Episode Summary

Jamie Hopkins, Esq., LLM, CFP^®, ChFC^®, CLU^®, RICP^®, Chief Wealth Officer at Bryn Mawr Trust and WSFS, turned personal tragedy—the loss of his father at a young age—into a mission to make financial advice accessible to working-class families. His varied career, from law to academia and corporate leadership, is grounded in this purpose. He co-created the Retirement Income Certified Professional^® (RICP^®) program, transforming retirement education with scalable, digital, and practitioner-led content that has impacted thousands of advisors. Jamie champions a flat leadership structure that empowers frontline advisors and builds trust through accountability.

Through the FinServ Foundation, he addresses industry diversity and the advisor shortage by providing mentorship, coaching, and access to underrepresented talent. Jamie highlights the evolving role of advisors as trusted guides amid increasing technology use and aims to double his firm’s business in three years. His story shows how purpose-driven leadership and innovative solutions can broaden the reach of financial services and foster lasting client relationships.

Here’s What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Vulnerability and the Path to Democratized Advice
• Adopting a Learning Mindset
• Building the Next Generation of Financial Advisors
• Finding Your Career Sweet Spot
• Managing Change
• Coaching, Mentoring, and Building Industry Awareness
• The Value of Finding Your Why

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Bryn Mawr Trust
• WSFS Bank
• FinServ Foundation
• The American College of Financial Services
• Retirement Income Certified Professional® (RICP®)
• Chartered Life Underwriter® (CLU®)
• Financial Planning Association

Quotes

“… what I learned was that actually most non-college graduate construction workers do not get advice. And so, it sent me on this path to—maybe the wrong use of the word, but it’s how our industry has used it—as that democratized advice. So really, every decision after that, I really made a conscious effort to make sure anything I was doing had some element of scale in it. And that the advice and the impact that was going to have was going to impact a lot of people, like my mom. So, my driving “why” became, I want to make retirement secure for millions of Americans like my mom.”

“I’ve heard that dynamic. Like, [the] leadership team only has 20 percent of the information, but 80 percent of the decision making, and 80 percent of the right information fell with everybody else with 20 percent of the decision making. So, what I’ve tried to do to compensate for that is actually develop a very flat organization that really is more advisor-led than, you know, what I’ll call back office or leadership-led. Like, I want our advisors and wealth director team leaders to be at the table making the decisions because I’m not going to be out there and around enough with the clients.”

“… we looked at what helps people be successful in other professions. We found three core things across the board. Right? Mentorship, which makes sense. Right? Most of us, when we’re successful, and I’ve had this conversation so many times, and most people just say I got lucky. Like, I got a great mentor, and I got lucky. Well, we can’t just rely on luck forever to change an industry.
Coaching. Now, coaching sometimes comes in companies, and you can hire coaches. But for early advisors, they tend not to get a lot of that. So that’s kind of like later on, once you’ve been successful. So, we don’t have a lot of coaching development-related stuff to young advisors anymore.
And then the third one was access. That really gets back to the first one that the access research is mostly access to your natural, wealthy network breeds a lot of success in life. Again, use that, be happy about it.”

Full Transcript

Sasha: Welcome to the Heart of Advice podcast presented by eMoney. I’m Sasha Grabenstetter.

Connor: And I’m Connor Sung. We’re your eMoney experts. Today on the podcast, we have Jamie Hopkins. Jamie, first off, thank you so much for joining us, and welcome.

Jamie: Well, thank you both of you for having me on. I’m excited to be on here today.

Sasha: Of course.

Connor: So, Jamie is the Chief Wealth Officer at Bryn Mawr Trust and WSFS, and founder and president of the FinServ Foundation, which is a 501(c)(3) dedicated to enhancing the financial services next gen.

Jamie let’s start there. Can you just bring us a little bit through your origin story, the highlight reel of some of the moments that have shaped the path that you’re on and how you’ve gotten here?

Vulnerability and the Path to Democratized Advice

Jamie: Yeah. Well, thank you. And, yeah, I’ll try to do that. I don’t have a cool origin story like Spider-Man or anything like that. But, yeah, everybody has their own story.

I typically start a little bit earlier than some people, but a lot of my origin story in this industry started when I was eight years old.

I lost my dad in a construction site accident. And you don’t know it at the time, but that kind of moment and loss and all those things that come along with losing your father and, really your hero at that time, it kind of sets you on a different path than you otherwise would have been on. And my parents ran a construction company together, and my mom is still running that company. Although we’re probably within 12 months of her retiring.

So, I’ve been telling this story for a couple years, but she’s right there near retirement now and has continued to run it after my dad passed away. But for me as an eight-year-old, I went through that kind of scarcity mindset around money because I was old enough to understand, right, my dad couldn’t get up on a ladder and hang gutters and get off the side of the house. Like, money doesn’t come in from the company. I don’t know how the company’s run, but I understand that part of it.

Right? That two-person team. My mom doesn’t do that part, but she’s continued to run that.

And as I got older, I started looking at how do people like my mom get advice? How do they prepare for retirement? You saw all these ads on TV.

And what I learned was that actually, most non-college graduate construction workers do not get advice. And so, it sent me on this path to—maybe the wrong use of the word, but it’s how our industry has used it—as that democratized advice. So really every decision after that, I really made a conscious effort to make sure anything I was doing had some element of scale in it. And that the advice and the impact that was going to have was going to impact a lot of people like my mom. So, my driving “why” became, I want to make retirement secure for millions of Americans like my mom.

And I’ve done that a couple different ways. You know, I have my own consulting company. I helped to build out one of the co-creators of the RICP® designation at American College with David Littell was the other co-director at the time with me. And I think that’s nearing 28,000 to 30,000 advisors that have now gone through that program.

And that scale, you think about every one of those having a hundred to two hundred clients, and it’s a really big impact. I got to go to an aggregator RIA firm for about six years, and we went from six billion to 32 billion or something by the time I left with Carson and really aimed at that scale and growth. And then a couple years ago, I got to come over here and step in as CEO of Bryn Mawr Trust Advisors and the chief wealth officer here at WSFS and Bryn Mawr Trust. And that’s a little bit different of a pathway now, but really want to be that scaled firm here in the Philadelphia, Delaware, New Jersey region, and that’s really why I came here.

And I told the team I want to double this business in the next three years, and so it’s aggressive.

But that’s about scale. It’s about leading with advice and planning and having that impact. And that’s my mom. Right? I want people like my mom to be secure in their future. And that’s really my story, you know, long and short form all at once, but at least the pathway to where I am today.

Connor: That’s so cool. Well, I wish your mom the best of luck. I have a very strong feeling that she has a plan in place, ready for her.

Jamie: Yeah. You’ll be surprised. Just parts of a plan. My mom is very—it’s actually a great point. She’s very distrustful of the financial service industry, even though I’ve been in it. She will listen to me, but, like, she doesn’t really trust other people because her whole life she’s felt like it wasn’t made for her. Right?

So, it’s an interesting dynamic as it relates to that. It requires a lot of work from my side to, you know, getting the legal documents in place and the estate plans and all of that we did a couple years back. I mean, maybe it’s been 10 years now. I say a couple years. Time flies. But, you know, getting those things in place can be a really big challenge because it’s still your parents, and, like, they still view you as their kid. But she does trust me, so that’s been good.

Sasha: That is good.

Jamie, I just want to thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that, especially about losing your dad. So, thank you. It obviously set you on a trajectory.

But I want to know how your early experiences from law school, then to education, to the wealth management, how do they shape both your career path and your professional philosophy? And what did you have to relearn or rethink in each new chapter?

Adopting a Learning Mindset

Jamie: Yeah. I’m probably relearning and rethinking things every day. So, I’ve got new lessons every day.

You know, I used to say—that it’s kind of a funny thing there—you always hear about that statement. Right? Like, you learn the most from your mistakes.

And I always used to say, well, I just want to learn from other people’s mistakes and my wins. That’s how I want to learn. Unfortunately, life doesn’t play out that way. So, I’ve learned from all of them, including my own mistakes.

So, yeah, a little bit of my story is I went to law school and then into private equity right after that, business school, had my own estate planning firm that then morphed into that consulting firm, and then I taught for a while. And so that even in a very early, like, experience of entering the work world, there’s a lot of different things at once when you look at it from the outside. Right? I was clerking in the appellate division. I worked on one of Bernie Madoff’s cases.

Right? I was doing estate planning documents. I was building a retirement income program and then consulting to, you know, some of the largest financial and insurance firms in the country, all of them in like a five-year period. Now, when I was doing it myself, it all made a lot more sense.

But from, like, the external world, it’s like, why were all these things happening? You know, the private equity one’s the one that really didn’t fit. I have, from actually it was seventh or eighth grade, I wrote down, what do you want to be when you grow up?

And I said a private equity attorney. I don’t, I didn’t know one. We didn’t have one in our family. Right?

Like, I’m the first lawyer in my family.

I don’t know where it came from, but I wrote that down and then, you know, went that pathway and, like, had this vision for it. And I got there, and I just didn’t love it. I think that my connection to it was lacking. I didn’t have that “why.”

It’s interesting work. It pays well, all those things. But I didn’t have that, like, impact factor that really kept me in it. So, but the personal finance side, I did because I saw it in my family and my mom, and that, like, really, really appealed to me that this is important because I have a connection to it.

So, the teaching one was interesting because I do have somewhat of a creative side, and there was a professor at Villanova that I had been grad assisted with, who taught at American College back in the 1980s. And he said, “Hey, this is a really interesting place. You probably never heard of it.”

He was right. I had never heard of it.

However, I’d seen CLU®. Like, I knew Chartered Life Underwriter® because, like, as you drive around the main line, oddly enough, there were, like, five signs that people had their practices, State Farm and others, and they had the CLU®. So, like, I’d seen this thing, but I didn’t really know what it was. And they wanted to bring in an attorney with ERISA background to help build out this program around retirement income because, like, half of it’s, like, tax law related and ERISA law.

And so, I got the opportunity after interviewing to come in and do that. And one of the cool things about American College, it’s really still today, is that almost all the faculty have side jobs. Right? Like, yes, it’s a full-time job, but, like, it’s a full-time job in the sense of, like, if you’re really good, you can do it in, like, four and a half hours a day. So, like, “full-time job” in air quotes.

You know? And so, everybody right there, you know, Wade Pfau and others that are pretty well known in the industry, like, you kind of find other stuff to do.

So, what I knew how to do was draft legal documents and estate planning. So, I started with that and then very quickly realized that scale conversation, I didn’t have any pathway to scale that. Like, I just didn’t see a vision for it at the time. AI didn’t exist, so you, like, couldn’t scale estate planning with AI back then. Now you can. So I said, Oh, well, this corporate consulting seems a lot more scaled, and I can write white papers and do trainings for large companies and work with the likes of LPL and State Farm and Raymond James, and all these big, you know, organizations that are impacting a lot of people. So kind of built that way.

And what I had to relearn with that, though, was that the, like, the enterprise clients were very different than individual clients. Like, individual clients wanted me to fully complete something for them. So, they came in, and they want their will done, their trust done, and they want it done. Like, with the t’s crossed, the i’s dotted. What’s interesting about, like, corporate consulting was that, like, sometimes they wanted it done, and, like, sometimes they just kind of wanted an opinion or a version of something, and they chose to do something completely different, and you didn’t execute on it. And so your job was kind of come in, and I actually built a whole program and training, and white paper for a company over months. I probably did 18 different edits of this whole program.

And at the end of the day, they just moved in a different direction and never rolled that out. And, I mean, they spent a lot of money with a lot. Like, I wasn’t the only one on this project. And it was just really interesting to watch, like, a company be like, Eh, we’re just not going to focus on this project anymore.

Like, strategy moved. It wasn’t that that one didn’t hit what they wanted it to hit. The company just moved what they wanted to focus on from a product standpoint, so they weren’t going to do any of that anymore. They didn’t want to go out and do trainings on it because they wanted to sell a different product.

And it was super interesting being like, wow, all of that work and—really good work with really smart people, and, like, we ran our own survey of data for as part of that, and, like, it never got launched. And it left, like, kind of a sadness in me after that project, to be honest.

And what happened after that was, like, I was like, well, I think I need to go somewhere so I can actually execute on this because I felt like that was really meaningful work, what we built was, like, going to be good for clients, but it never saw the light of day. We all got paid, made a bunch of money, but, like, it didn’t impact the client. So, you know, that was kind of a hard shift for me. And so I got the opportunity to go work with Ron Carson, now Omani, and, you know, brought me out there to help build out and execute on this, like, scaled planning offering we wanted to build.

And that was super appealing because it wasn’t going to be a consultant that gives you ideas and you just don’t execute on it. We were actually going to get to build that up from the ground up, and, you know, it was a great ride and I had a blast doing that. And, you know, they’re continuing their rocket ship ride there and doing great things. And, you know, what I had to relearn there, though, was very different. Right? Because, see, now you’ve got this, what I realized, though, there was that my clients are different than I thought my clients were going to be. I really came in there thinking the end client was my mom.

What I learned there was my main client, especially as it scaled, was our advisors. Like, that’s who we had to take care of first. And, like, if we didn’t take care of them, they couldn’t take care of their clients. And that’s a lesson that a lot of people don’t realize that, like, your clients and your, you know, your stakeholders or employees or whoever that’s sitting next to you, they’re often your first client.

Because, like, if they don’t trust you, they don’t feel like they’re taken care of and heard and listened to. They can’t go do their job the best of their ability. And that was a great learning for me, and I really loved it. And I got to work alongside a lot of really great advisors.

And then shifting here, I came in in a different spot. So, right, I came in as CEO of the RIA, and that’s a very different world. I don’t get the same feedback I used to get. Like, I was part of the team before, right, and I grew up in the organizations more as an entry-level person both times and moved up.

And, like, everybody would share things with me. Like, here, it’s interesting. Like, I get pieces of stuff, but I have to, like, really try to get the full story. So, I always feel like I’m making decisions with, like, 40 percent of what I really need to know.

I’ve heard that dynamic. Like, leadership team only has 20 percent of the information, but 80 percent of the decision making, and 80 percent of the right information fell with everybody else with 20 percent of the decision making. So, what I’ve tried to do to compensate for that is actually develop a very flat organization that really is more advisor-led than, you know, what I’ll call back office or leadership-led. Like, I want our advisors and wealth director team leaders to be at the table making the decisions because I’m not going to be out there and around enough with the clients.

I still do that, but I’m just not going to be able to do it enough to have that full, like, you know, in the trenches feel 24/7.

So that’s been something I’d have to learn through coming here, is just flattening out the organization and making sure that, you know, we’re leading with that advice and advisor-led group because I think that’s what makes this industry special.

Connor: Yeah. It definitely does. And I appreciate the broad brushstrokes there.

It sounds like you’ve definitely made your way of finding kind of gaps in either fulfillment for yourself or in accomplishment as far as, you know, implementation, and just continue to evolve.

I do have some follow-up questions with basically every portion of your career. Number one, so as you talked about Retirement Income Certified Professional®, the RICP®, the Main Line is an area just outside of Philadelphia that is a affluent area, and it’s along one major highway. So, for anybody that’s not from our northeast, it’s, you know, it goes out from the main train line directly from Philadelphia Center City and makes its way out, and there’s a ton of companies, businesses, and people around there. But as you think about the RICP®, what were some of the key behavioral or planning gaps? What were you guys aiming to fill for advisors?

Building the Next Generation of Financial Advisors

Jamie: Yeah. It’s a great question. So, a couple of things. I’ll do a walk back in time to, like, 2011, when that was kind of all being brainstormed. So, we actually had a program at the time about, like, kind of a senior living designation that was more like later-in-life planning.

And the mistake with that one was really we jumped too far into retirement. Right? Like, Boomers weren’t there yet. Advisors weren’t working with their clients yet in that, like, aspect of retirement at scale.

And a lot of products and, right, the demographics of the country, Baby Boomers going back 15 years ago, were just starting to hit this mass retirement age. And so retirement income was super needed, but there really weren’t programs. There was one out there, but it was a completely in-person program. You had to go to a university.

And so they were only doing, like, 30 or 40 people a year. It was a great program. Like, there’s nothing wrong with the actual content, but, like, scale for the industry, you can’t, you’re just not going to be able to do that many if you make everybody go out to a university to do all the coursework.

So, one of the things we really wanted to tackle was that. Like, how do we build a scaled program to hit this mass group of advisors and insurance agents, right, and educate them on this in a way they also want to be educated today? So, first of that was creating a digital program. At the time, we were actually still very CD and textbook-heavy. Coming back to you know, it was just nearing the end of that. But, like, we made a good decision on RICP^®. We did not go with the textbook, so we went with, like, more of a virtual outline.

So, we build an outline versus a textbook, and more practice questions and written paragraphs. And then we built the entire program about interviewing practitioners and experts in the field, versus just professors telling you here’s what you should do. So, when we did, like, annuities, we had, like, an annuity person that built them and sold them. It was an advisor. We did long-term care, same thing.

And we had all these great people out there. You know? I mean, Kitces was part of the program. Wade Pfau eventually came and joined us. Christine Benz and Mary Beth Franklin. And it was really fun because I got this mass exposure to, like, all these people I looked up to right away. And, you know, they’re coming in and telling you how they talk about it to a client.

And that was a really cool outcome. Although I didn’t think we wrote that down anywhere, the main thing that people always told me afterwards was the most practical program they’ve ever been through. And that was where I think it came from is the fact that, like, it was practitioners and thought leaders that told you how to do it on video versus, like, reading something on a piece of paper.

And that really helped us scale. Right? Like, it was all recorded. It was, you know, kind of closer to asynchronous. You can move through it at your own pace when you wanted to online and go take the test at some test center and move forward.

And so it’s kind of the right timing, right structure, kind of did everything by scrapping the historical stuff and moving forward to really how education then developed. Right? I mean, now that’s super normal. Right?

You think about, like, these modular courses that are online, you can sign into. In, like, 2020, those exploded. But that was almost a decade before that, and, really, really just kind of hit the mark and allowed for really a three-person team to build a program that hit 30,000 people. Now, yes, there’s, like, marketing everybody else, but we actually, like, did all the PowerPoint design, like, me and Melissa and David, which is really funny.

Like, Articulate Rise, and we’re in there, like, you know, like, it did not look great, honestly, but it worked.

Oh, we had our templates, and we just ran forward with it. So, yeah, that’s, you know, that’s kind of the actual functional part of the program. You know, there’s a lot of behavioral finance things that we built into the program, but I felt like that story is probably more interesting about just how it resonated and kicked off.

Connor: Yeah. And how you were kind of evolving and transforming the way that, I think, the way that the career was being taught. Right? That this kind of evolving from a scale perspective that it sounds like is a foundational Jamie pillar, and then, you know, more broadly, how to continue to deliver that expertise more broadly.

As we pivot a little bit towards some of your corporate consulting time, you know, the lack of execution, the lack of implementation. It sounds like the lack of willingness to change in some of the areas, regardless of, you know, how much time you invested in the findings or how valuable they may have been. What are some of the takeaways that you took from those experiences as far as some of the strategies either to pitch ideas to other leaders, to get teams to implement recommendations, you know, when they don’t perceive value?

I just kind of open it to any additional findings from the consulting time.

Finding Your Career Sweet Spot

Jamie: Yeah. There’s, I mean, there’s probably a million things there I could think of. As it relates to teams, I maybe figured this out part then and part a little bit later.

I will say, you do have to go meet people where they are, versus where you want them to be. That’s definitely a thing. Like, as a consultant, you kind of want people to be at some level where they’re going to be able to implement it and just adopt it, and you told them so they’re good. But for most, like, more you know, when you think about, like, an advisor consulting a client, it’s going to be more similar.

Like, you got to meet that client where they are, and that was the same kind of experience for me. So, I pivoted a lot of what I did based off a client needs versus always what I wanted to do too. And there’s a good and a bad to that. You know, I know some consultants that are much better.

They’ve got a menu of things, and they just do it. I more took the approach, like, well, what is it that you all feel like you need? And sometimes I’d push back and be like, I don’t think that’s going to work. But if you really want to do it, like, here’s the price tag.

And sometimes I would price stuff up to the point, like, I didn’t wanna do it. I did have a couple times, though, where, like, I price things up to a level where I thought people would just say no—they said yes anyway, and, like, immediately, I was like, I really didn’t want to do this, like, even at the price tag. So, one piece of advice I have for people later is, like, if you really don’t want to do the work, it’s not the dollar amount. Like, you just should turn it down.

Because I had, like, four or five of those over in my career where I was like, I don’t want to do this. I’m going to give them an insane price tag. They’re not going to take it, and I’ll pitch it. And, you know, and then they said yes.

And I was like, why? Like, I didn’t want to do this, and that’s my fault. Right? Like, it’s nobody’s fault but mine.

Like, it’s just trying to guard it with money is never going to work. So just turn down projects that you really don’t want to work on. I think only one of those I really regretted after the fact. I’d like there’s one that, like, just always like, I knew I didn’t want to do it, and then I did it, and I regretted it every day I worked on it.

Like, it just wasn’t interesting. Right? It wasn’t that, like, the firm was bad. It was just, like, really, really boring work. And I was like, it just every day I had to log in and work on it, I was just like, oh my gosh. I don’t wanna do this. So that’s a lesson too.

So, you know, it’s like it’s setting boundaries and then to get people to move forward. So, I learned this more when we were running Carson Coaching, and to see how our coaches were able to get firms to implement things. And that was really this, you know, what people talk about accountability.

And, you know, as a consultant, it’s hard to hold somebody to accountability because, really, that’s, like, why they’re paying you is because you’re outside of the organization.

In more of a coaching relationship, though, you really can set accountability measures, right, where somebody is accountable for follow-up. I also found that making them accountable to their teams was more relevant in those situations. So, it actually, say if the firm was going to move from—it’s a good example—firm was 80 percent brokerage and 20 percent advisory, and the firm owners would come in and say, like, how do we move to be 80/20 the other way?

But just saying it, you’re never going to get there. Like, you actually have to have conversations with clients, repaper things, talk about new products, and actually move these assets. And it’s hard sometimes, and sometimes you’re going to be told no, and sometimes clients are going to leave.

And to actually set accountability with your team, though, like the people who report to you and that are in that firm and that they know the timeline about these things. Like, that’s how you get it. That big picture goal, people really have trouble following through on that. Right?

And you see it drags out for years and years and years. And so I did think that was a good thing. And then I started doing that with some of my teams where I would write out my goals every year, like personal goals, my family goals, and I would actually share them with my team. I think you said, “thanks for being vulnerable,” and that’s a little where that comes from.

Like, I would talk about wanting to spend more time with my kids or being kinder to my spouse because sometimes I would snap at her when I’m stressed out about work. And, like, you have to share that to people, and then there’s accountability. And people say, like, how do you, how are you doing?

And, you know, try to give some honest answers. But not everybody needs to do that. Right? I think, you know, for some people, that’s not the way they wanna operate, but it was healthy and good for me.

Connor: That brings me to my last follow-up question, which is as a leader now, you mentioned some of the new opportunities and experiences that joining BMT has been and WSFS. You talked about making the org a little bit more flat.

I’m sure some of the aspects of the way that you’re building trust with your immediate clients, aka your advisor base, is part of that. Can you just talk a little bit more about how you get a little bit more ingrained with the advisors? I think about, you know, the smaller shops that are working on building standardization through a couple of advisors, all the way to the massive ones that are trying to develop standardization and accountability. But I guess, more, how do you think about you mentioned flat, but what does that entail? What is the structure? How does communication work between you guys?

Managing Change

Jamie: Yeah. So, I’ll give a couple things. I think one of the first and foremost things is, as a new leader coming into an organization, which is a very different experience than, say, building up your own team over time. Right? Like, everybody bought in. They joined you. That’s easier. When you come into a large organization that’s been around a long time, Bryn Mawr Trust is 124 years old, and WSFS is, like, 192 years old.

You know, WSFS actually predates the city of Wilmington, Delaware by, like, a couple months, which is wild. Yep.

It’s different. Right? Like, we have trusts with clients that, you know, probably were around before, like, my grandparents were born, and we’ll have trusts that we’re working on, you know, long after me and my entire team are gone from this earth. Like, I’ve brought that up before. Like, we’re dealing with multigenerational wealth transfer sometimes, and so there is a long game mindset that comes along with all of that. But I think coming in, one of the things I really wanted to elicit from my stance was, like, following through on the things I said I was going to do. Like, I think that’s the most important thing.

And doesn’t mean that everybody likes all the things that I said we want to go do. Right? Because it is a lot of, it’s change. It’s different.

And, you know, change is not so bad from, like, where you get to the end point. It’s that middle part. Like, that’s what people really struggle with. It’s not when you get to the changes done and you’re there. People tend to be fine. It’s, you get told they’re doing a change, and then there’s this change management intermediate process, and that’s really, really challenging for people.

And part of my goal was to kind of bring us under one team and one mission and one vision here, and that did require, you know, probably more change than most people were probably looking for from, like, a new leader.

But I think sticking to what I said we were going to change and develop is important. Right? Even when some teams might say, “Hey. We don’t really agree with that, or we don’t like that, or we don’t want to change.”

You know? But this is the vision, and we’re going here. And, you know? But it’s also recognizing at certain points, like, I want the team to make the decision and not me.

So, when we’ve done a couple of our really big hires and decisions, I wouldn’t say it’s, like, fully democratic process, but, you know, pretty close to it. Right? I actually had somebody complain in one of the interviews that they got to know the team more than they got to know me. And I was like, but that wasn’t a flaw. Like, that was a design feature of this. Like, I wanted you to get to know the team because they’re the ones that need to pick you. Like, it’s not just people that like Jamie that are going to work here. Like, you’ve got to work with all of them more than you have to work with me.

And, like, it was kind of funny because it was a complaint about the process, but then I was like, but, like, if you didn’t like that, then you shouldn’t be here because, like, I want you to know the team, and they’re making the decision here. And, you know, we really did run those as votes, and, you know, we kind of went with majority vote. Now, I did always preface people, if I think we made the completely wrong decision, I will step in, but they don’t.

Right? Like, they’re great, and we have a great team. So, I haven’t had to do that since I’ve been here. And, you know, I think people want to feel heard and have a voice even if it doesn’t always go their way.

They know that they got to sit at the table, and I think that’s what appeals to kind of being here is we’re, what I say, is we’re big enough to matter but small enough to still care. So, we’re not a 20,000-person entity where you can’t have a seat at the table. Right? But we’re, you know, we’re big enough that, you know, what we do has scale and impact, and I think that’s appealing to people, kind of, in the size we are.

And I also came in with a big vision. Like, I wanted to double this business in three years here, and that’s not easy to do, especially for a company that’s been around 120-plus years. You know, it took us 120-some years to get to the size we are. And then when you say, like, double that in three years, sometimes people are like, oh, well, that’s, you know, you just you can double in three years. It’s like a 24 percent CAGR or whatever it is. We’ll get you there.

But I’m like, but if you phrase it the other way, like, it took us 123 years to get here, and then you wanna do the same amount in three years. Like, people then grasp how hard, but that’s our big goal, and I think everybody rallies around that.

Right? Like, whether we hit it or not, it gives us a rallying point, and people appreciate that. Right? Like, it’s a big thing that when you’re doing something daily, like, you can be like, well, there’s a reason we’re doing this because, like, we’re going to the top there, and it’s not going to be easy.

And it means we’re going to have to make hard calls and do great service to our clients. I think that’s you know, without that, we will never get there. And it gives a rallying point for people to kind of get behind as a company.

Connor: Can you just tell us a little bit more about the FinServ Foundation, its mission, and why you’re so passionate about helping the next gen?

Coaching, Mentoring, and Building Industry Awareness

Jamie: Yeah. So FinServ Foundation, as you kicked off, you know, I’ve been involved with that since the start, and I am incredibly passionate about it. You know, I think I have my thoughts, but I don’t know if it’s a hundred percent buttoned up.

I think a big reason for me was when I look at people entering this profession in general, it’s been really hard for people who don’t have natural, wealthy networks to succeed and stay in the business. So, for you know, non-white, non-male individuals, it’s been a challenge, and that’s why we have a very, right, kind of similar-looking advisory force. It’s nothing wrong with that group. It’s just, it’s been very hard for other people to be successful, but it’s not a negative for that one. Like, it’s just we actually need more people to stay in the business and more people to be successful.

And, you know, I think part of that is, you know, when we looked at research around this—because I was an academic and two other academics helped me start this—was we looked at what helps people be successful in other professions. We found three core things across the board. Right? Mentorship, which makes sense. Right? Most of us, when we’re successful and I’ve had this conversation so many times, and most people just say I got lucky. Like, I got a great mentor, and I got lucky. Well, we can’t just rely on luck forever, right, to change an industry.

Coaching. Now, coaching sometimes comes in companies, and you can hire coaches. But for early advisors, they tend not to get a lot of that. So that’s kind of like later on, once you’ve been successful. So, we don’t have a lot of coaching kind of development related stuff to young advisors anymore.

And then the third one was access. That really gets back to the first one that the access research is mostly access to your natural, wealthy network breeds a lot of success in life. Again, right, like, use that, be happy about it. Sometimes I have to talk up young advisors not to steer away from that because they actually feel, like, shame that they’re just, like, going to lean into their family and their network.

And it’s like, no, you absolutely should. Like, leverage that as much as you can. That’s a blessing, not a curse.

But we tackled access in getting students out to conferences, getting them connected to companies, getting internships.

You know, sometimes it’s just exposure. Like, Dr. Daniel Crosby is coming to talk to the FinServ group in a couple weeks and doing a Q&A with them. And I’m like, that’s so cool to be like a 21-year-old and get to pop on a meeting and ask Daniel Crosby questions about, right, the industry. That didn’t exist when I was coming into this industry.

I didn’t get a mentor. I got lucky. There’s a great individual, Jim Meehan, that was my first mentor. But I went and asked him, very specifically, like, will you be my mentor?

And he said yes, and that was dumb luck. Right? Like, there was no real reason that he said yes other than luck. And that really helped keep me in this industry and keep me moving and open up doors. And I wanna provide that for others, and I want us to be able to fill in this gap that we’re going to have around advice because I really do think as more and more technology, like, I think gives people the access to advice. They’re going to search for more human-based advisors en masse. We don’t have enough today. Right? But we do have an advisor shortage. You know, every company you talk to is saying, how do I find more good young talent?

One of the challenges, and I’ve talked about this on other podcasts, because I’ve seen some of the back-end conversations.

The challenge with this in our industry today, though, is advisors are so heavily compensated off their clientele. It’s really hard to bring in other advisors without taking kind of a haircut to the advisory firm’s P&L, their earnings, whatever it is at the start. It’s a long-term investment.

In some other industries, you need bodies. You need them right away, so you continue to churn people in. Like, legal world where I came from, like, most law firms need young associates to come in, do grunt work day one, so they can continue to grow. They don’t view it as taking this, like, P&L hit. It actually allows them to bill more hours.

The advisory world, most people view it more as, like, that’s an expense, and it’s going to pool unless I just do the eat what you kill model. And then what we see there is, you know, 80 percent of them burn out within five years. Yeah.

So that has been a challenge for our industry to develop this. I also would say talking to college kids, they do not view this as a cool profession. Right? Like, we are not cool.

Fintech might be cool. Right? Like, they’re interested in that. They’re interested in hedge funds, maybe alts.

They’re interested in wealth building now for sure, but, like, financial advice feels not like the cool industry. So, nobody goes to college unless your dad or mom was a financial advisor and says, I want to be a financial advisor. They kind of stumble into it because they take one personal finance class and realize, wow—this is actually super cool.

I get to, like, talk to people and help them realize their dreams, and then they become interested in it. So, it’s just a different way into the industry. We still have lots of career changers that enter this industry, you know, which is different than some other professions like, you know, attorneys. It’s not a lot of career changers.

People go to law school, become an attorney. They go through the process, and it’s, like, very regimented. Our industry, you can kind of come in, teachers come in. They’ve been very successful.

I mentioned CPAs, attorneys, bankers, all across the board you’ve seen. And, you know, there’s less barriers to entry to some degree, too. Right? You take, like, one licensing test, and you’re up and running 30 days later.

So, it’s very different than some other professions. But to me, there’s a huge opportunity out there. It’s why we started FinServ. So, we work with about 42 different colleges and universities with financial planning programs, most of them CFP® programs.

And we work, we provide fellowships. So it’s a two-year fellowship to about 200 students a year now. We’re really, kind of, like, almost entirely volunteer organization. Every board member, myself, we’re all volunteers. We don’t get paid. We did just hire an executive director who went through the fellowship program, which was super cool.

Although I’ve taken some flack by it, interestingly enough. I didn’t know that I would, but she’s amazing. She’s going to be a rock star and leader in this industry long after I’m gone. But I think some people just expected us to get more of, like, a retired person who had been in the industry for a long time.

But to me, my goal has always been to have FinServ eventually entirely run by people who went through the fellowship program. So we’ve passed 700 students now, and that have come through the fellowship program. eMoney has been a sponsor and helped get students out to conferences like FPA gathering. And, you know, great partnership and the, you also have the eMoney Summit, bringing students there too, and that’s what we need.

We need companies to raise their hand and say, you know, help give these students a leg up. I think as long as you can take the long-term view.

Right, like this is what we need to do to protect this profession and grow it, doesn’t mean you need to take it all on yourself, and there’s other great organizations doing work out there too. We can’t solve it with one organization. You know, we have great like, almost 300 volunteer mentors now across the industry that have given back time, and it’s phenomenal. But that’s what it takes to move this forward.

It’s a lot of me asking and getting told no, too, so that’s, you know, by, like sales side. Right? It definitely gets, at work here, trying to raise money for the organization.

But, it’s really meaningful when places step up and individuals. I mean, we get a bit of both.

Connor: Yeah. And it was, as you mentioned, eMoney’s first year of sponsoring the FinServ Foundation, and we were, I guess, I’m happy that we were able to give you a yes amidst all of the Nos that you’re getting. And honestly, at the end of the day, both of us, our primary clients are advisors. So the more of them that we can get into the field, the better our lives will be.

But as far as the firms that, whatever size that are looking to invest in longer-term growth, as you talked about it, how do you get better connected with the Foundation? How do you come across students as they’re thinking about, expanding?

Jamie: I think the best thing that smaller firms have done is sign up to be a mentor. And that’s what I tell people when they reach out first, say, how do I get involved? I say, sign up to be a mentor. It does a lot of great things.

One, it kind of gives you a pure giveback moment. Like, you’re going to help some 20-, 21-year-old figure out a better pathway forward. And sometimes it’s really easy things. I’ve had some great people say, well, I don’t, I don’t know if I have anything to tell them.

I’m like, they’re 20. You have 10 million things to tell them. Like, you know, they don’t, you know, they don’t know how to do, like, book flights. A lot of times, we take people to conferences. The first flight they’ve ever been on in their life.

So, when you think you don’t have anything to tell people, like, there’s a lot of stuff. Right? Really basic things, how to interview, how to dress, how to show up. They don’t know the difference between a brokerage firm and an RIA.

Like, those things, even when they’re in financial planning programs, that doesn’t resonate with them yet. So, there are so many ways to help them. And sometimes it’s as simple as telling them things not to do. Right?

Like, showing up to an interview in, like, a hoodie with a camera, like, you know, and, like, their friends are playing video games in the background. Like, we’ve seen all those things, and it’s really impactful. But that’s really step one. I think as you, if you’re a bigger firm or wanna give back monetarily, that’s kind of the next step.

And so we’ve structured all types of partnerships. But I think the mentor one’s just powerful because we’ve had so many mentors, right, continue five-year-plus relationships. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it wraps up at the end of the six-month structured program.

And we also have people hire people out of that. Like, when you really connect with somebody, like, all of a sudden, you’re like, wow. Like, that’s who I want to hire. So then they bring them in as an intern, then they hire them on later, and it all starts like a mentorship’s kind of a longer interview process to some degree, and we tell all the students that too, the fellows that, like, even if it’s not your first job, might be your second job.

Right? Like, when you have three years of experience, they might call back up and say, Hey. I really need an advisor, and I’ve had this relationship with you for three years. I’d love to have you here.

And I think that’s a huge benefit of this is building those lifelong connections between our FinServ fellows and the leaders out there in this industry.

Connor: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more, and I think we partnered very well as far as our similar goals and mission through our University Program and our certification program. So, I look forward to the continued partnership with the Foundation.

Sasha: I do want to ask you more about this quote that you had quite a bit ago, about saying what drives you is that you found the “why that makes you cry.”

As a born and bred financial counselor, I think that it’s important for us to talk about, but I just want you to explain the phrase to our listeners, and has this mindset evolved for you over time? And is it just really that simple that this is the “why that makes you cry” is what drives you?

The Value of Finding Your Why

Jamie: Yeah. And that, you know, really is a Simon Sinek, you know, start with why.

But, like, the why makes you cry part is, like, it should be emotional. Right? Like, I think that’s the point of that one that, like, when I think about my why, it goes back to my mom. It goes back to the loss of my dad.

It goes back to that, you know, really painful moment as a kid realizing that, like, things aren’t okay, and that drives me. And what I tell people is, like, you know, while I might not like AI, I might not like the future of financial planning, I might not like whatever some education program becomes. I’m actually never going to stop caring about my mom. So that one, right, is like a core.

It’s that well you can go back to when you feel tired. You ask yourself, Why do I do this? Like, why am I up late on a Saturday writing an article about financial planning in the NextGen? Well, it’s easy because I need them to be there for the next person, like my mom, who lost their spouse with, you know, five kids, that wasn’t college educated, needs advice, needs an estate plan, needs life insurance, needs health care.

And if we don’t do this, like, nobody else is going to do it for us. Right? So, we are all—everybody listening to this and all of you—we are all the people who are going to move that forward collectively together, but we need to do it. And to me, that drives me, and it gets me emotional.

And I think if you can find that, like, you can do more than somebody who doesn’t have that. Right? Like, it doesn’t mean everybody needs that. Some people like having a job and getting paid and going home and, like, spending time not working.

For me, like, my job is very much tied to an impact I wanna have out there in the world, and it’s why I do what I do. And it’s why, like, I will take on additional things and volunteer and build up nonprofits and go get told no a hundred times, right, Connor, to find funds to get college students to conferences and mentors because it matters to me.

Sasha: I appreciate your candor, especially about your mom. I think that a lot of people have to find that “why.”

And for me, I found that why early on.

I had a really good friend pass away at the age of 20 from cancer. And so, for me, her life quote was “live your legacy,” and so I have always carried that with me and hope that others can also find their why and continue to make this profession as good as it can be.

Jamie: So, I love that one. It’s wonderful too. Yeah.

Yeah. Live your legacy. Reminds me of Tyrone Ross always says, “legacy over resume,” and I love that one too.

Sasha: I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one. That’s a good one. Thank you.

Connor: That is a good one.

And I guess just to wrap this up, Jamie, we ask all of our guests one final question, which is, How would you define the heart of advice as it comes to financial planning?

Jamie: Yeah. How would I define the heart of advice? It’s a good one.

I think I’ll go back to that I think the heart of advice means, you know, while I’m not going to use just the why one, but I think it means truly caring about somebody else’s outcome.

And it gets back to, we are a service industry. Like, we’re here to serve others, and that’s very noble. We’re not just here to make products and sell things. We’re here to service other people.

I’ll use an analogy to one time somebody used, I thought it was kind of funny. It’s the one that came to my mind now, although there’s there are there are more emotional ones. But somebody said being an advisor is very much like being a caddy. It’s all about making other people’s dreams come true.

Right? Like, it’s not you taking the shot for somebody. It’s helping somebody else be better at that. And I thought that, like, resonates a lot.

Also, advisors love golf, so it’s always like a good one there. Not everyone. I don’t play golf. I’m not a big golf fan, but, you know, I really do think it comes back to that.

Right? Like, truly caring about your clients.

And so, you know, you see that where I mean, advisors get invited to funerals and weddings and kids’ graduations, and there was a the late night with John Oliver made fun of that years ago. If you’ve never watched that clip, I always suggest advisors to watch it because it’s how the world views the advisory world. But they make a joke about this video of advisors going to weddings and everything. And I was like, it was so funny because, like, John Oliver clearly didn’t talk to a single advisor because every single advisor I’ve ever known has been invited to weddings, kids’ graduations. Right? Like, you actually, if you care, you become part of that extended family because you were there for them in the toughest moments of their lives.

When somebody passes away, when they lose a job, when they retire and try to figure out what they’re doing next, which can be both a scary and amazing moment.

And that’s where advisors really shine in those tough moments. So when the market loses 30 percent during COVID, it drops down over a course of two weeks, you can call somebody and they’re telling you it’s going to be okay, and here’s what we’re going to do to watch out for it. And to truly care in those moments, I think, is what’s noble about this profession. And it lets people sleep at night, and it lets them move forward. And, you know, that’s why what we do is very special.

Connor: It is extremely special.

And, Jamie, I just want to say thank you, number one. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing your Spider-Man origin story with us. And I’m maybe most appreciative at this point that you, that it led you to an eMoney client, and that your role at BMT and WSFS have gotten us a little bit closer and at FinServ Foundation at this point. So, again, thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your expertise, and I appreciate it.

Jamie: Yeah. Well, thank you both. And, yeah, love being an eMoney client. Have been eMoney client multiple times now, actually, but continue to love being an eMoney client and getting to work with you all. And, yeah, you built eMoney built a great tool to allow advisors to care, right, and be able to demonstrate that value for clients out there. So it’s a great thing that is for this industry.

Sasha: Well, Jamie, again, just wanted to tell you thank you. Thank you for sharing your heart on the heart of advice today.

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