Ep 316: Building A COO Society To Help Advisory Firms Scale Up Their Efficiency With Matt Sonnen

Financial Advisor Success

Michael Kitces

News, Business, Entrepreneurship, Business News

4.8 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2023

⏱️ 101 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Matt Sonnen is the founder and CEO of PFI Advisors, a consulting firm based out of Redondo Beach, California, that helps wirehouse advisors transition to independence and provides training and consulting services to the COOs of independent RIAs to help them develop and scale their advisory businesses. Matt and his wife have taken the knowledge and experience they gained from providing hands-on support to independent advisory firms to improve their operations, technology, and scalability, and turned it into a unique offering for Chief Operating Officers in the industry, dubbed the "COO Society.”

Listen in as Matt shares what it takes to establish an independent advisory firm when it breaks away from a wirehouse, how he developed his "stand-up-from-scratch" breakaway experience to help RIA owners understand their operational strengths and weaknesses, and how his unique “COO Society” helps COOs become more well-rounded in their roles. We also discuss how Matt got started in his advisory career as a 22-year-old college grad, what led him to ultimately launch PFI Advisors, and how the unexpected illness and untimely death of his daughter impacted him and his wife during the early stages of his firm’s launch.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/316

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

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
0:12.7	advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get
0:17.8	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 Kitsas. Welcome, everyone.
0:28.6	Welcome to the 316th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is
0:34.7	Matt Sondon. Matt is the founder and CEO of PFI advisors,
0:38.7	a consulting firm based out of Redondo Beach, California, that assists wirehouse advisors
0:43.0	with the operational transition support they need to break away, and then trains and
0:47.0	consults with the COOs, the chief operating officers of independent RAs, to better build
0:51.8	their own infrastructures, processes, and culture to scale up their
0:55.1	advisory businesses.
0:57.1	What's unique about Matt, though, is how he and his wife has translated.
1:00.3	There are years of hands-on support that they've provided to independent advisory firms to
1:04.1	improve operations tech stack and scalability into creating an entire community for the
1:09.1	industry's chief operating officers, aptly dubbed PFI's
1:12.9	CFOO society. In this episode, we talk in depth about how Matt and his team first learn what
1:19.0	it really takes to stand up an established independent advisory firm from scratch when it breaks away
1:23.5	from a wirehouse and has to quickly implement an entire operational infrastructure from
1:28.3	office space and phone systems to CRM and investment in custodial technology.
1:33.0	How Matt and his team then adapted their stand-up from scratch breakaway experience to help
1:37.3	RIA owners by implementing their own 10-page operational diagnostic questionnaire to fully
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Michael Kitces, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Michael Kitces and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.