Managing director Paul Blanco has piloted a one-time, nine-person MetLife office in Shelton across the shoals of two decades to become the 13-office Barnum Financial Group, with 275 financial advisers among a total 400 employees.
Barnum manages $7 billion — up from $1 billion in 2004-05 — while remaining a MetLife office. It has done business as Barnum since 1999, making its then-intracompany name its public face. The company — including offices in Greenwich, Stamford and Shelton as well as Elmsford, N.Y. — crossed $1 million in revenue in 1999 and this year expects $66 million in revenue.
The answer to the upward-ticking metrics appears in the form of Blanco himself. His enthusiasm is evident for everything that arises. He reads business 90 minutes a day because he enjoys it. He strides into the conference room at Barnum Financial Group’s headquarters in Shelton like the St. Francis College athlete he was. At 46, he remains varsity-fit. The tailoring is impeccable. The handshake is firm and is extended with a warm smile.
Paul Blanco in the BFG Shelton headquarters
“Barnum has a family feel,” he said. “I know everyone and their spouses and I take that seriously. I’m the head of the fun patrol, but I’m pretty intense with the work ethic. I always make sure I lead the charge on that.”
Specifically, Blanco said two things have guided him and his company:
“We’ve seen a turn to technology,” he said, citing the first. “But here we invest in people and leverage the technology. Without people, it’s irrelevant.”
Second was education. Barnum began leading financial planning classes at community colleges and discovered there was both interest and need. The class load involved four sessions and personalized homework assignments. A fifth class at the end availed the students of the Barnum advisers for a free consultation. The first class attracted 20 and was a hit so another was scheduled and another until it took off. After the free fifth session, 60 percent signed up for Barnum services.
“The students discovered that a little business knowledge can be a dangerous thing,” he said of the program called PlanSmart. Blanco waxed enthusiastic about the classes with good reason; MetLife took them national. “To find out what the goals/legacy are and if we can use products and services to achieve those goals — that’s what investing is all about. We plan with the end in mind. It’s amazing what we’re able to do for clients; it’s really phenomenal.”
Also educationally, Barnum reached out to companies with financial planning seminars, including retirement-themed classes that came to be known as RetireWise. “We had three majors right away,” Blanco said of corporate interest. Barnum was, in fact, filling a niche Blanco had noticed; corporations were cutting back on the sort of staff who might help with things like insurance and finance.
MetLife adopted that program, too, and now runs PlanSmart corporationwide (with RetireWise “at its core,” Blanco said.) Barnum representatives still manage 150 companies through the program and act for MetLife in a teaching leadership role for the program, an arrangement that now features two Barnum-based RetireWise directors who deal directly with corporate HR directors. Blanco called it “the Frank Sinatra model — they set it up and we teach.” He explained, “Sinatra never set up the stage.”
The teaching programs are working well, Blanco said. In 2001 MetLife counted 89 of the Fortune 500 as clients; today after one of the rockier decades in economic history, the number is 91. “Companies hear what we offer and they say, ‘Wow, they have all these things.’ We become like an extra arm of the company.”
Barnum keeps education forefront via hour-long seminars for clients at lunchtime, as well, with the upshot, in Blanco’s words, “We’re the planning firm of choice for their employees.”
Blanco started in the business with MetLife in 1991, selling insurance policies, which is what MetLife sold in those days. He sold mostly to teachers and young families. The work left him with an impression that remains front and center. “The time to start planning is young,” he said. His interests were firsthand. “I was living it — starting a family, planning for life. Something my father said is true: ‘If you get off to a slow start in life it’s tough to catch up.’”
Asked for adjectives that describe the workforce at Barnum Financial Group, Blanco offered several — cultured, family oriented, fun, accountable, high-energy, fit, empowered and entrepreneurial.
He is, he said, a big fan of teamwork. “If you think about our industry, it’s hard to be a one-trick pony,” he said. Drawing on a sports analogy, he said a basketball point guard, no matter how good, is ill suited as a center. Barnum teams are typically two specialists and a manager, but the format is, by design, fluid and some teams feature five advisers. “The point guard is built to fail at center — bumping around under the rim with those 6’ 11” guys,” Blanco said. “Why not do what you do best and do a lot?”
The company culture emerged in an anecdote about its latest office. This year, Barnum expanded into Elmsford, N.Y., where a smaller MetLife office was in business and where Barnum would consolidate its White Plains office of 25, uniting a total 80 employees fully under the Barnum umbrella.
Blanco at first bridled at the Elmsford office and its new 1,800-square-foot addition. “It wasn’t a bad-looking place, but it was dark and a little gloomy when I saw it,” he said. “The long and short of it is that place was not gloomy, but it did not have the Barnum employees there yet. It’s not about the way a place looks, it’s the way the employees act. The place is terrific. We have a lot of energy, a lot of smiles, huge professionalism and a learning culture.”
Energy notwithstanding, Blanco is also proud of the gleaming Barnum headquarters at 6 Corporate Drive in Shelton. “Like a law office,” he said.
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