Between Now and Success

There's never been a more exciting time to be a financial advisor, or a more challenging one. The Baby Boomer generation is keeping advisors busy as they age into retirement. A new generation of internet-savvy millennials is beginning to consider their investment opportunities. Competition is everywhere. Technology is both disrupting the RIA landscape, and giving advisors new opportunities to retool and expand their businesses, while staying independent. Dyanasty Financial Partners is one of the companies that's providing RIAs with a modern platform to differentiate and grow. On today's show, Dynasty's founder, Shirl Penney, discusses the core services that RIAs have to provide their clients to remain independent, and how a company like Dynasty can help.

As the co-founder of multi-billion dollar RIA Beacon Pointe in Newport Beach, CA, Matt Cooper has a unique, in the trenches view of trends that are sweeping the financial advisory industry, on both the client and advisor side. In addition to his original, $7-billion-plus RIA, Matt founded a sister company, Beacon Point Wealth Advisors, which partners with smaller RIAs around the country so they can enjoy the benefits of working with a larger firm. Beacon Point Wealth Advisors includes eight other RIAs, representing more than $2 billion in assets under management. On today's show, Matt addresses a variety of issues including technology, demographics, minimum account sizes, competitive threats, and much more. Learn from one of the best about how you can keep pace with the trends buffeting our industry.

Erin Botsford is one of the top financial advisors in the country. She is the founder and CEO of the Botsford Financial Group, which has nearly $1 billion in assets under management. She has appeared on Barron’s list of the Top 100 Women Financial Advisors and Top 100 Independent Financial Advisors multiple times. And she’s also an author who just released her second book, “Seven Figure Firm.” But maybe more impressive than Erin’s resume is the hardship she had to overcome to get where she is today. Erin was only 11 when her father died of a heart attack. The small life insurance policy he left behind made life very hard for Erin, her mother, and her five siblings. A car accident in her teenage years and a bad investment with a stockbroker in her early 20s put further strain on Erin’s family life and finances. These experiences taught Erin the value of comprehensive financial planning and asset protection, lessons she continues to impart to her clients. On today’s show, Erin discusses her compelling story, the personal and financial lessons she took away from her adversities, and how she built her own seven figure firm from scratch.

Once upon a time, financial planners met with clients annually, showed them a printout of how all their investments were performing, shook hands, and moved on to the next annual appointment with the next client. Smart advisors know those days are over. Many investors are already monitoring their portfolio online, often for free. Fees are compressing across the financial advisory industry. A younger, more connected, generation is starting to decide how much money, and how much spare time, they want to invest in planning for their futures. On today's show, I talk with Ben Jones, Managing Director of Intermediary Distribution for BMO Global Asset Management and host of BMO's excellent Better Conversations Podcast. We discuss how financial advisors can engage in better conversations that lead to better outcomes for your clients.

Whatever you think about Donald Trump, it’s hard to deny his masterful use of persuasion and branding techniques to win over a specific segment of the electorate that propelled him to the White House. Here are six key strategies Donald Trump used in his campaign and how you can adapt them to your business.

Imagine walking into a doctor’s office with a bad cough and walking out on crutches, still coughing. That’s how Brent Brodeski saw the client experience of financial advisory in 1992 when he co-founded Savant Capital Management in Rockford, IL. “It was kind of like going to the general practitioner, you get a checkup, and he wrote prescriptions and sent people on their way,” said Brent. “And people take that prescription and imagine the pharmacist saying, ‘No, I’m going to sell you this wonder drug instead. It’s more expensive and doesn’t really make you better.’ That was the problem, the clients had a prescription for one thing and they often were getting something else.” On today's pod we discuss lessons Brent learned from diagnosing his clients’ problems and devising the best cures for their finances on his way to expanding Savant to nearly $5 billion in assets under management and 13 offices throughout the Midwest:

Nobody can accurately and consistently predict the future but by observing and curating ideas, you can uncover accelerating trends, see things other people miss, and position your business to profit from these upcoming opportunities. In 1982, John Naisbitt wrote a book called Megatrends. It became a huge bestseller and he made the term "high tech high touch" a household phrase that we still use today. Unfortunately, Naisbitt's trends were so big and unfolded over decades that they weren't immediately actionable. In steps Rohit Bhargava. Rohit publishes a yearly book called Non-Obvious: How to Think Different, Curate Ideas and Predict the Future. Rohit says, "A great trend is a unique curated observation about the accelerating present. Great trends are never predictions about the world 20 years from now. Those are most often guesses or wishful thinking." Another trend forecaster, Chris Sanderson, describes trends as “profits waiting to happen.” That's clever but to turn trends into profits, you have to act on them. In today's show, Rohit and I discuss some of the non-obvious accelerating trends he sees happening right now. We then talk about how to apply those trends to the work financial advisors do.

Could 3 words be the difference between success and failure for you over the next 12 months? The recent presidential election proved once again that words are powerful. The words that we use, the language that we use has the ability to move people to take action. For several years now, I’ve taken this idea of “words are powerful’ and completed an exercise that I want to share with you. The exercise is this, “Identify 3 words that would set the course, give you direction, and totally excite you as you move through the year and look at them repeatedly for the next 12 months.” I started doing this 3 words exercise several years ago after hearing about it from Chris Brogan. The premise is simple. Pick 3 words that motivate you, remind you, and guide you on your road to making 2017 your best year ever. I encourage all my coaching clients to do this same exercise as it helps them stay focused on the most important outcomes for the year. In today’s episode, I discuss my 3 words for 2017 as well as review my 3 words for 2016 and discuss how well I executed on them.  

If you don’t plan your personal life with the same rigor and discipline you do your professional life, your personal life will suffer, says Ed Rapp. As a Group President and former CFO for Caterpillar, Inc. during the financial crisis, Ed was a high-level, globe-trotting senior executive who never forgot the importance of keeping family front and center. Ed and I go back more than 30 years when we worked together at Caterpillar. I left after a few years to go to grad school while Ed quickly moved up the chain and eventually became one of the top 3 executives at Caterpillar. In today's conversation, we discuss his keys to being a successful business executive operating at the highest level, while also being a family man. At the pinnacle of his career, life threw Ed a curveball and I encourage you to listen to this episode to the very end to learn what happened. There are many great lessons in today's show and I'm very grateful to Ed for taking the time to share them.

I just finished my second year of podcasting and the numbers are in. Here are my 10 most popular podcasts for 2016 based on downloads along with a key idea shared on each episode. Grab some coffee and a notepad. It'll spark some ideas.