Ep 270: Managing Growth By Building A Team Of 'A' Players with Kyra Morris
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.7 • 719 Ratings
🗓️ 1 March 2022
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kyra Morris is the founder of Morris Financial Concepts, one of the oldest independent fee-only RIAs in the country. Based out of Charleston, South Carolina, Morris Financial oversees $350 million of assets under management for 250 clients—a size that Kyra has taken care to scale to by focusing on finding and retaining top talent, as well as letting go of hires who don't meet the firm's high standards.
Listen in as Kyra shares how she balances her firm's growth trajectory carefully by growing fast enough to allow for her team to have new opportunities, but not so quickly that she can't find and hire the necessary talent. We also discuss how she retains top talent once she finds them, how she manages stress and finds work-life balance as a busy entrepreneur, and why she gives back to her community by creating mixed-use development that enables minority-run local businesses to flourish.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/270
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with |
| 0:06.8 | financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading |
| 0:12.1 | financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success |
| 0:17.2 | and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next |
| 0:21.9 | level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:28.0 | Welcome to the 270th episode of the Financial Advisory Success podcast. My guest in today's |
| 0:32.7 | podcast is Kira Hallowell Morris. Kira is the founder of Morris Financial Concepts, one of the oldest |
| 0:37.7 | independent fee-only RAs in Charles and South Carolina that oversees 350 million in assets |
| 0:42.7 | under management for 250 client households. What's unique about Kira, though, is how she has |
| 0:47.5 | steadily scaled the growth of the firm by taking the time to find and retain top talent, |
| 0:51.4 | and along the way, developing a willingness to quickly let go of any |
| 0:55.0 | new hire who doesn't meet the standards the firm is trying to achieve. In this episode, we talk in |
| 0:59.6 | depth about how Kira consciously controls her firm's growth by trying to grow fast enough to |
| 1:04.0 | create new opportunities for her team, but not so quickly that she can't hire and develop the |
| 1:07.9 | talent it takes to serve clients well. How Kira concentrates on building |
| 1:11.3 | the company's culture by hiring employees who see financial planning as a calling and have a |
| 1:15.5 | combination of competency and personality rather than selling for those who may have one but not |
| 1:20.6 | the other. And why, though, firing B members of the team who are getting the job done can be |
| 1:26.1 | tough, Kira refuses to settle when there are so |
| 1:28.6 | many people who may be better fit for the firm. We also talk about how Kira built her media |
| 1:33.3 | presence to drive growth of new clients in the early years of the firm, how that growth eventually |
| 1:37.3 | squeezed her personal capacity and made her realize she needed to change how she trained |
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