We talked with Shaun about:
- The challenges operational, back office, and other non-advisory roles face at RIAs, often working and navigating challenges alone
- How the High Impact Financial Operations Network (HIFON) offers a supportive community for operational leaders to solve problems, connect, and help others succeed
- HIFON’s journey from a virtual study group to a network of hundreds of RIA professionals providing access to valuable resources and opportunities
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About Shaun Kapusinski:
Shaun Kapusinski is the senior director of technology at Sequoia Financial Group and founder of HIFON: The High Impact Financial Operations Network. Experiencing rapid growth at his firm, Shaun experienced a common challenge among operational leaders at RIA firms — feeling isolated, untrained, and unsure. Searching for a space similar to the connections he enjoyed at industry conferences, he started a virtual study group with a handful of contacts. Fourteen years later, HIFON has evolved into a more prominent community dedicated to empowering hundreds of professionals and advancing the RIA industry. Open to firms of all sizes and locations, firm memberships include access to valuable feedback and expertise, an active discussion board, and a resource library of shared templates and documents. The virtual hub continues to grow, offering connection and collaboration across the RIA space.
Full Audio Transcript:
00:00:00 - 00:07:08
Lauren Hong
All right, Shaun, thanks so much for joining us this morning.
00:07:11 - 00:08:21
Shaun Kapusinski
Absolutely happy to join you.
00:08:28 - 00:24:27
Lauren Hong
Glad to have you here today. For those of you who don't know, I'm going to hand the mic over to you here to share a little bit about your background — you are someone to really know in this space. You are so well connected and you've also created an incredible organization we're going to talk more about today that’s really making an impact for operational leaders in the RIA space..
00:25:09 - 00:44:29
Lauren Hong
And what I love about it is it comes from such a genuine place of you wanting to make a difference. And you've done so much of that. And also just a congratulations to you after Insider Information gave you an award last year — I feel like one of many awards you've received.
00:45:00 - 01:01:19
Lauren Hong
So, anyway, I don't want to steal your thunder so I’ll hand it over to you to share a little bit more about your background. And about your organization that I think you said was founded in 2010. Am I remembering that right? So it's been around for a little while but I'll pass it over to you.
01:01:21 - 01:27:12
Shaun Kapusinski
Yeah. No problem. My 22 years in the industry started by being a college student who didn't know what he wanted to do other than go to New York City. And I ended up studying marketing, and I actually could not find a job in marketing. And so I ended up with an insurance company and did that in New York City, tried to sell insurance, which was very challenging for me.
01:27:14 - 01:50:13
Shaun Kapusinski
I only spent a little over a year there, and when I ended up back in Ohio, the options were either go back into marketing, some kind of entry-level position, or use that year of experience in this quote unquote financial services industry to go a little bit further. And that's what happened. I started with an RIA firm that I continue to be with to this day, which is wonderful.
01:51:00 - 02:20:23
Shaun Kapusinski
I’ve grown a ton and not only my own role but the firm has grown and has given me just so many opportunities to explore what's possible in this industry. So always having been on the operations side for me in a small firm in those early days, single-digit headcount, really was a kind of exploration of, all right, how do you learn the operations side and how do you develop it within an RIA and so over those first few years, it was just challenging because you kind of felt like you were alone.
02:20:23 - 02:41:25
Shaun Kapusinski
You were figuring this out. You didn't have a lot of resources to go to or places to pull information from compared to, let's say, what there is today. So within a few years, I had been able to go to a few events and really kind of fell in love with that concept of, oh, there are other people out here who are in a similar role doing a similar job and facing similar challenges — understanding the issue I was facing.
02:41:25 - 03:03:21
Shaun Kapusinski
And so two or three years of doing that kind of led me to a different feeling, which was leaving these events and being a little bit flustered with, do I really have to wait another year to come back to the same event to have these great roundtable type conversations where you rub shoulders with people who are in this type of a role?
03:04:05 - 03:29:17
Shaun Kapusinski
And so that's really what kind of led to me thinking about how do I interact with these ops folks. It seemed like every RIA had somebody who was responsible for the back office, for the things that were non-advisor, non-planning, non-investments, and wanting to spend more time with these people. I had kind of taken a page from the playbook of one of our advisors who was in a study group and I thought, oh well that's great.
03:29:17 - 03:55:20
Shaun Kapusinski
I'll just join one of the industry study groups that is focused on operations, because I'm sure that's where all these people hang out all the time, right? And it seemed like a good idea. Today it probably sounds fairly common but at the time I couldn't find anything. I was scouring the internet, I was talking to anybody and everybody I knew in the industry, asking do you know if there is an ops-focused study group and just kept coming up short.
03:55:22 - 04:11:25
Shaun Kapusinski
So I'm sure I wasn't the first one to hit this fork in the road. But at the time, I maybe was one of the first to say, well, I'm going to start the group. And so I did reach out to a handful of those folks I had traded business cards with in those meetings over those couple of years.
04:11:27 - 04:29:29
Shaun Kapusinski
And maybe once in a while, you would reach out to them and ask a question, right? It's a one-off question. It's just one person at a time. So it wasn't really efficient. Maybe to get a broad swath, like if you're looking for a review of a company or a document to get started, it's just nicer to have resources where you can get that from a bunch of people, right?
04:29:29 - 04:47:16
Shaun Kapusinski
If you can ask a bunch versus just one. And so that was the concept: if I've got five other people I can reach out to and talk to on a regular basis, maybe they'll be interested in having a regular conversation. So that study group concept was really the genesis of how the group began.
04:47:18 - 05:04:15
Lauren Hong
So tell me, though, because it's hard to be able to create community, right? Sometimes things can get going. There can be a lot of momentum but you've kept this going for some time. How did you initially get that, push it off the mountain to get it going and then keep the ball rolling?
05:04:15 - 05:09:19
Lauren Hong
I mean, that's much easier said than done.
05:09:21 - 05:28:02
Shaun Kapusinski
Yeah, I would say that. It wasn't like I had this perfect vision of what the group was going to become. It was more of an admittedly selfish motive. From the beginning. I knew I needed help, I knew I wanted to learn, I knew I was excited about connecting with folks in a way that I could reach out to them.
05:28:02 - 05:48:09
Shaun Kapusinski
They were my resources. And so for me, it was, hey, I'm going to keep this going. I'm going to be the one who's organizing it. I'm going to take action. I'm going to set up the calls. I'm going to make sure this happens. If you guys show up, then I felt like that was a win for me. And what I didn't anticipate as much, is that thankfully they felt the same way.
05:48:12 - 06:09:06
Shaun Kapusinski
And so by just keeping that going, keeping these regular monthly meetings going, people started telling me, hey, I've met others I've told about this group that's helped me. They've shown interest. Can we invite them to join us as well? Do you mind if this gets bigger? And I said, no, I feel the more the merrier.
06:09:09 - 06:30:23
Shaun Kapusinski
So it became just that. That was the community part where I didn't even think of it as a network or as a community. It just kind of became that because we were open to others joining us, and we were clear on what our purpose was and who could come to be in a role within an RIA was that minimum entry point.
06:30:26 - 06:50:06
Shaun Kapusinski
And it wasn't vendors, it wasn't custodians, it wasn't consultants, right? Those folks over time maybe had interest in joining but we've kept it to the membership. You're talking with your peers because those are the ones in a similar role — they know the things you're facing and can answer the question, here's how we do it in our firm.
06:50:11 - 07:06:06
Shaun Kapusinski
That's really what the original group was intended to do, is give you this peer-to-peer feedback. How do you guys do it? How do you deal with this problem? How do you solve this issue? So over time that snowballed. I don't know that I did anything other than I just kept having the meetings.
07:06:09 - 07:11:22
Shaun Kapusinski
The people asked for things like it and that seemed to work.
07:11:24 - 07:26:06
Lauren Hong
So not to get into the weeds but to get into the weeds. I'd love to hear a little bit more. How did you create that framework within that conversation to be able to help foster that? Was it somebody giving a presentation and there was feedback? Was it everyone would just come out of that kind of conversation?
07:27:00 - 07:30:07
Lauren Hong
How did you facilitate that?
07:30:09 - 07:46:02
Shaun Kapusinski
So I tried to mirror it like those conferences I went to and basically in a virtual format. So in 2010, the concept of a bunch of virtual meetings wasn't really a normal thing. So it was a little foreign, you could say to us but especially if you told someone, hey, have you been to a conference?
07:46:06 - 08:07:14
Shaun Kapusinski
Yes. Have you sat in a roundtable type session? Yes. Most of them said yes. There's usually a facilitator, which was essentially the role I was taking. And that facilitator basically goes around the room and asks people to introduce themselves, tell us a little bit about your firm and what you are facing today. To me, those were the best ones where they just said, what is it that is on your mind?
08:07:14 - 08:24:24
Shaun Kapusinski
What is bothering you, what has been challenging? What's hard for you right now? This group might be able to help you. You could apply this in any industry, right? You could take anybody's job and connect engineers. You could connect retail sales folks. I mean, you could do this really anywhere you want to. We happened to be in financial services.
08:24:24 - 08:42:07
Shaun Kapusinski
We have to be in financial planning firms. We have to be in RIAs. We narrowed it down and said, all right, if we get peers together and just facilitate that conversation. And that's how I ran it. And when the group got to maybe about 20, a little over 20 folks, I was on a call where it was kind of unwieldy.
08:42:07 - 09:03:03
Shaun Kapusinski
It was all over the place, right? You had people talking over each other, and it was those early days of understanding, how do you manage a group, a virtual group? We weren't even doing a video call. It was just a conference call. And it was kind of a mess. And so in a good way, that was a good experience where I felt like, okay, that call felt like a failure but it was a little bit of a springboard for me to say, I just need to break this up into a couple groups.
09:03:06 - 09:33:23
Shaun Kapusinski
And once I broke it up into groups as it grew, I knew I had to keep this in the single digits, just like a roundtable, right? If you had 25 people sitting at one big table and they all tried to talk, it could get challenging. But keeping it fairly small still to this day with hundreds of members, we still have small, single-digit communities on each call that make it very easy to interact with people on a one-to-one basis.
09:33:26 - 09:38:16
Lauren Hong
Oh my gosh. So I just want to swing back hundreds of members. You really had a pain point, right? It was something you tapped into. You've created this intentionally or unintentionally and unintentionally this community started to grow. So I know you have this focus group component but if you want to kind of call it that or if that's the internal word you use.
09:58:09 - 10:10:03
Lauren Hong
But I know there's other facets to it as well. Do you mind sharing a little bit more about that? Because I'm sure these sort of grew over time based on needs members had. So what does it look like today if we were to fast-forward.
10:10:05 - 10:29:05
Shaun Kapusinski
Yeah. So probably within the first couple years I realized there was way more interest than I had expected. And I got excited about giving back more than I initially thought. It became like, hey, this could be something bigger than I originally anticipated.
10:29:05 - 10:43:08
Shaun Kapusinski
I had to make a decision. Do I want to continue to run this or not? And pretty quickly it just became about, hey, I want everyone else to succeed. I've succeeded a ton from it. I'm going to benefit the most by talking to every new member who comes in. I still reach out and say, hey, I'd love to meet you, have a face-to-face.
10:43:15 - 11:03:22
Shaun Kapusinski
I may not be in your small group each month but you know I want you to know who I am. To me, it's a small organization because there's not a lot of other people other than me running it. So I have help but I want to make sure people know the intention from the beginning was to have this one-to-one peer community.
11:03:24 - 11:26:24
Shaun Kapusinski
These days it feels like I'm throwing a party of sorts. And I'm the host. And so I welcome people in, kind of show them around, so to speak, and then basically say, hey, go have a good time talking to these people. I think I've put you in the right room or I've at least created the room for you to be with your peers and some people love it right away and say, this is great.
11:26:24 - 11:49:20
Shaun Kapusinski
This is perfect. This is what I was looking for. And they can't imagine creating this on their own, which is fine, because I kind of point back and say, I couldn't imagine it either. I don't want to say it just happened but the way it evolved over the 14 years is as people asked for things, I just did my best to first tell them, honestly, it's just me.
11:49:20 - 12:04:26
Shaun Kapusinski
So if I can't do this, if this is beyond the capacity of what I'm doing on my nights and weekends, I'm going to let you know, I'm going to be straightforward. But then I also said, I'm going to do what I can to deliver on what you're asking for. So, a couple of those things would be extra calls.
12:04:28 - 12:30:12
Shaun Kapusinski
The normal calls are ops focused, so generally running a business, a lot of technology, a handful of things on compliance. There's marketing items. There are HR things. There are all kinds of topics we cover, pretty much everything outside of being an advisor, planning, and investments. We don't really touch that stuff. But we've had groups, smaller groups kind of pop up where people have said we’re really interested in compliance stuff.
12:30:12 - 12:50:23
Shaun Kapusinski
And so we started a separate compliance call. Marketing came up as well, even enough users around CRM; there's a group that focuses on Salesforce as a topic. So subgroups have been a new addition. We've added the vendors and the consultants, the custodians that have all jumped in and said, hey, we'd love to be connected.
12:50:26 - 13:16:16
Shaun Kapusinski
We've done that by having private webinars put on by those folks, such as yourself. I know you did one for us. We've done some different things that have basically gotten information people might be looking for into people's hands easier. So sharing documents or templates people have, we have a way that they can put those out there, post them to the group, and then everyone can access those.
13:17:01 - 13:43:00
Shaun Kapusinski
We collect firm data. So when somebody joins the group, they fill out a little survey. It basically puts that info into a spreadsheet. And there's access so that if you're looking for firms that might have a particular system and maybe have multi-locations and a certain number of users, you can whittle that down in this data sheet and go directly to those folks so it can help you with some of your searches.
13:43:00 - 14:02:19
Shaun Kapusinski
That to me has been one of those hidden gems. I've used them at my firm, and I try to encourage others to use them as well. So that's an example of a lot of the benefits people get by joining — they get access to these different components and they serve a different purpose depending on what somebody is looking for.
14:02:21 - 14:27:25
Lauren Hong
Oh my goodness, I love it. It's so fun to hear you talk about it too, just how it's naturally unfolded. And I also really appreciate that data component because it's very difficult to find apples to apples, especially within the community. You can google things, financial services, sort of baseline standards, but you really have to get that inside data and then that further look under the hood to really be able to unpack things, which sounds like you all have been doing.
14:27:25 - 14:51:11
Lauren Hong
So do you mind sharing a little bit more? You talked at the beginning about putting together who would show up for the group, operations leaders in the RIA space. Has it naturally over time been a certain size of firm or a certain pocket of the United States or those with common growth challenges?
14:51:11 - 14:59:01
Lauren Hong
Or maybe is it just kind of a smattering of different folks who just really need that community?
14:59:03 - 15:19:15
Shaun Kapusinski
Definitely the latter, for sure. I mean, I was curious about that myself. A couple of times I've taken everyone's location and mapped it out, and you basically just see a nice, almost equal setting of dots across the U.S. We've hit Alaska. We haven't hit Hawaii yet.
15:19:21 - 15:44:09
Shaun Kapusinski
We've actually had a few international firms join, which has surprised me. I usually have a conversation with them. And I think we're at three international firms right now. They basically do business in their country but operate in a similar fashion to an RIA. So I have a conversation with them saying, if you're using the same technology, if you're encountering the same challenges and issues, if you think this is valuable, then come join us and see how it goes.
15:44:09 - 16:02:16
Shaun Kapusinski
So it's probably not for everyone. Certainly we know some people even join and say, yeah, I don't know if I have time for this or if it's the way I like to solve problems or talk through things with others, and that's okay. There are other communities, there are other options these days.
16:03:02 - 16:24:20
Shaun Kapusinski
So I think that's a great thing — find what works for you. You know, there are tens of thousands of investment advisors out there; you could say that's the market of potentially who could be in a group like this. And the fact that we've got just shy of 300 firms that are interested in this type of community, I'm thrilled with that.
16:24:20 - 16:41:18
Shaun Kapusinski
I'm happy with that. Can it double? Probably. Absolutely. Maybe just putting out a message like this can help more people hear about it and see if it's something that would benefit them. But like I said earlier, the mission is I want to help people succeed in their roles. I want their firms to do well.
16:41:23 - 17:04:11
Shaun Kapusinski
I want the industry to do well. And so that's the purpose at this point, is putting something together that works. And I've even admitted to myself, if someday this is not valuable to people anymore, then it may not exist or it may look different in the future. Even the AI question, can you get these questions answered by just using AI these days?
17:04:13 - 17:23:25
Shaun Kapusinski
Right now, I think the answer is no, because from a scenario standpoint, I don't know that the reviews and the data it would pull from are necessarily out there. So, we're probably going to try to take some of the data we've collected and do something with that. But for right now, I do think it's still unique in terms of what it provides.
17:23:28 - 17:42:19
Lauren Hong
Yeah, absolutely. It's so fun to hear about. I did want to ask for those who are interested in joining, what is the baseline commitment? Is it a monthly meeting or a quarterly meeting? What would you be looking at to get the basic benefits?
17:42:25 - 17:45:19
Lauren Hong
What would that look like from a time investment?
17:45:21 - 18:03:25
Shaun Kapusinski
So I would say it's what they want it to be. So if you ask me what is the average user experience? Becoming a member has the benefits I talked about earlier, the biggest one being the monthly call. There's a monthly call. People have said, I'm sorry, I don't know that I can make it to every one.
18:03:29 - 18:24:17
Shaun Kapusinski
I say, that's okay. This is a group that's available to you. You're going to be invited. And if you're able to participate, certainly you will benefit more from that. You have a discussion board, a lot of activity on there. Kind of the same thing. If people have the capacity to maybe respond to others, that's how the discussion board works.
18:24:23 - 18:41:16
Shaun Kapusinski
I'm not the expert who’s answering every question. So it's the group. It's the peers who are actually the ones who are saying, well, here's how that's working for me, or here's how we're doing that in our firm. So from a commitment standpoint, it's almost how active do they want to be in the community. And we get some folks on one end of the spectrum.
18:41:16 - 18:54:24
Shaun Kapusinski
I've had people say this is insurance. I don't know if I'll ever use it but I know if there's a community there I need to ask a question to, I'll go to it. And then the other end of the spectrum, you've got people who on a weekly basis are helping answer questions. They're putting out some of their own.
18:54:26 - 19:15:08
Shaun Kapusinski
And that is, I think, phenomenal. It's really up to the user to depend on how much they want to use it. It's also a firm membership. So I always talk to people about this is not just for you; the ops person could be newer in their role or it could be the CFO and you do have plenty of people in between.
19:15:08 - 19:33:28
Shaun Kapusinski
So to answer your question from before, it's not a certain size, it's not a certain location, it's not certain technology. It's not even a certain role. It really comes down to almost the person. Does the person who hears about this say, yeah, I like that. I would benefit from that. I want to talk to people about this stuff.
19:33:28 - 19:40:15
Shaun Kapusinski
I want to have a group to ask questions to, and if they want to engage, it's really up to them for how much they would like to.
19:41:03 - 19:57:18
Lauren Hong
Oh my goodness, that's so valuable. And like I said when we started, love it. It also just came from a place of giving back and being genuine and solving a problem. And you can just see that through the narrative, as it's grown.
19:57:20 - 20:09:11
Lauren Hong
So if folks want to learn more, where would they go? And is there anything as we look ahead that they should sort of expect in this new year?.
20:09:14 - 20:31:09
Shaun Kapusinski
Sure. Well HIFON.org is our website and that's where you find out pretty much everything. Hopefully what I shared here today is on there. And it's easier to sometimes digest it when you can read through it. There's a little video, and we are working on a refresh of our website for 2025, so that should be coming out shortly and looking forward to that.
20:31:20 - 20:41:01
Shaun Kapusinski
Again, no major changes. So everything I described will still be there.
20:41:03 - 20:58:04
Lauren Hong
Oh my goodness, Shaun, thank you so much. Thank you for just giving back to the community on top of your day job. And everything you’re able to do to support people, and really leaning with that first — wanting to be able to add value. I just appreciate the work you do. And thank you again for your time today and for sharing.
20:58:05 - 20:59:22
Shaun Kapusinski
Thanks for having me, Lauren. I appreciate it.
20:59:24 - 21:04:13
Lauren Hong
Absolutely.
