Ep #385: Want To Go Far? Go With Others - With Scott Smith

This week’s episode features a group fostering a unique collaborative environment to help benefit consulting firms excel. Scott Smith, president and CEO of True Network Advisors, shares how his group builds a collaborative process across different agencies and the challenges that lie beneath it.What You’ll Learn From This Episode:02:22 Introduction to Scott and how True Network started07:06 How collaboration is done within the True Network14:14 How the group creates and fosters relationships with clients17:55 The biggest challenge of advisors coming together as a groupQuotes:09:23 “We just decided early on that if we could not do something better than the best agency at True, we were not going to do it because if we put forward that capability— and let’s say that person left True to go somewhere— then we might be putting those agencies in a bad spot to try to cover for that loss of capability. So we build resources— sort of like a cafeteria plan for our agencies where we do have compliance resources, we do have sales resources. For us to do something to put our name on it, our logo on it, and the True brand, we have to be sure that we are really really great at that.”12:52 “The altruistic vision of True, in the beginning, was to get agencies together: They wouldn’t compete with each other, that we share all their best ideas. And because we had ‘benefits people’— that’s who we were— then we know who’s doing great work and we can elevate and push that out.”18:56 “The concept of getting together with peers in a large or a small group— I just don’t think people do it enough and if they do it, they don’t do it for the right intentions. There is such power in small groups(…); it is really meaningful if you can find a small group with which you can share and collaborate and not compete with, be vulnerable. We’ve tried to take that ‘8 to 10 person culture’ and maintain it.”