What's the secret to building a consistently high-performing team in the financial services industry? We asked Tom Parks, a Managing Principal at 1847Financial and his answer was surprisingly simple: "We focus on the three Cs: Communication, Community, Culture." But what does that really mean in practice? In this blog, we delve into how these three core principles drive extraordinary results and create a thriving environment for financial professionals.

Your firm consistently exceeds yearly goals and leads the company in several metrics. What are some of the key habits, skills or priorities that you focus on to deliver these results?
We focus on the three Cs: Communication, Community, Culture. Open, honest, frequent communication is critical. We have a strong commitment to stay in close communication with the financial professionals on our team, and we look for opportunities to serve them and help them grow.

We maintain a high level of contact with our advisors, both on a personal basis as well as professionally. I try to call all of our financial professionals at least once a month. I’ll call sometimes and simply say, “I’ve got nothing for you, I just wanted to talk and see how you’re doing.” Sometimes I end up becoming somewhat of a coach, talking through very important decisions with them … other times, I might just hear, “It's really good to hear your voice. Thank you for thinking of me.” Either way, those conversations are really important to me.

I want everybody to realize that they are a part of something greater than themselves here, because they are. We have found that many of the people we recruit feel like they are on an island … they feel very alone in this business, or they have felt that way in the past. And this business can be very difficult when you’re experiencing it by yourself.

Building Bridges to Eliminate Isolation

We try very hard to build bridges, so it's not quite as isolating as it once was. We truly care about everyone in our organization, and we want what is in their best interest. If we help our advisors be the best they can possibly be, that makes us the best organization we can possibly be. A rising tide lifts all boats.

We are always going to them and making ourselves available to them. By fostering a collaborative and supportive environment, we help advisors connect with each other, share best practices and overcome challenges together. This sense of belonging not only boosts morale but also drives performance.

A good example of that is our road shows. Our leadership team visits our financial advisors on their home turf, and we bring wholesalers, practice development, marketing or other teams. We continually provide opportunities to gather our team to provide training and fellowship.

And at the beginning of every year, we do launch luncheons everywhere we have a concentration of financial advisors.

It’s important to us that we go to our people, often.

We have actually had people tell us that the deciding factor for them joining our firm is that we visited them in person, even before they were part of our team. None of the other companies they looked into did that.

We are always looking for ways to improve their practices, from practice development opportunities to new marketing strategies. And our leadership team frequently works on advanced cases with our advisors, to help them break into affluent markets with strategies they haven’t utilized before.

We’ve helped teammates with restricted property trusts, premium finance cases or other ways to front-end fund life insurance to try to improve performance … these are all things we share with our advisors at the appropriate time.

We fully understand the Leap philosophy. It is a significant framework we use to help pull the pieces together by looking at the client’s present model and evaluating they’re opportunities. It is part of our ethos and framework as an organization, and we have on our team some of the best Leap trainers in the country.

LEAP helps our existing teammates improve the service they provide to clients, but it also helps us recruit people who have worked in the industry for years but haven’t found the right framework to pull all the planning pieces together.

We're eager to sit down with them to review the Leap present position model and other Leap resources. We help them utilize Leap to organize conversations with their prospects and clients. It can help them sharpen their language, fine-tune their presentation and provide more clarity to their clients.

Describe your ideal recruit candidate.
We’ll take the multi-faceted, wealth manager, of course. But we’ve had a lot of success with people who have the potential to become a strong wealth manager, even though they may not be there now. We’re interested in finding the people who have the potential, who are coachable and who are open and willing to put in the effort needed to get there.

That’s why we’re always talking about “Engage, Educate, Elevate.” It's very purposeful. We'll take those people, build relationships with them and let them know that we are 100 percent committed to their success. That's why we use the expression, “It's all about you.” We believe in finding the diamonds in the rough and helping them to shine.

It’s all about the financial professionals here. They are our clients. We meet them where they are and help them to reach the level they want to reach. We’ll work with them and the Practice Development Team will help them become the ideal advisor that they want to become … not what we want them to become.

Take Robin Woodell, for example. She was a very successful advisor at Prudential, but she knew she could become so much more. She’s now developed into an excellent business owner, working on her business more than she works in her business. It’s very inspiring to watch her operate as a business owner and to know how far she’s grown in a very short time, but it’s even better to think about how far her company is going and how many more people she will be able to serve.

What advice do you have for financial professionals who are considering a move to a new firm?
First, do your homework. Ask a lot of questions, until you completely understand the firm you’re considering. You need to know that firm very well before cutting ties with your current firm.

Second, look for transparency. Most likely, you’re going to see the absolute best that firm has to offer while you’re in the early stages of the recruiting process. Too often people rush into a new firm, and then they find out that the firm owns the clients, not the financial professional … or some other critical issue surfaces. So, take your time; do not rush into it. This is your career.

When we talk to people about joining our organization, we're very transparent. I don't want to create false impressions.

The Kinder Brothers say, “Slow to hire, fast to fire.” But I’ve found that isn’t always the best approach. They also say, “The only good start is a fast start,” but my experience has taught me that there are advisors who have had a slow-burn start but have turned out to be excellent hires in the long-term. Sure, some are fast starters, but I would hate to miss those excellent advisors just because they didn’t fit a specific, artificial mold.

How did you get started in the financial industry?
I came into the business originally, straight out of college in 1982. I was told by my brother—who happened to be my sales leader—that I needed to focus on 100 lives per year. To be successful I had to write life insurance on 100 lives per year and I had to qualify for MDRT each year early in my career. After I had done that for two or three years, then I could become a sales manager.

So, I proceeded to do that. In my first year I wrote life insurance on 171 lives and qualified for MDRT, and in second year I wrote life insurance on 163 lives and qualified for MDRT.

My father was my original teammate when I came into the business. He and I ran an awful lot of joint business in my early days. We became very close as we worked in the business together. It was a great bonding experience to work with my father like that. I loved that, and I’m grateful I had that time with him.

I was the structured person; I was the systems guy working on our workflows and processes. My father was more of the people person; he never met a stranger. We had complementary skill sets, and it worked out really well.

After my first two years, I stepped into leadership as a sales manager. I worked in that role for several years, and then I went back to school in 1992 to get my Ph.D. Earning my Ph.D. was always a major goal, and my original plan was to go right back into the financial industry after achieving it. But when I graduated in 1996, I was offered a faculty position.

The financial industry was in a bit of turmoil at that time, with demutualization and other issues. So, I took that faculty position, and from 1996 until 2010, I rose through the ranks of Academia. Starting as an assistant professor and ultimately becoming the Dean of the School of Business at Mount Vernon Nazarene University.

I had 34 faculty reporting to me. There are a lot of similarities between working with financial professionals and working with academic faculty. I also had to run a $33 million dollar budget. I find a lot of cross-over between those two fields. That experience in education was great preparation for what I'm doing now as a managing principal.

So, in 2010, I was recruited to Penn Mutual by my brother. He had an office in Tampa, Florida that was struggling, and he asked if I would come back into the business to help him turn things around. “Give me two years … just come back for two years,” he said. And of course—14 years later, here I am.

Together, we transformed the Tampa office, building it into a thriving operation before I moved to Atlanta in 2016 to take on a new challenge there. After helping to revitalize the Atlanta office, I expanded my focus to include the Charlotte office, which was still in its early stages at the time.

I love the process of working with people to achieve meaningful growth and success. It’s incredibly rewarding, especially when you consider the countless clients whose financial lives have been positively impacted along the way.

Do you have a favorite quote or one that you like to share with the team and keep top of mind?
Words matters. Words are very powerful. There are many quotes that I love, but for years now we have chosen to focus as a team on one word each year. These are the words we’ve focused on for each of the previous years:

     2020 Limitless – We believe in abundance

     2021 Transcend – We’re going to transcend the pandemic

     2022 Elevate – Elevate our system, capabilities and scale

     2023 Breakthrough – Breakthrough our barriers

     2024 Significance – Focus on Impact and transformation

     2025 Fidelity – Fidelity to our core beliefs, faithfulness, truthfulness

We chose fidelity for 2025 because it combines many different, important concepts. One of them is faithfulness, and one is consistency. There's an element of truthfulness in fidelity. To say I've maintained fidelity to my core beliefs means I’ve stayed focused; I’ve maintained my beliefs.

Individually, I'm also keeping the word legacy top of mind.

Bob Buford wrote a book a number of years ago called, Finishing Well; and I'm not quite as young as I used to be. I realize the finite nature of life. Now, every day is about finishing well, and every day is about doing the best that I can do in that day.

We need to identify those things in life that motivate us, give us energy, and excite us.

What we do in this business motivates me. The way we help our financial professionals and the way they help their clients; those things bring me immense satisfaction and fulfillment. And they drive our vision and mission as an organization.

One quote we often share with our people is from General George Patton, “A mediocre plan executed today is better than a perfect plan executed tomorrow.” Execution is the whole thing, but execution in the right things is also important, which brings us to one from Steven Covey, “Begin with the end in mind.” Those two quotes help us focus on the right tasks and immediately take action.

Ready to grow your career with a firm like Tom's? Connect with him on LinkedIn!

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