David Lyon on Less Managing, More Advising

Show Timeline:  

1:45 An introduction to Oranj and how they help advisors unlock their potential
8:01 How David grew his RIA business to $200 million in two years through referrals
14:34 The challenges he faced in his business that prompted the creation of Oranj
18:49 The revenue model for Oranj and why their goal is to have advisors not pay for the service at all
25:31 Where David recommends advisors start in thinking about delivering a great client experience
29:07 How advisors can adopt an Amazon-like experience in their businesses
33:43 Striking the right balance between customization and a consistent service proposition

Links:

Website:              www.runoranj.com
Phone:                 312-635-0889
LinkedIn:             https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-lyon-2269755/
Twitter:                https://twitter.com/runoranjdotcom

Want more?

Stephen Wershing: www.TheClientDrivenPractice.com/checklistblog
Julie Littlechild: www.absoluteengagement.com/blog

Episode Transcript:

Steve Wershing:    
Welcome to Becoming Referable, the podcast that shows you how to become the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Steve Wershing. On this episode, we talk with David Lyon, CEO of Oranj, the industry’s first free wealth management platform. David was a practicing RIA for 10 years, and like other successful fintech CEOs, he began creating his technology to solve his own business problems. While practicing as an RIA, he made it clear that the value that he delivered to clients was through the wealth management and planning activities that he did for clients rather than the investment management. While he used technology to help streamline his practice, he was frustrated about the lack of software he could use to facilitate the relationship, and so he began building it on his own. Eventually, that became the platform we know today as Oranj.

In our conversation, we discuss his transition from RIA to fintech executive, how we created Oranj, and how he makes it free for advisors to use. We talk about how the fear that robos are a competitive threat is shortsighted. We talk about creating a customized experience, and we discuss how he looked to the software giants to learn how to make a sophisticated and price-competitive experience for advisors and their clients. With that introduction, let’s go to our conversation with David Lyon. David Lyon, welcome the Becoming Referable Podcast. Thanks for joining us.

David Lyon:    
Oh, thank you for having me.

Steve Wershing:   
Tell us a little about Oranj and what it has to offer advisors.

David Lyon:    
Oranj is a wealth management software platform for financial advisors. What we’re laser focused on is helping advisors unlock their potential and being able to serve advisors through surfacing opportunities to help them achieve better results for their clients, first and foremost, but also their businesses. How we’re able to deliver that is really offering advisors a free end to end software platform that encompasses a whole lot of capabilities but is really primarily focused in on portfolio construction. We’re balancing trading, client onboarding, and client portal. Really in addition to the software that we provide to advisors, Oranj helps advisors improve their bottom line through helping them lower their costs that they spend on software and providing them a marketplace of investment solutions that offers them the ability to really lower the cost of investing for their clients.

I’m sorry. When you say help advisors achieve more, I’m assuming that you’re not going to help me run faster and jump higher. Can you tell me a little bit more about what kind of potential you help advisors unlock through your system?

David Lyon:        
I think every advisor runs their business differently. I think a motto that we live by at Oranj is helping bring the advisor to the forefront. I think when many advisors hear about technology platforms like ours, they feel like we’re trying to replace them in some way. We help bring a certain level of automation to what advisors do, but we really pick and choose the places that we try to automate. We try to free advisors up to really spend less time managing and more time advising. Really what that means is instead of advisors having to go through their Rolodex of clients, calling clients for their quarterly review check-in, their annual review, whatever that might be, Oranj is actually surfacing those opportunities, very similar to how you might even check your social media feeds on Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Twitter. We’re surfacing those opportunities to advisors in real time. Instead of talking to five clients that really don’t need their attention, they can actually reach out and talk to the clients that do need their attention and actually have something meaningful to talk about with them.

Julie Littlechild:    
I always think that sometimes when there’s a new approach like you’re providing, that the story that got you here really makes it clear. I wondered if I could back up to understand your journey from being an RIA to founding Oranj and the gap that you saw for advisors that you wanted to fill.

David Lyon:    
Yeah. It has been a journey. My background is not in software development. As you mentioned, I was an RIA for 10 years. The idea for Oranj really started when I had challenges in the business that I was building and the business that I was running. I was pretty fortunate to grow my business to a pretty decent level within a short period of time. I started my business pre-recession. I went through all of the trials and tribulations that every other advisor listening to this podcast did. I grew my business to about $200 million within about two years and just really did that through a whole lot of activity, getting a ton of referrals. I think experiencing that kind of a growth exposed a lot of weaknesses that I had in my business but also I think just general challenges that advisors face every day in getting referrals, getting those referrals to meet with you for the first time, taking them through the process.

Really the gap in my business that I was trying to solve was really everything front office-facing, connecting, communicating, collaborating with clients and prospects. That was really the biggest pain point that I had in my business and went out, was really searching for a solution to help me with this. I couldn’t really find anything. That’s when I decided to do something about it and hired a third-party development firm to help me solve the problem. That was really the early days of Oranj. Used the early version of Oranj in my business for a couple of years and identified that there were others in the industry that had similar goals and challenges to overcome that I did in my business.

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