Between Now and Success

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.

Your business is under assault from Robo Advisors, technology disruption, Vanguard and Schwab's low-cost call-center programs, the DOL rule, flat markets, and clients who are scrutinizing fees more closely than ever before. Ask yourself… How will you continue to add value in an industry that faces competitive threats and shrinking margins? How will you ensure clients don't fire you if the financial markets experience years of flat to declining returns? Business as usual will lead to a steady and predictable decline in the value of your business. But there is a way you can add predictable and measurable VALUE that doesn't depend on the S&P 500 going up. In today's show, learn how to: Add overwhelming client value. Protect your margins. Get more referrals. Never lose another client. Close the 70bps gap in your value.

"If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to get comfortable with the notion of failing. Once you get completely comfortable with the idea that you're going to fail, what ends up happening is you build this resistance up and you start to think more clearly," says Anthony Scaramucci. Today's guest, Anthony Scaramucci, is the founder and managing partner of the $12.5 billion alternative investment firm SkyBridge Capital, the host of "Wall Street Week" on Fox Business, and a frequent contributor to major media. His new book, Hopping Over the Rabbit Hole: How Entrepreneurs Turn Failure Into Success, is a primer on how to thrive in an unpredictable business environment. In our conversation, we discuss the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life, the key lessons learned on his road to success, and we even sneak in some conversation about the DOL Rule and the presidential campaign.

Shockingly, you might be able to generate more alpha for your clients by helping manage their career than you can from investing or financial planning. Today's guest, Michael Haubrich, CFP®, created the concept of "career asset management" as a way to help add additional value to his clients using an asset that is typically neglected by financial advisors. The idea is by helping clients manage their career and earning potential, you can not only help them earn more money, but you can also help them find greater career satisfaction and guide them through a more rewarding retirement.

How would you answer these three questions about exploring advice? What is the definition of good advice? What is the definition of a quality financial plan? What does it mean to be a fiduciary? Kevin Knull, the president of PIEtechSM, Inc., (parent company of MoneyGuidePro financial planning software) asked those three questions to an audience of financial and wealth management leaders and basically got blank stares in response. Dismayed, he decided to reach out to thought leaders and experts around the country to get their answers. He collected their thoughts and published them in a remarkable new book called, Exploring Advice: What You Need to Know About Good Financial Advice, a Quality Financial Plan and the Role of a Fiduciary. I was one of the 36 leaders who contributed a chapter to the book. In today's show, I'm joined by Kevin Knull and two other contributors to the book, Tricia Rothschild, Head of Global Advisor and Wealth Management Solutions for Morningstar, and Frank McAleer, Director, Retirement Solutions for Raymond James. We discuss these three questions and point the way toward how you can add value in an increasingly commoditized industry.

Should RIAs offer an automated investing Robo-Advisor service? What are the pros and cons? How should you price the service? Will it cannibalize your existing clients? In today's show, Tina Powell and I discuss how she launched automated investing Robo-Advisor SheCapital and why they kept it separately branded from the large RIA that she was affiliated with. We also discuss the difficulties in gaining traction with a Robo-Advisor and how that led to her shutting down SheCapital after just about one year in business.

It appears clients care much less about their advisor's digital technology than advisors do. The financial services industry spends a lot of time talking about technology and there are thousands of companies around the world and tens of billions of dollars being invested in financial technology or FinTech companies to enhance the digital offering. Yet, when you ask clients of financial advisors how important all this technology is, you get a surprising answer. In today's show, I discuss a number of digital technology issues including: Recent research which suggests a financial advisor's digital capabilities rank low in terms of the value the client gets from their advisor. The strategy behind offering, or not offering, robo advisor technology. The surprising result of my proprietary research on how many clients one advisor can work with and the real secret behind how to increase that number. The implications of all this emphasis on digital technology and what it means for client satisfaction and referrals.

I believe financial advisors can add the most value to their clients in the areas of financial and life planning, and not as much in the investment management area. I also understand that you can't forget about the investment side. In today's conversation, we discuss how to improve your investment performance by overcoming some of the behavioral investing mistakes that are so easy for all of us to make. My guest is Daniel Crosby, Ph.D. Daniel is a psychologist, a behavioral investing expert, a bestselling author, and president of Nocturne Capital. Checkout Daniel's new book, The Laws of Wealth: Psychology and the secret to investing success.

The second of two special episodes. What does the future of FinTech look like? It was on display recently in Park City, UT at the 3rd Annual Fuse Event sponsored by Orion Advisor. Fuse is a three-day coding event that brings together dozens of programmers from FinTech companies around the world who band as a community and solve advisor problems. It's part hackathon, part relationship-building all wrapped up in a spirit of making the industry better. Eric Clarke, the founder of Orion Advisor, (see my podcast convo with him) is the mastermind behind the event along with his crack team of technologists including Brad Burgess and Joe Leyboldt. Leading advisors and technologists including Joel Bruckenstein, Michael Kitces, J.D. Bruce, Bill Winterberg, Tina Powell, Billy Oliverio, Ryan Beach, and yours truly were also on hand to lend a hand. I spent three days hanging with the cool people and created two podcasts to chronicle the event.