Gregory Raines talks rapid growth, guarding culture

Andy Burt 00:00:00 

Andy, Welcome to Investment News TV. My name is Andy Burt, and today we're joined by Greg Raines, a leader in the financial services space and has a lengthy, distinguished career. Greg is CEO of Tag Advisors, and was an Excellence Awardee at the 2025 Investment News Awards for the Park Avenue Securities Award for CEO of the Year. Greg, thank you for being with us today. We're eager to learn more about your journey. So thank you so much. 

 

Greg Raines 00:00:41 

You're welcome, man. Nice to meet you. 

 

Andy Burt 00:00:43

You as well. Let's jump in. Tell me about 2024. I know it was a huge year for growth, for Tag Advisors. What did it feel like in the midst of it all? 

 

Greg Raines 00:00:55 

Well, it stretched us, for sure. It certainly taxed our infrastructure, if you will. But we have, we have added, on average, over 10 million in GDC, or right at 10 million in GDC for the four years prior. So jumping to 18 last year was a stretch, but it also, in some respects, felt comfortable. Unlike a lot of OSJs, Tag is a very decentralized organization, we were using Zoom for Monday for our morning management calls, long before the pandemic. So when the pandemic hit, we were able to adjust very comfortably and really continue what we were already doing, and by that decentralization, it's allowed us to add people and personnel and OSJ supervisors on an as needed basis as we've grown. Whereas highly centralized organizations tend to have more challenges when they get to capacity. For us, when we get to capacity, candidly, we just hire another individual to meet that demand. 

 

Andy Burt 00:02:09 

Thank you for explaining that to me. I'm curious, though, what led you to decide to have a decentralized structure instead of a more centralized type of office situation? What was the impetus for that? 

 

Greg Raines 00:02:22 

You know, it's interesting. The CEO of Cambridge asked me about that years ago, observing that many of our counterparts were much more centralized whereas we were decentralized. I'm not exactly sure how it happened. I would just, I would say that it was organic, and it was something that I have always imagined myself being kind of like a leader, that when I meet someone, it's like looking at pieces of a puzzle. And while we'll bring someone in in a certain capacity, ultimately, we're looking for the ideal fit that comes, you know, with that individual. And I would say that that process of refining and finding the right fit certainly led to that decentralization process. And the other thing I would say is that candidly, not being geographically restricted and hiring good people. I mean, today we've got management team in Syracuse, Rochester, Chicago, Charleston, South Carolina, Birmingham, Alabama, up and down the East Coast. So some of it wasn't purposeful. It's just that when we found good people, we knew that we were able to add them on a more decentralized basis, rather than focusing geographically on the Richmond, Virginia area. 

 

Andy Burt 00:03:50 

Thank you. That really makes sense. And it also sounds like you were willing to adjust your long term strategy in order to find the right talent, the right people for your long term vision. 

 

Greg Raines 00:04:04 

Absolutely, that's correct. 

 

Andy Burt 00:04:07 

Super so when an organization like yours experiences that kind of growth, one of the things that can get lost in the shuffle is the culture that you built along the way, which we've already touched on a little bit. So I'm curious to know, how have you committed to protecting your culture?

 

Greg Raines 00:04:25 

Well, certainly your question is an interesting one, because when you look across the top 10 independent broker dealers, they have all been challenged with a question that you're asking. As they've grown, as they've aggregated, as they bolted on other relationships other broker dealers, it's been a challenge maintaining culture for those organizations, and I think that really has contributed to our growth, because our retention of culture, our commitment to the relationships that we have, really, I would argue, has been a respite to advisors that have. Just grown weary of being rolled up. I mean, you know, talking to advisors as much as I do, it's not unusual for me to talk to an advisor who's changed broker dealer four times, none of them being a choice that they had made. Those choices were made for them by the organizations that they were affiliated with. So, you know, in the middle of all of that consolidation and aggregation, I think part of our appeal in the marketplace is, you know, relationships are still important to us. I mean, I, I started in the business in 1983 and we were always told this is a relationship business, but with the consolidation that's occurred in the marketplace, certainly it doesn't feel that way at times at this point. So for us, those relationships are important. They're reflected in our culture, and certainly have contributed to our success. Our core persistency as an organization over the last five years has been 95% that means that in all of the chaos, all of the transition, all of the migration, if an advisor was with us at the end of the year, 95% of that production was with us at the end of the year, which is a testament, because sometimes, if you're growing really fast, but you're you're losing at a moderate pace, it's hard to measure what's exactly. All you're doing is measure net inflows, outflows, but when you are actually measuring core retention. 

 

Greg Raines 00:06:30 

To me, that's a really, really good reflection and testament to culture. And the other thing I would say on culture is this culture for us leads. It's not a lagging indicator. It's a leading indicator. The culture that we have is what is attractive. I just talked to an advisor in Atlanta last week. He's talking to four broker dealers, and he said, Greg, I'll just tell you right now. I haven't finished my due diligence process, but in terms of the feel of what I'm looking for, Tag is what Tag is, what is most attractive to me right now, and that's before discussions on offers and transition and payouts, everything else. He's just saying what I've experienced, and talking to you and meeting people in your organization has been preferable to everything that I've looked at so far. 

 

Andy Burt 00:07:30 

Well said, and congratulations on that core retention. That's an outstanding number, and your phrase of culture is a leading indicator. I've never heard it expressed like that, but I'm going to remember that one. 

 

Greg Raines 00:07:42 

Well, again, that's the it's a leading indicator, but I've said it for years, and one of my partners reminded me this morning. You know, we've kind of said for years, if we build it, they'll come and they actually, they actually have. It's somewhat of a cliche based on Field of Dreams, but it's certainly been true for us. We've been fortunate in that regard. 

 

Andy Burt 00:08:07 

Excellent. You mentioned that you've been in the industry for a number of years. I'd love to know a little bit more about your own professional journey, and as a part of that, could you share briefly a significant obstacle you may have overcome along the way to lead you to where you are now. 

 

Greg Raines 00:08:24 

Well, as I mentioned, I started in the business in 83 started out, you know, in retail, face to face with clients, and for reasons that I've never completely understood, I gradually migrated to working with agents, brokers and advisors. And I think what appealed to me about that was two things. Number one, the average advisor knows that if they don't do it, it doesn't get done. So I very much appreciated the core, entrepreneurial, independent, understanding of risk and reward associated with being an advisor. That was kind of a core value that I have that appealed to me about working with other advisors So Bob, I would say, certainly within 10 years of getting into the business, I was already migrating towards working with financial professionals, because it just had a very strong appeal to me. And the other thing candidly is that while I always felt comfortable as a financial professional, I felt even more comfortable working with advisors for the reasons that I just described. I felt like there was a simpatico and an understanding. I just you know I know what it's like to and remember looking at my desk and seeing that there were a total of three files on my desk that I could call and knowing that if I call them and they all said. Know, I would have nothing in the mill so that that you know that sense of responsibility, primary initiative, if you will, is something that I always appreciated and something that certainly I understand and have a great deal of empathy for and working with advisors, I know what it's like to be one, and candidly, I mean, if you're, if we're all really honest with ourselves, much of those senior management across the industry never experienced that. They came from other backgrounds, frequently legal. And for that reason, I think advisors are drawn and attracted to Tag, because in a week, you know, most of our management team at one point was an individual financial advisor. 

 

Andy Burt 00:10:59 

Thank you for unpacking that. It sounds like an incredible and very amazing journey that you, you've brought you come up to at this point, I'd like to know a little bit more about your team. You mentioned that you you're decentralized. You have offices in a variety of cities. But one of the one of the expressions that you noted to us, that I really liked, is you said that independence doesn't mean isolation. I'm curious to know, what does that mean to you? If you could unpack that a little bit more 

 

Greg Raines 00:11:30 

Well, advisors that have grown up in an institutional environment, be it in the life insurance industry, wire house models or whatever, advisors that have grown up in that world frequently make the move to becoming an independent advisor with their hair on fire. They've just gotten to the point where they've had enough. They don't want to do it anymore. I want to get out of here. And so again, they kind of, they kind of leave where they are screaming, if you will. But at some point that tends to catch up with a lot of advisors, where they realize, hey, I don't like being by myself. I don't like either being in a home office or in my own office. And you know, maybe you have an administrative assistant, but they don't fully understand or appreciate what you're living with and what you're dealing with on a daily basis. And so I tend to believe that frequently advisors move from that institutional environment, and there tends to be an overreaction towards going independent, and then at some point they realize, wait a second, you know, there were things about that world that I actually liked, the camaraderie, the culture being around other people that were living and dealing with the same things that I deal with on a daily basis. So with that, with that overreaction, with that overreaction, frequently, there tends to be a migration back towards the center. And I think Tag does a really, really good job finding that central part where you have the ability to have your own business, have your own brand, do what you want to do, but you also have infrastructure support, culture, camaraderie and the value of relationship of peers that are living and breathing and dealing with the same things you deal with now, not only that, but also individuals that have taken the next step, whether you're at 150 and want to go to 200 whether you're 200 and you want to 300 every step that you're at requires a slightly different reality to get to the next level. 

 

Greg Raines 00:13:10 

And being in an organization where we have advisors that do 50,000 a year and advisors that do over 3 million, I mean, we probably have, if I had to guess, 25 advisors doing a million or more in GDC a year. So that camaraderie goes a long way. The other thing that I would say is with the consolidation of the industry. And I'm just being honest, some would take, you know, take umbrage with it. But 20 years ago, a million dollar advisor was a big deal. It's still a big deal, but a million dollar advisor today is going to have a hard time getting their call answered directly. They just are in this world, in this environment, but in our environment, we kind of have the best of both worlds. We're with a top 10, last remaining fully independent broker dealer. But we also in our world, in Tag's world, it's 400 advisor 400 plus advisors. And with that scale, we kind of hit the best of both worlds. We've got stability, we've got infrastructure, we've got support at the broker dealer level. And within our world, it's kind of like a small broker dealer inside a big one. And that reality of having that smaller culture is something that a lot of advisors had along the way and lost. I mean, we've had advisors say, hey, what I have found here I didn't think existed anymore. So that culture and that sense of community certainly is a big component of what's contributed to our success. 

 

Andy Burt 00:15:32 

So Greg, I can tell that you've put an incredible amount of thought into how you approach your company and the work that you do. So my question for you is, how do you transform thoughts into strategy, into a plan and then execution? 

 

Greg Raines 00:15:50 

Well, in our world, because our management team is so decentralized, as I mentioned earlier, we do a Zoom call every morning at 8:50. I mean, we don't have management meetings once a week. We don't have executive meetings once a week. We have management and executive meetings every day. So our management team of over 20 individuals meets every morning at 8:50, Eastern, and we literally go person by person to see if there are relevant issues, concerns, and that that daily rehearsal of, hey, we need to focus on this. Hey, this individual is having a problem. This morning, we had an advisor that won a medallion signature but couldn't find the original paperwork signifying the account. Those are the types of things that we deal with on a daily basis. And while candidly, some of our team may get tired of these calls every morning, the redundancy and the overlay and commitment to execution and service translates into a culture of service that I think serves us and serves our advisors very well. So it isn't just a platitude every day, we're talking about how to handle situations that reflects the commitment that we make to our advisors, and then we do it again at 4:30 every day to make sure that we hit our marks. We check the boxes, and we did what we said we were going to do on the 8:50 call that morning. So those two things create an imprint of culture that I think traverses the organization. And you know, everybody that's involved winds up understanding this is what we do, and this is how we do it. 

 

Andy Burt 00:17:37 

So what I'm hearing there is that you have an incredible sense of purpose, even on the granular, granular level, on a daily basis, that reinforces the culture that you're building. 

 

Greg Raines 00:17:48 

I would say I'm not a heavy handed person, but I am extremely dedicated and passionate about doing what we've set our minds to do, and that's reflected in the conversations you know, we someone says, Hey, what's going on here? Someone asked a question. And a lot of times, interestingly, Andy, you'll get to a point, and everybody that runs an organization knows this and understands this intuitively. You get to certain points where it doesn't become an analytical exercise. It becomes an emotional exercise. It becomes a relational exercise. You know, most broker dealers today, and I learned this working at MetLife, most broker dealers measure all decisions through business risk, regulatory risk and reputational risk at our level. While those are things that we have to consider, we focus on relational risk, not business, not reputational, not regulatory, although we do all of those, what we add, in a big way, is the relational risk of staying connected with the advisors that we've made a commitment to serve. And I think that serves us very well. And I think you know, the fact that I'm in 10 meetings a week, fulfilling that sense of obligation and purpose reflects that commitment. 

 

Andy Burt 00:19:10 

Thank you for explaining that, and I would imagine that the commitment that you have to your advisors on a daily basis also translates to the commitment they have with your clients as well. So, so final question for you, 2024 was an outstanding year for Tag. How do you top it? What do you, what do you look forward to over the next six to 12 months? How do you, how do you top seven days a year? 

 

Greg Raines 00:19:34 

Well, Andy, you don't know the answer to the question, but we almost have, you know, it's not like we did something magic. The, you know, the with the changes in the industry, we just have to do what we do. And again, you know, parenthetically, to some degree, we still feel like, if we build it, they'll come. You know, we finished the year at 18 million in revenue last year added and. And we're right at 17 million right now, year to date. I mean, we actually, we should certainly crack 20 million, and we may very well hit 25 million by the end of the year. But again, that's kind of a function of the consolidation and dislocation that's occurring at the advisor level that we're able to kind of solve, and hopefully we've got, we're very fortunate that, by and large, as measured by retention and the actual comments of our advisors, we I feel like we've kind of hit a sweet spot that has served us and served our advisors well. So 25 looks good. And going back to your comments on culture, I'm consciously pay close attention, and I'm conscious of still maintaining the culture. We do a weekly call with our advisors that's voluntary. The the information on those calls is important. Our advisors would say it's the most important value that they get from Tag as an organization. But every Wednesday, 11am Eastern, you know, right now, we're averaging 170 advisors a week that get on to find out how to get the Cliff Notes and working with the broker dealer how to grow and protect their practice. And then, typically, we'll have a sponsor on talking about what's new in their toolkit. But that is very much a call where our advisors walk away with tangible, tactical, operational and strategic value that they can import and implement into their practice. 

 

Greg Raines 00:21:55 

So those are the kind of things that we're doing that I think arguably has translated into our success. And I was circular there, but the point that I would make on that is, when you have 170 and then you get to 200 then it's like, Okay, how many of these people on this call do I actually know? How many of them? How many of their voices would I recognize if I was on audio only? Even though we're tip, we're on video every week, so literally, and this gives you an insight, literally, recently, I started writing down the names of every individual on the call that I did not recognize, and then the next day, on our management call, I was saying, Okay, who is this individual? Are they associated or affiliated with an office. Give me the background on this person, so I've got a better understanding. So those are, those are the types of things that we're doing to maintain that culture in the middle of the substantial growth that we continue to enjoy. 

 

Andy Burt 00:22:55 

That's incredible how you've connected the long term, high level growth strategy with a very purposeful, granular approach to each of your advisors. Thank you for sharing that with us, Greg, this has been an outstanding conversation. So many nuggets of wisdom about your leadership approach and how you've come to where you are and so many great things in store for the future. Greatly appreciate your time with us at Investment News today, and thank you for your all of your insights. 

 

Greg Raines 00:23:25 

Andy, it's a pleasure to meet you. I hope to do it in person sometime. 

 

Andy Burt 00:23:29 

I would look forward to that as well. My name is Andy Burt. This is Investment News TV. Thank you for joining us today.