Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with

financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading financial

advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get

insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the

next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone.

Welcome to the 159th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is

Kelly Shikani. Kelly is a financial advisor and director of wealth

management for Lakeside Wealth, a hybrid RIA based in Chesterton, Indiana, right outside Chicago,

where Kelly manages a base of nearly 90 million of client assets. What's unique about Kelly, though,

is her decision to not hang her hat as a solo advisor and instead navigate existing advisory firms

that have already established

the necessary infrastructure to operate the firm, allowing her to focus on clients and not

needing to live in an eat-what-you-kill grid-based environment. In this episode, we talk in depth

about Kelly's career path through the advisory industry under the employee model, from starting

out as a trust accountant for ERISA plans with

Northern Trust, shifting to become a trust officer with an independent trust company, transitioning to

the independent channel under the Wells Fargo Finet platform, and then joining her current firm with an

opportunity to grow by servicing clients that the firm acquires in its own efforts to grow.

We also talk about how Kelly crew her client base in the early years by conducting women's

circles as a way to network and establish relationships in her small town community.

The reason she decided to pursue the CDFA designation as a way to initially differentiate

herself, and how ultimately she decided the best way to differentiate herself was simply

...