-to-day, even though it's not a a one for one match, but there's just a lot really to take in there. So, >> yeah, absolutely. I think that's great. And then I'm just going to double click on this.
This isn't where I expected to take this conversation, but you both did audit and I feel like when it comes to client service, especially with families with complex needs, audit is something that probably teaches you to be very thorough, very detailed, to look at a lot of different things. So, not really an area of industry where you're going to gloss over things that can have really substantial impacts, especially for an ultra high net worth family like you all serve. So, how much of that on the job training do you think translated even if you're not auditing large corporate financials, but the muscle of what it takes to run a successful audit? Tell me about that.
>> Yeah. And so, Deion was in audit for a small period of time and then she really was more in that focused individual space, but we have a few other audit alumni here. It does teach you that highle analytical thinking. So it takes you how to take a problem right or not really a problem take some highle piece of information and be able to dig down into it to identify where the risk is or where there might be a problem and how to interpret that data very quickly.
And it's interesting I mean thinking of my marker but just the industry in general the amount of time we spend on talking about data interpretation data aggregation. How do you take that and you learn how to very quickly interpret that and scale it down into here are the things that matter? That does translate pretty well into doing a financial plan for someone, right? Into saying here are the things that are top priority.
Here's how we really need to take a path into solving the problems you might have, right? And figuring that out pretty quickly and articulating it in a way that makes sense for the client. And that is a skill. Yeah.
>> Yeah. All right. So I want to zoom up a little bit now and talk about that experience that you had. But then so your role stands out to me.
So managing partner of client experience. Um >> but the primary niche that you all serve is ultra high net worth. And so I'm sure that client experience really is obviously it's at the center of every firm. These are all professional services firms.
But you know the experience that a ultra high net worth family is going to get really is everything. So, forgive me if my my research failed me here, but that doesn't sound like, hey, I'm an like I'm just an adviser to fin like to uh the ultra high net worth families that I'm sure Heritage has a bunch, but it sounds like you're almost in charge of the overall standard and experience of what those families should be receiving at Heritage. Is that a fair statement or did I miss that a little bit? >> No, absolutely.
That is it. It's in my role addressing how do we scale as a business while retaining the customization and the intentionality that families of this asset level have grown really accustomed to with us at Heritage but across their professionals, right? They have this expectation and we've set up an expectation that they're going to get a certain level of service. So after a time as you're doing various service offerings, there's just a need to bring everyone back into it to make sure that the cohesive picture is still coming through for the client.
Like if you have a really great investment plan, but it's not talking at all to the financial plan or if those things aren't supporting what we're seeing on the tax side of the house. How much value is that to a client? Well, the magic and the art is really when that all comes together in something that's functional for the client at the end of the day. And it's how do you get all of those services talking to one another, remaining consistent, setting up process that makes sense for us to continue to scale and grow on that side of the business.
And also on the flip side, be able to assess if our clients, some of our clients and us still have a mutually beneficial relationship, right? like is this still doing what it's supposed to be doing given the level of service that we're providing. It's sitting at that piece of it and then also not forgetting to check back in and listen to the client to say what is the client expecting. What are they seeing?
What is their actual experience? Because at the end of the day, we're a people business. So the client's experience is their reality, right? And so we can think we're doing this fantastic job, but if the client has a terrible experience through all of it, we're not going to get referrals.
We're not going to be able to keep going and eventually we're not going to be able to stay in business. So by focusing in on what that client is actually experiencing through the process of of what we're doing, we're just getting everyone to rehone it back in on the point of why we're all here to begin. >> Okay. There's a lot to unpack in what you just said.
Maybe I'll work backwards a little bit, but you kind of said, "Hey, if we think we're doing a great job, but the client isn't getting what they want, you know, we have a problem, right? " What do you do when that's actually happening? Right? So, hey, we think we're delivering every single thing that we promised we would deliver to you and we think we're doing it with fine colors and the reality is the client's going, "This just isn't what I expected.
This isn't what I was hoping for. " First of all, how do you uncover that? And then second of all, what do you do to rectify that? Yeah, that's I mean those are great those are great questions.
We so how you uncover it. I mean every firm wishes that they're uncovering it through a great client survey that goes out and the client calls and tells you exactly what's been on their mind. But in reality, as anyone can tell you, unfortunately it's coming up through a disappointment, right? There's something that falls through the cracks.
There's a service expectation that's not being met. And at that time the client's letting you know or they're calling in and letting their main relationship advisor know, right? Or we're uncovering that on our side. So, um, you know, something comes up, an error pops up.
One thing we do is we're very intentional about asking the client at that time, right? And getting a pulse on where they are. Hey, we just had something fall through the cracks. Is this, you know, on our side it may be small.
Is this small or big on the client side? Have they articulated it? And you can't take the first answer. You don't want to keep honing in on something if it's clearly not an issue, but you have to be able to ask enough open-ended questions.
And that takes time. And that takes a commitment to not being scared to call the client and ask those hard questions and hear something you might not want to hear. And then the hard part, I think, and this is where the role comes in, is the translation of that back to your team. You don't want the team to feel totally rattled by it.
And you don't want them to feel that the effort that they're putting in isn't noticed or appreciated, but there is this piece of having to reset the team back to the client. Like this is how the client feels right now. So while we thought, you know, we had maybe done everything that as it was supposed to go by our process, well maybe that's time for us to re-evaluate what that process is doing, right? And center it better on how it's going to impact the client overall.
So unfortunately, a lot of it will come through that. And then it's also the flip side of beginning and being confident in asking those questions before they happen. So periodically checking in with the client. And yes, I wish it was easier and more scalable to do a survey, but at the end of a client meeting, having someone hang back maybe and hey, how's everything going?
How are you feeling about this? What are your expectations? One piece that I also think firms get very scared of in our industry is pushing on having the fee discussion. A lot of people kind of want to let it go and then everyone knows that you're paying these fees, but it it can be pretty behind the scenes based on how the fees get pulled out and things like that, but if you're checking back in to say, "Hey, is this fee still feel appropriate?
" Because we're feeling like it is, right? That's how you're going to get back at that value piece. So, actually not being scared. If you believe in the value you're providing to your clients, you shouldn't be scared to kind of check in with them on how that fee feels.
And of course, there's a way to do that without it being like, hey, cuz everyone wants to pay less. But there's a way to do that. And doing it through the question around the fees is a good way to get it to whether or not a client is feeling the value that whether you're aligned maybe is what I should say on the value side. >> Sarah, that was super insightful.
I love the way that you laid some of that out. That was a good insight into what people can be doing and obviously that could be applied to whether you're ultra high net worth or not. Obviously >> the the one thing I was also thinking about as you were answering the question before that I wanted to unpack was you were talking about okay how do we get the tax information and the complexity and all of this type of stuff but then you know when I think about client experience or I think about great client experiences I've had this maybe sounds a little brash but it's like I don't care that you have to go do all of that type of stuff right I just want the end result to be a delightful experience and maybe I've been watching too much of the show the bear or I've been thinking about restaurants way too much lately But, you know, I think about how if you're sitting in the front of the house, >> you just want a beautifully composed dish to come out, you don't care about what happened with the farmers or the supply chain logistics or what's going on on how they got the ingredients or how long it took for prep or any of that. Like, you just want them to deliver a wonderful dining experience to you in the front of house.
And that's I think about that sometimes an hour. So, how do you manage the awareness of what that is? because it certainly contributes to the value of that fee that you're trying to make sure everybody's still okay with, but at the same token, not really collaboring with your client the whole time, you know, talking about how complex it is. There's got to be a balance there.
And when I think about client experience, I think this is one of those big things that is a balance you need to strike as a firm. >> It's an excellent point because frankly, if it were easy, we'd have a lot of clients that would do it themselves, right? if it was not time intensive, if it wasn't gonna take a lot of effort for them to learn. I mean, you think about the folks that get themselves up to this place of being an ultra- high net worth person.
They've run businesses. They've like been executives. They're very intelligent people. And if they wanted to go figure it out and put in the time, maybe they could do that, right?
And so that's something to keep in mind in terms of this is if it were easy, they'd do it themselves, right? And so it's not and so naturally it's going to be a complex process. And to your point, it's not bringing that all out for the client to have to feel with you because that changes the client experience in terms of how we make sure we instrument that. It's a lot of focus on how you're actually presenting information to the client.
It's very forwardlooking. So I think you also have to be able to look forward at what a client might >> where it might start to go. So, as certain experiences like restaurants, like how we order things, how I can order something on my phone right now and know that it'll be here tomorrow, th that type of expectation feeds its way into other areas and elements. And when you think about some of the platforms that you enjoy interacting with, they're very streamlined.
They're not very textheavy, right? They're it gets to the point pretty quickly. It's easy to follow and intuitive. And so if we can focus on making our the information and the story we're trying to get to the client more aligned with those types of experiences that they enjoy having.
That's the goal. And by the way, the caveat is we've not perfected it. But that's the reason for the role, right? Let's focus on how all these parts are that we're not showing them the same investment performance reporting that we've been showing since the firm started 20 years ago.
Right? The world has changed. The industry has changed and the attention span andor the amount of information that a client might want has also changed. >> This podcast is brought to you by Turncast.
We make game-changing content for fintech and financial services companies. Learn more at turncast. com. Hey next mile listeners, Jessica here from Milemarker.
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co and mention the Next Mile podcast and I'll personally [music] make sure to get the insights you need to take control of your data and scale your practice. because your time should [music] be spent building your business, not buried in spreadsheets. >> Okay. You really have thought deeply about the client service model at Heritage and that's wonderful, >> but obviously we're not just serving one family.
I don't think you're a single family office. And so when you serve ultra high net worth clients, I want to ask you a little bit about how do we scale this? How do we systematize it? And I know there's a marriage there between technology, but also I believe you are a big EOS shop.
I know a lot of the people who listen to this are EOS. So just talk to us a little bit about how you scale the service for ultra high net worth families who want to feel like they're the only family in the world. >> Yeah. Yeah.
It's a great question and it's hard because you end up feeling like you have two distinct business models and that starts with things like the technology, right? Am I looking for an investment platform that allows me to make changes across a mass amount of accounts very easily, rebalance very easily? Right? That's one benefit that you have.
or am I looking for an account or an investment platform that allows us to report on a wide variety of private investments, public investments, multiple managers maybe, and how does that work? And so it makes it that much harder to focus your research on where you're going next. And so we do use EOS to try to get to what is that business plan? How are we going to focus our energy and what's the right move?
And it is for scaling purposes. Things like technology are key. There's also some basics in our industry like segmentation that come into play here. But you can't stop at segmentation.
So we do segment our clients. We have about 17 families who fall into our family office bucket. And then we have a wide range of ultra high net worth and more traditional wealth management folks. >> Hey, let me break in real quick and just ask you tell me about your segments.
Right. So I feel like the industry has very like sliding scales on what they call these buckets. So what asset range or whatever KPI you use, how do I get into the family office bucket? What do you classify as ultra high net worth bucket?
So give me some definitions of your buckets. >> Yeah. So we have our family office bucket which is it's over a certain amount of revenue. So, one thing that we do is asset management is key, but we're really looking at the revenue because when you get into these families, sometimes it's realistic when people talk about risk diversification, they might be working with multiple managers.
Well, our role in that, what we want to do is we want to be the owner of their reporting. We want to make sure they understand that we have the tax piece. We have the financial reporting. We're doing all of this.
We're keeping tabs on everything, right? We are the that trusted contact. So instead of looking at it based on assets under management, we'll look at that based on annual revenue per family, we worked with a team to come up with a scorecard that we use both for our existing clients and our prospects. And it helps us understand where they fit in this bucket.
And some of the things that we look at are, you know, are we dealing with a family or an individual? Okay, what's the annual revenue piece on that? How many households are we talking? Because if you're talking 50 million for one household, that's very different than talking 50 million across nine households, right?
And so we're thinking about things like that. We look at the potential for growth. So are there liquidity opportunities here? Are they referral sources?
All of those items go into where someone might fit into our segment base, right? It results in in a score that pops out. Generally speaking, our family offices, they're complex, they're multi-generational, they bring in a certain amount of revenue for us annually, and we're able to provide andor are providing the majority of our service offerings. So, we're doing the tax work, we're doing the planning, we're managing the assets, we're doing bookkeeping for some of their underlying family partnerships.
In some cases, we're doing bill pay, we're coordinating their household employees. we are, you know, all in there. The next phase that pops up right under that, we call our family CFO. And these folks are ones that maybe they're not as complex, but they still have a pretty high revenue amount that they're bringing to us each year.
But maybe it's only, you know, two generations. It's really only three different households. That's a different animal, right? Maybe there's one trust, but that's kind of it.
So, you start to bring down the complexity piece on it. And often times those end up being our most profitable bottom line clients there because they're benefiting from our ability to work in a really complex space without layering in a ton of additional work that you might see on the family office side. So the extent side is is remaining relatively low compared. And then you move down the bucket and I'll say kind of that next bucket is more where we see our nextgen andor cumulators.
So those are personal CFO, maybe we're not managing the assets, but we're working with them through stock options RSUs, executive comp conversations. We're beginning to do that planning work. We're helping them with the tax advice and the financial planning. And at some point, those people might are expected really to flip into our family CFO or our family office segment.
So that's how we segment our clients down. And I think what's big is when you're trying to scale, being able to systematize it in any way you can. Every adviser likes to be like, well, it's really nuanced. And it is.
Everything is nuanced, but you have to be able to start somewhere on getting it into some kind of comparable scale that then allows us to zone in on it. And so one thing we've done is we've actually spent some time saying that no these family office clients and these family CFOs and then you know our next generation accumulators those are our focus areas. So people that don't fall into those buckets. Let's dig in deeper to those.
Are we going to and are we actually going to have a conversation with them about maybe it's time to go somewhere else and you know we have this great list of advisors. They work much better with individuals with your fact set and we know you're going to be in good hands. That's always easier said than done though. We love our clients.
It's hard to hard to say, you know, I don't get to call you and talk to you about your trip to Disney World or wherever it might be. But that's that's been a big help is that scorecard piece. >> Yeah, that's awesome because I feel like that's a question I get a lot, you know, whether it's people who serve mass affluent or people who are serving high net worth. It's kind of like how do you scale service?
The whole point is like white glove should not feel scaled. It should feel like it's the opposite of that. It should feel unscalable, but yet, >> you know, trying to run businesses. And by the way, I this is a funny full circle.
I'm always amazed at how well KPMG and McKenzie and Bane and all of these folks do at that because they are massively scaled obviously. I mean, they are running global companies, but yet at the same token >> seem to maintain a very high level of service or expectation of service. And I'm always amazed by that. And I don't know if it is just being militant on the standards of training people who come in and the human capital, but it feels like I mean obviously they you know you worked at DWC like I'm sure there's systems, there's technology, there's ways that they have done this to be able to serve, you know, thousands of customers globally with a white club standard.
>> Yep. Absolutely. And it does come back to the people because at the end of the day, the people are all we have, >> right? We're not making anything.
>> We're human capital. we're managing the people that we have in house. And so to the extent that you can make it easier for someone at the firm to be able to understand the nuance or even identify that it should be there, that's going to lead to better outcomes. It's hard, but trying to make sure we're not giving the Cadillac to someone that just needs a reliable Ford.
Like how do you make sure? And so trying to really define those and implement those standards. So the next piece I'd say after you do the segmentation and then you have the scorecard is then really looking at those service offerings ac across it and it could be from anything from like how many meetings are we having a year to getting really specific like am I traveling to meet with this person >> well if it's a family office client maybe it's a no-brainer right like and maybe we're doing that once a year and we just plan for it >> maybe we're not doing that for everyone and how do you differentiate when that's appropriate and when it's not it should we be doing tax returns for everyone or is there a certain level at which that becomes the benefit of being in that level. So these are things we are constantly exploring as we're assessing that client experience piece because for a while you can be small enough to just make sure that white glove service is happening right you're small enough you can yell over to the next cube but as you're building and as you're scaling that's where it really does get challenging and so I think the more consistent we can be on what are our standards of excellence how is everyone learning that when they're coming in the door and then how do we really slice and dice our client base to understand what's appropriate for one client versus another and then how do you escalate if you think there needs to be maybe a breaking of the rules for a client, what's the path for escalating that up to get maybe approval or buy in.
Um, so it's it's I think it's starting with guard rails more than it is with like really static processes, if that makes sense. Like because it's we know that people are people. They're never going to be exactly the same. That's actually really insightful and and maybe it's like a duh thing for a lot of people listening to this, but I think everybody's chasing this perfect system or this perfect way of doing everything, but in reality, perhaps the perfect system is just guard rails to let really talented and intelligent people work within and trusting that they're going to be intelligent and talented.
So, it's not always here's step one, here's step two, here's step three, here's step four. Again, I feel like we keep tying back to other things, but the greatest chefs in the world who create the best dishes, it's because they're able to be creative within guard rails, right? And then you have to create that dish over and over and over again. It can't be different every single night.
But a lot of times that's what happens. Here's the ingredients that are in season. You got to make something interesting with the ingredients that are in season. But now go be great.
>> Yep. And that's on the technology side. That's where you see it a lot with a firm like ours where we're doing we're doing the tax returns inhouse. So, we have CPAs on stack.
We have all of that. We're also doing the investment management. When you start talking about technology and data, we're looking at potentially maybe like three or four different business models where if we were like one firm, it would be this technology is what you use. It's just duh, that's what every person's using.
Well, okay. you know, this great financial planning software doesn't have a tax preparation software. So, how do you start to like think about things because it's you're going to have to have some level of bridge or guard rails around things like that? Because it's if you're setting up and you want to provide the service like Heritage is providing that's across multiple service offerings, you have to know that there's not going to be kind of a a perfect piece of technology that addresses all of those things.
So, how are we able to concentrate and focus on that? So, we see it in that way as well. >> I love it. I love it.
I think that's great. Okay, speaking of technology, I want to zoom up a lot and I want you to get out your crystal ball and I want you to tell me about some of the things that you see happening. Obviously, AI is a big trend, but it's not the only trend. What are some big things happening right now that you are paying attention to that you think you need to position Heritage well for over the next three to five years when it comes to client experience or otherwise?
>> I'm probably going to sound a little bit like a broken record. You've heard me talk about kind of this variety of services that we're providing across it. I think when you hear that, you can see that we have a strong belief that that's going to be a benefit to us in the future. I think we're going to start to see fee pressure.
People argue about when we start to see it and not. And really in the industry, I think it's not as much about like what the fee is as much as it is what you're getting for that fee. And what you're going to start to see or have already seen is that a lot of these large organizations, they can add a tax practice, they can add trust services, they can do all of these things pretty easily. And so what does that do for the more boutique feel, the more personal feel for a client, right?
For that client that doesn't want to get an 800 number. And so I think what you're going to start to see in the industry is and that what you've started to see is a lot of people trying to layer those on. And so the focus that we have at Heritage is how do we take these services we already have and then how do you look at what's going on with technology and AI to try to create some of that efficiency across it to continue to be an option for clients to serve clients at a really high technical level with a depth of experience across a bunch of services but not have to be you know the large bank or the large brokerage house to do it and still give them that alternative and that option. So, that's really where a lot of our focus has been.
>> I love it. I love it. All right, this conversation's been jam-packed. I don't even think we got to half of the agenda, which is okay.
That just means we're going to have to have you back on, but we're going to move into the final segment of the show, Sarah, which is what we call the mile marker minute. It's a series of lightning round questions aimed to get to know you a little bit better beyond heritage and beyond Disney World. So, are you ready for the mile marker minute? >> Absolutely.
>> All right. If you could travel anywhere in the world that you've never been to before, where would you go? >> The smart Alec answer is right there. I was thinking about this.
I think I would say Morocco or Turkey, but the real answer is I am very easily influenced where when it comes to travel and like Kyle, if you were telling me about where you just went, that's probably going to be like the next thing on my radar. So yeah, those are the two big ones that have kind of always been there, but periodically someone will be like, "We had this great trip to out west to go to the national parks. " And I'm like, "That's where I'm going next. " >> Yes.
I love it. Okay. Are you a mountains person or a beach person? >> Well, I'm a mountains person.
I think we always end up defaulting to that. So when my husband and I get some time maybe where the kids are staying away, we always end up in the mountains. But on that same vein with kids, we've become more beach people. >> Yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense. What is the best road trip you've ever been on? >> A couple of friends of m of of mine, we uh from PWC, we went out west. I met them in they had done Seattle first, but then I met them in Portland and then we drove to visit friends down in San Francisco and we drove down the coast and that was one of the most fun road trips I've done.
But here's for your first question. I'm dying to do a crosscountry one. So, >> who knows? Uh, yes.
Shout out Ryan Trean in his 50 States in 50 days YouTube series that I think made everybody want to do this like this thing. So, yes. >> Uh, what is the best flavor of ice cream? >> Mint chocolate chip.
My first job was at Brewers if you've ever been. And that was what was on my name tag. So, and it's still true. >> Still true.
I love it. That's awesome. What's the best book you've read or listened to in the past year? >> I've actually read a lot this past year.
I gave up some a lot of social media for a couple years and it's been nice because I found my way back to reading. Oh, there have been so many good ones. There was a it's called a bit much. It's a grouping of poems and I will look up the author of that.
>> Lindsy Rush. >> There you go. Yes. Yes.
And she got popular during the pandemic on on Instagram so I found my way back to social media. But what I'm reading right now I'm really enjoying and I never read it before is Jane Austin's Northhanger Abby which I guess is one of hers that like didn't get published for a really long time and I think people might not love it but I'm surprisingly really enjoying it. >> That's awesome. I love it.
Okay, so this is more for your personal life than it is for the firm. Okay, but I want you to complete the following sentence. >> Progress is blank. >> It's constant.
I think it's and it's little. So you have to take your small wins when you get them. And I don't know. I think Kyle, you have you have kids, right?
So you're Yeah. I mean, there's nothing like a kid to kind of show you the like benefit of like small progress. And then one day they just hit you with something that in their world is huge. My little one this weekend was so excited, called me in to show me.
Her sister taught her how to draw art. >> And you just think of that as an adult and you're like, "Oh, wow. " But this was such a big accomplishment for her. And so I think as a parent it brings you back a lot into celebrating kind of those small progress items.
So yeah, it's constant and it's sometimes it's really little. [laughter] >> Yeah, I love it. I love it. It's totally true.
And I somebody once said to me, you know, they're like, "Do you watch a tree grow, right? " And you're like, "No, I can't see it. " Like if you if you look at a tree one day and you look at a tree the next day, it doesn't look like it grew, but you come back in a month or whatever, it's like, "Wow, that tree is taller. " And I think about that a lot.
So, your answer is is dead on. That's awesome. All right, final question for you. There's an alternate universe, Sarah.
And in this alternate universe, you have a job or a career that has nothing to do with financial services. In that alternate universe, what is your career? >> This has been the same for a while, and I attribute it to watching a lot of Criminal Minds with my dad, but I've always said I would love to be in the FBI or to be in law enforcement or maybe even like a private eye. I'm so nosy sometimes that I think it could really come in handy.
>> I love it. Well, Sarah, you made it through the mile marker minute. This conversation was was really full of jam-packed insights, I think, for a lot of people, whether they serve high net worth people or they don't. I appreciate you kind of really getting into the how the sausage is made and how the engine actually works with some of this stuff because I think too often these conversations are too high level and people are like, "How do I actually serve these people?
" Right? Because it's very demanding. So, thank you so much for sharing a ton of insights on how you all are having so much success with that niche at Heritage and all of the work you're doing on client service. >> Thanks.
I appreciate it, Kyle. >> Absolutely. All right, everybody. That's been another episode of Next Mile.
Thanks so much for tuning in. Please make sure you click follow or subscribe wherever you're paying attention to this. And if you'd be so kind, leave us a review so people who've never heard of this little show on our corner of the internet can find great conversations like the one I just had with Sarah. But until the next episode, enjoy every mile.
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