Blue Ocean Global Technology Interviews Aliex Parker | Vice President of National RIA Sales

ALIEX PARKER | VICE PRESIDENT, NATIONAL RIA SALES 

Aliex Parker joined Triton Pacific Securities in 2020 as the Vice President of the Northeast Markets, IBD Channel. Prior to Triton Pacific Securities, Mr. Parker spent several years at ProShares as the Regional Consultant of the Southeastern Seaboard territory, successfully generating more than $375 Million in gross ETF sales. Before joining ProShares, Mr. Parker was Regional Vice President for Provasi Capital Partners managing the Mid-Atlantic territory. 

Mr. Parker earned a Bachelor of Business Administration, specializing in finance, from the University of Texas at Tyler. He holds Series 7 and 63 FINRA registrations.

Blue Ocean: Please tell us about yourself.

Aliex Parker: My name is Aliex Parker, and I am the Vice President of Triton Pacific’s RIA National Sales Division. Growing up around the business sparked my passion for this field. My grandfather has been a financial advisor for almost 40 years, and I remember visiting his office in the early 90s as a young kid, watching him manage his practice. On the wealth management side, the focus is on meeting clients, understanding their goals, and providing them with peace of mind for retirement. I quickly aligned with this mission as a child, realizing the impact you can have on people’s lives by giving them financial peace of mind.
Now, working on the distribution side, my day-to-day involves supporting, collaborating, and partnering with financial advisors across our industry. One of my favorite questions to ask wealth managers is, “Tell me about your most satisfying client success story.” The answers often involve steps taken to help clients move from point A to point B, such as assisting a family with financial illiteracy, helping them buy their first home, pay for college, or achieve their retirement goals. These stories resonate with me, especially coming from a single-parent home and understanding the challenges of managing money and achieving financial success. Seeing the impact my grandfather had on his clients reinforced my desire to be in this industry and support as many people as possible.
After earning my finance degree, I saw two different paths: one was to become a financial advisor, as I had always envisioned, or to pursue a role in retail distribution. I realized that as a young professional, gaining the trust of older clients to manage their retirement assets would be challenging. Therefore, I chose the distribution route, working with top financial advisors, learning from them, and planning to eventually implement these insights in my own practice. While my ultimate goal remains to transition into wealth management, my current role allows me to support hundreds of advisors who, in turn, influence tens of thousands of households. By providing advisors with better insights and guidance, I can exponentially extend the reach and impact of our work.

Blue Ocean: What’s one trend from your industry that excites you?

Aliex Parker: The interconnectedness and increased adoption of new technologies like Zoom and LinkedIn. These tools provide efficient platforms to connect on a global scale, enabling collaboration with clients and individuals without barrier. Despite the vast scale of our industry, it’s relatively small, especially for someone like me who is keen on accelerating growth and advancement. Building relationships and networks is crucial in our industry. Developing an expansive network of connections can open doors in your professional journey and enhance the value proposition you provide wealth managers frequently tasked with solving a broad spectrum of challenges.

A few years back when I was working with Wirehouse advisors, I sought ways to differentiate myself. Typically, in my role, you visit offices and buy lunch to get a few minutes to share your firms story and products. However, this process has become so commoditized that many advisors just look forward to the free lunch. To stand out, I shifted focus to value-added content—non-product-related, engaging material designed to help advisors address the largest wealth transfer in history, helping increase the likelihood of retaining assets through this shift. A significant part of this focused on best practices to engage Millennial and Gen X prospects, who are pivotal to the industry’s evolution over the next decade. Initially, I faced pushback from advisors who were reluctant to engage with their Boomer client heirs or utilize new tech platforms like Zoom. However, I found ways to bridge this gap by personally exhibiting the impact of social media marketing, leveraging LinkedIn to engage with prospects at scale while leveraging various phone and virtual meeting technologies to increase the frequency of communication. These methods have proven to enhance reach and efficiency by decreasing the need for travel and allowing easy, face-to-face interaction from anywhere in the world.

The exponential adoption of these technologies post-COVID has been remarkable, forcing the industry to embrace new tools for the better. LinkedIn has provided a platform to aggregate my network and maintain better contact with the hundreds or people I meet through the course of business. This exciting evolution enhances collaboration, idea-sharing, and the ability to connect with people across the industry, finding common experiences through technology.

Blue Ocean: What underpins your success?

Aliex Parker: I attribute it to my upbringing in a single-parent household, where two things were instilled in me: work ethic and adaptability. I think of it as “playing in the traffic,” where you have to actively put yourself in situations to create your own luck and desired outcomes. This involves getting creative with leveraging your network and finding commonalities or shared experiences to break through with new potential prospects.

Another factor that sets me apart is my focus on service and humility. In this business, your character is paramount; it’s all you have. The firm and logo behind you might change, but people engage with the person, not the firm. Understanding and clearly defining your value proposition is crucial. It’s important to consistently demonstrate your value, understanding, and guidance to potential partners. While many aspire to be hardworking and trustworthy, consistently showing up and delivering on these promises are what will define your reputation.

I believe that leaders are made, not born. You can learn and evolve, but core characteristics like work ethic, service mentality, and humility are intrinsic and foundational. Overall, my work ethic, service mentality, and humility are critical to my success and the relationships I have established.

Blue Ocean: What is something unique you offer to your clients?

Aliex Parker: It revolves around marketing, which I believe is fundamental to all financial sales. Advisors need to market themselves to prospective clients, retail distribution needs to market to the end user, the advisor, and ultimately to the client. Earning trust with affluent investors and those managing their wealth hinges on effective marketing. I’ve focused on becoming a relationship marketing specialist to support the wealth managers I work with, using a simple three-tier approach.

How can I help advisors identify their ideal client? How can I help evolve that focus into a monolithic mission statement that reverberates through all aspects of the business? How should that practice alignment translate to a better client experience, something directly correlated to business growth? Is that a specific occupation, corporation, or life circumstance? How does that specific target influence client communication patterns, complimentary services offered or asset allocation approach? 

And then, finally, rounding it out. How do you create more memorable client experiences? Is that through tailored events? Is that the feeling I get when I walk into your office? Is that the impression I get when I see your quarterly mailer or go to your website? Being a resource to guide the evolution of an advisors marketing plan can have a profound impact on their long-term success. Today, it’s changed so much. It used to be that you’d send a mailer or cold call 1000 people, hoping to resonate with a well-constructed and delivered sales pitch. Today, clients and advisors alike are more focused on aligning interests with those they work with as well as their investment portfolios.

Before that process starts, the hard part is objectively identifying who your products and services are most suited to benefit? Thanks to the great scope of social media tools today, the reach is exponential without a substantial spend if you can effectively resonate with your target audience.  

Blue Ocean: What is something you are grateful for?

Aliex Parker: My two-year-old daughter, Averi. Having our first child has been an enlightening experience. Much of my work is client-facing, either one-on-one or presenting in large group settings, so you know someone is always watching. That feeling is exponentially amplified when raising a child. The responsibility to not just teach but model the right behavior in all aspects of your life. Being a role model is something I’ve always taken pride in, but nothing compares to raising a daughter to be a strong, confident young woman. It’s a humbling experience that provides invaluable perspective.

In our fast-paced business, it’s easy to get caught up in the rush. Traveling abroad has always helped center me on what’s truly important: family, reflection, connections, and all those that positively influence your growth journey. These elements are pivotal to your sanity and success. Having Averi allows me to be even more introspective. I constantly reflect on how to balance the achievement of my own goals while maintaining and committing to her journey. I’m so thankful for this experience as it causes me to pause and ensure that I’m working with the same tenacity and perfectionist standards I strive for, while also reminding me to unplug and focus on what’s truly important, family. 

Blue Ocean: Outside of work, what passions or interests do you pursue?

Aliex Parker: It’s three different tiers. One, I love to golf. I used to play golf collegiately so aside from being a personal passion, it allows me to continue to challenge myself and provides a healthy outlet to disconnect. It’s important to find time for introspection and reflection, as I’m big on setting and achieving goals. Achieving ambitious career or life goals is the culmination or small incremental progress and consistent advancement. Finding ways to disconnect helps me check my progress and identify where I can improve along that journey.

Additionally, I love giving back through philanthropy. I’ve been privileged to mentor and speak to kids ranging primary school up through graduating seniors at my alma matter. I also support organizations combating domestic violence and local women’s shelters advancing the status of women and children experiencing homelessness. Giving back to the community ties into the outreach of trying to be more than yourself and leveraging the blessings my professional journey has afforded. Supporting charities and causes you believe in, many of which have personal ties, is important.

I also love to travel. This ties back to my love for traveling internationally. Engaging and interacting with people from different backgrounds, cultures and geographies always seems to provide refreshing new perspectives. At the end of the day, the foundation of relationship is connection. My perspective through travel has greatly improved my probability of identifying commonalities through shared experience with those I work with and allowed me gain greater understanding from the diverse viewpoints I have come across in my travels. 

Blue Ocean: What does your typical day look like?

Aliex Parker: Wholesaling’s one of the best jobs you can have; no two days are alike, or many times even in the same city or state. Given the range of responsibilities and variance of activity, the most important function of my day-to-day is time blocking. It begins the night before when I segment each component of the next day. This prevents me from getting overwhelmed by a perpetually growing to-do list and persistent travel schedule. About 65 to 75% of my time is spent traveling and meeting with advisors face-to-face or in a conference setting. A typical day is divided between client meetings, scheduling calls, and follow-up efforts to advisors I’ve recently met. Often, I’m meeting to share new ideas on how they can allocate investor capital or ideas to help grow their business.

Servicing existing clients is another big aspect of my role. I work with about 200 wealth managers across the country, and maintaining these producing relationships requires a lot of maintenance. This may include systematic performance updates for our various portfolio companies or sharing new marketing collateral they can leverage with clients. I also coordinate events with advisors to deepen client relationships and support the growth of their business.

I also contribute to the firm’s business development efforts, collaborating with our Partners on product development discussions and new marketing initiatives. My day involves a variety of tasks, and being effective and efficient with my time is key. This means prioritizing what needs to be done and blocking out less important tasks. For example, dedicating segments of my day to prospecting, doing expense reports, booking travel, and ensuring logistics for upcoming trips.

While the day-to-day can vary greatly depending on whether I’m on the road, at a conference, or working from home, the foundational key is having a plan. Being prepared the night before and allowing enough time for each task helps me navigate the day without worrying about unexpected issues. Having contingency plans in place allows me to adapt and evolve while maintaining structure. Consistent preparation the night before makes for smooth days despite the various directions I may get pulled.

Blue Ocean: What are your sources of inspiration?

Aliex Parker: My inspiration comes from my personal life, particularly from my mother, who worked hard, sometimes holding multiple jobs to provide for me when I was young. Her work ethic and determination to do whatever it took to provide anything I could want growing up greatly inspired me. She instilled in me foundational characteristics and traits such as humility, authenticity, and unwavering determination, all of which are paramount to me today. Regardless of one’s background or social situation, people generally seek stability, peace of mind, and the ability to provide. By not focusing on titles or preconceived notions and instead getting to know people on a personal level, you can foster great interactions and relationships.

Another significant source is my grandfather. As a first-generation immigrant, he entered an industry that was historically selective and exclusive. He aimed to be a wealth manager to help people who lacked financial literacy, just as he did when he arrived in this country. He wanted to help others retire with confidence, knowing there was a plan in place no matter what happened. Observing how he managed his business and client relationships, and his commitment to growing his business the right way, has profoundly influenced how I approach my own business.

The work ethic demonstrated by both my mother and grandfather is directly attributable to my inspiration. Seeing their dedication and the values they upheld from a young age has molded me into who I am today.

Blue Ocean: What advice would you give your younger self and other young people aspiring to step into this field?

Aliex Parker: One powerful lesson critical to my day-to-day success is to listen more and better. People often say, “You have two ears and one mouth for a reason,” emphasizing the importance of listening. As a young person in the finance industry, it’s natural to want to prove yourself to seasoned professionals, showing that you’ve done your homework and researched thoroughly. However, much is demonstrated by listening and providing well-thought-out, effective responses rather than rushing to answer. Quality responses lead to more dynamic and meaningful conversations, showcasing your capabilities. So, listening more is a big one.

The second piece of advice is to go out more and find ways to network. Whether it’s joining industry groups, getting certifications like a CFP or CFA, or engaging with CFP and CFA networking groups, expanding your reach is crucial. Today, my value lies in the people I know and can engage with—having just one or two degrees of separation from someone they know or have worked with. Building that network quickly involves actively participating in as many opportunities as possible. The industry offers numerous opportunities to develop your skills. Keep finding new and unique ways to engage with others in your industry. Typically, the better company you keep, the better insights you gain, and the faster you can advance in your career.

Blue Ocean: Please share your favorite quote.

Aliex Parker: There’s a great quote I love from John Wooden, the famous basketball coach. What impresses me about Wooden is his focus on character. One of his quotes that has always resonated with me is: “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you are, while your reputation is merely what others think of you.” This quote has guided my process and what I want people to understand about who I am and what I bring to the table.

Early in my career, I felt I had to prove something and wanted people to see me as the smartest person in the room. However, I realized you can’t force someone to think a certain way about you. You have to live your values every day, and that will shape your reputation. By focusing on character—doing things with a sound moral compass and the right intentions, and supporting people without expecting anything in return—you foster better relationships and truly understand the value of giving. When you give with the expectation of receiving something in return, the satisfaction is never as great as when you do something purely out of grace, humility, and kindness. Giving without expecting anything back attracts people and builds trust. It has allowed me to focus on being intentional in my actions, leading to fantastic relationships that extend far beyond just the business component.