A New Frontier: Three Key Initiatives Powering the Future of Silver Oak

In May, we hosted a roundtable for Silver Oak’s top financial professionals – a chance to share success stories, challenges, and our visions for the future of the firm.?

During that event, I revisited one of the most valuable lessons of my career: I can’t do it alone. None of us can. And within those conversations, the distinct difference between top advisors and those advisors struggling to grow became increasingly clear.

Top advisors excel at streamlining operations and focusing on what truly matters.?

I came to this conclusion myself in 2019. I was very unsustainably playing every role you can think of at Silver Oak – Chief Compliance Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Head of Sales, talent management. Just about the only responsibility I hadn’t taken on was CFO, and I sat down with him to discuss our divergence point.?

Do we go big, hire a team, bring in the infrastructure we desperately need, or do we sell?

Obviously, since I’m writing this today, we chose the former. We recognized that the business of running a financial services firm was different than actually running it, and we acted accordingly, hiring key compliance, operations, sales and marketing professionals to execute the tasks I shouldn’t have been doing in the first place.

And we grew. In fact, we were just recognized by InvestmentNews as one of the fastest-growing IBDs in the country. With the bulk of my time out of the weeds, I was able to focus on what we needed to do to grow the firm, build strong relationships, and secure top advisors.

This re-realization in May, that top financial professionals deeply understand the value of focusing on their core competencies, led me and the Silver Oak leadership team to kickstart three distinct but connected initiatives with one goal: Bringing solutions to our advisors that empower them to spend time on what matters.

1. Enhancing SilverHQ

Our rollout of Silver Oak’s proprietary technology platform in 2022 wasn’t without its challenges. The infrastructure was fragmented, with compliance reports, daily transaction logs, account openings, and access permissions scattered across various platforms, a barrier to the efficiency we were ultimately trying to create.

We’ve since begun a comprehensive overhaul of our systems, with the goal of integrating, upgrading, or eliminating any tools that don’t contribute to a streamlined experience. We laid out our technology vision at our Unplugged Conference in Nashville last October.? Our vision is to create a platform that incorporates everything from account to accounting and everything in between.

The result is SilverHQ, a centralized platform that unifies all the essential tools and services our advisors need. This fall, we’ll be rolling the platform out in stages, providing a cohesive, user-friendly interface that simplifies account opening, streamlines business processes, and consolidates access points, representing a significant step toward making life easier for our advisors and allowing them to focus on their core competencies.

2. Improving our Commission System with Pandia

At Silver Oak, we work with nearly 300 different financial institutions, creating a significant challenge when it comes to accurately tracking and reporting commissions and revenue.. We’ve managed this process, but it’s been cumbersome and inefficient.? A big part of the SilverHQ system will be an integration with a first class revenue reporting system.

We’re excited to introduce an integration with Pandia, an upgraded revenue system designed to simplify the complex process of managing commission payments. Pandia will transform how we handle revenue,? providing accurate reporting and seamless integration with the SilverHQ system.?

More than just a technological improvement, this upgrade is expected to be a game-changer for our financial professionals in terms of efficiency, accuracy and time savings.

3. Building a Visionary Practice

Most profoundly, we’re committing to helping our financial professionals build visionary practices. As I mentioned earlier, it’s easy for advisors who are also business owners to become bogged down with tactical work, leaving them little time to think strategically about their businesses? – and little time to be away from the business at all.?

Our goal is to change that.

In a visionary practice, leaders aren’t deep in the weeds of and indispensable to the day-to-day operations; instead, they’re focused on the firm's direction and growth. It's about building a team and infrastructure that allows the business to thrive independently of the leader.

We’re certainly not going to ask our financial professionals to triple their employee base or make massive hires. Instead, we're going to use EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) principles to teach them how to more effectively leverage technology, resources, and best practices to free up time and focus on their clients. We want our advisors to think big, not limit themselves by staying stuck in routine tasks.

The future of Silver Oak lies in fostering this mindset shift, helping advisors differentiate themselves by developing a truly unique brand and a visionary practice that’s both scalable and sellable, rather than a lifestyle firm built exclusively around them.

The Future of Silver Oak

As we continue to evolve, our vision is clear: to provide our advisors with the best tools, systems, and support to help them succeed. Our three key initiatives—upgrading our technology, enhancing the commission system, and cultivating visionary practices—are just the beginning.?

As we look to the future, we remain dedicated to helping our advisors create visionary practices that are sustainable, scalable, and capable of delivering exceptional client service. We’re excited about the journey ahead and the opportunity to continue growing together.