Jonathan Miller is the CEO of Parsonex Enterprises, a group of companies that provide financial products, services, and solutions to investors. He is a passionate entrepreneur and executive, specializing in creating and developing businesses as well as establishing effective marketing systems. His 20+ years of experience and visionary approach helps him to recruit and train financial advisers. He was also the executive producer of Publish or Perish, an award-winning dark comedy film.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Jonathan Miller talks about Parsonex Enterprises and how it helps people
How Parsonex influences their behavior
Building a successful financial services firm through partnerships
Tips for creating company culture
How does Parsonex differentiate itself in the marketplace?
Jonathan’s advice for achieving success as an entrepreneur
The journey of producing the Publish or Perish movie
People that have positively impacted Jonathan’s leadership style
In this episode…
When managing your finances, it's crucial to have a trusted advisor who can provide the products, services, and solutions you need to build and protect wealth. With the help of a financial advisor, you can develop a comprehensive plan that considers your goals, risk tolerance, and financial situation.
Jonathan Miller believes the overwhelming number of financial products can make it challenging to know which ones are right for you. He shares his journey of establishing a firm that provides financial advice and assistance to people, as well as helping advisors build strong client-advisor relationships.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker sits down with Jonathan Miller, CEO of Parsonex Enterprises, to discuss how to thrive in the wealth management industry. Jonathan explains how Parsonex helps people in the financial services industry, how to build a successful financial services firm through partnerships, tips for creating company culture, and advice for achieving success as an entrepreneur.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Sponsor for this episode...
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At Quik!, we provide forms automation and management solutions for companies seeking to maximize their potential productivity.
Our vision is to become the leading forms automation company by making paperwork the easiest part of every transaction.
Meanwhile, our mission is to help the top firms in the financial industry raise their bottom line by streamlining the customer experience with automated, convenient solutions.
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of our past guests have included Cody Foster of Advisors Excel and Justin Krane of Krane Financial Solutions. Today I get to speak with Jonathan Miller, CEO of Parsonex. And today's episode is brought to you by Quik! the leader in enterprise forms processing. When the last step to earning your clients business requires processing forms, don't ruin a good relationship with a bad experience. Instead, get Quik Forms, make processing forms a great experience and the easiest part of your transaction, visit quikforms.com to get started. I want to give a quick shout-out to Fueled Ismaily a friend I met over a decade ago online and have watched become a successful designer in Albania. Check out his website at fueled.com. All right, today's guest Jonathan Miller is the founder and CEO of Parson ex Enterprises and its affiliates. As you're going to see today, he's a visionary with over two decades of experience and has propelled Parsonex become one of the fastest-growing companies in North America. Jonathan is an accredited Wealth Management advisor holds a multitude of financial industry designations, and he personally leads Parsonex Wealth Management Division. Combining his financial expertise with a passion for the entertainment industry, Jonathan recently ventured into cinema producing his debut feature film, Publish or Perish through elation media. The film has already won numerous awards at film festivals around the world. Wow. That's so exciting. Jonathan, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Jonathan Miller 1:51
Hey, Rich, thanks for having me on. I appreciate being here.
Richard Walker 1:54
Now, look, if you haven't heard this podcast before, I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they build and deliver a great customer experience and the challenges to growing their own company. Jonathan, I'd like to understand your business a little bit better. How does your company help people?
Jonathan Miller 2:10
Well, it's central to who we are. In fact, our purpose we say is to make the lives of those we serve better. We're in the service industry, right? We're not selling widgets in the financial services industry. And I would say there's really two classes of people that we help in different ways. And of course, the most important in our business is investors and clients of our firm. And I think that we help them in a lot of ways. But while we're an independent firm, and we sell investments, what we found over the years is that the number one influence on their long-term investment success is their behavior. And behavior is most influenced by the decisions people make, or that they don't make. So we sell investment products and provide a lot of different kinds of services. We're very diverse in that nature. What we really offer clients is advice. And I think that for people to receive advice, and for people to be able to give advice, it's important that you have a relationship that you earn the right to give that advice, you can't just blindly put people into portfolios. And so we have fantastic relationships with our clients. And we guide them on their journey to financial independence, and then not just to retirement, but through retirement. And obviously, in wealth management, it's a little different because we're allocating resources for people who've had a sale of a business or inherited a bunch of money and their retirements pretty much set, but they then want to focus on their lifestyle. So service is probably the Hallmark that differentiates us. But we do that through relationships and rendering advice based on financial plans and goals and dreams and aspirations. The lifestyle, people want to lead in the future. So we advise them on that. The second group of clients that we help our customers, they're really our partners. We have a tremendous group of financial, independent financial professionals around the country. And I think the average person, the average leader, a decade or more threshold, we set to kind of not to give a good number on that. But they've been with us for 14 and a half years. So I have a lot of people who have really helped build the business with us. And so, while we're an independent firm, as you know, in your business, there's lots of different broker-dealers, there's lots of different investment firms out there and the advisors and reps have choices of how they want to do their business who they work with. So even though ultimately it's of course about the clients and we have some core philosophies and we really partner with our advisors, and help them build their business, help them be successful help them deliver that service to clients. So we really view the financial advisors and independent financial professionals that are affiliated with our firm who are in business for themselves and have been with us a long time and help a lot of the key people and we call them Salesforce partners, have helped build the company since the beginning, we've got to see how their careers have progressed, we've added synergy to that. And we just try to be a partner with them and service their business and be responsive and not just give them checklists. And so those are the things that we do. And we love it. And we are a highly relational firm. And so we get fantastic feedback from both our advisors and our clients. And those are the two main groups.
Richard Walker 5:29
So Jonathan, you said something interesting to me, because I don't know if you knew, but I left technology to become a financial advisor, which then led me to say, I got to solve this forms problem, because I'm never filling out forms again. But aside from that, when I was an advisor, what I realized is a lot of the work I did was psychological. And I think you distilled it so much better. And when you said it's about influencing behavior, right? So I'm curious now, if you think about how your company is organized with your advisor team, and the tools you provide them and the solutions you provide, how do you create a better experience and influence behavior that serves your customer better?
Jonathan Miller 6:08
Great question. So first of all, I would tell you that what we have now today, people see the glory, they don't know the story, it wasn't always this way, right. So I wish I could tell you that in 2007, when we launched the Parsonex Securities in end of November 2007, that we had this roadmap, and this perfectly laid out plan. And that's just not how it's happened. We had an idea that we wanted to take care of clients, and we want to take care of independent advisors and have a home for them that was different. But a lot of the things that we have today, they evolved over time and developed over time. So I think in any business, you have to be constantly improving, and fixing little things, and soliciting feedback, not thinking you have all the answers. But over time, a very strong culture and a very strong system has developed. And the first thing is we're structured differently for our advisors, we actually looked at, hey, how can we be unique, because we're obviously not going to be as big as some of the largest firms out there. There's a lot of different independent firms where every advisor is a business unto themselves, which is what I was sold on in the beginning, it sounds great, until you're like, wait a second, I'm not sure I want to do all these things I kind of want help and support. And do I need a good form system? So we use the word partnership. And what we did is we actually collaborated a few years ago with a managing partner, one of our attorneys with a very large law firm. And we were asking, how do you guys run the law firm? How do you guys structure that and so what we've come up with is really a partnership system, we call it Salesforce partnership, because technically, we're a corporation with multiple companies. But the way that we treat each other that kind of the mutual benefit, having expertise in various areas that people can help each other with or refer people to the structured more like a law firm, and the person who advised us. His name is Alan Walker, he's actually managing partner with Omer and Burn in Chicago, comes from a securities background. He's the best securities attorney, I know in the industry. And we've had a great long-term friendship and relationship with him. But he said, Jonathan, there's a lot of different companies out there. And they're all kind of similar in the sense that he said, they're all apples, maybe different color apples, different variations of Apple, different size apples. But he said, what you're creating here is an orange. And that was music to my ears, of course, but it's still in process. And so we have a fantastic group of advisers. And I think it's about servicing them being responsive. They're in business for themselves. So we can't do it for them, we don't just, you know, they still have to go work and do a lot of things. But just anything we can do to make that process simpler, and to your point, forms, logic and systems that make the execution of it simpler, right, as simple as possible, but not simpler. Those things I think are so important, and frankly, lacking with a lot of different firms about how they operate. We do a lot of companies that still do paper applications and handwritten, which there's an element of that, that's good, because you can be very personable, but about it with finance. But what we found is that you want to have as little friction as you can, in the actual process and implementation do an outstanding job because it really is about the relationship. And you don't want to be like, all right, I got a client who said they'll invest and they're going to do this, oh, boy, now we got to go through this arduous process to get everything taken care of. We want to make all those things as smooth as possible. And really just build long-term relationships. Do the best we can with what we have, where we are.
Richard Walker 9:36
I love what you're saying, Jonathan, because I mean, obviously, you're a visionary. You're not just hey, I'm going to start a business. You want to start a business with passion, and a goal in mind and try to drive to better outcomes. And I love that love entrepreneurs like yourself, because that's where I'm from. I mean, I want to see people do things better. And one of the things that we figured out is that when companies focus on how they improve the experience for their customers, they actually improve and influence the growth of their company. So I'm curious, you've taken this partnership strategy really serious? Does that mean that advisors collaborate with each other? They build strong bonds and relationships with each other? Or is it purely with you guys back at the home office or?
Jonathan Miller 10:17
No, we were very, very blessed. We have an amazing culture of people helping each other. And I do think that's uncommon in a lot of independent firms. Here, you go to conferences, and you see people or you go to industry-type things, but everybody's doing things their own way. We have just been very fortunate that we've had a lot of people coming over the years, but the core group of partners advisors up and we call them up. And we have identified some people's up-and-coming partners who are building their businesses. And frankly, some of them are going to outperform us veterans at some point in the future with they have enough time and compound interest behind them. But I think that it's big and little things. I think that Elon Musk said he didn't invent a car, he because all the technology was there, he just made 100 little things better, make batteries a little bit better. And then when you do those things in aggregate, then the net result is something that then feels it looks very different. I mean, there's definitely been bigger shifts over time, we made strategic changes, but the core philosophies of who we are how we treat people, which that's what culture is, right? Culture is not about, hey, we get an extra day off. And we got this kind of coffee versus, we work I think used to have beer there, which they don't have any more things like that. It's about how people treat one another and how they interact. And, yeah, we are so blessed, because the leaders in our firm, they all have very different businesses, there's a philosophical alignment on doing things, right. And serving clients and building great relationships, the referrals that they get, I see them from clients, it is just unbelievable. I mean, they do a good job. And in fact, we modeled some of the systems that we have based on what we've seen from them. And we try to share best practices. So we have online collaboration communities. But we're small enough that people can also just pick up the phone or send an email on questions that they have. Because you know what you know, you know what you don't know, but you don't know what you don't know. And so having a network of people that really do help each other and there's connection, you know, financially because there's in the partnership thing, their stock options, and things like that, that they level, but I would tell you, it's not the financial that drives it. It's really the way that they were helped when they were building their businesses by others, and they give back and they encourage each other because that's another thing, independent advisors, you're out there by yourself, right? It sounds so good on the front end, independent, highest contract, and you realize, wow, I'm really just running a business. And I really just wanted to help clients, and just have a great lifestyle, and I got to do all these other 50 things that I had to hire three or four or five people. So we try to make it as great of a business structure as possible. But I think that having people that when you're going through tough times, you can call and just get encouragement from or to celebrate wins with, right? If you're all by yourself, it's like, good job.
Richard Walker 13:18
I think that's amazing. I think that's really, really awesome. Because a lot of people have a scarcity mindset of like, oh, I'm gonna compete with you, I can't share with you what I'm doing. And I know when you go to conferences, you see people, they aggregate, they do communicate about it. But if you built a firm of entrepreneurs, and one thing I know about entrepreneurs, they love helping other entrepreneurs, because we've all been there, right? I think that's phenomenal. I'm curious, because I'm a big fan and student of company culture. I'm wondering if you've distilled it down to any core concepts or words even that describe and drive your company culture? And if you haven't, that's fine. I just don't know.
Jonathan Miller 13:57
Yeah, let me pull it up here, actually. So I don't misplace it. We do. Yeah, this is from a couple years ago. It was funny when we were developing it. One of the gentlemen on our team, Fred Boyd said he's worked with us for since 2017. And as a consultant, and we really say he makes people better. He's actually not from the financial services industry has a business background and a nonprofit background. And we knew each other prior to that, and he started part-time and then has been with us since then. And when I shared this a couple years ago, I said, oh, this is I can't remember if I called it a vision statement or a purpose statement. He goes what really you know, it's this and like, so this is probably not the technical jargon of I'm not sure which of those categories it falls into. But like I told you, our purpose is to make the lives of those we serve better. And in that end, we say we want to deliver superior value and service. I think when you get okay value and service, you give your, you don't look refer people for that, right, you're not enthusiastically engaged. The second thing is we want to build profit Goal and impactful relationships. And the third is we want to always do our best and strive for excellence in, that's always a pursuit. We can't control a lot of things are out of our control in the business. But I think that the funny thing is in that second one people said, build a profitable and impactful relationship was is that saying you're prioritizing profit, I said, I didn't say profit presses. For them, it has to be mutually profitable and beneficial. It's like the way the Japanese culture does business. And I'm not sure if you're familiar, I have a buddy of mine who he runs something called the English language College. He's my best friend since growing up in Germany, actually, and he runs three different schools in California, but he's traveled the world. And he said, different cultures around the world have different ways they do business. And I won't say who you said on the negative end of this, but he had said that a lot of people are trying to just nickel and dime you for everything they can get. And he said, doing business in Japan is very unique, because he said he's talking to them, and they get this deal. And they negotiate hard. But then at the end, they say, hey, we just want to make sure we want this to be a long-term relationship. Are you guys making enough money off of this deal? And he's like, yes, we are. But thanks for asking. It changes the dynamic of those relationships. And so those, those are the things that I would say, broadly define our culture. And then there's lots of details, because it's always in the execution, that it makes a difference.
Richard Walker 16:22
I think these things are important, actually. So let me take a step back, I actually believe that what truly drives customer growth and how you help your customer win, is by having a strong well defined culture, which leads to then delivering better customer experiences, which then leads to growth. And I actually defined my company culture before I ever started my company. Because what I was doing in college, and in my younger years was I was going from company to company, and I had the luck, I got to work at Arthur Andersen and consulting side a different client every six to 12 months. And I got to experience so many different company cultures, that I suddenly realized what would empower me to do my best work are the four tenets of our company culture, which are, and they're all equal. So doesn't matter the order, but they are, we must design software, so easy to use, it doesn't require a user guide, because who wants to read a user guide they just want to use it has to be intuitive, that also applies to processes and how you deliver services throughout your organization, we must provide outstanding service and my premises if you get a product that you need help with and you can't get help, the product is worth zero to you. Third, you have to do what you say you're going to do. If I say I'm gonna call you at two, I'm gonna call you at two, even if I'm going to call and say, hey, we don't have the answer yet. We're going to follow through it we say we're going to do and fourth is we love what we do. And when you find people who love what they do, it becomes infectious. And I think everything kind of spills forward. And man, Jonathan, it sounds like you are building an amazing organization over there.
Jonathan Miller 17:49
I love you if I was writing them down. I love what you just said, if you don't mind it, do you mind if I expand on those?
Richard Walker 17:55
Go for it? Yeah, I love these things, I want to share.
Jonathan Miller 17:57
I want to tell you that when you talk about the experience, it's very interesting, because we've talked about this a lot in our industry, especially financial services, as much money as are some of the big companies. I'm sure you've seen that they designed these very expensive proprietary systems that take a couple of years, by the time they're designed and they're already a little bit obsolete, not totally, and over time becomes more, you could contrast the experience of buying a car from a used car dealership, which I am not a car guy, I at least drive enough miles at least for many years. And that's just because I'm a mechanical idiot. But if you go there to, that's one experience, or just even buy any kind of a car, but then you go into Tesla. And I have some friends that have bought Tesla's I had one as a rental car with my wife and Nashville this weekend. And it's just the walk-in. Everything's paperless. It's a super simple process. Same if you go into the Apple store, right, it's just a different thing you check out and besides the fact that there's tons of people, so the service is they're so popular that probably maintaining service is difficult, but the process is so simple and easy, and, frankly, enjoyable, that people tell other people about it, and how often people brag about processes in anything. We don't do that the airport, that's for sure. Right?
Richard Walker 19:18
It becomes a differentiator, right? I mean, these are the things that you're looking at for how do you differentiate yourself because you didn't want to just be another apple on the tree, or in the orchard, you want to be the orange. So you look at these types of things as a visionary and entrepreneur. Right.
Jonathan Miller 19:32
Well, the other one I'll piggyback off on and I think it's become more important for me, since we've had success and kind of been where we're at in the last several years is that I actually say having fun is part of the DNA also. Because I might have to incorporate that we have a fun group and I said, hey, we put the fun in fund. They roll their eyes and they're like, it's kind of goofy, but I think you that. And that doesn't mean that every aspect of it is fun, right? There's a difference between joy and fun. Matthew McConaughey has a graduation speech super popular online, if you haven't seen it, it's fantastic. But he talks about the difference between joy. And I think people say, well, I just want to do something that's fun. Well, maybe fun first people is sitting on the couch, having edibles playing video games, and not being productive. But I think that joy comes from doing things that we were passionate about. And as you know, building a business, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of work over a sustained period of time. So it would seem in film, you mentioned film, we could talk about that later. If you don't love it, if you're not in it because you enjoy it, if you're just doing it to make a living, or to pay the bills, or just to get rich, I guess some people do that. I think that just from an overall lifestyle and health standpoint, we're all here just for a flicker. So you have to really, I think enjoy the things is mean to enjoy every aspect when you have to make personnel changes or have things that are tough decisions. That's not necessarily always enjoyable. You just got to discipline yourself to do them. But having fun being passionate about what you're doing, makes everything worthwhile. It unifies it energizes. And so I love that that's one of your things. And that's also, I think, central to us, we take all of our advisors annually on, we used to do it twice a year. But in the last few years, we've only been doing it once a year, but we call them fin trips, financial independence trip. So we have traveled, I think we're on number 24, we're going on a cruise to Barcelona, oh my gosh, we're going on a cruise out of Barcelona, a Mediterranean cruise, my wife and I, our family did that in 2019, we had to postpone it a couple of years for the company trip because of COVID. But that's a next May. And it's not for selling any particular product. And it's all compliant and all that sort of stuff. But we did that we just built it into the structure from a compensation and reward standpoint, because and people have said, well, can I just get the money or hi ago and I go, no, you cannot. And they said what do you mean, you can I said, you're this is about building relationships, and culture and experience. And the talks that happen the cross pollenization the ideas that come out of this sometime were big or small. It's like, oh my gosh, that's a phenomenal idea that then takes one person up. And so yeah, I didn't like it when I was a kid because I thought success was about hitting certain things or having certain things and as we all know this not really, it is really a journey. And if you're not enjoying the journey, if it's just miserable all the time, then it's very difficult to keep that sustained effort without having serious health problems or going crazy.
Richard Walker 22:39
I love that. Yeah, when we talk about empowering people to do their best work. And so people do the work they love. I also say you don't love every task, like I do not like expense reports, it's one of the last things I ever want to do. So I look for things I can get rid of, or give to somebody else. And hopefully find somebody who does want to do those things and offload their work that they don't like to somebody else, etc. So I think that's super fantastic. I have two other topics I want to bring up, but we're gonna run out of time. But no one asked me about your movie?
Jonathan Miller 23:07
Well, before we go there, can I make a comment? Sorry, just because it's so powerful. And you're right, we have to do this again in the future when we get more bandwidth. But two things, I think, that are central from an entrepreneurship standpoint, because I do speak to other entrepreneurs, even in our business. And I've had the privilege of a lot of our advisors that I've seen their path to success. And again, people see the glory in the last several years, a lot of them, they go, oh my gosh, they've always been successful. But that wasn't the case. Right? They had a long, hard journey there. But when we went to talk to entrepreneurs, I think a lot of times they look at me or you or other people that are successful in business, they said, well, their personality, it's almost like we make excuses for people make excuses for of course, it was inevitable, it was inevitable that we win the awards for the building, but we would have all this growth in a great company. And that's just not the case. And what I've told people as leadership as an entrepreneur is really surrounding yourself with people that compliment you, because there's probably 50 Things that you have to be good at and actually do well to have a great company, not one or two, it's a lot of them. And you're probably only good at a few of those things. Maybe you can do others but you either doesn't motivate you or it doesn't inspire you or you're not as good as other people. You're not as good as you think maybe at some of those things, but to be self-aware, like you were saying, surrounding yourself with people that compliment you and that do those other things and also giving the bigger purpose that it isn't about one person. It's about a team. My son just went off to college, he's playing college football, Weber International University. He's a quarterback worked very hard again. It was like a long journey. If anybody's got, an athlete in the family. It's a lot of long journey for them to get where they want to go and but I think football is a great analogy for it is you need to have a quarterback you need to have running back, you need to have offensive and defensive players, you have to have coaches and trainers and meal programs. And you have to have people that are selling the tickets and scheduling the games, there is such an infrastructure around it have such a varied talents that it takes to succeed in any endeavor, that it's critical that you recognize that in business, that you're really building a machine and yet early on, you're gonna have to do it all you're gonna have to do all the different things and the one or two people to help you try to negotiate deals so that, can I get you lots of work for the least amount of money because I have no money, right? We've all been there. But you do those things. Good. Yeah.
Richard Walker 25:44
This is one of the reasons I asked the very first question of how do you help people because I think humans are social creatures that depend on others. And it's exceptionally rare that one person can be completely independent and live a life independently. And it's really about how do we help each other because we do depend on each other. And we play these different roles, the quarterbacks not throwing a long bomb into the end zone to himself.
Jonathan Miller 26:06
Exactly. In your business, I just think also is similar, but it's different. Because you know what can make things more efficient team, right, because you can take things tasks off of it. But I think the business that you're in technology, streamlining things, we live in this amazing aging world. And so much of the talk in the media is negative about things that are going wrong. But when you think about the things you can do as far as automate that stuff you provide for software vendors and companies that can be so streamlined compared to what they were back in the day. We live in an amazing society. But it is incumbent upon us as entrepreneurs and people to use those tools and not get frustrated by them, find people to help you. Because the more you can implement those things, you get to spend your time on what I think is important, especially in our business. And those are the uniquely human things use technology and systems and structure to make those processes as simple as possible. But then you get to lean into the things that are uniquely human.
Richard Walker 27:09
Yeah, in fact, that's one of the things I'm really excited about, we're going to be launching a product this fall, that's going to eliminate the human factor of getting data off of forms, everything's going to be 100%, streamlined, AI driven, to give perfect data off any form, whether it was handwritten filled out digitally e-sign doesn't matter. So systems can be more fluid. And people can focus on what they do best, which is nobody's best work is reading a form.
Jonathan Miller 27:35
Amazing. By the way, we're very interested to follow up on that conversation. That sounds incredible. And you're completely correct. It's like how do you make it because the flip side of that is people for some people, especially in our industry, there's a lot of older advisors who don't want to they want to just do paper. So rather than forcing them, technology needs to enhance our effectiveness and efficiency, not replace it. And so if you're better at taking paper forms, you have a solution that you can do that. But then still it works in the ecosystem, the structure, I think it's an amazing thing that you're doing.
Richard Walker 28:04
Super, super excited about. Okay, so you're talking about having fun, have to imagine this movie that you became part of was fun. So what's this movie? Tell us about it?
Jonathan Miller 28:14
Yeah, the movie is called the Publish or Perish. It's a dark comedy that was written by a tenured professor at the University of Colorado, Denver named David Liban. He's actually the writer, director. And then he's the my producing partner on the film. And he had made other films and other movies. And it's about a English professor who is relentlessly pursuing tenure, he obsessively pursuing tenure, which I didn't fully I knew the word tenure, but I didn't know what that was until I got involved with this project. And how much work goes into it and how much pressure and stress it is because basically, you can't lose your job unless you do something really stupid, which is one of the opening lines of the movie. And he accidentally in this process kills a student. And by the way, it's dark comedy, so rated R. So then from that point, it was accidental. But then he makes many bad decisions, that kind of compound on each other. And so you have to be okay with dark comedy and with the language and things like that violence, a little bit of all of the above, but we won a bunch of awards at film festivals around the world. And it comes out on August 18. on Amazon, and other places. We're having a Hollywood premiere on the 19th. We also got a waiver from sag because the sag actors and we had a lot of sag performers that made this film great. They're on strike right now. And a lot of them are really hurting. So we're actually doing a fundraiser in conjunction with sag that probably by the time this comes out, it'll already have happened, but potentially would be ongoing. And, yeah, we're just supportive of the people because it's not the superstar actors that are wealthy already that are affected by it. It's all the people that this is their job and their craft and all the affiliated people. So yeah, it's very, very fun and exciting, and we're kind of nearing the end of that process.
Richard Walker 29:59
I think people Forget how many different people participate in the making of a film, the crews that go out and set up things and the scouts and just so many different people. It's funny. I had a friend produce a movie out of his own budget, and he actually used my office as one of the filming locations, which was pretty cool. So my old office in Torrance, California was actually in a movie.
Jonathan Miller 30:21
Torrance, is at. That is in LAX. I think. Correct?
Richard Walker 30:26
Yeah. Yeah. About 10 miles south LA.
Jonathan Miller 30:28
Andreas I taught is that actually, I'm not sure if he's still there. But he was for a very long time. And there's still the same area. So
Richard Walker 30:34
Oh, man, Jonathan, and I unfortunately, got to wrap this up. Because I could ask you so many more questions. And you're right, we'll have to do this again. Before we wrap this up, I have another really important question to ask you. But before that, how should people find you and connect with you?
Jonathan Miller 30:49
Yeah, the best way is to go to the parsonex.com website. And my schedule is very busy. In fact, that's the one thing when you start growing, it's like, I want to talk to everybody and encourage young entrepreneurs as much as possible. So thanks for these types of things are great, because it's a way that you can reach broader audiences. But my schedule is pretty buttoned down these days. But Parsonex.com, you can just go on there, I can click the About section in connect with the I think it's the Office of the CEO or something like that. Sarah Putnik is my executive assistant. But yeah, you just go on there. And it depending on what capacity you want to connect with us, we point you in the right direction, and then also on social media, which under my profile, it'll have all the social links there as well.
Richard Walker 31:29
Awesome. That's so cool. All right. So here's my last question, who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style? Or how you approach your role today?
Jonathan Miller 31:38
Oh, the biggest impact? I would say, that's a tough one. But in the broker-dealer investment in history, is actually my mentor, I would say, who I really followed in his footsteps, not knowing I would do that, at the time, he actually passed away a few years ago, his name is David Wickersham, just a phenomenal guy. I was this young attic college rep. 22 years old, I was trained, and like every lap people, like they'd all go sell insurance. And so I got a little bit of training, but I joined their firm, which is an independent firm, when my wife and I moved to Colorado in 2000. And there was zero reason that he should have taken any amount of time with me, because it was a low-producing rep, who didn't know anything, didn't have a network or any experience, but he did over time. And over the years, and then, in 2007, when we started our own firm, he actually was supportive of that. And we actually had some business integrations with them, that not immediately, but over time, because we said, hey, we don't have the ability to do this, can we do it with you, but in the last years before he passed away a few years ago, we kind of would meet once or twice a year for breakfast, and was really comparing notes about the industry and then just talking about life. And so I vowed AMISOM, right? There's definitely time since then, I've totally run this scenario by him, because he would have some wisdom, because he's one of the, just started with EF Hutton back in the day, like he has all this wisdom. But yeah, I would say that in the investment in broker-dealer industry, and it wasn't like, we spent tons of time together, I was registered as a branch manager with the firm for seven years. But then I had moved on, but we stayed in touch. And his son actually now runs the firm. And I would say, yeah, it was one of those people that for whatever reason, because I thought back on it, there really wasn't a good reason other than I guess, he liked me, to a certain extent, because there wasn't a business reason early on that he should have spent any amount of time with me, but he did. And I think sometimes those are the people that impact us the most.
Richard Walker 33:47
He must have seen that you're a visionary, he must have seen your aptitude and potential before you did, which is really cool.
Jonathan Miller 33:55
Without going into details, I'll tell you, he helped me avoid mistakes from time to time, and he would, when you get approved as a broker-dealer, he does the seven-year like, wow, they approve this as a broker-dealer. Theoretically, that sounds fine, right? But then it's like, I've been a branch manager, I theoretically know how all this stuff works, but you have to actually run it. And so yeah, he just did a lot of things that were just very, very generous and very helpful but he's in a better place today. So we get to remember him and then pass it on to other sadly I'm getting out sadly, I guess it's the way life is getting older myself. So now, I one point I was the young person in the industry, the young person winning trips, and now I'm like, definitely middle age and so I get to pass that on to other folks as well.
Richard Walker 34:43
Yeah. And you create cruise ship trips for your entire team. Amazing.
Jonathan Miller 34:48
Trips, financial independence. Thin.
Richard Walker 34:51
That is awesome. Like I want to give you a big thank you Jonathan for being on our show. Speaking with Jonathan Miller, CEO of Parsonex being on this episode of The Customer Wins, go check out Jonathan's website at parsonex.com. And don't forget to check out Quik! at quikforms.com where we take the work out of paperwork. I hope you've enjoyed this discussion. We'll click the like button, share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me.
Jonathan Miller 35:18
Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you.
Outro 35:22
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