Trip to the Mothership
I recently traveled to St. Petersburg, FL for my first in-person RJ Executive Council meeting since early February 2020. Our council has been meeting mostly virtually for our two year term, so it was refreshing to be together once again. The following week I attended the RJ Fall Development Conference (FDC) in Orlando, FL. The annual conference (Summer Development Conference or SDC) is usually held in summer but was pushed back to the fall this year so it too could be held in person. Nowhere does the culture of Raymond James shine brighter than at SDC/FDC and this year was no exception. It was a fabulous week between the two meetings and I wanted to share some of what I experienced.
Executive Council Meeting
As my Executive Council term winds down (one more quarter to go), I take great pride in what our group has achieved during a very challenging two years. The council exists as both a “think tank” for ideas that would improve the firm as well as a “feedback committee/advisory board” that allows top management to see what we advisors on the front lines feel about potential decisions and policies they are considering. It is made up of three advisors like me, three branch managers (who also provide financial advisory services) and two regional directors (they are not advisors but oversee a number of branches).
Dealing with COVID and how the firm responded to it was an eye-opening experience. The closest comparison that I had to draw from was how my previous firm responded to the financial crisis in 2008. I was not privy to the kind of information then that I am now, but I can only imagine what it was like for those leadership teams to experience…I only know how maddening it was to live through as a financial advisor and firm associate. The differences are quite dramatic and it reaffirms the very solid decision I made back in January of 2009 when I moved to Raymond James. Instead of wondering about the fate of my firm every weekend and the fate of those staff in the branches, as well as home office associates who all supported me, we were assured from the beginning of the pandemic that in the near-term, nobody was going to lose their job at Raymond James—contingencies were being put in place for everyone to work from home and the main priority for top management was that all of us were healthy and safe. Dealing with the “return to office” situations which branches all over the country, as well as home office associates, are navigating has proven challenging as different states have put in various mandates regarding vaccination and mask-wearing. The RJ response has been very thoughtful, leaving the ultimate choices to advisors and associates while also putting in strict protocols and testing to keep everyone safe. I am proud of the way our council provided input to these very difficult decisions. Overall, my time on the council has been a wonderful experience which provided great insight into how the firm is run.
Fall Development Conference
I am an avid attender of the annual SDC and having a virtual one last year was nowhere close to the same experience. When the firm announced that we were pushing SDC back to the fall and creating FDC, I cleared my calendar to be sure I could attend. I have spoken about and written about the culture of Raymond James many times since 2009…it is absolutely the premier alternative to Wall Street and the things that I experienced at FDC enhanced all of those “warm and fuzzy” feelings that make me proud of where we have built our Weiss Wealth Strategies practice. I heard from top market strategists like Jeremy Siegel (the MIT graduate and Wharton School of Finance professor who wrote the famous book Stocks for the Long Run now in its sixth edition), Federated’s Chief Equity Market Strategist, Phil Orlando plus RJ’s own Chief Investment Officer, Larry Adam—we have not shared much of Larry Adam’s work with you but will be doing so more in the future. Larry has a terrific gift of being able to talk about complex market matters in very simple terms. Many of his columns and videos are available on the RESOURCES/COMMENTARY AND INSIGHTS tab of our website. Over the years, a lot of you have asked my team and me where we get our research and market opinions; it is through access to a lot of bright minds at meetings like this where we get to know who we like and who resonates with us. We take a little sampling of the best and brightest strategists and analysts we know and make it our own. SDC/FDC gives us great access to really smart people.
There are also many “practice management” workshops at the conference which I attended. This is where top advisors share their best practices. I have participated as a panelist in the past and I have “sampled” many of the best ideas of my peers which we have incorporated into our WWS practice over time. This is another example of the comradery and fellowship that RJ advisors feel with one another—none of us have a monopoly on good ideas and we all work in different markets that allow us to help each other without direct competition. If you like anything that we are currently doing from a process standpoint, it is a good bet that it is something I picked up at SDC/FDC.
One of my favorite parts of SDC/FDC is the Service 1st Breakfast. This is usually held near the last day and it is like nothing I experienced before joining RJ. It is held in a large hotel ballroom with tables of advisors throughout and a table of ten department heads and firm leaders at the front of the room on a small stage. Near the stage you can always find top brass of the firm (Chairman Emeritus, Chairman/CEO, various presidents of the various RJ channels, etc.) all attentively taking notes. There is an open microphone and any advisor who wants to voice an issue has the forum to do so. This goes on for an hour or so or until every last question/issue has been asked. To see the way the firm’s leadership thoughtfully responds to the comments and suggestions of advisors is heartwarming. They truly listen to the rank-and-file employees. I approached Tash Elwyn, President of RJA (our channel), who I have gotten to know over the years and even more so over the last two on the Executive Council, and told him, “This is the best thing we do. I never experienced anything like this in 16 years at my previous firm.” He smiled and replied, “This is how we get better.”
Overall, it was an amazing trip and time very well spent. I often said during the heart of the pandemic, “NORMAL is just a setting on the dryer.” But it was fun to feel somewhat “normal” again and be with friends and colleagues whose company and insight I thoroughly enjoy and value. There is truly no better place for Weiss Wealth Strategies to be than at Raymond James.
–Gary Weiss, December 2021
