Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with

financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading

financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success

and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the

next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone.

Welcome to the 123rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast. My guest on today's podcast is

Brent Brodesky. Brent is the co-founder and CEO of Savant Capital, an independent RIA based in Rockford, Illinois,

that oversees more than $6 billion of assets and our management for nearly 5,000 clients.

What's unique about Brent, though, is not merely the trajectory of Savant's almost entirely

organic growth to $6 billion of AUM, but the way the firm navigated the all too common challenge of

buying out a co-founder, which in their case required raising more than $50 million of capital

to fund both the buyout and the next stage of Savant's own growth with a vision at 10x

the firm in 10 years. In this episode, we talk in depth about what it means to recapitalize an

advisory firm by buying

out a founder and taking on new outside investors to provide the cash for growth. The way that Brent

interviewed financial buyers, private equity firms, and banks that were willing to lend, the key

factors that he considered with respect to each type of investor in trying to decide who to work

with and who to

take capital from, and why he ultimately rejected them all and instead worked directly with some

high net worth family offices to be his patient capital investors for the future. And how even his

deal with a family office nearly blew up on the finish line when he had last minute doubts that one

of his investors was really properly aligned with his own vision for the firm. We also talk about Savant's advisory firm

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