Ep 034: Becoming An Advisor and #FinTech Software Entrepreneur While Running Your Own Advisory Firm with Sheryl Rowling
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 22 August 2017
⏱️ 72 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sheryl’s firm Rowling & Associates was already a robust planning practice before she decided to design and launch a rebalancing software that would be affordable and simple to use. In this interview, she shares the challenges of running concurrent businesses, what she wished she knew before diving into the software world, and what she learned about life and work while managing two related but demanding ventures.
She’s also a fierce advocate for work-life balance and has built a practice that allows employees to serve clients to a high standard while also carving out time for the rest of their lives. Sheryl shares the structure of her firm today, along with her hiring philosophy and how she manages such great, holistic relationships with clients.
Get the full show notes and transcript for this episode at: www.kitces.com/34
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with |
| 0:07.2 | financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading financial |
| 0:13.1 | advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight |
| 0:18.7 | from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the |
| 0:22.0 | next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:28.6 | Welcome to the 34th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is |
| 0:34.6 | Cheryl Rowling. Cheryl is the founder of rolling and associates, an |
| 0:38.0 | independent advisory firm in Southern California that manages more than 300 million in assets under |
| 0:42.8 | management and provides a combination of investment management, financial planning, and tax preparation |
| 0:47.6 | services for clients. What's unique about Cheryl, though, is not simply that she's built a successful |
| 0:52.8 | advisory firm with a team of |
| 0:54.3 | 12, but that in an effort to try and make her firm's investment management process more |
| 0:58.5 | efficient, C decided to create her own rebalancing software and then sell it to other financial |
| 1:04.3 | advisors as what we now know to be total rebalance expert, or TRX, which was subsequently |
| 1:09.3 | acquired just a few years ago by Morningstar. |
| 1:12.1 | In this episode, Cheryl talks about what it was like building a technology firm while |
| 1:16.4 | running our advisory firm as well, how building an advisor technology firm differs from traditional |
| 1:22.0 | advisory firms, the financial demands that it takes to continuously iterate rapidly |
| 1:27.4 | in a competitive software landscape, and the personal toll that it takes to continuously iterate rapidly in a competitive software landscape, |
| 1:29.6 | and the personal toll that it takes in trying to simultaneously run two businesses at the same time, |
| 1:34.9 | an advisory firm and an advisor technology firm. |
| 1:38.5 | In addition, we do talk in depth about the structure of Cheryl's CPA financial planning firm as well, |
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