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#FASuccess Ep 056: The Opportunities In Providing Hourly As-Needed Financial Advice For The Middle Market with Sheryl Garrett

January 23, 2018 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the 56th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Sheryl Garrett. Sheryl is the founder of the Garrett Planning Network, a financial advisor support network for fee-only RIAs with a focus on bringing financial planning to the middle market by making it available on an hourly, as-needed basis.

What's unique about Sheryl, though, is that what started out as a very unique business model in the late 1990s turned out to be so popular, that it attracted other financial advisors to her to emulate the model... and as a result, what started out as something Sheryl wanted to do for her own clients turned into a network of several hundred advisors all delivering the same hourly model in their own local markets.

In this episode, Sheryl shares her own path through the financial planning industry, how she struggled early on in a broker-dealer that required her to cold call and sell products, how she dropped her FINRA licenses and shifted to an early fee-only RIA, then picked her FINRA licenses back UP a second time for another broker-dealer firm, only to drop them again by transitioning once more into the fee-only channel for good... albeit by becoming a partner in a new fee-only RIA, only to quickly discover that the partnership wasn't going to work, which is what ultimately led her to finally start a firm of her own, a full 10+ years into her career.

In addition, Sheryl shares what it took for her to finally launch the Garrett Planning Network, what she's learned about the success and challenges of the hourly model for financial planning, why referrals from other advisors can actually be one of the best ways to build an hourly practice, how – just as with other advisory firm models – many hourly planners build lifestyle practices, while some endeavor to grow larger businesses, and how one of the appeals of the hourly model for her is that it kept her focused on trying to be as efficient as possible with her clients to help them manage their cost of advice.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Sheryl talks about the value of organizations like the Garrett Planning Network, where it's great to have the advisor support services... but in the end, the most powerful effect is simply finding a community of fellow advisors, pursuing a similar business model with a similar clientele, from whom you can learn, and with whom you can share best practices. Whatever your target clientele and business model happen to be.

So whether you are interested in learning more about the Garrett Planning Network, curious how you can grow your business by generating referrals from other financial advisors, or simply want to learn more about the hourly financial planning business model, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

Introducing AdvicePay And The Automation Of Billing Financial Planning Fees (Without Custody)

January 22, 2018 07:01 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

In recent years, the rise of the robo-advisor has driven a realization amongst most financial advisors that it’s absolutely essential to provide value beyond “just” portfolio management itself to attract and retain clients. This surge of interest in delivering financial planning is driving the growth of CFP certification to record levels (now more than 80,000!), but is also causing many financial advisors to question the entire AUM business model altogether; after all, if the future is all about getting paid for financial planning and not investment management, then will consumers eventually compel advisors to move away from the AUM model and towards fee-for-service financial planning?

Yet the caveat of this transition is that there’s an incredible operational efficiency to charging AUM fees. They’re straightforward to calculate, the infrastructure already exists to sweep fees from investment accounts and remit them to advisors, and the AUM fee is psychologically easier for clients because it happens automatically on their behalf. By contrast, charging directly for financial planning requires managing invoices, collecting and cashing physical checks, and a process to collect for late/missed payments. And from the client’s perspective, writing lots of checks for fees often just makes clients more fee-sensitive.

To address this challenge, we’re excited to announce the launch of AdvicePay, a new payment processing platform for financial advisors specifically created to facilitate fee-for-service financial planning fees (both one-time and especially recurring retainers). Because the reality is that while there are already a lot of other payment processing platforms out there, from PayPal to PaySimple, to the Quickbooks Merchant account, most don’t even meet the compliance requirements of state regulators to avoid custody and provide proper notifications to clients, some prohibit financial advisors from using them at all, and none are built to integrate with the existing systems of financial planners (nor do they appear to have any intention to ever do so!)!

Yet after registering a few hundred independent RIAs with state regulators in just the past 2 years alone at XY Planning Network, we’ve learned exactly what regulators really expect and are looking for to ensure consumers are appropriately protected, especially when it comes to charging ongoing recurring retainer fees. And while we originally built AdvicePay simply to solve this problem just for XY Planning Network, we’ve realized that with the entire advisory industry shifting towards financial planning – leading to a growing demand for a payment processing system to handle all those fee-for-service payments – there is an opportunity to help even more financial planners, and more consumers who want to work with them. Especially given how many people might need financial planning, and would be willing to pay for it, but don’t even have liquid investment assets to manage – and need a way to pay for financial planning directly from a bank account or credit card.

As a result, we’ve spent the past several months expanding the capabilities of AdvicePay to handle the wider needs of the financial advisor community, raised $500,000 of venture capital funds to support further development, and are excited today to be rolling out AdvicePay to the entire financial services industry… so anyone who wants to build a fee-for-service financial planning business will now have the tools to do so (in a compliant manner!).

In the long run, we’re not certain if financial planning fees will simply become a supplement to the AUM model, replace it entirely (where advisors charge for financial planning, and give away asset management for free!), or branch out further into its own path as a means of serving new consumer segments who can’t be served by AUM fees alone. But we’re excited to see what AdvicePay can do to help support the ongoing growth of the financial planning profession!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (January 20-21)

January 19, 2018 02:47 pm 1 Comment CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the fascinating letter that Blackrock CEO Larry Fink sent to business leaders, stating that they must make a positive contribution to society (in addition to delivering financial performance) to command Blackrock's interest (as the world's largest institutional investor)... and raising the question of whether SRI/ESG investing is about to make the shift from niche to mainstream (which, ironically, eliminate any potential performance differential for such strategies as they literally become the market!).

Also in the news this week was the first-time-ever release of a FINRA budget, that (finally) sheds some light on how the organization collects revenue and spends its resources... and recognizes that it must be "right-sized" with fewer staff and lower costs to be sustainable in the face of a shrinking base of broker-dealers. And the U.S. Supreme Court has granted certiorari to hear the case of Ray Lucia v. SEC, which may strike down the SEC's current process of selecting its administrative law judges as being unconstitutional (and force the SEC to adopt a more independent and better-reviewed appointment process, instead).

From there, we have several articles on retirement planning and research, including a look at how not to split an IRA in a divorce (and why it's essential to split an IRA after the divorce decree is finalized), why so-called "cash buffer" or "cash bucketing" strategies don't actually improve retirement income sustainability (and can actually harm it), and how the availability of reverse mortgages may change the 4% rule (taking an initial withdrawal rate equal to 1/25th of the available retirement assets) into a Rule of 30 (taking a 3.33% initial withdrawal rate against the combined value of the retirement portfolios and equity in the home, using a reverse mortgage line of credit to tap the equity in the future if/when/as needed).

We also have a few articles on financial advisor marketing strategies, including a reminder that the best way to get fresh new marketing ideas is not to ask other advisors what works but to ask your target clientele instead, a look at how to refine what your firm delivers to clients to truly create a differentiating client experience (beyond "just" trying to deliver better client service), and a great way of thinking about differentiating as a financial advisor by being capable of delivering something that other advisors either can't, or don't deliver themselves (though in the long run, a can't differentiator may be more sustainable).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of personal growth and development in an evolving business or career path: the first looks at why personal progress is all about continuously taking ourselves out of our personal comfort zone (because in the end, "if you want something in life that you have never had, you will have to do something that you have never done"); the second explores the "four elements of entrepreneurship", recognizing that it's more about the mental attitude of being willing to make decisions and attempt new things in the face of uncertainty than any particular skill or ability; and the last delves even further into the steps that successful advisors (and especially advisory firm founders) must take to avoid becoming the bottleneck in their own businesses as they grow.

Enjoy the "light" reading!

The Coming Golden Age Of The (Focused) Solo Financial Advisor

January 18, 2018 01:48 pm 10 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

With an ever-growing wave of mergers and acquisitions, and industry consolidation, amongst both broker-dealers and RIAs, there is an increasingly common view that the solo financial advisor is "doomed" in the coming years. Whether due to the burdens of managing the firm, meeting the rising volume of fiduciary compliance obligations, handling increasingly complex investment or insurance solutions, or just doing all the financial planning work… the presumption is that all together it will simply become “unmanageable” – or at least impossible to do in a cost-effective manner – for the typical solo financial advisor in the future. Thus requiring solo advisors to either be acquired, or at least be "tucked in" to larger firms, in order to access their resources and have better economies of scale. Yet the reality is that "the death of the solo financial advisor" has been forecasted for nearly two decades now, and in the meantime solo financial advisors have actually become more profitable than ever!

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we take a deeper dive into the current state of the solo advisor, why it's actually becoming easier to be a successful independent solo financial advisor, and why the coming decade is more likely to be the GOLDEN AGE of solo financial advisors than the death of them!

As a starting point, it is helpful to pause and reflect on the current state of solo financial advisors as they exist today, nearly 20 years after Mark Hurley famously issued his 1999 report forecasting the death of the solo advisor. Because the current industry benchmarking studies reveal some striking trends, including that the best solo financial advisors take home as much hard-dollar cash compensation as the typical partner in a billion dollar advisory firm! In fact, the top solo advisors are keeping in their pocket as much as 70 to nearly 90 cents of every dollar of revenue that they generate, after accounting for all expenses (technology, office space, staff, etc.). In hard dollar terms, the typical standout solo advisor is netting almost $600,000 per year in take-home profits, on $700,000 to $800,000 of total revenue. So to put it mildly, solo advisory firms are not exactly struggling and dying in today’s marketplace! And while these figures are based on about the top 25% of solo firms - so clearly not all solo advisors are doing this well - even the average solo advisor can do very well on much lower levels of revenue with the potential for a 60% to 80% profit margin!

Accordingly, even if costs rise substantially (say, another 10% on overhead), solo advisors would still have ample profit margins to absorb the impact, and top solo advisors could still be taking home nearly half a million dollars a year in take-home pay. Even an advisor generating "just" $250,0000 in gross revenue and running a 60% profit margin would still be taking home $150,000, which is still almost 3 times the median household income in the U.S. Simply put, there’s a lot of room to succeed as a solo advisor, even if costs rise.

Furthermore, it's really not even clear if we should expect costs to rise for solo advisors in the future, as the reality is that the cost of what it takes to operate an advisory firm today compared to 20 years ago has been reduced tremendously, due to technology. Tools that make it more efficient to be a solo financial advisor – scheduling software, rebalancing software, tax updates built into powerful planning software rather than proprietary spreadsheets, account aggregation tools that automatically update financial plans, etc. – have all reduced the costs of being a solo financial advisor, in terms of both time and money. And while 20 to 30 years ago the "best" technology was at the wirehouse firms that had the resources to develop them, today almost all of the best solutions are provided by independent technology firms, and accessible for the average solo financial advisor (because the independent technology provider can achieve economies of scale, which transfers down to the individual advisor using the software!).

With all this being said, I don’t want to be insensitive to the plight of many of today’s solo financial advisors today who are not running 60% (or 80%-plus) profit margins, and are not taking home half a million dollars or more in compensation from their firms. For many solo advisory firms, there is often a complaint with growth that “the business isn’t scaling”, which is typically code for "this isn’t getting any easier as my firm gets bigger, so when are all of these efficiencies coming along?" But the real struggles for solo advisory firms, particularly once they cross about 50 clients, aren't actually the result of being too small to survive, but instead are a result of not having enough focus. Because the reality is that it is time intensive and hard to scale if each client you serve is different and you don't have a clear target market where you can create a consistent solution. But that means the key to success isn't more size and staff and growth... it's finding better focus. Otherwise, growing bigger just makes the problem worse, because you add even more inefficient clients and then throw staff and money at the problem, which doesn’t actually make it more efficient, and just makes you miserable because now you have to manage more and more staff on top of your inefficient business!

However, it's important to recognize that there is one real challenge that solo advisory firms do face in the future: the marketing challenge of getting new clients, and differentiating yourself, given the coming (and even current) landscape of advisory firms. Because while there was a time where just being a comprehensive financial planner was a sufficient differentiator, but that is no longer the case. Solo advisors have to compete with over 80,000 other CFP certificants now, and every major broker-dealer has been making a big push into financial planning for years. And while it is true that solo financial advisors can often still go deeper than those firms, and have more relevant expertise, and be more specialized.... unfortunately, few solo advisors are. Many are still just generalist financial planners. And there is a problem with trying to outmarket a firm that’s 100 or a 1,000 times your size, or even larger, when all you do is the same generalist financial planning advice that they do. Which means focusing and specializing into a niche helps both your client service efficiency and your marketing!

The bottom line, though, is just to recognize that not only is the solo financial advisor not dying… and I’d argue that there’s never been a better time to become a solo advisor, thanks to the rise of the internet and all this amazing technology that allows us to be solo advisors and leverage that technology at a fraction of the cost of traditional staff members. However, the fact that you can be more efficient than ever as a solo won’t help in the future if you can’t differentiate yourself. But when you get all that right, as the benchmarking studies have shown already, solo financial advisors can make an incredible income (sometimes not even working full time!)! Which means being a solo financial advisor can still be amazing... at least, once you have focus!

Acquisition And Home Equity Mortgage Interest Tax Deductibility After TCJA

January 17, 2018 07:01 am 12 Comments CATEGORY: Taxes

The “American Dream” has long included the opportunity to own your own home, which the Federal government incentivizes and partially subsidizes by offering a tax deduction for mortgage interest. To the extent that the taxpayer itemizes their deductions – for which the mortgage interest deduction itself often pushes them over the line to itemize – the mortgage interest is deductible as well.

Since the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the mortgage deduction had a limit of only deducting the interest on the first $1,000,000 of debt principal that was used to acquire, build, or substantially improve the primary residence (and was secured by that residence). Interest on any additional mortgage debt, or debt proceeds that were used for any other purpose, was only deductible for the next $100,000 of debt principal (and not deductible at all for AMT purposes).

Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, though, the debt limit on deductibility for acquisition indebtedness is reduced to just $750,000 (albeit grandfathered for existing mortgages under the old higher $1M limit), and interest on home equity indebtedness is no longer deductible at all starting in 2018.

Notably, though, the determination of what is “acquisition indebtedness” – which remains deductible in 2018 and beyond – is based not on how the loan is structured or what the bank (or mortgage servicer) calls it, but how the mortgage proceeds were actually used. To the extent they were used to acquire, build, or substantially improve the primary residence that secures the loan, it is acquisition indebtedness – even in the form of a HELOC or home equity loan. On the other hand, even a “traditional” 30-year mortgage may not be fully deductible interest if it is a cash-out refinance and the cashed out portion was used for other purposes.

Unfortunately, the existing Form 1098 reporting does not even track how much is acquisition indebtedness versus not – despite the fact that only acquisition mortgage debt is now deductible. Nonetheless, taxpayers are still responsible for determining how much is (and isn’t) deductible for tax purposes. Which means actually tracking (and keeping records of) how mortgage proceeds are/were used when the borrowisecong occurred, and how the remaining principal has been amortized with principal payments over time!

#FASuccess Ep 055: Separating Management From Ownership On The Path To $10B of AUM with Tim Kochis

January 16, 2018 07:01 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the 55th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Tim Kochis. Tim is the co-founder of Aspiriant, one of the first independent RIAs to have reached $1 billion in assets under management in the early 2000s, that today is one of the advisory industry's few independent RIAs focused on comprehensive wealth management to have reached a whopping $10 billion of AUM.

What's fascinating about Tim is the way that he was able to attract and retain great talent as his firm grew, by distributing ownership equity of the firm early on... a philosophy that Aspiriant has retained by now having over 50 partners that participate in the firm's equity ownership.

In this episode, Tim shares how he was able to grow so quickly to become one of the leading RIAs (with a niche focus on working with corporate executives), the way he differentiated his firm and gained credibility even without having a big corporate name on his business card, how he deepened his reach in his niche by co-authoring multiple books on tax strategies for managing executive compensation and concentrated stock positions, the reason why Aspiriant chose from early on to charge separately for investment management and financial planning, and how the firm structured its lengthy and comprehensive financial plans with a shorter Executive Summary up front and a deep Appendix of Technical Memoranda in the back... with all the technical information.

In addition, we talk in depth about how Aspiriant separated ownership from management of the firm, the management infrastructure it used to operate, why Tim and his partners ultimately decided to merge the firm with another large RIA after already reaching $2.5 billion of AUM, and how he navigated his own exit as the firm's CEO (even though he still retains an ongoing ownership stake).

And be certain to listen to the end, where Tim discusses some of the insights he's gleaned over the years in how to successfully execute a succession plan, and the work he's now doing with leading industry consultants Philip Palaveev and David DeVoe on succession planning and developing the next generation for advisory firm leaders.

So whether you have been curious about ways you can establish credibility through a niche without a big corporate brand name, how to best structure a succession plan within your own firm, or are simply curious to learn more about the growth path of a multibillion dollar RIA, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

Comparing The Best Digital Advice “Robo-Advisor” Platforms For RIAs

January 15, 2018 07:01 am 6 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

As robo-advisor platforms have increasingly pivoted from direct-to-consumer offerings to business-to-business offerings instead, financial advisors have had many new "robo-advisor-for-advisors" platforms to choose from. The appeal of these "digital advice" support platforms is the potential to expedite the onboarding process for clients - especially less affluent clients where the advisor can't necessarily afford to take as much time to work with the client directly - where the technology helps with everything from risk profiling to efficiently handle the administrative tasks of account opening. And increasingly, these advisor FinTech companies are actually trying to expand into full-scale end-to-end wealth management offerings. Yet ironically, as more and more digital advice platforms build out their capabilities, it's increasingly difficult to simply keep track of the varying list of feature and integrations.

In this guest post, Craig Iskowitz, CEO and founder of Ezra Group (a management consulting firm providing advice to the financial services industry on marketing and technology strategy) shares his thoughts on the best "robo-advisor-for-advisors" platforms for RIAs available, reviewing popular players like AdvisorEngine, Oranj, RobustWealth, Jemstep, and Riskalyze regarding everything from features and integrations, to the client experience, pricing, and more!

Notably, as these modern digital advice solutions become more and more capable, they're also beginning to shift from technology tools to assist with "just" an advisor's smaller clients, to platforms that are capable of supporting the full range of an advisor's clientele. After all, even "traditional" financial planning clients continue to have increasingly higher expectations with respect to the online experience their financial advisor provides... which in turn is expanding beyond just having a seamless digital experience for opening and managing accounts, and into areas such as proactive communication and tracking of financial planning progress.

So whether you have been wanting to look into your options for utilizing a robo-advisor-for-advisors platform, are currently using a solution and want to ensure that it's still the right platform for your firm, or are simply interested in staying on top of this rapidly expanding area of advisor FinTech... I hope that you find this guest post from Craig to be helpful!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (January 13-14)

January 12, 2018 02:52 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 during the lull of the delayed Department of Labor fiduciary rule, the SEC is proactively working on its own version, and a first proposal could be released as soon as the second quarter of 2018. In fact, in anticipation of the coming rule, the CFA Institute has submitted a somewhat controversial comment letter suggesting that as the SEC proceeds, the best solution may not be to just harmonize with a uniform fiduciary rule for all broker-dealers and RIAs, but instead to focus more on the titles that advisors use and simply require those who hold out as such to be registered as investment advisers (and be subject to a fiduciary rule under current law!).

At the same time, this week's news also included newly proposed legislation in New Jersey, that would require brokers who are not fiduciaries to clearly and explicitly disclosure that they are not and have no obligation to act in their clients' best interests, as delays in a national fiduciary rule are leading to a growing momentum for states to take up the fiduciary slack in their stead. And the Wall Street Journal also published an investigative report about how even at discount brokerage firms like Schwab, Fidelity, and TD Ameritrade, which are known for not using commission-based brokers, that their Financial Consultants are still receiving bonus incentives on top of their salaries that introduce problematic conflicts of interest in their recommendations (further supporting the need for a fiduciary rule).

From there, we have a slew of advisor technology articles this week, including: a new cybersecurity platform initiative in the advisory industry called cleverDome; why financial advisors should be concerned about the recent news of computer chip vulnerabilities Meltdown and Spectre (and another reason/reminder of why it's so important to promptly patch your computer with software updates!); how "robo" tools are coming to life insurance now, both streamlining the process of applying for insurance, and even the time it takes to underwrite the coverage (as algorithms and data feeds begin to replace requests for paper medical records and human underwriters); a favorable review of Advyzon (which provides a combined CRM and portfolio accounting/reporting tool for investment advisers); and a look at some of the financial data startups that are trying to compete with Bloomberg in the independent financial advisor community (including YCharts and Sentieo).

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of time management and personal productivity: the first looks at what the research tells us about the most (and least) productive times of day for decision-making or creative work; the second provides a fascinating look at how our struggles with time management may simply be a modern-world iteration of the age-old philosophical question about how to find better focus and meaning in our lives; and the last is a simple but effective technique to help avoid distracting "opportunities" that may come along in your business... just provide a quote that is drastically higher than your usual prices, and let the prospective client either say no (but then it was their decision, not yours), or perhaps even yes (and properly pay you for the off-focus work, giving you dollars you can then re-deploy more productively in the business!).

Enjoy the "light" reading!

The Unhappiest Successful Advisors: Accidental Business Owners

January 11, 2018 01:32 pm 2 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

As we enter the new year, many advisors will be thinking about ways they can improve their business in 2018. Yet one of the more interesting trends that I have been seeing lately is the rise of advisory firms where the biggest challenge is not the success and growth of the business... but that the advisory firm owners themselves are unhappy, or downright miserable. This seems to particularly occur within the RIA community, and especially amongst those firms managing between approximately $100 million and $300 million of AUM... a subcategory of firms I call "accidental business owners". Because the source of their stress is that they may have built successful and profitable businesses - and now find themselves responsible for managing it - despite the fact that they never actually intended to build a firm that they would have to spend so much time managing in the first place!

In this week’s #OfficeHours with @MichaelKitces, my Tuesday 1PM EST broadcast via Periscope, we discuss what is causing so many advisory firms to become accidental business owners, why they occur in the first place, the problem with being an accidental business owner, and what financial advisors can do if they find themselves in this situation to become happier (and regain control of their lives).

To understand the phenomenon of the accidental business owner, it’s important to first point out that the word “business owner” is being used in a very specific way. We often talk about advisory firms as being “businesses”, but there's a distinction between true "businesses", and advisory firm practices. The difference is that a practice is built around an individual advisor. The practice is you, and while you may have a staff member or two, it's primarily about the services you provide to clients. By contrast, an advisory firm business – a true business – goes beyond just you as the founder advisor. There are other advisors, who manage clients, and who are responsible for helping to bring in new revenue. Historically, almost all financial advisors were salespeople, and most salespeople simply have practices - as evidenced by the fact that if the advisor-salesperson did not go out and selling new insurance or investment products, income dropped precipitously and the business would die. But with the rise of the AUM model, and phenomenally high retention rates amongst advisory firms, advisors began being able to accrue clients over time and actually build large and scalable businesses – businesses that truly needed to hire other advisors to come in and manage relationships – often even without trying to do so. The clients just accrued until the point that it was a business. Thus, they became "accidental" business owners.

But the fundamental problem that crops up for those financial advisors who become accidental business owners is that the job of running an advisory business is different than the job of being a successful advisory practice. A successful practice as a financial advisor is all about your ability to effectively service your own clients. By contrast, running a successful advisory business requires you to be in the role of teaching and training other financial advisors to be good at business development, financial planning, servicing clients, and managing relationships (in addition to managing the firm, hiring staff, making technology decisions, and actually being a leader of the firm). Which means if the primary reason you started your firm in the first place was because you like to be a financial advisor, and give people advice, and help them, and have those client relationships… then being an advisory firm business owner is going to be pretty miserable, because you don't get to do any of that stuff anymore. Which ultimately tends to occur as firms grow to around $100 to $300 million in AUM, because this is the point at which an advisor (or a small team of 2-3 advisors) truly crosses the threshold where they are at capacity and have to add more advisors and other employees and start to scale their practice up to a business.

So with all this being said, if you do find yourself in the position of being one of those unhappy accidental business owners, what should you do about it? The key is to acknowledge that is that there is effectively a fork in the road. The path on the left is to embrace your new role as a business owner. You may not have set out to do it, but here you are, and this is your opportunity to grow, to learn something new, and to do this well. You may recognize that you need help, but that's OK. If you’re a more visionary type, and you can see what needs to be built, but you’re really not the good manager to build and integrate it all together, then make the reinvestment to hire a Chief Operating Officer to be your right hand for implementation.

On the other hand, the path to the right is to go back to being a successful solo advisory practice again. This is by far the more painful path for most of us. Because it basically means downsizing the firm and the number of clients you serve, which to many can feel like "failure". Except it turns out that it may be the single fastest step to actually make you happy again in your business. Because, due to the 80/20 rule, many or even most advisors can maintain their current take-home pay by scaling back to (just) their top 20% of clients while freeing up additional expenses and a lot of time and effort.

But the bottom line is that as you get started here in the new year, take a good long look at what you’ve built. Is it a practice, or a business? And more importantly, what do you want it to be. Do you really want to build a business, and make the reinvestments – financial, time, effort, and learning new skills – that it takes to lead the business? Or do you really just want to run a successful practice, make good money, and regain control of your time? Either path is truly okay, but you have to decide what you want to build towards. And if you’ve found yourself accidentally going down the “wrong” path – you’re an accidental business owner that doesn’t really want to be anymore – recognize that going back to a lifestyle practice is an acceptable answer, and it may be the path that truly leads to greater happiness!

Managing The “Theater” Of A Financial Planning Meeting

January 10, 2018 07:01 am 5 Comments CATEGORY: Client Trust & Communication

For financial advisors who pride ourselves on the quality of the advice we provide to clients, it can sometimes be easy to lose sight of the importance of the more physical elements of our business that seem qualitatively irrelevant to the value of the guidance and recommendations we give to clients. However, as a tremendous amount of psychological research suggests, we should be careful not to overlook the more "theatrical" elements of a financial planning meeting – from the clothes we wear and the way we present information to clients, to the design and set up of our office – as the "theater" of financial planning actually does influence our clients, and their ability to implement our advice in a meaningful manner.

In this guest post, Dr. Derek Tharp – a Kitces.com Researcher, and a recent Ph.D. graduate from the financial planning program at Kansas State University – examines why it is important to both acknowledge and manage the theater of financial planning, particularly given the ways in which clients and prospective clients utilize the signals we as advisors send (both consciously and unconsciously) to decide everything from whom to hire, to what financial recommendations they should implement (or not!).

It is widely acknowledged that effective communication is an important aspect of what financial advisors do. However, something that is less commonly appreciated is the role that our environment plays in facilitating that communication. In his book, Suggestible You, Erik Vance examines the ways in which our suggestible minds are influenced by the stories we hear and the environments we hear those stories in. In particular, Vance examines the "theater of medicine", and its surprisingly powerful role in shaping the perceptions and beliefs of patients, which can, in turn, influence their physical health and well-being as well!

Additionally, the physical spaces we occupy (such as our office) can actually say a lot about us. Though laboratory research in financial planning is still very young, and scholars are only beginning to delve into how the offices of financial advisors can optimally be designed, some research from other fields has found that our physical environments can actually say even more about our personalities than some commonly used tools and assessments. At the heart of this are ways in which our personality manifests in certain behaviors which leave physical evidence within our environments that is really hard to fake – from mementos we collect and things intentionally place out for others to see, to more subtle clues such as the way we dress and organize things on our desk.

Ultimately, financial advisors have many options for trying to better manage the theater of financial planning... from sending signals of our conscientiousness through our clothing (e.g., formal dress) and communication style (e.g., controlled posture and calm speech), to signals of our competence through education and professional designations (e.g., CFP certification), and even signaling our knowledge of and solidarity with niche communities that we service... there are many ways in which we can seek to manage the "theater" of our financial planning to help our clients adopt and implement wise financial planning practices!