Fast-track Your Move to Growth

Shawnette Gauer: The RIA industry has changed significantly over the last three decades or so. We know that what got firms to a certain point in their business today isn't what's going to take them into the future, and so Schwab Advisor ProDirect is designed to help firms jump the curve in terms of growth, efficiency, enterprise value, and really work with them to achieve those goals.

Schwab Advisor ProDirect is really differentiated in this industry because of the decades of experience that Schwab has supporting 15,000 advisors on our platform. We have taken the decades of experience that we have, what advisors want, what advisors need, and packaged it together in a fee-based membership program, that's a high-touch model, providing the dedicated guidance and support to help firms reach the goals that are important to them.

It's designed for those that have smaller staff but really want to figure out, "How do I run my business in an operationally efficient way so that I can free up capacity to work on growth?"

And I like to use the analogy of hiring a personal trainer. When we hire a personal trainer, we get that accountability, we get someone that's going to show us how to get results faster. The trainer's the one knocking at their door at 5:00 AM saying, "Hey, let's get after it," and really help them drive success in a more quick and results-oriented way.

If we look at our benchmarking study—which we've conducted for the last 20 years—in our benchmarking study, we know that there are five ingredients that are incorporated into firms that are what we call Top Performing Firms. So, a top-performing firm, according to the Schwab benchmarking study are these firms that incorporate the five guiding principles. Once firms actually incorporate and execute and adopt these principles into their business, the results are impressive. We know that over a five-year period, Top Performing Firms have two times the assets under management, they have two times the revenue, and they have 2.7 times the client growth over that five-year period over firms that are not considered Top Performing Firms.

Schwab really is focused on empowering advisors and Schwab Advisor ProDirect is another way that we innovate to support advisors, providing the tools, providing the resources, providing the ingredients that they can implement in their business to help them reach their goals of growth.

JP Musgrove: I love community. Community is ... It's everything. I think when you take a look at our lives in general, community is such a central part to what we do. Once you connect into a community where you have fit and belonging, life just unlocks itself.

Schwab Advisor ProDirect is first and foremost a fee-based program, but it is one that helps advisors to accelerate their growth. So when you have a moment and an opportunity like this to foster a space where advisors feel comfortable connecting, they can share insights and ideas, but do so in an intimate way where they're able to really dive deep, I think it's game-changing for them as not only individuals and professionals but ultimately for the growth of their firm.

Oftentimes, when you're starting your own firm, there are these eleventh-hour moments where advisors have questions. They're grappling with really tough decisions, big ideas; "What's the next vision or dream that I want to accomplish?", right? To be able to have someone to pick up the phone and to call, to be able to have a sounding board to say, "Hey, I talked with you at a recent gathering, and I'd like to pick up that conversation and continue to dive deeper and go further," I feel like that's invaluable. And that ultimately is what we want to create is a space where advisors have that type of support.

We not only want to be a safe port in those storms that they may be going through at times in their careers, but we also want to be a soft landing for them as well. And we're curating a beautiful selection of resources, we're curating opportunities with forums, and really helping to facilitate key conversations where they can exchange insights and ideas that can help move their business forward.

I've talked to so many advisors, and as they are working through their growth journey and even pondering the idea of moving toward independence, I think that's one of the big questions that they ponder is, "What's next for me? How do I get there? But then once I'm there, how do I sow back into other advisors who may be taking the same journey or a similar one?" And I think that's what's special about the Schwab Advisor ProDirect community is that we will have a space where advisors will be able to experience a both-and scenario in that way. They'll be able to learn from each other, learn from what we will certainly provide with our curated gatherings, but then also have an environment where they can sow back into each other. Right?

And that's a legacy unto itself as an advisor being able to say, "As I move up the ladder, I can take the elevator back down and go bring somebody else up with me." And that's really special.

Adam Schwartz: How do I efficiently scale my business? How do I grow my business? How do I maximize my time and efficiency? How do I spend more time working with my clients and bringing on new clients? If any of those things resonate with you, if any of those things are where you want focus your business, that's the reason we exist. That's the reason we've built this offer is to help you reach your full potential as an advisor and help your clients achieve their full potential. Schwab Advisor ProDirect is a fee-based membership program that we've built for independent financial advisors that are looking to optimize their growth, operational efficiency, and have a community around them that can help them grow their business.

We've had a consulting business at Schwab for 25 years, so when we built Schwab Advisor ProDirect, we took all the learnings of some of our top managed firms, and what we consistently found that separates them from the others was efficiency of technology and operations. So we're not guessing on what works. We know what works because we've seen it proven year in and year out, and we've built those learnings into the program.

Our overarching themes center around three different buckets. One is we help advisors from a technology and operational perspective get scale so that as they grow, it doesn't inundate their business where they're challenged and struggle. Number two is we provide resources around relationship management, growth coaching and consulting to help them not hit the potholes but instead jump over them. And the third is we bring a community of other like-minded professionals, other RIAs in the community that are also focused on growth. This was really important to us. We heard this loud and clear as we built the program. We surveyed our existing 15,000 advisor client base, and one of the things we heard was, "We really want to have a community of other like-minded, growth-focused advisors that we can work with, that we can bounce ideas off." And so we've built a community foundation that's a core tenet of this offer where advisors can come together, not just get the best practices and learnings that we have but also share those concepts and ideas with other peers in different parts of the country so that they can learn and grow together. And Schwab provides that ecosystem to enable that to happen in a seamless way for the advisors.

Our goal really is to enable advisors to wake up every single morning, and the first thing they're thinking about is, "How can I spend more time on what matters to me, which is taking care of my existing clients and bringing more value to them, and then at the same time, generating more referrals and helping them grow their business?"