How do you engage an audience in a topic that may not be the most interesting? And how do you ensure that important information gets retained? You can’t force people to pay attention, but you can get creative about how to initiate a conversation, hook your audience, and retain their interest.

Alex Egan takes a unique approach when it comes to compliance conversations. On paper, Alex is the Director at Kaufman Rossin, a full-service public accounting firm, leading the regulatory compliance practice. Alex’s creative outlet as a comedian is what keeps his work interesting and his audience engaged. Compliance can be much more compelling than you might imagine.  

In this episode, Alex talks with Rebekah and Mac about his creative approach to engaging audiences about compliance, the benefits and pitfalls of conversations with compliance regulators, and the biggest challenges currently facing RIAs. Share your thoughts at hello@smart-ira.com.

Key Takeaways

• [01:12 ] - An introduction to Alex Egan.


• [03:17 ] - Should compliance be a selling point? 


• [05:00 ] - What happens when firms outgrow manual processes?


• [07:25 ] - How Alex brings creative outlets into his work.


• [13:24 ] - Alex’s most helpful community of industry professionals.


• [16:09 ] - The pros and cons of conversations with compliance regulators.


• [22:36 ] - The biggest compliance challenge facing RIAs — the SEC’s Modernized Marketing Rule.


• [25:53 ] - Why it can be difficult to comply with performance advertising obligations.

Quotes

[06:17 ] - “The process of having controls in place, of having technology solutions that the customer may be interacting with at various points in the relationship, these sorts of things may give a comfort level to a customer. That lets them know that there's a controlled process in place versus just talking to someone and writing a check and saying, ‘great, okay, where did my money go?’” ~ Alex Egan

[09:57 ] - “I always ask myself, ‘how do you get people interested in something that they're not interested in?’ And the key was simply engagement. and that's why I was able to use comedy as a way to keep people engaged in the conversation. If you're performing comedy, but at the same time delivering very important information, the retention goes up significantly and people walk away enjoying the laugh, but they also remember what you were talking about. ~ Alex Egan

[18:27 ] - “Even if you're not willing to open up in that big room or ask the question broadly [to regulators], certainly when you develop those relationships and conversations, you're a little bit more comfortable having those conversations later on.” ~ Alex Egan

Links

• Alex Egan on LinkedIn


• Kaufman Rossin


• FBI


• National Society of Compliance Professionals


• SEC.gov

Connect with our hosts

• Smartria


• Mac on LinkedIn


• Rebekah on LinkedIn

Subscribe and stay in touch

• Apple Podcasts


• Spotify


• Google Podcasts

Learn more about Smartria

Creativity, Community, and Compliance is brought to you by Smartria, an award-winning compliance management platform for compliance consulting firms and RIA networks. We excel at making the complex and frustrating world of compliance simple to manage and easy to understand. Want to get a behind-the-scenes tour and check it out? Reach out to us at hello@smartria.com and take a peek at our website, smartria.com.