Ep 430: Navigating The Fast-Growth Hiring Challenges Of Scaling From Scratch To $5M Of Revenue In Just 7 Years with AJ Ayers
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2025
⏱️ 90 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
AJ Ayers is the co-founder of Brooklyn Fi, an RIA based in Brooklyn—but operating as a fully remote business—that oversees $370 million in assets under management for more than 400 client households. What’s unique about AJ is how she and her business partner successfully tackled the hiring, training, and operational challenges of rapidly scaling their advisory firm from the ground up to $5 million in revenue in just seven years. Their strategic approach to systems and processes allowed them to sustain growth while maintaining efficiency and service quality.
Listen in as AJ shares how she and her firm rapidly scaled their advisory business, growing to 14 new clients per month while building a structured training program to onboard advisors in their specialized equity compensation niche. She explains how they leveraged LinkedIn’s Recruiter platform for proactive hiring, developed Gemifi software to streamline equity compensation planning, and implemented a three-part fee model to align revenue with client needs. AJ also reflects on delegating firm operations to reduce her own work schedule, hiring an HR professional to strengthen company culture in a remote environment, and overcoming impostor syndrome by earning niche-relevant certifications and gaining hands-on client experience.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/430
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | 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 |
| 0:21.3 | in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. Welcome to the |
| 0:27.9 | 430th episode of the Financial Advisor's Success podcast. My guest in today's podcast is A.J. Ayers. |
| 0:34.3 | AJ is the co-founder of Brooklyn, FI, an R.A. based in Brooklyn, New York, but operating as a |
| 0:38.8 | fully remote business that oversees $370 million in asset center management for more than |
| 0:43.1 | 400 client households. What's unique about AJ, though, is how she and her business partner |
| 0:47.2 | have navigated the hiring and training and systems and process challenges that come from |
| 0:51.3 | very rapidly scaling an advisory firm business from scratch to |
| 0:54.8 | five million of revenue in just seven years. In this episode, we talk in depth about how AJ and |
| 1:00.2 | her firm have navigated periods of rapid client headcount growth, with the firm averaging 14 new |
| 1:05.1 | clients per month in 2021 while having just three planners on staff at the time. How AJ decided to hire rapidly to meet this brisk new client demand by leveraging LinkedIn's |
| 1:14.6 | recruiter platform to actively reach out to potential candidates rather than just waiting for them |
| 1:19.6 | to respond to a passive job listing. |
| 1:20.6 | And how AJ's firm created a training program to bring new hires up to speed more quickly |
| 1:24.6 | on serving the clients in the firm and their hyper-specialized equity compensation niche by incorporating internally produced videos, |
| 1:31.9 | external coursework, and the opportunity to sit in client meetings alongside Brooklyn FI's lead |
| 1:36.6 | advisors very early in each new advisor's tenure with the firm. |
| 1:40.2 | We also talk about how serving the equity compensation niche has allowed AJ and her firm |
| 1:44.2 | to very rapidly attract new clients and then efficiently systematize its planning process |
| 1:48.8 | and give advisors the chance to get a lot of at-bats early on working with target clients. |
| 1:54.2 | How AJ and her partner further streamline the firm's planning process by creating their own software |
| 1:58.1 | tool called Gemify to extract data from a client's grant award |
... |
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