What is Visory?

…

This is the Transition To RIA Vendor Profile Series where we take a look at the solution providers powering the RIA model. On this episode:

Vendor name:

Visory

Vendor category:

Managed IT

Episode host:

Brad Wales

Episode guest:

Steven Ryder

Vendor contact info:

Website; info@visory.net; 603-624-6777

Full Transcript:

Brad Wales – Hi, I’m Brad Wales with Transition To RIA, and this is the Transition To RIA Vendor Profile Series where we take a look at the solution providers powering the RIA model. On today’s episode, we are answering the question, “What is Visory?” And to help us with that is Stephen Ryder. Stephen, thank you for joining us.

Steven Ryder – Hey Brad, great to see you again. Thanks for having me today. I appreciate it.

Brad – Absolutely and before I jump right into it because I think there’s a unique story here if you could give us the explanation of how you ended up at Visory. I think it will help people kind of understand the firm as a whole and then we’ll get into the core of what you guys do.

Steven – Okay, sure. I started my own company called True North Networks back in 2002. I struggled for a few years and found my niche in the wealth management space. I landed my first client in Bethesda, Maryland, my first RIA, and decided I liked this business and wanted to stay in the RIA space. So True North Networks grew from 2002 to 2021.

There was a private equity firm that found us attractive enough to purchase us and three other firms, merged all four of us, and then created Visory. So Visory was sprung out of four firms that merged together and we really couldn’t decide which one had the best name. So we did some marketing research and discovered Visory was a kind of a cool name. We all agreed. And so effectively, I think it was 2022, we all merged up and Visory came about.

Brad – Okay, good deal. Well, the context is helpful as we go through this and I understand your experience in the industry goes back all the way to the early 2000s. So that’s helpful context with that. So to jump into Visory, what is the kind of proverbial 30-second elevator pitch if someone’s never heard of Visory and they say, what is it you guys do?

Steven – So we are an outsourced managed service and managed security service provider. In English that means we’re your IT partner and we’re your cybersecurity partner for wealth management firms as our key vertical.

So for a wealth management firm that is looking to outsource their IT, can’t take it in-house, can’t afford it in-house, and are looking for a cybersecurity expert that they can work with that can help them with all things cybersecurity and also be with them during an SEC audit that might be auditing their cybersecurity, that’s the high level who we are.

Brad – Yes, and where this comes up for folks that are thinking about breaking away or exploring it is, for better or worse, if you’re at a large wirehouse firm, you’ve been able to rely on them for several different things, perhaps the office that you’re in. But one of those things you’re also relying on them for is that kind of IT infrastructure and all that goes with it.

So if you were to go on an independent path, all the pros that I talk about often in the videos I make talk about all the advantages of that. Well, it also comes with additional responsibilities. And one of those is how are you going to manage your IT? So case in point, here we are where you lean on a solution provider for helping with that. Visory is a great example.

And so I’ve always called it managed IT solution provider. I don’t know if that’s a fair way. Is that a term you would use or I know you did your best to kind of package it up or what what do think of that term?

Steven – I always like to use the word partner. We want to be a partner. We don’t want to just be a vendor. We want to be a partner. I know this is a vendor series, but I take the word partner very seriously. We are an extension of their company. It’s really critically important that they look at us as an extension of them to help them for anything IT, whether they’re breaking away, whether they’re adding an office, adding an employee, buying another company, whatever we can do. We’re their IT department to help them with all things IT and certainly on the cybersecurity side to make sure they can protect themselves, protect their assets, protect their client information, their client data. So it’s really critically important they look at us as an extension of their company.

Brad – I think I hear often, and you probably do as well, where I’ll be talking to a team and they say either they’re already independent to some degree and we’re talking about what they’re using now or they’re breaking away and they say, I got a local guy. And the local guy is often not generally industry specific and he maybe helps people just in that kind of geographic area with their kind of IT needs.

I can see there may be some benefits in the sense that’s literally a guy down the street, but if you could help us understand the difference of going with something like Visory versus, again, you often hear it’s my local guy. How do you typically frame that comparison?

Steven – I would say the local IT person is our biggest competitor. There’s obviously a lot of them. And so it’s convenient to have somebody across the street, down the road, in the same town, who can support you. And I certainly understand that. I know the value, we have is we have 350 RIAs we support today. We support RIAs in 50 states.

I often tell folks, you know, even if I was right across the street, it doesn’t mean I always have the parts if a computer dies, a laptop dies, a firewall dies. I don’t always have the parts on me to solve whatever the problem is. So it really doesn’t matter where I’m located. Can I get to the resolution quickly?

We also do understand the competition where I’m not local and they’ll say, well, if you’ve got to send somebody on site, what is that going to cost me? If let’s say, there’s an issue and they already tried the typical power cycle reboot, right? That’s the first thing at IT, right? Power cycle or reboot something. And it doesn’t work and it doesn’t come back. There are times we might have to send somebody on site. We do have employees in almost all states. So it could be an employee of ours or it could be a third party that goes in under our guidance and under our direction. Either way, that is covered under our contracts. There is no extra charge for that because we understand the objection to wanting to do business with us because we’re not down the street.

Most things we can handle remotely. There’s a lot of tools and utilities and things we can do remotely. For example, we had a client, I mean I know a lot of people won’t have servers on premise anymore, but we had a server on premise that had an issue. The motherboard died in this case.

We had a backup system in place. We were able to spin up the server on this backup device and never go to the office. We got him up and running within a couple hours. Then when HP came with a new motherboard, we were able to restore everything back to the server and we never even had to go on site at all. So there’s a lot of things we can do remotely.

However, we never take a shortcut with a client if we feel there’s a need to go on site because we can’t solve it remotely. Getting the client up and running is the most important thing. So we’ll send somebody. No questions asked and again, that’s that’s covered under their support contract. There would be no additional charge for that.

Brad – I think these examples you’re giving are a pitch, if you will, of why this type of service is so important.  Think about yourself as an advisor. When that issue perhaps comes up, whatever that might be, and it turns out it is maybe a motherboard issue and a motherboard has to be replaced, then you have to bring back the data that was over here.

One, you probably don’t know how to do that yourself. I certainly don’t. And two, that’s not something you’re going to want to be doing yourself. You need to be able to have a partner to lean on to say something happened, I need help getting it fixed, and be able to rely on experts to do that.

I would broadly say most any advisor doesn’t want to be dealing with that sort of thing themselves, having to figure that out. But with that level of support, it has to make sense for both sides as well. What do you typically look for as a minimum size practice where it either makes sense or it’s literally something that you’re able to accommodate? How do you kind of approach that minimum size customer from your side?

Steven – Yeah, our ideal client is five people and up. I mean, we have gone with smaller firms that are growing. You know, if there’s a three-person firm that wants to run a lifestyle business, not really interested in growing, they’re not a good match for us. If there’s a three-person firm that wants to grow and they’re three and then they’re four and then they’re five and they want to grow, we’ll definitely take a leap of faith with a firm smaller than five.

But usually five and up because there’s certainly costs or some licenses that are five-licenses minimum for some of the technology we use. So even a three-person firm may need to pay for five licenses. So those situations are ideal for us. Sometimes smaller firms just don’t see the value in what we may offer. I wouldn’t say we’re all that cost prohibitive, but sometimes for smaller firms it is and some firms would rather do it themselves. They’ll definitely do that.

I’ll tend to give some people tips and tricks of things to do if they can’t afford us or don’t want to use us. The industry’s small, and even if I can’t help somebody or can’t take them on as a client, I’ll try to guide them in the right direction. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and there’s no firm too small to at least give some advice to. And I always think that’s really important in this industry.

Brad – Yeah, I certainly appreciate you helping folks out.  Related to the minimum kind of size you were alluding in regards to employees, and I know you can’t give a dollar amount because there’s a lot of variables that have to be discussed before you can do that, but is the price of this type of service typically dictated by the headcount or dictated by the size of the practice asset-wise or how do you typically price something like this out?

Steven – Yeah, I wish I could build it up based on AUM, but I can’t really. I base it on headcount. So it’s mainly headcount and then device count. When I say device count, it’s not iPads and iPhones, it’s computers. Generally one user, one computer. Some people have one user, two or three computers. They might have a conference room computer. So there’s additional technology we install on an extra computer. So the headcount is usually the higher of the number. The device count is the lower of the number.

I think that that’s typically how we price it out. There’s Office 365 licenses that we can purchase on behalf of somebody. They can buy them on their own. We have some other technologies like spam solution and backup solutions. And there’s some a la carte things that people may choose or not choose. And we kind of walk through that process and thoughts about different things.

We also offer what’s called network as a service as another option. People who don’t want to spend a lot of money up front on computer equipment, do you want to do a capex or an opex regarding equipment like firewall switches, access points, things that typically age out at three and five years. Do I want to spend thousands of dollars every three to five years to replace that equipment or we just want to rent it?

And so we’re seeing even that level of clients doing this thing called network as a service where you’re renting this equipment from us. So you’re not having a big capex expense initially or when equipment ages out to help them with their cash flow, so to speak.

Brad – That’s great and I’ve learned something while making this. I did not know you had the network as a service option. Hopefully it’s helpful to understand that’s a potential option and good for me to be aware as well. So thank you for sharing that.

But with all this kind of new jargon and new responsibilities, and as much as you guys will do for the advisors and teams to support them with all of this, there’s still going to be some things I’m sure that need to be done at the local level or at least the local level needs to understand how to interact with your team and whatnot.

So when you bring a new team on or a new advisor, new RIA on, obviously you help set up everything and all that sort of thing, but how do you essentially train them on whatever it is they need to be doing on their side or how to interact with you on that going-forward basis? What does that typically look like?

Steven – One thing we’ve always done, and this is from my True North days and Visory has adopted this, we send somebody, I’ll say 99% of the time- it’s not always 100% because sometimes we just can’t for whatever reason- but about 99% of the time we will send somebody from Visory when we onboard a new client. We want that relationship, as I said earlier, it’s a partnership, it’s a relationship. We want a relationship with our clients. So we’ll send somebody from our team on site.

I’ve done many of them over the years. Somebody will go on site, help with the cutover. It can be daunting. People are nervous when they cut over their IT firm or when they leave a provider that might be hosting their data. It’s very nerve wracking. So they like when somebody’s on site to be there, to help them get through the process, help them learn our systems, how to contact us.

We schedule multiple calls with clients, basically a kickoff call, onboarding call during the course of the process, entry to a handoff to the service desk, the relationship manager. So they’ll meet a lot of people during the path. And then the final event is the day that they go live. At this point we are now your partner, this is how to contact us. This is who your people are.

That is so critically important, Brad, to make clients feel at ease because it is very, very daunting for most clients to make a change. And most clients won’t make a change. They may not even like their current IT company, but they don’t because it’s the devil you know versus the one you don’t. And they may take their sweet time to make that change because they just don’t know what they’re about to leap into.

So we try to do our best to handhold them through the process to make them like, this is gonna be okay, we’re gonna get through it. We’ve had some really difficult ones where, it’s rare, but there have been times where the current provider has not been very cooperative, but it’s very, very rare that happens. More often than not, they’re very cooperative. But even if they’re not, we’ve done this for a long period of time and we know how to get through this if it’s not being a cooperative situation.

Brad – So obviously you will help that breakaway situation, that functionally that advisor team is not necessarily doing any of that currently at the local level. That’s all the wirehouse firm-type things. So that’s for sure in the bucket. But then you were just alluding to it so I presume the answer is yes, the folks that are already in some degree of independence, maybe an independent broker dealer and they can lean on their firm for some of it, but either way they are doing some at the local level.

For those folks that maybe don’t like their solution provider or they just see more value in something like Visory, it does sound like that you are able to help with that situation as well where you’re kind of taking over that responsibility for lack of a better term.

Steven – Yes, and again we’ll talk about your audience a little bit, this transition of RIA breaking away. Absolutely, we’ll help them with whatever needs they have.

Sometimes they have their own office. Sometimes they have their own equipment. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they have to move. Sometimes their computers have to be reset. Sometimes they don’t get to keep their computers. So it’s really understanding who they’re leaving.

What are the stipulations of them leaving? Is the domain hosted by their current wirehouse? Is it their domain? Are they a DBA of an aggregator, right? You really have to have an understanding of what they have, what they’re allowed to keep, what they’re allowed to get, what data they can take with them.

And as you well know, a lot of the timeframe is really critical. If they’re leaving on September 15th, that’s when they’re leaving. You know, that’s the SEC. Those are the regulations, we have to meet that time frame. So if a client says to me or a prospect says to me they’re leaving two weeks from today and if I can’t deliver two weeks from today because I’m buried with other work I’ll say “Look, I can’t help you.” I hate to say that and it’s rare I say that.

We’ll pull out all the stops we can to meet somebody’s date because we understand this industry. We know that date is not our date, it’s their date. We can’t tell them well I can’t take you on until whatever date. It’s no, you have to take on this date. One clear thing we know from being in this business for 20 years is that date is the date.

Brad – I think that’s key and indicative of why there’s value in industry-specific providers. This is not just having the IT knowledge; you also obviously appreciate these target deadlines that someone breaking away and launching has because of variables entirely unrelated to IT but they have to be adhered to so a great, great example on that front as well.

Steven – I literally had a guy I spoke to this morning that is breaking away in three weeks and I said are you able to do it without an IT provider? He has most of his stuff together. He’s a little more technical than a number of other clients. He says he has it all together. He just wants to be secure.

I said, okay, good, because I’m happy to help you after the fact, but I cannot help you break away. He says he has all his ducks in a row. And I said, okay, perfect. All right, well, I’ll get some numbers to you and hopefully we can help you after you break away but he feels pretty confident he’s got everything he needs to break away.

Brad – Hopefully he has all his ducks in a row, but at least one duck maybe wandered off a little bit and needs to get reined back in.

An example of this is the first video you’ve ever seen of mine. You’ll watch plenty of them. There’s a methodical way you map all this out and there’s all these variables you need to solve for. Things could come up where all of a sudden three weeks out you’re trying to solve for something not ideal, sometimes circumstances warrant it, but you want to be able to do this at a more measured pace. We’ll get into it in a moment here how much time you typically prefer for that, but it is an example of where there is some lead time typically needed for this sort of thing.

I always like to try to set expectations to help folks when they do take that first step. Hopefully this whole series helps folks, that someone could watch this episode before reaching out and have an understanding. But if and when someone reaches out to Visory and they set a time to have a chat, whether that’s with you, Steven, or someone else on the team, and let’s assume this is not some expedited scenario of three weeks or whatnot, what happens in that first conversation? What can they expect?

Steven – Yeah. So first of all, let me just backtrack for half a second.

It’s great working with firms like you who are helping these guys walk through that process. I’m not an expert in all the things regulatory. I’m an expert in the IT part of life. So when somebody’s working with you, it’s a lot easier for us because they’ve already got their ducks in a row. By the time they come to me, they already have their ducks in a row. It’s really OK. I just need the IT stuff now. So that’s really cool. So if they come to me, I just have to understand their time frame.

Our ideal time frame, the perfect world for me, is 45 to 60 days. I can pull it off quicker. I would say about three weeks ago, we had an emergency one that the company had to be out in 10 days. It wasn’t a good scene, but we were able to pull it off.

But those are not anybody’s favorite things to do, including the client, as I’m sure it was a daunting task. We did pull it off. The client was thrilled. But ideally we need time to set it up. I mean, if I have to order equipment, I can’t always get it in three days. Do I need to set up an office with equipment, printers, firewalls, switches, access points. Sometimes they don’t need all that stuff.  Sometimes I have to do data migration.

It’s really understanding the conversation and understanding what they have, what they have access to, what we can get access to. Will the firm they’re leaving be of any help? Again, sometimes these folks are giving notice. This person I spoke to today, they haven’t even given notice yet. But they got everything ready to go. And I said, okay.

So timing of it is interesting what they can do, as you know. You’ve been doing this a while too, Brad. I mean, it spans the gamut of how easy it is and how difficult it is, but having done so many of these over the years, I think we’re pretty darn good at it. We’re not perfect at it. We’re not perfect at anything, but we’re pretty darn good at it. And I think we know how to ask the right questions. Again, having a firm like yours helping that has done some pre-work for us is hugely beneficial.

Brad – Well, I appreciate the kind words and I just like to think that I’m adding value with what I’m an expert at and folks like you are adding value in the things that you’re an expert at and it takes all of us together to bake the pie. So thank you for the kind words.

Steven – It seems there’s a lot of breakaways this year. Are you seeing the same thing? It seems like there’s a lot of breakaways, even more than last year. I mean, it seems like there’s a run on people leaving places and starting their own.

Brad – I did not pay Stephen to say that, that it is good for my business, but it’s been an evergreen theme for several years now. My entire business, when I launched it now coming up on five years ago, is based on the belief that the flow of advisors into the RIA space was already picking up and is only going to continue to for a long time to come.

And I did see just the latest set of articles the other day. And think it was, and don’t quote me on this, the Cerulli Report, one of the most respected research firms out there. Their takeaway is that not only is it still running just as fast as it has been, it’s only going to continue to accelerate over the next couple of years.

Obviously that’s good for my business because I’m a believer in people. A lot of folks obviously would like guidance on that process. So yes, it’s good but there’s a reason for it, right? There’s a reason advisors are drawn to it and there’s a reason those numbers are occurring. So yes, selfishly it’s good.

Steven – Yeah, good for you. We’ve been inundated. I can’t think of the last time we’ve been this inundated with breakaways. It’s been amazing.

Brad – Yeah. That’s a good sales pitch for the RIA model. It’s the reason advisors are taking an interest.

Steven – Yeah, for sure. For those of you who are listening, you can do it. You can do it. You can do it. Talk to Brad, talk to me. You can do it. It can be done.

Brad – Well, and that’s the name of this game, right? It’s just a matter of knowing. Just to put it in its most simplest form, what are the things you need to solve for on your own in the RIA space, and who do you lean on to do that? And to your line, Stephen, it’s entirely doable provided again you understand what those responsibilities are, you know how to solve them, and you rely on good solution providers or partners as you would call it. But it can seem daunting before you’ve begun this and so hopefully, again, this series is adding in some value for folks to not be so concerned that it will be something they can’t handle.

Steven – There’s people who can help you and people who have done it before and people who have expertise and you can absolutely do it with the right partners.

Brad – Yes, indeed. And to tie up a bow on the timeline, you noted 45 to 60 days is ideal. That’s to kind of really work through the weeds and all that. As you know, a lot of times folks, it’s months in the process; it could be years in the making from when someone first starts exploring the models to when they’re making that move. And they’ll often maybe want to overcome this fear of, gosh, I’m not going be able to handle the tech stuff.

So I assume you do have some conversations that are much farther out than 45 to 60 days and at that point there’s at least an overview. There’s maybe an initial idea of how these things are kind of priced out so I assume that’s a thing you’ll typically do as well, you know kind of far in advance if desired.

Steven – Oh, absolutely. The more advanced notice we have, the better for planning. I mean, I’ll take as much as you want. Six months, a year, I mean, I’ll take more than less. So I’m always happy to talk to folks and put them on the right path with things to think about. And again, we can help them as far as office space or coordinating the office space and dropping the cables, talking to the management company, how to set up where we want the wires. All those types of things are things we can help them with.

We’ve got a company next week, as a matter of fact. I’m flying down to Florida next week. There’s a gentleman going off on his own in my actual hometown. So I’m to go down and do this onboard so I can go to check on my house. But again, we’re helping him through the entire process of setting up his office. He’s literally moving into a new office space and putting in a rack, a switch, a firewall, and I’m going to help him install all that stuff.

Brad – A lot of moving parts, love the hands-on aspects. Sorry everyone, not everyone gets to by default live in the backyard of Stephen’s Florida home, but it surely is nice when that works out. But of course you have a whole team. It’s not just you helping with these sorts of things.

But for folks that want to learn more, they maybe like what we’ve been talking about. They realize the needs there. They say, hey, maybe Visory is the better solution for me if they already have one or they’re in search of one to begin with, what’s the best way for folks to reach out to begin learning more?

Steven – Yeah, calling us at 603-624-6777 or emailing us at info@visory.net are the two best ways to reach us.

Brad – We will put the contact info in the show notes as well so folks can follow up. But with that, hey, this was very helpful. I’ve known Stephen for several years along his journey. He’s been in the game for, I think, now over 20 plus years. I can’t say I’ve known him all 20, but I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned some on this episode as well, Stephen. So I appreciate all you do for the industry and for coming on to help us learn more about Visory.

Steven – My pleasure, Brad. It’s been great being here, and I can’t thank you enough for having me on your show today. Thank you.

Brad – Thanks.

Want To Learn More?

Schedule a Discovery call to begin the conversation about what an RIA path would look like for your practice.