We talked with Caleb about:
- The fluctuating talent market and the art of positioning job roles effectively
- A generational shift: Why is Gen Z seeking in-person opportunities?
- The importance of precise hiring strategies and how they lead to successful placements
About Caleb Brown:
Caleb Brown is the CEO and co-founder of New Planner Recruiting, LLC. He graduated from Texas Tech's financial planning program in the early 2000s after initially majoring in finance. Encouraged by his father to pursue business, Caleb discovered his passion for financial planning a few years into his studies and made a pivotal shift in his academic journey. Upon graduation, he returned to Dallas and secured a full-time financial planning role, where he worked for nearly six years. During this time, Caleb became actively involved with the Financial Planning Association (FPA) in Dallas. Witnessing the challenges faced by talented financial planners during a tough job market, he was driven to find ways to keep them in the profession. Caleb’s efforts through the FPA led to the creation of career day programs and internship opportunities, and eventually firms began seeking his expertise to hire the best candidates. His experience helped lay the foundation for New Planner Recruiting, which he founded with Michael Kitces. Today, Caleb continues to shape the future of financial planning by helping new planners enter the profession and connecting top talent with leading firms.
Featured Resources
- Caleb Brown on LinkedIn
- New Planner Recruiting, LLC on LinkedIn
- New Planner Recruiting website
- Angie Herbers
Enjoyed This? You’ll Also Love:
- How Women Can Break into Financial Services Careers and Why They Should
- How To Develop and Infuse Generosity Into Your Company Culture
- Unlocking the Power of Innovative Hiring for Employee Retention and Success
- Is Online Community Building Your Next Step? How This Financial Services Marketing Option Could Accelerate Your Goals Through Data, CRMs, and Social Listening
Full Audio Transcript:
Lauren (00:05):
Hi Caleb. Thank you for joining us.
Caleb (00:07):
Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Lauren (00:09):
Yes, and we get to go from one podcast show to another, so I know you've got a whole podcast. We'll get into that and the recruiting firm. But tell us, I'm going to hand it over to you. Share a little bit more if you don't mind about your background and working in this financial services world.
Caleb (00:29):
I graduated from the Texas Tech Financial Planning Program a long time ago before really anybody knew what was going on. And it was the early 2000s and I was trying to get an internship in financial planning in 2001 and trying to get a full-time job in 2002. And if you studied the investment markets, that's not really when they were handing out jobs, salaried jobs at fee-only firms where I didn't have a book of clients and really wasn't going to add much value and was asking for a salary. So it was a challenging time. But my father was an engineer. I knew I liked numbers and math but I just didn't want to do the engineering and he kind of just encouraged me to do something in business that was a good fit. I started out as a finance major at Texas Tech and absolutely hated it. I was just in there with thousands of people and they were gearing me up to create TPS reports for some global goliath bank or something, and fortunately I was able to stumble upon financial planning after a couple of years in school and changed my major and never looked back.
Lauren (01:39):
That's fantastic. So a little bit of adjusting course as you go along. I think we all do that, right? A little bit of exploration and hearing what you enjoy. How did you get to where you are today though owning your own company and being on the recruiting side of things?
Caleb (01:58):
Someone asked me this the other day. I was like, well, actually I think it was one of my high school buddies. If you would've asked me 22 years ago where I could never have come up with this, I never would've come up with this.
So I went back to the Dallas/Fort Worth area after graduation, I was able to finally convince someone to take a chance on me and it ended up working out for him and worked out for me. I was there almost six years but I started as a full-time financial planner and was really heavily involved in the Financial Planning Association (FPA) of Dallas/Fort Worth. I saw a lot of just job seekers having trouble. People weren't as lucky, as fortunate as I was, and frankly, they probably were a lot more analytical and better communicators with more gravitas and more polished and they couldn't find a job. So they ended up leaving the profession and I told myself, look, it’s great that I've got a place but we can't keep losing these people I went to school with who could be really good planners. And they went to become teachers and football coaches and bankers. I'm like, look, that's all great and that's fine but we need you in our profession. Sorry I'm a little selfish but we need you in our profession.
Lauren (03:11):
And keep you over in this neck of the woods over here.
Caleb (03:14):
Yep, that's right.
Lauren (03:15):
You were just seeing talent.
Caleb (03:16):
So I thought, hey, what can I do going forward through FPA or whatever other channel to try to retain these people? And up at that point, everything at FPA was geared toward your 55-year-old CFP® business owner, a baldheaded white guy.
Lauren (03:34):
Different clientele, different time in the growth of the RIA community-at-large too.
Caleb (03:39):
I was fortunate enough to get nominated for a board position, the career development directorship, and I got elected and there was actually some age discrimination I experienced back then too. And I said, look, we're going to focus on career changers and new college grads. That's what we're doing. If you don't like it, you'll find somebody else to do this. And there's not a lot of people lining up to be career development director. So they were like, okay, do whatever you want. And in it working out, we created some career day programs and internship programs and all this do-it-yourselfer stuff.
At the end of the day, I had these firms coming to me and saying, yeah, that's great but can you just tell me who to hire? You're talking to all these people and I don't know who the best fit is and who the best student is or what the best story is, and I don't know how much to pay these people — can you just do this for me? And I was doing that on a pro bono basis for a number of years while I was helping a sole practitioner build a financial planning firm. And then I found out in 2006 or so, Michael Kitces was doing that. We met at a next-gen conference and he was doing that in Washington, D.C. So we started laying the groundwork for an entry-level financial planning recruiting firm. Everybody's familiar with Robert Half and the big headhunters out there that want to place people who are making hundreds and hundreds, millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands and millions, and then the people who want to move books of business.
We knew that was a red ocean. We were looking for a blue ocean. So we're like, look, we're not coming with this recruiting firm to try to help those people — our focus is somebody who’s making between $50 and probably $150, $200,000 a year. So that's not an executive person, and they've got probably less than 10 years of experience and we're going to help them find jobs with salaried financial planning-focused firms where they're going to learn and they get to work on their existing clients and receive mentoring from a team, and they're not just thrown out there with a phone book.
Lauren (05:40):
Yep, yep. It's such a needed space too, because I think you see a lot of firms and they have their clients, they're doing a good job, they've got them there for a long time. So you want someone who you can help bring up as part of the culture, able to really offer that to them. And that's still your focus today. I mean, I know your whole podcast is focused on that. Tell me a little bit more. So it sounds like you not only identified the blue ocean but then tell me more about how it's stuck, right? So are you seeing a growing need for this still in this, for this audience, for placement?
Caleb (06:18):
Absolutely. I remember sitting around a conference table and Michael and I were just debating and it's kind of like, well, why hasn't anybody else done this before? It's like, well, because people, they just do it on their own. They just get somebody out of college or they find they're easier to find and it's like, how are we going to get someone to pay us to do this? And then it's like, wait a minute, isn't that exactly what they're asking their clients to do with them? Their clients can do the financial planning on their own if they want to but they're going to outsource it. And frankly, the client side is never empty, because I have two pipelines to fill — the clients and the job seekers — and we've always had sort of a line of firms lined up to pay to for us to do this for them, which is flattering and also exhilarating and good job security and helped me build a career and been a lot of fun along the way.
The challenge is just finding a good match. I mean, just because someone lives in San Diego and they're in the salary range doesn't mean it's a good fit. And some of the firm is like, oh, okay, maybe I should take this a little peel back the onion a little bit more, peel back another layer. So it's just been fun to do that. We kind of have a niche carved out and we've just been doing it long enough now where the firms that want — I mean, look, you've always got those who say we don't need you guys; we'll just post on LinkedIn and we get all these people. It's like, look, if that's what you want to do, that's fabulous. You do that. That's great. That's exactly like that prospect who comes to you and says I don't need a financial planner.
I can do it on my own. All right, same thing, but we have a niche carved out. We're looking for delegators, and there are a lot of firms out there that want to delegate this hiring because as you probably run into, they're not that great at it. They don't do it often. It's very time-intensive and there is some art and some science there that a highly, highly compensated firm owner or a financial planner does not need to be doing a lot of this stuff, especially on the front and the back end, right?
Lauren (08:18):
There's a lot. I mean, hiring's tricky. Being able to find the right fit, comb through all the resumes, do the promotions, really get a pulse. Every call you have, it can be, you want to make sure it's a good use of time on both sides too, right? So tell us a little bit more about these firms that are coming to you. I mean, how are you helping to shake out the right fit or even coaching them to go just to even make sure the job description's clear? What kind of process are you using? Are they coming to you and they're like, we know we've got this person, this is the fit. Are you working with the job description and coaching them up to that even before they open up the job? What does that whole process look like? I'd just love to hear a little bit more about the advice you give to firms as they're entertaining making a hire.
Caleb (09:06):
Sure. It is both. To answer your question, I mean, we spend a lot of time on the front end. I mean, a lot of my questions are like, okay, I'm asking them about their business: How many clients? What's the pain point? Okay, that doesn't sound right. Trying to do a lot of the practice management diagnosing, at least at a cursory level. And a lot of times, can you outsource this? Can we send it out to a remote paraplanner? Is there technology solution? So before you even get to hiring, because once you start hiring people, then now you're a business, now you're a manager and you might've just wanted to be a technician or an entrepreneur and now you're managing people. And what I've learned is a lot of the firm owners and your practitioners who are technicians, that's not their skill set. That's why they're not good at hiring. A lot of times they're not good at managing. Now, a lot of them learn to be good managers, which is because they can manage their client relationships. You can, I mean, managing people's a little different. So we're trying to help them figure out who to hire. A lot of them come in and they say, Caleb, look, I don't know what's out there. Here's what I think I want.
What do you think? Does that make sense? I love people like that versus the clients who are like, well, what do you mean that's not out there? I mean, this is what I was looking for. What do you mean? Well, I'm paying a salary. Everybody should be applying to my job and having to walk it through with them. Here's the talent market, just like this stock market. It fluctuates. I mean, it changes, it's fluid.
Lauren (10:42):
It was a very different situation when we were going through COVID and what the market was demanding compared to now too. It's interesting. I mean, on the marketing side, we see it too. We have talent conversations. I was talking with another CMO recently, and he gave this analogy about how marketing basically is that kind of glove that fits across departments and impacts the culture and how it's being shown up on the outside and all of that. So I think just to your points about, there's a lot of thinking that goes into it, and then how you're positioning the job description itself is a whole art unto itself. Do you actually help with the writing of the job descriptions and the messaging and what is your team involved with on that side of things?
Caleb (11:25):
We handle it all. We're looking for delegators. They're the final decision-makers — we're the CFOs, they're the CEOs of the situation. We're going to do all the legwork, everything, bring them awesome people to look at and have them agonize over who to hire. That's our goal.
Lauren (11:47):
It's funny, sometimes we've had firms we've worked with that have gone to look for the right messaging, and they go through all this stuff and they realize sometimes the input is not getting them the right output, which is sort of an interesting piece of it. And the other thing that some firms we worked with as well is then they go, okay, well, we got all this out there but we realize we've got a great culture and we're not showing it off. We're not telling people we've won awards, we're doing these fun things, or this is what makes us different. And I think that's one of the components to hiring too, is to be able to say how you differentiate yourself as a firm and as a culture. And if you're actually going to have success, you're not just going in and being a transactionalist, right? You're going to really be supported. And how are you working with firms to help them think about that step, even beyond just getting the job description out the door?
Caleb (12:37):
Well, candidates pay attention to that, especially, so your Gen Y, Gen Z. It's a differentiator, right? They look at that. I mean, the awards, it's like, okay, what really happened for that person to get the award? Is it one of those deals where you pay a fee?
Lauren (12:55):
I hear you.
Caleb (12:57):
But they look at that, it's social proof. Just having people talk about their job and the day in the life at the firm and some pictures on the social media account. I think that's becoming more table stakes now; everybody's kind of like, you go to LinkedIn, you could spend all day every day just looking at new hire announcements, and it's not a coincidence that once someone did it all, they all do it. And here's the welcome package. They get their umbrella and their laptop cover and their dog leash and their…
Lauren (13:34):
…baseball hat, sweatshirt, and all the things.
Caleb (13:37):
It's not a coincidence.
Lauren (13:38):
Yeah, yeah. It's so true. It's interesting. What other things are you seeing on the market, just kind in the trends, hiring trends, things firms should be thinking about?
Caleb (13:54):
I guess just even in today's day and age, there’s a little bit of a disconnect on the virtual thing. Frankly, after COVID, I thought the virtual thing was here to stay and we were going to just stick with it. That hasn't really panned out that way. Most firms settled on kind of a hybrid but you still have a good subset — I would say 90% of the job seekers send me something like, here's the location I'm interested in but also remote. Before COVID, they never knew that was an option.
If I'm in Austin, Texas, I'm going to have to move to Nashville if I want a job there. And now it's like, well, no, they can just do it remote. And not all the firm owners are on board with that. So there's a little bit of disconnect there on the remote piece but although the Gen Z, the people who were in school during COVID, they want the furthest thing away from all virtual they can get because it was such a disaster for them.
Lauren (14:51):
Yeah, that makes sense. I didn't put those two together.
Caleb (14:55):
The other thing I see is the impact investing, the ESG, just the B Corporations. What else? The advice only. Those are sort of the buzzwords that catch people's attention. But also too, I think just a lot of these bigger firms that have these super high five, 10 million minimums, they're losing a lot of next-gen advisors; they call me and they say, get me out of there. Because looking to help someone go from 10 to 20 million is not very rewarding. Helping someone go from 700,000 to a million and retire, that's very rewarding. And I'm kind of more in that camp. So it's just something to consider, if you're a firm owner out there listening to this who's got the big minimums, I get it. It's great, great business but I am seeing a little bit more traction develop there.
Lauren (15:58):
Are you also seeing any unique models with how firms are structuring teams to be able to help bring up the next gen as well?
Caleb (16:06):
Yeah. Angie Herbers has done a lot of work on this, and I followed her. We kind of got started the same. That diamond team stuff. I rarely get people on the siloed model anymore. It's all diamond teams. We want to try to make sure we can keep promoting, keep replicating, and building these out — making sure there's places for people to go so they don't have to go to another firm after three years because they have to wait for someone to die or retire.
Lauren (16:35):
Along with that, are you also seeing anything when it comes to firms segmenting against a particular audience? Like, okay, this is our team for business owners. This is our team for pre-retirees, retirees, so on and so forth.
Caleb (16:49):
The larger, I would say north of 10 billion, those bigger firms are doing professional athletes. You got your entertainers, your celebrities, you got your business owners. And when they say business owner, they mean Jeff Bezos type. They'll have some specialties. But I mean, I think for the other somebody, you might have someone in a smaller firm like, hey, you're an expert in Lockheed Martin. You deal with them or you deal with Coca-Cola, whatever it is. But it's still pretty much just whoever they fit well with, whoever has capacity or whoever brings them in is kind of the mix.
Lauren (17:27):
We see a similar thing too and more of that ensemble firm size where there's, like you said, a general target, but then there are specific advisors who might own a particular audience, if you will. They've got the business owners exit planning certification or so on and so forth but it's certifications or experience or just who their network is that aligns with that particular audience, which I would assume could be an attractive growth path for someone who’s younger. If they have more of a sweet spot, they want to narrow into seeing that the firm is investing in them going after a particular demographic. So super interesting. Any other things you think would be helpful to share just for if firms are thinking to hire, things they should do to prepare for that hire or initial things to be thinking about or that window of hiring?
Caleb (18:18):
Yeah, I mean, I just look at the business. Where do you need the help and you need to get started probably before you hit capacity. I mean, that's where we see a lot of oops. I get calls like small firms, 300 million, 300 clients. There's one advisor helping an associate helping the firm. I'm like, there is no way — you're not servicing all these people and you should have hired someone a long time ago. And so that the timing but also just the clarity being very clear. I mean, when firm owners come to me or the hiring managers, whoever it is, comes to me and says they're clear on who they want, as long as it's reasonable, if it exists we can find it for them. But when they're like, we don't really know. We just need somebody up here just to try to get some plans done and get some climbing, just kind of send us some people, that never works. And that's like the clients coming to them saying, hey, I don't really have any retirement goals. I just want a big pot of money, and can you make that happen?
Lauren (19:18):
Totally fair. It's like their unicorn, right?
Caleb (19:21):
I don’t know what to do with that.
Lauren (19:24):
I'm sure you see this too. I can say with owning a company myself, there are certain roles we hire for, and we hired more than once for them. We have certain people in a number of roles but we've learned to refine the job description over the years. And then we've also learned how long it actually takes to onboard someone for that. So that impacts when you actually go to put out that job description, how long it takes to hire. And that takes time. And so I think one of the great things your firm offers is you're having all these conversations. It's almost like you can speed that up versus going through multiple years of trying to get it right and then knowing when you should actually pull the trigger and then what to look for. So by the way, that makes me think too, we use DISC as a training tool for personalities. Are there any kind of tools you use as part of your hiring process to get the right fit?
Caleb (20:15):
There's a lot of them out there. So on the conative side, Kolbe Corp, out of Phoenix, Arizona, on the affective side, I mean, we've used Caliper in the past, StrengthsFinder, we used DISC. There's a profile, there's the culture index predicting. There's a ton of them out there. And we do see a lot of firms have their own, they probably have a consultant at some point, and they've brought in something, and that's what I recommend for firms, just make sure you're testing all areas of the mind, so the cognitive, the affective, and then the conative, and to try to get a good sense on who you're actually hiring.
Lauren (20:52):
Yep, makes sense, especially if it's someone who’s in a client facing role, right? Really owning those relationships but also supporting the work itself so it's reflective of how the business operates and shows up in the world. Not easy to find the right fit. But thank you. I appreciate your time and sharing a little bit more about what you all do. So just to direct folks to your website, it's newplannerrecruiting.com; we’ll make sure to link below. Any final words, final thoughts?
Caleb (21:24):
It's a great profession. If there's any job seekers out there, I share this all the time. I spend all day talking to people who are trying to get into this business — so if you're in it, you've picked the right one and just keep doing your thing and you'll have success.
Lauren (21:40):
Awesome. Thanks so much, Caleb. We appreciate your time.
Caleb (21:43):
Thanks for having me.
