Don’t Do That: Don’t Build Your Identity Around Being Needed with Dani Fava, Carson Group

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Don't build your identity around being needed.
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And I think this is, like, one of the most common mistakes, especially that younger professionals make.
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It's certainly a mistake that I made, and it's like, just the easiest mistake to make because it'll draw you in. Right. So what I mean by it is your goal shouldn't be to become indispensable. Your goal should be to become valuable.
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Welcome to the Don't Do That podcast. I'm Kelly Waltrich, CEO and Co-Founder of Intention.ly and like me, this show is no fluff and no bs, just smart advice to help you learn from the best and level up faster. So what are we not doing today?
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Let's find out. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Don't Do That Podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Waltrich, and with me today, the amazing Dani Fava. Thanks for having me. Kelly. Yes, Girl Chief of Strategy at Carson Group. You have had quite the transition and transformation over the past couple years. Tell us about where you are, what you're doing, what you're loving, and what Carson is up to. Yeah, I am the Chief Strategy Officer over at Carson, and that means a lot of things. I run our technology product data platforms, our tech platform, our investments platform, and private client services, which is something new that we just launched along with our advanced planning team. So a lot of things over there at Carson, a big chunk of what I would call our client offering. So really, anything that our advisors interact with or are utilizing is run out of the strategy organizations. It's been an incredibly fun job.
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I love the RIA space. I always say, if you can't be an entrepreneur, surround yourself in service of entrepreneurs. And I've been loving every. Every moment of it. And what we're up to at Carson is we're kind of pivoting our tech stack into being more AI native. We are creating capacity for our advisors at a fast clip. And with that capacity that we create for them, we're helping them win higher net worth and more complex households. So we're creating this, like, virtuous cycle of growth, right? Create capacity for them. Let them help them fill that capacity with higher, more complex households, which typically beget more higher net worth complex households. And we'll just kind of keep creating that capacity and that engine for growth for them. And we've been incredibly successful. We recently announced that we crossed the 50 billion threshold. Our organic growth is in the double digits now, and it's just. Yeah, it's been. It's been a fun ride. Okay, so creating capacity. What are some of the most interesting and exciting ways you're doing that. I've obviously seen some press releases, some of the partnerships that you have, but give our listeners sort of an overview, to the extent you can, of your biggest wins in that area. Yeah. So I would say they're recently the biggest wins are AI based. So we are in the client meetings now with the advisor with AI summarization and note taking, but it goes far beyond that. So we're creating this capacity for them not only to get out of the business of having to send meeting follow ups, we're also capturing tasks, moving those tasks automatically to the next step in the workflow. And even further, what we're kind of doing behind the scenes now is becoming more agentic. So executing some of those tasks for them and kind of doing things without them even asking. Right. Because we can trigger it based on the data. That is amazing.
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Okay, what did we do before we had AI note takers? Like, it's one of these moments where you think to yourself, like, that was not that long ago. And I can't imagine a world where we have to take notes. Where we have to take notes. I know. And where those notes live on paper rather than already in the system.
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And then the notes that are in the system, we can start acting on them agentically. Like, imagine a world where we used to have to do all of these things manually. Take the notes, bring the notes into the system, act on the notes, execute the next step. And all of these things can happen automatically. You can really start to envision a future where the RIA, your typical RIA, who used to be able to handle 100 to 125 households, can now manage 200, 300 households. And like the enterprise value that the RIA practice can create now with this additional capacity and the margin expansion that we can create with this additional automation. It's really magical and it's kind of fun. It is magical. So, you know, if you think about areas that can be disrupted, marketing is obviously one of them. So I've been a crazy person about this unintentionally.
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And we did our own mini holiday hackathon where we gave all the teams challenges to solve. Okay, we're spending way too much time here. This is super ridiculous how we're handling this.
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This is so manual. And so all the teams had a challenge that. And they all presented ways, using AI, that we can streamline our business. And it was so fun. And that sounds like what you get to do every day. Yes, yes. It's a big part of what I get to do every day. And we start with the problems that we're trying to solve. We start by just talking to our advisors. So we're in like, you know, deep study mode and learning mode all the time on what are our high growth advisors doing? And then how do we help them continue to stay focused on what they're doing or free them up from the manual things they're doing so they can get back to the things that really help them win. So it's so fun for me because I get both sides of that. The time spent with these incredible entrepreneurs, learning from them, and then on the other side, automating for other partners what they do really well and freeing them up to do the things that they love. And it's.
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Yeah, it's fun. It's really fun. Oh, my gosh. So I remember talking to you. You and I had breakfast when you were looking for your next challenge, and I just remember thinking like, whoever ends up with her is lucky and that you were gonna light the world on fire. And because, I don't know, I feel like you've been talking about these things so far before everybody else was willing to listen.
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I remember you were standing on stage at T3 and I was just in the back and doing what I was supposed to be doing. And I just remember thinking like, she's talking and none of these people are get. They. They're nodding their heads and they're smiling, but they don't believe that this is really the world that we're about to walk into. I don't know if you remember that talk about what the future was going to be, but here we are.
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And, and like, you've been beating this drum all along. So do you feel what is. I mean, do you feel so excited to be able to, like, I mean, this is right. This is real, right? It's. It is real. I know, it's like, I've never thought about it like that, but you're right, it is kind of this, like, tipping moment. Yeah, I've been talking about these things. I mean, I've been working with AI and machine learning for about 12 years now. And that sounds crazy to people because generative AI really only got into the consumer's hands when ChatGPT was launched, what, three, three years ago. And so it's brand new to everybody. But you're right, I've been beating this drum on like, hey, we're about to see this kind of acceleration in our industry and it's so, so exciting and it's I don't know what the word to use is. It's very satisfying for me to now see everyone else excited about it.
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Like, it's like I've been trying to get all of my friends to join my secret club for so long and like, now everybody's finally in it and I'm. And so I'm having fun with everyone who's also on the same page now. It's awesome. So it probably takes a certain type of advisor or team to embrace what you're trying to bring to the table.
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Obviously, I work with lots of types of advisors and I can sort of pinpoint the ones that I think get it and want to. But inertia is a. Is a real thing in this industry. So talk us through, like, how you pinpoint the right people, how you get them excited, how you get them to adopt these things. Like, what does that look like? You know, and it used to be much harder. So I've been also working with RIA technology adoption and struggling with. Through inertia in the space for a while.
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And it used to be very hard. You know, we would do everything we could to, you know, we want you to hear from your peers who are having success. We want to be able to measure that success so we can show you real results, so get you to engage. It used to be much harder. I'm actually experiencing something new with these AI use cases, with these AI, with the transition into AI. So it's so exciting and so evident right away what the value is that advisors are adopting this technology faster than I've ever seen. It's almost easy. You know, we create it, we launch it out there into the world. And the value is so evident that our adoption at Carson is immediate and it's kind of happening organically rather than, you know, us having to sort of convince. So it feels like the easy button, right? Like, if you think about the last time we went through this technology revolution thing where all the fintechs were starting to emerge, you still had to learn pretty intensely how to use every single one of them, how to connect every single one of them, how to train people, how to hire people. It was hard.
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It was exciting, but it was hard. Like, I'm just thinking back to my E Money days, and now this. It's like, feels so different, right? And it's part of what we call natural language, right? So AI is kind of designed and built to interact with people using the language that they use to interact. And I think that's what makes it so easy to adopt, is that you're talking to the software, right?
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You're. You're giving instructions in the same way you would give instructions to your colleagues or your peers. And so it fits so naturally right into your workflow. And so that piece of what you're talking about, like, that high, steep learning curve and the training and the, like, jargon that you'd have to learn up front is sort of. It's not part of the playbook anymore. Wild.
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Okay, so advisors are embracing this. I saw one case study with one of your partners that said it's giving them back how many hours of time. Like, what do you think? How are you quantifying? On average, we're hearing eight hours a week.
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So that's a full workday every week that our advisors are able to regain by using the software. That is crazy. Oh, my gosh. Okay, so tell me. I feel like, you know, Carson has a little bit of a leg up in that you have you figuring this out, but also the teams behind you. So just give, like, listeners a little bit of an overview of, like, what it takes to get to this point. Even though it feels like the easy button, we know it's not. Like, there's a lot of work happening behind the scenes to get there. So, like, what does it take? Yeah, And I'll say the first and probably biggest hurdle to overcome is around your data. And we've been saying this a lot at Carson, and it's hard. It's kind of hard for, I think, the layperson to understand, but AI really needs access to data to be successful in any form. Right?
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Whether it's generative or agentic, it really needs unfettered access to your data. And many RA firms are allowing the vendors that they work with to own their data.
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Right. So your data lives in Orion or your data lives in Salesforce, or both. Right. Your relational data lives in Salesforce, and your transactional or your portfolio data lives in Orion, and your transactional data lives in the custodian, which is fine for a tech stack, but when you want to deliver on these, you know, incredible use cases using artificial intelligence, you have to own that data in a centralized place to be able to give AI the access to that data all at once so you can get the most complete answer and the right workflow and the right next step in the workflow. And Carson has been on that journey for about the last five years because of our founder, Amani. Carson really believed in the power and the value of data. So he came back five years ago into the firm and said, we're going to hire a data person and they're going to build us a data warehouse, and we are going to be industry leading on how we organize, tag, synthesize, and add a semantic layer on top of our data. And so that's what Carson did years ago, and I think that's what kind of gave us the shortcut. Right when now that AI is so accessible and ready to use, we're able to use it in the, in the most creative and complete ways where other firms are kind of a little. They're figuring this out now, I think, but are still a little bit behind on the, on the road to get there. And it's not an easy road. It's expensive, and it adds another layer of complexity and risk into the platform. And so you have to really be ready for that and be real experts on that. And it's a big leap.
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I feel like we're seeing more and more firms pop out of the woodwork that are trying to solve that problem on behalf of advisors, which is, which is great and it's exciting. But you're right, everyone, you know, from my point of view, we go into firms and we need strong data to drive segmented communications and campaigns and all that kind of stuff. And I will say that it's probably a 1 in 10 that has the foundation for that kind of sophistication, whereas the other nine are still blasting the same message to everyone because they can't. They don't have it. So I definitely see that we spent a lot of time trying to dig out of that from a marketing standpoint, too. Yes.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Okay, so tell me, I'm just curious, like, how often do you step outside of our industry to tap technologies or ideas? Because what I'm finding is there's a place for what's built for financial services, because there's some really good stuff there. But there's definitely more and more a place for things that need to come from the outside that are moving a little bit faster. So just give me a sense of, like, how do you balance that and how do you think about that? And it's a great question because, you know, there's only so many hours in the, in the day.
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But I think much of the inspiration that I get comes from the AI community at large and what other firms outside of our space are doing with AI and how they're solving problems. And like, every day I listen to the. An AI podcast that kind of covers what's happening in the industry and what's exciting and how Other industries are moving forward and I, I get a lot of the inspiration on what to do next from there. So it's, I spend a good, a good amount of my time kind of studying things that are happening outside of the industry. I don't think the financial services industry, we can credit it with a lot of things.
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We probably can't credit the financial services industry with being the most innovative and the most cutting edge with regard to tech. So if you're going to do really incredible things, you probably need to pay attention to what's going on in the retail and consumer spaces. Yeah, I would say that on the marketing front, a thousand percent, we obviously work with all of the financial services CRMs and all that kind of stuff, but all the tools that we're layering into our toolbox that are so exciting are from outs, you know, the outside world. And I think it's so interesting because the first question is, well, does that run through my compliance? And I'm like, well, when was the last time you thought through your compliance?
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Because maybe now's the time, maybe now's the moment where you need a better way to not shut out all of the amazing things that you could be doing if you opened your eyes to some of these other opportunities.
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So we're going through that with a lot of firms right now. But actually one of the really cool things that we're doing, I'm sure you saw my old boss launched a new AI tool, Hamachi, and so we're partnering with them to use their regulatory agents. So now all intentionally content will run through those regulatory agents, which is like really exciting and hopefully I haven't actually told anybody that outside of you until right now. But we obviously have a FINRA SEC lens when we're. Everything that we do.
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But now it's going to be all built into our process, which is really cool.
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And it's so cool and it's so obvious, you know, when you think about AI and its ability to understand context now and its ability to kind of run through and understand and apply FINRA and SEC rules, probably better, I would say, than any human brain, right? Because it's all about memory and application to these different, you know, the different contexts that you're using. So it seems like such an obvious place to insert AI, you know, on the, on that compliance review and how quickly it can read through. I mean, we, we have advisors sometimes who write books, right. And, and so you can imagine just two years ago, you know, it would be somebody in our compliance department would get the lucky Job of, like, going to read the book and, you know, highlight the. Highlight the issues based on their knowledge and memory of the. Which is. Which is great, I'm sure, and through years of learning, but their memory and application of the FINRA and SEC rules and guidelines and they're, you know, reading through this book and then you compare that to this new technology where you can probably do that in seconds and it's just, it. It's eye opening for an OPEX and in a company in terms of how quickly you can get through these things. Yeah, I mean, it was really eye opening because the first couple reviews that we ran through it, I mean, the output was pages and pages and pages. Not that we did pages and pages of. Pages of things wrong. But you think about these regulations, it's a lot. It's not one thing. It's a thousand things that you have to think about. And so I'm hoping that this will arm compliance teams with more confidence in all of the things that are coming out of marketing in general, give them a faster way to move through things. Because, you know, we still run into. Compliance teams that are like, well, that will take three weeks to turn around. And I'm like, the world will change in three weeks and we will have a different campaign that needs to go out that is not sustainable.
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So I'm really, really, really excited about it. So we'll see. And that's just, you know, our little. Our little project that we're working on to make our agency more, you know, streamlined.
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But anyway, okay, so the premises of this show, Danny, as you know, is what not to do. Because I am a firm believer that we learn better from our mistakes and our failures. And you know what the best part of this whole thing has been? Is that it has become so abundantly clear that all the best people step in it all the time in, like, the best ways. And some of it is so hard and some of it is funny and some of it is, like, gut wrenching. But that has been my biggest takeaway from this, is like, all the people who do the best are willing to screw up first.
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Right? Like, it's just as true. It is true. Okay, so what are. What are we not doing today? What are we not doing? Yeah. Or what are we. What. What's my.
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What's your. Don't do that. What's my. Don't do that? Okay, so my don't do that is don't build your identity around being needed. And I think this is like one of the most common mistakes, especially that younger professionals make. It's certainly a mistake that I made. And it's, it's like just the easiest mistake to make because it'll draw you in. Right. So what I mean by it is your goal shouldn't be to become indispensable. Your goal should be to become valuable. And like, being needed feels like success. It feels like relevance. It feels like job security. And sometimes it actually is job security, right? Because you want to, you want to be needed. You want to be the person who gets the phone call every time there's a problem. Like, come in and solve this problem. Come in and give me this answer. We need you. And a lot of people like get addicted to that feeling, right? And it's like, I want you to need me. Yeah, I feel, I feel really indispensable because I'm needed. You need me in these situations and they like lean into that and they make that their identity.
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And it's a trap. It's, it's really a trap. Yeah, it will box you in. It'll burn you out.
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You'll get that like, kind of like that short term adrenaline from it, like that short term praise and dependence and like even some deference. It's addictive. And what you're not recognizing in those moments that you're leaning into being needed is that you're not able to become a multiplier.
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You can't be a true leader if you're needed.
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And I see it play out a lot of times in advisory firms where the CEO or the founder has really built a practice around being needed and they've actually trained their clients that their clients need them.
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Right. And that's terrible for enterprise value because your firm just doesn't have enterprise value when you are the product, right? So we see it play out in executive leaders, leadership and advisory firm founders, and even like in our personal lives. And I've got this kind of going on now in my personal life. Like you, you as a parent, right? You get, you kind of make your identity being needed by your, by your children. And then you are like, I am now all of a sudden an empty nester. And it's actually like kind of painful.
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And you're kind of going through this like rediscover discovery of yourself. And it's really hard when you hit a certain age to like re evaluate your identity. And so my advice like don't do that is don't build your identity in, in any facet of, in of your life. Don't build your identity around being needed. Add value and Teach people how to think on their own and continue to develop yourself. Like continue to lean into these areas of discomfort. Right. Like I could, I could, and I still love talking about AI and building AI and, but I could have easily like gotten boxed into that. Right. And never branched out into other areas of service and product build. And you know, what does it take to serve a high net worth client? Like, that's not, AI is not going to solve that problem for you. And so you've got to like lean into these other areas to become a true leader and, and to really build a full organization that, and you need to become a multiplier. Right.
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I can't do all of the thinking. I'll become a bottleneck.
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I need so many people around me who can do that thinking and solve those problems. And so what I need to do for those people is empower them, enable them, bring them up, put the right people in the right seats. That's true leadership. And once they don't need me, you know, they actually are running on their own. I can go to other areas and continue to build. And you think about like that virtuous cycle of growth that you're creating, that's leadership. Okay, I love that. I think it takes a certain kind of organization to feel comfortable with that concept. Right. Especially when you're younger and maybe not at like the top of the organization. Because to think to yourself, like, I'm going to empower all these people to shine. It is like, oh, it's a, it's a thing. Because if you're in the wrong organization, and I've seen it happen too many times where you have good leaders empowering their people, pushing them out in front, making sure their ideas are heard and then they end up with their job.
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I swear I've seen it. So like, what is your advice for, for organization? How do, how do you get to be at a point where you feel comfortable doing those things? You feel comfortable like giving up the spotlight and giving up like the ownership even. Not you individually, but like how do you lead an organization so that people feel comfortable? Yeah, it's all about, it's all about trust. It really is all about trust. Right. So you are consistently pouring into your people. Right. And you're consistently, like you said, putting them out so that they can shine. But it's a relationship that's all built on, on trust. Right. You are creating a roadmap and a strategy and you're setting them on a path and you're empowering them to figure out how to navigate that path, right? And the trust is, hey, look, like you can make a mistake, and that's okay.
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Like, the freedom to fail is also, like, really important.
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And the trust that I'm still gonna be here supporting you and helping you work through it, that's what your people need to develop.
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Now, will. Am I developing people to the point where they'll. They'll take my job? Like, I kind of hope so, in a way.
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Like, I kind of hope so. Like, I don't want to be the product, right? I don't want to be the bottleneck. I don't want the organization. I don't want to have the organization need me.
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I want the organization to want me to be in that seat, right?
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And I don't want to handcuff them to me, right? I want to continue to build. And then when my people can take my job, like, great. Like, I should be doing something else, right? Like, I should be pivoting to another place in the organization or we should be expanding our target market or expanding our product set. Like, they should be able to do my job eventually so that I can go pivot into other things and we can continue to grow. Because if you don't have that kind of a. If you don't have that, you can't grow.
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Like, you just. Yes, I.
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I mean, I feel like in my soul, what you're saying, because I very much and intentionally am like, guys, you should be out front, do the things. But you and I talked about this before our call, before we turned on the recorder. Like, be out front, front. Do the things, be the faces. I don't want to be that. And same thing with our clients. Like, I don't take clients. I have people who take clients. If they need me, I'm here, tap me in. I'm ready to go. But, like, I feel very similarly in that. Like, I want, you know, and you know what's awesome about that is Omani has said that from day one. I remember, like, 20 years ago, him talking about building, you know, the hundred year firm that's not reliant on one person. And he. I'm sure everybody still relies on him in some way or another, but look at how he handed off to the next generation. You guys are crushing it, crushing it. And to be able to do that, like, you really have to believe that, right? And we're still using so many of his principles. Like, he set true groundwork, right? Like, he really set the roadmap and, like, the principles and the foundation.
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And then he, like, got out of the way and let us all run it.
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And he's onto bigger and better, more important things like, you know, solving the planet's water crisis.
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Like, you know, like, he's like, only he can, right?
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Only he can. And one of Omani's best, something that he says so often, which I love, is if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.
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And like that's like a principle that he's, you know, build the team. You are not the product. You should not be the bottleneck. You should be the multiplier and the enabler. And you should be building a team of people who could all individually take your place. And they will. And you'll go on to bigger and better and more important things to either grow the company or do or solve a bigger problem. Yep. I love it.
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Okay, so for our listeners, the advisors out there who are thinking like, how do I get out of my own way and how do I make sure that I am creating enterprise value and I'm not the centerpiece of this business, what is your advice to them? It's a couple of things. It's one, always be in search of G2s. So you need to be hiring your replacement and hire talent when you see it, don't hire talent when you need it. So that's something that our most successful firms do.
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Always have a team approach. So as much as you know, you want your clients to view you as the smartest person in the room, instead of taking that view, take the view of I want my clients to know there's a team here. So if anything ever happens to me or if I ever step away, like they are going to be well taken care of. And all of our high growth advisors use a team approach in all of their client meetings. They're never the only person in the client meeting. There's always multiple people there, there's a team there and their clients know their team's names. Right. It's not about, it's all my investments, it's all my thinking.
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You need to follow me. You know, it's not that you're not creating disciples in that way. You're creating a team of valued individuals who are able to serve and I think do that as early as as you can. You know, it's kind of. We see a lot of firms come in when they're ready for transition and they're ready to move on and they're just starting to look for their G2 or they're just starting to develop their G2 and you know, that's good. But what's better is when we see a firm and we put there's real value here. Like we've got a, we have a valuation calculator that measures these things. Like, this isn't just like, you know, it's nice and it is nice. No, we're like, you know, we're measuring the value of the firm in dollars based on some of these variables that are, you know, are. Is there a viable G2, is there more than one viable G2 that. That contributes to enterprise value. And if it's so do it early, do it often, do it well. Build a team of people that trust you and that you trust and, and that's. That's evident. And those kind of.
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Once you have that like team culture, it's also a lot more fun, right?
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Like, it's just better. Why, why do you think so many people don't understand that, like life is short and you spend the majority of your time at work, so work with people you like. Adore. You adore. I know it's. And I really think it comes back to the, the don't that I'm saying to do. Right. I think people just build their identity around being needed and they don't think about like working with people they love and people they want to share knowledge with. They don't like, view it that way. They build an identity around being needed and that's not a culture that's conducive to, you know, fun or growth. Yeah, yeah. Or growth. That's right.
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Yeah. Oh my gosh. All right, so let's talk about being moms for a hot second. I have a two and a six or three and a six year old and I. The thought of them not needing me makes walks my world. Like even you just saying that. I'm having goosebumps over here.
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I am. So my 6 year old just started sleeping in his own bed and guys, I know your listen who listeners are appalled by this. I don't care because I will take the cuddles till the end of time.
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Till the end of time. Well, he just started sleeping in his own bed. And my husband called me on his way to work this morning and he's like, how are you doing? And I'm like, what do you. What do you mean, how am I doing? I'm fine. My day is off and running. I drove to the office for my podcast and I forgot my computer and now I'm doing it from. Oh, it's fine. It's a great day. And he's like, no. He's like, dylan's been in his own bed for a week for the first time in his life. Like, are you okay? And I'm like, well, now that you brought it up. No, but still, I get it. I think I get. I mean, I know what you're saying is real, but it's also hard. Oh, I. I'm not. You know, I'm preaching, but I'm definitely not immune to this feeling. My son is home for the holiday break from college, from his first year in college, and, like, I told him about some home improvements that I'm planning, and. And he's like, oh, great. You wait till I move out. And I'm like, no, it's for when you move back in. Right?
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What did he say? He just, like, laughed. And, you know, he knows me by now. But I think the point is, like, look, we want them to know they don't need us, right? But we're always here for them when and if they do. You know, like, you give them the wings, but you're like, but you can come back to the nest because we'll always be here. Yeah, but your wings work, you know? Work. Oh, my God. All right, well, I have some time for this, so check on me in a couple years when this is relevant to me, and I'll probably be a hot mess. Yeah, I think.
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I think my husband's just glad that he might get to sleep in a.
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In a bed again soon, so.
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I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But I truly will. That's my.
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That's my mom advice. Take the cuddles forever. Everybody's like, get them in their own beds. I'm like, mm, no, I know. Don't rush it. Make the cuddles forever. Yeah.
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All right, guys. So for those of you listening, your masterclass today was about not building your identity around being needed. I think this is probably one of the most interesting and differentiated don't do that that we've had so far. So thank you for that, Dani. And I think relevant, like you said to all of us in so many ways, both professionally and personally. So I'm gonna go cry into my lunch thinking about being an empty nester.
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And in the meantime, I want you all to think about the ways that you empower your people, that you help people step up, and that you make sure that they want you and you're adding value, but they don't need you all the time. I think that's such good advice and probably something I needed to hear. So thank you.
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You're so welcome. Thanks for having me. Kelly, of course.
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The information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Kelly Waltrich. The content has been made available for informational and educational purposes only.