...For Advisors
foradvisors
Subscribe
A podcast designed for independent financial advisors with the topics they need information about every day, to run their practices.
Available episodes
Newest first
Oldest first
May 3, 2022
Episode 49: Heather Rhoades on Estate Planning
"I really love kind of the collaborative approach in general...I find that really the clients are best served when the entire team of advisors are on the same page, have shared information in advance...And many times I find that the RIA is actually the quarterback for the client because he or she ends up interacting and speaking with the client the most out of any advisor and really knows the client the best, the family situation, the client's goals and worries."
Heather Rhoades is Chairman of Cummings & Lockwood's Private Clients Group and is Partner in Charge of the West Hartford office. She practices in the areas of estate planning, estate settlement, trust administration and charitable planning.
playlist_add
Apr 5, 2022
Episode 48: Bill Loehning on Lessons Learned From Wirehouses
"I think that the strongest firms that we know and the firms that are excellent at what they do, they keep a great structure out there of firms that are like-minded. So, it's sharing best practices, not being afraid to do that, and seeing how everybody can grow together. That's something that we do on the asset management side quite often."
In this episode we are joined by Bill Loehning of Thornburg Investment Management who shares his experiences working with both wirehouses and independent advisors and things he has learned that may be helpful to registered investment advisors.
William (Bill) Loehning is head of institutional advisor channel, focusing on registered investment advisors, family offices, and bank trust for Thornburg Investment Management. He has extensive experience working with all parts of the advisor community.
Prior to joining Thornburg, Bill was a senior advisor consultant with Putnam Investments, focused on the Northeast. Before that, Bill served as a regional marketing director for The Hartford, covering the wirehouses in New England and as a regional representative for John Hancock for the independent channel in the Chicago area.
playlist_add
Mar 22, 2022
Episode 47: Jeff Levine on CPAs and Financial Planning
"I coined the phrase "financial therapy" and it took off like gangbusters, the fact that it's a therapeutic sort of consultation to discuss their assets, their liabilities, their income, their expenses, their goals and objectives. And it's not specifically directed to individual solutions because the idea is it's consultative, to have a conversation about these things and figure out what might be appropriate for their point in life...it really transitioned our practice from basic accounting work to an annual financial service for the individuals."
For nearly 40 years, Jeff Levine has been more than an accountant to his clients. Jeff and his partner built a robust firm that provides much more than just tax return preparation. In this episode, you will learn how Jeff became a 'financial therapist" and how this unique approach of tax preparation with financial planning and outsourced investment management helped grow his firm and its revenues.
Jeff Levine serves as “Chairman of the Board” of Alkon & Levine and oversees the firm’s strategic planning. His conscientious and proactive approach to tax preparation and financial planning allows him to handle any issues that arise in a calm, organized, and creative way. A self-described “financial therapist”, Jeff works hard to ensure all Alkon & Levine clients receive rigorous attention to their financial needs as part of their annual service package.
playlist_add
Mar 8, 2022
Episode 46: Chris Winn on the Current Compliance Landscape
"The SEC did a really good job laying the framework to say, "Look, get out there and market yourself. The rules are now uniform, it's simple. All advertising communication must be truthful, it must be accurate, and it can't omit any material facts." And the medium that it goes out on is not the issue."
Chris Winn is founder of AdvisorAssist and has over 23 years of investment management industry experience with a focus on regulatory compliance, business transitions and operations and technology matters. Prior to founding AdvisorAssist in 2006, Chris was a co-founder and managing principal of MainStay Consulting Group, a strategy and compliance consulting firm serving investment advisors.
playlist_add
Dec 7, 2021
Episode 45: Carl Noble and Sauro Locatelli on Exposure and Sector Rotation
“I think historical experience shows that different parts of the market, different sectors, behave differently depending on where you are. Are you early in an economic cycle? Are you kind of in the middle of one, or are you later in one? And again, historical record shows that different sectors will be either outperforming or underperforming in large part, dependent on that primarily.”
Carl Noble, Senior Vice President of Investments and Sauro Locatelli, Director of Quantitative Research, of Congress Wealth Management join us today to discuss their recently authored peer-reviewed white paper for the Journal of Financial Planning on how sector rotation and asset allocation, in sync with the economic business cycle, can bear fruit for risk-averse investors and how these methods have been employed in managing Congress' own portfolios for nearly twenty years.
Carl was named Senior Vice President of Investments when he joined Congress Wealth Management in May 2021. He is involved in all of aspects of the team’s investment efforts, ranging from broad macro-economic topics to individual security selection issues, across different asset classes and markets. Carl helped develop the firm’s Tactical Asset Allocation investment strategy from its inception in 2002 and remains actively involved in its ongoing execution
Sauro is Director of Quantitative Research at Congress Wealth Management and is primarily responsible for the management and development of our in-house quantitative research models, which support the firm’s investment process. Sauro joined Congress Wealth Management in 2021 when Congress acquired Pinnacle Advisory Group. Sauro originally joined Pinnacle in January 2011 after completing an internship with the firm over the previous summer. Sauro is a CFA® charter holder, a certified Financial Risk ManagerTM and has earned his Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR) Certificate.
playlist_add
Nov 16, 2021
Episode 44: Louis Diamond on Breakaways
“advisors who go independent, they do it for many other reasons than just the economics. Math has to make sense. Your family has to be comfortable with it. You have to have the confidence that it's the right move. But other factors, like having ultimate flexibility and control, and building a business, those factors have to be weighted pretty heavily…”
Making the decision to breakaway from a wirehouse or larger firm can be a daunting one. There are many things to consider when making a move to independence. In this episode, Louis Diamond offers some insights into that decision making process.
Louis Diamond is president of Diamond Consultants and responsible for the day-to-day operations of the firm, with an eye towards future growth. After graduating magna cum laude with a BBA degree in finance and international business from George Washington University, Louis began his career at Ernst & Young, and later at Morgan Stanley and UBS. Louis is an author and contributor to the financial services media on industry news and trends, including "The Wall Street Journal," "Financial Planning" magazine, "Barron's, "The Washington Post," wealthmanagement.com, "FundFire," "RIABiz," "ThinkAdvisor," "Citywire," and "On Wall Street." Louis is also co-host of the podcast "Mindy Diamond on Independence."
playlist_add
Nov 3, 2021
Episode 43: Scott Dell‘Orfano on M&A
"I really feel like firms that can be crisp on what makes them different and what their value proposition is to clients makes a big difference. Firms that run efficiently and have efficiently run practices, so not over-leveraged, not over-technologized, not overstaffed. carry a higher multiple, and I think at the end of the day, the practitioners of the firms looking to sell, need to be able to articulate what is it they want do and what is it they're good at, and what are some of the things that they want offload to the potential buyer."
Mergers and acquisitions are a hot topic in the trade press these days. What then are the causes and formative factors behind the increased M&A activity being seen in the RIA industry landscape in recent months? Listen in to find out more.
Scott Dell'Orfano is Chief Strategic Officer at Congress Wealth Management. Mr. Dell'Orfano, who's based in Jupiter, Florida, joined Congress Wealth Management from Boston Private Wealth, where he served as president and chief operating officer, who was responsible for corporate strategy and acquisitions. Prior to Boston Private Wealth, Mr. Dell'Orfano, was a member of the firm's executive management team and served on the Boston Private Bank and Trust company's policy group. Before joining Boston Private Wealth in 2014, Mr. Dell'Orfano was Executive Vice President of Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services Group.
playlist_add
Nov 2, 2021
Episode 38: Carl Noble and Sauro Locatelli on ESG Investing
“I think that one of the big differences as you alluded to is kind of the way that some of these [environmental impact investment theories] were almost abstract ideas. People were talking about climate change back in the 1960s and '70s and pointing many years into the future and saying it's going to be a big problem. Well, here we are in 2021, and we are seeing an increasingly number of severe climate events that are actually impacting people's lives.”
Here it is, the lowdown on ESG investing, and how it can help your clients reach their financial goals and feel good about it too! Carl Noble and Sauro Locatelli tag team ESG ETFs and give you the inside skinny on how these evolving instruments can let you do well by doing good! Don’t miss a minute of this in depth interview . . .
Carl Noble, chief investment officer for Pinnacle Advisory Group in Columbia, Maryland. Carl joined Pinnacle in 2001 after graduating with honors with a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Maryland. As senior investment analyst, he was responsible for a variety of different research and analytic efforts, ranging from broad macroeconomic topics to individual security selection issues. He helped develop Pinnacle's tactical asset allocation investment strategy from its inception in 2002. Carl was appointed chief investment officer in 2020.
Sauro Locatelli joined Pinnacle full-time in January 2011 after competing an internship with the firm over the previous summer. He holds a bachelor's degree in business administration and a master's degree in finance from Bocconi University in Italy. As Pinnacle's director of quantitative research, Sauro is primarily responsible for the management and development of Pinnacle's in-house quantitative research models, which supports the firm's investment process. In addition, Sauro is an integral part of Pinnacle's investment team, which is responsible for the firm's asset allocation and security selection decisions. Sauro is a CFA charter holder and a certified financial risk manager and holds a sustainability and climate risk certificate as well.
playlist_add
Oct 19, 2021
Episode 42: CWM Investment Team on All Time Highs
“we wanted to take a very close look at the data historically going all the way back to 1928 on the S&P 500 just to really get a better sense of exactly how the market behaves after hitting an all-time high . . . either trying to dispel or confirm whether or not investors should be fearful when that's happening. And I think the results, as we looked at this were pretty interesting and maybe even will be surprising for some people.”
Despite advisor’s best efforts to the contrary, many amateur investors insist on trying some variation of “timing the market” philosophy to guide their investment activity. The myth is that if you’re investing while the market is continually racking up all time high returns, surely there’s a cliff just ahead, now’s not the time to build or add to the portfolio. Congress Wealth Management’s investment team shows you how the game really works, using data extending way back to 1928 to show just what really happens during those tempting occasions when record-breaking returns can be had. Join us for an enlightening half hour that will help you set client’s straight on how this type of timing error can create some challenges.
playlist_add
Jun 22, 2021
Episode 41: Kate Cote on Helping Military Families
“. . . their benefits really put them in a position where they can retire early, but definitely planning has to be done around that because usually the pension isn't enough to fund their lifestyle when they retire. So, you know, you have to build up assets that can be accessible without penalty or create other passive streams of income so that they can do it . . . They have the pension, which is huge. It can be quite significant amount of money. And then the other thing that helps make it possible to retire early is the healthcare benefits that they receive. Military can continue with Tricare and government employees can continue to pay the employee amount for the health insurance that they have, which is quite a bit less than what you would have to pay out on the open market or even for a supplement plan when you go on Medicare at age 65.”
Helping military and federal government families is a special niche, one that requires some specialized knowledge and a level of empathy that not too many advisors can showcase. Their needs are specific and specialized, and the advisor’s skill set must follow suit to serve them well. Kate Cote has developed a practice around these skills and knowledge, and her clients are as loyal as can be as a result. Don’t miss this fact-filled episode on niche practice development as its finest.
Kate Cote, specializes in helping active and retired military families transition to the private sector and federal government employees navigate towards retirement. Kate is the owner of Red Clover Financial Planning, an independent financial advisory firm that offers its clients a personalized holistic approach to financial health and personal happiness that is accessible no matter where life takes them. Kate has over 20 years of experience in the financial service industry and is a certified financial planner. She is committed to delivering financial plans that serve as a comprehensive action-oriented roadmap. As a military spouse and after years of experience helping government employees, Kate is well-versed in the benefits and challenges employees in these areas face and desires to help them maximize their opportunities to live their best lives now.
playlist_add
Jun 1, 2021
Episode 40: Chris Wendt on Digital Web Based Marketing
“These digital efforts take some time. I just talked to a guy this week who just a year later was able to turn a lead, or prospect from Smart Assets into a client. Really, you have to have a bigger picture to understand what growing AUM digitally is like. It's really about building an audience. And one of the ways you do that on your website is by offering a free checklist or guide. Whatever the issue is on retirement, investing, etc., we develop, you know, guides around that.”
Have referrals started to dry up, is your pipeline of new business getting shorter and shorter, is it taking you longer to find and identify prospects? If the answer to any of these is “yes”, then this is the episode for you! Christ Wendt lays out digital web-based marketing tactics chapter and verse, digs in deep and shows you what’s needed to start reeling in new clients you’d never find any other way. Don’t miss this make or break half hour!
Chris is the founder of Midstream Marketing, a digit…
playlist_add
May 18, 2021
Episode 39: Bernie Kiely on Working with Industry Organizations
“ I spoke at the Financial Planning Association of New Jersey one day, and after I spoke, a young lady came up to me and she said, you know, "There's a remarkable difference between FPA members and members of NAPFA." She said, "FPA members are all salespeople. They are all competitors.” . . . “NAPFA members are completely different, we're mentors, helpers, we guide people. So, NAPFA is like one big family. We take care of our own.”
Bernie Kiely, highly respected and renowned advisor tells you how it is in the world of advisory practice and how to develop your practice through working closely with industry-oriented organizations. Bernie doesn’t pull any punches in this delightful half hour full of useful and valuable practice growth insights, you don’t want to miss this one.
Bernie Kiely is a NAPFA-registered advisor and principal of Kiely Capital Management, Inc. and RIA. He's also owner of Bernie M. Kiely, CPA, an accounting firm where he specializes in individual taxati…
playlist_add
Apr 20, 2021
Episode37: Chris Winn on Regulatory Priorities
“Well, each year the SEC shares their regulatory priorities. In recent years, they've tried to make it not be a mystery of what they view as important. And we're waiting, for details for this year, but the core things that have been focused on include anywhere where there's a conflict of interest between the firm and the client, cybersecurity, and as you can imagine for 2020, business continuity . . . “
Yes, Virginia, there is a way to make compliance less onerous . . . Expert Chris Winn from Advisor Assist joins the show in this enlightening episode covering a wide range of compliance related topics, from audits, to SEC priorities to the new “Testimonial Update”. Don’t miss a minute of this vital information.
Chris founded AdvisorAssist in 2006 and has over 23 years of investment management industry experience with a focus on regulatory compliance, business transitions and operations and technology matters. Prior to founding AdvisorAssist, Chris was a co-founder and managi…
playlist_add
Apr 6, 2021
Episode 36: Dave Poulos on Nurturing Leads
“ . . . your CRM should be able to give you reports on each and every client and prospect that are consistent, current, and accurate. Once that happens, you can now select and target sectors of prospects, provide them with content that will resonate with them, that they will find valuable at the right intervals so you don't saturate them or annoy them, but will keep them present in the “find an advisor” file in their mind.
The best part of this automated and segmented follow-up approach is that you can do it all ahead of time and schedule the release in advance. What that allows you to do is to write all the follow-up messages, related content ahead of time, all at once, and release it whenever it's appropriate automatically. Your CRM is working for you while you eat, sleep, drive, do whatever. That's the best part.”
Want to close more business? Seeing good leads but not ramping up the AUM fast enough? Tired of chasing prospects for meeting times and dates? This is the episod…
playlist_add
Mar 23, 2021
Episode 35: Chris Wendt on Websites for Advisors
“You know, a website is a first impression. I mean, really, it's all about building trust. And before a prospect ever calls an advisor, they check you out on your... They check your website out. They see what you look like, who you are on Facebook. They do a lot of what's called stalking. They look you all over. And I had one advisor say that before they had their first initial intro call, the prospect said they read every word on the website. So, they don't even wanna talk to you until they feel like they know you. I mean, if you have a website that's not together, you know, it looks like it was built in the '90s or it doesn't really speak to them and build trust, then they're gonna go somewhere else and you won't even get that call.”
An advisor’s website has to do a lot of heavy lifting if it’s going to drive inquiries and leads to grow the practice. It’s the consumer’s “go-to” when finding out about you and your firm and how you approach your practice and what you o…
playlist_add
Jan 5, 2021
Episode 34: Carl Noble on Inflation
“the way economists look at it, you can have demand pull inflation, which is essentially when the economy is running hotter, demand is picking up, and that there's too much demand chasing too few goods, and that can cause the price levels to increase. The other way is a cost push inflation, which typically involves supply constraints. So one of the classic examples is looking back to the 1970s and the oil embargo, and OPEC, which created a huge bottleneck with energy prices and caused, those prices here in the U.S. to skyrocket.”
If you’re working with pre-retirees to build a long-range financial plan, and your methodology doesn’t include a way to account for different levels of inflation, this is the episode you don’t want to miss . . . Carl Noble digs into the details of how various inflation rates can come to be and how they affect your client’s long-term financial health and their retirement future. It’s 30 minutes that could save your clients a lot of money . . . Do…
playlist_add
Dec 22, 2020
Happy Holidays from ...For Advisors
I think we can all agree that 2020 was not the most placid year, in terms of the markets or our lives or the lives of our clients – if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that you never know what to expect.
Now, looking forward, it’s up to us to live up to that gift of trust, to grow into that more fulfilling role, to continue to provide the level of interest, engagement, and attention that our clients surely deserve.
This Holiday season, be sure to take some time for yourself, to reflect on the rich, fulfilling life your clients have provided you, and to be humbly grateful for them and their families.
playlist_add
Dec 8, 2020
Episode 33: Chris Pierson On Cybersecurity and The Dangers of Working Remotely
“A firewall is not a be all and end all. It isn't a “hey we have one, so now you're cyber secure.” But in a person's home environment, the router . . . the network modem, your AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, whatever, having that set up correctly is critical. But then the next piece of appliance next thing that happens after that, the router, sometimes it's two in one, but usually it's more separated. Having that device secure, making sure that is blocking other adversaries, making sure that simple things can't be found out about your home network, making sure the Wi-Fi is secure and all the rest – so important. That is where it starts. So, the router, the firewalls, absolutely where it starts from a cybersecurity perspective, when you're talking about the employees' home and home network.”
COVID-19 mandates and company lock-downs have caused a huge chunk of the workforce to continue to work from home. Study after study have shown that this needn’t negatively affect productivity,…
playlist_add
Nov 24, 2020
Happy Thanksgiving 2020 from ...For Advisors
Today's show is gonna be short and sweet. No guest, just a few words about the upcoming holidays and what they can mean for you and your practice. The 2020 has been an unusual year, could probably win awards for understatement.
Despite the forced distance between the masks and the virtual meetings via Zoom or other platform, there's still a strong need to connect with clients regularly. Perhaps more than ever, you need to reassure them that no matter how crazy the markets get, how strange the pandemic and its associated restrictions make our daily lives, you've still got their back, you have their best interest in mind.
If there's anything that advisors can be thankful for this year, it's their ongoing relationship with their clients. Most advisors started in their careers with the underlying purpose of helping others with their financial lives. Help them manage their lives in a way that prepares them for a successful and happy retirement. Times like these are a terrific excuse to re…
playlist_add
Nov 3, 2020
Episode 32: Diane MacPhee on Rightsizing Your Practice
“ [Right-sizing] . . . also unleashes significant staff capacity previously expended on these folks, thereby providing you the opportunity to delegate more to your staff. This sets you up to focus on business development and growth. Targeting ideal clients becomes much more clear for the entire firm once the client roster is scaled down, keeping those clients who support the firm. And with this knowledge, the team and the owner can create a specific marketing plan to follow in a disciplined manner.”
Diane MacPhee returns to the show for the second time to reveal all the positives and pitfalls of “right-sizing” your practice to boost profitability and build a solid niche practice that can grow and flourish. Don’t miss this fast-paced episode with a top business coach in the advisor space.
Diane MacPhee is a business coach with DMAC Consulting. Diane is a professionally certified business coach working primarily with financial advisors. Ms. MacPhee earned her certified financ…
playlist_add
Sep 22, 2020
Episode 31: Raoul Rodriguez on an Expats Niche
“. . . the United States charges income taxes on its citizens and residents on a worldwide basis, regardless of where they live. And that is just not the way that most of the world taxes its citizens. And so you could have an American that moves abroad, and they might have to now pay income tax in their new home country and report worldwide income. But at the same time then, they also have to report worldwide income back to the United States. And so this marriage of the tax systems can make for very, very complex planning issues that have to be addressed.”
If you’ve had clients ask you “What do I have to do to chuck it all and move somewhere exotic or tropical?” this is the podcast for you! Raoul Rodriguez is one of the world’s foremost experts on cross-border financial planning, especially regarding Mexico and Latin America, working in the US today, and he’ll share some of the more quixotic and controversial cross-border planning challenges in this information-packed ha…
playlist_add
Sep 1, 2020
Episode 30: Jeff Waters on Human Capital
“And one day I was sitting at that table and the light bulb went on and I just said, you know, guys in the money business don't take care of their own money. It's the cobbler's children without shoes. And I found that as I finally just had the time to pick up the pile of papers… And I just sat there one day and the phrase that came into my head was feeling out of control about money. People in the money business don't take care of their own money. They feel out of control about money. Not that they don't have enough money, because especially that period in the late '90s and early '00s people on the street were really making a lot of money, but they knew they weren't taking care of things.”
Jeff Waters had several epiphanies that lead him to the niche practice of serving HNW and High earning Wall Street pros with a very specialized planning and investing challenge that was part and parcel of their professional lives – and dubbed it Human Capital. Don’t miss this informative a…
playlist_add
Aug 18, 2020
Episode 29: Bernie Kiely on Press Attention
“...skill that I just picked up was every time I would read an article about consumer finance or taxes or financial planning, I would write a snail mail letter to the author. "Dear John, I read your article. I thought you did a great job. It was a real public service. This is another way you can look at the topic or here's how I explain it to my clients." And I tell people no matter how bad the article was, you never say that you want them to love you, not to hate you. And eventually, when younger reporters get an assignment from their editor, the first thing they do is pick up the phone and call me.”
If you’re seeking growth for your practice, few things can spur some incoming calls like a positive review or mention in a newspaper or magazine article, or a guest spot on a talk show. Guest Bernie Kiely shows you that not only can you offer a wider range of skills and services, like accounting or business analysis, but you can reap some press attention for your firm with just a f…
playlist_add
Aug 4, 2020
Episode 28: Marci Bair On A Unique Approach To A Niche
“… we're still, I would say like a generalist when it comes to financial planning, because we see clients in all phases of their lives and stages and create a comprehensive financial plan for them. Where we specialize in is like the niche of who we work with as well as some of our investment philosophies, which we'll get into later about the sustainable, responsible or ESG investing.”
Sometimes, one niche isn’t really narrow enough to drive the kind of growth that true specialization can, so our guest in this episode chose two, both who she works with, and what she offers them, in the fascinating episode about not only selecting your client base by who you are and who you can help best, but also by how you invest their funds, as Marci Bair shows us how she serves the LBGT community ably, and does the planet some good as well with ESG portfolios available for clients across the board.
Marci Bair CFP®, president and founder of Bair Financial Planning and vice president with th…
playlist_add
Jul 21, 2020
Episode 27: Carl Noble on 5 Things Your Advisor Won't Tell You About Investing
“Market conditions can change quite abruptly, and correlations under those circumstances don’t always work – recently they were both going the same direction – straight down!”
Pinnacle Advisory’s Senior Investment Analyst Carl Noble will walk retail investors through five major potential stumbling blocks of investing in today’s volatile and uncertain markets. Learn how to speak with clients about these key areas of their financial plan:
You’ll learn how to handle questions from clients about:
* When is diversification not necessarily the best strategy
* When to Turn off The Media Circus on TV
* How to find the investment information the pros use
* When to decide you’re smarter than your fund manager
* When it’s time to call in the pros to manage your wealth
Don’t miss this informative half-hour episode with a top expert.
Carl Noble is a Chartered Financial Analyst® who joined Pinnacle in 2001 after graduating with honors with a B.S. degree in Finan…
playlist_add
Jul 7, 2020
Episode 26: Enough! I'm Ready To Go
As an advisor, you’ve lived through several of the last economic downturns, weathered the storms, calmed clients, followed regulations, and taken care of others for years. Maybe it’s time to finally retire and take it easy . . . but how do you maximize the value of your practice in order to move on to the next phase? Pinnacle has a way, and if that’s your plan, the best advice is to get started NOW.
You know better than to try and sell from the bottom, but what steps do you need to take if you’ve reached a certain age, achieved your personal and financial goals, and want to shift gears into the next phase of your life? The process takes time, and there’s some work to do to prepare your firm for the transition.
CEO John Hill will take you through the decision at its core, see if it’s the right one your for you right now, and help you work through the preparatory steps to position your firm for maximum return and minimum stress.
playlist_add
Jun 23, 2020
Episode 25: Next Steps for Needy Clients
While bear markets can be a lot of work, they also create the best opportunities to grow. Some clients will leave their advisors due to poor communication or poor performance, and do-it-yourselfers will realize they need help. Now may be the best time to consider right-sizing your client list. In other words, letting go of your most difficult clients and replacing them with new, less stressful clients that appreciate your efforts.
What’s the best approach to starting a “right-sizing” program?
Pinnacle CEO John Hill will walk you through a series of questions and answers to ask regarding your work strategy, your client acquisition approach, your retention needs and how to evaluate your own per-client profitability.
playlist_add
Jun 9, 2020
Episode 24: Secrets to Calming Nervous Clients
Right now we are all facing challenges both professionally and personally. Clearly we are concerned for our clients and helping them navigate the crisis, but we are also personally impacted by the stress of serving clients and the reality of declining revenues and our own portfolio values.
Pinnacle Advisor Services is here to help you, the Independent RIA, to not only get through the current situation in good shape, but to set you up to thrive after the peak of the crisis has passed.
This episode addresses the most pressing concern we’ve heard from advisors – how do you kindly handle nervous clients, some of whom are keen to bail out entirely and take all their investments off the table and go to all cash.
John Hill, CEO of Pinnacle, will share some of his most impactful insights about working closely with nervous and uncertain clients and maintaining your client base.
You’ll learn:
* How to relate to clients as if you were a therapist, share their concerns and reassure th…
playlist_add
May 26, 2020
Episode 23: What's Next In The Markets?
As an advisor, you know how important it is to have a solid financial plan, and that clients spend time and energy working with you on crafting a plan that will help them achieve results – but when the storms come, the focus shifts like lightning to those investment strategies and their subsequent results, and suddenly clients are super interested in their portfolios.
Be prepared for those often complex and difficult questions from clients, by tuning in to this hyper-focused half hour program. Pinnacle has a whole department full of highly skilled, certified analysts, researchers and traders whose job it is to dig deep into the markets and help you navigate a way through this crisis.
Now, on this program we’ll pull back the curtain on what we’re thinking, how we got here, and what’s ahead for equities and fixed income investments, and how do you explain it all to clients interested in preserving what they’ve saved? Join Founding partner and CIO Ken Solow as he offers insigh…
playlist_add
Apr 14, 2020
Episode 22: From the Mailbag
Bill from Connecticut writes: “Love your show. Particularly, I could listen to your guest Dave Grant all day long, he was really entertaining. I’d like to start a content marketing campaign like his, but I’m really not a good writer – is there a source of material I could use to get started until I can polish up my skills?”
Advisors are busy people, in general, but these listeners took time to write and ask “For Advisors” questions about our guests and the topics we covered. In this informative episode we feature your questions and our answers to these timely and topical subjects we’ve covered on the show in the past year. Sit back and let us do the work for a change in this very special quarantine episode!
David Poulos joined Pinnacle as the Director of Marketing in 2018. He is responsible for developing strategies that drive growth and create media and industry awareness through the effective use of events, print, direct mail, radio, video, Internet, social media, a…
playlist_add
Mar 31, 2020
Episode 21: Mike Velasco on College Financial Planning
“My oldest one wanted to go...was looking at a couple of the state schools in neighboring states, was gonna get a significant merit package, was all set to go. And then at the last minute she veered off and said, "Hey, I want to look at a couple of the Ivy Leagues." And lo and behold, we decided that Cornell was the best fit for her academically, socially, and we applied there.
From going through that, I realized the whole process of how colleges look at students and their families and their abilities to pay, and how possibly you can leverage that knowledge into positioning yourself so that you can look artificially worse than you are, and maybe qualify for some of that need-based aid. So I started to incorporate some of those tactics when planning for my clients so they started to have some significant results.”
Sending children to college is one of the largest savings challenges most advisor’s clients face, and there are multiple ways to approach it from a planning standpoint…
playlist_add
Mar 26, 2020
PSA from ...For Advisors
Hello, and welcome to “For Advisors”, the podcast for, and about, financial advisors.
We don’t have a full program for today, and no ads, either. Just a brief public service announcement for advisors regarding the recent pandemic.
There’s lots of information out there regarding not only the virus itself, and the spread thereof, locally, domestically, and internationally, but also its economic impact on any number of areas and businesses. As a Financial Advisor, it’s in your best interest to keep up with such things for several reasons:
* You can help reassure clients with calm confidence that, while everything is not known, how they react to it all is something that they can control.
* You can explain to clients what the markets are reacting to, what they’ve done in the past under similar circumstances, and how that might affect their plans heading into or within retirement.
* You can keep yourself, your family, your clients and your practice safer by following som…
playlist_add
Mar 17, 2020
Episode 20: Bill Winterberg on Advisor Tech
“The advantage [of tech] is the advisor is able to become a specialist in these services and I suppose products that the advisor or the advisory firm offers to a clearly defined segment of households. So, it's really tough today in my opinion, and you'll hear this, you've probably heard this earlier on your podcast. It is hard to be a generalist, and it is hard to provide financial planning to almost all the households in the United States. So the positive is with this advent and increase in technology is as an advisor, you can choose these unique solutions, bundle them into your firm, and create a unique package that aligns with the needs you've identified among your target audience of the households that you serve.”
Bill Winterberg is uniquely qualified to provide insights on financial tech, as both a working software engineer and a registered advisor. His research, consulting practice and experience in both fields brings credibility and depth to his recommendations that would b…
playlist_add
Mar 3, 2020
Episode 19: Keith Daw on Time Management
“If you’re leading a team, and the team sees you floundering around with calendar conflicts and thinking . . .’He or she doesn't know what they’re doing’ . . . That doesn't bode so well for confidence for the team either. So I think the time management, I like to say even energy management, focus... A lot of people, a lot of professionals just need some assistance on figuring out what they should do first, or next.”
If you’re constantly feeling time starved, overwhelmed, under-staffed or over-scheduled, or just can’t seem to put together a good plan for managing your time effectively to meet your goals, Keith Daw is the man to see. This thirty-minute exercise in energy focusing and time management will give you tips and tools you need to get your crazy calendar under control, and the solutions you need to help focus on your goals.
Keith Daw is an integral member of McDonell Consulting Team. Keith has spent more than a decade in the professional services industry, educ…
playlist_add
Feb 18, 2020
Episode 18 - Chris Pierson on Cybersecurity and Protecting Your Practice
“ . . . First and foremost, making sure that . . . you have the right policies and procedures in place. You will never accept the email from Chris saying, "Hey, new bank, send the $1 million to this bank as opposed to one I usually use." You will never do that based off just an email. You will verify with a phone call. You verify with an email response. You will verify with something that the person knows that's unique to them and have their relationship manager make sure it's the right voice, right person, right demeanor, all the rest, and you will not effectuate that transfer if anybody thinks otherwise. That is massively critically important and can solve a lot of this.”
Of all the things that can happen to your practice, cybercrime may be the most prevalent, the most damaging, and the most frustrating, because there’s often no way to strike back, nothing to actually “do” to fight back, often even no known entity to blame, just a compromised identity or account, an angry…
playlist_add
Feb 4, 2020
Episode 17: Pam Krueger on What Clients Won't Tell You
“I want our conversations to be about me. I'm the client here. How does this play out on a practical level?
So can you imagine, you go to a therapist, you've never been to a therapist before but you've got a big problem that's driving you into that therapist's office. You sit down and how would you feel if the therapist, the guy gets up and starts pacing the room and saying, "You know, let me explain to you where I went to school and my background and my approach, and I wrote these white papers, by the way." And you're gonna be sitting there going, "Oh dear God, I thought this was about me." That's the same thing, because if you really think about it, that is the role of an advisor, to make you calm, to make the client calm, make the prospect feel better about their situation.”
Think you know your clients, think they all love you unconditionally, and that you do a great job relating to them all the time? Might be time to rethink some of that, as Pam Kreuger puts lie to some great…
playlist_add
Jan 21, 2020
Episode 16: Dan Pierson on Digital Assets and the Next Generation
“ . . . over 60% of the wealth of one family dissipates from generation one to generation two, and by generation three, about 90% of that wealth dissipates. And you have the same issue with the children of family members. They typically don't stick with the same advisor. So, you have those two forces working against you. It's really important. It's not a good long-term strategy not to focus on it. It's really important to focus on making sure you're connected to that multi-generational lineage so that not only do you help that consumer and the consumer's family retain the wealth, but also ensures that you retain the client.”
Inevitably, our advisors’ clients get older, and as we go through life we accumulate assets, both tangible and digital. Planners work with the tangible ones all the time and are quite good at using them to client’s best advantage. The digital ones, however, pose a new set of issues and challenges, both in terms of valuation and ownership, but also with reg…
playlist_add
Jan 7, 2020
Episode 15: Kelly Wright on Tax Planning for the Benefit of Clients
“I'll give you an example. The standard deduction has increased for a married couple to $24,000. However, in Maryland, the state deduction is only $5,000. So if you itemize on your federal return, that is the only way you're allowed to itemize on your state return. As a result, people who are not itemizing federally cannot itemize on their Maryland State return and their deduction off of their state income is a great deal lower, so their state taxes go up substantially. A lot of people don't see that interplay.”
Taxes are the all-purpose evil for investors and savers alike, but with proper projection and planning, there are some areas where some relief can be had, if you know where to look. Join us for a fact-filled and fast moving half hour as Kelly Wright CFP® shows us how to approach tax planning, how to work within the guidelines for 401Ks, Roth conversions, IRAs and other taxable and deferred accounts for the benefit of our clients.
Kelly Wright CFP® is the Director of Fin…
playlist_add
Dec 31, 2019
Happy New Year from ...For Advisors
Pinnacle Advisor Solutions will celebrate their 10th Anniversary in 2020, a milestone in any successful business. In that time, they’ve crafted a platform that allows solo advisors and small ensembles to adjust their business focus to spend more time with clients, spend more time on growth, more time to focus on the business itself, rather than the mechanical, transactional aspects of their firms.
All in all, they’ve built a platform that supports 16 strategic partner firms, covers an additional 35 firms with succession and continuity agreements in 23 states, totaling nearly 4,000 client families. Quite an achievement for any services business.
For those advisors seeking growth, there are many avenues to explore, not to mention the education to be had by listening to this podcast, before realizing the goal of a growing, thriving firm that sustains your family’s future. Each advisor must choose their own path to success, and Pinnacle Advisory Solutions would be pleased to be par…
playlist_add
Dec 24, 2019
Season's Greetings from ...For Advisors
The team here at “For Advisors” would like to thank each and every one of our listeners for supporting the program in the past year. The audience grows daily, and we’re grateful to all of you for telling your peers and colleagues about us, so they can tune in as well.
We’ve got quite a few exciting things planned for 2020, including some great guests with some valuable insights to help you build, develop, and grow your practice.
Wishing you all a very happy and safe holiday season, and a prosperous New Year!
Thanks for listening!
playlist_add
Dec 17, 2019
Episode 14: John Hill on Working With Physicians As Clients
“Well, I talked specifically about the idea that it was very difficult to build equity initially in a sole practice model. It was just not heard of. And so I think the accumulation piece was critical for these guys. You know, doctors have to live up to this understanding in the community that they make a lot of money and they live well and they have the biggest boats and they drive Mercedes and had the biggest houses. And quite frankly, a whole bunch of them did and put a hurting on themselves as a result of that. I think the challenges that we faced and where we had to focus early on and continuing until today, is getting the physician to really understand what their limits are, what they should live within, who they are, and how they have to prepare for that.”
Building a niche practice is a proven way to grow and build a reliable, stable client list and develop skills that allow advisors to serve a specific audience at the highest levels. In this packed half hour, we’ll hear h…
playlist_add
Dec 10, 2019
Episode 13: Deb Kriebel on Gender Diversity in an Advisory Role
“. . . currently watching the women's World Cup soccer championships, and they've developed a pipeline where they're starting girls at a very young age. And I think we need to do the same thing with wealth management. And I've recently been involved with a program called Invest in Girls where we're starting to talk with young girls in high school about careers in financial planning or wealth management. So they need to know that it's actually a career option.”
Deb has long been a champion of gender diversity in the wealth management space, and lays out the numbers good and bad in this rare, tightly-packed interview. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from this gifted Advisor.
Deb Kriebel has been with Pinnacle Advisory since 1996, and was made partner shortly thereafter. She has a degree in chemistry from Penn State and an MBA from University of Florida where she nurtured her interest in things financial, prior to obtaining her CFP. Deb's been honored by "Investment News" as w…
playlist_add
Dec 3, 2019
Episode 12: Ginny Hudgens on Strategic Planning for Advisory Firms
“ . . . I think interest has always been high [in strategic planning] for advisors who understand our value proposition and understand the need to have a plan. It's interesting to me that advisors understand the vital need of their clients to do planning, but they don't see the need in their own firms. They don't necessarily put the two and two together. And generally their firm is their biggest asset. As you know, most small business owners have the majority of their wealth tied up in their firm. So even firms who do strategic planning should use an outside party, because getting staff to speak honestly with you about the challenges and the firm weaknesses is very difficult because you're the ones signing their paycheck. So in a lot of cases, you're just not getting good information.”
Like the cobbler’s children who never got new shoes, Financial Advisors do a wonderful job of planning their client’s financial futures, but often fail to plan for the success of their own pract…
playlist_add
Nov 26, 2019
Happy Thanksgiving from ...For Advisors
In lieu of our regular weekly program, we just wanted to give thanks to all our faithful listeners and subscribers, without whom this program would not be possible. We’re eternally grateful for your ongoing support of the program, and of our mission to bring quality information to Advisors across the country that they can use to help grow their practices.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday from all of us here at …For Advisors.
playlist_add
Nov 19, 2019
Episode 11: Dave Grant on a Roadmap to a Thriving RIA Practice
“A lot of it was content marketing. You know, as you start an RIA, you've got nothing but time on your hands if you're starting from scratch with zero clients. So a lot of it was understanding what problems I am finding in my own situation and writing about it. Writing is almost a form of therapy for me. I need to do it else I just go haywire. So I was writing a lot. I then started turning those into videos. I was then approaching school districts to say, "I've got all this knowledge here. I am guessing you don't have anyone in your district who is giving this knowledge back to teachers to help the m understand their situation without coming in with a product pitch as well." Some districts were very open to me coming in and doing seminars with a veil disguise of, "I do consult with teachers to help them with their situation, but there's no product pitches here either." And that's how I started to gain some of my early clients.”
If you’re looking for a growth path, and have clien…
playlist_add
Nov 12, 2019
Episode 10: Lauren Locker on How Eldercare Became Her Niche
“Well, I'll tell you the thing that surprised me the most, there was a group called the American Society on Aging, which who knew, right? There's a group for everyone. They have a conference every year. And when I went there, there was over 4,000 people that go to this conference just to deal with the aging issues. And I learned things there that actually, of all the places that I went to, really helped me the most. So yes, we thought, you know what? The baby boomers are gonna come in, they're gonna want to talk about their parents and what to do with them and how to do it, but in reality, it was the baby boomers who came in. Because the fact is it's really hard to force someone to plan for what's gonna happen in the future, so you'd have to want to do it yourself. And what really turned out to be the big thing was it really was a value add to our financial planning practice.”
Lauren Locker shows how she narrowed her niche in eldercare by combining personal experience and insight…
playlist_add
Nov 5, 2019
Episode 9: Diane MacPhee on Projecting the Right Confidence
“. . . you want to cultivate a mindset where you do feel that your value is substantial and you stand in that value and you do it in a confident manner, but not an arrogant manner. And when you achieve that level, and you demonstrate that authenticity, these conversations, they go very well, you come across very calm and confident. And that is really more important to me than a technical skill.”
Every Advisor encounters a situation where they have to have a difficult conversation with a client, either about rates, or performance or fees or some planning issue that is challenging – and most advisors feel they can do better in this area. Diane MacPhee of DMAC Consulting shows you exactly how to change your mindset, project the right confidence and the right vibe to handle these conversations in a very straightforward and effective way that anyone can adopt with a little practice. Join us for a lively half hour of learning and exploring the various ways to ease these difficult conv…
playlist_add
Oct 29, 2019
Episode 8: Tim Riley on the Value of Active Management
“. . . our biggest focus was that just be able to see the same two or three studies cited again and again and again in support of this belief that active management was not creating value. And we just wanted to look and say, "All right, but we have all these other papers, and let's just take it to some more aggregate viewpoint." And if you take all 300 papers together, considering the quality of each, what conclusion would you come to?
Then what we found was that, you know, not that active management's great or active management's bad, just that there was clearly a lot more nuance to it than it's often portrayed in, you know, "The Wall Street Journal" or a lot of publications you see.”
Tim Riley, top researcher in the Economics Department at the Sam M. Walton School of Business has done a comprehensive review of the academic literature regarding the value that active management of equity portfolios adds to investor returns, to either validate or dispel the notion that passive por…
playlist_add
Oct 22, 2019
Episode 7: Chris Winn on Building Compliance Into Your Corporate Culture
“The best way for most advisors to deal with compliance is to really integrate it into the overall operations and workflows of the business. So identifying how you service your clients, how you maintain information, how your systems work, and essentially aligning a lot of those business activities with the normal operational flows of your business. Then in addition to that, there's obviously regulatory items that must be done, and those are the items that, you know, are often most thought of from a compliance standpoint. But we really like to make sure that firms are handling both of those so they're, you know, institutionalizing their processes and really weaving them into the fiber, their business, and then that covers a majority of the compliance and risk management.” – Chris Winn, Chief Executive Officer Advisor Assist
Advisors have had a long-standing love-hate relationship with SEC and FINRA compliance over the years as the practice of advisory has become an industry and a…
playlist_add
Oct 15, 2019
Episode 6: Marnie Hards CFP on Finding Her Niche
“I think that people tend to look for an advisor that they feel comfortable with and they can relate to. So, I did start with quite a few fairly young families. I had my first daughter in 2002 and my second in 2005. So I was in this place where, we were a young, married, couple with young children trying to plan for our own retirement, plan for our own college education funding and so those were the type of people who I attracted, people who were in a similar position to the one I was in.” – Marnie Hards, CFP®
Marnie founded Aznar Financial Advisors in 1999 after working as a financial planner with the Ayco Company and as an associate with PricewaterhouseCoopers and in corporate finance with Booz Allen Hamilton. Marnie has a Master's degree of Business Administration from Fairleigh Dickinson University and her undergrad in Finance from Cornell. Earned her certificate in financial planning January of 2001. Marnie's an active member in NAPFA, AICPA, and FPA. She worked with NAPFA…
playlist_add
Oct 8, 2019
Episode 5: David Poulos on Growth Marketing
“The average person’s sphere of influence has actually shrunk from a face to face basis, despite people having lots more connections digitally, in terms of “Friends” on Facebook or Followers on Twitter or Instagram. Once advisors have exhausted the pool of face to face referral opportunities, their growth typically plateaus, without a way to scale up beyond the personal referral.
That’s where a marketing program comes in, and that’s what we want to talk about today. Modern advisory practices, if they want to grow beyond a certain point, need to approach it in a different way than they used to. That doesn’t mean that some of those time-honored marketing tactics don’t work anymore, it just means that they need to be approached differently in order to be effective.” – David Poulos, Director of Marketing, Pinnacle Advisory Group
David Poulos joined Pinnacle as the Director of Marketing in 2018. He is responsible for developing strategies that drive growth and create m…
playlist_add
Sep 30, 2019
Episode 4: Ken Solow, Pinnacle Advisory Group, on Modern Portfolio Theory
“The way you can outperform, the way you can say your company is adding value is through manager selection. And the way we did manager selection is through picking mutual funds. So I think that's where everybody started, and actually where a lot of the industry remains. But it was after that 2000-2001 bear market, that we decided we needed to go on and explore something different, something that would be a more robust strategy for managing risk.” – Ken Solow CFP®, Founding Partner Pinnacle Advisory Group
Ken started Pinnacle over 25 years ago with his 2 partners, Dwight Mikulis and John Hill, with the idea that they can serve clients in a much more in-depth and personalized way than their competitors in the market at the time without having to make the uncomfortable choice between company's profit goals and clients' best interests when making recommendations on elements of their financial plans and investments. Ken is a recognized expert in modern portfolio theory and has appli…
playlist_add
Sep 19, 2019
Episode 0: ...For Advisors Introduction
Welcome to “ . . . For Advisors”, the podcast for and about financial advisors. “For Advisors” will be covering a wide range of practice management and advisory topics to help you, the smaller financial advisor, better manage and grow your practice.
playlist_add