Mike Papedis sits down with Travis Penfield, founder and CEO of 49 Financial — a $3B hybrid RIA built on a values-based, team-first philosophy rooted in Ecclesiastes 4:9. The conversation explores how 49 Financial's "supported independence" model eliminates the tradeoff advisors have historically been forced to make between autonomy and infrastructure.
Mike's Take
"The advisors I see burning out aren't the ones working too hard — they're the ones carrying weight that should be distributed across a team. If your model still puts one advisor at the center of every client relationship, every decision, and every crisis, that's not a practice. That's a trap. The firms growing fastest right now are the ones that figured out how to make collaboration structural, not optional."
This interview was originally published in Financial Advisor Magazine.
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