Ep 458: Overcoming Perfectionism Burnout While Still Serving Clients Well With A Standard Of "Calm Excellence" with Lisa Brown
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2025
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Given the high stakes involved (and the desire to provide high-quality service) when working with clients, it can be tempting for financial advisors to lean into perfectionist tendencies. However, doing so can sometimes lead to overwork and potentially burnout, particularly as a firm grows over time.
Lisa Brown is the President of Greenwood Gearhart, an RIA based in Fayetteville, Arkansas, managing $1.8 billion in AUM for 1,070 households. In this episode, Lisa shares how her firm's early culture of "urgent perfectionism" led to overwork amongst firm leaders and team members alike, and why she developed a new leadership mantra: "calm excellence." Listen in as we talk about how Greenwood Gearhart redesigned workflows to reduce team burnout, eliminated meetings and ensured those that remained focused on high-leverage activities, and created the conditions for sustainable growth—for clients, teams, and firm leaders alike.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/458
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with |
| 0:07.1 | financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading |
| 0:12.4 | financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success |
| 0:17.4 | and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next |
| 0:22.2 | level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:28.9 | Welcome to the 458 episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is |
| 0:35.1 | Lisa Brown. Lisa is the president of Greenwood Gearhart, an RIA based in Fayetteville, Arkansas, that oversees approximately $1.8 billion in assets under management for 1,070 client households. |
| 0:46.7 | What's unique about Lisa, though, is how her firm has implemented an approach of calm excellence was in contrast to a practice of urgent perfectionism that has |
| 0:55.0 | allowed her firm to manage its rapid growth while maintaining a high level of client service |
| 0:59.3 | and mitigating potential burnout among staff members. In this episode, we talk in depth about |
| 1:04.3 | how lease's firm made the transition from being investment-centric to being planning-centric, |
| 1:09.2 | helping it avoid fee compression compression, and maintain the |
| 1:11.7 | same fee schedule it's had for its 43-year history. How Lisa's firm experienced significant growth |
| 1:17.0 | after developing its comprehensive planning model, while also adding significant work for the firm's |
| 1:21.4 | staff. And how Lisa found that striving for perfection in the planning process led to burnout |
| 1:26.7 | amongst team members who |
| 1:28.0 | sometimes would work past midnight trying to create the best possible plans and client experience. |
| 1:32.9 | We also talk about how Lisa recognized that her team was likely on an unsustainable path |
| 1:37.3 | and instead developed a framework of calm excellence, which her firm defines is |
| 1:41.4 | striving to be our best with measured and paced progress while allowing |
| 1:44.6 | ourselves to learn and grow from challenges and mistakes. |
| 1:47.7 | How Lisa's approach has her team focused primarily on what matters most to the client and what's |
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