On this episode of Bridging The Gap, we are joined by Frank LaRosa, CEO of Elite Consulting Partners and Host of The Advisor Talk Podcast. Frank starts by sharing his journey from architecture into the financial services industry, and how he uses the same tactics he used to build his firm to help other advisors build their business. 

Matt and Frank discuss operational efficiencies, and Frank shares his insights on the importance of infrastructure in businesses, the trend toward independence, and the common inefficiencies in many financial advisory and wealth management firms. 

We dive into the ongoing trend of mergers and acquisitions in the industry, the rise of private equity firms, and the benefits of being an independent advisor. This episode wraps up with Frank sharing his thoughts around the advantages of automation in creation more capacity to help advisors serve their clients, as well as how we can use social media and branding to help firms and advisors attract new clients. 

Frank LaRosa Bio:

Frank LaRosa, Chief Executive Officer of Elite Consulting Partners and host of the top-rated podcast and YouTube Channel “Advisor Talk with Frank LaRosa”, has achieved a distinguished career in financial services, spanning more than 25 years. Frank is a sought-after industry leader whose expert opinion is frequently quoted in publications including Barron’s, http://WealthManagement.com , Investment News, OnWallStreet, AdvisorHub, and Forbes Business Council.

Frank began his career in the business sector after graduating from Kean University with a B.S. in marketing. His resume includes financial advisor positions at Smith Barney and Prudential Securities, as well as Executive Director for Morgan Stanley.

In 2011, Frank launched his company Elite Consulting Partners, a transition consulting firm with a unique, advisor-first approach to recruiting, informed by Frank’s prominent positions within the financial industry. Under Frank’s leadership, Elite Consulting Partners has become the most prominent, successful, and well-respected recruiting firms in the industry.

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You have to be obsessed with creating efficiency

in your business. You have to be obsessed with it. You have to lose

sleep over it. In an advisory practice, the ultimate

goal is to be better at servicing your clients.

How do you do that? It comes down to efficiency.

This is Bridging the Gap with your host,

Matt Reiner. Frank Laros,

welcome to Bridging the Gap. How are you doing, my friend? I'm awesome.

How are you doing? Welcome to the new year. Yeah, same to you.

Same to you. I mean, it's not common to have a braves fan

and a Phillies fan on the same podcast talking cordially

as well. So I hope we can make it through an entire episode.

I think we can. I think we can do it. But congrats to your Phillies

on making it to the world series and beating my braves, but hopefully it doesn't

happen again. Yeah, I appreciate that.

I'm going to bet that says it'll probably happen this coming year,

too. We'll see. All right. I like atlanta,

too. I like atlanta, too. So if we're going to lose anybody, I'd rather

be Atlanta than the mets. There you go.

We're both aligned on that. So let's focus on where we're aligned

and we can create commonalities around that.

Well, I'm really excited about this conversation. I've been following your

work for a while all over social media and what you've been doing

with your podcast, and I've been fortunate to be joining you

on that podcast as well. But I think it'd be great in

our conversation is going to be talking about operational efficiencies. We're going to be talking

about the industry. We're just going to kind of have this conversation because you're so

versed in working with advisors that I think it's just going to bring so

much awareness and insight to the listeners that can

add value. But before we get into kind of the meat of the conversation,

I always like to start out by talking about your journey. And I always usually

start by asking the question, what did the 13 year old frank

LaRosa want to do? I mean, I don't know if Elite consulting was on the

roadmap at 13, but what did the 13 year old Frank La Rosa

want to do? And then talk to me about how that journey evolved to where

you are today, to being the founder and CEO. Of Elite consulting partners.

Yeah, that's interesting. That's a great question. I would say the 13

year old Frank LaRosa, jr. Probably, if I

go back, wanted to be an architect. I love drawing. I love using

that side of my brain. I love to

build and design. I love that whole part about being

an architect. Got into college, was in one of

my people in their environment classes, and the professor

got up and said, if you're in this business, in this industry and

make a lot of money, you're in the wrong business. That was the last class

I ever took to be an architect. I switched over

to finance and marketing and sort of

stumbled into finance. That old saying

about behind every successful man is a strong and successful woman.

And so I had met my girlfriend at the time,

now my wife of 26 years, and said you should go into

finance. And I'm like, okay. I didn't even know what a mutual fund

was. I didn't even know anything about finance. She's like, you know how to sell,

you know how to talk to people. You should be in finance. At the time

had just gotten a job at Lehman Brothers in New York.

So did that and ended up working that took an

internship with parental securities back in the day.

For those of you that know parental securities morphed into moved

eventually I moved my own practice. I became an advisor. Moved my

practice, which was at a pamphlet at the time, a couple of

hundred thousand revenue. So I call that like a pamphlet. Moved it to

Smith Barney, grew that left Morgan

Stanley at the time and almost twelve years ago started Elite Consulting

Partners. And it's interesting looking back that one

of the reasons why I enjoy what I do today and also helping

advisors is because I get to help an advisor

build their business. I'm using sort of the

creativeness that I have in my mind to build my own firm to do

the social media stuff and the branding. So I get to use that creative

side of me and make more money than I probably would have

if I was an architect. Although there's some good architects out there, but it's like

1% of the 1%. So that's my path

in my professional career. Have only known financial services.

I started in production in 1996 so I've been

in the business since really as an intern since like 94. Right.

So seen a bunch of different things. It's all I know, it's all I talk

about. It's all I think about. As a manager and

a producer and now as a CEO of Elite Consoling Partners.

I've seen every kind of business, every advisor, every type

of client just about. Maybe there's one out there I haven't seen

yet. But I've gotten to see what

works, what doesn't work, what styles resonate, how to deal with

certain kinds of clients, what clients expect from an advisor,

what firms are good and where do for certain advisors excel at

certain types of firms and why, to your

point. And one of the things that you talk about a lot is how do

you run an efficient business? I think there's a lot of great advisors out

there and it doesn't mean that they're good business owners.

Right? They're good practitioners, but sometimes they are not

good operators of a business. And so many times I'll

tell an advisor that they should just stay where they are at a

wire house or regional firm because the things that they're going to have to do

when they leave may be detrimental to the growth of their business because

they're not good at it. Right. Yeah. They need that infrastructure.

And it's such an interesting journey that you went on. I love that you said

that you wanted to be an architect because you're now like, helping to architect

firms. Right. I mean, that's what you're doing. You're helping to architect your own firm.

That's that creative side. But you're solving problems. Like,

architects come in and they have to solve design challenges, and they have to be

creative, and you have to be creative just in a unique way. And you and

I align a lot on that way. I love solving challenges

of how do we better serve clients, how do we create greater

efficiencies? You mentioned talking about how we

have aligned with this idea of running efficient businesses. I'm curious from your

standpoint, you've worked with a lot of firms and you've seen both

efficient and inefficient businesses run. What are some

of those aspects of the firms that are not efficient, that stand out,

and what is keeping them from getting over the

hurdle? Like, what's holding them back from being efficient? Right. I'm curious on

that side because I have my own sense of belief on

it, but you've seen a lot more than I have on that side.

So I'll answer that question by telling a quick story.

I got a call, and I won't use the name of certainly I won't

use the name of the firm or anything, but I got a call from the

wife, from the wife of a very successful

CEO of a multimillion dollar RIA.

So the wife calls and says, my husband needs help

because he's in his mid sixty s or whatever.

It's a seven or $8 million RIA, and he can't

operate like this anymore. He's going to kill himself.

Meaning he's going to run himself into the ground. I need you

to help him. So okay. This is

different. Never gotten a call from a spouse before.

But when I met with these people, what I found was that they

were great asset managers. Right. They knew how to take care of their

clients and the service side. They had core values. They had all those

things that you should have when you're running a business.

But their internal service

model and operating model really was upside down.

All the decisions had to go through him. And he had a management team,

so he had people on the team that could do things even

like hiring interns. He was the first person that

the intern would interview with, not the last or at

all. I mean, an intern like, why are you even if your core management team

can't determine whether or not that intern is the right fit for your firm,

you should probably replace your core management team.

Right. It was inefficiencies in

their workflows. I know you have something called benjamin. It's a

client CRM type of thing, but their workflows in terms of

how they operate their day as efficiently as

possible. If you read the book, good to great. And if you follow traction

or EOS, it's all about or strategic coach,

it's all about having the right people in the right seats doing the things that

they love to do right. And so I see that as a real flaw

in a lot of businesses today and I think it's primarily

because this wave of advisors going from the

W two world where the manager is doing stuff for them

and now they own their businesses and they have

to put a different hat on and they're inexperienced in certain

things. Not that it's bad, it's just their inexperienced I see it a lot because

more and more advisors are going independent they're opening up their own RIAs,

they're going to a broker dealer but the other piece of it

that it's an operational inefficiency

it's trying to take on too much.

So in traction or Good to Great, they talk about

letting go of the vine as a leader right and trusting your team

and having the right team around you which is sort of an old school thing

right? Obviously having the right team around you but let going a vine and let

them do the things that they do really well. So my advice to him was

what's going to have the most impact on the firm and the growth of the

firm for you and your team is for you to do none of those things

and spend all of your time with your clients and

out finding new clients. Very well

respected individual in the community across the

river in Philadelphia. He should be spending all

of his time just high touch

with his clients, with his prospects, get more referrals and let his

team do those things. My other piece of advice to them,

which is also a flaw that I see with most firms,

especially for I'll call them newer business owners, is their unwillingness

to spend money on their business. One of my recommendations

to him was they needed to hire a chief operating officer

so they didn't really have anyone that was running

the business itself. Right.

And for that size business it's going to be $150,000 a

year job, right. You want to be able to spend that money. I've had

firms where I've worked with before where they've done that and their

growth was exponential because it took a lot of the

day to day mundane operations stuff off the principal's

plate so they can go out and then do what they do best,

which is what we all did best originally was go out and find clients.

That's how they make the most money. And so by doing those things I

found that that has helped you'll talk

about this as well spending money on technology to become

more efficient with how their workflows go.

And just a lot of advisors, they get sticker shock sometimes when they

see how much really good technology costs in

our industry. I spend a tremendous amount of money on

our technology in our CRM system and our phone system,

on our commissions and billing system for my entire team.

So as a firm, just by way of background, we have 60 north of 60

people on my team, consultants. Half of them are here

locally, the other half are spread around the country. And I recognized

that in order for me to grow this business to where I wanted

to get as an enterprise, I have to invest back in technology,

which is investing back into people. And I think financial advisors

don't make that connection. That if you're going to spend money on

the right CRM system. Because it makes you

maybe not you. Because you maybe don't even know how to use it as an

advisor. But your assistants do. Your staff does. So that it

creates more efficiencies for them so they can get more work

done and either handle more clients right,

or, if you're limiting your clients, have more time to

have a higher touch experience with the clients that you have.

It's creating operational efficiencies and also not being afraid

to spend money on your business for growth.

And you don't always get an immediate return on your investment. If you're

going to spend $50,000 or $100,000 a year on a new piece of technology,

you may not necessarily see the immediate effect,

but your staff might. You might see it a year later because

all of a sudden you're doing more business, you're opening accounts quicker,

you're servicing your clients faster with less clicks.

I'm a freak about can we reduce the number of clicks

when one of my team goes into salesforce to do a certain task,

can we reduce it by one more click?

Yeah, you and I are aligned on there. There's a lot of gold there

that you sent. I mean, I think that the idea of advisors having

control over every aspect of the firm, I think that that's such a challenge,

right. That story you mentioned about interviewing the intern,

you don't need that. There's no need, but that's like that control over

every aspect. And then I think that that's like a psychological challenge that

needs to be overcome of moving. And it's such an interesting

psychological battle because in order to get

there, you have to figure out how to let go. But we

feel that if we let go, then someone's not going to do it as well.

But I think that a good piece of advice. And I

read this somewhere or I heard someone say, I don't know where it was,

but it was actually during a presentation. If it's a decision

that's not going to drastically impact your business like an intern, it doesn't matter

if it's going to drastically alter your life then yeah, you need to put a

lot of thought into it. But if it's like you have all these people that

spend so much time determining where to go to dinner, it's like, does it really

matter where you go? You're going to have food. If you have a bad meal,

what does it mean? You had a bad meal, you go at it again tomorrow

and you do it again. Exactly. If they can have this mentality of just making

decisions faster that way, are you going to lose clients because of it?

No. Are you going to have an SEC audit because of it? No.

Okay, then just let someone else make the decision. So I think that's a good

strategy. I want to get to your other point of workflows

because I want to get down to that. That's something that's like near and dear

to my heart. I've got a presentation I do on workflows and I think that

the difficulty with them is that people feel it institutionalizes the business

from that standpoint. What have you seen now looking at the great firms,

you talk about wanting to reduce your clicks. What makes

a firm great at using workflows?

Right. What have you identified that? What are those firms that

are just using workflows so effectively? What are they doing in

terms of building the workflows, thinking through the workflows, executing on them, et cetera,

that differentiates them from their peers? Yeah,

I think that what I see there is the firms that are doing a great

job at it have a real understanding of the end game.

So some firms create workflows that somebody in

an ivory tower thought made sense,

but it didn't really translate to the

ultimate touch point for the client. So what does that mean

for the client? The firms that do it really well understand

what the end sort of output should be

and then they work backwards. And the

goal that you're trying to really get accomplished

is to again, you're not institutionalizing service.

Right. Because processes are

back ended. Right. You don't need to tell a client, hey, we're going to put

you into our process and you're not going to do that.

Right. But what it does is it takes the thinking

out of how do you service your clients so that

something doesn't get messed up or somebody takes

off, they're on vacation and all of a sudden they were the person, the sole

person that sent out the welcome kit

to the client. And maybe for certain clients who send out a gift or

something, right. We have a box that we send out to larger

clients that we're starting to work with. We call it a black box. And it's

really nice, has some stuff in it. Right. And we have some processes in

our salesforce system that all my advisor,

all my consultants have to do is click that button. An email automatically

goes to the person that's responsible for that and she knows to send out

the box. Right. And we're even trying to make that even

more automated because if the consultant forgets to check the box,

then nothing happens. So the point is understanding

what you're trying to get accomplished and automating the

thinking, really, or the lack. You want to

think as little as possible in order to deliver a

high level service means you want to automate the whole process

so that the client, they come in, they have a meeting, they come

on board, they sign up, you have a new client.

Welcome letter is a little bit tacky at this point. Some wow thing

that they get automatically two or three days after they've opened

an account. Then they have maybe another letter or

automatic meeting set where you're going to review their statement so that

you can walk through if it's the first time they're working with you and maybe

you're at Schwab and they've never seen a Schwab statement before. So you want to

review that with them, tell them how to read it just so many things that

you can automate. The clients don't realize that their name

came up in the system and they got a birthday card. Right.

But I don't really know if I'm answering your question really that well, but it

really comes down to setting up processes

so that you don't have to think about the things that could be

automated so that you can spend your time.

You did a YouTube video about being present with

your clients, right? And if you can automate the day to day

stuff, it allows you to be more present

with your clients or your team because you know that these other

things are being taken care of. I wear the same

clothes pretty much all the time. I have the same jeans.

I have four different colors, right. I have the same shirts. Right.

Because I don't want to have to think about what I wear every day because

I want to spend that mental energy on things that are more important,

like my team, these calls, talking with

clients. I can't put my clothes in

a CRM system, but I can automate it as best I can.

I automate my morning. It's all of the things that free

up your brain capacity for what's really important

to you. Yeah, I think that you make a really great point

there. Having an end in mind is what you alluded to at the beginning.

I think that what people tend to forget. I just would add

what is the beginning action and what's the end, right. When you're thinking about a

workflow, like get the beginning and the end and then fill in the holes.

But you run into this issue with the curse of knowledge, as I call it,

right. Where you just know it so well that you don't know how to break

it down because you've been doing it for so long. It's kind of like how

we are with making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. To break down all of

those steps is, like, silly. You're like, yeah, just get the peanut butter and just

put it on. You know what to do. But if someone doesn't know how to

make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, like, you really got to break it down.

But we can't break it down because we just know it. It's the curse

of knowledge at times. And I think that to your point of being present with

your clients, it's also being present with that situation and

being precise with that. Workflow as detailed as you can

so that other people can plug and play. We've been talking a lot about efficiency.

We've been talking about workflows, which leads to efficiencies, which leads to

capacity, which leads to more servicing of clients,

more presence with clients. And I think that that's where the industry is

going. I'm curious on your side right. As there's been so

much focus on MNA, on PE,

on consolidation in our industry, and also on the

commoditization of investment management occurring in our space,

what do you see? You spent a few decades in

our space, and you've seen it evolve drastically. What does

the next decade look like in our industry

with everything that's going on? Yeah,

I think m and A will continue. We all know, and we don't need

to get into the numbers that the average age of the advisor on our industry

keeps getting older and older. Right. So trying to solve for that,

and so M and A. I say M and A, but succession planning

is really important. I think PE firms out there recognize

how much value there is in an advisory practice, and so they've come into the

business. I don't necessarily think that it's a good

thing. I'm not a huge fan of PE buyouts.

If you're trying to bring

more AUM in, bring more AUM in. Right. Cut costs. Cut costs

right now. What's the next quarter? What's the next quarter? What's the next quarter?

If you're running a really successful advisory practice and doing the right thing

for your clients and you have a high service

model, sometimes it takes a while to bring good clients in.

Sometimes you don't want to keep bringing in more and more clients. I'm not a

huge fan of that. When I was a manager, I would coach my advisors

to find ways to offload

but reduce the number of clients that they have or households

that they have. It's the 80 20 rule. So spend more time

with that 20% of your clients that do 80% of the revenue, and you'll get

more referrals because you're spending more time with them. It just will

happen. I don't believe that PE firms have the patience for stuff like that.

I think that I've seen too many really good

firms, super OSJs, whatever you want to call it.

Take PE money and the culture changes.

Right, what once was, hey, we're different.

We're like the old school. We're the old

school Smith Barney culturally and all that other stuff. And then they take PE

money and all of a sudden the principals are getting hammered every

quarter by the PE guys

on the numbers, on the numbers, on the numbers, on the numbers. And they move

away from the people, the people to people. So I think that that's something that

everyone has to really be careful about. If you're going to take any

type of PE money, it really needs to be a strategic partner that understands the

business, that understands a long term game

plan, is not necessarily looking to flip you

and understands that the client is the number one thing that you're looking

at. I do think that we are going to continue to see the

advisors voting with their feet in terms of where they see in the industry going.

That is independence from W two.

And so it's not just wires, right? So W Two,

that could be wires regionals to independence.

And this comment I'm going to make may be a little bit controversial.

Within Independence, you have advisors that affiliate with independent

broker dealers, right? They have brokerage business, they have advisory business.

Those are great. And there's some great firms. Then there's a subset of those advisors

that have their own RIAs, right? And they're

all advisory, all fee based. So they have an RIA, they don't

do any brokerage business and they start this thing. It's going to be cool.

I'm going to open up my own RIA. It's going to be awesome. I'm going

to get 100% payout and all this great stuff. And then

they get audited by the SEC and it sucks up six months of their life.

So I think that we've seen this trend of increase in

RIA activity. I think two to three years from now we're

going to see that sort of unwind a little bit, meaning MNA

will still be taking place because we're going to see these smaller

RIAs roll up into bigger RIAs

because it wasn't what they thought it was going to be, right?

And they have $100 million or 200 million

or 300 million. In my philosophy, in my opinion, you need to have at least

a billion to be an efficient RIA to be

able to handle, to have the capacity to spend money on technology, to have

a good COO, right, to have the money to do those things

and then have a good bottom line.

I think we're going to see a trend there where you're

going to start to see some roll ups and almost sort of like the

number of RIAs actually going down. Sort of like what you see with the broker

dealer business. Like if you look at the number of broker dealers that were around

over the last couple of years, that number keeps going down because

these small BDS with 50 guys

or 100 guys, right? They're folding up because

it's too cumbersome now. And they can actually make more money by

taking their 50 advisors and roll up into some bigger firm.

Get rid of all the compliance, have the other firm do all the compliance,

they get a decent payout, and they end up making more money with I'll say

not no risk, but a lot less risk because they're not having to do compliance

anymore. Right? So I see that trend happening within the RA space.

I think deals on the MNA side are still pretty high.

I've seen some deals that are in anywhere between the ten

X of Ebok 15, ron Carson

did a 20 x or whatever. You always got to look at the devils and

the details of those deals. And so I still think that

multiples will stay at those levels. But I think the

structure of those deals is changing. The PE firms are

trying to minimize their risk and they're

not being as drunken sailor like, meaning just throwing

money at firms and highest bidder, no back ends,

no give backs, probably some more sellers notes

involved and stuff like that. So more exposure,

not real risk, more exposure to the seller if things don't

work out. Yeah, that's really interesting because

I've talked about this as well. It's like this pendulum that's happened in the space

right in your time. It went from being part of a wirehouse,

then you went to RAA to independent and that was your selling point

as to sell against it. And now we're basically the pendulum swinging back over to

a wirehouse model, but it's now an RIA wirehouse model. So you're just

going to RIA large RIAs. They're just becoming big

institutions but they're just not called wirehouses, they're just called aggregators

at this point. So wirehouse, they have a w two option. They're buying up

everybody and now they have hundreds of advisors underneath them and they're

w two and you have to file their policies and you have to use their

brand. So I have this saying that in our industry, the more things

change, the more they stays the same. Yeah, it's like

nothing's different. It's just moving, shuffling things around and moving

them around to let people get what they want. What does

this all mean in your mind for the client? I'm always curious

from perspective there because ultimately it gets back to

the decisions that are being made. I know that a lot of firms doing it

for the right reasons, but getting back to the client,

right, providing more access to clients, providing more services to clients,

providing an enhanced client experience, what does this mean for them?

If this trend that you project is there, is it good thing for the clients,

is it a bad thing? And I'm sure that some of our listeners will be

they'll fight one way or the other no matter which side you go because I've

talked to both sides but I'm. Curious from your perspective?

Yeah, that's an awesome question. I think it's a great thing for clients.

I think that one of the reasons why I see advisors

going independent is because they're limited with how they can work with their clients.

Right. I think the wires w two

type firms are trying to force

subtly, some not subtly their own investment processes

and philosophies on the advisor to deliver to the client.

Right. As advisors go independent, own their own raas.

They give them the flexibility to work with the client how they want,

service them how they want. Like I call it the real

world, right? If you were not in financial services and you were in

some other world selling a product, you can do so many things

for your clients, service them in ways that wow them

and so it opens up the door to an advisor

to really do you have to follow rules,

right. But really do a tremendous job with servicing clients.

How you want to service the client, how they should be serviced,

the way they deserve to be serviced. It also gives you the ability to run

money the way you want to run the money, not the way the firm is

telling you how to run money. And because your economics

are so much better on the independent side, believe it

or not, money is not an issue. Right. Whether it's this product or that product

doesn't really matter because you're primarily advisory

based, recharging a fee, you're getting a high

payout on it. So you're not like beholden to, well I got to sell this

product because I get a higher fee on it because my firm's taking sixty cents

of every dollar. I was talking to an advisor today and

he's leaving a wire house firm because he does some annuity business

for his clients but they basically limit

the revenue that the firm pays them on the annuity and then

he loses. He's got a 40% payout so he's

getting half the annuity and insurance business

fee. Wells is keeping they're keeping the

other half, right? And then they're taking sixty cents of every dollar

that he makes. So he's like, Frank, I basically get like $0.10

for every dollar of business I generate.

If he's on the independent side, which is what he wants to do,

that stress that thought. That discussion

in his mind is off the table. He doesn't have to worry about it.

And so he can be really truly agnostic

to his client with what product or service they should be

working on. Again, I'm not saying that he's doing the wrong thing and all that,

that's not what I'm saying. But it's human nature. Right though

I think it's all going to be great for clients.

I think that social media candidly,

I think the Pandemic 2020 and clients

getting so much more used to technology and zoom and not

seeing their advisor physically in person as much as

they thought they needed before, has opened up the marketplace for

a financial advisor to do business with people in geographies that

maybe they never thought possible. The challenge that the advisor has is

how do you brand yourself so those clients that are maybe in two states

over find out who you are. Right. Which is something I

think you have done exceptionally well with your branding,

your own branding and then the branding of your company. Yeah, I think

that that's such an interesting and I appreciate those good words, and I think that

that's an interesting perspective on the client. I do think it

is a good thing for the client. I do think what's interesting about this whole

dynamic of what's happening is that I think over the next

ten to 15 years, you're going to see that trend of what you're saying,

right, moving back into the aggregator model. But then you're going to have these younger

people that want to go back that forgot what it was like to be independent.

They're going to be going independent again, and we're going to be right back at

it as well. But I do think it's good for the client because

if you can get more scale, then you can get better service.

You can get better offerings, better opportunities, better services as well,

and better value. So I do agree with you on that

side heavily for that. But you and I could

talk for hours. I've been on your podcast. You're on my podcast.

We could do this for days. But I know that people want to get back

to servicing their clients or maybe their family if they're driving. So I

want to wrap this up by asking my two questions that I always like to

ask at the end of the podcast, because I've been really appreciative of your time

and your insight. I've loved this conversation.

This stuff is what gets me going. But I always

like to ask because I'm a lifelong learner, I love to learn. That's why

I do these conversations selfishly. But I also like to learn from

books. And I always like to ask smart people what's some books that they're reading.

And I know you already mentioned two great ones that I've read, good to,

great interaction. But I'm curious, what's one book out there that you think everybody

should read outside of those two you've already talked about?

Yes. So I actually have it over here. I keep

a buy mag. So I have a friend of mine, Ed Milette, he's a

big social media guy, but Ed Milette, and he wrote this book called The Power

of One More and Ultimate Guide to Happiness

and Success. And I read this book and it's

a really easy read and it really helps you in your

personal life and your professional life spiritually, with your

relationships at work, with your relationships on your personal side.

And I think if you read that book, it's very powerful and it just really

talks about the power of one more. One more phone

call to a client, right? You have clients that are

going through something stressful, one more call to them, one more

check in with them. You never know if that one more thing is going

to make a difference in their life or not, right?

Saying one more prayer at the end of the night or being thankful for one

more thing in your life, all of those types of things

are powerful and he goes into why those things are so

meaningful to him and it really resonates really well. I love

the book. It's phenomenal. So ed Milette the power of

one more. I love that. I've heard that in some sales books

as well, right? Just make one more call before you go out and you never

know that that may be the call that closes the big deal that you've been

waiting for all quarter. So I love that concept. So the final question is

something I've taken from Barron's at their conferences, but I always

like to ask my guests, we talked about a lot here, right? A lot of

value, a lot of insight and wisdom.

What's one piece of actionable advice you hope people listening to

this podcast take away from our conversation here today?

I would say that the one piece of actionable advice that they

should take away is you have to be obsessed

with creating efficiency in your business. Like,

you have to be obsessed with it, you have to lose sleep over

it. Because efficiency in an advisory practice,

the ultimate goal is to be better at servicing

your clients because that's what's going to get you money, right? Make you more money,

bring more clients and more referrals. So how do you do that?

It comes down to efficiency. That could mean better technology,

that could mean better staff, having the right staff in the right

seats, doing the things that they do the best at. So being

obsessed with that is something I think if you can focus on that as

a practitioner and maybe being obsessed with those types of things

in all areas of your life, right. Be obsessed with being

efficient at home as a father, as a husband and or a wife.

I try to be obsessed with that as being a good husband and creating efficiencies

in my life and my daily routine so I can be more present with my

wife when I'm around. So I'm obsessed with figuring out those little things.

I love that kind of mantra, right? Be obsessive about efficiency.

I think that that's such a great tool. And some

people say, well, that's not my job. But it really is because it's a catalyst

to you doing a better job for your clients, for you to be. A better

leader to your let me just say one thing because you said this before and

I think it's really important. This is a problem that some people have. I know

we're running late here. Being obsessed with efficiency doesn't mean overanalyzing.

Right. Paralysis by analysis. You can't do that.

What I mean is come up with processes, implement,

tweak, change, keep honing it. But you

have to make decisions. I always say a

bad decision or inaccurate decision is better than no decision because

you learn from it. Like, okay, we started that process. That didn't

work really well. There was a glitch here because this

didn't go out the right way or whatever. Okay, now you know.

So being obsessed with being efficient means

you have to implement something and you have to constantly work on it. So I

just want to make sure your audience understands that you don't want to overanalyze,

so you don't do anything. Yeah, that is a huge

point. A point worth spending time on. Agree wholeheartedly with that

as well. Well, Frank, this has been amazing.

I really do appreciate your insight and your time. I know that others are going

to want to continue to follow you, follow everything that you're doing, get more

insight and knowledge from you, maybe even work with you. So what's the best way

for our audience to get in touch and follow you and be part

of your network? Sure. I would say check

out my Instagram account, which is Franklarosa elite. You can

check out our LinkedIn account, which is obviously under Frank LaRosa. You can shoot me

an email at frank@eliteconsultingpartners.com.

My website is eliteconsultingpartners.com. DM me,

give me a call. Happy to talk and strategize,

find out how we can help you. I appreciate that, Frank.

Thanks so much, man. Be well, stay well and just always remember, go Braves.

All right. Thanks, Matt. Thanks for

tuning into this week's episode. Of Bridging the Gap. Don't forget to give us a