Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us for this webinar called Why Didn't I Think of That? Great advice from high growth firms. My name is Adrian Fossey and I'm the Vice President of Training here at Orion, and I am joined by a fantastic group of panelists here. Together, these firms represent. Just over $31 billion of a UM on the Orion platform and in fact added roughly 35,000 accounts to the platform in the last year. So these are definitely high growth firms and we are thrilled to have them here today to impart some wisdom on us and to learn some things that they've learned along their growth journeys. So thanks for joining us, guys. So with that, I'm going to have them introduce themselves, tell you a little bit about their firm and we'll start with Amanda. Hi, I'm Amanda Ahmed. I am the Director of Operations at Keel Point. I am based in our Huntsville, AL office. Although we have 8 offices throughout the country, we have about 2.5 billion in assets under management on the Orion platform and then another 500 million in nonmanaged assets on the Orion platform. Great, Tom. Hi, I'm Tom Romano, Head of Strategic Relationships at Symmetry Partners. We've been around for almost 30 years. I've been with a firm about 18 years. We manage just a shy of 10 billion in assets and management and we are out of Glastonbury, CT Awesome blue. Fantastic. Thanks, Adrian, Tom, Amanda, good to be here with you guys again. Luke Macho, Stratus Wealth Partners. I am the President of Stratus Wealth Enterprises, which is the firm's acquisition arm and the COO of until recently the CEO of Stratus Wealth Holdings, which is the umbrella company for the entire firm. Stratus was founded in 2009. We are a. National hybrid RIA, we maintain, gosh just over 20 billion and I think we're pushing on 60,000 accounts with Orion. So it's been a fantastic and growing partnership for us. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for being here and taking time out to instill some of your wisdom and advice on the greater Orion community. You know when we talk about growth and scale, I think it really comes down to things and that is people process and technology. So we're going to spend a little time during the this webinar talk about each one of those things and to start we're going to talk really about two things. I think that really all three of them in are kind of coincide, but that is technology and technology change. This can be one of the most difficult but most important pieces of growing a firm is deciding on technology, building your technology stack and then distributing that to your people out in the field. So Amanda, do you want to talk a little bit about how your firm has handled technology change? Yeah, we try to be very strategic about our technology changes, our technology growth. I think #1 is making sure that we don't chase the shiny objects. There's always new technology coming out. There's always new things that look great on on the surface, but may not be once you take a deep dive. So what we try to do is if there's ever a time where we think that we're going to need to add another piece of technology or potentially change what we're using is we develop a task force and we have our operations team on, we have advisors on, we have members of leadership. So we try to get in, in compliance, of course. We try to have everybody involved and really take a look at what do we need out of this piece of technology, what do we want out of it and what would be like aspirational, this would be amazing if we had this. And really trying to narrow down those goals and make sure that that piece of technology fits the majority of those things. Then we look at what does it look like to convert some pieces work a lot better or easier to convert than others. So we always try to look at what does a conversion look like because we've been through multiple conversions with multiple pieces of technology. They are not easy, they are never easy. So I encourage you to always and consider what that's going to look like because it is going to be overhaul of your technology, but also it's going to be a lot of work on your team. Yeah. And I think that brings us back to, you know, an important point that you made is when you're assessing technology, one of that the key features in assessing and deciding if that's the right tool for your firm is to know first of all what your firm's mission and vision is. And does that technology, is it additive to your firm or is it just a new shiny object? So I know that. All three of your firms have spent a lot of time building out mission and vision for your firms. And I think when we talk about strategic planning, we talk about how are we going to grow without that mission and vision. And you know kind of the overarching, hey, we're all growing in the same direction, then whatever technology you add, whatever process you add, it doesn't really. Result in much because you aren't all like minded. So you know, Tom or Lou, I'd love to have you guys hop in a little bit and talk about how your firms have built out that mission and vision for your firms. What, what did that look like? Where did you start that sort of thing? Why don't you go ahead, bud, I'll follow. Well we have a a saying here that we we always put the clients interest first which I think all RI A's will do. And so we sort of take that approach and look at everything through that lens. But when it comes to you know determining who we are and where we want to be, it it really I start with everyone having input right, bringing everyone into the room, all the apartment leads and making sure at the top that. We all want to go in the same direction and there's sort of a a hierarchy with that strategy and once you get to your managing directors and then your managers below them, you know making sure everyone follows up and is and is rowing in that direction. And so I think part of what we've done well is really making sure that our people are aligned with with what that vision is. And and you can't say it once, you have to say over and over again, right. You know if you've said it a million times, you probably need to say 1,000,000 and one times. And that that's really important. Yeah. I think you get on a key point, which is the consistency of the vision. You can't come up with it and then leave it in a box somewhere. It starts to be something that's really ingrained in everyone's mentality day by day. Lou, what about you? Yeah, I wanna, you know, I wanna try as we go through this, as well as to be additive to some of the comments others make. And I agree with, you know, everything. Tom, you know just outlined we would approach it the same. So I think digging a little deeper there, you mentioned earlier kind of the people process technology piece and at the highest level of strategic planning. I think you start with the ends in mind, right where where, where are you trying to get to and you know who are the right people, what are the right processes and ultimately what's the technology that you're going to need to get there. And I think you can apply that to any department in the business whether it's business development, operations, finance. Etcetera. I think one of the things that's worked really well for us and you know we had to learn and evolve to get there. Often times firms will think about you know whether it's implementing in Orion, a sales force, a risk allies, they start kind of with the technology and then try to figure out where it fits in the business. I've learned through trial and error by no means saying we got this figured out. I think you start with the people first, You know, figure out, you know, the folks that are doing the job, what are their challenges, what's working well in the infrastructure, what's not, Learn the process, understand the needs of the people, and then bring in the technology that's going to best not only solve for that issue, but it's going to work seamlessly with the broader infrastructure at the firm if you know, hindsight being 2020. Knowing what I've learned over the years, that's the way that I would approach every decision that we made within the firm. Yeah. And I think that brings up kind of a great segue to, like you said, starting with the people. That's one of the biggest challenges to growing firms is finding, recruiting and keeping the right people with your firm that can help you. In you know execute on that vision and that mission. And so I want to talk a little bit about strategies that you guys have used for recruiting new team members to your firms, whether that be in an operations or recruiting new advisors. So Amanda, let's start with you a little bit about what. Strategies have worked well for you in recruiting to your firm. Yeah. And I think that this is a problem that everyone in every industry is facing right now is just recruiting. And we have tried to look outside the box a little bit intentionally and unintentionally. One of the ways that we have been looking recently is actually partnering with a couple Realtors that I'm friends with and they we have. Huntsville's growing like crazy and we have hundreds of people moving in. Every single week. A lot of times they're moving in for a job, but maybe their spouse is now looking for a job. So I've been kind of talking to those Realtors, letting them know, hey, this is what we're looking for. If you have a family that's moving in and maybe the spouse isn't sure what they want to do, send them my way. I'm happy to talk with them. Kind of in a similar note on Facebook, there's a bunch of different Facebook groups for, you know, what's happening in Huntsville or I'm new to Huntsville. I've joined those groups and I watch for people who may mention I'm moving to Huntsville and I'm looking for a job in finance. I immediately will reach out to them and introduce myself and say, hey, would you like to set up an interview? So I'm trying to think outside of the box, outside of LinkedIn and Indeed because those are pretty slow in getting. Really good job candidates. I think in terms of keeping our current employees, that's also a challenge, right with everybody hiring. Lots of people are getting those kinds of phone calls, recruiters giving them a call. We just try to really stay strong to our culture, our core values, making sure that all of our employees really feel valued. You know we we recently went to a new. Policy where we're a little bit more flexible on time off. We don't have a set number of days anymore for time off and that went over really, really well for our employees where give them a little bit more flexibility with being able to take a day off here or there and and not have to worry about now if I can take Christmas off. So trying to find those small intangible things that we can offer to our employees that don't cost the firm a lot of money but do show that we care about our employees and their their work life balance. Yeah, I think flexibility is going to be the name of the game moving forward. We can thank COVID for just that kind of shift in culture. And you know I think like you said not only looking outside you know at different, I love the ideas of looking for different resources particularly when you're trying to recruit in a in a specific area and then building that culture and making it a place that people want to work. And want to stay working for it's such a key in retaining that talent. Tom, what about you? You could talk about a little bit about maybe recruiting advisors and what that looks like for symmetry? Sure, I wanna echo. Both Amanda and Lou, I think Lou's spot on that. When it comes to people processes in tech, you got to start with the boots on the ground, right? They're they're the ones we're going to know better than the Niagara Cliff. And you know, Amanda's right that recruiting and retaining is probably the biggest challenge that we see. Financial services firms maybe the unit that any other industry have. So we do a couple of things, which is we're in in house when we're when we're hiring. We have a pretty good internship program. It's not unlikely for our folks to intern with us for a couple of summers or even over, you know holiday break and then come on full time and leveraging local universities. That has worked in our favor. However, post pandemic geography doesn't matter as much anymore then. And I think that we're finding a lot of success through word of mouth and I and I think attending industry events such as Ascent, you know like any I always learn something when I get out of the office, right. But in terms of recruiting advisors, you know we we have a little bit of a different model than than than Amanda **** that we are. We work through financial intermediaries, other RI A's, those those are our clients and and we've invested a lot in technology and doing quite a bit with digital marketing. That's made the life of our business development folks a lot easier, a lot warmer calls. We leverage HubSpot to do that and it links into our sales force. CRM and technology has really taken a front seat in our recruiting capabilities. Yeah, I think you have to marry the two, right? It can't be all one. Or all the other and I've seen firms that have tried to operate just to run well, hey, we're just going to like do the marketing, you know and and not really attend anything or the other side of like it's all going to be word of mouth. We're not investing any money in marketing And I think the firms that I see that are the most successful, that are growing the fastest are the ones who've found that sweet spot in marrying those two together in both you know client recruiting and advisory recruiting. So let's get down a little bit more to brass tacks in terms of actual strategic planning, You know this is really in my mind, the key to having a high growth firm is to know where you're going and have a plan for how you're going to get there. You know, one of the things that we say on our team is you have a plan, stick to the plan. And then cast off discouragement, right. So you have a plan, you're you're going to go to that plan and then you're also, you know one of the most important things is as you're executing that plan that you're not allowing yourself, you know, to get discouraged and change course too quickly. So I'd love for you guys to share. Louie, we'll start with you about what strategic planning looks like at your firm, how you guys been executing that over the past couple of years and what's up next for Stratos? Yeah, no, that's fantastic. So again with strategic planning and we just went through this process at Stratos at a you know a very, very high level. And for us again it was starting with the ends in mind. And so for us that's really we think about the bottom line and cash flow which we want to double from where it is today, no easy task. We you know obviously we've got a much larger asset base than when we started in 2009 with 0, but at the same time it's it's harder to move that ship right when you have a large. Base. And So what we did is we said, OK, well and it's really about creating enterprise value. That's why we're looking at the bottom line. Hey, if we hit X cash flow, what's that due to the value of the broader enterprise? Once we came up with that objective then it became, hey, what are the parts and pieces of the organization that we need to address in order to achieve that. And we do it all through the traction EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system framework. And so for example, and I'm sure you know Amanda and Tom are going to have components of this, but I'll just give one example of I think how strong the commitment to your strategic plan needs to be because I think. And and I've seen this in my, you know, my past experiences at very large organizations and certainly here at Stratos, at a small private firm, right. If you don't have full commitment to the strategic plan and what the goals and objectives are there, you're wasting your time. And if it's a true strategic plan and you really are committed to it, you have to make some tough decisions within the organization that they're going to make you uncomfortable, they're going to make people uncomfortable. But that's where the growth happens. And so for us, one of the first steps was. You know, looking at myself, right. So I was, I am the President of our acquisition arm and COO of the holding company, way too many hats for one person to wear. And candidly it was slowing me down and it was slowing the organization down. So what I did is I had to look at what are the parts and pieces that I'm contributing to that are the highest level of contribution that I can and should be delivering to the firm and what are the things that I really should fire myself and get away from and. Bringing someone that can take things to the next level and quite candidly, look, there's always going to be a motion with that, right. People feel a sense of ownership and a territorial nature if you know they're running technology or they're running operations or whatever the case may be. But you got to get people on the same page. And in my case, it was, you know, firing myself from overseeing technology advisory operations, our transitions team and our practice management group and then the executive committee going out on. On what's now been in 18 month search which we just finalized to bring in a new CEO of the holding company that will pull me out of all of those things and quite candidly take it all to the next level and it's you know it's never easy to look. In the mirror, which I've had to do and say, hey, look, I've taken this piece of the firm as far as I can take it and really it's right the law of diminishing returns to have Luke Hamacho continuing to oversee it. And so I think it's decisions like that that will really help you achieve whatever the objective is within that strategic plan. And I think the the commitment and courage to make big decisions that are going to make you uneasy. And I would argue that. The folks on the team aren't feeling a little uncomfortable. You're probably not stretching that plan quite enough. So I would agree. I think, you know one of the few of the key pieces of strategic planning is to not only one. I think something that a lot of firms I've seen fail to do well is just is to identify what they're doing well, right. A lot of times you go into that strategic plan, you're just like what do I have to fix, what are the, you know, and of course that's an important part but. You also need to spend time of recognizing what is working well, you know how could what can we learn from the things that are working well. But then I think the other part of that which is what you guys were doing is looking at where are their bottlenecks, where are we. You know, I don't want to say roadblocks because I think in this case you know that's not the appropriate term, but it's a bottleneck, right. It is a, hey, there's only one person overseeing this or one way of doing this and it's stopping us from achieving the growth that we. Have and the potential that we have because we have a bottleneck here and then looking and making those hard decisions about how do we break this up and you know allow a way forward that won't have that same bottleneck issue like we've got right now. Absolutely. Amanda, what about you guys, What does strategic planning look like at keel point? Yeah, I mean we're also an EOS company. So a lot of what Lou said you know I can echo very much I think the one thing that I would add there is. Being comfortable taking a step back and realizing you need to change your strategic plan. If you set that and you think you're on cruise control for the next 5 years, I promise you you're not. Something's going to come up, whether it's. You know in terms of personnel or whether it's in terms of the market changing, but that strategic plan needs to consistently be changing, be reviewed, be analyzed by your leadership team to determine if that's still the direction you want to go. I know for us we've had to take steps back both on the personnel side with with different items that have come up over the last couple of years and on our kind of strategic growth model. I'm taking a step back and saying that's where we thought we wanted to go. Is that really the direction we still want to go a year later? So I would encourage everyone to just continue to let that evolve and change and don't just set it on cruise control and think you're good to go for the next five years. If only it were that easy. So I want to talk a little bit to the firms that have maybe never done strategic planning, right. So a lot of the firms that work with Orion are new independent practices that are maybe just. Trying to keep their head above water and get that client base built and you know have not really done a full strategic plan so to speak. What advice would you give or how would you know the first steps that you would take in creating a strategic plan for your firm? Tom, you want to kind of address that? Yeah. So we we kind of a process that we apply to our RIA customers as well as we use it internally here too. And it really starts with first of all getting feedback. We think it's a great idea for folks to periodically interview their their client base, get an understanding of why a a client's assigned to work with your particular firm or particular advisor and getting that feedback is is invaluable but. We then take that and we sit down and we go through what's called a strategy Canvas that we've been using for a number of years. And that strategy Canvas will show sort of where a firm is in the competitive landscape and what makes them unique. And from the base of that strategy Canvas, we can then help with segmenting your book of business, making sure you have appropriate service levels for the the tiers that you design and then putting together a growth plan that is. Written down all too often I see advisors say, yeah, I have a plan. It's, it's in here. But now you got to write it down. It's got to be quantifiable. It has to have a due date and then it has to be adaptable. Right. To, to Amanda's point, you don't write it down once and then forget about it and think you're going to be good. You know, five years later, you check out that plan like, well, wow, we failed. You have to be looking at it. You know, we we have a saying here. The world outside of your walls is moving faster than you are. You're in trouble. So you kind of have to keep that strategic plan. Has to be a living, breathing document that changes over time. Absolutely. I'm curious what kind of what points or arguments or? Influence do you have when firms say, oh I have the strategic plan, it's up here or Oh my clients, you know, everyone, I treat everyone the same they they get the same business model kind of what's your counter argument that why have you know what if you seen work well, well there's a couple things. If it's in their head then it's not, I would say it's not a plan, it's it's a hope, it's a dream, right. You have to write it down and you have to be able to share it with your staff, right. And they have to do that. So I think that that's something that that needs to happen. All too often, you know, I see advisory practices wanting to put the plan together, but they just don't know. Putting pen to paper, it's like the pen weighs 500 pounds in time. So. So they look for help and I think there's a lot of resources out there for folks to help. But with the segmentation, you know, the question I always ask is, you know, what are you doing differently for the clients that are paying you $5000 a year for the clients are paying you $20,000 a year and if you're treating them equal. What you're saying is, is that your higher net worth individuals are subsidizing the work you're doing for the lower net worth individuals. And so you have to have these sort of service tiers otherwise it's not fair to your higher net worth individuals. And once you make that point, most people say, yeah, you know, you're right, we have to be doing something more for these higher revenue producing folks. Yeah, I think that's the key. You know, that's something that we always encourage is the best practice on the Orion side is to segment your clients and and not only. Like you said, you have to put the pen to paper of what is our, what do our service tiers look like and then also actually execute you know on those, right, if you even if you put it down and it's not into practice but I've seen that be such a key to growth. You know, again it's the how, how do I grow, how do I get more clients, how do I and having that. Those set service tiers and you know the frequency of visits that you have with you know and touch points that you have with those clients. The different you know services you provide technology wise, you can only grow and scale when you have kind of a different plan for each. If everyone gets the same thing then you're going to spend all your time operationally and not be able to to recruit new clients for your firm. Lou, anything you would? Add to that, I saw lots of heads shaking as it was such a good answer. It really was it was a great answer. The only thing and really there's there's I mean it, that was a great answer Tom. So appreciate your thoughts on that. And I, you know I couldn't add anything. I think it's more I would shift to the cultural part of strategic planning and you know how do these things happen and. I know for us when we, you know, got there and I think EOS played and I know this is not an EOS commercial, but EOS played a big role in getting us to formally sit down. And I say that because I my guess would be a lot of folks on here, you know, right. These wealth management shops, RIA's right, they started a small entrepreneurial endeavors, right, maybe a handful of people, a couple people, one advisor and an admin. And then one day it's a you know, $2 billion shop with 40 employees, right? And. There's a culture that comes with that and I think small companies tend to be really, really protective of that culture. And strategic planning is going to mandate accountability and it's going to mandate change and. That's not always a bad thing. And you know for us, you know that process got us meeting every Monday more formally. It got us more comfortable debating and working through issues that we didn't always agree on and but making decisions based on what the objective ultimately was that we outlined in the strategic plan and to amend this point which was really well stated. Not being not being afraid to course correct, we need it. But that you know that for a lot of. All firms is going to be a change in the culture and I think folks should understand that as the culture changes, it doesn't have to mean that the firm's overarching culture changes, but it evolves because it has to to get to the next level. And so getting comfortable with that, getting comfortable with the level of accountability and it does take real accountability to be successful around the longterm strategic plan. I think that's you know those are keys to success that one you've got to get. With but you shouldn't, you should embrace because it it really is OK. Although it seems scary on the front end. Yeah, you answered one of the questions. The follow up questions that I was just going to ask is, you know, we both all three of you have talked a lot about like coming up with a plan and then sticking and then you have sticking to it but also modifying as needed. So what does that look like in the practical sense of, you know, how often are you guys looking at this? Is it, you know, every week on Mondays? You know how often are you meeting with that executive and then the you know down to the other departments. I think that's an important piece to know. Amanda, what does that look like? Yeah, I think we're taking a deep dive into it at least quarterly if not more frequently than that. I mean again we're meeting every week, we're having the simple conversations every week, but every quarter our leadership team gets together for a multi day off site. Meeting where they really go through our strategic vision and make sure that we are still on the right track and that we don't need to make any adjustments. So for us it's it's we're meeting weekly, but really deep dive every quarter. What about you guys? Certainly there are biweekly manager meetings, but what we do is on a monthly basis we have what we call Directors week. In fact this week is Directors weeks while our directors fly into our Home Office here in Glastonbury, CT. And we we always kind of refine, right. We we've spent a lot of resources and time and money on on on people and technology and we're kind of in a refining phase. But what we like to do most often with that time does making sure our priorities are aligned with that refining where we are now today, right. And so we have all the department heads sort of meet with their teams and come up with they think the priorities are. We have the priorities for the firm. We bring everyone together in room and and and we have a debate and you know it took us a while to get there. But I like what Lou said like you have to you have to be comfortable with disagreeing with people in the room and eventually you'll shake things out. But that does take some take some time, right? Yeah, they have to get to that level of comfortability to do that. I think one of the biggest things that our leadership team has. Emphasize with us at Orion and I really like the concept of is disagree and decide. So you know that room that period that quarterly meet that is your time to have those debates, those discussions. But then once you decide, you have to decide, right. You know it has to be we disagreed about this but then we decided on this thing and now we're all moving forward coming out of this. We're going that way because if you don't have the decide. Factor in there and and that agreement that hey even though this might not be the exact thing that I wanted to do, we're moving forward. Then you get you know into the underlying you know kind of people in in your organization not being on board and kind of spreading that throughout throughout the ORC. So I think that's you know one of the important things that we've learned is like disagree but then decide and and be on board with whatever it is. Once that decision has been made, so kind of two-part, you can choose either one, but you know talk about one of the biggest lessons that you've learned along the way of this growth trajectory that all three of your firms are on or the biggest piece of advice or you can answer both. Lou, I'll start with you lessons learned advice to give. Yeah, it's, it's funny. We were in the process of interviewing ACLO, the Kennedy that we chose. He asked me a question that I think I'm going to use for the answer here because no one had ever asked me, you know, that question before. He asked the whole team that, and it's what did we think was the firm's biggest failure? In the process, you know, the way phrased it was, hey, you guys have had success and you know everyone up here is a part of very successful organizations. But you know internally that's what everyone sees on the outside. There's turmoil inside at times, you know. But you know, I the way I answered it is and it falls into kind of what I've learned along the way. I I don't know that I would define, you know. The setback that I thought was I think is core to something. If I could go back, I would have changed and we could have changed as a failure. I just think it slowed us down and that was a commitment to process limiting exceptions and really focusing on and it's it's so simple, right, whether it's your ideal client profile or your value proposition or your specific target market. We really tried to be all things to all people and I think sometimes early in the life cycle of the business, you kind of do that when you're trying to keep the lights on and you know make payroll. But if if you can focus on what you do well and what you do best and serving the folks that that most appeals to early on. Whatever your business model is, but really just stick to it and disciplined. I think it saves you a lot of headache along the way. When I think about many of the changes we're making right now, honestly I'd say 50% of them take us into the future and 50% of them are just cleaning up things that we weren't focused on in the ways that we should have been along the way. So that's you know. Again, hindsight being 2020, that's been the biggest learning for me. And so when I go forward, I make decisions and I encourage my team to make decisions based on the objective that we're trying to accomplish and keep pretty tight discipline around what that is and what it is not because ultimately it's going to slow you down. I think you you hit the nail on the head there. Amanda. What about you? Lesson learned. Yeah. And I think this is going to circle back to a lot of things we've already talked about. But as you grow, you know, through mergers or acquisitions or partnerships or bringing on new advisory groups. We have learned that it's always going to be more difficult and take more time than you think it's going to. It just seems like every single one of them has has just proven to be that. And what you need is you need to have a really strong team behind you who are going to put in the long hours, who are going to work hard when the going gets tough. Because you're going to have moments where you sit there and say, Oh my gosh, should we make the right decision? Are we going in the right direction? And you've got to have that buy in from the top all the way down and from the down all the way up to be able to see those mergers, those partnerships through to the end. So I think that's my biggest piece of advice is making sure you have that. You know, one other thing that we've learned is that as you grow, we've already talked about this culture, culture is really, really important to our firm. But as you grow through some of these more unique partnerships and models. It's harder to control your culture. So to really think through that before you start moving in some of these directions, if you're going to have a partnership where maybe they're still running their own business but working under you, you probably have less control over what the marketing looks like or what the culture in that office is going to look like. So just making sure that you're comfortable with that and willing to accept that as you move forward. Yeah, I think you hit on a key there that you know with my. 10 plus years at Orion and working with clients, particularly in the mergers and acquisitions space. The biggest piece of advice that I can give is that if your firm strategy to grow is going to be M and A, it cannot be someone's second job at your firm. It it does not work. I can tell you from that. It cannot be an additive piece to someone's job. You have to have a team that is dedicated if that is truly your. Firm's goal. You know we have some great resources at Orion that we can provide about, you know our advice on building out an M and a team. You know, number of hours, number of people that we think would be appropriate depending on the size of the acquisitions that you're planning on doing. But that would be my ringing endorsement is to have to have a team that is dedicated to that. And I think you can speak to that, Amanda, that that's really the way it the way it works well and it's still a challenge even when it's working well but. The biggest disasters I've seen are when it's, you know, like I said, they're trying to add it into someone else's role at a firm and it is a huge commitment. It's an amazing way to grow and to grow quickly. But it is, it is a commitment, yes, very much so. Tom, what about you? Biggest lessons or piece of advice? There's a lot of lessons that we've learned along the way that's for sure. I guess 11 lesson that that we've learned and I guess it also would dovetail into to a piece of advice which I think is kind of been the theme here. You know, both Amanda and Lou have echoed this, but it comes down to focus. If everything's important, then nothing's important and all of us have a tendency of. Getting enamored with the shiny objects, you know, should we do X? Should we do Y? Should we launch a robo? Should we do an app? Whatever it may be. And you know, when we have those moments, I don't necessarily call them failures, but I think Blue hit the nail on the head with it is that it just takes away from your time and your resources, and that's time and resources that's not infinite. Then it's time and resource that could be put into. Something that is actually most important. So focus you got to have focus like the friends that we work with that are growing the fastest are the ones that have that, that true north. Awesome. Well, I want to thank you guys once again for joining me here. You know congratulations to the growth of all of your firms and the good work that you are doing in our industry. It has been a privilege once again to hear from you and learn. And yes, thank you again for joining us here today. Thank you for the opportunity, Adrian. It's a pleasure. Thank you. _1716156326323