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#FA Success Ep 349: Building The Marketing System Around Your Advisor Content To Get Real Marketing Results, With Olivia Luper

September 5, 2023 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 349th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Olivia Luper. Olivia is the Founder of Lexicon Advisor Marketing, a virtual outsourced digital marketing company that specializes in working with financial advisors to generate a steady flow of prospects.

What's unique about Olivia, though, is how she started out as a ghostwriter creating content for financial advisors and their blogs, but saw first-hand that great content alone doesn't generate prospects if there isn't more of a marketing system around it… so she expanded her firm to begin offering a full suite of outsourced marketing services to make the content actually generate results, from building lead magnets and mailing lists, to running social media ads to grow the list further, to writing the emails that get readers to actually schedule a first meeting.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Olivia has developed a 3-step process to building a marketing strategy for her advisor clients by focusing first and foremost on clarifying the advisor's message and vision for the firm, crafting an execution plan for top to bottom marketing funnel, and then if advisors don't want to do it themselves, providing ongoing implementation of the strategy, how Olivia has found success for her advisor clients using social media – even paid social media ads – not by trying to get clients directly but simply getting them to the advisor's website to collect an email address that will be used to turn them into a warmer lead over time, and how Olivia warms up those new email contacts with a welcome email sequence of 7 emails over the span of their first month that is structured to not only engage with prospects, but to help build trust and nurture the relationship with the advisor to increase the likelihood of the prospect becoming a client in the future.

We also talk about how, after having her son and just finishing her Master's degree in English, Olivia found herself between careers and was recommended by her mother-in-law (who also works in the financial advisor space) to try specializing in financial advisors because she saw the need for Olivia's content marketing expertise in the financial services industry, how Olivia experienced some frustration early in her advisor work because she was good at creating content for advisors and getting it out there but realized that advisors didn't know how to draw prospects to it to sustainably scale their growth, and why Olivia believes that most advisors are too timid about communicating the value of what they can provide to their prospects and that the key to better marketing success is about being more willing to simply share stories about how the advisor has helped other clients in similar situations.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Olivia shares how, while she was growing her business, she had a moment of reckoning for herself when she realized that she was employing marketing scripts that were too 'salesy' and focused on maximizing revenue and revamped her own marketing process to better align with how advisors aim to help their own clients in the first place, why Olivia believes that younger, newer advisors can find build more successful careers by being self-aware to find the types of clients they want to work with most and becoming increasingly well versed on the financial issues those specific people face, and why Olivia now feels fulfilled in her career as she can dive deep into her passion of helping advisors get unstuck and find the marketing messages that feel truly authentic to them so that they can continue to find more of their ideal clients and grow their firms, too.

So, whether you're interested in learning about why Olivia takes the time to learn about her advisor clients' vision and goals for their companies to make sure their marketing strategy is in alignment and can really help them grow, how Olivia structures each of the 7 emails in her welcome email sequence, or how Olivia develops marketing funnels to connect with warmer leads, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Olivia Luper.

The Latest In Financial #AdvisorTech (September 2023)

September 4, 2023 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Welcome to the September 2023 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that WiserAdvisor, one of the longest-running lead generation services in the industry, has acquired IndyFin, a startup advisor rating platform that had aspired to be the 'Yelp for Advisors' – which on the one hand provides WiserAdvisor with an opportunity to jump into the business of client reviews and ratings (which has garnered significant interest from multiple AdvisorTech startups hoping to promote such services in the wake of the SEC's new Marketing Rule allowing client testimonials), but on the other hand, raises questions about how much demand there really is for a standalone advisor rating tool, since few advisors are likely to accumulate enough ratings from current or former clients to actually draw in new clients (and advisors with enough clients to get a critical mass of reviews likely have enough clients that they can just rely on client referrals… or don't even need to add new clients anymore?).

From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

Former United Capital Partners founder/CEO Joe Duran is reportedly exploring the launch of a new RIA 4 years after selling his firm to Goldman Sachs, with a reported emphasis on providing lead generation opportunities for advisors on its platform – which if successful, could provide a new model for boosting organic growth without the high cost of outsourcing to a third-party lead generation service or relying on inorganic growth via mergers & acquisitions.
Onramp Invest, the platform that aimed to solve the challenges of cryptocurrency investing for financial advisors, was acquired by Securitize, a platform specializing in blockchain-based tokenization of private market investments, suggesting that advisors' interest in recommending digital assets for their clients – already limited during previous rallies in the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies – has declined further amid the price crash and ensuing scandals that have happened in the year-plus since
Wealthtender, a lead generation and advisor rating service, has announced a partnership with custodial account provider UNest to bring its find-an-advisor technology to UNest's customer base of parents opening investment accounts for their children – which, while expanding Wealthtender's footprint in the competitive lead generation market, raises questions about how large of a potential customer base UNest can provide (and whether Wealthtender will be able to secure any larger enterprise partnerships that can help it secure a spot as the "One and only" advisor rating service)

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:

With AI technology proliferating in the financial services industry, regulators are increasingly concerned about possible conflicts of interest if the technology can be manipulated to recommend a company's products and solutions over others (despite being under a technological veneer of 'objectivity'), as highlighted most recently by the SEC issuing proposed regulations for RIAs for evaluating and eliminating conflicts of interest in their technology, and Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin sending a request for six companies from different areas of the industry to detail their use of AI in their business practices
Over the last 10–15 years, a number of AdvisorTech providers have gained the majority of market share in certain core categories like financial planning and CRM; but as the most recent Kitces Research on AdvisorTech has found, a new crop of tools has arisen in more recent years that has garnered higher satisfaction ratings than the incumbents, and have been steadily gaining market share – suggesting that the traditional advisor tech stack might eventually be upended and replaced by a new 'next-generation' tech stack that reflects the growing shift of advisors into deeper financial planning and non-AUM fee models

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular "Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map" (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!

*And for #AdvisorTech companies who want to submit their tech announcements for consideration in future issues, please submit to [email protected]!

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (September 2-3)

September 1, 2023 02:00 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 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the state's fiduciary rule for broker-dealers can stand, potentially opening the door for other states to impose similar standards that exceed the requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation Best Interest rule.

Also in industry news this week:

A legal challenge to FINRA's operations as a self-regulatory organization has the potential to upend the current regulatory system for broker-dealers and their registered representatives
A recent study indicates that while many consumers appear confident handling their finances on a 'DIY' basis during their careers, the percentage seeking professional financial advice increases as they approach retirement

From there, we have several articles on retirement planning:

Why some individuals believe they need to save more money than they really do in order to have a sustainable retirement and how advisors can support them
A recent study suggests that average inflation-adjusted spending among retirees decreases by 3% annually, a sharper decline than previous estimates
The value in deciding how much is 'enough', and how advisors can support their clients in doing so

We also have a number of articles on practice management:

Best practices for giving praise and constructive criticism to motivate employees and help them grow
How developing and communicating a clear strategic plan can not only set the long-term direction for a firm, but also help employees better understand the value of their work
Why advisor happiness leads to better client service, and how firms (and clients) can assess whether their advisors are happy

We wrap up with 3 final articles, all about wealth:

Why those in the upper class are taking a more understated approach to displaying their wealth compared to previous generations
The services and skills that can help advisors move 'upmarket' and attract wealthier clients
How "social debt" can serve as a psychological and financial challenge for wealthy individuals and what they can do to avoid this burden

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Crafting More Equitable Advisor Non-Solicit Agreements With The ACRES Agreement

August 30, 2023 07:04 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Regulation & Compliance

Non-compete agreements (where a company prohibits an employee from working for competitors, at least for a certain period of time) are often used to help companies protect their investment in the employee (e.g., the time and money spent training the employee) as well as preventing the employee from taking the company's best practices to a new job at a competitor. But in the financial advisory business, firms are typically less concerned about employees taking intellectual property (e.g., financial planning processes and other 'trade secrets') with them to a competitor and are more concerned about clients (and the revenue they bring in) following their (departing) advisor to their new firm. Because of this, non-solicit agreements (where the departing advisor is restricted in whether and how they can communicate with their clients, and "solicit" them to come with the advisor when they leave for another firm) are much more common in the financial advisory industry.

As non-solicit agreements have become more prevalent among independent advisory firms, the terms of these agreements come into focus, such as whether a non-solicit agreement covers all of an employee advisor's clients or only certain ones. For instance, while it might be clear that the firm 'owns' the relationship with a client that the firm brought on itself and passed on to the advisor (thereby perhaps warranting a stricter non-solicit agreement), it would seem inappropriate to restrict an advisor from soliciting certain other clients (e.g., a personal friend or relative/family member) to their new firm.

In addition, there is also a fuzzy middle where it is less clear who owns the goodwill equity of the relationship (e.g., if a firm brings in a prospect through its marketing, but the advisor closes the deal and brings the individual on as a client, or the advisor brings in the prospect but does so using some of the firm's marketing resources or by leveraging its known brand in the local community). In these cases where the client is effectively a 'joint' client of both the firm and the advisor, it might be appropriate for the firm and the advisor to negotiate the specifics of how these client relationships will be handled under the firm's non-solicit agreement. For instance, the firm and the advisor might specify the client relationships that would be acceptable for the advisor to solicit, or perhaps negotiate a price at which the advisor would have to pay to take and service clients at their new firm.

Since many advisors and firms lack the legal expertise or resources to hire a lawyer to craft a custom agreement for each advisor, we are introducing the Advisor/Client Relationship Equitable Split (ACRES) Agreement to the advisor community as a foundational template advisory firms can use and/or modify to their specifications. At its core, the ACRES Agreement formalizes the recognition of the "yours, mine, and ours" split of client relationships, and allows firms and advisors to set the terms for how those different types of client relationships will be handled in the event that there is ever a split (from which clients can be solicited or not, what client information can be taken or not, and whether compensatory payments are due back to the firm or not).

Ultimately, the key point is that non-solicit agreements that represent the investment that firms and their advisors make into attracting and serving clients can leave each side feeling confident that their interests will be respected if the advisor and firm ever decide to separate in the future. Our hope is that by providing the ACRES Agreement as a template, advisory firms and their advisors can set better, clearer, and fairer terms for both parties!

#FA Success Ep 348: Building Your Own Planning Spreadsheets To Show Clients What They Need To See, With Jeff Jones

August 29, 2023 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 348th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Jeff Jones. Jeff is the Owner and Founder of Cypress Financial Planning, an independent RIA based in Haddon Heights, New Jersey, that oversees $275 million in assets under management for 380 client households.

What's unique about Jeff, though, is how he built his own financial planning spreadsheets in Excel, and has developed coding and integrations that automatically populate into a PowerPoint presentation, that he then shows clients to help build a story for their financial plans and give them the motivation they need to achieve their financial goals… while also still being able to know and audit where every single number in the projection came from.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Jeff leveraged his early years as an engineer for Lockheed Martin to develop the macros and Visual Basic code for his Excel spreadsheets to create more customizable and in-depth financial plans than he could with traditional off-the-shelf financial planning software, why Jeff felt compelled to build his own spreadsheets because he felt it would give him more confidence to answer client questions about the underlying assumptions and the details being presented to them (because he deeply understood the innerworkings, and the limitations, of the planning spreadsheets he built), and how Jeff has spent time over the years iterating on his spreadsheets so that his expanding base of advisors could easily add data and get the information they needed themselves for their clients… which worked so well that his business partner Ben branched off and teamed up with TIFIN to start his own FinTech company that further built out Jeff's financial planning spreadsheets into an actual piece of software that they now sell to other financial planning firms.

We also talk about how despite building the planning spreadsheets, Jeff was not as interested as his partner to starting up a FinTech company and instead gave Ben permission to develop the spreadsheets into standalone software with an agreement that Jeff would receive an equity share and would be able to use and develop his master copy of his spreadsheets for his firm, how, even though Jeff is only 39 years old, he has already begun sharing equity of his advisory firm with his advisors with the intention that he can possibly move on to other endeavors in the next 10-15 years while his G2 advisors can continue the firm's legacy, and how Jeff worked with FP Transitions to value his firm and to help build equity agreements where partners can buy in with a modest down payment and pay back a seller-financed note that accumulates equity through multiple tranches over time.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Jeff shares how he chose his equity agreement with his advisors because even though they would be essentially paying him back with the profit distributions of the firm he owned in the first place (such that he would be sacrificing his own profits and shares), he felt that this was the best way to help incentivize his partners to stay and give them better opportunities to become successful and help grow and scale the firm further, how Jeff found his first advisor mentor while he was still working for Lockheed Martin by cold calling advisors in his area and simply offering his time to help in any capacity he could and asking if he could just pick their brains about the industry so that he could start his own career in financial planning, and how, even though he has some time before he retires, Jeff already has plans to work more in the pro bono financial planning space once he has the time, energy, and his own financial freedom to be able to give back and create greater impact in the lives of others (with his passion that financial planning should be accessible to all no matter how much money a client has to invest).

So, whether you're interested in learning about how Jeff likens creating his Excel spreadsheets to that of an artist with a blank canvas where the end product is only limited by his imagination, how Jeff built macros into his spreadsheets so that when he makes updates to the data that supports assumptions in the master file, the sheets created from that file also update, or how, after working for Lockheed Martin, Jeff intentionally took a job at Goldman Sachs as a financial analyst so that he could get the industry experience and knowledge he needed to launch his own firm, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Jeff Jones.

TD Ameritrade To Schwab Conversion Tips For Financial Advisors

August 28, 2023 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management

The announcement of the merger between Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade in November 2019 kicked off a marathon of preparation for advisory firms to transition their clients on the TD Ameritrade custodial platform to Schwab. And with the final conversion of clients scheduled to take place over the upcoming Labor Day weekend of 2023, the marathon is approaching its final sprint toward the finish line. While many RIAs have already tackled some of the bigger issues around the conversion such as informing clients of the changes and updating regulatory documents, there are still some operational intricacies in the TD Ameritrade to Schwab transition process for advisors to address that could cause headaches if they're missed.

In this Guest Post, Grier Rubeling, a transition consultant for RIAs and founder of Advisor Transition Services, offers a series of actionable tips to help advisors (and their clients) get through the 'Schwabitrade' transition smoothly.

At a high level, some of the operational challenges of the transition amount to adjusting to Schwab's way of doing things for advisors who are used to TD Ameritrade. For instance, TD Ameritrade rep codes that are used to organize client accounts will be converted to an 8-digit Schwab "master number", which is used for account grouping, billing, account service, and more. Advisors will also need to familiarize themselves with Schwab's treatment of sundry accounts for fee billing and tax withholding elections for distribution, both of which differ in some key ways from TD Ameritrade.

Additionally, although Schwab states that most advisors' tax-lot settings for cost basis purposes will carry over after the conversion, some advisors with specific personalized settings (such as having multiple default lot-selection methods for different security classes) will likely need to research Schwab's Transition Planning Guide for information on whether and how those settings may change post-conversion. And any changes made between now and the conversion date of Labor Day weekend likely won't carry over, meaning they would need to be re-implemented once the transition is complete.

Finally, there is a category of tasks that involves tying up some loose ends that may remain after the conversion. For example, any checks or third-party direct deposits addressed to TD Ameritrade will be accepted for around 90 days after the conversion, but may encounter delays, so it's important to ensure that clients' deposit instructions are updated quickly. Additionally, any open trade orders (e.g., Good-Til-Canceled or Good-Til-Date orders) for non-mutual-fund securities will be canceled and will need to be re-ordered after the conversion. And for clients with IRAs, all contribution and distribution reported by Schwab will reflect only post-conversion transactions – meaning that advisors will need to keep careful records for any clients who contributed or withdrew prior to the conversion.

Ultimately, while this is by no means a fully comprehensive list of potential issues for advisors to consider about the TD-to-Schwab conversion, they may be some of the most common and important to address to ensure a smooth transition. Because with Schwab's customer service resources likely to be stretched thin in the days and weeks following the conversion, the more potential issues that advisors can identify and address before they become a problem, the less of the advisor's own resources need to be tied up in operational headaches (allowing them to keep the focus on their client-facing work)!