How This Bank Rep Took the Leap to Independence

That was instrumental in helping me with issues like: Who do you use for 401(k) work? Who do you use for payroll? How does this work and that work? She was a huge help.

My partner Collin and I … are happy to pay that forward. If any other advisor is looking to transition and wants to pick my brain, we’re happy to do so and to help Commonwealth in any way that we can. Jess was a huge help to us.

I remember asking her, “Everything about running a business seems daunting, right?” And she said, ‘It’s like before you have a baby. You don’t know how people do it. Then when you have the baby, it just all happens.”

Shortly after we signed our agreement with Commonwealth, we went up to visit the home office [in Waltham, Massachusetts]. We went through transition training, met with CEO Wayne Bloom, and we all had dinner together, along with his wife. This was over the weekend before Thanksgiving — the home-office staff members were having to come in to see us, and I felt bad.

Can you tell us a bit more about your official move? 

The day we resigned from Frost Bank — the morning of Feb. 29 at 7:30 in the morning. We were under legal counsel and got advice on how to resign and to do the transition. An attorney wrote our resignation letters and told us exactly how to do it. The transition team helped us, too, of course.

We worked at the Frost Bank right there across the highway for our new office. After we left the bank, we drove around the corner, sat here and within less than an hour, our licenses had been transferred. We were OK to open Kin Wealth. Our website went live immediately, and so did our emails.

It was a day I will never forget in my life. It was so stressful. Our [former Frost Bank] bosses called, and they were so gracious and wonderful with well wishes.

After those phone calls happened, I felt much better and the day proceeded to get a lot better. But until that moment in time, I was very stressed. My Fitbit was like, “You’ve exercised for two hours.” I was sitting here and my heart was racing. But, it’s been a very amicable split.

How did you reach out to clients, and which ones did you reach out to?

Of course, we couldn’t take any information on them, so we had to “White Page” everybody. We just looked them up on Whitepages. We had to buy a subscription. And you can get emails, phone numbers, all of that.

We were very selective on the clients that we wanted to reach out to. We knew who we wanted to continue to have a relationship with, and so we reached out to them and let them know about the transition.

We got all kinds of reactions. And to immediately follow up, we had to send them all of the disclosures. Commonwealth helped us through the regulatory process, navigating all these steps.

We had about 1,300 clients at Frost Bank. Now, we are aiming to settle at around 300 households and $300 million in assets. This is where we’re very comfortable — until we start adding additional staff. Our book of business at Frost was roughly double that right before we moved.

In the banking environment, there’s a lot of folks opening accounts to get higher-yielding money market funds or CDs — things of that nature that just really aren’t fitting into the overall financial planning mold that we want to have with clients. In the bank environment, it also can be transactional, with folks coming in on April 15 to open an IRA and fund it. That’s why the book of business was so large.

But we really wanted to select the clients that appreciated the Kin Wealth process. Even in that transactional environment, we did provide a very high level of service in a relationship approach. We wanted to be in an environment where we could do that even more.

What’s next?

We want to continue to grow with licensed staff and advisors.

Succession planning was part of why we transitioned. Collin works a lot with the second generation of the clients that I’ve worked with for the last 24 years — their adult children — which is great.

Eventually, I plan to retire. Looking out 12 years to when I would slowly step back out of the business, Collin — who’s worked with me since 2019 — would take over. I’ve been doing this a long time. I love what I do, but I also would like to go scuba diving.