In this episode, Jack Sharry talks with Eric Clarke, CEO of Orion Advisors. Eric is committed to improving client outcomes through strategic acquisitions and smart technology.

Straight out of grad school, Eric began his career as an asset management wholesaler. The company he worked for was experiencing operational challenges and, eventually, Eric realized the fiduciary IRA business needed stronger technology. At the time, available tech was only built for the brokerage business rather than advisory firms. Seeing an opportunity from necessity, Eric developed a business plan and founded Orion.

As Eric puts it, what’s current today is incredibly dated tomorrow. Orion provides technology services to advisory firms while keeping a pulse on what’s current and pivoting as needed.

Jack and Eric discuss the art of acquisition, how to instill proactivity in advisors, and why behavioral psychology is the backbone of strong and effective advising.

“What’s fascinating to me is that our industry is dominated by finance and accounting degrees, myself included. And as we look forward, I think we’re going to see a lot more emphasis inside of the industry on having degrees potentially dominated around behavioral psychology. And hopefully, we get to a point where we’re really understanding the investors that we’re serving in ways that we can drive and create value back in very meaningful ways.” ~ Eric Clarke

Main takeaways

When buying technology, advisors must make sure that technology is solving one of two problems: Is it creating a better client experience or driving internal operational efficiencies?
When combining businesses, you have to take a step back and look at the best ways to integrate offerings so you’re never operating in silos.
Knowing the overall composure of an investor is incredibly important in driving client value. And there’s more to it than simple risk-tolerance. Understanding an investor’s behavioral psychology also helps advisors to proactively solve problems by preventing potential stressors.
It’s better to disrupt your own entity than let other businesses disrupt you first. There are four key areas that advisors should be looking at when it comes to improving value propositions: prospecting, planning, investing, and outcomes.

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