Competition and Succession
Jim O’Shaughnessy
PLANADVISER: What role did succession planning and firm continuity—along with your own career outlook—play in the decision to sell to Hub?
Jim O’Shaughnessy: I feel our decision to join Hub has been validated by the number of other transactions we’ve seen, both involving Hub and looking out across the industry. We [since the acquisition, Sheridan Road co-founder Daniel Bryant has exited the advisory business] were fortunate to be in the position to be one of the first big transactions, and we had a lot of confidence at the time that this would be the right path for us.
I should begin by saying that a big part of our success was that we were able to create and maintain a long-term vision from the very start. We always had a formal three-, five- and 10-year vision of where the practice was heading. From the beginning, we felt succession planning was critical, both for our success as business leaders but also for our staff, for our people.
It was critical to us, as we looked to sell Sheridan Road, to effectively position our employees to have expanded career paths and a much broader opportunity for professional development. That played a larger part in our decision to sell than most people realize—the fact that we could maintain pretty much 100% of our team intact, outside of a few redundancies, and give them an opportunity for personal and professional growth.
Additionally, a big part of the Hub deal was about making sure we had immediate succession planning at the leadership level if anything happened to us on a near-term basis. Now that Daniel made the decision to leave Hub and start another phase of his career, I still feel very well supported.
PA: Without speaking for him, can you tell us more about Daniel’s business decision to step away from the adviser business? Has this affected your strategy or your clients?
O’Shaughnessy: In terms of discussing Daniel’s transition with our long-term clients, it has not been a huge challenge, and that’s largely because his main focus was on building out our strategic industry partnerships and on new business development. Most of my focus has been on operations and on servicing the existing client base. You could say he was more front end, and I was more back end, so his departure has not been disruptive for our clients.
After the initial transition, Daniel’s primary role was focused on helping Hub with internal and also external communications, all coming back to business development. He was working on getting the message out regarding what Hub was doing and looking to accomplish. He did a lot of speaking and traveling coast to coast representing us and Hub’s vision.
Internally, he was working on educating Hub’s existing producers in the insurance and benefits business lines, teaching them about what Hub Retirement and Private Wealth was going to become. He was working on identifying the key producers in the different verticals and geographies who were most interested in introducing the new retirement and wealth management services to their existing clients.
Eventually, Hub hired a full-time chief sales officer in Jim Owen, and he basically took over in an official capacity the work that Daniel had been doing. This was around the same time that our initial three-year sale contract with Hub was winding up, which gave Daniel the chance to reassess the goals and the objectives we had set out to achieve in that original period. With Hub now having that strong foundation of people and technology, he saw it as an opportunity to leave, with the firm being in a very good place.
PA: And what is your next step?
O’Shaughnessy: At that time, I made the personal decision that there was still much more I wanted to do inside of Hub, continuing to build out capabilities on the operational side.
I view the whole experience as a real success story, and I’ve been making a point of trying to communicate that outside of Hub, and inside, too. Our experience shows that you can sell your business and help make the transition a success—and then you can make a decision about your own next step, whether that’s to stay the course, to retire or to try a new challenge, like Daniel did. He left Hub on great terms, and he stays in close contact. —John Manganaro