About This Episode
Next Mile Episode 127: The Operating System Behind Scalable Advisory Firms with Matt Regan. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.
with Matt Regan · January 13, 2026
Next Mile Episode 127: The Operating System Behind Scalable Advisory Firms with Matt Regan. A conversation about wealth management, fintech, and the future of financial advisory firms.
That's what the founder of this firm preached is you should do things in a very systematic, repeatable way. It's the only way you scale. It's the only way you grow organically. And so he created a system that some of our smartest adviserss and and most successful advisers still use that system down to the letter.
Hey everybody, welcome back to Next Mile. I'm your host Kyle Vampelt, co-founder of Milemarker and today I am joined by Matt Reagan. Matt is the president of Wealthare Capital Management and he also told me and I can't wait to talk about this that he is the most humble president in financial services. Matt, welcome to the show.
>> Selfproclaimed most humble. >> Okay. It's not like a that's not like a wealthy's award or anything that they give out. >> It's never been validated in the wild.
So, but it's great to be here with you, Kyle. >> Yeah, absolutely. It's great to be here with you, too. We can create our own nomination committee to really make that verified if you'd like, by the way.
>> Right. Right. For those of you who don't see on video, Matt's got a baseball bat and a whiffle ball bat behind him. As a big baseball guy, I got to hear the story there because I'm sure there's a fresh whiffle ball bat for a reason.
>> I do. I got the whiffle ball bat was sent sent to me by my childhood next door neighbor who used to play whiffle ball in the backyard with me completely out of the blue. It arrived at my office one day without a note or anything else, but I was able to piece it together. The baseball bat is actually a chachki from uh from the great firm that David La runs called DPL on my >> Oh yeah.
>> Out out in Louisville. Is that from the Louisville Slugger Museum? >> From Louisville Slugger from Louisville. >> That's amazing, man.
I love that. I love that. I don't know if you're a big fan of whiffle ball or if you used to play a lot growing up, but if you need a rabbit hole to go down, if you've ever seen some of the crazy stuff these guys do on YouTube, they have a whole like major league whiffle ball league >> where they build the stadiums. >> Yeah, they build the stadiums and all that.
So, it seems like you found it. That was like catnip to me. >> That's great. That's great.
>> All right, Matt. So, I love to ask this question of everybody who comes on the show. You're not going to be any different. I've had over a hundred of these conversations on air and off air.
And I found everybody has their own unique path to this space. Some people really traditional like they followed in family footsteps or they knew this is what they wanted to do. Other people didn't even know this industry existed and they come in through the side door after maybe one or two other careers before finding this one. But whether your path is traditional or untraditional, we found everybody has what we call a money moment.
That's a moment in your life where the light bulb kind of clicks and you're like, "This is it. This is what I really want to do with my career and my time. I want to invest in this. " So for you, what was that money moment that led you to having this conversation today?
>> Yeah. Well, now I came into the industry the same way that everybody else does. I was a high school special ed teacher. Um, so and then ultimately took a job on the clearing side of the business kind of operations and technology and I was a what's called a securities lending trader.
So spent some time on Wall Street and really worked kind of deep in the bowels of the broker dealer world for years and years. But where things really changed were was, you know, I'm so old, it happened about 999. I got assigned to a bunch of banks to help them build out their online trading solution, which at the time it was just when Erade and BJ Direct and those firms were starting and everybody needed to have an online trading site. So that became my job was to help those firms set those up and that was where I really >> got involved in kind of the management of businesses and I've always kind of played at the intersection of technology and operations and that's where the light went on and I kind of figured out that's what I wanted to do.
That is awesome. I love that. And actually, that's a decent segue because I know you've described wealthare before as being right at the intersection of technology and operations before. And that's something that's really passionate to you.
Unpack that for us a little bit of what it means to be because you're not just saying, "Hey, we're an RAA. " You're saying we're really at the intersection of tech and ops. So, talk to us about that. >> The firm has a really interesting story.
So it began life back in 99 way before I joined as the industry's first goals-based financial planning software company. So the founder uh delivered a piece of software into the industry that he called financeware really pioneered the use of Monte Carlo and goals-based financial planning for individuals. It was licensed kind of far and wide in the you know through the industry to the point where even today every Wells Fargo adviser uses a version of it that they call envision. And uh it was also had several large enterprise installations at places like HD vest and Joe Durant used it as the planning software to start United Capital.
So you had this software business and at the same time the founder Dave Loper founded a straight ahead raia and you know recruited some advisers to use that software and build a practice. They've ultimately sold the software and the RAIA to a middle market private equity firm here in Philadelphia where I live in about 2014. And over the years from 2014 to when I joined in 2018, a strategic pivot was made away from trying to license the software to creating what we are today, which is a platform that supports independent advisors. So you know what we've done is we still maintain that proprietary technology which includes our planning software, our investment framework or our TAMP if you will as well as our implementation trading and rebalancing engine.
So one single threaded piece of software that advisers use to run their practice. But around that we wrapped kind of middle and back office services. Think compliance, billing, operations, marketing support. So that today we're a true outsource solution that independent advisers can use to run and grow their practice.
So we maintain the software itself. We still have a dev team. We still have technologists in Richmond. So we feel that you know an accurate representation of what we are is what we say is a tech enabled raia.
>> Yeah, that's fascinating. I love that. >> All right. So that actually is a decent segue into another thing I know we wanted to chat about which is let's start with affiliation models.
So if you are a tech enabled raia >> it sounds a little bit like what you describe is almost like a tamp without the focus on building the models or strategies right but you can outsource a lot of this stuff to what you're doing but kind of go run your business the way you want and be affiliated with you. But let let's talk a little bit about your thoughts on affiliation models when you are building this really tech- enabled RAIA. >> Yeah, so we do have a lot of the elements of a TAMP with the exception that we actually hold the advisor's registration. Um, so those advisors are on our ADV.
There's about 200 of them that are on our ADV. Uh, the predominant business model is 1099. Although we do have W2 values because we decided to get into the very crowded M&A space in about 2021 2022. So we've purchased some practices.
So today we have our W2 advisor which we call our direct channel but the predominant business model remains the 1099 channel for now. And so in total we manage about $10 billion on behalf of those 200 advisors. We do you know when you mentioned TAMPS we do have our own investment model. So we have a full investment team that includes modelbased solution that our advisers can take advantage of.
It's integrated fully with the planning software and we do the implementation, the trading and the rebalancing on behalf of those adviserss. What we preach is that if we're doing our job right and if the advisers are making good decisions, they shouldn't be spending any time on non-revenue generating activity. The idea is that's a that's a you know not a great use of their time if they're you know doing compliance or doing operations or billing their clients or we include in that picking investments. So we like the advisers to rely on us for that and so if you think of us as a true outsource solution were tampish but I would posit that we do a little bit more than that.
>> Yeah. Beyond that. Okay. So talk to me about what's the the case for why 1099 or why acquire.
Right. because it sounds like if I if I get acquired by you, I get to leverage everything that you're doing, you know, as well, or if I go 1099, I get to leverage this. Like, why one path or the other? I'll come at it from a different way is is one of the reasons that we liked the M&A space and decided to get into that very crowded and expensive space is that when we buy an advisor's practice, we do we deliver the same products and services to that adviser.
To your point, Kyle, you nailed it. When we buy an advisor, just like when we bring a 1099 advisor on, we get their clients on our paper. We get them into our investments, we train them up on our software, and we help them grow. So, it's the identical solution in either channel.
The reason that we have the 1099 versus W2 is that the 1099 advisors on our platform, they own their clients, they own their business, they could come and go as they please. They don't leave, but they know that that is their business. The W2s are a little bit different. They are employees of wealthare.
They've sold their practices to us. The economics change, but they've got a big check in their pocket. So ultimately, when we're in the M&A space, what we want to do is we want to make sure if there's an adviser in the 1099 channel that's looking to sell or looking for a true succession path or is ready to monetize and take some chips off the table, we want to be the home for them. So, of the five deals that we've done, three of them were existing wealth adviserss that transitioned over.
And we love that. We think that's a great model. >> Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me because we've had a bunch of these. Feels like one of the things that's coming up is there was this massive wave of consolidation.
And I want to choose my words carefully here, but that maybe there's some uh buyers remorse or sellers remorse for some of these places because you end up in these firms and and whatever. And it feels like the model you described is, hey, this is an opportunity to kind of date before we get married type of thing. Like I can work with you for a couple years and see, hey, do I actually want to sell ownership into this firm or not? Versus it being like, I'm either selling my firm or I'm not.
This feels like a good bridge model where you can really see how the firm works, what the culture looks like, what's it actually going to be like to work with all of them and then go, okay, the next step if I want to take some chips off the table or have a an event is I'm going to sell it to them rather than, okay, there's eight suitors that are looking to buy my business, I'm just going to pick the one that that I think fits the best and I go from zero to 100 right away. >> Yeah. Yeah. I love that.
The date date before you get married. I'm gonna steal that. But the way I also think about it, I think it's completely accurate what you just said. We know the advisers that we purchased.
Three of those five. We knew them before. We loved them. They love the people that work here.
So, it was a very comfortable transition. But the other thing that happens is when a 1099 adviser comes to us or when when an adviser is talking to us in in the recruiting process, often times the conversation about ultimately selling the practice will come up. And what we tell them many times is if their practice is completely bespoke, a dog's breakfast, everybody's in a different model, you know, some people are doing getting planning, some people are you're picking stocks. What we can help them do is create a practice that has more enterprise value.
We're a standard operating system and ultimately that's going to be a much more valuable practice to us the buyer or to any buyer in fact. So, we hope to help these advisers to take advantage of our common operating platform because that's where you create true value. >> Oh, 100%. I'm very bullish on that model.
You know, I never thought about this until you just said it, but because mo I spend most of my time talking to the firms that are trying to figure out enterprise value, trying to help people like that. I have to imagine a vast majority of even successful firms are that kind of hodgepodge. You take every household at at where they're at because you're just trying to grow your business. But I have to imagine a vast majority of the firms really don't have a lot of universal every single person gets the same exact structure when you come and work with them.
>> Yeah. I mean that's if you think about our history that's what the founder of this firm preached is you should do things in a very systematic repeatable way. It's the only way you scale. It's the only way you grow organically.
And so he created a system that some of our smartest advisers and and most successful advisers still use that system down to the letter. We've become a little bit more open architecture to be clear. But to your point, I think what you're seeing at the very very largest part of the industry where these massive consolidators have come in, you know the names. It's the usual sus.
They're at the point where they bought so many practices and they didn't have anything that they were providing those practice in terms of a common operating platform and now they're going back and they're saying look the only way this is going to work is if we start to standardize our process, our approach, at least our technology tools, our investments. So I think they're belatedly coming to the realization that not doing that isn't creating a ton of value at the firm level. >> Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense to me.
I want to ask your thoughts on this because I'm sure you've probably thought about it a little bit. One of the things that seems to be a challenge for people who whether you're doing the 1099 or you're acquiring definitely those who are acquiring a lot of the firms that are being acquired are looking for a succession plan and you know I think talent is just this big challenge right now across the industry. So you know maybe you have a a large suite of demographic of adviserss that are looking to retire but there's nobody really coming behind them to take care of that. And that seems like where acquirers are a great landing place.
Like, hey, I'm going to sell my business to you. You guys have all this infrastructure, but you know, people like you have to figure out how to have the people to serve all of that. So, how are you thinking about talent, the wave of talent, the delta of talent that the industry has and what to do about that? >> It's the biggest challenge that I face.
As I said, we're fairly new to the M&A game. We've purchased five properties. We have three under LOI right now that we hope to close between now and the end of January. But looking down the road, those advisers are going to want to ride off into the sunset at a certain point.
So I have to start to plan and to find people and to work with those adviserss in their local communities and start to think about G2. Now I'm a little bit fortunate so far the wealth adviserss that we serve skew to the younger side. They're often younger emerging adviserss. So we've been able to purchase a couple that are not anywhere near retiring.
But you know that that day is going to come and it's a massive challenge in the industry. So we're going to have to work hard to not just recruit successful adviserss to wealthare but to recruit successful G2 successors to wealthare. >> Yeah, I love that. Do you think there's still a long enough tale of firms that want to be acquired or are we like because everybody keeps talking about consolidation, but I've seen plenty of articles now where they're starting to say those big names that you said before that everybody knows.
They're almost looking to acquire some of the mini acquirers because the tail's just getting long now and things are getting interesting. So, I know there's the demographics happening of all of these people who are aging out or whatever else, but I mean, what do you think? Is it too saturated? Where are things going with this whole M&A consolidation play?
>> Yeah, I don't know if what you're seeing there on the really high end isn't driven by just the fact that buying a $300 million RAIA for a hundred billion firm doesn't move the needle. >> Doesn't move it. Now I I know where we're fishing is in a pond that's a little bit different. So we say we'll buy a firm from 100 to call it 750 million.
But the reason we want to buy in there is because we want to be sure that our service offering can help that advisor. So I say to my VP of corporate dev, I said, "Don't bring me a $3 billion deal because he's already got a chief investment officer and a compliance officer and a billing clerk. So all of that infrastructure is probably in place in his shop. The last thing I want to do is buy a firm that's operating really well and then fire a bunch of people.
I can't imag approach that. What I want to do is I want to buy firms that we can help >> that say, "Hey, I see the value of your platform. " So, we think we hope we're fishing in a pond that's a little bit different. The industry certainly is consolidating, but you know, I'll be the 650th guy to say I think it's still early to mid innings.
There's still a lot of firms out there and a lot of firms get created every year because you know advisers do leave the warehouses and the independent broker dealer channel and say I want to be an independent RAIA. Um and they establish their own ADV and ultimately they'll want to sell or or they'll see that you know an outsourced solution like ours makes sense instead of maintaining that registration. >> This podcast is brought to you by Turncast. We make gamechanging content for fintech and financial services companies.
Learn more at turncast. com. >> Hey Next Mile listeners, Jessica here from Milemarker. You know, we talk a lot about reaching that next mile in your business journey.
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If you are ready to stop being held back by your data and start using it to fuel your growth, I'd love to have a conversation with you. We're offering Next Mile listeners a complimentary consultation to explore exactly how we can help you transform your advisory practice. Don't let outdated processes keep you from reaching that next mile in your firm's growth. Visit milemarker.
co show and mention the Next Mile podcast and I'll personally make sure to get the insights you need to take control of your data and scale your practice because your time should be spent building your business, not buried in spreadsheets. >> All right, you talked about people who want to start firms. This is actually one that's interesting because I I have heard, okay, you probably got to be at about 100 million before platforms will start to take a look at you or anything like that. It feels like going from zero to, you know, zero to 50 or zero to 100 is still like maybe one of the hardest things in the industry, especially if you're young and you're ambitious or whatever else.
So to the person who's out there who maybe wants to start out and maybe they want to own a firm that goes from zero to 100 and then they want to call you and say, "Hey, I want to come and join, >> how do they go from zero to 100? " Matt, >> it's really hard. I completely agree with you, Kyle. The adviserss that we come across, you know, often ask, they say, "Well, at what point should I establish my own ADV or what?
How big do I have to be? " Unquestionably, that number, which probably used to be $100 million, is probably closer to three now. The price of, you know, technology, the threats of cyber security, and what you need to do to protect yourself from that. So, the level to be a viable standalone raia is getting very high.
But down at the lower end, getting it started. Look, I'm going to talk my own book and say, "You've got to find a firm like Wealthare that can give you the time to go out and find clients. So, get rid of all that middle and back office stuff, outsource the investments, outsource the technology, and go and spend time asking for referrals, kissing babies, getting out in the community, that sort of stuff. It's the only way you can do it.
" And that's why I was never a financial adviser. It takes an incredible amount of resilience and aggressive dedication to building that business and it's not for the faint of heart. >> Yeah. So, if I'm a younger person and I want to go I go get my my licenses and I'm like I'm ready to be an adviser but I have nothing zero assets under management.
I can still work with wealthare and say, "Okay, when I find my first client, you guys will help me with all this middle and back office, and I'm just going to go pound the pavement, and I think I have a niche of clients that'll listen to me. Like, I can speak their language, whatever. But I can work with you from day one, even with no assets or anything. " >> Yeah.
Because typically there's one to five million that's hanging around because they talk their dad into it or their rich uncle's giving them a little bit of money. And so, they're not at absolute zero. But yes, that's an adviser that we can help. We'll hand it, we'll register them, we'll give them the, you know, the custodial relationship, we'll paper their clients up, and they can go out and try to build that book of business.
We're very happy to do that. >> Yeah, that's awesome. Cuz that's true, too. That's another maybe not spoken about enough benefit of a platform like yours.
If I go out with a couple of licenses and say, I want to be an RAA. Schwab's not giving me the time a day. I'm not able to like get any custody relationships to be able to put these clients assets anywhere. >> No.
I mean, at one point, Persian wasn't taking any new relationships under 300 million bucks. I don't know if they've stuck with that. Fidelity was prohibitive at at those levels. So, yeah, you're getting the benefit of the scale of wealthare.
We've got $5 billion at Schwab. So, we consider ourselves important over there, and we think that we can provide that leverage to the smaller adviserss. >> I love that. All right.
So, we've talked about smaller advisors a little bit. I want to talk to you about smaller clients as a whole. And I feel like this is a really interesting deal because you have all of these Henry's out there, the high earners, not rich yet. So maybe they have high incomes but not a lot of assets.
You've got kids and grandkids of wealthy people who don't have a ton of stuff. And years ago, robo advisors were supposed to be the answer to this. And I think those fizzled out, maybe serve some bit of a purpose, but wasn't the thing that it was. Do you think AI is going to be what everybody thought robo advisors were going to be in the hands of a wealthare?
Are you going to be able to profitably serve now somebody with $25 or $50,000 in assets under management or, you know, does that change the game for you guys? >> I think the short answer is yes. I'm seeing so many interesting tools out there that are being delivered to the marketplace that we can white label that can provide a really an endto-end solution. And it isn't just that they're smaller accounts.
I mean, a small account can be serviced very efficiently by an old-fashioned financial adviser. I think a a lot of the the allure of that approach is that that generation of investors doesn't particularly want to spend a lot of time with a an adviser. That's not the world that they're that they're used to. They like to use their phones, figure things out on their own, and but have that advisor available.
And I was involved in the creation of the of the Robo solution, personal advisor services at Vanguard. I think the brilliance of that and why they're the largest robo that's out there is because the advisor is available if required. So it's that hybrid approach. But yeah, I do think some of the tools that I've seen delivered to the marketplace are really f are really high-end where portfolio construction again goals-based planning is all unified in a very slick delivery mechanism and I do think a lot of advisers like us larger platforms will open that channel white label some of those solutions and provide them to advisers as another channel that they can deliver.
And the other thing is I wouldn't short the pure roo. I mean, you know, ultimately, you know, Betterment build a really big business and they have found the clients that want that approach. Schwab with intelligent portfolios, Vanguard with personal advisor services. There is a large class of clients that are being served purely through tech.
It's not for, you know, old fogies like me, but for younger people, they do gravitate towards those solutions. >> It's true. I mean, maybe the marketing was provocative and all of that stuff. I just remember all the hysteria that, you know, well, there was some hysteria that they was going to replace advisors.
I don't know how much people ever bought into that, but it was always supposed to be this way that people were going to be able to serve smaller clients, you know, profitably. And I don't know how much that entered the advisor space. But I think you're right that those smaller clients did find advice, which is net positive for everybody because we talked about talent already. You know, that's one of the charts that I think about a lot is the demand for financial advice.
if you go search it or whatever. I mean, it's like going through the roof like this, but then the number of people becoming advisers is flat or going down, you know? So, something's going to have to happen for all of these people looking for advice and nobody nobody who wants to do the job, which is also really interesting. >> There's no question.
I actually have a daughter who's going to sit for the CFP in March and she's working and is as an assistant adviser for an RAIA out in Denver. And when I talk to her friends or I talk to people in their peer group and they ask about what I do and do I have any suggestions for them, I don't think there's anything else in in the economy at this point that has 100% employment coming out of, you know, four years of college. But if you can get those certifications and put yourself out there as a somebody that's interested in wealth management, if that's the path you want to travel, there are firms like wealthare and firms across the country that are going to snap you up in a second. That has to happen.
the supply has to catch up to that demand somehow. And there's some pretty interesting things happening at the university. So, you know, used to be that there were a couple of programs that actually, you know, taught financial planning. That's now dozens of programs and some of them are becoming degree granting programs.
So, I do think it's starting to change and and we will see some of the supply catch up. >> Yeah. On that note, with people who are starting to go do degrees and everything like that, I know the small contingent of college age kids or late high school age kids that I speak with that are trying to figure this out. They're looking forward and saying, "Okay, like AI, what's it going to do?
" All of that stuff. What is your thoughts or what's your take on the notion that jobs that require soft skills are going to like explode in popularity where it's like okay AI might help me with the stuff but people are going to want somebody who can really connect with them and be authentic and have bedside manner and be able to walk them through these types of things. That seems to be a prediction I'm seeing pop up a little bit more now that jobs that require soft skills rather than hard skills are going to be extremely popular in the age of AI. I think that's generally right.
I don't know that I'm smart enough to have, you know, the answer, but you know, I do see this notion of going to Wall Street and being an investment banker, young investment banker, and working 20our days and putting pitch books together for IPOs that never happen. I mean, that has to be a threat, right? I mean, there's no value really being created there. That can't be done with AI.
And being a first year law clerk and, you know, combing a bunch of cases to see if you could pull together information. I mean that has to be automated. So certainly the soft skills and those people are smart enough that they will find other places to thrive in the economy. But I I would generally agree that the soft skills will be the last place to be effective.
That being said, I mean you've seen some of the things that that are out there. People say that AI can't mimic empathy. I would say hold off on that as a definitive statement. the way that these these models kind of get better and better and better and get to know you more and more, I think you can you ultimately get pretty close to being able to replicate empathetic response.
I think the jury might be out in the long term on it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well stated.
Well stated. All right. Since we're talking about AI, uh, I want to move into this segment of the show where I'm going to ask you to get out your crystal ball and talk about what's going to happen in the next three to five years and how you're best positioning wealthare for what's next. >> Yeah.
I mean, I'm not the only one to say it, but I think the next wave of consolidation may be at the large consolidators, but Carson's going to buy a mariner or a Fischer's gonna buy a WG or something like that. You hear that in the industry, it does make sense to me. So, I think we're going to have trillion dollar raas at the high end. I think from a trend point of view, I think people will continue to migrate to the SEC fiduciary model.
Although, as I'm saying that, I think you're also seeing the replication of that model in some of the other channels. You look at a big regional firm like Janney here in Philadelphia. That's about a $250 billion RAIA. To me, most of their business is feebased.
you know, they act as fiduciaries even though they're a broker dealer and their open architecture and their advisers do an awesome job. That looks a lot like a really big RAIA to me. So there I think there's convergence in the business models. I do think one of the things that I used to say to my board when I was private equity owned, private equity guys always say, well, who do you compete with?
And my answer was, I compete with anybody that helps advisors. And that's just getting to be a very big space. So you think about firms like Orion who were a big we're a big Orion client. They do a lot of the stuff that we do.
Not everything but more and more. You think about the, you know, Schwab and Fidelity. We're large clients of theirs. We use them for custody.
They do a lot of the things that we do. So I I think there's convergence in the business models and I also think there's increased competition across the board. >> Yeah. >> For people that are in the business of helping advisors.
>> Yeah, that's fascinating. I also had somebody on here recently who shared something similar I hadn't thought about where they they said you know for the longest time RAAS were all very complimentary to each other because it was sort of like us verse the warehouses or whatever but now as they're getting bigger and bigger it's more competitive with each other and they were like you know the sort of friendly nature of this whole thing is starting to get a little less friendly as everybody's fighting over the same clients and you know we're taking clients from each other and whatever and I I never thought about that because it has always been RAAS versus the wire or RAS versus big IBDs or whatever. Now it's some of these firms are so big like you're saying it's a little bit of a different landscape out there. >> I think it's that's a really really good insight and I hadn't considered it but the other thing that's going on is you know we used to just say we recruit advisors to wealthare but we're not playing the same game that the wire is play where you're writing a big check and it's a 9-year note that's forgivable and it's 300% of trailing 12.
we would say, well, that's not even a game that we're involved with. You look at the higher end of the RAIA business right now. They are writing checks that are getting up there. You're seeing transition transition assistance packages that look a lot like those old wirehouse deals.
And I think that's leading to increased competition internally within the industry. We're not at a position right now where we're writing checks like that, nor do I think it's the smartest thing in the world. But I think it's out there in the industry and that's that's changing the competitive landscape. >> Yeah.
Well, I think the unspoken thing for the longest time is Morgan Stanley is a pretty darn good business. And I think there's a lot of people who uh would not mind owning a majority share in Morgan Stanley as a business, right? You might say, "Hey, I'd like to have more freedom to choose what my clients invest in or yada yada yada. " But the reality is I think most of us if given the opportunity would love to be a primary owner in UBS or Merryill or Morgan or you know one of these things.
They're not too shabby of businesses. >> Yeah. No, you and I are both members of, you know, the uh the Timberron CEO group and Chip Rome, who runs that, does a brilliant job of telling the SEC registered people that the pure RAAS to to hold their horses a little bit that those wirehouses not only are are nowhere near extinct, but they still dominate the landscape and in his mind will for the foreseeable future. So, I think to sell them short is a big mistake.
>> Yeah, well stated. All right, Matt, we are going to move into the final segment of the show, which is called the Milemarker Minute. It's a series of lightning round questions aimed to get to know you a little bit better behind the firm. Are you ready for the Milemarker Minute?
>> Yes. >> All right. If you could travel anywhere in the world you've never been to before, where would you travel to? >> I have never been to Paris.
How bad is that? So, I I think high on my list right now is Paris. If you were thinking about a more exotic location, I also would love to go, you know, down to like Chile and Peru. >> Oh, yeah.
Great options. Uh, all right. Well, Project Croissant is now in order and, uh, we got to figure out how to get you over there. That's awesome.
Are you a mountains person or a beach person? >> I am a mountains person. I'm a lake guy, not an ocean guy. >> What is the best road trip you've ever been on?
>> Wow. best road trip depending on how you define it. I've done some pretty fantastic golf vacations with my friends where we've, you know, kind of gone and visited three or four courses. I don't know if that falls into the in into the category of a road trip, but it's something that I really enjoy.
>> I'll take it. What's the best flavor of ice cream? >> It's so funny you say that. I'm not a sweet tooth guy, so the only ice cream I ever order is vanilla, and it drives my kids crazy.
Hey, you you you like what you like, Matt. Right. I love it. What's the best book you've read or listened to in the past year?
>> Just finishing a great one. The latest Cormarmac McCarthy book I finished, and I won't remember the name. I think it was called The Passenger was fantastic. And I decided to go back and reread one of his classics called Blood Meridian, which I'm about 3/4 through.
I flew across the country and back over the weekend, so I had plenty of time to read. But I'm a big Cormack McCarthy fan. I love it. I love it.
All right, complete this sentence for your personal life, not necessarily for wealthare. Progress is blank. Progress is empowering the people that work for us here and creating career paths and creating a, you know, a valuable professional life for the employees of wealthare because I care deeply about the people that work here and I want to see them not only succeed, you know, financially, but become happy, happy people. I love it.
I love it. All right. I know you mentioned golf for me. What is the number one course on your bucket list you still haven't played yet?
I actually have not played a course here in the Philadelphia area called Rolling Green, which is a great old course. That's what we have here in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia because we're so old is we have great old courses. And Rolling Green is on my list. >> I love it.
I love it. Awesome. All right. And then final mile marker minute question.
There's an alternate universe. And in this alternate universe, Matt Reagan doesn't do anything related to financial services. What career do you have in the alternate universe? >> I would go back to education.
I would go back to teaching. >> I love it. I love it. Awesome, man.
Well, you made it through the mile marker minute. This is a really fun conversation packed full of insights. We're going to have to have you back on to talk about a whole host of other things, but thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your wisdom with the Next Mile audience. >> I really enjoyed it, Kyle.
Thanks for the time. >> Absolutely. Okay, 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 go leave us a fivestar review so that other people can find great conversations like the one I just had with Matt.
But until the next episode, enjoy every mile.
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