The Compound and Friends - What does it mean to be elite? (with Josh)

Episode Date: April 16, 2019

Josh shouts out some of the elite-level activities taking place with Ritholtz Wealth, including some praise for trading, admin and the young financial advisors who are making their mark on the firm and its clientele. Enable our Alexa skill here - "Alexa, play the Compound show!" https://www.amazon.com/Ritholtz-Wealth-Management-LLC-Compound/dp/B07P777QBZ Talk to us about your portfolio or financial plan here: http://ritholtzwealth.com/ Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice just for you or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. Please see this 3,000 word terms & conditions disclaimer: https://thereformedbroker.com/terms-and-conditions/   Subscribe to the mini podcast on iTunes or Spotify Enable our Alexa skill here - "Alexa, play the Compound show!" Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First of all, I want to start off by saying congratulations to Matt, a newly minted CFP. Matt, congrats. Well done. How are you feeling now? Pretty good. Okay. All right, good. I want you to start studying. All right, you start studying for the next exam immediately. What else would you do? Insurance exam? CFA? No, you're done.

Now I need you to take everything that you've learned and apply it, and you're going to crush it. We're all really proud of you. I want to talk about being elite, not in the negative sense, not elitist. I think it's an ice cream man. Do you want something, or can I continue? Okay. All right. in. Do you want something or can I continue? Okay. All right. I want to talk about being elite because I feel like when they write the story of our firm, and they will, there's a lot of work

that's going on that's more behind the scenes than what a lot of people outside of the firm were able to see. And even then what a lot of our clients are able to see. And a lot of that manifests itself in not look at this talent I was born with, but just the slow and gradual accumulation of expertise and skills. So the first person I want to talk about is Alex. I had met with two prospective clients of Alex's over the last couple of weeks. And both of them made a point to say to me that Alex's strong suit is empathy. They didn't use those words, but the way that they described the experience of working with him,

I was really proud to hear that. And Alex has that quality that he was born with, but he's learned to channel that into giving very useful, very specific, highly expert advice in a lot of really important things. And I think the blend of being empathetic and understanding how people are feeling and understand what the right things are to get across in each conversation, in each meeting, but then coupling that with real expertise in financial planning, that is what an elite advisor is able to do, not just at our firm, everywhere in the country. Anywhere that you find somebody that's really good at being on the client's side and having the client know that they're talking to someone that gets what they're dealing with or what they're worried about or what they're excited for and then also has all of that expertise to bring to the table, that's somebody that's going to kill, going to absolutely kill it in this business. And Alex is absolutely killing it.

So getting a chance to talk with people, Alex, that you have had meetings with. In one case, the gentleman said, Alex, give us a second. Really just wanted to tell me that and give you that compliment. So I really appreciate how far you've come as an advisor. And someone like Matt, who is now a CFP, I think he has a lot to learn from watching you, how you carry yourself, how you help people, how you work with people, how you explain what we do. So look no further. That's your role model right there.

It ain't me. Okay? It's not Barry. It's not Batnick. That guy's the real deal. Patrick Haley is trading over 1,000 accounts for 700 families of the firm. He is doing this at a very elite level. There are almost no people in this industry in a position where every single day they've got to deal with 700 families

and over a thousand accounts pretty much all by him all by himself with a little bit of help here and there and obviously the the assistants at Schwab at Orion at TD but Patrick is running the show and that show is very complex it is not let me buy ETFs and mutual funds today. There's cashiering activity. There's rebalancing work. There are new accounts coming in that need to be allocated. There are tax-related decisions about what gets sold and on what time frame. And all of that's got to be handled by one person.

And I got to tell you, it's so thankless sometimes. When an advisor makes a mistake, one of you guys who's client-facing, an advisor makes a mistake, it's like a missed phone call or an email that wasn't explicit in what you were trying to say and the client got the wrong impression or something to that effect. And it's not that who cares. Of course, that's important. When Patrick makes a mistake, it could involve thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars. This is real money on the line. And when Security. Nobody wants to know what they're doing, right? Nobody wants to see. Nobody wants to know what Patrick's doing every hour of every day. When he's doing it right, it's invisible.

Now, when an advisor makes one of those mistakes or a clerical error on an account form from the administrative staff, I don't hear about it. When Patrick makes a mistake, I hear about it. I have to sign the correction. So not only is it somewhat thankless on a day-to-day basis and invisible when it's going well, in addition, every error, no matter how big or small, immediately has to come to me. Imagine if you were in that position where everything you did wrong every day, you had to come talk to Josh Brown. It's not fun. I don't want to even talk to myself. All right.

So I just, I feel like he's doing this at a very elite level. Some of you might've seen last week, we put out a call for an assistant trader role. We are actively interviewing. I think we got something like, how many? 70? 70 plus resumes already.

Many of whom are serious. And we're going to do our best to find Patrick some help immediately. We had never anticipated the firm scaling to this size this quickly. And so when you get to this point, you really have to make sure that it's not just about having the right people. It's about having the right systems and procedures in place. And Patrick deserves to be able to go to sleep at night knowing that he's got some help and it's not all on his shoulders. Anyway, I want to give Patrick Haley a round for just doing an incredible all-around job in a very thankless role sometimes. Patrick, well done. We all appreciate it. And we're going to get you some help right away. I want to talk about Erica Morrow, who is an absolute beast.

Erica informed me that the firm has opened 130 new accounts over the last four weeks. Is that accurate? Okay. That's ridiculous. And still going. 130 accounts in four weeks. Her team, Colleen, Anna, Justin, Catalina, and Rose sometimes. This team is unbelievable.

Think about how many households that is to onboard. How many different articles of paperwork are required? Everything from account forms to documents that enable web access to transfer. It's just an unbelievable volume. I have to be honest with you. There's probably only a handful of RIAs, my guess, in this country where the admin staff is being asked to open 130 accounts in a month. That just does not happen.

So I got to tell you, I'm just completely impressed by that. You guys are doing an elite job. And I know it's an elite job because I never hear a word. I never hear a word about anything going on with admin, which means everyone's reporting up the chain to Erica and Erica is finding solutions

to problems as they arise. You can come to me if you need to, but so far you haven't had to, and that's the most impressive thing at all. Everybody give Erica and the team a round of applause. Before I forget, happy birthday to Brian Rosen. And speaking of elite, happy birthday, Catalina. We're honored to have you as part of the team, and we hope you have a great day.

Brian, you're okay too. We love you. All right. That's all I want to say, but I really think that it's important that we look around and we recognize that in addition to Ben writing amazing work, Michael's work on the slides that Barry delivered to clients last week, Barry's work on those quarterly conference calls, whatever I'm doing, there's a lot of stuff that is very visible. a lot of stuff that is very visible. But then there's this other layer that enables all of that to happen, this deeper layer of people just being absolutely elite, whether it's Alex in meetings with clients and prospective clients explaining what we do, Erica, Catalina, Justin, the whole team doing what they're doing, getting hundreds of accounts open on a quarterly basis. Or we're talking about people like Patrick who are really keeping the machinery running.

There's a lot of elite stuff happening, and I just wanted to recognize that today. Everyone have a kick-ass week. We'll talk to you soon.