Ep 112: Finding The Time To Get The Right People Into The Right Seat Of Your Advisory Firm with Andrea Schlapia
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2019
⏱️ 108 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Andrea Schlapia is the founder of Ironstone, a practice management coaching and consulting firm for financial advisors who are struggling with the business execution challenges of transitioning from a practice to a business. Building upon her own experience as a financial advisor and a practice management consultant, Andrea has developed what she calls the “fundamental four” pillars of practice management, as well as tools and strategies to support each one.
In this episode, she shares her fundamental four framework and where most advisory firms struggle within those key elements of running a successful business. Listen in to learn how often Andrea advises firms to take development days to work solely on the business, why she says it’s so important to be ultra-selective when hiring and developing your team, and her specific process for assessing prospective hires and training staff to ensure her team stays as strong as possible.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/112
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with |
| 0:07.2 | financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsas to hear stories of how leading financial |
| 0:13.0 | advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight |
| 0:18.7 | from leading 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 Kitsas. |
| 0:27.9 | Welcome, everyone. Welcome to the 112th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. |
| 0:33.8 | My guest on today's podcast is Andrea Shlapia. Andrea is the founder of Ironstone, a practice management coaching and consulting firm that |
| 0:40.9 | works primarily with mid-sized advisory firms that are struggling with the actual business |
| 0:45.6 | execution challenges of transitioning from a practice to a business. |
| 0:50.1 | What's unique about Andrea, though, is that she's built upon her own prior experience as a financial advisor and a practice management consultant to develop what she calls the fundamental four pillars of practice management and has developed tools and strategies to support each of the domains across the four pillars. |
| 1:06.9 | In this episode, we talk in depth about Andrea's fundamental four business framework of strategic |
| 1:12.5 | planning, business development, operational effectiveness, and the human element, how most advisory |
| 1:17.5 | firms have a natural strength in strategy and business development, but may struggle with the |
| 1:22.2 | operational effectiveness and the human element. Why Andrea advocates that ultimately a firm |
| 1:27.1 | should take one development |
| 1:28.3 | day per month where they close their doors to clients and solely work on the business instead |
| 1:33.0 | of in the business, and why it's so important to find the time to be ultra-selective in how |
| 1:38.1 | you hire and develop your team in the first place. We also talked about Andrea's actual process for conducting interviews with prospective |
| 1:47.3 | hires. Her four steps of phone screening, in-office interviews, a meeting over a meal, |
| 1:52.8 | and what she calls an office simulation to really test a prospective hire skills in a real-world |
| 1:58.1 | business setting. The assessment tools, including PXT Select and Myers-Briggs, |
| 2:02.8 | that Andrea uses to evaluate whether a candidate really has the capabilities and personality |
... |
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