Ep 280: Overcoming The Pain Of Scaling: When The Second 100 Clients Is Harder Than The First with Brian Carney
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 10 May 2022
⏱️ 91 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brian Carney is the co-founder of RiversEdge Advisors, an independent RIA based out of Delaware that oversees over $400 million in assets under management for 300 client households. Brian’s firm doubled in only 18 months, causing burnout, staff turnover, and the need to completely re-build their infrastructure to be able to sustainably scale to the next level, and he joins the podcast today to talk about how he was able to get the firm back on track to success.
Listen in as Brian shares how his firm’s massive growth actually turned out to be a nightmare in disguise, as well as how he was able to turn things around. You’ll learn how they have made operations a key focus of the firm and the lessons that Brian learned that will allow him to scale his firm to the next level in a sustainable and healthy way.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/280
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 financial |
| 0:12.6 | advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get |
| 0:17.7 | 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 280th episode of the Financial Advisor's Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is |
| 0:34.0 | Brian Carney. Brian is a co-founder of Rivers Edge Advisors, an independent RIA based |
| 0:38.9 | in Wilmington, Delaware that oversees more than 400 million assets under management for nearly 300 |
| 0:44.3 | clients. What to think about Brian, though, is how he and his partner dealt with the fortunate |
| 0:49.6 | problem of having rapid growth as their firm gained momentum, rising from 150 million to 300 million |
| 0:55.3 | of AUM in just 18 months, and how the associated growth pains led to burnout, losing nearly |
| 1:01.1 | half their staff, and required them to completely rebuild the infrastructure of the firm |
| 1:04.9 | to actually be able to get to the next level. |
| 1:07.5 | In this episode, we talk in depth about how Brian as partner had made the goal in 2018 to double |
| 1:12.9 | their AUM from 150 million in five years and the Center of Influence Referral Marketing |
| 1:17.4 | approach that let them get there in only 18 months. Why that should have been a positive |
| 1:22.0 | of big growth but turned into a nightmare of working two long hours and making staff changes |
| 1:26.4 | that lost almost half their headcount in just a few months. |
| 1:29.6 | And how Brian was able to turn it around by ultimately hiring two recruiters and two consultants to help them not only fix the struggling culture of the firm, |
| 1:38.2 | but to quickly find a replacement employees they needed who were the right fit and could get them back on track for success. |
| 1:44.5 | We also talk about how despite having an optimistic outlook, Brian struggled to not take it |
| 1:49.0 | personally as the culture of the firm declined and employees decided to start leaving. |
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