Creating extra scale without extra headcount

Having founded two financial advice practices, Brad Symes discusses what he learnt the second time round in terms of upscaling without hiring additional staff members.

Symes was recently interviewed by Money Management regarding his career change from the sporting world of AFL to financial advice, including the transferable skills between the two jobs.

He started his financial advice career at Morgan Stanley before he and four of his colleagues departed to set up their own private wealth management company called Stellan Capital in 2019.

However, having built up a strong client base, he then opted to set up a second business of his own called Bratton Wealth with fellow Stellan Capital colleague Matt McRae which officially opened in July 2024.

“We ended up running individual businesses or client bases under the greater Stellan banner, as opposed to every single founder and adviser working across the board with all clients,” Symes explained.

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“It led to the point where all five of the founders were running their own pretty large, well-resourced, successful businesses and client bases.”

Nearly four months into Bratton Wealth, Symes explained how the boutique practice has been able harness technology and outsourcing to drive efficiencies without adding extra staff.

“If you surround yourself and your business with good internal people and good external third-party providers, you can run a pretty terrific and efficient business without having to spend millions of dollars to get off the ground these days,” he said.

“That’s where Bratton is a little different – what I learnt from the first time versus doing it the second time is that you can build more efficiency with how the industry has developed and the technology that’s out there.”

Bratton Wealth utilises an external administration service and has a separate investment committee and advisory board, freeing up Symes and McRae to focus on building and strengthening client relationships.

Symes continued: “Our model is we want to add scale and add to our client base, but we don’t want to necessarily add a lot of headcount. We’re in a pretty fortunate position, not only with our business but with the technology coming through, where I feel like we could probably double our revenue in the next three years and add one or two in terms of headcount.

“We don’t have to hire 12 staff members to do that, whereas I speak to other business owners in different industries, and they’re like: ‘We could grow our revenue by 30 per cent but we’d probably have to bolt on eight new staff members to help manage it’ – so we're pretty lucky in that regard.

“We want to be efficient, use technology well and continue to put our time, resources and energy into the areas that clients care about and the advice piece.”

Bratton Wealth’s approach aligns with suggestions from Business Health principal Tony Stephens earlier this year on how to create practice efficiencies.

Stephens encouraged advice leaders to ensure the right people are doing the right tasks, meaning advisers need to be focusing on high-value duties and working on the business. Moreover, outsourcing what you don’t have internally through an external consultant or a part-time employee is critical.

Recent findings from Netwealth also revealed that 81 per cent of advice firms with the highest technology adoption reported more than $1 million in revenue for the year ending 30 June 2024.

It also found the top uses of artificial intelligence in these advice practices were to summarise client meetings (64 per cent), content marketing (43 per cent), back-office automation (43 per cent), client review process (30 per cent), and to help prepare the financial plan or statement of advice (21 per cent).