Chris Brown Partner Story – Video Transcript

I’m Chris Brown, partner advisor with Allworth Financial. At this juncture, I’m actually the vice president of integrations. However, I started with Houston Asset Management and I was a partner there along with one business partner. We decided to partner with Allworth back in 2021.

So today I have a 250-acre ranch just outside of the small town of Weimer, Texas. When I say small, we describe that as towns that really roll up the sidewalk after about six o’clock on any given evening. When I was in school I never wanted an office job. I always wanted to have a job on a ranch or something of that sort, but my father gave me some very good advice and told me that I should go and get a business degree so that I could buy the ranch and be in control of that rather than work for someone else. That’s just where I derive my energy when I go to the ranch and sit on the tractor. It just makes my mind right.

The most important thing to me at this point in my life is the example that I’m setting for my son. He follows everything that I do and is, I call him my shadow, to the point of I will lay my hat down somewhere and he will lay his hat down the same exact way. We were working in the barn one day and I hung my jacket up and here in a few minutes I turned around and it’s hung up the exact same way. I need to set the example that will build character and turn him into the man that I would be pleased with ultimately one day.

I have a very difficult time with downtime. I don’t rest. My wife says I’m exhausting to be married to because I always have to be productive. You know, when we get out of work on Fridays, I generally go to my ranch and work the entire weekend till sometime after dark, get home late on Sunday night and do it again on Monday. So what gets me up in the morning? It’s doing something that’s gonna move the needle. There’s a gentleman that I follow, I guess they’re, what I guess the younger folks say, social media influencers, but he says, “Move the needle every day.” Better today than you were yesterday, better tomorrow than you are today. So every day I just try to set the standard that I’m gonna do something that is gonna make me better today than I was yesterday.

I started at Houston Asset Management, and then when I graduated, I came back. And so I started with that advisor and became his internal succession plan before those were even written about or talked about. There were no lectures we could go on to it, so we fumbled our way through it. Had some missteps along the way, but ultimately came to fruition. During that time, we actually had one of the partners in the office pass away abruptly, so we had to work through that situation. Ultimately, the advisor I was working for retired, and I bought him out as planned.

That left myself and my business partner, Bob Freider, running the firm. We brought on a few other advisors during that time. They were significantly older, until the point that I found myself one day sitting there with a partner in his mid-60s and three advisors that were anywhere from early 80s to 90. I was the young guy who was left to catch all of these folks whenever they retired or could no longer fulfill their roles. So Bob and I sat down and started looking for other solutions so that we could provide for our clients long term. And after a rather extensive search, we ultimately landed at Allworth.

The other aspect of it that made me decide to partner is that I took a step back and looked at my own net worth statement much of the same way that I would have done with a client. I had two issues going against me. One is I had a very concentrated position in my business. Had I went to a client and seen that they had that much money invested in, say, their company stock, I would have encouraged them to diversify it. And secondly, all of my income was derived from the market. My business tied to the market. The salary that we ultimately pay ourselves is tied to the market. And if I had a client in that situation, I would strongly encourage them to diversify. So I finally took my own advice.

So when we looked at potential partners, your first question that needs to be answered is whether you wanna work with an aggregator or an integrator. And the difference there is an integrator is gonna absorb you and meld together all of your systems and processes, and you’re gonna become one company, much like a marriage. Whereas an aggregator, they just kinda give you a check, bolt you over here and tell you a little bit about your profit and loss statement that they want. And that just did not appeal to me. I personally feel that that is not a sustainable process, and at some point in the future, those folks are gonna have to turn to integrators. And I think we’re actually starting to see that in the marketplace too. So rather than go through that painful process, just cut to the chase and rip the Band-Aid off and go straight to integrations.

So the key attribute that set Allworth apart for us when we were looking is that we were an RAA and had been for years. However, through different partners we had had over the years and situations that were fit for the client, we had some broker dealer business, some variable annuities with excellent benefits that we weren’t gonna get rid of. And many of the firms we talked to would not let us bring those over. And Allworth has its own broker dealer which could facilitate that. Now, we do no new broker dealer business, but we can facilitate and that’s extremely beneficial.

We deal with some executives who have large stock options so we can facilitate that for them. We just don’t do any new ourselves. So we liked that there was alignment there. We went for a site visit to Allworth and following the site visit, we were standing outside in the parking lot waiting for them to bring the car around. And the three of us just voiced our initial impressions. And I remember Christian saying, “Wow, they have all the functionality and capabilities that I have always dreamed of us having, but we just never had the skill to acquire.” And I told them that it was very clear that Allworth was coming to town and I did not wanna compete against them. I’ve always wanted to be on the best team out there. And so that was really the point at which we said, okay, we’re gonna move forward with this group.

So the personal transition for me, it was a little difficult initially. You know, you go from being the boss and the owner and doing whatever you wish to do. And while we have a lot of autonomy as partners, you still feel in the back of your mind, hey, I have a boss now. That is not the case. You have more of a coach and a partner, but you feel that yourself. So it’s difficult going from being the big man on campus to, you know, just another advisor in there. With that said, that does not mean you cannot still be a leader. I very much believe that you don’t need a title to be a leader. And some of the strongest partners we brought on, I think are that they are the strongest because they are such good leaders, even after the fact.

We build our firms up to think that our firm is the only one that can facilitate the client’s needs. So when you go to partner, you’re very concerned that your clients are going to all hit the door and run out the door because there’s no way anyone else can provide the same experience or the same quality of service. But at the end of the day, you’re coming along in the partnership in most of these cases. So you call the client and the client says,”
Oh, Chris, you’re still there? Okay. Well, are my fees going up?” “No.” “Okay.” Then they’ll ask about the staff or they’ll ask if it’s good for you. But I had built it up to be much more in my mind than it really was.

I believe I lost three clients and in hindsight, those three clients were probably going out the door anyway. This was just the point that gave them the reason to do so. So the staff experience post-transition, I look back to two key employees. So we have my CSR who I had worked with for, I believe it’s coming up on 13 years now. And she had always done a fantastic job on the phones. So I thought that that would be her position long term. We got to Allworth and she had an opportunity to move over to the operations side. And she now took a management position there.

Well, after the fact she let me know that she would get anxiety when she would pick up the phone to talk to clients. And I just thought I am a horrible boss. He or she’s worked with me all these years and I had no ideas because all I got from clients was compliments. So she was actually able to take on a role that she enjoys much more, is much more fulfilling, as well as managing people which is a skill that I didn’t have means to utilize in our smaller firm.

So during the transition, we had two individuals that were very key for us. We had Adam Peters, who assisted the advisors, and Beth Cohen, who assisted client service. Adam’s knowledge is just unbelievable, and he is very organized in the way that he instructs you. So that was invaluable from the advisor’s standpoint. From a client service standpoint, Beth facilitated the same for all of our team members. And a benefit with Beth is that she had been through a previous partnership, so she knew all of the emotions and all the experiences that our team members were going through.

So the integrations process has changed significantly from when I went through it to what the partners are experiencing today. We now have a formal plan built out. We have a project manager on the team that manages each and every step, as well as the corporate development team, which was around when I was here, has continued to evolve and improve over time. We have process feedback calls with every partner at one-month intervals over the first three months, and we have team meetings following those to actually use that feedback to improve the process. So over the many transactions we have done, the process continues to streamline.

Now that’s not to say we’re perfect. Every partnership is different, but we are trying to control the controllables. And being a partner myself, having gone through the process, I think that gives me special insight into how to improve that process for future partners.

So if I got to go back in time and speak with my earlier self, I would go back to when I took over the business from the retiring advisor and I would have focused more on scalability and streamlining the business and really positioning it for sell from the beginning. I know as advisors, we don’t think about that. We just go day to day and do the what’s in the benefit of our clients. And while that is absolutely the number one goal, I think that can be done in conjunction with building a scalable business that can ultimately be sold down the road.

As advisors, we advise our clients on retirement and how to exit one day. And yet we don’t do that for ourselves. So ultimately, everyone’s going to have to sell their business or transition down the road, whether that’s due to an abrupt health event that’s not planned or it’s due to your retirement. But at some point, you will have to transition your business and the more scalable you make that business, the easier and more fluid they’ll be. And ultimately the more it will benefit your clients.

From a very early age, I knew I wanted to own a ranch, and my wife and I, early in our relationship, used to talk about how in retirement, we knew I couldn’t sit still, so what would I do? And I said, “Well, why don’t we just buy ranches, make them the way we want, and then go on and do it again?” And this partnership with Allworth, from a financial standpoint, has actually let me do that much younger than I ever expected. We are now at the point that we’re under contract to sell our second ranch in which we are doing this in just a three-year period, and I never would have had that opportunity had we not partnered with Allworth.

When you consider the next evolution of your business, there are a lot of questions that you need to answer and choices that you have to make leading up to that decision. But what I found personally is that there are many questions and possibilities that come up after the transition to a new partnership and this new phase of your career. It opened up space for me to spend more quality time with my family and to do what I love. Today, due to my decision to integrate our firm with Allworth, I found that I can now do what I love as a new career path, which is sort of a realization of a goal that I set for myself when I was in high school. So without the partnership with Allworth, none of this would have been possible. And now that we have began to pursue that, it’s more or less been confirmation to us that this is what we want to do long term. So I’m very grateful that that opportunity has been provided to us.