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The Advisor Delta™ is your essential guide to mastering the wealth management industry. Hosted by Worldsource Wealth Management, this podcast delivers expert advice, actionable insights, and innovative strategies to grow and elevate your practice.
Join industry leaders for interviews, thought-provoking roundtables, and quick-fire 'Ask Me Anything' Q&A sessions, as we cover everything from emerging trends to leadership development. The Advisor Delta™ is more than just a podcast—it's a partner in your success. We aim to provide high-value industry insights while building a community of like-minded professionals who can learn from each other’s’ experiences.
Start listening today and unlock the tools, strategies, and inspiration you need to elevate your wealth practice with The Advisor Delta™. For more episodes and insights, don’t forget to subscribe and visit us at www.worldsourcewealth.com. And remember, together, we can take your practice to the NextLevel™.
Narrator: Welcome to The Advisor Delta™, the practice management podcast dedicated to helping investment advisors grow their business and reach their goals. Whether you’re looking to scale your practice, streamline operations, adapt to emerging technology, or deliver value to clients - this is the place for actionable insights, thoughtful leadership and innovative strategies. Brought to you by Worldsource Wealth Management. Let’s dive in!
Ariel: Hello, everyone. I'm Ariel Magil, Vice President of Practice Management at Worldsource Wealth Management, and welcome back to The Advisor Delta. Now, today's episode is a little bit different. We're sitting down with three of our fantastic advisors to explore the personal lessons that have shaped their careers.
Each of them will answer two questions: What's a lesson that has shaped your career? And if you could start over, what would you do differently? Now, we all know that success isn't about getting everything right off the top. It's about learning from the situations that challenge how you think and operate, and this conversation is about those exact experiences and what they reveal about building something that lasts.
Ariel: With that, please join me in welcoming Daryl Charanduk, Certified Financial Planner at Charanduk Financial; Jeff McDaid, Wealth Advisor at Armour Wealth; and Karen Okimi, Certified Financial Planner at Armour Wealth.
Ariel: Let's dive in. Now, let's start with you, Daryl. What's a lesson that's shaped your career? Thanks, Ariel.
Daryl: It was an interesting question that, you know, I put some thought into, and thought about going back and what shaped where we were at and what happened. So probably about in 2012, I had clients that were essentially long-term clients leave for different reasons. One client's mom passed away, decided to deal with the advisor his mom was dealing with. She had a lot more assets. It was easier transition. Another one was divorced, had a new partner. They wanted to find a neutral advisor. So those clients, it was a bit of a shock, a little disappointment obviously, but it was taking a look at evaluating why did they leave.
Daryl: What was I doing versus what they were moving to? And in both cases, it was model portfolios and fee-based advisors, even back in 2012. And I took a look at what we were doing, how we could do things differently, and that's when I started working with Dave Patterson way back in the day, and we went to fee-based, gave up on the DSC model, and created our own models, and that was a big turning point for the practice and the career.
Ariel: And so when you changed the model of your practice and sort of adopted these, these efficiency tools and ways to provide better advice, how did you communicate that to your clients? It was slowly over time. We had some tools with Worldsource that helped us show the difference between A class or DSC and F class.
Daryl: There was some big discrepancies with fund companies as well with the fee-based model and the prices. So by showing clients that, explaining to them why we were doing it, it was a fairly easy transition for clients. In most cases, they were saving money on the MERs at the time. It made my life a lot easier, and back then we still had some DSC that we had to roll out, so working with Dave back then was finding the right fit for the funds that we were using and what was available within the structure of the DSCs until those rolled off and we could just use what we wanted to in the long term.
Ariel: And what you've been talking about in terms of the model portfolios and the fee-based approach, that stuck with you ever since?
Daryl: It was 2012, 2013. It was a real turning point for how I ran my practice.
Ariel: Excellent. You were a little bit of a trailblazer because back in the day, those were sort of newer concepts.
Daryl: It was a time when they were talking about DSC going away. It took them seven to 10 years to do, but there was that initial conversation about this is happening.
Ariel: Yeah.
Daryl: And I thought, "Well, if it's gonna happen, we might as well get ahead of it and start the process."
Ariel: Excellent. Yeah. Maybe I'll look over at you now, Jeff, and ask you the same question. What's a lesson that has shaped your career?
Jeff: Thanks, Ariel. So a single lesson is kinda hard to pick out. There's been so many little successes and failures along the road that have really compiled to bring me to where I feel I am and probably where I'm going.
Jeff: But whenever I look back, there's a spot that stands out to me anyway, and it's the fact that I, starting my career, I felt underprepared, and perhaps I wasn't at the time, but I really felt that way. In fact, looking back, I had a background education that was well-suited for what I was doing, economics degree, MBA, I had experience running a business successfully. I had experience failing in multiple businesses as well. And yet walking into First Canadian Place at Bay and Adelaide, going up in these big marble elevators, and it's an intimidating place to be. The industry in and unto itself is intimidating. Even getting through all of that, sitting in front of clients when you're young and you feel like you don't have a ton of life experience is even more intimidating and challenging than anything you'd face in a big building, corporate Toronto, et cetera.
Jeff: So I took a step away from that side of the business and felt I needed more experience in the corporate world. Worked wholesaling and that sort of thing, and then came back to this side about 15 years later. I think I came back too late. I learned a ton, and I'm happy that I made that transition, but I think I should have had more faith in my desire to do well for clients and relied on some help from other people, trusting my experience was enough.
Jeff: And experience is never enough. You always need to learn more. You will always be learning. At some point, you've got to bite the bullet and say, "I'm not ready, but I'll never be ready, and this is what I want to do." And I just wish I'd found that a little bit earlier. I find that's a common theme universally, though.
Ariel: It can be when it's something that's intimidating, we're always reticent to sort of step off the ledge. And, you know, at the end of the day, it is what it is, and the part of that's made you what you are. So Karen, tell us about a lesson that sort of helped shape your career. So my answer's a little bit different.
Karen: I started in '93. I've got many years in the business, but my career span to retirement is actually a pretty short runway. So what I wanted to share was how I planned my succession. So when I started in the business, in my last different dealer in my office, we had many advisors that were 70-plus-years-old and having challenges maybe with some technology, compliance changes, and changes in general.
Karen: Nobody likes changes, and I think the older we get, the harder it is. And I did not want to be one of those people. So 10-plus years ago, knowing that I wanted to retire at some point, I started looking around for potential successors. I looked at a lot of my friends in the business who are my age. That wasn't a good choice.
Karen: Looked at meeting new advisors and also looking at wholesalers. Jeff was my wholesaler, and when we met, we had a great connection and we clicked very quickly. And when he went into personal production, I then approached him and said, "Hey, Jeff, I'd really love for you to be my succession plan." And so after about a year or two of his new role in personal production, knowing that he had settled down, he loved it, he was doing it very successfully, we then met to say, "Okay, let's move forward with our plan."
Karen: So we, at that point I moved over to Worldsource, and then about two years after moving in, I sold half my practice to Jeff after a lot of work and time and joint meetings which went extremely well. And clients saw that we were a good fit. We were very compatible, similar, very close, and my clients were very comfortable with that transition, and so I think it's been a very successful transition.
But even though I knew that Jeff was going to be my successor, once they moved over, the next step to actually say, "I'm going to sell" is a big, huge mental shift that does not come without a lot of fear and trepidation.
Karen: Yes. It's scary, and you take the leap. But I've seen advisors who say, "Yes, I'm gonna retire. Yes, I'm gonna sell you my business," and they never step out. And I did not, again, want to be one of those people. So I think the good ending or the successful part of it is that it's worked. It's two years into selling, and then within the next two years we're gonna meet to formalize what the next two years look like.
Karen: And I'm hoping to be retired in about two years. Excellent. I definitely have seen the difficulty a lot of advisors have in letting go of their practice. I'm glad to hear you've been so proactive because it doesn't get any easier, and of course you want to do it in a way that your clients are well cared for and you realize the full value of what you've built.
Karen: For sure, and it's a 30-plus year relationship. It's multiple generations. And so to hand over that to someone, it is difficult, but you make that step. And I've seen so many transition plans in the industry where things have gone sideways for whatever reason. But I think we're very fortunate that it's really worked well for us.
Ariel: Clearly your clients have confidence in you. They'll have confidence, or they have confidence in Jeff, and ultimately that's what drives them feeling that they'll hit their goals working with you two. Correct. Now, thank you all for your openness in terms of the lessons you've learned. I guess that would take me to the second question that we wanted to ask, and this is, I think, a little bit more of a loaded one because some of you are more comfortable admitting your errors than others.
Ariel: But if you were starting over again, what would you do differently? I know we've heard a little bit from you, Jeff, about that, but I'd love to hear all of you. Let's shake things up a little bit as far as the order is concerned. Karen, let's start with you. When I started in '93, things were a lot different back then.
Karen: When we had to process an RSP, we could do it on one piece of paper in five minutes. That was it. I had a captive family of funds of six or seven. Now, we still spent our time with our due diligence with the client, getting to know them, their goals, their net worth, their cash flow and all of that, but literally the paperwork was five minutes.
Karen: Fast-forward to today, we're in a completely different environment. So processing was not as onerous as it was, and over the years it's changed, and over the years I had a part-time assistant. But looking at how these two successfully operate with a team, if I could go back, I would many, many years ago have had a full-time assistant working on the business instead of in the business, building relationships, building your book.
Karen: I think my book would've been a lot bigger had I done that route. My main regret is not having that full-time. And I think for advisors starting today, when you're starting out, you may feel that I can't afford that assistant. But if you don't, you cannot grow. You don't have capacity. You have to take the financial obligation, and if you don't, you're gonna hit a ceiling really fast, and it's a lot harder in today's environment to grow without that help.
Ariel: That is an excellent statement, and it's something I hear almost every day, including even in one of the recent podcasts that we recorded where another really successful advisor, that was the piece of advice he gave, was hire somebody even before you think you're able to. And even when you think you can't, a successful advisor in the business once said, "For every full-time assistant that you hire, it's another $100,000 in income."
Karen: And I believe that.
Ariel: And so I hopefully want to ask Daryl and Jeff the same question. The thing they would do differently is starting a team. So I'll take that chance. Daryl, let's move over to you. So tell me what you would do differently if you could.
Daryl: It's an intimidating thought about starting from scratch again. And we've recently hired a young advisor, Liam, really bright. I think he'll have a fabulous career. But looking at what he's up against and what I was up against 30-plus years ago, very different.
Nobody even knew what a mutual fund was when I started, so that's how long ago I was here. What I benefited from a little bit when I started at Investors Group was having a division manager who was essentially a mentor. When I left Investors and came to what is now Worldsource, I was sharing an office space and some office costs with an older advisor who was really brilliant, he was busy with his practice, his kids, et cetera, so I didn't get a chance to learn as much as I probably should've from him. Yeah. And that was on me. It wasn't on him, it was on me. And for somebody starting out now, my first thing would be find that mentor.
Daryl: There's lots of us in the industry that are willing to take some time, share some knowledge, share our mistakes, but learn from those people and take everything you can from everyone you meet, would be the one piece of advice. I think that is so powerful, and I think mentorship is, you know, when we do new advisors developing, I don't think there's a more important ingredient than mentorship from somebody or multiple people in the industry.
Ariel: So that's an excellent point. Yes, Kim? Can I add on something? You certainly can. The one thing that I wanted to add in lessons is as a female advisor in a male-dominated industry, I was fortunate enough to belong to about two or three women's groups in the industry, and I can't undermine the importance for women to network with female advisors.
Karen: You build relationships, but you can share experience in a way that you can't share with people outside the industry. We built great relationships. We shared great knowledge. And you network with people not only in your dealership, but outside of dealerships. Because again, we feel like your world is very small inside one dealership, and by having that exposure, it really helps you learn.
Ariel: I really appreciate you saying that. I've heard that multiple times from younger women advisors who enter the industry. Having that support network that speaks the same language and understands the unique challenges that you face in a male-dominated industry, I think that's really important. And is that something that you still participate in to some degree?
Karen: Yes. So I still have groups that I belong to. A majority of our group is retiring, so now we're recruiting younger advisors to carry on the group because the group has been around probably for 40 years. Yeah. And so to see the originals retire out, but see younger people come in. It's really cool.
Karen: Yeah. That's awesome. Well, listen, if you ever need some help from us to sort of identify people, 'cause I do think it'll have so much value for our younger advisors to be part of a group like that. I assume it's geographically aligned. I think those are great points, and one of the things that I would do differently if I was starting over, it would be seeking the help of people around me.
Jeff: I think that would have helped regardless of whether I felt I was ready or not. I think it would have better prepared me to move back into the business more quickly. The longer you stay in something else, like a salaried role, et cetera, if you want to get into this business here where it's very independent, it becomes harder and harder to make that transition.
Jeff: You have kids, you have marriage. All these things happen over time, and the earlier you can do it, the better. You've got a lot of people that have had a lot of time in the seat in this business that can help and are willing to. You just have to be open to it. I would put that on me as doing that differently next time.
Jeff: And as Daryl mentioned as well, and Karen really alluded to this, the team focus. I wish I'd started focusing and building the team a little earlier as well. Our team has been everything in bringing us greater success and growth. Every person that we've added to the team has brought further growth. If I add someone else to the team or someone else comes into the team, it takes things off of the team.
Jeff: We see further growth, but I've been the bottleneck. I guess what I'd like to say is just about AI and tech in general, that was something I'd relied on to take some pressure off of me within the business and our team. But really we're in a relationship business, and that can only go so far.
Jeff: Without adding people that can be involved with clients directly, you're not going to be able to move forward and you're just chasing your own tail over and over. Yeah. That's an excellent point and at the end of the day, our clients are here because they wanna talk to us. Well, not me, but you guys, and not the computer.
Daryl: That's what the value you add. And like with the team members, I've been blessed with fantastic people who work with us, and to the point where they don't look at it as a job, they look at it as just as important to them as a business owner as I am.
And that's a rare thing to try and find. Absolutely. But it's been huge in terms of success and making life easy for me. When I walk through the doors this morning to the office, you can feel there's a great vibe in here, and clients feel that as well. But certainly as far as the team aspect, I hate to back it up to numbers, and you sort of spoke about it a little bit before, there's a lot of research into this, and building a team absolutely pays for itself, even in the shorter term.
Ariel: It's also an investment of time because you have to get people up to speed, and so it can be a little daunting, but I think that's really important advice and it's certainly the way the industry is moving anyway. And you don't want to build just a team, you want to build a great team. And you want to build a legacy.
Ariel: All of you don't have 50 years in your career left, but the goal is for your respective firms to endure beyond that, and that's really what the team is allowing you to do. And I think it's a really special place to have in our society, and I know it sounds a little idealistic, but contribute to the financial stability and security of our communities and you should be very proud.
Daryl: Leah will sit in on appointments with me and we're talking to clients that are younger and we're doing something, setting it up, and I've said, you know — You'll remember that we did this, but it, you'll be thanking Liam, not me, because — Yeah — I don't think you want me as your advisor at 85, so — Don't be so sure.
Daryl: You never know. Yeah. So it's important to see that there's gonna be continuity and a legacy that keeps going. Yeah. And just similarly for Liam, for example, like you see here's somebody who's younger who's really gonna be able to build a career and support whatever aspirations he has in his life. So it's really coming full circle.
Daryl: Yeah. Daryl, Jeff, and Karen, thank you all for being so candid. What I'm taking away from our conversation is that perspective that's shaped over time, and often through the moments that we only fully understand when we look back at them, are super powerful. There's no perfect path in this industry, as you've all shown.
Ariel: It's been a different path to success, but you all are self-actualized and you look very pleased with where this has brought you to this day, and you're excited about the future. There is always value in reflection, in being honest about the journey, and in learning from the experiences that shape us.
Ariel: After all, it's the things that don't go right, the calls you take back, and what you learn despite it all that shape how you move forward and how you show up every day. Thank you for joining us on The Advisor Delta. Until next time.
Narrator: Thanks for tuning into The Advisor Delta™! We hope you found today’s episode valuable to supporting your practice. For more episodes and insights, don’t forget to subscribe and visit us at www.worldsourcewealth.com. And remember, together, we can take your practice to the NextLevel™.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants only. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to seek professional guidance for their specific needs. Worldsource Wealth Management does not endorse any products, services, or companies mentioned in this episode.
Worldsource Financial Management Inc. is a mutual fund dealer. Worldsource Wealth Management Inc. is a dual-registered firm, both as a mutual fund dealer and an investment dealer. Both Worldsource Financial Management Inc. and Worldsource Wealth Management Inc. are members of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund (CIPF) and the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) and subsidiaries of Worldsource Group of Companies Inc., a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of the Fédération des caisses Desjardins du Québec (FCDQ), which is part of the Desjardins Group.