Have you ever wondered how successful companies manage to scale their businesses by creating and leveraging high-performing sales teams? Today's interview is with Jon Lacasse, an entrepreneur who is an expert in scaling companies by building such teams.

Jon shares his unique career path, which took him from concrete work to building a team of over 100 people within a division of Citigroup. He also discusses his decision to break free from the Citigroup umbrella to launch a healthcare brokerage firm. While helping owners with their health insurance, Jon and his team had an eye opening experience  to the lack of proactive advanced tax planning for business owners. This realization led to the inception of his company, Lifetime Advisors.

Jon emphasizes his success is rooted in understanding - and aligning - the motivations of each stakeholder—client, sales rep, and the company delivering the services. He explains the importance of education, and the role of delivering repeatable solutions using scalable systems and processes, and highlights the need for an insane discipline of tracking results.

We wrap up with a discussion on the changing landscape of the business advisory sector and how Lifetime Advisors offers a unique business model that's designed to take advantage of emerging opportunities, disrupt an old industry, and enhance the advice and service business owners receive.

 

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 Three Big Takeaways:

Building and Managing Effective Teams: A major theme is Jon Lacasse's philosophy of creating sales teams that are effective and efficient. He believes that leaders should understand and help clarify each team member's motivations, assist in building plans to achieve their financial goals, and educate them on complex subjects such as insurance, mutual funds, and mortgages, so they can make it simple for the client. He stresses the importance of accountability and meticulous tracking to refine the sales process. 

 

The Opportunity in Proactive Tax Planning: Jon's discovery of the potential of offering proactive tax planning, which started with Research and Development (R&D) tax credits. He found that many businesses were eligible but unaware of these credits due to a lack of specialized knowledge among, or too busy, CPAs. This led him to creating Lifetime Advisors with a few other partners, dedicated to helping business owners save money via proactive tax planning, going beyond immediate planning to cover a comprehensive set of products and services, including R&D tax credits, capital gains strategies, advanced estate planning, and exit strategies. Jon views this unique business model as a response to industry changes and a means to capitalize on the emerging opportunities.

 

The Business Model of Lifetime Advisors: Jon's current business, Lifetime Advisors, uses a unique business model in which they take over operational tasks and allow their Field Consultants (the sales people) to focus on building relationships and setting up appointments. Th