In the ninth episode of The COO Roundtable, Matt welcomed Susan Dickson and Suzanne Williamson, principals of Private Ocean.  Susan is the Chief Operating Officer of the firm, and Suzanne is the Director of Client Services.  Private Ocean, headquartered in San Rafael, CA, manages over $2 billion in client assets with 51 employees and has additional offices in San Francisco and Seattle.  With the goal of highlighting that people come before technology in the COO role, Matt, Susan, and Suzanne sat down to discuss the importance of culture, how that culture can successfully translate to M&A acquisitions, and much more, including:

To read a full transcript of this episode, please click here.

You can listen and subscribe on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

To purchase Greg Friedman’s (Private Ocean Founder & CEO) book, “The Financial Advisor M&A Guidebook,” click here.

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Episode 9 appeared first on COO Society.

In the eighth episode of The COO Roundtable, Matt sat down with David Canter and Scott Slater of Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions.  David is the Executive Vice President and Head of the RIA Segment at Fidelity.  A lawyer by trade, David has been in the industry for 25 years and has been involved in everything from setting up RIAs from a legal and compliance perspective to helping them grow and scale from a practice management standpoint.  Scott is the Vice President of Practice Management and Consulting at Fidelity.  He helps some of the largest firms in the industry work through their M&A strategy and is also host of the Future Ready Through M&A Podcast.  Matt, David, and Scott sit down to discuss their unique perspective into RIAs of various shapes and sizes across the country and much more, including:

To read a full transcript of this episode, please click here.

You can listen and subscribe on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Check out Scott’s favorite entrepreneurship book, The E-Myth Revisited, here.

Check out David’s favorite entrepreneurship podcast, Startup, here.

Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions® provides clearing, custody, or other brokerage services through National Financial Services LLC or Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, Members NYSE, SIPC.

Fidelity is not affiliated with PFI Advisors.

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In the seventh episode of The COO Roundtable, Matt sat down with Heather Goodman of True Capital Management and Mark DeLotto of Massey Quick Simon.  Heather is the COO, President, and Co-Founder of True Capital and helps the firm manage $1.1 billion in client assets across two offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles with 36 employees.  Mark, Managing Partner, COO, and CCO, helps Massey Quick Simon manage over $4 billion in client assets across six office locations with 55 employees.  Matt, Heather, and Mark sit down to discuss their roles in sustaining their firms’ plethora of family office services and much more, including:

To read a full transcript of this episode, please click here.

You can listen and subscribe on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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In the sixth episode of The COO Roundtable, Matt was excited to welcome the first CEO to the Roundtable discussion!  Jeff Concepcion, Nancy Andrefsky, and Lou Camacho from Stratos Wealth Partners joined Matt for an easy going, yet extremely insightful interview.  Stratos Wealth Partners has 287 advisors in 87 offices across 24 states and serves more than 13,000 clients with over $13 billion in assets under management.  Jeff is Founder and CEO of the firm while Nancy, who has worked with Jeff since the firm’s inception, holds the COO and CFO titles and Lou heads Stratos Wealth Alliance as its President.  In this episode, Matt, discussed with Jeff, Nancy, and Lou how they each play a vital role in sustaining such a large, acquisition-focused enterprise and much more, including:

To read a full transcript of this episode, please click here.

You can listen and subscribe on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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In the fifth episode of The COO Roundtable, host Matt Sonnen was thrilled to sit down with Heather Fortner of SignatureFD and Lucas Winthrop of Winthrop Wealth Management.  SignatureFD, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, currently manages approximately $3.5 billion in client assets with over 80 employees. Winthrop Wealth Management, located in Boston, Massachusetts, manages about $1.1 billion in client assets with 17 employees. Matt, Heather, and Lucas discuss the steps they take to put time back into the hands of their advisors and much more, including:

To read a full transcript of this episode, please click here.

You can listen and subscribe on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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In the fourth episode of our podcast, The COO Roundtable, Matt sat down with Tom Harms of Summit Trail Advisors and Stacey McKinnon of Morton Capital Management.  Summit Trail Advisors manages about $5.2 billion in client assets across five office locations: New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington D.C.  Morton Capital Management, located in Calabasas, California, manages roughly $1.8 billion in client assets.  Matt, Tom, and Stacey discuss the core values and structure they’ve instilled at their respective firms and much more, including:

To read a full transcript of this episode, please click here.

You can listen and subscribe on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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In the third episode of our podcast, The COO Roundtable, Matt was thrilled to sit down with Trevor Chuna and Shaun Kapusinski of Sequoia Financial Group, an RIA in Akron, OH managing over $4 billion.  Trevor, also featured in our latest White Paper, is the Chief Technology Officer and Shaun is the Director of Technology and Operations at Sequoia.  Matt, Trevor, and Shaun dive deep into how Sequoia has evolved the client experience through technology and much more, including:

Be sure to keep an eye out for Episode 4, which will feature Stacey McKinnon of Morton Capital Management and Tom Harms of Summit Trail Advisors.  Both firms manage roughly $1.8 billion and $5.2 billion in client AUM, respectively.

You can listen and subscribe on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

To read a full transcript of this episode, please click here.

To learn more about Shaun’s networking group, HIFON, click here.

To purchase Shaun’s book, click here.

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In the second episode of our podcast, The COO Roundtable, host Matt Sonnen sits down with Gary Bonner of Avalon Advisors and Mike Lee of LourdMurray.  Also featured in our most recent white paper, Gary and Mike are two accomplished Chief Operating Officers who have been catalysts for incredible growth at their respective RIAs.  Matt, Gary, and Mike detail how the COO of an RIA really acts as a firm-wide business consultant; how they are more than a just technology guru; and much more, including:

Be sure to keep a lookout for Episode 3, which will feature Trevor Chuna and Shaun Kapusinksi, two operations professionals from Sequoia Financial Advisors, an RIA in Akron, OH managing over $4 billion.

To read a full transcript of this episode, please click here.

To read the executive summary of Episode 1, please click here.

You can listen and subscribe on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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In our inaugural episode, Matt sits down with Jeff Fuhrman of Coastal Bridge Advisors and Tony Craun of Sand Hill Global Advisors.  These two were gracious enough to be profiled in our latest white paper, “Exploring the Benefits of Professional Management for RIAs: A Deeper Look into Chief Operating Officers.”  Matt, Jeff, and Tony discuss the strategies they incorporate to successfully tackle their day-to-day responsibilities, help their firms grow, and much more, including:

Keep a lookout for Episode 2, which will feature Gary Bonner of Avalon Advisors and Mike Lee of LourdMurray.

You can listen and subscribe on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

To read a full transcript of this episode, please click here.

To read Matt’s introductory blog post, please click here.

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I am thrilled to announce the launch of The COO Roundtable, Powered by PFI Advisors; our latest endeavor in championing the role of operations professionals within the RIA industry.  This podcast series will feature panel discussions with Chief Operating Officers at some of the country’s leading independent firms.  We plan to highlight operational best practices and the benefits that professional management can bring to an RIA.

Our inaugural guests will be the COOs most recently highlighted in PFI Advisors’ white paper, “Exploring the Benefits of Professional Management for RIAs – A Deeper Look into Chief Operating Officers:” Gary T. Bonner of Avalon Advisors, Jeff Fuhrman of Coastal Bridge Advisors, Michael Lee of LourdMurray, and Anthony Craun of Sand Hill Global Advisors.

We view this podcast as a natural extension of our core mission here at PFI Advisors:

To further evolve the RIA industry from a collection of practices to businesses, and to be a continued voice in validating the industry as a legitimate landing spot for billion-dollar teams and their clients.

With the goal of shedding light on the tremendously important work COOs perform every day in the trenches, this podcast is a bit of a passion project of mine, as I have seen throughout my 20-year career in financial services that operations professionals are widely viewed as “cost centers” and not “revenue generators” within sales organizations.  Industry luminaries such as Mark Tibergien, David Canter, and Philip Palaveev have been advocating for the professionalization of our industry for some time, and we intend to demonstrate that without leveraging a Chief Operating Officer, RIAs cannot achieve the organic or inorganic growth initiatives they set for themselves.  We strongly believe that COOs are needed to free the owners of these organizations from the daily minutiae of running a business.

As Jeff Fuhrman said during his interview for our recent white paper, “It’s the Chief Operating Officer’s duty to be in the wings, supporting the role of the advisor.  Leave the management of the firm to the COO, and they will make sure advisors get what they need so they can do the most effective job for their clients.”

We at PFI Advisors are declaring 2019 as the “Year of the COO” in the RIA Industry and aim to spend the year illuminating the hard work successful Chief Operating Officers bring to their respective firms through The COO Roundtable.   Our featured COOs will discuss how they overcome challenges pertaining to the day-to-day administration of their firms; how they maintain a holistic view of their organization’s culture; how they drive workflow improvements; and how they navigate the human resources element of being a COO, all at once.  We’ll also look to share their stories of hanging pictures on the walls, drilling holes in desks, and duct taping phone cables together, as no job is ever beneath a competent COO.

Our goal is to help the industry realize the massive value Operations professionals bring to RIAs.  Every advisory firm struggles with the goal of providing high-touch service to a larger and larger client base in a scalable and efficient fashion.  It is the COO’s job to execute the owner’s vision through people and technology, and to execute that vision profitably.

You can listen and subscribe on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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