Between Now and Success

In a Nutshell: All financial advisors deliver services and advice. The ones who are growing their businesses find creative ways to stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace and attract a niche of clients they can offer the most value to. Guest: Steve Wershing. Steve is the President of The Client Driven Practice and the author of Stop Asking for Referrals. He's also the cohost of a great po...

In a Nutshell: Delivering great service is table stakes. Drive toward extraordinary by creating a unique, emotionally engaging experience for each individual client. Guest: Julie Littlechild. Julie is a leading expert on the drivers of client engagement. She's also the cohost of the Becoming Referable podcast and the author of the book The Pursuit of Absolute Engagement. My Key Takeaway: To create...

In a Nutshell: In 2020, the most successful advisors have moved past worrying about "competing" with technology. Instead, they're finding ways to automate the 30 - 40% of the mundane tasks that are necessary for relationships but don't enhance them, so that they can focus on the human conversations that create real lasting value -- and more business. Guest: Matt Reiner, CFP® CFA®, the cofounder an...

A single word or a short phrase could permanently change your life. When you were young, a teacher may have said something to you that forever altered how you viewed yourself—good or bad. Maybe a parent said something that still sticks with you today. Or perhaps a former boss made a comment that drives you nuts to this day—I'm in that boat! In a similar way, this "My 3 Words" exercise I learned fr...

In a Nutshell: The largest financial advisory firms have developed consistent marketing programs that deliver a predictable stream of ideal clients...and there's just a handful of different ways to do it. Guest: Brad Johnson. Brad is the Vice President of Advisor Development for Advisors Excel. He's also the host of a great podcast for financial advisors called The Elite Advisor Blueprint. My Key...

In a Nutshell: Shifting from being a financial advisor to being a financial coach could be the next evolution of how financial guidance is delivered and enable independent human advisors to remain profitable and relevant. Guest: Todd Tresidder. Todd is a former hedge fund manager who transitioned into a successful financial coaching career. Recently, he has adapted his coaching into a series of pr...

In a Nutshell: Clear career paths and offering a path to partnership and equity ownership are key ways to attract and retain next generation advisors and advisory firm leaders. Guests: Lisa Salvi is Vice President of Advisor Services at Charles Schwab, where she oversees business consulting and education offerings, including their one-on-one consulting engagements, the annual RIA Benchmarking Stud...

In a Nutshell: Whether you're writing website copy, sending email newsletters, social media posts, physical mailers, or a combination, you have to master the psychology of engagement to turn your prospects into clients and keep your business growing.  Guest: Adam Bensman. Adam is one of the top direct response copywriters and consultants in the country, and he has a particular expertise in helping...

The growth of United Capital is a fascinating case study in how being early on a trend, M&A, technology, financial life planning, and a charismatic leader all came together to create one of the industry's biggest and most innovative RIA firms. Today, we'll take a deep dive on this story through one of firm's longest tenured employees, Matt Brinker. Starting at $0 in 2005, Joe Duran founded United...

If you're not learning faster than the world is changing, then you are going to fall behind very quickly. And businesses that fall too far behind usually don't get a second chance to catch up. A big challenge for financial advisors is, how do you stay on top of everything that's required to run a successful advisory business? As Josh Brown put it at the recent Wealth/Stack Conference, "A good advi...

When was the last time you talked to a Netflix employee about your account? How about an Amazon employee? I'm guessing for most of you the answer is: never. Netflix automatically charges my credit card every month and uses its algorithms to push content it thinks I'll enjoy to my home screen. A shipping problem or return request with Amazon is usually resolved with a couple swipes or clicks. It's...

Email Marketing is one of the most effective, least expensive, and underutilized marketing strategies available to you right now. I'm on the record as saying a person's inbox in the most valuable piece of marketing real estate you can own. When a person gives you permission to show up in their inbox on a regular basis, you can develop a personalized relationship that leads to new business and long...

A top-notch tech stack is table stakes. And you won't "out tech the tech titans" so you can't win on technology. So what can a financial advisor do to remain relevant and thrive in the years ahead? You can double-down on your ability to humanize the advisor-client relationship, to understand and deliver on exactly what your clients really need, and you should do it in a technologically-enhanced wa...

"You're either growing or dying." How many times have you heard that chestnut? Too many! But what if you decided you didn't want to grow? What if you decided you'd be happy at the current size of your business and just add new clients when an existing client leaves or passes away? Does the thought of that idea make you vomit or is it liberating? If you decide it's all about growth, what are you wi...

The classic educational seminar still works if you spend the time, and yes, the money to do it right. My podcast guest today, Matt Gulbransen, has mastered the science—and art—of delivering seminars that convert.  Matt is the President of Pine Grove Financial Group, which is an RIA operating in the St. Paul, Minnesota area. In our conversation, Matt discusses what attracted him to seminars, what w...

Today I'm going to share 3 maxims used by Navy SEALs that drive their elite performance. These maxims have been used by SEALs for decades and have proven their worth in thousands of Special Operations missions in every corner of the world. The good news is, they'll work for you too. Apply them to your business and to your personal performance and watch your results soar. My guest today is Commande...

Imagine for a moment if you could build a highly profitable practice that served a total of just 10 families and individuals. And through your personalized, indispensable service you could create clients for life, and perhaps even for a generation or two. That's exactly what David Dunn is doing at Kingsbridge Wealth Management. David describes Kingsbridge as a family office featuring a "full stack...

You're not going to reach the top of this profession without having a competitive streak in you. And when you channel that competitiveness into "winning" for your clients and "winning" in the growth of your business, that's a dynamite combo. Today's guest, Michael Bapis, is a competitor who played golf for the University of Utah, then collegiate-level basketball while studying abroad in Greece for...

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...