Tim Reaume Of Blue Chip Partners On 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business
Stay true to yourself, and to your clients
Your current clients have gotten you to this point. If your growth means alienating them, then you may have taken a wrong turn. Remember the things that got you off the ground and made those first strangers put their trust in you, and what you did to retain that trust. The values that started your journey successfully will oftentimes play a critical role in maintaining and amplifying your upward momentum.
Startups usually start with a small cohort of close colleagues. But what happens when you add a bunch of new people into this close cohort? How do you maintain the company culture? In addition, what is needed to successfully scale a business to increase market share or to increase offerings? How can a small startup grow successfully to a midsize and then large company? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experiences about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”. As a part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Tim Reaume.
Tim Reaume is a Senior Financial Advisor at Blue Chip Partners. Prior to joining Blue Chip Partners in 2021, Tim began his career practicing law at Dickinson Wright, one of Detroit’s largest law firms. For over nine years, Tim’s legal practice focused on helping clients navigate the complexities of tax, estate planning, and corporate law. In 1991, Tim made the transition to being a financial advisor and has spent the last 30 years helping clients achieve their financial goals. Tim works with many attorneys and corporate executives, and his designations and experience make him uniquely qualified to help clients address the complex financial issues they face.
While attending the University of North Carolina on a wrestling scholarship, Tim received his Business Administration degree. He then earned his law degree (JD) cum laude from the University of Detroit School of Law, and a Masters of Law in taxation degree (LLM) from New York University. He is an attorney (JD) and is a holder of the right to use both the Chartered Life Underwriter® and Chartered Financial Consultant® designations.
Tim enjoys boating, exercising, and spending time with his wife, Bonnie, and three children.
Thank you for joining us in this interview series. You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a key decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?
Getting my Master of Law degree in taxation (LLM) from New York University has been critical to my career success. This degree helped me secure a position at a top Detroit law firm, which enabled me to meet and network with a lot of top lawyers and business leaders in Detroit through the various transactions I worked on over a nine-year legal career. The relationships I formed during my legal career have been critical in helping me build a successful wealth advisory practice.
What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?
In terms of impact, it’s hard to compete with my merger with Blue Chip Partners in 2021. I am quite proud of the fact that aside from two clients with special circumstances, every client of my prior firm decided to follow me to Blue Chip. The merger was very impactful for my clients. While I was certainly providing my clients with excellent advice and service prior to the merger, my clients now have access to the expertise and experience of a 28-person firm rather than a 3-person firm. Further, when I decide to retire, I feel very comfortable that my clients will be left in the capable hands of some excellent Blue Chip advisors.
Sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a mistake that you’ve made and the lesson you took away from it?
A mistake I have made in the past that has cost me was becoming complacent. That is, getting to a certain point in your endeavors where you might feel quite satisfied with where you’re at and not reach as hard for that next plateau. Complacency cost me a few victories in my collegiate wrestling career, and early in my financial services career resulted in some lost business. So, if an opportunity presents itself, take it before it’s too late.
How has mentorship played a role in your career, whether receiving mentorship or offering it to others?
When I entered the financial services industry and started training, I had an impactful mentor who insisted that I master the basics of the industry before moving forward. I am grateful for this training as I was able to build on that foundation and create a successful wealth management firm. I’m also quite pleased that since my merger with Blue Chip, I’ve had the opportunity to mentor a number of younger advisors at the firm to help them develop their careers and help them avoid some of the mistakes I made early on. It’s been quite satisfying.
Developing your leadership style takes time and practice. Who do you model your leadership style after? What are some key character traits you try to emulate?
I can’t point to one specific leadership style that I’ve tried to emulate. But I’ve always focused on three things in my business life: work hard, be honest, and do what’s right. If you do those three things, I believe you’ll be a success and hopefully, those traits will rub off on the people you work with.
Let’s talk about scaling a business from a small startup to a midsize and then large company. Based on your experience, can you share with our readers the “5 things you need to know to successfully scale your business”?
- Have a tangible goal, then work back from there.
When I decided to make a paradigm shift in my advisory business, I did it with the end goal of providing more value, and better service, to my clients. Using clients as a “north star” has always been helpful to me because it cuts straight to the core of why I do what I do: to give people financial peace of mind and to help them get the most life out of their wealth. To that end, I decided the most prudent move was to join an established and fast-growing firm, Blue Chip Partners. They exemplified many of my own personal philosophies and I knew that they would help me take the service my clients received to the next level.
2. Don’t get ahead of your skis.
While we all want to grow as fast as possible, it’s important that you don’t leave your current clients or customers in the dust. Growth at any cost is not worth it, and you must make sure that you maintain your standard of service as your business expands. It’s very easy to focus on just gathering as many clients as you can, but you need to pay attention to all facets of the business to make sure they scale in sync.
3. Treat your current clients well and they’ll be happy to return the favor.
There’s always the next big thing in marketing. From good old-fashioned mail campaigns to the latest cutting-edge AI analytics-driven prospect targeting, there are endless ways to spend huge amounts of money trying to find new clients. It’s often easy to overlook the best source of new clients: your current clients! In my experience, not only are current clients more than happy to refer friends or family, but the resulting prospects are also almost always great clients in the long run. When you establish a real relationship with someone, you’ll often find that they want to see you grow just as much as you do.
4. Partner with people who share your values and vision
Every industry has a slew of peripheral industries solely devoted to “growth” in its most nebulous form, whether they’re ad agencies, marketing gurus, or any manner of life coach. There’s certainly a time and place for all of these resources but partnering with someone within your own industry who shares your core values can prove invaluable. When I engaged with Blue Chip Partners, I found a building full of kindred spirits who were all rowing in the same direction. It was a great opportunity for me, and those types of opportunities are out there in all industries — they might just take a little digging to uncover.
5. Stay true to yourself, and to your clients
Your current clients have gotten you to this point. If your growth means alienating them, then you may have taken a wrong turn. Remember the things that got you off the ground and made those first strangers put their trust in you, and what you did to retain that trust. The values that started your journey successfully will oftentimes play a critical role in maintaining and amplifying your upward momentum.
Can you share a few of the mistakes that companies make when they try to scale a business? What would you suggest to address those errors?
Prior to my merger with Blue Chip, I talked with some other firms. A few of them appeared to be an amalgamation of firms like mine, just cobbled together to increase assets under management. Going back to what I said earlier, my “north star” for the merger was to provide more value and better service to my clients. I couldn’t see in these companies the synergy or rowing together by the firm’s employees that would result in a better experience for my clients. I think these firms would have been better served to slow their acquisition pace and be more thoughtful on how the acquisitions were advancing the ball for their clients.
Scaling includes bringing new people into the organization. How can a company preserve its company culture and ethos when new people are brought in?
Expanding your staff is critical to scaling your business. We use a variety of personality and aptitude tests to judge a potential new hire’s alignment with our core values and business model. These tests have proved invaluable in vetting prospective employees, and we’ve had great success in nearly doubling our headcount in the last two years. Just as valuable as these hard metrics, though, is your gut reaction during an interview. More often than not, our hiring team’s gut reactions are further confirmed by the concrete metrics from the official tests. I can’t overemphasize the significance of that first impression.
What software or tools do you recommend to help onboard new hires?
We have a host of internally produced video training content that’s very valuable to help new employees hit the ground running. One unique aspect of our business is the emphasis on cybersecurity, and we employ a company called KnowBe4 that puts a huge amount of training material at the users’ fingertips, as well as structured training each quarter. The most valuable asset for training new employees, though, is our existing staff. It’s hard to overstate how important it is to have a team that’s just as invested as leadership is in the growth of the company. Each new member of our company spends time with people from every department to learn about the firm in a holistic manner, and this is critical to a smooth integration.
Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.
It sounds corny, but “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. The world would be a lot nicer place, and more productive, if we all used that as our guiding principle in dealing with others.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Check out our website for lots of great educational content and helpful resources. Also, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and follow Blue Chip Partners on LinkedIn and Facebook.
This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!
Thanks for having me!
