Side Hustle City
Step into Side Hustle City, the ultimate podcast for entrepreneurs, creatives, and anyone eager to turn their side hustle into a full-time passion. We bring you real-life stories of resilience, innovation, and success from diverse entrepreneurs who’ve made the leap from side projects to profitable ventures. Whether you're exploring entrepreneurship, looking for business insights, or seeking inspiration to fuel your journey, join us for valuable tips and motivational tales. Transform your passion into a thriving business with Side Hustle City, where dreamers become doers.
Side Hustle City
From Musical Theater To Financial Strategy And Career Opportunity
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A musical theater degree doesn’t sound like the start of a finance career, but it can be. We sit down with Andrew Evans to unpack how “stage skills” like presenting, absorbing information fast, and making complicated ideas feel simple can become a real advantage in wealth management and financial planning. The result is a conversation that’s part origin story, part career roadmap, and part behind-the-scenes look at how the financial services industry actually runs day to day.
We also go deep on “extreme college planning,” including why Andrew’s family moved to Florida to leverage the Bright Futures Scholarship and what it really takes to qualify. It’s a useful lens on how families can reduce the cost of college with smart planning, community service, and clear academic targets, instead of just hoping the numbers work out later.
From there, Andrew breaks down the modern advisor world: why most advisors are not sitting around picking stocks, why strategy and fiduciary stewardship matter, and how compliance and complexity have reshaped the business. He explains Rosby Financial and Rosby Office, a fractional support model he calls “Upwork for financial advisors,” and why regulated work often can’t be fully automated by AI. We also demystify advisor transitions, the project-heavy process of moving a book of business between firms, and why roles like paraplanners, admin support, and data specialists are in real demand.
If you’re looking for a side hustle that can turn into a main hustle, this one will expand your map. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s stuck career-wise, and leave a review with the skill you want to monetize next.
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Welcome And Theater Kid Banter
SPEAKER_03Welcome to Side Hustle City. And thanks for joining us. Our goal is to help you connect to real people who found success turning their side hustle into a main hustle. And we hope you can too. I'm Adam Kayler. I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, my co-host. Let's get started. Alright, guys, welcome back to the Side Hustle City podcast. Today I have a friend of mine down here in Florida, Mr. Andrew Evans. Andrew, how are you doing, buddy? Excellent. Bang bang. We're doing great. Bang bang. Well, this is gonna be interesting because you got two theater kids doing this podcast today. Uh we do. Yeah. Yeah, we do five five years in drama at the School for the Craig and Forming Arts. That was my major.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes. I have a BFA in musical theater. A lot of people don't know that. So yes. There you go. There you go. Well, you're musical theater.
SPEAKER_03See, I can't sing. So that's why I'm doing this now. I could just act and I could be on stage. That was what I could do. And uh it translated into politics. So that was kind of cool. Yeah, yeah. It sounds about right. Yep. Because, you know, you gotta act sometimes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, you know, uh uh in in college, um, the the head of our of our uh department would say uh to be a great actor, if you can fake sincerity, you've got it. And I mean, what what could be better for politics?
SPEAKER_03Really? You look at some of these people, yeah. Got a guy running New York right now who's uh an actor, right? There you go. He's a rapper or whatever. Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was an actor, he was an actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, actor. That's right. So, you know, and you see, I'm wearing my bullshirt today because we're bullish. Always be bullish. This is my bullshirt. So not not what you think I just said, bull shirt, not bull shirt. No, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, I just shipped my pants. Yeah, that's right. I shipped my pants. You've got your bullshirt, and I'm gonna ship my pants. That's it. That's what you gotta do.
SPEAKER_03So, Andrew, what are we doing? Yeah, what are we doing? Yeah, don't worry, this is gonna go off in a whole different direction than you planned on. This is how we work here. But but Andrew, so uh tell people a little bit
From Stage Work To Finance
SPEAKER_03about your background. You went to school up in Ohio Northern, right? You you got you, you said you got your BFA in musical theater, but uh, what got you into finance?
SPEAKER_02Well, uh it during my my time at university, uh, even though I, you know, I I I performed, had a great time. I worked in the scene shop, I worked behind the scenes, I worked in the office. I took a lot of internships at the same time where I was also then working in the back office of theaters. Um, and one in particular I worked for a summer for the Roundabout Theater Company New York. And uh what I did is I I handled um billing of subscriptions for their upcoming season. And just something about overall that blend of theatrics and money and just seeing all of those things, I just led me down this path so that when I graduated, um I I always had this idea that I would somehow, somehow, maybe one day I would end up at Disney as a producer. But I thought, well, the only way you could do it is you have to actually have to have the money to do that. But I didn't go down that route. Um, but I started with um very pretty soon out of out of school. Uh I started with Raymond James and Associates out of Sarasota. That's where I've I got all my series licenses, my Finroom, my SEC licenses.
SPEAKER_03Wait a minute. So you were at Ohio Northern, and then you ended up in Jacksonville. No, no, no, no, no, Sarasota. Sarasota, sorry, you ended up in Sarasota.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, I moved because I didn't want to live in the north.
SPEAKER_03I and you're from Pittsburgh, you're a Pittsburgh guy, and I live in Pittsburgh, and I understand it's just it can be rough on those one-way streets up those mountains.
SPEAKER_02That's right, that's right. So, like uh, you know, I I it's a blend of that. Uh, why'd I move to Florida? Because I was tired of being cold for a while. So moved to Florida, start career, got married, still married, still married, same woman. It's wonderful at 23-ish years, 24 years. Wow, there you go. Congratulations. Um, thank you. Um, and so started with Raymond James. Uh, was there for a while, started my career there, had a had a great time, but then uh we had some changes, we were doing something else, and then we actually moved back to Pittsburgh for many years, and that's where we had our kids. And then in 2017, uh again, still in this industry, you know, still growing. I I did time, as I say, I did time at Merrill Lynch and uh Charles Schwab uh until I went fully independent in 2009. Just I'm gonna do my own deal because I'm a malcontent
Extreme College Planning In Florida
SPEAKER_02like that. Um, had the kids, and in 2017, uh we did what I call extreme college planning. I looked at the numbers of what it would cost for us to put our kids through college in the north, and I was like, I I can't save, nor do I want to work that hard to take a pile of money and burn it. So we decided to move back to Florida to take advantage of the Bright Futures Scholarship, which is a uh a wonderful education program uh afforded to the residents of Florida, that as long as you you or your child uh have her over, I think it's a 3-7 G might be a 3-4 um GPA, you get over uh call it 1320 on the SATs, and you put in a hundred hours of community service, as long as you go to an in-state school, you don't pay or you have a dramatically reduced cost to it. And so when well, my wife's name is Lindsay, when we when we really dug into that in 2017, we're like, we gotta go. Like, why would why would we stick around? And so we put in in place uh the plans to then move back to Florida. We move, we now live in Melbourne, Florida, uh, move back here, and uh our son, fast forward, uh, he finished his freshman year at UCF last year, and we got the bill at him, and it was a goose egg because you gotta love it. He got that bright futures. Now, our daughter's in high school and she's coming along, and we expect that as well. So that just afforded us the ability to take our life in a in a total different direction, as opposed to let's say, being um being anchored um geographically because of college or things like that.
SPEAKER_03Um the one caveat is your kids are smart and uh they have to work at it, right? I mean, so you can't this isn't just a giveaway, right? This isn't just a uh, you know, no the state of Florida giving every kid a free scholarship. No, you got to work at it. Like this is this is something that uh you got a hundred hours of community service or whatever that was. You've got, you know, you said you got to get a 1300 plus uh on your SATs. Um, that's not easy for a lot of kids. I mean, you got to pay attention in school if you're gonna score that high. Um, and you know, uh you know, having residency obviously is a thing, but uh, but you got to work at it, right? And this this is what we always talk about is nothing comes free. Uh, you know, you think, oh, wow, these kids got a free scholarship or whatever, good for them. Well, you know, they had to put in effort.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I and Adam, I'll I'll tell you that uh again, this is our rabbit hole, but this is for the good of everyone, it's extreme college planning. But like, I was I was amazed when I talked to my son about like, oh, well, I guess all the kids and everybody's doing he's like, no, actually, a lot of them don't qualify. I go, why not? Because they didn't want to do the community service.
SPEAKER_03Wow, that's insane that's a hundred hours. That's all it is. Let's see. So if you're a kid, you're worth about what $15 an hour max to an employer, probably right now. Yeah, maybe less than $12 an hour, you know. But uh yeah, I mean, you you do the math. I mean, it's it's it's nothing compared to what it would cost you to go to school. Yeah. I mean, your time right now is worth less than your time in the future post-degree. So you're going to be spending your money that you're making in the future to pay off something that you could have done with essentially volunteer work at your lowest value you have to society at that point.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you you could like these kids, you could have gone um like every Wednesday and uh Wednesday and Thursday after school to the animal rescue and just cleaned out them and gave and you know do snuggles with kitties, and that counts that counts.
SPEAKER_03Why is it that hard? That's insane. It like somebody must have framed it to these kids in the wrong way or something, because I mean this is an obvious win, and you just gotta do it, and that's that's wild. But like your kids are on their
Two Businesses Behind The Scenes
SPEAKER_03way. You got one kid in high school now, she's also amazing at theater, she can sing. We we saw a performance the other day and it was outstanding. And uh your son, like you said, freshman year at UCF, just finished that up. So, what do they want to do? Are they gonna follow in your footsteps or uh are they gonna help with the business? What do you think? Probably I mean, it it'll it'll be here.
SPEAKER_02Um, I I'm not um I guess I'm I'm not I'm not forcing it upon them, but for the things that they're interested in and the things that they do, um they um they could easily step in. They'd be they'd be brilliant at it. And the this is now coming, is that like they could go either into either main company. So just for the benefit of everybody, I I run two predominantly uh there are two main organizations that I now have. One is an RAA that uh is well, as we're recording this, we're just under a billion in assets. So hopefully when we get this out, we'll be over a billion in assets. Uh, but okay, but that's that's an aside. Um, so uh RAA supports uh independent advisors across the country. We do basically the infrastructure work for someone to operate as an advisor without having to put up all of the capital and put up with all the all the issues of being really good at compliance, uh, all of your operation works, your technology, your oversight, things like that. We'll take care of that for them. Uh, and then the other business is uh it's called Rosby Office. So my brand is Rosby, Rosby Financial, and then Rosby Office, or I've cleverly called it our office, because it's clever. Smart using that degree. Yeah, that's right. This is this is it's our office, right? Um, and so uh in in in either one, just based on it, and and our office is it it's it's upwork or fiver for financial advisors. That that's what it is. That that's what it is. And so if my kids want to go into either one or neither, that's cool. Like it's okay. Um, but it it's funny, like I know so many other people who have they've had parents that built a business, and on one side, it's like the their parents are like, Well, I don't know if they're take it over or anything like that. And then and then it was just thrust it upon their kid to take it over. Like, well, you're just gonna do it now, you know. But like the whole time though, it's like, no, I don't know. It's like, whereas I'm saying right now, oh my god, if if my daughter came in and says, I want it, I go, You can have it. Absolutely, I'm not getting in her way. She'd totally have it. And it'd be awesome if she joined she joined either uh organization. I'd love it.
SPEAKER_03But you've put them in a position where they have options. Like a lot of us growing up, you know, people listening to this podcast, you know, you didn't grow up with a whole lot. You didn't maybe grow up with a parent who owned a business. Maybe they my mom was a teacher in McKee Sport PA.
SPEAKER_02And for those of you that know McKee sport, it's it's not it's not that posh to put it in a way.
SPEAKER_03That posh, okay. Yeah, you know, it's I I I know McKee Sport. Yeah, McKee's not far from Wheeling, West Virginia. Not far, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean, you're you're rough. It was and and even back then, like now it's just like I don't I don't know how many people even are living there now, but it was it was a pretty rough town. Pretty rough town. Yeah, you got some football players from McKeesport, though.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, you got some you got some guys. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. And in Pittsburgh in general, if you guys don't know, uh very it's a quarterback uh factory, I would call it. Bernie Kozar, Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, Joe Montana. I mean, those four guys right there. I mean, those are I mean, maybe Bernie Kozar was on the Browns, so what can you do there? But it's probably the best quarterback they've had since then. Let's let's put it that way.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and also for Bernie, uh, you know, he uh he got his liver transplant uh recently, he's looking better, doing better. So all love to to Bernie, you know. You know, we don't we only hate him when he's playing for them, when he's playing for the Bradford. That's it, but he's still a guy. It's fine.
SPEAKER_03That's right. Well, well, so yeah, like I said, a lot of people, you know, you don't you your parents didn't really set you up, right? So having this uh opportunity for them, I think is really big. And being able to provide that is what the finance world did for you, right? I mean, you're a kid coming out of you know, a theater degree, you know, everybody makes fun of these kids graduating with theater degrees or working at Starbucks now, right? They didn't, they weren't able to like figure out how do I transfer this into a real job, right? Yeah, uh, and many people struggle with that, but you were able to to turn that and leverage the skills that you got from that from that training in college into, believe it or not, something complete that seems completely different, a finance degree, but there were some transferable skills there.
Transferable Skills And Real Advisory Work
SPEAKER_03What do you see though? What did you see with what you learned and the talent you had, what did you see that transferred over into finance?
SPEAKER_02Uh actually a significant amount of it. Um, uh and a lot of people will say, no, but you're in finance, you go. There's we do very little direct financial equations for people day in and day out. And if anybody's listening to this and you haven't advised us, oh, you know, I'm doing that. No, they're not. There's not there's not enough time. You're you're really relying on other programs, uh, other um other systems, much larger investment companies that are running and crunching the numbers. They're distilling it down for you so that you could get to it. Now you you'll you'll still probably run some sort of uh a regression table or things like that, but really um it's it's very rare for there to be like one guy that you work with sitting in a room picking stocks. Like that that that's that's rare.
SPEAKER_03You guys that's what I picture. That's what I picture. There's some guy in Boston at some place or New York, and he's in a room at a computer with a bunch of other guys, and they're all just got the charts up and they're picking things.
SPEAKER_02But if they're doing that, you have to understand that the ones that are doing that, they're part of a much larger collective that is then trading a couple billion dollars. And they're they're not, it's not again, it's not that there's this guy, this guy's doing research for Monpaw Kettle over here and telling Monpaw Kettle you should sell IBM and you should buy GE and they and again, no recommendations to buy or sell anything here today, none of this. But it's like that that doesn't that doesn't really exist like that anymore. Like it it hasn't. It it really hasn't. Um, you'll get a one-off here or there, but um, but I'm sorry, I but I digress.
SPEAKER_03Uh so even though You mean there's no tick, there's no tape thing anymore, like the bump thing with the things coming out, there's none of that.
SPEAKER_02No, no, not so much.
SPEAKER_03There's not a guy just standing there looking at it.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, that's oh it's down three quarters. Oh my god. No. Um, no, not that. Uh, but but what um what it what a lot of it is, and just for everybody who knows too, I I did go back and I got a master's degree. Um I I I I learned I learned after I got into this business, or I should say that I really accepted it that I'm actually really good at math. Like I I realized that actually I'm really good at math. So I then doubled down on that as I as as I was going into my 20s uh and then getting a uh a master's degree. Um but uh interesting transferable skills have been the ability to present, absorb data, reconfigure it, to then deliver it out to someone in a in a much easier palatable way, as opposed to saying, well, your sharp ratio is here, and we've got an Elliott wave theory that's telling us that this is going to happen here and dot dot dot dot dot. Like this is politics.
SPEAKER_03That's what this is. This is politics. People don't want to hear the long, drawn-out answer. They just want to hear that their taxes are gonna go down.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Now we go through uh a lot of uh a lot of the industry. We do, we we work very, very hard. We take our time, we try to help someone figure out what are the goals, where are we trying to get to, what are the best ways to get there, in what investment vehicles, and we are siphoning through different things. Um, and and it's it's it's great, it's rewarding. Um, there's there's so many people in need of financial education, financial support that uh that's why we're still an industry. Like everybody's like, oh, well, AI is gonna shut it down, and you've got all the trade, all the people on TradeView and they're running their algorithms. Like, that's you know, that's trading. That's trading. That's totally different. And those people have always been there, they've always been there. So it's not like this is a new fad, like the whole uh GameStop thing. It was like, well, this is what everybody does do. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what everybody does now. Adam, every nobody is working with an advisor or anything, everybody's just doing it themselves on, you know, on uh uh autopilot and dot dye. They're not. They're they're not. They're not. There's a lot, but it's not everybody because most people say, Well, wait a minute, where is my time as a human the most needed? You could say, like, like, well, wait a minute, I own a auto parts store. I can't I can't be watching candlestick graphs and know when when my when my point is to buy something to do.
SPEAKER_03You're a plumber, you're an electrician, like these guys got money. Like, these are investors, these are who the investors are today. These small business owners just sitting on you know a two million dollar business that they grew or they bought. People don't think about that. Like you can just buy a business off of somebody who just wants to go fishing all day now. Yeah, those are out there, and and and you know, people actually will help you broker a deal to buy a business. Like, you don't have to slave away nine to five, you know, for somebody else.
SPEAKER_02I mean, there's guys out there right now selling businesses, and and that's something where a lot of people don't realize that that that like an advisor can come in. It's different than working with somebody at a bank, and somebody at a bank just needs to run you through underwriting and you either get a loan or you don't. Whereas a lot of the times you get really solid advisors that work with individual business owners. And if you walk up to them, you find that person says, Well, geez, what I want to do
Selling A Business And Tax Strategy
SPEAKER_02is I want to I want to figure out what my net worth is, I want to put all my finances together, and I really want to understand what I have, and then I need to figure out a way to leverage because I want to buy an HVAC company. Okay, that like an advisor can do that, they could do that. And if you mean advisor says, Oh, I don't do that, you should buy life insurance. That's something totally different. Yeah, well, that's not who you're looking for.
SPEAKER_03That's not it. No, but also you know, when we sold our business, I didn't know a whole lot about finance, right? I knew a little bit, I played around in stocks and everything, I knew the basics, but I got a big check, and I was like, What do I do with this big check? Like, who's gonna help me? And luckily, I had a friend who was an advisor, and you know, he's like, Hey, I got I got a plan for you, and yeah, bring it over here. And I'm like, Well, you're just as good as anybody, I guess. But is that the way to look at it? Is like, oh, I got a buddy who's in a business, and uh, or or are there other steps people should take? Because the plumber electrician who wants to go fishing every day, he hasn't been paying, like your point, he's been working, he hasn't been paying attention to the stock market, he doesn't know what to do. What should he do?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, see, like a lot of the uh a lot of those people miss out on. So you sell a business, okay? Well, you hey, there are taxes due, or you find someone, you talk about things like qualified opportunity zones that allow you to take those proceeds, put them over into this strategy. It's not an investment, it's a strategy that then works with you. So you have a limited amount of taxes or a very tax-sensitive way of then reaping in what you just sold, as opposed to I just sold, I just sold my plumbing business, and now I have to stroke, you know, Uncle Sam a check for you know $400,000. You know, it's like, well, you know, you don't have to do that. That's why you talk to an advisor that understands these things, it's strategies, not just buy this stock or sell that stock. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's perfect. But the thing is too, um in your industry, and and you know, if you're in doing whatever, you're thinking about getting into finance, are you trading stocks on a daily basis or are you just managing this RIA where there There's all these other advisors underneath it who are working with everyone else. I mean, they it it seems like if you're gonna get into finance, oh, you got to be a stock picker, and you're you go out, you find people who got money, and you you get them to let you manage their money for them. But there's there's a lot of other ways to create a business inside of this whole industry.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. There uh that's a that's a philosophical thing across the industry. Some people feel like, oh no, the only reason why that people come to me as an advisor is because I buy and sell the stocks. And and again, that's dwindling. What um uh what I what I do is I still maintain a book of business. It's not very big uh compared to uh the um the advisors that we work with. Like we have some really sizable advisors, but I maintain a small, personalized, like private book of business because I always still want to be involved in what's going on. I want to I want to eat my own cooking, as it were. So I always like to see it. I always like to stay in practice. You know, it it's always good, like any doctor would tell you this too. They might be a hospital administrator, but they still maintain a few individual clients so that they're always still up on top of what are the latest trends, what are the the advances in medicine, things like that. So that's that's how I do it. So I I don't buy or sell you know stocks and bonds every single day. I work with a few set of uh high net worth clients and we work on things I was already talking about, which is strategy to help them reach the various goals they have without overcomplicating it, without taking on too much risk. We just get them what they need and we do it intelligently because guess what? They're off doing the things they want to do. They're traveling, they're doing an Alaskan tour, they're spending time with their grandkids. It's whatever they want to do. I'm the steward of their money. It is not my money. I, you know, there's nothing about that. I don't think, you know, anybody, you know, you have to contain your um your ego in this business, I think, because you are the steward, the fiduciary to these folks and their livelihood.
SPEAKER_03Well, and I think there was a lot of big transformations in the finance world. I mean, banking used to be boring, like it used to be a bunch of nerds, and you know, it was just banking, and then all of a sudden, like derivatives came out and everything got a little more sexy, and now then now you got Wall Street Bros and all this other stuff, and then Enron happened, Lehman Brothers happened, compliance got crazy. Uh, you know, things got a lot more complicated, and it created an entire new industry, but uh and a lot more responsibility for these folks. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02They it it it gets harder. Um, it's uh um I I had I had four C's on this. It's it's the four C's. Um compliance, complexity. What was my oh balloons come up there? Uh compliance complex, I haven't done this in a while. Jeez, compliance complexity, um uh capability and competency. Ah, okay, those are the four that you have to have. You have to have those four to maintain things in our industry. But you but for any one person to be perfect at four of those, you either have a small business that you're trying to maintain or you're kidding yourself. And and really those four things are is why we have the RA, and that's why we made the other company, that's why we made Rosby Office, is because the the capabilities, so like all those things you just listed, and if advisor wants to do those things and they want to help their clients with that, for them to understand and be able to do all those things and stay on top of their compliance and stay on top of all the changes technologically, it you don't you probably don't have the competency to do all of it, and you probably don't have the capacity to do all of it. So those are two main things that we solve for with our with our Rosby office model. So um that's a that's is kind of a uh uh nice segue, but it was a little flimsy, I think.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but the but the R office model supports the Rosby office uh people, right? I mean you you've got your own people that work under Rosby, potentially that could use ROffice products.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, yeah. So um uh Rosby office, so Rosby Financial, that's the RAA you have to be registered with and work, and you know, you're only working with us. And for anybody listening, if you know the words, they're part of our ADV. Now they need to outsource capabilities, they need marketing support, they need an admin. Maybe they're bringing somebody into their firm, they need transition support. Well, they could tap into the Rosby office, they can tap into our office and get those services. But Rosby Office, that is available for the entire industry. So we actually have agreements with multiple firms across the entire nation to help support in transitions and marketing and admin work and paraplanning and website design and podcasting and things like that. So it like I said at the beginning, we started talking is that it's it's upwork for financial advisors. And why we say it's for financial, like, well, why don't I just go to upwork? Well, remember, we're highly regulated. Yeah, we're highly regulated. And so we've just taken what already exists and we said, we're just putting that nice layer of understanding and compliance over it. Like, we get it. We know what you have to go through. We know that this has to be approved, we know that we need this, we know that US based service providers for you are better than getting someone out of the Philippines because now you have to you have to tell your compliance team, why are you giving why are you giving someone in the Philippines access to your CRM and all of your clients' non-public information? Yeah, are you doing that?
SPEAKER_03Good question. Yeah, uh, yeah, and it it reminds me of something, and and I think a lot of people understand this. Uh, I had my back uh driver's side tail light go out, I go on eBay, I buy a cheap one for $200, it comes back and it has a short in it. So I had to pay another $75 to have it diagnosed at Pet Boys the other day. So on top of the $200, now I'm paying $75 and I still have to go get an OEM part that I know is gonna work. So instead of just going to get the OEM part in the first place, you know, I was like, oh, I can just go buy one over here and it'll be fine. So there's there's other reasons why you don't go
Fractional Help Beats DIY Marketing
SPEAKER_03to places that uh where you're just gonna get cheap services that you know you you don't know. You're just you're just through, you know, hope in that you find somebody who can do this work for you.
SPEAKER_02And and you and you know what's crazy, Adam, is that what what we are what we struggle with are it it's it's like a balance of finding and making sure that they understand that, like, hey, um advisors aren't really diving into AI automation as much as you would think because there's so much regulation around what we have to do that they're more than happy to outsource, like, hey, can you just do just you I had a call today? Guys, like, I don't have time to call back all of these prospects from an event I just did. He's not sending them automated emails, he's not sending them automated texts. He wants a human to make a phone call because he can't get to these hundred and some people. Call this person, book an appointment, put it on my calendar, do that for me. And they are willing to pay. We do uh uh per hour build in 15-minute incurrence. They're more than happy to pay an actual human to do that work. There is so much of that available that it's always it, it's it's always stunning to me that people don't get it. It's like you need to be blowing us up. Like, there's there's there's so much work to be done in the financial services industry without ever being an advisor, without ever being an advisor.
SPEAKER_03And that's the idea, is is like there's so much stuff that could be done out here, and and that's people are freaking out right now about AI and it taking their their, you know, changing everything. I mean, I've got friends, designers who have been out on the streets, they don't, you know, they've been out of work for months, can't find anything because AI is kind of taking over the industry. And writers, imagine being a writer right now and and AI just taking over, being able to do that and do it much more efficiently and uh correctly in a lot of cases. And yeah, I mean, you get knock out something in just a few minutes. So there's a lot of industries out there that are being affected, especially admin type stuff that are being affected. And what you're effectively saying is because of the regulations, because of the things we're like, I hate regulations, uh, which I I do kind of hate regulations, right? I think everybody does. But in a way, it's protecting jobs and it's actually creating new jobs.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. You you can't um you you really can't AI away what already exists as a manual bureaucracy. And and I I I just I feel like they people just don't get that. We we work with a couple other vendors um from a compliance standpoint, and I was like, oh, well, we have AI. We have AI in our compliance tool, and it this and then when you run it, you go, this this is none of this is what I need. You you you just you created a program, you slapped AI onto it, you you raised a hundred million dollars, but yet your program doesn't do what I need it to do. I still have to satisfy my regulatory obligations, and your AI just kind of gets in the way. Like it's nice, but like it can't file my 13 F's. It you know, it can't run that calculation. I it it I have to have the human in the loop anyway. And you've made it so complicated or you've made it feel like it's so important that like actually, actually, it's not that great. Actually, I'd I'd rather it, I'd rather just go back to the way that it was. You're we we don't need that. And and that's that's what I think you know people are missing is that um you you always have to be able to defend what you did and why you did it. And and that's why in the our office space is like get another human in, but you don't have to be hiring humans at at whole units. You don't need you don't need a whole unit of a human. Get them fractionally. Get them fractionally.
SPEAKER_03That's the move right now, man. There's I mean, fractional CMOs, there's fractional CTOs, there's fractional creatives. Yeah, I mean, this is where it's at now. And and you know, I I started an ad agency 15 years ago now, when everybody else was, you know, rushing to hire so many people because all these ad agencies are like, oh, we've got 300 employees, we got five, we're the biggest ad agency in Cincinnati. I'm like, these people are sitting here doing nothing all day, they're playing on Facebook half the day, yeah, you know, and you're paying them. And then ultimately your clients are paying because you're charging $350, $400 an hour for you know these people to sit here, pretty much. You got to pick up the slack somehow, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And uh, you know, the whole time I'm like, well, I'll just do the Hollywood model. I'll just bring in the design, you know, the front end designer for this and the back end designer for this and the HTML guy for this, and you know, I'll mix things up, you know. It and and that's really what uh needs to happen. I mean, it it's it's the way people want to efficiently and effectively build teams.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, yeah, it it's funny. There's there's nothing there, there's never been anything wrong, wrong with you know, outsourcing and fractional. Like uh, again, we built a house down here. And anybody who's ever built a house, like when when you when you go and you build the house, it is not the same person putting on the roof that put in the tile, that put in the sink, that laid the plumbing, that did the electrical, that did the low voltage electrical or did the garage. It's it's all subcontracted, it's all specialized in those areas, but it but you have a general contractor who figured out, hey, this is what we're doing. Um, this is how we're building the house. And now I'm gonna go out and I'm gonna find you the best people that will then do the best work for you. And it's there's really no difference than that. It's like, why, why, why, why complicate it? Why complicate it? Fractionalize it, uh, intelligently outsource.
SPEAKER_03Well, and if you're a company and you're looking for this stuff, a lot of times, you know, these these brokers and and anyone in finance, like you're not a marketing person. You probably want to be, or you got a friend or a nephew or your your son or somebody that can do that.
SPEAKER_02We all think yeah, see, we all think we know how to do it. Every every advisor falls, no, I can I can just do it. I can just do it. And then you realize, like, nah, I'm kind of screwed. I don't I don't know what to do.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I manage all these portfolios and I know all about finance. I could do anything. And it's like, no, the reason you can't do everything is because you have all that other stuff to do. That's right. Exactly. Exactly. And now you're gonna get yourself behind the eight ball. Every day you you fail to, and you know what? Everything's about just making decisions, right? Delegating, make decisions, get it out of here. One thing I've always learned in business is don't let something sit too long because tomorrow there's gonna be another thing. The next day there's gonna be another thing. And now you've you're three, four days, maybe even a week from getting this thing done that you could have just handed off to somebody who knows what they're doing.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Yeah. So like we we want we want more advisors to give us a call, but we also want more of the providers and more people out there to like for them to understand, like, hey, if if you're really if you're really good at if any of your listeners, if you're really good at Excel, okay, if you're really good at Excel, you could really thrive in the things that we do. Like we could really add you as a provider because we have to manipulate so much data for things like advisor transitions and people like, oh, well, but once you know how to do it, no, every and what this is what makes it great is that every single firm is different. It might be the same paper, it might be the same product, but everybody's processes are totally different from another company's. Everybody does something that's a little bit different, a little bit different.
SPEAKER_03Their database is slightly different. It says name instead of first name, or you know, or or the name, the first name. Last name, first name, same cell.
SPEAKER_02Well, no, we have to put this has to come in common delimited. Oh, well, we can't we can't do a direct upload into our system. We actually have to go this way first. We don't use DocuSign, we use Adobe Sign, you know. So there's all these little caveats that really if anyone we tell them, like, if you have any sort of skill here, we can an advisor needs you, a firm needs you. And to firms out there, we say, like, why would why would you bother? Why would you even bother building your own virtual desk? That is such a waste of of resources and capital because every if if there is a firm listening, you know as well as I do that your advisors probably won't use it as much as you think, but you have all of the carrying cost of the computer, of the compliance, of the salary of that person, hoping that you're gonna try to turn a profit on this. You're not outsource it. We'll build a desk for you tomorrow.
SPEAKER_03You know, and you guys have done this over and over again. Yeah, and in the number of transitions that you guys have done. And a lot of people, I mean, maybe the advisors listen and they understand, right? But to the regular person out here, there's a whole industry around these transitions and a whole group of skills that you need, and they're not that hard to learn, but there's work out there and there's jobs out there around this stuff, and people don't even know what it is. If you're not in the industry,
Advisor Transitions Explained Step By Step
SPEAKER_03you really don't know. But explain what these transitions are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So when when uh an advisor, advisor team, what have you, moves from say uh they're going from Merrill Lynch to um Kestra, these are all industry cover, they're moving from Cambridge to um one coastal. Um, everybody's moving to Rospi.
SPEAKER_03No, just I mean, if they were smart, but I mean you can't go.
SPEAKER_02The average IQ. I mean, it's you know, hey, well, we do what we can. Um, so when you're moving your book of business, uh the uh not to go too far into it, but there are things like protocol, you can't take certain things and dot dot. But let's hold that off to the side. So when you're moving your you're you're moving your business logistics from from one regulated entity to another, to move that over, you need to have new paperwork signed, either physically or electronically. But to populate that paperwork, because you have to populate that paperwork once you're registered with the new firm, to get it cleaned up and prepared, to have it stacked ready to go, saved in a in a secure location that only you have access to, but you've allowed somebody to say, look at it, and then day it the day you re-register to then go in, get it into the new documents and out the door to those clients, and tracked and back and processed and revenue and assets back to you at the new firm so you can maintain your business and cause at least you know as little uh panic or we'll say uh issues with your clients' lives as possible. That takes a lot. We usually like at a minimum like a four-week runtime to help somebody get that prepped so that then once they come on board to their new firm, then that onboarding and bringing those clients in doesn't take that that that long. We like, you know, ideally you'd like it in three weeks, but you know, depending on the complexity, maybe it's four, maybe it's five, but every once in a while, you know, really hits that sweet spot. But it's a lot of work, Adam. There's a lot of data. It takes a lot of time to prep it. It's a lot of project management, um, it's a lot of data manipulation.
SPEAKER_03But there's also some regulation around this, right? Like between the old firm and the new firm, and in a way, you guys act like an escrow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. Um, so think of it like an escrow agent, um a qualified intermediary, if you will. Um, like there, uh one of our regulations now is Reg SP. So it it you have to be very sensitive around who controls, who touches um non-public information. That's why Rosby Office is a whole other entity. It has nothing to do, like it's two totally separate organizations. I've got Rosby Financial, that is an RAA that lives over here, its own, its own accounting, its own EIN, it's its own entity. And then over here, we have the other entity, which is then our office, and everything that has to happen there, the oversight, and so on and so on and so on. And what we do for these people that are moving firms, a firm they're going to knows about us, they'll tell an advisor that they're trying to recruit in. Rosby Office engages with that advisor, not with that firm they're going to, with that, because it is that advisor that's hiring Rosby Office to come in, be the consultant, clean up their data, clean up their databases, get them prepped and ready to go for the day that they flip, so that then their data can then cleanly populate and get moved over as soon as possible.
SPEAKER_03So that's why I was I was just talking it is a whole lot, but if I'm interested in these services and I'm like some, you know, I'm getting ready to do a transition or whatever, are is there like a thing out? Is there like a list out there? Do these do these people know where to look for somebody like in our office? Is there to the book to the do the brokerages know? Like um, how do they even find you?
SPEAKER_02Uh well, it's funny. Actually, as a quick callback, turns out we we show up on um chat GPT and Claude. If people do a chat and they're asking for transition services, we we show up. We show up. Um, but a lot of the times uh it's a lot of word of mouth. Um, there's no like master list that you can look at, but sometimes third-party recruiters will know about us, uh, existing firms that have used us before, they'll tell people. Uh, we work with a lot of other industry professionals like on the peripheral, they know about our services, so then they tell individual advisors, but it's not it, it's not a massively published uh list or anything. And each group is a little bit different than another group. So some group, like like we're we're friends with another um another group where they only work with people that are custodying client assets at Schwab and use two other specific programs. That's all they do. They if you're if you don't fit in this box, forget it. You're not working with them. Wow. Okay. But like for us, we try to find uh we call them um uh service providers. We find people that have enough breadth of knowledge and skills and experience that they can actually move and pivot for various different projects. So they're not like they're they're not rigid like that. Um, we try to help keep them focused. Uh okay, well, like just stick with broker dealers and RAAs who are using um Pershing and NFL throwing out you know jargon and something. Okay, right here, great. This is this is like your wheelhouse, like these these seven firms that we work with. You could take any project within these seven, but then this other group is like, no, no, you're very specialized over here, so you you really should just work with these two firms because they only use fidelity and sales force, and you're really good at that. So we keep them channeled.
SPEAKER_03Interesting. So it sounds a lot like my industry, too, where I put a project together, I might get overwhelmed because one of the things is there's only so many people that know how to do this stuff. You know, there's only so many of these companies in the industry. You guys really aren't in competition because there's so much work out there. You talk yeah, you all know each other. You're like, hey man, I I got a big transition that just came in. You know, there's you know, uh twenty thousand items that need to be moved over. Like, I we need help. Like you guys work together in a lot of ways too. Or like you just said, one group's like, Hey man, we don't do that at all. Like you can have this. Ross be I know our office does it, just give it to them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yep. Yeah, absolutely. That it it It it's great that um and again this comes back to that AI thing. People think, oh well, yeah, it's gonna do this. Even with AI, there's so much work that has to be done. There is so much work.
SPEAKER_03People are you listening to this? Like, there's work. If you're if you're flipping burgers right now with a college degree or you're working at Starbucks or something like that, like listen to what he's saying. Yeah, there's work out here.
SPEAKER_02And and it's a range, you know, in terms of transitions, you're looking between, depending on on the size or the complexity, between you know, 65 to like $125 an hour is is what gets unbelievable. That's like what it is. Because there's and there's there's so much work, guys. There's so much work. There's so much, yeah. Even if you're a college kid right now, let's say somebody's listening into this, like, well, I think I'll listen to this, but and they're and they're and they're a whiz and they know how to do these things on a computer, dot dot. But they have time because maybe they're in graduate school. Call us, we'll working with us, you'll pay for graduate school.
SPEAKER_03Like the work's out there, just do it, people. Like, what do you like? This is what it drives me crazy. People just they're online, they complain, you know, the economy, my bills, this and that, I'm gonna cry on camera to my TikTok followers. Like, guys, what Andrew's telling you is there is a whole industry out there that needs human beings. Yeah, that that AI is you're protected from AI. This skill set is needed. And if all you do is just reach out and say, hey, I'm looking for something, I'm pretty sharp.
Finding Work In A Regulated Industry
SPEAKER_03You know, I work, I know Excel, I've I've worked in an office before. I get it, I understand finance a little bit, you know. I can move data from one thing to another. Like call Andrew, call reach out. Andrew, like like let's let's let's talk about how they find you. Give me some websites, give me link, you know, LinkedIn, all these other things they could find you on.
SPEAKER_02Uh uh, I think if you just search for me, I uh uh I think I'm just Andrew J. Evans on LinkedIn. I think that's that's the extent of my LinkedIn profile right there. Andrew J. Evans.
SPEAKER_03Someone else manages his LinkedIn, probably.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. They do. I don't, I don't, I don't know what it is. Um, so there's that, and then uh so there's uh RosbyOffice where you could find us at uh R letter R office.team. So I I know somebody says because people try to email us as .com. It's like not everything's dot com anymore, everybody. We're the team. You're we're your team. Together, everyone achieves more. It's an acronym, rOffice.team. And you can learn some more about that, uh, us there. Um you can email me there. I'm a evans at r office.team if you want to know about that platform, and then we'll get you in touch with um with our folks over there, talking to Greer, talking to Melissa, anybody you want. I mean, there's there's there's so much opportunity. Um, love to talk to anybody and everybody about what's there. And then over uh on the RAA, that's rosbyfinancial.com. Uh and actually we've got some like that's it's really for um uh existing uh advisors looking for ways to really capital uh re call it like recapitalize, if you will, but like we we don't bill the way everybody else does. It it's great. We I believe in cost to value ratio. So we like to make sure that advisors get are getting their capital back to them, not that the firm is taking it. Let's give you the capital back so that you can use that as fuel for growth. Grow your practice, hire someone, hire a marketing company, hire an advertising company, like get more money so that you can then reinvest and then you can get bigger yourself. Like that, like we we want to help the flywheel of the economy ourselves inside of our industry is like, well, if you have the money, I I can't make that this is this is my capitalist uh uh attitude, which is why I went off and I did this, is that uh I don't believe in central planning. And I don't think that a firm that I was giving up, say, 30 or 40 percent of the revenue that I generated can make a better decision for me in advertising and technology. I don't think that they can. Okay. I just I just don't I just don't buy it. So that's why we created Rossby Financial. It's like, well, let's give you back. We're gonna take care of some very core things you have to do and some things regulatorily make sense for us to help cover for you. But after that, I I don't know if really if is is e-money better than right capital, is right capital better than money guide pro. I don't know. You're the advisor, you figure out what works for you, so you do that, right?
SPEAKER_03Uh we're just your regulatory backstop, like nothing get past us. We're gonna let you know all the things you you really need to know to not lose your license or you know keep yourself compliant. I mean, that's good. And guys, Rossby is R-O-S-S-B-Y. So R-O-S-S-B-Yfinancial.com. You can find him. A Evans E-V-A-N-S at Rossbyfinancial.com. And yes, Andrew, you are Andrew J Evans on LinkedIn. So, guys, slash Andrew J. Evans, if you're looking for him on LinkedIn. He's in a nice uh pink and blue shirt with a smart uh sports coat on in his picture. That's true. Uh so check him out.
SPEAKER_02Uh the other thing, Adam, which I I can say here that that we're working on right now, I made a I made a small post on uh on our on our Rosby Wealth. Rospi Wealth is is my is my own personal practice, but I I I alluded to it. Um, but what we're gonna start because we are running out of advisors, there's an advisor shortage, huge advisor shortage. So we are we are putting together an incubator to help people who want to come into the business, help them develop and become investment advisor representatives. So that is smart, yeah. So there's more to come there, but that's starting too. It's like we're our industry is dominated by old men, they don't live forever.
SPEAKER_03This this is this is the problem with plumbing, electrical, HVAC, like all this other stuff. Like, where where's the next generation?
SPEAKER_02Yep. So we're we're gonna be doing um our bit to help uh develop that. And it's not just like young kids coming into the business, it can also be a career changer. Well, I was a I was a teacher for 20 years and I just don't want to do it anymore, or dot dot dot, or I was a cop. Um, I don't know, I I was a sales engineer and I lost my job to AI. Uh we've got room, we've got we've got work to do. We've got, you know, we've got business opportunity in this industry. So that uh more to come on that, but we're gonna have an incubator uh for developing IARs.
SPEAKER_03Well, and I think you're also, I mean, you're not only all this stuff, but you're you're producing actual events that people can come to and learn things. And I think you got one planned for uh South America somewhere. I mean, you guys are doing like really cool stuff. I think you might end up in Puerto Rico. It may end up well, we don't know yet, right? So yeah, it could be anywhere, but um, but yeah, it could be Puerto Rico, it could be a lot of places, but um Davos is calling me. Davos is called Davos is, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if you want to hang out with those guys, or maybe you do. I don't know. It depends on yeah, what kind of money? Are you gonna pay me? I don't know. Am I gonna get the money? I don't know. We'll see. They got the money, they definitely got the money, but but you know, you're doing actual physical events too. And a lot of that started, you know, during COVID that fell off. And uh I think it kind of hurt the industry. And and that may be why one of the reasons you you have a shortage right now in these advisors, um, because people just aren't able to to meet up and talk and do things, but you're you're enabling that as well.
unknownYep.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Uh uh, we we feel that um the uh the the conference uh is is something that that is wonderful. Like anytime you get you get people together to get to Congress, when you get people to Congress together, um, but in our industry, like we don't we we don't like to do them where you're just sitting in a room and somebody's talking at you. We actually like that interaction. So we we don't do as much of that as much as we do the one-on-one, the group discussions and let everybody talk about like what are the problems, what are the successes, how do we then feed off of each other's energy to to go together. So, you know, this um I've always had this thing. Uh, my my viewpoint with the financial services industry, if you want to see what's working or you want to get um advisors, you want to know why advisors tend to do things the same over others, is that advisors flock like birds and birds flock. This is how they actually flock. A bird will keep in its eyesight seven to eight other birds and follow them as to what they're doing. And over time,
Incubator Plans And Community Invitation
SPEAKER_02because each of those birds that that one bird is following also has seven or eight other birds in there. They're like, Well, what are they doing? What are they doing? And they they end up flocking together. And so with advisors, it's kind of the same thing is that one is going to catch on to something, two others are gonna watch, five others are watching those three, eight are watching those five. It's a Fibonacci sequence, you know, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. That's and and and that's what happens. So we like to get them together to like watch how they flock. And then out of that flock, like what's becoming what's becoming the next idea, what's becoming the most potent, what's becoming the the things that we need to look for. Awesome, Andrew.
SPEAKER_03Well, I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. I think people learned a lot and uh discovered that there's a whole new industry out here, and uh not really a whole new industry, but a whole new sect of this industry uh that needs help. I mean, we need advisors, we need transition experts, we need all these people.
SPEAKER_02Admins, we need paraplanners. We we really need paraplanners, everybody. We really need paraplanners as an industry.
SPEAKER_03So, guys, reach out to Andrew, Andrew J. Evans on LinkedIn. You can find him again, smart blue jacket, blue and pink shirt. You'll see him. And uh, that's how I find the right people so that I don't get like a fake profile of someone that I think I'm I'm connecting to. And then uh Rossby, R-O-S-S-B-Yfinancial.com and R, the letter R, office.team, right? Yesur, that's it. That's it. All right, guys. Well, thanks a lot, Andrew, for your time. I appreciate you coming on here and sharing your industry knowledge and opportunities with people, and I wish you all the luck. Absolutely. Thanks. I'll talk to you soon. This is great. Thanks. Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side Hustle City. Well, you've heard from our guests. Now let's hear from you. Join our community on Facebook, Side Hustle City. It's a group where people share ideas, share their inspirational stories, and motivate each other to be successful and turn their side hustle into their main hustle. We'll see you there, and we'll see you next week on the show. Thank you.
