James Taylor: The Power of Process | Next Gen
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Welcome to the podcast. I'm excited. Are you ready to go? Welcome here. Okay, I don't know what to say. I just said that. Welcome here. Just cut that.

Welcome to Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward, Next Generation, a special series spotlighting the emerging leaders shaping the future of financial advice. Twice a month, we'll be digging into the strategies, insights, and game-changing moves that will help you take your practice to the next level. I'm your host, Allison Tucci, and today my special guest is James Taylor, or as friends call him, JT. James Taylor is a

J.T. is a managing director at Morgan Stanley, managing a team of 18 people and over $3.5 billion in assets under management. Today, we're going to be talking about his role and how you can build a team with new age impact using old school wisdom. So I'm going to jump right into it. So for advisors that are thinking about being ready to manage their own team, at what point did you know you're ready for managing your own book to manage your own team? Was it tenure, assets under management? What was the flag? Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think there's ever a good time to do it. I think it's just you have to jump in two feet in and go into it right away. So I tore down my entire practice in 2015. At the time, I was –

27 and I looked at my practice and it was not what I wanted to be. It was terrible. Why? It was more like a transactional practice, not really a planning-based practice. I focus on tax planning, financial planning, estate planning. That last year, I started really taking a deep dive and becoming an expert around that. So I was like, listen, I've been doing this wrong the whole time. Let me rebuild this and let me rebuild it into something that's going to be special.

So once I started putting pen to paper from a process perspective, I just started plugging people in from there and like, hey, I want this person to do planning. I want this person to do business development. I want this person to do servicing. So I made that conscious decision. I think it's when you're ready to really put someone else's career in your hands and take that responsibility because that's essentially what you're doing. I think that's when you make that decision. What was the process that you put down on paper to make sure that you were able to slot the people into the right spots?

Yeah, so everything. I think for us, how much we've been able to scale up while still providing that high level of service, you have to be process-oriented. I always tell our team, I think what we can get done in a day, most people can't get done in a couple weeks. And that's because every single aspect of our business has a process around it. So first, very simple from an acquisition perspective.

You know, we're kind of an old school team, I would say, where we're cold calling. That's where a lot of the new people that are on our team start building their practice. That's where, you know, I kind of grew up. But not in the traditional way. You know, like we're connecting with the people on LinkedIn. You're not getting the phone books and looking at people that are transitioning. No, no, not at all. Not at all. So we do a lot of research on the companies that we're reaching out to. We do a lot of research on the people that have been at the company, the tenure of the people at the company, and really kind of narrow those lists down.

But after we make that initial call, we're doing so many things after. We're connecting with them on LinkedIn. We're seeing the mutual connections that we have with the person. If the person's interested in getting research, we sign them up for research. So they're getting these weekly touches from us that isn't just coming from us picking up the phone and having another conversation with them or being annoying.

And then really kind of walking them through our team and who we are when we do that initial call. I think first impressions are everything. So we'll send out a calendar invite with an agenda. So right off the bat, they see this team is professional, Taylor Group, here's what we're going to be talking about. And then when we connect with them on LinkedIn, now we're putting a face to name, right? So it makes a little bit of a warmer call.

And I think that the world became a lot smaller when the pandemic happened and people started getting a lot more comfortable utilizing Zoom. So that allowed us to really expand our practice a bit. But after we do that initial call and we kind of walk everyone through what that call looks like, it's really qualifying the person, making sure that they're a good fit for our practice.

and then really opening up the entire firm to them. So we're not just talking about our team and we've gotten the rankings and the accolades and the awards. We're also talking about what we can offer from a firm perspective, whether it's family office resources, whether it's tax and estate planning, wealth management banking, and all the different perks that go with that. So right off the bat, people are really seeing that we are very much a holistic practice and we're not just focusing on the investment piece, which I think is probably the most commoditized part of what we do.

I think a lot of advisors listening might think that's an old school practice. So why would you still cold call? Why do you think that that's an important skill set for advisors to learn?

I think it is. Don't get me wrong. It is definitely an old school process for sure. But I think people are craving advice now. And at the end of the day, we talk about technology and we're big adopters of artificial intelligence, big adopters of technology. But at the end of the day, people want to work with people and talk to people. So picking up the phone and having a conversation with someone and just going kind of direct to them like, hey, here's what we do. Here's who we are.

I think is second to none. I think that's a big, big deal and a skill that has been lost in our business, which is great for us. If people aren't willing to pick up the phone and call, we are, and we are willing to talk to people. And we prospect with planning. We focus on the tax planning, the estate planning, the financial planning. So I think most people, when the traditional cold caller is much more of a transactional relationship or more talking about specific investments, where we're talking about stuff that's important to them, i.e. their family,

saving them money from a tax perspective because they have a concentrated equity position that they keep getting killed in taxes every single year. So I think that's a major differentiator is that we prospect with planning, not with like a product or investments. Let's talk about the next stage, which is engaging.

So how many meetings do you normally have before you land, quote unquote, land a client? Yeah, sure. So, you know, after we do the introductory call, so we've determined this person's a good fit for our practice, walk through the team and who we are as people.

as well. I think that's important. So we talk through our principles, right? Our principles are elite process, accountability, trust, service, integrity, and gratitude. And we kind of go through what that means to us as a team. And then we set the stage, right? So here's what it's going to look like from a process perspective.

We're going to send you an executive summary. So here's a full breakdown of exactly what we talked about today. Then we want to set up a live planning meeting. That's when we're going to actually build out your preliminary financial plan. We'll go through your net worth statement. We'll go through your goals. We'll show you how you look overall and how we would get you from point A to point B. Once we have a clear understanding of all of that, we're going to do a recommendations meeting.

And that's when we'll take a deep dive into our recommendations. We'll talk through what are we talking about on those monthly calls? Like, what are we actually covering? We'll talk about our cost, our fees, and how we get you from where you're now to working with us, at which point we're going to ask you to hire us as your wealth management advisors.

So if you're going through this process, we're going to ask you to hire us at the end. But where I think we're very different is that we're doing a lot of work up front. Okay. Right? And I think people really recognize and appreciate that where we're like we really want to understand, okay, here's all the different moving parts. And also, what are your goals? Like what are you trying to accomplish? Again, if you have, you know, $100 million, a few hundred million dollars, you know, really you're probably going to focus on the estate planning. Like what's the most important asset that a person has? Right.

It's their family. It's not their stock. It's not their $100 million portfolio. So how much estate planning have you done? How much have you focused on that? So going through some strategies around there. But I think those conversations lead to really good conversations down the road that it's all about them. What are you trying to do? What are you trying to accomplish? It's not about me.

And I think that a lot of people kind of fall into that pitfall of like, oh, well, you should be doing this. You should be putting money into it and kind of pitching investments or portfolios right off the bat. You're too concentrated where in reality it's like I know I am.

But I've done really well doing that. So everyone that's told me to get out of that has been wrong. But if you can tell me a way that I can do it where I'm keeping as much money in my pocket from taxes as possible and you're going to make sure my family is completely taken care of so now this is generational wealth, not just me, then I'm going to work with you. It's a really good fit. But those conversations can't happen unless you take that deep dive, which we do. So for an advisor who says, OK, that's great, JT. You're telling me I have to do all these meetings up front.

But it could be a giant time suck for me. It's not worth it. I don't have the time for it. I have a book. What would you say to that advisor? Yeah. I mean, you're not going to grow. And that's fine, right? I mean, there's plenty of advisors that have done, you know, extremely well, you know, continuous service their clients. And, like, that's okay. I want to continue to grow. It is a lot of work. And it is a lot of time that we put in. Now, getting back to having a process in place –

I think that streamlines it a lot more. Like we're not trying to – we're personalizing it for the client, but we're going through that process every single time across the board for every single one of our prospective clients. And then with our clients from a servicing perspective, we're doing monthly calls. We're doing quarterly reviews. We're sending out weekly commentary. So we don't lose clients. And I always kind of talk through that with advisors. I'm like –

Like, if you bring – you know, we brought in a billion dollars last year, and that's great. But if we lost assets, you've got to look at the net number always. And, like, you know, people, I think, focus too much on just the acquisition piece and not actually keeping the clients here. And I think, like, servicing is, like, the most important part. And, like, clients are asking for more. They deserve more. They want more. And if you can do it all, you know, the sky's the limit.

You're listening to Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward, Next Generation. We're going to take a short break. Stay with us. If you are a financial advisor, then you know building a retirement plan practice takes work. Capital Group can make it easier by offering a platform to help you build it. Learn more at capitalgroup.com. Capital Client Group, Inc. Welcome back to Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward, Next Generation. Let's get back into the conversation.

You mentioned your team throughout this conversation. And I'd like to dive into that a little bit more in detail. It sounds like you have different roles within your team. Can you kind of break that down? Yeah, yeah. So we have the service, right? So our client service associates are unbelievable. So they're handling everything from an onboarding perspective, day-to-day services for our individual clients. I would say they're the ones that really keep clients there, right?

We have a 24-hour rule. Like if a client emails us, we have to respond within 24 hours without fail. I love that rule. It's a really good rule and people just like to be heard from. You know, like another one of our clients when we had a dinner, it's like, you know, you guys are so responsive. When I send an email, I feel like you've been waiting for my email all day because someone's responding right away. And that's just not the case. It's just the culture that we built in. And then...

I think another thing that's a little bit different about us is every single person on the team has equity. So even our client service associates have equity in the practice. So everyone feels that ownership, right? Like, hey, like, yeah, I might be responding on a weekend. I might be responding at night. But that culture perspective is like, well, I'm an owner. I need to respond, right? This is beneficial for all of us. Like, I need to make sure I'm taking care of the clients because, like, that's our ownership. And I think that's really important just from, like—

If you are building a team, do that right off the bat. Just rip the Band-Aid off. Have everyone have equity. And that way you're just not – like everyone's looking to grow. Everyone's looking to keep the clients there. Everyone's looking to service. And there's no resentment versus one person getting a new account versus another person. Everyone's growing. Everyone wins.

I think that's important. It's alignment of interests on your team. I'm sure it breaks down potential issues that you could have had in your team and builds your point, ownership. I think that's great. So as you're looking to grow the team, how do you determine when is a good time to bring on another advisor, bring on someone additional? Is it...

Someone raising their hand and saying, I don't have the time anymore. You're pressing productivity maybe drop. What are those triggers to say, I'm ready? Yeah. So there's a lot, right? So we do three team meetings a week, and then I do individual goals meetings every month. Oh, you're busy at meetings. Very busy. Very busy. And it's funny. I know a lot of advice like, well, those are useless meetings. We're very effective with our meetings, I think. So Monday is really kind of process. Yeah.

we're always trying to update and look and stay cutting edge. So if there's new things that we can be implementing that will be beneficial for our clients, we're going to do that. And we talk about that on Monday. And the good thing about our team too is like,

I see a lot of teams that want to do certain things and then it goes into like someone proposes it and then it goes to like this crazy vote and then some people do it, some people don't do it. Our team buys in. So if we implement something, we're going to go run with it and we might run with it for a month. And if it's good and it works, we're going to keep it. If it doesn't, then we'll revisit. We'll go back to the drawing board. But yeah.

Are the teams super nimble and super willing to try new things, which I think is really important? You know, every Tuesday we do like an advanced planning meeting. So those strategies that we're talking about, like around estate planning and tax planning, the implications of each one, like what does that mean? And we try to do that from the top down. So we're very big on training and education. I think you should always

forever be a student in everything that you're doing and always just be willing to learn. And our team does and buys into that. And on Thursday, we used to do a business development meeting every Thursday. We changed that. So now we do a gratitude meeting, right? The first 30 minutes is actually gratitude, right? So we're saying, what are you grateful for this week? What happened this

this week that you're grateful for. And the first couple of times we did it, it was like, JT, this is corny. We're having conversations about family. We're having conversations about friends. We're having conversations that we normally wouldn't just have and that little meeting to hear what's going on in everyone's life, it shows your team that you care. I think that's a really big deal. And then you get some really good insight to people. It's not just about

you know, what they're doing from a business perspective. It's like who they are as a person. You know, that makes it like a lot easier and better to work with one another. Like we really kind of know everything about one another and we have each other's back. So how do you find, you know, these people to bring on your team? It sounds like you have a very distinct culture. Everyone enjoys really working together. There's a couple of things that I would say that's unique about our team.

One, we have three sets of family members on our team. So six people are related to each other in one way? Yeah. We have twin brothers, James and Hunter. They're fantastic. We have Cameron and Michaela. They're sisters. We have Shane and Kyle Drum. So Shane is ED, one of my partners, and his younger brother, Kyle, who is a VA in the Morgan Stanley program. And then my oldest friend and, you know,

High school rival and college roommate is our COO. And getting back to like ownership and culture, like we don't have those like little clicks. The advisors, I think they're really good at checking their ego at the door. I think they've done a great job of like realizing that this is a team thing.

Yeah, it's the Taylor group. But I am nothing without them. We're all truly working together to grow and build something. But it doesn't work if there's one chink in the armor at all. So everyone kind of learns and I think we show a good –

People want to be valued. We value each person on the team, and we understand how important their role is for every single team member. The business development doesn't work unless we have the financial plans. The financial planning doesn't work unless we have the servicing. We don't have that clicky drama at all, and I think it's just we genuinely like working with one another. It's fun to work with one another, and we do a lot before hiring someone.

We do a lot of due diligence. Like we've had a lot of people that have worked with us in some type of role. Like we have a robust intern program. Like we have 20 interns working throughout the year. So like we're developing people early on and they also know what they're getting into. Everyone says they can do the job. Everyone's got like, you know, sitting down an interview, I can do the job.

Yeah, you really got to think about kind of what we're doing. Like we're working like – I make it sound funny and it is like we have a great thing. But we're working eight to seven every single day. We have a lot of clients on the West Coast. We're routinely working on the weekends. And that's from the bottom to the top. That's fine. We're OK with that. Everyone is OK kind of doing that work. But everyone that says that they can, we really kind of dig deep and like –

do a lot of like not scaring people into like, hey, like just know what you're getting into. Like this is this is we're all in. We're working our butts off. We're going to have fun doing it. But like it's going to be work.

Talking to an advisor that, again, is trying to build up a practice themselves or trying to think about that, what are the first couple steps they should take? Time management. 100%. I'm very, very deliberate with our time. I think our team is very deliberate with your time. And then if you have a process in place, it also gives you – you get time back. You create time.

Like, so if I am, you know, talking to you and I'm talking to someone else and, like, those meetings are completely different, I'm going to do an intro meeting with you and then a recommendations meeting. But I'm going to do an intro meeting, then a data gathering call, and then a live planning, and then an implementation meeting. Like, so now I'm doing four meetings for you and two meetings with you. Like, that just doesn't make sense. So, like, having a process around everything is going to make you create time. Right.

So you're not wasting time on mundane tasks that are just a time suck. So I would say time management by far without a doubt is the most important thing as you're kind of building this out and you're starting. And then kind of figuring out the numbers. I came back to like if you have $50 million in assets –

And your goal is to get to $200 million, you know, then from a timing perspective, you know, 25% of your time should be, you know, used on, you know, talking to those clients. And 75% of your time should be used to go service the other or get new clients, right? Just like just simple, like very simple kind of like. You're literally making a business case. Correct. Yeah. Okay.

And as you continue to kind of grow that number out and say, okay, well, now who do I want to bring in? Because I want to make sure I retain all these people and I want to make sure. And then, you know, so from the very beginning, I'd say come in and really be deliberate. Like success isn't by accident. Like,

Sometimes there's a little bit of luck, right? Market appreciation. Yeah, exactly. Longest bull market in history. But success is also like you're deliberate. You're meaningful with how you're spending your time and you're not wasting it. So if you're someone who maybe isn't the best with time management, do you find maybe a partner that does that process work and you maybe do the other half? How do you really manage that? Yeah.

You can get better. You can get better. Yeah, no, it's one of those things. So I think that –

I think this is like the golden age to be an advisor. I think it's this golden age just to be alive. There's so much knowledge out there that you can get at your fingertips. I do Audible, right? So I'm on my commute. I wake up super early. I go to bed pretty early as well. But I'm listening to a book whenever I can. A lot of those books, like again, the self-improvement books or self-help books, all

Or you're looking at how people build a business, right? Like, you know, the Everything Store, you know, Warren Buffett, Snowball, all these names. The common theme is like, okay, time management. Or how to process around everything, you know, competitiveness. But also like what's your purpose and really finding what your purpose is. So like I think that you can learn that. Like you could be bad at anything. You could learn anything. You have YouTube. You have Audible. You have ChatGP. You have everything. Like there's knowledge at your fingertips there.

Like, shame on you if you don't utilize it. So besides Audible, ChatGPT, what would you want to leave listeners with? Give back. You know, give back. Give back as much as you can. It comes back to you tenfold. So give back your time. You know, try to help develop people. You know, I think that has served me really well. And forever be a student. You know, try to learn as much as possible. Be curious. Ask questions. I think, you know, that will serve you well. You know, you'll have purpose.

And again, it's just how the world works. Like I'm a big believer in karma. You know, you continue to give back and put other people before you. It comes back tenfold. Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah, no, it's great. Thank you for having us.

The production team for Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward Next Generation is Ellie Ismaladou, Rebecca Bisdale, Paul LeBlanc, Kinga Roy-Jacques, Joseph Lusby, and Alexis Moore. Melissa Haggerty is the executive producer. Jenna Mathis is the director of programming for Barron's Advisor Programs. Greg Bartalas is the editor-in-chief of Barron's Wealth and Asset Management Group. We'll be back soon with another episode. Thanks for listening.

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