Happy Labor Day weekend.

After a quick trip to Dallas to meet with some of our engineers, I’m back in my office gearing up to grill and work through a lot of updated marketing materials that will be launching soon.

Traveling to Dallas in August reminded me how much this time of year feels like a total oven. I spent two years living there in the early 2000s. The concrete and heat can make shoes melt to the streets if you’re not careful.

Maybe that’s what happened all those years ago when Big Tex didn’t make it through the State Fair.

This week, I’m focusing on one of Dallas’ top companies and one of the world’s most impactful engineers.

Here’s this week’s Connected Advisor.

1. The Just-in-Time Wealth Management Firm

2. On the Pod: How Apella and Symmetry Have Built Growth Cultures

3. Bookmarks

   • VRBO Drafts Saban

   • Skynet Celebrates its Birthday 🎉 

4. Milemarker On the Road ✈️

Let’s go. 🏁

Just-In-Time Wealth Management: Applying Toyota’s Timeless Lessons to Modern Financial Services

Immediately following World War II, Japan began widespread reforms.

The 2,608-year-old nation of industrious, culturally rich people had to find its way to international relevancy after the unconditional surrender to the Allied Forces.

The financial difficulties of the occupied country led Kiichiro Toyoda, the Founder and President of Toyota Motor Company, to resign from his namesake organization.

As a company, Toyota was in pure survival mode.

With a deeply troubled company and a limited supply chain, Taiichi Ohno was a production engineer who was forced to find a new way forward.

After studying the American Grocery industry, Ohno invented a concept that would not just revive Toyota but forever change the world.

Just In Time (JIT) Manufacturing

Taiichi Ohno is the founder of Just-in-Time (JIT) Manufacturing - a concept that turned weaknesses at a given moment into timeless virtues. JIT created a low-cost, highly organized and efficient production process to address Japan's shortage of capital, storage space, and natural resources. Toyota stopped holding excess inventory and only produced parts that were going to be immediately used.

Every part had its destination in the form of a purchased vehicle. Waste was minimal, and the core operating philosophies surrounding this pivot led to the discovery of dozens of engineering principles that guide how so many things, from cars to spaceships to code to logistics, are managed today.

Principles like Kanban, Supply Chain Visibility, Kaizen / Continuous Improvement, and Andon or Signaling are all bi-products of Ohno’s leadership and thought processes.

The WealthTech Supply Chain is Broken

Looking at most wealth management firms, we often find many tools, apps, and must-haves at different levels of use and relevance.

Like an unoptimized factory, some solutions are overworked, underutilized, or living on islands. To a large degree, firms have either too little technology or too much, depending on who you ask.

Similar to Toyota’s post-World War II assembly process, your firm likely has a lot of parts sitting around. But unlike Toyota, most wealth management firms are still left to count on their suppliers to build their cars.

This leaves most wealth management firms handing out a dozen or more logins that are hard to manage while you continually dedicate more resources to support them.

Where Wealth Management Can Adopt JIT

For wealth management companies, there’s a wonderful emergence of companies that can now apply the core principles of Just-in-Time Manufacturing to their evolving processes.

For a long time, the adoption of these methods was more exclusive to processes and left for firms large enough to have software developers—if they knew how to lead them.

Today, I am witnessing firms start to take the materials/software they have licensed, extract the data they contain, and assemble insight and information that is being directly applied to how decisions are made and how the business is run.

Key Use Cases

1. Single Source of Truth

   Firms can now focus on information that is truly owned and controlled by the firm. As the underlying supply chain evolves, all of their insight is able to compound.

2. Your Logic, Automated

   Information, calculations, and logic previously living in obscure places can now find a place of key relevance that allows your team to find its benefit without needing any training.

3. Centralized Experience

   With all of your information and logic coming under your control, you can now couple that with a singular experience that gives your advisors what they need.

Control over your supply chain of data now allows you to assemble what you need, right when you need it.

Here are some practical ways that wealth management firms can begin to experience this sort of progress with the supplies you have today.

1. Get Control Over Your Data
   We get to connect data for our firms all the time. Its an investment but the rewards are that you no longer have to query a gatekeeper.
   
   You can have the answers in front of you and this supply of data can help you unlock insights across the one thing you think about more than anyone else - your business.

   
   Owning your data also pays.
   
   According to a McKinsey study, “Organizations that leverage data are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, six times more likely to retain them, and 19 times more likely to achieve profitability.”
   

2. Choose Your Partners Based on the Access They Provide You

   Just recently I was chatting with a friend of mine who is looking at his reporting software options. He’s between a rock and a hard place in a sense.

   
   In this case he’s sitting between a low cost but closed system and one that can cost nearly twice as much but affords him complete agency over his data.
   
   Its time that we start voting with our data now so we can realize its value later.

   
   Its also time to lobby your tech vendors with questions around how they are participating in the revolution of data streaming, open API’s and making it easier to connect your systems - not just the ones that they offer.
   
   The push for value creation by Private Equity has led a lot of software companies to build walls to try to drive adoption.
   
   But if you wanted walls, you would have stayed at Merrill Lynch or UBS.
   

3. Get to Know Who You Are

   One of the really interesting exercises we see firms go through is to be able to start unpacking their true identity through the data analysis they can now automate.

   
   How do advisors actually perform versus how you perceive they do?
   
   Are advisors actually adopting all the value-added services you’ve invested in over the past several years? These include game-changing solutions like DPL, Holistplan, Pontera, and more.
   
   Or did you spend much time with the 15% of your advisors who are natural early adopters?
   
   Put your data to work and start to transform how you lead your team.
   
   The beauty of this process is that its a process. It does take time but often that time gives you the right insights to start coaching your team to new levels of success day by day — with just enough information to really add value.

Toyota Today

Today, Toyota is the world’s largest car manufacturer and has a $291B market cap. It employs over 370,000 people worldwide and will produce between 9 and 10 million vehicles a year. My family drives around in one every day.

When I needed to find a car for my teenagers, I looked at Toyotas first because they hold their value and tend to be very reliable cars. Toyota knows that success for their firm, means success for us as consumers too. I hope the value you add for your clients is felt for generations to come.

________________________

On the Pod: How Apella and Symmetry Have Created Cultures of Growth

In Episode 058, Kyle interviews Patrick Sweeny, Chairman and CEO of Apella Wealth, who shares valuable insights on fostering a culture of growth within financial advisory firms. Patrick discusses the power of internal promotions and residency programs in nurturing talent, the benefits of focusing on a specific niche, and the strategic role of technology in delivering comprehensive planning services.

Key topics include:

1. The evolution of Apella Partners and their approach to finding executive talent from within.

2. How Apella’s residency program successfully onboards new advisors.

3. The importance of having a niche in the advisory business.

4. The integration of technology to enhance client relationships and planning solutions.

Patrick emphasizes that the most successful advisors differentiate themselves by offering services that truly matter to clients, maintaining strong relationships, and leveraging technology effectively.

Key Quotes:

• “You differentiate yourself by delivering more services that are important to clients.”

• “The most successful advisors have a niche. They understand their niche and quickly build trust with clients.”

• “This is still a relationship business. People want a relationship with someone they trust, and technology helps us be more effective.”

Don’t miss Patrick’s insights on creating a growth-focused firm that stays true to its core values while embracing innovation.

Bookmarks

VRBO Has Drafted Nick Saban

I’ve never been an Airbnb guy. VRBO has always been a cut above, in my opinion. At our house, we call it V-R-B-O, not Vrbo, but that’s because we were using the site before they told us how to say it.

In their latest ad, just in time for football season, Nick Saban plays the part of the Airbnb host. I thought you might appreciate this as much as I did:

Skynet Celebrates Its Anniversary

In a time when technology is getting closer to sentience, we can look back to August 29, 1997, when Skynet was said to come online.

While I’m pretty optimistic about the rise of machines, many people feel very differently.

As you serve your clients, it may be helpful to gauge how everyone is feeling about technology so we can be sensitive and not presume they are good with every new communication method.

 
Milemarker on the Road

Catch our team on the road at the following events or cities:

1. September 5-6 - Omaha, NE

2. September 15-18 - Huntington Beach, CA

3. October 28-29 - San Francisco, CA

If you’re in any of those cities and want to arrange a meeting time, reply to this email, and we’ll get something on the calendar.

Jud Mackrill