Brian Fernandez, President at Krilogy, joined the Next Mile podcast for a discussion with host Kyle Van Pelt about building the people, processes, and technology behind lasting growth.
With more than 20 years of experience in wealth management and working with family office clients, Brian joined Krilogy in 2025 as President and “integrator.” It’s a role that helps him pair his client-facing perspective with a focus on operational excellence, helping translate the firm’s founding vision into execution. Throughout the conversation, Brian and Kyle explore what it takes to develop the next generation of advisors, keep culture intact while scaling, and decide where technology like AI fits alongside the human side of advice.
“One of our tenets and rules of engagement is you can love every idea for five minutes. You can throw anything out there, no matter what it is. And as the integrator, I have to know ‘Okay, I don’t have to solve this right now. I can actually just listen, and I can think about it.'”
Key Themes and Takeaways From The Conversation
Investing Ahead of Growth: Building Before You’re Overwhelmed
Brian discusses how Krilogy uses EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, to create accountability, and why firms should build executive capacity and infrastructure ahead of the next stage of growth, not after. It’s the same discipline Krilogy uses behind its own build vs. buy decisions on technology investment.
Artificial Intelligence: Human Side of Advice
Brian shares his outlook on where the financial services industry is headed, and why customized advice is harder to scale than a manufactured product, even as the tools around it improve.
“If we’re creating human experience, as good as AI gets, I still think we’re going to have the opportunity to be really trusted advisors and do the work that really is the emotional stuff around families, retirements, or selling businesses.”
Future of Family Office: Complexity and Scale
Brian describes what separates a true Family Office from standard wealth management services. The complexity of family office clients, the depth advisors need to serve them, and how often that coordination happens contribute to the management of wealth for families. Elevating those skills and staffing for them is what makes this space hard to scale.
Next Generation: Developing Advisors and Partners
Krilogy builds a talent pipeline that carries the firm’s culture and values forward as the team expands. And that extends to how Krilogy trains new advisors joining the firm through the Krilogy Advisor Development System (KADS), as well as senior mentors into a pipeline of future partners as well.
Culture at Scale: Institutional, Not Personal
A strong culture can’t rely on one founder or executive. Brian shares how Krilogy teaches its values and rules of engagement consistently and gives employees the confidence to hold one another accountable as the firm grows.
