Between Now and Success

What separates the merely good from the absolute best of the best? Is mastery an end that we can achieve, or is it a lifelong process of continual evaluation and improvement? I've been fascinated by these questions for a long time, particularly as they relate to what drives peak athletic performance and how those concepts might be applicable in other disciplines as well. Like, say, going from being a competitive long distance runner as a kid to running a successful life-centered planning practice! After all, you and I won't ever stand on an Olympic podium. But we do have to excel in the high-stakes sport that is business so that we can deliver the best results for our clients. So I googled "top sports psychologists in the US," and it turns out that one of the best in the country was right down the road from me. Dr. Barbara Meyer is a professor and director of the Laboratory for Sports Psychology and Performance Excellence at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. Dr. Meyer is not only an academic, she's also a sports psychology coach who works with professional and Olympic athletes on the mental side of the game. In fact, Dr. Meyer has trained athletes at every Winter Olympics since the 2002 Salt Lake City games, where her client won a gold medal. In this conversation, Dr. Meyer and I discuss how to prepare mentally for a peak performance in any profession, striking a balance between sticking to the process of mastery while still achieving your desired outcomes, and how the concepts of self-regulation and visualization can help you monitor your behavior and alter it based on the demands of the situation you're facing. If you're serious about personal improvement and growth you're going to love this episode.

This is a presentation I delivered with Mitch Anthony. In it, we: 1. Share 3 new client dialogues that will completely differentiate you from all other advisors. 2. Show you why the current investment-focused planning model is broken and a new model that will replace it. 3. Show you how to future-proof your business from low-cost competitors and encroaching technology. The industry is shifting from an investment-focus to a life-centered planning focus. These 3 dialogues pave the path for you to have meaningful conversations with your clients that go beyond what the market is doing. Ultimately, money is just a tool to help clients live a better life. These dialogues equip you to facilitate that life-centered conversation so your clients can live the best life possible with the money they have.

If you don't "know thyself," you'll have difficulty succeeding in a world where technology is making average human advisors obsolete. Self-aware advisors understand that they have blind spots and they seek to shine a light on them, make changes, and turn them into strengths. Joe Deitch, the founder of Commonwealth Financial Network, joins my podcast today and shares wisdom from his four decades of running a top broker dealer and drops some amazing insights from his new book, "Elevate: An Essential Guide to Life." In this conversation, we discuss overcoming blind spots, closing the knowing-doing gap, leveraging the multiplier effect, deep listening, meeting people where they are, and much more. By the end of this episode, you'll have a good understanding of the key skills you'll need as an advisor to thrive in the years ahead. For additional notes and quotes, visit https://www.belayadvisor.com/134

What's working right now in financial advisor marketing? Based on my conversation with marketing pro Abby Salameh, you'll be very surprised. While attending the 2018 In|Vest Conference in New York, I had a chance to sit down with Abby Salameh for an in-depth conversation about the state of advisor marketing. We talked about which marketing strategies are working the best, branding, the client experience, referrals, making a good first impression with prospects, the proper role of technology in marketing, and much more. Abby Salameh is the Chief Marketing Officer at Private Advisor Group, a RIA with 620 advisors overseeing $27 billion in AUM (See my earlier podcast with John Hyland, the co-founder of Private Advisor Group). Her sterling career as a RIA marketing expert has included stops at Sanford Bernstein, TD Waterhouse, and the Fusion Advisor Network. She was also a founding member of the team that launched Investment News. One consistent thread among the most successful advisory firms is they know how to market. And they know how to strike the right balance between using technology to scale their marketing efforts and using the human touch to engage potential new clients. So if you're looking to improve your marketing efforts, generate more qualified leads, and position your firm for accelerated growth, you'll want to listen to today's conversation with Abby Salameh.

In this excerpt from a Master Class I presented for First Assent Asset Management, I discuss 5 strategies to close the 70 basis point gap in your value. This gap comes about from the fact that advisors charge an average of 100 bps for their services, yet robo-advisor type services (and Vanguard and Schwab) are closer to 30 bps for investment management. Advisors have to make up this 70 bps gap by adding non-investment related services that clients value. In this excerpt, I share 5 of the 9 I discussed in the Master Class. Make sure you listen all the way to the end – the 5th point might sound like a bit of a head-scratcher, but I think it's extremely important to improving your practice and your relationship with your clients.

There are few things more detrimental to our wealth than the negative money stories we pickup in our youth that haunt us as adults. And there are few things more impactful you can do as an advisor than to understand your client's money stories and work with them as you engage in your planning relationship. Let's face it, we all grow up with hang-ups around money. In those formative years of our upbringing, we start to absorb the financial habits and attitudes that we hear and see modeled in our family and other social relationships. Positive habits, like an emphasis on saving and investing, can set us up well for long-term financial planning. But some negative attitudes, like a fear of market volatility, can cause us to make poor emotional decisions about our money. Over the course of a lifetime, those can be seven-figure mistakes. Dr. Brad Klontz, CFP told me that he believes the very best advisors learn what their client's hang-ups are and use that knowledge to work more effectively with their clients. And Dr. Klontz is tackling those hang-ups from two sides: first, as the managing principal of his own RIA, Your Mental Wealth Advisors; second, as the founder of the Financial Psychology Institute and as an associate professor of practice in financial psychology at Creighton University's Heider College of Business. Dr. Klontz keeps these businesses and clients separate to avoid any unethical conflicts of interest. But through his unique experience as both a researcher and a client-facing advisor, Dr. Klontz identified four broad Money Scripts that show how our experiences shape our attitudes about money.

Are your multi-millionaire clients any happier than your merely millionaire clients? As your clients' net worth increases, have you seen a direct rise in their level of happiness? Have you ever felt frustrated that all your hard work on the financial side of your client relationships didn't move the needle in their sense of well-being? Helping clients save, grow, and protect their money is a service that clients value and appreciate. But there is so much more you can do to help them beyond just the numbers. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being maximum life satisfaction and well-being, what if you could help your clients move from a 6 to a 9? Or even to a 10? Think about how that would add meaning to your work and satisfaction to your client's life. My recent podcast guest, Dr. Martin Seay of Kansas State University, researches how we can apply the concepts of positive psychology to the financial planning process. And advisors who incorporate Dr. Seay's work won't be drifting off course into "touchy-feely" territory. They'll be putting sound scientific data into action and future-proofing their businesses.

Have you ever seen an advisor on TV or read a quote from an advisor and thought, "They should be talking to me; I'm just as smart as that advisor." The fact is, that advisor may not be any smarter than you from a technical standpoint, but they may be more media savvy than you are. Now more than ever, money is news, twenty-four-seven. Baby boomers are retiring. Millennials have major money issues. Health care costs, Social Security, and Medicare are a constant source of political debate. The pros and cons of the new tax laws are still contentious. Cryptocurrencies could be bigger than the internet…or simply the next pets.com. And one group of pros uniquely qualified to weigh in on all these hot button issues is…You—a financial advisor. Recently I visited CNBC Studios in New Jersey and talked with Jim Pavia, award-winning journalist and Money Editor at CNBC Digital, about how advisors can get themselves ready for prime time.

Michael Chasnoff discusses how he grew Truepoint Wealth Counsel, his fee-only wealth management firm, to $3 billion in AUM and 750 households without any mergers or acquisitions.

Barron's recently wrapped up the 2018 edition of the Barron's Top Independent Advisors Summit in Orlando. Whether you were in attendance or are looking to catch up on what you missed, today's episode will give you an insightful snapshot of one of the most valuable get-togethers in our industry. My guests today are Bill Keen and Matt Wilson of Keen Wealth Advisors, a fast-growing RIA with more than $400 million in AUM. Bill also has his own excellent podcast, Keen on Retirement. Bill and Matt have attended the Barron's Top Independent Advisors Summit and the wirehouse version for many years, so they have the perspective to connect the dots between the lessons from past conferences and where the 2018 summit is pointing. We talk about some of the key takeaways from this year's event, the ongoing trend towards Life-Centered Planning, and how advisors can put these insights into action right now to grow their businesses.