Learn from the Experience of Others with Dennis Snoozy

Dennis, my man. How are you doing? 



Good. How are you doing, Charlie? 



I'm good. I'm jumping out of one meeting into the next, getting a couple of things ready for us here. 



Okay, good deal. 



Give me one moment. You have a good week? 



Yeah, it's been busy. 



It sounds like you're looking good. I am so excited for our guests today. I've got Dennis Snoozy. With me today, and here's what's awesome. Right. Dennis has been in this industry for three decades. He's been a producer, he's been in management, he's worked in captive firms, and now he's an RIAA. So we're going to talk all about that transition to independence. We want to bring a little bit of knowledge to maybe those younger advisors that are thinking about going independent, whether that's with an independent broker dealer or transitioning all the way to an RIAA. We want to take advantage of Dennis knowledge and experience and bring you as much knowledge as we can without the hard knocks of earning it yourself. Right. So, Dennis Snoozy. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm excited for our conversation, man. 



I am too. Thanks for having me, Charlie. 



Got it. Absolutely. My pleasure. So were chatting right before I hit record, Dennis. I was like, I'm going to tap into those 30 years. Not that I want to make you feel old, but then I talk about myself. Right. 25 years, Dennis. And I go, when did that happen? 



I know it goes by really fast. Yeah. 



So you got started advisor, I think, 93, I saw. Right. 



Yeah. I was licensed in March of 1993. 



Wow. Awesome. Yeah. And so for those younger advisors that are out there, and some people might be older than us. Right. But second career or third career? So we're referencing younger and years of experience, not necessarily age. One of the lessons is it cruises by like before you know it, you're decades into this thing. 



Oh, for sure. And it seems like it goes by pastor every year. 



I agree. I learned that my kids are twelve and 1413 and 14. June 1, the twelve year old becomes a teenager. So I'll have two teenage daughters here in a couple of weeks, and they're good kids. Right. But I didn't realize how fast it went by until they were born. Right. And then you're living in reference to something else. So you're watching them grow quickly and you go, wait a second, they got to twelve that fast. That means anyway yeah. 



It seems like they're just born and then all of a sudden they're like, ten. It's like, what happened? 



Talking about high school next year already. So Dennis, you got started as a producer in the industry, but then you like, not too long into the career, you made a change to management. 



Yeah. 



What was attractive about management? You went down that track for a little while. Talk to me a little bit. Talk to our audience a little bit about that change. What drew you into that management role versus producer? 



I think so. As an advisor and this is my thought process at the time, but as social advisors, I saw people needed a lot of help. There was a lot of financial problems people would run into and I could help so many people in a week. But by going into management and this is what originally drew me to it, is that I could help more people by using the knowledge that I gained and training advisors on how to do this. So I really focused on that part of it was how do you build an advisor? And in doing that I felt like I could help a lot more people throughout my career with that type of an approach that's originally what drew me to it. And it was great. It was great. 



It was so much really good at and I saw a lot of success from it. Yeah, I wouldn't trade those experiences really for anything. 



That's awesome, man. And well, it all sets you up for where you are today and we'll talk a little bit about that. Certainly. I want to make sure we key on S amp P financial advisors. Pardon me? I want to get the name right. 



Yes. 



So I had to check my notes real quick then it's just to make sure that everything is straight for our conversation. Right. We have a kind of a very similar philosophical approach to the role that we play in the industry. Right. It's social advisors. I'm not an advisor. I kind of pardon the French, but fell a** backward into the industry. In the late nineties I hooked up with at that time were still finding jobs out of the newspaper. 



Right. 



I was in my mid twentys and I hooked up with a technology company that was cranking out websites in a handful of industries and financial services happened to be one of those. So I was fortunate to be the right age at the right time and be in the right place for that. Having not been an advisor, having not sat on that side of the desk, I don't necessarily know the experience in working with that branch manager, complex manager, that kind of infrastructure. Right, right. Tell me a little bit about how that management work at the firm you're at the time, how many advisers you are working with? Because I want to know, as we're making a greater impact in running advisors or educating advisers, what did that really look like for you? How many advisors were kind of under your umbrella, if you will? 



I would say when I first moved into management, I moved from Portland, Oregon down to Phoenix and I started running an office down here in Phoenix and it was very small at the time. In fact, it was like the second to last office in the company I work for that office was, but I built up a lot of advisors. We probably had about 20 social advisors in the office when I started kind of growing from there. I started training some of those advisors that were in the management track on how to be managers and sent them out to manage different offices around the United States. And from there, the region I was managing grew to about 104,020 to 140 advisors. 



Wow. 



So my career was more rather than helping clients directly, it was more about hiring people that didn't know anything about the industry, very little experience, and training them on how to be a successful adviser. And that's a very challenging process. It was a very challenging process to do that. But you learn the business really well if you're going to be good at something. I would say teach. And so when you're teaching people how to do something, you just really solidify it in your mind and what you're doing. So that was a big part of it. I think some of the keys to success there were and I think every advisor there's a lot social advisors that are running a small shop right now that want to grow your systems are so very critical. 



The more you can define a process, the more you can define just the key components to becoming successful, the better you're going to do. And so I think that's one of the traits that I really learned early on is how critical systems are and how critical they have those systems to find because it's bigger. Everything's bigger. 



Not a problem at all. And maybe we'll edit it out, maybe we won't. No big deal. Because your point about processing systems couldn't agree more. Right. We've been probably not since day one because day Cvanderven Social Advisors.com was me, myself and I, but probably from year one certainly documenting processes. And once you've got a documentation, of course now you can evolve a little bit. 



Right. 



We completely agree with you on the process and systems. Dennis, one of the things I'm curious about, and I know that a lot of people who form an RIA even, could be a captive adviser. Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch could be an adviser in a warehouse. Right. One of the things that they have to do is build a team oftentimes. And it's one of the interesting things about our industry. I bring it up on most of the podcasts. We record successful advisers who go from building a practice to often building a business. The skills that help you become a successful adviser are not necessarily the same skills that help you be a successful business owner. So we'll get to that in a second before we get there. With your experience in recruiting, it sounds like you got a lot of it. 



Yeah. 



What were the qualities that you were looking for and the advisers that you were hiring? Was there any two or three things that stood out that maybe our audience can benefit from as they're recruiting. 



Yeah, that was the secret sauce. That was like if you could find that out, that would have been huge. There were some traits that I think were all successful advisers, really come from one. A strong work ethic is obviously critical. This business, as you're building it, you just have to work because there's a lot of mistakes, there's a lot of things that go wrong, and you got to be able to work past them. I think that's the second thing is you're looking for somebody that's resilient, somebody that can, if things don't go their way one day, are ready to throw in the towel. And some of those how those exhibited themselves, I always kind of looked at somebody's past. Did they work a lot when they were younger or were they in sports when they were younger? 



Those are some of those key traits where they had goals or they had jobs that they had to just do a lot. And so I think those were some of the key traits of the individual. And then I think they also had to want to help people become successful, help the clients that they were serving. They wanted to have a desire to help those people become successful. And so those are some of the traits that I just always looked for. Doing it for a number of years, it just kind of becomes second nature after a while. You could kind of I don't know, you just kind of internalize whether you think somebody could do it or not. That was usually some of the key factors that I looked for. 



So dedicated and disciplined and then a sense of almost altruism, right? I mean, the ability to give of oneself, maybe. Something that's always been interesting to me, right. Is most of the advisers I've worked with over the years, whether it's in coaching capacity or whatever that might be, whether it's providing services, most of the advisors that we've worked with over the years come from a financial background, right? Whether it's their education, maybe they grew up and their parents inherited their dad or their mom's book or something like that. Oftentimes you get into the industry and you find out you've got a sales job, though. You came from this finance and business background, maybe. How hard was that for people? Are you looking for that background in sales at all? 



Or was it really an understanding of speak to that a little bit, maybe, where the best industries were? 



Yeah, I think you can teach the sales part of it. You can teach that, but also you can't be so rigid in the financial side of it that you're not relating to people. You can have somebody that's just really intelligent from a financial standpoint, but they have a hard time articulating that to the clients that they're going to help and the clients that they're going to serve. So you had to be intelligent to get into the business, but you had to have a personality to be able to relate to the clients that you're working with. Yeah. No matter how smart and intelligent you are. And a lot of the different financial concepts, at the end of the day, people, the old adage, people don't care what you know. They want to know that you care. 



If you couldn't care about the clients and if you couldn't care about what you were doing, it's very difficult to be successful in this business. 



I find that those soft skills right. I love that you said you can train for the sales, and largely you can, but the soft skills are difficult to train for. For a period of my career and this is some people I run into, people that I met during this period of my career. Dennis for a period of my career, I bought a conversion. The company I was with, were doing websites. I think it's for Smith Barney at the time, was before that Morgan Stanley merger. They bought a travel trailer, and I was kind of nomadic. I enjoyed the mountains, I enjoyed the ocean. And they set me off in California. Oregon. In Washington. For a year of my life, I traveled up and down the West Coast going into Smith Barney branches, and I'd camp. I had two dogs. 



I'd camp and I'd wake up Koa or whatever and put on my suit and tie and roll into the downtown San Francisco office of Smith Barney or whatever that might be. So I still run into people every now and then. We're like, Wait a second, weren't you the guy who lived in the van down by the river? Right. 



That's hilarious. 



It's a good memory. 



Yeah. 



I was in and out of so many branches, lots of times, 60 people. Right. You go into a big metro area, maybe 60 advisors. I found that those folks that had the corner office, that had the prime real estate, they were not data driven. They were the soft, skill people, to your point. Right. Those people that were the top producers and had a team working with them, longevity creates a lot of that stuff, too, but it was maybe not even the best data driven adviser. But to your point, related to people better than anybody else in that branch. 



Yeah, I would agree. I would agree wholeheartedly. Because to help somebody, you have to really be able to listen to them, to a client. You need to really be able to listen to that client and understand them. And I found the people that were really good at that and also had the work ethic to go along with it. Almost like a passion. This industry can be very addicting, the way I put it. Some of the very social advisors, I think, in our industry are almost addicted to the business where it's like, how many people can I help? And that's how they view it. I've talked to some very social advisors in our industry before, and it's just always amazing. The higher somebody is almost, the more humble they are. 



Very humble, and also just almost a driven passion that is just amazing, almost, to talk to them. 



Yeah. And I think a lot of that comes with age, experience. The income that can be created doesn't hurt that either. But you have less to prove as those elements grow. 



Right. I think the money is ultimately a driving force to be top. Everybody is driven by money, I think, to a degree. But to become really big in the industry, it becomes more than just the money, for sure. It's about helping people. 



Yeah. You reach a threshold where the money, more money doesn't matter much. 



Right. 



Unless you're keeping score that way. And some people do, but right. 



To that degree. I used to say you could help people, you could want to make money, they go hand in hand. The more people you're helping and the bigger problems you're solving, the more money you're going to make. So whichever one you want to focus on it, because the end result is going to be the same. As long as you're ethical and compliant, everything will work out best for everybody. 



Well, and I kind of think that's true outside of our industry, too. The more lives you're impacting, the more value you create for the people around. 



You, I think so. 



Whether you're a doctor or whatever that might be. Right. So I think that's maybe something of a universal truth. 



I think, like, Elon Musk represents that tremendously, whether you like him or not. 



Right. 



He has a passion for what he's doing. He's the wealthiest man in the world, and he's still working every day of the week, lives a very simple lifestyle, but he has a mission to change the world, and the results of that are just inspiring, really. 



Yeah. He's not thinking small. Right. Whether it's transforming industries right, yeah, exactly. Pushing research forward. And we could debate the effectiveness of electric cars today. And I know there's waste that comes off. There's plenty of negative things you can say about it, but it's the brand. It's the beginning of an industry, for sure. Right. If you don't start, where's that going to be in 20 years? So, yeah. He's doing incredible things, no matter how you feel about the guy. Right. 



Yes. 



I'm entertained by him. I don't know if I have a feeling one way or the other. I'm entertained by him for sure. He's a good follow on Twitter, for sure. So, Dennis, when you and I were getting better acquainted a few weeks ago and kind of just talking about how this podcast and the conversation were going to have, one of the things that we chatted about was FINRA numbers going down. Right. And I don't have this. I could probably look it up real quick. It's at our fingertips, but that's a number that continues to decrease. I was at a conference in Vegas last week, jolt conference. Great conference, right? First year for a great marketing conference put on by Snappy Crack and I'll give them a little plug. I like those guys over there. Yeah, but it was a great conference. 



But someone referenced the recent FINRA stats and frankly, the registered broker dealers, the registered advisors both numbers continue to or license advisors both numbers continue to plummet. You and I chatted a little bit about why we thought that was the case. You want to share your take on it and then I'll share mine. 



Yes. Well, I grew up in the broker dealer world. I work for a smaller broker dealer, I would say. And I was there until about a year and a half, two years ago or about a year ago, two years, I can't remember. But I think technology is changing our world tremendously. And so even go back to 2010 what you needed to run a practice efficiently you needed technology to speed up your processes and make things run faster and kind of taking advantage of the technological changes. But technology was very expensive back then. Very expensive. We've seen over the past decade. The cost of technology come down tremendously. And so our ability as an adviser to put all the pieces together that a broker dealer would have put together you could put it together pretty easily. 



Almost better in some respects, I think than how a broker dealer put it together. And you're cutting out a lot of the fat or you're cutting out a lot of the inefficiencies in a broker dealer world. So there's a lot of fees in the broker dealer world that's social advisors that you pay program fees. And a lot of it is paying for the old investment into the technology that they had to invest in. And so you're seeing just a lot of fees in the broker dealer world that advisors are paying and you can avoid those. You can escape it by opening up your own RIAA. And I think if people start understanding that and start looking into it I think it's just what you could do as an advisor and the efficiencies you could create in your practice are tremendous. 



The second thing and I saw this when I was at the broker dealer the cost of growing, the cost of bringing on advisors, future advisors is a huge expense. It's a huge expense. And so as things have become a lot more efficient in our economy I think a lot of the broker dealers have slowed down on that bringing in new advisors, training them, teaching them how to do the business the right way. And so I think there's a two fold event that's happening right now. There's less advisers coming into the industry and there's just a much more efficient way that you can build your practice right now through an RIAA. 



Yeah, and I echo that. Right. So you look at financial planning software, e money and the sort and you look at CRM. It used to be you had to go work for a firm with really deep pockets to get the best, most efficient technology I'm going to share with you. So we've got a client and he runs on our platform also a coaching client of mine. I'm not going to bring any firms into this. Right. I don't want to do anybody directly. Right. But he works for the independent side of a large bank. They've got their captive advisor audience too. Part of his issue, he's an independent advisor but he's treated basically the same as a captive advisor by the compliance environment. That's one. Issue number two is he was really looking at joining an RIAA and he ultimately didn't make that. 



The guy I'm talking about who listens to this, he knows exactly who I'm talking about. Right. But he ultimately chose not to join that RAA. The payout wasn't going to be a whole lot. He was sacrificing internal resources, personnel resources, not technology. But he was sacrificing that to join an RA and take just a slightly higher payout. So for him it didn't make sense. But that particular company, the broker dealer he's working with, they had an upgraded marketing software in like twelve or 13 years. 



Right. 



And so he was really frustrated by his inability to keep up with marketing with independent advisors right now. They just so happened to make that capital investment in the last year. But what ends up happening is it becomes a project. Right? Here's our budget to upgrade this particular area. And then five years from now maybe they'll look at that again if the advisors get noisy enough. 



Yeah. And I think you're working inside a broker dealer, those changes like you're not upgrading it for one person, you're upgrading it for the entire salesforce. When you're just an independent advisor, like owning your own RIAA, it's very easy to upgrade and it's very easy to be very current because it's not hard to just switch to the next better whatever software or whatever technology you want to put into place. It's not hard to do that. But when you're a broker dealer and you're trying to do that for 1000 advisors, for example, that's a whole different ballgame. And the amount of time it takes to do it is tremendous. And then they don't even know how many advisors are going to use it. 



Well, that's exactly it too. Right? 



That's the other side of it. I think. You look at that from a broker dealer world. You're trying to move 1000 advisors or 500 advisors. Whereas when it's your own RAA, you're trying to move yourself or your team or if you're part of a smalleria I think they even think that way just because they've been more upgrading things quicker. 



The difference between that capital investment and subscription based pricing, right? 



Yeah. Right. 



So you might have to commit six months or twelve months to a piece of software, but at that point you can make a switch without having to worry about added expense. You're already lined item for that. One question I asked you when were chatting a couple of weeks ago that I'm curious to your take on it is do you think the broker dealer model is dead? 



I think it's going to gradually turn to the RIAA space. I grew up in the country where common sense kind of rules and I always look at something's better, easier, faster. People are eventually going to move there. And when you look at working in the broker dealer world and then switching to an RIAA and really understanding the differences between those two, to me the RIA world is the only place to be right now. And so I think eventually people AI transcription that direction, I think it's going to take some time. I also think there's some really innovative things that are happening from a technology standpoint that could even speed it up. And this is something I just kind of explored and played around with a little bit. But your ability to buy like partial shares in a stock right now right. 



Is a huge advantage. So rather than maybe going into mutual, taking your clients into mutual funds or ETFs, you can recreate like an Smt 500 index by buying partial shares. That's pretty cool that you're really cutting out a lot of the expenses that the Incline experiences and that you experience as the advisor. So I think it's just going to see more and more technology, creating more and more opportunities that it's going to be hard for the broker dealer world, I think, to just keep their structure and make it happen over the long term. So I don't think it's going to die overnight, but I think there is going to be a gradual dripping away of the broker dealer world. And I think you see more and more people go to the Ri world. 



Yeah, we're witnessing it happen. For those advisers that are on the broker dealer world, those listeners of ours that have concern in that transition, what do you feel like you lose dropping that seven and moving into an RIAA space? What can they plan to talk about? Insurance and things, but speak to that a little bit? 



Yeah, I don't think you really lose anything when you look at it and when you really understand it and there's. 



Like. 



What you lose. We're all creatures of habit and we're all creatures of the environment that we came from. The company I work for was sold and that forced me out of the world I was living in as an executive for a Wall Street based investment company to all of a sudden step back and say, hey, what's going on in the world? And so when they sold the company, I was kind of let go to figure out what I was going to do next. It took a little while for me to let go of a lot of the past influences that I had, the past culture of the company I've lived in to say, okay, let me really look at what's going on in the world today. 



If I'm going to kind of restart with 20 plus years of experience in this world, what's the best way to do it? In my opinion? And I looked, I went to an independent broker dealer to start out with, just to see what that was like. Realize that you have all the problems of a broker dealer with a lot of expenses, but none of the help where it comes. That just led me naturally to the RA space was just the future of our industry. And so I had that chance to really knowing everything I knew growing up in the broker dealer world and seeing it behind the scenes to step back at a stage in my life and go, what's the right way this should be done right now? And that's what really led me down the path of creating my own RIAA. 



And all the fun that comes with that. 



For me. That's fun, right? Yeah. I still find myself even we're social values, about nine years old now, just about in October, but I still find myself in the operations side of the business, which is something that, for the growth of the business, probably isn't the best thing, but I'm passionate about that. It's very difficult for me to give that up. We got a team really built around the operation, so I suppose I could walk away from it. But when I take my fingers out of it and just take an oversight, that's difficult for me. Right. I like where you're at with your RIAA and establishing those systems and those processes that we talked about earlier. That's fun for me. I mean, the building of that is really kind of where the passion comes from. 



Yeah, it is very exciting. And then that you own it. You own it. It's designed the way you want it to be designed and you can change it if you want to at any time. Those are very attractive parts of the Ri world. Yeah. 



Dennis, for the listener's sake, any advice on if they're thinking about making a move to RIAA? What advice would you give to whether it's a captive or an independent advisor who's thinking about making that move? How far out should they be looking? What are the things that they could do now in their position? Because obviously, retaining assets is a big thing and a lot of people can't make that transition if they're not going to retain some of their clients. What kind of advice would you give to somebody who's thinking. About making that move so that they've got their ducks in a row before they make the leap. 



Well, I think you have to become educated. My experience from a lot of the advisors I know that work in the broker dealer world, I would say there's a lot of big misunderstanding of what an RAA is, even if they know what an RAA is. So I think you have to educate yourself. You have to do the research. There's a lot of resources out there. I mean, we have the internet right now, which leads you to everything you would ever need to know, pretty much to research what that looks like. So I think it really starts with education, saying, do I want to kind of set up the operations myself? Even though it's not that hard once you do it can seem intimidating at the time. 



Sure. Yeah. 



And so I think you have to educate yourself. You have to ask yourself, do I want to set up these operations? What would they look like? And that's really putting together your conglomerate of vendors to make your operation work. And then I think what's it going to do for your clients is another thing, because if you're looking at retaining clients, what's going to make you different than the world you're in today? And I think you can create a much better tailor made experience for your clients when you really think through it and save them some money and save your business quite a bit of money as well, too. 



So I think you got to start with educate yourself and then think about what is the value proposition that I can create with this company that I'm going to create for my clients and what's the purpose of my company? And I think when you get all of those defined and you feel good about it and you kind of with the pros and cons, then you just make a decision. And I think you go you start putting together the pieces, everything that you can before you leave your broker dealer and then take the step. 



Awesome. I love that. And I want to talk a little bit about SMP Financial Advisors, of course. And you gave me a good segue. What's the purpose, if you understand the purpose of why you're doing it, I can speak to messaging around fiduciary. Responsibility is really key in retaining assets. Depending on where you're coming from, depending on the initiatives of the firm you're leaving. If those are in some way not allowing you to provide really fiduciary advice to your clients, then you kind of have to do it for your clients. Almost. Talk to me about the purpose behind it in the culture and all that behind SMP Financial Advisors. I'd love to learn where you're headed there. 



Yeah, well, I'm fairly new creating this. 



I love that, man. I love it. 



Yeah. I went from running a big region, over 100 advisers and a lot of people where you're thinking very strategically and you're thinking very big picture, kind of going all the way back to getting back to basics and recreating just the infrastructure of my own company. But the purpose is I want to really advise clients on what I think they should be doing and keeping the fees that they're experiencing down. I think it's very easy. When you start adding in like mutual fund expenses and then you add in advisory expenses or ETF expenses, you start adding all those expenses on, all of a sudden you can see some of these clients start paying a significant amount of money every single year to work with you. Is that the best thing for them? 



I really tried to create a company that's very efficient, like very low overhead, where we could provide really good advice to clients at a very reasonable price cost. That's the purpose of that. And then as I get this built up, it is going to be to start adding advisors into this organization where you can, I think, help them see the future of what they could create for their clients as well. So that's the purpose I'm at and I want to be cutting edge. Our world, I believe I've done a lot of research on how the world's going to change a lot, and I think our world is going to change very quickly over the next ten to 20 years. Like with electric cars, you're looking at blockchain technologies out there. 



There's a lot of major foundational parts of our economy that are going to shift over the next ten to 15 years. And I want to make sure that the clients that I'm working with are able to take advantage of that as they do, and also as well manage the risk that they're experiencing on a day to day basis. So I just want to be very forward looking and I feel like in the broker dealer world, you're very stuck. The broker dealer world does not change very fast, right? It's very stuck in its old ways, it's very stuck in its old systems, it's very stuck in its old technology, and it's not as nimble as what I think the world is going to turn into. And so that's the purpose between S and P. 



I want it to be very cutting edge, very efficient, provide a great service for our clients and also help them take advantage of some of these changes and avoid some of the pitfalls of what I think we're going to see coming down the road over the next ten to 20 years. 



That's cool. I've been on the technology side of the industry for 22 years. The websites we originated back in the day we originated, locate our technology. Go to Lpl.com, type in your zip code, go to Morganstelly.com, type in your zip code and find the advisors near you. And then off of those advisor returns hung this data driven templated website that was the same for everybody, with the exception of the phone number, the email address, the title, and the picture. Right, right. Look for that's coming just 20 years. And not too long before that, my first programming was writing Das in high school. Right. So I could not graduate 91. Not to date myself too much, but I learned how to draw a figure eight. Listen, it's hard to believe that's 30 years, but at the same time, it's only 30 years. 



Right. 



And things have come so far so quickly. It seems like a recurring theme in our conversation, that technology is driving so much change. 



It is driving. I think where it's really changed, too is the marketing part of it. When I was at the broker dealer I work for, the idea like, marketing through social media is here now, and everybody's doing it to a degree. But to really get into it, understanding how to market through social media and how you're going to communicate your message on a broad scale, using technology right now is huge versus when I first started out in the industry, we had the phone. Like, I literally cold called people. People would answer their phone. And I've seen over my career, from prospecting via the phone to it's now digital, very much digital. 



And so I think to kind of keep your practice relevant and growing, and if you really want to scale it up, you have to start embracing a lot of the technology that we have at our fingertips. 



Yeah. And there's still some broker dealers making that difficult. 



Oh, for sure. Yeah. 



I'd say a lot, yeah. In the work that I've done over the years and what we do with social advisors, we work with compliance departments from many broker dealers, and some are really easy to work with. Right. Some are really advisor focused and growth focused. Others are so protection focused that the advisers are kind of behind an eight ball. They cannot even be competitive in that arena. Different initiatives with different broker dealers. I won't name any names because I don't want to slam anybody, but there's certainly not everything is created equal, for sure. 



And I think that creates a lot of frustration for the advisers in that world. It puts them in a tough position, too, because it's like they have all of their clients there, but their broker dealers are moving ahead. And I think that's also the other reason I created an RIA is you have that control. If you want to stay outdated, you can. But if you want to move ahead and you want to take advantage of technology to grow your practice as time is going, I think you have to be in the RIAA space because you're always going to be slowed down to a degree by the willingness of your broker dealer to allow it and also their technology capabilities. 



Yeah, I agree. With you. We're on the same page. I think you'll continue to see that number for the registered firms and advisors that will continue to decline and maybe even pick up speed at this point. 



Yeah. 



You're an awesome resource, Dennis. You really are. I mean, you've got a few decades under your belt with this stuff. Right. You started as a producer. You know what that mindset is like. You've been in the position of management, so you know what it's like to run large teams. We're not talking small teams, but 100 and 4150 advisors. That's significant. 



Yeah. 



And then making that leap into the RIAA space. I to want don't offer up your contact information without your permission. Right. But I want to make sure that are you okay? Especially where you're going to be doing some recruiting here before too long. Our audience is not necessarily the consumer client base, but it is those advisors that are looking at transition and what the rest of their time in the industry looks like. Are you willing to be a resource for those folks? 



Absolutely. This way. My career is helping people. Most of it's been helping advisers. I've done so much research that I really understand the broker dealer world, living in it, and then looking at where the RA space is at. Anybody has any questions, I'm certainly happy to help in any way I could. 



So what's the best way to find more information about SMP Financial Advisors and furthermore, to contact you directly? 



The best way to reach me emails, obviously a great one, which is Dennis@smpfinancialadvisors.com. I'm on LinkedIn. Dennis Snoozy. My last name is S-N-O-Z-Y. I'm the only dentist snooze out there, so I could say that. And I'm on Facebook as well, under SNP financial advisors. Those are the three best ways to reach me. 



Cool. And I'll tell you what, we're lucky that way. Right. There aren't too many Charlie Van Durbans in the world either. 



Yeah, it's nice to have with the way the world is going, it's nice to have a unique name. 



Yeah. Certainly. It doesn't matter who you're working for, your brand is your brand. Right. So it's nice to have some stand apart, if you will. 



That's right. 



Listen, Dennis, I think the world of you. You're awesome. Thank you for spending the time with us. But also every interview we do is unique. But you bring a perspective that I haven't really come across before. Right. Again, from producer to management to back into producer role, watching this industry evolve pre Internet. Right. Watching all the evolution that's happened and landing where you are today with the foresight to know that the rapid changes happening around us, the broker dealer world really isn't keeping up. And you're absolutely spot on with that right now. It's great to fly a Morgan Stanley flag, maybe because there's credibility in that brand. I'm not picking on Morgan Stanley in that respect. 



I'm just using an example, but it's so difficult for a large firm to evolve with the pace of society, whether that's from a regulatory environment, technology, whatever that is. Right. So I echo your sentiment completely that RA is the future, and largely for those reasons. Right. It just can't be nimble when you're that size. 



Yeah. And I think now's the time to be nimble. It's incredibly important. Also, and we didn't talk much about this, but I think the role of an advisor is going to change over time, too. I think what we do for our clients is going to broaden, because as you get more efficient with technology, the services that you can provide to each and every client, and how you're going to differentiate yourself in the future, you're going to have to do more and more for each and every client. I think as you're embracing where the world is going, you want to be able to add on those services and also explore new areas on how you can help clients out. I think it's going to be really important for the next 1020 years into the future. 



Thank you for bringing that up, by the way. I think it's not too long ago that our whole industry was transactional. Right. And then everything has migrated to fee based. And I don't know that's the right pricing structure yet either. Right. I know a lot social advisors that are evolving into a subscription based service, especially for young professionals or younger people who maybe don't have the assets that the fees makes sense from a pricing perspective. Yet the evolution there puts the adviser more in a concierge role, almost right. Where. 



It can go a lot of different directions. See the subscription services, it's very interesting to me. Very interesting when you start looking at what everybody's doing. The industry used to be very just the same, almost everywhere, but you really start to see a branch out into a lot of different interesting areas. I think it gives you the ability to test those different things, and it will be very interesting to see what the world looks like in ten years and what the role of a financial advisor is. 



Yeah, it certainly isn't boring. I'm excited to see what's going on too, so I'll keep my eyes open. We keep trying to evolve as fast as we can to keep up with it. So if you're out there, you've got any questions whatsoever? Again, Dennis got a wealth of information. He's been down just about every avenue you could possibly be in the industry. So look up on LinkedIn Dennis. Snoozy Snooz Ysmpfinancialadvisors.com. And Dennis, I just want to say thank you one more time. I absolutely appreciate you taking time out of your day, that's valuable time that you lend to us and our listeners. And it's been great talking to you. Of course, I'm going to stop the recording. We'll probably talk for a little while longer. But it's absolutely wonderful that you're a resource to our listeners. So thank you for that. I appreciate it. 



Thanks for having me, Charlie. It's been enjoyable. I appreciate it. 



You got it. Absolutely. Dennis thank you, man. Bye.