Punching above our weight class, and winning!

There’s a moment in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland where Alice admits she doesn’t much care where she ends up. The Cheshire Cat’s reply is blunt: then it doesn’t matter which road you take.

Most financial professionals care deeply about where they’re going. The firms recruiting them often don’t.

That’s the problem in today’s talent market. Mega broker-dealers and large RIAs compete hard for top advisors, offering impressive transition packages and sign-on deals. What they rarely do is sit down, ask the right questions, and genuinely listen to the answers.

Billy Hopkins addresses this head-on in his latest article, A Tad from Perfect. He shares a candid conversation with a financial professional who believed Silver Oak was the better firm but assumed a larger competitor could pay more. Maybe, but that firm probably never asked where the advisor truly wanted to go.

Money matters, but numbers won’t tell you whether a firm will support your long-term vision or just plug you into their existing model.

We call ourselves “a tad from perfect” on purpose, investing heavily in our people, our technology, and our advisor community rather than a marketing budget. Over 26 years, we’ve built a flywheel around five disciplines that independent entrepreneurial advisors need to scale: wealth management, financial planning, technology, business planning, and community.

The framework supports advisors on their own terms. No one tells you what to do or how to do it.

Stop asking what can get you where you want to go and start asking who.

Read the full article for more here.

Silver Oak Recognized as the Sixth Fastest-Growing IBD in America by InvestmentNews

We didn’t start Silver Oak with the goal of winning awards or earning accolades.

Our CEO, Billy Hopkins, founded the firm with a simple but unique vision – to do the right thing for independent financial professionals.

You don’t always get rewarded for doing the right thing – that’s not the point, after all – but we’re ecstatic to have been recognized as the sixth fastest-growing independent broker-dealer by InvestmentNews.

This honor isn’t just about growth, even though that’s the criteria for putting the list together. When you look at the firms making up the majority of the list, the names probably won’t surprise you. To be in their company in spite of building Silver Oak in a radically different way is a compelling testament to what today’s independent financial professionals really want: independence without compromise.

And that’s the foundation of the Silver Oak difference. We set out to marry institutional-grade resources with the flexibility, autonomy, and support you’d expect from a much smaller shop. What does that look like?

Looking for ways to say ‘yes’ instead of ‘no.’ Behemoth broker-dealers aren’t in the business of trying to make things work differently, or even better, for their reps. But we believe in acting as consultants, problem-solvers, and even cheerleaders for our financial professionals.
Technology and resources that put financial professionals in the best position to succeed by enabling them to personalize the tools they use to the strengths and goals of their own practices. It’s about more than tech: it’s about freedom and trusting the financial professional to make the best possible decisions for his or her clients.
Growing intentionally by being purposeful about the reps we bring on. Growth for growth’s sake is never the goal; we’re here to create a firm culture built around authenticity, future-forward thinking and a laser focus on client service.

We’ve never wavered from exactly who we are; being named to InvestmentNews’ list of the fastest-growing independent broker-dealers in America proves we shouldn’t.

Read the full article here.