Transcript:
00:01
Derek Fredrickson
Hey there, everybody. It’s Derek Fredrickson here from the COO Solution and the COO Solution podcast. I’m very excited to have one of our clients with us today, Adam Wolf. Adam, thank you for being here. Welcome to the show. It’s great to have you.
00:13
Adam Wolf
Great to be here. Thank you, Derek.
00:15
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah. So we’ve been working together, Adam, for I think about six months, if I’m not mistaken. Does that ring a bell? Sometimes it goes faster than we’ve thought, but, yeah, exactly.
00:25
Adam Wolf
A couple of those months were around the holidays where we started, so we got delayed a little bit there. But, yeah, we’re on the right track now.
00:32
Derek Fredrickson
Well, I really appreciate you being on the show to share a little bit. As I said in the intro earlier and just before we got on, a little bit of your story. I think having the opportunity for some of our clients to share their experience of what it’s like. Working with us here at The COO Solution and getting the kind of embedded COO support in their business. So we’re going to talk a little bit about that and just see what that’s like from Adam’s perspective.
So, Adam, I’d love to start off and just kind of ask a question about what was the story, what was the situation like before we started working together? What was working in your business? Maybe what wasn’t working in your business.
01:08
Derek Fredrickson
And really what I’d love to have you share a little bit is what made you kind of think about this idea of, like, should I consider bringing on a Fractional COO? Like, what was the click there that made you want to have a conversation with you And I did in the beginning?
01:21
Adam Wolf
Sure, sure.
01:22
Adam Wolf
So I’ve been doing, you know, retirement planning and tax planning for. For individuals, for, gosh, going back now 26 years. And so having my own company for the last 12 years, they don’t prepare you as an entrepreneur to be extremely organized with processes, procedures, systems. And so going back about close to five, four to five years ago is when I should have hired an operational support, a COO. But really about two years ago, we got to the point where, you know, we had decent systems, we had decent processes. I have a wonderful team, Derek, and as you know, and it got to the point where we were adding new clients. We had. They were stacking on top of others. I did not want the service level to be reduced in any way, shape or form
02:21
Adam Wolf
So trying to get ahead of that, bringing some more structure to the business, some more operational structure to the business without having to do it myself or do it ourself with the small team that we have here. So, and not knowing, you know, the exact business model that you specifically have for your business, because it’s very unique. Going out and searching for it and just randomly one day going on Apple and finding you on a podcast, which was just. It was like, it was meant to be, Derek. It was meant to be.
02:53
Derek Fredrickson
I love that. I love that. I’ll never forget when you said, I found you through your podcast, and now I’m proof that it works here. And so tell me about that. When you were looking online and kind of open to the idea, I mean, you said something which I think is interesting for our audience, because in my experience, most… a significant majority of business owners, entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, don’t jump out of bed in the mornings and say, I need more structure, I need more systems, I need more operational support. But you kind of saw a different path there. What was the thing that was driving that to say, okay, I think I need to do things differently, or, I think things are going to be… have to change.
03:29
Derek Fredrickson
And knowing that maybe you weren’t the one that was the best suited to bring in that change, what was that thought process like?
03:37
Adam Wolf
Yeah, so really, it was born out of frustration and you know, way too many things to try to accomplish on a daily basis. Number one is taking care of my staff and my clients, and with that, we take care of Adam that way. But not having that operational structure where I saw with peers, I mean, we were getting close and were up there compared to others in our world, we’re up there, but seeing what it could be like and not necessarily, “hey, that’s a shining object I want to reach for”. It’s, “How can we make our client process better? How can we make our staff process better? And everything, you know, that’ll. That’ll make my life better.” So I just know that I can’t wear all hats at the level where we’re performing at right now.
04:25
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah. thank you for that? Either when you were cascading this idea to your team, or when we initially started working together, what was the response from your team? Were they generally open to the idea? Were they somewhat like, you know, skeptical thinking, like, how’s this going to change my job? What is this person going to do? Why is Adam doing this? Like, what was the situation? There’s.
04:47
Adam Wolf
Yeah, it was like, in general, I’ll give you sum it up with all the people’s responses. It was about time. Like, okay, Good. We’re so happy. 2026 Is going to be wonderful because we got started in late November 2025. So you know, it was a buy in. It was an automatic buy in even before meeting Stephanie. So because my team is very organized and they work on, you know, they work in that realm. And that’s a great compliment to what we’re doing on the planning side for our clients. But yeah, that’s how it was born.
05:23
Derek Fredrickson
Okay, good. I love that. And I just want to echo something else that you said, which we get a lot with the clients that we work with, which is in most cases, the founders can be a bit reluctant in having the change in place, especially in the work that they do to their clients. Right. Because as you know, you have a very relationship focused, you know, positive, element to what you do with your clients, where they trust you, they know you, they like you. It’s a lot of referrals and you don’t want to jeopardize that in any way, shape or form by initiating change. But an introduction of change in a positive way through the filter of how can we do things better, how can we do things more efficiently, how can we be more effective with the end goal.
06:04
Derek Fredrickson
I love what you said to serve your clients, to serve your team, but also it’s there to serve you as the business owner. So tell me a little bit about that because I appreciate your looking at things in all layers – the business, the team, the clients, but then also for you, like what was the. Is there a personal motivation for you in doing this type of work together?
06:24
Adam Wolf
Yeah. You know, so I love what I do and you know, I’m really bad at almost everything else. Derek, to tell you, I think I mentioned that to you before, but you know, with helping my clients and getting them through to and through retirement safely, you know, with all the risks out there, with all the noise out there and have building a community where, you know, hey, we’re able to handle not just the investment side of things, but also the tax side of things, which is your number one expense in retirement. Having a one stop shop for people to be able to, you know, help them along the way and through retirement so they can enjoy their retirement, so they can spend their money and not have to worry as much as they would if they weren’t in a situation with Wolf Retirement.
07:04
Adam Wolf
So that’s who were trying to build. But to get back to your original question, I am, you know, I can wear a lot of hats. At least I thought I could, you know, so I can. And I could take a big, you know, I don’t know if. If you have this personally, but I’m able to take a lot of the weight of the world and put it on my shoulders, but it does sort of start to break you down a little bit. And so anything that can be taken off my plate that I’m not necessarily good at or great at, we got to get that off my plate, onto somebody else’s plate through systems, through processes that are extremely efficient, and we had a pretty good run at it there on our own.
07:46
Adam Wolf
But then to hire professionals to help us get, you know, continue down this path together and get it that much better has been the key for our company.
07:54
Derek Fredrickson
Got it. I love that. And again, just to echo, I think, the idea of, like, yeah, we can wear. I can wear, you can wear. A lot of our audience can wear multiple hats. And I say multiple hats in the context of, like, pushing the boulder of the business up the hill, but when we sometimes realize that we can actually chop up that boulder and create rocks, bigger rocks, pebbles, and get other people that are in their lanes to push their part of that. I don’t know if the analogy makes sense, but it’s kind of that visual of moving it up where it’s not always all on the shoulders of the founder.
08:26
Derek Fredrickson
And, yes, we’ve got some team and structure, but when we get a lot more kind of foundation in place in order to do that moving up, it kind of relieves some of the pressure and some of the burden on you to see, you know where else could we be doing things differently in the context of the business in terms of growth and scale and everything else.
I want to go back also when you were kind of doing that initial inquiry or search, like you said, so I think I need to bring on a Fractional COO, but they don’t know what they don’t know about where to find them, how to hire them, train them, recruit them, are they vetted? Are they best?
09:02
Derek Fredrickson
What was kind of unique about what you were introduced to in our model in the beginning that made you feel this is the right solution that I’m looking for for your business?.
09:12
Adam Wolf
Sure. I interviewed two other companies and actually one gentleman and another company, And then you guys. And it was really. The first gentleman was, hey, I think we can do that. I think, you know, I do EOS stuff, but, you know, hey, this is not necessarily my wheelhouse, but it is in my wheelhouse and I’ll make it, you know, some kind of custom thing for you and we’ll do. It was very much pie in the sky. There was no, you know, real, hey, here’s the framework, here’s the game plan, here’s how we get people from A to B to C to D. And then the second company, they were, you know, about halfway from that to where you guys were. You really said, hey, before I even, you know, before we even, you know, get engaged, we’re going to go through.
09:58
Adam Wolf
Which was extremely painful for me, Derek, as you know. Yeah, like a thousand page questionnaire assessment, you know, it was like six pages. But, you know, it was a deep dive. And I joke that way, but it was a deep dive that made me really look and focus on, hey, this is working really really well with my company. This is sort of good, this is bad. And so when I say bad, things that can be fixed and SWOT analysis, we did everything along those lines. But it was really the first time in a long time that I had put everything on paper to then have it assessed by you guys. And when we had that initial meeting after that assessment and that framework and how organized it was, that was what, you know, if you’re going to hire a COO, you need somebody who’s organized.
10:50
Adam Wolf
And you guys were extremely organized and really got what I had to say with that assessment.
10:55
Derek Fredrickson
Well, thank you. I appreciate it, I think it’s important for the audience to know because they might be, listen, do your due diligence, shop around. I recommend that. But I think at the end of the day, as you described, yeah, we do not jump into the business and shake the tree to get things to fall. There is an assessment period to really understand. And like you said, it’s a deep dive. We’re going to open up the hood of the business to see what’s working and what’s not. And there’s no judgment, but we got to put it all on the table for us to be able to objectively and strategically and carefully in an organized way, determine what we’re going to do. But first, where are we going to go? What is it going to look like? What’s the objective?
11:31
Derek Fredrickson
What’s the end goal that we have in mind? And then we can reverse engineer. And yeah, with Stephanie as your COO, she’s the boots on the ground, day to day operator, we also had that methodology of that 30, 60, 90 day framework to give us that strategic plan, that North Star, if you will. So I think it’s great that you shared that. So, I mentioned Stephanie. So let’s talk about Stephanie. Let’s talk about what has changed in your business in the last three to six months. You know, with the work that we’ve been doing, you talked a little bit about our process, but also in just the day to day, week to week interaction with Stephanie, with your team, and the environment of what’s been created, what does that look like on the inside, from your perspective?
12:10
Adam Wolf
Yep. So one of the big things we did was almost week one was we put in place a software product called Asana. And there’s a lot of different ones out there, but it was, you know, work management, you know, so. So we’re able to now have in one system all of the different, you know, working towards all of the different processes and procedures broken down by all the different steps within all of the things that we do from a marketing side, sales side, service side. Those are our three main things here at Wolf Retirement. So having that documented and all of our staff in the same place to then go through and everybody can be assigned tasks and having more management and just more organizational structure there, that was great.
13:06
Adam Wolf
From that perspective then also, you know, I’d say number two is, you know, I still have the. Obviously because we’re a small company that they’re reporting to me when we need it, but now it’s more defined. So they’ll report, folks will report to me for specific things. They’ll report to Stephanie for specific things. And it’s off my plate. Which was, you know, that was one of the most immediate things that we had, you know, going into, you know, going into January.
13:35
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah. What was that like? What was that feeling for you, if you could describe it, knowing that, like the weight was starting to lift off the shoulders a little bit. There are some things that could start to slide off where we’re like, okay, I know Stephanie’s got that, or that’s happening. And I know the team’s going to get support in that area from Stephanie. What did that feel like for you in the beginning or even now as it continues in the work that we do?
13:55
Adam Wolf
You know, it’s like. And, you know, I’ve. It’s been hard for me to leverage and, you know, pass work on to others because we’re all in the, you know, a lot of us who are trying to control things, you know, we want to be able to do it all ourselves. And when I say that, you know, the fact that she was able to now have the structure in reporting, you know, little bit by little bit. I was getting less questions throughout the day, less emails throughout the day from, from my staff. And it felt really good at that point.
14:27
Adam Wolf
But then it starts to accumulate and hey, there’s a weekly meeting where we’re all catching up with and then, you know, with Stephanie and I meeting on a weekly basis, she’s given me the results of the week and the update of where, you know, all of our staff has gotten to for the week and what they’ve checked off their boxes and you know, their checklist that they go through. So, you know, it’s just, it’s freed, it’s, you know, it’s freed up a, a lot of, you know, time on my end and you know, not having to worry about it. The brain power has been helped there as well.
15:01
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah. And I want to take that question a step further. So what are you doing differently now with that extra freed up brain power, if you will? Like, how do you see yourself in the business differently? Are you showing up differently? Do you have time for different activities that are more in your zone of genius, that is your strength? Like what does that look like now?
15:21
Adam Wolf
I don’t. I’d say not yet because we’re still, there’s still projects that I’m in charge of and that I am running lead on. But you know, the, just the having more time to get everything else accomplished.
15:40
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
15:40
Adam Wolf
Is, is the starting point here, you know, not having, you know, I see where that’s going to go, Derek. However, because I could see it in another three to six months when things are off my plate fully with projects that we’ve started, there’s going to be more time for me to be able to say, hey, you know, we need to pick up another advisor, we need to hire another advisor and then I can focus on training and leadership that way. And so, you know, whereas my head was in the weeds a little bit more, you know, through the whole process with our clients.
16:10
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah, I really appreciate that. I appreciate your honesty because I think, you know, the alternative would be like, everything’s different and everything’s utopia and I’m like, you know, only come to the office one hour a day and you know, everything else, that’s not reality. Right. New level, new devil. And I think there’s a new way of being. So I really appreciate your transparency and your truthfulness around that. Because listen, as you said, this is progress, not perfection. This does not happen overnight. When we are there to work with you and your organization, initiating significant change and how things are run. That doesn’t happen in an instant. It takes some time to build and it takes some time to train. It takes some time to get the team on board.
16:55
Derek Fredrickson
And I say the team from the CEO all the way down into the day to day members of the organization and anyone’s got that’s going to tell you otherwise, that can happen overnight, they’re lying because it takes some real real effort and time in order to invest in this. And this is what I say, I’m saying this more and more with the clients that we work with. That listen, in your case, Adam, like we are here to help you with what you’re going to do and other companies as well in terms of scale or growth or exit or 10x or whatever it might be.
17:25
Derek Fredrickson
But what we’re focused on is how you’re doing what you’re doing because the how are the things that most business owners tend to overlook and when they get to that point where they’re really ready to take the next leap, it’s the how. It’s the structure systems, the process, the right people, the, “This is how we do things around here.” If we neglect that and if we try to implement it so quickly to think that it’s going to be perfection, it’s going to crumple up again. So I really appreciate your honesty that this is not something that’s going to be like, you know, one day it’s a completely different, you know, Wolf Retirement Navigation, you know, company. It’s different. It’s different.
18:01
Adam Wolf
Yeah, it’s laying. You know, had the foundation that we’re just, we’ve, we’re going through the process right now to really make the foundation efficient to scale. That’s where we are. Because if you jump from where we are to scale, it’s, we’re gonna have a whole nother set of problems.
18:16
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah. So you mentioned Asana Project management, you mentioned SOPS as an example, documentation, meetings. I know that sometimes for some business owners they may not sound very sexy. Right. We’re not talking about like quadruple revenue growth or 2x your profit or anything else. Like why do you think that these are the types of things? Again, they, some business owners may not know that’s what they really need because what they feel like they want is the scale. What they really need are these elements first. So why like what else has happened in the business or why do you think? I guess from your perspective why did you see that this was actually what was needed in order to be kind of a predecessor to get to that growth and scale. These things that are the foundational kind of building block elements, if you will.
18:59
Adam Wolf
No, I mean, we’ve grown, I mean, the last three years we’ve grown significantly, you know, revenue wise and also profit margin wise, which is number one. The number one thing. But really the way I see my growth in the business is how well are my clients doing and how many families are we changing and how many, you know, for the better and allowing to relax and enjoy their retirement. That’s how I see success. So it’s hard to put a KPI to that.
19:26
Adam Wolf
But you know, being able to track all that stuff in a more efficient manner, which is what were doing before meeting you guys, but really now utilizing that element of it’s allowing us to then say, hey, we’re gonna, you know, while we’re going through this rebuilding or refocusing project, we’re now able to, you know, key in on, you know, where do we need to spend the money to make it that much more efficient to then scale, to then grow that revenue line. So we’re in a really unique position right now where we have that flexibility to do so. And we can go sideways while we, you know, get things in place that are stable, stabilizing to the company. Not just stabilizing, but being able to scale it over time with how many, you know, systems and things we’re making more efficient.
20:17
Derek Fredrickson
I think, I mean, as you mentioned as example, like, you know, onboarding when you bring on another advisor, like having that playbook in place so they know how they work in your organization and it runs like a well oiled machine versus and I’m not suggesting this is what it was like in the past. When it’s not structured in some way, it can kind of feel like we’re kind of tripping over our feet in order to get, you know, a new team member on board. But we want things to be often say, process driven, not people driven. That doesn’t mean we don’t value people, but we want a process in place where it can really run more efficiently and more, you know, effectively and like you said, in an organized manner.
I want to talk about Stephanie for a moment.
20:54
Derek Fredrickson
So what I would love to hear from your perspective, because part of what we do, as you’ve experienced and witnessed, Adam, both at your level as a CEO, working with Stephanie and the organization, is this culture of accountability, right? This doesn’t mean that we’re babysitters. Right. This is not checking in to be like, hey, did you do this and did you do that? That’s why we have systems like Asana and SOPs and how we run meetings. But what is the relationship like with you and Stephanie? Because she does, in some cases hold you accountable in order for the things that she knows that, you know, need to get done or how you can show up. Like, what’s that relationship like? I think it’s really important in that CEO-COO dynamic that it fits really well. What’s that relationship?
21:34
Adam Wolf
Stephanie’s wonderful. Not just from her, you know, wealth of knowledge and experience level, you know, and working with many different companies for many different years, but also her personality and my personality really match up well. So that was a great fit there. And when I say that, it’s, hey, you know, hey, we have these five things that we are, you know, we have on our plate, but let’s not try to take it all, you know, let’s take some chunks out.
22:02
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
22:03
Adam Wolf
Over time versus trying to do it all within a week. So, you know, bringing that accountability, really, you know, having that accountability. Because usually the buck used to stop with Adam Wolf and now it’s, you know, still stops with Adam Wolf. But Stephanie is the one keeping things on track.
22:20
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
22:21
Adam Wolf
So sometimes I spend way too much time on the client experience and having the clients, you know, happy. Whereas we, the operational side, you know, which she’s directing and leading at this point, alongside me, is she gets me to answer the questions in a way that is digestible to myself and the company and then pushes a little bit more and like my team and allowing, hey, we’re just going to take that from them and we’re going to tell them about it later, that kind of thing, you know, in a really nice way. It’s a really nice way.
22:59
Derek Fredrickson
I appreciate that. Yeah, it’s important to get the team members on board again. We want their buy in a new way of doing things. Not just for, you know, implementing systems, for the sake of implementing systems. All right, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, but if there’s a new way of doing things, and I’ve seen from what we’ve talked about with Stephanie as well, the team’s been generally very receptive to this new way of doing things because they can see it’s going to better for them. They can be more responsible in the outcome, they can have more autonomy, they can make better informed decisions and they could just do better work. And what CEO doesn’t want that.
23:29
Derek Fredrickson
And if it means that you’ve got that operational partner to help cascade that both structurally but also in terms of supporting the team to be on board with that, it really creates a win, win.
So I appreciate that. Adam, I’m sure there are people that are listening or watching this that are like you, a business owner before working with us six months ago. What would you say to a business owner that is having a reflection around, I wonder if now might be the right time to thinking about bringing on a Fractional COO. Well, what advice would you give to other founders and CEOs that might be in that situation?
24:04
Adam Wolf
Yeah, you know, I wish not looking back and dwelling on things, but you know, around near two, two years ago, when I was really, hey, we need to find something. And not pursuing that at that time, I wish I found you guys a couple years earlier. So anybody who’s in this, if you’re already thinking you need something like this, you do. And to at least interview you and your company and go through that assessment. It was difficult for me to go through that assessment, but there was no cost to do that, which I’m all a fan of. And it was a wonderful way to really dive in because once you start going through it, you’re like, I need this.
24:49
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah.
24:49
Adam Wolf
And if you go through it and you don’t, then you don’t need to hire anybody. You’re great. So in starting it at the level of you and you know, all of, your employees and team members that, you know, have this high level of experience, which they’ve been there, done there, they’ve done that, got the T shirt. And you know, from that perspective, maybe not knowing specifically with that industry or the specific sub industry, which I’m under, but learning it very quickly and understanding enough from the organizational perspective to really better my business and that’s it. And at the end of the day, it’s all about results.
25:26
Derek Fredrickson
Yeah. Well, thank you, Adam. I appreciate that. I love what you shared.
Wonderful conversation. Thank you for sharing some of your story and some of your experiences thus far in the work that we’ve done. For those that are listening, may want to find out a little bit more about Adam Wolf and what you did. I know you’ve talked a little bit about where could people find you online, Adam?
25:43
Adam Wolf
Yeah, so we’re wolfretirement.com that’s WOLF the word retirement, all one word dot com, that’s you go out there. Check us out. You have any questions about anything. You know, what we focus on as a niche for folks in the investment world is retirement planning. Only the investments that go along with that, getting safer in retirement, getting to and through retirement successfully. And that number one bill in your world in retirement is the tax bill for most people. So anything we can do to reduce that tax bill, not just now, but over time for you and your family and your beneficiaries, that’s what we do.
26:19
Derek Fredrickson
Excellent. Wonderful. Thank you, Adam. I appreciate you being on the show today. Thank you, everybody, for watching. We’ll see you next time on the COO Solution podcast.
26:26
Adam Wolf
Thanks, Derek.
26:27
Derek Fredrickson
You’re welcome.
