Practice Management

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.

A potent combination of sky-high bonuses, accelerating intergenerational transfers of wealth, low-interest rates, and the specter of inflation “makes investing in a concrete, fixed asset like real estate attractive to many as they balance their portfolios,” Nelson says.

Ask yourself these questions when seeking a trust partner who not only is committed to a partnership service model, but can also deliver.

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.

When Swedish bank SEB AB announced recently that it wanted to buy into the market for carbon credits, what it got was a pile of duds.

Stand on the steps of The Royal Exchange in the heart of the City of London and you can picture the churn of people 200 years ago or more in what was becoming the world’s preeminent financial hub.

Don’t pay big bucks to “branding experts,” using manipulative sales techniques, or rely on the questionable advice offered by “referral experts” or those who tell you to sell differently based on the personality type of the prospect.

Finding the right professional to manage your finances is challenging. Financial professionals have many different titles, certifications and qualifications, but which type is right for you?

We spent a small fortune in 2020 and 2021 on training for our advisors. We need them to get better at business building and finding new sales opportunities.

Here’s how advisors can maximize their event marketing ecosystem to drive more appointments from their in-person and digital events.

We're sharing four areas of work female advisors should resolve to pay special attention to in 2022 –plus, how you can give those resolutions staying power.

Soon – within the next two years – the SEC will wake up and start holding financial advisors who use TAMPs to the same fiduciary standards they hold them to in selecting mutual funds, ETFs, and other investment products. When it does, many advisors will be in trouble.

As financial professionals scramble to close business before year end, taking a moment to appreciate client growth as well as the holiday season may seem like an energy waste. But the opposite is true.

As we close out the year, I’ll provide my top five advisor observations from my work with large and small practices.

A Pittsburgh insurance broker and a Richmond, Virginia forensic accountant have developed an alternative rating system for measuring the ability of life/annuity companies to keep their promises even in market crises. They call it the transparency, surplus and riskier assets ratio, or “TSR” for short.

Before we bid farewell to 2021 let's take a look back at some of our favorite milestones.

There was a lot of yelling when I was there from 1999 to 2008, but there was a lot of a bank’s own capital being committed and a lot of risk being transferred. I probably did more yelling than anyone, and I got yelled at plenty. But at the end of the day, nobody took anything personally.

Great articles don’t always get the readership they deserve. We’ve already posted the most-widely read articles for the past year. Here are another 10 that you might have missed, but I believe merit reading.

As is our custom, we conclude the year by reflecting on the 10 most-read practice management articles over the past 12 months.

As is our custom, we conclude the year by reflecting on the 10 most-read investment and planning articles over the past 12 months. Tomorrow, we will highlight the 10 most-read practice management articles.

A return to the office means a return to the commute. Less time with family. Less time for your health. All to do the same work for the same company at a different desk.

In your meetings, hand the reins to the client. You may find that your initial assumptions weren’t valid.

We need to do year-end planning but in past years it hasn’t gone well.

An exceptional year for wealthy Americans, at least in terms of their financial health, just got better.

Media attention has focused on the long-standing “4% rule” and how economic and demographic realities have reduced that guideline. This article discusses related considerations and provides opportunities for retirees dealing with the new normal.

The best marketing doesn’t just attract people to your business. It also repels the people you don’t want to work with.

I haven’t written one of these rips in a while, so I thought as an end of the year celebration I’d bring the “six phrases” series back and the first roast will focus on my personal favorite: brokers.

Betting on flashy names like Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, Shaquille O’Neal and Martha Stewart to boost blank-check companies this year left investors mostly in the red.

A large portion of the advisor community would be far better off under the RIA model, yet many of those advisors will never take advantage of it.

Why doesn’t my staff see my appreciation in action and how could they be upset about donations to organizations they care about?

Advisors breach their fiduciary duty when they fail to recommend guaranteed income products.

This Christmas’s unexpected stocking stuffer might be an NFT.

Picking the few "monster" stocks among the many thousands of underachieving ones is extremely difficult. But for those who guessed right and had the discipline to stick with those winners through bull and bear markets, the rewards have been truly remarkable. Here are the 20 best-performing stocks of the past 30 years.

As you near the end of Q4 and gather your thoughts, goals, and priorities for 2022, we have one piece of advice: Streamline your business!

It’s that time of the year where we reassess relationships, segment our client activity and look at where we want to spend our energy in 2022. This year, the topic of centers of influence (COIs) has come up.

Is it possible that, as the planning profession matures, all planners will eventually follow the same path that every other profession has followed, and charge on an hourly basis for the advice they give – like lawyers, tax professionals and accountants?

Social proof is integral – no one wants to hand over their life savings to an unknown entity or someone they can’t be sure whether to trust.

Service offerings that were premium yesterday may be considered ho-hum today. To keep your clients loyal and attract new business, you need to continually create “delight” with strategic updates.

Do you believe any advisor can become a strong salesperson?

Financial advisory practices using only a handful of team members to prospect and engage in traditional business development will be usurped by teams that are trained to be causative.

If your marketing stank this year, follow these simple instructions and make 2022 better.

The financial services field is one of the most regulated in the U.S. Our regulations are as complex as those in the medical field. This makes sense; our health and our money are two important pillars of wellbeing. Preventing harm to either can be a matter of life and death.

Here are three reasons marketing will get harder for financial advisors next year and beyond. Yet the situation isn’t hopeless. You can adopt strategies that make your marketing easier even with the changes on the horizon.

Behind every advisor’s success story is a well-laid and executed plan, which starts with effective goal setting. Let’s see how this works in action.

With the financial independence, retire early (FIRE) movement on the rise, Americans are targeting early retirement. I will explain the FIRE movement, the steps you can take for early retirement, and how an anti-financial plan helps you achieve your goals.

When guiding advisors on how to transition their practices to the RIA model, this is a question I commonly address.

The golden rule has a huge flaw that needs to be exposed. It sets you up for failure on a big assumption that everyone does want to be treated the way you want to be treated.

No one cares how hard we work. No one cares how many college degrees or years of experience we have.

We’re all salespeople in some sense, fiduciary financial advisors included.

There are ways to be different, but few advisors are willing to adopt them.

Here are some things to do to incorporate feedback more consistently into your daily practice with your team members.

Hype is never far away from cryptocurrencies. Punters taking public transport or navigating social media are bombarded daily with enticing advertising and billboards dangling the next big coin, while self-proclaimed experts and gurus offer hot investing tips before the inevitable tired disclaimer: “Please do your own research.”