Welcome back to the 273rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Penny Phillips. Penny is the president and co-founder of Journey Strategic Wealth, an independent RIA platform for advisors that manages over $3 billion in assets through the firms that they work with to outsource their back-office compliance and operations management.
What’s unique about Penny, though, is her expertise in helping advisors to scale their own time and productivity to work more effectively with clients, both as a consultant who has trained advisors to turn their planning approach into processes that other advisors in the firm can be trained on, and as an outsourcing provider to support advisors who don’t want to have to build the processes themselves and prefer to simply tuck-in to a larger enterprise so that they can focus on the client work they enjoy.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Penny spent years helping advisors build systems and processes to eventually institutionalize their vision of how clients should be served so that the advisor’s legacy can live on after they retire, why Penny decided to launch her own advisor platform to offer advisors a space to tuck-in and to plug-in to existing operational infrastructure without needing to be bound up by restrictive covenants, and how advisors can decide for themselves where they want to be on what Penny calls the RIA “spectrum”, from being totally independent and having everything on your shoulders, to being an employee of an RIA that uses but is bound by the firm’s own systems, or any of the growing number of mid-points now available in the advisor landscape for those who want to balance between the two.
We also talk about Penny’s own journey through the advisor industry from how she accidentally began coaching and consulting advisors while running a pilot program for an insurance company to transition their agents into financial advisors, how working with transitioning advisors inspired Penny to start a firm of her own that would provide advisors the platform to make that transition from working at a product-centric company into building their own advice-centric business, and why Penny ultimately decided to take her own leap to start an advisor platform in the midst of a pandemic.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Penny shares how she was surprised by how despite technology advancements in the industry, it still remains remarkably challenging to build structure and centralize operations, how Penny came to realize that making tough decisions that aren’t always popular just comes with the territory of becoming an effective leader running a growing business, and why Penny believes it is important to not only do what you love but to also keep an open mind to opportunities that may come along in life.
So whether you’re interested in learning about how Penny helps advisors maintain their independence while tucking into an RIA and leveraging its services, how she went from an ‘accidental’ coach and consultant to owning and operating a multi-billion-dollar firm, or how she is fulfilled in her career by providing the tools and concepts to help other advisors succeed, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Penny Phillips.
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