Between Now and Success

Knowing what you know now, what would you do over if you could restart your business today? I posed this question to 6 successful advisors and their answers were insightful. And here's the funny thing, you can implement these ideas now and benefit from their hard-fought mistakes. You'll also hear my color commentary on each of their do overs.

How well are you using advisor technology to automate your business, augment your work as an advisor, and segment and personalize the value you deliver to your clients? Have you thought strategically about your business model and how you use technology to support it in a profitable way? In today's show, I chat with Michael Schrage, who is one of the world's most provocative thought leaders on innovation. He's also a research fellow at the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, a columnist for Harvard Business Review, Fortune, CIO Magazine and MIT’sTechnology Review, and the author of multiple books. Perhaps no one knows more about how to maximize return on investment from innovation processes than Michael. I first became aware of Michael nearly 20 years ago when I read his article, The Relationship Revolution. In the article he said we should think about technology as a way to enhance relationships, and not just a way to add value to information. It stuck with me. Our conversation covers several topics including: How to align using advisor technology to automate, augment, and segment and personalize the work you do. The importance of figuring out your business model (e.g., a highly automated mass market model like Betterment, a high-end, hands-on boutique like AdvicePeriod) and how you use advisor technology to support it. How you can use advisor technology to gather information that leads to insight that allows you to deliver greater value with greater confidence to your selected clients. How advisor technology can deepen your client relationships instead of just "scaling" them. How to use data to optimize what's in the best interests of your clients. Why robo-advisors are not commoditizing investment management--despite what many people believe.

Financial planning as practiced today is going away and will be replaced by an entirely new way of interacting with and delivering value and connection to clients. The days of offering a free financial plan in order to snag AUM are done. In today's show, I chat with Phil Cunningham, CEO of Advicent, the global provider of SaaS technology solutions for the financial services industry. You may know them better through their products including NaviPlan®, Profiles™ and Figlo™ financial planning tools, the Advisor Briefcase® marketing tool and the Narrator™ application builder. Advicent has about 100,000 advisor clients across North America so Phil has a bird's-eye view of what's happening in the fintech space. Our conversation covers the spectrum including: The changing role of the financial advisor (See: Going beyond money management to make a deeper client connection). How advisors can stay relevant and add value. The impact of technology on the client experience, managing your business, marketing it, and advising clients. What "big data" means for advisors and how you'll benefit from it (See: Jud Bergman discussing big data). Where financial planning fits into the equation and how the definition of financial planning is changing radically. What you should do with Robo-technology to benefit from it instead of being threatened by it. How to compete against a big brand like Vanguard.

Tony Robbins, a peak performance strategist, entrepreneur and bestselling author and Peter Mallouk, the #1 independent financial advisor in the country have joined forces to offer comprehensive planning services to clients with a minimum of $50,000. In today's podcast they explain how they came together and what they hope to accomplish. We also talk politics, the fiduciary standard, why advisors need to be a practical psychologist, the disastrous 401(k) industry, how Mallouk grew his firm from about $50 million in AUM to roughly $18 billion today, and we even mention the Showtime series Billions. It's a packed episode you won't want to miss.

Your business success boils down to three things: 1) the right people, 2) building, selling and servicing the right product, 3) at the right price and cost structure to generate acceptable profits. In other words, it's about people, product, and profits. The great auto executive and commercial pitchman Lee Iacocca got it right when he said: In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, product and profits. Unless you’ve got a good team, you can’t do much with the other two. In today's show, I go through each of these areas and discuss specific things you can do to excel. Make sure you visit the website to read the full article and see a video of one of Iacocca's classic commercials. 

After reading about a new digital platform for financial advisors that builds traffic on the other company's website I thought, 'This is not a good way for advisors to build their digital presence.' So, in today's podcast, I'm going to walk you through a three-step digital marketing strategy for building a digital presence that drives traffic to YOUR website, that builds YOUR leads pipeline, and that builds YOUR brand, not somebody else's(See my podcast: How to Build a Brand That Connects With Your Clients and Prospects). There are so many platforms out there that rely on you to create content for them--for free--in order to build THEIR business. I'm thinking of Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Medium, Advisor Insights from Investopedia, and many others. The trick is you have to be very careful with these other sites to make sure that you get a positive ROI on the time and intellectual capital you spend populating these other sites. I'm not kidding when I say if you pay scant attention to your digital marketing and digital presence strategy, you're going to be history before you know it. All these platforms that have popped up in recent years are trying to grow by getting free content from you and then selling advertising to the platform user base. It's a great business because their cost of goods is like--zero. These platforms know the value of attracting lots of people to their system. You need to do the same. Now, there is a time and a place for you to use these third-party platforms to grow your business. But, you have to be smart about how you do it. You have to carefully choose the third-party places where you post your intellectual capital and devote your time. And the ultimate goal of doing this is simple--you want to drive traffic back to your website, capture the leads, and start nurturing them to become clients. Today, I discuss how to create a digital strategy that drives traffic to your website and builds your brand, not somebody else's.

Why are only 23% of CFPs women? Why are even fewer women in leadership roles? Why aren't more women entering the business? What can existing firms and leaders do to encourage more women to become financial advisors and help them through the tough early years? Those are just a few of the questions Eleanor and I discussed on today's show about how to hire and train women financial advisors. All firm leaders and industry leaders reading this post and listening to this podcast have a role to play in encouraging more women to enter the business and helping ensure they succeed. Frankly, it's a great business for women. They possess certain interpersonal skills that make them ideally suited for the human-to-human nature of this work. Unfortunately, there's a stereotype among many women that this business is all about sales and numbers. Sure, that's part of it, but ultimately it's much more than that. When it comes to training women financial advisors, Eleanor said, "I think a training program has to make sure that she understands the timeline for advancement, the expectations for the role, the responsibilities, where she is going to be in the firm if she meets expectations in the next year, 2 years and beyond." Hiring women makes good business sense. "Firms need to realize that having more women in a firm does very positive things to the workplace environment, to the culture, even the bottom line. Large companies who have put more women in leadership positions, management positions, really do have higher return numbers measured in a number of ways. It's just good business," said Eleanor. Oh, and let's not forget, women may be slightly better investors than men, according to various studies.

Technology is changing at head-spinning speed and it's easy to get confused about which technology to implement and how to go about being profitably innovative. Betting the farm on a certain technology direction is usually not the best idea. But what can you do instead? In today's show, I have a conversation with Lex Sokolin, co-founder of an early Robo Advisor called NestEgg, and now a partner and chief operating officer of Vanare. Lex gave an excellent talk at the T3 Technology Conference in February and we got together to chat about being innovative. (Also, checkout this profile of Lex at Wealthmanagement.com.) We talk about the process of being innovative and how financial advisors can make good technology decisions without betting the farm. We also discussed James Altucher's process for coming up with ideas, lean startup methodology, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. It's a value-packed 25 minutes!

How do you influence people to take action? How do you get people to follow you, rally behind you, and take your advice? Robert Cialdini wrote the seminal book on influence and I encourage you to read it (or checkout the highlights here). But in today's show, I want to share a few more tips that come from an article written by United Capital founder Joe Duran (see my earlier interview with him here), a conversation I had with one of my coaching clients, a podcast I did with professional speaker Michael Port, and from a book by Robert McKee called, "Story." We all want to be more influential so we can help people take positive action to improve their situation. The good news is there are specific ways to do that and I share them with you in today's show. If you have any questions or comments, please email me. I'd love to hear what you like and what you'd like to see improved about the podcast. Thanks!

It was a great week for podcast recording. I recorded several episodes with people from as far away as Sydney, Australia and as close as 30 minutes from my house. And each of them generated numerous insights and on today's show, I'm going to share 3 of them. I close the show with a quote from Buckminster Fuller on how to make change. This quote is particularly relevant to the financial industry right now. If you have any questions or comments, please email me. I'd love to hear what you like and what you'd like to see improved about the podcast. Thanks!