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When Is The “Right” Time To Launch Yourself As A(n Independent) Financial Advisor?

April 18, 2019 02:33 pm 1 Comment CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

From the financial advisor’s perspective, the virtue of emerging advisor technology (i.e., “FinTech”) solutions is the opportunity to operate the firm more efficiently and reduce overhead costs by automating various back- and middle-office functions of the firm. Which means the most likely outcome of FinTech “disruption” is not to eliminate financial advisor jobs… but to reduce the needs for and opportunities of other non-advisor roles in advisory firms (that are more repetitive and more conducive to being automated away).

But from the perspective of those back- and middle-office employees, the emerging risk now is whether or how secure their jobs may be in a more FinTech-driven future. Which in turn raises the question: would it be better to shift into a more “front-office” client-facing role as an individual advisor. And if so, the next question is: When is it the best time to make the switch, and launch your own practice as an independent financial advisor?

In this episode of #OfficeHours with Michael Kitces, we discuss the three key skillsets would-be advisors need to gain experience and ultimately expertise in before even considering launching on their own as an independent advisor, ways to gain the competency and confidence needed to be able to serve clients (and get them) in the first place, and why it’s so important to have the financial stability – or even a pile of cash socked away – to be able to pay your own living expenses in the first few years while you build your advisory business.

The first step in preparing to launch as an independent advisor is gaining the expertise and experience to ensure that you’re able to operate and grow your new business to begin with. Initially, that means having the operations know-how to (to name just a few examples) open accounts, transfer assets, and place trades… because someone is going to have to do it, and that someone is almost certainly going to be you when you start your firm on your own! It also means learning to actually manage client relationships, which encompasses communicating effectively the nature of the advisory relationship, letting clients know what to expect, and setting boundaries. Finally (and perhaps most importantly), you also need to have experience in developing business in the first place, because no matter how great your advice may be, you won’t be in business for very long if you can’t convince anyone to hire you to begin with!

The next essential piece of the puzzle is competency. Offering financial advice is a sacred duty, and no matter how good your intentions may be, you have the potential to do severe, life-altering damage to your clients if you don’t make sure you really have the knowledge and know what you’re doing. For many, this means getting your CFP certification (and possibly additional post-CFP designations as well), because simply passing the minimum Series 7 or Series 65 regulatory exams isn’t enough, and earning the right to put those three letters after your name will not only give you credibility in the eyes of prospects, but will help you have the confidence you need to convince people you know what you’re talking about in the first place!

Lastly, you absolutely must have your own financial house in order, and the financial stability to be able to handle the foregone income when you go out on your own. Which usually means either having enough cash saved up to cover your living expenses for at least three years (because that’s often how long it takes for even experienced and competent advisors to earn enough to live on), or a dual-income spouse or other additional income source. As even though a career as an advisor can be potentially quite lucrative, it still takes time to get to that level, and it’s simply not feasible if you don’t have a cushion to make it through the first few lean years to survive long enough to get to the higher income levels of the future.

Ultimately, the key point is that finding success to launch as an advisor isn’t something that happens overnight. It requires years of preparation to gain the knowledge and experience, to not only provide advice to clients but to make sure all the day-to-day operational tasks happen in the firm as well. At the minimum, an advisor starting from scratch will need their CFP certification, an average of seven years of experience in operations, sales, and relationship management, and the financial stability to cover three years (give or take) of living expenses. Because that’s the sort of foundation that will offer the best odds of succeeding in a career that holds tremendous potential rewards in the long run… both from a financial and psychological perspective!

How The Financial Planning Process Differs For Young Clients: Not Simpler, But Different Complexities

April 17, 2019 07:11 am 10 Comments CATEGORY: General Planning

The rise of the asset-under-management (AUM) model has driven a concomitant shift in financial advisors to focus increasingly on Baby Boomer retirees – for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks: “That’s where the money is.” To the point that some in the industry have raised the question of whether the pendulum is swinging too far to retirees, and that it’s time to start doing more financial planning for next-generation clients as well.

Except the challenge for most advisory firms is that it’s not profitable to do financial planning for younger clients, who simply don’t have sufficiently-sized investment accounts to generate enough AUM fees for the advisory firm to deliver the advice. For which advisory firms can adopt various “fee-for-service” models, from charging minimum fees based on a percentage of income, to flat monthly retainer fees. Except then the pressure is on the advisory firm to justify the value of the financial planning advice being given to clients for that fee, especially when they tend to have "simpler" financial needs in the first place.

Yet the reality is that younger clients with fewer assets and lower net worth still experience the kinds of tumultuous life transitions that necessitate engaging a financial advisor in the first place. In fact, ironically, older retirees typically only experience a few major life transitions in the span of decades – retirement itself, a major change in health, and the death of a spouse – while it’s younger clients who actually experience a steady stream of major life transitions that may necessitate a financial advisor, from getting a new job, to going back to school, starting a business, getting married (or getting divorced!), having children, and more.

And while younger clients may have less in the way of investments and assets, they still face substantial complexities when it comes to their cash flow itself, from how to transition from a dual-income household to a stay-at-home-parent (or back again) after the birth of a child or a decision to go back to school, merging finances during a marriage (or separating them again after a divorce), to adjusting spending while launching a business. Or simply engaging in strategies to increase income and job potential in the first place.

Which means, in the end, while the focus of financial planning may shift for next-generation clients – from monitoring the health of their assets to monitoring the health of their income instead – arguably younger clients don’t really have “simpler” financial advice needs in the first place. Instead, they have a different set of complex financial advice needs… and an even greater need for the cyclical and ongoing financial planning process in the first place, because of the pace and frequency of the life transitions that impact their financial situation throughout their 20s, 30s, and 40s!

#FASuccess Ep 120: Building A Personal Finance Media Brand By Focusing On Being Your Authentic Self, with Manisha Thakor

April 16, 2019 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 120th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Manisha Thakor. Manisha is the founder of MoneyZen, a financial literacy and education platform focused on empowering women, and is also the VP of Financial Wellbeing at Brighton Jones, a $5 billion AUM independent RIA based in Seattle, Washington.

What's unique about Manisha, though, is the way that she's been able to build her own personal brand platform around personal finance over the past 10 years after starting her career in institutional money management, and the ways that she's been able to turn her brand around personal finance education into a financially successful business.

In this episode, we talk in depth about what it really takes to build a personal finance brand. Why most financial advisors struggle to gain visibility with the media, and even when they do still typically fail to get any new clients from it, the ways that a personal finance brand can be monetized, not only from getting clients directly, but also even becoming a corporate spokesperson or brand ambassador, and the way that Manisha has been able to successfully build a personal brand as a speaker and media personality despite the fact that she's actually an introvert.

We also talk about Manisha's fascinating personal career journey, from her early success being an intrapreneur, building out a new separately managed account line of business at an institutional money management firm that ultimately grew to nearly $6 billion under management, to a decision to relocate with her new husband that forced her to make a switch out of the firm and launch her personal finance brand instead, how marital troubles and a subsequent divorce eventually led Manisha back to working at a larger advisory firm to get better infrastructure support, and why ultimately Manisha decided to make one more switch to her current firm, Brighton Jones, to once again become an intrapreneur and help them transition their advisory firm from traditional wealth management to a focus on holistic financial well-being.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Manisha shares how she managed the ups and downs of her advisory firm while going through a stressful divorce. Her frank discussion about dealing with depression, anxiety, and now medicated bipolar disorder, and how through it all she's managed to stay successful by forming relationships and connections around her that she can rely upon, and by simply relying on the power of being yourself. Because, as Manisha puts it, it's so much less exhausting to just be your authentic self than to try to be someone you're not anyways.

So whether you're interested in learnings about the steps Manisha took to build a personal finance brand, how she, as an introvert, was able to find her groove as a presenter and public speaker, or how she paved her own path by simply being herself along the way, then we how you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast.

Revenue Productivity Ratios: The 3 Most Important Numbers To Manage In An Advisory Firm

April 15, 2019 07:07 am 3 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

As advisory firms grow, it’s crucial to both measure and manage the productivity of the firm. At the individual level, productivity is typically measured by evaluating the amount of time it takes to complete various key tasks. At the firm level, it’s measured through key “revenue ratios” that become Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the entire business.

The first key revenue ratio that all advisory firms should measure is revenue per client – literally, by dividing the total revenue of the firm by the number of clients. The significance of revenue/client is that it is the most straightforward way to understand an advisory firm’s “typical” clientele, to immediately identify clients that may unprofitable (i.e., significantly below-average revenue/client), and to determine which clients are so far above the firm’s average that it may be worthwhile to segment them and then provide additional services to them. In addition, given that the typical solo advisor only ever has the capacity for 50-100 clients in total, understanding the advisor’s revenue/client provides an indication of his/her maximum earning potential as well (at least until/unless lower-revenue clients are replaced by higher-revenue ones!).

As advisory firms grow, and become multi-advisor, so too does the next revenue ratio for productivity shift, from revenue/client (for an individual advisor’s clients), to revenue per advisor themselves. By measuring revenue/advisor, it’s quickly possible to see which advisors in the firm are more efficiently servicing their clients (and the associated revenue), by literally handling more revenue per advisor. On the other hand, extreme deviations in revenue/advisor can also provide an indicator of not just efficiency and productivity, but significant over- or under-servicing of clients as well.

And for the largest advisory firms, the key measure of productivity becomes revenue per employee, the most straightforward way to quantify, in the aggregate, how much staff it takes across the enterprise to service each segment of the firm’s clients and revenue.

In turn, advisory firms that measure these three Key Performance Indicators of advisor productivity can then evaluate how they compare to other firms at a similar size, using industry benchmarking studies. Which actually show that, when measured on these key productivity measures, advisory firms may not actually benefit much at all from growing larger and gaining economies of scale, as larger firms tend to attract more affluent clients (with higher revenue/client) that demand additional services which in turn fully offset any size-based efficiencies!

The bottom line, though, is simply to understand that as advisory firms grow as businesses, it is feasible to benchmark the productivity of the firm in the aggregate… and then take the necessary steps to manage it accordingly!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Apr 13-14)

April 12, 2019 02:59 pm 2 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that Envestnet is adding a new "Credit Exchange" to its platform, where advisors will be able to assist clients in getting (pre-qualified) loans for everything from buying real estate to borrowing for their business, as Envestnet tries to facilitate a wider range of holistic advice for advisors on its platform (and expand the range of products available on/through its platform in which Envestnet itself can participate!). Also in the news this week is the announcement that Betterment is partnering with DFA to offer DFA funds through Betterment's RIA platform... and without any trading fees (beyond Betterment's own platform/wrap fee), applying even more pressure to traditional RIA custodians that still charge higher ticket charges to advisors' clients who want to buy DFA.

From there, we have a number of articles about the increasingly contentious domain of brokers and advisors switching firms, from a new Regulatory Notice 19-10 from FINRA cautioning broker-dealers not to bad-mouth former brokers and in fact requiring them to give the former broker's contact information to their former clients still at the firm, recent lawsuits from both Schwab and Edelman Financial Engines to pursue departing brokers and advisors as the tactics of Temporary Restraining Orders and injunctions historically used by wirehouses to retain their brokers' assets are now increasingly being employed in the wealth management and RIA channels, and the rise of forgivable loans as recruiting tools in the independent broker-dealer channels (as wirehouses themselves are cutting back the growth pace since UBS and Morgan Stanley left the Broker Protocol).

We also have several articles on personal finance habits and decisions, from a discussion of how "Concierge Medicine" works and whether it's really worth the cost, what it really means to be "financially healthy" (beyond just the dollars and cents of your household cash flow and balance sheet), and a discussion of some "unconventional" financial planning strategies that even financial advisors themselves sometimes engage in (e.g., taking money out of a retirement plan to invest in a startup... their own newly-launched advisory firm!).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of the benefits of writing and journaling (and how to do so more effectively): the first explores some of the benefits of establishing a writing habit for yourself in the first place (not merely as a form of communication and expression, but your own learning and self-discovery process); the second provides some good tips on how to write more effectively and "eloquently" when trying to communicate and make a point; and the third explores the benefits of simply writing for yourself, in the form of journaling, and how to adopt an effective journaling habit by simply creating a structure for yourself to journal just one sentence per day (and then look back and see your sense of progress after a month or few!).

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Kitces & Carl Ep 05: Do Clients Really Value Getting Help Managing Their Behavior Gap

April 11, 2019 07:03 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Client Trust & Communication Kitces & Carl Podcast

One persistent struggle for financial advisors has been to find ways to communicate the value that they bring to the table. Fortunately, several recent studies have tried to quantify that value - down to a specific number of basis points annually – and have generally shown that financial advisors can more than cover their advisory fees with a wide range of value-added benefits… most significantly, by helping clients overcome the dreaded “behavior gap” that exists between the returns of the market, and the (lesser) returns that investors would otherwise realize on their own due to their behavioral biases.

Unfortunately, however, a recent Morningstar survey of almost 700 individual investors found that the advisor’s ability to help “control their emotions” is perceived as the least valuable service an advisor can provide from the consumer’s perspective… even as it’s the most valuable benefit from financial advisors according to the advisor research! Yet this ironic gap in the value of getting help with the behavior gap actually makes sense, since investors themselves often don’t see that their behaviors are a problem in the first place.

Nonetheless, this gap between what the research suggests is a benefit of working with a financial advisor, and what consumers state they actually value, raises the question: Does the real gap lie between market and investor returns, or between what investors actually value and what advisors think they value?

In our fifth episode of “Kitces & Carl”, Michael Kitces and financial advisor communication guru Carl Richards sit down to discuss the question of whether advisors should even bother trying to communicate the value they provide when helping clients manage their “behavior gap”, why attempting to convince prospects that you can help them manage their behaviors is perhaps an uphill battle, and how maybe the best way to overcome the behavior gap (and the perceived value of getting help with the behavior gap) is by shifting a client’s perspective altogether.

The starting point is to realize that most clients don’t initially seek an advisor’s help because they suddenly decide they need help clarifying their life goals or making better decisions at key junctures; they come to an advisor first and foremost because they have an acute pain point they need help with. And while for some new clients, that pain point may be due to devastating decisions in the depths bear market - which then prompts them seek out an advisor because they (or more often their spouse) realize that they do need guidance when it matters most – for many consumers, the pain point that drives them to a financial advisor is about some other non-portfolio issue in the first place.

Furthermore, even if many people do undermine themselves by making poorly timed decisions, it’s nearly impossible to “sell it” as a benefit of entering into an advisory relationship, since a client will first have to admit to themselves that they are so bad at making financial decisions that they have no other choice than to hand the task off to someone else! And denial about our own failings – even if it’s true – can be quite powerful. Which is why, in general, trying to position yourself as someone who can help clients “control their emotions” or change their “bad” behaviors is challenging at best. Which is not to say that managing those clients’ behaviors isn’t beneficial… it simply means that people who are in most need of that help will likely have a hard time admitting it.

Ultimately, the bottom line is that advisors do truly add value for their clients by managing the “behavior gap”… but selling that as a key feature of the relationship probably isn’t going to get most advisors very far. Instead, the best way to help clients close that gap is by connecting their use of their capital with what they say is important to them in the first place. And the only way to help a client down that path is to absorb with empathy where they are presently, and then gradually help them understand continuing to make them same decisions that they’ve made in the past won’t get them different results. Which creates the real opportunity for financial advisors to demonstrate their value!

How Divvying Up Household Financial Responsibility Impacts Financial Knowledge Over Time

April 10, 2019 07:04 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: General Planning

Financial knowledge plays an important role in enabling individuals to engage in good financial behavior. However, like other forms of knowledge, financial knowledge is subject to decay if we don’t apply and reinforce that knowledge regularly. While this may seem fairly obvious, the reality is that the many decisions we make – including the decision to retain (or delegate) responsibility for making financial decisions – may influence our development and retention of financial knowledge.

In this post, Derek Tharp – lead researcher at Kitces.com, and an assistant professor of finance at the University of Southern Maine – delves into the recent research on how financial knowledge may increase or decrease over time based on how a couple allocates responsibility for making financial decisions.

A recent study from Adrian Ward and John Lynch provides some interesting insights into how the divvying up of financial decisions among couples may influence financial decision making. Contrary to what many may expect, the authors found that the initial assignment of financial responsibility was not influenced by levels of financial knowledge at the beginning of the relationship. While this may seem counterintuitive, from an economic perspective, it is the individual with the comparative advantage (rather than the absolute advantage) that we would expect to take on a larger share of financial responsibility in an efficient outcome. For example, despite a CFO’s potential absolute advantage over a stay-at-home spouse’s financial knowledge, it may be the case that it is better for the household financially if the CFO focuses on their work rather than managing household finances. Because all households have limited time and resources, the reality is that some trade-offs in all areas of life are ultimately inevitable.

Long-term, the assignment of financial responsibility appears to influence financial knowledge, with spouses who take on 100% of the responsibility becoming most knowledgeable, whereas those who take on no financial responsibility (i.e., delegate those responsibilities to their partner) actually experience a reduction in their financial knowledge over time. Furthermore, while those who share responsibility do appear to each see modest knowledge gains with time, those gains are much smaller than the gains experienced by households with one member specializing in financial responsibility.

Overall, this finding has important implications, as it suggests that there is both risk and opportunity associated with sharing or delegating financial responsibility. On the one hand, those who delegate may benefit from the higher levels of knowledge gained by the specializing spouse. On the other hand, should the specializing spouse experience disability or premature death, a spouse with less financial knowledge than they may have had if they were involved in making financial decisions could be thrust into a role as a financial decision-maker without being prepared. Moreover, it’s possible that financial knowledge of those who delegate responsibilities to a financial advisor could similarly experience a decrease in financial knowledge over time. While this is not explored in Ward and Lynch’s study, it is nonetheless important for financial planners to help clients understand both the risks and rewards associated with divvying up responsibility between members of a household… and between a household and their financial advisor!

#FASuccess Ep 119: Career-Changing Into Financial Planning By Creating A Niche Serving Your Former Profession, with Kenneth Robinson

April 9, 2019 07:11 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 119th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Kenneth Robinson. Ken is the founder of Practical Financial Planning, an independent RIA in the Cleveland, Ohio area with 2 advisors who work with 55 clients on an ongoing annual retainer fee that varies from $5,000 to $25,000 a year.

What's unique about Ken, though, is his decision to focus into a niche of working with Ohio public sector employees, having been a public sector professional himself before career-changing into financial planning 20 years ago, and the way he's been able to make his practice so efficient by developing a specialized knowledge of Ohio public sector employee issues, from the state of fundedness of the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and its pension plan, to coordinating Ohio public sector retirement planning for those who are also eligible for federal FERS benefits from a spouse, as well as coordinating Ohio public sector employee pensions with the Social Security Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset rules.

In this episode, we talk in depth about how Ken formed his niche in working with Ohio public sector employees as a career changer from the public sector himself, why he chose to focus on a niche not only because he felt he'd be more credible with them, but also because it increased his own confidence that he could add enough value to justify as fees in the early years, the way he got started in his niche by going back to some of his former colleagues to form what he called a Founders Club, where he asked for their feedback on his new advisory business venture, and then invited them to become clients for a first year discount.

The way he developed a specialized website that acknowledges right away his niche with Ohio public sector employees so that at least anyone who did arrive on his website would immediately know about his specialized expertise, and the way he adopted his financial planning process over time, from simply doing a full comprehensive financial plan for every client upfront, to instead always focusing the planning process on whatever the one most pressing issue was for the client first and only then circling back to cover the rest of the modules of financial planning.

We also talk about the annual retainer fee structure that Ken uses, adopted from the Alliance of Comprehensive Planners and based on a combination of the client's investible net worth, income, and complexity, and why and how Ken decided to modify and even raise his retainer fees over time, including for his existing clients who started with him early when the fees were lower, and the way that Ken explains his retainer fees to clients to justify his value proposition by focusing on how financial planning is an ongoing process and not just the upfront plan alone.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Ken talks about some of the marketing challenges and mistakes he's made over the years. What he's learned along the way, and how working with a coach has helped him to stay grounded through the inevitable ups and downs of running an advisory firm.

How Much Does A (Comprehensive) Financial Plan Actually Cost?

April 8, 2019 07:02 am 5 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

It is a simple question: how much does it cost to get a comprehensive financial plan? Yet despite the rising popularity of financial advisors offering financial planning services, remarkably little has actually been published about what financial advisors charge for the service. Which is striking for both consumers – who want to know what a plan might cost – and for financial advisors themselves, who may want to benchmark whether the pricing for their financial plans is “reasonable” relative to their advisor peers and competitors (rather than solely setting the price based on its time-and-labor cost to the advisor).

In our latest Kitces Research survey on “What Financial Advisors Actually Do”, we found that the average cost for a standalone comprehensive financial plan is $2,400 (up from $2,200 in a 2012 study from the Financial Planning Association). Notably, though, our research finds that more and more advisory firms who offer financial plans actually are charging for them separately – rather than merely bundling the plan into their AUM fees – and in fact there is a growing rise of financial advisors who are charging for financial plans solely in a “fee-for-service” manner (hourly fees, monthly subscription fees, or annual retainer fees), rather than blending fees with AUM at all.

In addition, not surprisingly, financial plan fees did vary significantly from one firm to the next, although as it turns out, the biggest driver of financial planning fees is not the cost (i.e., how long it takes) to produce the plan, nor even how comprehensive the plan is, but the affluence of the client themselves paying for the plan in the first place. In other words, clients with more financial means to pay for a financial plan tend to pay more for a financial plan. Opening a debate of whether more affluent clients pay more for financial plans simply because they can afford to do so, because they tend to use more experienced advisors with deeper expertise (even if “the plan” itself is the same), or simply because their higher net worth and affluence means they perceive more value in the financial plan, to begin with.

On the other hand, it’s notable that, because financial advisors only spend about 50% of their time on client-facing activities in the first place, advisors are still greatly limited by how many financial plans they can do and how many clients they can support, which ultimately limits their ability to charge for their time and generate revenue. In the end, the average advisor generates a fee of about $150/hour for their client-facing activities… even as they only spend about 50% of their time on client activities that generate fees in the first place.

On the other hand, the research does indicate that advisors who have advanced professional designations, and more years of experience, do manage to command higher financial planning fees in the marketplace. Though, again, this appears to be less a function of advisors with greater credentials and experience charging higher fees, per se, and more the result of experienced and credentialed advisors being more effective at attracting the more affluent clients who are willing to pay higher fees and perceive greater value in the financial plan in the first place. Which means in the end, when it comes to setting the cost and determining value, the answer to “what should a financial plan cost” truly is in the eyes of the beholder.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Apr 6-7)

April 5, 2019 02:52 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the industry buzz that there's some new retirement legislation winding its way through Congress, known as the SECURE Act, that is showing promising signs of passing later this year, and would make a number of notable changes to retirement accounts, from eliminating the age limit on IRA contributions, pushing back Required Minimum Distributions from age 70 1/2 to age 72, and curtailing stretch IRAs as a revenue-raiser to "pay" for the other changes.

There were also a number of regulatory news headlines this week, including the death (at least for now) of Maryland's proposed fiduciary rule, a new simple one-page Fee Disclosure form under consideration in Massachusetts (even as debate continues over the SEC's proposed four-page Form CRS disclosure), a discussion of whether the recent fiduciary momentum at the state level means that it may actually be a better way to enact improved regulation of advisors (if only to eventually force federal regulators to then create a uniform national law), and a fascinating (and painful) look at how the rise of forgivable-loan recruiting bonuses amongst broker-dealers may be causing consumer harm (and a rising number of broker bankruptcies).

From there, we have a number of articles around practice management, including: what advisory firms should focus on if they're struggling with growth; how to better measure a firm's AUM and revenue over time to ensure the firm will know if/when it has a growth problem; how advisory firms are shifting from revenue-based compensation to team-based and firm-based compensation to promote a more team-oriented growth environment; and what owner-advisors should be thinking about to increase the valuation of the business if there's a plan to sell the firm in the coming decade.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of repetition and breaking the boredom routine: the first looks at how adopting deliberately repetitive habits is a key to helping us change our behaviors for the better (and to simply make it easier to do what we know we need to do, without being forced to spend so much time and energy thinking about it!); the second looks at how we as human beings tend to bond by sharing our stories... except when our stories get too repetitive that no one wants to hear them, though ironically acknowledging the repetitiveness of our stories can actually still build trust after all; and the last explores how to relieve the boredom that often comes with routines, not by ending the routine behavior itself but simply by recognizing the benefits of choosing to deliberately break the routine (or as the saying goes, "everything in moderation... including moderation!").

Enjoy the "light" reading!