The Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors: Ex-Edward Jones Advisor on Building Beyond $1B<\/a><\/p>\nWM: Brian, what has it been like working with your dad over the years?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brian Merrill: After Enron went down, I was still working there. I was one of the last 10% there, but I was starting to have nothing to do. My father said, \u201cHey, if you help edit my most recent book, I\u2019ll teach you how to trade.\u201d So I learned how to trade and build portfolios over those first couple of years. After the book came out, we created what was called All Seasons Retirement Portfolios, which is now Tanglewood Portfolios, which grew from nothing to about 175 clients.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And then in 2014, when I became an owner of the firm, I transitioned that program to somebody else to instead focus on more of the business aspect of the firm. One of the reasons I have the corporate development officer title is not because of corporate development in the large company sense of acquisitions and external growth. It\u2019s more internal, new products, new initiatives, innovation, strategy. And that keeps it exciting for me because I like to build new things, so there\u2019s never been a time where we\u2019ve been stagnant as a company. I think we\u2019ve done some things that are unique in the industry because I was allowed the latitude to do some of those things here that I wouldn\u2019t have had somewhere else.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WM: How is the succession plan structured? John, do you have an end date in mind or a plan for transitioning out?<\/p>\n
JM: I\u2019ve\u00a0emulated Philip Carret, who managed\u00a0the Pioneer Fund back in the 1920s. He worked at his desk till he was 103, and he died on his desk. And I liked that. That means he was productive until the day he died. It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t have my vacations and fun, but I enjoy what I do. Also, we still have clients that actually go back to my pre-Tanglewood days, with their kids and their grandkids, and I feel a huge responsibility to the original clients to see it through for them. We put a lot of plans in place. And through the estate settlement, through the estate distribution, through the setting up the heirs, many of which are clients, many of which are not, but we take it full board to see that through.\u00a0<\/p>\n
From a succession standpoint, we\u2019ve got plans in place that my stock will be partially given to Brian, partially sold to the company. There\u2019s a buy-sell in place where if it\u2019s not given or sold to an existing shareholder, then it must be bought by the company. So it\u2019s not going to get spread to relatives or anything like that. And that plan has been in place since 2014, although we have modified it twice as we brought in new owners and new aspects to the plan, but that\u2019s still in place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WM: The firm has made this decision to stay independent, not take outside capital. When did you come to that decision to stay independent, and why?\u00a0<\/p>\n
JM: The first firms that were being merged or bought happened probably 20 years ago, and I saw the results and how it changed things. With some firms, it changed things more than others, but on the other hand, you\u2019ve got more mouths to feed, you\u2019ve got different priorities, you\u2019ve got different goalposts. It\u2019s no coincidence that a lot of those are tied to Fidelity\u2019s or Schwab\u2019s referral plans. That\u2019s 26 basis points, so they have to charge that to their clients. If we charge that added onto our fee, we\u2019d have the same fee as everybody else, but we don\u2019t do that. We have never taken a referral fee from any source. It\u2019s been all organic growth, and that keeps us flexible from the standpoint that we’re not having to take those types of client relationships, nor do we have to pay those kinds of fees, nor do we have those kinds of obligations. But a lot of those firms do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I go back to clients first. What\u2019s in the client\u2019s best interest versus what\u2019s in your personal best interest? If it was all about money, we would\u2019ve sold several years ago because the amount of money they were flashing was unbelievable. But I\u2019ve invested well; I don\u2019t need the money.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WM: How do you respond to capital providers that reach out to you? Or do you just not respond?\u00a0<\/p>\n
JM: I don\u2019t respond to them, but they keep coming.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WM: Do you think you\u2019ll ever reconsider taking capital?\u00a0<\/p>\n
JM: We don\u2019t need it. We have talked periodically about buying another firm, but it would have to be a cultural fit. That\u2019s the hardest part. I love our culture, and the people here are 100% on board with our culture. But you go to another firm, you\u2019ve got a different culture. It may be similar, but it\u2019s different. And integrating the two cultures would probably be much more than integrating the two businesses. And I\u2019ve seen that also. A big firm two floors above us sold out to a bank, and then they went through a transition. Then, the owners were kicked out, and they started a new firm. It\u2019s just kind of a mess, and where does that leave the clients?\u00a0<\/p>\n
WM: Last spring, you added a couple of shareholders. What was the significance of that to the firm?\u00a0<\/p>\n
BM: Ownership and succession aren\u2019t something we\u2019re thinking about or going to do; it\u2019s something we\u2019ve done. It\u2019s already in place. Part of the process is also how do we retain the key employees who have been here a long time that we think are important to the continuity of the client experience going forward, and to the culture of the firm going forward? And one of the things we can do is decide who should be part of ownership because we believe they help with that continuity. They help maintain the consistency of the client experience through generations. From our perspective, we just want to broaden ownership and then basically let those know that we think are important to the future continuity of the firm, consistency of the firm, that we want them to be a part of the performance of the firm and to tie them to us, have an ownership mentality and feel like everything is rewarded for them, not just us, especially given the tenure and the value that they\u2019ve brought to the firm over the years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WM: What is the path to equity ownership at the firm?\u00a0<\/p>\n
BM: There is a 10-year component. We wanted to roll it out, and 10 years seemed to be a good starting point. But that said, if we were to bring in somebody who was at the leadership level or if we were to purchase a firm and their group came over, there are other ways to ownership. But the primary way to ownership is from working here a long time, delivering value for a long time, and then, even more importantly, feeling like you\u2019re going to continue to be here a long time, so that we maintain the talent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WM: What have you been doing\u00a0to develop associate advisors?<\/p>\n
BM: Up until about five years ago, we didn\u2019t see the value of hiring young advisors because we intended to work with larger clients that those advisors wouldn\u2019t resonate with. But then we started doing more and more work for each of our clients and adding to the services that we do, and we decided to develop an associate advisor program, which we had never had before and created a path. And then that path is associate advisor, senior associate advisor, wealth advisor, senior wealth advisor, and then potentially shareholder. We have somebody who started as an associate advisor, moved to senior associate and is now a wealth advisor. For every wealth management client, they now have a primary advisor, and then they have an associate advisor who is also assisting the primary advisor with that account.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because of the extended services and deliverables that we\u2019re doing, and it\u2019s great because the associate advisors are in the meetings, talk with the clients, get experience. We\u2019ve never really had a natural path for them to develop clients before being ready, but now we have more and more multi-generational families. We created what we would call a deliverable, which is our family financial consulting program, and it’s basically that if somebody signs up as a wealth management client, then their adult children will be able to have a junior advisor from our firm free of charge. And so they don\u2019t have to go to Edward Jones; they don\u2019t have to go do robo advisors, and they have somebody they can call.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The family financial consulting is specifically for those who may never become clients. That\u2019s why we don\u2019t view it as a profit center. It\u2019s a service that we provide because we know that our clients care about their health and their kids more than anything. And so we wanted to make sure that their kids are taken care of, learn how to be good stewards of money and can carry through for the next generation. Our junior advisors can start there before having true client relationships where we have a client engagement, where we have an advisory agreement. And then also there’s the younger clients that are full clients of the firm that are the kids of gen one, maybe gen two, gen three. And so there is a path for them to develop their own clients.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tanglewood Total Wealth Management has a long and rich history. John F. Merrill, who\u2019s now 78, founded the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,147,530],"class_list":["post-670418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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