Episode 258 – Scaling a Multi-Billion Dollar Advisory Practice through Mastering Leadership with Jon Kuttin

Episode Transcription

This is the Ultimate Advisor Podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful and scalable practice. Each week we’ll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets and create the advising practice that you’ve dreamed of. You’ll be joined by our hosts Bryan Sweet, who is moving fast towards a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practices marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let’s jump into another amazing episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast.

Brittany Anderson 01:07

Welcome back to The Ultimate advisor Podcast. Today I have with me an exceptionally ultimate advisor Jon Kuttin is a Barron’s Hall of Fame Advisor with 30 plus years of experience leading and growing a financial advisory practice. As the CEO of Kuttin Wealth Management a private wealth advisory practice of Ameriprise Financial Services. John helps guide the strategic vision of the practice as they seek to become known industry wide as a leadership development factory. driven by a mission to build leaders and give back to the financial services industry. John regularly speaks and contributes articles on CPA alliances, leadership, acquisitions, recruiting and other topics for numerous publications, including Forbes, financial advisor magazine, and Barron’s. His nine and a half billion dollar AUM practice is headquartered in hotplug, New York and has offices across the country. Jon, welcome to the show. 

Jon Kuttin 2:12

Thanks Brittany, super excited to be here. And you know, I guess what, what they say sometimes is longtime fan first time caller. So I’ve been following you and Brian and your team for quite some time I listened to your podcast. So really excited to be on here. And I will say the most impressive thing that you just did was you actually pronounced hop hog correctly that I have to ask, did my team coach you on that? Or did you act you actually know what hotdog is? Because that was impressive. 

Brittany 2:24

Yeah, so, none of the above. I saw that in your bio. And I Googled it. And I was like, I am not going to butcher this because I know that without a little research. I’m not going to know how to say it. So there’s my secret.

Jon 2:56

super impressive. I can I can share that. Lots of lots of people butcher that one. So you did extremely well. So well done. 

Brittany 3:05

Oh, so funny! Well, Jon, I would love to hear I mean, nine and a half billion dollars of focus on leadership. You are moving and shaking and making waves in the industry. So can you share maybe the behind the scenes of the Bible as to kind of what got you to where you are today?

Jon 3:23

Yeah, so thank you. I appreciate that. I started in the business in 1994. So it hasn’t quite been 30 years, but we’re just about there. And this is the only thing I’ve done. So I literally interned when I was in college, my junior and senior year. Back then the company was called IDs financial services, which became American Express financial advisors now Ameriprise started this or traditional advisor back then if you were decent, by the end of your first year you were anointed a training manager. So you’ve now at the you know, for me at the age of 22, I was now ready to train the next crop of young college grads that came into the business. And I spent about eight years of my career and leadership about eight years into my leadership career. I decided to move back to being a full time adviser. So I literally Brittany didn’t have the guts back then to go lease an office space because it was a big commitment. I actually decided to actually finish my basement and my old home in we call it the mezzanine level of my home. It sounded a little fancier, right to be the mezzanine level as opposed to the basement. And ultimately, we went to work and the first thing that I did Brittany, was I thought it’d be smart to partner with CPA firms. So I built my first CPA partnership like an alliance in 2001. Fast forward today the firm has over 100 CPA relationships and it’s been a very big catalyst for our growth. And then I did my first m&a transaction in OCE. You and we’ve done dozens of m&a acquisitions since that point in time, I think it’s good to give a little background. About 14 years ago, I stopped working with clients personally. So I have not been a client facing advisor for about 14 years or so said, Hey, I’m going to really look to kind of turn my practice into an enterprise and what Dan would call a self operating company. And today, I won’t say, we’ve got all of it figured out. But the business really does run without me. And to me elite leadership, as you eloquently said in your opening remark, is kind of that key Jenga block we call it. And our culture is very much about leaders developing leaders. Yeah,

Brittany 5:46

you know, we could go so many different directions right now, Jon, and I want to unpack something here with you, because I would I would bet that some of our advisors tuning in are going okay, so he’s created massive success in many different ways, between the leadership between your m&a space between the CPA relationships, so can we press the button and go a little bit deeper there, you know, you kind of touched high level on some of the things that you did to remove yourself. That’s a dream for a lot of advisors to be able to say confidently, I really haven’t been seeing clients for 14 years, but we’re still growing. So can you talk a little bit more about some of the scalability that you kind of helped create? And what did that take?

Jon 6:30

I guess they say it’s simple. Not easy, right? So so my favorite terms and at the end of the day, we’ve got this concept that my leadership coach Ray Kelly taught me and it’s called simple, complex, simple, the vision that you have always starts off very simple. I want to build a million dollar a year wealth management business, a $10 million a year wealth management business, I want to have advisors who work for me whatever it may be, that’s a simple vision. And inside the mountain is this word called complex, right? And really, what that means is man, an idea isn’t worth anything. And you’ve got to get through all that complexity. And then it becomes what my leadership coach call, I’ll give credit throughout the process today. But profound simplicity, I’ve always looked at things Brittany as as trying to connect the dots backwards, I can think back to well, what were the pivotable moments in my career, that I can say when I did that thing that created the next 10 F rope 10x growth opportunity. So for most financial advisors, what I found is zero to about a million in gross revenue, what I’d say is, it’s all about grit, and it’s all about sales. Second phase of business growth, one that retains clients, meaning your systems, your processes, your client experience needs to be so strong, that you got 98% retention, or better the other part of it is it asks to actually be something that you can teach to other people, and that it’s tangible. So when you think about that for a minute, and you go, what does that mean? It means well, how many times a year do you see your clients and what is the client experience look like? And that client experience needs to not only retain clients, but it has to create organic growth, more business with your existing clients. And in addition to that, attracting friends, family, right introductions, from the very clients that you ultimately serves, and the centers of influences that you ultimately work with. So that’s phase two. And then phase three is what I’ll call scaling. As I look back that there’s three ways to scale a business. One is through capital and cashflow. The second is technology. Look what we’re doing right now we’re broadcasting a podcast that will get out to all of your listeners in the the free world. And then the third phase is human capital, if you have human capital, but you don’t develop the human capital, and they don’t get better at what they do to bring that big vision that you have to life, then ultimately, what you have is an expense. So if you start to think about your human capital, not as an expense, but as an investment, ultimately, the better you get at leading people, the better they’re going to actually get. And then you build this culture, of being able to actually bring the vision to life through that human capital. Yeah,

Brittany 9:29

you know, John, I think what’s so fun about listening to you talk about this is that not every advisor got into this industry, to be a leader to run a team to emphasize the notion of human capital that you just talked about. So John, I think one thing that you have done so incredibly well, is this notion of leadership. And I would love for you to talk a little bit about just why is showing up as a great leader. Why is this so? important, especially in today’s world with all that’s going on. All that’s happened in the last few years just talk about leadership in general and the importance in our industry. 

Jon 10:09

Yeah, couldn’t agree more. Yeah, the way I think about it, the definition of leadership is the ability to influence someone to do something that they wouldn’t do without you. But when you think about what’s going on in the industry, today, businesses are getting bigger and bigger. I mean, the business that you help run is a tremendous business. I mean, it’s, it’s an enterprise. And you know, you use the word people. And I’ve always used the word people to lead as well. And that’s really what we’re in the business of, right, as a financial advisor, you’re actually a leader of your clients as well. Think about it, what we do some call it sales, I call it leadership, because we have the knowledge base, the client that you serve, or the prospect that you serve, it’s your job to influence that couple or that individual. And when you change the avatar, right, from I lead my clients, to I lead my people, meaning my my human capital, ultimately, you have to kind of go through this paradigm shift a little bit, I would share, there’s three types of leadership. So the first type of leadership is what I was just describing the old command and control, right, which is how, for those of us who have been around for a while, that’s the old school, when you think of a leader in the past, it was somebody with a strong presence that was able to pound his or her fist on the table. We can accomplish anything as a team, follow me and I will get you to where you want to go. The second type of leadership is appeasement leadership. And this is if you’ve ever been part of a culture where the leader is wishy washy, and it’s just like, let’s let’s do everything by committee, what does everybody else think we need to move really, really slowly and get everybody’s opinion and feelings as it relates to that. And then the third type of leadership, which is really what I aspire to be, and what I believe we’ve we’ve started to move in that direction, is what I’ll call a vision based leadership, how do you build a vision that’s big enough for every single person inside of your organization to get what they want for themselves inside of your vision, where you’re actually bringing people in, who as you know, Britain, they have unique abilities, those are your who’s that you could put them in the right seat on the bus. And ultimately, I call it moved northeast, we’re aligned on our vision, we’re aligned on our mission, we’re aligned on our values, we understand why we do what we do, I have this saying I’d ask our listeners to just think about your thinking for a minute. When I say this, right, I call it play the freeze game, my saying is until you get yours, it’s hard to help other people get theirs. And what I mean, when I say that is, it’s okay to want what you want. People want what they want, I can tell you, I needed to make several million dollars in my financial planning practice, until I could really become a servant leader, I had to get what I wanted, I have my own baggage to unpack my mom and dad find bankruptcy. And when I was in college, and for me, finances is security. And there was a level of security that I needed that I can go, then I know I’m actually good. And I could not ever worry again about the decisions I make and how it relates to me financially. And I could focus fully on the people and helping them get what they want. And when I was able to kind of make that pivot is really when the business started to explode, where I can really act more as a servant leader. 

Brittany 13:55

Well, there’s a there’s a lot to unpack here. And one thing I want to press on because I think this is such an important topic that you brought up, John, but it’s talking about, you know, leadership leading by vision, right. And, you know, one thing that I think that so many visionary entrepreneurial advisors could benefit from, is having somebody either on their team, a coach or somebody that they can lean on to really help them clearly articulate that vision. You know, I think a lot of times a lot of the advisors that have come through our coaching program, we talk about this all the time where you know, they’re like, Hey, I I get really excited or I get back from a conference and I’ve got all these ideas and it stacks up against this vision. But then my team looks like deer in the headlights when I bring it to them because I’m overwhelming them I’m bombarding I’m whatever the case is. So I think that you know what you talked about John and you’ve worked so hard over the years and put the right people in place to help articulate that vision which I think is so incredibly powerful. The other thing you you kind of did this little like drop and I want to pick it back up because I think it’s so important is you made a comment about how leadership is important to your clients as well. So I want you to talk about this because there’s a couple of things that are happening and that have happened in the last few years. We have pivoted now from being a complete face, you know, one to one type business, you meet with your clients, you have the conversations, you help them with their plan, you incite their dreams, all these great things. And then the next client comes in and you’re face to face, and you’re having these constant interactions. I mean, you talk John about, you know, what are you doing as far as like your different prospecting events? And how are you engaging? And what’s your retention look like? So I would love for you to push on, you know, why is leadership so important today, especially as maybe human interaction directly is declining a bit, we’ve got zoom. Now we’ve got technology, we’ve got, you know, generations that a few short years ago, we’re not embracing that that are now. So can you just talk about that a little bit, and maybe where the future pacing of the industry is going there, one

Jon 16:03

One of the biggest things that we’re focused on right now is exactly what you just said, which is, I love by the way, video conferencing, I think it’s an amazing tool, we extensively use video conferencing. With that said, one of our focuses is making sure that we do everything we can to kind of give clients a hybrid approach. When you sit in a room with someone where you break bread with them, you have breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a cup of coffee, you have them when they leave the room, it’s easy to say it’s convenient to do everything virtually. But it’s something that we actually track as a KPI inside of our own organization, is we want to make sure that we continue to have our advisors be belly to belly have that level of relationship. And it’s actually a leading indicator that we’ve started to measure. Because I think it becomes a lot easier for a client to disengage from a relationship or not to meet the next generation, the beneficiaries of your client from a how to you know, keep the wealth inside of the business to the next gym. If you don’t necessarily see somebody, any at any point in time, when you think about the other part of your question, you hit me with a couple there. I call that the cutting two step because I usually ask a lot of questions myself. from a leadership perspective, here’s something that is really hard for advisors to do. And I think when they can napped on it, they really start to have like an epiphany moment. And I’ve helped some advisors connect on this. So permission to be slightly arrogant to the audience. So I apologize, right?

Brittany 17:54

I’ll forgive you this time. 

Jon 17:57

Okay, if you’re an advisor listening in, you’re a million dollar producer, you’re a $500,000 producer, you’re a $2 million producer, whatever it may be, for that matter, a $10 million producer, I genuinely believe that if I said to you, as that advisor, hey, I’d like to meet with you once a quarter and coach you in your financial planning business, I genuinely believe to the bottom of my soul. That that is an unbelievable value proposition for that particular advisor. I think I know more than the average financial advisor not all I’ll learn something in that meeting as well. But I probably know more than the average million dollar producer about how to build a $10 billion enterprise. Right. So the flip side of that is you’re a financial advisor at some point, when will you believe that your clients really, really, really need your advice and believe in the value that you provide? Because I can tell you, if you serve 150 or 200 or 300 families, I could tell you, you know more about financial planning, tax planning, estate planning, you know, you name it portfolio management, of course, insurance, then all of your clients, I’m gonna say 99%, maybe have one in there who you know, used to do and knows what you do. So, I really look at it and go, Man, an advisor would be lucky to be coached by me. I think when advisors start to realize that their clients are genuinely lucky to have you, who’s listening to this podcast wants to get better. You’re a student of the business. You’ve got this great client experience. You’ve got a servant heart that you’re genuinely trying to help. That is when you start to win all of the opportunities from your client, not because you make more money because they do an in service withdrawal from their old 401k Not because you got a referral to their buddy that they play golf with. Get through that they quit because those clients and those prospects are genuinely better off with you at the helm as their leader.

Brittany 20:08

Yeah, you know, there was a saying that I heard recently and it was something along the lines of, you know, courage is a decision. But confidence is earned. When you talk about like, you made the joke about the arrogance for a moment. But truly, I think that that is one thing, when we look at what separates the great advisors from the good. You know, oftentimes, the great advisors are the ones that are like, Hey, I’m not doing this by myself. I’ve got great people in my corner that are coaching me, I’ve got mentors, I’ve got coaches, I’ve got programs I’m involved with, you know, I’m stepping outside of the proverbial box that I live in every day, leaning into the genius and the insight that other people have already created, so that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Also, when you talk about that personal belief, and this actually, it pivots me into another question that I have for you, people, I believe, can sniff out a lack of confidence and a lack of competence. Very quickly. I know that you and I are both huge advocates of Dan Sullivan, and strategic coach. So you have seemed to have mastered this notion of 10x. Thinking, there’s the book, it’s 10x 10x is greater than 2x. We’ve recommended this book so many times over to our audience. But can you just talk about how you’ve actually internalized and embrace this TEDx thinking? Because it shows up literally in every single thing that you’re talking about here?

Jon 21:38

I think you guys also familiar with EOS as well, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, entrepreneur operating system. So we’ve run on EOS. I think for for four and a half, maybe almost five years now. I had an unbelievable learning from a business partner of mine who was part of a business that we helped consult CPA firms on how to provide business advisory services. His name is Paul Latham well built and sold an accounting firm, I think in 2001, for like $40 million. So back, still a lot of money, but back then that was a lot of money. And what he really did was he was a consultant to businesses, and help them with advisory work to scale their business, maximize their profits, and then ultimately sell their business. And Paul has this saying, very similar to Eos, for dx, whatever it is that you all use out there, if you use anything. There’s two things I’m gonna say that Paul said that I think really made a difference in my life, as a business person. So the first was, he said, what you have to do is make the intangible tangible, one of my biggest growth opportunities as a leader was that I would say things to your point before Britany, they were clear to me, I understood the vision. And I couldn’t understand why no one else saw it or acted on it. And most business owners have been there themselves, and quite frankly, are there right now, it’s intangible until you write it down. And actually make it real. That’s what making the intangible tangible. And what most business owners do is they have so much time energy thinking about their baby, which is their business, but the people who work for you, for the most part, they don’t care about your bit, we’d like to think that they do, and some do, and those become your partners long term. But most when they leave at five o’clock, they’re gonna go enjoy their lives, you have the curse, as the business owner, that you’re thinking about it, but you don’t give someone the chance to catch up. So if you can take the time, and actually write it out, and actually show a vision in writing, which is where Eos, all those things work is those are tools to make the intangible tangible. The other big thing that I’ve learned from Paul, and this one’s really important, he calls it the three ingredients of business success. And he uses the word vision, plan and desire. So I had the opportunity to speak at a conference for Paul front of about 200, financial advisors and CPAs. And he spoke before me, and I was listening to Paul’s presentation and this time, he said the same thing to the audience. And he said, here are the three ingredients of business success success. He said vision he said plan. He said write plans, WRI te said write plans. And when he said write plans for me. That’s where it actually clicked. How will you make the intangible tangible by writing your plan down? So those of you who understand EOS if If you don’t, I think you should go go by traction. And there’s another book that I forget which it’s called rocket fuel. rocket fuel. Thank you. Yep, exactly right. And what what that is all about is it’s, well, what’s the big 10 year vision, your V to dream big, right? And then break it down into ultimately, what are the rocks that you’re going to actually create, and then live to, in a binary way actually make those things happen. That’s the plan. It’s written rocks that are KPIs that are leading, not lagging indicators, which we could talk a little bit if you’d like Brittany, because I find a lot of people get confused on what a lead versus what a lag indicator is. But man, if you can start to use systems and processes like that, in your business, to take all that complexity, make the intangible tangible, have a 10 year vision, break it down to rocks that are leading indicators, you make it really easy and systematic and clear, to actually help your your team bring your vision and therefore their vision to life.,

Brittany 26:09

Yeah you bring up such a great point, John, in this whole notion of lead versus lag, we talk about this a lot as well. And you know, to summarize, and I want you to add color to this to is your lead measure. Those are the things ultimately that you can control. Those are the things that you should be focusing your time, energy and attention on your lag measures are the direct result of those leads. But to your point, John, there’s a lot of people out there not just in our industry across industries that confuse those. And they end up focusing on the lag. And then they wonder why the needle is not moving. It’s because the attention is not focused on the right activity. So is there anything else that you would add there, John, because I think we’re very aligned in that vision there. 

Jon 26:50

Here’s how I look at it. I have 200 people, Brittany, who work in my organization, they all have three rocks a quarter. So 200 people, three rocks, a quarter on average is 600 rocks a quarter, right? 600 rocks a quarter times four quarters in a year is 2400. Rocks, let’s assume I hire no one else for the next 10 years, which we will 2400 rocks times 10 years is 24,000 leading indicators accomplished. That makes sense so and as managing the power we’ve all heard, right, people overestimate what they can do in a year. And they underestimate what they can do in a decade. 40 quarters is a really long time. And that’s the key that I find is when most people think about rocks, they pick a table stake, ask for referrals three times a week, the right way, for 13 weeks, you’ll ask 39 times I bet you you get one client, that would be the lag, losing 10 pounds in the next 13 weeks as an example, is a good goal. But it’s a lagging indicator, that’s what I want to accomplish. So if I want to actually lose 10 pounds, what I could say is I am going to eat no more than 2000 calories per day, I am going to exercise no less than 30 minutes per day. And I am going to drink no less than a gallon of water per day. Those are all to your point Brittany, controllable, I call it binary. If I did those things, as long as I pick the right leading indicators, at the end of the day, 13 weeks from now, when I jump on the scale, the lag indicator should be I lost 10 pounds. And ultimately, even if I lost seven, I made progress, I might need to tweak my leading indicators for the next quarter. But ultimately, that’s the best way that I’ve found to explain it to someone who doesn’t really understand it. And it’s really, really hard for people to do for some reason until you get that simplicity on the far side of complexity. Once you get it, you can accomplish anything in the world that you want to accomplish. You just have to figure out well, what are the things that are binary that I just need to do over and over again?

Brittany 28:57

You know, John, I think that those examples are so they’re so golden. And I even find myself I mean, this is something that I eat, sleep and breathe, but I have to put myself in check sometimes. Or I’m saying, Brittany, are you actually focusing on lead indicators right now? Or is that actually a lag. So it takes consistency, it takes repetitions, and it takes that kind of self awareness that we’re not perfect. And we still have to continue to make sure that we are measuring the things that matter and what’s going to move the needle. So John, I’m sure at this point that our audience members are wondering how the heck can I get more of this guy? Where can I learn? So can you just talk about quickly your podcast? I think there’s so much value in it, and I highly recommend our audience members to tune into it.

Jon 29:41

Sure , thank you. Yeah, so I have a podcast. It’s called Quantum growth for financial advisors. And we have conversations just like this. So it’s generally either me blabbing or me interviewing somebody in the industry. So lots of conversation around leadership mergers and acquisition. is partnering with CPA firms, things along those lines. So I think I think I love your podcast, I get a lot out of it. I think a combination of both of our podcasts would be, you know, listeners if they like yours. And clearly they do because they’re here, I think they’d also enjoy some of our episodes as well.

Brittany 30:19

Awesome. I love it. Well, John, you said a little bit earlier that you had this dollar figure in your mind to where you could get to a point where you could truly focus on being that servant leader and giving back. So I believe that you have maybe a new venture that you’re promoting through your consulting group. Can you talk about your give back? And what that looks like?

Jon 30:42

Yeah, sure. So to your listeners, I actually don’t coach. So you know, one of the things that I don’t do anymore as I did Coach advisors years ago, but I stopped doing that just I have 80 plus advisors on my own team that I spend my energy actually coaching. But I as you can probably tell by my wordiness today, my passion, Dan Sullivan talks about, you know, if if the thing that you do, you would do for free and you can’t stop talking about it, that’s probably your unique ability, right? We’ve heard Dan talk about that. I love talking about the financial advisory, space leadership, entrepreneurism, how to actually grow enterprise value, etc. So what I did is I created something that we call the financial advisor success syndicate. It is a free platform, right? So today, we have about 300 advisors in there. And really what it is, it’s myself and six other founding members, who are seven total, including me, who have expertise in everything from mergers and acquisitions, to leadership development, to marketing, etc. And really, what are this it’s a community to ask questions, we do some webinars, we call them, like, like this, specifically for the group. And it’s just the place to get better the way I’ve been describing it. It’s almost like a family office for financial advisors, all of the expertise you need, in one place free of charge. Advisors have been loving it. So if anybody’s interested you go to it is, where’s the website? Again? I’m sorry, it’s www dot join F A. S s.com. And we can get everybody have link, as well.

Brittany 32:39

Awesome. We will make sure that is in the show notes. John, before I ask you my very last question. If somebody you know, if they want to connect with you on LinkedIn, follow you anywhere else. Is there anywhere else that they can get a hold of you? Or do you want them to focus on the financial advisor success syndicate? Kind of your last minute plug, give

Jon 32:49

Give the podcast Listen, listen, the financial advice success syndicate. If anybody had a question, just google me, you can find my email. And I’m happy to answer a quick question. But that is kind of why we built the podcast and why we built the Syndicate, it’s it’s a, it’s a, you know, a community just for that, that I can go check. Once a day, I was getting lots of calls from advisors going, I’m gonna get a half hour of your time. So now I just say, wanted to go to the syndicate. And you can not just get my time, but you can get a bunch of people on my team’s time. And then, you know, other folks who have different specialties in the industry as well. But thank you for that.

Brittany 33:23

What a brilliant give back. So John, my last question for you is, what did I ask you that I should have?

Jon 33:30

I think you were perfect. And I think you asked me everything that you should I think I gave you very long answers. And what I love is in listening to your team’s podcast, I feel like we’re very aligned. I think we’re we’re kind of doing very similar things maybe in our own different way. But I would just share with you love the abundant mentality and what you guys are doing to help the industry and give back so much. Appreciate it. I’ve learned a lot from your podcast and appreciate you having me on yours.,

Brittany 34:01

Well it has been my great pleasure, John, we know that time is the only commodity that we can’t make more of so you chose to spend it with us today, sharing your brilliance with our audience. And for that we’re very grateful. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity is a lot of fun. So that rounds out today’s episode of The Ultimate advisor podcast. We’re gonna catch you right back here next week. Hey there, Brittany Anderson here. If you are loving what you’re hearing on our ultimate advisor podcast, don’t keep us a secret. Share us with other advisors that you think would benefit from the messages that you are hearing. The easiest way to do that is to simply send them to ultimate advisor podcast.com. And if you want to learn a few other ways that we could potentially serve you as an advisor, go check out ultimate advisor mastermind.com As always, we are so happy Good to have you here with us as part of the ultimate advisor community, and we look forward to a continued relationship