Scaling with Soul: Growing an Advisory Firm Without Losing What Matters with Grace Balestrieri

Episode 165: This week, Kyle Van Pelt talks with Grace Balestrieri, Senior Director of Client Experience Operations at Brighton Jones. Grace began her career in software, where her work spanned implementation, customer experience, and operations. She now brings that playbook to wealth management, building the systems, processes, and technology that let advisors focus on clients.

Kyle and Grace discuss what "scaling with soul" means in practice and why growth can't come from simply adding people, tools, and complexity. Grace unpacks how Brighton Jones' Centralized Administrative Office brings custodian expertise to high-volume work, and why firms building one should plan for a learning runway and staff ahead of demand. She also shares how the firm's training program is evolving into Richer Life University, what advisors can borrow from B2B sales about activity and referrals, and why she believes technology will make relationships the real differentiator.

In this episode:

(00:00) - Intro

(01:19) - Grace's money moment

(03:05) - Bringing a software mindset into wealth management

(05:13) - Why firms shouldn't overlook talent from outside the industry

(06:36) - What it means to scale with soul

(07:56) - How centralized operations help advisors scale

(10:17) - Building expertise you don't have yet

(13:46) - Inside Brighton Jones University

(14:54) - Expanding into Richer Life University