Today’s episode focuses on the vital role of leadership in the business world, featuring our guest Chris Reynolds. With over 30 years of experience, Chris has played a major part in shaping Canada’s wealth management industry, particularly through his leadership at the Investment Planning Council, the country’s largest independent wealth dealership.

In our conversation, we talk about what it takes to build and sustain strong, long-term relationships within professional teams, highlighting the importance of trust and a shared vision. Chris shares how great leadership comes from recognizing people’s strengths, creating accountability, and fostering a supportive culture.

As we dive deeper, you’ll hear practical insights that both aspiring entrepreneurs and experienced leaders can use to strengthen their teams, improve company culture, and deliver a better client experience.

Takeaways:

• Chris Reynolds emphasizes the importance of building relationships based on shared vision, which fosters team loyalty and longevity in the workplace.
• In leadership, it is essential to articulate clear expectations and allow competent team members the autonomy to execute their roles without micromanagement.
• The essence of effective client relations lies in identifying problems and providing solutions, rather than merely selling products or services.
• A focus on consistent and positive client experiences will ultimately cultivate trust and loyalty, which is vital for long-term success in any business.
• Reinforcing a culture of trust and accountability within a team can drive collective success and improve overall morale and productivity.
• The podcast illustrates the significance of simplifying processes to enhance the client experience, highlighting that less complexity often leads to greater satisfaction.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Investment Planning Council
• Canada Life
• Quadras

Foreign. Welcome to the A List podcast.

Today we've got really special guest Chris Reynolds, who is one of the most aspiring entrepreneurs in the wealth management business in Canada. So, Chris, thank you so much for joining us today.

Oh, I wouldn't miss it. It's great.

So Chris has spent over 30 years building the Investment Planning Council, which is the largest independent wealth dealership in Canada. Recently joined up with Canada Life, who is the organization that I started to build my practice with.

It's been really interesting to see the transition from Quadras Canada Life over to more of the Independent Channel. And Chris, I think, is a large part of that and is driving the vision of what independent financial advice looks like here in Canada.

Now, what really sets Chris apart is his leadership. And so what I've noticed about him is he's the type of person who cares about his team and people tend to stick around him long term.

And so I had the pleasure of catching up with Sam Febro, who's been working with Kris 25 years. So maybe let's start off with that. Kris, how did you end up building relationships with somebody like Sam?

And then how do you maintain a relationship over a long period of time despite all the acquisitions, mergers, growth and stuff? Like, why do people stick around?

It's a good question. I ask the same thing. And for long suffering Sam and many of the other people.

You know what I think if you want a great team, you have to share the same. Why? In other words, you have to have people who buy into your vision. Because if they don't buy in the vision, as I said, then it's just work.

And nobody wants to work. At least they don't want to work for very long.

But if you have a vision, if you continue to describe what the future is going to look like and how we can do it together, that keeps people around. Like, you can't just expect somebody to be outstanding when their job is to do the same thing over and over and over again.

They have to be building to something and everybody wants to be part of something. And so you have to constantly be reinforcing what it is that we're all trying to do together. So that would be number one.

Number two is when I find somebody who's competent and that is good at what they do, the best thing that I can do is nothing. A lot of leaders think that their job is to actually help people do their job better. I'm sort of the opposite of that person.

My job is to clearly articulate what I want from them and then let Them figure it out. And if they don't do it, then we have different talks.

Because the other thing that you have to do, and everybody wants this as well, well, is you got to hold people accountable. You can't just say, I want to grow by 20% and then you grow by 5% and you're like, that's okay, let's pat everybody on the head, right?

It's then, then it's what they call, what I call. I'm going to give you some help.

And help means we're going to meet every week until we figure out how we're going to meet the objectives that we've set. So you know, there's a big part and I'm sure that we're going to talk about it. In my book there's a whole area, it's on trust.

If you hire a team member and they know exactly what you want and you've been very clear on it and they're competent, then you have to trust them to do it and that's it. The reason mostly that people leave positions in general is because they feel over managed.

They don't feel they have that trust, they don't feel that they're part of something. So if you want to build a really world class team, hire world class people, but let them do it, don't do it for them.

What's surprising to me though, Chris, is you didn't grow up in financial services, you grew up on a farm north of Toronto. So how, how did that early upbringing tie into some of the character traits that you still hold today?

Well, I think you know, and I know a lot of people who grew up on a farm and they all have the similar trait, which is responsibility and accountability. Because when you grow up on a farm. So I grew up on, my dad traded racehorses, right.

And racehorses are every day, like if you don't feed them, they die. Right?

So, so it's seven days a week, every month, every year and you have to wake up at a certain time, you have to do your, what your responsibilities are.

So all of that I think comes down to, you know, you don't, it's not even a conscious thing because you grew up in it, but you know, the power of responsibility. And so I think that you know of anything, you know, you know, responsibility and you know, hard work.

And so those traits I guess keep going through your whole career.

And a lot of people that I know who are, you know, hugely disciplined and have that consistency, you know, when you ask, oh, so where'd you grow up, you know, say, eight times out of 10, they probably grew up on a farm, and that's why they have that level of discipline and consistency in what they do do.

Yeah, I love that. I. I was in the military for a little while, so I got lucky that that kind of trained it for me.

I didn't have the farm experience, but, yeah, in this business and most businesses, it's being consistent and following through on your promises for many years. And that's what leads to success.

Well, absolutely. You know, I talk about that a lot. Like, what is brand? At the end of the day, brand is consistency.

You just have to be consistent, and you will have a brand new. Now, that brand can be positive, and it can be negative. Like, you know, people who are late all the time, that's their brand.

Their brand is incompetent. I don't trust somebody who's late all the time. I just don't.

And so no matter what they tell me that they're gonna do, I automatically, in the back of my mind, I don't really trust them.

But somebody who shows up on time all the time and somebody who does what they say they're gonna do every time they develop a brand, and that brand I trust, and I will give them more and more and more responsibility. So. So if you want to do better in life, just be more consistent.

I love it. Yeah. There's a gentleman who brought me in the financial services business, Greg Taylor, and he said, yeah, this business is pretty simple.

You just need to show up early, say please and thank you, and show people that you care.

Right? Yeah. Consistent and consistently show people that you care. Because that's another thing, people. I have a great experience for my client.

I'm like, all of them. And then it's like. Then it was a pause. I'm like, yeah, not all of them, just some of them. So that's not consistent.

You can't build a brand by being inconsistent, even in the experience that your client has with you.

Another thing that Sam brought up when I was chatting with him, Chris, is he said that you are well known for recognizing those that work with you and having fun along the way.

Right.

What are some examples of that over the years, and why do you think that's important when it comes to leadership?

Well, I think it's important to everyone. I don't know if it's just leadership, but there's whether it's parenting, whether it's having friends, family, like, anything.

So much of the world is about negative reinforcement, Right. In other Words. You see someone do something bad, you tell them about it or you complain about it, Pick up the news.

Everything is negative reinforcement. So imagine a world where there was positive reinforcement. When somebody did something well, not only did you acknowledge it, you overdid it.

And I'm known for overdoing it. When people do something well and make a big deal of it.

So if I make a big deal out of something you did well, and I do it very publicly in front of a lot of people, what behavior is that going to drive? It's going to drive more positive behavior. Because human beings are wired, hardwired to go towards positivity.

If you do it through negativity, can you nag somebody to be better? And the answer is absolutely not. They will go. They will do their best to rebel against you and prove you wrong.

So I try to overdo positive reinforcement.

Negative reinforcement comes in a different format where we have a talk one on one, and I ask you a bunch of questions of whether you're satisfied with what. What's going on and your level of performance. So it's not a. I'm giving you shit. I'm asking you, are you letting yourself down?

So if you keep those two things in mind for leadership, But I also know leaders who are constantly criticizing, who are constantly, I'm going to say negative reinforcement. They're hoping that if they nag you enough that you're going to be better at what you do. And it never works.

And I learned that very early in my career, you know, as someone was pretty obsessive compulsive. You know, I tend to like things one way. And I used to try to do it by nagging people to do it one way. Hardly ever worked.

Once I started saying, wow, did you see the look on that client's face when we did the welcome sign? And then they're like, yeah, that was great. I'm like, that's because of you. What do you think that person did every single time after that?

Great feedback, Chris. It basically praising publicly, but then providing guidance privately.

Right. And not that they let me down. They let themselves down. People are better. They want to be better. Everyone wants to be better.

Nobody wants to let anybody down. And anyone who does, we're probably not going to be hanging around for very long. So.

So let's shift gears a bit here, Chris. So you. You grew IPC from, you know, two and a half billion before I saw.

That, it's actually zero.

Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, hold on, let's.

I actually grew it from My apartment, which is no bigger than this room, by the way.

Well, I was chatting with an advisor yesterday. He said you guys used to have your parties down in your basement.

Exactly. We used to have our Christmas parties in my basement with all like, seven of us when I started the company.

And, you know, it certainly progressed from there to the point now we can't even hold everybody in one room. So it's. That's. That's how I measure success is every year how big our Christmas party got and.

And what leadership shifts did you face during that time of like, you know, holding a small party for your seven successful advisors to now holding massive parties in the Hyatt that they can barely fit the 400 advisors in the room.

It's. You know, at the end of the day, it comes back to what we talked about before, is you cannot do it yourself. Right? It's impossible. It can't be done.

There's not enough capacity in anyone's life. And so if you're trying to do every job and do it well, you're going to fail. You're going to fail every single time.

So I learned very early, and I use this in my talk. You know, there's an expression that says, if you want something done well, do it yourself. Have you ever heard that? Yeah.

Literally the dumbest thing I have ever heard in my life. Like, only dumb people would ever say that.

And if I want something done, I go find the most competent person in the world to do that particular task and then I get them to do it to the point where my whole career was based on trying to do anything. And that is the only way you're going to scale.

The only way that you can build a large company in any form is not do it yourself is to, again, get the best people that you possibly can find and be very clear on the vision that we all share and then hold them accountable to getting there. And so your job is just being a cheerleader and holding people accountable. It's the only way that you can grow.

But the mistake everyone makes is they think they can do it. And, you know, if you read my book, the first chapter is about the best advice I ever received.

And the best advice I received was again, when I used to work for this very successful horse trainer and very successful, like, probably worldwide. You know, one of the best and what contrasted him to everyone else that I had worked for in the past is this dude never worked.

Like, he would leisurely come in at 9. Everyone else started at 6 in the morning.

You know, he'd grab a coffee, he'd wander around, he'd joke with his staff, he'd talk with his managers, he'd take his clients out for drinks and lunch, and he literally didn't seem to do anything. And one day I'm like, man, what is going on here? Like, how is this happening? And he said, son, let me tell you a story. No.

He said, son, let me give you a piece of advice. He's like, from the neck down, you might be worth $100,000. But the problem with neck down is you're going to wear out.

At some point, your body is going to give out on you. You can only go so long, and you can only do so much. But from the neck up, you are worth untold millions. You can build a team around you.

You can have great ideas, you can build businesses, you can do anything. You can entertain clients. You literally have unlimited amounts of potential.

Choose early which one you're going to use, because it's hard to make the shift once you're neck down. And I'm like, I quit. And I literally did. I'm like, that's enough of this. I'm working neck up from now. That's how I got into the financial business.

And would you say that your family was supportive those early days?

I'm not sure. Supportive or unsupportive? I'm like, I'm not sure that they even knew what I was doing most of the time. I was a pretty independent guy.

I left home when I was 18. I moved to Miami.

So when I started the business, I do know this, though, is I remember when I started ipc, so this wasn't my career, but when I started ipc, I called my dad and I said, hey, I'm starting this business. He's like, oh, you want to be an entrepreneur, do you? And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, well, you only have to now work half days.

You just have to figure out which 12 hours it's going to be.

Well, yeah, I hear in our business, it's you spend the first five years being underpaid and then overpay the rest of your life. But I'd say that's common for most entrepreneurs when they start businesses.

You tend to need to overwork, put in insane amounts of time, and without any guarantee of success. But if you do manage to make it past that and get to that point, life can get pretty good.

Well, that's it. Like, everyone sees you at the end. No one sees you at the beginning, Right. So they see Me now they're like, oh, look at your life.

You get to travel around, you get to do this, get to that. And I'm like, well you weren't around for the 12 hour days and these Saturdays and Sundays or the know the days that I had there.

There was a time, believe it or not, I had to take a line of credit on my house just to make payroll. Like we were pretty well down to our last pennies before we started to really ramp up as an organization.

So that, that all gets blurred once you start having some semi success.

Yeah, I've been there before already, Chris.

So you know what I'm talking about.

Oh, 100%. Yeah.

Luckily you have to have a partner that is supportive as well because if you don't have two heads moving in the right same direction, it could be a real pain.

Yes, yes. That's also a challenge because you do give up, you know, you give up your early days. And I know I did. I know that I sacrificed family.

I know I sacrificed a lot of things in the early days. But you know, I can't say life is, is bad now but in the early days, you know, people do suffer.

And how do you make up for that if you traded?

I would say I think a lot of entrepreneurs face this right where they do make the trade of going all in on the business and perhaps in time with family or personal life can suffer once you have made it. Is there a shift in how that?

I think there is. You have to also habits run deep, right. 20 years or something, you're probably going to keep doing the same sort of thing.

But as I said, life for everyone sort of gets bigger, better as you know, both financially and just time freedom comes out of that. So who knows whether you can say whether it was worth it or not.

But I can say that at least everybody was part of something is that we sacrificed kids, sacrifice. Everybody sacrificed. But at the end we were all part of something that we can now look back on and be pretty proud of.

100%. Yeah.

I have a two year old daughter and having my wife's family being so supportive along the way gives us both the ability to maintain entrepreneurial ambition or career. Who, who supported you along the way that gave you the ability to kind of keep pushing as you built ipc.

That's a, it's a good question. But I'm, I'm not sure it was, I'm going to say I'm not sure it was anyone. I'm like, I'm pretty, pretty. As I said, I'm obsessive compulsive.

So once I get on a track, it's. It's very difficult to get me off that track.

So, you know, I have a ton of mentors that I can, you know, point at, at different points in my career and say, you know, in the early days it was this. In the early days it's that. And, But I can tell you that Tessa, my wife, I wouldn't say she's as career.

She's like, I'll tell you what, she's not saying, go do more work. That never comes out of her mouth. What she, what we have together is a very balanced life.

And so I'd say from a supportive point of view, I have rethought of, you know, the prioritization in my life. And I would say that's a lot because of her.

Interesting. And Chris, who would you say were those early mentors and what role did they play in your own leadership growth?

Well, my mentors. So what I tend to do is I'm a great thief.

So I see who is really, really good at each of their endeavors, who's the best at their endeavors, and read everything I can on those people and then try to figure out and map out what did they do and how can I replicate that. So the people I point to all the time, of course my original is Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.

There's probably not a piece of literature on either individual that I haven't read over the time period. Of course, Steve Jobs and how he has changed the world and his mantras and his obsessiveness.

As I can appreciate also throughout, I had some great leaders that I got to work with on the IGM level. Certainly the Demarais family have been, you know, they've done okay in the whole Canadian space.

I can't point to a single one, but a wide variety of people I've learned from. In fact, I'm readily admit that every idea that you hear spewing out of my mouth is probably somebody else. I'm just regurgitating it from somebody.

Yeah. Here we call that R and D or rip off and duplicate.

Right, Exactly. That's my whole career.

Now you've been a big part of painting the vision for ipc, and it's clear you have a why. How do you inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs to find their why?

It's a good question, one that I think about quite a bit. But I think we're all, we all agree what we want to do, right? Which is we want to better Serve our clients.

I don't think that there's anyone I've met and if there is anyone that I've met that doesn't want to better serve their clients, doesn't say that I probably don't want to know them. So we have that. So we all want to better serve our clients. So the inspiration that I tell everyone is, you know what you and I both want?

We want to develop a world class delivery of wealth management services to our clients consistently. My job is to make your job easier, if that makes sense. So in other words, we both want the same thing.

We want to give the highest level of service and advice to our clients. We want to deliver world class.

And I use world class because, you know, one of my goals, I have a, you know, a checklist of things is I want them to write a Harvard Business Review study on our company and the experience that we provide for our company for our clients. Like that's one of my goals, is they're going to write a whole article on world class experience in the wealth management business.

And I don't think anyone can't get behind that. Why? As a, as a reason, as a purpose to get up in the morning. Because that never ends. Like, no, like even as a financial advisor, you know this.

You can get in the grind, right? You can day in, day out, seeing clients, blah, blah, blah, the markets are up, the markets are down, blah, blah, blah, right? That's not exciting.

What's exciting is the look on their face when you have a welcome sign when you host a client event, when they refer people in and you take a picture of the person that they referred and send it back to your client. Like those wow moments are things that you can get your head around. This is exciting. This is something that I can drive a team towards.

I don't think anyone can get excited as I want to sell more insurance than anyone else. Nobody can get their head around that. But I don't think anybody cannot get excited about giving their clients the best experience.

Well, you certainly inspired me in that sense, Chris, so thank you for inspiring the next generation of advisors.

In an industry that is typically stuffy, it's refreshing to hear someone at your caliber who is so focused on that client experience now, after 25 years in this industry, what are some leadership qualities or experiences that maybe early days you would have acknowledged or been okay with and now you simply do not tolerate?

Well, I think it's, that is, you know, there's certain management styles that probably, I'm going to say got the Job done, but probably weren't motivating to the people like I could. And I've hired leaders, I've had leaders who got stuff done at the cost of people. You know, people were unhappy.

As I said, they got the task done because someone was on their back and somebody was yelling at them and everything. You know, if I had to go back in time, I wouldn't have tolerated that for 10 seconds. And yet in some cases tolerated for years.

So I can say that's on me for putting up with management styles that I completely disagree in. And so that above all is you have to respect your people.

You have to build up your people, and if you don't, it's going to collapse at some point anyhow. But that respect has to be reciprocated.

In other words, I don't have any time for somebody who, you know, you know, just calls it in or you know, looks in your face, tells you what they're gonna do and then goes back and complains in the lunchroom like zero tolerance for any of that. We're, we're all on the same mission. We should all be very enthusiastic about it.

So you also let one or two people be the sort of naysayers in the organization. That'll kill you too. Right. So you gotta identify them very quickly and get rid of them.

Because if people see that behavior, they'll replicate that behavior. So, so you know, that, that's over my years of leadership. That's what I've learned. You gotta act way faster than you think you should.

Yeah, that's incredible insight, Chris, because I think in sometimes high growth companies, when you have perhaps someone who's, for example, a good salesperson and they're meeting their numbers or exceeding their numbers, but they are impacting other people in the organization, it may be the default as a, as a founder or as a leader to simply let that person keep doing their thing and think that eventually they'll change. But it's good advice.

Yeah, they don't. And it usually gets worse because it's been tolerated. Right. So if they push the line here, they just keep pushing it. No one goes back in time. Right.

No one says, oh boy, I should be a nicer person. That's, that's not usually a behavior that I've seen ever happen.

Now when I was chatting with, with Sam, he mentioned that you're, you're an amazing salesperson that doesn't sell. So how do you build trust with clients and still ultimately get them to make the right decision?

Well, at the end of the day. You got to think about what we do and what we do and what we get paid for is to solve problems. And our job is to identify problems.

Some problems, people know they have, and some people have no idea they have these problems. Our job is to identify those problems, make those problems incredibly clear, then show them a way to solve it. That's not selling.

That's helping somebody lead a better life. If you have an estate problem, my job is to tell you what your estate problem is and then show you a solution.

If you don't want to do it, that's on you. I did my job. And so when you have that attitude, like, have you ever been sold? Because it's very uncomfortable.

We get those guys, when you go to a car dealership, and they get the white belt and they get the white shoes, and they're like, oh, I'm gonna get you in this car today. What can I do to get you. I'm like, stop with that. Go get me a car. Go find your manager right now. So we don't have to play this game.

Let's get this done. It just annoys people. No one likes to get sold. What I want is someone.

Have you ever had also the salespeople who don't even ask you a single question and then tell you what you need? Have you ever had that experience? It's the worst. It just makes you cringe, right?

You have a little cold sweat in the back of your neck when these people talk. I never want to be and nor do you. Nor does anyone want to be that person. Right? That's not sales. That's just annoying. Sales. We're not in the sales.

I'm not a salesperson. I'm in the fix your problem business. Now, if you don't think you have a problem, then you're not my client. So we can part ways really quickly.

Like, I don't have to spend all day here convincing you, you have a problem. I'm telling you I have a problem. Acknowledge it, don't acknowledge it, and I will give you a solution.

And then also, you know, on that same vein, you know, I hear all the time advisors, and I'll use financial advisors will tell me things like, my client wants this. I'm like, get out of here with that. They do not. Why would they go to advisor and then tell you what they want?

Like, that's the most ridiculous statement I've ever heard of. Your client should take what you tell them to do because you're the advisor. Would you go to your Accountant say, no, I don't want that. I want my.

I want to file my return the other way. It's a ridiculous statement. So we're not in the sales business. We're in the problem solving business.

Our job is to deeply, deeply, deeply understand our clients and everything that motivates them and everything that they do and everything they want, identify problems and solve them. That's not sales. That's. That's a noble profession.

I think most people that start businesses are in some semblance the sales driver. But I do agree with you completely that the best sales are not done by telling, that are done by asking.

Right. In the first. I tell people the first meeting that you have with a client is 10 minutes of you talking and 50 minutes of them talking.

And if you don't have that ratio, you should shut up. You're talking way too much. Because. Have you ever been talked over? Because I have. Especially by someone who thinks they know more than me.

And I'm like, yeah, that's it.

So, Chris, you have done a fair bit of traveling in your time and you've learned a few things that you seem to now apply to the wealth management business. Such as, like why hotels can charge a premium. I heard that in one of your previous podcasts.

Or.

How people first businesses end up being able to charge more money. Let's start with that.

Yeah. One of the things, again, one of the chapters of my book, one of my circles, is value. You have to give value before you can get value.

So if you keep that in mind all the time, I have to give more value before I receive value. So in other words, I have to give value to my consumer or my customer before I can get paid. What do people value their time?

Feeling good.

Exactly. Self actualization. Feeling good, feeling important. Feeling special. It's what everyone wants.

The best companies in the world are the ones who can make you feel special. And especially in the hospitality business.

In the hospitality business, I was getting an extensive traveler that travels all over the world and some of the bag. But some of the best hotels in the world. You can see why you pay what you pay. Like at first, you're like, that's outrageous. It's a bed, it's a tv.

It's the same commodity. And I use this all the time. What's the difference between Motel 8 or Motel 6? Motel 8. Whatever it is, you can see how many times I've stayed there.

And Four Seasons. What's the difference between two? From the commodity point of view? They both have a bed. They Both have a closet.

Maybe they have a TV and they have a bathroom. That's the commodity. And yet Four Seasons will charge you ten times more for a room than Motel 6 will. Why? Because of the experience.

And if you've ever had the Four Season experience, you'd pay for it. Again. And I'll use an example. And this is just because, remember. And there's the other thing.

When it comes to experience management, it's the little things that people remember. It's not the grand gestures. It's not the beautiful foyer. It's that when I stayed, I was in San Francisco and I stayed at a Four Seasons.

And in the morning I came out and I looked down and there was a Globe and Mail on my. Like a news. This is way back, by the way, when they had newspapers. I don't think they have that anymore.

But there was a newspaper on my thing and it was a Globe and Mail. I'm like, a Globe and Mail. That's weird. I'm in San Francisco. And then I looked over the door next to me and it was the Miami Herald.

And the one next to that was the New York Times.

Whatever city you registered was on your license, on your driver's license when you came in that they got a newspaper from your city and put it in of front, front of your door. Imagine how incredible that is. And a minor gesture. I don't know what it costs, but it's probably not that much.

I have told that story literally a thousand times. It's the little things that people remember. They don't remember the room. They don't remember, as I said, the grand gestures.

They remember the restaurant. But I'll remember that newspaper for the rest of my life.

People forget what you said, but they'll never forget the way you made them feel.

Absolutely. And when you. In the hospitality business, there's a great book called Unreasonable Hospitality. If you haven't read it, it's fantastic.

And it's about 11 Madison Avenue, one of the best restaurants in the world, and how they are outrageous in their client experience. Like outrageous. They'll hire Sinatra to come in to sing for one of their guests. Like outrageous.

What do you think everyone does after that experience raves about it and tells everyone they ever met. But if you sold them a good mutual fund that did 12% next year, how many people would your clients tell? None. You're supposed to do that.

That's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to get them a good return. But if you did that on top of A welcome sign with a beverage menu.

And you remembered that their cat's name was Fluffy and you bought a caller for Fluffy as they came in. What are they telling their friends about the 12% or Fluffy's collar? Fluffy's collar every time. Right.

The best advisors I know and best business people I know obsess about their client experience.

Great takeaway for our business. And then I'd say for anyone that's listening, and I certainly have a lot to learn from you in this regard, Chris.

Now, you built your career around a client first mindset, which I think ties in quite well to this total client experience that you're talking about. What do you think most leaders misunderstand about trust and the client experience?

And where do you see as being opportunities for, I would say, entrepreneurs in general or young entrepreneurs that are just starting to build their business?

Well, there's two ways that people build businesses. One is they develop a product and then they go find people to sell it to. That's one. And it's probably the most common way.

I'm going to go and open up a Juice Juice Juicery, and then I'm going to get clients to come to me. That's one way to do it, and that's fine.

A better way to do it is start with a client and say this client or these clients or this demographic has this problem. And I am going to solve that problem better than anybody in the industry.

And so you start at the client level and you build backwards until you get to your product, as opposed to, I'm going to build my product and then I'm going to find people to sell my product to. And so the best businesses. And again, this is my study of Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs always started with the user, always started with, you know, when he came up with the ipod, it was, I want to get my daughter. If you haven't read the story, Lisa, she had that Sony thing on her thing.

She's like, I'm gonna put all of your songs onto a thing this big, so you can put it onto your pocket. So you start with the client. What does that client want? All of their songs conveniently ready for them whenever they want.

I also don't want something bulky so that I can go for a run or I can, you know, do exercise or I can't have this big disk sitting on my thing. From that simple concept, he created literally a dynasty.

And so my recommendation, every entrepreneur is start with your client and obsess about what that client needs.

The interesting thing about, I guess, the Software parallel is with software. You can make the complex sort of invisible to the end user.

In financial services or perhaps more in person businesses, it's sometimes more difficult to make the complex become so invisible to the end client.

So in perhaps a more traditional business that can't hide the complexity behind a software, what advice do you have to sort of help turn that complex process and system and create a incredible client experience?

Well, I think, and again, I'll steal from Steve Jobs again, is what can you eliminate, like, everybody. A lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of people just in general like to add complexity, right.

So they're like, oh, so I have this good idea, but what if we did this? What if we added this and what if we added this and what if we did this and what if we did that?

And there's, you know, whiteboards and boardrooms somewhere where people are saying, yeah, and then we. We can do this. Steve Job was the opposite. He's like, what do they want? I want to listen to a song. Okay, I'm going to make one button.

And then if you read his biography, there's a whole chapter called One Button. I want one button that controls everything. I want one button that you turn it on, turn it off, everything. I don't want it so small.

And I want the packaging simple. So he went the other way. Let's get the essence of what really a client or a consumer wants and then eliminate everything else.

The reason for complexity and mistakes and our business compliance and all those is we make the simplest of tasks and the simplest of products incredibly complex.

And yet it can be so easy, and yet we choose and we actually believe in our heart of hearts that we're doing the right thing for the client by adding complexity. We actually believe this is better for somebody, and it's not. We feel more important. So I would say go through the opposite process.

What is the essence of. And there's another great book called Essentialism. What is essential to get the task done.

And then your job is to eliminate everything else in the process. And that's a good way to do it.

Yeah, I haven't actually read Essentialism. That's something I'll have to add to the list. But.

The other one, sorry, is innovators dilemma.

Innovators dilemma.

Right. Okay. Take one piece and be better at that piece than all the other ones. And that's how you capture market.

When you have made a. Perhaps a poor hire or someone came on who you maybe misunderstood their value values. What. What impact did that have to others in the Organization.

And then how did you, how did you manage to grow from that experience?

It comes down to, at the end of the day, every organization has sort of an essence, the culture. You know, I call it a cult because you can't have culture without a cult. So everyone has to be.

And again, it's a terrible term, but we call it drinking the Kool Aid. You got to be on. You got to believe what we believe, you got to say what we say. And good cultures even have their own language.

Like, you know, you hear it. And this is an interesting time in our, in our time because IPC is coming with a bigger company with Canada Life.

You can hear our language is different. Like we call it tce. And for somebody at Can Life, they're like, what's tc? I never heard of that yet.

There's nobody at IPC who doesn't know what TCE is. It's part of our lexicon. It's. It's how we roll. So going back to your question is.

They'Re not buying into stands for total Client Experience.

Ah, yeah. I actually should say, see, I'm so used to everyone knowing what I'm talking about that it's total client experience. Right? It's.

What we obsess about is how do we make that client experience better. It's, it's, you know, I know a lot of other of our competitors, you know, look at, you know, I want to have the best product or I want to have best.

This about that, you know, my thing is always I want the best client experience. If I want to be rated by consumers, I don't care that I had, you know, the, you know, whether my performance was 9% and everybody else was 10.

What I wanted is clients were like, everyone I deal with is fantastic over there. So going back to your question, if you're not buying into that and if you're anyway also submarine, what I call submarining it.

If you're like, oh, that's stupid, or I don't like that, that will just pollute your culture. Like, everybody has to be on board for the why.

And if you're not on board for the why, the biggest mistake you can make a leader is tolerate that, right? They're either on the bus or you're off the bus. And it's easy. And I've said, you know, over my career, I've never fired anyone. They fire themselves.

We have the, we have what I call the talk. And we're only going to have the talk one time.

And that was, that's their chance and they can turn around, they can buy into what we sell or they can go somewhere else. So I didn't fire you. You fired you.

I like that. Hopefully no one who's listening has to go through that experience, but I think at some point in business it comes up, right?

You will absolutely go through that experience. You will go through that experience probably a hundred times in your career. Because people are people, People are messy.

One of my other mentors, he gave me the best piece of advice. He's like, strategy is perfect, but people are messy, so deal with people. Very fair.

Now, Chris, you just released your new book, the Six Circle Strategy, which I look forward to reading and encourage anyone on the call to. What inspired you to write the book now? And what's the core message that you think entrepreneurs would take away from this book?

It's a good question. And I think the book has been in me for a while. So, you know, give a lot of credit.

You know, I work with Evelyn E. And she does all my promotion and basically her jobs make me look good, which is a very full time job. It takes a lot of work. And one day we're like, you know, you do these blogs, you do the podcast, you do this. She's like, why don't you write a book?

I'm like, yeah. I'm like, like everything. I'm like, how hard could it be? So just in case anyone knows, it's really hard. It's super hard.

It's taken me about 18 months to get that out of me. But why? And from her encouragement was it's through observation. And I have a very privileged position.

I get to work with some of the top entrepreneurs, especially in the wealth management business, not only in Canada, I would say, in the world. I would stack some of the advisors I get to work with, with any advisor on a worldwide basis.

And, you know, through my career, I basically saw six characterizations, six circles, six things that all of them had in common, right? Without exception, all of them had all of them in common.

So that's where the characteristics come and where it came in circles is because it's not a straight line. Like, it's not a. Nothing is linear, nothing is. I started here and I went here.

Mostly what I've seen or observed in entrepreneurial behavior is I do it, I screw it up, I fix it and my circle gets bigger. And then I do it again, I screw it up and my circle gets bigger. So the characteristics are all very consistent.

It's just, where are you in expanding your circles? And so that's why it's the six circle strategy.

And so what I'm hoping to do is inspire entrepreneurs to work on each one of their circles, whether it's one at a time or over time.

So on top of the six circles, like we'll bring out, we're bringing out a workbook that people can go through in their own businesses and they can look at their own circles and how to expand it. So I think we can take it far. But it's really, you know, my whole thing and what drives me is helping people.

That's, that's my, you know, everyone has a thing. My thing is I love mentoring people. I love working with entrepreneurs, I love working with leaders, I love trying to make them better.

So that's, you know, the book is sort of distilling all that information into one place.

Yeah, well, I look forward to reading it and I'm sure I'll end up writing some content about it myself afterwards because every time I speak with you, I get to pick up a little, a few more things to apply to my business and help me run a better business business. So thank you, Chris.

Chris, let's say you were meeting with 20 year old Chris and you were going to tell him a few things that he might do differently. What are the few things that you.

Would tell younger Chris, like 20 year old Chris go to bed earlier. That would be the start. You know, going back, you know, the most fundamental.

I can actually probably go through the circles, but the two that I'll dwell on is focus. I started my career the way everybody starts a career, especially in the wealth management business. I started it simply.

I used to have one thing, one problem that I used to solve for clients and I did it so successfully that I ended up starting my own company to the point where I made it so complex that I needed tons of staff to actually help me do it.

And if I look back on it, that was, you know, if I had to give myself advice, I'm like, don't go the again add what if we do this and what if we do that? What do we do this. You know, it was a fantastic business. It solved.

In my particular case, I was an expert at helping people in severance and pension rollovers and I did so well, like so well that I decided to screw it up, which I started to add different markets to it, I started to add different products to it. I started to do this, I started to do that and I had to go through the circle to learn to go back to simplicity. So that's number one.

Number two is the power of trust. Right. It's the business we were in. It's like in the mafia. This is the business we have chosen. We are in the trust business.

And if I was the younger self, I would put all of my emphasis on building a brand of trust. And you do that through doing the same things consistently over and over and over and making it better and better and better.

And again it goes back, these things are tied because the more complex you make something, the less able you are to be consistent. And so they affected each other.

And so if I had to go back, I would be go back to simplicity and I would go back to consistency, which builds trust, which builds your brand.

So in that sense, I guess you never would have built ipc. You would have been just the best transition expert advisor.

Well, I probably would have been pretty happy, but I actually started IPC so that I could have a company that would help me be better at that. So sort of. And then I just had more and more people join my mission. I guess that's how I look at.

The software business on my side, Chris.

Exactly.

Okay, so you started on a raised farm, Chris, and grew a business to 34 billion in assets. What's next for you? And if people want to find you, where's the best place to connect?

Well, what's next is continue to grow it. You know, between now is ipc. You know, we bring Quadrus and IPC together, we'll be actually well over $130 billion in A assets.

And actually that's an outdated number actually IBC's 40 billion today. So we just did another transaction with D. Thomas, so that is added and some great, great people.

And our founding principle is still our principle. We are going to continue to obsess with helping advisors build a better business.

And now with this basically one of the biggest, if not the biggest independent firm in Canada, there's no telling what we're going to do, but we are going to build something special.

Well, Chris, I'm fortunate to be able to share some time with you. Thank you for, for joining today and sharing some of your expertise and your life. It's been a real pleasure.

Could I just grab your autograph before we go?

Absolutely. And for anyone that wants a book, it's Chris Sreynolds ca easy to find.

You can see my email and if anyone ever needs any help, just go to that email address. There's a little place you just hit a button and we can book a virtual coffee. Happy to have a little chat.

Got to do something while you're in Miami, right?

Exactly.