Ep 063: Overcoming A Material U-4 Disclosure To Build A $125M AUM Advisory Firm with Kevin Kroskey

Financial Advisor Success

Michael Kitces

News, Business, Entrepreneurship, Business News

4.8 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2018

⏱️ 116 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kevin Kroskey’s journey to success is an amazing story of perseverance and a testament to the power of determination. The founder of True Wealth Design, an independent RIA that serves 160 clients, Kevin has managed to grow his practice to nearly $125 million in AUM after what, for many advisors, would have been a catastrophic setback in his early career: going to prison for 17 months.

In this episode, we talk in depth about Kevin’s unique path to starting his own firm after working as a high school physics teacher, switching to the financial services industry, and then finding his career and life brought to a halt by an "unrelated" criminal conviction. He shares how he managed to take back his life and build his advisory business, as well as his advice about what any advisor can do to persevere through the challenges that life sometimes throws at us.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/63

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with financial planner,
0:08.4	speaker and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading financial advisors
0:13.6	navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight from leading
0:19.2	industry consultants about how to break through to the
0:22.0	next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone.
0:29.7	Welcome to the 63rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast. My guest on today's podcast is
0:35.5	Kevin Kroski. Kevin is the founder of true wealth design,
0:39.0	an independent RAA based in Akron, Ohio that has grown to nearly 125 million in assets
0:44.1	under management with six employees serving 160 clients, built over the span of the past 10 years.
0:50.9	What's unique about Kevin's practice, though, is that he's been able to persevere in building his practice, despite what for many advisors would have been a catastrophic setback in his early career.
1:00.9	The fact that in his mid-20s, just a few months after his first job at a broker-dealer, he went to prison for 17 months after the law finally caught up with him for having sold ecstasy back when he was in college.
1:12.8	In this episode, we talk in depth about Kevin's journey from starting out as a high school physics
1:18.3	teacher straight out of college to switching into the financial services industry by working at
1:23.2	that independent broker dealer in his mid-20s, then finding his entire career in life brought to a halt
1:28.6	by his criminal conviction for selling ecstasy, despite the fact that he had already stopped and
1:33.9	left that life behind several years earlier. And how he began the process of trying to rebuild a
1:38.8	path back into the financial services industry after he got out of jail, starting with a three-year ordeal
1:44.9	with multiple appeals just to try to get a license to become a mortgage loan officer as an ex-con
1:49.9	before finally switching to hang a shingle as an independent RIA.
1:55.0	We also talk about how Kevin actually built his advisory business by following back on his
1:59.9	early teaching skills to begin doing local
2:02.7	adult education classes on personal finances, borrowing money with a bank loan and be able to send
	...

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