Episode 103: From Ranch Life to Running a $3B Firm — Meet Eric Flynn, CFA of Compound Planning
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Forget what you think you know about finance careers. Eric Flynn didn’t come up through Wall Street. He grew up on a ranch in Montana. An actual 20,000-acre ranch, wrangling cattle before most of us were out of bed.
Today, he’s the EVP and Head of Wealth Management at Compound Planning, a $3 billion digital family office built by tech founders who believe wealth management should feel a lot less clunky and a lot more human.
Eric’s story is part Yellowstone, part Wall Street, and all about finding the courage to own your different.
In this Episode, Eric and Stacy dig into:
Why he ditched computer science for accounting (and why neither felt like a forever fit)
How growing up on a ranch shaped his work ethic, mindset, and ability to fix just about anything
What it’s really like building your chops at a boutique family office where you do everything
Why Compound’s approach to tech, AI, and client experience is changing the game for advisors
The power of owning your story, especially in an industry that’s slow to celebrate what makes you different
About Eric Flynn:
Eric is a tenured financial professional with over 23 years of experience in the wealth management space. At Compound Planning, Eric leads the Wealth Management business and is responsible for executing the strategic vision, leading the advisory team, and harmonizing the service offerings for an exceptional client experience. Eric’s background is in advising higher net worth clients and providing family office services as well as consulting to firms in the wealth management industry.
Eric received a Masters in Professional Accountancy from Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana and is a CPA and CFA Charterholder. Prior to joining Compound, Eric was a Principal of multiple registered investment firms, and also helped build a national consulting team catering to the wealth management industry.
He has a passion for helping people and leading/growing teams. Outside of work, Eric enjoys most anything outside after having grown up on a large family ranch in Montana. He also has a passion for giving back to the community and serves on multiple boards including the Montana State University College of Business Dean’s Advisory Board, Bozeman Health Foundation Board, and is the President’s Council Representative for the Western Region CFA Societies to the CFAInstitute Board of Governors
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TRANSCRIPT
Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.
[00:00:00] Stacy Havener: I love back stories and this one has some special sauce to it. You've heard of the hit series Yellowstone, right? Well, my next guest lived it, Eric Flynn is the EVP Head of Wealth Management at $3 billion. Family office, compound planning, co-founded by two successful tech execs. Eric literally grew up on a ranch in Montana.
[00:00:25] Stacy Havener: His days were spent on horseback wrangling cattle and traversing a 20,000 plus acre range. Now he's a CFA in the C-suite at a $3 billion digital family office. Are you kidding? How cool is this? Let's dive in. Meet Eric. Hey, my name is Stacey Er. I'm obsessed with startups, stories, and sales. Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the Toughest Boys Club, wall Street.
[00:00:58] Stacy Havener: I've raised over 8 billion that [00:01:00] has led to 30 billion in follow-on assets for investment boutiques, you could say, against the odds. Yeah, understatement. I share stories of the people behind the portfolios while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes. It's real talk here, money, authenticity, growth, setbacks, sales and marketing are all topics we discuss.
[00:01:24] Stacy Havener: Think of this as the capital raising class you wish you had in college mixed with happy hour. Pull up a seat, grab your notebook, and get ready to be inspired and challenged while you learn. This is the Billion dollar Backstory podcast.
[00:01:45] Stacy Havener: Eric, thank you so much for being with us today. This episode could be subtitled, blast from the past, I think could be apropos. So what I love about having a podcast is the chance to invite my friends and [00:02:00] colleagues from over the years. Invite them into the studio and let my new friends listen in. And that's what's happening here.
[00:02:06] Stacy Havener: We have not talked in a long time, my friend. I cannot wait too long to hear what's happening in your world. So let's start with that. Let's start with your story.
[00:02:17] Eric Flynn: Where do you wanna start? You wanna start all the way back? I wanna
[00:02:19] Stacy Havener: start, I wanna go way back. I wanna go back to did you always know. That this is what you wanted to do?
[00:02:26] Stacy Havener: Like did you grow up saying, I'm gonna be in the investment space?
[00:02:31] Eric Flynn: Absolutely not. No. Growing up, you know, grew up on a ranch in Montana, so we go all the way back. So I'm a fifth generation Montanan, grew up about an hour north of Bozeman here on a big family ranch and yeah. Investments was as far off my radar as it could be at that point.
[00:02:45] Eric Flynn: And as I was growing up working on the ranch, yeah, I knew that my older brother was probably on the path to take over the ranch, so I started thinking about what other things might I be interested in? And computer science was kind of where I, you know, that was kind of beneath the hot thing and I was like, wow, I'm gonna go to college and I'm gonna do computer science.
[00:02:59] Eric Flynn: [00:03:00] And I did one year at computer science and I looked around and went. I'm sitting in a dark room with a bunch of people writing code. Which one of these doesn't belong? This guy? Like, I gotta get outta here. Yeah, yeah. So I switched over to accounting and I said, okay, this opens a lot of doors for me. I had knew of a couple friends that were in the accounting profession, so decided a master's in accounting was probably the way to go.
[00:03:18] Eric Flynn: So went down that path knowing that, you know, I called my dad and I was like, you know what? I think this is gonna be a better path. And he was like, why? He was like, well, my friends tell me they get two days off every week called a weekend. And that sounds pretty good. After growing up on the ranch, the ranch.
[00:03:30] Eric Flynn: Yeah, so they never had a day off. So I was like, okay, well this profession might sound pretty good. You know, having a weekend, you know, and a paycheck, things like that. So, uh, you know, the work ethic, I would never trade for anything in the world. Yeah. Growing up on the ranch, but that was kinda my first glance into kind of the professional world of like, okay, maybe this is gonna work out.
[00:03:47] Eric Flynn: So, yeah.
[00:03:49] Stacy Havener: Okay. Wait, before we go further, because also the computer science description was funny, but accounting is kind of like. Similar. It's, it's, it's also similar, right? You're like, well, I grew up on a [00:04:00] ranch and now I'm an accountant. But I love it. I love it so much and we can't connect the dots, right?
[00:04:04] Stacy Havener: Going forward, we can only connect and looking back, but I want you to take us through, look, I'm an East Coaster Ranch is a, it's a foreign concept to me. So I want you to explain, when you say you grew up on a ranch, do you mean you had a couple horses or is this basically, um, what the heck is that show Yellowstone.
[00:04:24] Stacy Havener: Yeah.
[00:04:25] Eric Flynn: So I, I always tell people I don't watch Yellowstone. I lived Yellowstone, so. Yeah. Right.
[00:04:29] Stacy Havener: Exactly.
[00:04:30] Eric Flynn: Yeah. So I mean, I mean there, there's enough truths in that story to say, oh, it's kind of close, but then it's obviously just a Western soap opera. Yeah. So, I mean, from that regard, yeah, a lot of it's overdone.
[00:04:38] Eric Flynn: But, uh, you know, we, we have a little over 10,000 acres deeded with another 10,000 acres that we lease, so about 20,000 acres. So it's a real cattle ranch. We had a thousand head of cows and, you know, horses, the whole thing, you know, we raised. Cash crops and everything, you know, in between. Wow. So never a day off, you know, whether in the summer it was kind of raising alfalfa, cutting, you know, hang the whole thing, you know, moving cows around between the pastures, just [00:05:00] like you see in the show.
[00:05:01] Eric Flynn: Wow. You know, from the, from the lowlands to the high mountain pastures and doing the whole thing. And the wintertime obviously calving and feeding cows every day. So through, yeah, it was the real deal.
[00:05:10] Stacy Havener: It's the real. So like this is what he means to, he says ranch people. This is like the real thing. Yep. So I wanna work this in as we go because I imagine, again, that whole comment about like, you can't connect the dots, you also can't really know the lessons.
[00:05:26] Stacy Havener: Or how they're gonna apply in the future, but I wanna come back to that. Yeah. But, but let's stay with the backstage. So you're an accountant, you have a weekend and a paycheck. Things are really looking up.
[00:05:36] Eric Flynn: Yep.
[00:05:36] Stacy Havener: Um, in this next chat, well, I was on that track,
[00:05:38] Eric Flynn: so Yeah. I You're on the
[00:05:39] Stacy Havener: track, but there's a twist.
[00:05:40] Stacy Havener: There's always a twist.
[00:05:41] Eric Flynn: Yep. So, got my first job outta college, Arthur Anderson, you know, Anderson got the call. I was like, wow. Arthur Anderson. I made it, moved to Atlanta. Didn't realize I got on the Anderson Titanic after it hit the iceberg. So three months later. Going put, I was like, well, the CPA world sucks.
[00:05:56] Eric Flynn: Uh, I gotta find a, I gotta pivot. So, [00:06:00] so my CPA life was a, was a pretty short pivot. So yeah, after basically. Moved right back to Bozeman, ended up at Bitterroot, which is the multifamily office. Ah. So they were looking for an accountant that could, you know, basically do performance reporting and kind of all the, you know, keeping track of all the family office stuff for all their clients.
[00:06:17] Eric Flynn: So that was my first foray into wealth management and never looked back after that.
[00:06:20] Stacy Havener: Yeah, so Bitterroot fantastic. That's obviously where our paths crossed. You were there for a long time. Along the way here you get a little thing called the CFA, so at some point you decide. It's cool to do performance reporting and accountant stuff, but you wanted to expand into the investment side.
[00:06:39] Stacy Havener: Talk about that a little bit.
[00:06:41] Eric Flynn: Yeah, that was within the first year. I knew it was like I had the accounting basis, but I didn't know enough about some of the investments in the research and the diligence that we were trying to do, and I was like, okay, I need either to go back to school and figure that out or find something else and mm-hmm.
[00:06:53] Eric Flynn: Yeah. Quickly came to the conclusion that CFA was the gold standard in the industry to basically. Get that next level of education. So I [00:07:00] dove right in. So, and that's my advice to everybody is if you're gonna take the CFA, do it as fast as you can outta school while you're still in that academic mindset.
[00:07:06] Eric Flynn: Yeah. Oh,
[00:07:07] Stacy Havener: great advice.
[00:07:07] Eric Flynn: So happy I did that. Especially right after the CPA program and getting my CPA license. It's just, I moved right into CFA and it was, it was the best decision I ever made. You know, hindsight, looking back and, um. So I, I jumped right in, got my CFA and honestly, the CFA has done a lot for me over my career, especially the community that comes with the CFA of joining local society and all that other stuff that's created, all this network that I've been able to leverage for my entire career across investment managers, across industry professionals.
[00:07:34] Eric Flynn: So I always say CFA is kind of one of the things that helped me get where I'm today.
[00:07:38] Stacy Havener: It's a great point. And. Being married to somebody who went through that program and has their CFA. I can tell you it is a ton of work. Oh yeah. A ton of work. So kudos to you and everybody who goes through that program. I have the utmost respect for the work you put in while doing a day job, as most people do.
[00:07:58] Stacy Havener: Right. Okay. So I wanna [00:08:00] spend a moment, because we're gonna get to sort of where you are today, but when you were at Bitterroot, what was your role? Because now you're sitting in a very. Interesting, strategic kind of wealth management role. What were you doing at Bitterroot to give context for the next chapter?
[00:08:16] Eric Flynn: Sure. So worked my way up through a lot of different places at Bitterroot. Obviously multifamily office, but small amount of employees. So I did a little bit of everything. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. Started in kind of in the back office side, worked my way up through the investment side, and then client reporting, client engagement, and then more client presentations and then kind of business developments and yeah, then up to partner and kinda helping run the firm and then, you know, once kind of reached the end there and then went out to the, to the next adventure.
[00:08:43] Eric Flynn: But the beauty and the curse of the small shop is you do a little bit of everything. Yeah. Which. Gave such a good perspective on the industry to know everything from soup to nuts on the back office to reporting softwares, and how do you build that infrastructure for the clients all the way up to actually going out, doing the presentations to investment committees, to clients, and everything in between,
[00:08:59] Stacy Havener: which [00:09:00] is not said lightly, by the way, because I think the skillset of being good with numbers and knowing how to do due diligence on managers.
[00:09:11] Stacy Havener: Then also being able to, you know, communicate that to clients and be comfortable talking with clients. That's pretty unique. So when you move on from Bitterroot, does that sort of comprehensive experience point you in a certain direction? I.
[00:09:26] Eric Flynn: It did actually, it was a culmination of a lot of different things with my CPA background and CFA plus.
[00:09:31] Eric Flynn: Mm-hmm. You know, my multi-family office background led me to an accounting affiliated RAA Wiffle Financial, who was interested in building out their multi-family office kind of ultra high net worth platform between the accounting firm and the RAA. 'cause It was an accounting affiliated, obviously underneath the same roof, but they were trying to figure out how do we leverage the accounting firm and the RA to basically build this really cool.
[00:09:51] Eric Flynn: Integrated platform. So that was kind of what I came in to do, is help lead the team, help you know, obviously build the, the Rocky Mountain regions where I sit, as well as kinda how do we [00:10:00] think through what our ultra net worth offering could look like, you know, across the platform. So we can leverage the accounting firm, we can leverage the RAA, what does that look like?
[00:10:07] Eric Flynn: So that was, that kind of pointed me in that direction a little bit. Stumbled upon it, but at the same time, that was, you know, once, once I saw it, I was like, oh, this is. This is a great fit. Um,
[00:10:17] Stacy Havener: yeah. So in your wheelhouse, so now Dovetail that with was Compound Next
[00:10:22] Eric Flynn: then Compound was after that. Yeah. So yeah, there was a couple of different iterations within the Wly platform.
[00:10:26] Eric Flynn: Just as you know, as we were growing and scaling, we crossed about 6 billion, you know, trying to figure out how were we gonna grow the RAA side of the house and then, you know, looking for funding just like every RA that kind of hits that size and scale. Looked at some PE money, looked at different options, turns around, we ended up selling the whole RAA to create a planning.
[00:10:43] Eric Flynn: Um,
[00:10:44] Stacy Havener: okay. Interesting.
[00:10:46] Eric Flynn: So it was basically, you know, too many conflicts between the accounting firm and the ra, having it all in the same house. You know, obviously with the audit and, you know, the attest function versus, you know, what you can do with business owners. There was a lot of conflicts of interest.
[00:10:58] Eric Flynn: So in the end, [00:11:00] made a deal with creative planning, spun the RA out. Um, as part of that I stayed at Wiffle and actually helped build the consulting division for Wealth and Asset Management. Ah. So I joined the, the Wealth and Asset Management team. There was a co national lead there to help lead the basically consulting division.
[00:11:14] Eric Flynn: We focused on RIAs mainly. Got, got it. We did some broker dealer, some independent broker dealers, some hybrids, but, uh,
[00:11:20] Stacy Havener: consulting them on just like business strategy, growth strategy kind of stuff. Yep.
[00:11:26] Eric Flynn: Okay. Yep. Of it was, that was been fun. Yeah. It, it was really fun. And it was, you know, what, what's the business structure?
[00:11:31] Eric Flynn: You know, some of it was tax structuring, some of it was just back office accounting infrastructure, and then some of it was growth planning, you know, pathways to partner. How do you promote and retain and attract talent and how do you. Foster that within the organization and get them equity ownership. So it was, it was fun working through Yeah, a a lot of different iterations with that, with a lot of different firms.
[00:11:49] Eric Flynn: And then through all of that, that's where Compound got ahold of me and was like, Hey, we're building something pretty cool over here. Would you be interested? And I was like, no. And then, yeah, I'm happy where I am. Well, thank you. [00:12:00] And then, uh, you know, they're very persistent, so eventually they, they, they told me the story and I was like, wait.
[00:12:05] Eric Flynn: Story different. Ooh. So let listen to this one. And it, you know, it's tech. So think of us. Think of us as a tech firm, that that's kind of the foundation and then the RA platform's kind of built on top of it. So instead of an RA that's just trying to pull the tech together and hope it all works together, it's more of a, you know, let's disrupt the industry.
[00:12:26] Eric Flynn: Let's figure out the tech first, and then make sure that the advisor's lives, the client's lives all integrated within the tech. So it's super simple, super straightforward. And once I kind of heard that story I was like, okay, that's interesting. Let me hear more. Mm-hmm. You know, and the rest is obviously history.
[00:12:38] Eric Flynn: Uh, I was like, oh, that's really cool. If we can do that the right way. That's an industry changer. Um, yeah. So I wanna be part of that.
[00:12:45] Stacy Havener: I love it. Fantastic. And so now what do you do at Compound? And then I kind of wanna like talk a little bit more about the compound story because I think it is unique and different and the founders have really unique backgrounds.
[00:12:57] Eric Flynn: They do.
[00:12:57] Stacy Havener: Um, so the seat [00:13:00] you're in now at Compound, talk a little bit about what you're working on.
[00:13:04] Eric Flynn: Sure. So my role at Compound is head of Wealth Management. So the advisory team kind of rolls up to me, our investment team, our internal tax team, and our ops team kind of sit with. So I kind of sit on top of the RAA side of the house, so to speak.
[00:13:15] Eric Flynn: Mm-hmm. So really my job is to make sure everybody plays nice in the sandbox and we're putting a nice product together for our clients. Yeah.
[00:13:22] Stacy Havener: Do you do client facing stuff still, or not you work? I do do
[00:13:24] Eric Flynn: some, some client facing stuff, but that's less of my role now. And it's more on the kind of the firm leadership side.
[00:13:30] Stacy Havener: So before we move on, now we've got like the back story up to today.
[00:13:35] Eric Flynn: Yep.
[00:13:36] Stacy Havener: And when you look back, wanna to the ranch? I wanna the lessons from ranch. You know, now you look back, you're like, gosh, you know, the distance from where I started with my family's business and life to where I'm sitting now, like, and yet I'm sure there are related points there.
[00:13:55] Eric Flynn: Yeah. I would say a lot of it comes back to hard work, dedication, the work ethic, problem solving. So many of those [00:14:00] things are I. No matter what industry you're in it, it's all kind of applicable. But you know, it's really, you know, there's a lot of tough times on the ranch where it's like something breaks and you're out in the middle of nowhere and it's, you have to problem solve and figure it out.
[00:14:10] Eric Flynn: And, you know, it's similar to the RA world. It's like, okay, here's a big problem, then we just have to figure it out. So you just sit and problem solve and you know that hard work and dedication is something that that translates no matter what industry. And it's, you know, this is a relational business.
[00:14:24] Eric Flynn: Just like ranching, ranching's a relationship business. I mean, you can't do it on your own. You know, most ranches, they work with a neighbor ranch to, you know, anytime you have a big, you know, cattle branding or a roundup, you get all the neighbors together. It's all relationship based. You just, everybody works together to try to get the job done.
[00:14:38] Eric Flynn: And, you know, it's similar in our industry where it's, and you got a big client, you got a big project. It's like you, you rally the troops, you get everybody together, you collaborate, you figure it out, and you work together.
[00:14:48] Stacy Havener: Love that. God, that is so fascinating, so different, so fascinating. And I would imagine, this is not a great analogy.
[00:14:54] Stacy Havener: I'm gonna regret this probably afterwards 'cause I don't wanna compare clients to cattle. But [00:15:00] the reason, the reason I'm saying this is because when you were talking about problem solving and everything changes, it's like these are, they're living, breathing. Things. Yep. Yep. And they're all gonna have their own issues on any given day.
[00:15:18] Eric Flynn: Yep. They required to be tended to every day. You can't necessarily
[00:15:20] Stacy Havener: plan for, right. You can do your best, but like there could be this left tail thing. You know, no pun intended, that just comes at you. Yep. And here you are.
[00:15:31] Eric Flynn: I'm not sure I'd make that analogy, but there are, there are some. There are. There are some crossovers there.
[00:15:35] Eric Flynn: Yes, I could, I could come up with that.
[00:15:37] Stacy Havener: Wait, how many cattle? So it is like way more than you have clients, but point being that like there's a lot you can control on a ranch, as I'm sure there's a lot you can control.
[00:15:48] Eric Flynn: Yep.
[00:15:48] Stacy Havener: When your job is to help clients, right? Yep. Like there's just of, for sure. And in the markets, like there's just a lot that you just cannot plan for.
[00:15:56] Eric Flynn: Yeah. And it's back to, you know, your word is your bond on the ranch. I mean, people [00:16:00] trust you. If you say you're gonna do something, you better do it like that. And you know, if you shake somebody's hand and say, this is who I am, you better honor that. And that's the same in this industry too, because it is such a, it's such a relationship based business and it's such a small world as you know.
[00:16:13] Eric Flynn: You know, here's it know how many years later we circle back and it's like, I always tell people, don't burn bridges in this industry. It's way too small because you never know when you're gonna need that person for something down the road.
[00:16:22] Stacy Havener: Totally. Yeah, I can imagine, Eric, that there's not much that can be like thrown at you, that you're not like, okay, well we can figure this out.
[00:16:30] Stacy Havener: Right. Yeah. Don't, don't
[00:16:31] Eric Flynn: get too high. Don't get too low. Yeah. It's, everything's a problem. You can just start working. A problem are, do you get up,
[00:16:35] Stacy Havener: put this on?
[00:16:36] Eric Flynn: I get up pretty early, but I'm more of a stay up pretty late too, so I, I go to bed about 11, 11 30. I'm usually up at 6, 6 30.
[00:16:43] Stacy Havener: Okay. I have one more question.
[00:16:44] Stacy Havener: Do you wear cowboy boots?
[00:16:46] Eric Flynn: I haven't worn cowboy boots in a while. I'll just say. They're not the most comfortable thing. So, and everybody's like, do you still like to ride horses? And I was like, no, I actually hate horses. Uh, 'cause every time I got on a horse growing up, well, every time I got on a horse growing up, it was like a 12 or 16 [00:17:00] hour day of going to work.
[00:17:01] Eric Flynn: Oh. So it's not a, this is a fun thing to go do. It was like, this is a really long, hard work day every time I got on a horse. So it's not something that I desire to just go, Hey, let's go get on a horse every day. That's not a fun, entertaining thing for me. That was always a, that's, this is a really long, hard work day.
[00:17:17] Stacy Havener: Fascinating. So now for you, relaxation is not that.
[00:17:22] Eric Flynn: It is not that. No.
[00:17:23] Stacy Havener: Wow. Okay. We're gonna come back to that at the end. Okay. So talk to me a little bit about compound. So you teed up this idea that it was tech first sort of advice. Second was built after and I, when I was prepping for the call and reading about the founders, the co-founders, I believe they're, it's, is it co-founders, Christian co-CEOs?
[00:17:45] Stacy Havener: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:49] Stacy Havener: This is like legit coming from.
[00:17:52] Eric Flynn: Yes, so Christian's background came from Legalists, so helped found Legalist, which was a technology firm in the alternative space to kind of [00:18:00] work on bankruptcy settlements and legal settlements, and built the tech, built all the infrastructure for that, built that company up to to be a very successful company.
[00:18:08] Eric Flynn: I started to look at some of the technology that was built and I was like, wow, I think this would actually play in the wealth management space. You know, and they coupled that with Alex's experience coming from Cardo, where he was working on equity infrastructure and you know, how do we, how do we do that, you know, from from Kato's background.
[00:18:22] Eric Flynn: And then started looking at the wealth management space of like, Hey, we're doing all this for executives, where we're planning all this executive comp, and what does. But then as we translate that to their actual wealth management experience of who's giving them advice on what to do with all of this, there feels like a disconnect.
[00:18:35] Eric Flynn: So those two kind of got together and said, I think we can put something pretty neat together. And you know, kind of couple that together. It's like, here's the tech, here's a different thought process of how do we provide advice to the industry and how do we build the tech to make an advisor's life super easy to be able to give.
[00:18:50] Eric Flynn: Really good advice to their clients and look at their entire balance sheet. And that's where we came up with the dashboard that we built. It's, you know, integrate all of your financial life into one place so you can kind of manage your entire balance [00:19:00] sheet. The advisor can see that, the client can see that it's all linked up.
[00:19:02] Eric Flynn: It's all real time. And then translate that to backend tech that we built our own financial planning software. We built our own kind of CRM software. We built our own AI on top of it. One of the reasons we wanna build it all ourselves is we want own the data. We wanna be able to leverage ai. We wanna be able to basically enrich all that data to give it the advisors the ability to be super proactive.
[00:19:21] Eric Flynn: It's like, Hey, here's some information. Something happened with your client. AI picks it up, you know, gives the advisor an alert and says, Hey, by the way, here's a proactive touchpoint to go talk with your client. Something happened with their financial plan, something happened with, you know, their cash balance, whatever it was.
[00:19:34] Eric Flynn: Yeah. So really kind of leveraging all that to say, let's make the advisor's life super easy to be able to give, you know, we call it the magical client experience. So let experience, yes. I.
[00:19:46] Stacy Havener: So random, like is there a target market? So either when you started, 'cause now you've obviously evolved. I know there's been acquisitions and things like that.
[00:19:54] Stacy Havener: We can talk about that.
[00:19:56] Eric Flynn: Mm-hmm.
[00:19:56] Stacy Havener: But when you started, given the background of the [00:20:00] co-founders, was there an eye on, like, was it kind of built almost like, you know, how you build something for yourself? That whole mantra of being a founder, like was it built with them in mind? Like they had had successful careers in the tech industry?
[00:20:15] Stacy Havener: Is that part of the target market or was it initially.
[00:20:19] Eric Flynn: Yes. I would say it was very catered towards the founder community outta the gate. It was very much, you know, a lot of kind of pre-liquidity founders that needed help. How do we structure this? Yeah. How do we wanna plan for the future, you know, liquidity event.
[00:20:32] Eric Flynn: And that was kind of the impetus of. At the start, and we have a lot of equity comp like built into our dashboard. Yeah. So you can put in your equity comp and figure out kind of what it's worth and what stage you're at with your financing and it'll give you projections on what you think it could be worth.
[00:20:45] Eric Flynn: Cool. So it's got some pretty cool features built in there, but that was kind of the initial impetus and say kind of the foundation base of, you know, the initial clients for compound. We've grown in scale since then, so now we've kind got clients across the entire spectrum. But that was kind of the the core initial [00:21:00] client, and we still serve a ton of those clients.
[00:21:02] Stacy Havener: That's was, that was gonna be my next question, and I think it's a great point for people listening and building and growing to really hear and kind of pause to take in, because this was built as something specific for someone. Special and vice versa. Something special for someone specific, right? Yep. It was like to solve a problem.
[00:21:25] Stacy Havener: Now, later on, you often realize, gosh, this has broader applicability.
[00:21:30] Eric Flynn: Yep.
[00:21:30] Stacy Havener: But I think the beginning genesis of a firm. To get that clear and that niche down really allows you to build that special specific thing.
[00:21:40] Eric Flynn: Yep.
[00:21:40] Stacy Havener: Before you start trying to figure out how to make it appeal to everyone. Which then, as you know, often the case, it just appeals to nobody.
[00:21:47] Stacy Havener: It's just like another, yep. Whatever. Right. It's a nothing. Yeah. It's hard
[00:21:51] Eric Flynn: to, it's hard to come out of the gate and be all things to all people. Yeah. You gotta be focused, you gotta be niche. Especially in this industry, it's hard to be differentiated. Yeah. Um, you know, there's so many firms in the [00:22:00] industry now, it's, it's hard to differentiate one from the other.
[00:22:02] Eric Flynn: So unless you have a really clear focus with a really clear differentiator of, you know, here's who we want to serve, or here's how we execute, or here's how we deliver. Yeah. It's gotta be different. And then, you know, once you grow and scale, then you can kind of expand out to the other pieces. But yeah, it's good to be focused on that.
[00:22:16] Eric Flynn: Whatever your niche is.
[00:22:18] Stacy Havener: Yeah. So let's talk about that differentiation. It's honestly in the work we do with asset managers and now even with some wealth managers, it is one of the most difficult things next to like really kind of crafting your story, which is also very difficult to do.
[00:22:32] Eric Flynn: Yep.
[00:22:32] Stacy Havener: Um, the differentiators is really tough because I think it's easy to tip into saying things that like, A, you think people wanna hear, or b.
[00:22:43] Stacy Havener: As one of my friends, Dan Alkis likes to say like, truisms, like you tip into truisms, and you just say the thing that should obviously be true. IE we put clients first. Okay, well like, yes,
[00:22:55] Eric Flynn: everybody does that. Everybody should do that, right? Yeah,
[00:22:58] Stacy Havener: exactly. So how do you think [00:23:00] about differentiators? For compound
[00:23:03] Eric Flynn: for us, it really comes back to that tech background.
[00:23:04] Eric Flynn: Yeah. Uh, of really just building the tech ourselves. You know, I mean, rewind back to, you know, 10, 15 years ago, the tech was so disparate within the industry and not that great. Yeah. And now we're in a place where there's actually a lot of really good tech in our industry. It's all disparate and it doesn't really talk to each other as well.
[00:23:19] Eric Flynn: It's starting to get better, but our mantra is basically it's our system. If we do pull in a third party, it has to integrate with our system and it has to come through us. So we don't want clients logging into, you know, e-money out there, you know, Orion over here and you know, Schwab over there. It's like logging into our system.
[00:23:35] Eric Flynn: Everything's there and it has to feed through to our system so that. There's a single pane of glass for the advisor to log in for the client to log in. So everybody's looking at the same thing. Not saying we still don't use some of those other parties 'cause we're never gonna rebuild Orion, for example.
[00:23:48] Eric Flynn: I mean, that's really hard. Um, but we have built our own financial planning software. We still do supplement with other third party softwares that where ours is not as capable as theirs. But for the most part, we want everything to play nice in our system so that the client [00:24:00] logs in, they see the same thing that the advisor sees and it's super clean, super simple.
[00:24:04] Stacy Havener: Is the equity comp, because I, I was on your website, I can't remember now if there was some kind of like calculator or dashboard or something that I could do just as a visitor to the site. So it, I would imagine, especially given the card a bit like, you know, what a cool company, what a cool platform. All the stuff that happens at that firm and was built at that firm.
[00:24:24] Stacy Havener: So is the equity comp component or like the founder community component of the tech. Kind of like a, a special sauce element.
[00:24:34] Eric Flynn: It is a bit of the special sauce, but our dashboard's free to use so anybody can use it. Yeah. So you just create your login and then you can start linking up your accounts and play with some of our stuff.
[00:24:42] Eric Flynn: So the equity comp, um, you know, all of our dashboard stuff, some of the financial planning tools are, are basically built. Are right there. Are just built there and you can just play with it. That so fun. Yeah. So you basically, if someone wants
[00:24:51] Stacy Havener: to do that, what is it? Compound planning.com.
[00:24:54] Eric Flynn: Compound planning.
[00:24:54] Eric Flynn: Do com.
[00:24:55] Stacy Havener: Yep. So that I didn't get a chance to do it, but I definitely let you know. It's [00:25:00] kind of, sometimes it's nice to hear what a visitor to your site experiences or takes away because you're so close to it and there's so a lot of resources on there. That was one thing that jumped out to me. I wanna come back to differentiators.
[00:25:11] Stacy Havener: The other thing that jumped out to me. Was there was a video, I think it was a video on the investment or market update or something that you could watch.
[00:25:22] Eric Flynn: Yep. We do quarterly, actually, we do, every month we do like a webinar series that's available to the public. You can sign up and you know. Mm-hmm. We've done one on 10 31 exchanges.
[00:25:30] Eric Flynn: We've done a one on ESOPs. We've, we do a quarterly market commentary, so we try to rotate through a topic every month where. One of our advisors, plus one of the subject matter experts presents and, and it has a topic. So we've done some tax trainings. We've done, you know, kinda what's going on with the tax market.
[00:25:44] Eric Flynn: We always do a quarterly update with our CIO. So there, there's always videos out there on specific topics that clients might be interested in.
[00:25:51] Stacy Havener: Okay. So website ACEs, obviously. Okay. Back to differentiators. So the tech platform big, what else would you say [00:26:00] differentiates compound?
[00:26:01] Eric Flynn: I think it's just the flexibility on our platform.
[00:26:03] Eric Flynn: You know, we want to cater to the advisors and make sure that we can make their life easy. So we give them lots of flexibility on our investment platform. You know, we, we have a good robust alts platform that we've built. We do integrate with some of the third party alts as well. So, um, we're not saying full, you know, advisor is pm go pick in Israel stocks, but we have a very robust.
[00:26:21] Eric Flynn: Platform of models if you want 'em, you know, direct indexing through Canvas and O'Shaughnessy. You know, we do all the alts, we have all the pieces, so clients can get pretty differentiated on, on what they offer. And I'll say our, you know, again, focusing on the clients that we focus on, we do call ourselves digital family office, so we wanna be differentiated.
[00:26:36] Eric Flynn: Don't, yeah. Talk about, we don't wanna just be kind of like cookie cutter portfolios and everybody's in the same thing and all the models are just really rigid of. This is all you get. So our advisors have a lot of flexibility on how they can build portfolios and customize them for their clients, knowing that we have a lot of larger clients that, you know, they, they want something that's different.
[00:26:52] Eric Flynn: They don't want just a bucket of ETFs because they could probably go do that themselves. So yeah, we're differentiated
[00:26:57] Stacy Havener: and I would imagine. [00:27:00] If they are founders or entrepreneurs, depending on the business they're in, is gonna really influence what type of portfolio they wanna build around that.
[00:27:08] Eric Flynn: Yes.
[00:27:08] Stacy Havener: You know, if their equity conference, since I'm making this up, is really tied to tech.
[00:27:14] Eric Flynn: Then we'll build some, some very customized indexes around that to make sure that we're building diversified portfolios and not, not putting all our eggs in the technology basket. Exactly. 'cause if you the index, you're all MEG seven and you know, you're probably doubling down on your exposures. That's right.
[00:27:26] Eric Flynn: So, yep. So we do a lot of, yeah, let's look at the overall exposure. Let's make sure we build around it, let's customize around it and make sure we're doing the right thing for the client.
[00:27:34] Stacy Havener: So I have two definitional things. Yep. So talk to me about what does Digital Family Office mean?
[00:27:40] Eric Flynn: It, it means we're, we're, we're trying to build the services that you'd normally get from a family office to the masses.
[00:27:45] Eric Flynn: Okay. So it's, you know, again, more alternatives, more kind of the democratization of, you know. Get access to all the different kinds of investments. So that's one and two, it's just that it's that higher level of service, you know, through the technology. Yeah. We're able to provide, you know, hopefully, which we're [00:28:00]striving to do is that magical client experience, which is more of a family office experience of here's your quarterback, your concierge, that's basically helping you with everything in your financial life.
[00:28:08] Eric Flynn: And that's what we're really striving for.
[00:28:09] Stacy Havener: So you answered my second definitional question, which was that the magical client experience? Yeah. You know, there's all these studies that say like when you name something. It sort of changes how it's perceived.
[00:28:22] Eric Flynn: Yep.
[00:28:23] Stacy Havener: And I love that you did that for the client experience piece.
[00:28:29] Stacy Havener: You don't hear it a lot. Like even on the asset management side, you have all these people who have like really differentiated specialties and have a really interesting, unique way of looking at something, but they don't name it. But they could. They should. They should because then it kind of becomes a thing.
[00:28:46] Stacy Havener: It's something you can reference and it's unique. It sort of adds, I think, to the differentiation. 'cause you're like, it's this, it has a name.
[00:28:54] Eric Flynn: Yep. It becomes part of the culture. Yeah, it
[00:28:56] Stacy Havener: part of the culture.
[00:28:58] Eric Flynn: Yep.
[00:28:59] Stacy Havener: [00:29:00] Interesting. So let's talk about that because you are bringing firms onto the platform. I saw in your news stuff a lot of acqui, not a lot, but acquisitions happening.
[00:29:11] Eric Flynn: Yep, yep. We're recruiting a lot of advisors. Yeah.
[00:29:13] Stacy Havener: Okay. How are you thinking about the who, the types of firms?
[00:29:19] Eric Flynn: Yeah, that's, that's interesting. It's. Finding firms and advisors that resonate with the story of who we are and what we do. Mm. And we resonate well with kind of, we'll call it the G two advisor. So, ah, uh, our average advisor age is a little younger than the industry average.
[00:29:34] Eric Flynn: Um, you know, it's around 40 plus or minus. So we are younger from an advisory perspective, which obviously, you know, with that tech executive that's kind of caters to that. Yep. Type of client as well. It's a lot of the younger, the younger founders with advisors that are really specializing in that area.
[00:29:50] Eric Flynn: That was kinda the initial impetus. And then because of our structure and how we want everybody aligned, we want everybody to have equity options in the company. We want everybody to be part of that experience. You [00:30:00] know, I always tell people, you know, there's. Mercenaries and missionaries in this industry, and we're full of missionaries that are here because they wanna build a firm, they wanna be part of something special, they wanna build something different.
[00:30:10] Eric Flynn: And it is different because we have our whole engineering team that's building the software and we have all our advisors and they all work together and it's like something on the website's broken. My client can't do X, Y, Z. They put it into the, into the message. The engineer looks at it and is like, oh, I can fix that.
[00:30:23] Eric Flynn: And it's done, done. You know, it gets fixed by the end of the day or it gets fixed instantaneously and
[00:30:26] Stacy Havener: right.
[00:30:27] Eric Flynn: You don't get that everywhere. That's where it's like you've put in a support ticket, it goes off to somebody, you know, and it might get fixed six months later. For here, it's like, some of it's in real time.
[00:30:35] Eric Flynn: Some of it's like, Hey, that's a really cool idea. We'd love to be able to build that. Let's put that on the roadmap and let's put that as, you know, the next build or the next iteration of our software. So that's what people really resonate with. And what gets people excited about joining?
[00:30:47] Stacy Havener: Fascinating. Is it kind of geographic in terms of the founder target market?
[00:30:52] Eric Flynn: We're we're scattered all across the country. I would say we, there's a good contingent in the Bay Area, kinda on the west coast. Yeah. But yeah, I think [00:31:00] our biggest advisor group's probably in Denver. Uh, and then we've got, uh Oh, that's
[00:31:03] Stacy Havener: interesting.
[00:31:04] Eric Flynn: Corporate home offices in New York. We've got a good contingent of advisors out there, Florida, Ohio.
[00:31:08] Eric Flynn: Um, cool. Yeah. Upper Midwest, Chicago, Texas. We're pretty much everywhere. I'm the only one in Montana, however, right now. So I'm hoping to get somebody out here, but, uh, come on
[00:31:17] Stacy Havener: Montanans. Yeah, let's get it going. Try.
[00:31:20] Eric Flynn: Yeah.
[00:31:20] Stacy Havener: Where are the ranchers who wanna be in the investment biz? This is, that's a tough one to
[00:31:25] Eric Flynn: find.
[00:31:26] Eric Flynn: Yeah.
[00:31:28] Stacy Havener: Um, that's fantastic. You know, interesting. We talked about story. We've touched a little bit on culture. One of the things that we talk about a lot and I think is challenging, I love your perspective on this. This is not an industry that sort of celebrates the non-conformist, if you will, like I think tech and Silicon Valley and like when you think about just kind of the aura and vibe around founders, like it's really special and magical to use your word.
[00:31:59] Stacy Havener: Like there's, [00:32:00] it's really celebrated when you get to the investment space, it's kind of like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're central casting here. This is the box that investment people fit into. This is who you are and how you, you know, all the things, and it's really tough to embrace your authentic self in an industry that's so rigid.
[00:32:24] Stacy Havener: And so how have you thought about that? I mean, obviously in your bio you talk about the ranch. It's nice to put some of those bits in the bio. I think it gives people a glimpse, but like what was that journey like for you? I mean, you're coming from accounting, which is really central casting.
[00:32:39] Eric Flynn: Yeah, it was a, it was a hard industry to break into.
[00:32:42] Eric Flynn: I will say that, and I. Having the CCFA, you know, coupled with the CPA A was a differentiator. That kind of got my foot in the door in a lot of places to just at least have conversations. But, you know, it's a lot of work to build a network and kind of build that from the grassroots out here in Montana. So it's, it's a lot of travel time.
[00:32:59] Eric Flynn: Okay. You know, it's a lot of time [00:33:00] on an airplane, so there is that as the downside, but I get to come home to Bozeman, but it is, yeah. It requires a lot of travel. Uh, 'cause not a lot of finance folks, you know, sitting in Bozeman, Montana more now than there were, you know, yeah. 15, 20 years ago. But, you know, the, the network is San Francisco and New York and you know, Denver and all the major hubs.
[00:33:17] Eric Flynn: So you gotta be willing to travel and you gotta be willing to put in the work. And then, you know, it comes back to being your authentic self too, is being memorable. It's like. If I tell my story and I talk about the branch, people will remember me a little bit more than some of the other folks,
[00:33:30] Stacy Havener: 100%. And
[00:33:31] Eric Flynn: then it took me a while.
[00:33:32] Eric Flynn: I, I downplayed that early in my career. 'cause I just, I wanted to fit in and I wanted to be like everybody else. And I didn't tell that story near as much as I should have. So, looking back, and once I kind of leaned into it, I said, well, this is who I am. Take it or leave it. People were like, oh, that's super cool.
[00:33:44] Eric Flynn: Let's talk about that. Yes. And then it's like that opened up more doors and more conversations and more network than I ever could have imagined.
[00:33:52] Stacy Havener: Isn't that so interesting? Thank you for sharing that. And I think it's, it's often the case, two points there. One, when we're earlier in our [00:34:00] career, we're more nervous about it.
[00:34:01] Eric Flynn: Yeah.
[00:34:01] Stacy Havener: Which sort of makes sense. I mean, humans by design, we want to fit in, right? That's like part of our survival. DNA. So it's difficult to be like, oh, I'm different than you all, so, yep. So that I think is normal for people to have an evolution around, myself included. But the other thing is, it's usually the pieces that we're like, not that we're embarrassed about them per se, but they're like the thing that we don't really wanna talk about.
[00:34:28] Stacy Havener: Right. Yeah. And that's usually the thing. Because it's gonna have something around it like it's so different, or we think it's too quirky or it's like not cool, or it's all about what we think others will perceive on that. I did a podcast actually today. The podcast it released today was the hundredth episode of this, which was really cool.
[00:34:50] Stacy Havener: And my congrats, I don't know, do you know Dr. Daniel Crosby from Orion? Yeah. Okay. So he's one of my best friends in the industry and I was [00:35:00] re-listening to the podcast this morning and there was a part at the end where he talks about just how powerful it is to be passionate about anything. Like it doesn't really even matter what it is, but the fact that you have something big and meaningful in your story or in your life, like it is cool.
[00:35:18] Stacy Havener: That is the cool thing, and it's hard for us to get there. I think the ranch piece, my gosh, there's just so. It's so different. It's so unique. There's probably a book of lessons, you know, from the ranch. I should I, I've
[00:35:34] Eric Flynn: thought about writing a book. I should do it at some point. You should do it. Yeah. Like
[00:35:37] Stacy Havener: it's really different, especially even just with like the cool factor around Yellowstone and some of the stuff like you might be, I don't know.
[00:35:47] Stacy Havener: I mean, maybe there are other, like, I'm gonna call you a cowboy, for lack of a better term. A rancher maybe, but like maybe there are other rancher CFAs out there. I don't know. I don't know any.
[00:35:56] Eric Flynn: I know of a couple, but there's not very many of us, that's for sure. Yeah. Like how awesome. [00:36:00] It's a very small community.
[00:36:01] Eric Flynn: Yeah.
[00:36:01] Stacy Havener: Yeah. And I hope you're proud of it.
[00:36:03] Eric Flynn: Yeah, and again, I mean, when I first started I wanted to be, you know, you wanted to be part of the team, part of the club, so you, I, anytime I traveled to New York, I'd look at what everybody's wearing, try to make sure I could get the exact same things and, you know, feel like I was part of the club.
[00:36:16] Eric Flynn: And then, you know, I never really felt like I fed in. Tall. I was basically like, you know what, this is who I am. And most times you'll see me in a baseball cap and you know, my tennis shoes walking around. And that's, that's who I am and that's how I'm comfortable and that's more of how I grew up, just kind of being myself and that's how I'm comfortable and that's where you're gonna see me most times.
[00:36:33] Eric Flynn: Yeah. And I don't try to fit in as much as I used to. It's, it's so great. The more I did that, the more I got accepted and it was like, okay, I should have done that from the get go.
[00:36:42] Stacy Havener: That's also part of the journey, isn't it? Bit there. Like, I wish I had done this sooner. You know, when you think about whichever side of the desk you're on, whether it's buy side or sell side, whether you're asset manager or wealth manager, whatever.
[00:36:59] Stacy Havener: 'cause you've been involved with both in some way, shape or form, either vetting managers or consulting them or whatever. What advice do you have for them? Like I imagine when you were at Bitterroot, maybe less so now, you saw a lot of stuff come across your desk.
[00:37:16] Eric Flynn: Yep.
[00:37:17] Stacy Havener: And a lot of it was probably not that great.
[00:37:19] Stacy Havener: Yeah. But like when you think back to that, like what advice, let's start with that. Let's start with what advice do you have for asset managers to really like stand out in a crowded field?
[00:37:30] Eric Flynn: Yeah, it's back to being authentic. It's pretty easy to tell when you're looking at, you know, when you're talking to an investment manager or something, if it's just another thing on the shelf or whether it's something that they're interested in, they're passionate about.
[00:37:39] Eric Flynn: Mm. And it, you know, the things that they're passionate about, the things that, you know, you could tell that they had a real interest in. Those are the ones that I always gravitated towards. So if it's, you know, yeah, this is, this is something that we have, but. Eh, it's like, okay. Yeah. Well, I, I never wanna hear about that again, but he is like, oh, this one.
[00:37:54] Eric Flynn: Yeah. This is the one that is like, oh, this, this one I'm pretty excited about, but, and those are the ones that, okay. I was like, okay, [00:38:00] well tell me more, because if you're excited about it, I'll get excited about it. Yeah. Yeah. It might not be the right thing for me now, but at least I can feel the passion. I can feel the interest.
[00:38:07] Eric Flynn: Yeah. It gets me more excited about it. It might not be the right thing for me, but I'll at least put it on the shelf and say, okay, well maybe that's something, if we ever need something in that space mm-hmm. This person's really excited about it. That's their niche. That's their passion. That's one that I'll, I'll remember.
[00:38:21] Eric Flynn: Yeah. So yeah, I mean, back, back to being your authentic self from finding your niche, you know, all things to all people. One ETF versus the other ETF that. I know. Okay. You know, I'll follow a relationship at that point to say, okay, here, somebody that I like, that I might wanna support. Yeah. You know, state Street over somebody else, or whatever, you know that I'll do.
[00:38:38] Eric Flynn: But that's more of a, it's all the same. It's fungible. But if you're really trying to be differentiated with some of these other products, it's like, okay, show me that you're passionate about it. And I get excited about it.
[00:38:49] Stacy Havener: And that's like not something that fund managers really think about. Like passion's not one of the five Ps.
[00:38:55] Stacy Havener: So like I talk about my performance passion, like it doesn't compute and yet [00:39:00] it's the thing that's probably gonna stand out and you can tell.
[00:39:03] Eric Flynn: You know, and I tell that to advisors too, as you know, as they're trying to build their book and grow and scale, they're like, oh, I just, I just wanna build my book and I want to have all these clients.
[00:39:10] Eric Flynn: And they're like, well, good. Well, who do you wanna serve? Well, everybody, right? I was like, well, that's hard. You can't be all things to all people. You know? If you find people that are like you, that are interested in the same things as you, that are passionate in the same things as you, you're gonna resonate very well with them, and you're gonna be able to get them as clients a lot easier than trying to fit in with everybody.
[00:39:26] Eric Flynn: And it's really hard to do that, especially when you're early in your career and you're just trying to take any client to just build your book and be successful. But it's. As you see, as advisors get older in their career, they always start to say, okay, well here's the group of clients that I really wanna work with that I'm excited about.
[00:39:39] Eric Flynn: And that's usually when they really take off.
[00:39:41] Stacy Havener: It's so true. It's interesting too, 'cause like, so that was gonna be my question. Is it the same advice for an advisor, which here you're saying yes it is. You know, you could have an advisor who specializes in ranchers. Yep. That community is gonna have a unique set of challenges, a unique set of [00:40:00] opportunities, problems, all the things, right?
[00:40:02] Stacy Havener: As well as just a unique personality community. Bit like they want a trusted person. So there's so much advantage. I agree with you, in sort of saying like, this is who I wanna serve and here's why I'm the right guide for those people.
[00:40:18] Eric Flynn: Yep.
[00:40:18] Stacy Havener: That community. And yet advisors more so than asset managers sometimes really struggle with that.
[00:40:26] Eric Flynn: Yep. I mean, that's what resonated well. I mean, I was ranch know. There's certain things you can control, certain things you can't, you know? Mm-hmm. And I always equate it as I'm, I'm your guide. Like if we're out on a hunt or we're out on the ranch and we're going for a hike, it's like, I can tell you where to go and I can get you there, but I can't control the weather.
[00:40:42] Eric Flynn: Yeah. I can't control certain circumstances. I can't control if animals are gonna come out so you can see them. But I can try to get you into the best positions to be successful. Yeah. And I'm gonna be your mountain guide to get you there. There's only certain things that I can control and other things that I can't, and having an authentic story that people go, oh yeah, I get that.
[00:40:59] Eric Flynn: [00:41:00] You know? Yeah. That is really important to be able to tell your authentic story.
[00:41:03] Stacy Havener: So let's go to ai, which seems a weird leap from authenticity, but I had wanted to talk about it in the differentiators piece.
[00:41:11] Eric Flynn: Yeah.
[00:41:11] Stacy Havener: Because you know, advisors, everyone wants to grow their business. Come on. Doesn't matter like where you are in the evolution, like.
[00:41:18] Stacy Havener: We all wanna grow. So if I'm an advisor and I think about that and you have a way to make that easier, different, better, more magical, like I'm all ears on that because business development, if you're an advisor, is tough.
[00:41:36] Eric Flynn: Yep.
[00:41:36] Stacy Havener: It's really tough. Also, you don't say sales, which I, I learned when I did a workshop.
[00:41:42] Stacy Havener: I'm like, why are we not saying sales? And it's like, that's a bad word.
[00:41:44] Eric Flynn: Yeah. Nobody wants to say I'm a salesperson. 'cause that's, yeah, that's like a dirty word. Yeah,
[00:41:49] Stacy Havener: I know. So that's like another podcast episode. But anyway, so it's really tough. So talk about, like, you mentioned ai. Tell me more about that.
[00:41:57] Eric Flynn: Yeah, I mean, I think the more data that you have, [00:42:00] you know, obviously young people get sensitive about having client data, but at the same time, if you have all the data on your financial plan and the estate plan and their tax plan, plus their emotional response to all these things, and you can document all these things, you know, AI doesn't solve the human problem, but it helps you be more efficient, so it really can organize that data in a way that you can look through it.
[00:42:19] Eric Flynn: Quickly see where their issues are or other things that you can be doing to service your client better, or, Hey, it's been a long time since we looked at the estate plan and it's gonna remind you, or it's client's birthday and you should reach out to them. Or, Hey, you know, they took some money out that wasn't part of the financial plan that we have on, you know, that the, that AI is keeping track of.
[00:42:35] Eric Flynn: You need to go reach out to your client and see why that happened, because that was an unplanned, something that, that didn't agree with the plan. From our perspective is how do we leverage AI to basically make sure that we're giving advisors information that they need when they need it, to meet the clients in their journey where they are in their journey.
[00:42:50] Eric Flynn: Mm-hmm. And really kind of leveraging that to say, how do we make that client's life better by giving them better advice, by having better data to be able to serve them better? Mm-hmm. And it really [00:43:00]comes back to, you know, if you have all these disparate pieces of technology and it doesn't really talk well together, you don't have a good integrated data source where you can say.
[00:43:07] Eric Flynn: We own all the data, we can look at all the data and we can enrich the data to make sure that we're serving the client better. And that's where we're really trying to, to manage our data and use AI effectively. On top of that, we're building a lot of cool features right now that are kind of real time coming up, you know, prompt advisors or you know, create task list and create.
[00:43:23] Eric Flynn: Okay.
[00:43:24] Stacy Havener: So that's cool. The prompting.
[00:43:26] Eric Flynn: Yep.
[00:43:26] Stacy Havener: I'm actually talking to one of our clients with this 'cause it's tough to keep it all straight. So that was gonna be my question. So it's super valuable for the clients who are already clients. What about like the prospects, right? Future clients? So if I'm an advisor, will the AI help me?
[00:43:40] Stacy Havener: Like will it give me, this is me just like dreaming 'cause I don't really understand Texas. This might be like a possibility, but also could be happening. And I'm just totally unaware. So like if I was an advisor and I wanted to build my book of business. I would love it if AI could say, Hey, I see your, your funnel.
[00:43:57] Stacy Havener: I don't even know if that's, maybe you don't say funnel and business [00:44:00]development pipeline. Yeah. Advisor. But whatever Your pipeline, something. And you know, here's some interesting bits on these people. I. Worth reaching out to. Right. So is it just for clients or does it help them with prospects as well?
[00:44:13] Eric Flynn: We don't have it on the prospecting front yet.
[00:44:15] Eric Flynn: Okay. But there are some firms that are working on that, which is pretty intriguing. Yeah. But from our perspective right now, we're really focused on the advisors and the client experience. Okay. So that's the core of what we're trying to build. 'cause you can, again, not to be all things to all people is like that's where we're really trying to focus now, focusing on the advisor experience, which.
[00:44:35] Eric Flynn: Client experience because the advisor's the one that really is going to impact that client experience. So obviously we have the tech that the clients can interact with that makes it pretty special. So we can put things there for them, but ultimately we want the advisor to have all the tools and resources they need to be able to go serve that client better.
[00:44:51] Eric Flynn: That's where we were kind of trying to focus that time of, you know, here, here's a service ticket recommendation based on everything that we just saw. I mean, if you transcribe your call notes, you know, we'll pull, pull that. That's [00:45:00] so automatically in, we'll pull in all the emails that you sent your client service associate has sent, your investment person has sent all get funneled into the household automatically, and then the ice, it's on top of it.
[00:45:10] Eric Flynn: It'll generate a meeting, agenda proposal and say, Hey. Based on everything that everybody's been talking about. Here's a couple of things that might be interesting for your next meeting. So it's gonna kind of prompt you and help you along the way to say, you know, you've been talking to your client about all these different things.
[00:45:24] Eric Flynn: Here's a meeting agenda to review, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then, you know, that helps you, wow. Instead of having to review all those things yourselves, that the technology is basically helping you. Organize that thing, you know? Is it perfect? No, but it's a good starting point to say, oh yeah, I remember those.
[00:45:37] Eric Flynn: Oh, no, we talked about all these things. I don't need that, but Oh yeah. Oh, that reminded me. There's one more thing I wanna put on that agenda. And then it saves you from having to track down all your emails, all your client service associated emails. All your investment emails. All the tax emails, and it's just, it's all assimilated.
[00:45:50] Eric Flynn: I love
[00:45:50] Stacy Havener: it. Those meeting, I mean it's probably like super basic AI and anyone who's like really good at AI is laughing at me. But like the meeting transcription thing is [00:46:00] so helpful. It's
[00:46:00] Eric Flynn: so helpful. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause I'm a
[00:46:02] Stacy Havener: ferocious note taker and I also walk around, I have like 18 notebooks on my desk. I probably have a mole skin from my meetings with you guys at Bitterroot and like took three pages of notes and then it's like the amount of work.
[00:46:15] Stacy Havener: You have to do in follow up is just ridiculous. So I love what you're building. It is super special. It is different. It's a great story. I'm cheering for you and I'm, I'm cheering for you all at Compound. I'm cheering for you, Eric. Um. I have some questions that are going on our authenticity bit and authentic leadership.
[00:46:36] Stacy Havener: Okay. I have some questions for you to help us. This is gonna be very interesting actually.
[00:46:41] Eric Flynn: Alright.
[00:46:41] Stacy Havener: They're not rapid fire per se, but you know, they're inspired by, well, I'm gonna date myself again, but James Lipton's inside the actor's studio, he had those questions he would ask all the famous actors.
[00:46:53] Stacy Havener: Gotcha. So you're the famous actor? I'm James Lipton, that's what's, I dunno
[00:46:55] Eric Flynn: if I can live up to that, but, okay.
[00:46:57] Stacy Havener: Okay. Alright. First one, what [00:47:00] book inspires you?
[00:47:02] Eric Flynn: Ooh. Uh, does
[00:47:03] Stacy Havener: not have to be business.
[00:47:04] Eric Flynn: Actually, I love this, uh, wisdom of the Bullfrog by Admiral McCraven. Dunno it on leadership. Oh, this is a great book.
[00:47:11] Eric Flynn: It's short, simple Wisdom of
[00:47:12] Stacy Havener: the Bullfrog.
[00:47:13] Eric Flynn: Yeah. It's like leadership euphemisms from Admiral McCraven on Yeah. Leadership is simple, but not easy. Yeah, I love simple,
[00:47:20] Stacy Havener: not easy. Great one.
[00:47:21] Eric Flynn: Yeah. Yeah. Good. Okay. Fantastic
[00:47:23] Stacy Havener: luck and a new one. Love that. You're rocking it. Okay. Now this, I don't know what you're gonna say to this.
[00:47:30] Stacy Havener: What place inspires you? What's your happy place?
[00:47:34] Eric Flynn: My happy place. There's a few places on the ranch when I need to just go like detox and be like, okay, here's my happy place. It's quiet, you know, sitting by our cabin by a little mountain stream. Mm-hmm. That, that's a happy place. But at the same time, with all the travel I do, I kind of have to find happy places across the country and yeah.
[00:47:50] Eric Flynn: You know, there's, there's places in New York that I love, like out sitting at the seaport, you know, watching the ships go by. At the end of the day, I have a long client meetings, or you know, the ferry building in San [00:48:00] Francisco. Having a beer and a couple of oysters mm-hmm. You know, down it, hogs island and oysters.
[00:48:05] Eric Flynn: So, I mean, there's, there's happy places that I've found across the country where, yeah. After a long day of meeting, you kind of have to have that, you know, here's a good spot that I know I can go to and just detox, have a nice relaxing time. But you, you know what's
[00:48:16] Stacy Havener: interesting, all three of those places had water.
[00:48:19] Eric Flynn: Yeah.
[00:48:19] Stacy Havener: The stream and at the ranch, the seaport and the ferry building. Isn't that interesting?
[00:48:26] Eric Flynn: Yeah. Something about the water, you know? Yeah. A relaxing And also
[00:48:28] Stacy Havener: I was like, he's either gonna say the ranch or he's gonna say the farthest thing from the ranch.
[00:48:34] Eric Flynn: Yeah. I mean, the first happy place for sure is on the ranch.
[00:48:37] Eric Flynn: You know, that's, that's a place for sure, where if, if I just need to go get away from it all, that's a good recharge place. But, uh, yeah. You know, again, there's such cool places across this country that I, I've been able to find a few of those, you know, in every place that.
[00:48:53] Stacy Havener: You've written your book. I'm gonna just paint a picture for us. Okay. You've written your book, you know Rancher, CFA book. What? We don't know the name yet. [00:49:00] TBD. Okay. Okay. But you're gonna give a talk. Maybe it's a TED Talk. I'm not sure. It's something, it's a stadium. There's a lot of people. Okay. You're about to take the stage to talk about these lessons you've learned.
[00:49:11] Stacy Havener: What is your walkout anthem? Ooh.
[00:49:14] Eric Flynn: I like a lot of different types of music hype, so this is gonna be an interesting one. You know, if we're really digging into the cowboy vibe, it would probably be Cowboys like us by George Strait. I was
[00:49:23] Stacy Havener: wondering, is he gonna sing a country song or is he gonna go,
[00:49:25] Eric Flynn: or, but, but if, yeah, that's if you're going that way, but I mean, yep.
[00:49:28] Eric Flynn: Yeah. Mean I grew up in the eighties, so it could be like inner Sandman from Metallica or such a good one.
[00:49:33] Stacy Havener: Also, like every high school's team, like Yeah, team Sport. That was like everybody's song for a minute.
[00:49:39] Eric Flynn: Yeah. Or if it's gonna be more of those like a really stressful talk, it'd be like under pressure by Bowie and Queen.
[00:49:44] Eric Flynn: I mean, yeah, I, I could go a lot of different ways on that one. You have
[00:49:47] Stacy Havener: situational,
[00:49:48] Eric Flynn: yeah.
[00:49:48] Stacy Havener: Walkout songs.
[00:49:49] Eric Flynn: Situational walkout songs. Yeah.
[00:49:51] Stacy Havener: I like this. This adds some depth.
[00:49:53] Eric Flynn: Yeah.
[00:49:54] Stacy Havener: Okay. All right. All amazing. So good. Okay. What profession, [00:50:00] other than your own, would you like to attempt? '
[00:50:03] Eric Flynn: cause I've attempted the CPA thing and I just say I wouldn't go back that way.
[00:50:06] Eric Flynn: You know, we used to do the dude ranch thing growing up and I was kind of the hospitality thing where I used to cook for people out on the range and yeah, I could go back to that at some point. Um, and then teaching, yeah, I, I do a lot of volunteering and guest lecturing up at the college, so I could definitely go be a professor at some point.
[00:50:22] Stacy Havener: What would you cook for these people?
[00:50:24] Eric Flynn: Mostly I was the head dessert chef, you know, on the, no, we did the, like a city s slickers, like cattle drive thing and I cooked, uh, so for 45 guests we'd do, uh, like dutch ovens and I'd do like cobblers and cinnamon rolls and
[00:50:35] Stacy Havener: oh my gosh,
[00:50:36] Eric Flynn: cakes and stuff in, in Dutch ovens with charcoal out on the range in, you know, big wall tents and stuff.
[00:50:41] Stacy Havener: So. Amazing. Let's put that goes in the book. Something that, that goes in the book. That goes in the book. Okay. What profession? Opposite, what profession would you not like to.
[00:50:52] Eric Flynn: I couldn't go back to doing tax work. I think that's, that one's out. No, no, no. Public accounting on the tax side. Yeah.
[00:50:58] Stacy Havener: Been there, done that,
[00:50:59] Eric Flynn: been there, done [00:51:00] that.
[00:51:00] Eric Flynn: I don't, I can check that one off the box. I don't need to go back to that. Yep.
[00:51:02] Stacy Havener: Okay. Okay. Now, this is a long time away. What do you want people to say about you after you've retired or left the industry? Ooh,
[00:51:13] Eric Flynn: that's a good one. Um, when I'm done, if people say I had a positive impact on the industry and the profession, and you did it the right way.
[00:51:21] Eric Flynn: That would be, that would be pretty special.
[00:51:23] Stacy Havener: I like that. In a right way. In a magical way.
[00:51:27] Eric Flynn: Yeah.
[00:51:27] Stacy Havener: You are awesome. Eric, thank you so much for being here. It's so much fun to reconnect with you. If people wanna follow along on the journey, well first of all, they can go to compound planning and geek out on those dashboards and all that cool stuff.
[00:51:40] Stacy Havener: So that's amazing. Compound planning.com and if they wanna follow along, how else can they do that?
[00:51:45] Eric Flynn: Yep. You can follow me on LinkedIn. Uh, I definitely post a lot of stuff out there, so definitely track me down on LinkedIn. Happy to connect. Um, yeah, obviously we post stuff on compound planning, but those are the two places that I engage with.
[00:51:56] Eric Flynn: I don't do much on some of the other social platforms, but, uh, those two [00:52:00]particularly. Yeah, I definitely am out there. So happy to connect and love to meet new people. Right. So
[00:52:04] Stacy Havener: get your name on the wait list for the book. It's gonna be fantastic. Just wait,
[00:52:07] Eric Flynn: it's a ways away yet, but it, it will happen at some point.
[00:52:11] Stacy Havener: Thank you Eric. Thanks for being here.
[00:52:12] Eric Flynn: Thank you.
[00:52:13] Stacy Havener: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The information is not an offer, solicitation, or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products, or to adopt any investment strategy.
[00:52:28] Stacy Havener: Investment values may fluctuate and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm. Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Haven or Haven or Capital Partners.
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