Between Now and Success

I'm convinced that one of the keys to success is to have extreme clarity. But clarity can be difficult to define, and even harder to achieve. In our business, many advisors don't do a thorough enough job defining themselves to an ever-more-crowded marketplace. "We help you achieve your financial goals" might fit well on your website's masthead. But does a phrase like that really say anything meani...

If I only knew then what I know now … As advisors and business owners, we all think about this from time to time. But how often do you actually put what you've learned into action? Right now, you're probably sitting on a lesson or idea you could use to transform your business. In fact, you might have enough "A-ha!" moments stored up to do something really exciting, like starting your dream RIA fro...

A master class from Sterling Shea on how to revamp your business and thrive as a world-class financial advisor, taught by someone who literally writes the book on where our industry is going and how the best of the best stay at the top.

How can financial advisors build an enduring business with sustainable value? Contrary to what we often hear and read, it's not all about tech. It's about being indispensable in your clients' lives. Today's guest, Brie Williams, says there are four areas we should focus on to create sustainable value. Be authentic to what you represent. Set, manage, and deliver on client expectations. Remember tha...

Capitalism is taking a beating right now. Rising wealth inequality and low social mobility have been festering for decades. The median income of Americans hasn't budged in 30 years. The overall share of GDP accruing to capital has risen significantly relative to labor. And I could go on. So is capitalism the problem? No. We don't need to ditch capitalism, we just need to evolve it so more people c...

Seminars work. I've had multiple advisors on my podcast in recent months who are all killing it with seminars. In fact, today's podcast guest, Bill Keen, raised $90 million in AUM last year from seminars. Sure, it seems old school in the age of Facebook, YouTube, and Zoom, but people still value human to human live contact. You can only Google, click, and swipe so much before you just want to hear...

A growing financial advisory firm needs lots of top talent. What are you doing to deepen your roster of advisors? Do your brightest employees see a path for themselves from, say, a business or marketing degree to CFP® certification? And if so, what can both the employee and the employer expect during that process? Well, confession time: it's been a couple years (actually decades) since I got my CF...

David Bach is one of the most well-known names in personal finance and the RIA space. In 2018, AE Wealth Management ranked as the second-fastest-growing RIA in America according to Investment News and Financial Advisor Magazine. David is also an 11-time best-selling author, including 9 New York Times best-selling books that have sold over 7 million copies and been translated into 19 languages. His...

Rohit Bhargava is the founder and chief trend curator of the Non-Obvious Company , which helps companies and leaders win by learning to see what others miss. He's also the founder of three successful companies, and advisor to multiple startups, and a bestselling author of five books on a wide variety of topics, including the future of business, how to build a brand with personality, and why leader...

As technology automates much of the "mechanics" of money, advisors need to evolve to the more emotional aspects of money. After all, simply helping rich people get richer isn't usually a driving motivator for advisors—or clients. In my conversation with Doug Lennick, the co-founder of Think2Perform, an author, and former EVP of Advice and Retail Distribution for American Express Financial Advisors...

Today's guest is Brent Kessel. Brent is founder of Abacus Wealth Partners, which has more than 50 employees and more than $2 billion in assets under management. About ten years ago I was reading a Buddhist magazine and did a double-take when I saw an ad for a financial advisory firm on its back cover. Abacus Wealth has been on my radar ever since. "I have been a student of different kinds of Easte...

Today's guest is Dan Moisand. Dan is a Principal and Financial Advisor at Moisand Fitzgerald Tamayo. He's also a past national president of the Financial Planning Association and has been featured as one of America's top financial planners by at least 10 financial planning publications. Dan's perspective on how the industry has changed during his long career led our conversation to some strong ins...

If you could come up with 3 words for this year, 3 words that would drive your actions and keep you on track to make this your best year ever, what would those 3 words be? This is the fifth year now where I've begun the year by identifying 3 words that will set the course, give me direction, and totally excite me as I move through the year. I write these words at the top of my Daily Focus sheet an...

Life-centered planning, improving client behavior, the client experience, positive psychology, marketing, and technology are some of the hot topics I got to discuss with finance industry leaders and thinkers on my  Between Now and Success  podcast during 2018. I think some of these topics, like a renewed emphasis on your human touch as an advisor, will continue to have a huge influence on where ad...

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 spe...

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 h...

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...

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 l...

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 s...

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 helpi...

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 bein...

This is a presentation I delivered with Mitch Anthony. In it, we: 1. Share 3 new client dialogues that will completely differentiate you from all other advisors. 2. Show you why the current investment-focused planning model is broken and a new model that will replace it. 3. Show you how to future-proof your business from low-cost competitors and encroaching technology. The industry is shifting fro...

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...

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 expe...

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...