Ep 464: Hiring A Director Of Talent To Shape The Development Of Next Generation Advisors (And The Lead Advisors Who Train Them) with Katie Calagui
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2025
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Attracting and retaining top talent is one of the greatest challenges for growing advisory firms. As teams expand, success depends not just on recruiting, but on creating a culture where people feel valued, supported, and empowered to grow. This episode explores how intentional talent development and leadership coaching can help firms build thriving, future-ready teams.
Katie Calagui is the owner of Katie Calagui Consulting, a coaching and consulting firm that partners with financial planning leaders to strengthen their people systems and firm culture. Listen in as Katie shares how firms can move beyond traditional HR to invest in true people development, building training, mentorship, and advancement pathways that reduce turnover and develop next-generation advisors. You'll learn the key metrics that reveal whether your talent strategy is working, common leadership blind spots, and why the best coaches don't give advice—they draw out the wisdom firm leaders already have.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/464
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. |
| 0:29.0 | Welcome to the 464th episode of the Financial Advisor's Success podcast. My guest on today's |
| 0:34.9 | podcast is Katie Kalagi. Katie is the owner of Katie Kalagi Consulting, a coaching |
| 0:39.2 | and consulting firm that works with financial planning firm executives and leadership teams. |
| 0:43.6 | What's unique about Katie, though, is how she supports firms in building out their talent |
| 0:47.9 | development capabilities to boost employee retention, create a pipeline of next generation |
| 0:52.7 | advisors, and ultimately facilitate stronger |
| 0:55.1 | and more sustainable growth. In this episode, we talk in-depth about why Katie thinks that firms |
| 1:00.5 | can benefit from investing in a people development role that spends their time focusing on firm |
| 1:04.8 | culture and training rather than operational HR issues, how Katie finds that the best places to work |
| 1:09.8 | are where employees feel like they're |
| 1:11.0 | part of a family, being valued and seen in their organizations, while those that struggle |
| 1:15.4 | tend to have controlling leaders and employees aren't trusted to take on higher level work, |
| 1:20.0 | and Katie's key metrics for determining whether a firm's people development strategies are successful, |
| 1:24.6 | including promotion and retention rates as well as growth in advisors' total client headcount and average client size. |
| 1:30.3 | We also talk about why Katie thinks that maintaining a strong talent pipeline is as important |
| 1:35.0 | as ever for firms, even as artificial intelligence-powered software tools, become increasingly |
| 1:39.9 | capable at handling tasks such as note-taking commonly performed by newer employees. |
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