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Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 413th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Kevin Leahy. Kevin is the CEO of Connecticut Wealth Management, an RIA based in Farmington, Connecticut, that oversees approximately $4 billion in assets under management for 1,100 client households.
What’s unique about Kevin, though, is how his firm has built a systematized internal advisor training program to efficiently onboard young new talent straight out of college, maintaining a strong advisory talent pipeline as his firm has grown to $4 billion in AUM through both organic growth and acquisitions of retiring advisors (whose clients can be transitioned to Kevin’s up-and-coming young advisors) while maintaining a high level of service with a relatively low 35-to-1 client-to-advisor ratio.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Kevin’s firm’s new hire training program ramps up through the first 6 months, starting with an initial 90-day stage that uses standardized case studies to teach the firm’s financial planning process and how to review and input data into the firm’s systems, followed by a second 90-day stage that builds new hires’ confidence in their client communication skills by conducting mock client presentations and receiving constructive feedback from peers and current advisors, how Kevin’s firm uses a software platform called Playbook Builder to compile training materials (including videos, PowerPoint presentations, and word documents) in a centralized location and create a more systematized onboarding and training process, and how Kevin typically assigns new hires once they have completed this 6-month training program to service teams not based on having complementary skills to the lead advisor, but rather based on having similar strengths to better align the team with its clients’ preferred planning style.
We also talk about how Kevin sources entry-level hires not only among recent college graduates, but also from a robust paid internship program that allows his firm to vet interns before committing to a full-time offer, why Kevin’s practice of bringing on multiple new hires at one time both keeps the firm ahead of hiring needs and promotes efficiency by allowing these cohorts to go through the training process together, and how Kevin has found that this 6-month training process has paid off (even though the new hires add limited value during this initial training period) as nearly all employees who have gone through this training are still with the firm, saving the firm the time and money in turnover costs it would otherwise face to replace hires that don’t work out.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Kevin shares why his hiring process puts a premium on identifying individuals who mesh well with his firm’s 8 core values and emphasis on teamwork (and in the case of experienced advisor candidates, weeding out those who might prefer an ‘eat what you kill’ approach that doesn’t fit in Connecticut Wealth Management’s team-oriented culture), why Kevin decided to create a centralized planning team to ensure consistent service for each client even as the firm’s average client AUM and complexity grows, and how Kevin’s firm has grown not only through acquisitions, but also by increasing its wallet share amongst clients obtained in these deals by demonstrating a higher level of service than they might have previously been accustomed to that leads clients to grow even more with the firm over time.
So, whether you’re interested in learning about building an internal advisor training program, how to use an internship program to keep a firm’s talent pipeline full, or how to maintain a firm’s core values as it grows over time, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Kevin Leahy.