Penny Phillips on What It Takes to Run a Successful Business

Show Timeline:
07:02 The need to be adaptable right now (and always)
09:13 Being willing to redefine success
12:47 Questions to ask yourself to take your business in a different direction
15:50 Characteristics of successful and ‘adaptable’ advisors
19:45 Using ‘what’ or ‘how’ questions to gain clarity on what you are trying to achieve
26:39 Solidifying your value proposition while giving clients the open space to express themselves
30:06 Creating a referral experience instead of asking for referrals
32:20 Three things you can do to start on a different path for your business

Links:
Website:            https://journeyswadvisor.com/
LinkedIn:          https://www.linkedin.com/in/penny-phillips-8a777533/
Twitter:              https://twitter.com/thrivosllc

Want more?

Stephen Wershing: http://advisorchecklist.com/blog/
Julie Littlechild: http://www.absoluteengagement.com/blog

Episode Transcript:

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Julie Littlechild:
Welcome to Becoming Referable, the podcast that helps you become the kind of advisor people can’t help talking about. I’m Julie Littlechild and today, Steve and I offer up a twofer. You see, we’re talking to Penny Phillips and in addition to hearing her insights on what it takes to run a successful business, we’ll hear about her journey, one that took her from a corporate role to starting a successful coaching business and now to her current role as president and co-founder at Journey Strategic Wealth. Penny will share some perspectives on how advisors need to adapt their businesses in a new environment, but points out that this evolution was always needed. She digs deep on the skills that advisors may need to develop going forward in order to compete. She provides some incredibly interesting and important, I think, insights on the idea of self-coaching, highlighting the idea that success isn’t only about the tactics that we employ in the business, but the approach that we take and the rules that we play each and every day. With that, let’s get straight to the conversation with Penny. So Penny, welcome to the Becoming Referable podcast.

Steve Wershing:
Welcome, Penny.

Penny Phillips:
Thank you for having me. Good to be here.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing you speak a couple of times and I’ve often seen some of your posts and great content, so I’m excited to have you on today. I want to talk about your work, but I was really struck when we were chatting before having you on by some of the transformation you’ve gone through in your own professional life. Since I like a good journey story, I thought it might be interesting to start there and just tell us the kinds of things you’re working on and how that’s evolved.

Penny Phillips:
Sure, and if you use the word journey, you probably know my new company that I just co-founded is called Journey Strategic Wealth and it fits in perfectly. So I just-

Steve Wershing:
That’s the journey we wanted to know about. Right. Exactly.

Penny Phillips:
There we go. So I just launched with three other partners, a registered investment advisor. We’re a national firm, but based on the East Coast in New Jersey, although I sometimes say just New York City Tri-state area, but it is New Jersey. I say launching that business, we just launched it in January, but it really feels like what the past 12, 13 years have led to for me. So Julie, I shared with you my entire career has been spent in, to some extent, financial advisor, coaching and consulting with a focus on practice management. I started my career at New York Life, the insurance company, and my first foray into practice management was working on an initiative at the time for their corporate RIA to help successful transactional insurance agents transition to become financial advisors and wealth managers and it was a fascinating experience.

Penny Phillips:
I grew really interested, not just in how advisors build businesses, but the mental shifts and transitions that they go through as they evolve in their careers. So I knew that I was going to spend my career in that line of work and after jumping around a bit, I launched my own coaching and consulting company called Thrivos, which is still around. We have wonderful coaches coaching there, but there was a moment last year when I really felt like there was bigger impact I could have on the industry. After coaching advisors for the past five years, about where they’re at and transitioning and what the next phase of the life cycle is for them, I said, “Gosh, if I’m coaching them to go independent, maybe I’ll just build an RIA that’s built for a specific type of advisor,” which I’m sure we’ll talk about. So, I did that and so that’s where I’m at right now, a lot going on, but exciting, fun work.

Julie Littlechild:
Well, why don’t you tell us, you said a specific type of advisor. Can you talk about who you work with?

Penny Phillips:
Yeah, my experience, I’ve spent a lot of time in the independent space and, specifically, the insurance broker dealer space and I’ve always said this. I think the insurance BD advisor that a woman or man who grew up in that type of culture and has made that transition successfully to be a wealth manager, is the dark horse of the industry. I find that in the RIA and indie space and M & A space, people don’t really talk about that advisor, but it’s that advisor that I’m interested in, extremely strong relationship management skills; they were raised in a culture where they had to sell a product that nobody wants, like life insurance and it’s

Penny Phillips:
So, they just have this raw ability to connect with people and couple that with technical competency in planning and investments and wealth management, for me, I’m very interested in that type of advisor. What I was noticing the past couple years is some of them had simply grown out of the broker dealer they were with and were looking to go independent. They would always say to me, “You know what, Penny? I can get a 92% payout at so-and-so firm,” and they ended up making that transition, but then realized a 92% payout doesn’t mean anything when you have to run a business, right?

Penny Phillips:
Your real net payout is 40% after you make payroll and set up tech and et cetera. So, I found that this idea of, “We’re going to go independent and be really successful and make a lot of money,” there was a disappointment factor because what the adviser was actually looking for was not big, higher payout; it was specific support around practice management and being a business owner and I found that there wasn’t a firm out there that was really built to solve that problem. Every RIA firm says, “We do practice management,” but there isn’t a firm that’s actually built a practice management coaching experience into the fabric of the RIA and that’s what we built with Journey. So advisors join us and we, essentially, allow them to outsource all of practice management and operations to us.