In this episode of The Trusted Adviser Podcast, Rob Pyne sits down with Lisa Fuentes of Alteris to explore the journey of growing an advice business from four people and around $3 million in revenue to a 75-person, multidisciplinary business generating around $30 million in revenue.
Lisa has been part of the Alteris journey since 2003 and shares what she has learned as the business has evolved through new service lines, acquisitions, technology changes and continued growth.
The conversation explores what happens when an advice business moves beyond the small-business stage and starts building the people, structure, systems and infrastructure needed to support its next phase of growth.
Lisa talks about the importance of separating revenue-generating roles from operational functions, how Alteris has built its corporate services capability, and why curiosity has been such an important part of the business’s growth.
The conversation also explores Alteris’ approach to technology, including its decision to step back and review its processes before selecting a new CRM, the introduction of AI across the business, and the importance of governance and experimentation when adopting new technology.
Lisa also shares the story behind the Alteris Women community, which has grown to around 1,500 members, and the role it plays in helping women feel more confident engaging in financial conversations.
Looking ahead, Lisa discusses Alteris’ ambitions for its next stage of growth, the importance of governance and succession planning, and why she is particularly excited about using the lessons Alteris has learned to help other advice businesses grow.
LISTEN
SHOW NOTES
Topics Discussed
- Lisa’s journey with Alteris since 2003
- Growing from a four-person business to 75 people across five offices and three states
- The journey from approximately $3 million to $30 million in revenue
- The moment Alteris started to feel different from a small business
- Establishing Alteris’ aged care advice division
- The importance of education and awareness when launching a new service
- Alteris’ acquisition journey
- The role of culture and values when assessing potential acquisitions
- Separating revenue-generating roles from operational functions
- Building dedicated functions across HR, marketing, IT and client services
- Turning corporate services from a cost centre into a revenue-generating capability
- The frameworks, tools and systems behind Alteris’ growth
- Taking Alteris’ experience and capabilities into other advice businesses
- The importance of curiosity and mindset
- Leadership succession and developing emerging leaders
- AI adoption, governance and training
- Measuring the impact of AI on productivity and quality
- Rethinking technology rather than simply following the status quo
- Reviewing and improving processes before selecting a new CRM
- The decision to build out Zoho across the business
- The Alteris Women community
- Helping women feel more confident engaging in financial conversations
- Governance and organisational structure for the next stage of growth
- Alteris’ vision for helping other advice businesses succeed
Episode Highlights
(Times are approximate)
[00:01] Introducing Lisa Fuentes and the Alteris story
[01:32] From four people in 2003 to a growing advice business
[03:54] Expanding into aged care advice and acquisitions
[06:46] The personal experience behind Alteris’ aged care focus
[11:15] Separating revenue-generating and operational functions
[16:06] Knowing when a business function needs dedicated resources
[18:32] Turning consultants into permanent internal capability
[30:34] Turning corporate services into a revenue-generating function
[36:18] Taking Alteris’ growth frameworks into other businesses
[38:41] The people, infrastructure, tools and mindset behind growth
[41:01] Planning for leadership succession and developing emerging leaders
[44:38] Introducing AI with governance and training
[45:12] What the data is showing about productivity and client outcomes
[51:04] Rethinking the technology status quo
[52:32] Going back to the drawing board and reviewing processes
[54:50] Building out Zoho CRM
[56:08] The story behind Alteris Women
[59:17] Creating confidence around financial conversations
[01:02:41] The changing confidence of women engaging with financial advice
[01:05:42] Preparing Alteris for its next stage of growth
[01:08:34] Building the people, teams and functions needed for future growth
[01:10:48] Helping founders navigate their next stage
[01:13:17] Lisa’s vision for helping other advice businesses succeed
Quotes
“The journey always continues and it’s always exciting to see and to understand that there’s another chapter.”— Lisa Fuentes
“We got here because we were challenged every year.”— Lisa Fuentes
“It’s so empowering. I can’t tell you how interesting it has been for me.”— Lisa Fuentes
“We’ve got the people, we’ve got the infrastructure, we’ve got the tools, we’ve got the framework, and we’ve got the curiosity.”— Lisa Fuentes
“We didn’t want to go with the status quo.”— Lisa Fuentes
“We came back within the business, we looked through all of our processes, we timed them all, we costed them all out.”— Lisa Fuentes
“We want every female client to engage in a financial conversation.”— Lisa Fuentes
“We need them to feel confident and comfortable to be able to do that.”— Lisa Fuentes
“If you have the vision and if you know that there’s somewhere that we’re all aspiring to get to, then it’s an easy conversation to have internally.”— Lisa Fuentes
“I have this wholehearted commitment to ensure people are successful.”— Lisa Fuentes
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Growth changes the way a business needs to operate. What works when there are four people in a business does not necessarily work when there are 75.
- Structure creates capacity for growth. Separating revenue-generating roles from operational functions allowed Alteris’ people to focus on what they do best.
- Curiosity can be a powerful growth mindset. Lisa describes curiosity as a key part of how Alteris has approached challenges and opportunities over the years.
- Technology should solve a business problem. Rather than choosing a platform simply because it is popular, Alteris stepped back, reviewed its processes and identified where improvements were actually needed.
- AI adoption needs structure. Alteris introduced AI gradually, with experimentation followed by formal governance, policies and a more structured approach to its use.
- Growth creates new opportunities for internal capabilities. Functions that were originally built to support Alteris are now being considered as capabilities that could help other advice businesses grow.
- Confidence can change financial conversations. The Alteris Women community is focused on creating an environment where women feel comfortable asking questions and engaging more confidently with financial matters.
- The next stage of growth requires planning before it arrives. Governance, organisational structure, people and systems are being considered as part of Alteris’ future growth rather than as things to address afterwards.
- Leadership succession needs to be part of the growth conversation. Developing emerging leaders and creating the right structure around them becomes increasingly important as a business evolves.
- Growth is an ongoing journey. For Lisa, there is no single point where the journey stops. Each stage creates another chapter, another challenge and another opportunity to learn.
RESOURCES & LINKS
- The Trusted Adviser: https://thetrustedadviser.com.au
- Alteris Financial Group: https://alteris.com.au/
- Connect with Rob Pyne on LinkedIn
- Connect with Lisa Fuentes on LinkedIn
- Follow The Trusted Adviser Podcast
TRANSCRIPT
Rob (00:01.316)
Welcome Lisa Fuentes to the Trusted Advisor podcast.
Lisa Fuentes (00:05.048)
Thank you for having me, Rob.
Rob (00:07.632)
Thank you for taking the time to join me, Lisa. I have been aware of the Alteris business for some time. I’ve met your principal and founder, Keith Jones, briefly at a Macquarie hosted event maybe a year or two ago now. And I’ve got the impression then that Keith had built a pretty amazing business and having spoken to you I can see there’s some pretty amazing people that are helping you build a pretty amazing business. So, I’m really looking forward to this conversation, Lisa, because what you guys are doing there is very impressive.
You’ve got a lot of things going on, but a lot of it’s working super well. So, let’s get into it and give our audience a bit of a background, I guess, on the journey you’ve been on. Four people in two thousand and three when you joined, seventy-five people now across five offices in three states, and around thirty million of revenue. So that’s a big leap from three million back then to thirty million today, and you’ve got twenty-four of that million dollars in financial planning because you’re a multidisciplinary business and so I wanted to sort of just give people the context of the business, but that’s a substantially sized business in the context of the advice industry in Australia. Can you remember the moment you realised you’d stopped being a small business? Was there a sort of a pivotal point where you’re thinking like, okay, we’re in seriously different territory now from when I started?
Lisa Fuentes (01:32.17)
Yeah, well yeah, it has been a journey, and I think being part of that journey since two thousand and three, what I’ve observed is that we don’t stop. The journey always continues and it’s always exciting to see and to understand that there’s another chapter and I think that’s what’s kept me engaged in the business and engaged in the growth over the years.
Now when I started, as you mentioned, there was four of us in the group and that it was quite nimble. I had worked at ING Bank, so I was in a big corporate sort of superannuation division and moving into a very small office in Parramatta was a bit of a shock initially. But I think what I loved most about that experience when there was four of us and were share sharing an office space that it was hands-on.
We all played a role to keep the business running and to service our clients. We used to have, you know, conversations in the back office around what was next for a client, and there were four of us involved in those conversations, and we got the work done. I guess the journey from that for office people business to when it started to feel different was when we started the aged care division in the group back in 2014. And why that became different is that were no longer doing the things that were had always done. We were venturing into a service line that not many of us were familiar with. And also, we realized that the industry in itself wasn’t familiar with the service as well.
So entering into that space, engaging in a service that was new to many, started to feel different. And we started to get this understanding that in order for this to be a success, we needed to go on the journey of creating the awareness in the industry and into our client base. And it became an educational process. So again, stepping out of our day-to-day
Lisa Fuentes (03:54.28)
Servicing our clients from a financial planning point of view, entering into a new world of aged care financial advice and unpacking how we could actually bring it to life for our clients and also to the industry. And the other part that started to, I would say, shape this new chapter was the acquisition journey that we started to embark on in 2016. We did our first acquisition. And I remember when Keith said to me, we’re looking at buying this business and it looks like a great business, and I need you to go in there and find out what this business actually does. I had never done that before and I was very aware of what you know we did every day and how we navigated through, you know, servicing our clients and running the business. But I had never ventured into another business to start to understand how they did things and why they did what they did.
And that experience was really enlightening because I got to see another founder passionate about you know what they had built and also passionate about how they were servicing their clients. So that gave me a deeper understanding that there’s more of us out there, there’s more businesses striving to do their best, and there’s more businesses wanting to service their clients in a particular way. And I remember coming back from that experience and saying to Keith, this business is actually really good. You know, they care about their clients. There were three of them in the business. So, it was a very small business, but a high-value business. And I said, and they all genuinely care about their client outcomes, and they care about what they do in their business to service their clients very similar to us, but in a much smaller scale again. And again, those two things, the aged care advice offering and venturing into the acquisition space, I started to realize that there’s much more to this small business that were in. And the conversation started to change in the office.
Rob (06:13.424)
Yeah, and so you speak of the you became kind of the M&A due diligence person, so you were actually looking for I guess and what you’ve described there is very much a cultural and values alignment with people that you were looking at acquiring. And so that was obviously very strongly endorsed by your visit to them and the three-person business, which you were some many years earlier, back in two thousand and three, but I also want to just touch on the aged care piece you’ve just mentioned. Are you happy to share a bit about what the motivation was there? I think it was a very personal motivation for you. Can you share that with us?
Lisa Fuentes (06:46.313)
Yeah, I guess for me it was a personal motivation, but I think when it started what actually allowed us to sort of navigate through this new offering was clients moving their loved ones into care. And we had two cases that got presented to us at in a client meeting and so we saw that there was potential in helping the families move their mum and dad into care.
But obviously that it wasn’t just a transition of home to an aged care home. It was unpacking the financial side of and the strategies behind the finances to move their loved ones into care. And my personal journey on that was I had to make that decision for my mum. I was my mum’s primary carer, and I never thought that I’d ever get to a point where I needed to make that decision for my family. And yeah, it’s an emotional journey. It’s one that you don’t want to be on, but I think having the expertise and having people take away that pressure of how am I actually going to make this happen from a financial point of view alleviates, you know, the journey itself and you get to focus on, the things that are really important to families, making sure that mum and dad are okay, that they are emotionally okay and that you can be with them and spend quality time with them as you have the professionals manage and deal with strategies and finances and paperwork, etc. And why I’m very passionate about that area as well is just what we’re doing in terms of the business and how we’re giving back to families and it’s, it’s very touching. It’s a very emotional journey. You tend to have a group of, you know, family members in the conversation. So, you’ll have, you know, the sister, the brother, and you know, potentially an aunt and uncle in the room, but many people in the room, and everyone’s trying to get to the right decision, but it is an emotional decision for everyone and everyone embarks on that journey very differently.
Lisa Fuentes (09:00.427)
So, my relationship with Aged Care Advice is an emotional relationship and I see the outcomes and then the recognition and the feedback that we get from families is amazing.
Rob (09:14.84)
Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Lisa. I really loved the way you’ve just described that. Its people don’t really know what you’re talking about until they live it, I think, being that you became the primary carer for your mum and dad. And you had to make, as you say, emotional decisions and decisions to support their lifestyle. So, it’s more than the finances, isn’t it? It’s obviously the advisory part is important to get the numbers right, make right decisions around the home and the ongoing care, but it’s the life they lead when they need more support that you obviously got very involved in and I think for people listening, this is an area that’s so natural for an advice firm to be working in because we have aging clients and they are going to encounter these needs at some point if they haven’t already. So, a credit to your firm to be an early mover in this space to take care of people as they get into their later years. So, I’m just wanted to say, you know, well done on that. It’s something we’re doing ourselves now and I just have been through a similar journey with my parents in the last twelve months. So, I’ve gone through the same personal journey, and it resonates strongly with me. But let’s turn to the to the business and its trajectory over this last twenty plus years. You described the change required to keep pace with your growth was very kind of you said for every revenue generating role to sit in its own division and every operational function like finance and IT and HR and marketing, investment operations sit centralized under you. You said it was a really important structural setup for your business to divide those two divisions, if you like, the revenue generating division from the operations division. You said to me when we spoke that it was a really important structural change. It allowed the business to grow the way it has. Can you talk me through why you thought it was so important that you made that distinction in the divisions?
Lisa Fuentes (11:15.455)
Yeah, so a couple of things. As were growing, many of us were wearing multiple hats. And as you maybe can appreciate, you know, as a founder, you are generally one that’s focused on, you know, what’s next for the business and how can we get there. And if you’re distracted with, I need to have a look at my computer, or I need to manage and deal with the HR matter. It slows the business down. And over the years, what we’ve done, we’ve been really clear on what everybody’s role is and where their focus should be. However, as you grow, the decisions around where you should focus first, second, and third change and you could be in a year where you know HR has become much more important because you’ve had some HR matters to deal with within a business.
The following year it could be all right now we need to set up a new service line and therefore we need marketing to start to focus on that area. But if you are an advisor and you’re pulled back into these functions, you don’t necessarily, you stall the growth of your area. And so, when the business started to grow, we experienced a number of pain points along the way, which I’m sure many businesses do. And it became really apparent that those roles that were revenue generating needed to remain as revenue generating roles and couldn’t be distracted by the growth or the functions or the operational side of the business at any point in time. So we had a consultant that came in and actually looked at our governance framework and our structure and also looked at where were going as a firm and in consultation we made the decision that all those operational functions, although they may not be a full-time role within the business, the concept of them coming out of the revenue generating functions was extremely important. So, we structured the business, and when I say structure, we created roles and it was literally a diagram. We separated some of the roles in and individuals from those IT functions or those HR functions.
And we put up on the board what that structure was going to look like. And it was very visual, but it made so much sense. And why did it make so much sense? Because advisors could continue to do what they do best. The HR function could remain as an isolated function. The IT function could remain to one side. And no one was distracted by the other person as the business needs presented themselves and why does it also work today is that when we’re looking at the vision and the growth of the business, everyone around the table is thinking about their areas and what does their area need to do to enable that growth to ensure that we do achieve our goals and our objectives in the business. And no one’s distracted by an operational function or I’m not distracted by a revenue growth strategy.
I’m actually working quite closely with those individuals to ensure that the business is set up in a way that can enable that growth. And I look at it through the lens of what do I need to do in client services? What do I need to do in HR? What do I need to do in marketing? What do I need to do in IT to ensure that those numbers can be achieved year on year.
Rob (15:18.01)
Yeah, and in the early days, and that it’s such an important point you’ve made there about just dividing your functions and letting people focus and being just dedicated to thinking about one thing principally, which is either revenue generation or in your case, wearing all those hats initially to sort of cover all the other bits that the make the business run smoothly while the advisors get out there and see clients and grow the business.
Lisa Fuentes (15:29.495)
That’s correct.
Rob (15:46.085)
But you’ve added over the journey functional managers one at a time as the need appeared. Because you couldn’t do it all forever yourself, obviously. You took it all on initially. Marketing was the first one you handed off, then client services, you brought in functional managers. How do you know when a function has outgrown being someone’s second job? And how do you make that call before it starts hurting the business?
Lisa Fuentes (15:53.61)
No. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Lisa Fuentes (16:06.944)
Yeah, so I think marketing was a fairly easy one to invest in initially, and all these functions have come on quite differently. So, when I think about marketing, it started off in a consultancy space and so did HR. So, both those functions we had consultants work quite closely with the business.
But with marketing, when we started to engage with our marketing consultant, we had established our aged care service line. So there was a need to get aged care out into the market. And there was a need to also continue to grow the world side of the business, the financial planning side. So, if you think about those two services, they both had different needs, but we needed to create that awareness out into the industry and out into the broader market. So, I didn’t have the skill sets to do that. I had the skill sets to run an event, an annual client event, but I didn’t have the skill sets to next necessarily look at our brand, have a look at our values and how can we communicate what we’re trying to achieve as a group more broadly. So, we brought the consultant in, and that journey was a great journey. There was a lot of learnings along the way, things like you know, do you do a newsletter? no, we don’t. Okay, I think we need to start to communicate with your own clients as to what you do, how you do it, and maybe we can put together some cadence around the communication piece. Great. So we did that. and then it was about you know the next iteration of that in terms of aged care. How can we create the awareness more broadly to our client base and also to the industry?
But when we solidified some of those, you know, very basic 101 marketing initiatives, we then realized that the business, well didn’t realise, but the business was going through, you know, growth in terms of acquisitions, we knew that focus needed to come internally. Because it wasn’t a consultancy, you know, engagement. It needed to be in-house, and we needed to ensure that we invested our time and energy in marketing in order to continue to grow.
Rob (18:28.08)
Did that consultant Yeah, that was the question. Did the consultant become your employee? Yeah.
Lisa Fuentes (18:32.853)
Yeah, they did. Yeah, she did. Yeah, she became our marketing, our first marketing manager. And she still is within the business. And we did the same with HR. And I think what’s been really interesting for me personally is although I understood that these functions were important, I didn’t actually understand and appreciate the value that they were going to bring to the business at any point in time. And having and working with them in this consultancy space gave me an opportunity to understand the value of these functions. And so, when they came in the business, I was able to position them, I was able to, you know, work with them to truly create value in terms of the next iteration of the growth of the business.
And I was able to get all stakeholders involved in the function and sell the function to Keith in particular because it’s another cost centre now that you’re bringing in. So having that engagement initially allowed me to see the value externally, so they were external facing, and then I was able to bring that value into the group.
Rob (19:47.313)
So, the way thought about that was before we commit to adding it in as an ongoing function, we do a consulting engagement, we see what it can do for us, and that way you’re kind of
Lisa Fuentes (19:57.269)
That’s correct.
Rob (19:58.917)
It’s almost like a try before you buy situation. They actually come in; they make a difference. And so, you’re doing that in a in a very purposeful way. Instead of saying, I think we need marketing, let’s hire someone, you’re saying, I think we need marketing, let’s engage a consultant. And if we if they can demonstrate the value and we can see the impact that they’re going to have or having and then going to have, we then turn that into, if we can encourage them to turn them into an employed part of the team to help growth, help the growth continue. So that’s that
Lisa Fuentes (20:11.233)
That’s correct.
Rob (20:28.09)
I guess the answer to that question I asked, which is how do you determine when is the right time? Well, you kind of know where the pain point is in the business, you get the consultant in and then you kind of can see what’s possible and turn them into an employee.
Lisa Fuentes (20:40.545)
That’s correct, and if I think about HR, you know, we have a group of people that we need to manage day in, day out. And as the business grew and as we started to acquire businesses and acquire not just the clients but also staff, we realized to transition them from A to B, we’re going to need to issue new contracts, we’ll need to put them on our performance in a performance review framework, we need to set them up into payroll. So, the numbers of, sorry the volume of work that started to come through in different areas highlighted the need in one or two of these functions along the way. And then because I wasn’t an expert in HR or marketing,
Rob (21:29.562)
Yeah, for sure. No, that makes sense.
Lisa Fuentes (21:35.811)
But I knew what we needed to do. The first thought was, well, why don’t we get someone who knows what they’re doing to help us navigate through this next phase? And then if we do believe that we need this full time or permanently in the business, let’s bring it in. yeah. yes, she did. Yeah. And she’s our HR manager now. And it continues to evolve and building out because the needs of the business change as the numbers grow,
Rob (21:51.78)
Did that consultant become employed as well?
Lisa Fuentes (22:05.67)
you’re faced with new conversations, new decisions, new challenges, but also new opportunities. And so, because of that, the areas are now building out and they’ve all established ways in which you do things, but now we’re on the mindset of how do we scale this? Because again the business is going through its next iteration of growth, which looked different to the last, you know, eight years.
Rob (22:34.244)
Yeah, for sure. And you talked a bit about acquisitions that you the journey you’ve been on with that. And you were initially the MA and diligence person for acquisition number one, but you’ve now got five officers and you’re a large advisor group. I’m curious to know how you get consistency of delivery as people come in and they adopt your way of doing things. And you don’t but you don’t want to squeeze the personality out of people because obviously they’ve been doing things a certain way. You put it well in our first chat. You said, you be you, but we’ll give you a framework within a framework. What’s inside the framework and what’s genuinely left to the individual?
Lisa Fuentes (23:08.012)
Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa Fuentes (23:14.528)
Okay, so when we’re acquiring businesses or when we have acquired these businesses, the strategy is to onboard them and then integrate them. Okay, so those are two separate things. Onboard them, bring them in, make them feel comfortable, understand where the value is, and we know where the value is prior to them being onboarded, and then set up a plan. And integrate them. And so, when we’re looking at integration, we’re looking at both sides. We’re looking at what they’ve been doing, and we look at what we do. And then we say, well, now that we are, you know, maybe ten times more than what we used to be, or now that our teams have doubled in size, or maybe the client base has grown by a hundred, what does it need to look like? And so, we take both businesses into consideration.
Because not one is better than the other. They’re all at different stages, they all do things slightly differently, and maybe there’s an opportunity to bring in, you know, a process of what this other business was doing and integrate it into ours, or vice versa. So, once we get that true understanding, then we establish what the framework is, and then we integrate everyone into that framework. So, we don’t ignore what the business B is doing or business C is doing. We actually spend a lot of time in there to understand what they do day in, day out and how do they service their clients. And we don’t want to disrupt for the sake of disrupting. Because you lose people along the way. You lose the staff potentially that are committed to embark on this journey and you lose your clients. And you don’t want to lose either of them. They are the most important part of any acquisition. And I do heavily focus on the people side.
Rob (25:13.328)
For sure.
Rob (25:16.9)
Yeah. And you’ve done eight acquisitions in eight years. What do you think you’ve learned along the way that you wish you’d known in the beginning? And where do integrations most often go wrong based on your experience?
Lisa Fuentes (25:28.898)
Yeah, planning and communication. They’re the two things that will potentially take you down a path that you shouldn’t be on.
I think initially we didn’t know what we’re doing. We knew that were buying something and we knew we needed to understand what we’re buying, so that was really good. We spent a lot of time understanding what we’re buying, but we didn’t necessarily spend a lot of time in planning on how were going to move the business from A to B. So, we learnt that along the way, and then the communication side, be really transparent up front as to what you’re going to do.
But I think the first part is to understand why you’re buying this business. Number one, you know, where is the value and ensuring that you communicate that value everywhere. So, you’re communicating it internally, but you’re also communicating it to the seller. And you’re saying this is why we’re buying your business and this is where we see the true value. And then once you start to communicate that, you then look at how the business are operating. And then the next phase is once you understand how they’re operating, you build a plan as to how you’re going to onboard them. And when I say onboard them, it’s literally just bringing them in, no change, and then how you’re going to integrate that. But you’re communicating all of that up front. So, there’s no surprises along the way. And that’s what we learned the most is communicating what you’re going to do before people are signing documentations and agreements, etc.
And once that communication is clear and the plan is clear, the next phase is actually taking people on the journey of change. And that can be difficult, but I think if you’re transparent and open up front, people have an opportunity to engage in those discussions before things start happening. And so you start to iron out all the confusion, you start to work through people’s hesitation of what does this mean for me? You work through all of that.
And so, when the time comes, it’s an easier transition.
Rob (27:36.379)
Yeah. That point about communication is not to be understated, is it? Because in reality that’s just that in all things, if people don’t know because you haven’t told them, they’ll make up their version of what they think is going to happen and then then there may be that
Lisa Fuentes (27:52.558)
That’s right.
Rob (27:53.497)
Opportunity for misalignment of expectations. So, communicating up front in advance and proactively just helps everyone get on the same page. If there’s issues to work through, you do that at that time before people are committing themselves and then feeling disappointed cause they expected something different. So yeah, I yeah, it’s just it’s so one, isn’t it? But we just have to state it again because people don’t do it even though they know they should, you just you said in the first instance you hadn’t done,
Lisa Fuentes (28:07.982)
That’s right.
Rob (28:21.118)
anything before in the MA space and the first one you had to figure out how to do the onboarding piece because you’ve done the due diligence really well but the onboarding and I can relate to that story as well. You kind of learn how to do the onboarding first time you do it. But communication is critical. And so yeah, it’s a point well made. But you’ve made a strategic shift in recent times, not to say you’re not going to do acquisitions at all in the future. Obviously, that’s still a part of your plan.
Lisa Fuentes (28:46.732)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Rob (28:49.05)
But you’re moving more towards the opportunity for partnerships rather than outright acquisitions. So, minority positions of kind of thirty to fifty percent, the sweet spot you think being businesses that are about three to five million of revenue, so am I right in saying that the partnership model is just another option as opposed to instead of acquisitions?
Lisa Fuentes (28:52.482)
That’s correct.
Lisa Fuentes (29:11.61)
I’d say that the shift is l more towards the strategic partnership, although we don’t shy away of having a conversation with the firm if they’re looking to be acquired because we know how to do that and we can do that really well. So, we still engage in those discussions all the time, and the other reason why we’re engaging in those conversations because the whole purpose around these strategic partnerships is to enable the growth of other firms. So, if we continue engaging in potential acquisitions, we will find opportunities for other businesses. And we have a playbook in which we do these things, so it’s actually quite easy for us to look at a firm, see where the value is plan how we’re going to onboard and integrate and then go through the process of integration. We can do that. And so, we still have those conversations because we know that if you’re not out in market, you may miss out on an opportunity. And we also know that the value that we’re bringing to our strategic partners is that of you know inorganic growth. And so, we ensure we stay at the top of those opportunities all the time.
Rob (30:34.158)
Yeah. And when we spoke about this and you shared that with me, a part I found really interesting is that you don’t just show partner firms how to do it, you take on the functions, and you charge a fee for those. And you mentioned bookkeeping was one example. You said, well, we can just take that on. We’ll charge like a bookkeeper would charge, essentially, but you’re actually doing it from an in-house perspective. What did it take for your corporate services team to adapt from being a cost center to selling its own services to those partner firms?
Lisa Fuentes (30:44.258)
That’s correct. It’s so empowering, Rob. I can’t tell you how interesting it has been for me, thinking that I was always going to have this negative red figure on the top of my head, and that’s how people were going to view me, to then actually engage in a revenue conversation. It’s actually an empowering shift, mindset shift. And the reason being is that you we all truly believe that we’re delivering value.
Lisa Fuentes (31:29.438)
I believe my team is, they believe they are, and that’s what we strive for. We strive for the mindset of how we can actually make this happen, and then when it does happen, we all go, wow, that was pretty amazing. But to be able to deliver that sick success mindset into other firms, it’s so empowering because they have, they are super clear in what they need to do.
They have built the framework and tools and systems to enable their functions to run quite efficiently. And then now they’re engaging in the conversations of how can I bring the value of what I bring to Alteris into your business. And so the conversations with all the managers have been: well, now we need to articulate what that value is because we believe it.
And we do it day in, day out with Alteris, but how can we articulate it into these other firms? And it’s about demonstrating the work that we’ve done over the years and being really I would say humble around that experience because not all of us were born to know. We’re very curious, and that’s something that I live by. I ask a lot of questions, I’m really clear that I don’t know everything.
But I do love to be surrounded by people who do know and if I’m not, I’ll go out and I’ll find them. And that’s the mindset that the managers have in my division as well. Although they’re very good at their jobs, they will come across a situation where they haven’t come across the situation before, but they will go out and they’ll find out and they’ll ask the questions. So being really transparent about our journey, that we didn’t get here overnight. We got here because were challenged every year. We were challenged with opportunities, and we engaged with them with the lens and the mindset of curiosity and then we built along the way. So having been able to have those conversations with other firms and there’s an alignment already because they’ve also had the challenges of growth.
Lisa Fuentes (33:50.029)
And they also know that they don’t know everything, and that’s why they’re engaging with us. So, there’s a true alignment from day one from that first conversation. And then it’s about structuring what the service is, and we’ve got the foundations. So, we’ve got a HR framework, governance framework, we have an employee experience framework, we have a marketing engine, we have tools.
For a sorry, we have a career progression framework within the group. So, establishing these frameworks makes it really easy to communicate what is it that we can do for you and what services we can provide you. It’s actually a simple, simple conversation. But those frameworks have been built over the years and the managers that have built those frameworks are still within the business. So, they know what it means to be a an eleven-person business or a twenty people business. They know what the differences are and they know what a business may need, you know, at any point in time. And we’ve got the frameworks that they can lean on if and when they need them.
Rob (35:01.7)
Yeah. I love it, Lisa. I love it because it makes so much sense the way you’re describing it. And you’ve obviously gone through the journey as you’ve built your business to establish these frameworks for your business. And then you say, well, we can just apply those to any business now. We can give them the toolkit, if you like, on any of these aspects of our business. And so, it’s and the fact that you talk about you bring a success mindset to that business, which that they’re already really engaged and purposeful about what they’re trying to achieve, but you just can accelerate their development. and the fact that you said two of my favorite words in the English language, I’m curious and I’m humble. I love that. it’s the businesses that go very well like yours has are often infused with people that are curious by nature, but don’t think they have all the answers. They’re humble always to think of something more to learn. So just love the way you’ve described that.
Rob (35:55.993)
And I wanna talk more about how you’ve got to this point. You’ve funded all of this growth, including acquisitions, off your own balance sheet. Though you’ve had no shortage, I’m sure, of private equity knocking on the door. For Alteris, is private equity out of the question? And what would have to change for you to consider taking on a private equity partner in the business?
Lisa Fuentes (36:01.72)
Mm-hmm. That’s correct.
Lisa Fuentes (36:18.924)
Yeah, so at some point things need to change. And I’m sure most businesses think about this all the time. So, what’s next? So, I think for us we definitely want to continue to grow. there’s no stopping in us, and I just want to go back to the comment that you made around the playbooks and the frameworks that we have. So, I remember pulling together a slide for a workshop that we did to a number of other financial planning businesses that articulated our journey. And the last slide was if you’re clear on where your growth where your growth is or where it needs to be, we can do this for you, but we can do this in many ways.
So, we can set up a JV if that’s what you want to do. We can set up a new service line if that’s of interest. We can open new offices. We can talk to new markets. We can invigorate and engage your client book. You name it, in terms of that growth, the growth strategies, we can do it because we’ve done it. So, there’s nothing that I think a business can grow into that we haven’t done before. Now the opportunity is to do it at scale. And what does that mean? Take what we’ve done and embed them into other businesses and enable their growth. So, if they want to set up a new office, we can do that. If they want to set up a new service line and it’s an accounting service line, we can switch that on. If they want to engage in a JV arrangement, we can switch that on. If they want to create a new team within their group, we can switch that on. So, we’ve got the ability to do that. Now I think why does this strategic partnership become why is it so attractive? One, because we’ve done it, but also, we’ve we believe in in other firms, and we believe that other firms can grow as successfully as our firm can as long as you have the right mindset. And so, because of that we’re going, well we could probably do many of these.
Lisa Fuentes (38:41.836)
Because we’ve got the people, we’ve got the infrastructure, we’ve got the tools, we’ve got the framework, and we’ve got the curiosity, and we’ve got that mindset in the group. So, we can do that. So now that what does that mean from a financial point of view? At some point you’ll become that stretched that you can’t just you know, take on that journey with your eyes closed and go let’s see how this goes. So, we do need the capital, but we’re also interested in long term patient capital. That’s where the interest lies. And the reason being is that we believe that we can get there, and we believe in a journey. So, we don’t want to be with a firm that it will potentially inject some capital for three years and then you know sell us off somewhere else. We’re interested in that long term partner.
We’ve been on this journey for 24, 25, 26 years, and we don’t plan to end that journey anytime soon. And we want to ensure that our that our people, and when I say our people, it’s our clients and our staff that we look after everyone in the business. And we can only do that if we have some patient capital. And we continue to grow and we continue to go down the journey that we’ve been on for the last twenty-four years. Just another iteration of it.
Rob (40:07.104)
Well, look out. You’ve just given a whole bunch of private equity people an introduction to what you’re looking for and I’m sure there’ll be some if they’re not already talking to you, they will be shortly if they listen to this podcast episode because you’re what you’re saying is we’re growing, we want to preserve what we have, the people we’ve got, the growth we’re on, but at some point we would be open to welcoming a private equity partner who can accelerate our development and continue to help us acquire and grow organically, inorganically. So yeah, great to hear that you’re actually not as you said, I think you said there a moment ago, there’s no stopping us. Like we’re not we’re not yeah, we’re not gonna settle and get complacent. We’re still on a on a on a growth journey. So, I wanna,
Rob (40:57.828)
Talk about something which is becomes relevant to a lot of businesses and you’re seeing it firsthand as you acquire businesses. Your founder and CEO, Keith Jones, stood up at a staff conference and casually said he wouldn’t be around forever. And the room reacted the room reacted with real concern at the time. What did that moment tell you and how have you responded to that apprehension that kind of came across the team?
Lisa Fuentes (41:01.592)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Lisa Fuentes (41:21.888)
Yeah. So, I didn’t see it in the room, but then the conversation started after the conference and I didn’t think anything of it, to be honest, it’s almost like it’s too far away, let’s not even talk about it or think about it. But it became quite apparent that potentially there were individuals thinking about it, and when it was said very lightly, it landed differently. So, what have we done? well things don’t what we’ve realized and but things don’t last forever and at some point, you need to start to make decisions that potentially feel a little bit uncomfortable but at the same time you’ve got the opportunity and the time to prepare yourself for that time in the future.
And the preparation and where we started to focus on was what does that actually look like today? Because people want to know, and they’re also thinking about their own futures. And so we started to focus within, and we realized that in the end of the day, the structure of the business it has you know your CEO.
COO, you have all your C-suite, then you have a line of you know general managers or heads of, and then you have a line of managers. In order for the business to continue to grow in the way that it has, we need to nurture our talent within. And we need to invest in our emerging leaders to enable them to grow and be successful in their roles and potentially take on those more senior leadership roles in the future.
And as soon as the focus started to shift within, the sentiment within the group changed because they realized that okay, let’s not focus on the end and things dropping off. Let’s focus and invest our time and energy on what we already have. And how can we give that success story back to our managers who are very invested in our vision and our story, and they want to be part of the journey. And so why don’t we invest in them? And so that’s where the focus is. And so, the mindset again doesn’t focus on an end, it just focuses on the people within, and how can we continue that success story along the way with the managers and the leaders that we have already in the business.
Rob (44:05.966)
Yeah, leadership succession is such a critical aspect, isn’t it? That’s often underinvested or overlooked because everyone doesn’t worry about the fact that at some point the founder may be thinking about their own retirement at some point. Naturally they’re gonna retire someday. They might not want to do it for a long time yet, but it’s gonna happen at some point. So, thinking early,
Lisa Fuentes (44:22.56)
Yeah. We did say to Keith that he could continue to come into our team meetings if he wanted to and still participate. and we also jokingly said that we’d create a hologram and that way he’s always in the office even though he’s not saying anything, he’s still in there somewhere.
Rob (44:38.224)
Well, that’s what we’ll go to is technology. So now that you’ve done the segue on the hologram, you’ve have invested in tech. You’ve done an AI rollout, but you led with governance and training rather than figuring out use cases like SOA production or onboarding. You started with a policy, a chosen tool, then a broader manager deployment, with that sort of governance and training piece being the starting point. That order was very deliberate for you.
Lisa Fuentes (44:46.732)
Yeah. Yeah. Correct. That’s correct. Mm-hmm.
Rob (45:12.782)
What has the data told you that you didn’t expect?
Lisa Fuentes (45:17.934)
Productivity has increased. the quality of the output has increased. Managers are much more prepared in their meetings. client outcomes are clearer. data okay, so
Rob (45:37.668)
Dig into it for me. What are you using? What have you what have you what have you done?
Lisa Fuentes (45:41.985)
I think everyone embarked on this very similar journey on file notes. That was one thing that many firms did first. We did that as well. And it was a very simple one to do because were transcribing notes, and then what we realized that there were tools that could actually transcribe it for you and tools to be able to deploy those transcriptions or summarize it in a way that was pipe friendly. So that was kind of the initial discovery and that made things really easy for the firm to adopt because were already doing it. It just made everyone’s job easier. So, we got the Claris. Yeah. So, we got yeah still using Claris. We’re now using it to produce our ROAs. So that’s kind of the next iteration of the use of that one software.
Rob (46:24.836)
Which tool did you go to? yep. Still using Claris? Yep.
Lisa Fuentes (46:41.654)
Yeah, so that was an easy one to bring into the business and that’s where we got the buy-in that there’s tools out there, there’s ways in which you can do things a lot easier and the output is still great and it’s quicker and we’re not spending a lot of time in you know summarising discussions. That was a really good win. And then from there we had a few managers that we paid for their ChatGPT license. But it was purely for, it was under the business, and we got them to play around with it. And these were staff members that were already looking at chat and bringing those conversations into the office. So, we thought, well, why don’t we issue them some licenses and see how they go with it? And then the feedback with that was also great. look I’ve been able to do this and know it’s analyzed a spreadsheet and then it’s produced this document. and I’m coming to my meetings now so much more prepared. So that was also a really easy one for people to engage in. And when I say people, those that led it, but then they were having conversations around the room. And then we realized that if we look to deploy this more formally, we’re going to have to set up some rules and guidelines around how to best.
You know how to utilize the tool in a way that will not compromise privacy and security, etc., for the group. And because you can’t necessarily be at someone’s desk looking at them, you know, querying or putting data into a tool like Chat GPT or Claude. And so, we created this policy and we communicated what the policy was, and everyone understood the policy. We gave everyone an opportunity to ask any questions if that’s what they or if they needed to clarify something. And then we decided as a firm what was going to be the best tool. So, we deployed a few more ChatGPT licenses and we had a few more people engage in ChatGPT with the policy. And then because individuals started to get more comfortable using AI, we started to see like the next iteration of use. It was it can actually create potentially a web page it can do this.
Lisa Fuentes (49:07.392)
And so that then those conversations came back into exec, okay, now this needs to be more broadly formalised, it needs governance, and we had our senior IT engineer go out into the marketplace, explore what was going to be the best AI tool for the business, and then sets a more sort of structured governance around the use of this tool in the business. And also bring a tool in that we can scale with. And so, Claude was chosen, new policy was written, governance framework was introduced, and now we have 17 managers using Claude in the business. And again, the experience with it hasn’t necessarily changed, it’s just that we’re using it for more and more things now. And I use the tool.
And I’m quite open when I use it, so are others within the business, and we don’t shy away from presenting something that’s been produced by AI because it starts to get other people thinking and being more curious around if you’ve been able to do that, I could potentially do this in my area. So, it’s created again that sense of curiosity and also the sense of how I can improve what I’m already doing within, within my team or within my function.
Rob (50:35.236)
Yeah, for sure. Let’s talk through the technology stack as it stands today. Obviously, Claris, you’ve mentioned Claude is now obviously a tool that augments the manager’s ability to get work done and they’re experimenting and finding new ways to make the process of what they do more effective, after considering your options around software, you are still on Xplan as the CRM or you are not anymore? Yep, so you are at the moment, but you hired a senior data engineer
Lisa Fuentes (50:46.444)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s correct?
Mm-hmm. That’s correct. So hope. That’s correct.
Rob (51:04.804)
And you’ve landed on Zoho as an alternative CRM, talk us through that decision and what your technology priorities are right now in the business.
Lisa Fuentes (51:11.234)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yep. Okay, so it’s again, I think every business faced with the same challenge. Xplan was one of everyone knows what I’m about to say, so I won’t repeat I won’t repeat this the story that everybody everybody’s probably shared at some point. But I think for us we didn’t want to go with the status quo. So the alternate to Xplan
Rob (51:23.814)
Everyone knows what you’re about to say.
Lisa Fuentes (51:41.25)
were Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Fin365, and we looked into all the platforms.
Rob (51:48.783)
My last guest. In fact, it we’re recording this on Friday the eleventh of September. This episode will publish in about two weeks from today, Lisa. But the episode that came out today was with Stephen Handley, Fin365 founder. So yep. For just for reference to our listeners, that’s the that’s the one that landed today. Yeah.
Lisa Fuentes (51:53.932)
Yeah. Yes. Okay, okay. Yes.
Okay. So yeah, so we explored all of them. Yeah, we explored all of them. and were trying really hard to build a case so we could make a decision and land on one of them. And no matter what we put forward to Keith, nothing was landing. So, we knew and this was over a year or two years because the as soon as you engaged with someone in Salesforce the answer was never no. The answer was always yes. Yes, we can do that. Yes, we can do this. Yes, and plus we can do this. So were never challenged with what we’re trying to achieve. And that in itself said to me, they’re gonna promise the world and I’m sure when we start on this journey, it’s not gonna look like what they’ve actually promised.
To get to that promise, it’s going to take us years and years and years of development and work and years and years of money spent. And will we ever get there? And when will, when will we get there? I couldn’t answer those questions, so I knew the approval of any of one of these solutions wasn’t going to be there. So, Keith said, I think we need to go back to the drawing board. I think we need to actually revisit what we what we’re doing and look to see if we can find some improvement with what we have and then engage in a technology conversation once we’ve sorted the house out. And so, we did that. So, we came back within the business, we looked through all of our processes, we timed them all, we costed them all out. And in that journey, we realized that there were gaps, you know, everywhere, not everywhere, but there were enough gaps for us to go, right, there are actually initiatives that we could run today to help us
With the current technology stack that we have. And then at the same time, we knew at some point we needed to find an enterprise solution. An X-Plan wasn’t going to be that solution. So we engaged in the recruitment space because we said we need an expert. And fortunately we found the person that is now responsible of the build-out of our enterprise solution. And when he came in, we had already done all the homework.
So, we handed the homework that we had done to him, and we gave him the opportunity to go out to my market and to find the solution. And he he drew the c he got to the conclusion that Zoho was the best solution for the group and that he could build it out. And it was a solution that was going to cater for all of our needs across the entire business and not just for our aged care advice business but also for wealth. And the build-out was going to take him anywhere between nine to twelve months, and he’s on that journey. He has rolled out the Zoho CRM solution for the aged care advice business. So, they’ve been running it now for eight months. And we’re looking to deploy Zoho into wealth, into the financial planning division, at the end of October.
Rob (55:16.814)
Yeah. Yeah, great. It’s you didn’t start with him in a consulting role before he became an employee?
Lisa Fuentes (55:24.064)
No, no, we didn’t. We had many consultants try to sell us the dream. but it was just too costly. And then the cost of having a senior engineer and f have his first-year focus on a build-out made so much more commercial sense. And we’ll have it all internal, any maintenance now moving forward will be maintained by the team internally.
And we won’t need to pay hefty fees for development moving forward. So from a commercial stance it made much more sense to bring the salary in and go with a solution that was going to solve for the issues that we had in the group.
Rob (56:08.26)
Makes sense to me too. Something that we spoke about when we first chatted, Lisa, was something you’ve done which is quite an innovative approach that hasn’t been led by an industry body. You’ve s set up what you call your Alteris Women Initiative, and it started after Keith met with an all-female led firm in the US. That group that you’ve established is now fifteen hundred members and you get,
Lisa Fuentes (56:29.304)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That’s correct.
Rob (56:35.8)
You do four to five events a year built from inside your firm rather than by that, as I say, third party industry body. Because that’s that exists in sort of an industry representation approach. What have you learned about what women want to talk about and has it changed what happens in your meeting rooms with advisors?
Lisa Fuentes (56:42.094)
Yes, it has. And we started the community, the Alteris Women community about five years ago. And it did start from, you know, Keith heading over to the US, but I think prior to that, what stood out the most is that we had sixty percent of our workforce were females and it was quite rare back in the days.
I used to show up to conferences, and I was one of three females in the room, now I show up to conferences and there’s a few more of us. I still believe that you know that ratio can continue to change and should change over the years. So, it started really within that we had a very strong female led business and Keith heading overseas and seen an all run female practice, you put those two things together, and you go, there’s something powerful about having a group of women working together and engaging with other women. And we also have a very strong you know client base, and 50 60% of the client base are females. But what we’re finding that in the in the room, the con the female would either engage in a financial conversation, but not necessarily focused on investments. Engage in a financial conversation centered around family, succession, what’s next for my children, for me, for the family, but not focus on that investment return. And we also found that some females weren’t necessarily engaging in any conversations.
So, the thought of you knows having 600 female clients and not all 600-feeling confident or comfortable engaging in a financial conversation made us think, well, there’s something more that we can do to be able to talk to our female clients. So we’ve created this community on the basis that we want every female client to engage in a financial conversation. But to start off with,
Lisa Fuentes (59:17.356)
We need them to feel confident and comfortable to be able to do that. So, how can we create that confidence? And how can we can we create a room or a moment in time where they’re not only engaging in the conversation, but they actually understand the situation, they understand what’s next for them. So, the community does that. So, we have events throughout the year.
We talk about financial matters that are important to females and the space is a safe space and it’s a space where women can share their stories, it’s a space where they can ask questions and it’s a space that they can bring others into because we love that, by the way. We don’t like showing up to a room on our own, we love showing up with a group of our friends.
And so, we’re welcoming others to come into the room and to be part of you know this journey of if you don’t know, that’s okay. We’ll put you in a position where you know, but not only that, we want you to walk out of this room and feel confident that you can engage in that in that discussion. And it could be things like estate planning, it could be around investing into direct equities, into property, we’ve also had more recently the COO of the Living with Newton-John Cancer Research Institute present. And again, it’s just really insightful information that allows people to think, okay, what can I do with this now and how can I engage in this matter that’s going to work for me and for my family and for what’s important to me. So, what our advisors are finding now is that the female our female clients are showing up and they’re showing up in a way where they’re asking questions, they want to know more, and they’re not leaving the room with uncertainty, they’re leaving the room with confidence that they’re that their questions have been answered and they do understand and they know what’s next for them and for their family.
Rob (01:01:25.882)
Great initiative to empower women to feel more confident in being in the room and asking questions and engaging more in that conversation because it turns to things that are more important, let’s be honest, that matter more anyway, about family and children and things that are much more to that personal decision as opposed to the financial decision because financial decisions are only there really to serve the personal ones anyway. So, let’s talk about the things that matter most first. So, the fact that the,
Lisa Fuentes (01:01:39.17)
That’s correct.
Rob (01:01:54.691)
It’s been a great success for you to have built out a community now of fifteen hundred or more women but that have been clients initially and brought their friends along. So, what a great way. What a great sort of grassroots initiative to empower women to be more informed on money matters and just feel like they can engage more confidently in the room with it with your advice team. And it no doubt’s helped your advisors to appreciate that and be because advisors would have unwittingly probably not taken the time to ensure,
Lisa Fuentes (01:02:18.07)
Yeah, that’s right.
Rob (01:02:24.634)
that maybe the lady in the room is not as well informed and not engaging as much and now that now that there’s a two-way understanding there that they need to take more time to do that, but the lady in the room’s also taking a bit more time to understand it through this initiative. So well done. It’s a great thing.
Lisa Fuentes (01:02:41.196)
Yeah, and what’s really interesting is just seeing the journey of the females that do turn up to our events. Initially it’s the quiet, they’re observing, they’re having round-the-table conversations, then two and three events in, they’re asking questions and they’re bringing others with them. So that tells me that they’re feeling more confident, they’re trusting the people in the room, and they want to share their experience with others. And they want others to feel what they’re feeling, that level of confidence, and the willingness to engage in a topic that potentially they thought they knew of, but they didn’t understand it. But now they know.
You know, back in the days it was almost like, we need to feel sorry for the females because they don’t understand or they don’t get it or they don’t bother in engaging in these conversations. What I’m saying is that’s the past. Now we have women who are showing up, who want to be part of something, who want to make a difference, and we need to embrace that. And we need to ensure that all women are feeling that way. So, what can we do to enhance what we’re already feeling? And then how can we take that, you know, growth or that confidence and turn it into something else? And what women do generally is that we tend to look after ourselves last. We tend to look after those that are around us first.
Rob (01:04:30.416)
Yes.
Lisa Fuentes (01:04:34.53)
So, the impact that a woman can have on their circle is tremendous if they’re feeling confident and engaged, they will make a difference to many. And so, if we can create that environment where they’re feeling safe, where they can ask the questions, when they can walk away with something that they can then turn into something else, then we’ve achieved we’ve achieved our goal. So, we want every female client to show up to their meetings and to ask questions.
Rob (01:05:09.24)
Yeah. I love it. I can I totally believe in what you’ve said there about women putting everyone else first and themselves last. But as you say, the ripple effect of actually giving the woman more information to be empowered, to be more engaged. The ripple effect on their family and the impact that has is tremendous. I call my wife the sun. The rest of us are in the solar system. everything revolves around everything revolves around her, which we’re very happy about. So, I love it. It’s so good. I’ve got a two more questions for you, Lisa, if you’ve got the time. Is that okay?
Lisa Fuentes (01:05:39.534)
Sure. yes, that’s fine.
Rob (01:05:42.669)
Okay, so Keith told the team you’d be a thirty million business when you were doing three million and nobody could see how you would get there. He’s now saying hundred million to two hundred million in three to five years, and you started planning for it with governance and an org chart rather than doing deals. Tell us why you started with that governance and org chart and how do you engage your team to believe and commit to that future?
Lisa Fuentes (01:05:51.679)
Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm. That’s correct.
Lisa Fuentes (01:06:10.06)
Yeah, so governance in the org chart is so important. So again, that shift when we moved the operational functions out of the revenue generating roles was a massive shift for us. And it’s now setting us up for that next iteration of growth as well, because we can take all those operational functions into other businesses and we can enable, they’re growth. So that infrastructure is there. So, Keith being an entrepreneur at heart, he will never stop. So, my job has never been to stop him. My job has been to figure it out. And the iterations of figuring it out has just changed over the years. It’s just gotten bigger and bigger, obviously, in terms of volume and size. But I know if you have the right people around you and the right mindset, lots of things happen. And if you have the vision and if you know that there’s somewhere that we’re all or there’s a journey or there’s somewhere that we all need to get to or inspire to, then it’s an easy conversation to have internally. When you don’t know where you’re going, it’s hard to engage in a converse in a today conversation. But if you know where you’re going, but you just need to figure a few things out to get there.
Then they’re exciting conversations to have. They’re the ones everyone’s invested in because we all realize that we don’t know, but there’s an opportunity to find things out and to work it out along the way. So that’s great. In terms of governance, it’s the same, it’s the same thought process. We know where we want to go; we know that there’s a number, but we also know that we need people and teams and structure and functions to get us there. And so that starts to broaden the mindset. What do we have today?
What do we need to be in a hundred million dollar business? And what does that journey look like in terms of growth? Is it strategic partners? Is it, you know, a number of acquisitions? Is it a new service line? you know, is it just organic growth? So you start to distill what that hundred million dollar number is, and then when you have a a a good idea of what the makeup of what that $100 million looks like.
Lisa Fuentes (01:08:34.242)
Then you can start to look at the functions and the people and the teams that you need to get there. And so those are the conversations that we’re having today. And as soon as I engage with that conversation, it becomes clearer and clearer as to how we’re going to get there. And so that clarity, I can then communicate internally. And I can start talk to the team.
Yes, we are going to be a hundred-million-dollar business, and no one shies away from these numbers, by the way. If anything, it excites everyone because we know that if there’s a number, then there’s a way. There’s something that we need to do to get there. And so, then everyone walks away with, yep, I know where we’re going, I know what my role is. I don’t know exactly how I’m going to get there, but I know I need to get there. But I will find a way to build out the systems, the tools, the processes, and to bring the people in my team to ensure we can achieve that number.
Rob (01:09:30.02)
Yeah. Your role as the chief operating officer and Keith’s role as the CEO is the classic what they call visionary and integrator sort of dynamic in the EOS book written by Gina Whitman called Traction, which you may be familiar with, but it’s so familiar to me what you’re describing. Keiths got a vision, he’s entrepreneurial by nature, he wants to push forward and progress and never stop. And he has you, as you said, I have to figure it out. I have to I go; I’m on board. Now I’m gonna do the figuring out of how we actually get to that. And you start to put in place the integration, if you like, the systems, the people. You’re actually the one that sort of takes the baton and runs with executing on that vision. do you have you read the book, Traction? Do you do you
Lisa Fuentes (01:10:20.97)
No, I haven’t, but I’ll be interested to read it. And I yeah, I’m the integrator. But I have that same I play that same role when I’m talking to founders and CEOs of other businesses, Rob. You know, when we’ve been talking to groups or firms, there’s two types of leaders or founders that I speak to. There’s those that are,
Rob (01:10:23.874)
Yeah. You’re the integrator. You’re the,
Lisa Fuentes (01:10:48.684)
you know, have grown the business to a certain size and they’re ready to take the business to that next stage, but they just don’t know how to get there. Right? And I love those founders because I go, I you don’t need to worry about that because I know how you’re going to get there. I’ll figure it out. If you give me a number, I’ll figure the rest out. And I’ve got the people in the teams, and I can communicate that to your team and I can make it happen.
That excites me. And then you’ve got the founders where they’ve taken the business, let’s say to a I don’t know, $20 million business, and they’re fatigued. They’re tired. They’re tired of running the operational side. They’re tired of having to deal with contracts. They’re tired of having to step into HR matters because they’ve been doing that over and over again over the years. And they just want someone to come in and just take that all away. So, they can continue to grow they’re firm and do what they do best. That also excites me. So, if they say to me, I’m fatigued, I actually get this feeling of I don’t want you to be t fatigued. So let me just take it away and you can continue to do what you do best.
Rob (01:12:09.744)
Yeah, I love it. It’s,
Lisa Fuentes (01:12:10.754)
So, both those founders excite me. The ones that are willing to take their business to the next level, continue to grow, and they’re very, you know, set on what that growth and what that vision looks like, that excites me. And the founder that’s fatigued, that also excites me. Because I know I can do it. I know I can distill it and I will find a way to navigate through the challenges and enable that next iteration of growth for both firms.
Rob (01:12:39.428)
Because you’ve been there and you’ve navigated those challenges yourself and you’ve got the toolkit to solve for it. So, no wonder it does gives you excitement regardless of whether they’re fatigued or still energized by the growth journey that they’re on. I’ve got one final question. So, you clearly have tons of energy still you’ve been doing this for over twenty-four years now, but there’s no shortage of energy in the way you think and speak about this business that you’re running and growing.
Lisa Fuentes (01:12:59.287)
I do.
Rob (01:13:08.954)
What are you most excited about right now, say in the next three years? what really energizes you about where the business will be over the next three years?
Lisa Fuentes (01:13:17.838)
I can have an impact on other firms. That’s what excites me. Because the impact that I’ve had has been within the business and that still energizes me because I see the success and growth in individuals. I love that. I love seeing others succeed. I have this wholehearted commitment to ensure people are successful. And success for everyone looks and feels differently but that doesn’t matter. I don’t pay attention to the differences; I just pay attention to a success story for them. So, then I’m able now to do that with a business. So, it’s the business I see it as a person, and I can I can inject all my energy.
And all my ideas and thoughts and frameworks and tools and systems have you described that, I can inject them all into a bigger beast. And I’d love to see these firms succeed and grow. And if I can do that for many, I would say that would be one of my biggest wins in my career.
Rob (01:14:30.522)
Yeah, I love it. Lisa, I love this podcasting gig because I get to talk to amazing people like you and talking to people like you energize me too. So, I don’t lack energy, but I just love these conversations because I get to talk to wonderful people that have got real passion for what they’re doing and want to impact more people that they can touch from the things they’ve figured out. So, I really want to say thank you again for taking the time to join me today. I’ve kept you well past the hour that I promised.
Lisa Fuentes (01:14:58.146)
Yeah, you have. You have. You have.
Rob (01:15:00.784)
But I’ve loved it. And so, thank you, Lisa Fuentes, for taking the time to tell the Alteris story. It’s a wonderful journey that you’re on and it’s not stopping any time soon by the sound of it. So, congratulations again and thanks for ta taking the time to join me.
Lisa Fuentes (01:15:05.122)
That’s okay. Thank you. No, thank you for inviting me. I haven’t had this many opportunities to talk about our journey, it’s been a really good story to share in a boardroom, but it’s nice to be able to share it more broadly. So, thank you.
Rob (01:15:32.568)
It’s a great story and I feel privileged to have been able to have this conversation to better learn about the Alteris business. It is a wonderful business and it’s like I said, I love doing this show because I get a chance to talk to people like you, learn more about what you’ve done that’s worked and what you’re still doing that’s working, and where you’re going. So, I loved having this conversation, Lisa. Thanks again.
Lisa Fuentes (01:15:54.616)
Thanks, Rob. Speak soon.