We're Adding a Co-Host to Root Ready — Here's Why

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Welcome back to another episode of the Root Ready Podcast.
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I'm your host, James Kannell, and today we're actually introducing a fun new change to the show.
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And that is we're bringing on a co-host.
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That co-host, we're going to go over a bit more of your background, Eden, in just a bit, but briefly, real quick here, welcome to your show now too.
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Thanks, James.
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Excited to be here.
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Before we jump into more about you, Eden, and kind of your background and role here at Root, the reason we're making this shift is I record these episodes and I'm here in this little office space thinking about what seems like would be valuable to advisors who are on their growth journey, advisors who are still in that associate role or early lead financial advisor role, trying to be the best they can be.
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And so I think I've got a good understanding of what that is.
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But there was an there was, I almost said incident, like it was a serious thing.
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There was an incident.
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Um we have something called the Garden, which is a part of our associate development pathway.
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And I got to join you, Eden, and all the other associates in the garden.
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And we had just rolled out our high performers workbook, which was essentially how can you optimize your effectiveness and your time and your energy and all these different things as a really a professional and a human, not even just as an advisor.
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And so it was these things that I've learned over the course of my career that I tried to do.
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And it felt like, yeah, this is great.
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Here's the principles, here's what you need to do.
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And we got into the garden, we got into that meeting.
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And there was some really healthy pushback of not that this is wrong, but that how are we actually supposed to implement this?
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Do you recall that conversation, Eton?
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I do.
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It was very productive for sure.
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It it was, I think it was, correct me if I'm wrong, the top, like the daily habits, the top three.
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Is that where we started in that?
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Do you remember?
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Yes.
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Yes.
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Okay.
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And so we were talking about this concept of, yeah, every day, every week, you should have a top three things you want to accomplish this week.
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And then every day you should have a top three things you want to accomplish this day.
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And you should try to screen out everything else or shut down everything else and just prioritize those things.
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And then got some feedback of, well, hey, that's great, but like what do we do when I'm an associate advisor?
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My time isn't necessarily my own.
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I have to kind of be at the um available and ready to drop everything and do something if my lead advisor needs it.
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Or I need to be able to be super responsive in Slack or be super responsive in email.
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And it was a good light bulb moment for me of, oh, okay, like these principles, there's not that the principle is true, but the implementation piece, there was a disconnect between me here sitting in this office space thinking about it, and actually how is this being received and implemented at the associate advisor level, at the lead financial advisor level.
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So even you're here, and I we were talking about this of not to be like a yes person, not just to be like, yeah, that sounds good, but to say no, like push back.
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Where do things sound good in theory, but then come up short in reality?
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Because sometimes they do come up short, and other times it's just no, here's a different way to think about that, or to ask some of the follow-up questions, really being the voice in a lot of ways of the listener, of the people who are listening to this thing.
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This sounds really good, but that kind of last mile, that last, you know, 100 yards sometimes of how do I actually implement this into what I'm doing.
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So excited to have you here, Eden.
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And I thought that today would be helpful to give the audience a little bit just a background on you.
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Obviously, everybody at Root knows you, but to start, how long have you been at Root now, just to paint the picture?
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Yeah, I just had my three-month anniversary a couple days ago.
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So it's been a great time.
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It started in January this year.
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And you've started, you know, kind of fun fact.
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I think you've you started, I don't think you even had a team meeting until you joined, and then we had our whole team event where we have what uh, you know, 60, 70 of us in person, high energy, everyone's excited to see each other.
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You hadn't had a team meeting before coming to that, correct?
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That's correct, yes.
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Yeah.
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So Eden jumped right in at a fun time.
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Um, where did you give us a bit of your background?
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How long have you been in the industry?
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Where did you work prior to work prior to Root?
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What does that look like?
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Sure.
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Yeah, I've been in the industry for almost four years exactly now.
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Started at my first finance firm back in spring of 2022.
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So interesting time to jump into things.
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But I started at a big broker dealer, so very different energy from what we do here at Root, but it was a great first experience just to learn the basics of finance, what even is a journal, what is an ACH, just transfer of assets, all those kind of basic things.
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And that was a great initial experience, just working at a big firm with a lot of support with all the licenses and things like that.
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Great way to just dip my toes into the industry.
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Um, but I was interested in doing a little bit more deeper planning than what I saw on the horizon on that kind of bigger firm scale.
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And so I decided to switch over to the RIA side of the industry after about a year and a half or so.
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And it was a very different experience off the bat.
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I was not used to the style of holistic financial planning where we're going way beyond just the investments, which was really the core of my first experience at the broker dealer.
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Very eye-opening, very educational.
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That's where I ended up getting my CFP and learned a lot there.
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Um, but it was a very boutique firm, small, and I ended up wanting something a little bit more structured, not necessarily that big company feel that I had at my first job, but not necessarily so small where I didn't feel fully supported in my development and the trajectory onwards in my career.
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So that's what led me to kind of start looking around.
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And I found root on LinkedIn, and the rest is history.
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Here we are.
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How's the experience?
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Don't hold any punches.
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The good, the bad, the ugly.
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How's the experience been in the first three plus months?
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First three months at Root have been overall wonderful.
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It's been a really refreshing change of pace for me and just with the style of how we work here has been very refreshing.
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I think a big change for me that I'm still working through is the fully remote environment.
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Both of my prior jobs were hybrid and mostly in person.
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Um, but I've been really pleasantly surprised by how connected we all are still as a company.
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It's not just with the clients, very used to meeting with the clients over Zoom, but I was a little nervous about not being able to just walk down the hall to so-and-so's office and ask a question when things come up, because that's what I'm very used to.
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Um, so that's been a little bit of a change for sure, just getting used to this fully remote environment.
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But I have been really pleased with how connected everyone is.
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And we have a lot of fun internal meetings too, that are kind of similar to standing around by the coffee maker in my old offices where we're just chatting, getting to know each other better.
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Um, so that's all been great.
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And I think the most surprising thing for me that has been exactly what I was looking for is the emphasis on development, training, and mentorship here.
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That's been probably the most exciting change for me over the past three months.
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So let's talk about that.
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What when you say structure, a million different things could come to mind based upon where someone is in their firm or their experiences.
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What has that looked like?
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What type of structure were you looking for?
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And what even specific things have you received that made you feel like you got it?
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Yeah, I think at my prior two firms, I had very different experiences with what development looked like.
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At the big firm, you know, it was a lot of hand holding and almost too slow, like you're kind of not allowed to progress, maybe at the pace you would like to, just because of kind of those bigger, more corporate guardrails.
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And then at the smaller firm, it was kind of the exact opposite where there wasn't really anything in place.
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It was a lot of learn by doing, which is excellent experience.
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There's nothing wrong with learning by doing.
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It's probably the best way to learn.
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But I was looking for more structure to get from the associate to the lead role.
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And I felt like the learn by doing was great for learning what to do as an associate.
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That was awesome.
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It taught me a lot.
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But I didn't feel like I was getting that extra how do you get from associate to lead type of training.
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And that's really what I was looking for.
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And coming here to root, I've been so surprised just by the resources that are already built, just that exist for us to access to learn more.
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Videos, sites, resources, everything is kind of built out already.
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But then the kind of classroom style learning that we're doing in the garden that you mentioned, our kind of associate development training, it feels like going back to college in the best possible way.
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Probably like my favorite class I could imagine is what the garden feels like.
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And it's not about how do you be a good associate.
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Of course, that's part of it.
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But it's also about how do you become a lead?
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How do you take your skills as an associate to the next level?
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That's been a big part of the garden.
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And I think that's the most beneficial part of it, and something that a lot of young advisors, new advisors are looking for.
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How do I get the training to move from support role to lead role?
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And I've been really impressed with the structure around that here at Root.
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Yeah, Paul and Jeff has really done an excellent job with that.
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What's a specific tangible example, something you've learned in that classroom style setting that has helped to connect the dots between the development, between the associate and lead role for you?
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Yeah, I would say they give us these kind of assignments, which sounds gross and homework-y, but that's not what it's like at all.
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They're very fun.
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And they want us to record videos of ourselves presenting certain elements of the financial plan, of the Sequoia process, and rehearse using our own voice.
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And the first assignment I went into, I thought, oh, this will be easy.
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I've seen my lead Naomi do this a hundred times.
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This will be super easy.
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And I went to do it myself and kind of froze up and felt really awkward and didn't really know what to say.
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And that's been the most valuable part of the garden is pushing yourself every week.
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They give you these assignments that are very doable, but it makes you push.
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It pushes you to get out of your comfort zone and rehearse being the lead, prepare for being the lead.
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And I think that's been so valuable to get those repetitions, even just by myself.
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Just it's a very safe space to fall on your face and totally mess up when you're just recording a video, you're sitting alone in the office.
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That's been a tremendous experience.
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I love it.
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And just uh, you know, to set the stage for some future episodes that that will come, what you just mentioned.
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Uh, so Naomi's your lead.
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You uh you and Naomi work very closely together.
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The concept of how do I learn from what I'm observing, but also kind of create my own voice and create my own way of being.
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I think in a couple episodes from now, we'll do something on that.
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So that will be that'll be fun.
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Um, so very cool.
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So you you've you've done all that.
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What has been, and by the way, people listening, like a lot of this is just off the cuff.
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Like the goal of this podcast is not to be super rehearsed or Eden when I say this, you say this really good thing about really no, like let's talk real about what's working, what's not working, because um there's areas to improve everything.
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We want this podcast to be a very valuable uh tool, both for root, first and foremost, for root advisors and associate advisors, but then also for the industry as a whole.
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What's been the biggest challenge as you are developing from the associate role to the lead role?
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And granted, you're three months in, so this might be something that's just coming.
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But where do you feel as an associate with four years of experience in the broker dealer world and the RIA world, now with your second RIA firm?
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What's the biggest holdback when you think of where you are versus where you want to be as a lead advisor?
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That's a great question.
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And for me, it's kind of twofold.
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It's one thing that you can't really learn, which is developing confidence.
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I feel like that kind of takes time, repetition, just like what we're doing in the garden.
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Just developing enough confidence to feel like I can respond to client questions.
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I am qualified to give this recommendation.
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I am able to help.
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I am able to answer these questions in the moment.
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Being more confident in that and not feeling that kind of deer in the headlights, I need to look to my lead advisor in this moment.
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Someday there isn't gonna be a lead advisor to look to.
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It's gonna be me.
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So I think developing that confidence is one piece, which I do feel like takes a lot of time.
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But um what we're doing in the garden is very helpful for that.
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And then I'd also say overcoming some fear of not knowing everything and being comfortable knowing that you will never know everything as an advisor.
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No matter how long you've worked as an advisor, you still don't know everything.
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No advisor knows everything.
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And I think as associates, a lot of the time we feel like, well, I won't be able to become a lead until I know everything.
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I need to know everything before I become a lead.
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Well, that's never gonna happen.
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So it's kind of being able to move through that fear and get comfortable knowing that I'm gonna have to say to a client, hmm, that's a great question.
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I don't know.
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Let me look into that and get back to you.
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That still feels very scary to say right now as an associate, even though I see my lead do it.
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We I mean I've seen it tons of times before.
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It's very normal.
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So I think it's kind of a combination of building that confidence, feeling confident in my qualifications, my experience, my knowledge, and overcoming the fear of I don't know everything and I won't know everything.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I think that's that's a that's a challenge I think all associates have.
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And I think it's uniquely challenging at root because yes, I'm talking my own book here, but I think the quality of advisor at root is exceptionally high.
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And the benefit of that is yeah, you come in as an associate, there's so much to learn from.
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There's so many people who are kind and supportive and committed to your development that you can learn from.
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The downside is the perceived gap between where you feel like you are and where they are is significant because, oh my gosh, this is what it looks like to be excellent.
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I remember I shared this before when I was a young advisor.
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I would look at, you know, the Michael Kitsies of the world or like the people that were public.
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It's like, oh my gosh, that is that's what I have to be.
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And I'm just this kid that passed to CFP, but that's it, and they perceived gap was enormous.
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And I was actually talking to Eden and Hannah at our team retreat about this, of they were kind of sharing the same thing.
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Like they are so good as advisors.
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They're so strong technically, they're so strong in what they can do with clients.
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But they were sharing that.
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Like, yeah, there's this perception of I feel like maybe I'm not where these other advisors who have been doing it a decade longer are.
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And I said, we need to go.
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I I don't know how to say this without whatever else.
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We need to go to like a broker dealer conference.
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And you, we need to just interact with people there.
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And you will start to see all of a sudden that perceived gap of where you are between you and everyone else is all of a sudden you're gonna say, Oh my gosh, I'm head and shoulders above the average advisor in this industry.
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And I think that that's something probably a lot of younger advisors, even listening to this podcast, might struggle with, is they're comparing themselves to the people who are maybe most active, the loudest voices, oftentimes like the people that are maybe most successful online.
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And they're not seeing the average or the median advisor.
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Now, I think that we should not compare ourselves to the average and the median advisor.
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And I think that that feeling, I think that's a good feeling.
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Like I've felt that many times before of what you're feeling, Eden, is how do I use that to fuel this insatiable desire to always get better?
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But on the flip side, also recognize that I'm really incredibly competent and good.
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And I know that I'm gonna be supported in the growth that um that's being pursued here.
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So uh thank you for sharing that.
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One one question to you.
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You know, going back to even not just the goal of this podcast, but the goal of having you as a co-host on this podcast is to say, where are things, what are things that also me specifically?
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What am I saying on this podcast?
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What do I say internally at root?
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Where to go back to the high performance workbook example, James, yeah, it sounds good.
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Like the the principle is sound, but the implementation is tough.
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Are there areas, and again, people listening, this this wasn't a question I asked Eden ahead of time, so I'm just asking her on the spot.
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Are there other areas like that that come to mind that are sound in principle, but challenging to implement?
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That's another great question.
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I think just one thing off the off the top of my head is I think this is a great rule of thumb, which I think this is newer, a newer implemented rule of associates only are required to join 10 meetings per week with their advisor, which in theory that is fantastic.
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We are doing a lot of work, we're expected to do a lot of the prep and the follow-up, and that takes a lot of time.
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So sometimes sitting in that extra 11th meeting is too much.
00:17:40.559 --> 00:17:44.079
It takes away from really valuable other work that we could be doing.
00:17:44.319 --> 00:17:54.960
Um, I would say one thing that I feel with that though is whenever I do miss a meeting, like I have had scheduling conflicts or, you know, the garden is always prioritized for associates over client meetings.
00:17:55.119 --> 00:18:00.240
When I'll then circle back with Naomi to talk about what happened, I kind of wish that I had just been there anyway.
00:18:00.319 --> 00:18:07.359
And I often end up watching the recording of the meeting anyway, just to catch myself up and make sure I'm able to do the prep and follow-up work.
00:18:07.519 --> 00:18:09.440
So that's something that I'm still settling into.
00:18:09.519 --> 00:18:20.000
I think it's also kind of rare Naomi's trying to keep her total meetings to 10 meetings or less a week anyway, because that's also just a general good rule of thumb to make sure your calendar is not overloaded.
00:18:20.160 --> 00:18:21.920
But that can also be hard too.
00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:25.599
You know, there are moments where you'll have more than 10 meetings in a week.
00:18:25.680 --> 00:18:29.279
And I still feel this desire to be very involved.
00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:34.000
Um, so that's another one that just comes to mind from the associate perspective.
00:18:34.480 --> 00:18:34.799
Yeah.
00:18:34.960 --> 00:18:35.680
Yeah, very good.
00:18:35.759 --> 00:18:46.240
And for people listening, obviously people at root understand, but we were dealing with this challenge of, you know, leads set their schedule of how many clients they want to onboard, how many clients are going to serve within within Guardrails, of course.
00:18:46.480 --> 00:18:50.559
But as the associate, you're you're there for the ride in a lot of ways.
00:18:50.720 --> 00:19:06.480
And that could be good if you're perfectly aligned in terms of what you want your development to look like and what your leads naturally growing at, or it could be challenging if your leads just absolutely getting after it and taking on a whole bunch of meetings, you're like, man, this is starting to be pulled in a whole bunch of different directions.
00:19:06.640 --> 00:19:13.599
So we tried to create some standards around um how to protect associate time specifically as as we did that.
00:19:13.839 --> 00:19:14.640
Um all right.
00:19:14.799 --> 00:19:29.839
Well, Eden, anything else that you let's see here, before we start to wrap, anything else that you've seen or experienced or would share with the audience listening as they're thinking about their development and maybe they're in a previous role like you had at your previous firms.
00:19:30.160 --> 00:19:34.880
Any tips you might give them that are worth taking?
00:19:37.119 --> 00:19:46.240
I think before I joined Root, I had the luxury of taking some time off, which many people do not have that luxury.
00:19:46.640 --> 00:19:56.000
But I think it's important to at least carve out some time whether you actually take time off to do this or just, you know, Saturday morning making breakfast.
00:19:56.319 --> 00:20:11.119
Just to take some time to think about what kind of advisor you really want to be, and whether or not the company or role you're in currently is supporting that trajectory.
00:20:11.759 --> 00:20:24.079
I feel like a lot of times in my previous companies it was just dive all the way in, get into this, loyalty, be with this company, and keep your head down and it's gonna all work out.
00:20:24.480 --> 00:20:34.960
And I kept finding myself at my previous two firms feeling frustrated and almost was thinking about leaving the industry because I thought it was the job that I was doing.
00:20:35.039 --> 00:20:39.200
I thought I maybe I don't like financial planning, maybe I made a mistake.
00:20:40.079 --> 00:20:47.440
But what really was the problem, and this is something I kind of figured out in the time that I was able to take away, is it wasn't what I was doing.
00:20:47.599 --> 00:20:49.039
I love financial planning.
00:20:49.119 --> 00:20:52.240
I love working with the clients, I love doing what we do.
00:20:52.559 --> 00:20:57.599
But I wasn't in the right environment to be the kind of advisor that I wanted to be.
00:20:57.759 --> 00:21:03.039
And it did take some time stepping away and really critically thinking about that to realize that.
00:21:03.279 --> 00:21:06.960
So I think it's just okay to give yourself space to dream bigger.
00:21:07.119 --> 00:21:10.400
And if it's not where you're at right now, that's also fine.
00:21:10.559 --> 00:21:11.599
I think that's okay.
00:21:11.680 --> 00:21:15.440
And you can find ways to work within whatever company role you're in.
00:21:15.599 --> 00:21:17.839
Um, there's a lot that you can do internally as well.
00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:25.039
I think looking for the right resources, listening to podcasts like this are very helpful when you're kind of landlocked wherever you're at.
00:21:25.200 --> 00:21:33.440
But it's also okay to dream bigger and think about is there a place that might be better for me to support where I want to go in the long run?
00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:37.759
Um, that would be a piece of advice I would give to my younger self.
00:21:39.759 --> 00:21:40.640
Yeah, well said.
00:21:40.799 --> 00:21:54.799
And I think that as we close, this is you know, I've I've mentioned this before that I try to obsess about the problems we have at root or the things that aren't working perfectly at root.
00:21:54.960 --> 00:21:57.039
And that is because we want to dream bigger.
00:21:57.200 --> 00:21:59.759
We want to dream bigger about what is the impact that root can have.
00:22:00.079 --> 00:22:02.000
Of how do we attract the highest quality people?
00:22:02.160 --> 00:22:05.359
How do we serve uh just incredible clients?
00:22:05.599 --> 00:22:09.119
And you get there by saying, well, what's not working today?
00:22:09.279 --> 00:22:13.119
And let's let's eliminate that bottleneck or let's let's fix that.
00:22:13.200 --> 00:22:17.920
And so going back to this whole thing of Eden is joining because Eden's been an excellent advisor.
00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:20.000
She's been here three months, she's learning so quickly.
00:22:20.160 --> 00:22:21.759
And I thought, well, who who better?
00:22:21.920 --> 00:22:23.680
You know, we have so many awesome associates.
00:22:23.839 --> 00:22:39.440
And but but the unique experience of being somewhat fresh off the past experience of your past firm and also here at Root long enough to see what we're doing, but also not so long that everything just feels like it's second nature already, or it just feels like a given.
00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:40.880
Great perspective.
00:22:40.960 --> 00:22:54.240
So that as I'm having these conversations and recordings, it's not just, you know, in some ways preaching from the ivory tower, it's hearing things from the ground floor and pushing back and saying, well, where does this not land?
00:22:54.400 --> 00:23:02.319
Being that voice of the listener who's trying to actually implement this type of uh type of stuff to to do it the most effective that they can.
00:23:02.480 --> 00:23:08.960
So Eden, really excited to record a whole bunch more episodes with you, but thanks for agreeing to be the co-host here.
00:23:09.279 --> 00:23:15.279
And we will see you all next time on the next episode of the Root Ready Podcast.