Unlocking 7X Growth and Scaling for Significance with Triad Member Matt Dixon

This week, I sat down with Triad member Matt D. , the Founder and CEO of TruNorth Advisors, to discuss the blueprint he followed to double his business three years in a row while pursuing a life of true significance.

Matt was an independent financial advisor gathering $23 million in new assets in 2021. This year, his team is on track to gather $160 million—a staggering 7X growth in just three years! But it’s not just about the numbers.

In this episode, Matt dives into how becoming a better leader, setting clear and consistent goals and staying grounded in humility have been the keys to his success. More importantly, he explains how shifting from chasing success to pursuing significance has transformed not only his business but also his personal life, including major milestones like growing his family.

If you're looking to scale your business, evolve as a leader and create a passionate, purpose-driven team, this conversation is loaded with actionable insights you can start leveraging today.

Three Insights From This Week's Episode

Setting Goals that Lead to Growth

• Matt shares how being a lifelong learner and writing down clear, specific goals has been essential to achieving 7X business growth in just three years.

“Goals are built to be broken, but also goals are built to build...We set a much loftier goal than the original goal...and now we’re trying to be a student of anything we could learn...to raise that goal a little bit.”  – Matt Dixon

Significance Over Success

• How to build a profitable business that also blesses others and brings deeper meaning to your life.

“To me, the definition of where significance lies is in the effect and the change of other people's lives.” – Matt Dixon

Build a Business Bigger Than You

• Learn how to craft a culture of passionate contributors who grow alongside the business.

“If you’re building the right business for the right reasons, the people will be there and you have to trust that process, and you have to understand that the culture sometimes will evolve on its own.” – Matt Dixon

Are you a financial advisor who feels stuck, needs help or simply wants to have a conversation with Brad?

• Text “Coaching” to (785) 800-3235 to apply for a 30-minute Zoom coaching session.

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More on Doing Business and Doing Life.

During this week's episode, in my conversation with Matt, one of the things that repeatedly came up is how important it is, as your business grows and evolves, to have a culture that continues to grow your team at the pace your business is growing. One of the biggest struggles I've heard from many founders doing their best to grow an independent financial advisor business is struggling with turnover, culture and getting the right people in the right seats on the bus.

During this week's conversation, Matt specifically talked about how his team, at $160 million of assets gathered annually, is unrecognizable when looking back just three short years ago to the team that captured just north of $20 million of assets per year.

One of the biggest factors I've seen that it takes for a financial advisor to truly step into the business owner and CEO world is a commitment to the team and their clients that is bigger than any one individual and, more importantly, a promise to the collective team and the “product” they deliver to their clients (aka, the caliber of financial plans they build).

Recently, I was listening to a podcast that talked about Sir Jony Ive, who is most well-known for being the chief design officer under Steve Jobs and being heavily involved in the designs of many of Apple's most notable and world-changing products. Steve Jobs was famous for his “harsh feedback,” but until this clip I’d never heard someone unpack the “why” behind some of that harsh feedback.

For Jony, Steve’s challenge of whether the work he was doing or how other people perceived him mattered more helped Jony learn life lessons and learn more about himself as a leader.

Now, to be clear, I’m not endorsing Steve Jobs’ leadership style as far as how that feedback was delivered, but I do appreciate the ability to clearly communicate ideas within a business that lead to results that are unmatched without that feedback. At Triad, we try to deliver feedback from a place of love as well as truth, and have found this framing to be very beneficial as we continue to get A players who are super passionate about the work they do to communicate in the healthiest way that also serves the business at the highest level.

Remember, it’s impossible to build something that doesn't exist with a team of humans—each one having their own perspectives and experiences—if you aren't able to speak the truth.