The WealthStack Podcast
00:02:15 · Brad Johnson, Shannon Rosic
[00:02:15] S1: My... The first thing that comes to mind, I'm a husband. I'm a dad. That's my first most important job. Married my high school sweetheart, Sarah, and we have three kids. So we've got a couple high schoolers. I have a football game tonight, actually. We were just talking a little football before we hit record here. And daughter that's in grade school. So that's my primary number one job that I take the most seriously. And then, obviously, everything on the finance side of the house, been doing it almost twenty years. You can see here in the back, do business, do life. So our goal here at Triad is to help our members grow a business without sacrificing their life along the way, which is really the same mission we're on as well. [00:02:54] S0: And if you haven't already, folks, please check out Brad's podcast because it's pretty incredible, and he has really unique guests on there. So if you just wanna quickly just talk about do business, do life just because I had the pleasure of being on, and I was just happy to be part of the conversation. But you've had some heavy hitters in multiple industries come on that podcast. Right?
00:02:54 · Shannon Rosic, Brad Johnson
[00:02:54] S0: And if you haven't already, folks, please check out Brad's podcast because it's pretty incredible, and he has really unique guests on there. So if you just wanna quickly just talk about do business, do life just because I had the pleasure of being on, and I was just happy to be part of the conversation. But you've had some heavy hitters in multiple industries come on that podcast. Right? [00:03:15] S1: Yeah. I... It's... If I look way back, I had a podcast before the current iteration today started back in 2015 before it was the cool thing to do in finance. And I grew up listening to the Tim Ferriss Show. That was the first podcast I really binged, and what I loved about that show, it was a very eclectic guest list to just help you level up in something in life. And so really using a version of that framework, but applying it to finance. I I like to... I'm curious. I like to talk to different types of people from all of different industries, so we mix it up quite a bit on there. We've got authors. We've got people crushing it in finance, speakers, athletes. So it's fun to keep it fresh. [00:03:55] S0: Like I said, folks, be sure to go check it out. And you've actually spent years coaching some of the industry's most successful advisers, and one of the philosophies behind Triad is that idea of do business, do life. What were you seeing in the industry that made you realize the traditional definition of adviser success needed to change?
00:04:18 · Brad Johnson
[00:04:18] S1: The... I'm starting to turn into the old guy these days. I'm 46, so I like to hope that I've gathered a little bit of wisdom along the way. But I think especially when you're a 20 that gets into this business, it's kind of the pursuit of more. More assets under management, more revenue, more production. And what I've seen, if that is the singular pursuit, when you deal with money can consume you. And you can sacrifice things along the way that when you actually get a little bit older, hopefully a little bit wiser, you realize that wasn't worth the trade off. Because at the end of the day, your last shirt doesn't have a pocket on it, you can't take it with you, and if you sacrifice all the stuff that matters along the way, that's a lousy trade in my book. And I was fortunate. I came into this business at 26, and I was working with advisors that were twenty, thirty years older than me. So I kinda had a little peek into the future, and I was able to gain some of their wisdom. And I remember when I had my first child, they're like, dude, don't take this for granted. It's gonna go in the blink of an eye. Be at the ball games. Be at the family dinners because you can't ever get this time back. Unfortunately, listened to them. Not that I didn't miss some stuff along the way because this business can keep you busy, but now I have a 16 year old, and now it really makes sense. And I'm glad I didn't, and I think unfortunately a lot of people get sucked in to the production and finance celebrates the production. It's what they parade people across the stages for. And a business built with a proper blueprint can be done in a way you don't have to sacrifice success in business with significance in life. So that's really the pursuit here at Triad.
00:05:58 · Shannon Rosic
[00:05:58] S0: That's certainly a refreshing perspective, but you've actually had a front row seat to how advisory firms operate at different stages of growth. Right? So what's one thing you've noticed that separates firms that successfully scale from those that seem to maybe hit a ceiling regardless of how much tech or talent they add?
00:06:19 · Brad Johnson
[00:06:19] S1: Just because you're a great financial adviser, those rules, those behaviors don't make you a great business owner. Two very different skill sets. And one of the things I see with a great individual adviser that oftentimes is a founder, oftentimes an entrepreneur in our business if they're on the independent side, which is who we typically work with. When you go from playing a solo game to a multiplayer game, it's like, well, that was... It's like a video game. That get... That level was really easy, or at least you'd figured it out. And then when you go to a multi adviser team, it gets complicated again, and it gets frustrating at times. And you have to let go. It's not... If you want something done, do it yourself. If you want something done right, do it yourself. No. That doesn't work when you build a business in a multi adviser team. So you've got to start to delegate, empower, bring great talent onto the team, systems, processes, repeatable, duplicatable, trainable, someday sellable. So there's just a bunch of different behaviors that need to be formed, and that's where a lot of advisors get stuck, which is why that's what we coach on extensively here because it is a blueprint that is achievable, attainable, but it's very different from how most advisors grew up in this space. They went through the school of hard knocks. How they learned to sell or to bring on new clients took them fifteen to twenty years of figuring it out the hard way, And then it gets really frustrating when you have that next gen adviser that's 25, and they don't just instantly get it and start closing deals. But, yeah, you've gotta train them. You gotta have a process. So that's one of the things we help a lot with.
00:08:01 · Shannon Rosic
[00:08:01] S0: Great. I appreciate the background and the context, but I wanna jump into our first segment that I call stats all folks. And there was one number in particular that caught my attention, and that was 2,000,000,000 because Triad Wealth Partners surpassed 2,000,000,000 in AUM in less than three years, which is a very impressive growth by any measure. But what interests me isn't necessarily the number. It's what has to happen behind the scenes to support that kind of growth because adding advisers, clients, and assets also means adding complexity. So I'm sure that's more workflows, it's more data, more service demands, and really just more opportunity for things to fall through the cracks. So, Brad, when you look at the infrastructure required to support that kind of growth, where do you think most advisory firms are getting it wrong?