“The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world.”

—Steve Jobs

Leaders with a growth mindset recognize the need to recruit, develop, and deploy the talent of others. Such leaders are hyper‐focused on attracting and retaining top talent. They don't just look for advisors with a big book of business. They look for talent that will grow with the firm and add good energy while doing so. The best place to start looking for leads is right in your own office.  These are the people you know and who know you.  You should always be looking for new advisors. That's the only way to have a sense of control over your own destiny and to ensure that you are not being held hostage by those who are a poor cultural fit.

Over the past 10 years I have asked managers in every channel what percentage of their advisors they would replace if they could wave a magic wand. Their answers run a range from 10 to 30 percent. No matter how you look at it, that's a lot of advisors. One of the ways I interpret those percentages is like this: those teams, departments, and firms are 10 to 30 percent less efficient and successful than they can be. My point is that you have room to build the type of culture that you envision; you just need to attract those advisors who will better serve the client and your overall strategy.

When I was a manager, I offered my team members an incentive of 2 percent of their trailing 12‐month production for anyone who made a successful introduction and was helpful with the recruitment process. Relying on your own team to help with the recruitment process can be just as important as recruiting new talent. If your existing team is not happy, however, they will not actively promote the opportunities to others. In fact, if they themselves are unsatisfied, you might be faced with retention issues. I have also recruited advisors simply by picking up the phone and introducing myself. And, in a large market this strategy could keep you busy for a long time. Utilizing an outside recruiter is also an effective strategy. I have always had a good experience working with professional recruiters. But before I engage recruiters, I build a relationship with them. I want them to know our story so they understand who would be the right fit.

Recruiting has to start with a bold vision of where you see your office, market, or firm, be it in one, five, or ten years. You need to make a declaration, a powerful statement. A longtime friend from UBS is the best example of what's possible when you create the right culture. John Decker and I were managers at UBS for many years and I consider him one of the best recruiters of all time. What's his secret? He is very competitive and likes to win. He also never becomes complacent. As CEO Andy Grove said, “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” The other secret to John's success is his ability to surround himself with talented people. He would be the first to tell you that you can't build a business without the help and cooperation of many. Finally, one of John's greatest passions is to inspire and motivate others to reach their full potential. When I first became a manager in 1990, John told me something I never forgot, and it has served me well over the years. He said, “Rick, learn to love recruiting.” John's competitiveness, his emphasis on working with the most talented people, and his drive to inspire and motivate is what makes him a top recruiter. And, as I said before, paying attention to details matters. John doesn't wing anything that's important to him. To be an effective recruiting machine you need to have a process and be organized.

The recruitment process starts with creating a deep talent pipeline and never letting it run dry. When you meet with a potential new advisor, it's just like a client discovery meeting. Once you feel the advisor may be the right fit, it's time to find out everything about him (all within appropriate human resource practices, of course). As to family, where is he with kids? Are the kids out of the house? Are they in college? Is he taking care of his parents or in‐laws? What's his passion? How does he spend his free time? I like to ask advisors, if money were no object, what would they be doing? During the conversation, I look to make a connection with something we both may be passionate about. Relationships are shared experiences after all. If you have an innate curiosity, you may learn something. Finally, I want to know what gets them out of bed every day. What are they hoping to achieve and what are their long‐term goals? Some advisors have a very clear picture what this future looks like. For others, it's a little foggy because they have never taken the time to think and plan ahead. This is a good opportunity to help them talk about their business, their goals, and the resources needed to achieve them. When all is said and done, I want to win them over, but not by over‐promising and under‐delivering. If I have one secret to being successful at attracting talent, it's the following: have a solid reputation. What does your brand say about you? You must have the tenacity to make recruiting a daily activity, and you must also surround yourself with competent people who can make the onboarding process seamless for both the advisor and the clients.

During all the recruitment and deals that I have structured over the past 25 years, one thing remains certain. Without two motivated people at the table, the deal doesn't get done. I have learned that motivation is different for each person. It's not always about money. Advisors move for different reasons, but generally there is a push and pull. I have been on both sides of negotiating a deal and I find that the better you understand your market, value, and competition, the better position you are in to negotiate. In other words, do your homework. If the advisor only wants to talk about money or the deal, this is a red flag for me. I'm not interested in attracting people who are only focused on the deal. The best advisors focus on three things when they contemplate a move. The first is serving clients well. They care about taking care of their clients before anything else. The second thing is whether the culture is right for them and their team. They are concerned with the questions: Will we be happy here? Is the management team committed to excellence? And the third thing the best advisors think about is the overall compensation.

Trying to attract top advisors is an art. The advisor is trying to get 100 percent of what he or she wants and we know most of the time it's not possible. Therefore, help advisors prioritize what's most important to them. How flexible are they? Helping them be clear about their top priorities is the foundation not only to negotiating but to determining if it's the right fit for both of you. Negotiating is a highly emotional process and some advisors deal with it better than others. It's your job to help them discover what's truly important to them and to sit on the same side of the table with them. Building trust, therefore, is the number one priority when recruiting and negotiating. During this process nothing kills trust faster than breaking your promise or commitments. I consider a broken commitment as simple as being late for an appointment or promising to mail something and forgetting to do so. Again, most people are not disciplined and organized enough to keep their commitments. Therefore, if you want to stand out, pay attention to the details, follow through, and keep your word.

The biggest turnoff for the hiring manager or the advisor is rigidity. No one wants to deal with Dr. No, the person who has no flexibility and is stubborn. That's not to say that saying no doesn't ever happen or is inappropriate (be just as cautious of the person who only says yes). If the answer is “no,” how are you saying it? Again, your emotional intelligence goes a long way in these situations. I once worked with a compliance manager who loved to say no. She just enjoyed the reaction, and she liked that power. I never like saying no because I tend to be a people pleaser. Therefore, if I must say no, I try to show a great deal of empathy.

One mistake I see in recruiting is making comparisons between your firm and another. Often people mistakenly compare apples to oranges. Whether you're working at an independent firm, wirehouse, bank trust, or RIA, every firm within each channel is different. Advisors sometimes make assumptions based on channel alone about what your firm offers in terms of technology, platform, support, culture, total compensation, and payout. It's vital that you are honest about everything. Make sure the details are spelled out clearly and correctly so there are no surprises down the road.

Hiring Does Not Equal Recruiting

Recruiting and hiring are two different skills. If hiring is like driving a car, recruiting is like racing in a Formula One car. To put it another way, when you're hiring, you're the buyer. When you're recruiting, you're the seller. Recruiting top talent takes a lot of skill and hard work. These people often have a large book of business as well as many options and they know it.

Consider this:

• Look at the quality of the book and the character of the person.
• Look at the last three years' track record of net new assets. Is the business growing?
• Look for people who genuinely like people: never forget we are in the relationship business. Once again, culture matters.
• Look for nice people. It's an inherent quality and it's as critical in our relationship business as any hard skill, perhaps more so because it cannot be taught. “Nice” to me means putting clients' interests first and treating everyone with respect.
• Take the Thanksgiving test. Would you ask this person over for Thanksgiving?

Just as important as what you do want out of the recruiting process is what you don't want. Do not recruit a book—recruit the person. I promise this does not reduce your recruiting success. I'm just thinking of my mistakes of recruiting the wrong people and what I've learned along the way about the best tactics to recruit the right people. Who joins your team affects retention and your environment. Do not hire people who would rather sit in front of a computer screen all day than network with people. The future will place more value on soft skills and relationships. And don't hire people who are happy just being employees. Hire people who have an ownership mindset. One of the best indicators of future success of a new advisor coming into the business is any entrepreneurial experience in college or later in life. Someone with strong relationship‐building abilities and business acumen.

Leaders with a growth mindset spend a lot of time looking outward. They pay attention to their competition. They pay attention to business, economic, technological, and social trends. They pay attention to the world and they make a concentrated effort to experience the world through a variety of viewpoints. The more curiosity you have the more engaged and enjoyable the journey.

In Chapter 7, I discussed self‐awareness. I asserted that great leadership starts with self‐awareness. Self‐awareness is not about navel‐gazing. It is the starting point from which a leader acquires the tools with which to look outward.

All great leaders know this.  Yet, not all organizations do this. My services are often used when organizations, large or small, seek to look outside of their own walls. They want to gauge their own sense of performance and find ways in which they can improve the client experience and thus their business results. Virtually all of their existing measurements are internal. As a result, they have no idea how they are doing relative to their competition.

Ask yourself:

• How is my firm doing relative to the competition?
• What are my main competitors doing in this market that's working? Should we be doing that as well?
• What are my main competitors doing in this market that's not working? Let's not do that!

Always keep an eye—better yet, both eyes—on your competition. Don't get complacent when you're doing well. Make it a habit to constantly evaluate what your competition is doing. You will learn from their successes. You will learn even more from their failures.

Spend the Time and Take Your Time

Everyone you recruit must be aligned with the vision, culture, and strategy of your organization—this goes for your receptionists and assistants as much as for your team leaders and managing directors. Recruit people who fit into the world‐class service model that defines your brand.

While great leaders focus on recruitment, average managers don't spend nearly enough time identifying the right people who can help them grow the business. Not investing the necessary time and resources in recruitment is the single biggest mistake I see firms commit. Others include:

• Being too focused on selling the firm to the recruit versus selling yourself, how can you add value? What makes you different from other managers?
• Trying to do it all by yourself. Bring in and showcase your team.
• Not really listening to what's important to the recruit. Don't make assumptions. Is this person a good fit with your existing firm and team?

Addressing all of these mistakes is quite simple—it just takes time. I challenge you to spend considerably more time sourcing and identifying people who have the ability to adapt to the culture you have worked so hard to build.

“First get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats, and then they can figure out where to drive it.”

—Jim Collins, Good to Great

Always give the advisor the full story: the good, the bad, and possibly the ugly. Ask open‐ended questions and then zip it up. Listen carefully. Listen as well for what's not being said. I always like to start from the beginning with, “Tell me about yourself: Where did you grow up?,” and inevitably, “What's important to you over the next five years?” and “In managing your practice, what's your process and what's your investment philosophy?” I ask the question and then give my undivided attention to listen to the advisor's response.

You need to have a well‐defined process. One of the biggest mistakes I see all the time is not recruiting from within your own office first. That's from where all subsequent introductions come. Retention is just as important as recruitment. As a manager, I knew if I could keep everyone happy that I would be successful.

I always emphasize the word partners. Being a good partner means we both have to keep our end of the promise, our commitments. If I am a good partner as the leader/manager, I'm going to create a great working environment, and if I can't do that, I become a poor partner. Advisors are smart, and they are also street smart and have a nose to sniff out when they are getting the short end of the stick. Ultimately, a good partnership has trust and collaboration. The manager goes to bat for the advisor, and most of the time it's not to help the advisor but to help the client.

Recruitment Is Just the Beginning

Once you have your talented people on board, you must continually add value, because that's the only way you can increase the probability that your attrition rate will be satisfactory. Adding value means different things to different people. Value for someone in the business for less than five years may be different than for someone in the business for 25 years. One size will not always fit all. Focus on what you can control in terms of the environment you're creating. Most people will appreciate that you made the effort. Remember: recruiting is a contact sport.