Early Retirement - Financial Freedom (Investing, Tax Planning, Retirement Strategy, Personal Finance)

Inside Root’s Growth Plan (And the Promise Refuse to Break) │ Root Talks

• Ari Taublieb, CFP®, MBA • Episode 274

Share episode

What happens when growth changes a company?

We’ve all seen it—your favorite restaurant expands and suddenly the quality slips. The connection feels lost. But does growing always mean losing what made you special?

At Root, we think about growth differently. We use “anti-goals” to define what we never want to become, with checks in place so expansion never overshadows client experience or team wellbeing.

That’s why we recently lowered our minimum investment from $2M to $1M. It wasn’t a quick decision. It came after expanding our team to ensure service stays exceptional. Like Patagonia, we measure success by more than profit. For us, it’s about advisor engagement, client satisfaction, and building a place where our team wakes up energized to serve.

If you’re curious how companies can grow without losing their soul, we’d love to hear what brands you feel most connected to and why.

-

Advisory services are offered through Root Financial Partners, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. This content is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered personalized investment, tax, or legal advice. Viewing this content does not create an advisory relationship. We do not provide tax preparation or legal services. Always consult an investment, tax or legal professional regarding your specific situation.

The strategies, case studies, and examples discussed may not be suitable for everyone. They are hypothetical and for illustrative and educational purposes only. They do not reflect actual client results and are not guarantees of future performance. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal.

Comments reflect the views of individual users and do not necessarily represent the views of Root Financial. They are not verified, may not be accurate, and should not be considered testimonials or endorsements

Participation in the Retirement Planning Academy or Early Retirement Academy does not create an advisory relationship with Root Financial. These programs are educational in nature and are not a substitute for personalized financial advice. Advisory services are offered only under a written agreement with Root Financial.

Create Your Custom Early Retirement Strategy Here

Get access to the same software I use for my clients and join the Early Retirement Academy here

Ari Taublieb, CFP ®, MBA is the Chief Growth Officer of Root Financial Partners and a Fiduciary Financial Planner specializing in helping clients retire early with confidence.


Speaker 1:

James, I've never asked you to do this. We've had a lot of podcasts together. I'm going to ask you to close your eyes Now. For those of you who are listening, you're going to go. This seems like the same podcast. That's because you're listening. For those who are watching on YouTube, you are going to see James's eyes are closed and I'm going to ask you, james, a few questions and everyone. I promise there's a very good reason we're doing this. So, james, would you please close your eyes and think of a brand that you really enjoy? Okay, this can be a restaurant, this can be a clothing establishment, any service you can think of. I'm going to give you a second. Do you have one in your head? I do. Okay, what do you like about it? And you can open your eyes now.

Speaker 2:

Uh, what's that? Should I tell you what it is? First Just tell you what I like your eyes now?

Speaker 1:

uh, I wasn't. Should I tell you what it is first, just tell you what I like. Uh, yeah, uh, tell me.

Speaker 2:

No, tell me what you like about it first I like that there's this invitation into this lifestyle that I'd like to think, I want to live, even if I don't actually, uh, have the time or intentionality sometimes to live it is there a immense quality about a product?

Speaker 1:

Is it even a product?

Speaker 2:

of adventure get outdoors, live life, travel, do fun things and there's something fun about that.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful. Now I promise I'm going to connect the dots, but, james, can you close your eyes one more time? I'm going to ask you to think about a brand that was amazing, but you don't love it as much anymore. Maybe it's the service, the quality, maybe it's just long wait times. Whatever it is, do you have a brand in mind?

Speaker 2:

Not a specific brand.

Speaker 1:

Let me think, Give me give me a second, take your time here and this guys, we're making this podcast episode. Today. We're talking about change, we're talking about growth, we're talking about how do we ensure that the service always stays at a level where you go, wow, no matter what growth is happening. This is not going to be one of those companies where, all of a sudden, things start to change. And, james, while you're thinking about yours, I'm going to share a quick analogy. Of many of you know, one of the I mean happiest moments of my life was when I had financial freedom to get guac at Chipotle. That was like I made it. And now when I go to Chipotle, it's a little saltier than usual. I could put that up to you know, maybe there's so many changes happening and the company's so big that they switched to a different salt product. I don't know, but Chipotle, for me, I loved and I just don't have that same feeling today. Is there a company or product you can think of where you've had that experience? It's funny.

Speaker 2:

You say that Jersey Mike's is mine and I don't know if it was just different stores, but I remember loving it in college and the most recent couple of times not loving it as much. So it could just be I changed or it could be that. But that's funny that you said a food store, because that was what came to mind, for me too.

Speaker 1:

So everyone's probably wondering does this now connect to asset allocation? And is it the cauliflower and the Roth conversions? No, what is something that almost everyone I'm not going to say struggles with, because some people are really good with it, but they're always going oh, this is going to be different. Well, that word is change, and there's people that embrace change, there's people that fear change, and we are always going to be changing. That is just that's life.

Speaker 1:

When it comes to Jersey Mike's, maybe there's things that are changing where the owner goes. I would love every store to be so dialed in that, whether James comes to us in New Jersey or California, he gets that Jersey Mike's ultimate experience. But, as many of you are probably thinking of right now, you're probably like you know what? That's why I go to that one restaurant near me. That's the small pop shop, and I'm kind of concerned because they just opened one across the way and now I'm wondering does that mean my personal service is going to start to suffer at my shop that I love? So this embracement of change is something we take very seriously here at Root. Into that in more detail today, james, do you think many of these companies Chipotle, jersey Mike's, rourke do you think they're looking at change on a consistent basis going? What can we do to always maintain our quality of service? And do you think people from the outside go? Well, jersey Mike's is just so big, there's just nothing you can do about it the outside go.

Speaker 2:

Well, Jersey Mike's is just so big, there's just nothing you can do about it. Hard to say, Are you asking. Do I think they're focused on change management internally and what that looks like? Yes, I would hope so. I would think so. I think that also part of it comes down to, as that change is happening, what are you changing for, or in other words, what are you optimizing for? You talk about the mom and pop shop. If you want to optimize for an awesome experience for that small town, feel you know all of your customers. They treat you well, you treat. That's awesome. There's going to be some things you say no to because of that. If you're that mom and pop shop that wants to become the next Jersey Mike's, there's going to be some things you say no to because you have to optimize for that. So I think that, yes, there's change management going on always, but it comes down to what are we trying to change and for what purpose? And how is it going to move us closer?

Speaker 1:

where we want to go, love it. And the reason we're making this podcast episode today is we had a new client who said I love seeing the videos you make. I actually feel closer to you and, james, the feeling that I get from watching your videos is one of the main reasons I became a client. But I wanna make sure you're not growing so quickly that the service ever starts to suffer. And I wanna make sure, if I'm a client, I'm excited for your growth.

Speaker 1:

I'm a part of it where I'm not thinking, hey, they're doing new stuff, I'm gonna be left behind. They want the guac to always make sure it's not too salty. So, yes, I'm the chief growth officer. Part of my role is to grow Root, but another part of my role is to make sure we don't grow so quickly that service suffers From your perspective, james, if you're the founder of Root, just like there's a founder of Chipotle, but I personally I don't know the founder of Chipotle. I just know that my Chipotle is saltier now and I'm impacted by that. So, as the founder of Root, what do you want people to know about how we grow?

Speaker 2:

A couple of things. One is, you know it's important People talk about these anti-goals is kind of a big thing. Hey, what are your goals for where you want to be? Well, in some ways I don't know, at least in the traditional sense that people ask but I do have like an anti-goal. I do know what we don't want to become and how can we put as much effort into not becoming that as we do the things we do want to become.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm not going to name names, but maybe one of the names we already mentioned today. I know it was purchased by a private equity company and it used to be maybe the smaller shop. And then there's an acquisition and that acquisition, I've got to imagine the focus is purely upon how can we maximize profits, how can we maximize sales, how can we maximize revenue valuation over the next five to seven years so that we can exit this and all of our investors are happy? So again, if you're optimized and if you're changing for that, great, but that this and all of our investors are happy. So again, if you're optimized, if you're changing for that, great, but that's a zero interest to any of us here at Root. That's not what we're optimizing or changing for. So how do we do that? We start by understanding very clearly what don't we want. What does a bad outcome look like? And to me, even selfishly, a bad outcome is one where I make lots of money but I hate my job because like, oh cool, we sold, we have an investor, but now we have to hit this quota of revenue, growth and new clients per year and profitability targets, and you need those to an extent to maintain a healthy business. But if that's your core and your sole focus, you're going to lose a soul. You're going to lose the heart of what makes something special. So the anti-goal is I don't want this to become a place that I ever dislike working at or that anyone here at Root ever dislikes working at, which means that that's a big focus.

Speaker 2:

Another thing is how do we have checks and balances? You are the chief growth officer. I'm confident that if I said, ari, we need to triple the size of our company in the next 12 months, you'd say on it and in the next week or so, you'd have a great plan and you'd be executing upon it to get us there. We could do that, but that's going to be in direct opposition to some of our other goals. So we have checks and balances. How do we also have a VP of brand? And brand to us is both internal and external, not just a marketing thing, but it's what's the culture here at Root.

Speaker 2:

What's it like for the advisors who are working here? How do we support their growth and their development and their ability to be the best they possibly can be? How do we have a regular pulse check on how are people doing here? What's the morale like? What's engagement like?

Speaker 2:

If I'm a client of somewhere and it's a deeply personal relationship, I want to make sure I'm working with happy people that love where they work. The last thing I'd want is working somewhere where people are miserable. People can't wait for the weekend, people can't wait for their vacation, people can't wait to be done and leave for the day. I want to be working where that person's engaged, because most engaged workers, the people that love their work are the people that are going to be most excellent at it. So if you tripled root in a year, but that directly was in direct opposition to our ability to maintain this place where the best advisors can thrive and have this place where they can be developed and grow and do all these things.

Speaker 2:

Well, there's a checks and balance there.

Speaker 2:

We're hitting this growth target, but we're missing this other target, or our advisory targets.

Speaker 2:

Some of our targets are client experience. Many of our targets are client experience. What are we getting? What are our scores like, when not just clients taking client satisfaction scores or MPS surveys or anything of that nature that gives us quantitative data, but also you get a lot of awesome emails. I get a lot of awesome emails. We get DMs of just clients that express really positive feelings about their experience with their advisor. So all of these things are a form of checks and balances of we could grow like crazy but everything else would suffer. That's not acceptable. And we have someone else on the team whose responsibility it is to maintain advisor standards, to maintain team member standards here of what that looks like to maintain compliance stuff, to maintain operational standards, operational standard. So all of those things serve as a checks and balance to say no one can go too hard in their area because if it starts pulling away from our ability to do other things in other areas, we're starting to lose sight of what's most important.

Speaker 1:

This is why we are so lucky you're running Root. Now there's a big question that's coming in the comments often on YouTube, which I'm going to ask you, james, and then I'm going to give a quick disclaimer. So everyone knows why are we making these types of podcasts, videos? It's all coming from the free community, the Root Collective. If you have not joined, you can do so. In the description.

Speaker 1:

There are thousands of members where, as fun as it is and hopefully it is fun to listen to James and I talk about all these types of concepts you can also speak to each other, and it's taking YouTube comments to another level, where you can hear from other people who are in a similar position going yeah, I want to retire early, but healthcare, how do I get my spouse interested in finances? So a ton more in there in the description. But, James, you're aware we dropped the minimum to $1 million and people are grateful for that. But a question that comes in a lot is why? Why did that take so long? Why didn't we start with that? Why did we even have a $2 million minimum? So any thoughts you're willing to share there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I would say, well, we did start with that. If I go back in time, six years ago, seven years ago, eight years ago, almost as a start, like there wasn't a minimum, it was, yeah, that you're getting the business started, you're trying to grow however you can, you're trying to work with clients. The minimum was purely our way. It's hard because, in a way, the minimum is in direct opposition to our stated mission of how do we help as many people as possible get the most out of life with their money. Well, instituting a minimum is in direct opposition to that. But we have to go back to checks and balances. If we had no minimum and every single person was coming to Root and we committed to serving every single person that wanted to work with Root, I can tell you we'd have zero advisors left, because the amount of stress and burnout and crazy amounts of work that that would have been we, and burnout and crazy amounts of work that that would have been we wouldn't have been able to maintain the standards that we have for ourselves. We would not have been able to maintain the level of client service that we expect for our clients. We would not have been able to maintain the place where it's a healthy work environment for people to say they can come and they can work here and they can enjoy their time here and be fully engaged in what they're doing. No-transcript flow of new clients coming to Root. That was just the simplest way to do it and our goal is to drive that down as much as possible over time.

Speaker 2:

Part of our long-term vision, part of our long-term purpose, is to say how can we create a platform that, whoever you are in the world, we can help you?

Speaker 2:

Now some people that's a very personal, one-on-one relationship where you're working with an advisor here at Root, you're part of an advisory team. For some people, that's simply a podcast or a video or a resource that's online. That's completely free and millions of people could access that. But the reason it took us longer than maybe I initially thought to be able to drive down that minimum is as quickly as our team was growing, the number of people wanting to work with Root was growing even faster, and so we kept expanding the team sizes. Hey, we can start bringing on more people in a responsible, sustainable way each month. But every single month, more and more and more people are wanting to work with Root and so the pipeline grew, even as our ability to onboard people grew with it, and we finally got to this point where the team was able to grow to the extent that we were able to reduce the minimum and be able to serve more people on an ongoing basis.

Speaker 1:

I appreciate the transparency and I think everyone else will. Who's listening and watching to this? Because it's not often you hear a founder speak in the way you are. I have a quick favor for everyone If you're listening to this, please send us an email at hello at rootfinancialcom and I'm going to tell you what to put in that email. Don't just send a blank email. I've done that before. And if you're watching, please drop a comment on YouTube. What is that one company or that one brand that you just resonate with? Is it Trader Joe's? Is it Patagonia? Many of you go wow, I'm just loyal to this company, I get a feeling. So my final question to you, james, for today's short and sweet podcast episode is there a company that you go? I want to simulate this with Root, is it? I want this to be its own thing where people hear Root and they think X. What do you want people to think of when they hear Root?

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, you mentioned Patagonia and that maybe wouldn't be the first thing that comes to mind, but there are a lot of similarities between what I would like root to be and what Patagonia is Very different, obviously, clothing and the mission they have versus our services and the mission that we have. But there was very, very, very clearly a mission far beyond just the financial side of things that the Patagonia founder had, and beyond that, even as we talk about our growth philosophy, one of the things that I'll say is how do we create an environment where everyone on the root team wakes up on the balls of their feet so excited to get to work with who we're working with, who we're serving? That's a direct quote from the Patagonia founder, yvon Chouinard. Of that. He wrote that in his book Let my People Go Surfing.

Speaker 2:

So I think there's a lot of similarities there of when you're doing things right, it should feel like play. When you're doing things right, you should be fully engaged. When you're doing things right, like you're attracting the right people to come here, and I think that that is a large part because there is a. It goes beyond yourself, but it's very easy to be connected to a mission that's not just about how do I make more money for my family and try to get out of work as early as possible on Friday afternoons. There's a lot of jobs that are like that, but it's great when you can actually be connected with a group of people who are fully aligned and there is something bigger than just the financial side of things. So I think Patagonia is a great example of that.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for tuning in to the show Root Talks. This is where I host this show with James, so we are recording this. This is available on YouTube on our Root Financial YouTube channel. A big shout out to our new series. We have a series, root Drops, where you get to hear from myself and one of my advisors here at Root to learn a new financial topic and we answer the questions that are dropped in our free community, the Root Collective, and then check out our other show, advisor Unplugged. These are longer episodes where you can really learn why did this advisor choose to be an advisor, what was their story? And you might find you just might resonate with something they say. So hopefully you enjoy all the content we put out. Please like this video if you enjoyed it, comment below if there's something you learned and all we ask is you share it with someone who might resonate with it. See you guys next time. Thank you.