Ep 238: Breaking Away To Independence For Freedom To Serve Clients The Way You Want with Margaret Dechant
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 20 July 2021
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Margaret Dechant is the CEO of 6 Meridian, a hybrid-RIA based out of Kansas that has $3-billion in assets under advisement and serves 700 clients. In 2016, Margaret and her partners broke away from a lucrative practice at Morgan Stanley to go independent, and did so by building a new firm entirely from scratch.
Listen in as Margaret shares what led to her decision to break away from Morgan Stanley and why she and her partners decided to build a new firm from the ground up instead of leveraging a plug-and-play service platform provider. We also discuss how 6 Meridian is generating leads for larger and more complex clients by nurturing deeper relationships with existing referral sources, and how they are building a multi-generational firm by recruiting and developing younger advisors.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/238
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with |
| 0:07.1 | financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading |
| 0:12.4 | financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success, |
| 0:17.5 | and get insight 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. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:29.2 | Welcome to the 238th episode of the Financial Advisor's Success Podcast. My guest on today's |
| 0:34.7 | podcast is Margaret Deckoned. Margaret is the CEO of Sixth Mer, a hybrid RIA located in Wichita, Kansas, that has |
| 0:41.5 | $3 billion in assets under advisement serving 700 clients. |
| 0:45.8 | What's unique about Margaret, though, was that in 2016, she and her partners broke away |
| 0:49.7 | from a very lucrative practice at Morgan Stanley to go fully independent, and rather than |
| 0:53.9 | use one of the |
| 0:54.5 | popular breakaway broker support platforms, decided to launch their own firm entirely from scratch |
| 1:00.4 | in order to build the business exactly the way they wanted. In this episode, we talk in depth about |
| 1:05.7 | what it was that Margaret and her partners wanted to be able to offer their clients and their team |
| 1:09.5 | members that they weren't able to accomplish within a wirehouse. The circumstances leading up to Margaret and her |
| 1:14.6 | partners deciding to break away, including the realization that despite investing heavily into |
| 1:18.5 | their own brand and acting as a standalone unit, all the work they were doing within the |
| 1:22.6 | wirehouse wasn't truly their own and instead was considered Morgan Stanley work product. |
| 1:28.9 | And the decision-making process that Margaret went through when figuring out what the business they wanted to build would |
| 1:32.2 | actually look like rather than simply trying to find the best recruiting offer from any number |
| 1:37.2 | of competitors. We also talk about why Margaret and her team ultimately opted to go fully independent, |
| 1:43.4 | divving up the tasks amongst |
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