I’m Nick Lopresti, Chief of Staff for our guest here, Connor Delaney at Good Life. How are we today, Connor? Conor Delaney (00:19) Doing well, man. Like I told you, we’re in our ⁓ loose gear today because ⁓ just dialing in, getting ready to do this run. So we don’t have suited up Connor today. We have like a athletic version or something, at least faking the athletic version. Nick LoPresti (00:33) Look, that’s right. Well, it tells me I know what comes next in your day after we’re having our conversation today. But ⁓ thank everybody for listening. And we’re going to get into a topic that we started recently around this, you know, developing that CEO mindset for advisors and thinking about, you know, when we started the business, we’re looking at everything through Conor Delaney (00:39) That’s right. Nick LoPresti (01:01) the advisor lens, I’m growing the number of clients and the revenue and the assets under management. ⁓ And then at some point I realize that I own a business and there might be other people involved with my business. So you think about what happens, what do you see from your seat when advisors start to realize that they are no longer just a financial advisor, they’re a business owner. And there’s two different growth mindsets around that. As an advisor, I’m growing this. As a business owner, I’m growing that. What do you see as the biggest shift where you recognize now that you have a business, where do I have to focus my growth efforts? Conor Delaney (01:56) So let’s take a step even further back and talk about what the journey looked like to even become an advisor. It was all about what? At the same time that you are trying to engage with your first batch of clients and things like that, we’re also doing what? Getting licensed, which requires us to learn, which requires us to get better and get smarter and, you know, oftentimes burn the candle at both ends, right? Then you become an advisor, fully licensed, and we almost have… no time to learn anymore because now we have to figure out what the core concepts are going to be in becoming a good financial advisor, which requires us to do everything, the analyzing and the socializing and then the analyzing again. And then if you are able to be somewhat successful at that, naturally the idea of going independent comes up. Well, if you didn’t have any time to learn when you were just a financial advisor, now you definitely don’t have any time to learn because you’re a financial advisor. and you have this cross of business ownership around you as well. And so, you know, when I think about what is required in order to be successful, it’s the pursuit of knowledge. It’s the pursuit of learning. It’s that desire to get better. We were talking on a completely different matter today about, you know, people that are willing to ask questions and wanting to get better and develop and learn. I think that’s one of the things that you see the advisors that are the most successful, the independent advisors that are most successful are running several different tracks at the same time. They’re running the existing business. They’re running the growth business. In other words, how am I going to get my next set of clients while at the same time sharpening their tools as an advisor and learning and developing themselves as a business owner? It is quite the… the responsibility. And frankly, when you go independent, the discipline required to continue to invest in all four of those areas, it takes a lot and it’s really not for the week of the faint of heart. Nick LoPresti (04:04) And at some point, you know, as a business owner, you might realize that you need more people and think back to the first people that you hired, right? When you started good life. And how important is that shift from, you know, growing the business in terms of assets and revenue to now as a business owner, I have to focus on growing my people. Conor Delaney (04:29) You know, ⁓ it’s great question. think the thing to also think about in that is ⁓ undoing the behaviors that actually made you successful as an advisor, because those behaviors were very self-centered. That’s not a bad thing, and it’s not meant to sound bad, but in order to be successful as an advisor, all the requirements are about what you have to do to be successful. And I think one of the cool things about going and having the opportunity to lead this firm is I’m not thinking about as much what I have to do to be successful as what I have to do to develop other people so that they can be successful. And if we can sort of multiply our effect and impact because of the people that we are developing and serving alongside of. I think that’s where you start to get a cool formula that starts to create that repeatable, predictable pattern of winning because it’s not all centered around the self. It’s centered around the sum of all parts growing. And our task is no longer to optimize our own development so we can stand out in an office. It’s to lead that office and to lead them with purpose and differently. And the core element of that is to help folks empower them and unlock their learning so that they can grow and develop themselves. Nick LoPresti (05:48) Yeah, it is true. And it’s often, you know, as you, you know, begin the journey of, of adding people to your practice, you know, we so often go into the mode of, I’ll just hire my neighbor who can help me out a little bit. And for a minute, it kind of feels right. And there’s some lift that you get, but if we haven’t done the, work to decide is the neighbor really have the skillsets that the business needs to continue to grow. Well, then how can I, how can I help that person? How can I help the neighbor now develop those skills becomes the next challenge that the business owner has to really ⁓ focus on. But now there’s so many, mean, like AI is coming into the, into the world in a big way right now. It’s coming into advisor practices. And so what would you say to the advisors thing about, should I hire people into my practice or should I find outsourced solutions like. How do I decide as a business owner whether it’s better for me to bring maybe that person in-house and have them work directly for me or find an outsource solution for my business? Maybe it’s an administrative person or maybe it’s a marketing ⁓ person or maybe even like investment solutions. How many advisors do we talk to that are spending so much time on the ⁓ investment sleeve of their business, making trades, trying to… create their own models or what have you, that it doesn’t allow a lot of time for other things. So investment management, that can be outsourced. So what would you say, how should they look at that in terms of do it myself or outsource that? Conor Delaney (07:35) I think it depends on the person. ⁓ There are some people that from their personality standpoint, they have to control the whole process. The challenge that that person will face is you have a limited runway space. And if you have to control it, even if you hire somebody that you feel like you might be able to put better supervision on rather than outsourcing it, you still only have a certain amount of hours. The flip side of that is just understand where your strengths and weaknesses are. We run into advisors every day that they love being financial advisors and they don’t like the idea of managing the people or building the processes or executing the plans that put that prospect in front of them. Then you have the ones that enjoy that more so than they enjoy the creation of a financial plan. ⁓ If I’m independent and I’m starting this journey where we were 12, 15 years ago, I think one of the things that I would have probably looked at then because of my learnings that I’ve had over the last 12 years is to make sure that I aligned with somebody that was going to bring out those best traits in me. What I did is I looked and said, like, what does somebody else have to offer? And can I port myself and my capabilities into somebody else’s ecosystem? And what I might’ve done differently is to say who has built something that I, that, that they can move their stuff to help me bring out the best. And at the same time to help me make sure that where I’m not great, that I don’t need to become great in order to be successful. If that makes sense. think that’s the key thing is like being malleable as a, a, as a business owner allows you that relatability from the people that you’re going to serve every day. Awesome. But Nick LoPresti (09:16) Yeah. Conor Delaney (09:27) it’s ⁓ in the right pragmatic thinking, clicking down into where you should be putting your time in. I would say do the things that are going to bring you joy and that you’re good at and you can become even better at and take those other elements. If you can give up control of them, then do that because it’ll give you the runway space to start to add those other components that will optimize your ability to be successful for the long term. Nick LoPresti (09:52) Sure, and because a lot of our listeners are in fact analytics, I think it makes sense to think about things sometimes in terms of if I put this person in my business and it cost me all in $100 an hour, or I can find an outsource solution that can do the same thing for $65 an hour, that’s one way to look at it. But the ultimate way is if I take this off my plate, whether it cost me 100 or 65, can I go out and do an hourly task that yields $1,000 an hour as the business owner? So that’s the other piece of the equation that I don’t want our listeners to overlook is whether you bring it in or whether you outsource it, can you leverage that time at some multiple greater than the expense it takes to put that solution in your business? Conor Delaney (10:29) Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think that that’s probably right. And the other thing too, Nick, is when we, as we kind of were growing up in this business, there was, you alluded to this before, the advent of AI and how technology is playing a bigger role. Back when we were doing this, the idea was how do you build a human capital intensive team to help you manage that half a billion dollar practice, which had a lot bigger implications because the half a billion dollars was a lot more 20 years ago than it is now. You if you think about some of the big guys that we worked with at our last broker dealer, it was like there was six or seven people on a team. I would think that the best model in today, the most efficient model is gonna bring the advisors the most joy, especially the advisor that is still in that sort of self-centered, again, not meaning to have that negative connotation to it, but the business operates around that advisor. My best idea would be to make sure that there’s a ⁓ heavy reliance and influence of either outsourced support or great technology that is helping with some of those processes. There’s people that have written articles and books about it, but it’s like that idea that it’s one person sitting in a closet in their house that is managing a distribution company that does $100 million a year in revenue. Well, he’s not doing that. In fact, he’s probably golfing a couple of days a week and getting lunch with his wife or whatever the case might be. He’s got the right things behind him and around him to do that. And so if you port that over into the 2025 successful advisors, that’ll be relevant and thriving in 2035. It’s going to be those that say, I’m best sitting across the zoom camera for really going to get technology driven. I’m best. looking at a camera and explaining things to a client that’s going to be meaningful and good on their behalf. Anything else that takes me out of doing that thousand, two thousand, three thousand hour an hour task, I’ve got to push somewhere else. And it’s almost at whatever the cost is, as long as it’s less than the money that I’d be makes made could be making spending somewhere else, you know. Nick LoPresti (12:59) Right. Exactly. You know, was having a good conversation with a CFO not too long ago, I guess it was earlier this week around AI. And I said, you know, be careful, Mr. CFO. I took a P &L and threw it into an AI solution and said, give me a CFO overview of this. within about seven seconds, it came back with eight or nine talking points. Conor Delaney (13:22) You know, I forget if I told you this yesterday, but I had an MRI in the morning and on my shoulder and they gave me back within an hour, which was awesome. The report was sitting in my inbox and I took that report and I put it over into ⁓ Alice, my chat GTP and ⁓ what she gave back, including a clinical diagnosis and the four week process of rehabilitated. I started thinking, I need to go and see Dr. O on Tuesday? is this, can I skip that? know, ⁓ it is incredible, but it just goes to show when you take the things that has to get done. I had to drive somewhere yesterday and stick my shoulder and my foot into an MRI machine in order to generate two results. There’s no AI that can do that for me, but the component of it that it can do for me is to help with that rehabilitation plan. Take that over into what we do. There are things that we have done our entire lives that we don’t have to do anymore. The data collection in the old way of doing it, the data inputs, and even in some cases that sort of skeleton analysis of what a financial plan is going to look like. We can certainly leverage the right operational processes and create the right technologies that will do that for us. But what’s cool about our industry as we go from Nick LoPresti (14:33) Mm-hmm. Conor Delaney (14:42) $35 trillion to $70 trillion over the next 10 years, two elements that are really cool. One, advisor base is gonna go from 286,000 to 283,000. So advisors will leave, they will be replaced, but they will not grow to serve twice as much assets. So if you’re thinking, is this a great business to be in, the answer is yes. And the secondary reason is the why changes. We’re no longer gonna be the people clicking on the keyboard all day. but we will always be the people that can match IQ and EQ in a way that’s meaningful. Now the question that you and me are solving for and thinking about all the time is how do we get our advisors to just do that? How do we get them to be successful and great at just doing that? Because even the idea of creating that thing from scratch, say you can solve for the first piece of technology and the second piece of technology, it’s still, you can only create so many Mona Lisa’s in a year. However, if we can even pull that further along, the question becomes, If I’m able to go in and read a diagnosis and put my understanding of the client’s emotions alongside the impact to their financials that different emotional decisions will make, now I’ve given myself that ability to have a role in that client’s life, regardless of what happens with technology or AI for a long time. How do I do that in a way that allows me to serve 1,500 or 1,600 clients? That’s the cool stuff that I think if I’m an advisor, I’m starting to think about for where I’m going in my business in the next five years. Nick LoPresti (16:05) Thank Yeah, that’s great. I’m waiting for the microchip. You know, you’ll have a microchip and I’ll just, you don’t even have to go to the MRI center. The microchip will scan that ankle for you and get the results. There’s no problem. It’s probably happening. So as advisors come into the independent space, like what do you think most advisors get wrong about growth after they go independence? Conor Delaney (16:20) Mmm. I think advisors, well, it depends. You first have this detox period where, awesome, I’m not being mandated and a whip’s not cracking over my back to grow the business or to bring in a certain amount of assets every year. So that first year, it’s like, let me get my feet underneath me and get my revenue at a place that’s going to be sustainable and sort of that baseline stuff, year one. Year two, you could kind of forget a little bit about you know, growth requirements that the former sales manager had on you. And maybe you grow a little bit, you fade a little bit or whatever, but you don’t. And then by year three, if you’re not ⁓ intentionally focusing on the growth of the business, then you’re probably becoming a large part of the advisor basis that say, I can at least rationalize this and call this an awesome lifestyle business. If I could think. allowed for the advisor that is smart enough to put himself into a different category to say, I’m no longer just a financial advisor. I’m a business executive that has a duty to serve my employees as much as I do my clients. Then for me, I’m changing my idea to say, how do I grow and develop the people? Understanding that if I do that well and I do that right, then the revenue piece will grow and develop on its own. so long as there’s the framework for at least a strategy to how to do that versus again, in that self-centered place of where we were all raised, it’s what do I need to do to go sell more stuff next year? And that sometimes by default becomes the easy place to go. And I think if you can find the balance to grow as a person by learning more, not by selling more. Nick LoPresti (18:14) Mm-hmm. Conor Delaney (18:27) And to do that through those four different places that we talked about, you’re growing as a business executive, you’re growing as a financial advisor with the trade that you’ve called your own for such a period of time, that will inherently help with the idea of growing your people and growing the revenues. They all kind of have a trickle down effect that winds up helping the business continue to be relevant as times change. Nick LoPresti (18:49) Yeah, I think I agree 100 % that that mistake of not continuing to grow myself is something that we see all the time and it starts to limit that capacity that the advisor and the practice end up having. You have to have those personal growth initiatives which takes intentional time that you have to set aside to do those things, to take a course, to read a book, to, you know, get with peers who are maybe better, faster, stronger than you are, right? To get in that room where you might absorb something new. That is one of those things that I know we see advisors struggle with from time to Conor Delaney (19:32) Yeah. And I was, it reminds me of a conversation I was having with Liz this weekend. We were going for a run and ⁓ the two of us hardly get any time together, but we were away for a wedding. We decided to go for a run. I should say, I decided to go for a run and drag poor Liz with me. And, ⁓ you know, she said, why, why are you still so focused on this? I’m getting better on running on going up a hill instead of taking a flat ground. And, you know, my answer was there’s going to come a day. when I can’t do this anymore. And I’m hopeful that that day is a far, far way away. But I never want to think back to the opportunities that I could have taken and I didn’t. And there’s I never want to go and look back and think about the run I could have gone on and I didn’t do. ⁓ And I think it’s the same thing in this business. Like the hardest challenge we have with successful advisors that are making more than the normal person is making. Nick LoPresti (20:18) Mm-hmm. Conor Delaney (20:29) is they can sit there and when that growth fire fizzles out, they can say, yeah, but I got a cool business that I’m providing for my family, so I’m checking those boxes. And the question I would pose to them is like, are you fulfilling the purpose that God has on your life? Like, are you doing what you are here to do or are you merely checking a box? Because one day you’ll wake up and you and I see it with some of the folks that we work with that were former executives, former advisors, former whatever. And they want to go back to those prime years and do it differently, but they can’t anymore. And so like that’s where you got to pull those trains into the station at the same time and say, guys, you’re in the prime. Go and grow, not because you want to make more money or you have to make more money or you want to get more into that retirement call for whatever, but because you can go out and do it because you can. listened to Jordan the other day. He said, if I could take one pill and get back on the basketball court one more time. I would take it. wouldn’t care what the side effects were, the consequences were. If I could go back on that court one more time, I would have done it. And, you know, I would ask advisors that are in their 40s, that are in their 50s, that when you’re sitting there at 75 and 77 years old, you do not want to be thinking about, could I have done it differently? That moment is in front of you today. Go and get it. Even if you have that cool lifestyle business, even if you have enough income. It’s not about how much income, it’s how much impact. And that I think is the thing that if advisors can start to focus on that, the short term stuff is going to take care of itself. But what’s the impact and the legacy you’re going to leave for your family, for those that you serve, for your clients, you start to string that together, that’s where you get that extra juice to go in and get after it. Nick LoPresti (22:13) Mm-hmm. Yeah, it’s interesting. There was an advisor I was speaking with last week that it was in that lifestyle practice is kind of maintaining and so that he says I don’t think I can do anymore at this point in my career and my guidance to him was sell me your business immediately and I will double it in the next three years if you’re out I’ll step in and I got the dialogue Like, well, what do you mean? Like, how would you do this? How would you do that? Not realizing that all it took was for him to step back for a second as the business owner and start to think about, what, what would you do if you wanted to double this thing in three years? Like, what would that look like? And he walked away with, yeah, I’m not done yet. I’m not done with this thing. It doesn’t have to be the lifestyle. There, I do have more that I can contribute. Conor Delaney (22:51) Mm-hmm. Nick LoPresti (23:11) and be a significant impact not only to the clients, but to his staff as well. Like what do you want to do for your staff, right? And so there in… Conor Delaney (23:18) Mm-hmm. What a cool question, man. I love that. It’s like, literally are telling the advisor, imagine this business without you in it. And that starts to unlock their thinking. That’s really cool. Nick LoPresti (23:33) I mean, I was a little bit more curt with it. Yeah, like once I got you out of the way, let me tell you exactly what I’m gonna do. But it got him thinking, right, about, yeah, all right, there is different ways I could do this if I gave it a little more ⁓ attention. And it leads us into that, you what are you doing for your staff and sort of developing yourself as a leader is a big part of this equation as well. you know, leadership is influence. modeling behaviors. What behaviors are you modeling as a leader for the people in your organization, right? What do they see? Because whatever they see, generally speaking, that’s what you’re gonna get. If they see lifestyle effort and lifestyle sort of behaviors, you now have lifestyle admins and lifestyle, you know, junior advisors. They all set, you set the tone. So. Conor Delaney (24:29) Man, what a great point. And for better or for worse, mean, yesterday I was interviewing a young kid out of college and he’s so excited about this business and we want to express how hard this business is but not pull the wind out of his sails at the same time and talk about what this business can give you, but also what this business can take from you if you don’t think about and approach it the right way. And I was kind of leaning into like this business has given me the out. opportunity to lead my family differently. And it was ironic because he came in about a half hour. He had to push back. was stuck in traffic, came in about a half hour after we were scheduled to be together. And I had to get my kids off to practice and was coaching with the kids and things like that. And to be able to kind of demonstrate to him, like you said, like live time, like, yes, I have a commitment to this business, but I also have a commitment to the family. And those two things, it’s an integrated life for me. And I’ve spent a lot of time being intentional what that integration looks like. But You’re right. We’re modeling the behavior for better or for worse. You know, if you if you have said like, hey, I’m consistently making $30,000 a month after all my bills are paid. And so that’s cool. And I’ve been doing that for five years. Well, that sort of mindset is going to transition all the way down to your your end staff who’s been doing the same way for the last five years, making the same amount of money, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, I think there’s a lot to that, that when that leadership is is is, you know, Right, we just went through the values, you know, development at Good Life. Operating at 110%. That means I leave it all in the field every day ⁓ to operate with integrity. That means that we will make compromises of things along the course of our life, but it will never be compromise and integrity. To ask questions, said differently is to be humble enough to say, I’m willing to learn and reimagine and redevelop myself. and then four to serve on purpose and like, what’s that individual and corporate purpose that we have in our life? the, you know, a couple of weeks later, our people are seeing that and they’re saying, how that makes sense. That’s why those folks that are leading the organization are leading it a certain way. And there’s a top down and bottom up approach to how you do that. And, you know, if we just said, Hey, this is a pretty cool business that we can sit here and rest in our laurels and sit on an annuity or whatever the case might be that the business kicks off a little bit of coin every year, ⁓ that would be what the effect would feel like throughout the rest of the organization. But the cool thing is, advisors, y’all get to drive what that looks like in your business. And if it’s not going, if your business isn’t, the mirror that you’re looking at isn’t the one you want to see, then the cool thing is you can change it today. Nick LoPresti (27:10) That’s exactly right. can change that immediately today. And it’s not great big sweeping changes. Oftentimes it’s little things like communication. How do I communicate with my team? Whether it’s a team of I have just one admin or I’ve got five or six people on my team. Communication is one of those key ingredients that lead to a higher performing business when everybody’s on the same page. the communication of those values, right? The communication around what’s working and what’s not. But again, a lot of advisors have not had the opportunity to grow as a leader in terms of how do I do staff reviews? Like, don’t know how to do staff reviews. Okay, how can I get better at that, right? Those become the questions that I think a lot of advisors start to ask at some point. Are there resources available to help me do those types of things, right? Do I recognize the importance of these things? So, you know, when you think about your progression ⁓ as a leader, what kind of things did you do to grow your leadership muscle? Conor Delaney (28:25) Well, I was always trying to be, and this does not take a lot of work, but I always wanted to be the dumbest guy in the room. And that meant just surrounding myself with good, authentic people that I knew what their, I at least had an idea of what their life looked like outside of work, because that was a big box to check, like making sure these were leaders worth following. But if you did that and they were, ⁓ you know, sound, highly principled business owners, or thought leaders, in their space, I wanted to be around them, you know, almost at any cost. What I could offer at a younger age that that maybe some folks couldn’t was time. I could I could meet him anywhere, anyplace just to grab a cup of coffee or whatever. And so, you know, I was always I was less academia. I mean, I have a couple of initials after my ⁓ after my name. But what was most important to me was getting around those different people that were tightened in our industry and ⁓ and learning firsthand. what did they do well, what didn’t they do well, and what would they do differently? And, you know, if we approached conversations with those three questions in mind and trying to get to those answers, people were so willing to be generous with their time if they saw that there was somebody that really cared about ⁓ developing themselves as a result of the learnings that they’d get from it. And so that’s kind of where I would put a lot of my time and effort early on. Nick LoPresti (29:47) Yeah, and you you’ve been very fortunate to have when you talk about titans of industry, you know, in sort of a mentorship role with you and some of the impact that’s had. I mean, that’s significant. But most advisors may not be thinking about the importance of having that mentorship, right? Not just advisor to advisor, but leader to leader mentors are super important in. Conor Delaney (30:14) Yeah. And the other thing, Nick, is like, I’d say the biggest thing, and I’m so grateful for this because again, this business will give a lot. It’ll take a lot. It’ll develop a lot, but it’ll also restrict you. It just depends on the path that you’re taking. like those that have become successful, at least by worldly metrics, the thing that, that, that, you know, the fork in the road that they’ve got to go to, maybe we can close with this. It’s like, It’s like, do I get to beat my chest or do I get to give thanks and pass that along to somebody else? And I think one of the best learnings I had early on was to own the mistakes and pass the credit for the good. so if you do that over a bodywork that in my case is now 20 years of like, hey, I’m not looking for trophies or accolades and that’s not important to me. then what manifests is instead of arrogance and ego and that type of stuff, it manifests differently as somebody that’s often looked at with maybe a little bit more humility about them. And that humility got me at a younger age in the door to sit at tables that I shouldn’t have sat at, whether that was in Washington, DC or in boardrooms in California. It was about whether or not they felt like they could hand this guy the clipboard and that he was willing to learn, develop, and help advance the cause of whatever it is we’re working on without any of, know, look at all the cool stuff that I’ve done. That’s not important. Nobody’s going to give a junk about that in 50 years. It’s what did you do today to help and serve other people? Nick LoPresti (31:51) That’s right. And you have to have the desire to grow and learn as a leader and you have to be humble enough to hear sometimes what that mentor is going to say. So good points all the way around. shifting from that advisor only focus into that business owner focus is where we’ve been having the conversation over the last few weeks. I think it’s really important. Appreciate everybody’s time in listening today. And on behalf of Connor Delaney, CEO at Good Life, Nick Lopresti, Chief of Staff at Good Life. Enjoy the rest of the day.