In this episode of RIA Tech Talk, we welcome Christopher Johnson of TrigaByte Technologies to the show. He brings insights into CRM options for RIAs and answers some of our FAQs for each.
We cover some of the top CRMs used by RIAs including:
Christopher answers our top questions to help you make the best decision about a CRM for your firm.
- What are the pros and cons of each CRM?
- Are some CRMs better suited for a smaller advisor vs a large RIA firm?
- From your perspective, what are the top 3 CRMS for the RIA industry?
- If you were running your RIA firm, which one would you use and why?
- Which ones do you get the most complaints about?
Get in touch with Christopher
Christopher Johnson, TrigaByte Technologies
Phone: 612-817-7767
Email: chris@trigabytetech.com
Listen To The Audio:
Read The Transcript:
David Kakish
Hello and welcome to the RIA Tech Talk podcast, brought to you by RIA Workspace. I’m David Kish and I’m here with Todd Roca. Together we’re on a mission to simplify the complex world of technology for RIAs just like yours. The title of today’s session is What’s the Best CRM for your RIA and why? I’m really excited. We have a special guest, Christopher Johnson, and he specializes in this area. And what we’re going to talk about today are the different CRMs on the market today that are specific to different RIAs and which would be the best one for your RIA. And here’s the deal. I love covering topics like this, and I should put a quick disclaimer. We’re not getting paid by Wealthbox or Redtail or Salesforce or anybody else like that, but I love these things because it’s a great way to get an objective view because sometimes there is a right CRM for the right type of company and some nuances and stuff like that.
But again, excited to have a special guest with us today. His name is Christopher Johnson. He’s the founder of Byte Technologies. He’s just outside of the Minneapolis St. Paul area, has 30 years of experience in financial services, and he has a boutique consulting firm where he also focuses on the tech. Now we focus on cybersecurity IT compliance, help desk manage it. He focuses on operations, and the analogy I like to use is it’s like peanut butter and jelly. We’re the peanut butter, here’s the jelly, and together we’re better together. So without further ado, Chris, I want to welcome you. Thank you. Feel free to introduce yourself and we’ll kind of get down to business after that.
Chris Johnson
Yeah, thanks David. So I appreciate the opportunity to be on the podcast and really looking forward to digging into CRMs and what they can do for financial advisors. Like you said, I’ve got 30 plus years experience in the business. I really grew up on the operations, technology and compliance side. Most notably my role of chief compliance officer and chief operations officer for a large RIA broker dealer in the Twin Cities area. Was there for a long time. And from there jumped out to the client side actually and ran a wealth management practice for about six years prior to forming trivi. And really during that six years, started recognizing my passion for technology and what it can do for an advisor and how they serve their clients. And with my background, having the ops technology compliance and then client side, I think I have a unique position with experience and knowledge that can really add value to my clients and what they’re trying to do and accomplish in using the technology that they have. And really part of it is I have a six background also. So that process improvement, elimination of waste, utilizing your resources and getting more value out of the tools that you already pay for and that you have in the firm, it’s really a good conversation in trying to understand and find additional value in those tools and how they can help the advisor grow and serve their clients. And in the end, it’s really about what they do for their clients and creating that unique experience.
David Kakish
Sounds good. Well listen, I am really excited because I have a lot of questions. Well, Todd, too, I have a lot of questions and hopefully I’ll give Todd an opportunity to ask questions too. And you said you’ve got 30 years of experience, so do you start working when you’re five? Is that the deal?
Chris Johnson
Yeah, I was pretty close to that. Yeah, 1989 is when I started in the business. I’m fortunate to have my father’s gene in the youthful look, don’t let that fool you. I used to get, when I was younger, even more people saying, Hey, wait, did you just come out of college? How long have you been in the industry? When I was in a role of Chief operations officer, chief compliance officer, and people would look at me and go, are you sure? So yeah. All right.
David Kakish
We’ll have a separate podcast on aging, but for now we’ll kind of pull it back in and talk about CRM. And by the way, just the listeners know, we’re not going to talk about every CRM under the sun. We’re going to talk about six different ones, and I’ll kind of list them alphabetically, advisor engine, advise on Red Tail, Salesforce, Tamarack, Wealthbox. Those are kind of the big six in this space. And maybe there are others that Chris, you’ll talk about. But from our perspective, a lot of times what we’re doing with our clients is like, well, hey, what’s the better CRM? And a lot of times our answer is like, look, this is not our area of specialty. We’re happy to have you talk to another client that’s using a certain CRM and why and things like that. But that’s kind of why I’m excited, Chris. So the first question at the top of the hour, just a one minute question, one minute answer and then we can wrap it up. What’s the best one and why?
Chris Johnson
Yeah, that’s a great question. I get that question all the time from my clients, and really the answer is it depends. I mean, there’s so many different ways that people do this business and the tools that they use, and it really, the way you drill down into what is the best CRM is, it really depends on who you are as a firm and what you do and how you serve your clients and what features you want and need in order to do that. And that’s where we get into really deep conversations with my clients on really, who are you and what do you want to be and what do you want to look like and how does that present out to your clients? So I can’t give you a specific one answer, quick answer for that, but that is the question I get all time. It’s not Salesforce, come. I mean, if you’re a one person shop and you’re paying for Salesforce and you need to customize that, really, do you have the resources and Yeah, exactly. Financial stability to do that, probably not. Yeah.
David Kakish
Yeah. For the record, I was being sarcastic with that question. Absolutely. So by the way, really quick, out of the six that I mentioned, are there any that I missed that we want to add to this or
Chris Johnson
No, I mean, yeah, I think those are the ones that I come across most often that people are using. You’ve got some of the more captive people. I mean, we could get into Client Works, which is LPLs homegrown system, and if we got into, oh gosh, now I’m losing their name, another firm that does their own, so those are some of the other ones.
David Kakish
Yeah, we’re talking more about the independent. Yeah,
Chris Johnson
Exactly. And even independents that are with LPL don’t always just use Client works. They may have their own CRM, like Redtail or Wealthbox or whatever that they use on top of that. So yeah, these are the main six for sure. Yeah.
David Kakish
So which ones do you have experience working with or do you have a background in? I’m curious. And then we’ll maybe go into more specific questions from there.
Chris Johnson
Sure, absolutely. So lots of experience in Redtail, lots of experience in Tamarack, lots of experience in Salesforce. wealthbox a little bit, advise on not a whole lot. I really haven’t come at least my clients that are using a lot of advise on. And then advisor engines, lots of experience in that too. In fact, that’s the old juncture. And the firm that I was chief operations officer for, we actually used Juncture back in the day when it was juncture and an in-house database solution. So yeah,
David Kakish
Yeah, yeah. I forgot. Yeah, juncture. That’s right. And they were the dominant one for quite a while. They were,
Chris Johnson
Absolutely. Yeah. Back then that was best of breed and everybody was going best of breed, and you didn’t have the integrations that you did today and you had all these silos out there, your CRM, your financial planning tool, your trading tool, and all of these now are really pulling things together and really trying to be that one-stop shop of here’s where I go to do my daily business. And I think advisors, that’s what they’re looking for. Sure.
David Kakish
So out of the ones that I mentioned, larger RIAs and they’re smaller RIAs, and I kind of say that with a grain of salt, but depending on the size of the RIA and generally, it’s kind of funny a lot of times, and I don’t know if you do the same way or not, but when we look at a size of an RIA, right, they all like to compare a UM, and that’s a metric and that’s an important metric as assets under management. But we tend to look, I’m like, well, the number of employees, the number of full-time employees that they have, absolutely. That’s a key metric for us regardless of a UM. And so that’s kind of when we say a larger RIA versus smaller RIA, I’m curious, do you look at it the same way? Is that how you’re looking at it?
Chris Johnson
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Because it’s about process and how many people are involved in that process when you’re using these tools. And if you have one person that does everything, a really simplified solution is the way to go. If you have multiple people that are involved in a process, you need a system that can handle that workflow and being able to automate the passing of tasks and things that need to be done. So yeah, absolutely. Number of people is a big part of determining what system fits you best. Yeah.
David Kakish
So vaguely speaking, what’s your definition of a smaller RIA in terms of headcount and what are the CRMs that you typically see in?
Chris Johnson
Yeah, so I really kind of look at 10 and under, and I think Red Tail’s the predominant one that is for the smaller independent, maybe they’re an advisor out doing their own thing, 1, 2, 3 people, and maybe they’re their own RIA. But yeah, red Tail’s really the predominant for that space. And then as you get upwards into the 20 plus, you’re looking at advisor engine, Salesforce, and when you’ve got really large enterprises, Salesforce is the predominant one for those larger when you start getting into 50, a hundred people because of the complexity of the business and how many people are involved in what happens every day.
David Kakish
Yeah, I generically say that our sweet spot is five to 25 employees, the RIAs we work with. And what’s funny with these RIAs, once they hit 20, 25, 30 employees, the big question is, Hey, how do we increase a UM without increasing headcount? Right?
Chris Johnson
Absolutely.
David Kakish
They’re all trying to tackle that, and that’s where we see a lot of that. It’s kind of interesting. I mean, I think Wealthbox has also been making some inroads.
Chris Johnson
They have absolutely
David Kakish
A lot lately, and I think if I’m not mistaken, they’ve been taking some market share away from Red Tail in that space.
Chris Johnson
They are. I think they just hit how many clients. I remember seeing them kind of promoting them, hitting a thousand clients or something, 1500 clients. But yeah, Wealthbox is definitely taking market share from Redtail. I specifically don’t have any clients that are working with Wealthbox right now, and I haven’t helped anybody move from Redtail to Wealthbox. But yeah, I’m hearing that in the marketplace that Wealthbox is really making headway.
David Kakish
How about, I’m curious, and I don’t know if you have good numbers on that or not, but RIAs with around 10 to 30 employees, what are you typically seeing the CRMs in that space? I’m curious.
Chris Johnson
Yeah, I mean, again, predominantly I’m seeing a lot of Red Tail and there is some tamarack in there. The people that are using Investnet with that whole merger that took place a number of years ago, people are starting to look for that fully integrated platform that really does everything for them. And Tamara is one of those. It’s interesting, Tamarack way back when it was portfolio management or trading rebalancing, the firm that I was at, we started using Tamarack and I was actually on their advisor board that helped them develop the CRM component and that integration piece way back when Stuart Depino was there and Andina Anderson and that initial Tamarack, I don’t recognize the names, but yeah. Yeah. So wait, that
David Kakish
I’m not that old Chris?
Chris Johnson
Wait, we’re talking back in the early to mid two thousands, so yeah,
David Kakish
I’m kidding. I think we’re about the same age.
Chris Johnson
That’s why I don’t have much hair on top, and I don’t know if people can’t see that, but I like to say I’m follicly challenged because of my age.
David Kakish
Yeah, it’s interesting in that 10 to 30, I think Redtail is really big. I think TAVI Rack is really big. And then depending on the type of company, I sometimes see Salesforce.
Chris Johnson
Salesforce, we’re doing custom, that’s the other and stuff like
David Kakish
That. Yeah, those are absolutely. So alright, well I’ll tell you what, thank you. My big question was like, Hey, what are you seeing in the smaller versus larger versus mid-size RIA, I guess I’ll kind of just open the floor for you start. Maybe we can take ’em one at a time in whatever order you want and kind of dissect that and talk about the pros and the cons and go from there. Maybe that’s a good way to do that if you don’t mind. Okay.
Chris Johnson
So I mean if we start A to Z advisor engine, they’re promoting their complete wealth management platform. They’ve got all of these different technologies that are part of the system. Their challenge has been they had to re-engineer their whole platform from an in-house server-based model to a web-based model as everybody was going cloud. And by the way, the cloud,
David Kakish
This is what people knew meant for many years, is juncture, right?
Chris Johnson
Juncture. Exactly. That’s what Juncture Juncture was.
David Kakish
And what you’re saying it was built server-based or desktop based and then desktop-based.
Chris Johnson
Absolutely. There was a desktop installation. You had to have your own, I think it was a SQL server back then to run the database. And really it had a footprint in the firm and lots of support needs from supporting the database and the server that ran the database. And as everybody started going to the cloud, everything for Juncture was so hardware based that they had to re-engineer their whole platform. And so I think they’re getting there. They have a lot of different things that they can do. The CRM has contact management, practice management dashboards, admin tools. They’ve got their digital onboarding and client portals. So they really have a lot that they can do portfolio management, so all their data consolidation and rebalancing and reporting and fee billing. And then the planning side, I think where Advisor Engine is light on is the integration. The planning tool is their in-house planning tool.
I mean they use, I think Franklin to help with their models or maybe it’s their goals-based planning that they use Franklin template for, but a lot of their stuff is more built in the system, whereas a Red Tail has integrations, they do more integration of data versus building out things themselves. So advisor engines great for as you get to be a little bigger, that’s where I see it. I have one client that’s on Advisor Engine and they’re a larger firm. They’re in the 30, 30 ish range of people and growing. So I think their advisor engine opportunity is really to go for those larger firms that really want some digital workflow stuff because their digital onboarding is really nice, but they’re kind of light on portfolio management. I mean, this specific client uses Black Diamond for their portfolio management. They don’t even use Advisor Engine for that piece because it’s kind of light, it doesn’t have the complex reporting things that Black Diamond does so advise on. I don’t know that much about that.
David Kakish
Chris, real quick, Chris, before we move on. So one thing with Advisor Engine, and for the people that know it under juncture, they actually have a lot of market share. And I think one of the big challenges of Juncture is their, and I know this, I have an interesting story. They built so much of their stuff with what I would call legacy onsite server, that it was really a challenge for ’em to move to the Juncture cloud to migrate.
And it’s like a legacy software that now you’re trying to build in the cloud. Whereas some of the other competitors think Salesforce for example, it was always originally a cloud-based application.
Chris Johnson
Yeah.
David Kakish
And what’s funny is we were thinking about the cloud, I think way before Juncture was that we even got the domain name juncture cloud.com. We had that domain name and then we had a bunch of other something cloud.com.
Chris Johnson
Sure.
David Kakish
But legally you can’t keep a brand’s name. So we actually, we gave it to Juncture, we transferred all that stuff to Juncture during those days. And that’s why I kind of have a funny story behind that. I just wanted to share that.
Todd Darroca
You could have charged a lot for that David, man, I would’ve would’ve been like 10 grand.
David Kakish
Todd, yes and no. You can’t use somebody’s brand and do that, but if it was a generic name x.com on Twitter, yes, you could have gotten a lot, but I can’t go in and say nike cloud.com actually. So we transferred all that. We didn’t take, or if we did take money, it was just something like nominal or whatever.
Todd Darroca
I believe this happened to Salesforce too. They forgot to re-up their domain name and somebody bought it. Yeah, someone bought it, yeah.
David Kakish
Are you serious Salesforce?
Todd Darroca
Yeah. I think obviously Salesforce being Salesforce took care of that real fast.
Chris Johnson
Yeah, you’ve got all the trademark stuff that comes into play with that, right? I’m sure all these companies are trademarked and you can’t use trademark names like that or by domains to them. So
David Kakish
Just a little, I wanted to make this stuff can sometimes be dry, so I wanted to make it a little bit entertaining. So advisor engine, what used to be known as Juncture, we talked about that. Fantastic. Thank you. And you were going to start to talk about advise on
Chris Johnson
Yeah, so advise on, I don’t know a whole lot about them because I haven’t really come in contact with clients that are using ’em. What I know is they’re trying to be, again, that one-stop shop where you’ve got portfolio management and client reporting, CRM, billing, rebalancing, all of those things. So kind of a investment type thing, a tamp, I think they’ve got a tamp piece of the business. And so I don’t have a lot to say other than I hear that people, I think they’re becoming more noticed in the industry because I think they’re modern, right? Their interface looks modern, their reports look modern, they’ve got a document management component of it. So if you’re a firm looking for a one-stop shop, I definitely think there’s someone to look at and really to do a comparison of what your needs are to see if they fit. And I think they can help the larger firms because of that fully integrated setup.
David Kakish
What’s your take, and this is a little bit of a tangent, but I think it’s an important question to ask. What’s your take on best of breed and then a one-stop shop where it’s sort of everything. Now, generally speaking, the smaller you are, it’s better to have a Swiss Army knife, right? Yes. The bigger you are, you want have maybe separate but curious, what are your thoughts on that? Because that’s a question that even transcends the RIA world, but we’re going to focus on RIAs.
Chris Johnson
Absolutely. No, and I get that question a lot. And again, I come back to what are your needs and really the needs of my clients, what do you need? How do we pull them together? And I think you and I passed little emails that we are trying to look for companies that maybe could build data warehousing behind these systems that can help some of the integration components that maybe aren’t there. That’s something that I think when you look at advise on and you look at Tamarack in investnet type, they’re this big integration piece that has the one-stop shop. Well, that costs a lot of money usually, and you don’t have a lot of flexibility with those because they’re built and you use ’em and you’ve got your lists and things that you can create in the system for how you code a client and what their status is with you and segmentation and those kinds of things.
But you’re kind of stuck with what they have. Whereas something like a Salesforce, you can buy Salesforce and then you can build all around it and integrate and do whatever you want with it. In fact, one of the firms, when I was in the wealth management practice, we were partnered or aligned with the RIA side was a large RIA that used Salesforce and had put a ton of money into it and customized it and built custom integrations with the financial planning tools and all kinds of stuff that then made it a very wow experience. Well, that’s very expensive to do. So yeah, your smaller firms usually from a cost standpoint, that one stop shop, you buy the one license and you get their pieces, you’re
David Kakish
Covered across the board.
Chris Johnson
Yeah, yeah, you’re covered. Yeah. Yeah.
David Kakish
I mean the way I see it is if I were an RIA with five employees, I’d probably be looking sort of an all-in-one. Absolutely. If I had 30 employees, there’s probably nuances where I’m like, no, I may want to customize Salesforce or Redtail or Absolutely.
Chris Johnson
Yeah. That’s what I generally see across my client bases. Cool. Yeah, the smaller ones are one-stop shop, they want it easy integration. Not a lot of problems with trying to figure out, well, here’s my planning data, here’s my CRM data, how do I pull those together? Yeah, sure.
David Kakish
Okay. Alright. Advise on we talked about that. Okay. Red Tail. Red Tail is kind of the big one in the SMB space, I guess if we want to call it that.
Chris Johnson
It is. Yeah, it is. And Red Tail’s been great. They merged with Orion not too long ago, so I think that’s helped Redtail for a long time was having a lot of service challenges and some challenges with database connection and things like that. And I think they’re really resolving a lot of that with the partnership with Orion. I think Orion’s looking to, when you look at Investnet versus Orion, Orion’s trying to be investnet I think. And with bringing in A CRM and some of those components and really trying to compete in that marketplace, Redtail has definitely been one of those main components that people have used.
Most of my clients are on Redtail, not that I’ve recommended it, it’s something that they’ve had. And so I have a lot of experience, and actually in the wealth management practice that I ran, we used Redtail for the first part of that business initially when we were with a different RIA than the one that used Salesforce. So I have a ton of experience in Redtail in building workflows and helping people actually migrate data into it. One of my clients started their own RIA about a year and a half ago, and they were on their RIAs Redtail database, and so we had to set up their own Redtail, and so we had to do a migration of all that data. So the features are great, they’ve got imaging, they’ve got Redtail speak, you can use their email. So they had a lot of options and I think they have over a hundred integrations that you can connect to
David Kakish
And we see a lot of Redtail, right? In the 30 employee, if you’re an ria, a 30 employees, I think Redtail has a really big market share and for good reasons, for good reasons, and generally people that are using it are fairly happy and not looking to move away from it. Absolutely. That’s kind of been my experience.
Todd Darroca
Here. When you talked about migration out of the six that you’re talking about, is Redtail one of the more, I guess, simplistic ones to do that migration? It’s not a big pain in the neck, or is there one that maybe is really smooth and easy that if somebody was trying to switch or migrate, they should look at first?
Chris Johnson
Yeah, migration data migrations are always playing craps. You’re rolling the dice because garbage in, garbage out. The current database may be full of bad data, and when you bring that over to a new database, it’s still bad data. So I spend a lot of time with my clients in doing a data migration in cleaning up the existing database so that it’s accurate, it’s complete, it has all the information that you need so that you can make that transition really easy into the new database. All of these vendors have onboarding solutions and data migration solutions that are part of that process when you buy their product. And I don’t think there’s one that’s better than another. I think it really comes back to how good your data is. And if you have a lot of complexity in that data, then you can run into a lot of challenges.
So I’ll use an example. Redtail has very limited amounts of fields that you can customize, whereas Salesforce has a lot of customization that you can build into it. So if you have a very customized Salesforce database that you’re going to move to something that’s more not customizable, you will have challenges with that because well, where do we put this field? Where do we put that field? So that data mapping becomes a challenge and not that you ever see people going from Salesforce to, it’s usually the other way, Redtail to Salesforce. But yeah, that’s a great question. It really depends on where your data’s at and how are you going to migrate that into the current or the new database.
David Kakish
Yeah, it’s really interesting, and this is probably a great segue to go from Redfield to Salesforce. You said something really important. We have a lot of people that are using Redtail, and I don’t know if I were to liken it to cars, I feel like it’s, I don’t know, a Honda Accord very reliable, works really well, not a lot of thrills, but I don’t know, maybe you want to upgrade to A BMW or a Mercedes or something. I don’t know. But I think Redtail just it does a lot of what you need. And again, I’m talking like in the sub 30 employees, right? RIA is under 30 employees, but you’re right, when they’re trying to do a lot of customization, it can become a challenge and then people start looking at Salesforce. So that’s probably a good for you to start talking about Salesforce.
Chris Johnson
So Salesforce is a beast, right? I mean, they’re in who they serve, whereas Redtail was built for financial advisors. You don’t see a lot of real estate people using Redtail. Why would they go to a system that’s made for financial planners and investment advisor type people? Whereas Salesforce is a CRM period. They have a financial services module that’s more geared and built towards financial planners and investment managers. But yeah, when you buy into Salesforce, you go into it knowing you’re going to have a ton of resources that go into database setup and how you use it and ongoing support and maintenance for that because there’s so much that you can do with it. In fact, the clients that I’ve worked with that have Salesforce usually have their own Salesforce certified people that have some of the different certifications that you can get from Salesforce so they can do that work on their own versus having to pay an outside consultant to do that.
The customization and some of the, it’s almost like coding, right? It’s not necessarily coding, but it’s almost like coding where you have to build out this module or you have to enhance this reporting feature or do these various things. So yeah, Salesforce is a big behemoth and if you have the resources to do it, and it’s really a great tool because you can really make it your own. And the firm that I was working with, that’s what they did. We had e-money integrations that aligned with the Riskalyze score, and it was just this cool platform and they had this whole process of how people identified who they are as people. So we got really deep into who a person is and then aligning their investments and their goals and their plans for the future with their money. And it was really cool, but I think I heard they put 25 30 million into that, and that’s a lot of money and resources and the smaller firms just don’t have that.
David Kakish
Yeah, I mean, to your point, if I were a five person RIA, I wouldn’t look at Salesforce, I would look at Redtail, but if I were a 30 person RIA and I need to get some of that customization that I’m just not getting in Redtail, thats where you start looking at and saying, okay, you know what? Salesforce begins to make sense. But with that, it’s like you almost have to have a part-time, Salesforce developer, or even maybe a full-time or a company that knows that really well for you. Absolutely. Yeah. Back to your question, one is not better than the other. What are you trying to do?
Chris Johnson
Yeah, you can do it yourself. You go into the database lists and you can customize your status or you can customize your keywords or these other things that are list oriented that allow you to query the database. How many clients do I have that golf while I’m doing a golf outing? So now I send out a blast email using that data to invite them to a golf event. Whereas Salesforce, I mean you’re customizing. You can customize anything really.
David Kakish
It’s a double-edged sword, right?
Chris Johnson
Absolutely. Well, if something goes wrong, how do you fix it? When you’ve got that level of stuff, how do you fix it? Redtail, you go to Redtail and say, Hey, this doesn’t work. If you’ve built out your own Salesforce, now you have to figure out, or the company you’re using has to figure out, how do we fix this? Cool.
David Kakish
Well, listen, we got two more left, Tamarack and Wealthbox. And so Tamarack, if you weren’t in this industry, you would think it’s a spice or something like that, right?
Chris Johnson
Absolutely. So I think Tamaracks great Tamaracks built on Microsoft Dynamics, and so if you’re a Microsoft shop, the integration of Dynamics to all of your other Microsoft Suite products is fantastic, and there’s a lot you can do with it, especially now with copilot and all of the AI stuff that’s coming out. Talk about creating some automation in what you do. It’s a great platform for that. Along with, again, they were a wealth management practice that basically initially built the system and they started with rebalancing, which was portfolio management type stuff, and then they expanded out to CRM and compliance and all the other components. And so again, if you’re looking for a one-stop shop, Tamarack is one of the ones you should be looking at now, expensive. So when you compare Redtail or advise on or Wealthbox to Tamarack from an expense standpoint, you’re going to be paying a lot more for that development and money that they’ve put in into building the system. But yeah, if you’re a larger shop that’s looking for a one-stop shop and can afford it, rack is definitely one to look at because of all the pieces that they have.
David Kakish
And when you say large, again, just to go back for the listener, when you say a larger size RIA employee headcount, what rate would you…
Chris Johnson
Yeah, you’re in that same with Salesforce, 30 plus I think. 30 plus. Okay. Yeah. I mean smaller firms can do it, but it’s expensive. You have to be willing to make that investment, which smaller firms can do. But I think when you look at scalability and cost and all of that, your people and your technology are usually your two biggest costs in your p and l. And if you’ve got a large chunk of that going towards Tamarack, which is again, it can be a one-stop shop with everything, you can look at that and go, yeah, maybe I can afford that as a smaller shop, but personally I think it’s geared towards that larger market.
David Kakish
Sure. Okay, cool. And then the last one on our list is wealthbox. And again, to be fair, we did this in order of, we did it alphabetically, right? It’s not like market share or anything like that, it’s alphabetically. So the six CRM number six on our list is Wealthbox.
Chris Johnson
So Wealthbox, again, I don’t have any clients directly using this. I’ve come across it where people have asked me to look at an analysis in comparison of them versus Redtail. I think the two of them are the two that kind of most closely match each other in what they can do. But from what I hear, I think Wealthbox is another great solution for those independent breakaway people that maybe are starting their own RIA and from a cost standpoint, not it’s comparable to the Red Tail side. And so I think it’s a great one to look at. If you’re going to compare, and you’re a small firm, Redtail, Wealthbox for sure are two that you should be looking at.
David Kakish
Yeah, and that’s exactly what I was going to say. I think Redtail and Wealthbox in that SMB space in the small to mid-size, RIA, they kind of compete. I think Redtail is kind like the well-known, established one. Absolutely. And I feel like Wealthbox is really kind of chipping away at Redtail, and then they are, every time they do, they like to brag about it, right? Yes, absolutely. Rightfully so, because their business. Yeah. Alright.
Chris Johnson
Well, and I just want to make one other point on those. I see a lot of these solutions in, they may not be their own RIA, but they’re an independent office that maybe is aligned with a larger RIA and they have, so I’ll use Cambridge Investments as an example. They’re a large broker dealer, RIA, but all of their advisors are independent. So you come into a firm like that and they say, here’s the options that you have from A CRM that integrate with our in-house systems or things that we use, wealthbox, red Tail, all of those are part of that. So these smaller independent may not be their own RIAs, but advisor offices are candidates for products like that. For sure.
David Kakish
And again, I just want to go on the record and say Todd and Chris, which one of these partners or vendors is paying CRM vendors is paying us the most?
Todd Darroca
All of ’em.
Chris Johnson
Zero. Zero. They’re the same. They’re all the same.
David Kakish
I just want to put that I don’t paying us
Chris Johnson
And nobody pays us I zero for any of those partners.
David Kakish
I know. I just wanted to put that out there. Truly agnostic. And that’s kind of why we talk about that. And sometimes there’s a ton of value in talking with you, Chris, where we’re like, Hey, listen, what’s the deal? And I know mean this space pretty well, but I got a lot of really great insights today. Let me ask you a couple of follow up questions. And again, thank you. What you shared was very, very helpful. If you are running your own RIA firm with five employees, let’s just kind of stay there, right? Which CRM would you use and why?
Chris Johnson
Well, honestly, I would either use Redtail or wealthbox. And again, I don’t know enough about wealthbox, but from what I hear, they would be ones that I would look at Redtail for me right now, just because I have so much experience in it and I know the system, you go to things that are easy and that, right? That’s how natural you lean to those things. Red Tail’s great, but again, it’s turning into a big company. Orion’s now owns it, so who knows where that’s going to go. But between I think Redtail and Wealthbox, those would be the two that I would focus on looking at for my own shop.
David Kakish
I have one last interesting question, then I’ll turn it over to Todd to see if he has any questions. And this question isn’t really a fair question, but which ones do you get the most complaints about? And the reason I ask that is you got to remember if somebody’s not using something, nobody complains about it, right? And I’m curious, which ones do you get the most complaints about? Are people just maybe have a hate relationship? I don’t know, maybe hate’s a strong word. You know what? Yeah, yeah. Which ones do you get a lot of complaints about? Red Tail. Okay. Red
Chris Johnson
Tail. Yeah. I mean, because a lot of my clients use it and they’ve gone through this evolution of being their own company, trying to develop things on their own to Orion, taking them over through the pandemic from a service standpoint. Companies were really struggling with supporting service and I mean, you could be on hold with Redtail back then for 45 minutes to an hour.
David Kakish
I remember that. They went through a difficult, painful support experience for a while. I think they’ve fixed that though, right?
Chris Johnson
They have no, yeah, absolutely. And my comments are just inexperience and knowing it’s not disparaging against them or anything like that. It’s just knowing, I mean, everybody goes through challenges in their business. We all do. Nobody’s perfect and stuff happens. It’s really how you come out of it and really what you do to support your clients. That’s where when we’re talking about do we get paid for this? I look at myself as a fiduciary. I grew up in the RIA A space and RIAs, you’re a fiduciary to your clients. You do what’s in their best interest. If we were getting paid for this, we wouldn’t be doing what’s in our best interest for our clients by talking about and recommending and saying, these are ones that I would use. So just want to put that out there to be fair.
David Kakish
Yeah, I just want to put this out there based on what you said. It’s an unfair question because a lot of our clients use Redtail, right? And obviously if you’re using something a lot, you’re probably going to complain about it just because…
Chris Johnson
You get the good and the bad.
David Kakish
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that’s why I said it’s an unfair question. I always think it’s an interesting question.
Chris Johnson
Well, so here I will also say though, advisor Engine has gotten their NOx two because of their evolution from being that in-house, hardware based desktop installation to the cloud base. I know they had a lot of challenges with people migrating to that cloud base solution, and so I think they got a lot of knocks on that too, but I think they’re past that.
David Kakish
I think from what I understand, I won’t get too much into it, but when you build, it’s a server-based application and a cloud-based application, they’re just totally different. And I think that was their, yeah, and I agree with you. I think Advisor Engine is way past that, but when they were going through that process, it was a little bit tough for, it wasn’t a seamless transition of Oh yeah. It was almost moving to a different CRM back then.
Chris Johnson
Totally. Well, yeah. And then, I mean, you’ve got Investnet too, investments at behemoths, so everybody knows challenges, and you’ve got a big company like that. You have service challenges that you go through. So they all do, right? Again, nobody’s perfect. I think it’s really, you find the solution that best supports your needs and you figure out how to work as best as you can with them. Yeah.
David Kakish
Cool. Well, Todd, I want give you, I don’t know if I’ve been asking a lot of the questions, but I wanted opportunity to ask Chris any questions on your
Todd Darroca
No, I think there’s a lot that Chris has said today and some great insights. So I think my only question is how can somebody get in touch with you, Chris? I mean, what’s the best way?
Chris Johnson
No, best way is either email or phone. My email is chris@triggerbytetech.com. So gigabyte is just like gigabyte if you think about it. And then tech.com or my phone number is two eight one seven seven seven six seven. And just a little history trigger byte, when you think about Byte. Until I started Gigabyte, there was no such thing as a gigabyte, right? There’s gigabyte, terabyte, megabyte, all the bites, and Tri is actually my middle name. So Byte has a very meaningful background as to how I formed the company and where that name came from. So I’m the first trigger byte in the world. Cool.
David Kakish
Cool. That’s a great story, Chris. And by the way, if you’re driving, don’t feel like you have to write this down. We’re going to include this in the show notes. We’ll include Chris’s email and his phone number. So yeah, Chris, thank you so much for these. You’ve shared a lot of really great insights. If you’re listening to this and you’re saying, wow, this Chris guy really knows this stuff. He does. We just kind of scratched the surface. Chris, this was a lot of fun to geek out on some of this stuff.
David Kakish
Not in the RIA space, this is so boring, right? Totally. You this space, you’re like, oh, that’s what I wanted to hear. That’s what I want to know. I want validation, and I don’t want it to be from the vendor because the vendor’s always going to promote themselves. And so I think this has been a phenomenal session. I guess before we wrap up, Chris, any final thoughts or insights or words of wisdom you wanted to share with the listener?
Chris Johnson
Yeah, no. When you say you love geeking out about this stuff, so do I. And a lot of my friends and people that I know and work with just kind of look at me, excuse me, and go, you’re kind of strange because you really get into this stuff and advisors don’t. They just want to serve their clients. And that’s where I can help and add value because I understand what they’re trying to accomplish in serving their clients. I understand what their staff goes through on a day-to-day basis, and I love it. And I look for ways that I can add value, and I think my background kind of supports that. Yeah. Thank you. Sounds good. I appreciate
David Kakish
It. Yeah, Chris, thank you so much. And then, Todd, since you’ve got the wonderful radio voice, maybe you can go ahead and you can sign off for us today.
Todd Darroca
Of course, of course. Well, as always, guys, thank you so much for listening to the RIA Tech Talk podcast, brought to you by of course, RIA Workspace. And for more podcasts and resources, go to our website, our ia workspace.com and check out the learning center. That’s where all of our episodes and other cool stuff will be just for you to research and bookmark. And as always, Dave, and I love hearing from you guys, and I’m sure Christopher now would love to hear from you too. So please reach out to us in the episode ideas or comments, and we always love to see those. And we hope you stay tuned for more RIA Tech Insights in our next episode. We’ll see you guys later. Thanks for joining us.