A second-generation practice goes independent

Unlike nearby Nova Scotia, which is centred on Halifax, New Brunswick has three centres of roughly equivalent size: Moncton, Frederickton, and Saint John, each with their own degrees of economic specialization. It’s a province that exports a great deal of lumber-derived products and energy, and the recent trade war with the United States has been a source of some worry for Josselyn Flemming’s clients. Through this period, Josselyn and Flemming remind their clients that the tariff headlines change day to day, and that panic now will do more long-term harm than any decision made in Washington.

Why teamwork will shape the practice’s future

Josselyn and Flemming note that the decision to switch firms was not a sudden shift made as they took more leadership of the practice from their fathers. Their roles in the practice have grown over the years and the whole team gradually came to the consensus that the arrangement for teamwork and client sharing available to them at RBC Dominion Securities was insufficient for what they wanted to do. That model was built, they say, around individual advisors serving individual clients with shared administrative support. They wanted deeper teamwork. They wanted more collaboration between advisors and they wanted a means of expanding their practice through client sharing.

The decision, then, was to go independent, but finding the right firm took time. They did their due diligence on other independent firms but found that Wellington-Altus offered them a true sense of collaboration. They say that during a day spent in a Wellington-Altus office in Toronto, they felt a sense of positive collaboration that they didn’t feel elsewhere. While they are still new to the firm, they say their experience has been similarly positive. Other advisors in the firm don’t treat them as a threat. In fact, with one of their associates out on medical leave, an associate from another practice in Montreal was seconded to support them, something they say would not have happened in the bank-owned ecosystem.

Now, as they set themselves up with a new dealer, Josselyn and Flemming say they want to grow, adapt, and take advantage of the new flexibility their firm affords them.

“We want to really hit the ground running with some marketing. Of course, we’ve got a lot of work to do over the next couple months, and it may not happen immediately, but we’re thinking about, finding ways to get the word out, working on our brand, maybe even a name change,” Flemming says. “Now that we have the flexibility to run our business how we see fit and do all these things that we may or may not have been allowed to do before, we want to take advantage of those.”