Advisor Talk with Frank LaRosa
Advisor Talk with Frank LaRosa offers unfiltered guidance and advice for financial advisors, wealth management professionals, and entrepreneurs alike who are interested in maximizing both their business and personal potential. Informed by Frank's unique insights and his personal conversations with industry leaders, the dynamic discussion topics of Advisor Talk include business ownership, leadership, practice management, transition and recruiting, marketing and branding, as well as a host of financial services related topics related to wirehouse, regional, and RIA advisors, firms, and teams. Frank’s goal, and the goal of his team at Elite Consulting Partners, is now as ever to be th...
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The Advisor CEO: Why Most Advisors Never Become Business Owners
<p>Scaling sounds great until you find out what it costs you.</p> <p>Every advisor wants the high multiple. Far fewer want the version of themselves required to earn it.</p> <p>Frank LaRosa and Stacey Frank tackle the transition that trips up most advisors, the move from doing the work to owning the business to leading it as a CEO. The dream is an enterprise level practice. The obstacle is that the advisor is still the one holding every relationship and refusing to let go.</p> <p>In this conversation they get into why advisors resist building real...
What's Behind Your Name? Why Most Financial Advisors Get Rebranding Wrong
<p>Your firm name is not just a label.</p> <p>It is the brand people search for, refer and remember.</p> <p>And most advisors get it wrong.</p> <p>In this solo episode, Frank LaRosa pulls back the curtain on the naming conversations he has with breakaway advisors every week. Many default to their last name without realizing it can scare off the very advisors they hope to recruit. Others fall for a name that sounds great until a quick search turns up an identical practice down the street.</p> <p>Frank explains why your name carries far...
The Right Move Not The Next Move: What We Learned At Elite Ignite 2026
<p>Four days. Twenty-four firms. $4.5 trillion in controlled assets. Here is what Frank and Stacey took away from Elite Ignite 2026.</p> <p>Frank LaRosa and Stacey Frank are back in the studio for the first time in about six weeks and they are using this episode to do something they have never done quite like this before: open up the room. Elite Ignite started five years ago as an internal team meeting. It grew into a broker dealer and RIA conference unlike anything else in the industry. No deals discussed. No transition packages on the table. Just firms coming in...
Greatest Hits: When Is the Best Time for Financial Advisors to Transition Firms?
<p>Key Highlights from the Episode:</p> <p>0:00 – Introduction</p> <p>1:02 – Should I stay or should I go next year? </p> <p>2:27 – Why Q4 is often the best time to transition </p> <p>3:59 – How holidays and client schedules factor into timing </p> <p>5:35 – Deferred comp considerations for advisors </p> <p>10:23 – Why firms sweeten deals in Q4 to hit quotas </p> <p>12:48 – The myth of the “perfect” time to move </p> <p>14:42 – Leveraging holiday parties and events for client communication </p> <p>17:08 – Why every advisor’s timing decision is unique </p> <p>23:12 – Emotional readiness vs. waiting too long </p> <p>25:27 – Rip the Band-Aid off: once you decide, ju...
Marketing Is Being Brave: Why Authentic Content Wins More Clients
<p>Advisors spend years earning credentials and almost no time showing people who they actually are. Wade Shields thinks that is the whole problem.</p> <p>Wade came to Elite Consulting Partners after ten years in New York City making documentary and branded content for Google, Ernst and Young and the American Cancer Society. The process he used there and the one he uses now starts the same way: figure out what the real story is before you make anything. He calls it brand forensics and it is the foundation every advisor skips.</p> <p>The first half of the...
Greatest Hits: How Financial Advisors Should Actually Be Using AI
<p>In this Greatest Hits episode of Advisor Talk, Frank LaRosa and Stacey Frank take a grounded, advisor-first look at how AI is actually changing the profession - and why the future of advice is still fundamentally human.</p> <p>Rather than fearing AI, Frank explains why this moment closely mirrors the rise of online trading in the early 2000s - a shift that many believed would eliminate advisors, but ultimately made great advisors even more valuable.</p> <p>This conversation centers on a critical idea:</p> <p>Technology can provide data. Only humans can provide wisdom.</p> <p>Frank...
What If You Never Try: One Decision That Changed Her Career
<p>She helped advisors make the move for two decades. Then she had to make it herself.</p> <p>A headhunter called. Shannon said she would do a five minute call just to give a name. Several months later she was the new president of Ozark.</p> <p>This is not a story about being unhappy. Shannon loved Raymond James, still does and is still a shareholder. This is a story about a harder kind of decision: the one where everything is fine and something still pulls you toward more.</p> <p>The turning point came from advice she had...
Inside The Succession Trap: Why Sell and Exit Deals Keep Failing
<p>Most advisors say they want to exit. What they actually want is to stop doing the parts they hate.</p> <p>Scott Danner has had this conversation more times than he can count. The advisor says they want to sell. Then the deal falls apart. Not because the numbers were wrong but because nobody asked the right question at the start.</p> <p>Scott is the Executive Vice President and Head of Legacy at Steward Partners. He founded Freedom Street Partners in 2016, built it to nearly $3.5 billion in AUM, and sold it to Steward Partners in late 2023. He started...
Know What You're Saying No To | The Ameriprise Truth with Brian Mora
<p>The firm advisors think they know is not the firm that exists today.</p> <p>And if you are going to say NO, at least know what you are saying no to.</p> <p>Frank LaRosa goes one on one with Brian Mora of Ameriprise for a candid conversation that challenges some of the most common misconceptions advisors carry about one of the largest and most innovative firms in the industry.</p> <p>Frank and Brian break down what $1.7 trillion in assets actually means for an advisor looking for stability in a consolidating market, why Fortune named Ameriprise one...
No Jerks Allowed | Raymond James' Philosophy for Financial Advisors
<p>Every firm says they have great culture.</p> <p>Very few can back it up.</p> <p>Raymond James can. And in this episode, they explain exactly how.</p> <p>Frank LaRosa sits down with Jodi Perry, Head of Advisor Recruitment and Business Development and Todd Ferguson, Chief Information and Security Officer at Raymond James, for a wide ranging conversation recorded live at the Ignite Conference.</p> <p>The group breaks down what it really means to put the advisor in the driver's seat, why the freedom versus independence distinction matters more than most advisors realize and how Raymond...
