7 Indicators It’s Time to Leave Your Current Firm
It’s a decision that’s been keeping you up at night. You already know the answer — you’re ready to leave your current wirehouse. Still, pulling the plug strikes up all sorts of emotions — chief among them, fear. Change is almost never comfortable. It’s particularly difficult when the change you want to make affects others. In the case of financial […]
Mentoring Young Talent in Financial Advisor Practices
The need for mentoring the next generation of financial advisors is primarily driven by the imminent demographic shifts taking place in the industry. According to Cerulli Associates, the average age of financial advisors is the mid-50s, and Cerulli estimates that close to 98,500, or about 32%, of financial advisors plan to retire over the next […]
An Overview of Succession Planning
With the growing number of financial advisors moving closer to retirement age, succession planning has been a hot topic of discussion for the last couple of years. To ensure a smooth transition of the practice from the retiring financial advisor to the acquiring financial advisor, a well-written document and tested succession plan needs to be […]
Setting Goals for Your Financial Practice
Having a strategy or game plan for growth is important for financial advisors to thrive in the current market. Clear definition of business goals is the first step in developing this growth strategy for the practice. But the Study on Drivers of Business Growth, undertaken in 2014 by the FPA Research and Practice Institute, finds […]
How To Deliver Bad News
“Your portfolio is in the toilet! I’ve lost you a lot of money! …but, we’ve done a little better than the S&P, so it could be much more bleak.” At some point in your career, you will need to deliver bad news to a client. Learning to do so effectively can not only ease your […]
What is Your Hook Question?
We talked before about your elevator pitch: that 30-second speech you keep in your back pocket that answers the question, “What do you do?” But, what do you do after you’ve delivered your pitch? You’ve left your prospect wondering about you and your services. How do you hook him or her for an appointment? Donald […]
What Is Your Vision?
Do you have a vision for your practice? For your personal life? Because, in our opinion, you are working foolishly if you don’t. What great leader or business owner never had a vision? Even if the business did not ultimately achieve the vision, the plan to achieve it launched the business to further growth and […]
Building a More Valuable Practice – Tip #1
There are many ways to grow your practice – the most obvious being adding more revenue, more assets and/or more clients. The most valuable businesses in the industry however focus on building value in their enterprise every year, in addition to growing the revenue/asset base. There is a long list of recommendations that we would […]
Passion: Are You Losing Yours?
Here’s a potentially difficult question… What’s your passion? Do you have one? I had an advisor call me recently from the east coast; he’s got a successful practice but he is losing his passion. Have you lost your passion? If so, how can we recreate our passion? In my opinion, I think one of the […]