Between Now and Success

As the co-founder of multi-billion dollar RIA Beacon Pointe in Newport Beach, CA, Matt Cooper has a unique, in the trenches view of trends that are sweeping the financial advisory industry, on both the client and advisor side. In addition to his original, $7-billion-plus RIA, Matt founded a sister company, Beacon Point Wealth Advisors, which partners with smaller RIAs around the country so they ca...

Erin Botsford is one of the top financial advisors in the country. She is the founder and CEO of the Botsford Financial Group, which has nearly $1 billion in assets under management. She has appeared on Barron's list of the Top 100 Women Financial Advisors and Top 100 Independent Financial Advisors multiple times. And she's also an author who just released her second book, "Seven Figure Firm." But...

Once upon a time, financial planners met with clients annually, showed them a printout of how all their investments were performing, shook hands, and moved on to the next annual appointment with the next client. Smart advisors know those days are over. Many investors are already monitoring their portfolio online, often for free. Fees are compressing across the financial advisory industry. A younge...

Whatever you think about Donald Trump, it's hard to deny his masterful use of persuasion and branding techniques to win over a specific segment of the electorate that propelled him to the White House. Here are six key strategies Donald Trump used in his campaign and how you can adapt them to your business.

Imagine walking into a doctor's office with a bad cough and walking out on crutches, still coughing. That's how Brent Brodeski saw the client experience of financial advisory in 1992 when he co-founded Savant Capital Management in Rockford, IL. "It was kind of like going to the general practitioner, you get a checkup, and he wrote prescriptions and sent people on their way," said Brent. "And peopl...

Nobody can accurately and consistently predict the future but by observing and curating ideas, you can uncover accelerating trends, see things other people miss, and position your business to profit from these upcoming opportunities. In 1982, John Naisbitt wrote a book called Megatrends . It became a huge bestseller and he made the term "high tech high touch" a household phrase that we still use t...

Could 3 words be the difference between success and failure for you over the next 12 months? The recent presidential election proved once again that words are powerful. The words that we use, the language that we use has the ability to move people to take action. For several years now, I've taken this idea of "words are powerful' and completed an exercise that I want to share with you. The exercis...

If you don't plan your personal life with the same rigor and discipline you do your professional life, your personal life will suffer, says Ed Rapp. As a Group President and former CFO for Caterpillar, Inc. during the financial crisis, Ed was a high-level, globe-trotting senior executive who never forgot the importance of keeping family front and center. Ed and I go back more than 30 years when we...

I just finished my second year of podcasting and the numbers are in. Here are my 10 most popular podcasts for 2016 based on downloads along with a key idea shared on each episode. Grab some coffee and a notepad. It'll spark some ideas.

Your business is under assault from Robo Advisors, technology disruption, Vanguard and Schwab's low-cost call-center programs, the DOL rule, flat markets, and clients who are scrutinizing fees more closely than ever before. Ask yourself… How will you continue to add value in an industry that faces competitive threats and shrinking margins? How will you ensure clients don't fire you if the financia...

"If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to get comfortable with the notion of failing. Once you get completely comfortable with the idea that you're going to fail, what ends up happening is you build this resistance up and you start to think more clearly," says Anthony Scaramucci. Today's guest, Anthony Scaramucci, is the founder and managing partner of the $12.5 billion alternative investmen...

Shockingly, you might be able to generate more alpha for your clients by helping manage their career than you can from investing or financial planning. Today's guest, Michael Haubrich, CFP®, created the concept of "career asset management" as a way to help add additional value to his clients using an asset that is typically neglected by financial advisors. The idea is by helping clients manage the...

How would you answer these three questions about exploring advice? What is the definition of good advice? What is the definition of a quality financial plan? What does it mean to be a fiduciary? Kevin Knull, the president of PIEtech SM , Inc., (parent company of MoneyGuidePro financial planning software) asked those three questions to an audience of financial and wealth management leaders and basi...

Should RIAs offer an automated investing Robo-Advisor service? What are the pros and cons? How should you price the service? Will it cannibalize your existing clients? In today's show, Tina Powell and I discuss how she launched automated investing Robo-Advisor SheCapital and why they kept it separately branded from the large RIA that she was affiliated with. We also discuss the difficulties in gai...

It appears clients care much less about their advisor's digital technology than advisors do. The financial services industry spends a lot of time talking about technology and there are thousands of companies around the world and tens of billions of dollars being invested in financial technology or FinTech companies to enhance the digital offering. Yet, when you ask clients of financial advisors ho...

I believe financial advisors can add the most value to their clients in the areas of financial and life planning, and not as much in the investment management area. I also understand that you can't forget about the investment side. In today's conversation, we discuss how to improve your investment performance by overcoming some of the behavioral investing mistakes that are so easy for all of us to...

The second of two special episodes. What does the future of FinTech look like? It was on display recently in Park City, UT at the  3rd Annual Fuse Event sponsored by Orion Advisor. Fuse is a three-day coding event that brings together dozens of programmers from FinTech companies around the world who band as a community and solve advisor problems. It's part hackathon, part relationship-building all...

This is the first of two episodes. What does the future of FinTech look like? It was on display recently in Park City, UT at the 3 rd Annual Fuse Event sponsored by Orion Advisor. Fuse is a three-day coding event that brings together dozens of programmers from FinTech companies around the world who band as a community and solve advisor problems. It's part hackathon, part relationship-building all...

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...