Adapting a fast-growing registered investment advisory firm to include new players, including next-generation talent, is daunting. But who better to help think through this process than the next generation of leaders themselves?

At WealthManagement.com's recent RIA Edge West conference, Mark Bruno, managing director and head of strategic consulting at Emigrant Partners, spoke with two next-generation leaders in Emigrant-backed RIAs about how they are rethinking and repositioning their firms. for the future.

Stacey McKinnon, COO, CMO and wealth advisor at Morton Wealth, a $3 billion RIA, had a non-traditional path to financial services. In 2013, Fiduciary Network (now Immigrant Partners) helped Morton Wealth buy itself out of a bank. At the time, McKinnon was working as a Pilates instructor and wedding planner, and one of the two people who took over as majority owners of Morton's walked into her Pilates studio. She liked the way the studio was run, so she asked McKinnon to join her at RIA.

“I said, 'That sounds like you're talking to the wrong person,'” she said. “She eventually convinced me that helping people with their wealth is similar to helping people with their health.”

McKinnon took the plunge and began filling out the paperwork. She soon got her CFP and learned the business.

“When she met me, I was 28 years old, and by 31 I had become the COO of the company.”

Her skills as a wedding planner also helped.

“You're not coordinating hoteliers and photographers, but you're coordinating many different teams to all work together for the common goal, whether it's your clients, your team, your company or your community,” she said.

“You might not find it in the most conventional places, but having an eye for people who do different things, people who have the potential to become leaders but need time and care is one of the most important things that you can do as a leader of any organization, but, in particular, an RIA firm that deals with people,” said Bruno.

Tylor Bordelon Seaman, CEO of Maslow Wealth Advisors, the $1.75 billion RIA formerly known as Durbin Bennett, had a more traditional background. He came to the industry from business school and worked at Dimensional Fund Advisors as a practice management consultant.

“I was looking to go from a big company to a small company – more of a startup. I had the benefit, the luxury of seeing things that worked in the industry and things that didn't work in the industry,” he said.

Durbin Bennett, which was founded in 1987, took some minority equity in 2013 and then began the transition from G1 to G2. Bordelon Seaman came in 2015 and management liked the fact that he had expertise in investments, practical management and financial planning.

“They had strong leaders in each of those silos, but they lacked the connective tissue. It was a natural evolution to go from advisor to managing partner to CEO.”

About three years ago, the firm was having serious conversations about selling to a large national RIA. They also had the option of recapitalization with Emigrant and they took advantage of this opportunity. This took the founder's liquidity, reset the RIA's cap table, and allowed the firm to look ahead to the next five to 10 years.

As part of this, the team decided it was time to choose a name that is more about ideas, rather than people. Earlier this year, the RIA was renamed Maslow, which is a nod to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

This was part of the vision of Founder Rick Bennett, who had been a mentor to Bordelon Seaman. He was 100% behind the new name.

“It was his vision for it to be a firm that would pass him on,” Bordelon Seaman said.

While McKinnon hasn't led her firm through a rebrand, she had an early goal of charting a new path forward for Morton Wealth. And when she became COO, the firm had some growing pains to sort out.

“I had to be in a leadership role early on when we were running this firm during what I like to call the 'teenage years,'” she said. “I mean, I'm moving from mom-and-pop to institutional growth. In some ways, we didn't do it the right way.”

At that time, she and the management team took very seriously the responsibility the founder had given them.

“It's a one-to-many ratio because you can't duplicate what a founder has done,” she said. “We took the responsibility to run and lead the organization and we took it so seriously that I think we accidentally made the firm feel a little too disciplined, a little too robotic, with too many processes, procedures and systems.”

Since then, she has tried to lead the firm by elevating others and delegating more responsibility and decision-making authority to them.

Basically there was a lack of trust between the leadership of the firm and the rest of the employees that needed to be overcome.

“We said, 'We have to change this. The first thing we need to do is build a culture of trust. We must be a company that puts people first.”

Like many firms, they created an executive team made up of everyone with a C-Suite title, but it didn't work.

The conversations became very circular because, she said, they didn't have the right people at the table.

“It was a very unproductive set-up actually.”

Morton reviewed how a traditional leadership team works and how to bring in more useful perspectives. They created a “development team,” which meets to discuss priorities for the firm, and a “resilience team,” which focuses on the infrastructure needed to realize goals.

“You have to make more room for great people within your organization,” she said.