‘When you care about your advisor first, you must care about profits last’

Designed does so by staying out of their advisors’ way as much as possible. They don’t set additional rules for advisors beyond what CIRO mandates, unless there is something unique about an advisor’s practice that requires more service, compliance, or customization. And even then, additional policies are only used to support that one advisors practice – not applied to all advisors. They don’t impose any communication restrictions on their advisors beyond the SRO rules either. They also don’t publicly comment on market trends or economic outlooks, meaning when their advisors share a forthright view on an issue relevant to their clients or their work, they aren’t contradicting head office. They seek instead for advisors to best represent the industry, use fair views and well sourced information when making comments rather than pushing for advisors to tow the dealer line.

Because Designed stays so aggressively in their own lane, they can limit the size of their head office. Konopaski explains that they can keep a lean team able to enforce mandatory regulations and facilitate their advisors’ businesses without adding on dozens of additional compliance staff. All staff are doing meaningful work that is designed to specifically support the advisors needs, not head office needs. For example, they don’t employ spokespeople or economists to publish market outlooks or commentaries.

“They’ve got guys making seven figures to talk about this [stuff],” Konopaski says, which increases the costs downloaded to both advisors and clients. “We just don’t do that; we lay in the weeds, and we let the advisor run their practice.”

Because they don’t make a public show of their insights or outlooks, Konopaski accepts that Designed does not build the same public brand recognition as other dealers. He says that’s intentional, however. He wants Designed to become a recognized brand among advisors, but he doesn’t want Designed’s brand to overpower the brand of their individual advisors in the minds of their clients. Konopaski wants to ensure that Designed maintains a strong reputation within the industry, but sees it as the advisor’s job to build their own reputation among individual investors.

The model Designed seems to have built appears unique, and a bit iconoclastic. Konopaski believes that its one other dealers should try to emulate, but he doesn’t expect anybody will.