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 to the 422nd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is

Kalin Mayhew. Kaelin is the president of Merit Financial Advisors, a hybrid advisory firm based in Alpharetta, Georgia,

that oversees approximately 13 billion in assets under management for 26,000 client households.

What's unique about Kaylin, though, is how she developed her advisory management and leadership skills

to work her way up from starting as an intern to eventually become the president

of a national RIA enterprise and lead their proactive mergers and acquisition strategy.

In this episode, we talk in depth about the ups and downs of Kaelin's evolution over the past

decade from being a client-facing advisor to a large firm leader, including the lesson she learned

when once early on, her team threatened

to quit because of her original management style.

How Kaylin grew to recognize the importance of connecting better with her team members as people

rather than just focusing on business results and outcomes alone.

And Kaylin's strategies today are on asking peers and employees for feedback, which have helped

her recognize blind spots

in her own leadership approach, and even as she's now advanced the highest management levels

of the firm. We also talk about Kalin's current role managing her firm's merger and acquisition

activity, including how she and her business partner decided to sell their previous firm

...