February 27, 2025 • 26 mins
Are you limiting your growth potential by thinking too small?
In this episode of Don't Do That, host Kelly Waltrich sits down with Billy Hopkins, CEO of Silver Oak Securities, to discuss the importance of thinking big, taking uncomfortable steps, and adopting an enterprise mindset to accelerate business growth.
With 25 years of experience building Silver Oak Securities from a small Tennessee firm to a thriving enterprise, Billy shares his "Dave Grohl moment" that changed everything and the pivotal decisions that transformed his business.
Kelly and Billy discuss:
0:44 Introduction to Billy Hopkins and his Eagles fandom
1:47 Billy's journey from independent advisor to CEO of Silver Oak Securities
3:43 The "Dave Grohl moment" that changed Billy's entrepreneurial trajectory
6:25 Why holding onto unprofitable relationships limits your growth
9:12 Breaking through the ceiling: Investing in growth even when you don't feel ready
14:19 The value of being uncomfortable and having people who push you forward
17:57 Why advisors need to believe in their ability to elevate their practice
19:21 The importance of focusing on advisor experience to enhance client experience
21:43 Why partnerships and vendor relationships require patience to realize their full value
23:13 The wealth transfer opportunity and building the right infrastructure to capitalize on it
24:08 Billy's growth mindset: "Put a zero on the end of it"
Connect with Kelly Waltrich:
Connect with Billy Hopkins:
About Our Guest:
Billy Hopkins is the CEO & Founder of Silver Oak Securities, Inc, an independent, full-service Broker Dealer and SEC Registered Investment Advisor championing the spirit of independent wealth advisors by empowering them to foster meaningful, long-lasting relationships with their clients.
Billy has devoted the past 23 years to cultivating a unique structure at Silver Oak Securities that offers the strength, scale and resources of a large financial institution with the flexibility and freedom offered by smaller boutique organizations.
Billy holds a degree in Business from Lambuth University, and holds his Series 6, 7, 4, 53 and 66. An avid trail runner, he lives in Tennessee with his wife, Rachel, and their sons, Sam and Jude.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Billy Hopkins (00:00):
There's some really cool, wonderful people in
(00:06):
this industry that have carvedout niches, and they've done
things, and I think everyfinancial professional has that
ability to elevate and taketheir practice up. And we need
advisors, and you see it everyday, and so, yep, some of them
are always like looking for thatexpansion. How do I hire this
(00:26):
next person? How do I do this?
Others just stay in that littlebubble. And what we want them to
do is just get out of thatbubble and realize that if you,
if you do that in the next fiveyears, can be absolutely
amazing.
Kelly Waltrich (00:44):
Hi everyone, and welcome to today's episode of
The don't do that podcast. I amhere with my friend Billy
Hopkins, CEO of silver oaksecurities, couldn't be more
excited for this conversation.
Couple of reasons. One, we arefresh off an Eagles win, so I
had to wear my gear today.
Second reason is, Billy told mebefore this that he's amped up
on three cups of coffee andready to rock for this
(01:05):
conversation. And third, thereare a few people that I talk to
in my life, even my mom, maybeas much as Billy and I talk, and
it's on a daily basis, and it'sbecause he's got more ID great
ideas than anyone I know, so I'mexcited for you to hear them
today, Billy, welcome. Thanksfor joining me.
Unknown (01:22):
Well, thank you for giving me the chance to be here.
I am truly honored. I've beenwaiting for your podcast for a
while, and I know we've beentalking about it, and I think
you did it right, because youreally thought through it and
you didn't rush to do it, butI'm just blessed to be here. So
thank you.
Awesome. So Billy, why don't yougive our listeners just a little
(01:43):
overview of yourself and yourbusiness at Silver oaks that
they have a little contextaround your background?
Yeah. Thank you. So I started mycareer just completely as an
independent financialprofessional, and went from a
back started into the 90s. So wewere brokers that evolved to
(02:04):
advisors, that evolved to a asupervisor that had a crazy idea
of starting my own firm when Iwas 27 years old, and had no
business doing it, but was, youknow, looking at the industry,
and kind of caught the wave ofthe independent space. But,
(02:25):
yeah, we were challenged. Wewere small, but we also were in
Tennessee. And, you know,there's not a lot of financial
service companies that startright out of Tennessee. But had
a, had a belief that we could,that we could build a firm on
relationships and and have nowin our 25th year. So
(02:46):
very exciting, truly blessedto work with what I say. You
know, financial professionalshave big hearts. They have, you
know, you know, really goodrelationships that they've built
over a number of years and andare extremely important in the
economic system. And just havekind of watched this wave from
(03:08):
Independence grow to, you know,now it's it's Ra, it's tech,
it's all of these things. SoI've kind of caught a lot of a
lot of waves, and it's justamazing. And I love it every
day. That'sawesome. Okay, so when you and I
met early on, you told me aboutyour Dave Grohl moment, and we
have certainly leaned into thatfor your branding, because we
(03:30):
love that your your business isfrom Tennessee, and we have
totally leaned into theNashville theme and the music
theme and the role that thatplays in your life. Give
everybody a little preview ofyour Dave Grohl moment, if they
haven't read the article.
Yeah, so, so if you didn't knowDave roll, he was the drummer
for this little band callednirvana. And you know, they came
(03:54):
out of nowhere and justdestroyed the musical pivot in a
way that very few bands do. Butunfortunately, their lead singer
died. And so, you know, he wasfloating around in this abyss.
So he went, rented a studio, oneday or two days, and just
cranked out these, this albumthat was just in his head, and
(04:19):
he, you know, they, used to makea joke, you know, the worst
thing a drummer could do is say,I have an idea for sauce. So,
you know, he just kept it quiet,just went in, recorded all the
parts, and he so he had thistape, and didn't even have a
name, and didn't even have aband, but he was called to
called to be a drummer onSaturday. Love for Tom Petty.
(04:39):
And then Tom Petty asked him,would you be the drummer? And he
sat down and said, you know, no,I'm going to give this this
thing. I made a shot, and, youknow, later became one of the
biggest bands in the world. Andso we were at a point in our
career where we had grown alittle bit and started to see a
little bit of success, but not,you know what we truly want?
(05:00):
That, and I was approached by amuch larger firm to come and
build their advisory division,moved my family to California,
and in that kind of day rollmoment, I was like, you know,
no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna seewhat we can make of this. And
kind of turned it down. And itwas a, it was a heck of an offer
(05:22):
that you sit there and think toyourself, I wonder where that
could have been. But we, youknow, I just enjoyed what I was
doing and so much. And so it waskind of my day, growing while we
I could still see my handturning the phone down, you
know, kind of, yeah, I talked toyour wife, and she's like, Hey,
I think you ought to go for it,you know.
So we all need somebody likethat in our life who gives us a
(05:44):
little push towards theentrepreneurial journey. I know
that I feel very lucky that myever so patient husband lets me
do some of these crazy thingsthat I try to do. All right,
Billy, so you and I talk onalmost a daily basis. You have a
lot of ideas. It's my favoritething about you. You're never
sitting still. You have moreenergy than any person I know,
(06:05):
maybe Tina, you I think yourival Tina, which is, you know,
yeah, I certainly cannot keep upwith the two of you. And I feel
like when you're running thatfast and you have that many
ideas, you learn a lot oflessons along the way. So, you
know, the premise for thispodcast is, don't do that. What
do we what are we not doingtoday? Billy,
well, we're not doing isthinking small. So, you know, at
(06:32):
in we're, we're, we're a firmthat is a member of FINRA as
well as the SEC so you know, wehave one foot over in brokerage,
and we have one foot in what Ikind of call transactional. And
then we also leaned in towardsthis idea of advice. And to give
you a little plug, Kelly, I knowI went to the Orion. We bought
(06:52):
Orion, and I looked at thislittle chart of the growth of
Orion. And I kind of Well,wonder what happened there, when
this kind of charges wentstraight up to the roof, and I
figured out was when they hiredyou as their CMO. So, you know,
that's when I knew I had to workwith you. But there's, you know,
(07:13):
in we kind of feel like werepresent a lot of the
independent advisors out there,whether there are whatever,
because the way that we'restructured or our size, and
there were just relationshipsthat we had, and those
relationships were veryprofitable, but yet they drained
(07:33):
you in so many ways, becauseeither they took up, they kind
of do your time, they wouldn'ttake your advice. They were cons
pushing envelopes and differentstuff and back as a fin.
Remember, there was sometransactional type stuff that
you would do, and even, and youkind of knew there was this
other thing that you reallywanted to be doing, yeah, but
yet you were afraid you couldn'tlet go of that, because they
(07:55):
were your biggest branch, orthey were your biggest client,
or whatever. And so you foughtit for a couple years, but in
the mind, you're like, I reallyshouldn't be doing this. Yeah,
we need to just cut waves. Butyou just never felt like you
were either thinking too smallor you were just couldn't do it.
They weren't nice to youremployees. You know, we always
had these clients that just kindof won't take your advice and
(08:18):
they do things. So we finally,after about two and two and a
half years, just cut the cordand said we're not going to do
this anymore. Yeah, and thatmoment was the moment we took
off, because we quit spendingall of our time and energy on
these small these relationships,and did a pivot, went straight
(08:41):
up, and we made it up in ninemonths. Wow. But we fought it
for two years. We really did,and we kind of fought those so I
know, as I talk to clients, ourclients, you know, they always
have those relationships, yeah,that they just can't let go of,
and you're just like, No, justdo it. There's acres of diamonds
out there. You've you, ifyou're, if you're good at
building relationships, you'regoing to build those better,
(09:06):
faster. So you know, don't hangon to things that you know
aren't right, and just just go.
That's such good advice. I feellike, you know, I tell everybody
that will listen. I don't knowif you can relate to this, but I
tell everybody that will listenat one of my biggest struggles
as an entrepreneur, especiallyone that's leading a marketing
(09:26):
business, is that clients cometo me all day long and they say
things like, hey, I need threeblogs, or, Hey, I want to put
ads on, you know, Reddit, or Iwant to Do this. And I think to
myself, like, Okay, I'm abusiness owner over here who
needs to pay my people and takecare of them. So the easy thing
(09:48):
would be, write the blogs, handthem over, make them great, and
call it a day. But then there'sa CMO in me who's like, why are
we writing three blogs? Whyaren't we writing two blogs? How
about one blog? Where are youposting these blogs? Blogs,
who's helping you write theseblogs? What are the topics of
these blogs? You have a contentcalendar. If you don't have a
content calendar, how, like, Ijust spiral. And so I think, you
(10:10):
know, I think, to your point,there's a struggle of, like,
revenue versus doing what'sright for you and what's right
for their business and what'sright for your clients, and
sometimes doing what the youknow, the hard thing, the hard
thing is sometimes the rightthing. I don't know, so I don't
know about you, but Idefinitely, I feel that on a
(10:30):
daily basis, the easy thing is,take the revenue, right?
We bump into ceilings, and it'sa natural thing, you know, we we
at every business, everyentrepreneur, is going to bump
into those ceilings, and theonly way you can kind of get
through them is fine, is is toinvest into them. But for you
(10:52):
know, for us, it was a it was apivotal moment in that we also,
um, met an inflection point withus, where we decided to it freed
us up. We ended up working withOrion, we ended up working with
those kinds of things, and wewould never have done that if we
had just stayed there. And Ithink it probably would have
(11:12):
been devastating, you know, tobe honest with you, so as we
talk to our professionals today,you know, we're kind of trying
to get them to buy into buildingenterprises, you know, not not
resisting the the opportunity toeither hire up. You know, we
(11:35):
made a big decision to to bringon a group of very qualified,
too big for us employees. Wefought that I've been looking
for a while, and I was able toto to work with a with a really,
(11:57):
really good group of employees.
But we kept thinking toourselves, we're not ready,
because when they come in andthey look at our systems and
they look at our stuff, oh,we're just a mess. You know,
they're gonna, they're not gonnawant to take on this challenge
of a smaller firm. And what wesaw was yes, absolutely, they
(12:18):
were willing to embrace that.
And my CFO kind of even said,you know, Billy, there's a,
there's a, I worked with thiswith his father in law, was,
kind of ran a huge company. Hewas like, you know, as a CEO, he
had this idea that I don't needto be the highest paid employee.
I You find the people that aregoing to get you there, and if
(12:42):
you yourself even have to takesome sacrifices. So we even kind
of launched over into workingwith people and with that
mindset, like, hey, we knowwe're not ready, but we believe
we can grow into it, and if wehad hesitated, we'd still be
stuck over this thing, and nowour firms doubled. And so you
(13:04):
know, as just as anentrepreneur, what you don't do
is just either hold on to thingstoo long, or fight the
opportunity to expand your youryour sphere, to get, you know,
and don't. And people werebuying you. They bought us. They
bought these employees boughtus, you know, they knew that it
(13:26):
wasn't. They weren't ready. Butwhat they saw was an exciting
little group of people thatwanted to grow, and they focused
on that, as opposed to thethings that we weren't. And we
were just worried about thethings that we weren't. So I
would just say, you know, andI've noticed that with you,
Kelly, as you've dealt outintentionally, watch, you know,
the way that you've built yourteam. You know you were starting
(13:47):
a new endeavor, but youimmediately jumped into finding
the people that you needed, andyou didn't let that stop you and
worry. I don't know if I'm readyfor that yet. No, I look up and
go, How in the work she doing, Ihave my but it's amazing to you.
It's amazing to watch. And thenwhen I come and see your board
of the clients that you have, Inoticed that it's expanding. Is
(14:08):
because you, you know, you havethe resources and stuff to
handle it now, but you didn'thave that right off the bat, so
you had to go, kind of jump intothis thing full with both feet,
you know, yeah,and you and you and I talked
about this before we jumped onhere. Like you have these
moments where to your point, yousay, are Am I ready for this?
And you have to do it even whenthe answer is no, right? And
then when the answer is no, it'sextra reason to do it, because
(14:31):
you need to be a little bituncomfortable. And I know that
very uncomfortable. I've got acouple of people on my team who
constantly push me to be hard,to be better and do more things,
and I wouldn't be doing thispodcast if Tina didn't make me
do it. So thanks, Tina. Butlike, I feel like, I feel like
everybody needs that. Everybodyneeds somebody who's like,
giving them a little kick in thepants every now and then to
(14:53):
think about the next thing. Andyou know, Randy has been another
one. And you know, 30 years CEOof Orion, he's like, an endless
number of ideas and things thathe wants to do. And, you know,
he called me their days, like,we need an AI person. We need
this, we need that. And I'mlike, oh, you know, I Oh, let me
get my coffee first. It's like,8am but yeah, I'm like, You're
so right. It's like, those arethe moments that take you from
(15:17):
status quo to really gettingafter your goals. And I've
watched that happen for you, andI've watched you be totally
uncomfortable sometimes doingit. And right like you, I feel
like you and I are uncomfortabletogether, which is a fun little
journey we're on. Tinaput me in front of a camera, and
it was mortified at just howeasy she was. Like, well, this
(15:39):
is what we're going to do, andthis is how you're going to do
going to do it, and just dothis. And I'm like, scared to
death, and she was so good atit. And you're like, I think I
could do it. But deep down, hewas like, Oh my gosh. But you
know, we're at the final This isa financial service podcast, and
you know you are able toconnect. And I know there's
(16:03):
FinTech and there's all thesedifferent things, but we share a
common ideology of this, and wekind of have to buy into at
least I do is the next 10 to 15years can be amazing. There's
going to be a lot of turnover.
There's M and A there's all thisdifferent stuff that's floating
(16:25):
around. But what it really is isthere's a some really cool,
wonderful people in thisindustry that have carved out
niches, and they've done things,and I think every financial
professional has that ability toelevate and take their practice
up. And we need advisors, andyou see it every day, and so
(16:48):
some of them are always likelooking for that expansion. How
do I hire this next person? Howdo I do this? Others just stay
in that little bubble, and whatwe want them to do is just get
out of that bubble and realizethat if you, if you do that in
the next five years, can beabsolutely amazing. So just
(17:09):
don't let it, you know, beconfident that that there's a
clientele that want to buy you,and there's people that want to
buy what you're selling, and,yeah, be a part of something.
And so we, you know, we were inJackson, Tennessee, which, if
anybody knows where JacksonTennessee is, it's this little,
you know, stop on the way fromNashville to Memphis. And so
(17:31):
people would say, Well, who isbillion where in the world is,
of all the places to start afinancial service firm. But
after they get over that, youknow, they kind of want to, they
realize that that because wewere small and nimble, we didn't
do things the way everybody elsedid, so we kind of built our own
(17:53):
little niche, and now it's funto see what you can take it, you
know, yeah, soBilly, I admire you because, you
know, I start all of ourrelationships by saying, what
are your goals? Right? Like, Iam super interested in hearing
what business owners are tryingto get after. And the majority
of the time, what they say to meis, like, X number of seats on
my technology, or X number ofrevenue in the next couple
(18:16):
years, or I want to sell in fiveyears. And to get to that, I
need to get here. But for you,it's, it's very genuine. I truly
believe that it's very genuinein terms of you believe that
advisors in this industry wantto do good, and they want to do
right, and that they want toenjoy doing that so that they
have they're having a goodexperience themselves. And you
(18:38):
want to people. And I think,like with all the PE money and
all the M and A and all thecraziness that's in our industry
right now, like we've so lostthat, and so if people are
looking at Silver rope that justhit the, you know, most
recruited advisors list next tosays Tara, and they're asking
themselves, why it's that, Billyit's because you focus on
bringing a great experience toyour advisor so that they can
(19:03):
bring a great experience to yourclients. When the rest of this
industry has, like, lost, Idon't know they've lost the line
of sight to like, what'simportant, in my opinion. So I
very much appreciate that aboutyou, and I think that that's why
my whole team fights over whogets to work with Billy and
silver silveroak, well, I feel, I feel
honored I come to your officeand everybody's there. They're,
(19:24):
you know, so, so happy to bedoing the work that they're
doing. And I still also look atyou and say, you know, they kind
of have a mission and a feelingof the way that they work with
us, and I imagine that that'swith all the clients, because
you, when you came to us, youdid spend a lot of time trying
(19:49):
to understand us. Yeah, in thechallenge again, getting out of
your comfort zone. And I'mthinking small is when we hired
you guys, you. We didn't exactlyknow what we needed to do or
wanted to do. We just knew thatwe had to work with an
organization that could make usbetter. Yep, so there was a lot
(20:10):
of pain in there, and I alwayssaid there was a lot of pain
just because you were asking mequestions that I didn't know how
to articulate and differentthings like that, but you you
took the time and, you know, weknew it was, you know, now, look
back at all of the collateralthat we've kind of built, and
(20:33):
all the different stuff and andit's just, truly, it's amazing.
It's so awesome. You know, Ican't, I can't say enough about
your team. But also one ouradvisors to and other
professionals in there to do thesame. You know, the
stick through the pain, a littlebit of pain. Don't,
(20:55):
don't, don't fire your cmo rightoff the bat, because there's 100
things that they can do for youif you lean in. Because it's not
just we have a problem in anindustry, this ROI on your you
know, your investment, what's myROI? And you know, if I don't
see immediate results, then Ijust change. But that's not your
brand, and that's not your yourneed to be a way of thinking,
(21:20):
but in a financial service worldthat we live in, it's hard
around that. It's hard gettingaround that. But you know, the
opportunity that nobody'sarguing is, is this wealth
transfer? Yeah, I feel luckybecause there was this ra
movement that happened. And Ialways thought you guys back at
(21:44):
Orion, and you many days thatyou came in, so you understood,
at least the what always say,you know, I have a, I have a
marketing mind, love Kelly thatactually understands what the
financial service industry isbecause you worked with it. So
there was this, what we fight,you know, kind of a little bit
today. Bit today is, is we're aFINRA member, and some people, I
(22:05):
kind of run away from FINRA,where we embrace FINRA, right?
We believe that you can becomprehensive in the way that
you do it if you do it right,and it doesn't matter
commissions, fees, whatever it'sall about doing what's right,
um. But we see, see a lot of thebigger companies that had just
grown through acquisition notbeing able to get down on the
(22:27):
level of the advisor and whatthey need and what they want to
do. But those advisors are alsohave hit these plateaus, and
they need to bust through it.
So, you know, we are just tryingto do what a lot of the really
good RAS have done out there,which is to help advisors bust
through some of those glassceilings. And there's some great
stories out there, some greatpeople out there, and we just
(22:49):
want to help them take it to thelevel that I think that they
can. And so some of our beststories are just our pain. I
felt like, if you said, Don't dothis, I could spend three days
with you and just like, whereyou want, where do you really,
really, really, really want totake this? Because I got a
million, I think I made moremistakes than I made right
(23:10):
decisions. Yeah, Billy andI have talked, you know, every
day for the past couple weeks,trying to figure out what is his
best don't do that. Because weall, we all have, you know, if
you're not making mistakes,you're not learning, you're not
living. So I love that aboutyou. So guys, for our listeners,
just as to rewind here, whatwe're not doing today is
thinking small Billy wants us tomake the uncomfortable move, to
(23:32):
take the uncomfortable step, todo something out of our comfort
zone, to think big, to hire thenext big hire that's going to
push you and to for our advisorswho are listening to think with
an enterprise mindset, becauseyou deserve that business. You
can have that business. You justneed the the right tools and
partners to help you get there.
Billy as we, as we part wayshere, give our audience a little
(23:56):
bit of insight until to how yougive yourself a pep talk, or,
how do you how do you pushyourself forward in those
moments where you're like, OhGod, I know I got to do this,
but it's the hard thing.
It's the hard. It's the it'stackling whatever is at you, in
front of you, and chipping away,whether you're kind of chipping
(24:22):
away at or whatever. But the thething I kind of look at in this
industry is you can really, mymindset was you can only be
registered with a couple offirms, so it might as well be
us, and if it can be us, thenlet's give this. Let's just get
(24:44):
better and get good. Because youknow, whether it was, should we
buy should we build our own techstack? Yeah, absolutely. We
should just build our own techstack. And yeah, it's way more
expensive than buying it off therack. But every time you. Buy it
off the rack, it disappoints, solet's just build our own and so
just always kind of look at itlike you can put your mind that
(25:13):
stupid thing. You kind of putyour mind to it, but people are
looking to be associated with afirm that can can, could do
things a little bit differently,but listen, help them build a
community a part of it. Soeverything that we always tried
to do is just see if we can, canimprove our lot just a little
(25:33):
bit better, with an end goal ofdouble where we were at. Call it
10x call it whatever. I'm a bigDan Sullivan fan. You got this
unique ability run with it, youknow. And in our industry, there
are a finite group of peoplethat can, that clients can trust
(25:55):
and will trust. And if you'reone of those few, you're the
only one that can do what youdo. So just do more of it. I
heard somebody say, justwhatever you go, put a zero on
the end of it. And I like thatidea, you know, just put a zero
on it. That's just what we wantto do. We want to see if we can
just take it to as high as wecan go
(26:18):
next level. All right. Billy,well, I appreciate you. I want
you to hit all of those amazinggoals. I want all the advisors
to find you and fall in lovewith silver oak like we have
here. It intentionally, and Iwish you the very best. So
thanks for joining us today.
Everybody that's listening. Weare not thinking small in 2025
so figure out what that means toyou. Figure out what that means
to your business. And as Billysays, add a zero to it. Thanks
(26:40):
for listening.
Hey, thank you, Kelly. Iappreciate you so much. You guys
are amazing.
Kelly Waltrich (26:50):
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed
today's show, subscribe to benotified when new episodes
become available, and pleaseconsider giving us a five star
review on Apple or Spotify. Thispodcast is sponsored by
intentionally, a financialservices growth engine, design
consultancy and agency. If youwant to learn more, please email
(27:11):
me at Kelly, at growintentionally.com, thank you
again for listening and checkback to hear what we're not
doing next. You.
There's some really cool, wonderful people in
(00:06):
this industry that have carvedout niches, and they've done
things, and I think everyfinancial professional has that
ability to elevate and taketheir practice up. And we need
advisors, and you see it everyday, and so, yep, some of them
are always like looking for thatexpansion. How do I hire this
(00:26):
next person? How do I do this?
Others just stay in that littlebubble. And what we want them to
do is just get out of thatbubble and realize that if you,
if you do that in the next fiveyears, can be absolutely
amazing.
Kelly Waltrich (00:44):
Hi everyone, and welcome to today's episode of
The don't do that podcast. I amhere with my friend Billy
Hopkins, CEO of silver oaksecurities, couldn't be more
excited for this conversation.
Couple of reasons. One, we arefresh off an Eagles win, so I
had to wear my gear today.
Second reason is, Billy told mebefore this that he's amped up
on three cups of coffee andready to rock for this
(01:05):
conversation. And third, thereare a few people that I talk to
in my life, even my mom, maybeas much as Billy and I talk, and
it's on a daily basis, and it'sbecause he's got more ID great
ideas than anyone I know, so I'mexcited for you to hear them
today, Billy, welcome. Thanksfor joining me.
Unknown (01:22):
Well, thank you for giving me the chance to be here.
I am truly honored. I've beenwaiting for your podcast for a
while, and I know we've beentalking about it, and I think
you did it right, because youreally thought through it and
you didn't rush to do it, butI'm just blessed to be here. So
thank you.
Awesome. So Billy, why don't yougive our listeners just a little
(01:43):
overview of yourself and yourbusiness at Silver oaks that
they have a little contextaround your background?
Yeah. Thank you. So I started mycareer just completely as an
independent financialprofessional, and went from a
back started into the 90s. So wewere brokers that evolved to
(02:04):
advisors, that evolved to a asupervisor that had a crazy idea
of starting my own firm when Iwas 27 years old, and had no
business doing it, but was, youknow, looking at the industry,
and kind of caught the wave ofthe independent space. But,
(02:25):
yeah, we were challenged. Wewere small, but we also were in
Tennessee. And, you know,there's not a lot of financial
service companies that startright out of Tennessee. But had
a, had a belief that we could,that we could build a firm on
relationships and and have nowin our 25th year. So
(02:46):
very exciting, truly blessedto work with what I say. You
know, financial professionalshave big hearts. They have, you
know, you know, really goodrelationships that they've built
over a number of years and andare extremely important in the
economic system. And just havekind of watched this wave from
(03:08):
Independence grow to, you know,now it's it's Ra, it's tech,
it's all of these things. SoI've kind of caught a lot of a
lot of waves, and it's justamazing. And I love it every
day. That'sawesome. Okay, so when you and I
met early on, you told me aboutyour Dave Grohl moment, and we
have certainly leaned into thatfor your branding, because we
(03:30):
love that your your business isfrom Tennessee, and we have
totally leaned into theNashville theme and the music
theme and the role that thatplays in your life. Give
everybody a little preview ofyour Dave Grohl moment, if they
haven't read the article.
Yeah, so, so if you didn't knowDave roll, he was the drummer
for this little band callednirvana. And you know, they came
(03:54):
out of nowhere and justdestroyed the musical pivot in a
way that very few bands do. Butunfortunately, their lead singer
died. And so, you know, he wasfloating around in this abyss.
So he went, rented a studio, oneday or two days, and just
cranked out these, this albumthat was just in his head, and
(04:19):
he, you know, they, used to makea joke, you know, the worst
thing a drummer could do is say,I have an idea for sauce. So,
you know, he just kept it quiet,just went in, recorded all the
parts, and he so he had thistape, and didn't even have a
name, and didn't even have aband, but he was called to
called to be a drummer onSaturday. Love for Tom Petty.
(04:39):
And then Tom Petty asked him,would you be the drummer? And he
sat down and said, you know, no,I'm going to give this this
thing. I made a shot, and, youknow, later became one of the
biggest bands in the world. Andso we were at a point in our
career where we had grown alittle bit and started to see a
little bit of success, but not,you know what we truly want?
(05:00):
That, and I was approached by amuch larger firm to come and
build their advisory division,moved my family to California,
and in that kind of day rollmoment, I was like, you know,
no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna seewhat we can make of this. And
kind of turned it down. And itwas a, it was a heck of an offer
(05:22):
that you sit there and think toyourself, I wonder where that
could have been. But we, youknow, I just enjoyed what I was
doing and so much. And so it waskind of my day, growing while we
I could still see my handturning the phone down, you
know, kind of, yeah, I talked toyour wife, and she's like, Hey,
I think you ought to go for it,you know.
So we all need somebody likethat in our life who gives us a
(05:44):
little push towards theentrepreneurial journey. I know
that I feel very lucky that myever so patient husband lets me
do some of these crazy thingsthat I try to do. All right,
Billy, so you and I talk onalmost a daily basis. You have a
lot of ideas. It's my favoritething about you. You're never
sitting still. You have moreenergy than any person I know,
(06:05):
maybe Tina, you I think yourival Tina, which is, you know,
yeah, I certainly cannot keep upwith the two of you. And I feel
like when you're running thatfast and you have that many
ideas, you learn a lot oflessons along the way. So, you
know, the premise for thispodcast is, don't do that. What
do we what are we not doingtoday? Billy,
well, we're not doing isthinking small. So, you know, at
(06:32):
in we're, we're, we're a firmthat is a member of FINRA as
well as the SEC so you know, wehave one foot over in brokerage,
and we have one foot in what Ikind of call transactional. And
then we also leaned in towardsthis idea of advice. And to give
you a little plug, Kelly, I knowI went to the Orion. We bought
(06:52):
Orion, and I looked at thislittle chart of the growth of
Orion. And I kind of Well,wonder what happened there, when
this kind of charges wentstraight up to the roof, and I
figured out was when they hiredyou as their CMO. So, you know,
that's when I knew I had to workwith you. But there's, you know,
(07:13):
in we kind of feel like werepresent a lot of the
independent advisors out there,whether there are whatever,
because the way that we'restructured or our size, and
there were just relationshipsthat we had, and those
relationships were veryprofitable, but yet they drained
(07:33):
you in so many ways, becauseeither they took up, they kind
of do your time, they wouldn'ttake your advice. They were cons
pushing envelopes and differentstuff and back as a fin.
Remember, there was sometransactional type stuff that
you would do, and even, and youkind of knew there was this
other thing that you reallywanted to be doing, yeah, but
yet you were afraid you couldn'tlet go of that, because they
(07:55):
were your biggest branch, orthey were your biggest client,
or whatever. And so you foughtit for a couple years, but in
the mind, you're like, I reallyshouldn't be doing this. Yeah,
we need to just cut waves. Butyou just never felt like you
were either thinking too smallor you were just couldn't do it.
They weren't nice to youremployees. You know, we always
had these clients that just kindof won't take your advice and
(08:18):
they do things. So we finally,after about two and two and a
half years, just cut the cordand said we're not going to do
this anymore. Yeah, and thatmoment was the moment we took
off, because we quit spendingall of our time and energy on
these small these relationships,and did a pivot, went straight
(08:41):
up, and we made it up in ninemonths. Wow. But we fought it
for two years. We really did,and we kind of fought those so I
know, as I talk to clients, ourclients, you know, they always
have those relationships, yeah,that they just can't let go of,
and you're just like, No, justdo it. There's acres of diamonds
out there. You've you, ifyou're, if you're good at
building relationships, you'regoing to build those better,
(09:06):
faster. So you know, don't hangon to things that you know
aren't right, and just just go.
That's such good advice. I feellike, you know, I tell everybody
that will listen. I don't knowif you can relate to this, but I
tell everybody that will listenat one of my biggest struggles
as an entrepreneur, especiallyone that's leading a marketing
(09:26):
business, is that clients cometo me all day long and they say
things like, hey, I need threeblogs, or, Hey, I want to put
ads on, you know, Reddit, or Iwant to Do this. And I think to
myself, like, Okay, I'm abusiness owner over here who
needs to pay my people and takecare of them. So the easy thing
(09:48):
would be, write the blogs, handthem over, make them great, and
call it a day. But then there'sa CMO in me who's like, why are
we writing three blogs? Whyaren't we writing two blogs? How
about one blog? Where are youposting these blogs? Blogs,
who's helping you write theseblogs? What are the topics of
these blogs? You have a contentcalendar. If you don't have a
content calendar, how, like, Ijust spiral. And so I think, you
(10:10):
know, I think, to your point,there's a struggle of, like,
revenue versus doing what'sright for you and what's right
for their business and what'sright for your clients, and
sometimes doing what the youknow, the hard thing, the hard
thing is sometimes the rightthing. I don't know, so I don't
know about you, but Idefinitely, I feel that on a
(10:30):
daily basis, the easy thing is,take the revenue, right?
We bump into ceilings, and it'sa natural thing, you know, we we
at every business, everyentrepreneur, is going to bump
into those ceilings, and theonly way you can kind of get
through them is fine, is is toinvest into them. But for you
(10:52):
know, for us, it was a it was apivotal moment in that we also,
um, met an inflection point withus, where we decided to it freed
us up. We ended up working withOrion, we ended up working with
those kinds of things, and wewould never have done that if we
had just stayed there. And Ithink it probably would have
(11:12):
been devastating, you know, tobe honest with you, so as we
talk to our professionals today,you know, we're kind of trying
to get them to buy into buildingenterprises, you know, not not
resisting the the opportunity toeither hire up. You know, we
(11:35):
made a big decision to to bringon a group of very qualified,
too big for us employees. Wefought that I've been looking
for a while, and I was able toto to work with a with a really,
(11:57):
really good group of employees.
But we kept thinking toourselves, we're not ready,
because when they come in andthey look at our systems and
they look at our stuff, oh,we're just a mess. You know,
they're gonna, they're not gonnawant to take on this challenge
of a smaller firm. And what wesaw was yes, absolutely, they
(12:18):
were willing to embrace that.
And my CFO kind of even said,you know, Billy, there's a,
there's a, I worked with thiswith his father in law, was,
kind of ran a huge company. Hewas like, you know, as a CEO, he
had this idea that I don't needto be the highest paid employee.
I You find the people that aregoing to get you there, and if
(12:42):
you yourself even have to takesome sacrifices. So we even kind
of launched over into workingwith people and with that
mindset, like, hey, we knowwe're not ready, but we believe
we can grow into it, and if wehad hesitated, we'd still be
stuck over this thing, and nowour firms doubled. And so you
(13:04):
know, as just as anentrepreneur, what you don't do
is just either hold on to thingstoo long, or fight the
opportunity to expand your youryour sphere, to get, you know,
and don't. And people werebuying you. They bought us. They
bought these employees boughtus, you know, they knew that it
(13:26):
wasn't. They weren't ready. Butwhat they saw was an exciting
little group of people thatwanted to grow, and they focused
on that, as opposed to thethings that we weren't. And we
were just worried about thethings that we weren't. So I
would just say, you know, andI've noticed that with you,
Kelly, as you've dealt outintentionally, watch, you know,
the way that you've built yourteam. You know you were starting
(13:47):
a new endeavor, but youimmediately jumped into finding
the people that you needed, andyou didn't let that stop you and
worry. I don't know if I'm readyfor that yet. No, I look up and
go, How in the work she doing, Ihave my but it's amazing to you.
It's amazing to watch. And thenwhen I come and see your board
of the clients that you have, Inoticed that it's expanding. Is
(14:08):
because you, you know, you havethe resources and stuff to
handle it now, but you didn'thave that right off the bat, so
you had to go, kind of jump intothis thing full with both feet,
you know, yeah,and you and you and I talked
about this before we jumped onhere. Like you have these
moments where to your point, yousay, are Am I ready for this?
And you have to do it even whenthe answer is no, right? And
then when the answer is no, it'sextra reason to do it, because
(14:31):
you need to be a little bituncomfortable. And I know that
very uncomfortable. I've got acouple of people on my team who
constantly push me to be hard,to be better and do more things,
and I wouldn't be doing thispodcast if Tina didn't make me
do it. So thanks, Tina. Butlike, I feel like, I feel like
everybody needs that. Everybodyneeds somebody who's like,
giving them a little kick in thepants every now and then to
(14:53):
think about the next thing. Andyou know, Randy has been another
one. And you know, 30 years CEOof Orion, he's like, an endless
number of ideas and things thathe wants to do. And, you know,
he called me their days, like,we need an AI person. We need
this, we need that. And I'mlike, oh, you know, I Oh, let me
get my coffee first. It's like,8am but yeah, I'm like, You're
so right. It's like, those arethe moments that take you from
(15:17):
status quo to really gettingafter your goals. And I've
watched that happen for you, andI've watched you be totally
uncomfortable sometimes doingit. And right like you, I feel
like you and I are uncomfortabletogether, which is a fun little
journey we're on. Tinaput me in front of a camera, and
it was mortified at just howeasy she was. Like, well, this
(15:39):
is what we're going to do, andthis is how you're going to do
going to do it, and just dothis. And I'm like, scared to
death, and she was so good atit. And you're like, I think I
could do it. But deep down, hewas like, Oh my gosh. But you
know, we're at the final This isa financial service podcast, and
you know you are able toconnect. And I know there's
(16:03):
FinTech and there's all thesedifferent things, but we share a
common ideology of this, and wekind of have to buy into at
least I do is the next 10 to 15years can be amazing. There's
going to be a lot of turnover.
There's M and A there's all thisdifferent stuff that's floating
(16:25):
around. But what it really is isthere's a some really cool,
wonderful people in thisindustry that have carved out
niches, and they've done things,and I think every financial
professional has that ability toelevate and take their practice
up. And we need advisors, andyou see it every day, and so
(16:48):
some of them are always likelooking for that expansion. How
do I hire this next person? Howdo I do this? Others just stay
in that little bubble, and whatwe want them to do is just get
out of that bubble and realizethat if you, if you do that in
the next five years, can beabsolutely amazing. So just
(17:09):
don't let it, you know, beconfident that that there's a
clientele that want to buy you,and there's people that want to
buy what you're selling, and,yeah, be a part of something.
And so we, you know, we were inJackson, Tennessee, which, if
anybody knows where JacksonTennessee is, it's this little,
you know, stop on the way fromNashville to Memphis. And so
(17:31):
people would say, Well, who isbillion where in the world is,
of all the places to start afinancial service firm. But
after they get over that, youknow, they kind of want to, they
realize that that because wewere small and nimble, we didn't
do things the way everybody elsedid, so we kind of built our own
(17:53):
little niche, and now it's funto see what you can take it, you
know, yeah, soBilly, I admire you because, you
know, I start all of ourrelationships by saying, what
are your goals? Right? Like, Iam super interested in hearing
what business owners are tryingto get after. And the majority
of the time, what they say to meis, like, X number of seats on
my technology, or X number ofrevenue in the next couple
(18:16):
years, or I want to sell in fiveyears. And to get to that, I
need to get here. But for you,it's, it's very genuine. I truly
believe that it's very genuinein terms of you believe that
advisors in this industry wantto do good, and they want to do
right, and that they want toenjoy doing that so that they
have they're having a goodexperience themselves. And you
(18:38):
want to people. And I think,like with all the PE money and
all the M and A and all thecraziness that's in our industry
right now, like we've so lostthat, and so if people are
looking at Silver rope that justhit the, you know, most
recruited advisors list next tosays Tara, and they're asking
themselves, why it's that, Billyit's because you focus on
bringing a great experience toyour advisor so that they can
(19:03):
bring a great experience to yourclients. When the rest of this
industry has, like, lost, Idon't know they've lost the line
of sight to like, what'simportant, in my opinion. So I
very much appreciate that aboutyou, and I think that that's why
my whole team fights over whogets to work with Billy and
silver silveroak, well, I feel, I feel
honored I come to your officeand everybody's there. They're,
(19:24):
you know, so, so happy to bedoing the work that they're
doing. And I still also look atyou and say, you know, they kind
of have a mission and a feelingof the way that they work with
us, and I imagine that that'swith all the clients, because
you, when you came to us, youdid spend a lot of time trying
(19:49):
to understand us. Yeah, in thechallenge again, getting out of
your comfort zone. And I'mthinking small is when we hired
you guys, you. We didn't exactlyknow what we needed to do or
wanted to do. We just knew thatwe had to work with an
organization that could make usbetter. Yep, so there was a lot
(20:10):
of pain in there, and I alwayssaid there was a lot of pain
just because you were asking mequestions that I didn't know how
to articulate and differentthings like that, but you you
took the time and, you know, weknew it was, you know, now, look
back at all of the collateralthat we've kind of built, and
(20:33):
all the different stuff and andit's just, truly, it's amazing.
It's so awesome. You know, Ican't, I can't say enough about
your team. But also one ouradvisors to and other
professionals in there to do thesame. You know, the
stick through the pain, a littlebit of pain. Don't,
(20:55):
don't, don't fire your cmo rightoff the bat, because there's 100
things that they can do for youif you lean in. Because it's not
just we have a problem in anindustry, this ROI on your you
know, your investment, what's myROI? And you know, if I don't
see immediate results, then Ijust change. But that's not your
brand, and that's not your yourneed to be a way of thinking,
(21:20):
but in a financial service worldthat we live in, it's hard
around that. It's hard gettingaround that. But you know, the
opportunity that nobody'sarguing is, is this wealth
transfer? Yeah, I feel luckybecause there was this ra
movement that happened. And Ialways thought you guys back at
(21:44):
Orion, and you many days thatyou came in, so you understood,
at least the what always say,you know, I have a, I have a
marketing mind, love Kelly thatactually understands what the
financial service industry isbecause you worked with it. So
there was this, what we fight,you know, kind of a little bit
today. Bit today is, is we're aFINRA member, and some people, I
(22:05):
kind of run away from FINRA,where we embrace FINRA, right?
We believe that you can becomprehensive in the way that
you do it if you do it right,and it doesn't matter
commissions, fees, whatever it'sall about doing what's right,
um. But we see, see a lot of thebigger companies that had just
grown through acquisition notbeing able to get down on the
(22:27):
level of the advisor and whatthey need and what they want to
do. But those advisors are alsohave hit these plateaus, and
they need to bust through it.
So, you know, we are just tryingto do what a lot of the really
good RAS have done out there,which is to help advisors bust
through some of those glassceilings. And there's some great
stories out there, some greatpeople out there, and we just
(22:49):
want to help them take it to thelevel that I think that they
can. And so some of our beststories are just our pain. I
felt like, if you said, Don't dothis, I could spend three days
with you and just like, whereyou want, where do you really,
really, really, really want totake this? Because I got a
million, I think I made moremistakes than I made right
(23:10):
decisions. Yeah, Billy andI have talked, you know, every
day for the past couple weeks,trying to figure out what is his
best don't do that. Because weall, we all have, you know, if
you're not making mistakes,you're not learning, you're not
living. So I love that aboutyou. So guys, for our listeners,
just as to rewind here, whatwe're not doing today is
thinking small Billy wants us tomake the uncomfortable move, to
(23:32):
take the uncomfortable step, todo something out of our comfort
zone, to think big, to hire thenext big hire that's going to
push you and to for our advisorswho are listening to think with
an enterprise mindset, becauseyou deserve that business. You
can have that business. You justneed the the right tools and
partners to help you get there.
Billy as we, as we part wayshere, give our audience a little
(23:56):
bit of insight until to how yougive yourself a pep talk, or,
how do you how do you pushyourself forward in those
moments where you're like, OhGod, I know I got to do this,
but it's the hard thing.
It's the hard. It's the it'stackling whatever is at you, in
front of you, and chipping away,whether you're kind of chipping
(24:22):
away at or whatever. But the thething I kind of look at in this
industry is you can really, mymindset was you can only be
registered with a couple offirms, so it might as well be
us, and if it can be us, thenlet's give this. Let's just get
(24:44):
better and get good. Because youknow, whether it was, should we
buy should we build our own techstack? Yeah, absolutely. We
should just build our own techstack. And yeah, it's way more
expensive than buying it off therack. But every time you. Buy it
off the rack, it disappoints, solet's just build our own and so
just always kind of look at itlike you can put your mind that
(25:13):
stupid thing. You kind of putyour mind to it, but people are
looking to be associated with afirm that can can, could do
things a little bit differently,but listen, help them build a
community a part of it. Soeverything that we always tried
to do is just see if we can, canimprove our lot just a little
(25:33):
bit better, with an end goal ofdouble where we were at. Call it
10x call it whatever. I'm a bigDan Sullivan fan. You got this
unique ability run with it, youknow. And in our industry, there
are a finite group of peoplethat can, that clients can trust
(25:55):
and will trust. And if you'reone of those few, you're the
only one that can do what youdo. So just do more of it. I
heard somebody say, justwhatever you go, put a zero on
the end of it. And I like thatidea, you know, just put a zero
on it. That's just what we wantto do. We want to see if we can
just take it to as high as wecan go
(26:18):
next level. All right. Billy,well, I appreciate you. I want
you to hit all of those amazinggoals. I want all the advisors
to find you and fall in lovewith silver oak like we have
here. It intentionally, and Iwish you the very best. So
thanks for joining us today.
Everybody that's listening. Weare not thinking small in 2025
so figure out what that means toyou. Figure out what that means
to your business. And as Billysays, add a zero to it. Thanks
(26:40):
for listening.
Hey, thank you, Kelly. Iappreciate you so much. You guys
are amazing.
Kelly Waltrich (26:50):
Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed
today's show, subscribe to benotified when new episodes
become available, and pleaseconsider giving us a five star
review on Apple or Spotify. Thispodcast is sponsored by
intentionally, a financialservices growth engine, design
consultancy and agency. If youwant to learn more, please email
(27:11):
me at Kelly, at growintentionally.com, thank you
again for listening and checkback to hear what we're not
doing next. You.
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