Ep 075: Walking Away From RIA Partnership To Scratch Your Own Entrepreneurial Itch with Kathy Longo
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2018
⏱️ 101 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kathy Longo is the president and founder of Flourish Wealth Management, an advisory firm in the Minneapolis area that oversees nearly $130 million of AUM for 61 affluent clients. Surprisingly, Kathy chose to start this firm after successfully climbing the partnership track ladder to become one of the next generation successor owners of an independent RIA worth over $1 billion.
In this episode, Kathy shares what led to her choosing to leave a successful firm to pursue her own entrepreneurial goals, as well as the challenges she faced in doing so. Listen in to hear how she has grown her business, why it’s so important to find study groups of peers and colleagues, and the crucial philosophy she says all small business owners should embrace.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/75
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 |
| 0:13.0 | advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight |
| 0:18.6 | from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next |
| 0:22.3 | level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsas. Welcome, everyone. Welcome to |
| 0:28.9 | the 75th episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast. My guest on today's podcast is Kathy Longo. |
| 0:35.5 | Kathy is the president and founder of Flourish Wealth Management, |
| 0:38.5 | an advisory firm in the Minneapolis area that oversees nearly 130 million of assets under |
| 0:42.8 | management for 61 affluent clients. What's unique about Kathy, though, is that she had already |
| 0:48.4 | successfully climbed the partnership track ladder at a billion dollar plus independent RAA |
| 0:53.0 | to become one of their next-generation successor |
| 0:55.9 | owners, yet ultimately decided to sell her shares and walk away from that business to start a new one |
| 1:01.2 | in order to scratch her entrepreneurial itch. In this episode, we talk in depth about how Kathy |
| 1:07.8 | structured and built the staffing of her firm, launching initially by using a third-party |
| 1:11.9 | tamp provider, then transitioning to do the investment management internally as the firm grew |
| 1:16.7 | by having her husband take over as the director of investments. The culture snapshot document |
| 1:22.3 | that she created to screen potential new employees and ensure they're likely a good fit, |
| 1:26.6 | and why it's so crucial |
| 1:27.8 | as a small business owner to embrace the philosophy of slow to hire, fast to fire with new |
| 1:33.6 | employees. We also talk about the value of having a study or mastermind group, why Kathy decided to |
| 1:39.3 | join two different study groups, one that's comprised of all women financial planners in the |
| 1:43.5 | industry from the Minneapolis area, and the other that's comprised of all women business owners outside |
... |
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