Breakaway Brokers

Let’s look at two overlooked activities you should be tracking to ensure referral sustainability.

He bullies team members, the other partners and most of our vendors.

I want to draw your focus to the three most important, yet boring, tax strategies that every advisor should be discussing with every client.

RIAs can be paid to service trails-paying annuities without a broker-dealer.

Advisors face an uphill battle to get attendance to their events.

Let’s look at 10 must-haves for financial advisor websites.

I’ll explore four stages of personal performance that will improve your ability to recruit top talent.

You will wear a therapist hat on top of your wealth manager cap.

Here is the just released our 2022 T3/Inside Information Software Survey. It ranks, by market share, the leading software solutions in advisory-firm tech stacks in 35 different categories.

Many advisors would greatly benefit from scale yet are hamstrung by the very temperament that led to their success in the first place.

Here are five ways to win new business and clients for life by creating urgency, so your prospects want to create a financial plan now with you.

Your firm’s digital messaging and visual expression must all align with your ideal clients’ needs, goals and objectives. Here is how four top advisors achieved that goal.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on strategies to become more time efficient. Since that time, I have been inundated with advisors asking questions such as…

Many of you are struggling to decide whether you should breakaway and form your own RIA. I confronted the same decision many years ago. Here’s my story.

Here are five tips to improve your productivity and ease your stress.

RIAs must align their communications, planning methodologies, and product set with the needs of retirees, especially women, whose chief priority is reliability of income more than return on investment.

Give yourself a year to implement a marketing plan, and it will promote procrastination and won’t be nimble. Instead of planning out your advisory firm’s marketing tactics for an entire year, create a plan that spans just 12 weeks.

For years, small accounts have been overcharged and underserved. I’m encouraged, however, by what I see some advisors doing, I wish the rest of the profession were inspired to similarly elevate the value provided for the price charged small clients.

This article discusses how to build a prospect list, from generating leads to getting potential clients to meet with you.

In my work with clients, one of the most important services I provide, in addition to coaching on finance, estate planning, and investing, is facilitating cross-generational conversations about what it means to have wealth, and especially about what it means to use wealth wisely.

Watching hundreds of YouTube cooking videos revealed to me the secret to successfully managing your advisory firm.

Here are the nine steps you need to take when entering a new niche market.

Consider the upfront bonus checks often paid to advisors leaving one broker/dealer to join another. That “bonus” is not a bonus at all.

We are a service industry. Before we try to sell clients anything, we need to stop and consider what they want.

The insurance industry has struggled to build engagement with its customers. That is also true among financial advisors, who can apply the same tactics to grow their business.

The passing of my beloved pet and “office dog” offers an important insight into how advisors can serve clients when they truly need help.

I’ll take an order of flat fees (otherwise known as retainers) with a side of financial planning. Customers are lining up out the door for this.

Here are five winning tactics to leverage immediately for more online introductions.

The Federal Reserve embarked last week on its long-advertised monetary tightening: a quarter-point increase in interest rates, with the suggestion of six more by the end of the year, and a plan to run down its stock of government debt (details to follow). This was widely expected and essentially a non-event.

Why do we still refer to so many firms in the advisory profession as broker/dealers?

I’m having an existential crisis with a few of my advisors.

We describe how an intentional and sustainable vision for diversity and inclusion at Wealthspire took form.

As a financial advisor looking to jump to independence as an RIA, you have two doors from which to choose.

I am interested in any guidelines on paying and compensating my assistants.

Your firm would take off if you could replicate yourself. The problem: You can’t.

Advisors who avoid the TAMP space based on misguided preconceptions are missing out on the powerful competitive advantages they create.

New data on consumer preferences and behaviors during COVID shows that the advisory firms face daunting challenges with respect to staffing, differentiation and – if they are private-equity backed – financing and maintaining profitability.

Inject targeted marketing content in a stepwise approach and be patient while the relationship builds as marketing prospects see and consume your content.

If there ever were a strategy to come close to being a sliver bullet for marketing, it’s texting. Before you click away from this screen, hear me out.

A world economy that’s still recovering from Covid-19 faces new risks from an energy-price spike as the standoff between the West and Russia escalates.

Here are five ways the right partner can help you become more efficient in independence.

We have the new program installed, but no one is using it.

I’ve learned a lot running my digital marketing companies over the past five years. You may find these six lessons helpful.

It's called social media for a reason. Most people get the media part. They share links back to their website, blog, or podcast. But they forget about the social part.

Some observers assume I tell everyone that they should go down the RIA path. That is not the case.

I’m not averse to having clients tell their friends and family about me; I’m just averse to making it sound like they need to do it because we need them to do it.

Observing the lack of traffic at a new Ferrari dealership led me to an important insight into how advisors should justify their value to prospects.

Custom-designed, printed marketing materials help customers know, like, and trust you by making your brand more recognizable and memorable, and deepen relationships with existing clients. Here’s how.

I work with student-athletes looking to cash in on their name, image, and likeness (NIL). But I also work with advisors and have found there are important similarities In how they achieve marketing greatness.

Sourcing your own E&O policy is not complicated or intimidating if you understand how to navigate the process.

It’s becoming more and more challenging to find employees to fill essential roles. Advisor are hitting roadblocks with succession planning and filling internal staff positions.

How do you know when it’s time to pivot your marketing?

Here are some rules and skills that are unique to the virtual sales platform. Growing your skills in these areas will make your practice very profitable in the coming years.

Recently one expert asked whether the letters I receive are authentic or perhaps I make them up. I’d like to use this column to address this and ask financial professionals to consider things we often don’t talk about in this industry.

In today's digital-first world, a marketing funnel is how financial advisors attract ideal prospects, engage clients and COIs, and stimulate referrals.

If a recently widowed client hasn’t fired you, then you are among a lucky few. Here’s a thought experiment that illustrates the vulnerability advisors face when they don’t engage the female half of a couple.

I’ve been asked many, many questions about referrals from advisors all over the country. This article has the most popular questions I’ve heard time and again, followed by my response.

I find it difficult to act as a social worker. I’ve no background in psychology. I’ve no skills to help warring couples find their bliss and agree on a center point when they have differing opinions.

I predicted that 2021 would be a transitional year for managing an advisory business, and I expect this transition to accelerate and become fully formed in 2022. These are the changes that I envision for the coming year and beyond.

Federal Reserve officials have begun debating how to approach shrinking a stockpile of more than $8 trillion of bonds as a key element of a policy-normalization campaign in the wake of unprecedented moves to shore up the economy during the pandemic.