Nerd's Eye View blog

Lifting Advisor Wellbeing By Focusing On Time And Income Over Revenue Alone

August 23, 2021 07:04 am 7 Comments CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

The career path of becoming a financial advisor has long been lauded as an opportunity that pairs together a high income potential with the flexibility of building your own book of clients (or the outright benefits of being an entrepreneur building an independent business). The caveat, though, is that while financial advisors do generate an income far higher than the national average, there is also a great deal of stress in building an advisory business from scratch and just trying to survive long enough to enjoy that income. Not to mention the reality that, as the saying goes, “You can’t take it with you”… raising the question of whether the stressful pursuit of a financial advisor’s income potential is even ‘worth it’ in the long run?

But as the latest Kitces Research on Advisor Wellbeing shows, financial advisors do in fact enjoy not only above-average income, but above-average wellbeing in all 18 sub-scales of the Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving (a comprehensive measure of wellbeing). And in fact, while the average American typically reaches a point where their wellbeing stops rising once they achieve a certain level of income, financial advisors continue to report ever-greater levels of wellbeing as their career earnings continue to grow with additional years of experience!

The caveat, though, is that while advisor wellbeing does rise as income grows, advisor wellbeing actually begins to decline once the aggregate revenue of the business exceeds $1.5M. And on average, the higher revenue grows from there, the lower the self-reported wellbeing of financial advisors themselves! The shift appears to be driven by the reality that once an advisory firm grows materially beyond $1.5M of revenue, it is virtually inevitable that the advisory firm takes on multiple lead advisors, and a growing team infrastructure to support them… transforming the founder’s role from being the advisor they first set out to be into becoming a manager instead, while simultaneously increasing their hours worked and reducing the autonomy they have over their time and schedule. All of which are associated with lower wellbeing.

Of course, given that most advisors haven’t even reached $1M+ of revenue, many might wish they had such ‘first-world’ problems. However, our Kitces Research on Advisor Wellbeing also shows significant dips in advisor wellbeing at approximately $275,000, $550,000, and $825,000 of revenue… all of which are associated with capacity thresholds where advisory firms must hire to service their ever-growing number of clients. Which means in practice, advisory firms actually face a series of repeated barriers that reduce wellbeing… all associated with hitting the capacity limitations of serving clients, and what happens when the firm either doesn’t hire early enough, doesn’t hire enough at all… or hires so many people that the founder primarily shifts to becoming a manager of that team (instead of an advisor).

Ultimately, though, the key point is simply to recognize that in the end, it’s maximizing the value of our time – and literally generating the maximal revenue from the minimal time – that appears to be one of the greatest drivers of advisor wellbeing. Which means the key to “happy growth” is not just adding more clients, but specifically increasing revenue per client (by attracting and serving more affluent clients who can pay higher fees) that allows advisors to do their most rewarding work. Even if, in the long run, that actually means working with fewer clients… who most value the time and value that their financial advisor provides!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Aug 21-22)

August 20, 2021 02:58 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with a recap of the CFP Board's latest update to its 5-year strategic plan, which includes an ever-greater focus on its standards of conduct and enforcing them... but raising the question of whether the CFP Board is ready enough to enforce its standards even if it means the total number of CFP certificants might (temporarily) decline in order to clean its own house and build a more trusted foundation for growth in the future?

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

A new study finds that almost 25% of SEC-registered investment advisers took PPP funds, and an estimated 6% of those may have claimed more than they should have (and those who did are disproportionately advisors who already had a history of client complaints, misconduct, or outright fraud, reinforcing the view that a small number of 'bad apples' are engaging in a disproportionate amount of bad advisor activity?)
The majority of advisory firms (51%) report that the pandemic didn't have any impact on their culture, but of those where it did, nearly 4/5ths reported that it was a detriment to their employee engagement

From there, we have several investment-related articles, including:

Talking points on how to persuade clients to rebalance when they're hesitant due to embedded capital gains
The ongoing rise of alternatives as a substitute for ultra-low-yield fixed income allocations
Why the real 'investing nightmare' is not a 40% bear market or a 'lost decade' in stocks, but a scenario where markets are down 40%+ even after a decade (which hasn't been experienced in the US, but does occur periodically in other countries around the world!)

We've also included a number of articles on client communication:

Why even good advisors can end out with regulatory complaints if they allow a gap to emerge between client expectations and reality (and fail to address it before the dissatisfaction escalates)
How big life changes can affect client behavior, and lead to situations where advisors must dig deeper in client communication to unearth the underlying issues
Why giving 'blunt' advice can turn off prospects... but it is also an effective way to screen out those who aren't really ready to work with an advisor and implement their advice

We wrap up with three final articles, all around the theme of being decisive in our focus:

Why the most successful businesses are not just the ones who take action, but are the ones that most often take decisive action
How fear of our own mortality often stokes us to cram as much as we can into our time, instead of encouraging us to better focus that time instead
Why sometimes the best decision we can make is to stop trying to be bigger 'just for the sake of', and instead focus on being better for those we want to serve most (from our family to our most ideal-fit clients)

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Living A Happier (Financial) Life By Deliberately Choosing “Less”

August 18, 2021 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Client Trust & Communication

Financial planning clients don’t often visit their financial planners with the intent of reducing all the ‘stuff’ that they have and do from their everyday lives. Instead, the focus is typically on doing and acquiring more – investment gains, strategies to protect wealth, increasing asset diversification – these are more commonly the focus of financial planning meetings. And yet, by asking clients to reflect on a more novel problem-solving approach of subtraction as a way to create and select the most important goals in their financial plans, they may actually discover how to achieve greater satisfaction from their plans.

For instance, consider what the sense of overcommitment can do to our brains. When there are too many things to do or manage, feelings of overwhelm can inhibit our ability to think clearly and take action, which is probably why we often come out of an overwhelming situation with longer to-do lists than what we started with! But deliberately ‘subtracting’ some busyness from our lives – instead of always trying to be the best and get the most at every moment – might be a better plan. Research by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly on the mental state of ‘flow’, the state of mind involving total immersion in an activity, suggests that it is the absence of distractors that allows flow and that serves as a key element in attaining happiness. Applying the concept of subtraction and flow to financial planning when helping clients choose which goals to prioritize can ultimately help them free up space to more fully enjoy the activities (or freedom from activity) that bring them the most satisfaction.

Advisors can encourage clients to engage in subtraction and to identify their most important priorities to pursue (and to identify those activities they can let go of or delegate to others) by facilitating candid discussions that explore what truly matters most to them. Adapting solution-focused therapy questions that ask clients not just what currently is working for them, but also what isn’t working, can be a helpful way to guide clients through these conversations.

As pandemic quarantines are lifted and the world begins to re-engage in social activities, financial advisors have a unique opportunity to encourage post-COVID ‘re-entry’ planning meetings to revisit financial plans with clients and to assess whether their goals need to be adjusted or re-designed. By guiding them to do so by subtracting complexity and simplifying their lives, advisors can help clients develop good financial planning goals that can accommodate greater joy and satisfaction!

#FA Success Ep 242: Navigating A Family Succession Plan As The Successor To Build Your Own Future Vision, With Charlotte Geletka

August 17, 2021 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 242nd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Charlotte Geletka. Charlotte is the owner and managing partner of Silver Penny Financial, where Charlotte personally manages $140 million for 150 families.

What's unique about Charlotte, though, is that she purchased her father’s financial advisory firm, at a time when the firm’s existing business model was no longer really viable, in order to build her own vision for the next stage in the firm’s future.

In this episode, we talk in depth about the lessons Charlotte learned from the experience of buying the business from her father, understanding that, while she would have to make some substantive changes, she was still buying, as she puts it, “someone’s business child that they built from nothing”, the process Charlotte went through to determine a fair price for an advisory business with a number of different business segments (each requiring their own multiple), and how she deliberately structured the seller-financed deal with an accelerated payback in order to put pressure on herself to grow revenue quickly.

We also talk about Charlotte’s mindset shift away from viewing financial planning as simply a means of generating business and to offering financial planning as a stand-alone service as a way to serve clients who aren’t a good fit for the AUM model, why Charlotte leverages TAMPs for portfolio management (and how she integrates the TAMP fees with her own AUM fee structure), and how Charlotte created a one-page deliverable for clients explaining all the value-added services she provides beyond “just” managing their investments.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Charlotte shares her own pathway into the industry, from being vehemently opposed to working in financial services to realizing that a career as an advisor would offer her the opportunity to receive compensation that was directly correlated with how hard she worked, Charlotte’s growing appreciation for just how important leadership qualities are when it comes to the success of her business, and the important lesson Charlotte learned about the benefits (both professional and personal) of surrounding herself with other like-minded advisors.

So whether you’re interested in learning about Charlotte’s experience buying her father’s practice, about the valuation process she used to settle on a price for the business, or how she integrates TAMPs into her fee structure, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Charlotte Geletka.

Creating Hockey-Stick Style Growth By Taking The Uncomfortable Leap

August 16, 2021 07:08 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

It is a fundamental part of human nature to aspire to a future that is better than what we currently have. To the point that for those in even the most dire of situations, “hope” is what keeps us alive and going. After all, if there’s no hope that things could someday be better, there’s no reason to even bother trying to make it happen. Yet the reality is that hope alone is not enough to actually change our situation for the better. It’s hope, combined with action – and the sometimes scary moment of ‘taking the leap’ – that is necessary to lead us down a better path.

In this guest post, Stephanie Bogan of Limitless Adviser shares what it is that leads us to inaction and getting “stuck” – even and despite having an aspirational hope of making our advisory practices and our lives better – and why our ability to take the leap (or not) isn’t driven by figuring out the “right” methods and tactics to make the change, but changing our mindset and thinking differently about what’s possible in the first place.

So how do you find a path to better – or exponentially better hockey-stick-style growth – from where you are today. The starting point is to simply write down your revenue, income, hours worked every week, and time off per year. Then write down what you hope it could be if there were no constraints. And then double those goals… and reflect on all the negative thoughts that come to mind telling you it can’t be done, it won’t be possible, or that it’s too good to be true.

Because it’s only by facing our demons – those ‘limiting beliefs’ that we tell ourselves about what can’t be done, even though it clearly can because other advisors have – that we can get clear on what we’ve just been ‘tolerating’ (or outright avoiding), why we’ve gotten stuck in that pattern, and what steps we need to start taking if we really do want to achieve a different and better outcome instead.

Ultimately, the key point is to understand that what limits our success is not actually figuring out how to get to the next level, but the stories we tell ourselves – sometimes unwittingly or entirely subconsciously – that lead us to deny ourselves what’s actually possible. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the path of making a change won’t still entail challenges and a potentially significant amount of discomfort. But if the reality is that you’ve already allowed yourself to become “comfortably-uncomfortable” with your current level of under-success… why not at least redirect that discomfort towards your advantage?

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Aug 14-15)

August 13, 2021 02:54 pm 8 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with a recap on where the latest legislation on the infrastructure legislation and budget reconciliation bill (with pending tax law changes) stands as it winds its way through Congress in the coming weeks, which is anticipated to culminate in final passage sometime in mid-September... and likely kicking off a fresh wave of fourth-quarter tax planning with whatever new tax rules are implemented.

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

California regulators fine Jefferson National $150k for not better overseeing the recommendations RIAs were making regarding its no-commission annuity, raising fresh questions of how no-load fee-based annuities will be overseen in the RIA channel
A Wall Street Journal article highlights the rise of new advisor fee models as an alternative to the 1% AUM fee (which is notable if only because the conversation has now made it all the way to the WSJ?)

From there, we have several retirement-related articles, including:

Why retirees should consider doing a 'Trial Run' of retirement before pulling the trigger for real
How ultra-HNW retirees are using the "Buy, Borrow, Die" strategy of using securities-based loans to (permanently) avoid capital gains taxes
Why the guaranteed income from an annuity may act like a 'license to spend' that helps retirees enjoy more of their money than a traditional portfolio-withdrawal-based approach

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

How to do a quick test on your "referrability" as a financial advisor amongst your clients to their friends and family
How the rising competency of financial advisors means that prospects are more likely to choose us for other reasons, such as our personal connection and ability to quickly establish trust
The three questions to ask prospects to set the best agenda for a first meeting

We wrap up with three final articles, all around the theme of managing our own behavioral biases as advisors:

How to overcome our brain's tendency to be overly optimistic about how long projects will take
Why it's unrealistic to expect our lives to be hassle-free and why it's better to focus on the 'optimal' amount of hassle instead
Why sometimes the best way to improve our situation is not to add, but to subtract instead

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Kitces & Carl Ep 66: Helping Clients To Stop Maximizing Their Wealth And Set Goals To Enjoy It Instead

August 12, 2021 07:03 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

Beyond offering technical expertise across the eight primary knowledge domains of financial planning, one of the most valuable services that financial advisors bring to the table is helping clients align how they use their resources with the things that are most important to them. Accordingly, advisors create an overlap between a client’s values and use of capital by helping clients identify, set, and achieve goals. Because, as the great American ‘philosopher’, Yogi Berra, once observed, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” However, for some, the practice of setting and achieving goals can easily become an end in and of itself, which makes it difficult for the client to get off the proverbial goal treadmill and focused on the things that they said were actually most important (i.e., what those goals were intended to achieve). Which raises the question: How can financial advisors help clients who are stuck in the cycle of setting and achieving goals channel their attention and energy towards the things they said were really most important to them?

In our 66th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss the various circumstances that might make it difficult for some clients to get off the goal treadmill, how advisors can help those clients who are perpetually unsatisfied and trying to reach towards the “next thing”, and how advisors can help clients who are nearing retirement find fulfillment outside of their career.

As a starting point, it’s important to acknowledge that sometimes it’s necessary to reevaluate and reset goals because clients may want something more or different than they thought they did at an earlier point or may achieve a goal and realize that wasn’t what they really wanted in the first place. But for clients who are stuck, the root cause of their issue may be that the goal they’ve been working towards all along may not have been the right goal in the first place (and as a result, no matter how hard they work, will never truly reach a point they’re comfortable with). Or, in other cases, it may be that the client has become addicted to the grind and can’t stop, which often turns out to be harmful to both the client and the people that matter most to them.

Such clients may benefit from (re)visiting a life-planning process (such as those offered by George Kinder or Money Quotient), or from an actual intervention, but for other clients, the problem may simply be that they do not know what to do with themselves once they’ve achieved their goals! Especially for those who are nearing (or at) retirement, and need to find satisfaction in something outside of a career that they might have spent the majority of their lives working in. For those clients, advisors can open the conversation by simply asking if they’ve given any consideration to how they’re going to focus their energy once they’ve reached financial independence, so that they’re retiring to something rather than away from something. From there, advisors can help clients brainstorm about the things that they might want to contribute to or do outside of work, and then task them to go try different things out and report back at their next meeting.

Ultimately, the key point is that there can be several reasons that people get stuck on the goal treadmill, and while perpetual improvement is an admirable endeavor, at some point, setting, achieving, and resetting goals may prove to be a blocking point that prevents a client from aligning the use of their capital with the things that are most important to them. And by identifying those root causes, advisors can help clients get unstuck and move back towards creating the sort of value overlap they were hired to create in the first place. Because, at the end of the day, the endgame isn’t about helping clients not have any more goals after getting to the point they initially wanted to arrive at… it’s helping them set new goals that keep them moving forward, in a way that’s truly most meaningful to them!
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Storing Cryptocurrency Securely: The Safest Options For New And Experienced Investors

August 11, 2021 07:04 am 37 Comments CATEGORY: Investments

Since the first block of bitcoin was mined in January 2009, cryptocurrency has transformed from an obscure, experimental corner of the market to an increasingly popular investment option trying to become mainstream. Famous for its dramatic highs and infamous for its subsequent lows, cryptocurrency has fascinated many as a fast-moving corner of the market... capturing both media and more and more consumer attention, to the point that many advisors who may have once dismissed cryptocurrency as a legitimate investment option are being asked to reconsider it by a growing number of clients ready to take on at last a little risk. In fact, a recent FPA Trends In Investing survey found that one in four advisors have indicated that they have considered adding cryptocurrency to client portfolios—a massive increase from what was historically fewer than 2% of advisors interested. However, in order for advisors to have confidence in cryptocurrency as a sound client portfolio option, it is important to know how to do more than trade cryptocurrency; advisors must also understand how to securely store it.

Because while cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin solve many unique technological challenges that have made entirely digital currencies infeasible before, cryptocurrency is not held in traditional brokerage accounts like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and ETFs, which presents unique challenges for securely storing cryptocurrency. In addition, unlike funds that are transferred via ACH and can be retrieved in the event that they were accidentally transferred between the wrong accounts, there is no central authority that can 'undo' an accidental cryptocurrency transaction. Instead, cryptocurrency is traded using public and private keys, which allow cryptocurrencies to be received and spent, respectively. While public ‘receiving’ keys can be used, generated, and distributed on a case-by-case basis without any personal risk, private ‘sending’ keys need to be securely guarded. If someone is trading in large amounts of cryptocurrencies, then the risk is even higher, and the keys will need to be safely stored in what is referred to as a (digital crypto) ‘wallet’. Yet at the same time, a key challenge with cryptocurrency storage is that the sophistication of the storage strategy used needs to also match the technical sophistication of the investor, as there’s a genuine risk of losing funds (or more specifically, permanently losing access to one's own cryptocurrency holdings) in the event that someone doesn’t quite know what they are doing.

So what is a safe option, then, for cryptocurrency storage? There are a wide range of storage options. In theory, one of the most secure methods possible is what’s known as a ‘paper wallet’- which refers to a wallet generated fully offline and stored in a physical format. However, the challenges of actually generating a paper wallet fully offline, and some technical aspects of how Bitcoin transactions actually work, make paper wallets a poor choice for most users. At the same time, despite the ease of use available from some wallets that can be installed on a computer, storing keys on a computer that has ever been connected to the internet is also a bad idea since an internet-connected computer can be compromised (and if that computer is the gateway to thieves permanently stealing one's sizable cryptocurrency holding, it is best to assume that any such computer has already been compromised!?).

Thankfully, there are two general cryptocurrency solutions advisors can give to their clients (or use) themselves. For the less tech-savvy advisor, using a reputable exchange or storage provider is emerging as a lower-risk solution—particularly as more mature firms are developing in this space. Such storage violates an ‘old’ cryptocurrency adage of “not your keys, not your coins,” since it is true that the service provider does have the owner's keys for (and therefore ultimate control of) the cryptocurrency funds, but for someone who otherwise would have limited ability to secure their funds, this may still be a better alternative, particularly if features such as 48-hour waiting periods are added before transactions can be made. However, for the slightly more tech-savvy user, hardware wallets are likely the ideal balance between security and the technical sophistication needed to implement a strategy. Hardware wallets are single-purpose computing devices that are designed solely to store cryptocurrency keys. The single-purpose nature of hardware wallets means that they can be used without fear of being compromised, even if a user is interacting with the wallet through a compromised computer. While there are some basic standards that users would want to ensure a hardware wallet meets, quality hardware wallets use a combination of security features that help ensure that someone’s coins are safe and retrievable even in the event that their hardware wallet is lost or stolen.

At the end of the day, cryptocurrency is likely here to stay, and consequently will only receive more attention in the future. As a result, if someone is going to own cryptocurrency, appropriate security measures need to be taken to address the unique nature of how these assets are owned and held. Importantly, though, as the amount invested grows, so too does the need to safeguard those investments. This is especially true for those who are looking to invest not only for themselves, but also for others. But the good news is that ultimately, with a little bit of research, advisors can find a secure storage option that opens up an entirely new side of investing for their clients (and even themselves if they are so inclined)!

#FA Success Ep 241: Scripting A “Values-Based Financial Planning” Business Development Process, With Bill Bachrach

August 10, 2021 07:08 am 6 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 241st episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Bill Bachrach. Bill is the Chairman and CEO of AdvisorRoadMap, which provides training and mentorship to help financial advisors better attract and communicate with their ideal clients.

What's unique about Bill, though, is that as the creator of the values-based financial planning framework and the father of the now-famous question - “What’s important about money to you?”- he pioneered a repeatable process to put a client’s values and goals at the center of the financial planning conversation at a time when the industry was still focused almost exclusively on product sales.

In this episode, we talk in depth about how Bill’s “What’s important about money to you?” question not only gives advisors a powerful way to start a meaningful conversation, but also gives prospects an opportunity to communicate the value that they’re seeking from a financial planning relationship, how that opening question is just a part of Bill’s script for having values conversations with prospects to create a foundation of trust and, ultimately, helps advisors (as Bill puts it) rescue prospects from their current advisors, and how Bill uses his values roadmap as a deliverable to visually show prospects the steps that they can take in order to fulfill their most deeply held values and achieve their most important goals.

We also talk about Bill’s five prospect conversations (each of which occur during the first prospect meeting, including the Opening, Values, and Goals conversations, as well as All The Money and Commitment To Hire steps), Bill’s techniques and suggestions for leading those conversations without overly “controlling” the conversation, and how recording prospect conversations for later review not only helps advisors build even more trust and relevance, but also ends out helping advisors learn to listen more, say less, ask better questions, and answer prospect questions more effectively.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Bill shares his recommendations for helping prospects more concretely identify and define their goals, with not just the name, target date, and cost, but also the emotionally compelling words that describe what achieving that goal will feel like (to include on their financial roadmap), why Bill feels that it’s an advisor’s obligation to take full advantage of the financial planning tools that are available to them (and why doing so makes it even easier to “rescue” clients away from other advisors who don’t), and Bill’s view that trust isn’t a function of an advisor’s technical chops, but is instead a function of character, the ability to ask good questions, listen, and ultimately hold clients accountable to the advice that they’re given.

So whether you’re interested in learning about how Bill’s “What’s important about money to you?” question, his five prospect conversations, or how financial advisors can build trust, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Bill Bachrach.

What Makes Financial Advisors Happy And The Second Kitces Research Study On Advisor Wellbeing

August 9, 2021 07:01 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Personal/Career Development

The financial services industry has long presented itself as one with high earning potential. As the saying goes, “there’s a lot of money in the money business”. For financial advisors, in particular, the career is often held out as one where advisors have ‘unlimited’ income potential… or at least, an earnings opportunity that is limited only by the hours of hustle that the advisor is willing to put in to build their book of clients.

Yet, while the average established financial advisor does earn significantly more than the median US household ($192,000 versus $68,700, respectively, according to the latest Kitces Research study), what’s even more notable is that when it comes to overall wellbeing, the average financial advisor actually outscores the typical American on all 18 subscales of the Comprehensive Inventory of Thriving! In other words, the career of being a financial advisor isn’t only one of above-average income, but it is rewarding across all domains of wellbeing, from relationships to engagement to mastery and meaning… with a particular focus on self-efficacy and accomplishment. In other words, the career of being a financial advisor is particularly conducive to those who are good at setting goals and being able to take action to achieve them… who then work with clients to help them set and achieve their own goals, too!

Unfortunately, though, one of the hardest aspects of being a financial advisor is simply figuring out what path to pursue to be a financial advisor, in an industry with choices from employee to independent, broker-dealer to RIA, large national firm to local boutique (or even just hanging one’s own shingle as a solo advisor!). For which it seems that every successful financial advisor says “their” channel and business model is the best… and in practice, relatively few advisors change channels at all throughout their careers!

However, as our 2020 Kitces Research study on Advisor Wellbeing reveals, not all advisor channels and business models are truly equal when it comes to advisor wellbeing. Instead, the reality is that the ‘best’ channel and business model for an advisor depends on their own intrinsic motivators and preferences. For instance, advisors who greatly value their autonomy may eschew the wirehouse model and pursue independence, while those who value income the most will tend to start their own firm (even though doing so is far more time-consuming), while those who value their time over just maximizing income may prefer an employee career path rather than trying to ‘eat-what-you-kill’ as an advisor who has to get their own client base.

In order to explore this further, we’re excited to announce our latest 2021 Kitces Research study on Advisor Wellbeing, specifically to delve more deeply into the intersection of what leads to the greatest levels of happiness and wellbeing as an advisor, and the motivators that lead us to become financial advisors (and to choose certain channels and business models over others). Notably, this year’s Wellbeing survey is shorter than our ‘typical’ Kitces Research study, and it’s our hope that every advisor will take a few minutes to share their own experiences and perspectives for this important research!

Thanks in advance for your participation and willingness to contribute!