feed - Part 46

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Feb 15-16)

February 14, 2020 02:54 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the ongoing industry drama of the prospective "Schwabitrade" merger, with a new public "Pledge" from Schwab that it will accept all RIAs regardless of AUM and without any custody fees, buzz that Fidelity will soon require a larger subset of least-profitable RIAs to begin paying a platform custody fee, and Pershing rethinking its prior $250M AUM custody minimum as it too positions to capture potential "NeverSchwab" RIAs that have been rejected by Schwab in the past when they were small and may not want to return from TD Ameritrade to Schwab in the prospective merger.

Also in the Schwabitrade news this week is the fresh revelation from a recent Schwab mid-quarter Business Update to Wall Street that, for the sake of acquisition expediency, they will not likely retain TD Ameritrade's popular (and most open architecture) VEO platform and instead anticipate keeping their own Schwab systems at the core, simply augmenting them with TD Ameritrade technology as it deems appropriate, amidst the latest buzz of what's worrying the advisor community as the Schwabitrade deal continues to ripple (beyond just RIAs themselves on the TD Ameritrade platform, and the broader potential impact to the entire advisor technology ecosystem).

From there, we have several articles on industry regulation, including some pushback from advisor industry associations about the SEC's proposed relaxing of the RIA advertising rules as being a welcome change but one that may put too much compliance burdens all at once on RIAs (as virtually all client communication may be scooped up as being 'advertising' under the new rules), a newly approved model regulation from the NAIC on a "best interests" standard for annuity agents that in practice simply repeats FINRA's existing non-fiduciary suitability requirements, positive progress on NASAA's recent model rule to prevent financial exploitation of seniors (making it easier and safer for advisors to intervene on their clients' behalf), and a new proposal from NASAA to potentially require all advisors under an RIA to obtain 12 hours per year of continuing education credits.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of trying to clean up the advisor industry: the first highlights how lobbying firms representing Wall Street brokerage firms and insurance and investment products continue to drastically outstrip the spending of actual financial advisor advocacy organizations like the IAA, FPA, and NAPFA; the second looks at the emerging regulatory challenge of 'fake comment letters' that create the impression of widespread support or opposition for proposed regulation but in reality are simply fake spam (and may have played a role in the DoL fiduciary rule); and the last is a frustrating profile of an "advisor" who has repeatedly been barred and fined (by both an individual state and then nationally by the SEC), and even convicted of a felony for securities fraud, with an obligation to pay more than $4M in restitution that hasn't been repaid, yet still continues to maintain a state insurance license for the past several years, and holds out to the public as a financial advisor providing retirement income plans to clients to facilitate annuity sales... begging the question of when the various regulators that oversee financial advisors will finally ever get better about coordinating to ensure that bad actors already convicted repeatedly under one regulator don't simply set up shop again as "financial advisors" under a different regulator and continue doing potentially-problematic business with consumers?

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Kitces & Carl Ep 27: Handling The ‘Required Minimum’ Conversation Without Being Awkward

February 13, 2020 07:11 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

Many financial advisors have asset minimums to ensure that they generate enough revenue from each client to be compensated appropriately for the value they provide (and the business cost to deliver it). But when it comes to having conversations about net worth with prospective clients to find out if they qualify for those minimums – especially those who are friends and family - the situation can quickly become awkward given the highly personal relationship individuals have with their money.

In our 27th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and financial advisor communication expert Carl Richards talk about some ways to broach the sensitive and potentially difficult conversation about assets and net worth with prospective clients, and how to gracefully defer from taking on prospective clients who don’t meet the firms’ requisite minimums. Because even while the natural inclination for many financial advisors is to help anyone who asks, regardless of net worth, doing so often becomes increasingly difficult as an advisor’s firm grows and the capacity to spend time with clients who don’t actually meet their minimum fees becomes smaller and, in many cases, non-existent.

The first issue to consider when requiring asset minimums is simply to recognize that it’s not always apparent who may qualify (or not), which means it’s crucial to meet with prospects, conduct an initial discovery meeting to learn about goals and values, and to get a rough idea of the prospect’s balance sheet to safeguard against making premature assumptions about what the client is really worth. And in the event that a client does not meet the firm’s minimums, the advisor can still conduct a brief follow-up meeting to provide a few basic recommendations and resources to the prospect without much effort, and then describe to the prospect what the firm’s typical clientele generally looks like and what the minimum fees are… a simple act of goodwill to help the client, and also an effective marketing strategy, as prospects who are grateful for the guidance they received from the advisor may still be able to refer people in their network who are appropriate clients (having been given a description of who the firm does work with, in the process of being helped themselves)!

However, while spending time with prospective clients and running through a complete discovery meeting can be a rewarding process for both the client (for the free guidance they receive) and the advisor (for the opportunity to help someone in need and the creation of a new, potential referral source), it is also a time-consuming process and an advisor’s capacity may not often permit them to meet with all prospects without some screening mechanism in place. One potential remedy is to help people better understand who the firm works with before even reaching out to the advisor… which can be achieved through the firm’s website. Details about the typical clientele or specific niche served by the firm, together with the firm’s asset minimums and fees published directly for all to see, can help deter unsuitable prospects from reaching out to the firm in the first place (effectively allowing them to self-select out themselves). And including some potential resources (e.g., books, white papers, etc.) for individuals who may not be a good fit can again leave the individual with something of value from the firm, even though they may not be a suitable client.

Ultimately, the key point is that even though the ‘required minimum’ conversation can be awkward, there are ways for financial advisors to have these discussions as a meaningful discovery process that can even serve as an effective marketing strategy… and even (briefly and time efficiently) help those who might not be ideal clients in the process. Furthermore, maintaining a website that includes a profile of the ‘ideal client’, together with a clear description of the firms’ fees, can also keep discovery meetings with prospects who are unable to meet the firm’s required minimums to a manageable minimum!

#FASuccess Ep 163: Building A Fast-Growth Practice Without Prospecting By Working Under A Credit Union, with Michael Gennawey

February 11, 2020 07:03 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 163rd episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Michael Gennawey. Michael is a financial advisor and program manager for SoCal Wealth Management, a hybrid advisory firm in Southern California that oversees $260 million of assets under management for nearly 1,800 clients.

What's unique about Michael, though, is the way he's been able to build SoCal Wealth Management under the umbrella of the Credit Union of Southern California, which itself has nearly $1.6 billion of credit union assets serving almost 120,000 members across 18 branch locations and feeds a continuous flow of prospect referrals to Michael's advisory firm, with the caveat that as part of the credit union, they have to take every client that is referred to them.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about the unique structure of credit unions as customers or, rather, member-owned financial institutions, and how the member-centric culture of credit unions can be so complementary to the client-centric culture of advisory firms. The way that Credit Union of Southern California structures its referral program and trains its Member Service Officers across branches to identify members with client needs and steer them towards SoCal Wealth Management at a pace of nearly three new clients per week, and the way SoCal Wealth structures its offering on the LPL platform to keep it efficient enough to run this kind of high-volume client business.

We also talk about the way that Michael's firm uses an internal team member supporting the financial advisors to both set initial appointments with referrals but also to help screen them to ensure they're a fit for the firm in the first place, SoCal Wealth's financial planning process and their two-meeting approach that delivers the plan interactively with MoneyGuidePro, not only to engage clients but to save significant time in the plan preparation process, and the way that Michael's firm segments clients for ongoing services, given the incredible range of who the credit union refers to them, from multimillionaires to those opening their first IRA.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Michael shares how to figure out which credit unions have the right client-centric culture and which are just offering wealth management as a product-based profit center, the typical payouts that advisors receive in a credit union environment in exchange for having to do little or no business development, and the unique structure that SoCal Wealth has built for its advisors where clients that are referred through the credit union must stay behind, but advisors can still have their own personal clients that the advisor can take with them if they leave in the future.

The Latest In Financial Advisor #FinTech (February 2020)

February 3, 2020 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Welcome to the February 2020 issue of the Latest News in Financial Advisor #FinTech – 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 and wealth management!

This month's edition kicks off with the big announcement that Visa is acquiring Plaid for a whopping $5.3B (barely a year after Plaid itself acquired Quovo, a popular account aggregation solution for financial advisors), in a move that will help cement account aggregation as a standard fixture in the financial services landscape, and likely help to standardize (and reduce the frequency of breakages) account aggregation data gathering… though for the price that Visa paid to acquire Plaid, it doesn’t appear likely that serving financial advisors will be a priority, raising questions about what Visa’s commitment will be to Quovo in the long term and leaving the door open for Yodlee’s continued growth in the advisor community.

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

Invesco’s Jemstep announces a major deal with Citigroup to power its new Citi Wealth Builder robo platform… to be funded exclusively with Invesco model portfolios comprised of Invesco ETFs
Fidelity and Schwab announce a series of new enhancements to their own digital onboarding solutions and a long-term pledge to eliminate account application forms altogether
WisdomTree announces that it intends to sell its robo-for-advisors platform AdvisorEngine for a significant loss that amounts to little more than what it originally paid for Junxure, raising questions of where Junxure itself will land when WisdomTree puts the company up for sale
TA Associates announces that it is putting Orion Advisor Solutions up for sale for nearly $2B, in what may become the biggest yet private equity sale of an RIA technology solution

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including the growing intertwining between risk tolerance assessment tools and rebalancing software, Act Analytics launching a new ESG research platform for advisors looking to more easily analyze and then customize ESG portfolios for individual clients, Whealthcare’s founder splitting off from the company despite recent industry awards as advisor growth appears to have been lagging, and a growing level of integrations and adoption of cash management solutions for financial advisors as the pressure grows for advisors to show value for clients beyond just the portfolio itself.

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular new “Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map” as well.

I hope you're continuing to find this column on financial advisor technology to be helpful. Please share your comments at the end and let me know what you think!

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

Kitces & Carl Ep 26: Talking Clients Out Of The Bunker Portfolio

January 30, 2020 07:27 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

Kitces & Carl Episode 26 - Talking Clients Out Of The Bunker Portfolio

Clients often worry about how “the market” may be doing at any given time, which is understandable given the assets they may have invested there. However, there are times when some clients (particularly those who experienced the worst of the financial crisis a little over a decade ago) completely lose faith in the entire economic system altogether and want to abandon their financial plan to go all-in with a ‘bunker portfolio’, investing solely and entirely into select assets (like gold) that they feel will ‘save them’ from the risk of an overall failure of the entire economic system.

The fear that stokes the bunker portfolio goes beyond the typical concern over bear markets or periodic market volatility – it is based on a deeper fear and doubt about the entire foundation of the economic system. And for financial advisors working with such clients, the challenge is in helping them understand that, despite inevitable economic cycles, shifting their portfolio to ‘bet’ on a complete collapse of the entire economic structure is itself a low-odds, high-risk bet, such that even with the potential risk, the best course of action is generally still to stick to their financial plan and stay the course instead.

In our 26th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and financial advisor communication expert Carl Richards discuss how to communicate with clients with extreme distrust of the economic system as a whole, as contrasted with temporary concerns over market volatility (in which case a different conversation around market timing needs to be considered), and present strategies to help those clients from making fear-based decisions.

The first step in talking clients out of the bunker portfolio is for advisors to confirm that clients appreciate the fundamental principles around risk and return and that for more than a century, equities have fared better than fixed income, and fixed income has outperformed cash.

Even so, clients may still feel beholden to escape-hatch strategies to avoid market catastrophe. In these situations, advisors can help them understand the value of diversification by framing hypothetical out-of-market portfolios as risk-based ‘bets’ themselves, considering whether the portfolio the client is proposing would stand the test of time. And by examining the data, the advisor can simply ask (and assess) how often (if at all) the proposed portfolio would have made sense and actually been an appropriate choice. Often, this is enough to convince the client of the merits of their original plan and to stay the course.

For some clients, however, no amount of reason will persuade them that the economic system is not actually about to fail. And while an advisor’s primary role is to help clients meet their goals and to clearly understand the impact of their decisions, the advisor must also consider the overall happiness or dissatisfaction the client may experience as they follow their recommended plan in achieving their goals. Because if the client doesn’t fully agree with their advisor’s recommendation, and becomes so stressed about going along with the plan anyway, the advisor’s plan becomes exactly that – the advisor’s plan, and not the client’s plan. On the other hand, the strategy that the client does want to pursue, in opposition to their advisor’s recommendations, may not be one that the advisor, in good faith as a fiduciary of the client, can stand behind. Accordingly, in such circumstances, the advisor may simply need to acknowledge that the best course of action would be to terminate the relationship.

Ultimately, though, the key point is simply that clients who have completely lost faith in the economy need to be on the same page with their advisor around assumptions and principles of the market for the client-advisor relationship to continue on a healthy path. Because, unless the client is in agreement with the basic assumptions on which their financial plan has been built, it may not be possible to talk them through their fear-based decisions at all.

Distinguishing Financial Stress From Anxiety And Client Communication Strategies To Help

January 29, 2020 07:04 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Client Trust & Communication

In today’s digital-age culture where nearly all sources of news and media are instantly accessible and information overload is a normal state of being, it is not surprising that stress and anxiety are very commonly experienced in our fast-paced society. And in fact, stress and anxiety about specific financial problems are what most often drive people to seek the help of an advisor in the first place! Which, in turn, means that advisors should have some strategies in their toolbelts to effectively help clients (prospective or otherwise) who might be stressed and anxious. Accordingly, the first step is understanding that, while the terms “stress” and “anxiety” are often used interchangeably, the reality is that they are two very different things, indeed, and require different approaches.

While stress is the result of external stimuli perceived to pose some level of threat (with a corresponding response to the threat that may involve uncertainty about one’s own ability to deal with the issue at hand), anxiety results from internal forces arising from unhealthy attitudes towards a particular idea or concept. Thus, while stress can be eliminated when the external stimuli are removed, the same is not necessarily true for anxiety. While an external stimulus might serve to trigger anxiety, removing it may have no effect on the anxiety since it is the internalized idea that causes the anxiety (versus the actual external trigger).

A recent study released by the FINRA Foundation examined specific differences between individuals reporting financial stress and financial anxiety and found that 44% of all respondents reported experiencing financial stress. Other results provided by the study showed stress levels varied by sex, income level, age group, healthcare concerns, presence of dependents, and retirement status. More detail on these differences can be found in the following figures.

Interestingly, financial anxiety is consistently higher than financial stress across a variety of demographic groups, roughly 10 percent higher. This might be justified by the very definitions of stress and anxiety, whereas stress can be addressed by removing the stimuli acting as the stressor, anxiety will linger as psychological damage even in the absence of whatever stressor might be the initial root of the anxiety.

And while stress and anxiety may appear very similar, the underlying causes are distinct and communication styles to deal with each condition should be adjusted accordingly. For instance, advisors who have clients experiencing stress can most effectively help them by reframing the stressful issue positively (such as by reminding how they’ve successfully overcome similar challenges in the past), focusing on the problem (discussing the specific problem and plan of attack), and making to-do lists for the client. On the other hand, clients with anxiety may be overwhelmed by these strategies. Accordingly, advisors can use a different set of techniques, such as providing a safe place to have conversations about money issues, offering guidance as a teacher and supporter, and recognizing and acknowledging growth and progress. And while stress and anxiety may appear to have similar symptoms on the surface, simple assessment tools can help the advisor assess whether their clients are experiencing stress or anxiety so that communication strategies can be adapted accordingly.

Ultimately, the key point is that while stress and anxiety affect many individuals, financial advisors can best help their clients by having mechanisms in place to help them identify any stress and anxiety they may be experiencing. Additionally, taking care of themselves and managing their own stress and anxiety issues is something else advisors must do; otherwise they run the risk of unintentionally transferring their own emotions onto the client.

#FASuccess Ep 161: Cultivating The Right Firm Culture With A Reality-Based Leadership Approach, with Tessa Felix

January 28, 2020 07:03 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 161st episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Tessa Felix. Tessa is the HR and operations lead for PWL Capital, an advisory firm based in Montreal and Ottawa that oversees nearly $3.6 billion in assets under management.

What's unique about Tessa, though, is her particular focus on developing the culture of her advisory firm, and the systems and structure that she's put in place to help hold everyone on the team accountable for their work, in addition to making the firm an enjoyable environment to work in.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about the Reality-Based Leadership system that Tessa has incorporated into her management approach in the firm. Why the emotional expense of employee drama is such an important cost to manage and save for the firm; Tessa's routine of weekly team meetings, internal team podcasts, and monthly one-on-ones that she uses to maintain the culture of the firm; and why in the end, culture is not just about creating a fun workplace, but about the actions and behaviors that are expressed in the workplace.

We also talk about Tessa's own career journey. From joining her advisory firm in an operations role, earning her advisor licenses to shift into a client-facing advisory role, deciding that she actually enjoys the work of managing people and building culture more than working directly with clients and shifting back into an internal operations role, the way she navigated the challenging transition from being a peer of her co-workers to their manager instead, and how she ultimately became not just the HR and operations lead, but the culture lead for her advisory firm as well.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Tessa shares some of the key books that have influenced her journey of learning how to develop and manage people and culture, the software tool she uses to help manage internal team meetings and employee engagement, and the importance of both cultivating a growth mindset in employees and having a growth mindset as a firm where culture itself will always be fluid and evolving.

And so with that introduction, I hope you enjoy this episode of the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast with Tessa Felix.

Practical Cybersecurity Steps For (Independent) Financial Advisors To Better Protect Client Data

January 27, 2020 07:07 am 16 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

In most financial planning firms today, nearly all business operations depend on some form of cloud-based technology or other data storage system. And given the sensitive and personal nature of client information that financial advisors are entrusted with and work with on a daily basis, reliable security measures need to be implemented to protect that client data, wherever it is stored. In fact, both the SEC and FINRA have increasingly recognized the significance of cybersecurity measures for financial planning firms in recent years, and offer extensive regulations, rules, and guidelines to ensure advisors effectively protect client and firm data against the vast expanse of malicious cyber-threats that attempt to steal valuable Personally Identifiable Information (PII) across the globe on a daily basis.

However, the rules and regulations around cybersecurity and identity theft can seem overwhelmingly complex to deal with, especially for financial planners who are sole proprietors or who work in smaller firms. As while larger firms have the staff infrastructure of dedicated IT and compliance teams, smaller practices don’t have this option and are often left to their own devices (or seek out consultants at additional compliance cost) to develop cybersecurity plans for their practices.

Even more problematic, though, is simply the fact that most financial planners became financial planners to be financial planners… not cybersecurity experts. And while most financial planners may know enough about computer systems and basic internet processes to manage their firms, few have an extensive background in IT sufficient to fully develop their own sound, yet manageable, cybersecurity plan.

In this guest post, Preeti Shah – herself the founder and sole proprietor of Enlight Financial, an RIA located in Matawan, New Jersey that works with physicians and business owners – shares her own 16-point cybersecurity plan that she personally developed, and how she boiled down the complex regulatory requirements of cybersecurity into practical categories of tools and systems to manage and implement on her own.

In practice, Preeti converted her cybersecurity requirements into a comprehensive checklist that includes measures to protect her email systems, ensure safe mobile technology practices, provide secure document storage and software solutions for use with her clients, maintain a secure physical working environment, and provide for an emergency plan in case disaster strikes.

Ultimately, the reality is that no cybersecurity plan will be perfect as cyberthreats continually evolve. Still, though, a work-in-progress framework that continues to evolve as each point is revisited and improved upon over time can help protect key data and demonstrate to regulators a good-faith effort to do so. And the reality is that financial advisors don’t need to be cybersecurity experts to implement a reasonably sound plan to better protect their clients' and their firm’s confidential data… at least once their cybersecurity requirements are boiled down to more practical steps that can be implemented!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (Jan 25-26)

January 24, 2020 03:01 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the industry news that lawmakers are recommending the Federal Trade Commission investigate Envestnet's Yodlee over its data-sharing practices, raising concerns that the anonymized data they sell might still potentially be pieced back together by data buyers and that Yodlee is not sufficiently disclosing the way it sells data and the risks involved... though notably, Yodlee maintains that it does sufficiently scrub its data before sharing, and the practice is common across more providers than just Yodlee anyway.

Also in the news this week is a profile in Financial Planning magazine of Schwab, and specifically how it pursues advisors in its retail division that want to switch over to form an RIA or join an existing one... raising concerns about whether Schwab is impeding the ability of Schwab's retail advisors to work in the industry if they leave Schwab, or whether independent RIAs are being inappropriately aggressive in pursuing Schwab retail advisors to join their firms and bring their existing Schwab retail clients along (even though RIAs would lambast Schwab if its retail team ever tried to poach RIA clients and assets?).

From there, we have several articles on industry trends, including one analysis that suggests, despite robo-advisor competition, the market for financial planning advice is actually poised to explode to the upside in the 2020s (in large part because the rise of technology is making it so much more efficient to deliver financial advice that it will reduce the cost and expand the market of who advisors can serve), a look at the ongoing slow but steady decline of wirehouse advisor headcount (even as wirehouse advisor productivity hits record highs), and the continued rise of mergers and acquisitions of advisory firms (which hit a new record in 2019, up a whopping 31% from the prior year).

We also have several practice management articles, from a discussion of when it's time to revisit your own fee structure with clients (or not), a discussion of the rising popularity of the subscription-fee model for financial advice and when it works best (or doesn't), the appeal of offering tax-planning services to grow your advisory firm, and the rise of "cash-management" solutions where advisors can offer clients high-yield bank savings accounts to complement their investment/brokerage services.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of personal productivity: the first explores how effectively achieving your goals requires not just setting goals, but prioritizing them to be able to focus and avoid being overwhelmed; the second examines how the real key to productivity is to focus on the 'fundamentals' first (from sleep to nutrition to workspace environment) and your own psychology, rather than fretting about self-control or self-motivation; and the last looks at how the real key to being more productive is not about what else you can manage to do, but what you can stop doing (and especially identifying the things you can stop doing that relieve you of even more otherwise-unnecessary decisions down the road)!

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

#FASuccess Ep 159: Navigating Financial Advisor Career Opportunities Under The Employee Model, with Kelly Shikany

January 14, 2020 07:08 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 159th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Kelly Shikany. Kelly is a financial advisor and director of wealth management for Lakeside Wealth, a hybrid RIA based in Chesterton, Indiana, right outside Chicago, where Kelly manages a base of nearly $90 million of client assets.

What's unique about Kelly, though, is her decision to not hang her hat as a solo advisor and instead navigate existing advisory firms that have already established the necessary infrastructure to operate the firm, allowing her to focus on clients and not needing to live in an "eat what you kill" grid-based environment.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about Kelly's career path through the advisory industry under the employee model. From starting out as a trust accountant for ERISA plans with Northern Trust, shifting to become a trust officer with an independent trust company, transitioning to the independent channel under the Wells Fargo FiNet platform, and then joining her current firm with an opportunity to grow by servicing clients that the firm acquires in its own efforts to grow.

We also talk about how Kelly grew her client base in the early years by conducting women's circles as a way to network and establish relationships in her small town community. The reason she decided to pursue the CDFA designation as a way to initially differentiate herself, and how ultimately she decided the best way to differentiate herself was simply her ability to have a different kind of conversation with her clients in the first place.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Kelly talks about how she structures her week to maximize personal productivity. Why it's so difficult for most of the employee model to even figure out the right questions to ask when evaluating potential advisor job opportunities, and why it's important to balance a positive desire to be loyal to your firm and clientele with focusing on your own needs to find a fulfilling career and the right place to work as a financial advisor.