Listen to this week's episode

Episode 132

On this week’s episode of Next Mile, I sit down with Andrew Evans, Chief Executive Officer of Rossby. Before Rossby, Andrew served as Executive Vice President at TAG Advisors and as a Securities Principal at Cambridge Investment Research. 

Andrew discusses entrepreneurship, growth, and designing better businesses. With a background in musical theater and a career spanning mortgage brokerage and financial advising, he shares the parallels between creative careers and financial services, why repeatable processes beat flashy marketing plans, and how thoughtful design can transform the advisor experience. 

Key Takeaways

• Whether you're selling a mortgage or a financial plan, technical skills are just the baseline. The real growth comes from mastering interpersonal and psychological engagement and understanding the emotional drivers behind a client's financial decisions.

• Plan a repeatable process. Growth becomes sustainable when your marketing and operations are simple enough to execute consistently every day.

• Design for less but better. Complexity is the enemy of efficiency. In leadership and tech, aim for intuitive design that reduces clicks and surprises. Your goal should be to create a "source of truth" for data that lets your team spend less time on administration and more time on high-value work.

• The best ideas at any conference or meeting rarely come from the person at the podium. They happen in the hallways, over coffee, or during shared activities.

Quotes

"Nobody gains great ideas by sitting there and being lectured at. It doesn't happen. The best stuff happens in the conversations on the edges." ~ Andrew Evans

"You can't satisfy everyone. Whatever you've decided on for your firm's tech stack, someone is going to hate it. So, design for the firm's data integrity first, then let them pick their tools." ~ Andrew Evans

"Focus on where your practice's source of truth is. That's where you really need your agent. Keep it focused. Keep it tight." ~ Andrew Evans

Links

• Andrew Evans on LinkedIn

• Rossby Financial

• Raymond James

• The Unconference

• Kelsey McKenna

• Seeds Investor

• Midquel McClendon

• Capital Square

• The Design of Everyday Things

• Redtail Technology

• Wealthbox

• Advisor360

• eMoney Advisor

• The Lord Of The Rings

Connect with our hosts

• Milemarker.co

• Kyle on LinkedIn

• Jud on LinkedIn

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Kyle Van Pelt