HCOB: What was that structure — how was it different? Mettelman : We wanted to pioneer what’s now known as the “Hybrid RIA (Registered Investment Advisor) Model.” In the simplest terms, the new model essentially gave indepen- dent financial advisors the freedom to choose what products they sold clients and whether a fee or commission-based structure was best to meet their individual needs. It's a model that often makes more sense for advisors with high net worth clients. And that’s who we envisioned would join the new firm — seasoned financial advisors who had a solid book of business consisting of high net worth clients, the best producers in the business. HCOB: So, what was your process? I assume you had to first resign from your position and then go about setting up what is, I assume, a difficult business entity to create. You couldn’t just hang out your shingle and get to work, right? Mettelman : No, it’s not that easy. With government regu- lations the way they are, it probably would have taken us about six months to get all the regulatory requirements completed, so we took a different route. We looked around and found a small shell of a broker dealer for sale in Florida. And that's how we got our third-party partner — he was the principal and the owner of that little firm and he had about 10 advisors. We still had to work through several regulatory hurdles, but that move got us moving much quicker. Before we knew it, we were working away out of our guest bed- room, with my wife, Dana — who has an accounting degree from Auburn — paying the bills, handling the insurance issues, keeping the trains running on time.
Mark Mettelman and his founding partners sold Triad Advisors to the legendary New York Stock Exchange-listed firm of Ladenburg Thalmann in 2008.
HCOB: So now you’ve got few advisors in Atlanta and a handful or two of other advisors in Florida — how did you go about growing the business, finding new advisors to join you? Mettelman : First of all, I knew a lot of them — as I said, I’d recruited many of the best producers at the firm I was run- ning, and I had kept in touch with those I’d worked with in various capacities over the years. And as I mentioned earlier with regards to the broker/client relationship being the most valuable asset — this is a relationship business on virtually every other level as well, and our advisor-centric business model relied even more heavily on strong relationships than traditional firms. So, we hit the road, meeting with the very best, most productive advisors in the business. We laid out our Hybrid RIA model and our initial broker dealer engagement model, which was also unique. We didn’t simply offer to hire them, nor did we offer them an equity stake as an incentive. What we were asking was for them to commit their own capital to the venture as a condition for coming aboard. We wanted only those high producers willing to put some scratch into the game, to be truly committed. That’s how we got our first 16 partners — really big hitters — who formed the core team in the early days. Triad Advisors gen- erated enough business to survive the first year and grew steadily for the next several years. Then Triad really took off, growing to $30 million in revenue and around 200 financial advisors within five years. But the best was yet to come.
Relationship are everything to Mark, who still keeps in touch with his Auburn tennis teammates after more than 35 years.
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