Evolving into a virtual practice can help cast a wider net for clients

Sheila Chesney can tie her practice's evolution directly to technological advancements that brought her from using her phone and e-mail as primary forms of communication to video calling.

Sheila Chesney can tie her practice’s evolution directly to technological advancements that brought her from using her phone and e-mail as primary forms of communication to video calling.

As the principal of Chesney & Co. Inc., a 14-year-old firm that has $74 million under management, she found herself in the novel situation of building a virtual wealth management practice from the ground up. Though the firm has blossomed from being a one-woman practice to having three employees, Ms. Chesney’s investments in technology transformed the firm from one that was just getting by to one that was thriving.

“The mistake that most advisers make when they start making a little bit of money is that they take it all as income,” she said. “You have to keep plowing the money back into the business and make it grow.” Ms. Chesney practices what she preaches, moving 7% of gross revenue annually back into the business and its technology.

After leaving a career with IBM in Connecticut, she set up her practice in South Carolina in 1996 and began marketing it the following year. At first, she considered leasing office space about half an hour from where she was based, near Hilton Head. She opted instead for a virtual business, which would allow her to work with clients outside of the immediate area.

“I couldn’t source the clientele locally, so I went virtual — and we were going down that road whether we liked it or not,” she said. The firm’s physical headquarters are on her property outside Beaufort, S.C., in a building separate from her home.

The move from communicating strictly via e-mail and the telephone to using Skype and Cisco WebX video chats proved to be a major step in Chesney & Co.’s evolution, not just as a way to contact clients but to communicate with employees.

Clients’ and employees’ facial expressions are more telling than what they say on the phone, Ms. Chesney said.

The office and its document management capacities also evolved as the firm moved from having only one server to multiple servers, and onward to document management systems Worldox and NetDocuments. The firm’s portfolio management software also underwent an up-grade, going from Schwab Performance Technologies’ PortfolioCenter to systems from Black Diamond Performance Reporting LLC and Tamarac Inc.

The climb to the next level hasn’t always been easy.

Ms. Chesney said she had a hard time being a good manager for her employees. “I was always moving 5,000 miles ahead of them and leaving them in the dust,” she said. “To be a successful practice, you need people recognizing that they’re part of the team, and you have to develop them and coach them.”

The human-resources function has since been outsourced to another firm that also conducts Chesney & Co.’s weekly staff meetings and helps with reviews.

E-mail Darla Mercado at [email protected].