Mastering Talent Acquisition: Insights on Recruiting and Retaining Top Financial Planning Professionals

Maddy Roche: Hello. I'm Maddy Roche, XYPN's Executive Business Coach and host for XYPN Radio. Today, I'm excited to interview Caleb Brown, founder and CEO of New Planner Recruiting, a recruiting firm that works on placing top talent in this industry into firms around the country. Caleb Brown has over 20 years of experience in this industry and his passion and expertise for this space speak for themselves throughout the next hour.

I've chosen to bring Caleb back onto the podcast because he provides a unique perspective to you, our listeners. He knows the ins and outs of what firms are doing to attract top talent and keep that talent, but he's also deeply familiar with the shifting landscape of what that top talent is looking for when taking a job.

Caleb and I riff a lot about what it takes to be an entrepreneur. And yes, that means the hard truth about what to do when that top talent of yours eventually leaves to another firm. We discuss how perfecting your story and your brand and your value and your mission not only helps you attract your ideal clients, but can help you attract talent as well.

Caleb talks stats. From compensation to hiring timelines. And he gives you language to use in interviews and even gives you examples for work samples that you can use to vet applicants. I think what is most valuable in this interview though, is the reminder that there's a lot to be offered by the generalist or the career changer applicant that may not be ready to hit the ground running per se, as a lot of advisors often say they're looking for as they hire, but there's In applicants who can offer a wide range of emotional intelligence and business acumen that aren't often taught in classrooms.

I use this interview as an opportunity to ask Caleb a lot of the questions I receive as a coach here at XYPN. So I hope you find this interview both helpful and motivating to you. Without further ado, here's my interview with Caleb Brown.

Hello, Caleb! Welcome to XYPN Radio. It is so nice to have you today.

Caleb Brown: Hey, great to be here. Glad to be back.

Maddy Roche: Welcome back I should say. Listeners, Caleb of course has been on the XYPN Radio show a few years back, and we are excited to have him here because as you can imagine the hiring landscape for advisors is rapidly changing and Caleb is an expert in that space. I'll let him introduce himself in just a moment, but Caleb has a really unique perspective for all of our listeners, both from the candidates that are looking to be hired into advisory practices, all the way to the perspective of what those advisory practices are offering those candidates. So today's episode is going to be able to dive into Caleb's expertise in that space. And Caleb, why don't you reintroduce yourself to our wonderful listeners?

Caleb Brown: Yeah. Thanks, Maddy. I mean I really at the core of it I have three primary roles. So one of those roles is CEO of new planner recruiting, where we're helping RIA firms across the country, hire paraplanners, associate planner, lead planner positions. So it's a niche recruiting firm and the types of firms that we work with.

And then also the positions that we recruit for. So we're not doing admin ops or client service or anything, but a lot of the comments and things that I share here will probably be helpful for firms hiring those positions. But I just want them to know that I focus more on the CFP® track. So that's where I spend 90 percent of my time probably.

And then, I also teach at the University of Georgia's Financial Planning program every spring. So every spring I have between 50 and 100 graduating seniors that are going to come work in some of your member firms or then are looking for jobs. And some of them are going to start their own firms, and just talking to them about the practice management side.

So it's a lot like, for the practitioners out there, it's I wish my doctor client would have had this class in business that's what we're giving to the financial planning grads. So that way when they show up hopefully to your member firms, they know what an ACAT is. They know what technology. Versus me, when I showed up my first firm, I had no idea how we made money. Really? I'm like this is crazy. So trying to get them positioned for success. And then the last part is I've been doing this for over 20 years. I've got a book of business at a RIA here in Georgia, where I live, that I work. I have a team that helps me so I can be as involved. I've got a great, gig. I can be as involved as much or as little as I want to be. So I still have my hand in the CFP®. So the practitioner side, I could do, the professor side, academic side, and then the recruiter side.

Maddy Roche: Great. Awesome. I will call on all of those personas of yours, Caleb, in the next 50 or so minutes. But Caleb, I would love to start with just a high level overview of kind of what the market's like right now for those looking for positions at RIAs, similar to the XYPN member firms.

Caleb Brown: Yeah, certainly cooled off. We had a little bit of panic and maybe a big panic in the COVID stuff that kind of rebounded pretty quickly. Firms were already behind on their hiring, I think, even when COVID hit. You fast forward to 2021, 2022, 2023 it was hot and heavy.

A lot of firms hiring, a lot of talent moving. Then I think the interest rate stuff that the increases that the Fed has taken. That's certainly slowed things down. Market's still doing good but it slowed the number of firms looking to hire down. You just had fewer, you've got less competition if you're a hiring firm, which, that puts you in a little bit better spot.

Still the needle is in the favor of the job seekers, not the hiring firms just cause there still are a lot of firms hiring. It's just less than it was a few years ago. So it's good news if you're a job seeker, maybe a little better news if you're a hiring firm.

Maddy Roche: Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about that connection to the interest rates, what you're seeing on the side of the firms and why they would choose to not hire as rapidly. 

Caleb Brown: And I haven't taken a formal poll that's really the only sort of big thing that's happened really. Usually you see it and we haven't had an interest rate increase like this in a long time. So most of the time it's a market downturn. Firms get panicked, my revenue is going to go down and the world's going to end.

I can't afford this person and that's when they pull back. But for whatever reason I think it just, I don't know. That just slowed things down which is what it's intended to do. So it depending on what side of the fence you're on it worked, but just uncertainty it's an election year also there's uncertainty.

I think there's still some fear out there. I think a lot of firms frankly have been like, Oh this is great. Like we lost some people or we had some retirements and markets going up, we're still getting new clients and hey like we haven't, we've gotten by without hiring anybody.

And like our rev our margins are really good right now. Let's just see how, let's just see how long we can keep this up. And the obvious problem with that is, right? I get calls in the afternoon after I go to lunch from the candidates in those firms saying, Caleb, they haven't hired anybody in a year.

They said they were going to hire someone and they're killing me. Can you help me find another firm? 

Maddy Roche: Oh, fascinating. I'm wondering, are you seeing tech or AI play into some of the efficiency on the side of the firms at all yet?

Caleb Brown: There's certainly, I would say pretty much everybody I talk to is using some sort of at minimum AI note taker or something. I even had a candidate on my podcast the other day say, yeah I got started and I was taking the notes in the client meetings, but now we have AI that does that.

My question for him was like, what are you doing? What value are you providing? But I still think there's just it certainly can help with research and some notes and some marketing stuff but for a lot, and there's probably firms, and I know you guys have had them on like firms that are just having AI do all the heavy lifting, but most firms aren't there yet.

Maddy Roche: Interesting. I'd be interested in a couple years to ask you the same question, just knowing how rapidly AI has entered the space. But let's turn our attention to the job seekers. You said the needle is in favor of the job seekers right now. What are you seeing job seekers look for and prioritize right now in 2024?

Caleb Brown: At least the people that we deal with, they're looking, they want to be CFP®s or they're on the CFP® track or they're already CFP®s. Most of them, good, news for your firms. They want to be in the fee only. They want to be in the 1940 act, they want to be into the fiduciary model.

I don't have people calling me begging me to go to broker dealer firms, wire houses, banks and part of that may be just be selection bias because they know I don't really, not all of our clients are fee only but everybody is fee based, at least we have a couple independent broker dealers that do really good planing.

That's fine. At the end of the day, we're agnostic. I don't really care. I'm going to recruit for who I think has the best model. And right now, that's the RIA. Doesn't mean that will be five years from now or ten years from now. Because some of these other channels are trying to catch up and to pivot.

But the talent wants to be where they're not having to sell, they're not having to sell products. They're not having to bring in aunt and uncle. They're not having to bring, selling an annuity to grandma, where they can really at least the entry level people that we deal with. We also deal with lead planners and we can talk more about them too.

I want to go somewhere, Caleb, where I'm not going to be under pressure to sell. I can be paid to learn and I can take things slow. I can add at least some value by just taking some of the grunt work that the AI can't do off of these planners, the senior planners plates. And in return, I just want to be mentored.

And I want to be mentored more than just after a three or six week training period. I really wanted ongoing. And this is, maybe we'll get to this later. This is where there's a little bit of a disconnect. Mostly probably with some of the older generations, it's okay, we hired you, trained you.

Kind of mentored you for a couple months. Hey, let me know if you have any questions. My office is right here. It's Ooh, and that's maybe how they wanted to be trained, but that's not really what this next generation, Gen Z. I was just having a conversation with a buddy outside the industry yesterday, like with his kids like Gen Z takes so much affirmation.

So much affirmation and I'm not knocking them. I've got kids and I'm in millennial generation, but it's just, it's a different they just, the tough love approach that I adhere to my, like my students at UGA, a lot of them don't like it. And they let me know they don't like it. And my philosophy at that point, and this is a senior level class.

You're going to have to get over it because frankly, if you can't deal with me, you can't get through me, you are not going to be able to make it.

 Some of these Gen X, these baby boomer firm owners that are out there.

Maddy Roche: Fascinating. Let's stay on this. In terms of when it comes to mentorship and what job seekers are looking for, what would the ideal relationship be and how can we justify that kind of on the side of the advisor to be able to invest that amount of time, resource, energy into that mentorship?

Caleb Brown: A lot of people won't invest it because it's in their mind, it's worthless. It's a waste of time and money. and that's why you have a lot of high margin solo practices out there, under the NAPFA community and some of the other ones. But look, if you want to build, if you want to have a small boutique sort of lifestyle practice, that makes you a ton of money.

You can do that. If you want to have something bigger and beyond you and you want to be able to take vacation and do whatever and you want to have, an enterprise, what I'll call an enterprise. You're going to have to hire some people and at least the planner positions, advisor positions that I recruit for an ideal scenario is people really at any level,

especially the entry level, they want to come sit next to someone who knows what they're doing. And be in every single client meeting, be involved in every single, every email, every video call, every phone call, whatever it is and just sit there and learn how these senior people deal with people and get these clients to do what the planner wants them to do. Oftentimes when the client doesn't want to do that and then make them think it was their idea to do that.

So there's a lot of thing. And as good as the UGA and all these other CFP® programs are, you don't learn that coming out. This is different than being a physician. You complete medical school, residency, fellowship you come out there's no training, you know what you're doing here.

You don't need on the job training. So we're still working on getting that up. But the firms that offer that say, here's what I encourage firms to say, but you got to make sure you deliver on this. You can't just say this, Hey, come work for our firm. you're your career change or you're new.

Like we're going to teach you everything we need, we know, and we're going to get you to where you want to go quicker than everybody else. Like my job is to pour everything I have into you and get you to my level or above in 24 months, 36 months, whatever it is. And I'm just maybe not use that language or the timeframe may be different, but just that's the mindset.

That's the message that needs to be communicated. Versus, and I know you want to talk about this kind of an average firm is we got, we're a profitable firm, we got a couple hundred clients and we've got good technology and we're part of XYPN and hey, come over here, we'll pay you a salary and we'll do this and it'll, we'll do some fun trips and post some stuff on LinkedIn and it'll be great, it'll be okay.

That's not as compelling to this next gen or to me, it's man, trying to get a job in 2001, you're going to pay me a salary. That's super compelling. Like I'm all about this and I don't have to bring in any clients. And I still think, and I am starting to see a shift, because there for a while I would get when I first started the recruiting firm, it's Caleb, I'm offering a salary and a career track and an opportunity for equity ownership.

And I'm like, sounds awesome but guess what? Everybody else is doing that.

Maddy Roche: My mind goes to how competitive is a recent grad versus someone with actual experience. Do you have numbers on that around how many applications a lead planner job gets every, every post?

Caleb Brown: We do, the newer planners, it's like a feeding frenzy that now coming out of these CFP® programs it is competitive because you have a lot of what I'll call high profile, maybe celebrity RIA types that come in and recruit and also big asset management firms, cause that's another awesome seat that I have I'm able to see what all my UGA students are getting from these RIAs.

A lot of times in Atlanta or Charlotte, these very attractive cities to Gen Z, Gen Y, and basically some of these large asset managers, they come in, and well who do you want to interview? We want to interview everybody. What do you mean? We'd like to hire all your students.

Whoa, and they have an advantage, frankly because they know exactly how many people they're going to need in Philadelphia in 36 months, they know how many people they're going to need in Charlotte in 12 months. They know exactly how many. Your an RIA with a hundred million dollars, they don't know.

They don't, they can't, they're a little bit more reactive, right? It's Hey, Caleb, I need somebody now and I tell them, okay, it's going to take 60 to 70 days to get somebody. And that's pretty good. Two to three months. So it's but these bigger firms are offering whatever my students want really.

So that's another, in terms of cash compensation, health insurance. It's Hey, come join us. we're going to put you on the phones and there is, that is a challenging component because one of my strategies that I've revealed publicly before is let these people go to these big wire houses and asset managers.

Let them go learn front phone skills. Let them learn professionalism. Let them learn how to work in an office. Let them work, figure out okay, this is not really financial planning. Let them get their CFP®. Let them get licensed. Then just recruit them out of there. Two or three years later. That's a great strategy.

it takes time. And that's why we have the business that we do and have had the success, but that's a good lever to pull. I went off on a tangent on the new college grads, but my makeup, half of my clients say we want someone brand new. It doesn't necessarily mean out of college, but just career changer, somebody finishing up the CFP® program, younger, newer, whatever it is.

And the other half are like, no, we hate those people. Only find me somebody with experience. So it's, I don't really, it's not a clear trend. It really just comes down to the firm owner's personality and experience. Maybe how they were trained and how they brought up and just, it's really personal preference.

Maddy Roche: Yeah, I'm glad you say that and from where I sit as a coach, there's so many advisors that actually several years in really want to start giving back to this industry and actually look at hiring as a way to do that. And so people who are natural teachers, people who are natural mentors, this could be a really fabulous way to attract some of that top talent and compete with some of those larger firms. If you can promise that kind of mentorship, but the hard part is justifying the time investment into it.

So many people, by the time they're ready to hire, they feel like they're on fire. And although they may have an interest in mentoring and training up people, the amount of time that they have to take to actually do that is hard to justify. And listen to this podcast, listen to XYPN Radio ahead of time so you can stay ahead of the curve, as you begin to approach your hiring needs.

Caleb Brown: I get it. what I would say, and I've said this for the last 20, you're going to have to spend time training some, whoever you hire. Just on your systems and your setup. And a lot of these XYPN people that I talked to and I recruit for have very strong core values in specific ways on they left firms and they had big blowups and nasty divorces from some of these other places they left.

And you may want to consider, and this is where a lot of them are, at least that we work with, find me somebody that's got a clean slate. That I can brainwash in a good way because that's what someone did with me versus getting somebody over here that I've got to unwind because they have all this, they've done planning old school or a crappy way, and mine's the better way.

So look, and I'm not talking about you need to spend half your day sitting there. But it's like, Hey you're an intern, you're a new hire, hey, I'm about to meet with the Browns. Just come on in here and sit down and just take some notes. Watch the body language of the clients.

If you have a, if you see something or you think certainly, make raise your hand or send me a text or send me a note on the chat or whatever it is. That's what I'm talking about. And then, okay. We finished the meeting with the Browns. That was two hours.

Why don't you come into the office or get on Zoom real quick and let's have a 10 minute debrief.

Maddy Roche: Yes.

Caleb Brown: So I'm not saying the person needs to spend triple the amount of time. And then here's another client emails in, okay. Send it to your parent planner. Hey, this is what the Smith's just wrote.

How would you handle this? Okay. You write a response. And you forward it to me and then we'll go over it together. And oh by the way, I'm expecting that we'll do this probably a couple of dozen times, maybe more. And then you're going to start getting it 90 percent of getting the product, the finished product, 90 percent of the way there, not 10%.

 And I think that's where, and I probably failed as a manager too, over my career not, it's hard to come up with those guidelines, but laying out those expectations, like we're not just going to keep doing this forever, but I want to get you confident before we pull the training wheels off. And that's what I'm talking about in the mentorship.

So I'm not saying that they need to. They got to work their eight hour day and then it's Oh man, I got to spend it's like studying for the CFP® all over. I got to spend three hours in the evening looking over my intern or my associate planner. That's not what I'm in.

Maddy Roche: I'm glad that you talked a bit about, trying to get someone in with a clean slate because I do hear from advisors that I work with that they want someone to hit the ground running. They want someone to come in and know how to host client meetings, have their book, become profitable for their business.

And I do think that's a hard ask, especially with the amount of kind of, previous experience people are coming in with that they, as you say, have to be unwired from. So can you talk a bit to the pros and cons of hiring someone and maybe remaining laser focused on this? I need them to hit the ground running versus let's put it in 6 to 12 months of real mentorship and ramp up.

Caleb Brown: New news flashed to them if they can hit the ground running, probably don't need you. So why, especially if they can get the clients now look.

Maddy Roche: Interesting.

Caleb Brown: I have people say that to me too. And we've certainly found candidates that have hit the ground running, but it's been, they either did not like the business development component.

They did not want to be a small business owner. So they said, we're not going to start our own firm. We'd rather hit the ground. And to your point, those people are a lot harder to find, because if you know what you're doing and you can hit the ground running, most, most of those people aren't looking for a job.

And if they are, there might be something going on there. That's below the surface that you need to investigate and see what's going on. Maybe they're not very good. Maybe they're not good at their job. You have a screening process. Yes, every firm owner wants to start, but it's like, This is part of being a business owner.

This is what you signed up for when you left that big RIA firm because they didn't make you a partner. You get to deal with all this stuff now. You get to deal with the HR. You get to deal with the training and maybe you'll see some of the frustrations that they may have had. So it's just, I love talking to these people that's that got upset and left their own firms.

And yeah, I, can see that. Yeah. It's almost like the roles were reversed, and not always the case, cause some of the firms that they left were just poorly managed. But that's part of being a boss, being an owner. It's also part of being an owner and having the risk of,

you could spend 6 to 12 months and do everything right that I just said, mentoring and spending time and giving them whatever they want. And guess what? They could leave.

Maddy Roche: They could join XYPN while you're still a member.

Caleb Brown: That's right. They could say, I'm out of here. I'm going to call Maddy and go set up my own lodge, my own firm. And boom, that's part of the risk on hiring somebody. If you don't want that, don't hire anybody is what I would tell them.

Maddy Roche: And that has happened. It's one of the harder positions we at XYPN are put in, and we do respect the privacy of that applicant into XY, and their, right and choice to start their own firm, but that scarcity mindset plagues our advisors and advisors that are approaching this hiring idea of, but what if I lose them?

And it's, objectively it's a very difficult operational issue. If you have an advisor that's serving 45 clients and they leave, how you manage that capacity and rehire and replace them, but I think you make such good points that this is all part of the journey and it's part of your business plan that how do you handle an exit from a staff member, regardless of what the reason for that exit is.

Caleb Brown: And let me just address that for a minute because you're, right. But. where the industry, sorry, the profession is now from when I got in over 20 years ago. Yeah. If you're XYPN member you got 200 clients. You're handling a hundred clients that somebody else associates.

And that person leaves yeah that's trouble. Because you just got 200 clients dumped onto you. However, with the growth of the profession. There's all these resources. A lot of them are virtual and most of your people are virtual anyway. So you got Sue Chesney out there. She can do the plans for you.

You got, VAs, you've got internal stuff. can you hold the fort down and keep the firm from blowing up for a year or a couple of years till you get someone hired? Absolutely. You can, is it going to be tough? And are you going to have to put in late nights? Yeah, but remember that's what you signed up for.

That's why you're making all the money. Okay. So I would just say there's. Certainly they need to mitigate risk and that's a concern, but they're the profession is in such a different place than it was even just 10 years ago. With so many now, you can't just call somebody up and expect them to have a relationship with a hundred clients.

I understand that, but I'm saying, can you piecemeal something together? And keep it afloat. Keep the clients from leaving. Yes, you can. You have more levers to pull than even maybe five years ago, because every month or every year that goes by, there's new solutions coming out to help the financial planning profession.

Maddy Roche: Yeah. Beautifully said. I'm interested in, say some XYPN advisors and listeners are interested in getting in front of some of these Gen Z new recent grads from UGA. Outside of the mentorship, what else are you seeing young, smart, sharp top candidates considering and looking for when they're, vetting their options?

Caleb Brown: This is, a lot of it depends on their personality, but I would say I am seeing a little bit of a trend with, the first trend is that the students that I had during COVID do not want virtual. If your firm is virtual. It's going to be harder to attract those like, and they don't have an office to go to.

So be aware of that. generally outside of that, we have a mismatch in the talent and then the hiring firm pool right now, because the majority of the talent wants some sort of very loose, hybrid, flexible schedule. The majority of the firm's hiring want somebody in person. And frankly, I've got XYPN people that I'm recruiting for right now that say no in person.

So don't kick them out if you find out who that is. In all seriousness, I'm just kidding. so got to be careful on the virtual thing. And then they're, they do like going to bigger firms. So this is something bigger these bigger RIAs in Atlanta and Charlotte, they gobble up people.

And I think it's part of the community thing. that's why so many of them go to the unnamed asset manager that I was talking about earlier, because it's this is great. I'm going to go up there with 25 different cohorts from all these other schools, like this is just like college. Interesting. They don't have that in a seven person, six person, 10 person.

All virtual or smaller RIA, whereas. When I was looking for something, it's I want to go to the small firm where I only have to share my boss with one person, nobody else. It's me. I get everything. Maybe it's just selfishness. That's how I fell into my job, right? Versus you go to a bigger firm where you're boss, there's 10 people they have to mentor. So back to your early point, Oh my gosh, this is a full time job mentoring these people. but just, I would say, be aware. So you can't do anything about the way your firm is structured and the size of it right now. Maybe just you put that aside and really try to, but I think the core, the core back to the core values, like the Gen Y and the Gen Z are really focused and a lot of your membership is focused on this too.

Hey, I want to do financial planning for people that don't have any money. So as soon as somebody can get that figured out on how they can make money doing that, they're going to be onto something because the talent is very interested in that component. And I, the calls that I get especially from more senior people, experienced CFP®s, And I'm telling these people are very successful, making tons of money.

Caleb, can you find me another firm? Why? It's not rewarding for me. First, my firm has $5 million minimums. And two, I don't like working with these people because they're pushy and they're bossy. And it's somebody at that wealth level, I was just talking with Kitces about this recently.

Somebody at that wealth level has their own company probably, because usually you can't save your way into, north of, maybe $10 million. And they're bossing people. They're the boss. They're bossing people around and they've, created a company. So they treat that's how they treat their financial planner or it's unrewarding stuff like trying to find the insurance policy on an airplane.

That's not moving the needle. That's not rewarding or fulfilling. taking somebody from 10 million to 11 million. That's not very rewarding. What is rewarding is taking little Sally Smith who lost her husband five years ago, and she's got $500,000. And that's all she's got. And we have to make that last.

And I know I've got to be available. Caleb, I do not want to take a vacation. I need your coaching on this because if little Sally Smith calls. I want to be there because she needs me. We're a team. I'm part of her, she's paying us like $3,500 a year. I'm not going to let anything bad happen to her.

I'm always going to be available.

Maddy Roche: I love that.

Caleb Brown: That's what they're looking for.

Maddy Roche: How do you coach advisors and practices that are looking to hire this kind of talent to convey that culture? What's the best way to put their values in front of these, candidates in terms of core values, who they work with, like how would you coach an advisor to do that?

Caleb Brown: Well, a lot of it should be on the website. Just you can, there's a bunch of vendors that you guys have, they need to have it on the website. walks on the beach, the lighthouses, all that stuff. We need to get away from all that. I had to tell a prospective client that reached out to me. Cause I pulled their ADV. I looked at the website and I had to deliver some very bad news. Hey, that homepage picture, go to this website. Here's another firm that's in a different state.

They have the same one. It's Ooh, they didn't, they had a bad day that day. 

Maddy Roche: I use compass and lighthouse as examples all the time. It just doesn't differentiate you for your clients or future talent. So listen to Caleb.

Caleb Brown: So website, Hey, here's the target clients. Hey, here are some local community and volunteering and pro bono. Homes for heroes. We, take part in that. We volunteer, we help the injured, service members help them, they have to meet with a CFP® before they can get a house that's happening.

All that can be on the website. the ADV, you can list out the target clients, the fee structure, all that and the top candidates will. Will look at that. They'll look at the ADV. but I think just in the interviews, I actually just got some feedback and this is real time

earlier this week, Hey, I just when you sent me on that interview, Celeb, it was great. I just went in there. It was a small little conference room. It was a round table. And I just sat down with both the guys and we just had a candid, just very relaxed conversation about why they started the firm, who they're looking to help, what their goals are, and who they think could be a good fit here and what their core values are.

And. it just made it very relaxing for me. And so this is feedback I'm getting from the candidate and just laying it out there and not being overly formal and, stuffy, , again, the Gen Z types, my students, they necessarily are not looking to go to the, and I currently already address this with the minimums, but the stuffy sort of wood panel, 32nd floor high, That's not really what this group is looking for right, right now. Okay. So it's just, every sort of everyday people, making an impact on their lives, seeing the tangible, benefits. So I, what I would tell the XYPN members that are wanting to hire people, share some of those, here's what a good candidate would ask.

what has been the most meaningful. What's been the most memorable thing you've done for a client? What's been the most meaningful and rewarding thing. And your members should be able to say, boom, is when I helped Sally Smith do this when man, they like, and look, don't make this up, but I'm just like, Hey, we, saved a marriage.

Like we saved a marriage. Like, that's pretty substantial. So talking about that versus Yes, you're, we really need to get those plans done and here's a laundry list of crap that we want you to do. yes, there's going to be some grunt work and all that, but try to paint the picture for them knowing like, Hey, this is the stuff I gotta do to get to that level where I can help, save the marriage or the kid wanted to go to Penn or wherever, and we got it funded on somebody that's a blue collar. That's amazing.

Maddy Roche: It's amazing how much of your advice is similar to the advice we as coaches give to advisors about how to attract their ideal clients. They have to have their story. They have to have their value ads. They have to have a real essence of, what they do, why they do it. Anyone who hasn't really been able to verbalize that isn't going to attract the ideal clients and certainly won't be competitive in the hiring field.

So having that story and having that deep understanding of what your major successes with clients have been and why people should work with you is good for all sides of the business.

Caleb Brown: I feel like those are somewhat linked, right? If they can't tell the story to attract the clients, they're not going to need to hire anybody.

Maddy Roche: Totally. Totally. I often see advisors who are on fire looking to hire, but there's so much work here that Caleb is giving us advice around on how to prepare. In terms of the actual hiring process for advisors, any recommendations around like work samples or vetting the actual quality of these candidates?

Caleb Brown: Yeah, I said earlier, they have most of the job seekers have most of the leverage. That doesn't mean you just need to bend over backwards and just say, okay, we'll give you whatever. And that's not what I'm saying. Some sort of conversation, interview process, conversations, whether it's in person video or phone, maybe you do one of each, you don't want to make your process too long, but just to get a sense on how they handle themselves on each one of those medias.

And then really, Some sort of look, if they're an experienced CFP® that's been doing this 10, 15, 20 years, okay. You look at the credentials, you look at their book of business, the revenue, the client list that's pretty easy and more straightforward to see who's successful. You have to get lined up on the philosophies, but the newer people.

Back to my iceberg and Kitces uses this all the time. I love it. It's like the huge chunk underneath the water is what sunk the Titanic, not the piece at the top. And a lot of these sort of career changes or new players could have, not necessarily they're intentionally trying to hide them, but just have skeletons in the closet that you have to overcome.

It's Oh yeah. When that person gets stressed out, they just check out and then they're out for the next two days. Not that's necessarily a deal killer, but when you like to know that, or when they get stressed out or when they have too many priorities, they just, they start missing details.

They blow up the details. So there needs to be some sort of exercise and depending on what hire you're hiring for. Let me see if I can come up with a couple examples here off the cuff, but if it's a CSA or something, just give them a client fact sheet and then just have them copy it over to an account application.

See how many and see how quick they do it. And then see how many mistakes they make. Okay. Or somebody left a voicemail and they're putting a note into your CRM. Okay. so maybe a paraplanner, here's a client questionnaire and intentionally leave things out or put things that might be contradictory in there and say, okay, put this into, have them pull up the RightCapital, whatever, and have them just try to put some stuff in and then, See if they come back and say, Ooh, we're missing this. Ooh, this was contradictory. So I'm going to make a note for my senior advisor over here, Hey, I didn't know what to do with this. See how far they take it.

Okay. It's just a little exercise. you can come up with the exercises based on the position that you're hiring for and how your firm operates.

Maddy Roche: Really good ideas. Thank you for those actual examples. That's very helpful. How long should an advisor expect the hiring process to take from job posting to actually like butt in seat type, days?

Caleb Brown: Right now we're professionals and we're doing this full time all, all day long. And we're, we carted out a niche. And I said earlier at the top of the call, it's about 60, 70 days right now. So two to three, I would just say two to three months, if you're going to have an experience, like professional outsourcer do it.

And it could be longer depending on the situation. It could be shorter. if you're doing it yourself, I would say. a lot of times I have do it yourself or is it have tried for, a couple quarters, maybe probably at the most, and then they throw their hands up and say, okay, Caleb, you do this.

We gave it a go, but, I don't know a couple months. if you have something attractive, you should be able to get some people to talk to, and then you can spend a couple of weeks going through some process with them and, get them a start date, run some background checks and things like that.

And, I think it's really a couple months. some of your members hire people in a couple of weeks. It's all over the board, but, that's what I say. You certainly don't want to rush it. But to my earlier point, even though I love data and I'm a tough love guy, and I love putting things for candidates to demonstrate efforts because over my 20 year career, the people that have looked best on paper have not been the highest performers, the people that have exhibited the intangibles have, and here's what some of those intangibles are just conscientiousness. So emotional intelligence, awareness.

follow through, so just doing what they say they're going to do, passion for their profession. Hey, financial planning is all I'm doing. Yeah, I know I could go over to investment banking. I'm not doing that. I could make twice as much money. I'm not doing it. commitment to their career. Yeah.

I got the CFP®, but I'm working on this. And, I signed up for the Kitces tax course. I'm doing this. I've signed up for George Kinder's. I just I'm just constantly doing stuff, a sense of urgency, passion for the profession, conscientiousness. those are the types of things that, and a lot of times those don't show up on a resume.

You've got to, And you've got to interview and that's going to give you one small piece of the iceberg below the water, but also interacting with them frequently through a screening process. You can glean some of those things.

Maddy Roche: Totally.

Caleb Brown: there's other tools like Kolbe and DiSC that you can use as well to help with that.

But a lot of it is just interacting and just sit back. I said, I spent 90 percent in the recruiting seat. That's my job is a hundred percent. Just sitting back, observing people and reporting on that and assessing that and reporting that to my clients. And your members may not have the luxury of doing that.

Cause it's look, I got a business to run. I can't spend all this time doing all this. Understood. Do the best you can get a job posting up there, have them put for some sort of, can they follow directions? Can they go through a process? Can they, read the instructions and then interview them and then get them in there.

Maddy Roche: As a hiring manager at XY for years, it was always fascinating. Can you follow the directions of the application and people who don't, it's really wild and it's a waste of time. but those little, hints and nuggets along the application process tell you a lot about a candidate.

Caleb Brown: And let me just say one other point. How you brought you. Trust your gut. you're a good financial planner for a reason. You have a good sense on whether this person's going to be a good prospect on the marketing side. And your gut probably hasn't led you astray too many times. Same thing on the recruiting side.

If you see some red flags, Oh, but Caleb we got, we just signed six new clients, man. I'm like, just be careful. I'm not saying don't do it. Just be careful because a lot of times those red flags. When hires don't work out, people started Oh yeah, they did. Oh yeah. We brushed it off and there's three or four, five different things that popped up.

And the other point that I wanted to make on this was, look, you can go through a perfect process. You can do everything right. You can take them through all this testing, but you're never going to know 100%. Until you get them in there and let them try. And I know that's not what they want to hear, but that's part of being a business owner.

That's part of doing it.

Maddy Roche: I'm glad you talked about some of these intangibles, and I might be biased because I was a generalist as I started my career at XY ten years ago with the title of Director of Getting Shit Done. But there's a real value to be able to bring in a generalist into a company and allow them to flourish and find the right seat.

Especially bringing some like actual business acumen to the firm is so much what advisors crave, although mentorship is what they'll provide. So many people just want people that get the business, that understand the importance of client relationships, the importance of conscientiousness and emotional intelligence.

Is there, any other tips you give to people maybe considering career changers or others, as opposed to some of these, I want the most highly decorated top of the class candidate?

Caleb Brown: Yeah, again that's hey, Caleb I want your top female 4.0 student. if I had a dollar for every time someone said that I'd do the recruiting for free probably. Just, look, the career changers they have a lot of advantages, right? Look, at the business that you're in.

You're in selling experience. maturity, wisdom,

 Like 20, like when I was 22, I didn't really have any of that. So it's, there's a trade off there, right? A lot of these career changers, they have one, done their own planning for their own family. They've gone through marriages and divorces and births of kids and college educations and buying and selling home that they live life and that helps put them in a little bit better seat to counsel someone on some of these things.

And I'm not saying Oh, you got to go get divorced to be able to talk. That's not what I'm saying, but just, they're in a better position to be able to talk through some of these. They have probably a little bit more confidence than a 21, 22 year old and where we run into problems usually with the career changers is, Caleb, I've been successful and it's not rewarding.

And like, Silicon Valley, Hey, Caleb, I'm getting paid $250,000 to work for said tech company. And here's my job all day long. I just do A/B testing on an icon and I move it from one start and my job sucks. And I want to, get into something more rewarding. And, it's okay, do you know what you're looking at in terms of an entry level planner position?

You're like, are you okay with working going from 250 down to $60,000 a year? Yeah, a lot of times the firms that are looking to hire them aren't comfortable with that, but we have a major disconnect with a lot of the career changers on the comp. Not saying we don't have that On the new college grad stuff either, because some of these new college grads, their professors and their parents have said, yeah, this is what you need to ask for.

And it's ridiculous. So I've had to deal with some of those issues. So I'm not saying you're going to eliminate the risk either way, but to your point, the career changers, Look, Hey, I'm a retired engineer. I'm a retired real estate person. Sometimes they bring in clients, a 22 year old like yours truly wasn't bringing in any clients for the first three or four years, five years of his career.

There's a lot of pros and cons there and I would, it's going to come down to personality. that person is still multiple, maybe not as multiple as you want them to be, but they're just further along. maybe they're not as flexible because they can't relocate because they got kids in school and some other things.

We could go on all day long about the differences between career changers and experienced people and college grads, but I hope that helps paint the picture on the maturity and the experience piece, which is valuable. And they, have a sense they've worked in another career here. Here's the biggest risk for some of your clients, if they hire someone right out of school, I went through my degree. I got a 4.0 and I'm the female top, but I really don't want to do this. This isn't what I thought it was.

Maddy Roche: Yeah.

Caleb Brown: You're probably, could that happen with a career changer sure. But most people aren't going to, I just had somebody I placed in Boston, making $150,000 a year, had to go to the spouse and say, look, this is what I want to do.

And go to the kid. Like, this was a big sacrifice for them to do this. They're not just going to up and leave and Oh, I'm out of here. It didn't go well, it didn't go the way I thought they are committed.

Maddy Roche: Let's talk comp for a second. What are you seeing in terms of the ranges for kind of each of those levels that you're talking through from, CSA to lead planner and

give us the hard truth. How important is comp when it comes down to it versus things like flexibility, PTO, maybe even equity?

Caleb Brown: We, and we'd have some internal proprietary research when we surveyed. It was about a thousand Gen Y and Gen Z people in our database. All right. So it wasn't a general population and cash compensation. It was in the top 10, but it was a lot further down than, a lot of it was employee benefits, health insurance paid PTO

it was like PTO is a huge deal

Maddy Roche: Give people time off

Caleb Brown: Just give people time off, we have a lot of people subscribing to the Angie Herbers just unlimited PTO model. but people like that, a lot of them have student loans, that haven't been forgiven. and they want to live in an expensive apartment in Atlanta and Charlotte and Nashville and all these cool hip, Boulder, Colorado expensive cities.

They, need to be compensated. I don't know when this is going to air, but we're working on right now to release. This is early August. We're releasing our 2024 salary report, before the end of the month. And that the, range what, since we don't really place client service associates, I don't really have good, hard solid data for you there but for the paraplanner, and this is nationwide average.

Okay. So this is big firm, small firm. Wire house lots of different channels, and different zip codes, right? The nationwide average for base salary is about $76,000 is what a para planner is looking for. And that's like in our model, that's like a zero to two year person. Okay. So someone right out of school, like we've talked about at the top of the class

Maddy Roche: Is that a CFP® candidate?

Caleb Brown: Yes. They're, they've probably completed the education. They, may have passed the exam, but they're not a CFP® yet. So the next one is an Associate Planner. So this is your solid second chair, right? Who can maybe do some, just taking off more of a burden from the lead planner, and that's like a two to five year person.

Okay. and that person was like, that person was like $94,000. So when the way we do our salary report, and this is different than Schwab and Investment News where they're in, or they're just sending a questionnaire to the firm owner saying, fill in how much you pay your people. Okay. Which is fine. ours is when I and the other recruiters here talking to the candidates.

Like kind of what, like what they're currently making is irrelevant. It's what is it going to take to get them to look at this job or move? That's the data point we're drilling in on. And a lot of times they're not far off. our data pretty much matches up a lot of the other surveys out there, but the associate planner two to five year, that's about $94,000.

Okay. So it's base, comp, and then a, the, lead planner, which is five, that five year mark, and, maybe above, was like $125k. Okay. So the tranches were like 75, 95, 125 is where people are. And sometimes there's outliers in there. And sometimes, it's just because sometimes I get people that say, hey Caleb, I'm making this amount of money and already alluded to the, career changers, but man if you can find me something in an RIA, fee only, NAPFA firm, XYPN firm, dude, I'll, work for a lot less, so that's why we, that's why we approach it the way we do because it's something, but sometimes that can skew the numbers.

Maddy Roche: Okay, fascinating. and we will link to that salary study, so long as we have your blessing, Caleb.

Caleb Brown: Yeah, that's great.

Maddy Roche: I get this question a lot from the advisors I coach around, they're looking to maintain a pipeline of talent and I encourage advisors always to have a few candidates that they could tap and say that there's an opening if and when they're ready to hire.

Is it advantageous for, say a small firm to have a apply here at any point button on their website or a job description hung up in perpetuity that invites applicants to apply? are you seeing your, graduates or the people applying to these jobs looking at firms that have that?

Caleb Brown: it's reasonable for a firm, you're about us team page and then the careers that can click on that. And then if it says, we don't have anything right now, but feel free to send your resume to email that's fine. You're just creating your own applicant tracking system, your own database.

that's fine. you may not, I tell candidates all the time. And I spent a whole chapter in my book that I wrote last year about this, reach out to people. you want to go work at a firm in Bozeman, Montana, get on the internet and find someone and reach out to them and call them and you demonstrate that passion for the profession that could turn into something. I also would suggest what I don't, I don't think you should leave a fake job description up there if it's not really an opening, that's going to agitate people and word spreads fast in this industry. So you gotta be careful. there. Boots on the ground. like here is why we've had a lot of success at new plan of recruiting, because earlier on when I started the firm, I flew around to all the CFP® programs and I had boots on the ground and I went and spoke and I went and interviewed and I went and did mock interviews. And I talked to thousands of new CFP® and a lot of those people I couldn't do anything with at least that year, but I developed a relationship with them. And now I'm placing CFP®s with 10 years of experience. and we can charge a lot for that. And, some, of your people are like, look I'm not doing that.

Look, if you're in a college town, if you can't take two hours out of your day, every spring to go to speak in Caleb Brown's practice management class, you got bigger business management issues because you could get five resumes and you do that for four or five years. now you've got experience, a pipeline of experienced CFP®s.

Now they may be at other firms and they probably are but you could reach out to them and that's a good place to start. So a lot of firms just I'm not doing that. I don't have the time. And that's why us and other vendors and outsourcers are here, but you can do that yourself. 

Maddy Roche: Totally. 

Caleb Brown: You can do that yourself if you want to, and you want to take the time.

Maddy Roche: And it's good practice to be able to share your story and what you've built and why you're an important company to be in this space. Caleb, I could absolutely interview you for another three and a half hours and we'd be here into the night. So I'm going to respect our listeners and you, my friend, and wrap this interview up.

Any final words of advice, or actually I'll change that ending question I usually ask, and I'll ask you to give us your ideas of where this, industry and the space is moving to in the next couple years. Anything you anticipate really impacting, the market for, both people looking to hire and to be hired?

Caleb Brown: A couple of thoughts, just one on that, on the tips I would, for your listeners. And then maybe some futures. I would just say. You don't have to be a billion dollar firm, even though that's what the industry, that's who gets the awards. That's who's out there. It's the act. Bigger is not always better on this, create the business you want for the life you want for your family situation.

It doesn't matter what this other person is doing exactly what you tell your clients. Okay. Have patience too. It's I'm not growing fast enough, like says who, right? It takes time to build this up. And I know, you guys on the coaching side, say that as well, but just, have patience.

This is, it takes a while to get that snowball rolling, but once you do, it just, it's massive, it's a massive force once it gets going. I'm not big on the futuristic stuff, like predicting future and things. It is a little bit of a bummer kind of for me because all these firms that I started recruiting for, 15 years ago that were a 100, 200, 300 million now they're like 3 billion.

And they're like, Hey Caleb, we have our own HR person. We don't need you or hey, a private equity or an aggregator. We just got a like humongous multiple and we took it and I can't work with those firms any longer. but I don't think it's, Mark Hurley You're only going to have five or six creative planning mariners out there, and then you're going to have everybody else is going to be under a hundred mil.

But I don't think it's going to be that bifurcated. because it certainly ha it hasn't done that in the accounting world. Or even in the, legal field. But I am excited about this next generation because their core values and a lot of your members, their core values, their motivations.

They're different than the founding generation. It's different. just for one example, like it's not about just building up a bigger firm and piling up money for themselves. Okay. And that's, more commonly attributed with baby boomers who were taught that, there was lingering effects from the great depression.

So I understand why they operate that way. but, and then just this massive push, we have a lot of people really pushing hard and fighting and a good fight to try to bring financial planning to every single American that wants it. That's fabulous. And the pressure is on me and others to like, get more people in the profession to be able to deliver on that.

So we don't have to tell that person who's if we change the perception that financial, what financial planners really do. And it's not just for wealthy people. And somebody from middle America says, yeah, I want to work with somebody. And you're like, we look at the assembly line. We don't have anybody there.

There's people that want to get in this profession and it's we're getting more and more recognized and familiar, but I want more. I'm not, satisfied with the current stuff and just looking for, projecting I want, I don't, people might come on my podcast. How'd you get in the industry?

Oh, I fell into it. Or I just, I went to school that I found that no. I want them, Hey, my parents are, whatever it is, financial planner, I'm following their footsteps just like they would like a professional athlete or some other, highly respected field. And the needle is moving. We're getting closer and that's exciting.

Maddy Roche: Very much. We're very aligned on that, Caleb. it was so nice to have you on this podcast. Your passion is clear, your expertise is solid, and you have been such a great resource to XYPN member firms over the years. you have followed in Kitces' track of giving away a lot for free in terms of your research and different resources.

So please do check out newplannerrecruiting.com. Caleb, thank you so much for being on XYPN Radio, for being a friend and ally of our network over the years. And, I look forward to having you back over the next couple years.

Caleb Brown: Thanks, Maddy.