A couple of things stand out when you look at the website of registered investment advisor 6 Meridian LLC. First, there’s the company name, which has a certain edge to it. Then there’s the group photo of the company’s employees, which has a good number of young faces mixed in with the more seasoned folks on staff who’ve been in this business a long time.

Obviously, that mix of age cohorts didn’t just kind of happen.

“This industry has starved young people out of it over the years,” said Margaret Dechant, partner, co-founder and CEO of 6 Meridian, a Wichita, Kan., firm with $1.8 billion in client assets under management. “The wirehouse and sales environment put unrealistic expectations on young people and many of them didn’t make it. And then 20 years later we’re like, ‘Hey, there’s not any young people in this business.’ So what we’ve committed to is providing younger people the opportunity to nurture their education and grow as a professional, and then give them the responsibility to help run the business.”

Dechant and 6 Meridian’s other five co-founders and partners, along with remaining staff members, formerly worked together as a team at Morgan Stanley before they established their own RIA in 2016. She said the team operated fairly independently inside of Morgan Stanley with its own investment management strategies, coupled with wealth management work. Ultimately, though, they wanted to call their own shots.

“We wanted to leverage our skills and talents to focus on our clients, and to not focus on the agenda of the wirehouse,” Dechant explained, adding that they studied the pros and cons of going independent for three years before taking the plunge. And she’s glad they did.

“Since going independent, we’ve been able to expand our investment management strategies and to do more on the wealth management side,” Dechant said. The firm serves 630 households, and its client base largely comprises business owners, executives and medical professionals. She said 6 Meridian’s average household client has roughly $5 million in assets.

Another benefit of independence is having control over staffing needs. “We’ve been able to add people to our team based on what we needed,” Dechant said. “We wanted our more seasoned people to spend time with clients with more complex needs, and we also wanted to build capacity and service the next generation of clients.”

During its time as a stand-alone firm, 6 Meridian has brought on board a handful of next-generation professionals. And part of the credit for this goes to its clients.

“Recruiting younger talent and building a bench within the firm is something we’re very vocal about,” Dechant said. “Our clients are aware we’re building an enduring firm that will serve multiple generations, and they’ve been helpful in bringing talent to us.”

She noted that not all prospective hires suggested by clients have panned out and led to job offers. But one who did fit the bill is Markus Phox, a Wichita native who attended Princeton University, where he majored in economics and played cornerback on the football team. In 2016, his final season, he received the Hank Towns Award, given to the player who has given the most back to Princeton football. After graduation, he worked for a year in New York City as a salesperson for MarketAxess Holdings Inc., an electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities.

“I wanted to work in finance for a year because I knew I wanted to be a financial advisor in the long term, but didn’t know how that path looked or what steps to take right out of school to accomplish that,” Phox said

He yearned to return home, and did so without a job in August 2018. But his period of unemployment didn’t last long because shortly after he was back in Wichita he attended an investment summit hosted by 6 Meridian. Many of the firm’s clients were there, and a bunch of them are parents of friends he went to private school with. Phox reconnected with the parents, and evidently made a big impression.

“I guess some of the clients said good words on my behalf to the partners when they were looking to hire young advisors,” said Phox, who in short order was asked to interview with 6 Meridian.

Setting A High Bar
According to Dechant, advisor firms looking to hire young talent need to have a strong value statement.

“You need to give people a reason to want to come work with you,” she said. “And that’s twofold. We set out to establish a very clear compensation and career path for our advisor personnel so they understand what it takes to work here and to get more responsibility and to move up the career path with the firm. And that’s a great selling point when you’re talking to younger talent.”

The second aspect, she added, is that the firm sets a high bar in terms of what it wants from prospective new hires regarding the education and knowledge base they need so they can work with clients and help the firm deliver its deep-dive value proposition on the wealth planning side.

That clear messaging resonated with Phox, as did the team atmosphere he said he felt as he went through the interview process. He started at 6 Meridian two months after returning home, and he’s currently working on attaining the certified financial planning designation. He said the goal is to take over some of the advisory roles of the partners so they can go after the bigger clients who can bring in more revenue for the business.

He current job title is registered associate, and he works mainly under Sarah Hampton and Thomas Kirk, two wealth advisors and founding partners.

“I’m running the client relationship in the background, and they’re taking the lead in the meetings and all of the client interaction,” Phox said. “It’s set up that way so I could learn the meat of the work and the day-to-day job of being an advisor.”

A Helping Hand
Hiring young people in the hope of molding them into full-fledged wealth advisors and investment managers who can help take an advisory firm into the future is one thing. Training them to be grow into their expected roles is another.

“There was a time when I was sitting at my desk and thinking, ‘How in the world are we going to train these people?’” Dechant admitted.

The solution? She reached out to Kaplan Financial and discussed how they could be a resource to help 6 Meridian train its new hires.

“They’ve been a very valuable partner in helping us train our people by helping them get on track to get their securities licenses, and they’re the channel we use for the CFP designation,” she said. “I can’t say enough good things about the work they’ve done for us.”

In addition, she added, 6 Meridian developed an internal training program where new employees spend time in each line of business—investment management, marketing, operations—to better understand the ins and outs of the company.

“One key thing we want everyone to understand is how they fit into the bigger picture, so we work hard to make sure they understand how the organization works, how a person moves from being a prospect to being a client, and how to develop that relationship,” Dechant said.

What’s In A Name?
Oh, about the company name of 6 Meridian . . . this refers to the Sixth Principal Meridian, a north-south line established in 1855 as the launching point to survey the newly created territories of Nebraska and Kansas, along with parts of Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota. This line goes through Wichita via Meridian Avenue.

“When we launched out of Morgan Stanley in September 2016, we worked with our marketing firm and we wanted something that was a nod to the region because most of us grew up in the Midwest and most of our clients are from or still live in the Midwest,” Dechant said.

She added that the marketing folks proposed incorporating the Sixth Principal Meridian into the firm’s name.

“We don’t put this in our marketing because it’s a little too corny, but what we say is that the Sixth Principal Meridian was the launching point for people who wanted to launch a better future for themselves and their family.”