Between Now and Success

What is the cornerstone of your financial planning process? Solid money management is table stakes, not a differentiator. What really stands out is when you help clients be thoughtful about "what's the money for" and then align their money to support the life they want to live and be in harmony with their values. Advisors who learn how to help clients make those connections will be providing a val...

Your business may not be for sale, but it should always be salable. According to a 2019 study by J.D. Power, the average age of a financial advisor is 55; approximately one-fifth of advisors are 65 and older. If you're within 5 - 7 years of exiting the business, succession planning should be one of your key strategic initiatives. Paul Blease advises that preparing to sell your practice is a proces...

In a Nutshell: Paul Blease's 40 years of experience in financial services covers everything from the big wirehouses to the largest independent RIAs. In the first of two conversations, Paul and I focus on the synergistic team model, which he believes is the best way for advisor CEOs to attract, retain, and maximize top talent, while also providing "white glove" service to all clients. Guest: Paul B...

Rapid advances in technology, generational change, Covid, financial upheaval, and distrust in institutions are upending the course of life…and financial planning. In light of all that is changing, how do you future proof your business? In this special live webinar recorded on February 1, 2022, Ric Edelman, the #1 financial advisor of the past 30 years, joins me to discuss the impact of five critic...

In a Nutshell: Webinar marketing and digital communication is here to stay. In today's show, I talk to Eight Digit Media founder Chris Ross and we discuss a detailed, step-by-step strategy for generating tens of millions of new AUM each year from webinar marketing. And I'm not talking marketing fluff here. I have coaching clients who work with Chris and I've seen firsthand the results his team hel...

For seven years, I've started each year with 3 words that I've carefully chosen to motivate me, remind me, and guide me on my road to making the New Year my best year ever. My 3 words are printed at the top of my Daily Outcomes sheet (my prioritized to-do list) so I see them multiple times a day. By being thoughtful when I identify my 3 words and then reviewing them on a daily basis, I have a dail...

What is the "real value" that financial advisors deliver and that clients are willing to pay for? The value delivered by financial advisors has morphed over time. Decades ago, it was picking stocks and facilitating transactions. Then asset allocation and money management came into vogue. In the past 15 years, financial planning has become popular in parallel with the rise of financial planning sof...

Guest: Ashley S. Murphy, CFP® AIF® CEPA™, Founder and Executive Director at Global Financial Planning Institute and Founder and Principle at Arete Wealth Strategists. Insight: Where do you want to be at the end of next year? Most of us can see the top-line goals we want to achieve. What's harder is identifying the smaller steps you have to take every day to get to that destination. And what's hard...

Guest: Janine Wertheim, who recently retired from Securities America after spending 37 years with the company. Janine started shortly after the company was founded and served in a variety of leadership roles. Most recently, Janine was President of Securities America Advisors, which is the $75 billion RIA firm she and a small team founded back in 1994. Insight: I started my financial services caree...

9 months of job interviews. 27 "No's" from top advisory firms. 33,000 cold calls. That's all it took for Erin Scannell to open up his independent office and land his first client back in 1999. Few people would have powered through that long, but as Erin Scannell explains on today's podcast, he learned some hard lessons in perseverance and resilience growing up that continue to motivate him to this...

Guests: Patrick Brewer, CFA, CPA is the President & CMO at WealthSource, a full service national independent registered investment advisory firm. Prior to that, he was the founder and CEO of SurePath Wealth Management, a financial advisor practice with seven offices across the country. SurePath was acquired by WealthSource Partners in early 2021. He's also the founder of Model FA, which supports f...

Jim Crider, CFP® and CEO of Intentional Living FP discusses how his desire to guide people through the personal stress that money can create led him to a career in financial services and, ultimately, founding his own firm.

In a Nutshell: Technology is going to absorb most of the technical aspects of our work, so we have to become experts at what it means to be human. And advisors who embrace and further develop their "human" side of advising will thrive no matter how technology evolves. Guest: Clare Ciervo, CFP®, Advisor & Financial Planner at Balanced Rock Investment Advisors.

Most advisors effectively handle the money question. Few are adept at handling the emotion question. In this discussion, retirement expert Mitch Anthony and Steve Sanduski, CFP® show how you can become your client's retirement coach and help them navigate this tricky transition to retirement. For the full presentation, please register for our free webinar on June 29 at 2:00 ET.  To register, visit...

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...

Episode: Joining me for this panel discussion on Bitcoin are: Meg Bartelt, CFP®, MSFP of Flow Financial Planning Ronnie Colvin, CFP®, of ColeFP Wealth Management Adam Blumberg, CFP®  of Interaxis Academy Insight: Bitcoin can lead you down some very twisty rabbit holes. But as an advisor, learning the basics will allow you to answer the most common questions you're going to get from clients: What i...

In a Nutshell: Top-performing financial advisory firms create an employee value proposition that goes well beyond what you pay them. The firms that are attracting and retaining top talent have developed multi-faceted strategies that address team members' financial desires as well as their innate desire to connect with something bigger that inspires them to do their best work. Guest: Anand Sekhar,...

Ready to take your marketing up a notch? Working with a PR firm can really accelerate both your media presence and your potential for growth. But PR isn't something an advisor can just outsource and forget about; you have to be prepared to invest both your time and your money to get the most out of this relationship. Guest: Jason Lahita and Jimmy Moock of StreetCred Communications, a public relati...

Episode: Recently I was a guest on the Wicked Pissah Podcast, where I talked to hosts Chris Boyd, CFP® and Jeff Tomaneng, CFP® about how my lifelong interest in finance and tech led me to investigate bitcoin's potential as digital money and a store of value. Today's episode is a rebroadcast of that show. Insight: I believe that our global financial systems are at an inflection point. You don't hav...

In a Nutshell: If you want to grow your business, you need to build out a systematic, repeatable action plan that will reach your ideal prospects and motivate them to make some positive changes in their lives — including working with you. Guest: Jeremy Keil is a CFP, CFA, CIMA, and founder of Keil Financial Partners in New Berlin, WI. My Key Takeaways: Be specific. Jeremy's firm is laser-focused o...

Listen to this episode to learn about the change I'm making to Between Now and Success. The second announcement is the launch of my new podcast. You can subscribe to it here: https://stevesanduski.com/dma/  

In a Nutshell: The next wave of fintech and wealthtech will offer dramatic efficiency upgrades for advisors. Prepare your team to spend less time shuffling papers and more time having meaningful conversations with clients that will create real value. Guest: Marty Bicknell, Founder and CEO of the $35 billion AUM behemoth Mariner Wealth Advisors. My Key Takeaways: We need a true advisor desktop plat...

Words have power, especially when you pick three of them at the beginning of the year and use them as a guide for the next 12 months. Life is filled with distractions and it's so easy to let the "stuff" of life knock us off the path we planned to follow at the beginning of the year. But an exercise I picked up from Chris Brogan called My 3 Words helps me stay on that path regardless of what life t...

Barron's Advisor is the gold standard when it comes to advisor conferences, rankings, education, and practice management. I've had a longstanding relationship with them and am thrilled to announce our new collaboration. Learn all the details in today's short episode. And be sure to visit:  https://stevesanduski.com/barronspodcast/

In a Nutshell: Learn the basics and dispel the myths around Bitcoin so that you can provide advice that's in your clients' best interests. Guest: Adam Blumberg, CFP, co-founder of Interaxis,  a company that provides research and education to advisors and companies in the cryptocurrency, digital assets, blockchain, and DeFi space.  My Key Takeaways: Money is complicated. Money's been called many th...