Rust, Dust, and Smoke: Derek Wittjohann and Premier Path Wealth Partners' Unsexy Niche with Business Owners

Introducing Derek Wittjohann and Premier Path

Anthony Codispoti (00:03)

Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories Podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome adversity. As you listen today, let one idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Codispoti, and today's guest spent 13 years at Merrill Lynch, then in 2023 left to start an independent firm. Two years later, assets had grown past $1.2 billion.

And the firm landed at number 43 on Financial Advisor magazine's list of the fastest growing independent advisory firms in the country.

Derek Vitjohan is Chief Operating Officer and Partner at Premier Path Wealth Partners.

A fiduciary advisory firm serving business owners, executives, and multi-generational families. He is a CFP and a CPWA, ranked number 65 on Forbes 2025 Top Next Gen Wealth Advisors Best in State List. He also writes and speaks on early retirement, succession planning, and where AI fits into wealth management.

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Derek Wittjohann (02:27)

Nailed it. Ten out of ten.

Anthony Codispoti (02:29)

Thanks for making the time to share your story today, Derek.

Derek Wittjohann (02:32)

That's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Why Derek Left Merrill Lynch

Anthony Codispoti (02:34)

So Derek, you graduated from Rutgers in 2010, degree in Economics and German language studies, then joined Merrill Lynch. And you were there for 13 years before you decided to go out on your own. What was the impetus? What was the inspiration for branching out?

Derek Wittjohann (02:51)

Yeah, so it's interesting. When we when we made the decision to leave Merrill, I always think we were moving towards something, not moving away from something. That's why we didn't end up at another, another warehouse, another large firm. And I think what became problematic for all of the large wirehouses is it was increasingly more difficult to serve the needs of our clients and competing that with serving the needs of corporate interests, corporate incentives, things like that. So

Drawing the line became more and more difficult. We knew that if we wanted to serve our clients, those are typically business owners in that middle, lower middle market space, think rust, dust, and smoke. If we wanted to continue to differentiate ourselves and serve those clients, we knew it couldn't be done at the large warehouses. We would have to go be independent, control our own destiny, control our own decision making. And that's ultimately why we made the decision.

Anthony Codispoti (03:37)

So were there quotas that you were really encouraged to meet, selling more services, pushing clients towards things that maybe weren't in their best interest?

Derek Wittjohann (03:45)

Yeah, and yes. The short answer is yes, right? Selling I mean, Merrill Lynch was unique in that it was bought by Bank of America. So a lot of cross banking selling, the selling the checking accounts, selling the mortgages, having to make the decision of you know, w one theme that repeats itself is we tend to find the harder way to do things, not the easier way. So at Merrill that was foregoing a lot of compensation for things that we ultimately knew wasn't in the best interests of our client.

And eventually it just became too cumbersome to to intermediate those two conflicting interests. And again, nothing against Merrill Lynch. It would have been the same Morgan Stanley UBS, any of the other ones.

Building an Independent, Client-Focused Firm

Anthony Codispoti (04:19)

Okay. So you had a vision to go out on your own and do things that were more client centric, more favorable for the client and get everybody's goals aligned. So what did this new vision look like? How were you gonna do things differently?

Derek Wittjohann (04:33)

Yeah, so we spent three, four years doing a lot of due diligence. This wasn't like an overnight decision. all the various different types of platforms. Was it fully independent? Was it kind of the pseudo-independence? And we said, you what, if we're gonna do this, we wanna control control our own decision making. we don't wanna be owned by anyone, have anyone else interfering with our final say. So that's why we ultimately made the decision to go fully independent.

We use some resources in the background, right, back office type of support to help us scale, but ultimately it's our firm, it's our decision making. And I think a couple of reasons why we did that, tools and technology, just having access to things that we were so used to hearing no for so long at the wirehouse. Now something comes up, we can be at the cutting edge. we can be the first person to to be implementing these types of tools, technologies, estate planning technology, tax analysis technology.

We're developing our own proprietary tech on guiding business owners through the sale of their business. So all things that wouldn't be available at at one of these warehouses. Ultim another one is the types of services we offer. Right now we have we launched a strategic business advisory arm of our practice dedicated to guiding the business owner who's considering the sale of their business, call it.

It could be six months ahead, it could be two years ahead of the a potential sale or succession of their business. Having a consultant in-house, having a dedicated resource that helps them evaluate the business, identify the gaps, close the gaps, ultimately increase the value of their business leading up to a sale. Something that we weren't able to do. And then I would say the third leg of that was access to investment solutions. Right now, you know, we're not beholden to a large institution.

For something to hit the platform of a Merrill Morgan Stanley, these funds, these investments have to have capacity for tens of thousands of advisors. they may still be good, but there's a lot of steps in between that's of strategies that are more than appropriate for clients, but just never see the light of day at these larger institutions for reasons of scale. So

Anthony Codispoti (06:34)

Give me an example of

one of these products that you found that Merrill Lynch, you know, just it would have taken years to kind of go through all of their red tape that you guys are like, this is great. We wanna bring it now.

Derek Wittjohann (06:47)

So we we actually just launched our own proprietary fund. Now, when I say proprietary fund, we're not the ones picking these PE companies and making the deals. We're it's a a selection of subfunds. So a strategy of four to five private equity, unique deals, type of things that we didn't have access to before. The purpose of that was to access the market, scale across our entire book of business, and offer these types of environment investments that clients didn't have access to. So

you know, one strategy is like a public company take private strategy, tremendous track record, tremendous resume, something that never would have been seen at Merrill Lynch. Another is your typical lower middle market, private equity, actually very similar to the types of clients and business owners we work with. They're the first institutional capital investing in these types of businesses, never would have seen the light of day. one thing that makes up a lot of people's

you know, call cocktail talk is tech venture, anthropic, open AI, Andoril, Shield AI, all of these buzzwords that clients wouldn't have access to otherwise, and now we do, now we can have those conversations. And it clients are asking for it, even proactively. We're we're we're proactively building the the the platform for it, but they're they're asking for it as well, we're finding.

Anthony Codispoti (08:05)

That's really cool. Tell me a little bit about the tech that you guys are building to help folks sell their businesses.

Derek Wittjohann (08:11)

Yeah, so we're we're big on Claude. That's our that's our platform. And it it's interesting. AI in wealth management, we have to be very careful, very secure with client information. we found the the first kind of productivity hacks through AI maybe don't apply to our business, right? The the agents that sit on your email help you schedule meetings, things like that. We were very reluctant to have AI tie into any of our client data, but rather

We can build something through Claude, that vibe coding term that's been that's been thrown around. build an application, run it through the compliance process, make sure it's it's secure, but then it sits locally on our hard drive. It's not connected to not connected to the ethos of the stratosphere of of all the other stuff out there. But really, bottom line is clients are selling their business. they're looking to us to help facilitate that.

Process. I think the question we get a lot is look, who's driving the bus in this whole thing? You have investment bankers, you have attorneys, you have CPAs, you have CFOs, management team, the owner themselves, you have us. And it's like who's doing what by when. ultimately our differentiator is that we sit in the middle of this process. We you know, we dictate the pace and help facilitate this process. So this this technology that we're in the middle of building,

gives a visual guide towards that and helps keep partners accountable. And at any point, the business owner can look to this and say, okay, here's where we are, here's what's open, here's where we've done, here's what we need to do to get to the next step.

Launching the Firm and Winning Clients’ Trust

Anthony Codispoti (09:38)

Sounds really cool. take me back to that first week, right before you're leaving Merrill Lynch. What's going on? What are you guys doing behind the scenes to get ready?

Derek Wittjohann (09:47)

Trying get any sleep we can, I think. That was that was a tense week, but it was so we

Anthony Codispoti (09:51)

Why tense? What's on the line?

Derek Wittjohann (09:55)

yeah, and a little inside baseball in the wealth management space. we're allowed to take our clients, but we can't pre-solicit them. So we've done we're at three to four years of due diligence. We've gone through platforms. We I'm looking at our office, we picked the the color on the walls. There's a story about that.

Right, we're picking the the printers, we're picking the curing machine. So we're doing everything. Not a single client knows about this. so you know, when we looked at our client list, we're limited in the information that we can bring. Pretty much a name and a phone number is about it. and you know, we're we're there the week before, the night before, wondering, are the clients even gonna come with us? And people inside of the industry, the team that helped us,

build a firm and launch the firm, they always tell you the client's gonna follow, the client's gonna follow, the client's gonna follow. So we heard the words, but look, you're looking at imposter syndrome the night before. Everyone tells you the clients are gonna come, but until they're in the door and they say yes, you have no idea what's gonna happen. so yeah, you spent the last four years planning for this thing. You're you're staring down the barrel of actually doing it and you hope you hope it all works out. So there's a lot of a lot of gut checks in that process.

Anthony Codispoti (11:04)

And so what happens on the day? Or is it like a single day where you're contacting every client or is it spread out over weeks and months? Like how quickly do you have a sense of they're coming with us or they're not?

Derek Wittjohann (11:17)

Yeah, so if you ever saw Jerry Maguire, it definitely had some Jerry Maguire vibes to it. Where eight eight AM, eight thirty, Mike Lehman, our CEO, went into our Merrill office, handed in the resignation papers. he didn't even bother or I mean, he on his way back to the office he sent a text that said we're good. And then when the whole team, there were six of us at the time, picked up the phone and started calling clients off the bat. Cause at that point it's a race.

we need to get to our clients. Merrill or any firm assigns a transition team to reach out to your clients first. And it's it's a battle to see who gets there first. But I say it's a battle. At the end of the day, I'll spoil the ending. It's a relationship business. 97% of our revenue came with us. We were in the first day or two, we knew that we were on we were on a good path here. There was still weeks of administrative work to do, but kind of those initial conversations, we had a good indicator the first.

first few days, the first weekend.

Anthony Codispoti (12:07)

'Cause they know you. They know the members of your team. They don't know random Joe from Merrill Lynch that they've never talked to before.

Derek Wittjohann (12:15)

That was probably our biggest surprise too. Is we spent I spent thirteen years of a firm telling you brand recognition. People go here, come to work here because they recognize Merrill. It's a brand that has brand equity. And you hear that enough times you start to believe it. So when we picked up the phone, I can't tell you how I could count on one hand how many times I actually said, Well, what about Merrill Lynch? I mean, the name didn't even come up. and that was a nice vindication of

what we had built, what we were building. it's a real again, it's a

Anthony Codispoti (12:42)

I mean, were most people's

responses just, Okay, yeah, send me the paperwork? Was it that simple or is there a lot of back and forth answering questions about why, what does this mean?

Derek Wittjohann (12:52)

More operational questions. It was it was yes and then a couple of questions, right? Yeah, yes, we're with you. Can you just help me understand right where my accounts are going to be? Where do they sit? We we custody through Fidelity, for example. so th those technical, those operational questions, definitely curious for them, but it was a quick yes, especially our business owner clients. So like, what took you so long? You know, I think they were excited that we are now business owners serving business owners.

yeah. What were you waiting for? So it's good feedback. Yeah. I appreciate it.

Anthony Codispoti (13:24)

Good for you. We're rooting for you now. Um,

so those three percent that didn't come over, you said nine that's an amazing ratio, but the three percent who don't come over, I'm guessing these are folks that maybe the relationship wasn't as strong, or like what's going on in that case?

Derek Wittjohann (13:41)

You know what, we even feel it as we're serving the client. The institutional clients are probably the toughest because we do work with nonprofits, you know, some institutional clients. When you have a rotating board, it's your your relationship is only as long as the the tenure on the on the board type of thing. there might be other banking or lending facilities with the larger institutions. So we did have, I think it was one institutional client, maybe two, where they're like, Yeah.

Look, we're we're too tied into the firm. It's gonna be too difficult. So that was not surprising. And then I have to think maybe there was one client who was a surprise, but it really wasn't everyone else we had marked as maybe we didn't have a long term relationship with them, but I would say the institutional clients are the toughest because you don't have you don't know the patriarchy of the business going back, you know, fifteen, twenty years or something.

The Owner’s Roadmap: Preparing for Succession or Sale

Anthony Codispoti (14:29)

Okay, gotcha. So Premier Path, you've built something called the owner's roadmap for business owners and executives. Tell me what this is and what that looks like in practice when a business owner sits down with you for the first time.

Derek Wittjohann (14:43)

Yeah. So that that's a word we use a lot, is whether it's owner's roadmap, owner's mindset. We like to think we serve clients with an owner's mindset. I would say wealth creation, either entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs. when we talk about the owner's roadmap, it's really a process in helping that business owner consider the succession possible sale of their business. That's really what it's created to help help achieve. So, yeah, we talk about

Three things. Are you ready? Is your business ready? And is the market ready? those are three, three boxes we need to check to be able to proceed to the next step. And we talk about you as the business owner, are you ready? can you afford to sell your business? The money that you you earn after, is that enough to keep you through through your retirement, through meeting your goals that you you had set for yourself, including the family and the spouse as part of that conversation. I I think so many.

So many business owners, their identity is tied to the business. They sell the business on a Friday, on Monday, they're like, What am I gonna do with my time? I'm following my wife around Home Depot and she's ready to kill me. they say they say in marriage it's for better or for worse, but not between nine and five. So how do we you know, how do we create a second identity for for what life is is to be after the sale? And then is the business ready? That's where the strategic

Business advisory service that we can now offer steps in. where's your business today? Where does it need to be? Can the business run without you? I think that's the most, probably the biggest criteria that a buyer looks for is it's great you're the owner, but I'm gonna buy it from you. Can it operate without you? And identify the gaps, create some KPIs. What do we need to do in the next, is it six months, is it 12 months to maximize the value of our your business? And lastly, is the market ready?

that's where we bring in those investment bankers, lower middle market investment bankers, who have a real sense of here's the feedback we're getting, here's what our relationships are saying. we just went through one where helped facilitate the sale of a a flooring company and tariffs were a big, big factor there. So we were keeping constant pulse on the market through the investment banker. do we need to accelerate the sale? Do we need to wait this thing out? ultimately they're

Their plan was really bulletproof. They i they weren't impacted that much by the tariffs, but still things we have to consider. So are you busin are you ready or is the business ready? Is the market ready?

Anthony Codispoti (16:59)

I wanna dive into a couple of things that you said there, Derek. I'm talking about the issue of owner dependency. And this comes up over and over again. because this can be one of the biggest stumbling blocks to selling a business. A buyer wants to come in and know that it is more or less plug and play, ready to go after the sale. And if the owner is such a key part of everything that takes place, all the decisions go through them.

all the business relationships, all the sales relationships are through them, then it's a real friction point. I'm curious, coming from your wealth advising background, how you guys were able to adapt your skill set into that kind of an environment to be able to coach the business owners on how to become less owner-dependent.

Derek Wittjohann (17:46)

Yeah, it's I I think it's a partnership. So it starts with I see it I'm a visual person. There I think there's a Venn diagram between the business owner. They're they are the owner of a business, they are the operator of a business, and then they have a family, right? And there's a there's an overlap between those three worlds. and if selling or stepping away from the business is key to their personal goals, their family goals,

Then we need to we need to build the roadmap to be able to help them sell the business. And then through that process, through the relationships, through the feedbacks with enough potential buyers saying, Hey, this business is great, but it's useless without the owner there. We can't come in and buy. So now, right now you you you identify enough of these roadblocks where you're like, okay, we need to, we need to step back. We need to really this goes back to the the business advisory piece of our business is what we need to do today? What are the KPIs we need to put in place? Usually comes around strength of the management team.

How do we empower them? How do we hire to replace some of the tasks you're doing? And if they can't, and look, it's tough to be able to do that for a business owner who so much of their identity is in this business. They created that, they started it from nothing to tell them that they're no longer needed for the business. It's a tough you want to sell the business and you have to be useless. But you know, don't want to admit that to yourself. I'm I'm I'm curious your feedback. You've sold a couple businesses. How did you manage that?

Anthony Codispoti (19:07)

I I was gonna ask what exactly it is that you do to help with this because yeah, I've been through this and it is the most unexpected and the hardest part of the process. Right? whether you realize it or not, as you said before, your identity becomes really anchored to whatever the business is. And I've had the the privilege of owning, running, exiting multiple businesses. So for a while I was the internet guy, then I was the

T guy, then I was the costume jewelry, and I had all these identities. And when that business sells, even when it's a successful exit, then it's like, well, who am I now? where do I fit into this world? What is it I'm supposed to do when I get up in the morning? And so I've managed those transitions well if the next thing is already in place and I can step right into it. And that's my new identity, that's my new focus, that's where my new efforts go.

If there's a gap in between what I've just done and what's coming next, I'm lost. I I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with myself.

Derek Wittjohann (20:11)

Do you find have you identified your next project before the current project is sold and complete?

Anthony Codispoti (20:18)

Sometimes.

and when I have, and when that project is ready for me to put maximum effort into it, then I'm good. I've got a purpose, I've got

Derek Wittjohann (20:28)

Interesting. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (20:30)

something constructive to do, I've got problems to figure out and solve every day. if I don't know what it is, or it's less clear, or it's early stages, and so there's not enough to do, that that's when I struggle.

Derek Wittjohann (20:44)

Interesting. I found that with the so most of the business owners we work with, it's like generation, it could be a multi-generational business or they started this thing when they were fourteen. So it's not the we do have a couple of serial entrepreneurs. I do find the mindset is a little bit different, but when this is all they've done since they were eighteen or the only conversation at the family dinner table because they're generation three of a business, it's there's a lot that

A lot of time that goes into that. And you asked, how do we do that? there's two ways we two ways we do that. At some point we like to say, at some point during the process, someone is going to call your baby ugly here, right? When it comes to you have bankers and negotiating going on and they don't like the balance sheet, they don't like this, they don't like your go to market strategy. So at some point someone calls your baby ugly and having the having the presence of mind and the team behind you to help.

support you during those times is super helpful. So two resources we've dedicated. I keep talking about is the strategic business advisor. it's one member of our team, Bill Earhart, he's unbelievable. He was a CEO of several companies. Now he chairs our Vistage team. I don't know if you're familiar with Vistage, but think YPO, things like that. So he sits next to us. He's been his business is consulting businesses through through their challenges. So

He addresses it from a business perspective. Okay. How do we build the management team? How do we offload operations from you? So a very tactical business perspective, he steps in and helps pull the pull the owner back out of these roles. we've also partnered with resource Dr. Richard Orlando. He's on the family side, so he's a family advisor and he works on family governance, he works on kind of personal identity, what's your family gonna do afterwards? How do you spend your time? Is it through philanthropy? Is it through

Things that you've always wanted to do. So from a family, from I would say a more psychological, spiritual perspective, we have him as a family advisor to help the the emotional side of it. And then Bill Earhart, roll up your sleeves. What do we need to do inside of the business to to get you out of this stuff? we have him as well. So a little bit of a one two punch, but it's almost always a challenge.

Anthony Codispoti (22:48)

So take a step back for me, Derek, and give me the soundbite of what Premier Path does and who you do it for. Give me the breadth of everything.

Derek Wittjohann (22:57)

Yeah. So at the core, we're an independent wealth management firm. but we are uniquely designed to serve the needs of we call it owners with or you know, clients with an owner's mindset. Think you're middle market business owner who is considering the succession or sale of their business.

How the Firm Grew Past $1.2 Billion

Anthony Codispoti (23:14)

Okay. And when you left Morgan Stanley, if I've got my research here correct, you took about eight hundred million dollars in client assets with you. Two years after launch, those assets had grown past one point two billion, and you guys, Premier Path, were at number forty-three on financial advisors magazines list of the fastest growing independent advisory firms in the country. So take me inside that growth.

What were you guys doing to drive that?

Derek Wittjohann (23:45)

Yeah, I I think three factors. one, just having the open for business sign up, I think is incredibly powerful. Just being open for business, communicating your story, having the antennas up drives a lot of that. two, having a different story to tell. I'll go into detail in each of these. And three, finally, we are spending more time where our end users and and clients are. And I'll I'll hit all three of those. So when I say

open for business. Year one, we were really just rebuilding our business and growing at the same time, which was difficult to handle at times. It's a good problem to have. But I say year one, we were successful in growth despite our process, not because of it. And that's where it was just, like I said, kind of a little scrappy, but keeping the keeping the open for business signed up, finding the opportunities where you can in closing. leg two of that is having a different story to tell.

Whether it's existing clients that maybe there were more opportunities to help serve them, whether it's prospective clients that we had always had conversations with on the sidelines, but were never to get over the finish line because we were limited by the resources we had at Merrill. back to what we said, tools and technology, access to investments, the services we offer through strategic business advisory, for example. that was a whole new audience that we could go go speak to. I mean, can tell you.

Right now we're speaking to a handful of prospective clients on some of these private access investments that we didn't have access to before. And that's that's the first step into the relationship. That's the most that's their highest priority. We would have been cut out from those. And then number three on that list is spend time where our end client is. we're speaking at spending a lot of time at conferences. So when I say conferences, I don't mean like wealth advisor conferences. I mean

Movers and warehouse conference. the the Glass Builders Conference, the flooring convention. and speaking exactly on this, which is succession planning and preparing your business for sale, where you have a lot of these owners of the business or their circle of trust. And this is something that we like to say succession is going to happen. It's only a matter of if it's on your terms or or not. and this message resonates with them. So finally we're spending time where they are and

It's been received really well.

Serving “Rust, Dust, and Smoke” Businesses

Anthony Codispoti (25:53)

You used a phrase that really caught my attention early on, rust, dust and smoke. So you guys are not dealing with a lot of the high tech business owners, the SAF software AI folks. These are the unsexy but long standing profitable businesses kind of running in the background. This is titans of industry that nobody knows about, kind of a thing.

Derek Wittjohann (26:16)

Exactly. I I love it. these are the best people. I think they're sexy in their simplicity. and look, we don't have anything against there's nothing we're perfectly qualified to work with the serial tech entrepreneur, but I think some of the things we just talked about, which is multi-generational, building it since you were so young, when you have such quick transactions, quick turnover, maybe some of these other components don't have as much time to take hold. So

When we're sitting with three generations around one table, that's where a lot of these things start to come together. And you're right, rust, dust, and smoke. I think of manufacturing, distribution, packaging, logistics. You would drive by these businesses, you probably do every single day, don't even realize they exist. It's the millionaire next door. These are owners that yeah, they they're in charge of thirty to three hundred million of of revenue at their companies and you would never know it. And they're I gotta tell you, they're

They're they're the salt of the earth people. I you how much joy we get out of serving these clients.

Anthony Codispoti (27:11)

Yeah, this is your tribe. feel free to tell me that this is none of my business, but I'm curious when you guys make that switch, you go from big warehouse, Merrill Lynch, to independent. Let's say, okay, you had $800 million in assets under management with Merrill Lynch. Now it's $800 million assets under management under Premier Path. How does your income change overnight? Is it a

Twenty percent, is it a forty percent increase? I'm trying to get some idea of the economic dynamics at play here.

Derek Wittjohann (27:43)

That's a

great question. And I think I I may have mentioned earlier, we are gluttons for punishment. We often take the harder path, not necessarily the easier path. So an example of that is we could have picked up our business from Merrill Lynch and moved it to Morgan Stanley, UBS, any of the other large warehouses. We'd we would have made a

We would have been paid a large check to be able to do that. It's much easier, right? There's no, mean, right

Anthony Codispoti (28:08)

Right up front. Just

Derek Wittjohann (28:09)

up front, just to make the move. so try explaining that to your significant other of hey, we're I'm not gonna be taking this very, very large check that's being offered to us. Even better, I'm actually gonna go and we're going to spend our money by launching this business. So we're coming out of pocket. and it was for for the owners. I mean, I'm proud to say

all of our all of our employees that had absolutely no impact. If in fact if anything, it was a benefit to them. But for all of the owners, probably took us nine, twelve months to get back to where we were. and now growth, right, growth is in our DNA and it's it's been tremendous. but we didn't do it for the easy money, that's for sure. if so

Anthony Codispoti (28:43)

The nine to twelve months

to get back to where you were is just because there's what a lot of software costs that go into kind of getting everything up and running. Probably some legal costs

Derek Wittjohann (28:52)

Yep, upfront costs.

Anthony Codispoti (28:53)

and

Derek Wittjohann (28:53)

Exactly. Yeah. Legal costs, accounting costs, lease, right? Lease the building equipment, technology, payroll, all that stuff. That's not that's we own the business, so that's coming from us. So we had to right, we had to we had to support that. We had to come out of pocket and support that. And to be able to pay that back, pay off the loans we took to do that, probably took us nine to twelve months to get to break even. And again on day one.

Even if a client says yes on day one, there's still asset transfers. So there's no income for probably three months, three, four months until everything's set up, set up the way it was before, reestablishing those lines of revenue. So we we definitely took the the road less traveled here.

Anthony Codispoti (29:32)

Okay, so once you get to that point of paying off the loans, everybody's transferred over, the revenue's coming in, how much more revenue is it for you when you're an independent versus when you're at one of the big warehouses?

Derek Wittjohann (29:45)

day-to-day income, I don't know that it's a huge difference. I I think the di the there's two big differences. You're doing it because you're building equity in your own enterprise, which is ironic because we're we don't have any plans on selling it, but right, you're still building something that's yours. And then at the end, right, profit distributions, anything that we decide not to reinvest in the business, which is right now our focus is reinvest as much of our profits back into the business as we can. But if there's anything left over, as an owner, we're we participate in the

And the profits at the end. But day to day paycheck, the if I look at what we paid ourselves in what I would call advisor compensation versus what we had there, maybe a couple percent more, but that definitely wasn't the that wasn't the fuel for our decision.

Anthony Codispoti (30:24)

That's interesting. a lot of value in being able to go out on your own just to have access to these other products, to be able to bring in the right strategies that you have evaluated, that you give the green light to, that you give the thumbs up to, not waiting for some bureaucracy to give you the green light. Yeah.

Derek Wittjohann (30:42)

Exactly. Exactly.

We we knew that in in a one to three year period, right? This wouldn't be the final if if we were looking to maximize income in a one to three year period, this wasn't the road to go. But we know that we're building something and ultimately being able to have conversations with clients and prospective clients that we weren't able to before. my favorite line was a client from Merck and it's plastered on their I think it was a regional headquarters. They said, if you do right by your client, the profits will follow. And that's if I could tattoo that on my back, I would.

Anthony Codispoti (31:11)

I I think that is such a great philosophy to live by. Um

Derek Wittjohann (31:14)

Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (31:16)

say it again, because I want people to hear it. If they if they dozed off for a second, it it's really important.

Derek Wittjohann (31:21)

Yeah, if you do right by your client, the profits will follow. And I can't tell you how many times I'm sure you can see this from your own business ventures. You you don't make the easy picking up the nickels in front of a bulldozer type of decisions today. You let those lie, you do what's right today, and then ultimately that earns you the loyalty, the trust, and the reputation to be able to do larger things later.

Anthony Codispoti (31:43)

Yeah, and the reputation i is the important piece there, right? Once you've soiled that, once people think that you're not out for their best interest, that you're just grabbing those nickels, dollars, whatever they are, the dynamic changes and and and and you've lost the ability to to work with them. So

Derek Wittjohann (32:01)

Yep. You lose it's tough to re repair that.

we we joke that we're terrible business people sometimes. We we could have been making a lot more money on some of these decisions in the short run than we have. but now that I joke because it's conscious

Anthony Codispoti (32:11)

Mm mm mm.

Derek Wittjohann (32:12)

decisions for for the long term that we know is ultimately building.

Anthony Codispoti (32:15)

You know, I

learned a r a really good lesson from my very first business partner, who was his first time owning a business too. because I had one idea of what sales was supposed to be like. You know, I'd heard people make comments growing up about, that guy can sell, you know, ice to Eskimos. And so I had this frame in my mind that a really good salesman is somebody that convinces people to do things and buy things, even if they don't really need them.

And I watched my business partner, who was not a salesman by training, who had no prior business experience, go into sales meetings and be so wildly effective because he wasn't selling. He was educating, he was teaching, he was asking questions to learn about what the client needed. Brandon Smith, if you're listening. And as a result, the clients were like,

I can I can see this guy really wants the best for us. He just talked us out of a more expensive implementation because this less expensive one is gonna solve our problem better for us. And and they loved him and they loved the advice he would give them. And if he would make a suggestion to them down the road, they were just incredibly receptive to it. And that for me was like this giant mind shift. It's like, my gosh, sales is very different.

From what I thought it was. It's it's it's very education based.

Derek Wittjohann (33:41)

I love that you said that. Sometimes we joke, we say, I think we we're good at selling because we're so poor at selling. Uh

Anthony Codispoti (33:47)

Yeah.

Derek Wittjohann (33:48)

for that exact reason. We're just I think we get so passionate about what we know is in our clients' genuine best interest and I think they feel that passion and I think that resonates with them. Totally to your point.

Anthony Codispoti (33:59)

mentorship that was really helpful for you coming up.

Mentors, Resilience, and Early Career Lessons

Derek Wittjohann (34:03)

Yeah. Yeah, I can think of two great mentors early in my career. I ultimat I actually interned for him while I was at Rutgers and then he helped hire me into Merrill Lynch, Bruce Milstein. no longer with Merrill Lynch, but still in the industry. And this guy was so just to set the stage, I was working with him. He was the branch manager at Merrill Lynch where I was working, and I was his support, I was his administrative support in in running the

Branch. Tremendous opportunity. That's where I built relationships with 115 advisors in the office, ultimately with Mike Lehman, the CEO, who that's how we met at Merrill and now launched the firm. But Bruce Milstein was he was someone who coming out of college, I thought I all had it all figured out, did well, took my finance one-on-one class. I'm like, all I'm ready to take over the world here. And I will tell you that your first corporate role out of college is just.

moving at neck breaking speed. And for was it it was actually a tough time. and looking at Bruce, who was someone who served other advisors, the advisor was his client, being this the support in the office, he is someone that set the bar so high with what you could call unreasonable expectations, but he was the guy people went to to solve problems. And I found that if you can, if you can solve your boss's problems, if you can solve your clients' problems,

If you have this mindset of unrealistic expectations, quick turnaround time, get it done, figure it out, find a way. those types of qualities, people continue to turn to you for solutions and then you build a lot of personal recognition. But it was yeah, tough time for me up front. Ultimately, look to him for a lot of a lot of guidance and he he he is passionate about helping people, rolling up his sleeves and again being that first call for to help people get it done and

Anthony Codispoti (35:46)

Mentors are such a a

Derek Wittjohann (35:46)

Mellus. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (35:48)

a great and powerful mechanism for learning. And I think a lot of folks struggle to find that or struggle to understand or develop that kind of a relationship. I think another way that we learn are from kind of challenging work experiences. Was there a client situation you went through where it's like, man, that was dicey, but I learned how to do something different going forward?

Derek Wittjohann (36:10)

So I'll maybe I'll hit that in two ways. One, I think challenges up front at work were difficult. That was even before I was client facing. And then there were a couple of client interactions that were were light bulb moments. If d is that all right? Go in those two directions.

Anthony Codispoti (36:23)

Yeah, absolutely.

Derek Wittjohann (36:25)

So on the on the personal side, like I said, you come from college, your first role here here you're working with people who are first of all, advisors are a unique population. They want things done yesterday. They are advocates and serving their own clients. So they want

They want answers, they want results, they want outcomes immediately. And for me, I had a really tough time acclimating to this the pace, the expectations, the politics, communication, frankly, sales, right? We say that service is sales. How do you sell? How do you communicate bad news to someone but make it make it sound good? So all of these soft skills coming out of school was really, really tough, found a lot of early challenges and it was it was.

Odd because if if I'm the first one in the office, the last one out of the office, but things still aren't working out and results aren't what I had hoped, that wears on you for a while. But ultimately, through, like I said, my relationship with Bruce as a mentor, just a mentality of control the things you can control. Right. I can control my effort, I can control the time I spend in the office, I can control my my attitude and my outlook. You get enough bumps and bruises and enough WTFs from other advisors for

less than optimal outcomes that you you start to turn it around. so I think of that as like my corporate boot camp. I can't tell you how much I learned in a 12 month period in such a short a lot of bumps and bruises in such a short timeframe. pivoting to the client side. So I spent about 12 months in ad in in an administrative role. That's where I met Mike Lehman. He's the CEO of Premier Path.

And we formed a relationship on the advisor side. That's when I actually stepped into the business of advising clients. there were a couple of of interactions on the client side that were light bulb moments. I remember one time, it was a cold call. picked up a cold call, he agreed to a 15 minute meeting, and here I am. I have all the best answers to wealth management and meeting his goals. I say, Sir, we're gonna sit down. I'm gonna understand your goals, I'm gonna understand.

Your balance sheet. I'm gonna understand when it is you want to retire. We're gonna go through this thorough process. it's gonna be very thorough, inclusive. We're there's n no stern left, no stone left unturned. And we're gonna be able to answer all of your questions. He said, Whoa, I gotta stop you there. That is way more than I ever hoped to to get out of this conversation. I don't have time or bandwidth to deal with this. we gotta put this on pause. And guess what? I never got him back on the phone. So

It showed me that what was valuable for me wasn't valuable for him. And when I talk about this owner's mindset helping serve business owners, we talk now a lot about what I would call cowboy logic and cowboy planning. It's like there are so many competing demands on our clients' time, particularly the business owner. What are the highest three highest impact things I need to do today to keep the ball moving? Where are my blind spots? I'm leaning on you to keep me on the path and don't bore me with the details. So this sort of

I'm not interested in planning. I don't want to read 30 pages of analysis that you've done. Bottom line up front, cowboy logic. What do I need to do today to get me to the next step? I don't know if you can relate to that as a business owner of competing demands in your time, needing bottom line up front type stuff. How does that how does that resonate with you?

Anthony Codispoti (39:33)

Yeah, for sure. I'm more of a a planner than not all, but a number of the entrepreneurs that I've known. I've had some business partners who are very much like ready, fire, aim. You know, let's just take the shot and then we'll worry about where it was supposed to go after the fact. but yeah, you know, there's there one of the things that I think makes small businesses

successful or gives them a leverage point over larger competitors is the ability to see an see in a gap and move towards it quickly. And so you get used to moving very fast on ideas. maybe too many ideas at once, but you extinguish the ones that aren't working and, you know, throw fuel in the fire for the ones that do. so yeah, what you're describing, that phone call with that, you know, that particular perspective client, I get it. It's like

He was probably putting out 10 fires that day. He had something very small, very particular in mind for the conversation he was going to have with you that day. And you just completely blew his brain by like, I had three minutes for this. What you're talking about sounds like three hours. There's just not even the headspace for me to set aside for this in the moment.

Derek Wittjohann (40:44)

thousand percent, a thousand percent. We we say among our team we say don't never give the client homework. He felt like he was getting homework that day. And Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (40:51)

Yeah. Well put. Yeah.

Derek Wittjohann (40:54)

Yeah. So that was that was rough.

Anthony Codispoti (40:55)

So, what one of the other things that I think are, really powerful educators, you know, when I think the time when people really learn the most in life is when they're in these really uncomfortable situations, when we go through really hard things. What are some really hard things that you've been through, Derek? What did they teach you?

Derek Wittjohann (41:15)

Yeah. So I shared I shared the one story. That was my professional crisis. I'm twelve months into my career. Things are not working out. I'm putting I'm giving a hundred percent but getting zero. so I think that was that was probably the hardest of my professional career. I I mean, talk about the Sunday scaries, walking into the office just waiting for the three three things to go wrong, but I didn't know why. And kind of overcoming that through, like I said, what are the three or four things that I can control?

Which is attitude, effort, time in the office, and then eventually that that that turned around. I think look launching the business was huge. We're challenged, failing and learning all at the same time, right? I mean, when we talk about now we're business, so we have to know the inner workings of employee benefits.

taxation legal structures, S corps versus C corps versus LLCs. we're managers, right? Now we're we're managing a staff and leading a staff and they look to us in a very different way than they did before. A lot of that was outsourced to Merrill, who kind of hired and built our team now that's a that's on us. you know I w lessons lessons we learned along the way early in the business, we said yes to everything. I think that was a really

really tough thing and we had to be brave and confident to be able to do it was at Merrill or even just earlier in our career, someone had dollars to invest in a pulse, like, come on in. And then we really had to be mindful about where our time was best served, who we were uniquely qualified to help, who we enjoyed helping and where it made sense. So now we're very selective with the types of clients we work with. and I think that helps both sides, right? No one wants to it doesn't make sense to fit fit a

square peg and a round hole. and yeah, I think the biggest biggest adrenaline rush is the night before a launch, wondering if your entire livelihood book of business, everything you've been doing for the last four years is gonna gonna pay off or this was all for nothing. You have families to support, significant others to report back to. So that was a lot of war stories I can think of.

Anthony Codispoti (43:18)

When you go when you think back to some of those really hard times, what was helpful for you in getting through that?

Derek Wittjohann (43:25)

Yeah. I'm a big I mean, inside of the firm, you'll hear this all the time. We're we're almost sick of saying it, but it's so true is grit resilience, find a way, figure it out, be comfortable being uncomfortable. we always talked about finding the finding the hard route in the face of the easier path. And I I think having that mindset of look, being a business owner, you're

Inherently irrational, right? You believe something, you believe that you have a better product than everyone else. And if you didn't believe it, you wouldn't be running your own business, right? So having the having the conviction, being comfortable, being uncomfortable, you know, just doing it, right? I mean, know Nike is in stock market freefall right now, but I remember how many times I look back to that slogan of just do it, control the factors you can, remember why you did it. It's to it's to serve your clients.

And I I think that helps get you through the tough times.

AI as a Tool to Improve Client Conversations

Anthony Codispoti (44:16)

Mm. We talked about how a little bit about how you guys are using AI. I'm curious if you see AI as a potential threat down the road to some of the services you guys provide.

Derek Wittjohann (44:28)

Great question. I'm a I'm a big I feel really strongly about where the the role of AI ultimately for our industry as well. I actually don't think it's a threat. I think it's gonna help supplement and enable more client conversations. I'll give you an example. We had Mike Lehman had a conversation. He w we enjoy traveling, so we talk about traveling a lot. he's planning it an upcoming trip.

He works with a really high end travel advisor, right? So he went through, he researched researched his whole trip on AI, had a full itinerary, found all these ideas, brought it to his travel planner, his trip advisor, and they had such a better conversation, right? He's not the one booking it, he's not the one doing it. I think you still want boots on the ground. You want to know, you want to know the local speak.

Of no, no, no, you never go to this restaurant on a Wednesday because that's when whatever, yeah, I'm making stuff up. But it it enriched the conversation, it brought an informed client to the table to where that advisor can now step in and have a more meaningful conversation of what she's qualified to do. And I see it the same way in our businesses. we do encounter, in fact, pretty frequently, someone comes up and says, Here are the 10 things I found on Chat GPT about this. What do you think? And if anything,

If anything, it reinforces our case because I'm like, boy, if you had ever acted on one, two, and three, that would have been a disaster. I'm glad you brought it to me. Let's talk about why it's not best for your situation. But hey, six and seven, totally on board. It's something that we do with clients all the time. you're not going to go to jail with the IRS. This is something that's that's very commonly done. And in fact, it's something that we would recommend. So long story short, I think it brings an informed client, an informed consumer to the table.

It helps enrich client conversations that way.

Anthony Codispoti (46:10)

and I'm seeing the same thing, at least in the current state. and I'll use a lawyer example. I did some research on a topic, took it to my attorney and said, Hey, what do you think about these strategies? You know, AI has come out with these points and think that's the this is a a really good path forward. He says, Well, yeah, go ahead.

Derek Wittjohann (46:29)

Let me ask you sorry, no, keep go keep going.

Anthony Codispoti (46:33)

And and he said, Well, the problem is that three of these things that it's saying are legal.

Those were proposed law changes that never took place. And the AI

Derek Wittjohann (46:42)

Mm. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (46:45)

saw whatever document it saw that this was a proposed law change that never happened, never actually went through. If I had trusted AI and gone down that path, I would have been in in a dicey situation. So I can take it to the attorney and I know the questions to ask now, right? It it it is a more well-informed conversation.

And then the attorney can be the expert and says yes, no, no, yes.

Derek Wittjohann (47:11)

Yeah. Let me ask you from a from a psychological, from a behavioral standpoint, when it gave you the list of ten, pretend your attorney wasn't there, scale of one to ten, how confident would you feel in implementing any of those ten?

Anthony Codispoti (47:24)

that's an interesting question. I thought you were going to ask how confident I was in its recommendations, and I was very confident because it it makes a very strong case. In actually implementing them,

I'm trying to remember the exact situation now.

I think I would have needed help. I I don't I I I still would have gone to the expert to help me implement them, for sure. Yep.

Derek Wittjohann (47:50)

Yeah.

Even s speaking personally, whether it's the attorney, whether it's the the travel advisor, when it comes to actually clicking the button and taking its taking, you know, making the leap of faith and saying, All right, I trust this enough to, you know, put my money where my mouth is, I I still think someone having an having a person that's been there, done that, has the battle scars, I think that's invaluable in for information and context to add to those those types of conversations.

Anthony Codispoti (48:18)

I'll use a a another example. This was very recent, was buying a new gas grill for the house and was doing research.

Derek Wittjohann (48:24)

Hmm. What'd you get?

Anthony Codispoti (48:26)

got a Weber 315. It's partially assembled on my back deck right now.

Derek Wittjohann (48:28)

There it is.

Anthony Codispoti (48:30)

And in the research, you know, I was like, here's what I'm looking for. And Claude came back with some suggestions and like this is exactly what you want. And I'm like, okay, find me customer reviews that talk about how.

Good, this product is like I want some third-party validation. And it found me some of these customer reviews, and it says, okay, these are the best ones. Well, then I went and started looking for the reviews independently myself, and I was not finding the same thing

Derek Wittjohann (48:58)

Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (48:58)

that Claude was reporting. I don't know where the disconnect was, but like it was a helpful shortcut, but I'm not ready to put 100% of my faith into, you know, any this wasn't even that big of a decision to.

Gas grill, it's a thousand dollar investment. It's, not a a big deal if it goes wrong, but I wanted to get it right. Yeah.

Derek Wittjohann (49:17)

Yep, totally.

It and I think I do think the one area that's gonna find challenges that we're we're we're seeing is what I would consider single use, single purpose technologies. That I think those are gonna have the toughest times, I'll tell you what I mean. Is for like a brief moment we had the SaaS pocalypse, everyone thought Salesforce and all these companies were gonna go to zero. That's turned out not to be the case. I think when you're multi-use, multifaceted, have so many

lines of business tied into your right your user stack, I I think you're you're pretty pretty bulletproof. But I find these smaller smaller single purpose technologies are gonna be challenging. So I'll give you an example. I mentioned them earlier, but a technology that helps with reading wills trusts and estates and builds an estate diagram. That's one technology we invested in out of the gates. I think they're gonna struggle or

Tax right, tax software that reads your recent return and tells you certain band bandwidths. Here's where you are to the, you know, before the next next tax bracket, here's where you are for certain other, you know, government government thresholds and things like that. proposal software, investment proposal software. So these single purpose technologies, we're like, this is crazy. We're just gonna spend the couple of weeks building it ourselves, get it to

Anthony Codispoti (50:29)

Mm-hmm.

Derek Wittjohann (50:30)

a hundred percent.

customize it to what our clients are asking for, what our needs are. why would we why would we spend the money on a license that gets us eighty percent of the way there when we can do it exactly in the way that our clients expect? Guess what? They all talk to each other now. They're not plugging and playing all these different non communicating platforms. So I if there is one thing that that's gonna have trouble, I think it's the those single purpose tech softwares.

Anthony Codispoti (50:52)

Very

interesting. As you were talking, my first thought was, well, those are probably good acquisition targets for a bigger platform. But to your point, like if the bigger platform isn't already offering those services, way easier for them just to build it out themselves. As I hear you talking about building it yourself, you know, without the the development experience, everybody can vibe code something to some extent now.

Derek Wittjohann (51:16)

Yeah, that's exactly right. And look, we still gotta be we gotta know when we're ahead of our skis, right? Bring in the experts. We have a couple of resources in the background, make sure it's secure, safe, all that stuff. But yeah, for sure.

Derek’s Legacy, Integrity, and Business Values

Anthony Codispoti (51:28)

Derek, as you think about the work that you're doing now, what is it that you most want to be remembered for?

Derek Wittjohann (51:33)

question. I think

I see us as our clients see us as what I would call a wartime conciliary, right? Who's my first phone call gonna be? Who are the people that help me solve my issues? figure it out. We say that Premier Path is a family and we serve families. And I think if our families, our clients have an issue that doesn't even fall inside of our immediate scope, we're the people that get it done, we're the people that drive solutions. again, wartime conciliary, we're next to them in the field of battle.

helping them get it done.

Anthony Codispoti (52:06)

What's one rule that you would never break in business no matter what?

Derek Wittjohann (52:11)

Integrity. We talked about it before. I I shared my quote. I mean, I wish I could make that sexier because everyone says integrity, but it's it's back to that. Do right by your clients and the profits will follow. It is a trust business. People do business with who they know, like and trust. And you know, I I think it's integrity. Inside, I could rattle off a few other mantras we have. we always say find a way, figure it out, get it done.

lifetime of learning, comfortable being uncomfortable. don't keep your clients homework. It's not your fault, but it's still your responsibility. That's my favorite quote of the last 12 months. but these are all things we're sharing it, but I'm really proud of our team. Not only are it's not a top-down approach, they bring this to us. So we we have a really tremendous team. I think culture is built from from the inside. And I just rattled off 10. If there was any that that caught your attention, I'm happy to share more, but

Really proud of the some of the values and yeah, values and standards that we've set.

Anthony Codispoti (53:06)

I like it. And before I ask my last question, Derek, I'm going to do three quick things for the audience. First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with Derek and learn more about what they're doing, go to premierepath.com. It'll be in the show notes, but two simple words, very short URL, premierepath.com. And Derek, who are the folks that should be contacting you? What's the right kind of business fit?

Derek Wittjohann (53:28)

Yeah. I would say business owner in that small middle market space, twenty five to three hundred million of revenue, some sort of multi-generational component is something we excel at. someone who's considering the future, the succession of their business, whether that's transitioning to the next generation, selling. but if if you're a business owner in that space, I can tell you that we've probably seen it before and we can be of value to you.

Anthony Codispoti (53:49)

Also, if you're enjoying the show today, please take a moment to subscribe wherever you're listening. See, it also sends a signal that helps others discover our podcast. So thanks for taking a moment to spread the word. And if you advise business owners on their wealth, retirement, or legacy, here's a lever most of your clients don't know they have: a program that counterintuitively turns their healthcare plan into higher net profits, freeing up capital they can redirect into your planning and raising the value of the business itself.

Backed by Bain Capital Insurance, so it's solid, bring your clients that win and they'll pass your name along. AddBackBenefits.com. So, Derek, last question for you. A year from now, what is one very specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?

Derek Wittjohann (54:36)

Question. I think so we manage about 1.2, 1.3 billion of assets under management. The next goal within our sites is is two billion. at some point we'd like to grow through we've been growing organically through attracting new client relationships. At some point we would like to bring like-minded advisors as part of our team as part of the journey. So I look at 12 months. If we had another like-minded team that helps us.

serve uniquely serve our business owner clients, I think that'll be a great great threshold for that.

Anthony Codispoti (55:05)

That's

fun. Okay. We're gonna have to check back in on that one. Derek Vit Johan from Premier and Path. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I appreciate you being here.

Derek Wittjohann (55:17)

Anthony, it was a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Anthony Codispoti (55:19)

Hey folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, put that into action today.

Connect with Derek Wittjohann:

Website: premierepath.com