The Problem Solver Mindset: How James Bogart Grew Bogart Wealth to Nearly $4B AUM

James Bogart launched Bogart Wealth from his basement — folding tables, a garage postage station, and clients signing paperwork at the dining room table. Six years later, the firm is approaching $4 billion in AUM with 63 team members, 100+ inbound leads every month, and a next-gen advisor training program that drew 119 applicants for four open slots.

None of it was perfect. And James will be the first to tell you exactly what broke along the way.

In this episode, Shelby sits down with James for an honest, framework-rich conversation about what it actually takes to go from solo advisor to CEO of a scaling enterprise. He covers the mindset shift that transformed his prospecting — from "financial advisor" to "problem solver" — and the jungle hunter, zoo hunter, and zookeeper framework he uses to build an advisor team that can actually sustain growth without friction.

James talks about the dinner seminar model that powered his early growth, the COVID pivot that put 397 people on his first Zoom call, the data infrastructure that made scaling possible, and the leadership mistakes he made that he wishes he'd caught sooner.

If you're building something real and asking bigger questions about what it takes to get to the next level — this one is for you.

Topics covered:

• The "problem solver" introduction that outperformed every cold pitch on a ski slope
• Jungle hunters, zoo hunters, and zookeepers: building the right advisor corps
• 12 to 63 employees, flat to nearly $4B — what the growth journey actually looked like
• Dinner seminar math: 35% new prospects, 65% consultations, 87% close rate
• The COVID pivot: 397 people on the first Zoom, digital content that changed everything
• What broke when growth exploded — and why data was the thing that saved them
• Advisor Growth Track: a next-gen talent pipeline that drew 119 applicants
• EOS, visionaries, integrators, and the leadership hires James wishes he'd made sooner
• Concentration risk, mom-and-pop volume, and why no single client exceeds 60 bps of revenue
• The shiny object trap — and why staying in your lane compounds faster than chasing opportunity
• Lightning round: what to hire first, the metric that matters more than AUM, and living off-script

Hosted by Shelby Nicholl. Produced and edited by Aaron Sherman. Operations and Guest Coordination by Shelly Hadel.

Transcript

Shelby Nicholl (00:53)
I've been so looking forward to this conversation because your growth story is obviously tremendous and you talk about it a lot. And it's not just a marketing pivot, but it's an entire business strategy change. you've said a lot that, you know, kind of everything breaks and that you just keep on going. So let's start with what you say you're really good at and that many advisors are not good at.

which is knowing what the value is of the advisor. Talk about that a little bit.

James Bogart (01:21)
You know, I think fundamentally our industry is a little flawed in that we're teaching this next generation of advisors phenomenal skill sets, right? Whether it's building financial plans or tax optimization strategies or how to build an asset allocation and talk about different investment narratives. But at the end of the day, in my opinion, the role of an advisor isn't necessarily each of those things independently. The role of the advisor

actually is all about solving people's problems. And a really good advisor puts themselves in a position to be able to anticipate what someone's problems are going to be. And we do that through the planning and through the investments and through the tax and through the estate. Like all the different components of what we do is our value proposition. But that reshift of mindset, of purpose and role.

I think was probably the most transformative thing for me. And really, when I think about our growth story and why we had the level of success that we did, it was really heavily driven by that. and so Shelby, I shared the story with you on our prep call, but I was on a trip with another advisor. He's at one of the brokerage firms. And we decided to have a prospecting competition, a friendly game between the two of us. And I'll fully attest, I'm a very competitive person. But as we're sitting there,

We're actually on a ski trip and we agreed to spend the whole day just talking to different people. It's obviously a very affluent market, target rich environment to see who could get more prospects off of it. And at the end of the day, he got two, I got 11. And so of course, you know, he was buying our drinks at the end because that was the wager. And he's like, I got to know, how'd you do it? And I said, well, before, let me ask you, how did you present yourself when you were talking to these prospects?

And he flat out said, well, I'm a financial advisor at X, Y, and Z company. I'm like, yeah, that's where you went wrong. You lost him literally in the first 15 seconds. And he's like, all right, well, how'd you do it? And I will attest, I had a little bit of an unfair advantage because my wife was with me and it might soften the conversation a bit. But I flat out introduced myself as a problem solver. And you could tell I immediately at a minimum bought myself another 20 seconds.

Shelby Nicholl (03:26)
Ha ha ha!

James Bogart (03:36)
It's that engagement and that reframe that's so, so, so important because when I think about what individuals are looking for right now, the reality of it is, is technology is absolutely going to replace a lot of the, let's just say scalable part of what we do on a day-to-day basis. know, anything that's analysis, data-driven, like most pieces, most, at this point we're already there. Technology is better than most financial advisors in that regards. The human side is what matters the most.

And I think when it comes to how we connect and engage the empathy, it really comes back to understanding what people's problems are. And I think I want to relate this back to the journey and probably me as I became a better financial advisor. But I remember very, very vividly the day that I learned to listen. And I think early on in my career, I...

let's just, I fully attest, I also have an ego, right? Like it's just part of it. But I felt like I had to tell people how smart I was and all the things that I knew. And what I realized probably seven, eight years into my career is I didn't need to do that, right? I needed to listen. And then as soon as I started listening, truthfully, all of this came from one of the critical hires I had in my journey where I realized very clearly on,

He was way smarter than I was. And the engagement with him was so important because as smart as he was, I learned that I actually looked a lot smarter just by listening to him and then asking him pointed questions that were very direct, intentional to his situation. And then we were able to learn how to work together in that regards. But I would come back to this whole narrative as soon as you can listen to what people's problems are.

and then put yourself in a position to be able to help them solve those problems over the next three, five, 10, 20, 30 years. That's when the engagement level becomes unparalleled to any other advisor in the industry.

Shelby Nicholl (05:41)
Totally agree. And that's also where you start to see where you can get real conviction about your own value as well. I think about it from our business, everything that we do is because somebody came and asked me to do it. But I think it's not just that they asked, it was that I was able to listen to what their need was and then figure out how to do it and do it better than anybody else and have high conviction about that.

James Bogart (06:03)
Because people wouldn't ask you if they didn't have a problem. And again, I come back to because I do think the landscape is changing dramatically with technology. And I think it's the pace of change is going to continue to accelerate faster than any of us can actually anticipate. But the cold hard reality of it is the human side of what we do. And this is where whether it's being a financial advisor, being a service oriented consultant or even just service industries. Right. It's like, what are the problems that we are trying to solve?

Shelby Nicholl (06:06)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Mm-hmm.

James Bogart (06:33)
You know, for some, might be a very simple, like, I think about when we go out to eat. I love, like, I live for a great service experience. Like, and now I've kind of curated the places that I want to go, not necessarily based upon atmosphere. Yeah, the atmosphere's nice. But if I'm to get a great service experience, it could be a hole in the wall, not necessarily great restaurant. But if it gives me that wow factor from a service side, that's what uniquely differentiates. And that's why I continue to come back.

I still think about the same level of engagement that we do day in and day out when we're working with households.

Shelby Nicholl (07:06)
Yeah, love that. You one of the things that you've said also is about the different kinds of advisors. Talk about zoo hunters, zookeepers, tell me all the zoo things. All right, good, I love it.

James Bogart (07:18)
trademarked this, all right? So

I do believe that there are different types of advisors in this space and I think when I talk about an enduring firm, I think every enduring firm needs to have each of the different types of advisors. But what I mean is that there's a jungle hunter, a zoo hunter, and zookeeper, right? So there's three different types.

But the jungle hunters, the individual that goes out, they're able to hunt, they're able to kill, and they're able to bring it in and everybody eats off of it, right? And then, to me, that really is like the era of the broker, right? That worked at the wirehouses, right? Like in that environment, you eat what you kill, you have to produce and perform in order to stay hired, right? Like that really was the mindset for the longest time. I do think it's shifting a little bit now, but there still is a very heavy jungle hunter bias within those types of organizations.

Shelby Nicholl (07:49)
Mm-hmm.

James Bogart (08:08)
But then you have your zoo hunters. These are individuals that are super gifted at winning business that is within an enclosed environment. And then you have your zookeepers, which are your more service oriented advisors. They're not necessarily comfortable going out prospecting, but they are imperative, imperative to help give that client experience that's so bespoke and unique that is empowering.

Shelby Nicholl (08:18)
Yeah, gotcha.

James Bogart (08:37)
not only the zoo hunters, but the jungle hunters to be able to go out and do what they do. So I think when we talk about what builds an enduring firm, you have to think of an organization that has each of those different types of advisors. For the longest time, I know we were talking about this, but the longest time I thought I needed an entire organization of jungle hunters, a bunch of James's. And the reality of it is, that's a disaster.

And I mean that with the utmost sincerity, right? But like when it comes down to the personality types of a jungle hunters, you build an organization full of alphas and you're going to have constant friction, constant contestation. And that's not what builds an enduring organization, right? You need to have that support infrastructure that's going to be able to deliver that experience that you are out promising to each and every one of these households that's engaging and working with you.

The second you decided that, now all of a sudden you're gonna have lack of communication, lack of clarity of purpose, roles, definitions, like it just doesn't work. And from my lens, I think it's important to be able to understand that not every single advisor is a jungle hunter. And once I did that reframe, it really was a dramatic shift within the organization.

And I also think that it's opening up the doors for talent that we didn't have before, right? And this is where I think, again, I hope every organization is fortunate enough to have the 100 to 150 leads every single month like we do. Once you get to that place and then you start looking at the scaling that's required within it, you're needing to do this talent war that's at a pace that's unparalleled right now. And so you need to have the different elements of Advisor Corps.

Shelby Nicholl (10:04)
Mm-hmm.

James Bogart (10:27)
without being able to sacrifice what your firm represents, your brand, your presence, your service offering. And so again, when I think about our growth journey, mean, you nailed it. We literally tested every system, every process. You know, I would say Boca Wealth was built off of the Herculean feats of some really special individuals. And we figured things out along the way. you know,

it comes back to identifying these types of individuals. And I think about one of my advisors, I remember vividly, and this was 2020. He came on and originally the goal was to help me and transition business off of me to him.

all of a sudden we had this lead flow that was just, I was drowning. The other advisors were at a place where they were drowning and he's, and I said to him, I said, how do you feel about prospecting? And he's like, look, I can close. I'm just not the best hunter. Light bulb went off, right? And that's when all of a sudden we build all of our training modules of like, this is exactly what this meeting's like. This is exactly what this meeting's like. This is how you present this type of presentation. And we built that, that very systematized.

prospect to client experience. By the way, we have the same on the client side, a uniform client experience for every single client within the organization. But that systems, that process and training. And now all of a sudden his book is larger than mine. Like he's, I mean, you want to talk about the ultimate success story. Like he is it. And I hope to continue to replicate that within this organization time and time again. And to be clear, I've now got eight or nine individuals that are having the same journey right now. And it's amazing to watch. And when I think about my purpose,

Like that's what I lean into now and I hope to continue to be able to grow as we continue to grow the organization.

Shelby Nicholl (12:17)
I love that. You mentioned talent war and we're definitely seeing it just across the entire industry, right? but we've been talking about this looming talent shortage for a really long time. And I don't even think we were seeing it five years ago, but we are now. Like now the hunt for talent is so much tighter. It's so much harder to find the right person for the organization.

Is talent your biggest challenge today?

James Bogart (12:44)
It is, but it's not necessarily in the way that I think a lot of other organizations are experiencing it. And I'll kind of try to paraphrase the journey, right? But in 2020, we had 12 individuals. We're sitting at 63 right now. So that's six years we've had some pretty dramatic staffing change.

Shelby Nicholl (12:57)
Yeah.

James Bogart (13:04)
You know, the shift that's happened as an organization, we're almost at four billion in assets now. And so the shift that's happened within the organization has been dramatic. You talk about the move from practice to enterprise, you know, and part of it was me getting out of my own way. You know, I fully attest, I am not the best when it comes to managing people. Like that is not my gift. That's not my skill set. And so it's been really, really important for me to surround myself with people who are.

good at managing people. And that was part of that journey, right? Like we go from a head count of 12 up to north of 60. And it was really, really, really important to get that infrastructure built around me. I was probably a little too slow to build out my executive leadership team. And I don't mean that to disparage anyone that was on my team at the time. But you know, the needs of a five, $600 million organization versus the needs of a three and half to $4 billion organization.

are just fundamentally different, right? We went from, I would just say, very flat to all of a sudden going vertical. And now we've got management roles and we've got layers essentially. And maintaining that cultural integrity is extremely, extremely important. So what I've done essentially with the roles is bifurcated between our advisory core and then our non-advisory core. And the reason for doing that is simply because we need to be thinking about capacity.

within the organization as we continue to grow and scale. And this is where, just a quick tangent, but data integrity is imperative. I think every organization, no matter how big you are, you need to be investing in the quality of your data. The quality of the output is directly reflected on the quality of the input. And so it's understanding what your client acquisitions costs are, what your close ratios are, because then you can start building that pathway forward and what you're looking at from a scaling perspective.

And this is why I've done this bifurcation. So in 2021, I built Advisor Growth Track, which is an accelerated training program for the next generation of advisors. You we talk about this war for talent and I'll be the first to admit, I was just downright negative about Gen Zs and just, you know, to a point where it just wasn't engaging, wasn't, and I've had some great mentors over my career and some coaches that I've worked with and really got a great refrain around,

the role of a Gen Z and how they think. And what I came to appreciate with Gen Zs in particular is that they are a very, let's just say, task-oriented generation, and they're a very cohort-oriented generation. You think about how they've been raised, it's teams for virtually everything, right? And so for us, what we did with Advisor Growth Track is we gave them this collegial cohort environment. So it's four to six individuals, they come in, every single graduating class out of these financial planning programs.

Then they give them on the job training where they're sitting within each of the departments of the organization. And then they go and sit, seat two behind the lead advisors where they're sitting in an apprenticeship type of role. And mind you, this is another part of one of the things that I'd say in my career that I got very lucky with. was kind of an original brainchild. And now all of a sudden it's taken this organic element of its own. It has been a challenge, right? To get the pathwaying right and then to get it managed correctly.

But the reality of it is that we now have an army of advisors that are going to, in the next three to seven years, completely change what Bogart wealth looks like in the future. And when I think about how important that is within the organization, because it's helping us with our talent for non-advisory roles, right? Because these individuals are sitting within each of the different departments because it builds that next generation of talent. But simultaneously, we're now also building the infrastructure for next generation advisor growth.

And so the reason that I'm going down this pathway just with talent is because when I think about advisor growth track, it's something where training is an imperative part of any organization. And that was something I would tell you I was too slow to, but being able to give that career pathway, I can't tell you the number of individuals that we're hiring now because we have not only the growth, because I do think growth is an absolute element of culture, but we're showing them the pathway in order to be able to have a future.

You know, I've got an individual that I'm talking to right now that I'm probably going to end up hiring and opening up a new market off of him because I have conviction in his ability to go out and get business. And I also have the training and the infrastructure that I can do that. Right. And by the way, this is a little bit of a bespoke conversation. But the point with all of it is if it weren't for that infrastructure and that foundation, I don't think we would be successful and I wouldn't be willing to make that investment.

So when I think about the talent war now, coming back to the original question, I think it's really important to understand the framing and being able to give these individuals the pathway for growth. We were blessed. We had 119 applicants for the last four slots of AGT this last year. So we're unfortunately turning away, in my opinion, great talent simply because of the capacity constraints that we still have.

Shelby Nicholl (18:05)
Wow.

James Bogart (18:16)
And so, know, most of it right now is building that training infrastructure and then not having disruption within the organization, right? Like being, you know, knowing where you are in this growth cycle.

Shelby Nicholl (18:25)
Well, and you're balancing that

organic growth with, you're balancing your lead flow with the capacity that you have and the talent. Or do you think like, gosh, if I had the talent and I could train them properly, I could just turn up the spigot? Or both? Yeah.

James Bogart (18:40)
a little bit of both candidly,

you know, the thing about organic growth is I think a lot of individuals do not have patients associated with organic growth initiatives. You know, it's like, always think of the guys that put up the signs to, to, to mow lawns or move or whatever. like, you can't just put up a sign and say, I'm an advisor and expect lead flow. That's not how it works. Right. Like, and, so in order to have.

really successful organic growth, you need to commit to whatever it is, right? And so, you know, we've really gone all in on niche-based marketing. I would say that what we've built is very bespoke in our industry, and we are subject matter experts in very defined verticals. But the success that we've had is because of 20 years of presence, right? And the things that I did 15 years ago to build the platform for where we are today.

We're a very different organization than what we were 15, 20 years ago. The reality, right? And mostly because of that infrastructure that was built then is why we are now. And we went really deep within one Fortune 500 company. We became the masters of that ecosystem. We knew their benefit plans arguably better than their HR department did, specifically how to translate.

decisions that these individuals had to made that had material financial consequences to them at these specific life events. And that became the engine, right? And we knew it, still do by the way. But we, it's one of those that I have then taken what we built there and replicated it into other organizations. But the reality of it is, is those other organizations combined still don't come close to the lead flow that we have.

off of the presence with the 20 year organizations. And I don't have the expectation that they will, right? It's funny, I hired a business development director 18 months ago and she's really hard on herself. But when she's like, we only had this number of people, I'm like, whoa, that's an awesome number, right? Like remember, we're pioneering new markets, right? Like we have no presence. Don't expect that you're gonna see what we have down here in Texas that we've been doing for 20 years.

Shelby Nicholl (20:47)
Mm-hmm.

James Bogart (20:56)
and immediately get the same number in a brand new market. Like it just doesn't happen. So the point with all of it is like when you're building out organic elements within an organization, it requires commitment. Like you need to go into it basically saying, I am allocating X capital and this is exactly what I'm going to spend on these initiatives in order to be able to then see future client growth. It doesn't happen overnight.

Shelby Nicholl (21:21)
Yeah, yeah. It's super interesting. think about it even with any entrepreneur, right? Any entrepreneur you want to have, you want to go deep on your subject, right? Whoever your prospect is. But also that it's not just that it happens overnight. It's not just putting a sign out probably even for that lawn company, right? It's much more than that, that they've created an environment in those neighborhoods where everybody sees their trucks and their materials all the time, right?

a certain amount of stability and history to your point of being in there for a long time. People look at us and are like, where did Muriel come from? You guys have only been out a few years, and that's true. But we all had 20, 25 year corporate careers first. And so we're building on that, those decades of history, and bringing a different viewpoint to the market that we think is convictionally better. Tell me a little bit about your team. You mentioned you've got you.

the firm has been built through this Herculean efforts of your team, which is amazing. Every great growth story has a great team, but your team has also changed, as you said, as you've kind of maybe professionalized and continued to build the business and get to these different levels of growth. Is your original team still with you? How did you decide when you needed to bring in that professional leadership team?

James Bogart (22:43)
You know, I think I touched on it a bit, but that was the hardest part of this talent war, truthfully. And I kind of have this mental image of a puzzle set. I was trying think as you were asking the question, I think every one of the OGs is still here. And now they're all aquatized and I'd say very happy.

Shelby Nicholl (22:48)
Yeah.

I love saying OGs too, right? Yeah.

Awesome.

James Bogart (23:13)
I can't recall when leaving. Now that I think about it. mean, we've had some client service role, like some of the operational side of the business that come and go, but not any of the leadership for sure is all still here. The core advisor is all still here. One thing I'll say is every obstacle I've ever encountered has ultimately been a door for something else, right? And so,

it's important to know that when the stuff happens, like be ready for what that is building in the future. But when I think about the leadership team, the hardest part was really figuring out who I needed around me, right? And then, because, know, truthfully, when I think about client service side and I think about advisor head count and I think of like, that's almost easy, right? Because it's, you know,

Shelby Nicholl (24:04)
Yeah, because you knew that. You've always known that. You've been

doing that for 20 years, however many years. And you grew up in that space. You knew what you needed as an advisor from the CSA team. You probably didn't know what you needed from a president.

James Bogart (24:15)
Exactly. Yeah. And I think

it was really, really important to define the expectations for each of those roles, right? It's like, you know, as an advisor, right? To me, any advisor really can't properly service more than 125 to 150 clients. Like you get to a point past that, like it's not the service experience that our clients are accustomed to. Right. Plus the advisors need capacity to be able to do all of the work around servicing them.

but we also have a tremendous amount of infrastructure underneath them, right? So dedicated client service team, dedicated operations team, dedicated financial planning team, portfolio management team. So like our advisors show up and just interact with clients, which is amazing, right? Like you take all the minutiae away from it and now you've got a really empowered advisor. The one thing that I will say, and let's just say it caught a frustration for me.

And I will fully attest every individuals wired a little bit differently right like you know Tony Robbins saying there's campers and there's climbers You know you get to a point worth a lot of individuals where they hit their number Whatever their number is they want to make 300 grand they want to make 500 grand They want to make a million bucks Whatever it is and then they just kind of hot tub right that's the camper and then you do have some individuals that are very let's just say growth oriented and I'll put my hand up for that one right like they usually haven't pinnacled the mountain and they're on to the next mountain right like

You know, and so one of the things that I think is really important is understanding where people are and their respective journeys as we're building this enduring organization. Because there's absolutely nothing wrong with an individual that wants balance in life and, you know, building the infrastructure around them so that they can have the fulfillment they want in a workplace, fulfillment they want in their home life, and all the other fun things. And like I think about my purpose now is I'm almost living off of their balance.

Shelby Nicholl (25:54)
That's right.

James Bogart (26:09)
you know, bless my wife, she's an absolute saint, she puts up with me. But you know, it's like, live for watching other people's journeys as well. And I think it's really, really fun. Coming back to the original question, sorry, but you know, all of those other roles to me are easy. The hardest part was building a leadership team and getting those personalities right. I mean, and so we're an EOS organization. I think every business needs an operating system. Like, let's start there.

Shelby Nicholl (26:33)
So funny, as you were

talking, I was like, I bet you're EOS and obviously you're the visionary and you're the culture keeper and then you needed an integrator inside. Yeah.

James Bogart (26:43)
And I think about like, for lack of better words, my original right hand, like my COO, she was the perfect integrator in this first leg of the growth journey. Like absolutely perfect. And by the way, she's still perfect, but the reality is the needs of the individuals within an organization change as the organization changes. That, I messed up, right? Like I could have done a better job recognizing that earlier, right?

And that absolutely impacted some of it. I always look backwards what I could have done differently. I could have grown faster if I had done this.

Shelby Nicholl (27:16)
Same.

Self-actualization

and self-awareness, they kind of go together.

James Bogart (27:24)
Yeah, it can be bad though. So, you know, it's getting right butts, right seats. I think first and foremost, really leaning into a good operating system. We love EOS. Anybody who hasn't read Gina Wickman's book, fantastic, like start there. But I will say is understanding the role assignments. Yes, I am the quintessential visionary, but without a good integrator that can continue to keep with the organization as it continues to grow.

Shelby Nicholl (27:26)
Hahaha

James Bogart (27:54)
You're gonna hit ceilings, right? And you're gonna hit places where it's breakdowns in communication, it's culture hits, it's all the different things. One thing that I've come to appreciate is managing egos as you grow is so important. And especially when you're bringing in outsiders, right? You think about the hired guns, right?

I think about hired individuals who have 25, 30 year careers that they're used to the journey that they went through, but their journey is very different than our journey. And you mentioned culture, because culture is like the epicenter of things I think about. recognizing that integration, you really have to commit to that. And I think about me, when I hired my president, bless his heart. He comes on board and I go on six straight weeks of traveling.

And he's like, does James actually work here? And that's part of the journey. And being intentional as you're growing, you need to spend the time with your people to get that culture integration right. That was, again, that's another thing I think I messed up a lot.

Shelby Nicholl (29:07)
Yeah, super interesting. and I think I love the self-awareness, right? I think that is exactly how we grow and learn. And the growth that you guys have had has just been tremendous. So you've had to do a lot of self-awareness in here and a lot of like company awareness, right? Like what's working well, what's working not well and sort of fix them. You've often said that like in your growth journey, which now almost to 4 billion incredible in six years,

I love it. But you said everything broke. What was like one of the things that surprised you that broke?

James Bogart (29:38)
so these organic engines are fantastic. Nothing pains me more than not having the capacity to deal with prospect lead flow. And we hit that point. We hit that point in 22, 23, and this is why that I come back to that data comment, and again, lesson I learned, but why it's so important.

Shelby Nicholl (29:48)
Yes, yes.

James Bogart (30:01)
to understand the data so that you can do advanced capacity planning. And this is where I think about some of the mistakes that I've made, but one that, by the way, we had the organization built the double and we Forexed, in a year, brought a billion assets in 21 and then another 622. And we couldn't get human capital fast enough. I'm not one to just hire to fill a seat. Like I want right people.

And, you know, this is again, you talk about the surprises, didn't have the training programs built correctly, you know, like my expectation is I had an advisor who's got 15 years of experience in CFP that they know everything I know. You can come back to self-explanation. They should just know or like osmosis, right? Like it's just going. It doesn't happen that way, right? You got to build the training. And so

Shelby Nicholl (30:47)
They just didn't, yeah. Different set of clients.

James Bogart (30:58)
Coming back, I think some of the things that broke that were surprising was not having capacity. When I think about some of the individuals that haven't worked out with us, it's like a willingness to be able to indoctrinate into our culture, the Bogart way. And that's, again, it's just so important to work on those things and be intentional about it.

Shelby Nicholl (31:17)
Yeah, you one of the things I say a lot is I don't love the word culture, by the way, because you can't spell culture without the word cult. But then at the same time, you know, maybe a cult's OK because you're doing things in the Bogart way, right? Maybe the Bogart way, maybe the Bogart cult is the right cult and that you want people to sort of ride for the brand. Right. So it's it's a funny balance. I think I'm trying to figure that out.

James Bogart (31:41)
I would absolutely agree with you actually. mean it's the thing is is I think about the concept of right butt right seat like you want people that are the absolute disciples of the organization like they have the same level of clarity that you me as the founder have right and like again I think about where I've made mistakes a lot that is one of them.

Part of it is, know, one of things I will say is careful what you wish for because you're gonna get it. Like I am a very strong manifestor. I have come to appreciate that might be one of my superpowers. But it's one of these things where as I've gone after the things, right, it's pulled me out of that role, that seat, that capacity, right? And it's just pulled me apart in a lot of different ways. But it's also made it really, really difficult for my team to get access to me.

Right? so like, and then nothing drives me more crazy than they're like, well, we know you're busy and we don't want to. I'm like, yeah, but this is so much more important. Come in, open the door. Yeah.

Shelby Nicholl (32:50)
You mentioned a moment ago data and

how data and data cleanliness, data governance has been like super critical. And one of the things I was so interested in with your story is that prior to the pandemic and your kind of pivot to digital marketing, you were doing these in-person events and you knew exactly how many people were coming, how many appointments you'd get. Like you could kind of predict the success and your growth journey based on doing these in-person events. And then the pandemic hit and you went digital. Talk about that pivot from like even a data standpoint, like how did you

rework your funnels, so to speak.

James Bogart (33:26)
Yeah, we originally started doing lunches for these targeted organizations. We had to transition to dinners based upon geographic shifts that happened with the company that we were targeting. But for every dinner we were doing, and again, took 15 years plus to get to this point, but we were getting 60 to 80 individuals at every single dinner that we were doing. We were doing two, sometimes three a month.

And for every event that we did, roughly 35 % of the attendees were brand new prospects. Of those, 65 % came in for a consultation with us. And then of those, 87 % became a client. Now, remember, this is the days when it was just me, right? Like, and me, sorry, me.

Shelby Nicholl (34:12)
that you knew

those numbers. Like so many advisors don't even know those numbers.

James Bogart (34:17)
Well, when you're spending tens of thousands of dollars on every single event and you don't have the tens of thousands of dollars, you start to, you know, there's an element of like the journey, right? I talk about like the attributes of successful people. It's resourceful, it's resiliency, it's in a lot of grit. One of the things I've commonly talked about that I miss the most is my desperation, right? Like as I talk to some of these organizations that we're looking to partner with,

There's one, the two brothers that I'm just so inspired by every single time I talk to them. They are where I was five years ago and I so desperately want to partner with them because I know how to 5X them and I can do it really quickly. again, those types of conversations don't happen overnight but the point is I see the things that they're doing and I'm like, yep, that's what I used to do. I miss that part that like...

you think that way. And then you get to a point where, you know, as you pay, as you grow, like things change. But coming back to the question, I knew the data because I needed to know the data, right? Like, why am I investing this type of capital spending two, $300,000 a year on these dinners if I'm not going to see a return? And I needed to understand, like, what are my client acquisition costs, right? Like getting into client lifetime value, understanding the ratio of client acquisition costs versus client acquisition value so I can understand where I'm leaning in.

or where I need to be pulling back from. And so that was pre-COVID. And by the way, when it was a very lean organization, and the numbers weren't what the numbers were, I would say on a relative basis, it was kind easy to remember most of it, and we used Salesforce, so we were able to build out funnels within Salesforce. I was super blessed to have an extremely talented individual who

By the way, when we were smaller, a lot of us were wearing lots of different hats, right? Like I was CEO, Chief Compliance Officer, Chief Business Development Officer, like financial advisor. And this individual was an advisor, but also helped me build out all of our technology, our original technology, the workflows, the dashboard, so I could see things. I come back to like when things weren't good. And by the way.

Nothing drives me more crazy when someone says it must be nice. Cause I'm like, you have no idea what I went through. Like we're not going to spend the podcast talking about what I went through, but when things weren't good, I always leaned in on BD at business development. And it was because I had access to that type of data. Now, as soon as the spigots open, we transitioned March 23rd, 2020 was the first digital event I did. I took the content that I'd already been doing as the seminar, as the dinner seminars.

I pivoted a little bit, rebranded it. I called it, I still afford to retire? And we went from getting 60 to 80 people at our dinners. had 397 people at my first Zoom, which you want to talk about scary? That was scary. 397 people on my first Zoom. Another 700 people watched the recording that week. Light bulb went off. It's like, my gosh, what have I been missing? Now I fully attest we had a captive audience with everybody during COVID, but the reality of it is is that

it changed everything for us. So the next two weekends, I committed to filming all that content, right? So I had 25 different events. came in Saturday, Sunday, brought a bunch of suits in, and I more or less curated these were webinars, but there was just digital educational content. We spent about $25,000 redoing our website. Fast forward July 4th week, we had a hundred new prospects in a week.

And that flow just took off. So I had to repurpose one of my people to just help me handle the inbound, because originally it was just me doing all the inbound. But I had to repurpose one of my individuals to help handle inbound and then booking meetings. And then that was it, off to the races. But the data got harder as soon as that volume. And so when we talk about things that broke, that was one that broke. had to change, we had to adapt.

You know, I think back, like we were using Excel to do our email distribution list, right? Like, again, you have to be resourceful. you know, if

Shelby Nicholl (38:37)
Yeah, that's right. That's how

we start. It's a little gritty and it's a little garage band level, you know?

James Bogart (38:44)
We literally started BoGrad Wealth in my basement. We folding tables. We got outed a couple weeks before we were originally going to go, so we didn't have office space. So my garage was the postage station. My basement was where we had all the printers. And we had clients come to my house and sign paperwork at the dining room table. You just make it work, right?

Shelby Nicholl (39:05)
You just do what you gotta do and you're

like, I'll have office space in a few weeks. It's great. And in terms of a transition, we tell people to do that all the time, right? Take the co-working space for the short amount of time if you need it and then figure out your long-term office space.

James Bogart (39:20)
I

think so many people get paralyzed by the unknown, right? Like that it prevents them. Well, yes, absolutely. You know, they think it has to be perfect in order to be able to do it. The answer is absolutely not. Because when I look back on my journey, there was nothing perfect about what I did. You know, there's certain things that I would say were intentional, certain things that were kind of accidental positives. There were certain things that were

Shelby Nicholl (39:25)
Yeah, and perfection.

James Bogart (39:50)
my gosh, this was terrible. But the reality of it is momentum and just getting going is the most important part of any of these entrepreneurial journeys.

Shelby Nicholl (40:01)
Yeah, those accidental positives, I call those actually strategic intuition. It was actually you were intuitively strategic, but it was intuitive. It wasn't like you were sitting down going, okay, what's my strategy? was just like, this feels like the right thing, let's go.

James Bogart (40:19)
Yeah, I mean, yes and no, right? Like I would say, like I think about where we are now. We don't have a single client that represents more than 60 basis points of our revenue. That was accidental. I'm not going to say it was intentional. I mean, like, but we have no concentration risk. I have not a single client that would economically harm our future. I feel abundantly grateful for that. But obviously that's a tremendous amount of work because it's a lot more volume than a lot of almost four billion R.A.s, right?

Shelby Nicholl (40:33)
Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah,

James Bogart (40:48)
We don't have institutional

Shelby Nicholl (40:48)
yeah.

James Bogart (40:49)
clients. We're all mom and pop. The average account size of the firm is about 2.2 million, right? Don't get me wrong, we've got big stuff, we've got small stuff, but the point is it's volume based. We are very much, let's just say, mom and pop.

Shelby Nicholl (41:03)
Yeah, but you know who you are and you know who you're serving and you know them extremely well. mean, my gosh, you moved to Texas for them.

James Bogart (41:11)
It's so funny you say that because every single time I chased the shiny object, it was an absolute failure and a huge distraction. Like that's probably one of the best lessons I would try to instill on anyone who's on their journey is like be intentional about where you're going. Like focus, stay focused, stay disciplined. Try to eradicate the shiny objects because they're going to happen all the time.

You know, it's like we had an opportunity for an NFL player at one point, big one, and I spent so much time on like building out the presentation materials and going down and doing the players association stuff and like all this stuff. And then, you know, he ended up going with somebody else that was working with somebody in the locker room. I'm like, all right. If I had just applied that same level of time, energy and focus to my fairway, like what I'm really good at.

Again, another one of those things, it could have grown faster, right?

Shelby Nicholl (42:12)
Yeah, yeah. Well, okay, that's a great lesson to sort of get to our ending point on. I have just a few real quick lightning round questions, I call them. What is one function or hire, and you've kind of talked about this a little bit, but one function or hire that you'd invest in earlier if you had it to redo?

James Bogart (42:31)
Ooh, ooh, ooh. Two come to mind really early on. Business development officer, right? Like somebody to take it off of the jungle hunter, founder, whoever, but get that person hired early on. Their core focus is all around building a scalable business development process that's not dependent upon you, one person. The other one, just because I want to, I just think it's so important.

and I'm still struggling with this one, but it's an internal corporate trainer. I think a lot of things get figured out when you can have conformity of process, conformity of training, like everybody doing the same thing.

Shelby Nicholl (43:11)
Yeah, that's great. All right, and then what is something that means more to you than AUM, a metric of some sort?

James Bogart (43:20)
Client retention.

Shelby Nicholl (43:21)
Client retention, yeah, that's a great one. And then what is one way, and this is always the question we end it with because of the name of the podcast, Advisors Offscript. What's one way that you're living an off script life right now?

James Bogart (43:34)
What's the script? You know, the reality is, I've made a lot of sacrifices in my career that has impacted the people that I love the most. Not always in a positive way. Sure, there are beneficiaries of the outcome, but you know, for me, my journey has not always been a positive one. And the reality of it is, is I've had to overcome a lot of things, both personally, professionally, and it's an isolating environment.

Shelby Nicholl (43:36)
Yeah.

James Bogart (44:04)
Right? Like, and so when I think about the off script nature of the question, it really comes down to like, I miss that desperation that I had. I really genuinely do. But knowing that I've been challenged every single step of my journey. And now I'm at this other point where people are challenging me as to why am I continuing to do what I do? And just know that you're not alone in that journey. Cause I've found

my community in that regards as well. Entrepreneurs are wired just differently. There's a little bit of crazy in there. And there's nothing wrong with that. You think about what greatness has come from people who are doing things off script. A lot of these big companies wouldn't exist if it wasn't for really great human beings that are going down a different pathway that everybody else is challenging.

And I would never have been able to create what I did if I lived a scripted life.

Shelby Nicholl (45:03)
Yeah, love that. It's so good for you to say that and also to bring up sort of the depth at which it takes too, right? Like it's a mindset, it's a mental game all along the way as well. And you certainly, we didn't talk about the challenges that you faced. People can go listen to all of your stuff and they should. Huh?

James Bogart (45:22)
I've other podcasts

on those.

Shelby Nicholl (45:28)
Exactly.

Yeah, go listen to the stuff because there's such a journey with that. I mean, we focused a lot on sort of the business journey today, but there was a huge personal journey that you've gone through.

James Bogart (45:36)
think it's really, really, really important to find a good community that can help with that journey. Because again, I felt isolated. I felt lonely.

There's even conversations right now that I can't have with my staff, Things I'm working on that you need those people that you can lean on, consultants or coaches, you know, getting your team, right? Like you think about like some of the high performance athletes or performer, you musicians, like they're not doing it alone, right? Like they've got teams of people who are helping them. And...

this industry is not immune to that, right? Like success is very lonely, it's isolating. People will always judge you from their shoes where they are currently standing. They're not in yours, so they don't understand what you're going through or why you're going through it. And I'm really proud of the things that I've had to overcome. And frankly, I'm even more proud of the people who have endured the journey with me. I mean, my wife, I can't speak highly enough about my wife and the things that she has

she has put up with from me, why? I couldn't even begin to. Yeah, I mean, not to get too down the road, but I literally watched the company one week into being married. Blew up our whole lives. So the point is, is you gotta have that team around you. And I don't believe in a script.

Shelby Nicholl (46:50)
We love a good partnership for sure. And you guys have had that.

No.

That's right.

Awesome. James, thank you so much for the honesty, the frameworks, the thinking, just sharing your story. Really appreciate it. This was one of the most fun conversations that I've had and one of the ones that every time I talk to you, I learned so much for my own business too. So to our listeners, if you've built something real and you're asking bigger questions, this episode was completely for you. Get clear on what you want, build the systems, hire the people.

James Bogart (47:12)
They're all.

Thanks.

Shelby Nicholl (47:38)
And James, one of my favorite sayings of you is be very careful what you wish for because you're going to get it. So thanks so much for being here.

James Bogart (47:46)
Thanks,

Shelby. It was fun.