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When Advisors Become Their Own Boss, Dynasty Answers 'Now What?'

By Jane Wollman Rusoff

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You’ve realized your dream and opened your own registered investment advisory firm. You’re the chief executive officer. 

But do you know how to execute the responsibilities of a CEO?

“Entrepreneurial leadership … is, in particular, thinking about the shadow that you cast as a leader — how your behavior as a CEO dictates behavior within the organization,” says Gordon Ross, chief client officer at Dynasty Financial Partners, in an interview with ThinkAdvisor.

Since 97% of Dynasty’s network of independent advisors are first-time CEOs, the firm coaches them through its “Advisor-to-CEO” program, launched two years ago.

This features, in addition to year-round, one-on-one coaching, an annual three-day event at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where partner firms’ CEOs take classes with Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors.

At last month’s event, one session about the client experience had the CEOs putting themselves in the client’s shoes starting with their first engagement as a prospect. The most popular segment turned out to be about artificial intelligence.

“The professors went around the room and helped each CEO use AI,” Ross, who oversees Dynasty’s relationship management team as well as its training and coaching programs, notes in the interview. 

ThinkAdvisor recently spoke with Ross, who was on the phone from St. Petersburg, Florida, where Dynasty is headquartered. Here are highlights of our interview:

THINKADVISOR: Why did Dynasty start its “Advisor-to-CEO” program?

GORDON ROSS: The one thing that unites 97% of firms in Dynasty’s network is that the person in charge is a CEO for the first time.

So they often come to us with coaching needs and look upon us as an advisor to help them become the best leaders they can be. 

What’s the program’s specific goal?

To provide our RIAs with a lot of entrepreneurial, leadership and strategic planning coaching, and transition them from being [a top advisor in a large firm] to the CEO of a top RIA. 

What’s the biggest feature of the program?

A three-day event at MIT Sloan School of Management, where classroom work is done with professors focusing on a variety of topics.

Year-round, we have webinars and one-on-one coaching provided by Dynasty’s relationship management team.

What do Dynasty’s RIAs need most from the program?

If you were to ask all the CEOs, I think many would say [coaching on] their own personal role and responsibility around client management.

They’d say, “Many of the biggest clients are here because of me. And perhaps I’m nervous about that. Maybe the bulk of the business development comes through me. And all the new clients are coming through me.

“So if I were to focus on executive tasks, would that mean that growth would fall off?” 

What was the most popular session of the event you held at MIT last month?

How AI will be used in the wealth management world right now.

ChatGPT is available on the open market. Anybody can log into it, and it’s free to use.

How did the professors use that?

The people in the class had their laptops up, and we had a mini-hackathon.

The professors went around the room and helped each CEO use AI, looking at several different ways that the CEO of an RIA could use it today.

What are some examples?

The way MIT explained it is to think of AI as a team of really good interns. With any intern, you have to give them very specific instructions and monitor their work carefully — and they could be very successful.

One way to use AI, if you were analyzing [a company] over a period of time and wanted to know what the market was for a specific platform, you could [ask] AI, and it would spit out the answer very quickly.

Or if you wanted to create a job posting for, say, an administrative assistant, you can quickly type in that request and it will come back with a very comprehensive job posting.

What else did the advisors discuss concerning AI?

Taking it to the next level: A number of the CEOs said they’re going to publish a code of ethics around AI for their organization on what you would use AI for and what you would not use it for.

Broadly, what key content areas comprised the September MIT event?

One was entrepreneurial leadership, which is, in particular, thinking about the shadow that you cast as a leader — how your behavior as a CEO dictates behavior within the organization.

We had another segment around client experience and the journey that clients go through when working with your firm — from the point where you first engage with a prospect to their coming aboard and beyond. 

What do they see and hear from your wealth management firm? What proposals are shown to the client?   

It’s putting yourself in the seat of the prospect or client.

What other segments were held?

One was around family businesses. If you yourself are an RIA family business, what are the challenges? Or maybe you’re thinking about bringing family into your business.

Everybody in the room had clients with very successful family businesses. They discussed what that might mean about the majority of their wealth and how you become a strategic advisor to that family enterprise.

What else does Dynasty have in it’s “Advisor-to-CEO” program?

In the last year or so, we expanded our Entrepreneurs-in-Residence coaching. These are individuals who have run RIAs or other companies in the industry in the past and are now looking to help coach or advise other RIAs.

For example, we have Andrew Marsh [Dynasty vice chairman], who was co-founder, president and CEO of Richardson Wealth [one of Canada’s top independent wealth management firms].

This idea is really important because the world isn’t short of executive coaches, but very few have experience in the wealth management world. 

So the fact that we’re bringing in people who have actually done that job is really powerful.

This was the second year of your “Advisor-to-CEO” event; so clearly, the advisors have been enthusiastic about it. Apart from attending, how else have they shown that enthusiasm?

After the first year, a number of RIAs came to us and said, “I want you to come to my firm and go through this particular piece of content with the [team].”

This year we’re going firm by firm, speaking with the CEOs and asking, “What are some key topics that came out of the event that you want to deploy across your organization?”

Jane Wollman Rusoff

@jrusoff2

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