Building Your Dream Team of Top Talent – Episode 39
It’s essentially impossible for advisors to build top practices by themselves. You’ve got to surround yourself with the right people, and put them in the right roles, to truly elevate your business. That goes double if your goal is to build a world-class advisory business and reach the pinnacle of advisor success.
You surely don’t need me to tell you how difficult it can be to hire, train, motivate and retain great people. But it’s probably helpful to understand why the process can be so tough—and, more important, how you can take specific action steps to create a “dream team” of talent that can help bring your practice to a higher level of success than you may have ever thought possible.
With that in mind, we asked Kirk Hulett for his best advice. For more than three decades, Kirk has guided elite financial professionals to transform their advisory teams into high-performance engines that drive 58% more revenue than traditional solo models.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Most advisors are “accidental CEOs” who find themselves having to manage people.
- Build a team their understands their shared purpose and has shared goals to drive them forward.
- Regular, systematic communication with your team members is crucial to long-term success.
You weren’t planning on this
Most advisors find themselves in the position of being an accidental CEO. They became advisors to provide great advice, meet with clients and attract more clients—not to hire, manage and motivate employees. But that’s exactly what they end up needing to do with much of their time, despite the fact they haven’t had any real training in how to do it.
This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that we are experiencing an extreme crisis in talent in our industry. We have experienced advisors leaving the industry due to retirements, but we have many fewer new advisors joining. By one count, there’s going to be a gap of around one hundred thousand advisors in about 10 years.
Building a dream team
Hulett says advisors who want to build a dream team of top people should keep several key ideas and action steps in mind as they move forward. They include:
- Get started early. Hulett says the biggest regret he heard from successful advisors is that they didn’t add team members soon enough. Rather than hiring in anticipation of growth, they let the business overwhelm them before they bought in talent.
- Don’t hire your clone. To accelerate and manage growth, you probably don’t need two of you. Instead, look to hire people who are strong in the areas where you are weakest. Focus on your strengths and let skilled people address the other key areas of the business.
- Put a premium on experience. Advisors too often hire people who are talented—but not in the area of business where they need help. Unlike past investment performance, which of course doesn’t predict future results, hiring people with successful experiences in a discreet skill (back office, client management, etc.) tends to be an excellent predictor of their ability to help you succeed.
- Ensure the team has a shared purpose and set of values. Everyone needs to understand the practice’s purpose and believe in it deeply, as well as understand their particular role in making that purpose come alive. Shared values across the practice provide the structure around that purpose.
- Establish clear communication rhythms. All your people need to be rowing in the same direction, so you have to have systematic and formal communication processes and cadences. That means, for example, at least bi-weekly one-one-ones with each team member. It means at least a bi-weekly or monthly team meeting where you work on improving the business. It means an annual planning meeting where you get everyone involved with the areas of focus for the coming year. And it means a feedback loop where you as the leader can get continuous feedback from your team on what is working, what’s not working and what can be made better.
- Create development plans for (and with) all your team members. Work with your people to determine where they want to get better and what they want to strengthen in terms of their knowledge base, skills and overall career. Have a plan to help them pursue those goals—whether it’s through direct mentorship, or outside mastermind groups or other organizations. For young investment professionals, help them build a career path so they stay with you—one that enables them to perform at gradually higher and higher levels in a sustained manner over time.
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