FP+Careers - Part 15

Planning For The Expiration Of The CARES Act Student Loan Payment And Interest Freeze

July 14, 2021 07:08 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Debt & Liabilities

Beginning on March 20, 2020, most Federal student loan borrowers were given a break from having to make student loan payments, with interest rates set to 0% and no payments required. This policy began as an Executive Order, was then included in the CARES Act, and was repeatedly extended by both the Trump Administration and the Biden Administration. However, the payment and interest freeze is scheduled to sunset on September 30, 2021, and millions of borrowers will once again be required to make monthly student loan payments.

The resumption of student loan payments will be a significant change for many borrowers’ finances. It not only impacts cash flow but may also impact their preferred tax filing status, where they choose to keep their retirement savings, etc. In addition, many borrowers have had significant changes, both positive and negative, in their financial lives since the payment freeze began, so the best strategy to pursue after the repayment freeze ends may very well have changed. And with the resumption of payments for so many borrowers happening all at once, getting a plan in place and implemented well ahead of the September 30 end date is vital.

Borrowers on Income Driven Repayment (IDR) plans have many planning opportunities to consider. Both the timing of their income certification and their 2021 tax filing status could be set up strategically to minimize student loan payments. Especially since the popular strategy of Married Filing Separately to minimize payments may no longer be as appealing for families with young children, due to the American Rescue Plan’s changes to the Child Tax and Dependent Care Credits for 2021 (which are reduced or lost altogether for couples who file separately, and which have become fully refundable).

In addition, borrowers who may previously have been pursuing forgiveness strategies (e.g., deliberately minimizing payments to maximize their loan balance in anticipation of future Public Service Loan Forgiveness or IDR forgiveness) may now be able to pay their loans to $0, while others may have had a career change that makes them eligible for forgiveness programs they previously did not have access to. Borrowers should not assume that the student loan plans they had pre-pandemic still apply, and advisors can play a key role in helping them think about the moving pieces and how best to manage the tradeoffs involved.

Broad student loan cancellation of some amount has also gone from being a ‘pipe dream’ to having realistic odds of passing in the coming months. While this is far from certain, and many of the policy details are still unresolved, it is on the minds of many borrowers who don’t exactly want to accelerate debt repayment only to find out it would have been forgiven by waiting just a few months. For some borrowers, this may mean making at least a small bet on forgiveness, opting to pay some interest now in hopes of forgiveness, even if they have the cash to pay off their loans in one lump sum today. Other borrowers may decide to just wipe out their loans with the cash they’ve saved during the pandemic, simply to eliminate the debt (and its future interest and payment obligations).

Ultimately, though, the key point is simply that with tens of millions of student loan borrowers due to ‘suddenly’ begin repayments in October, a flood of service requests is likely to come soon to loan servicers. Which means those who are considering potential changes to their student loan strategies, from altering their tax filing status to accelerating (or not) their income recertification, need to be evaluating their plans now, including a consideration of how those plans might be adjusted if at least some level of student loan forgiveness does, in fact, come to pass!

#FA Success Ep 235: Aligning Your Advisory Firm With Your Own (Progressive) Values, With Georgia Lee Hussey

June 29, 2021 07:08 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 235th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Georgia Lee Hussey. Georgia is the Founder and CEO of Modernist Financial, an RIA in Portland, Oregon that offers deep financial planning services to 46 affluent households for a combination of retainer and AUM fees with a $17,500 minimum fee just to get started.

What's unique about Georgia, though, is how she actively seeks to align her own personal values with the values of her advisory firm, the values of the clients that she serves, and the impact that she creates not only for the community she lives in, but on the broader financial services industry as well.

In this episode, we talk in depth about how Georgia went through the rigorous process to qualify as a Certified B Corporation in order to create a structure that would keep herself and her firm accountable for its decisions and actions, Georgia’s “conscious capitalism” approach that prioritizing having a positive impact and running a profitable business are not, contrary to popular belief, two mutually exclusive goals, and why Georgia's clients, more often than not, view her not just as someone to whom they can delegate to, but as someone who can hold them accountable and to be more intentional with their money and financial decisions.

We also talk about Georgia’s planning process itself, which leverages the Money Quotient framework across a series of five onboarding meetings, why Georgia engages in two full-day retreats with new clients specifically to give them the space and time to discover their goals, envision what they want their lives to look like, and figure out how to align their financial decisions with those goals, how Georgia proactively discusses politics in her client meetings as a way to broaden the discussion around how the financial decisions that we make affect the world around us (and as a means of helping her clients gain better clarity around their own relationship with money), and why Georgia’s favorite part of the entire planning cycle is in helping her clients actually implement her recommendations, which can take some clients up to three years to complete because of the depth of the firm’s planning recommendations.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Georgia shares her own background as an artist coming into the financial services industry and how her own involvement with opening and running community events translated directly into generating business as an advisor, how Georgia’s first two jobs in the industry helped her figure out the sort of business she wanted to build and to prove to herself that clients would pay what she felt her time was worth as an advisor, and how that, although being the CEO of a successful advisory firm can sometimes be lonely, Georgia has found fulfillment and satisfaction by building a community of entrepreneurs and business leaders with shared experiences.

So whether you’re interested in learning about Georgia’s focus on having a positive impact both in her community as well as the financial advice industry, how she incorporates the Money Quotient framework into her planning process, or how she’s intentionally building her business to align with her values, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Georgia Lee Hussey.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (June 26-27)

June 25, 2021 02:59 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with a look at the big media buzz around how Peter Thiel managed to built a whopping $5 billion Roth IRA by 'stuffing' it full of pre-IPO shares of his companies and early stage startup investments (first PayPal, then Palantir, as well as Facebook), which as part of a ProPublica investigative journalism expose is already raising questions on whether the IRS needs to further crack down on how illiquid private investments are valued when being contributed to Roth accounts?

Also in the industry news this week are a number of other interesting headlines:

A recent study on consumer preferences in retirement shows that what retirees actually care about is very different than what they expected in the years leading up to retirement, with a major focus on health, family, and purpose, and not 'just' retirement finances alone
FPA hires a new "Chief Membership Experience Officer" as incoming CEO Patrick Mahoney attempts to change the tone and focus to turn around the beleaguered membership association

From there, we have several interesting articles on the rising focus on operations and the 'business' side of advisory firms:

PFI Advisors (an operations consulting firm) launches a new "COO Society" for advisory firm operations staff to learn and train
Angie Herbers launches a new practice management Academy for advisory firms focused on the core areas of business management for a scaling advisory firm
Why COOs are increasingly becoming a partnership-track role in larger advisory firms

We've also included a number of articles on the growing focus of 'data' in advisory firms, including:

A consumer study that shows consumers are very willing to share their data with their wealth managers (more so than their own financial institutions)
How "Chief Data Officer" may soon become a key role in larger enterprise advisory firms that manage their data as an asset
The trade-offs in being a data-driven leader (and why there is such a thing as being 'too' data-driven, such that the firm misses out on innovation by looking only in the rear-view mirror)

We wrap up with three final articles, all around the theme of learning from the past to inform the future:

How "The Office" itself has evolved over the past 100 years, and why repeated calls for it to decline in popularity haven't materialized for decades
Why it's becoming increasingly popular to (once again) look to antiquity for insights about what's healthy and best for us
The fascinating link between walking outside and improving our mental health and creativity

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

#FA Success Ep 232: Turning Your Personal Passion (For Financial Literacy) Into A Personal Brand, With Jamie Bosse

June 8, 2021 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 232nd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today’s podcast is Jamie Bosse. Jamie is a financial planner at Aspyre Wealth Partners, an RIA in Overland Park, Kansas that manages just under $500m in assets for 275 families.

What’s unique about Jamie, though, is how she’s been able to balance her own responsibilities within a firm that serves affluent clients, with writing a series of children’s books on personal finance and a soon-to-be-published “grown-up” book addressing many of the money issues that young parents face, as she crafts her own personal brand as the “Money Boss Mom”.

In this episode, we talk in depth about how Jamie found that creating content for Aspyre that spoke about financial decisions and issues she was making as a parent resonated with (and began to attract) a younger client base, how a “teachable moment” with her son was the inspiration for her first children’s book, “Milton Brings Home The Bacon”, the mechanics of the publishing process that Jamie had to navigate to bring that book to life, and how Jamie has found that the value of being a published author isn’t in book sales per se, but rather the goodwill that having a book brings to herself as a planner, as well as to the firm she works for, which benefits from the additional reach that Jamie’s brand can bring.

We also talk about how Aspyre charges both an AUM fee as well as a separate financial planning fee for their more ‘traditional’ clients (and how they think about the value they bring to the table when the all-in fee can approach 150 basis points), Jamie’s role in expanding the service model of Aspyre to serve next-generation clients that Jamie has been able to help attract to the firm, the subscription fee business model the firm implemented and the technology it's using to make next-generation client meetings more efficient, and how Aspyre has been testing out a surge meeting structure in order to create space to work on bigger picture projects within the firm (as well as the challenges that they’ve faced as they learn how to make surge meetings work for them).

And be sure to listen to the end, where Jamie shares how her own career journey, from starting at a firm that ended out being too small, to working at a bank that was too big, before settling in at a mid-sized RIA that was ‘just right’, mirrors the career progression of so many young planners as they find their right fit over the span of three career jumps in their early years, the lessons Jamie has learned around the importance of maintaining professional relationships and not burning bridges (because the financial advisor community isn’t all that large, and you never know who you’ll run into later in your career), and why Jamie feels it’s so important for younger planners to get involved in the advisor community as a way not only to give back to the profession, but to stay connected as well.

So whether you're interested in learning about how Jamie balances her personal brand as an author with her responsibilities within her firm, the process she uses to publish her books, or how she helped broaden the focus of her firm to be able to serve next-generation clients effectively, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Jamie Bosse.

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (June 5-6)

June 4, 2021 02:56 pm 2 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with a fascinating industry study of more than 70,000 financial advisors showing that 2020 actually witnessed record client retention rates across the industry (94.6%) but also one of the slowest years for new client acquisition (ostensibly at least in part because so few clients were willing to change advisors in the first place?), as the advisory industry at large continues to shift into increasingly stable ongoing fee-based AUM relationships with its affluent clients (though in practice, the majority of affluent clients are also maintaining unmanaged brokerage accounts for at least some of their investable assets as well!).

Also in the industry news this week are a number of other interesting headlines:

A new white paper from Bob Veres and Matthew Jackson highlights how niche financial planning is becoming the new frontier (though arguably, fee-only financial planning already has been a niche for the past 20 years?)
An Arizent study finding that the majority of advisors wish to stay at least partially working from home as the pandemic subsides... although not significantly more than the number of advisors who already worked at least partially from home pre-pandemic!?

From there, we have several interesting articles on cryptocurrency:

The FPA's latest Trends In Investing survey shows a significant spike in the number of advisors looking to allocate more to cryptocurrency in the coming year (at 26%, up from fewer than 1% of advisors just 1 year ago)
Schwab may be gearing up to soon make cryptocurrency investing available on its platform
Why the dominance of cryptocurrency in the consumer media means advisors have to talk to clients about it, even if the advisor's view is that it's not (yet?) worth investing into

We've also included a number of articles on the growing buzz around inflation:

A recent study highlights the investments that perform better or worse when economies transition into higher inflation environments
The heat is coming off forward-looking inflation expectations as investment markets increasingly assume the Fed may act
How to have the 'inflation conversation' with clients by focusing on the Rule of 72 and how long it takes for prices to double

We wrap up with three final articles, all around the theme of adding value in client relationships:

The opportunities for even fee-only advisors to add value to clients with advice about their insurance policies (even and especially if the advisor isn't the one selling them)
Tips on how to have more productive annual client review meetings by breaking them into backward-looking and forward-looking sections of the meeting agenda
How to think about restructuring advice fees into Service Fees and separate Access Fees to better align the interests of the client and their advisor to provide ongoing value

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

#FA Success Ep 231: From CPA Lifestyle Practice To Billion Dollar Multi-Generational RIA Enterprise, With Michael Goodman

June 1, 2021 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 231^st episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today’s podcast is Michael Goodman. Michael is the Founder and President of Wealthstream Advisors, a fee-only RIA headquartered in Manhattan that manages over $1b in assets for 350 client families.

What’s unique about Michael, though, is that he used his early experience as a CPA to transition into a career as a financial planner, starting first as a solo practitioner before making a deliberate decision to build out a large ensemble firm that can persist and sustain even after he retires.

In this episode, we talk in depth about the convergence of the tax planning and financial planning professions, how early CPAs pioneered the wealth management model by running what were essentially family offices offering affluent clients comprehensive tax and financial planning that expanded into RIAs helping with investment management as well, how the breadth of business knowledge that CPAs obtain as part of their stringent education offers a unique perspective on the planning process (and as Michael put it, “a bigger lens to work from”), and how working with a consultant was the catalyst to help Michael change his mindset from maintaining a CPA lifestyle practice to building an enduring RIA enterprise (and how building and being part of a larger team ended out being the aspect of business ownership that Michael enjoys the most!).

We also talk about Michael's own journey through the financial services industry, why doing audits of small- to mid-sized business as a young CPA gave him the equivalent of an MBA education in business management (while getting paid to do the work that was giving him such an invaluable education), how Michael moved to what at that time was a Big Six accounting firm but ultimately found the work unsatisfying because he lost the human element he enjoyed so much, and how Michael’s involvement with the AICPA’s Personal Financial Planning membership was the pathway to finding mentors that he could model after as a planner and business owner.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Michael shares the specific hires he made as his practice began to expand (including a lead advisor as well as a COO to free up his time to work on the business rather than in the business), the specific types of traits and experience Michael was looking for as he filled those roles, the mechanics of the valuation process Michael went through in order to bring in shareholders in order to build for the next generation, and how changing Michael’s mind around hiring younger planners just out of college has turned out to be a hugely satisfying professional experience.

And so whether you're interested in learning more about Michael's journey from starting out as an accountant and ending out as a financial planner, the deliberate steps he took to transition from a lifestyle practice to a multi-generational firm, or how he structured the sale of equity in his firm, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Michael Goodman.

Why (Virtual) Experiential Learning Is The Future Of Financial Planner Training

May 31, 2021 07:07 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

As the total number of CFP certificants crosses 90,000 – nearly 1/3^rd of all financial advisors – and the number of undergraduate and graduate school CFP Board registered programs continues to grow, the pathway of a college degree plus CFP certification is increasingly becoming the way new financial planners learn how to do financial planning. Yet the reality is that while a theory-based education may provide the “book smarts” and an understanding of the regulatory and legal sides of the practice, it doesn’t necessarily give future financial advisors the full scope of understanding and skills needed to thrive as emerging professionals. While at the same time, ‘on-the-job’ training is still far too often focused on teaching the sales skills it takes to get new clients… but not necessarily what new financial planners need to learn to deliver good advice that clients will actually implement. Which means, simply put, that the emerging pathway for training new financial planners may not be providing the full base of knowledge and education really needed to be successful as a financial planner.

Fortunately, though, other established professions have long since determined an alternative approach to teaching and training new professionals to figure out how to actually apply their book knowledge in real-world situations: experiential learning. From veteran craftsmen to train apprentices, to experienced doctors who train residents, to simply getting an internship with an experienced professional, getting an opportunity to learn by “seeing how it’s done” in practice remains a remarkably effective way to learn. In the context of financial planners, in particular, this means shifting from a purely technical-focused training or one that only practices sales techniques to turn prospects into clients, into an experiential learning approach that allows for the practice of advice techniques to convince clients to actually implement the advisor’s advice.

However, experiential learning opportunities have been limited in practice. Conferences can be costly and take time to vet out which ones are genuinely applicable to people who have not truly entered the industry yet. Internships, while useful (at least when well implemented), are limited in number and often only provide the scope of how one particular firm does financial planning. And few firms have the depth of team or capability to implement a systematized apprenticeship-style training program for a large number of aspiring financial planners.

The good news is that the rise of the pandemic has driven such a newfound focus to online learning, that it is also creating new opportunities and best practices for experiential learning to go online as well. A case-in-point example is the FPA Externship, which launched in 2020 as an 8-week intensive online experiential learning program. Similar to an internship, the goal of the FPA Externship is to provide new financial planners an opportunity to get exposed to the real-world practice of financial planning. However, the virtual environment makes it possible to give participants exposure and experience to many different firms’ styles and strategies, while ensuring a rotation through all the different areas of financial planning (not just the one area that one particular firm is focused on). In other words, aspiring financial planners get to see a wide range of what it actually looks like to be a financial planner and do financial planning for various types of clients with varying needs delivered by experienced advisors with a wide range of planning styles.

The significance of programs like the FPA Externship is that the financial services industry is in the midst of a shift from sales-based “financial advisors” to advice-based financial planning, but new financial planners often can’t tell which jobs are which until it’s too late. Consequently, a break can emerge between what new advisors saw in education and what they witness in practice. Which in turn can lead to disillusionment and many talented financial planners leaving the profession… not because of lack of interest, but because they never get to see what the financial planning profession is truly capable of at its best.

Ultimately, the key point is that technical and sales training can take future advisors far, but without experiential learning to understand what the financial advice business is really about, new financial advisors will at best be under-trained when they first begin to work with clients, and at worst can face disillusionment as they begin their careers (and potentially leave the profession before they even really start!). Fortunately, though, programs like the FPA Externship – which is soon to close its summer 2021 enrollment! – are emerging that can fill this gap and provide advisors an understanding of the true power of financial planning, thus developing a stronger generation of financial advicers for years to come!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (May 22-23)

May 21, 2021 02:53 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that 'upstart' RIA custodian Altruist has raised a huge $50M of fresh investment capital to fuel its ongoing growth, even as questions arise as to how quickly the platform is actually growing and whether Altruist is ultimately really an RIA custodian, or a platform TAMP, or a technology firm that overlays custodial services... though arguably Altruist's ongoing growth (and ability to attract investor capital to fuel that growth) despite the murkiness of its 'categorization' may simply highlight how the traditional dividing lines between each are continuing to blur as advisors expect more and more from their advisor platforms (whatever they may be labeled)?

Also in the industry news this week are a number of interesting studies:

The latest Charles Schwab "Modern Wealth" survey finds that consumers have substantively reined back what it takes to be "wealthy" and "financially happy" as expectations adjust in a post-pandemic world
A T. Rowe Price study highlights how next generation clients are interested in financial advice, but want to talk about different topics (that are more relevant to them) and prefer flat- and subscription fees over the AUM model when seeking a financial advisor

From there, we have several interesting articles on mergers and acquisitions and advisory firm valuations:

How often the best way to increase an advisory firm's valuation is to simplify and do less (which makes it easier for an acquirer to quickly integrate the firm and thus be willing to pay more)
As large advisory firms look more like platforms and platforms provide more advisor-support services, the lines between "selling" and "being recruited" are beginning to blur

We've also included a number of articles on financial advisor marketing:

How to apply Donald Miller's "StoryBrand" approach to show the value of financial planning to prospects (by highlighting how the financial planning process will transform them)
Why advancing technology is making it easier for any advisory firm to become a "storyteller" using online tools for easy-to-create videos
The benefit of marketing an advisory firm's services (i.e., actually focusing on the services the firm will provide) over simply trying to highlight its intangible value

We wrap up with three final articles, all around the theme of how even "small" advisory firms can be very financially successful:

Why advisor platforms struggle to be profitable supporting advisors until they're at least $100M of AUM but advisors themselves can be wildly profitable at less than half that amount of AUM
The importance of doing an "audit" on your own client roster to identify who the really profitable clients are (and those who aren't)
How growth usually does not lead to economies of scale in advisory firms, which means greater profitability is not about adding more clients in the hopes that margins improve, but about getting smaller and more focused instead

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Kitces & Carl Ep 60: The Training That Service Advisors Need To Get To The Next Level

May 20, 2021 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

For most of the financial advice industry’s history, financial advisors’ success first hinged on survival… which meant getting enough clients to generate enough revenue to survive. Which meant those who survived typically had exceptional “people skills”, which gave them a leg up when convincing people to purchase whatever financial products their companies sold (even with limited industry experience). However, as the industry has become less about financial products sales transactions and more about ongoing advice relationships, financial advisory firms have increasingly needed to hire “support” advisors whose job isn’t to bring in new business, but rather to service (and be awesome for) existing clients. The good news is that these pathways have led to wider opportunities for people to enter the profession (even and especially if they aren’t necessarily business-development oriented). But because bringing in new clients is harder than keeping existing ones, those who do the former inevitably earn more than the latter. Which means that support advisors who decide that they want to level up their careers often have to learn the interpersonal skills necessary to develop (and lead) client relationships.

In our 60th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and financial advisor communication expert Carl Richards discuss some steps that support advisors with limited client experience can take to learn how to communicate effectively, habits they can adopt to develop their own approach when taking point on client relationships, and ways they can position themselves within their firm to get the opportunity to expand their role.

As a starting point, it’s important to recognize the amount of progress that the industry has made in prioritizing ongoing relationships with clients and that there's no longer just one pathway into financial planning as a career. And it’s equally important to acknowledge the fact that advisors can craft a very rewarding career as a support advisor without worrying about bringing in new business. However, for those support advisors who do want to move into a lead role, developing solid communication skills is key. And while not everyone is born with the proverbial gift of gab, the good news is that striking up a conversation, listening actively, asking good questions, and building rapport are all skills that can be learned.

Accordingly, initial steps that advisors can take include joining groups and taking courses designed specifically to help get people comfortable speaking with (and in front of) strangers, communicating effectively in professional settings, and thinking quickly to respond in real-time to the unexpected (or incongruous). Some examples include Toastmasters and Dale Carnegie (for public speaking and professional training, respectively), as well as improv classes, where advisors can practice responding genuinely to what’s happening “in the moment”.

Other proactive measures service advisors can take to learn how to lead client relationships is to seek out opportunities to sit in on meetings with lead advisors (especially discovery meetings where the client/advisor relationship is just taking shape), not necessarily with an eye towards participating in the meeting, but rather simply as a silent observer to listen and absorb as much as possible. From there, advisors can look for opportunities to develop a ‘mini-specialization’ proficiency in a particular planning topic (think ESG investing, equity compensation planning, or student loan planning) and become their firm’s internal expert for a subject that’s impactful for their clients (which can help get them invited into more client meetings!).

Ultimately, the key point is that there are specific actions that support advisors can take to give themselves the tools they need (beyond “just” solid technical chops) to move into a lead advisor role. Becoming a good communicator is an essential first step, and lead advisors within the firm can be great resources to learn from as well—but developing unique expertise and bringing additional value to clients can really give those looking to advance their careers a big leg up!

#FA Success Ep 229: Navigating The Evolution Of Financial Planning Over 50 Years Of Building, With Alexandra Armstrong

May 18, 2021 07:05 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 229^th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today’s podcast is Alexandra Armstrong. Alex is the Founder and Chairwoman Emeritus of Armstrong, Fleming, and Moore, a hybrid RIA in Washington, D.C. that she launched in 1983 and ultimately sold to four successors after a career of over 40 years as a financial advisor.

What’s unique about Alex, though, is that she’s one of the true pioneers in the industry, earning her CFP in 1977 as one of the first CFP classes in the country (and the first person in Washington DC to earn the designation), serving for seven years as the first woman chairperson of the International Association for Financial Planning (which would later become the FPA), championing the initial formation of a group of independent broker-dealers that would eventually become the Financial Services Institute, and serving as a chairperson for the Foundation of Financial Planning, a board that she continues to sit on to this day.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about Alex’s journey through the financial services industry at a time when there were even fewer women in the industry than there are today, her appreciation for the fact that she was mentored by two women who were both top producers at their firms in the 1970s (demonstrating that even early on, women could find success in the industry), Alex’s early recognition that providing comprehensive financial planning was a competitive advantage and a way to differentiate herself beyond “just” selling investment products, and the camaraderie that Alex found amongst other early financial planners from around the country who shared a passion for helping people with their entire financial picture in an industry that was still entirely focused on selling limited partnerships and other financial services products.

We also talk about how Alex’s natural ability as a delegator was (as she puts it) the real secret to her success (as it allowed her to spend more of her time on client-facing activities), the importance of involving both spouses of a client couple in the planning process (going so far as to send each spouse a separate copy of the financial plan before the review meeting so they would each have time to think about any questions they might have), and how having the ability to be picky about who Alex chose to work with helped her foster the formation of lifelong client relationships.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Alex shares why she believes a career in financial planning is ideally suited to women (because it allows them to utilize their emotional intelligence, and gives them the opportunity to do work where they can use their intellect, make a real difference in people’s lives, and earn a good living), how Alex struggled emotionally when it was time to transition out of her own career that meant so much to her (and how she’s found purpose and satisfaction serving on various boards, including her ongoing service to the Foundation for Financial Planning), and how Alex found that transitioning to retirement ultimately wasn’t all that disruptive because of the wisdom that her clients shared with her about retirement after starting their own next chapters.

So if you’re interested in learning about Alex’s pioneering career in financial planning, some of the key lessons she’s learned along the way, or how her clients’ experiences entering retirement helped her with her own transition, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast with Alexandra Armstrong.
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