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#FA Success Ep 316: Building A COO Society To Help Advisory Firms Scale Up Their Efficiency, With Matt Sonnen

January 17, 2023 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 316th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Matt Sonnen. Matt is the founder & CEO of PFI Advisors, a consulting firm based out of Redondo Beach, California, that assists wirehouse advisors with the operational transition support they need to break away, and trains and consults with the COOs – the Chief Operating Officers – of independent RIAs to better build their own infrastructures, processes, and culture to scale up their advisory businesses.

What's unique about Matt, though, is how he and his wife have translated the years of hands-on support they’ve provided to independent advisory firms to improve their operations, tech stack, and overall scalability, into creating an entire community for the industry’s Chief Operating Officers – aptly dubbed as PFI’s “COO Society”.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Matt and his team first learned what it really takes to stand up an established independent advisory firm ‘from scratch’ when it breaks away from a wirehouse and has to quickly implement an entire operational infrastructure from office space and phone systems to CRM, investment, and custodial technology, how Matt and his team adapted their stand-up-from-scratch breakaway experience to help RIA owners by implementing their own 10-page “Operational Diagnostic” questionnaire to fully understand each advisory firm’s operational strengths and gaps across a wide range of domains from better onboarding with the firm’s custodian to refining its systems to deliver financial planning to clients, and how Matt ultimately built his COO Society, an online coaching program and community for those Operations professionals within independent RIAs who are focused on those key technology, human resources, and business administration issues, to help them to navigate growth at their own RIAs… and become better more well-rounded COOs themselves.

We also talk about how Matt stumbled into his own advisory career in the late 1990s as a 22-year-old recent college graduate after a recruiter found him a job as an operations point person for an ultra-high-net-worth top-producing team of four brokers at the Beverly Hills branch of Merrill Lynch, how after admittedly making the mistake of leaving Merrill to sell insurance on his own, Matt was recruited back by his former Merrill team in 2008 to help them found and launch Luminous Capital, one of the very first breakaway independent RIAs which began with $1.7 billion of client assets, and how, after years of working closely with RIAs affiliated with Focus Financial to consult on their operational efficiencies, Matt was inspired (and with a little nudging from his very entrepreneurial wife) to launch PFI Advisors so that he could offer his wealth of operations knowledge to consult with a wider range of breakaway brokers and RIA owners… and gain the flexibility and control that independence provides to run his consulting business however he wished as he started his own family.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Matt shares how the unexpected illness (and subsequent tragic death) of his daughter Layla impacted Matt and his wife while they were still in the early stages of launching PFI Advisors, how Matt has learned through trial and error that as a consultant and business owner, gaining new business is more than just stating what your firm does for those it serves, and instead is about explaining how those service offerings can solve for the specific pain points they’re looking to solve, and how Matt stays motivated through the words of the successful basketball coach from his alma mater that success can’t be sustained by simply looking at whether you’re winning, and instead is ultimately about finding self-satisfaction in knowing that you’re pushing your own limits by truly doing the best that you’re personally capable of.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about how Matt and his team help advisors break away from wirehouses to stand up their own RIAs, and RIA owners develop more efficient, scalable processes, why Matt and his wife decided to launch their own consulting firm and subsequently, the COO Society, or how the COO Society has developed a community to foster grow and knowledge to make better COOs in the advisory industry, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Matt Sonnen.

Can Time Blocking Make Advisors Happier And More Efficient?

January 16, 2023 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

One of the most important aspects of emotional wellbeing is having a feeling of control over one’s time. Indeed, financial advisors often describe one of the benefits of financial planning as helping people take control of their time by giving them the financial freedom to do what they enjoy. And likewise, for advisors themselves, one of the ways to stay happy and thriving is to have the ability to spend time doing what one finds is most valuable or fulfilling.

The 2021 Kitces Research Report on What Actually Contributes To Advisor Wellbeing reinforced the idea that the happiest advisors feel in control over their time. Study data showed that ‘Thriving’ advisors – those who reported high levels of overall wellbeing – spent more time on ‘core’ client activities (such as client meetings and developing financial plans) and less time on other activities like administration and back-office tasks when compared to ‘Struggling’ advisors who reported lower wellbeing. Thriving advisors also worked fewer hours each week than their struggling counterparts, suggesting that they not only spent more time on fulfilling client work but also had more time to devote to fulfilling pursuits outside work.

But it wasn’t just the hours spent on each task that mattered for advisor wellbeing. The amount of autonomy that advisors felt over how they spent their working hours – that is, their ability to choose what tasks they worked on over the day – led to them being able to actually spend their time doing work they enjoyed. And while the ability to enjoy this autonomy might be dictated by some factors (like experience) that are out of the advisor’s control, there are methods that all advisors can use to optimize how they manage their schedule, which could make enough of a difference to see a meaningful improvement in wellbeing.

One strategy advisors can use is time blocking – i.e., blocking off stretches of time in one’s calendar for specific tasks or even for a single project. Creating this focused time not only helps eliminate distractions and inefficiencies caused by frequently bouncing between tasks; it can also make the advisor more efficient and effective at their tasks when they are immersed and engaged in their work without interruption.

There are several ways that advisors can implement time blocking in their work. ‘Theme Days’ give each day of the week a specific purpose, so tasks can automatically be sorted into the day they ‘belong’ to. Alternatively, the ‘Ideal Week’ method incorporates business and personal goals for advisors who want to work less than the traditional workweek. And ‘Surge Meeting’ schedules block off certain months or weeks of the year for advisors to get in all their client meetings, freeing up the rest of the year for other projects or even for time off.

Regardless of the method, time blocking works best when the advisor can remain undistracted by other tasks. This might require some creativity in finding ways to eliminate distractions and organize tasks to ensure they are dealt with at an appropriate time rather than buried in an inbox. Ultimately, though, it may require some fine-tuning (and practice!), time blocking can be the path to achieving greater autonomy – and better wellbeing! – in the year ahead.

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (Jan 14-15)

January 13, 2023 02:05 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 the Federal Trade Commission has proposed a nationwide ban on noncompete clauses in employee contracts, aiming to give employees more freedom to change jobs within the same industry. In the advisor world, where noncompete agreements are fairly common, a ban on the practice could incentivize firms to reassess their employee value proposition and to consider ways to establish their clients’ relationships with the firm, and not just with their advisors.

Also in industry news this week:

A study suggests that simplification is the top reason consumers combine their investment accounts, signaling that the onboarding process for new advisory client assets is a value-add in itself
FINRA has released its enforcement priorities for 2023, including a continued focus on compliance with Regulation Best Interest as well as several new priority topics, such as manipulative trading, fixed-income pricing, and trading in fractional shares

From there, we have several articles on retirement planning:

The latest rules for 2023 Required Minimum Distributions from inherited retirement accounts
How reviewing and adjusting capital market assumptions can help advisors refine their use of Monte Carlo simulations
Why relying on Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) to support the bulk of retirement income needs could be risky

We also have a number of articles on investment planning:

A recent study indicates that rebalancing a portfolio on an annual basis is superior to longer or shorter time horizons
How stocks and bonds tend to perform following their biggest down years
The long-term portfolio growth trajectory clients can expect when implementing a dollar-cost averaging strategy

We wrap up with three final articles, all about dealing with distractions:

The four types of attention and how individuals move between them throughout the day
How consolidating the wide range of ‘inboxes’, from email to workplace messaging, can help limit distractions throughout the day
How incorporating breaks to review notifications and social media during the workday can create more time for focused work

Enjoy the ‘light’ reading!

Kitces & Carl Ep 103: Balancing Client Responsiveness With The Proactive Sledgehammer Of Value

January 12, 2023 07:09 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

As comprehensive financial planning has become more widely adopted, many financial advisors have felt pressure to find new ways to differentiate themselves by demonstrating their unique value to clients. And while providing fee-only advice or highlighting service as a fiduciary may have once been a fair differentiator, these services are now often considered table stakes, necessitating financial advisors to find more creative solutions that show current and prospective clients that they provide more value than other advisors. However, as more advisors continue to increase the services they offer to enhance their value propositions, the new challenge has become balancing the many services offered to clients (who sometimes don’t really need all of the services offered) with enough time and capacity to show up for clients who truly need help with a particular problem.

In our 103rd episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss the challenges of finding an optimal balance between proactively providing value and the consistency of simply being available to respond to clients when they come to their advisor for assistance.

Some advisors increase their value propositions by offering a ‘proactive sledgehammer’ of value by inundating clients with all the things they can do for them to emphasize that they not only have them top of mind, but also that they keep them top of mind all year round. Some advisors implement client service calendars that dedicate certain times of the year to tax planning, insurance reviews, or quarterly meetings, and fill the gaps with newsletters, client appreciation events, and regular firm updates. Others use frequent emails to stay in regular contact, sending reminders or helpful information relevant to their clients. Though these can be good approaches to increase touch points and create value for clients, balancing the frequency of these touch points (and the scope of what clients are offered) with the real value that clients actually need and expect is most important. Because while some clients may appreciate and need more frequent communication, others just want to know that the advisor is there when they need them. And while frequent communication may be important with many clients, it is often the most critical in the early stages of a client relationship, when advisors are just learning about their client’s needs and building trust with the client. However, as the relationship matures, clients may build enough trust in their advisor that they no longer expect (or want!) frequent communication, satisfied in knowing that if any financial issues arise, the advisor will be there to help them.

Ultimately, the key point is that while most clients will appreciate many of their advisor’s valuable services and proactive communication, finding the optimal balance between offering too much and simply being available when needed will depend on each unique client. This begins with understanding their needs (and communication preferences!) and gaining their trust. And building trust early on not only helps advisors develop more meaningful relationships with clients, but also helps them save time as they won’t need to spend as much time offering solutions that they know won’t really matter to the client. Which means the advisor will end out with more time to focus on providing better – and more relevant – service with the capacity to be available when a client truly needs it!

Providing Mortgage Advice In A Higher Interest-Rate Environment: Opportunities For Advisors To Add Value

January 11, 2023 07:06 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Debt & Liabilities

Leading up to 2022, financial advisors and their clients had grown accustomed to a relatively low mortgage rate environment. In fact, until earlier this year, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate had stayed below 5% since 2010 (and below 7% since 2001). But as the Federal Reserve has sought to raise interest rates this year to combat inflation, mortgage rates have reached higher levels not seen in more than 20 years, with 30-year fixed mortgages reaching an average of 6.9% in October 2022, twice the 3.45% average rate in January.

While the plight of today’s first-time homebuyers facing higher mortgage rates has attracted much media attention (deservedly so, as the monthly payment on a 30-year fixed mortgage for the median-priced home in the U.S. increased by nearly $1,000 in the past year), higher interest rates can affect financial planning calculations for current homeowners as well. For instance, higher interest rates have raised the borrowing costs for those looking to tap their home equity through a home equity loan or a Home Equity Line Of Credit (HELOC), and older homeowners considering a reverse mortgage will also be subject to higher interest rates.

At the same time, higher interest rates can present opportunities for some individuals. For example, those who are interested in making an intra-family loan could generate more income from the higher Applicable Federal Rates (while the loan recipient benefits from a rate significantly lower than standard mortgage rates). In addition, many current homeowners could have mortgages with rates lower than the ‘risk-free’ rate of return now available on U.S. government debt, which has risen alongside broader interest rates (perhaps changing the calculus of whether to pay down their mortgage early). And current homeowners with significant equity could consider downsizing and buying a smaller home in cash, potentially benefiting from a less-competitive housing market while not having to take out a mortgage at the current rates.

Ultimately, the key point is that a higher interest-rate environment affects not only homebuyers looking to purchase a home for the first time but also those who are current homeowners. Further, given that a home can be considered a consumption good (that often comes with emotional attachments) as well as an asset on the homeowner’s net worth statement, advisors can also add value by helping clients explore their home-related goals and assessing the financial tradeoffs of purchasing a more or less expensive home with a mortgage in a higher rate environment (or, if they have the means, whether buying a home in cash might be appropriate!). Regardless of whether a client is an aspiring first-time homebuyer or considering downsizing in retirement, advisors can add value by helping their clients navigate higher mortgage-rate environments!

#FA Success Ep 315: Learning Business Development By Consistently Being Seen Where Your Ideal Clients Are, With Lisa Brown

January 10, 2023 07:08 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 315th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Lisa Brown. Lisa is a Partner and Wealth Advisor for CI Brightworth, an RIA under the CI Financial umbrella with offices in Atlanta, Georgia, and Charlotte, North Carolina, that oversees nearly $5 billion in assets under management* for over 1,500 client households.

What's unique about Lisa, though, is how, by digging deeper into an existing firm niche focus of Coca-Cola employees and talking extensively with employees there about their common needs and issues that affected their financial goals, she began to write white papers for them, which was so successful in building her reputation and expertise – and client base – within the company that she gave up her own office space because she was spending so much time meeting with clients in their offices at Coca-Cola headquarters… which just led to even more referrals and growth by being so visible on-site at the company.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Lisa realized that by visiting Coca-Cola’s headquarters consistently and engaging employees in-person about their financial issues, she could become known as a familiar and trusted financial expert in the Coca-Cola community, how Lisa leveraged writing white papers about preparing for retirement and what to look for in severance packages in the event of a layoff specifically for the Coca-Cola employee niche as marketing tools to gain even more referrals within the company, and how, as a practice area leader for corporate professionals and executives as one of CI Brightworth’s four key practice areas (the others being business owners, dentists, and retiring clients), Lisa has begun to train and guide the next generation of advisors in the firm about how to become effective business developers by identifying and getting known in their area of specialization, too.

We also talk about how, in the early stages of Lisa’s career, she doubted her future in the financial services industry and decided to obtain an MBA as a fallback, but coincidentally during her first semester, the program began offering a Master's in financial planning that provided the same coursework required to take the CFP exam which ultimately led Lisa to obtain her CFP designation and find a successful career path in the industry, how Lisa credits preparing tax returns for clients during her formative years at Goldman Sachs Ayco as one of the ways she grew her confidence and expertise to feel more comfortable as an expert advisor, and how Lisa leveraged 4 pillars of professional networking, joining organizations and attending their networking events, public speaking, and creating content in the local media to build her personal brand and gain referrals.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Lisa shares how she hit a point where she realized working nights and weekends was taking away from the time she could have been spending with her husband and children, and had to force herself to get comfortable with prioritizing what was urgent versus really truly important to regain more of that family time, why Lisa feels it’s important for newer, younger advisors to surround themselves with experienced advisors and take every opportunity to absorb the knowledge and practices that they put forward to develop as a better advisor and create a successful career path for themselves early on, and why Lisa believes the key to success for her at this point in her career is how she can impart the wisdom she has gained and sponsor younger advisors to help them build the skills and confidence they need to become better advisors and find their own paths to success.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about why Lisa decided to work with corporate professionals and executives, how Lisa and her firm are working to replicate their success at Coca-Cola with other larger corporations and white papers, or how Lisa thinks about and develops processes to increase and improve business development, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Lisa Brown.

What Makes Financial Advisors Happier: More Time Or More Money?

January 9, 2023 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development Practice Management

While it may be easy to assume that having more money would make a person happier by opening consumption opportunities unavailable to those with less income, experienced advisors can likely identify many examples of high-income individuals who are unhappy with their lives. To provide a more holistic view, researchers have sought to assess whether increased income leads to greater happiness on two dimensions: emotional wellbeing (how an individual feels today) and evaluative wellbeing (how an individual feels about their life overall).

An oft-cited 2010 study by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton found that while overall life evaluation was positively correlated with income (even at levels exceeding $120,000), emotional wellbeing only increased up to $75,000 of income, plateauing after that point. This suggested that, after a certain point, increased income would not necessarily increase an individual’s day-to-day happiness. However, a 2021 study by Matthew Killingsworth using a more granular measurement scale found that day-to-day wellbeing continues to increase even beyond income levels exceeding $75,000 (while also finding that overall life evaluation increases with higher income as well).

When it comes to financial advisors, in particular, Kitces Research found a similar positive correlation between income and happiness. For instance, our research found that not only is advisor take-home income positively correlated with overall life satisfaction, but also that, similar to Killingsworth’s findings, their income is positively correlated with positive feelings and negatively correlated with negative feelings, even as income exceeds $75,000.

Importantly, there are other factors that can mediate the relationship between income and happiness, which may explain why higher income doesn’t always lead to greater happiness. For instance, Killingsworth found that respondents increasingly reported that they did not have enough time to get things done as their income rose, serving as a small but significantly negative mediator of the association between income and experienced wellbeing. This concept of ‘time poverty’ also appears to apply to financial advisors, as Kitces Research has found that the number of hours an advisor works in a given week is inversely correlated with their wellbeing.

These findings suggest that advisors who choose to pursue increased income in the pursuit of greater experienced happiness may be more successful if they deliberately protect the time they have available for their other responsibilities and interests. A few ways that can help advisors do this include adding staff as their firm reaches certain revenue ‘pain points’ where they have too much work on their plate, and allocating more ‘hard dollars’ paid to outside vendors for marketing services as the firm grows, allowing firm owners to use their time for more valuable and/or enjoyable activities.

Ultimately, the key point is that as an advisor’s income increases, their wellbeing – in terms of both day-to-day happiness and overall life evaluation – can potentially increase as well. But if higher income comes with increased demands on the advisor’s time, particularly if they get to the point where they feel they don’t have time to finish everything they need to get done, the experienced ‘time poverty’ can have a negative effect on the advisor’s wellbeing. In the end, time is the ultimate scarce resource, and it is important for advisors to spend it wisely, particularly as their income increases!

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (Jan 7-8)

January 6, 2023 02:04 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 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has received significant pushback from investment adviser and financial industry trade groups to the regulator’s recent proposal that would establish formalized due diligence and monitoring obligations for investment advisers that outsource certain advisory functions. While the proposal received support from state regulators and consumer advocates, adviser industry groups argued that the measure would create unnecessary extra work for advisers and could be a particular burden on smaller firms.

Also in industry news this week:

Amid a robust regulatory agenda, the SEC is facing elevated employee attrition, particularly in its senior ranks
How planning specializations can help firms and their advisors stand out from the pack

From there, we have several articles on retirement planning:

Why an individual’s portfolio of relationships could be just as important as their investment portfolio when it comes to happiness in retirement
A recent study shows how delaying Social Security benefits typically leads to greater lifetime wealth than claiming benefits early in order to reduce portfolio withdrawals
Why ‘failure’ scenarios in Monte Carlo simulations are very different than plane crashes

We also have a number of articles on practice management:

Why the most successful firms in the coming years might be those who dominate individual market segments rather than those that are ‘overdiversified’
Four ways firms can attract next-generation advisor talent
Why being proactive can help firms overcome the challenges of hitting capacity ‘walls’

We wrap up with three final articles, all about New Year’s resolutions:

Why the most successful goals are often those that fit within one’s self-identity
How a ‘time audit’ can help an individual spend more time on their most important personal and professional activities
Why a single push-up could be the key to achieving a New Year’s resolution

Enjoy the ‘light’ reading!

Implementing Retirement Income Guardrails To Facilitate (The Right) Spending Raises And Spending Cuts

January 4, 2023 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Retirement Planning

Financial advisors have a wide range of strategies at their disposal to create financial plans for their clients. And when it comes to retirement planning, one popular technique is the use of ‘guardrails’, which set an initial monthly withdrawal rate that can be later adjusted as the size of the client’s portfolio changes. This strategy is valuable because it generally allows for higher initial withdrawal rates than more static approaches that don’t accommodate clients willing to adjust their spending in retirement. However, given the technical nature of the guardrails approach, advisors can find it challenging to explain to prospective and current clients how it will work in practice.

To start, it is typically preferable to explain guardrails to prospects and clients in dollars rather than in percentage terms (e.g., telling the client they can safely withdraw $4,500 each month rather than saying they will have a 5.4% annual withdrawal rate). Further, given that a client’s monthly distributions will almost certainly change at some point when implementing a guardrails strategy, they must understand what this means in practical terms. To help them do so, advisors can explain that when market returns are strong, they can take larger distributions each month (in dollar terms), but when an inevitable bear market arrives, they may need to cut back on their monthly income until things get better. In addition to explaining withdrawals in dollar terms, advisors can also present a client’s asset allocation in dollar terms (instead of the more usual approach of explaining the allocation in percentages) by framing it as the number of years of income that would be protected from stock market fluctuations (e.g., setting aside a ‘war chest’ of cash and fixed income balances to provide 5 years’ worth of income).

While most clients will have no problem accepting a larger monthly income, tightening their belts will be more challenging. One way to prepare clients for a potential reduction of their monthly income is to give advance warning that a cut might be necessary if their portfolio declines further (and to encourage them to consider where they would cut back if needed). In the case of a market downturn, advisors can wait an agreed amount of time (e.g., 2 quarters) after the client’s portfolio balance falls below the lower guardrail before implementing an income reduction, as this can give the market time to recover and preclude the need to make any adjustment at all (and is still more conservative than the annual review prescribed in the initial guardrails research). If the portfolio balance declines due to excess distributions (e.g., a lump-sum withdrawal to buy a new car), advisors can advise clients on whether withdrawals will bring them closer to (or even dip below) the lower guardrail and the implications for their future monthly income.

Ultimately, the key point is that while a guardrails strategy can help clients maintain sustainable withdrawal rates throughout retirement, ensuring that clients understand how the strategy applies to them – in practical terms – is essential for success. Advisors can do this by explaining withdrawal rates, guardrails, and potential future changes in spending and income, all in dollar (rather than percentage) terms. Furthermore, by giving clients advance warning of potential changes, advisors can help clients feel confident about the guardrails strategy and, perhaps more importantly, in their advisor’s ability to implement it!

#FA Success Ep 314: Focusing On The Planning Work You Enjoy By Providing Outsourced Virtual CFP Services, With Sue Chesney

January 3, 2023 07:07 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 314th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Sue Chesney. Sue is the owner of Delegated Planning, which offers virtual outsourced financial planning support to 55 advisory firms, and the co-founder of Planning Zoo, an outsourced financial planning data entry business that helps current and recently graduated students from college CFP educational programs connect with advisory firms that need paraplanner support for data entry into financial planning software.

What's unique about Sue, though, is how through Delegated Planning and Planning Zoo, she’s pioneered one of the largest outsourced financial planning support firms in the country, and shares her first-hand experience of how advisory firms are scaling the delivery of comprehensive financial plans by increasingly separating the front-office work of delivering comprehensive financial plans to clients from the middle-office work of creating them (and how firms are increasingly leveraging outsourcing providers so they don’t have to be responsible for hiring and training those financial planning support employees, either).

In this episode, we talk in-depth about why Sue founded Delegated Planning so that she could bridge a gap between CFP professionals who simply wanted to work on financial plans (and not necessarily with their own clients) and advisors doing financial plans for clients who needed both paraplanning and virtual CFP support services but don’t have the time (or resources) to hire a full-time employee that they would also have to train and manage, how, in a similar vein of supporting advisors, Sue decided to launch Planning Zoo where she and her partners train and teach aspiring CFP professionals the skills to do data entry with financial planning software using real client cases so that they can gain industry experience before graduating (again while relieving the pressure from advisors that need additional trusted support but don’t want to hire and train it), and how Sue has seen that by charging by the hour (down to the minute) for Delegated Planning, the advisors who work with them have been able to better align their fees and their financial planning offering… now that they can see how much time it truly takes for their financial plans to be built for each client.

We also talk about how, while on the verge of taking over another advisor’s business, Sue realized she enjoyed planning work more than working with clients directly, and with the encouragement of a virtual assistant from her former firm and peers in her study group, she decided to offer her services as an outsourced CFP and launch Delegated Planning, how, by offering flexible schedules, Sue was able to tap into a unique talent pool of advisors who want to supplement their income while getting their own RIAs off the ground and planners who also enjoy the planning work but don’t want to work with clients directly, and the way that Sue navigates the cybersecurity and E&O risks of serving as an outsourced financial planning service provider by operating as a “co-fiduciary” with the advisors her firm works with to their end clients.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Sue shares how, as Delegated Planning has scaled over the years, she has dealt with the difficult task of shifting from being a manager of her growing team into more of a CEO mindset to help scale the business further, why, even though it may feel risky and scary, and requires a lot of preparation, Sue feels it is important for newer advisors to explore the opportunity of one day owning their own firms because of the freedom it brings and the rewarding feeling of helping clients and furthering the financial services industry, and why Sue feels that the key to her success has been enjoying what she does for a living, as in the end as a business owner the business is always on her mind… but she doesn’t mind that it’s so hard to stop thinking about work, because it’s work she enjoys and finds fulfillment in how she’s able to help other advisors.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about why Sue launched Delegated Planning and Planning Zoo to help advisors find planning and data entry support, how Sue helps newer planners gain real-world experience and learn a variety of planning software, or how Sue deals with the challenges of stepping into a CEO role and managing two businesses, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Sue Chesney.