Entrepreneurs are born out of a desire to fix, to innovate, to act. Conor Delaney, founder and CEO of Good Life Companies is entrepreneurial in all he does. Bold, authentic, and unabashed in his beliefs, he has persevered in health, family, and business by thinking independently.
In this series, Conor is joined by guests from the financial services industry as well as entrepreneurs, wellness gurus, community leaders, mentors, and others to share experiences that led to abundance, success, and wellness in the journey to a Good Life.
Nick LoPresti:
Good afternoon, Mr. Delaney.
Conor Delaney:
Good afternoon, Mr. LoPresti.
Nick LoPresti:
It’s good to have you back here in the podcast studio with me.
Conor Delaney:
This is our podcast, Thinking Independently. Nick is my guest today. It’s cool doing something with somebody that you’re very familiar with. You get to interact with every day.
Nick LoPresti:
I mean daily, sometimes earlier than others. Today was a particularly early day.
Conor Delaney:
It was.
Nick LoPresti:
We start early around here.
Conor Delaney:
We run late too. Sometimes 10:00, 11:00 at night, we’re texting.
Nick LoPresti:
Right. I mean that’s just what it takes. Whatever it takes.
Conor Delaney:
That’s right.
Nick LoPresti:
Well, I think it’s interesting as I was thinking about today, that I’ve known you for more than half of your natural life.
Conor Delaney:
I was going to say that. If you didn’t say that, I was going to. See, we start to think like each other too.
Nick LoPresti:
That’s right. So, you started Good Life 12 years ago. I think 12 years ago now?
Conor Delaney:
Yup.
Nick LoPresti:
You and I go back to the days when you were brand new advisor working in an office not far from where I was at, at the time. Then, we lost touch a little bit. You moved on, and I was still doing what I was doing in the capacity in which I was doing it.
Conor Delaney:
The captain always goes down with the ship.
Nick LoPresti:
I did. In fact, as a matter of fact, I did go right down with the ship a couple of times. A couple of times, and then what? Three years ago or so we reconnected. It’s been great for me.
Conor Delaney:
It’s been a heck of a ride, and the timing was perfect. We were in that weird Covid times, and it was even weirder up here. We crossed paths at the right time and here we are now on the other side of Covid with no epidemics, or pandemics, or any of that stuff. It’s just this great business that we get to run together.
Nick LoPresti:
Right, exactly. So, you and I met. You were a brand new financial advisor. I’m not even sure you had graduated from college yet, but you were licensed prior to graduating college.
Conor Delaney:
Yup. In between freshman and sophomore year of college is when I started the studying and the training track to go ahead and become an advisor. So, I was closer to graduating high school than I was graduating college.
Nick LoPresti:
I wasn’t at that point, but that’s okay. So you were out there doing your thing as an advisor. You were finding new clients. You found a business partner, and then you get into this phase where you start Good Life. Then one day, somebody calls you a CEO. What’s that like? Suddenly you’re anointed CEO. What’s that like?
Conor Delaney:
I like to call it drawing the short straw with my partner and I. Again, I think there’s a tremendous amount of responsibility that goes into any perception of leadership. I think on day one, you have to grow into that. You have certain innate characteristics, and those come out. You also, it’s something that takes a little bit of time, and business maturity, and such.
At the time, I think when we started Good Life, I would’ve been 25, 26 years old. It’s one of those things where if I would’ve known then what I knew now, I probably wouldn’t have been running as fearlessly towards the wall that I was because somebody may have said, “Hey, it’s going to hurt. This is going to take some time. There’s going to be tremendous amount of challenges.”
At that time, especially not knowing what it was going to take to create this independent business model, I was just bringing a tremendous amount of energy and excitement to it. I think that that was the tailwind that got us through those early days when we were still trying to figure it out.
Nick LoPresti:
You talk about your journey from advisor to business owner, and what some of the gaps were in your skills maybe in services that were available to you. That’s what led you to build some of the services and value proposition around Good Life, which is we can help you move from financial advisor to independent business owner, because it’s a different thing.
Conor Delaney:
Totally different. I think the one thing that we get the greatest, there’s a lot of things that we get a lot of kicks out of around here. I think for me, the coolest thing is taking a financial advisor that has developed and created this great business for him or herself, and walking them through this journey that they are wearing almost a completely different hat.
They’re no longer just the financial strategist, the financial planner, the financial advisor, but now they’re also the one that gets to be that contributor a little bit differently and probably a little bit bigger in that community. They’re hiring staff, or they’re hosting events. It’s all of a sudden, it’s their brand instead of the brand of the big wire houses behind them. I get a kick out of that.
I love developing business owners that they’re not just financial advisors working for somebody else, that they’re building a legacy for their family. That one day, their kids may even be able to tap into and be that next generation of financial planning for the clients, the community that they serve.
Nick LoPresti:
That business that you’re helping them create really for most advisors becomes their largest asset?
Conor Delaney:
That’s right. I don’t even think a lot of them know that when they get into this. I certainly did. You were on the same side of the table. I was in terms of us always being told, “Hey, the grass isn’t greener on the other side. You got this great opportunity here at wherever you’re at.” That way of thinking is probably in many ways sort of controlling mechanism so that you don’t figure out that, “Hey, you’re really sitting on a multimillion dollar asset.”
I was talking to somebody today. We have created hundreds of millions of dollars of net worth for financial advisors around the country. That’s awesome because it’s transforming their family. It’s transforming their community, and it’s given people that oftentimes have walked around many times being told like, “Hey, you’re not good enough. You’re not the corner office guy. You’re the next to the corner office guy. You’re somewhere down the hallway.”
When you empower them and you remind them that they are elite. They are in that top 5% of people that actually made it through that five-year time period, that 10-year time period. You see this, their whole energy level changes. The burden is off their back. With that oftentimes, comes the ability to really push and thrive, by creating not just independent financial advisors but business owners in the communities that they’re serving. We’re seeing that ripple effect change families, change communities, change generations. That’s probably one of the most exciting parts of the business.
Nick LoPresti:
Absolutely. So if you rewind the clock three years ago, you and I come together. When I got to Good Life, it’s a very different Good Life today than it was then just three years ago. The company looks and feels a whole lot different. What would you say the biggest change over the last three years has been?
Conor Delaney:
I would say probably awareness, maybe awareness from the top down. What I mean by that is for the first 10 years, we were trying to figure out if we had something that was going to be the disruption that we hoped it would be. So can we take advisors through a process where they leave behind the comfort, if you want to call it that of the lower payouts? All the staff has done for you, and you can run and thrive and operate in this particular ecosystem. Do we have something over here that’s different, and unique, and cool? The first five or 10 years, we figured out the answer to that was yes.
Then after that, the question becomes why? What are we doing with it? So if we can build a great business that creates all this commerce in these local communities around the country, and in doing that it creates a pathway for advisors to do nothing different than what they did before, that’s not going to be something that is going to be as attractive as understanding that we sit in a business that can help advisors to be better mothers and fathers that can live longer, healthier lives. That can process their decision tree differently by utilizing our systems and services and being empowered in this independent space.
I think when you put that formula together, our next chapter is really pulling out the best out of our advisors and taking ownership of that. I think that’s one of the biggest changes over the last couple of years that you see, a lot of maturity within the organization.
Nick LoPresti:
Is that because I’m older?
Conor Delaney:
Yeah, of course. You could bring that average up a little bit.
Nick LoPresti:
Take that average age up a little bit. I know we did some math on some of the statistics around your leadership team and I was definitely drawing the average age-
Conor Delaney:
Appreciate that.
Nick LoPresti:
… a little bit. So, glad to do my part. When you think back, so again now you’re anointed this title CEO, chief executive officer. You said, “Hey, kind of got the short straw on that one,” if I’d have known. What’s been the most difficult lesson you’ve had to learn since creating your own firm?
Conor Delaney:
I would say there’s two things. One is there’s a lot more politicking, if that’s the right word, that you have to get good at. Which is a challenge for me because as you know, I like to be extremely transparent and authentic with how I govern my business, my personal life, the discipline that I try to bring to those different elements.
When you’re leading people, there’s a different standard. You have to meet that standard or that standard will be you. So figuring out how to navigate through that, so that there’s implications. If you’re trying to negotiate a contract with somebody, and it’s just you that is affected, you might be more crass, or look at it differently, or be more authoritative.
When there’s hundreds or thousands of people associated with the decision tree that you’re making, you got to figure out how to nuance and navigate differently because the ripple effect isn’t just that somebody might say that you took the wrong approach or that you could have done things differently. There’s a downward effect if you don’t do it the right way. So, I’ve had to take a lot of time and grow into that element of it.
The other thing is that, and I heard this a lot growing up and it never made sense but it certainly does now, is the air is definitely thinner at the top. Just the amount of stuff that finds its way to you is such that at the end of the day, there’s always stuff left over. There’s always more work that can be done and prospectively, there’s not a whole lot of people. There might be a hundred folks that are on a client service team, but there’s only one person that has the chief executive officer title.
So, you don’t have that collaboration the way that you used to when you were an advisor with 50 other people because you could go through the ebbs and flows differently than you can when you’re the only person wearing that title in the organization.
Nick LoPresti:
As a chief executive officer, when you started, it’s you and a few others. It’s like driving a jet ski, you’re all over the place. Now you’ve built this cruise ship, where you’ve got 73 employees on the ship. You’ve got a few hundred licensed individuals on the ship out there in the field doing work with clients. As the captain of that ship, what keeps you up at night?
Conor Delaney:
I think the one thing that keeps me up the most at night is the responsibility that we have to, which is no different than when I was an advisor, to ultimately that end client. That the mom and dad that are struggling to save money for college or invest for their retirement, or the folks that are going to retire and the right strategy for them to retire. So when you look at who ultimately do we all aim to serve as advisors and then roll that back up, it’s like, “Okay, well if the goal is to make sure that they get the best experience, and the best access, and the best results, then we have to create the right vehicle for the advisor.”
The advisor who basically is Good Life’s end client so to speak, has to have an experience that gives them the peace of mind that they can rest at night knowing that their business is safe. Their clients are safe, et cetera, safe as they can be with the controls that we control. All of that happens well, if we take care of our employees. When we take care of our people, then with that, you get better performance, more loyalty ability for them to adapt and maneuver differently as trials or tribulations may have in the business.
So, it’s a hard question to ask because if any one of those three channels aren’t going well, the end client, the advisor, or the employees, then nothing’s going well. So all three of those silos are really the things that keep me up at night because the organization cares so much about where this thing started, which was with those clients that were looking to me, to us, our advisors, to develop a strategic plan for them that was going to help them get from point A to point B.
Nick LoPresti:
It makes sense. See, I thought when I asked what keeps you up at night, it’d be one of your five children.
Conor Delaney:
A lot. There’s a lot of kids.
Nick LoPresti:
More often.
Conor Delaney:
So the good news is we don’t sleep anyway, so there’s always more time to think.
Nick LoPresti:
Yes. That’s a full-time job right there just getting through the night. So when you think about our business, financial services working with advisors, what part of the business are you most passionate about? What do you feel really passionate that’s where you want to focus your energies and talents?
Conor Delaney:
I think the two, I can’t say one. I’d say two. It really is who we stand for as an organization. My personal passion will always be to make sure that we’re an organization that can serve the needs of any client, whether they are a new client and just starting out on their investment journey, or they have $50 million to invest. I don’t care, as long as they’re willing to participate in the financial planning process. Always been big for me, I always say that if somebody would’ve given that type of attention to my dad and my mom, then I wouldn’t have had to go through the hardships that I did when I started the process of losing my parents when I was a teenager.
The second element of that is just becoming aware, as I said earlier, of what the opportunity is to make a difference in our advisors’ lives. So we know that a greater portion of American families today are divorced, more than half have diabetes, more than half have poor relationships with their children, more than half. In our business specifically, that number is even higher. So the question is, well, what are the stats? We now know that. The question is what are we going to do about it?
So where my passion is really moving towards, and I think all these things that have happened in my life has aligned us to get to this point now with this business and with me, where we can actually serve as a place of respite for financial advisors that have gotten it, and are tired of living and working in a place that doesn’t get it, and/or for advisors that want to get it. That don’t want to be a part of those statistics and that can look at Good Life and say, “That’s a place of hope.”
So if we can do those two things well, serve the end client in a way that honors them. Then serve the advisors, in a way that allows them to be really, really cool different makers in their community, then we’re going to be all right. What I have found happening is advisors are saying, “Hey, what’s the difference in Good Life, or what’s the difference in Conor Delaney?” That gives us the ability to tell a story that gets them excited about jumping on board.
It’s not about the payout. It’s not about the transition’s assistance. It’s not about all those other things that the industry uses as a majority of the vernacular. It’s can we help this advisor become a better version of him or herself? When we can show that as a body of work, I think that that helps the advisor gain confidence that this is a good place for them to be. So whether it’s rolling out this White Label fitness and nutrition app for our advisors, or it’s coming up with even doing the one-on-one coaching that I’ve done over the last couple of years with folks that have sought it out, that’s where I get a lot of satisfaction of it.
It’s just being a firm that shows on a day-to-day basis that we truly care about the advisors. Not about their money, not about their payout, not about how much revenue they’re generating, that’ll all solve itself. If we can help make a healthier life and lifestyle for our people, then the rest of the stuff source itself out.
Nick LoPresti:
Would you say that if an advisor came to Good Life, got on the Good Life cruise ship, brought their business and the cruise ship pulled into the port where they were going to get off. Their business looked exactly the same, but they were healthier, in better shape, leading a better life, their version of the Good Life, is that success? Would you consider that successful?
Conor Delaney:
Absolutely.
Nick LoPresti:
Their business stayed the same?
Conor Delaney:
Yeah, absolutely. Again, I think it’s hard for that to happen because the advisor’s going to be healthier. Their blood’s moving, circulating faster. They’re thinking more clearly. So if you can start, they’re not worried about. We have helped to empower them with the tools that going home is a joy and not a disruption.
When you start to put together the whole advisor, their business isn’t going to stay the same. It’s going to grow because they’re going to be attracting the right type of client, and more clients in general. Even if they say, “I’m not open for business,” it’s going to happen because they’re going to start to gain that it factor.
Nick LoPresti:
The X factor. Talk about that today, absolutely.
Nick LoPresti:
What do you see as the next frontier that you, Good Life, wants to create for advisors to tap into?
Conor Delaney:
It starts with their clients. The answer to the question is based around where’s the financial advisor going? The idea of the financial advisor in the year 2000 being somebody that had access to product or knowledge that would allow the client to get something that the guy down the street couldn’t get, that’s gone. My daughter has an account for Greenlight that she’s buying and selling stocks or fractional stocks, and she’s 12. I don’t exactly know how that works, but she’s got it nonetheless.
So in other words, the access to product isn’t the value proposition anymore. The value proposition I think will always stay in two things. The first thing is the advisor has to be able to emotionally connect with the client. There’s no access to product that’s going to replace the ability for the advisor to make that emotional connection. Then second, it’s the advisor that’s willing to position himself in the center of the client’s life and lifestyle, and not just at the center of the client’s exiting out of the product grocery store so to speak, where they are willing to engage in all of the things that the client has going on.
Again, I think if you go back to where that successful advisor is going to come from, the client is going to take more time on a go forward basis, making sure the person’s sitting across the table from them has the discipline for himself or herself to manage their most treasured assets. There’s two other things I think that come into play. One is our industry hasn’t even really fully flushed out the first generation of defined contribution versus defined benefit. When that money gets unlocked over the next 10 years that are inside the 401Ks right now, the opportunity for financial advisors is through the ceiling.
The second is that advisors in general haven’t necessarily seen a full flush out of the advisors that are exiting the business, being replaced by advisors that are entering the business. So again, that creates a massive opportunity for the advisors that are looking to grow, to tap in a way that maybe they’re not contemplating. So I think when you look at where the business is going, it’s going to be the humble advisor that wants to grow and is willing to put the infrastructure in place around him or her. That will be the one that finds the most success I think, going forward.
Nick LoPresti:
Well, you mentioned something there that we have been working on and trying to make a focus. What do you do in an industry where the average age is high, and there’s not a lot of new blood coming into the financial services space? You’ve got a couple of interns around here. I had a conversation with one of them today, very interesting to hear his perspective on our industry. He’s a sophomore in college right now and trying to figure out where he wants to take his career path. What do you do to solve that issue that the industry is facing, which is we’ve got an aging population of advisors and no one to replace that?
Conor Delaney:
Well, it’s hard. The reason I think is, the biggest challenge is that, and we see even with advisors who has a kid in their household that doesn’t want to get into the business. Well, I think a lot of times the perspective is that, “Well, this is a job that is either going to go away, or it’s a job that requires, it’s too hard.” I think that the challenge is people are coming out of school and saying, “I don’t even know that I can get through these tests. The tests have not gotten easier over the last 15, 20 years. They’ve gotten harder.” So, you do have a problem where you have inherently more sellers than you have buyers.
I think if you can build a scalable business and if you can tap into the right partners for that, we’ve heard the vernacular capital partners or equity partners later. How about we find a growth partner? Somebody that’s going to help be your partner, not just in getting you a check. You can go to a bank or credit union and get a check, but somebody that’s going to help you put the structure around you to grow an enterprise.
That enterprise or focus of the enterprise might be you, Mr. Advisor, but that there’s people on your bench that are going to help service the heck out of those clients. That gives you scale, allows you to take in more clients, and build a business model that looks differently today for most advisors, looks differently five years from now for most advisors than it does today. It’s really the only way I think that you can get it.
Again, look at the opportunity. More advisors leaving than are coming in, one. More clients needing services that have ever needed services before, two. Three, more money being unlocked out of 401Ks than ever before as well. When you put those three things up as an advisor, I would be very, very confident that you have good job security if you’re good at what you do. I just think it is a formula that the firm that solves it, that spends enough time in that sandbox coming up with a solution that addresses this is going to be a firm that’ll live for a long time.
Nick LoPresti:
Do you see yourself putting any resources behind that initiative and saying, “I think we can be a part of that solution long term?”
Conor Delaney:
Of course. I think firms have also gotten smarter, or at least the ones that will exist five years from now are the ones that have been able to adapt. Where we are not just a place to aggregate for the purpose of getting higher payouts from custodians, broker dealers. We’re also not a place that is just doing compliance anymore. We have to think about ourselves as thought leaders, as a tech company to a certain extent, as a marketing company to a certain extent, so that we can live in those different sandboxes and create the right experiences, and try and test the right things to be able to get them to the advisors in a way that they’ll look at organizations like Good Life and hopefully not just say, “Yup, that’s our compliance shop.”
If we’re just your compliance shop, then we have failed you, or you have failed us, or some combination thereof. These need to be think tanks that are tapping into advisors for their thoughts and perspectives, and open-minded enough to take them and do something with them. Then to create the right type of calibration that you’re manifesting things in a think tank, in a sandbox, and you’re pulling them through to something that changes the experience for the advisor.
Nick LoPresti:
Absolutely. Anything else that you want to cover off while we’re together today?
Conor Delaney:
No, but I’ll tell you. This is a little bit weird because I’m usually the one that’s asking questions.
Nick LoPresti:
So you want to ask any questions?
Conor Delaney:
I do. What’s been the most gratifying part of your experience over the course of your career, which let’s just say it’s a little bit longer than mine? I won’t say how long.
Nick LoPresti:
It’s been a minute.
Conor Delaney:
Then secondarily, what’s been your most gratifying experience in the last three years?
Nick LoPresti:
Industry-wide the experience, it’s the same answer for both periods of time. I’ve always been really passionate about helping other people develop, and I love that. I think some of the mistakes that we’ve made too together have actually been good. We’ve done some things where we dance a little close to the sun sometimes. Sometimes we get burned. Sometimes we prevent ourselves from getting burned just at the last moment, but I think those are my favorites.
Conor Delaney:
Yeah, I think. Well, we talked about that today. The idea that failure is an option. It’s not the option that you want, but sometimes failure happens, right?
Nick LoPresti:
That’s right.
Conor Delaney:
Unlike what Eminem once famously said about success being his only option. I’ll leave those words on another podcast too, but it is. Sometimes you have to go with that blind faith of, “I know, I just intuitively know that this is going to work out.” Sometimes it doesn’t look exactly the way that you think it’s going to at the end, that as you thought it was going to in the beginning, or sometimes that journey looks a little bit different but the end outcome is still there. It’s cool to contemplate an idea where you don’t have to be perfect and yet you can still bear fruit.
Nick LoPresti:
Right. I think that’s one of the things that helped you and I align a few years ago, which is we both sense that there’s something else here. There’s something bigger going on here. I’m not sure that either one of us knows exactly what it is, but we know we’re on to something that’s unique, different, that’s going to help a lot of people do a lot of great things. Not just financially, but think about going out and helping others in their community and doing that goodwill. That is a big part of the DNA of Good Life. It’s a big part of my DNA as well. You know there’s something bigger.
We haven’t necessarily tapped into it just yet, but we’re getting pretty close. I think about the people that we’ve been able to surround you with. You’re great at what you’re great at, but now you’ve got some people. Now you’ve got people that have a lot of experience. That have maybe the acumen to go out into the marketplace and help move this message forward in a big way. You’ve done some things around the marketing. You’ve done some things around the chief revenue officer. You’ve done some things around a chief financial officer, all of whom had more experience in that space than either you or I certainly have had. So, you got those specialists together.
I look at the team now that we’re surrounded with and I go, “This team can move mountains.” That’s my belief. That could be industry changing. I think Good Life will be that firm that changes a lot of things in the industry.
Conor Delaney:
That’s right. I think there’s a quote that I’ve shared with you a hundred times, but it’s Ralph Waldo Emerson. He talks about the definition of success. “To leave the world a better place than it was when you got there. Put a smile on the face of a kid, earn the respect of honest critics, and to know that one life breathed easier because you’ve lived.”
If we have that as a core thing that we’re aiming at every day, some days we do it better than others. If we can get that right more than we get it wrong, then we know that we’re going to fulfill what Emerson was talking there.
Nick LoPresti:
Agreed.
Conor Delaney:
Good stuff, man. Well, thank you for jumping on and spending some time together. This is fun. We’ll have to do it again sometime.
Nick LoPresti:
I think we should do it on a regular basis.
Conor Delaney:
Let’s do it.
Nick LoPresti:
We can put these on, on Saturday mornings, see what happens.
Conor Delaney:
Oh boy, I don’t know about that. We have to put the little E next to that.
Nick LoPresti:
Oh yeah, the little explicit.
Conor Delaney:
All right. Thanks, man. Thank you.
Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA/SIPC. Investment advice offered through Good Life Advisors LLC, a registered investment advisor. Good Life Advisors LLC and Good Life Financial advisors are separate entities from LPL Financial. The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only, and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. To determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you, consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision.
Disclaimer
The opinions voiced in this podcast are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual to determine which strategies or investments may be suitable for you. Consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making a decision. The economic forecast set forth may not develop as predicted, and there can be no guarantee that the strategies promoted will be successful. All performance referenced as historical and is no guarantee of future results. All indices are unmanaged and may not be invested into directly.