Welcome back to the 335th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Tim Wyman. Tim is a Managing Partner for the Center for Financial Planning, a hybrid advisory firm based in Southfield, Michigan, that oversees $1.5 billion in assets under management for 1,000 client households.
What’s unique about Tim, though, is how, as a second-generation partner, he helped redesign the firm’s organizational structure from siloed advisors to an ensemble practice, both restructuring the firm’s compensation, and in the process systematizing future partnership opportunities to both next-generation financial advisors and key non-advisory team members to ensure continuous internal ownership of the firm for the long term.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about why Tim and another G2 partner decided to transition the firm from a siloed advisor structure to an ensemble to both fulfill the vision of first-generation partners to evolve the firm into an enterprise and also create equitable partnership opportunities for all employees of the firm, how Tim and his firm worked with Philip Palaveev to develop their “Center for Financial Planning Path to Partnership” document to outline buy-in options and the quantitative and qualitative criteria employees must meet to become a partner, and why Tim and his firm implement a monthly scorecard called the “State of the Center” and a bi-annual report using Moss Adams benchmarking ratios to monitor the financial health and productivity of the firm.
We also talk about why Tim and the firm don’t assign a dedicated CSA for each lead advisor but instead ensure that each client has a dedicated CSA to keep the client relationship consistent (even and especially as planner and ownership transitions occur), why Tim and the firm ensure their newer associate planners are involved in all client-facing activities instead of just working on back office support so that they can learn different relationship-management skills in real-time from the senior advisors themselves, and how Tim leverages the firm’s proprietary CRM and its integration into Tamarac to automate tasks and compile data for their Annual Review Reports for clients – cutting down his total meeting prep time to just 15 minutes per client.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Tim shares how he was surprised by how much complexity is involved in growing and scaling a firm past 10 and then 20 employees but feels rewarded by seeing how much of an impact the firm makes, why Tim feels that it’s important for younger, newer advisors to find a mentor they truly respect as a person and as an advisor early in their careers (even if it’s not a formal mentorship) to build better career opportunities for themselves, and why Tim believes that developing a successful career path doesn’t always have to be complicated and can be built upon working just a little bit harder than others and focusing on mastering a few core skills like writing, speaking, and treating clients well.
So, whether you’re interested in learning about why Tim is considering instituting lower capacity limits for CSAs than lead planners, how Tim and the firm’s other partners structured partnership opportunities and buy-ins, or how 2 of the Center for Financial Planning’s founding partners, 3 of the current partners, and 40% of financial advisors are women, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Tim Wyman.
