When you groom and identify a rainmaker in your practice that has the ability to go out and do it on their own, you’ve got to retain them. The last thing you want to do is train your competition. They don't have to leave to become a partner. They don't have to become a business owner to earn the amount of income that they desire. They don't have to leave to do it. They can do it by staying with your firm. So, what you see here is there's five rungs of this career path: client service associate, paraplanner, advisor, lead advisor, practicing partner.

The first two are backstage rungs. Backstage meaning they're working in the practice but not sitting in front of clients yet. They might do some phone work with the clients, but they're in the backstage still. The other three rungs, advisor, lead advisor, practicing partner, those are front-stage rungs.

A client service associate is somebody who has zero to two- or three-year’s worth of experience. They are green. A lot of times we'll bring them in out of college. We have hired five people that came out of being interns that have now entered our firm and are now permanently with our firm over the years. So, we start with interns and then if they're good, you see their work ethic, their intelligence, all the cultural fit, then we hire them as a client service associate. It's an entry-level position. They're doing pre-appointment, post-appointment, just anything that kind of needs done, they're going to do.

The next rung is when they're starting to get that RICP designation or a CIP or they're starting to work on getting their licenses and you're teaching them how to be a financial planner, but in the backstage. So, they're doing your tax modeling, your financial modeling, your due diligence, your product due diligence. It's all backstage work though, in preparation to go to the third rung: advisor.

When they go to the third rung of advisor, now they switch over into being front stage. But are they going to work with the biggest clients of the firm? No, they're not. They're going to segment off a book of your business, have them start working with smaller clients of the firm, new potential, smaller clients that are coming in. They're going to take those clients, and most importantly, they're going to sit as your second chair in all your client meetings. They're going to watch you. They're going to learn from you, and they're going to take a lot of heavy lifting off of you because you're already taught them how to do all the stuff that needs to happen in the backstage in the paraplanner rung. So now they're able to sit there and they're able to do the bulk of that work, take the notes, do the due diligence, and it frees you up to continue to be the rainmaker you are while you're informally mentoring them through a two-chair approach. First chair, second chair. Law firms, big accounting firms have done this forever. The RIA in the financial planning business is newer to this, but it works. It's informal mentoring: first chair, second chair. Ultimately the lead advisor is always a first chair, always has a second chair working with the bigger clients of the firm.

Then, finally, practicing partner. That is only available when you identify a rainmaker. A rainmaker is basically hardwired to be a hunter. There's a difference between a hunter and a farmer. A hunter is someone that gets their energy from going out and finding a new kill and dragging them home. It's for bringing in new clients to the firm. They love it. It's almost like a business development officer type of profile. They love to bring new people into the firm. A farmer is more about nurturing existing relationships and fostering those relationships to earn more business. Some of you in this room have serviced your clients so well, and because you're great farmers, that's how you've grown your business by referrals and fostering relationships.

Some others of you are hunters. That's what you get your energy and enjoyment out of. I think the biggest mistake that I see a lot of business owners and advisors make when they bring in other advisors is they're always only looking for a hunter. “I'm going to hire this person. They're going to pay for themselves, and I'm going to make a profit off of the business they do, and blah, blah, blah.” When in reality, in many cases, you actually need to hire a farmer because you're already such a good rainmaker and a hunter. You just need to free up your time. You need to segment a book of your business that a farmer takes over, and you need a farmer sitting in on your client appointments as your second chair to free up your time as the rainmaker.

When I started about 11 years ago, focusing on growing my coaching training company and my financial services practice, I was having a hard time being able to service all the clients. I identified someone I thought would be a great future hunter. He was an intern, $10 an hour. Then I offered him a position, came on as client service associate. People loved him. He was doing a great job. This is about 12 years ago. Then he worked his way up, he wanted to be a financial advisor. He was very clear about that upfront, and we groomed him to be an advisor. But my time got to capacity. So I hired an advisor in that rung-three level that took over all of my B and C clients. I was only working with my A's and my triple A's. So it freed up a tremendous amount of my time. And he also was grooming Brian too. He's CFP, CPA. And so Brian was at that paraplanner rung. And then as time went on, the two of them graduated. Brian started being second chair to Jeff and an advisor. He took all the C-list clients. Jeff became an elite advisor. He took over my A-list clients too. At that point, I was only working with triple A clients, only the top-tier clients of the firm. And then ultimately Brian became a lead advisor. And I'm excited, January of last year, he bought in, a combination of him buying and an equity grant that I gave to him. He's now a 20% partner of the firm.

And Brian, if you can imagine, going from a $10 an hour intern – in the last 12 months, we brought in $90 million in new assets. Brian brought in $51 million of the $90 million in new assets. This is a little bit of a little sneak peek of how to create a rainmaker. Having a stable financial planning process, filling their calendars, teach them how to fish, and lastly is the compensation. I came out of the insurance side of the business first and then layered in investments, and taxes, and estate planning, comprehensive holistic planning. I was always taught on the grid model, and it was eat what you kill.

And you're paid off the grid. The thing that I started to notice about five years ago is the mentality and the silos that that can build within your firm because the advisors are only worried about their income, about their clients. And the verbiage even becomes that way. "This is my book of business; these are my clients." What is happening here? These are clients of the firm, and I would say it until I was blue in the face, but they thought of them as their clients and their book of business. So, I made the decision a couple years ago to tear down the silos.

We went to a base salary, and then on a monthly basis they do get a sales bonus only off of new revenue that was generated in the previous month. That new revenue can be from existing clients or it can be from new clients, but it's only on new revenue. And so there's no trails being paid. That's what the base salary's really accounting for. So a monthly sales bonus and then quarterly we pay a profitability bonus. We set a target of profitability and on a quarterly basis, we pay that bonus to every employee of the firm, not just the advisors, to incentivize to grow the firm, not incentivize them solely to grow their income.