Ep 129: Building The Lifestyle Practice Of Your Dreams By Selling Your Firm And Starting Over with Donna Skeels Cygan
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 18 June 2019
⏱️ 97 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Donna Skeels Cygan, the President of Sage Future Financial, joins the show to discuss how she runs a firm overseeing nearly $90 million in assets under management and still maintains a work-life balance. After building her first successful firm, Donna decided to sell it and come back three years later to start over again, this time building a much more deliberately-crafted schedule that’s intended to only ever have 40 affluent clients.
In this episode, Donna shares her journey in building her first and second advisory firms, as well as how she decided which clients she wanted to bring to her second firm when starting up again. You’ll learn about her process and the tools she uses, how she employs a virtual assistant to maximize her time with her clients, and why she has no concerns about her ability to remain competitive as a stand-alone solo advisor.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/129
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with |
| 0:07.0 | financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading |
| 0:12.3 | financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success, |
| 0:17.3 | and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next |
| 0:22.0 | level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:28.0 | Welcome to the 129th episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast. My guest on today's podcast is |
| 0:34.5 | Donna Skiyel Saigon. Donna is the founder of Sage Future Financial, |
| 0:38.5 | an independent R.A. in Albuquerque, New Mexico that oversees nearly 90 million of assets for about |
| 0:43.4 | 40 client households. What's unique about Donna, though, is the way that she successfully built |
| 0:48.5 | her at first advisory firm to over 100 million of AUM with five full-time staff members, |
| 0:53.2 | and then found herself so mired in |
| 0:54.9 | the time it took to run the practice and serve her clients that she sold it and came back |
| 0:59.4 | three years later to start over again building a much more deliberately crafted structure |
| 1:04.0 | that's intended to only ever have 40 affluent clients. In this episode, we talk in depth about |
| 1:10.1 | Donna's journey of building both her first |
| 1:12.5 | and second advisory firm, the way that years of continued growth allowed her to hire more team |
| 1:17.1 | members, but frustratingly never got to the point where she was able to free up her time to spend |
| 1:21.1 | more of it with her family. While she ultimately decided that the only way to relieve the burden |
| 1:25.2 | of the firm was to sell it, the reason that Donna |
| 1:28.2 | ended up coming back to start a second advisory firm after all, and how her current structure, |
| 1:32.7 | with just 42 clients paying an average of nearly $18,000 a year in fees, allows her to run so |
| 1:38.9 | efficiently as a solo advisor that she finally has the work-life balance she wanted, needs only |
... |
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