By 2005, Sowell Management was beginning to see something important take shape: financial advisor partnerships built on trust and lasting relationships.
This is the third installment in Sowell Management’s 25th anniversary blog series, looking back at defining moments in the firm’s history and, most importantly, why they still matter to the advisors Sowell serves today.
The firm had spent its early years creating more choice for independent advisors. But choice alone was never going to define the kind of company Bill and Cindy Sowell wanted to build.
The relationships mattered just as much.
Some of the advisor relationships that began during Sowell’s early years would continue for decades, creating a different way to measure the firm’s progress. Growth could be reflected in assets, capabilities and the number of advisors the firm served. Longevity told another part of the story.
For Bill Sowell, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, those long-standing relationships became evidence of something much harder to quantify.
“You can offer an advisor technology, investments and resources, but a relationship has to be earned over time,” Sowell said. “It comes from doing what you say you are going to do, being available when someone needs you and continuing to listen as their business changes. That was important to us in the beginning, and it is still important today.”
For an independent advisor, those changes can be significant.
A practice that begins with one advisor may eventually include multiple advisors and employees. Clients become more complex. Technology changes. Growth creates new opportunities and new demands. Over time, questions about succession, ownership and the future of the business can become just as important as the decisions that helped launch it.
A long-term relationship has to be able to change along with those needs. That idea became part of the way Sowell approached its work with advisors: understand the business in front of you, but also recognize that it may look very different five, 10 or 20 years later.
Why Year 5 Still Matters
In an industry where advisors have more choices than ever, relationships can be easy to talk about and much harder to sustain.
For Daryl Seaton, President and Chief Executive Officer of Sowell Management, the distinction comes down to whether a relationship continues to provide value as an advisor’s needs evolve.
“A real partnership cannot stay static while the advisor’s business keeps changing,” Seaton said. “What an advisor needs at one stage of the journey may not be what they need at the next. The relationship has to have enough trust for those conversations to keep happening and enough flexibility for both sides to keep adapting.”
Seaton understands that perspective from both sides. Before joining Sowell’s executive leadership team, he experienced the organization as an advisor and partner.
That history gives him a firsthand view of why the quality of the relationship surrounding an independent business can matter as much as the capabilities themselves.
“There are going to be moments when the answer is straightforward and moments when it isn’t,” Seaton said. “What matters is knowing there are people who understand your business, know what you are trying to accomplish and are willing to work through the next decision with you. That kind of familiarity and trust is built over time.”
Twenty-five years into Sowell’s history, some of its longest relationships can now be measured in decades.
That longevity does not mean the relationships have remained unchanged. In many ways, the opposite is true. Advisor businesses have grown, the industry has evolved and Sowell’s own capabilities have expanded.
What gives a long-term relationship value is its ability to evolve without losing the trust at its foundation.
For Bill Sowell, that remains one of the accomplishments he values most.
“When an advisor chooses to continue building with you year after year, you don’t take that for granted,” Sowell said. “You keep earning it. To me, that has always been what partnership is about.”
