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 on the 254th episode, the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is

Eliza Depardo. Eliza is the founder of her eponymous advisory consulting firm, with a particular focus on working

with mid-to-large-sized independent advisory firms with several million dollars of revenue.

What's unique about Eliza, though, is the unique focus she takes on the human capital issues

that arise as advisory firms try to scale up, recognizing that a financial advice business

is first and foremost

as service business, which means attracting, retaining, and developing the firm's people is the

biggest key to its long-term success. In this episode, we talk in depth about the unique challenges

that advisory firm founders face as they grow and scale their advice businesses, including how the

ability to attract and serve

clients is so fundamental to growing the first million of revenue, but takes a backseat

by three million of revenue and all the growth thereafter. Why, it's the advisors who are most

effective at moving away from the client-facing work to develop their team management skills

instead that tend to have the most success at scaling their firms. And why even as advisory firm

founders take on a greater focus in management as they grow, the long-term key to scaling is about

getting comfortable with the scariest hires of all, dedicated management, including a C-O-O and

eventually a CEO that isn't the founder to create the infrastructure necessary to grow the

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