Between Now and Success

The nature of financial planning advice will change dramatically as it becomes common for people to live to 100. The idea of a three-stage life where we go to school for 20 years, work for 40, then retire for 20 and die will go away. It will be replaced by a non-linear, multi-stage life where people will cycle in and out of education, work, leisure, re-creation, sabbatical, gig economy, and encore...

What if you cut your AUM advisor fee in half and made up the difference by charging a retainer fee? That's what multi-billion dollar RIA firm Abacus Wealth Partners is experimenting with. With the DOL rule and increasing pressure on firms to be more transparent with their pricing, we're starting to see firms experiment with their advisor fee. In an earlier episode, I talked to Scott MacKillop who...

It doesn't cost twice as much to manage a $1 million portfolio as it does a $500,000 portfolio so why do clients have to pay twice as much? That question is getting asked more frequently and we are starting to see advisors and money managers move to a flat-fee pricing model in response. Long-time industry veteran Scott MacKillop is today's podcast guest and he recently launched a new third-party m...

For many years, I've started each business day by writing down my prioritized list of actions. I then spend a couple minutes searching for a quote that speaks to me that day and I write that quote on the top of my list. When that's done, I print the list and keep it on the top of my desk so it's front and center during the day. For today's show, I'm going to share with you 10 quotes that made my l...

Today's podcast guest, Alex Tapscott, is the co-author of an important new book called, Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business, and the World. Alex describes blockchain as a vast, global distributed ledger where digital assets can be moved, stored, and managed securely and privately and where trust doesn't need to be established by a third-party or an...

How do you build and manage a fast-growing billion-dollar RIA? What is the role of the CEO in this type of company? As the financial advice industry continues to evolve at a rapidly increasing pace, the role of the CEO becomes even more critical. Yet, as a business coach, I often see advisory firms struggle with making the shift from being an advisor-led firm to one run by professional management....

Financial education is hot and it's a great way to build your business. Investopedia generates more than 20 million monthly unique visitors to its website by offering the public (and financial advisors) educational articles, Q&As, and videos. Ric Edelman built a $16 billion RIA by educating the public through books, seminars, radio and TV shows, podcasts, and newsletters. And I'm using the same co...

What's it like to climb Mt. Shasta with a hard-charging group of financial industry executives? What goes on behind the scenes to prepare for the climb and who made it to the top? And how do you deal with a major accident before the climb even starts? In today's episode, I take you behind the scenes in the Skip and Chip Excellent Adventure 5.0. Skip Schweiss of TD Ameritrade and Chip Roame of Tibu...

If you want to succeed in digital marketing, you can't use yesterday's strategies. Today's most successful digital marketers take full advantage of the major digital networks and are creating content that is relevant, engaging, and share worthy. In today's episode, I chat with Mitch Joel . Mitch is President of Mirum - a global digital marketing agency with over 2000 employees. Marketing Magazine...

Note: This episode originally ran on July 18, 2016 Eli Broad is the billionaire founder of two Fortune 500 companies—Kaufman & Broad (now KB Home) and SunAmerica. You don't reach that level of success by doing things just like everybody else does. Broad said 'being unreasonable" led him to generate massive results. Listen to the podcast to learn 7 key business insights from his autobiography, The...

Eli Broad is the billionaire founder of two Fortune 500 companies—Kaufman & Broad (now KB Home) and SunAmerica. You don't reach that level of success by doing things just like everybody else does. Broad said 'being unreasonable" led him to generate massive results. Listen to the podcast to learn 7 key business insights from his autobiography, The Art of Being Unreasonable, that illustrate how you...

When your clients sell their business, are you frustrated that you don't always add the resulting windfall to your AUM? There's a simple way to insert yourself in the sales process, add more value to your clients, and ensure you get your fair share of the proceeds to manage. One of the objectives of my podcast is to help advisors figure out ways to add more value to their client relationships that...

You could be the smartest, most technically competent financial advisor in the country but without solid leadership and a marketing plan , you'll be like the lonely Maytag repairman. Few RIAs have been as successful at building their business through good old fashioned business leadership and sophisticated marketing than Wealth Enhancement Group (WEG). This multi-billion dollar RIA has an impressi...

Providing great customer service is no longer good enough. Today's consumers are grading you on the "client experience" you deliver and how your client experience makes them feel. Customer service is just one aspect of the client experience and if you do not intentionally create a client experience that "wows" your clients, your business will quickly fall behind the national RIAs who are leading t...

The Envestnet Advisor Summit was packed with an agenda of top speakers and a multitude of sessions to choose from. And they capped it off with a closing keynote from Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer. Meyer's talk was so good and insightful that I'm now a Buckeye fan—except when they play Wisconsin and Nebraska! Here are six of my takeaways from the event plus a bonus interview with Vestorly c...

If a prospect asked you, "Why should I choose you?," could you answer it in seven words or less? In this world of short attention spans, you better be able to. The rap on financial advisors is they all sound the same. In the past, you could get away with that because there was so much business to go around and consumers were less discerning. Today, it's a much more competitive world and this means...

The top marketing people realize that when it comes to marketing the services of a financial advisor, you'll have better results if you purposely repel a significant segment of the population. Most of us want to be liked by as many people as possible so the thought of gearing our marketing to repel potential clients seems ridiculous. But one very successful advisor at the Barron's Top Independent...

America's top advisors gathered in Scottsdale, AZ on March 21 - 23 for the annual Barron's Top Independent Advisors Summit. I held a roundtable discussion with three top advisors who attended the event and our goal was to pull out the key takeaways from America's top advisors and deliver Actionable Intelligence to you. The roundtable participants were Jack Davis of Navigation Retirement Group , an...

Financial advisors used to get paid for managing money to help clients safely reach their retirement goal. Going forward, financial advisors will get paid for creating a client experience that shepherds their clients through a lifetime of experiences and transitions that taken together, add up to a life well lived. In today's podcast, I touch on a major shift I see happening in the industry. The s...

I've always taken the attitude that you're never too smart to learn or too good to improve. So even though I get paid handsomely as a professional speaker, there's always room to become better. And at a recent Master Class with top professional speaker Michael Port, I picked up three excellent speaking tips when he critiqued my performance. Michael was a guest on my podcast ( Read the show notes/l...

Ric Edelman is one of those rare people who can make bold, provocative statements AND have the experience and track record to prove that he’s not just blowing smoke. If you ask industry people who has been the most successful financial advisor over the past 30 years,  Ric Edelman would likely top the list.  Starting from scratch in the 1980’s, Ric built a juggernaut with 30,000 clients, 125 financ...

Knowing what you know now, what would you do over if you could restart your business today? I posed this question to 6 successful advisors and their answers were insightful. And here's the funny thing, you can implement these ideas now and benefit from their hard-fought mistakes. You'll also hear my color commentary on each of their do overs.

How well are you using advisor technology to automate your business, augment your work as an advisor, and segment and personalize the value you deliver to your clients? Have you thought strategically about your business model and how you use technology to support it in a profitable way? In today's show, I chat with Michael Schrage, who is one of the world's most provocative thought leaders on inno...

Financial planning as practiced today is going away and will be replaced by an entirely new way of interacting with and delivering value and connection to clients. The days of offering a free financial plan in order to snag AUM are done. In today's show, I chat with Phil Cunningham, CEO of Advicent, the global provider of SaaS technology solutions for the financial services industry. You may know...

Tony Robbins , a peak performance strategist, entrepreneur and bestselling author and Peter Mallouk , the #1 independent financial advisor in the country have joined forces to offer comprehensive planning services to clients with a minimum of $50,000. In today's podcast they explain how they came together and what they hope to accomplish. We also talk politics, the fiduciary standard, why advisors...