Charting New Waters: The Journey of Rebranding with Jorge Padilla

Charlie Van Derven: 0:16

You're listening to RIA Collective with your host Charlie Van Derven, a podcast designed to help financial professionals remove the fear and anxiety around going independent. Let's go. Thank you for tuning into another episode of RIA Collective. I'm your host Charlie Van Derven here all the time, but I always have a new guest. Today. I've got an awesome guest. Jorge Padilla is with Meira wealth in Miami. Jorge, thanks for joining me. This is a pleasure to have you on the show. I appreciate you taking some time out of your day.

Jorge Padilla: 0:51

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Charlie Van Derven: 0:53

Awesome. Here's what's interesting and here's what we're going to dive into today. I like to try and bring something a little bit different to each show. And then, of course, we're going to wrap up talking about the things that Jorge did great so you can learn from his experiences rather than maybe making mistakes that he made. Jorge, we'll find out about that a little bit later. So when Jorge and I were getting to know each other, I noticed on his LinkedIn, Meira Wealth used to be called the Lubitz Financial Group. Now, everyone that leaves a warehouse or joins the industry, Jorge, of course, they got to build a brand. So I thought, what better way to go with our conversation than talk about that rebrand that you guys went through? Because that's heavy know lyn's a lot of work. Yeah, Lynn built that firm for a long time, and then to make that transition to Meira Wealth. But I want to unpack that a little bit because I think as people exit those captive environments and have to think about their brand, you could bring a lot of intelligence around that topic for them.

Jorge Padilla: 1:53

Yeah, we'll do my best to unpack almost a year worth of process. I'm still searching from a professional way that came with it. But for us, the rebranding conversation, we had explored that in prior years when were in conversations with maybe some firms to potentially merge or maybe even just be thinking about growth. But we took the opportunity of using the pandemic period, where everybody was rethinking their lifestyle, who they want to work with, who they want to spend time with, where they want to live, work, what's going to be everything looking like after all that difficult period. And we had already gone through quite a bit of restructuring internally through the pandemic, working remotely all the time, virtually. We kind of had a big change in teams and technology and all that. And as were planning for future strategic work and growth and what our plans would be, we brought up again the conversation of rebranding. Because the reality of it was that the founder of the firm, Linda Lubitz Boone was continuing the transition of delegating some of the business administrative things or the kind of the management things. Also working less and less with clients. So the growth engine of the firm wasn't going to be necessarily her. It was going to be other advisors in the firm that are right now with us or future hires that we have. So we kind of ask ourselves, maybe we take this as an opportunity to rebrand and then begin to know ourselves. Not by the founder's name that will no longer be driving the growth of the firm, definitely not. She will still be part of it. Because obviously after two, three decades, there is a lot of relationships built and trust in the community, but it's just sending the message of we are in a team based environment. Here in the firm is not just one individual and one professional working with clients. And we wanted to communicate that very clearly for every new client and also for existing clients, that it's not just one person that runs the show, it's a team that is running the show as a group that we try to deliver a consistent service experience to clients and advice experience to clients. So it was, I would say six, nine months long process and defining how do we want to know ourselves as working with an agency that helped us thinking about all the corporate and brand image and what should it feel look like, and searching for names, et cetera. So it was fun, it was challenging, but I think the outcome was pretty good.

Charlie Van Derven: 5:12

Get your creative juices flowing a little bit.

Jorge Padilla: 5:14

Yeah, right. Exactly.

Charlie Van Derven: 5:17

A couple of questions I want to base. First off, I want to ask you about the name and then I want to talk about communicating that change with Linda's clients.

Jorge Padilla: 5:27

Very important.

Charlie Van Derven: 5:28

Now, you grew up with this firm, right? You came in 2007, 2008. So your financial services career has been with Lubitz Meira. So all of your clients had to go through this transition. So let's table that for a second. Let's learn about the name first. Meira is an interesting name, Meira Wealth. How did you guys come up with that? Was that looking at Mission? You talked about lifestyle.

Jorge Padilla: 5:51

Yeah. So we definitely wanted to have a name that would be something unique, that would catch up people's attention that we're different. We're not the typical financial services firm that you're going to find out there. So we wanted to find something that resonated with us in the sense of what is it that we do for clients and how do we want to be known as? And we then started to venture outside of the English language to find words that we have richer meaning behind them. So we arrived at the word Meira because it truly resonated with us, the meaning behind it. It's a Hebrew name and it's actually a feminine version of a name, which is to honor the fact that the company was founded by a woman. And we want to embrace, and we do embrace diversity in our team. We'll continue to do so. And the meaning is someone who brings or light to others or illuminates others. So in a way, when we work with clients and we really getting to know them beyond just the money piece of the equation, we are illuminating them and helping them bring light to difficult things that are going on through their lives, through the work that we do. So it truly resonated with us. In that sense, then, we also wanted to find a corporate image or logo that would resonate. And that was another whole process of finding something that truly encapsulated what is that we do that goes beyond just investing money. So we arise at this concept of ikigai, which is a Japanese word that is defined as the intersection of your passion, what you're really good at, and what also you can make a living out of or derive money from. So we want to work with people in our firm that are truly passionate about what they do, working with clients, and they're really good at. And when we align those things, we believe you can make a pretty good living doing so as well. So that's kind of the logo of our firm comes from that ikigai kind of diagram concept.

Charlie Van Derven: 8:27

That's a really cool story here's. What I love about something like that is gosh, we've been through the traction exercise. I don't know if you guys we.

Jorge Padilla: 8:37

Have embraced the traction framework in our business.

Charlie Van Derven: 8:40

Gino wickman is awesome, right? But it really makes you really focus on what your purpose? What what an awesome I mean, come in, join the Lubitz financial group. I'm sure the environment was great, but what an awesome exercise for a team to go through together so that you all rally around Central Mission, how good that's got to be for the firm, but also how good that's got to be for the clients. Which leads me to what we know was I talking about just a second ago, is how do you communicate that? What did that communication plan look like? How did you reach out to clients and talk about that change? There wasn't any weirdness or fear or anything else.

Jorge Padilla: 9:20

Yeah, definitely very important. It took us months to go through that. We first decided that we wanted Linda as the founder of the firm and pretty much the face of the firm for many years, to reach out to the majority of the clients personally before went open or public with it, to explain personally what the rebranding was about, that there was no change of ownership going on. I was already a partner, a principal in the firm for some years. One of the good things is the majority of the clients that we work with have been with us for many years, if not decades. And we work with about 100 and 6170 families or individuals, so it's not a large number. So they ultimately get to know what's going on in the firm, and they know that Linda is getting up to the retirement age or retirement transition. So many times they've asked that question personally, and it's just another opportunity to communicate what the plan is for continuity of the firm, to say, I'm putting things in place for years now where I'm stepping back, this is part of that process. The rebranding conversation is part of that transition. There's not going to be a change in who owns the firm. There is still the intent of transitioning the firm internally from a succession point of view. There's still the intent of having advisory teams work with clients. So it's not just one individual working with a client that if the professional leaves the firm, then the client may leave or the client may feel like they don't have somebody else to work with, that they trust or know, love it. And so having that conversation beforehand really started to pave the way of getting feedback as well on anything that we may consider differently when we are communicated publicly. So obviously it's time consuming, but I think that was really valuable to gain feedback, to then incorporate in the public outreach, if you will, of communicating this. So probably she must have had 30, 40, 50 of those conversations and then started having the emails or the news. And we mail newsletter like little snaggle mail. So we did one of those where it was all about the rebranding. So nowadays when you get something in the mail, it may stick out a little bit more if it's just an email, sometimes you may not even read it. So then that helped a little bit. But yeah, it was a process that took months to go through and to communicate. And clients for a while still kind of not sure about the name. And every client meeting. We try to be a little bit more purposeful in reaching out to clients, to have meetings when all this came out, so that we could explain and answer any questions or go through any concerns that they may have. That there is nothing really we have not sold to a different company which some clients that didn't read through things had the perception that actually happened. So then having the opportunity to have a conversation is super helpful to explain, no, that we didn't sell. We actually do, in fact, continue to have an internal transition. And this makes the foundation even better to grow from, because if we want to attract other advisors to the firm, we feel it's just going to be a lot more attractive and purposeful if it's a brand instead of a person's name.

Charlie Van Derven: 13:35

I love two things that I heard in there, if I can boil all that down, things right. Number one, it's about the team. It's not only about Linda, right, and positioned correctly or me.

Jorge Padilla: 13:51

Right. I may be the primary person that is in the succession of taking over the business, but it's not just me, there are other advisors in the firm, and we do plan to bring in other advisors as we grow.

Charlie Van Derven: 14:04

Yeah, but it's almost about conveying that adds confidence to the client instead of focusing on this principal person who they all know is getting ready to retire. It's about the support that's provided there. So that's great. And then it sounds like you got some good client feedback, which also makes them part of the I think for those on YouTube, you got a great coffee.

Jorge Padilla: 14:32

There you go.

Charlie Van Derven: 14:33

That's great. I love it. So actually, I got to find some of those with the social advisors or RIA Collective. Those are cool looking, but it's also involving them in the process gives them a little bit of ownership over that transition too.

Jorge Padilla: 14:49

Yeah, I think the communication aspect of things, when you have transitions like that or changes like that is so important. And the more you can gain feedback from clients, especially I mean, you cannot get feedback from every single client. But hey, if you reach out to your top 30 top 40 clients, top 50 clients, it just makes a big difference because you're going to get insights. We did get insights, especially from clients that have been in marketing or have been in business that were super helpful.

Charlie Van Derven: 15:22

I'm sure. Yeah. I'd have thrown my two cent worth in there if I'd have met you before the rebrand, you can only take so much, but certainly you did two things well. Whether that was by accident or on purpose, it sounds like two really good things came out of it. Your key clients had an opportunity to weigh in, so they felt like they were part of that process and the display of the team just adding the confidence. Kudos, man, that's awesome. Thank you. I don't mean jorge, tell me, getting to know you a little bit like you embody what Meira stands for, your team. I love that. Do you feel like because of the concerted effort to change the name and really bring mission to the forefront both internally and with clients, do you feel like that you guys sensed that change in 2021? Do you feel like you have a different approach to the business? I mean, did it really change the way you do business and the way with clients?

Jorge Padilla: 16:27

To some extent, the work that we do and the purpose behind it and our goal with working with clients has not changed. That is something that they care for the clients. And one of our core values is and has been for years. And when went through all this rebranding, we revisited all of our company core values, and one of them has been as a firm. And the culture we want is that we are professionals, but we also elevate our professionalism with compassion. So there are certain things that have not changed, especially in terms of the approach of working with clients, in the approach of managing the business, that has changed. Part of all this rebranding and all this maybe refresh perspective and approach and more being more intentional was also helped by having Greg Chang, who is serving as our CEO for the firm, to help with all the business aspect of things. So that's something that it's important message as well that we're looking to be a professionally managed firm that is setting the foundation to grow for the future and for decades to come. So it's just bringing different type of approach to incorporating technology with a different perspective. It's incorporating maybe we talked about traction, so incorporating some principles of managing the priorities or tracking the priorities better. Another of the initiatives that we got to talk about some of the marketing and business development in terms of acquiring clients but working with the team, right? So making sure that the people that we have working with us, that we all are aligned as well as resonate with the core values of the firm and culturally is a good fit. So incorporating a team management or a team platform to gather feedback and make sure that we all are on the same page, those are things that obviously take time, but it's just being purposeful and intentional on how should the firm grow over time and to still preserve that culture. Because if we take care of our team and our people, we will also be taking care of the clients that we will be serving now and in the future.

Charlie Van Derven: 19:15

Yeah. Awesome man. I love it. You guys have a great story to tell and thank you for sharing it with me. Yeah, you alluded to it a little while ago. So you joined the Lubitz Financial Group back in 2008. You bought into principle of the firm and you said something really interesting to me on our kind of meet and greet call a few weeks ago. You said and I wrote it down as I was getting ready today, but you said the approach where you have a different approach in that it's not about the value of your book of business. Right. There's greater valuation in the firm, I'm not quoting you directly, but it's more about the value of the firm rather than the value of the book of the business. Right. Talk about that a little bit.

Jorge Padilla: 20:13

When I was looking at becoming a financial advisor, going through the CFP program, which I decided to do from the moment I decided to go into financial services and be an advisor, I said, okay, I need to go. Through the CFP because this is going to give me the depth of knowledge that I need to work with clients and be a good advisor. But from very early on, I had the idea of really the value is in providing that holistic and kind of personalized service to clients. And my perspective on doing that is I could be wonderful in serving clients, but if something happens to me, then the clients are not going to be well served or what if I want to take weeks off on vacation and unplug because I also need my work life balance and recharge sometime. Then if clients have something going on, I always have to be on call. They're just going to be much better served if there is a team behind it. And also started very early on right after college in the industry. To me the idea of saying okay, build your book of clients is like who do you want me to call? I came from Spain. I don't have a network of people. I moved cities after college. I need to start from scratch. I know nothing about life. I'm going to advise a wealthy family about transitioning a business to their heirs when I'm 23 year old, it just didn't make sense to me. To me it was about focusing on learning the business and how I can be as good and knowledgeable as I can and obviously gain expertise and knowledge along the way. And then the more I learned about the industry, the idea of building a firm as opposed to a book of clients that you're just plugging into maybe a system or you're just part of a huge institution, it just didn't appeal to me as much as creating something that has enduring value over time. That is not going to better. That can better in terms of service, delivery and the experience and the quality of the advice, not just for clients but also for the team behind it. Right. It needs to be serving both ways and having that approach, it just felt a lot better in terms of the culture and the type of people that I want to work with.

Charlie Van Derven: 23:01

I love it, man. How cool. We're going to talk about the goals for Meira here in just a little bit and those who are listening, I'm impressed by the culture you guys have built. Now, I'm not in there firsthand, right, but in describing what you've got with Meira wealth and the team that you've got. Listen, man, if we've got listeners who are looking for a soft landing spot, sounds like a.

Jorge Padilla: 23:29

We'Re happy to have conversations with advisors that resonate from a cultural point of view and also are purposeful about looking at clients financial pictures on a holistic manner. Right. That is not just the investment part.

Charlie Van Derven: 23:46

I love that. So Jorge, we'd like to go through. I got a couple of questions I like to ask everybody because I feel like while our conversations about that reband and about the mission and about culture, I want to give some really practical things to our listeners that they can think about right away. So I like to ask if there was one thing that you did as you were growing in this industry that has propelled you to the success you've realized if you look back what is that thing? What can our listeners learn from your experience of a really good thing you did that helped you in the future?

Jorge Padilla: 24:25

For me, since it's rare to have somebody that stays with the same firm for 14, 1516 years or so or decades in a situation like that, to me, the most important thing is to think about it from how can I bring value and also how can I bring an entrepreneurial mindset even being in the same firm. Right. So just maintaining that intellectual curiosity to learn the different aspects of the business has given me so much more depth in understanding what's going on, all the moving pieces. And while I may say I'd rather not focus on all these operational things, and I'd rather have a team helping or supporting to do all that, I know enough about all those that I have understanding of what they're going through or the different moving pieces needed in coordinating technology or coordinating strategic changes for the firm. Just having that perspective now is super valuable because I understand all aspects of the business. So I would say that was super valuable. And the other thing that I did, I think it has given me a lot of depth and has elevated a lot. The type of conversations, or maybe the trust that clients get from having conversations with me is I got involved into a lot of the investment strategy and investment operations of the firm early on, and I still do. I lead all the investment strategy decisions and kind of the investment committee efforts. So it's just another of my passions. But having that depth of understanding of what happens in portfolios, ultimately, clients get too focused sometimes on what happens in the money part and what happens to the portfolios. But just having that depth of knowledge around the investments brings in a very good ability to add value and develop trust with clients that they feel like, okay, yeah, I can sense that you know what you're talking about here. I feel like I wouldn't have had that experience if it had been in a large firm where there is an investment department that runs things. And I just need to read the Cliff Notes of here's, the weekly commentary, because then I wouldn't have been able to go through all the things that we do behind the scenes to manage portfolios.

Charlie Van Derven: 27:10

It's education and knowledge is what it boils down to. And you're right. Right. If you're in a large firm, often you're on the client acquisition, the business development. Right. You get to know that world well, but you don't see a lot of the other moving parts. I love that.

Jorge Padilla: 27:23

Yeah.

Charlie Van Derven: 27:24

Here's the flip side of that question. So if anybody could learn from a mistake you feel like you've made throughout the years, is there anything that you can really think about that you're like, gosh, I wish I'd have done that a little differently.

Jorge Padilla: 27:36

Yeah, so focusing on all those other things in the business left me not focusing so much on growing the business or getting new clients. And I think one of the things that I would have done differently is earlier on, I guess it's two things, but it's kind of similar and related. One would be try to find some expertise or niche or area that you're truly passionate about that is unique, that resonates with you. And then two, nowadays with podcasting, social media, writing blogs, there is really no excuse other than time to be more public and more purposeful about communicating all those things that you're doing. Right. Especially if you're reading about it and you're learning about those things and you just enjoy it, then why don't do something a little extra and be public? Publish content so that you can then become subject matter expert in whatever it is that you want to be known for. Because that takes time to build, it takes years, and it takes consistency. So those are the kind of the things that I think I would incorporate a little bit differently.

Charlie Van Derven: 29:01

That's cool. I don't know if you know what we do on the social advisor side of things, right. Because I really don't try to mix the two a little bit. Yeah, it's pretty much you're like, I don't know if you lobbed me a softball there, Jorge. If you were like, hey, here's your chance to promote Charlie, I appreciate it either way.

Jorge Padilla: 29:22

Yeah, it's true, right? I mean, that's one of these days. It's one of the ways of really getting clients and attracting clients. If it's a niche or something that is specific enough, where if people want to look for that type of information, they find you.

Charlie Van Derven: 29:42

Yeah, I'll tell you what. I had a conversation with a client today where they've got one very small subset, one designation that they serve the industry as a coach. They have some endorsement of one specific designation and the designating party, whatever, whoever issues that designation. And the question were talking about was you serve RIAs or you serve independent advisors, what if you just serve this designation? What if you were a really big fish in that small pond? How would that impact? Right. Certainly it's consideration for every advisor. Jorge, tell me a little bit about and we'll wrap this thing up because we're coming up on our 30 minutes and we want to make sure we're concise in our communication. I think I talk too much Ore and people get bored with my voice, so that's really it. I want to wrap up so they have to listen to me too long. Give me a little bit of sense of where Meira wealth is going. You were open to having conversations with advisors who might be interested. What are some of the goals for the firm going forward?

Jorge Padilla: 30:51

Yeah, so we definitely have a very good foundation to continue to grow and speed up the growth. We are at about 250,000,000 in assets under management.

Charlie Van Derven: 31:11

Awesome.

Jorge Padilla: 31:12

We were looking to hopefully grow another 100 million in the next three years or so, mostly through organic growth. But again, we're not closing doors of other advisors. We want to have conversations with other advisors that want a new home and want an environment where they can feel connected with a team of people that have very much values and culturally aligned. And there is a purpose of embracing kind of a process of planning as part of what we do for clients. Part of that is also growing the team as well. So just this month we hired a new client services person and we hope we're trying to transition to a diamond team advisory model or team model. This is a concept promoted or developed by Angie Herbers. I know a lot of IRA firms have embraced this in a way to try. We haven't been successful at hiring experienced advisors and then working with an existing group of clients. But we've been successful, and I'm a very good example of that, of over the years have advisors or just entry level people that are really good in trying to train them, help them grow and grow with the firm, grow with the clients. Right. I think that's something that I've done over the years is try to work with the next generation of clients or children of clients that to me was really valuable because that typically is less complex. So as I was learning and growing in my career that helped kind of grow with the firm and then helped me gain experience. And then if there are any transitions happening in terms of advisory team in the firm, it just becomes more natural. Clients already know who they have been working with organically over the years. So we're hoping to continue to grow in advisors where kind of our clients, we have another client service, this person is going through the Cfbe program. So hopefully in the next few years we'll become an advisor as well. So that's a way to continue to build capacity in a very natural progression where clients already knowing who they're interacting with from years and then that helps us then little by little transition advice or clients as well to bring capacity or allow me or other senior advisors to bring in more clients. So we're not looking to grow exponentially. We want purposeful growth that makes sense, that we continue to nurture the culture that we have, and we want to work with clients that we can add value to their lives, but also we can enjoy working with. Life is too short to be able to have to struggle or just not enjoy the time that you're spending with the people that you work with. And that's another perk of being in a more boutique firm as opposed to a large firm.

Charlie Van Derven: 34:42

Yeah and I think that a lot of people who. Are at the large firm with quotas and push hard sales quotas.

Jorge Padilla: 34:50

Yeah, don't get me wrong, we will have those as well. But understanding that if we run into a prospect that has $5 million and we see that it's not a good fit the investment philosophy or they're just a jerk or not reasonable, it's okay. I'd rather spend my time doing working with clients that I'm happy to pick up the phone and have a conversation with.

Charlie Van Derven: 35:19

Yeah.

Jorge Padilla: 35:19

I love it.

Charlie Van Derven: 35:20

I love it. Culture is everything. So Jorge. I know you're responsive on LinkedIn. What's the best way for people to reach out to you?

Jorge Padilla: 35:27

Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. Just type in my name. I'm trying to be a little bit more active there. You can also reach me at the Meirawealth.com website. Those are probably the best places to find me.

Charlie Van Derven: 35:47

Awesome. Thanks for spending this time with me.

Jorge Padilla: 35:51

Thank you for having me.

Charlie Van Derven: 35:52

Yeah, you got it. So, on behalf of myself, Charlie Van Derven and my guest today, Jorge Padilla with Meira Wealth in Miami, Florida. Great place to be. Thanks for tuning into another episode of RIA Collective. Now, as I say at the end of all these episodes, this is not a revenue play. We're not trying to grow money. We've got a pure mission of moving this industry to a more independent space. And so if you share this podcast, if you like us on your listening platform, if you know anybody that needs to listen to this interview with Jorge or the other interviews we've done with head of RIA Breakaway Attorneys, please share this. Jorge, thanks again for being here and for every took a little bit of time out of their day to listen to this episode of RIA Collective. We appreciate the heck out of you.

Jorge Padilla: 36:39

My pleasure, Charlie. Thank you.

Charlie Van Derven: 36:44

You've just listened to another episode of RIA Collective with your host, Charlie Van Derven. For more information, visit riacollective.com now. Have a great day.