Between Now and Success

What are the top firms doing to outperform the rest? How are they growing? What’s the silver bullet that’s going to help my firm hit that 16% five-year growth CAGR I’m seeing from the best of the best? These were hot topics at last month’s Charles Schwab IMPACT Conference in Washington, D.C. And of course, the very reason that so many of our industry’s best and brightest were gathered there to speak, learn, and network is that there isn’t one “silver bullet” that’s going to transform your...

For advisors who want to grow their audience – and hopefully, their client base – content and distribution is King, Queen, and Jack. But how do you build your audience? What is going to set you apart from the crowd and make your blog post or newsletter a must-read, your video channel a must-watch, your next podcast a must-listen? Caleb Silver, the editor-in-chief of Investopedia, discussed these hot topics at the recent FPA Annual Conference in Chicago. After his presentation, “Building an...

What do you need to be a successful financial advisor? An Ivy League degree in finance? A family practice that you can inherit? A group of wealthy connections that you can network? An "in" at one of the major firms? Well, Rebecca Rothstein doesn't check off any of those boxes, and she's currently managing over $4.5 billion in AUM. Without even a high school degree, Rebecca left home at age 17. She bounced through a series of odd jobs -- including walking racehorses after they'd...

If you want to be a better financial advisor, learn how to land a jet plane on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean in the middle of the night. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating just a bit … But I really do believe that the top advisors of the future will be those who are open to a wide variety of insights that come from a wide variety of experiences you and I might never have. Talking to and learning from people outside of our field can really get our gears turning. Suddenly you’re...

Building a top-notch intern program doesn't simply mean hiring a few planning interns. Top financial advisor David Armstrong took it much further and hires creative interns too. These are students who major in the creative fields and can build a portfolio of work at David's firm while David gets to stay on the leading edge of marketing and social media. No two paths to financial services are the same, but David Armstrong's was particularly unique. As he served overseas in the Marine Corps,...

The AUM pricing model is prevalent in our industry but in many cases, the pricing is significantly disconnected from the real value being delivered. Depending on your expertise and your client base, you might add value through tax management or estate planning advice. You might add value by fostering a positive attitude in your clients about investing, talking clients down from the ledge and helping them avoid a bad decision when volatility shakes the market. If you're working in the...

What separates the merely good from the absolute best of the best? Is mastery an end that we can achieve, or is it a lifelong process of continual evaluation and improvement? I've been fascinated by these questions for a long time, particularly as they relate to what drives peak athletic performance and how those concepts might be applicable in other disciplines as well. Like, say, going from being a competitive long distance runner as a kid to running a successful life-centered planning...

If you don’t “know thyself,” you’ll have difficulty succeeding in a world where technology is making average human advisors obsolete. Self-aware advisors understand that they have blind spots and they seek to shine a light on them, make changes, and turn them into strengths. Joe Deitch, the founder of Commonwealth Financial Network, joins my podcast today and shares wisdom from his four decades of running a top broker dealer and drops some amazing insights from his new book, "Elevate: An...

What's working right now in financial advisor marketing? Based on my conversation with marketing pro Abby Salameh, you'll be very surprised. While attending the 2018 In|Vest Conference in New York, I had a chance to sit down with Abby Salameh for an in-depth conversation about the state of advisor marketing. We talked about which marketing strategies are working the best, branding, the client experience, referrals, making a good first impression with prospects, the proper role of technology...

In this excerpt from a Master Class I presented for First Assent Asset Management, I discuss 5 strategies to close the 70 basis point gap in your value. This gap comes about from the fact that advisors charge an average of 100 bps for their services, yet robo-advisor type services (and Vanguard and Schwab) are closer to 30 bps for investment management. Advisors have to make up this 70 bps gap by adding non-investment related services that clients value. In this excerpt, I share 5 of the 9...

There are few things more detrimental to our wealth than the negative money stories we pickup in our youth that haunt us as adults. And there are few things more impactful you can do as an advisor than to understand your client’s money stories and work with them as you engage in your planning relationship. Let’s face it, we all grow up with hang-ups around money. In those formative years of our upbringing, we start to absorb the financial habits and attitudes that we hear and see modeled in...

Are your multi-millionaire clients any happier than your merely millionaire clients? As your clients' net worth increases, have you seen a direct rise in their level of happiness? Have you ever felt frustrated that all your hard work on the financial side of your client relationships didn’t move the needle in their sense of well-being? Helping clients save, grow, and protect their money is a service that clients value and appreciate. But there is so much more you can do to help them beyond...

Have you ever seen an advisor on TV or read a quote from an advisor and thought, “They should be talking to me; I’m just as smart as that advisor.” The fact is, that advisor may not be any smarter than you from a technical standpoint, but they may be more media savvy than you are. Now more than ever, money is news, twenty-four-seven. Baby boomers are retiring. Millennials have major money issues. Health care costs, Social Security, and Medicare are a constant source of political debate....

Michael Chasnoff discusses how he grew Truepoint Wealth Counsel, his fee-only wealth management firm, to $3 billion in AUM and 750 households without any mergers or acquisitions.

Barron’s recently wrapped up the 2018 edition of the Barron's Top Independent Advisors Summit in Orlando. Whether you were in attendance or are looking to catch up on what you missed, today’s episode will give you an insightful snapshot of one of the most valuable get-togethers in our industry. My guests today are Bill Keen and Matt Wilson of Keen Wealth Advisors, a fast-growing RIA with more than $400 million in AUM. Bill also has his own excellent podcast, Keen on Retirement. Bill and...

John Hyland was unhappy. Fresh out of college, the big firm lifestyle of late nights and steak dinners had taken a physical toll. John felt unhealthy and out of shape. At a tailgate party he heard some friends talking about Ironman races, how impossible they seemed, how no average person could complete one. “I just had this a-ha moment in my mind,” John told me on a recent podcast. “I just had this moment of clarity and said to myself, "I need to do this." John finished the first of...

Historically, the financial advisory business has been about a story of numbers. Today, it’s about a number of stories, say Mitch Anthony. Of course, good advisors always knew that viewing our industry as a matter of number-crunching was just a fairy tale. And today, revolutions in technology and an aggressive marketplace have made that fairy tale ancient history. Instead, pioneers in life-centered financial planning, like noted author and speaker Mitch Anthony, want to refocus our...

If you are in the “inform” business, and not the “transform” business, you won’t be long for this business. Technology services are quickly chipping away at the value-stack financial advisors offer to clients. There may come a time when, “I turn on my phone and I say, ‘Hi, Alexa. Tell me what my bank account is today. Transfer $10,000 from Bank A to Bank B. Open a 529 plan for my kid. Then, rebalance my brokerage account.’ And tell me how I'm doing against my goal of buying this house,”...

I’ve long said that there are many ways to be successful as a financial advisor. My guest today, Steve Cassaday, founder and CEO of Cassaday and Company, Inc., is a perfect example. His main marketing plan is a throwback to the 1990s. He spends hundreds of thousands of dollars per year doing high-end dinner seminars for a carefully selected group of people. And when they become a client, he creates a comprehensive financial plan for them but he does NOT use financial planning software to do...

My guest today, Dr. Eliott Berkman, is a tenured Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon, where he directs the Social and Effective Neuroscience Laboratory and conducts field-leading, federally-funded research on goals, motivation, and behavior change. He's also the Associate Director of the Center for Translational Neuroscience, and an author who writes about psychology and neuroscience for lay audiences, including in Psychology Today. We talk about the concept of the...