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August 01, 2001 at 08:00 PM
It is one of the stranger ironies of the financial planning business that advisors who once fled large financial services firms to strike out on their own are now considered doomed to extinction unless they band together to form–guess what?–large financial services firms.
For some time now, Undiscovered Managers’ Mark Hurley has been predicting the end of cottage-industry planning as we know it; Michael Gerber of “E-myth” notoriety has made an entire career out of exhorting advisors and other entrepreneurs to build corporate enterprises rather than one-man shows. But wait a minute. If large financial firms were a bad idea in the old days, why should they be such a good idea now?
Glenda Kemple and Woody Young of Quest Capital Management in Dallas can list a whole host of reasons. Their firm, formed from the merger of their practices in 1987, has mushroomed to a total staff of more than 30 people, and they’ve mapped out ambitious plans to keep right on growing. What do they think makes their firm better than the big, bad firms of the past? Some of their reasons won’t surprise you: They offer comprehensive planning services, they’re compensated primarily by fees, all their planners are CFPs, and their securities transactions are funneled through an independent broker/dealer, Raymond James Financial Services. But there’s more. For instance, all the advisors own a portion of the firm, the business has a clear career path for young planners, and all clients work with a team of advisors, rather than one particular individual. The cult of personality doesn’t cut it at Quest Capital Management. What matters to Kemple and Young is increasing the value and effectiveness of their firm, providing for their own eventual retirement, and making sure their clients will continue to be served after Kemple and Young have departed. All of that is best achieved, they believe, through a large, team-oriented company structure.
E Pluribus Unum
The transformation from small individual practices to a sizable integrated financial planning firm isn’t always easy, and in Quest’s case, it didn’t happen overnight. The story of the firm’s evolution is an edifying one for any planner who has ever felt the urge to merge.
Entrepreneurs are not exactly known for their willingness to hew to others’ wishes, and financial planning entrepreneurs are no exception. Before Young merged his single-owner practice with Kemple’s in 1987, he had his clients, his support staff, his account statements, and his own way of doing things. After the merger, he kept right on doing them–and Kemple forged right ahead doing things her own way, too. Sure, the two shared overhead expenses, a software system, and a name, Quest. They even had a written business plan, a concept both planners still swear by. But even after the two invited four other planners to join the firm, everyone’s work stayed separate. “We basically had six little subcompanies, with their own expenses for their own people, their own furniture,” says Young, 57. “Glenda and I had offices next to each other for 11 years without ever meeting with each other’s clients.”
Members of the firm couldn’t figure out whether they were a single firm or half a dozen, so it was hardly sur
| Quest Capital Management |
|---|
| Glenda Kemple and Woody Young 8235 Douglas Avenue, Suite 500 Dallas, Texas 75225 214-691-6090 www. questrjfs.com o [email protected] Joint practice founded: 1987 Number of planners/staff in office: Two principals, seven client-planners, 21 staff members Number of clients of the firm: 500 Compensation method(s): Primarily fees; some commissions Average fee for a comprehensive financial plan: $6,500 Fee for managing assets: Sliding scale decreasing from 1% of managed assets Hourly rate: $225 Client demographics: High-net-worth executives and professionals of the Dallas/Ft. Worth area Glenda Kemple Education: BA in business, University of Missouri Previous incarnations: Controller and treasurer, marketing manager Professional designation(s): CPA, CFP Outside interests: Traveling Woody Young Education: BA in political science, University of Oklahoma Previous incarnations: U.S. Marine Corps officer, president of a business planning firm Professional designation(s): CFP Outside interests: Boating, music |
prising when referral sources started to have the same problem. The result was that those sources had to play favorites whether they liked it or not. “If you were an attorney who worked with both Glenda and me, you knew that if you called me, I’d get the revenue and if you called Glenda, she’d get it,” says Young. “That strategy of ‘eat what you kill’ was putting our referral sources and our professional relationships in an awkward position.”
The other problem with functioning as separate entities was that huge strides in efficiency–always touted as a primary reason to band together in the first place–weren’t materializing. With everyone doing their own marketing and handling all the quotidian chores of running a business, the planners spent “maybe 20% of their time” directly serving clients, says Young. He and Kemple started to have an inkling that they needed to do things differently, but they weren’t sure what.
Serious medical situations have a way of focusing the mind, and that’s exactly what it took for the two principals of Quest. In 1997, when everyone else was returning unwanted Christmas presents, Young fell victim to a heart attack and had to have quadruple bypass heart surgery. He was out of the office for nearly five months. The good news was that his personal financial matters were well in hand–the firm has a policy that all planners must have an up-to-date financial plan. The bad news was that Kemple and the other planners had no idea how to pinch-hit for him. “It was, ‘Wait a minute, how do I run this business by myself? I don’t even know Woody’s clients! They don’t know me!’” says Kemple, 51. To add to the turmoil, Young’s support staff wasn’t wild about letting anybody, even Kemple, barge in and try to serve “their” clients. “There was a some level of ‘Well, I work for Woody’ as opposed to ‘I work for Quest,’ and some reluctance to include me in meetings or allow me to help out,” says Kemple. “It became fairly obvious that we did not have a firm at all; we had practices.”
When Young got back on his feet that summer, the two principals brought in Mark Tibergien, who specializes in practice valuation and transactions for Moss Adams LLP in Portland. The consultant spent two days interviewing everyone on site, and informed them that their practices could be worth twice as much as an integrated firm as they were in their current form, as individual practices Scotch-taped together. “He told us, ‘You have too much overhead, and everything is dependent on your personalities,’” says Kemple. “‘If Woody hadn’t made it off that operating table, what would happen to the value of your firm?’”
Fate seemed determined to drive the point home; that winter, it was Kemple on the operating table, in this case undergoing back surgery. She was out of the office for three months, and during her absence, Young struggled with the same client and support staff battles that she had faced while he was out. When Kemple returned to work, both principals were ready to make some serious changes.
