Daryn Form has built a successful financial advisory business over the past 20 years. In 1999, he earned the Certified Financial Planner™ professional designation. In 2011, he earned the Canadian Investment Manager (CIM™) offered by the Canadian Securities Institute; this professional designation is required to be licensed as a discretionary portfolio manager in Canada. Daryn uses a scientific process-driven approach to investing—along with his breadth of experience and knowledge in wealth management and advanced financial planning—to help his clients achieve their financial goals. 

Topics Discussed in This Episode:  

• Who Daryn’s firm serves (1:14)
• Why Daryn decided to become an advisor early on (3:24)
• Daryn’s onboarding process for clients (9:36)

• How Daryn approaches client acquisition (14:18)
• Why Daryn decided to switch to an AUM-based model (20:53)

• How would he start in the wealth management industry today (32:07)   

Links and Resources: 

  Assante First Avenue 

 Quotes From the Show:  

“In some ways the business has changed dramatically, in some ways it hasn't changed at all - this is still a relationship-oriented business.“  

“The majority of our new clients come from our overwhelming effort to do terrific work for people, such that they want to tell other people about it.” 

“Their problem is unique to them, but it’s not unique to others, which means it wasn’t unique to us.”   

With over two decades of industry experience, Daryn’s expertise stemming from building his own successful practice is useful to advisors of all different levels. Today, he is sharing his experience and wisdom with us.  

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from the episode: 

• Daryn’s clientele and how he approaches serving and acquiring them 
• How to build a business that is a good fit for you
• Daryn’s advice for young advisors breaking into the industry  

To listen to the full episode, find us on iTunes or Stitcher, or click the link at the top of the page. 

Daryn’s clientele and how he approaches serving and acquiring them 

Many advisors build a clientele that is niche-oriented, allowing them to serve people on a deeper level than they could if operating in a diverse market. Daryn’s niche is owner-managed enterprises. Operating in Saskatoon, his client base is typically made up of business owners across the different industries in the area such as manufacturing, mining, construction, and more. 

This commonality amongst the client base of his practice has its benefits. The majority of these business owners come in seeking help with similar financial planning problems, allowing Daryn and his team to know what the future solutions look like early on in their relationship. This has allowed the practice to build a proven suite of services that can be reused over and over again, making the work they do more efficient and therefore, more impactful. 

Serving Clients and Client Acquisition

When it comes to acquiring new clients, Daryn’s firm is a relationship-oriented business. Most of his clients come from referrals, something that he attributes to consistent hard work and delivery for his existing client base. 

While he doesn’t put emphasis on manufacturing referrals, he does point out that it is important to let your clients know when you’re taking on new business, along with the types of clients you wish to serve, so that they are given a nudge to refer their friends and family members. From there, your previous dedication will lead to successful client acquisition. 

To serve his clients, there is not one process that fits every situation. Typically, Daryn and his team begin by getting to know the client and their needs in a comprehensive way - Who are they? Why did they start the business? What are the biggest challenges they need help solving through wealth management?

From there, Daryn’s firm steps in with suggestions of how they can fix the headaches the client is facing, using a solutions-based approach early on. He points out that taking several meetings upfront with a client is worthwhile in an industry where it could turn into a relationship spanning decades.

Hint: If you want to learn more about the operations at Daryn’s firm, check out the investor resources on their website for articles and videos covering different aspects of investing.

How to build a business that is a good fit for you

For Daryn, running his own business is something that excites him, making it easy for him to be excited about working with other business owners. This is the key to building a successful financial advisory practice that is a good fit for you: finding out who you will be happy serving in the long run. 

Instead of focusing on the net worth of clients you wish to attract, or going down a path that you think you are expected to follow, Daryn suggests spending time and energy to build a business that feeds your sense of personal fulfillment, setting you up for long term, sustainable success. 

When it comes to the number of clients a firm should serve, Daryn says that you can find success at any number of clients as long as you establish a process that makes sense for all parties involved. Whether you have 3 clients or over 100, setting up a service model that aligns the needs of the clients with the needs of the advisor, as well as setting up a revenue model that allows the advisor to be properly compensated, is the best path. 

Hint: Interested to hear more from about approaching financial advising from the lens of being a business owner? Check out Episode 41 with Dustin Serviss, where we discuss how owning his own business helps him advise his clients.

Daryn’s advice for young advisors breaking into the industry 

For those wishing to break into the financial planning industry, Daryn suggests utilizing the community of advisors around you. Take time to research firms that align with your value set and that serve communities that interest you, and look for mentorship opportunities within them. 

Similar to the legal or accounting world, the structure of the industry has shifted to people coming in as associates and working their way up at firms through hard work. Daryn suggests volunteering your services at different firms to find the best fit, and then making yourself a useful component at that firm, positioning yourself for upward mobility. 

To hear more from Daryn about the compensation model at his firm, what he attributes his success to, and his opinions on financial planning technology, check out the full interview. Listen with the link at the top of the page, or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher to make sure you never miss an episode.

Today’s guest is Tom Deans. Tom is a professional speaker and the author of two best-selling books that deal with the intergenerational transition of family wealth: Every Family’s Business and Willing Wisdom. Listen to the episode to hear what Tom has to say about why there’s an estate planning gap, how advisors can fill that gap, and what kind of effect the COVID-19 crisis has had on the subject of estate planning.  

Topics Discussed in This Episode:  

• How Tom became focused on the issue of estate planning (3:37)
• Why Canada has an intergenerational wealth issue (6:10)
• How advisors can fill the estate planning gap and provide advice to their high net-worth clients (12:01)
• What Tom has noticed about the culture of families that transfer wealth successfully (15:16)

• What is The Willing Wisdom Index (23:09)
• Whether there are any trends over the last few months related to COVID-19 (26:57)

Links and Resources: 

For a free software trial: Sales@willingwisdom.com 

Call Tom: (519) 938-2069 

Willing Wisdom 

Quotes From the Show: 

“Estate planning isn’t just about answering the question ‘Who gets my stuff when I’m dead?’ There’s a whole part of estate planning that’s very much about the living.”  

“A will is like an MRI for a doctor - the will and a conversation about a will reveals everything.” 

“Wealth has always been about family and family relationships.” 

Tom provides a unique perspective from outside of the traditional financial planning industry at how advisors can grow into an untraditional niche. His many successes in publicizing the issues facing intergenerational wealth position him to provide insight to all advisors on how they can grow their business by opening discussions on estate planning with their clients. 

Below, we will be discussing three key ideas from today’s episode:  

• The Biggest Problem Facing the Transfer of Intergenerational Wealth 
• What Successful Advisors Are Doing Right With Estate Planning
• How to Use Estate Planning Software as a Sales Funnel 

To listen to the full episode, use the audio player at the top of this page, or find us on iTunes or Stitcher.

The Biggest Problem Facing the Transfer of Intergenerational Wealth 

In Canada today, many advisors are seeing more and more clients that are a part of the first generation in their family that faces dying before they can spend all of the money they have earned. As people accumulate wealth that has the potential to be intergenerational, one problem stands out amongst the rest: 12.5 million Canadians do not have legal wills as a part of their estate plan. 

It isn’t just low-income Canadians who are missing this key component of their financial plan; high net-worth individuals are coming up short too, putting their family’s wellbeing at risk once they pass away. If a person dies without a will, their province will use a unique formula to distribute their assets to their surviving relatives. Even if the family wishes to divide the property according to provincial law – which is rarely the case, having a will in place will reduce delays and expenses. If not having a will has such a negative impact on the ones closest to them, why do so many people not have one?

Why are Canadians Not Making Wills?

There are a few different reasons Tom provides to answer this question. The first is that many estate planning professionals have abandoned the practice of writing wills for more lucrative alternatives. With DIY will writing kits becoming more popular and more affordable, many lawyers have abandoned will writing for estate litigation. 

Not only is it harder and harder to find a will writing professional, but many people have superstitions around writing a will, finding the topic too morbid to discuss. With several first-generation clients not seeing their parents set an example by writing a will, it is left off of their list of priorities as well. 

For financial advisors, this leaves a corner of the market wide open for them. With nearly a third of Canadians not having a will, and the majority of people who do having less than perfect ones, financial planners are set up to take advantage of the market. As Tom puts it, “What is a more valuable role for an advisor to add value to a client relationship in than an area that every other professional has largely walked away from?”

Hint: Interested in learning more about intergenerational wealth transfers? Check out Episode 47 with Cindy Radu, where we discuss how to increase the odds of successfully transitioning wealth. 

What Successful Advisors are Doing Right with Estate Planning

If you are a financial advisor considering adding estate planning to your services, you may be wondering how to approach it. Tom points to the successes of American and European advisors in the space who have one thing in common: they have positioned themselves to be central to an entire family’s success. 

The main way to do this is to organize quarterly or yearly family meetings that cultivate a more formal approach to familial wealth preservation. Many people shy away from having these necessary financial discussions out of the fear of it causing family rifts. When an advisor acts as a facilitator for these discussions, resourcing solutions to the issues brought up and delivering them in these meetings, they become much more than a financial planner. They are set up to become a central part of the family’s financial success for generations to come. 

Tom points out that if an advisor is not offering this service, it is highly likely that their competitors are. In many cases, older clients are not as concerned with the amount of money an advisor has generated for them as they are knowing how they will be taken care of as they age. Offering this service could mean the difference between a client choosing your firm over your competition’s. 

The other main piece of advice Tom offers advisors is to make sure they have their own will locked down. If a financial planner does not have a will of their own, how can they successfully advise their clients on how to structure one? Tom suggests going over your own will and taking note of the questions that come up naturally for you. Who will care for you if you become incapacitated? How will your assets be divided amongst your children once you die? These are the same questions you can assist your clients with to form a long-term relationship. 

How to Use Estate Planning Software as a Sales Funnel 

Tom’s estate planning software, The Willing Wisdom Index, gives advisors the unique opportunity to simultaneously get automated data about an individual’s existing estate plan and to use it as a sales tool to lock down a potential client. 

The software works by creating an email that a financial planner can send out to a potential client or post on their social media channels. The prospect will then complete the questionnaire attached to the email, which will populate a robust report on the state of their estate plan. The report includes a general score out of 100, information on how their estate plan measures up to their peers, and a list of key areas they need to improve on. 

With this report, advisors have their foot in the door to suggest their assistance in closing the gaps in a person’s estate plan. By opening up a conversation about the topic using this software, the advisors are able to capitalize on this market that has been left open by other professionals.   

Hint: Interested in this software? Email Tom at Sales@willingwisdom.com for a free demo and to get more information.

To learn more about how Tom got into the industry, how his books gained popularity, and the trends he sees emerging from the current pandemic, listen to the full episode. You can check it out at the top of the page, or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher to ensure you never miss an episode. 

Tim's blog The Sustainable Economist has inspired thousands of Canadians to invest according to their values with model portfolios to reflect different definitions of sustainable investing. Tim writes a bi-weekly column for The Toronto Star and is regularly featured in publications such as CBC’s The National, BNN Bloomberg’s Market Call, and the Globe and Mail. Listen to the episode to hear what Tim has to say about what’s involved in sustainable investing, what kinds of returns can be expected from those investments, and how Tim approaches helping his clients invest in a way that reflects their values.

Topics Discussed in This Episode: 

• What Tim and his firm do (1:09)
• How Tim got into his niche of the industry (3:22)
• Terms of Socially Responsible Investing (8:50)
• Where socially responsible investing is in terms of returns (14:20)
• Tim’s approach to advising and serving clients (20:00)
• Tim’s sliding scale (24:45)
• Tim’s advice for investors (46:19) 

Links and Resources: 

Good Investing

The Sustainable Economist

Quotes From the Show: 

“The number one indicator that is most correlated to financial outperformance is gender diversity on the Board of Directors." 

“You don’t need to sacrifice financial performance. You can do at least just as well, and most socially responsible funds have outperformed by a little bit.” 

“I very much believe in price discrimination- that some people can afford a higher price, and some people can afford a lower price.”

From his unique business approach to his success in the sustainable investing niche, Tim Nash offers insights backed by years operating in the industry. Advisors at any career stage can benefit from learning from his expertise, along with hearing about the potential performance implications of cultivating a sustainable client portfolio.

Below, we will be discussing three key ideas from today’s episode: 

• How Tim Breaks Down Sustainable Investing 
• Expected Returns in Sustainable Investing
• How Tim Structures his Business to Serve People from All Walks of Life 

To listen to the full episode, find us on iTunes or Stitcher, or listen with the link at the top of this page. 

How Tim Breaks Down Sustainable Investing 

To discuss the core of Tim’s business, we must first establish what sustainable investing really is. He breaks it down into two different groups: “Doing less evil” and “Doing more good”. 

Doing Less Evil 

The most common route to socially responsible investing (SRI) that Tim’s clients take is what he refers to as the “doing less evil” route. This style of investing still uses a typical approach: you are investing in large companies with the goal of getting market-rate returns. However, the companies that the client is investing in are vetted according to their values in order to get rid of the least sustainable companies, making sure that their money is being invested using a value-based system. 

The beginning of this model relied heavily on negative screening, which focused on excluding specific industries that the client did not want to invest in. A common example of this is a client not wanting to invest in any fossil fuel company. 

The model evolved further into relying on ESG analysis, which stands for environmental, social, and government research and analysis. This model evaluates companies based on those key factors to determine if they are acceptable for inclusion in a sustainable investing portfolio.

For example, if a company contributes to pollution with the way they create their products or has a large carbon emission problem, they would fail the environmental analysis. If a company has poor labor standards or lacks diversity on its board of directors, it would not be up to par on its social analysis. If the company spends a lot on political lobbying, it may not qualify for sustainable investing due to the government analysis. 

Combining ESG analysis with participation such as shareholder engagement including voting on shares to push the companies toward more sustainable initiatives is what makes up the “doing less evil” model today. 

Doing More Good 

For those that are extremely committed to sustainable investing, they may opt for the “doing more good” model. This is based less on the traditional goals of financial returns, and more on the intention of investing for the greater good. 

Also referred to as impact investing, this model typically contributes to the private side, relying on things such as microfinance, green bonds, community bonds, etc. The investments are usually hyperlocal, impact-focused, and do not put much emphasis on the individual’s financial gains.

Hint: If you want to learn more about value-based investments, check out Episode 39 with Ryan Fraser, where we discuss his approach to charitable giving.

Expected Returns in Sustainable Investing 

For potential clients interested in sustainable investing, the main question on their minds is whether or not they would be sacrificing returns in their portfolio by using a socially responsible contribution model. While Tim admits there is no way to predict the future with complete certainty, over the past ten years companies who have good ESG have outperformed those who don’t.

Tim’s clients have experienced high returns on their investments, largely due to major players with poor ESG falling out of popularity in the last 5 years. “My portfolios have done very, very well over the last 5-10 years… a large part of this is due to the fact that we are underweight or zero weight in fossil fuels.” 

Even if the energy sector does bounce back causing underperformance, Tim predicts that we will see climate change become more of a common issue, which may favor sustainable investment portfolios. He also notes that since many social funds are overweight in technology and healthcare, they are set up for success in the post-COVID world. 

Although there is no definitive answer to how the space will shape up in the future as sustainable investing becomes more and more mainstream, Tim’s clients typically do not have to sacrifice any returns at all, and oftentimes they can expect to slightly outperform traditional portfolios.

Hint: Want to hear more from Tim on the debate around sustainable investment returns? Check out his appearance on Ben Felix’s podcast, where they discuss the economic impacts of SRI in detail.

How Tim Structures his Business to Serve People from All Walks of Life

Tim’s investment planning and coaching business is designed to allow him to serve all Canadians, no matter how large of an investment they can make. He does this with his in-depth investment coaching and education plan, as well as charging an hourly fee based on a sliding scale.

At Tim’s practice, the goal is to educate a client to the point that they are comfortable investing on their own, setting them up for long-term independence and success. The first step is to teach his clients about the space, walking them through the complexities of financial planning so that they are confident in making decisions for their own portfolio. 

Next, he works with them to determine where they are on the spectrum of sustainable investing - whether they want to “do less evil” or “do more good”. Once that is established, he coaches them through their options in the sustainable space, explaining the tradeoffs in the industry and empowering them to choose an approach that fits them best.

In the end, they have built their own portfolio based on the values they find most important, and Tim walks them through their first time investing. This unique approach is designed to alleviate the anxiety and fear around first time investing, allowing his clients to have long-term results thanks to him equipping them with confidence to make their own future investment decisions. 

In order to ensure that no one is unable to work with him due to cost, he created a pay scale that charges an hourly rate that is based on how much money the client has to invest. This way, he is able to serve clients who would normally have to make these decisions on their own, while still allowing him to profit off of his expertise. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about how Tim got into the sustainable investment niche, how he is expanding his business, and the biggest obstacles he has overcome while running his own practice. You can check out the episode at the top of this page, or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher to make sure you never miss an episode.

Keith Matthews is a Partner and Portfolio Manager at Tulett, Matthews & Associates. He has an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business and is a Chartered Investment Manager. For close to 25 years, Keith has been working with his clients to deliver leading-edge wealth management strategies to help his clients reach their long-term goals. Listen to the episode to hear Keith talk about why he decided to become an advisor, what attracted Keith to ETFs in the early days, and how clients respond to Keith’s book, The Empowered Investor.

Topics Discussed in This Episode: 

• Why Keith decided to become an advisor (3:22)
• What attracted Keith to ETFs early on (5:57)
• How Keith approaches advising and serving his clients (12:08)
• Why doing taxes for clients gives you an edge (15:53)
• The role of Keith’s book in the client acquisition process (21:17)
• How Keith leverages software at his practice (32:11)
• Advice for new advisors (40:11)

Links and Resources: 

Tulett, Matthews & Associates

The Empowered Investor

Quotes From the Show: 

“All of the early advisors that were doing this knew it made sense, knew it was the right thing, knew it was very friendly for clients.” 

“The idea of at least understanding tax sensitivities is huge for an advisor, and it’s a huge value-add for clients.” 

“If a client buys into all the following things and wants to have the sort of comprehensive approach that we’re dealing with, wants to be engaged, is serious, wants to see themselves reach their goals, and subscribes to the investment approach, then I think we’ve got a really nice connection.”

With an expansive career in the industry, Keith has become an expert on ETFs and passively managed strategies. His knowledge and experience can help you evaluate your processes, no matter what career stage you are in. 

Below, we’re discussing three key ideas from today’s episode: 

• How Keith Pioneered the use of ETFs 
• How to Set Up Clients for Success with a Thorough Onboarding Process
• Keith’s Advice for New Advisors

To listen to the full episode, use the link at the top of this page, or find us on iTunes or Stitcher.

How Keith Pioneered the use of ETFs 

When Keith began his career in the financial services industry, he worked in a bond trading position at the institutional level. As he began to understand the way financial performance was being measured, he realized that there were a lot of institutional firms that were not performing at the level they boasted. 

It is then when he started thinking about serving individual investors by delivering wealth management services and building portfolios using asset allocation strategies and attaching those strategies to underlying ETFs. When Keith began this practice in the 1990s, he was swimming against the tide- going against other firms marketing different approaches as the “secret” to successful long-term investing. 

Keith continued pursuing this new approach because it made sense for both the advisor and the client. The business model allowed the advisors to have the time to focus on the things that their clients cared about the most: Do I have enough money to retire? How can I optimize my taxes? Are we on track to meet our financial goals?

By pioneering a model that put client needs first, he was able to build a successful practice and implement an approach that has since grown in popularity. 

Hint: Want to learn more? Check out Keith’s book, The Empowered Investor, which outlines 8 key investing principles in a way that anyone can understand.

How to Set Up Clients for Success with a Thorough Onboarding Process

When it comes to serving clients, Keith starts the relationship with a strong onboarding process that allows the advisors and the clients to get to know one another. 

They begin with a discovery meeting, which can last up to an hour and a half, where there is no presenting from the firm - only listening to what the clients have to say. They learn who the clients are, what their goals are, and what they wish to accomplish by working with a wealth planning team. At the end of the meeting, they do a deep dive into the client’s financials to understand where they’re at at. 

If both parties feel like the fit is good, then they move on to a proposal meeting, in which Keith and his team inform the prospective client on how the firm operates and what investment approaches they take. 

As a result of this comprehensive process, Keith is able to work with clients that are serious about the process and that want to be engaged in it. An educated client will get more out of financial planning services because of their level of involvement, their accurate understanding of expected returns, and the trust that is built with their financial advisor. 

Hint: Interested in learning more about the importance of client education? Check out Episode 54 with Sasha Djurdjevic, where we discuss how he approaches educating his clients.

Keith’s Advice for New Advisors

After 25 years in the industry, Keith has one key piece of advice for aspiring financial advisors: to find the services that you love and put a lot of energy into those strategies. The more passionate you are about the way you are investing, the more likely it is that you will find success with clients. 

For young advisors fresh out of college, Keith recommends joining a firm and finding a philosophy that you identify with. There are many opportunities at firms for those that work hard, and they are a good place to begin your career. 

For more seasoned adults looking for a career change, whether they take an entrepreneurial route or join an existing team, as long as they find an approach that fits and put client needs first, they will be set up for success.

Listen to the full episode to hear how Keith utilizes financial planning software at his practice, and how his clients and colleagues have responded to his book. You can listen to the episode at the top of this page, or you can subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher to make sure you never miss an episode. 

Chris Enns is not just a financial planner – he’s also an opera singer. Over the last 10 years as a performing artist, he’s learned the hard way that ignoring money doesn’t really work. That’s why he founded Rags to Reasonable - an advice-only financial planning & money coaching firm that specializes in working with creatives and people with other non-traditional financial situations. Listen to today’s conversation to hear what Chris has to say about non-traditional financial planning, Chris’s biggest challenges and successes, and what it’s like to speak a different kind of financial language. 

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

• Who Chris’s firm usually serves (8:48)
• Chris’s strategies for coaching and planning (14:30)
• What happens after clients improve their financial stability (19:50)
• Using different financial language for different kinds of people (28:55)
• What things Chris believes have contributed to his success (31:37)
• The biggest challenges Chris is facing (35:37)
• Chris’s advice for financial planners (49:53)

Links and Resources: 

Rags to Reasonable

Quotes by Chris: 

“The truth is, the things that make people great artists, and really good at their craft, are the exact things that are going to make them good at their finances.”

“I think that one of the things we need to think about more in the financial space is that the answer cannot be that we talk about money in one way.”

“I have never had a real job in my life – I’ve worked for myself my entire life.”

Chris is using his performative background to portray a new type of story - a story of financial success for his clients. By helping his fellow artists rethink their ability to handle money, he has found success in the niche he has created to help those with unique financial situations. His experience in growing his advisory practice teaches businesses both young and old that customizing a client’s experience and solidifying a client/planner relationship is the key to maintaining success.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode: 

• How to work with variable income clients
• How mentorship and financial independence helped Chris start his practice
• How to use relationship building as a client acquisition tactic in times of market instability

To listen to the rest of the episode, click the link at the top of this post, or find us on iTunes or Stitcher.

How to work with variable income clients

Before Chris became a professional advisor, he saw the need in the arts community for a specialized approach to financial planning. When he transitioned into running his fully online financial advisory practice, he wanted to meet the demand he saw during his own arts career. It was natural that his client base would be made up of sole proprietors and small businesses, almost all of whom had variable income. 

Clients with variable income often struggle with common financial questions like how to save money, pay off debt, or plan for retirement when their cash flow is so irregular. They are also often younger and less versed in the financial planning world than other advisory clients, making it important for Chris to listen carefully to their background before jumping in with a plan. 

His solution? To build a plan that can transition into a lifelong technique, knowing that not everyone can fit into the same system. 

Crafting a repeatable, customized plan 

The first step Chris takes with a new client is to get to know them and make sure that his services are a perfect fit. If not, he takes the time to send them in a direction that will help their financial needs. If he feels he can provide value to the prospective client, he creates a custom proposal based on their exact needs. This ensures that each unique financial situation is taken care of in the way that best fits their situation, rather than forcing a general approach on them. 

When Chris is coaching clients with variable incomes, he uses their time together to craft a set of steps that can be worked over and over again, allowing the result to become more than a one time financial plan. As he says, “It’s more teaching the person to fish, rather than handing them a basket of fish.”

Hint: It may seem like a lot of extra work to start from the ground up for each client rather than use a standardized system. Try creating a customized quoting system like Chris uses to make sure that your extra effort is reflected in what you are paid.

How mentorship and financial independence helped Chris start his practice

Even though Chris’s practice is relatively new, he has been very successful at producing early growth. He attributes his success to two key components: mentorship and financial independence. 

Since Chris had an untraditional pathway into the business, having mentors allowed him to see what his own path could look like in the field. Especially for young businesses starting their practice, he recommends finding experienced planners to learn from, which will help them wrap their minds around the complexities of the industry. 

Hint: Want to learn more from some of Chris’s mentors? Check out Episode 9 with Julia Chung and Sandi Martin from Spring Financial Planning.

The second thing that helped Chris through his early years in financial advising was his ability to not rush to monetize his business. He dipped his toe into the field by writing a blog, which eventually led him to further opportunities to expand and create the business he runs today. 

Because it was his side gig and he was fully supporting himself with his operatic career, he did not have to take on non-ideal clients. This has helped him continue to work with the people that are the best fit for his practice, as the more ideal clients he works with, the more ideal clients he gets referred to him. 

How to use relationship building as a client acquisition tactic in times of market instability

One of the biggest challenges Chris is facing right now is pivoting his practice to be more accessible during the pandemic. With many of his clients facing an extended time period of not being able to find work in their native fields, he is having to solve new financial problems. Even with emergency funds, many of his arts industry clients will be forced to take on different jobs to make ends meet. 

The new opportunity that Chris sees is making his services more affordable, so that he can continue to work with his clients. He is working to create different ways to serve them, whether that be through shorter sessions, a smaller budget, or through his free office hours offered on his website. 

While this is allowing Chris to help his clientele when they need it the most, it is also a good business move. By taking the time to continue to build relationships even when there is no profit to be made, his investment into people will create more business when their financial lives are back to normal. Chris anticipates that once we are on the other side of this crisis, the demand for financial planning will be larger than ever. 

To learn more about Chris’s unique journey to the industry, how he uses workshops to attract new clients, and how he wants to enlist artists to create financial art, listen to the full podcast by hitting the link at the top of this page. Make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so that you never miss an episode. 

Lucas MacMillan has been working in personal finance for 10 years. He is a Certified Financial Planning Professional and graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Science. Lucas manages Camber Private Wealth’s financial planning effort; where all prospects are given a financial plan before investing and all clients receive ongoing financial planning support using Camber’s immersive custom financial dashboards. Lucas also leads Camber’s data science team.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode 

• How Camber approaches building a plan with clients (5:43)
• How client dashboards work and what their goal is (12:06)
• How Lucas starts with dashboards (14:30)
• The client response to recent market volatility (24:20)
• The goal of Lucas’s data science project (30:49)
• How Lucas’s firm has been acquiring clients (37:35)
• Lucas’s advice for listeners (43:31)

Links and Resources:

Lucas MacMillan

Camber Private Wealth

Quotes by Lucas:

“We really wanted to go way outside the box on financial planning.”

“Just getting people a financial plan is a huge win.”

“It isn’t extremely important that you get their financial life 100% accurate the first time you touch them. It’s something that you can massage over time, as you get to know the client.”

Lucas provides a fresh perspective on the future of the financial planning industry. His practice is using technology and data science to change the way their clients interact with their financial plans, creating a unique way to attract and retain clients. Whether you’re a seasoned wealth manager who is comfortable with status quo, or you are building your financial advisory practice and want to employ fresh tactics, you can learn from the innovative ways Lucas approaches his work.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• How Lucas customizes client experience using data visualization
• How Camber is leveraging data to combat low conversion rates in the financial industry
• The importance of client education and continuous marketing during times of financial instability

To tune in to the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link at the top of this post. 

How Lucas Customizes his clients’ experience using data visualization

Coming from a background working in a centralized planning division at a larger firm, Lucas was used to communicating with clients via huge stacks of paper packed with information. When he moved on to Camber, his goal was to redefine the way in which he could display the key messages in a financial plan to his clients. His solution was to build custom dashboards for each client, visualizing their personal data and allowing them to access any detail of their financial plan with ease. 

How It Works

Before meeting with a client, Lucas sends them an adaptive questionnaire that allows them to fill out as much or as little information on their financial status as they would like to. From there, his team builds a financial dashboard that houses the information they provided, as well as the financial plan the firm has built for them. Over time, they add more information on every client, making their dashboard more and more robust. 

The complete dashboard replaces the need for a lengthy, printed financial plan that makes it difficult to find specific details. His clients are able to see their financial assets on a high level when they just want general figures, or they can dig down into any specific area to get full visibility into their wealth management status.

For example, a client can open their dashboard and check out a summary of their cash flow sources. If they want more information on a specific area of cash flow, they can click through and get details on every aspect, like salary, bonus pay, stock-based compensation, and more.

Camber’s immersive dashboards also include two key sections for client visibility: a “your control” section and an “our control” section. The “your control” section allows clients to visualize the aspects of their financial plan that they can directly control. How much should they save over the next five years? How caught up are they on their RSP contributions? If they follow the steps recommended by their financial planner, how will it affect them in the long run? 

The “our control” section allows clients to clearly see the things their financial planner is controlling. Things like asset allocation and diversification are displayed in a way that makes it easy to see the contribution the planner is making to the client’s financial wellbeing, forming a stronger client relationship over time. 

Hint: Do you struggle with collecting financial data from your clients? Consider allowing them to provide only the information they can easily access and then make their plan more specific over time. The less they have to do, the more likely they are to convert.

Client Response

Lucas says the response he has gotten to Camber’s dashboards has been overwhelmingly positive. His clients feel like they are able to participate in important conversations about their financial health because the data is presented in a manageable way. The dashboard is like a custom search engine for each client to be able to quickly access answers to common financial planning questions, allowing them to make more informed financial decisions leading to better long term outcomes. 

How Camber is leveraging data to combat low conversion rates in the financial industry

A key issue Lucas is focused on is the low conversion rate in the financial planning industry. Why are potential clients abandoning the process of developing a financial plan? In the hopes of solving industry problems such as this one, Lucas started a data science division at Camber, which works with students at the University of Calgary to fill in the blanks using survey data.

Reported spending habits from clients are often guesses; no one keeps track of every dollar they spend. To tackle this discrepancy, Lucas’s team uses microdata files containing surveys of large groups of people to estimate spending data based on parameters such as age, income level, gender, family size, and more. 

Using these findings, he is able to communicate comparative data to his clients to give them an understanding of how they match up to their peers. Are they spending more money than the average person of their age? Are they spending less money, setting them up for a stronger financial future? This allows people to fully understand their financial status and encourages them to make smart decisions to keep up with the pack.

The importance of client education and continuous marketing during times of financial instability

In the midst of the Corona Virus pandemic, clients want to know how the changes in the market are going to affect them. Lucas has found that his client base has stayed calm during this time of market volatility. He credits this to Camber’s dedication to keeping clients informed with their dashboards. 

With stress testing displayed in an easy way, clients are able to visualize their worst-case financial scenarios, helping them to understand that in most cases, they will be okay despite market downturns. Lucas stresses that times like these are not anomalies, but are to be expected when investing. “It’s not a bug in the market, it’s a feature of the market. The market doesn’t always go straight up”. 

For financial planners, Lucas sees this time as an opportunity to focus on their marketing efforts. While some people are taking a break from promoting their firms, the practices that focus on marketing will come out of this crisis ahead of their competition. He advises making a push towards digital marketing, setting yourself up for success once this is over.

Hint: Want to learn more about attracting new clients despite the COVID-19 crisis? Check out our episode with best-selling author and marketing expert Allan Dib. 

To hear more about Lucas, like why he made the switch from environmental chemistry to asset management and how Camber is overcoming technological challenges, listen to the full episode using the link on the top of this page. Make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so that you never miss an episode.

To get notified the next time an episode goes live, subscribe to our mailing list below!

Zak Smith is the Senior Manager of Financial Planning and Wealth Strategies at Sagium, an independent wealth management firm in Calgary. He is a founding member of the newly formed Financial Planning Association of Canada and volunteers his time as a mentor for the Mount Royal University business department as well as with the CPA Financial Literacy Program. His recent successes include being named the 2019 winner of the PlanPlus Canada Financial Planning Awards, and 2nd runner up of the PlanPlus Global Awards program for the Americas region. 

Listen in to hear Zak talk about how feedback and competition make him a better financial planner, how he’s helping clients through the recent volatility in the markets, and what it’s like to serve clients as a team.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• What made Zak switch from accounting to planning (3:20)
• Zak’s typical process for clients (6:00)
• How Zak prepared clients for volatility in the markets (11:30)
• How feedback and competition make Zak a better financial planner (15:05)
• The challenges Zak encounters in his practice (23:45)
• How Zak’s team can provide a personal touch while working as a group (30:30)
• How Zak applies different perspectives to his work (34:15) 

Links and Resources:

Zak Smith

Sagium

Why Financial Planning Software Doesn’t Make Advisors Faster

Quotes by Zak Smith:

“Whether volatility exists now or in the future, we know it’s going to happen.”

“I was always cognizant that hey, is there any metric to what we actually do in this industry as far as a standard for what we’re delivering to our clients?”

“Clarity became the utmost piece in developing our plan reports so that it just made the conversation a lot easier with the clients.” 

Zak is unique as a guest on this show: he’s only five years into his career as a financial planner, and he doesn’t run his own practice. And yet, he’s built into his career ways to constantly improve himself as a planner. So whether you’re just starting or have been doing this a long time, and whether you run your own firm or not, you can draw from his experience and find ways to build on your skills.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• How Zak prepared clients for volatility in the markets

• How feedback and competition make Zak a better financial planner

• How Zak applies different perspectives to his work

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

How Zak prepared clients for the recent market volatility

Market volatility has been on all of our minds recently, and financial advisors are at the front lines of questions from clients about what they should do. Do they stay the course? Pull out as quickly as possible? Take advantage of low stock prices?

But Zak has seen fewer questions from clients than he would have expected, and he credits that to the stellar process his firm has when planning for clients. They engage clients in the process right from the beginning and make sure their clients understand that downturns and volatility are just part of the process.

Specifically, they use planning software to actually show clients what kind of volatility can exist in the markets and how it might affect their financial plans — so when clients see it happening in real life, a lot of the fear and confusion just doesn’t happen. Zak makes sure they know what the plan is and how they’ll be looked after no matter what’s happening in the market.

Of course, if clients do have questions, Zak’s team welcomes the conversation. But at no other time has the value of the process been more clear to Zak because he can see firsthand how much comfort their process has provided clients in uncertain times.

Hint: For another perspective to help you guide your clients through a difficult market, listen to How to Measure Client Progress Effectively (Even If Markets Decline) with David Christianson.

How feedback and competition make Zak a better financial planner

Anyone can learn from Zak’s (so far) short but successful career as a financial planner. In particular, he’s been very committed to improving himself as a planner, which has helped him achieve recognition in the field already. But more importantly, it’s made him able to provide a better service to clients.

External feedback

In 2019, Zak won the PlanPlus Canada Financial Planning Awards and was the second runner up in the Americas region for the global awards.

While the accolade is a major honour, Zak simply entered the competition because he wanted to see metrics and a standard for what he was delivering to clients. He had the sense that his team’s process was excellent, and his clients and colleagues seemed happy, but he wanted a panel of industry experts to look at what he was doing and give him feedback on what he could improve.

Before he entered the competition, he took a few years to evolve the process and plan reports with his team until he felt comfortable asking for that external feedback in the form of the competition.

Internal feedback

Zak’s passion for feedback doesn’t only come out in prestigious competitions, though.

It starts in his office, where he and his team do the planning for all of the firm’s clients, whether they’re looking for investments or insurance. Zak and his team do a lot of diverse financial plans, so they can’t always be in the room when those plans are presented to clients.

As a result, they rely on frequent discussions both among themselves and with the advisors at the firm to make sure their plans are working for clients. Zak’s door is always open to colleagues who have an idea to streamline the process, bring more clarity to plans, or improve the client experience.

More formally, they also meet at least once a month to debrief with the advisors and generate ideas for how they can improve the plans. This built-in opportunity to discuss and offer one another feedback is the foundation of Zak’s success as a planner.

How Zak applies different perspectives to his work

Since Zak is still new to the industry, he relies a lot on hearing others’ perspectives and learning from others’ experiences. Podcasts in particular have been a big source of learning from him, and he tries to keep an open mind to different ideas and points of view.

Some of his industry-specific favourites include:

• Michael Kitces’ Financial Advisor Success Podcast — a well-known classic.
• Jason Pereira’s Fintech Impact — a friend of the show who focuses on technology and how it impacts the industry.
• XYPN Radio — a US-centric show. But since the US seems to be further ahead in terms of industry changes, Zak finds this one relevant in terms of learning how he can adapt and service the next generation of clients.

One additional step Zak recommends is reaching out to people after consuming their content. When he has questions or just really connects with what someone writes in an article or says in a podcast, he isn’t afraid to reach out to connect and learn more from them.

Hint: Zak emphasizes that the most important part of learning from others is having a good filter. Everyone has different needs and contexts, so make sure that when you apply others’ ideas, you filter out what doesn’t work and shape the rest to your situation.

To hear more from Zak, like how his accounting background has informed his planning career and why he’s obsessed with clarity, take in the full episode, which you can find right here on this page. Or better yet, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

To get new episodes directly to your inbox, you can also sign up for our mailing list below.

Sasha Djurdjevic, CIM, FMA, DMS, is a portfolio manager serving global private and institutional clients at his firm, River Wealth. He has extensive capital markets experience and has held senior investment roles at prominent investment companies in Canada. Listen in to hear what Sasha has to say about his educational approach to financial planning, his tricks for communicating complex ideas to clients in a way that’s relevant to them, and how he balances his business with raising four children.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• Sasha’s unusual niche (6:40)
• Sasha’s 70% rule for financial planning (13:10)
• How Sasha acquires clients who live abroad (20:00)
• How Sasha uses idea generation to communicate complex ideas to clients (24:20)
• The value of transparency and openness (28:05)
• How Sasha balances running his practice with his personal life (38:20)
• Why it’s important to know yourself as an independent advisor (46:10) 

Links and Resources:

Sasha Djurdjevic

Aligned Capital Partners Inc.

Quotes by Sasha:

“Trying to bucket people, and say that if you’re a non-resident you have these unique issues, is useful to a point, but the reality is that every client is different.”

“Help people to understand the context a little more, and you’ll end up with a more satisfied or self-actualized client, who then will value your work more highly.”

“Instead of trying to come up with a perfect plan, come up with a plan that does a pretty good job of reflecting what’s in front of you and what you know, then put your full effort into that plan.”

With Sasha’s experience working with a mix of institutional, retail, and global clients, he’s had to shift contexts, meet people where they’re at, and translate difficult concepts into learning opportunities relevant to each unique client.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas that he’s imparting to you:

• How Sasha approaches educating his clients
• The value of transparency and openness
• Sasha’s 70% rule for financial planning

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

How Sasha approaches educating his clients

When Sasha first started serving retail clients, the biggest challenge he had coming from working with industry clients was the amount of hand-holding he felt he had to do to help people understand their financial situations and the work that he does.

He was used to working with people who knew as much as, or more than, him about finance. But with retail clients, he knows so much more about the topic, and numbers are so much more a part of the way he thinks, that he found it difficult at first to relate to where his clients were coming from.

He realized that as an advisor, he can ask all of the right questions… but his clients will still not necessarily know the answers. They may have a basic idea of what they want and what they can do with their money, but they don’t really know what’s possible.

But he also didn’t want to take client education in the other direction — some advisors give a lot of information to their clients, but that information isn’t relevant to the specific person they’re talking to. Without a focus on the client and their objectives, an overload of information is useless and overwhelming.

Sasha has learned over time to find a balance between the two extremes. He spends time dialoguing with clients and making them part of the planning process. Within it, he finds opportunities to integrate education about their contexts.

In these conversations, he helps open their minds to what they can do in their situations — thus helping them achieve goals they didn’t even know were possible.

The value of transparency and openness with clients

Hand in hand with education comes transparency — and Sasha likes to take the time to explain to his clients how the industry works. He doesn’t teach them the full nuance; rather, he gives them enough context to help them understand their place within it.

Transparency doesn’t specifically produce revenue in itself — instead, Sasha’s reasoning behind it is that it purely benefits the client. Hopefully, that means more business for him, but the goal is never to extract as much revenue as he can from people. The outcome he’s looking for is that the client is informed and happy.

“Help people to understand the context a little more,” he explains, “and you’ll end up with a more satisfied or self-actualized client, who then will value your work more highly.” And when they value your work, they are willing to pay for that value.

Hint: To hear from an advisor with a commitment to radical transparency, listen to our episode on building and managing a successful investment firm. You’ll hear from Steadyhand’s Tom Bradley about his “obscenely transparent” practices and how you can apply them in your business.

The taboo topics

A commitment to transparency means breaching the taboo topics of fees and benchmarking. There’s a common misconception that discussing these topics has a risk of poor optics for the advisor — what if you’re underperforming the benchmark? What if someone else has a lower fee? (And let’s be honest: there will always be someone out there with a lower fee.)

If you’re avoiding these topics, clients will feel like you have something to hide. And if anyone does ask you about them, you’ll feel thrown off and uncomfortable answering their questions. If you address these topics head-on, though, your clients will feel that you’re being open and honest with them, and they’ll trust you more for it.

Hint: A great question to ask potential clients is, “what have your conversations about this (fees benchmarks, or whatever else) been with your past advisor?” Unfortunately, most clients won’t have an answer because their advisor won’t have discussed these things with them — automatically making you look like a more trust-worthy, valuable choice.

Sasha’s 70% rule for financial planning

Sasha feels that the financial plans he creates for his clients are more general than what many other advisors do.

One reason for this is that people’s predictive abilities aren’t very good; most people can’t reliably tell what their lives will look like in the future. And that makes sense — there are so many variables to consider that it’s impossible to know what the future will bring. 

Especially with younger clients, there is always time to adjust the plan, and a lot of control over your strategy. It just doesn’t make sense to put in every little detail and obsess over little things 30 years from now that you are still able to change in the meantime.

Hint: Not only is too much detail not very useful, it often bores clients. If you fill your financial plans with information that isn’t meaningful to them (and a lot of numbers they don’t understand), they won’t feel as invested in the plan and will be less likely to stick with it.

When it comes to financial planning, Sasha applies a rule used by the US Marines: the 70% rule. In imperfect situations — like a battlefield or, let’s be honest, life in general — don’t aim for a perfect plan. Instead, aim for a plan that’s 70% there. If you have 70% of the information you need, 70% of the possible implications of your plan and 70% confidence in its accuracy, that’s a great start.

And that’s the caveat — it’s a start. Put your full efforts into the plan, with the full understanding that you will adjust it continually as you learn more information.

Catch the full episode to hear from Sasha about how he works globally while thinking like a local business and why as a business owner, the first thing you need to understand is yourself. You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Robert Watterson is the owner of Watterson Financial Solutions, a firm that handles financial planning, accounting, compliance, insurance, asset protection and tax services. Listen to hear what Robert has to say about how working in forensic accounting informs his current work, how he remains focused with so many different areas of practice, and how his interest in blockchain technology helped him develop an audit-ready bookkeeping system.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• How Robert moved from military forensic accountant to advisor (5:00)
• How his military experience informs the way he acquires clients (9:10)
• Staying focused while providing different offerings (18:40)
• How the different parts of Robert’s business build on one another (21:40)
• The blockchain’s impact on the financial industry (23:40)
• Robert’s audit-ready bookkeeping system (30:30)
• Robert’s biggest challenge in growing his practice (35:10)
• Why service is the most important part of running a practice (38:00)

Links and Resources:

Watterson Financial

Send Robert an email

Quotes by Robert:

“In the military, one of the things that they taught us was never look for what’s good for you; look for what’s good for the overall project you’re working on. And if you’re working with a client, that means the overall good for the client.”

“Make yourself referable… If you are referable, they will come back to you for work or they will have somebody come to you for work.”

“If you don’t worry about making money off every client, the client will worry about making sure you make money.”

With Robert’s different interests and areas of expertise – forensic accounting, blockchain technology, compliance and financial planning – it can be difficult to see how everything fits together. And yet, he’s able to pull knowledge and skills from different areas to create a unique practice in a way that we can all learn from.

• How Robert’s military experience informs the way he acquires clients
• Robert’s obsession with learning
• Robert’s biggest challenge in growing his practice

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

How Robert’s military experience informs the way he acquires clients

In the military, there is a high emphasis on sharing information freely and looking out for the team. Robert had to make sure that if he was injured or killed during an assignment (yes, the stakes were that high), somebody else still had the knowledge and skills to do his job. As a result, he is used to an open culture of constant teaching and learning.

He explains that “in the military, one of the things that they taught us was never look for what’s good for you; look for what’s good for the overall project you’re working on. And if you’re working with a client, that means the overall good for the client.”

Robert feels deeply that his job is to help people, and he’s never afraid to give his time freely to people without expecting anything in return. At the large insurance firm he worked at, he often took on the clients and cases nobody else wanted because they didn’t come with obvious financial gain for the advisors.

People did tell him that if he did this, eventually clients would come back to him. And while that’s not why he helps people, the prediction was correct.

That’s the irony of good service – when you don’t look at how much money you can make and focus instead on helping people, financial success often follows as a result. In fact, Watterson Financial Solutions no longer advertises their business at all – they can’t because they have so many referrals coming through.

Robert summarizes the approach like this: “Service your client. Give them the information they need and don’t worry about making money off of them. If you don’t worry about making money off every client, the client will worry about making sure you make money.”

Robert’s obsession with learning

Another aspect that Robert brought from the military into his advising is his ability to learn. In the military, he would have to learn about projects (and the associated knowledge and skills) quickly and expertly – when investigating other countries or protecting against financial warfare, a mistake could cost him his life.

As a civilian, Robert has maintained a hunger for knowledge. He isn’t a dabbler – if he’s going to proceed with something, he needs to know everything he possibly can about it. He certainly doesn’t feel comfortable advising people on anything he doesn’t fully understand.

For example, he recalls that his team once spent 18 months looking into a new investment before ever mentioning it to a client – he wanted to be sure he thoroughly understood everything there was to know about it first. He certainly refuses to do things halfway.

Similarly, he realized early on that blockchain technology was going to transform the financial industry. When he found out that post-secondary schools were beginning to offer courses and degrees in blockchain, he took one of the first offerings available in North America and became the first (and still only) forensic accountant blockchain professional.

With or without Robert’s military background and remarkable ability to absorb and understand new information, you can apply his principles about learning to your advising. Your clients expect you to be an expert in your field – make sure that’s what you deliver. Own your expertise and be aware of your limitations so that you can address them and serve your clients to the best of your ability.

Hint: To hear more about the importance of learning throughout your career, listen to our episode on improving your practice through professional education with Jason Watt. 

Robert’s biggest challenge in growing his practice 

Robert says that the biggest challenge in his career has been always wanting to already be at the next higher level.

For example, when he left his insurance company, the company’s regulations stated that he couldn’t take his 700 clients with him; he had to walk away from relationships he’d built over years and begin rebuilding his client base.

Robert has been learning to feel comfortable with the level he’s at right now even as he strives for more, and channeling his frustrations to fuel his motivation.

Hint: If you’re feeling frustrated about your practice’s growth (or lack thereof), keep in mind that running a business is not a sprint by any means. Listen to our episode on predictably growing your practice with systems, tools, and referrals for suggestions from John Page on where to focus your efforts to build a sustainable business.

Make sure you catch Robert’s full episode to hear more, including his early involvement in blockchain technology and how it informed his audit-ready bookkeeping system (yes, it really is audit-ready). You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Martin Pelletier is a portfolio manager and managing director at TriVest Wealth Counsel, a division of Wellington-Altus Private Wealth. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder and has extensive investment industry experience, including senior roles in capital markets, private banking, venture capital, wealth management, and family and multi-family office.

Martin is regularly featured in the media and is a weekly contributor to the Financial Post's Investment Pro section. He is a member of Thomson Reuters Canada’s top 40 social influencers in finance, innovation and risk (2017), was a top-10 finalist for the BlackRock Award for Canadian Portfolio/Discretionary Manager of the Year (2018) and was recently named to Wealth Professional Canada Magazine’s Leading Portfolio Managers (2019).

Listen in to hear what Martin has to say about risk, return, and the foundation of his success.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• How Martin (accidentally) avoided the financial crisis (2:05)
• How goals-based benchmarking removes unnecessary risk (6:25)
• How asset management differs between high net worth and ultra-high net worth clients (12:30)
• Building trust at scale (17:00)
• How thinking big and building small has contributed to Martin’s success (21:55)
• How advisors need to reposition themselves to succeed in a changing industry (28:20)
• How Martin has eliminated the most challenging aspect of his business (33:40)
• Why he thinks you should never get comfortable (40:40) 

Links and Resources:

TriVest Wealth

Martin Pelletier

Email Martin

Quotes by Martin: 

“With ETFs coming out, it’s democratized the investment industry, and commoditized it.”

“It’s all about building relationships. The number one reason why someone’s going to decide to go with you is trust.”

“If you really want to impose change, you have to think big and build small.”

Martin Pelletier’s financial advice is sought after both by the media, and high and ultra-high net worth families. Today, he’s sharing his expertise with us.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• How goals-based benchmarking removes unnecessary risk
• How asset management differs between high net worth and ultra-high net worth clients
• Building trust at scale

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

How goals-based benchmarking removes unnecessary risk

It’s pretty clear at this point that the value proposition of financial advisors needs to change — with technology and new products making do-it-yourself investing easy and inexpensive, advisors have to offer something more.

For Martin, that something more is a holistic planning solution that tailors investment portfolios not to an index, but to a client’s specific goals.

Every investor has a goal they want to achieve, whether it’s retiring in five years, travelling, spending their time volunteering, or working part-time. Martin starts by understanding what it is his clients want to achieve.

Next, he derives a cash flow statement and comes up with a target return. Finally, he designs a custom portfolio and structures it to provide that return.

If a client needs a 5% rate of return to achieve the lifestyle they want, there’s no reason to have a more volatile portfolio. Beating, or even matching, an index isn’t the point — the point is meeting the client’s goals while minimizing risk

Client reactions

You may be reluctant to try this approach with your clients because you’re worried about how they’ll react. Wouldn’t anybody want to squeeze as much out of their portfolio as they can? Why settle for a 4% or 5% rate of return when you could shoot for 7% or more?

Martin hasn’t found that to be an issue. First of all, he interviews prospective clients to ensure they’re a good fit for one another, and this is one thing he looks for — if someone is trying to outperform the market, they aren’t the right client for him. And once his ideal clients get to know him, they trust him to focus on their specific goals rather than beating some kind of average.

Hint: To hear from another advisor who personalizes portfolios to his clients’ goals, listen to our episode with Peter Cishecki on the one change you can make to your practice to really put clients first.

How asset management differs between high net worth and ultra-high net worth clientsWith most of his clients’ AUMs falling between $1 million and $20 million (with one family at $500 million), Martin’s specialty is around the high and ultra-high net worth segments. And while the two might seem similar, Martin has found a big difference between managing $1 million and $20 million portfolios.

With more assets, he’s able to introduce more unique investment products, like private equity. That often doesn’t make sense to someone with $1 million — you often can’t invest a meaningful amount while keeping the portfolio weighting reasonable. Just $100,000 is a full 10% of their portfolio, and the risk can be too big.

That’s not to say that a high net worth client can’t have a well-diversified portfolio or achieve similar goals — of course they can. The process might just look different.

And the ultra-high net worth clients don’t just allow for more customization — the sophistication of their profile often demands it. Typically, they have far more complicated financial situations, with cross-border companies, unique compensation structures, assets in various currencies, and multiple holding companies. As such, the planning needs to be more in-depth and personalized.

Building trust at scale

When it comes to marketing himself and acquiring clients, Martin gets right to the heart of the matter. “It’s all about building relationships,” he says. “The number one reason why someone’s going to decide to go with you is trust.”

And with social media, you can start building trust before even meeting a prospect by creating and sharing good quality content online.

You might worry that writing down and sharing your best advice and tips is giving away your secret sauce. Sure, there will always be people who will read your work and apply it themselves — but those aren’t real prospects because they aren’t people who want to work with an advisor anyway. The clients you are targeting are people who want you to manage their money for them, not people who want to do it themselves.

Martin has been a longtime contributor to various media outlets, including a weekly column in the Financial Post. But with social media, you don’t need a platform like that to reach potential clients — you can provide good quality information straight to your own audience.

Hint: Whatever information you want to convey, make sure you connect it with something topical — something in the headlines or that your audience is already thinking about. You can have the most important advice in the world, but if it doesn’t grab their attention or seem relevant, they’ll never read it in the first place.

To hear more from Martin about his practice, the habits that have made him successful, and how he managed to neutralize the most challenging aspect of his business, listen to the full episode. You can find it right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any future episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

In a change of pace, today’s episode is an introduction to one of our favourite podcasts: Fintech Impact. You’ll hear host Jason Pereira interview Tea Nicola, CEO of Wealthbar, and our own Pawel Brzeminski, CEO of Snap Projections.

The Fintech Impact Podcast is hosted by Jason Pereira who explores the fintech space and interviews its major players — both incumbents and newcomers. Whether they’re trying to make existing finance players more efficient or looking to disrupt the industry altogether, this show explores their impact on consumers and the industry as a whole.

Listen in to hear about Wealthbar’s acquisition of Snap Projections, what that relationship will look like going forward, and Tea and Pawel’s shared vision for how fintech can impact the industry — and the lives of average Canadians.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why a partnership between Wealthbar and Snap Projections makes sense (2:05)
• What the end product looks like for both clients and advisors (6:30)
• Pawel’s product-building philosophy (16:40)
• Revealing Tea and Pawel’s wishes for their industry (23:00)
• The biggest challenges Tea and Pawel have faced in scaling their companies (27:05)
• What gets these founders out of bed every morning (30:55)

Links and Resources:

Wealthbar

Tea Nicola

Snap Projections

Pawel Brzeminski

Fintech Impact

Jason Pereira

 Quotes from the Episode:

“It just made sense to basically own software that is going to eventually become what I want to see, which is a vision for a full practice management platform for an independent financial advisor.” — Tea Nicola 

“This is technology that’s gonna enable you, not threaten you.” — Jason Pereira

“In a lot of cases, it actually takes an advisor to make adjustments. I don’t think we can really have a fully automated tool that can provide the best solution for every single case.” — Pawel Brzeminski

With their shared goal of transforming the financial services industry in Canada and making the lives of both advisors and consumers easier, Tea and Pawel’s recent partnership is a match made in heaven. Today, they’re opening up about what that vision is, how it brought them together, and the impact they hope to have on Canadians.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• A vision for personal finance in Canada
• Where automation leaves financial advisors
• Tea’s wish for the average Canadian

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

A vision for personal finance in Canada

Picture a busy mom walking into her home carrying bags of groceries. As she sets them down, she gets a notification on her phone. Maybe her TFSA contribution limit just increased, or RESP season has started.

With one button, she can react to the notification without a second thought. Or, if she wants support making a decision, she can easily get in touch with a real-life advisor who can talk her through next steps.

That’s Tea’s vision for what Wealthbar can be for the average Canadian consumer.

It’s a guided, one-stop-shop for Canadian consumers for everything to do with investing, planning, insurance, mortgages, lines of credit and so on. Most actions can be routine, so users barely even have to think about what they need to do — they can trust that the software’s suggestion makes sense for them. And if they need further support, a human advisor is there to act as their quarterback.

Where automation leaves financial advisors

You might be wondering where exactly this kind of automated system leaves financial advisors. Does it devalue the hard work many have put into their careers? Is it a cheap mimic of the skills advisors and wealth managers have developed over many years?

From Pawel and Tea’s perspective, robo-advisors do just the opposite: they let you manage your time more effectively by taking care of your rote tasks — the administration, much of the research and portfolio management. These tasks, which often take a lot of time, are not the true value-add that an advisor offers clients.

If you’re like one of the many advisors we’ve spoken to and worked with over the years, the part of your job that you love and value the most is the actual relationship with your clients: the advice you can give them when they’re stuck, or making sure their financial plan makes sense not only in terms of the numbers but also in terms of what they seek to get out of life.

This is also doubtlessly what your clients appreciate most about working with you. And if you can spend less time on the dreary routine tasks and more on your clients, think about the impact you can have on their lives.

Luckily, the rote tasks are the exact things that a robo-advisor lets you outsource to automation. It’s just about making more room for you to provide what technology can never replace: the human touch.

For instance, with today’s robo-advisor and planning software, you can generate a pretty solid financial plan and a solid investment strategy. But as Pawel explains, “in a lot of cases, it actually takes an advisor to make adjustments. I don’t really think we can really have a fully automated tool that can provide the best solution for every single case.”

With the time-consuming heavy-lifting out of the way, you can focus on tailoring the plan for your clients to take their plans to the next level. That human aspect — the qualitative details, the behavioural coaching — can’t be replaced by any machine.

As Jason summarizes, “this is technology that’s gonna enable you, not threaten you.”

Tea’s wish for the average Canadian

If Tea had one wish, she would love to see financial literacy among average Canadians increase tenfold.

Currently, Canada scores at about a C-minus for financial literacy. But this is a worldwide problem — sadly, we’re among the most financially literate countries in the world. But as Tea says, “being the best of the worst is still not good.”

For Tea, this lack of financial literacy is not just bad for Canadians — ignorance is actually her biggest competitor. When people don’t know any better, they buy into media sensationalism and fads, believing the hype about the shiny new thing.

If average Canadians knew enough about finance, Tea feels they would realize why they need a product like Wealthbar in their lives. They would see the value of a good financial plan, and they would love to see it better integrated into their lives.

To hear more of Tea and Pawel’s conversation with Jason, and their shared vision for the future of financial services, listen to the full episode right here on this page. You can also find us and subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

John De Goey is a Portfolio Manager with Wellington-Altus Private Wealth. He has built a national reputation as a trusted authority on professional, transparent and evidence-based financial advice. He’s written for publications including Canadian MoneySaver, MoneySense and The Globe and Mail, and appeared on television programs like CBC’s MarketPlace, News World and BNN’s Market Call. He’s the author of The Professional Financial Advisor, now in its fourth edition, and STANDUP to the Financial Services Industry, released last year.

In today’s episode, he’ll discuss misconceptions commonly held by financial advisors, why advisors might hold these misconceptions, and what you should believe instead. Listen in to hear more about John’s work, research and advice for advisors and investors.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The unglamorous yet insightful reason behind John becoming an advisor (3:35)
• Common myths and misconceptions in financial advising (5:00)
• What advisors get wrong about cost (9:15)
• Why advisors ignore the evidence and recommend activities that don’t add value (18:20)
• The key beliefs advisors should focus on improving (26:35)
• Why investors will need to be part of the solution (21:55)
• Why the reason for advisors’ beliefs isn’t the most important question to explore (38:20) 

Links and Resources: 

Standup Advisors

STANDUP to the Financial Services Industry: Protecting Yourself From Well-Intended But Oblivious Advisors

Email John

Quotes by John De Goey:

“There are a lot of advisors that should be part of the solution, want to be part of the solution, but the really ugly secret that a lot of people in the industry don’t want to come to terms with is that there are many advisors that are themselves part of the problem.” 

“Any advisor who is worth his or her salt would do very well to understand that where the rubber hits the road is in the behaviour that they help to enforce or disabuse their clients of.”

“This is perhaps the only industry in the world that I’ve ever found where the low-cost products are the best products.”

We’re so thrilled that for the fiftieth episode of Growing Your Financial Advisory Practice Podcast, John De Gooey is back on the show to celebrate with us. If you missed his first episode, it was all about determining the key assumptions you should use when developing financial projections. Today, we’re looking at the opposite topic: John is here to bust the myths and misconceptions you may have as a financial advisor — myths that could be holding you, and your clients, back.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• What advisors get wrong about cost
• Why investors will need to be part of the solution
• The key beliefs advisors should focus on improving

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

What advisors get wrong about cost

A lot of advisors tend to act like the cost of products is immaterial. But in fact, cost makes up a full half of the value proposition, the other half being the benefit. When you change the cost of a product, you actually change its value.

Cost is also one of the most reliable determiners of a product’s performance — it’s inversely correlated to product’s performance. Consistently, lower-cost products perform the best over time. But many advisors either don’t realize this or ignore this fact.

This might be because with most things in life, you get what you pay for. A good quality suit or vehicle, over time, deliver far more value than a cheap version.

But when it comes to investing, as Vanguard founder John Bogle used to say, “you get what you don’t pay for.” The more a product costs, the more it eats into your return and the lower your return is expected to be. So, in what might be the only exception in the world, the low-cost products are actually the highest quality products.

This fact is more relevant than ever — in a world economy in which returns are significantly lower than they used to be even just 30 years ago, this information becomes all the more important to apply.

Why investors will need to be part of the solution

For most of his career, John focused on other advisors, working to get them to challenge their assumptions and rethink the advice they give. The whole time, even through releasing four editions of his book, The Professional Financial Advisor, he’s felt ignored and overlooked inside of his industry.

Now, he’s turned his attention to investors. His newest book, STANDUP to the Financial Services Industry is written for clients, and he wants to show them how their advisor may be part of the problem.

While he’s careful to clarify that advisors’ intentions are generally very good — most people don’t go to work every day with the desire to hurt people — the results of poor financial advice can be harmful.

What investors need to do

John encourages investors to take the following three steps in ensuring their advisor is using evidence-based practices in their advising:

1. Summon up the courage to ask their advisors tough questions (as Canadians, we know this isn’t always easy).
2. Ask the right questions — John has included a number of questions that he recommends people ask right in his book.
3. Discern and call out if the answer isn’t evidence-based. John includes some of the best pieces of research on his website for investors to find and use in conversations with their advisors.

There are two things keeping investors from holding their advisors accountable: not having the tools and knowledge to do so, and being too accepting of unsatisfying answers. John’s helping cover the first piece — the latter is up to each individual to combat on their own.

The key beliefs advisors should focus on improving

If there’s one area John wants advisors to focus on, it’s beliefs around behavioural economics and behavioural finance.

More and more, the emerging evidence reveals that investor behaviour is probably the most important factor of financial wellbeing, yet most advisors don’t pay much attention to it, seeing their role too firmly in the investment side of things.

John explains it like this: “When you ask a typical advisor what he or she does for a living, many of them will say, ‘Well I recommend products and I help my clients save taxes,’ and whatever. But some of the more enlightened ones will go a little bit further and say ‘I help my clients by engaging in behavioural coaching.’”

If you can help clients invest in the right registered account or save just $100 more every month, you can have a major impact on their life.

Hint: This sometimes means disappointing your client by correcting their misguided beliefs: rather than just facilitating what it is they want, challenge their assumptions and give them advice about what will actually help them in the long term.

Correcting the implementation gap

One major part of investor behaviour that you should be focusing on is implementing the plan that you put together. You spend so much time and effort doing the proper diagnostics, suggesting great solutions, and coming up with the perfect plan, but none of that helps the client if they don’t actually put anything into action.

A plan that doesn’t get updated or used isn’t worth anything. So along with actually updating plans on an ongoing basis, helping clients implement solutions should be a major focus of financial advising.

To hear more of John’s advice, listen to the full episode where he explores various financial advising myths in depth, speculates as to why advisors hold these beliefs — and explains why that’s actually the wrong question altogether. You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Terry Ritchie is a Partner and Director of Cross-Border Wealth Services for Cardinal Point, with offices in Toronto, Calgary, Irvine, Phoenix, and Boca Raton. He is a Registered Financial Planner in Canada and is enrolled to practice before the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as an Enrolled Agent. Terry is also a Trust and Estate Practitioner affiliated with the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners. He has been practicing cross-border financial, investment, tax and estate planning for more than 30 years. 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• What actually drives people to move between Canada and the United States (6:45)
• Why cross-border work matters to Terry (10:10)
• What advisors need to know about visas and green cards (13:40)
• Important elements of U.S. income tax (23:50)
• Investment limitations of Canadians in the US (28:10)
• How cross-border living affects estate planning (37:10)
• The biggest cross-border planning mistake you can make (43:45)
• Terry’s #1 tip for growing a career you really love (53:20)

 Links and Resources: 

Cardinal Point

Email Terry

Quotes by Terry Ritchie: 

“I can quantify the numbers that you might be better off from a tax perspective in that jurisdiction or country versus this one. But really at the end of the day, it’s truly around lifestyle. Where are they going to be happiest?”

“It’s just the nature of the business. Markets go up and down... Tax laws change. Family dynamics change.”

“Advisors have a right to say no,” he says. “There has to be a fit – on both sides.”

Terry’s firm, Cardinal Point, offers a total solution to individuals who have Canadian and American financial matters – snowbirds, those who have dependants in one country while living in the other, and those who move between the two countries. And as someone who has financial matters in both countries himself, he has unique insights into what it takes to plan for people like him.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• What actually drives people to move between Canada and the United States
• The biggest cross-border planning mistake you can make
• Terry’s #1 tip for growing a career you really love

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

What actually drives people to move between Canada and the United States

If you were paying attention to social media around the 2016 American election, you probably would have heard Americans who were dissatisfied with or worried about the results and saying that they would be moving to Canada. However, that flood of Americans moving to Canada hasn’t panned out.

It turns out that tax talk doesn’t much affect people’s decisions about where to live, either.

“I can quantify the numbers that you might be better off from a tax perspective in that jurisdiction or country versus this one,” says Terry. “But really at the end of the day, it’s truly around lifestyle.” It’s about where they see themselves living and where they will be the happiest.

Healthcare is often a big factor, but family is the biggest reason for people choosing to live in one place over another. Terry has had clients go through many of the steps required to permanently move to the United States… until a grandchild in Canada came along and changed all of their plans.

It’s important to know all of the factors going into a move or change of citizenship, but people rarely act purely in their financial best interest – and that’s ok.

The biggest cross-border planning mistake you can make

The biggest mistake Terry sees financial planners making in the area of cross-border planning is… well, taking it on at all. If they’re not well-versed in it, that is.

If it’s not your niche, the truth is that you probably don’t have the skills needed to do cross-border planning effectively. And it’s not subject matter that you can just brush up on in a weekend seminar and be ready to go.

If one thing is clear from Terry’s advice, it’s that cross-border planning is very complex. From limitations on holding investment accounts depending on where an individual resides or has citizenship to multiple sets of tax laws to immigration… there is a lot of liability for the client, for you, and for your firm.

Not to mention that all of these laws change from year to year, and just keeping up with the updates and knowing how they’ll affect clients is almost a full-time job in itself.

If you don’t have the background to take on a certain aspect – or even the entirety – of your client’s planning, there’s nothing wrong with bringing someone else in or referring them to someone who can offer them the services and experience they need most. Yes, it can be hard to let go of the AUM (and the pay that comes with it…), but, put simply, “if you don’t know what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be doing it.”

Hint: If you’re looking for advice on working with other financial professionals, listen back to the show with Cindy Radu, where she discusses bridging the gap to work effectively with other advisors.

Terry’s #1 tip for growing a career you really love

Terry really wants you to take away that you don’t have to do everything for every client.

At the beginning of your career, it’s easy to feel like you have to take on any client and do whatever they ask you to do, even if it’s not within your preferred niche.

But, says Terry, “advisors have a right to say no. There has to be a fit – on both sides.”

It’s definitely not worth it to take on people you call tell are jerks – they’re only going to cause you trouble down the road. Work with nice people so that you look forward to meeting with them and putting in the work for them. You’ll not only be happier – you’ll likely do a better job for them, too.

This goes for your niche, too. If you know what niche you want to serve (and Terry recommends having one), don’t feel like you need to work for clients who aren’t a good fit for that niche. Your time is valuable, so the time you put into your business should be spent building your expertise in a particular area, not catering to anyone who comes along.

Terry’s firm has this very well defined: they only offer full-service solutions, not individual services. If someone’s just looking to get some tax advice, they’re not the right fit.  “We’re not for everybody, but for those people that we can serve, we try to do a really, really good job.”Defining guidelines

In addition to working with good people on work you want to do, make sure you’re clear for the beginning on what the relationship is and what kind of work you will or won’t do. Setting up clear boundaries is the best way to avoid uncomfortable situations in the future.

For more helpful advice from Terry, make sure you catch the full episode where he talks about the ins and outs of the tax, estate planning, and immigration considerations that can affect financial planning. You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Jason Pereira is a Senior Financial Consultant with Woodgate Financial Inc and IPC Securities Corp. He is one of Canada's most respected authorities on financial planning, the financial industry, and financial technology. He’s been awarded 7 industry designations including the CFA, CFP, and RFP. He has won and been named a finalist for several industry awards, and he is the only 3-time winner of the PlanPlus Global Financial Planning Awards. 

Jason is also the leader of a growing group of financial advisors seeking to improve financial planning, both for advisors and consumers. As the president of the newly launched Financial Planning Association of Canada (FPAC), he’s here to talk about his hopes for the future of financial planning in this country.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• Why FPAC exists and what its goals are (2:40)
• Why FPAC needed to be a new organization in order to reach its goals (10:30)
• How FPAC will benefit the public (15:30)
• How FPAC plans on handling enforcement (17:05)
• The benefits of FPAC membership to advisors (21:40)
• What types of memberships are available (27:05)
• What the reception for FPAC has been like in the industry (29:45) 

Links and Resources:

Financial Planning Association of Canada

FPCA Charter

Email Jason

Woodgate Financial Inc

 Quotes by Jason Pereira: 

“This is a coming together of like-minded individuals who want to see the professionalization of planning in Canada, and to basically move this industry and this country forward.”

“We’re trying to create the member body that basically is going to push for active change.”

“We’re not going to be able to build the industry up if we don’t provide the resources to do that.”

You might remember Jason from an earlier episode of the show (and if you didn’t, do take the time to hear his advice for competing – and winning – in the Canadian HNW segment). However, today’s show is a little different as we’ll be hearing from Jason about his passion project of transforming financial planning from a sales-based industry to a robust profession in Canada.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• Why FPAC exists (2:40)
• The goals of the Financial Planning Association of Canada 
• The benefits of FPAC membership to advisors (21:40)

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

Why FPAC exists

Jason and others started FPAC out of frustration with the status quo of financial planning in Canada. He was seeing that worldwide, among established and even many developing markets, Canada is far behind in terms of its financial planning infrastructure.

While there are many planners who want to see the landscape improve, there hasn’t been a committed yet accessible members’ association that can use the strength of numbers to push for real change.

As Jason puts it, “this is a coming together of like-minded individuals who want to see the professionalization of planning in Canada, and to basically move this industry and this country forward.” This means pushing for regulatory, technology, tax and legal changes to build out an ecosystem supportive of a strong financial planning profession.

The goals of the Financial Planning Association of Canada 

Looking at other countries and different industries, Jason and others outlined an end state for what the industry should look like. They broke that ideal down into three main goals.

Fiduciary-level planning

This is the cornerstone of professionalization. Most consumers just assume that financial planners have a legal obligation to act in their best interest – but that’s not the case. There are certainly organizations that ask or require their members to act in clients’ best interests, but the legal weight doesn’t back the requirement up.

To be a member of FPAC, you must pledge from the first day that you will act as a fiduciary. FPAC is also calling for a legal fiduciary standard for anyone calling themselves a financial planner.

Higher professional standards

Speaking of which, right now in most provinces anyone can call themselves a financial planner – the term doesn’t really mean anything. The result is that the level of service and competence can vary wildly. 

FPAC wants the term financial planner to mean something. They also want there to be no question that anyone carrying a CFP or RFP can provide sound financial planning.

Evidence-based financial planning

Too many advisors operate on unproven heuristics, assumptions, and rules of thumb. FPAC wants advisors to operate based on evidence.

Are you recommending an investment portfolio? Make sure you have a solid risk tolerance questionnaire to back it up. If you’re advising on insurance, you have to have a solid needs analysis, and so on.

The benefits of FPAC membership to advisors

On the surface, belonging to FPAC might sound like signing up to follow a lot of rules. But Jason is committed to building up the resources planners need to help them reach the required standards. “We’re not going to be able to build the industry up if we don’t provide the resources to do that,” he explains.

While they’ve only just launched the association, they will be rolling out major initiatives to help planners improve their practices.

Best practices wiki

FPAC is creating a wiki of best practices that will act as a guide on how to run your practice from start to finish. While anyone can edit it, there will also be curators to help create definitive guidelines and suggestions and ensure the content doesn’t become outdated.

Planning portal

Jason sees this as a hybrid between an academic journal and a concept library. It will include how-tos on everything planning-related, all backed by evidence and research. For example, if you’re executing an individual pension plan, there will be a definitive article on what that is, where it fits into a financial plan, how to implement it, who to go to and what tools you can use.

You can think of it as a one-stop repository for how to actually plan for your clients.

A large online forum

They will also create an online forum for members to participate in. This will work to build a community of members who can help one another raise the bar for financial planning in Canada.

Opportunities to give back

Jason has been hearing from colleagues across the country for years that there’s not a great structure for financial planners to offer financial planning services pro bono. As a result, they want to build a pro bono community to connect financial planners with communities that most need their help.

Trust

Jason’s vision is that as consumers start to learn about FPAC, they will demand its standards of their own financial planners. Consumers want to be able to trust their financial professionals, and they will seek out those who are demonstratively working for them.

If you want to learn more about FPAC, be sure to listen to the full episode and check out the FPAC charter. And come back in two weeks for more great financial planning advice from experts like Jason.

You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Cindy Radu is a family wealth transition advisor. She works with individuals, family enterprises, business owners and family offices to maneuver the complexities and opportunities of multi-generational wealth. Cindy has over 25 years of legal, fiduciary, trust and governance experience, giving her a bird’s eye view of the many issues families can face.

Listen to the episode to hear how Cindy frames wealth, family enterprise, and success in a way that helps her clients handle the complicated financial and emotional factors involved in transitioning family wealth.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• Rethinking the key issues around transitioning wealth and family businesses in Canada (8:05)
• The difference between a family business and a family enterprise – and why it matters (11:10)
• Cindy’s first steps when advising clients (18:45)
• How Cindy bridges critical gaps by working effectively with other advisors (25:25)
• Helping families avoid assumptions and get on the same page (33:40)
• What wealth and wealth management really mean (39:30) 

Links and Resources: 

Cindy Radu

Cindy on LinkedIn

Email Cindy

Quotes by Cindy Radu:

“Way too many families are willing to stake everything they work so hard for on basically a hope and a prayer that everything is going to turn out alright.”

“Referrals from clients are frankly the strongest possible referrals that you can get.”

“I’ve been successful in my practice because I’m able to bridge those emotional and technical aspects of the wealth planning and transition.”

Cindy has been a Chartered Accountant and estate planning lawyer, and she’s also worked with large financial institutions. And yet all of her work has had one common goal: helping families through transitions. Today, she shares her experience to reframe the conversation around family wealth transitions.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• Rethinking the key issues around transitioning wealth and family businesses in Canada
• The difference between a family business and a family enterprise – and why it matters
• What wealth and wealth management really mean

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

Rethinking the key issues around transitioning wealth and family businesses in Canada

There are nearly 900,000 family businesses in Canada. Together they contribute to over 60% of GDP, employ over 6 million people, and donate annually $1.5 billion to charity.

However, successful wealth transition from the first generation of a family business to the next only has a 30% chance of success. Worse yet, the chance of a second generation transitioning their wealth to the third generation is a measly 10%.

So where does this failure come from? If you look at what most financial professionals focus on, you’d think that tax and financial planning problems are the major issue. However, together these only contribute to about 3% of transition failures.

Here’s how the other 97% breaks down:

• The vast majority – about 60% – of wealth transition failures come from a breakdown in communication and trust between family members.
• Around one quarter of failures is due to the next generation not being adequately prepared to be good stewards of the wealth.
• In just over 10% of cases, a lack of mission or vision contributed to the failure.

These numbers are a stark wake-up call to anyone who believes that financial planning is all about the numbers. That’s why Cindy focuses most of her time on bringing multiple generations of a family to the table and helping them find common ground.

Hint: You’ve probably heard of the Pareto principle, which states that 20% of activities generate 80% of results. In this case, think of the amazing results you could have just by getting two or even three generations of a family discussing their plans together!

The difference between a family business and a family enterprise – and why it matters.

The difference between a family business and a family enterprise amounts to a critical difference in how Cindy helps families.

A family business is exactly what most people think it is: a business owned and run by a family. They vary in scope, from your local corner store to McCain, but they’re all considered family businesses.

A family enterprise, on the other hand, includes the family business as well as all the other elements that make up a family’s financial situation: real estate, art collections, investment portfolios, registered investments, insurance products and so on.

Traditionally, we break these things out, with different experts taking on different asset classes. And that makes sense because each area is itself rather complicated. But when they just work in a silo at different points in time, the family enterprise as a whole gets forgotten.

Without really knowing how all the pieces fit together, it’s impossible to get a clear picture of the family as a whole. That’s why a major aspect of Cindy’s work is liaising with different financial specialists and making sure everything fits together in a way that helps – not hurts – the family members themselves.

Hint: For more on working effectively with other professionals, listen to our interview with Jamie Robb.

What wealth and wealth management really mean

When asked about how Cindy approaches wealth management, she pointed out that everyone has a different definition of what it means. And in most cases, the definition is far too limited – usually just involving investment management.

Cindy has been trying to shift the meaning of capital beyond just the financial – though that part matters, too. “This term of wealth management for me,” she says, “really is a very, very broad term that encompasses all of the financial, social, human, and intellectual capital that a family has, all tied up in a bow around a shared dream of where that family wants to get.”

So when Cindy works with a family on wealth transition, she’s always keeping in mind all of these pieces – not just the family business, not just the family enterprise, but the family members themselves, too.

To hear more from her on how she works successfully with teams of advisors and specialists, why you need to be honest about your blindspots and what post-mortem exercises can reveal, make sure you listen to the full episode. You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Peter Cishecki started Everything Financial Group in 1996 after working for many years at one of Canada’s leading insurance companies. He has created an all-in-one financial experience for his clients where he built trusted, long-term relationships by providing complete financial strategies and solutions for financial peace of mind.

Listen to the episode to hear about how Peter came to work with portfolio management companies on a referral basis and how it’s affected his business. 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• Why more advisors don’t work with portfolio management companies (9:30)
• Why your clients wish you worked with a portfolio management company (14:35)
• How Peter structures his fees – and how he provides enough value to earn them (18:55)
• How Peter’s work culture transformed when he began working with portfolio management companies (27:30)
• The biggest challenges Peter has faced in his career (30:40)
• Three misunderstandings about wealth management (33:50)
• How Peter gets in front of prospective clients (35:20) 

Links and Resources:

Everything Financial Group 

Quotes by Peter Cishecki: 

“When I can get people to change their outlook on life and start to enjoy their money while they’re young and healthy, that’s huge satisfaction.”

“If you’re going to collect a fee, do something for the person.”

“Truly look yourself in the mirror every day and say ‘What am I gonna do today to make a client’s life better?’”

In late 2010, Peter noticed he was already running his practice like a portfolio management company – offering six different model portfolios and spending all his time on administrative work. He realized that by working with an actual portfolio management company, he could let other professionals handle that work while focusing his efforts on what he really wanted to do: building financial plans.

Since making the switch, his practice has grown by at least 500%, and his entire office culture has changed into less of a team and more of a family.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• Why your clients wish you worked with a portfolio management company
• Why more advisors don’t work with portfolio management companies
• How Peter makes sure he provides value and earns his pay

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

Why your clients wish you worked with a portfolio management company

Peter realized that working with a portfolio management company came with enormous benefits for his clients. Here are the four main benefits:

A true fiduciary

Legally speaking, portfolio management companies are the only true fiduciaries within the Canadian financial services industry. Their responsibility is to the client, never to the advisor, so the client can rest assured that their best interests are always being considered.

Active management

Portfolio management companies provide active management of portfolios – someone is working daily to ensure the client is reaching their goals and nothing is going off the rails. Imagine trying to do all that by yourself.

Fee transparency and tax deductibility

Portfolio management companies provide 100% transparency and disclosure on the fees they charge.

Hint: This one can be tricky because a client who is used to working with a mutual fund salesperson, for instance, likely doesn’t realize the fees they were paying before because they weren’t being disclosed. Learn about properly articulating the value of financial advice in our previous episode with John Page.

Additionally, unlike commissions, management fees on non-registered investments are 100% tax-deductible, so clients are already saving money before the market even does its work.

Personalized portfolios

Portfolios are designed for the financial plan and not the other way around, meaning that a client’s portfolio is perfectly suited to their situation. For example, if according to the plan the client only needs a 4% return to stay on track and meet all their goals, there’s no point in having a portfolio that chases a 7% return. This results in less risk and volatility, which in turn means the plan is more accurate and realistic.

Why more advisors don’t work with portfolio management companies

Ego

Some advisors think they can do a better job than a portfolio management company. In truth, they can’t possibly succeed at advising clients, creating great financial plans and managing portfolios better than a company with hundreds of staff whose job it is to actively monitor and manage portfolios.

Money

Earning a deferred sales commission is easy and quick. A referral fee from a portfolio management company, on the other hand, may not end up in your bank account for up to a year and a half after you start working with a client. A lot of advisors aren’t willing to give up on that comfort by changing their business – and compensation – structure.

Lack of knowledge

In the end, Peter believes that most advisors just don’t realize the opportunity exists. For example, they think there are regulatory barriers, or that portfolio management is only for their wealthiest clients – not the case at all!

How Peter makes sure he provides value and earns his pay

One objection financial advisors may have to working with a portfolio management company on a referral basis is that it feels wrong to earn the referral fee (usually around 1% of AUM) when it seems that the company is the one doing the work.

In short – does Peter ever worry that he’s not delivering enough value to justify his pay?

Not at all, he says, because the value he does deliver is clear to him and his clients.

Sure, it would be wrong to just earn a referral fee and then do nothing else for the client. Simply put, “If you’re going to collect a fee, do something for the person.”

And since Peter outsourced all the administrative work behind portfolio management to someone else, he’s had far more time to actually do things for his clients. His firm offers its own Omni Formula financial plans, a proprietary system that has undergone significant revision (and still gets tweaked once in a while). They update the plans annually to make sure they’re still meeting clients’ needs.

For clients over $2 million, they also provide some legal and tax services to make sure those clients get their money’s worth.

Peter – and perhaps more importantly, Peter’s clients – are confident in the value he provides them.

For more helpful advice from Peter, make sure you catch the full episode where he talks about his fee structure, how his work culture changed after transitioning to this business model and more. You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Brad Amlin has put in more than 17 years in the financial services business. His primary area of expertise is financial, estate and tax planning, focusing on strategies that include the use of life insurance and investment vehicles. He works with both business owners and high net worth individuals.

Brad has also been through numerous business transitions, both as the advisor buying practices and, more recently, as the one selling his own business. Listen in to hear how Brad built a $30 million AUM business to $150 million – and why he decided to sell.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• How Brad sought out clients in his early days as an independent advisor (8:15)
• How Brad built Cornwall Wealth Management from $30 million to $150 million AUM (12:35)
• What Brad looks for in clients (24:45)
• How to help your clients through a business transition (28:50)
• Why Brad’s practice has both MFDA and IIROC advisors (31:30)
• Major challenges when undergoing a business transition (33:35) 

Links and Resources: 

Email Brad

Cornwall Wealth Management

The Personal Coach 

Quotes by Brad Amlin: 

“Success really revolves around the continuity of who the client’s dealing with.”

“Even if you do want to, over time, rebrand the company, I think maintaining the brand… for a specified period of time post-transition really helps the continuity and maintains that client.”

“I find the challenge to be maintaining confidence and maintaining that ‘up’ feeling in an environment that seems to be rapidly shifting through regulatory change.”

While Brad started his financial services career working for a bank, he’s since had quite the career building and buying financial advisory businesses; at its peak, his practice had $150 million AUM. In his mid-forties, he decided it was time to sell his business to another advisor and get back to what he loves best: time and working directly with clients.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• What Brad looks for in clients
• How to help your clients through a business transition
• Solutions to 3 major business transition challenges

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

What Brad looks for in clients

Now that he’s sold his business and no longer needs to worry about strategy and operations quite as much, Brad has the freedom to be more picky about which clients he wants to work with. There are two characteristics he looks at first when choosing which clients he wants to keep working with.

Clients who listen

Brad now works just with the clients who listen to what he has to say and are willing to put in the work to put his advice into practice. While some consumers just shop around until they find an advisor who will tell them what they want to hear, Brad likes working with people who are ready to hear the truth and act on it.

Clients he can relate to

Brad most enjoys working with clients who are within his age group. He finds that clients in their forties and fifties see retirement looming and are therefore more motivated to take advice. As well, they’re just at a similar point in their lives as he is, and it makes it that much easier to relate to one another.

How to help your clients through a business transition

In his experience going through numerous business transitions, Brad has found that maintaining the client experience is the most important. As he puts it, “success really revolves around the continuity of who the client’s dealing with.”

For this reason, when talking to his clients, he positioned his recent business sale as a strategic alliance. He’s not broadcasting to them that he sold equity in the business – they don’t need to know all that. While the logo may be different, all they care about is that they now have more offerings and people available to help them than they did before.

In time, the advisor who bought Brad’s business may make further changes. But letting clients adjust to the transition and see that nothing drastic has shifted in the level of service is key to keeping the relationships running smoothly.

Hint: For more on keeping your clients happy while navigating transitions in your business, listen to our episode with Jim Greenwood. Jim shares the two most important values that he’s keeping at the forefront while helping another advisor transition out of the industry.

Solutions to 3 major business transition challenges

Having gone through several business transitions now – on both ends of the deal – Brad has seen his fair share of challenges coming up. Here are the biggest three, along with the solutions that helped him overcome them.

The clients aren’t the right fit

When you build a book of business from the ground up, you have the chance to pick clients who see eye to eye with you, and the clients can grow with you as you develop your practice. When buying a book of business, however, it’s hard to know whether the clients will be a good fit.

Solution:

Luckily, Brad foresaw this potential problem when he bought his first business, and he avoided it proactively. He and the senior advisor agreed to a one-year trial where Brad would work under the advisor and get to know the clients and the business. When it came time to buy the practice, Brad was sure it was a good fit. He had also begun noticing ways he could grow the business, so when he took over, he was ready to hit the ground running.

A lack of mentorship

One major challenge Brad experienced was working with the financial advisor whose business he first bought. While Brad had been expecting a mentor to show him the ropes in the first several months of working together, it turned out that the other advisor was too busy to spend much time with Brad at all – he was essentially left to his own devices and felt like he was floundering for several months.

Solution:

Brad’s firm hired a business coach (The Personal Coach) – someone he could be accountable to and who could help build his confidence in the business. Together, they created a value proposition, wrote scripts that Brad could use, roleplayed different scenarios and brainstormed how he could reach out to prospects. It was exactly what he’d been missing from his senior advisor.

Loneliness

This one’s more related to running a financial advising practice in general – Brad has found that it can be a very lonely business. When you’re the one running everything yourself, it’s easy to second-guess yourself and question every decision. Brad still beats himself up any time a client leaves his practice (and it does inevitably happen to everyone). This uncertainty can lead to loneliness – you’re the only one who knows what it’s like to be in your shoes.

Solution:

Brad’s best advice is to work with a senior advisor. While it’s true that he didn’t get the mentorship he had hoped for when he worked with a more experienced advisor, he still recommends it to others. Find someone to teach you about the industry – and, just as importantly, someone who knows what it’s like to be new to the business.

You’ll definitely want to hear about Brad’s unique experience in the industry in his own words – as well as his keys to a smooth business transition and why his practice has both MFDA and IIROC advisors. You can find the show here on this page or better yet, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes.

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Yvonne Martin-Morrison is a financial planner with Raymond James Ltd.’s Retirement and Financial Planning Group. In 2019, she was the winner of the PlanPlus Global Financial Planning Award for Canada. She provides planning services, advice, and tax intelligence for Raymond James advisors and their clients. Her work also involves creating educational materials, presentations, and publications to empower advisors and help them better serve their clients.

Listen to the episode to find out what Yvonne has to say about her no-nonsense approach to financial planning, her principles of good financial planning, and how to approach decumulation. 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• How Yvonne approaches working with advisors and their clients (5:25)
• When advisors should reach out to Yvonne for support (13:20)
• Overcoming clients’ objections to planning (17:35)
• Yvonne’s basic, no-nonsense definition of financial planning (19:45)
• Yvonne’s approach to decumulation in retirement (36:20)
• The power of principles (40:40)
• Common mistakes advisors make when bringing in an outside expert (50:45)

 Links and Resources:

Raymond James

 Quotes by Yvonne Martin-Morrison:

“It’s very important that I avoid getting lost in the details right at the beginning.”

“What is the point of planning if you’re not implementing the strategies and solutions?”

“When we get those outputs and those software results, that allow me to really dig into analysis. And I think that’s one of the challenges for a lot of advisors is they think an output is the end. For me, that’s the beginning.”

Yvonne has been through it all as a financial advisor – from her uncertain rookie years to taking on some of the most complex situations in the business. Now, she steps in to help other advisors create integrated and comprehensive financial and retirement plans for their clients.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas that Yvonne has to share in this episode:

• How Yvonne approaches working with advisors and their clients

• Overcoming clients’ objections to financial planning

• The power of principles in retirement planning

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

How Yvonne approaches working with advisors and their clients

Yvonne approaches working with advisors the same way you probably approach working with your clients. She asks them about where they are at in their planning, how they’ve been doing, what’s been working for them, and what their frustrations are.

Because she works with so many different advisors (and their clients), it’s important for her not to get bogged down in minutiae. She wants to get right to the heart of their issue so that she’s not wasting anyone’s time.

Earning trust

Advisors are often a bit cautious when bringing on an external expert like Yvonne to help them. And that makes sense – you probably feel the same way if you start recommending a new accountant or lawyer to clients. When you’re ultimately responsible for your client’s financial well-being, you want to make sure that the person coming in is the expert they claim to be and that they will impact your relationship with the client positively.

To earn their trust, Yvonne works hard to establish open communication and clear expectations. She’s been where they are, so she respects the fact that they are running their own business. She gets that they know their clients better than she does, so she seeks to understand their situation. She shows that she knows what she’s talking about and that she’s really there to help.

Her ultimate goal isn’t to make them the perfect advisor; her goal is progress. She works with them and empowers them to help them be a little bit better tomorrow, the day after that, and the day after that.

Overcoming clients’ objections to financial planning

Planning is such an important part of financial well-being, but a lot of clients are reluctant to do it. So how can you convince them of the value of planning when they’re not interested?

Yvonne shares how you can overcome two main objections.

They’ve tried it before and it didn’t work

Often, clients have had some financial planning experience, but it didn’t go well or wasn’t useful for whatever reason.

This is a reasonable objection. There’s experience behind it, and it’s your job to find out why it exists. You need to dig in and listen to what they’ve shared with you.

What has been their experience? What was the result? Where did their frustration with planning come from?

Once you understand why they didn’t like financial planning before, you can show them how their experience with you will be different – what you’re going to do that will be new to them and how it will help them.

Planning is hard

It sure is! But, as Yvonne puts it, “anything worth doing is going to have a level of difficulty and challenge.” This is especially true when they’re trying something new for the first time. The great thing about planning is that it does get easier with time – let them know that the work they need to put in upfront will lessen, and they’ll start to see benefits that will more than make up for their initial effort.

Hint: One great tool that Yvonne loves to use to show clients the value of planning is storytelling. If you can tell someone, “I have a client like you who had similar concerns” and share with them what results they were able to achieve, they’ll be able to visualize what you’re telling them in a much more visceral way.

The power of principles in retirement planning

When Yvonne works with advisors, they often ask her for basic rules they can follow to get the best results every time.

Of course, planning doesn’t really work with rules. You can pretty much expect that any assumptions you make will be a bit off, and projections never come to be exactly as expected.

That’s why Yvonne likes to share basic principles – not rules or formulas – that she encourages advisors to work off of. Here are some of her favourites:

• You can’t have everything, so you need to prioritize: There are unlimited strategies and possibilities when it comes to financial planning, but you can only pick one. Go for strategies that have the highest impact but minimize the risk (that is, impact and likelihood) of negative consequences.

• Don’t get locked into one idea: Even though you can only pick one strategy at a time, don’t get too hung up on one particular idea. Keep evaluating other options to ensure your clients are on the right track.

• A guarantee is very valuable: If your client can have a guaranteed, reliable source of income in retirement, that’s very valuable and greatly reduces risk.

Hint: There’s a lot of misconception out there that the CPP is always in danger of failing; while this was true in the 90s, it’s just not the case anymore. It now has guaranteed benefits for the next 70 years, as well as huge protections.

• Get paid to wait if you can: If you’re able to rely on other sources of income and defer the CPP, do it. You likely can’t get that kind of guaranteed return anywhere else.

• Consider longevity: If your client is very ill and isn’t expected to live more than a few years, that’s an important consideration. Don’t defer benefits for someone who is unlikely to be able to enjoy them in the future anyway.

Hint: Are you looking for more advice from retirement planning experts? Listen to Episode 11: The Art and Science of Retirement Income Planning with Howard Dixon.

Yvonne has a lot of wisdom to share about financial and retirement planning, so don’t miss the full episode where she shares her detailed planning process, how she uses software to aid in her financial planning and more. You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Mark Shimkovitz has been providing financial planning advice and managing investment portfolios for 25 years. He works together with his wife Robin, a life coach, to take a life-first approach to financial planning. This approach allows him to build personalized financial plans and investment strategies.

Listen to the episode to hear what life-first financial planning is, what it was like for Mark to start an independent practice after over twenty years working for banks and why he’s excited about giving back.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• How Mark compares working for a bank to running an independent practice (5:10)
• How Mark brings his philosophy into the conversation with clients (12:30)
• Mark’s three-dimensional planning process (14:45)
• How Mark and his team help clients create – and stick with – a budget (26:10)
• Why investment management is just a small slice of the wealth management pie (31:15)
• Mark’s focused approach to acquiring clients (37:40)
• How giving back is – and isn’t – part of Mark’s business (49:25) 

Links and Resources: 

Mark Shimkovitz

Living Richer Podcast

 Quotes by Mark Shimkovitz: 

“I’m very clear, in fact, in saying that you know when you’re hiring me, the investment management component is only one slice, and it’s not a very large slice.”

“We need to be able to articulate and demonstrate why we deserve to be paid more than, you know, 30 or 40 basis points that could perhaps be attributable to the investment management.”

“Let’s really look at the big picture. Let’s look at what’s really most important to you. Those should be your benchmarks for measuring success.”

With plenty of experience working for banks and now running his own financial practice, Mark has figured out a lot about what works in financial planning – and what doesn’t. He has a clear philosophy and strategy for his own business, so it makes sense that’s exactly what he helps his clients with in their own lives.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• A three-dimensional planning process

• How Mark and his team help clients create – and stick with – a budget

• Why investment management is just a small slice of the wealth management pie

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

A three-dimensional planning process

Mark’s life-first approach means he has come up with a custom three-step planning process that he uses with clients. He calls it the 3D process: discover, design, and deploy.

Discover

Financial discovery is obviously a crucial part of providing good financial advice. And Mark goes deep into it with clients: where are they now? Where do they want to be? What financial obligations are likely to come up in their lives? When do they want to retire and what does that look like to them?

But for Mark, the financial side is the easy part of discovery. First, he needs to understand where clients are at emotionally. How do they feel about where they are today? What gets them up in the morning? What keeps them up at night?

He wants to understand their goals so that he can truly provide life-first advice. If he doesn’t know what they want out of life, it’s hard to know what financial strategies make sense for them.

Hint: This deep-dive into clients’ goals is a great way to separate yourself from what the big banks offer. For more on this topic, listen to Episode 23: How to Differentiate Your Independent Practice from the Big Banks with Chris Rawles and Spencer Tilley.

Design

Next, Mark looks at what needs to be done to get clients from where they are to where they want to be. He looks at all aspects – the savings strategy, the estate planning, tax strategy and so on.

Of course, no one wants to be given a huge list of things they need to do. That’s why Mark also prioritizes the steps so that it’s clear where the focus needs to be. He shows clients what they need to do now and what they’ll want to address later on but don’t need to worry about just yet.

Deploy

Deployment is pretty self-evident – it’s putting the plan into action. As assets start to come in, Mark begins working with clients on their investments and savings strategy. He also brings in his office’s internal experts to review wills and powers of attorney to make sure all their bases are covered.

How Mark and his team help clients create – and stick with – a budget

Have you ever seen clients balk when you bring up budgeting? It makes sense. Budgets are tough to build accurately, they can feel restrictive and they’re about as easy to stick with as a fad diet (so… not easy at all).

A lot of people think about budgeting as subtracting expenses from income to figure out what they should be saving – but does it ever really work that way?

Instead, Mark frames budgeting as “spending money with purpose.” Rather than mindlessly letting money go where it goes, he encourages clients to be intentional about the way they use it.

And yes, the first step is knowing how much money is coming in, followed by figuring out the non-negotiable expenses. But to Mark, one of those non-negotiable expenses is paying your future self.

This is part of his “pay yourself first” strategy. It means having a really strong “why” – a meaningful reason for putting the money away. As long as the goal is clear and stronger than in-the-moment impulses, budgeting works well.

The caveat

Often, people will get excited about a budget that they can see truly aligns with their most important goals. But after a while, they won’t necessarily stick to it.

That’s where Robin’s side of the business – the life coaching – comes in. She helps clients understand why they might have trouble sticking with a budget, why they might want to work on their behaviour and how they can do it.

Hint: You may not have a life coach working with you, but the takeaway here is that a budget isn’t a one-and-done kind of deal. It’s a recursive process that requires a lot of reinforcement to help clients remember what that budget is helping them accomplish.

Why investment management is just a small slice of the wealth management pie

Mark finds that people often conflate wealth management and investment management. But they’re not the same thing – the first is just one component of the latter.

For example, if a client is saving $1000 a month in their RRSP and Mark helps them find a way to save an extra $100 a month, he’s just helped their retirement savings grow by 10% – a huge gain. On the other hand, trying to shave four or five basis points on an ETF or negotiating down a small fee isn’t going to have nearly the same effect.

Wealth management to Mark means taking a step back to look at the whole picture and identify what’s really important to the client – and what’s going to have the biggest impact on getting them there.

To hear more advice from Mark, including a break-down of his investment strategy, what he suggests to new advisors and more, make sure you catch the full episode. You can find the show here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Today’s guest will answer these questions and more. Debbie Hartzman is a financial advisor, holding CFP, CLU, CDFA (Certified Divorce Financial Analyst), TEP and CEA designations. She’s also an author and a national expert on helping individuals undergoing separation or divorce proceedings. Listen in to hear what she has to say about becoming an advisor, understanding the nuances of working with divorcing or separating couples, and the benefits of using a financial advisor during separation or divorce. 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• Understanding the difference between separation and divorce (12:30)
• The benefit of having a financial advisor during a divorce (16:20)
• The tax implications of divorce (29:10)
• How Debbie approaches potential conflicts of interest (23:30)
• How new advisors can begin specializing in divorce (48:30)
• Staying focused when helping clients through a separation (53:40) 

Links and Resources: 

Hartzman and Associates

To order Debbie’s book, Divorce isn’t Easy, But it Can be Fair, contact her through her website above. 

Quotes by Debbie Hartzman: 

“If I’m going to be in this business, I’m going to be that bus driver. I’m going to be the coordinate between the lawyer, between the accountant, and the client so that there’s somebody watching the big picture and helping the client make good financial decisions.”

“That’s where my value comes in. It’s being able to help them understand how that’s going to impact them not today, not tomorrow, but in ten or fifteen years down the road.”

“I wouldn’t be a good planner if I didn’t plan for myself. So my plan for myself was: I love this business, I love giving back, I love helping people, but I also want to do it on my terms instead of the business running me.”

Now approaching a quarter-century in the business, Debbie has (literally) written the book on having a divorce that is fair and ensures long-term financial stability. Coming from a legal background, she understands how to work with lawyers to help clients make the most of marital separation.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• The benefit of having a financial advisor during a divorce
• Staying focused when helping clients through a separation
• How new advisors can begin specializing in divorce

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

The benefit of having a financial advisor during a divorce

It’s well understood that when going through a separation or divorce, it’s important to have lawyers helping you through the process. However, while lawyers have expertise in the legal system, they have blind spots and lack that financial expertise. Here are some of the ways Debbie helps clients navigate divorce in a way that a lawyer alone can’t:

Decision-making

Lawyers negotiate on behalf of their clients, but it’s still up to the client to decide what they want out of the divorce and what the lawyers should be trying to achieve.

Debbie helps clients figure out what they need and can expect in the first place. Often, a client will become fixated on one thing – keeping the house so there’s less upheaval for the kids, for example, or trying to punish their spouse financially for their infidelity. Debbie helps them have a broader look at what will benefit them financially, emotions aside.

Long-term perspective

For the most part, that broader look means looking at the person’s financial future. The lawyer’s job is to come to a settlement; it’s not to make sure that their client is financially set for the future.

Debbie can look at a client’s situation and help them see how certain decisions will affect them for the rest of their lives – taxes, cashflow, everything. “That’s where my value comes in,” she explains. “It’s being able to help them understand how that’s going to impact them not today, not tomorrow, but in ten or fifteen years down the road.”

Preparing documents

As a financial services professional, Debbie is the best person to prepare documents to help complete a financial disclosure for the client. She knows what to look for better than a lawyer.

She also helps clients save money in the process. “If we do all the grunt work in advance, we get all the documentation set up properly and we bring it to the point where we can hand it to the lawyer as a package, that cuts out a whole bunch of hours and a whole bunch of back and forth between the lawyers.”

Hint: For advice on building business relationships with lawyers, accountants, and other professionals, listen to Episode 34: A Value-First Approach for Working Effectively with Clients (and Other Professionals) with Jamie Robb.

Staying focused when helping clients through a separation

A lot of past guests on this podcast have talked about how financial planning is similar to counselling in many ways. But Debbie doesn’t see it that way.

She feels that the last thing clients want is to be paying you to talk through how they arrived in this position.

Instead, she finds it important to be laser-focused on the business aspect of the relationship and to put everything else aside. Yes, someone going through a separation is experiencing a lot of emotional turmoil. And if their partner hurt or cheated on them, they may feel that they deserve more out of the divorce. Or they might be accustomed to a certain lifestyle and expect that they can maintain it moving forward.

But in the end, a judge is going to be looking at what is fairest for both parties regardless of who hurt who in the marriage. And there’s nothing you can do to change that.

Setting realistic expectations

That’s why you must help clients manage their expectations, both around what they will be entitled to and what they can expect their lifestyle to be after assets are split. To do that, you need to understand what’s reasonable from a legal perspective.

Rather than letting them waste time fighting for a result that legally speaking isn’t possible, you need to help them be realistic and move forward with what is achievable.

Hint: If you don’t feel like you understand the separation process enough to help your clients through it, that’s ok! It’s better to refer them to someone who does than to risk giving them bad (or even illegal) advice.

How new advisors can begin specializing in divorce

Narrowing down into a specialty as a financial planner is one of the best ways to grow your business. However, Debbie cautions against trying to specialize in divorce too early in your career. In her experience, a new advisor isn’t going to be ready to specialize in such a complex area right off the bat.

Education and experience

First, she recommends getting your CFP and focusing on gaining experience and building knowledge. Debbie herself has spoken to people going through divorces, worked with mental health professionals and attended seminars – anything to give her a better ability to help her clients. When it comes to divorce and separation, you also need to be well-versed in tax and the legal process.

The legal piece is especially important as there are very specific limits on what you can and can’t advise on. The last thing you would want is to be accused of practicing law without a license and being unable to defend what you’ve advised.

Process, process, process

Just as importantly, Debbie says you need a rock-solid process that is scalable and repeatable.

From the very beginning, you should be putting processes in place that will allow you to help the clientele you want to serve while having the lifestyle you want. This isn’t something you can create right away and coast on for the rest of your career – it takes time to learn from experience and create the balance that works for you.

Make sure you catch the full episode to hear about Debbie’s full process for helping clients through separations and divorce. You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Dustin Serviss of Serviss Wealth Management has been featured as the number 1 Top 40 Under 40 leader in 2014 by the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce. In 2017, Serviss Wealth Management was awarded the Top 10 Wealth Builder Award by its previous investment dealer (consisting of over 800 advisors). Serviss Wealth Management was also voted one of the Top 3 Micro Businesses in Kelowna by the Kelowna Chamber of Commerce in 2018.

Listen in to hear how Dustin helps business owners manage their wealth – and their businesses. 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• How Dustin went from day trading as an engineer to running a successful practice (4:10)
• Dustin’s unique approach to leadership (11:25)
• Three lessons learned from working with a business consultant (20:20)
• How Dustin leverages what he learns from his clients to offer even more value through consulting (28:15)
• Why ongoing learning is critical to business success (33:35)
• Overcoming the grind of the first few years in business (36:35) 

Links and Resources: 

Serviss Wealth Management 

Quotes by Dustin Serviss:  

“Now when we are going and talking to clients, we are talking on a level that is business-minded first, financial planning second.” 

“When you’re exposed to bigger stuff you realize that other people think differently than you do.”

“As entrepreneurs, we have a lot of good ideas and we have even more great ideas… And before you know it, you’ve got so many things to do, so many processes, so many touchpoints, so many this, so many that.”

Serving business owners and lawyers, Serviss Wealth Management is a powerhouse of an independent financial planning firm. Acting as the quarterback (as he puts it) for his clients’ financial affairs, and taking his own entrepreneurship very seriously, Dustin has a lot to share about the business side of financial planning.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• Three lessons learned from working with a business consultant
• Dustin’s unique approach to leadership
• Why ongoing learning is critical to business success

Three lessons learned from working with a business consultant

Two years ago, Dustin decided that he wanted to rewrite his business plan. And he certainly didn’t do it half way.

Instead, he hired a consultant, James, to work with him over the course of an entire year. Together, they looked at all aspects of the business and decided on a new path forward. Read on for Dustin’s three main takeaways.

Hint: For more on the importance of having a business plan, listen to our episode with Chris Paterson on the major drivers of advisors’ business growth.

The importance of professional help

All advisors know the importance of a talented professional who can help challenge clients and help them reach their goals. And that’s not just true for clients in need of financial services.

Dustin half jokes that every business owner should work with two professionals: a therapist and a business consultant. And in essence, the two are similar. There are very few people whom you can count on to ask the hard questions and help you overcome your ego.

This is critical in both the personal and professional spheres. Dustin recommends finding a professional (or two) to help you challenge your beliefs and get you out of your comfort zone.

A clear understanding of what it means to run a business

Since Dustin works primarily with business owners, getting a clearer sense of what it means to be a business owner himself was invaluable. Now, he can work with his clients confident in his own approach and skills as an entrepreneur.

As he puts it, “now when we are going and talking to clients, we are talking on a level that is business-minded first, financial planning second.”

The importance of shedding

Entrepreneurs tend to have a lot of ideas, and they’re all great (or at least that’s what we like to believe). It’s so easy to add great ideas on top of one another, layering on and layering on.

The problem, as Dustin puts it, is that “before you know it, you’ve got so many things to do, so many processes, so many touchpoints, so many this, so many that. It’s so hard to train new staff, it’s so hard to keep going myself.”

James helped Dustin cut the baggage – so much that it was a bit scary to Dustin. But by asking what clients actually value in the relationship, they were able to shift the focus to the important things and shed the rest.

Hint: If you’re curious, the lesson was that Dustin’s clients didn’t care so much about all the checking in and the birthday cards – and maybe this is true for your clients, too. Instead, they just wanted timely and satisfying responses to their questions. As a result, Dustin and his team focus on getting back to people within 24 hours whenever possible.

Dustin’s unique approach to leadership

Dustin’s approach to leading is all about transparency – probably more than what many leaders would be comfortable with.

For over five years now, he has shared all the numbers of his business with his staff. They know how much each revenue source brings in, what the expenses are – everything.

When Dustin hired James to help him with the business plan, the whole office got involved. James would come into the office for a couple hours every two weeks to discuss different aspects of the business with everyone on the team.

Dustin believes this is important because it allows his staff to help make decisions and drive the company culture. Having them involved in the process means that everyone feels that they have ownership – each one of them, after all, is a stakeholder in the business.

Why ongoing learning is critical to business success

Dustin attributes his success in the industry to two things, and they both show how invested he is in learning:

1. Dustin has a lot of letters behind his name, spelling out five designations. He believed from the beginning that the more designations he had, the more marketable he would be. He now attributes much of the growth in his career to the designations he earned early on.
2. Dustin is grateful for the two mentors he worked with, both about 10 years ahead of him in the business. You don’t know what you don’t know, and at the beginning, there’s a lot you can’t know about advising or running a business. His mentors exposed him to situations he never would have imagined possible and allowed him to overcome his own restrictions to see things from clients’ points of view, not just his own.

Whether it’s through a set curriculum or from experts in the field, Dustin’s dedication to learning what he could from others early in his career set him up for success later on.

For more advice from Dustin, listen to the full episode where he shares how he manages the different aspects of his business, how he offers even more value through a consulting service, and more. You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Jamie Townsend is an advisor who recently completed his designation in the Family Enterprise Advisor (FEA) program, which focuses on helping families manage their greatest asset through continuity. Jamie works with business owners and professionals to help simplify their financial lives. He was recently recognized by Wealth Professional Magazine for his work as a Top 50 Advisor in Canada.

Listen in to hear what Jamie has to say about the challenges that family businesses face, the best ways to help, and the part of financial advising where shortcuts just won’t cut it. 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• Why Jamie got the FEA designation and how it has served him (2:35)
• What it’s like being in business with a parent (5:45)
• Insights gained from serving multiple generations of families (9:25)
• Why success is never a finite state (14:55)
• Why Jamie accepts new clients by referral only (17:35)
• How financial information is different from financial knowledge (24:10)
• Jamie’s advice for new advisors (26:35) 

Links and Resources:

Lawton Partners Wealth Management 

Quotes by Jamie Townsend: 

“We are able to have an incredible impact on people when it matters most.” 

“If you think about this conversation in terms of generations, you have the next generation coming up with their own energy, their own ideas, their own goals. And sometimes those align perfectly with the generation above, and sometimes they’re completely different.” 

“When you spend time with someone, if they’re ultimately going to work with you, they need to get to know you, they need to like you, and then eventually they start to trust you.”

Jamie Townsend is well-versed in family business. Not only does he run a practice with his dad, but also between the two of them, they’ve worked with some families over as many as four generations. Don’t miss out on learning from his unique perspective. 

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• Insights gained from serving multiple generations of families
• Why success is never a finite state
• Why Jamie accepts new clients by referral only

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

Insights gained from serving multiple generations of families

Jamie’s opportunity to work with several generations of the same family has given him a unique perspective on wealth-building over decades, not just months or years.

For him, wealth building “is not a conversation that is a three month conversation or a six month conversation... It is this process of doing the right thing, following the right principles. And then you get to see the cumulative impact.”

As you might expect, the effect of compounding is especially evident over many decades. But it’s not only the dollars that have a chance to grow.

When you have a business over several generations, “it’s not just the bricks and mortars of a business that can be passed on… but it is also what the family stands for, the lessons that they have learned.”

The true impact comes from passing on the knowledge of running a sustainable business and working toward a common goal over decades. When families are able to work together in this way — something that Jamie helps them do — they gain an advantage that many businesses lack.

Why success is never a finite state

When asked what has made Jamie’s practice so successful, he balks a bit at the word “success.” It’s an uncomfortable word for him because, he says, “it sometimes means that it’s a finite moment.”

Rather than feeling like there’s a point where he’s finally made it and can now coast on his own success, he feels like his firm is always continuing to grow, always just beginning to reach a new level. This perspective has made him relentlessly pursue new ways to add value for clients.

For example, he’s brought people with different skill sets and designations to the team; as long as they share the same fundamental values, different skills mean a better-rounded service for clients. He’s also found ways to create efficiencies and introduced services to help clients with valuing and running their own businesses.

And most of all, he’s done the one thing you can’t automate, or speed up, or mimic: the process of getting to know his clients, always doing his best for them, and earning their trust in the process.

Why Jamie accepts new clients by referral only

Jamie’s single-minded focus on creating value for clients means that he wants to spend as much time as possible with them — and the way he sees it, time marketing to new clients just gets in the way.

Rather than meeting new people, he’d rather spend his hours serving the clients he already has. He’s seen that when advisors take on too many clients, they don’t have the opportunity to get to know them and create real impact on their lives, meaning that their business is more transactional than relational.

Jamie is so concentrated on his current network of clients that a few years ago, he and his team decided to begin accepting clients by referral only. That means that they’ll only take on someone who has been specifically referred by a current client.

This exclusivity may seem risky, but Jamie has found that it pays off. He’s able to spend more face-to-face time making sure his clients can ask lots of questions and understand everything that’s going on with their money. He and his team also come up with new ideas to add value — like hosting client-only events with guest speakers to help them learn more about finance and business.

Hint: Many of the things Jamie does for clients don’t directly earn him money; for example, he’s currently looking at new ways to help clients make better evidence-based business decisions. However, any value he creates for clients helps his relationship with them — and therefore his business — in the long run.

The benefit of spending so much time serving clients and providing them with value is that, inevitably, the clients can’t help but talk about the service to their friends. And they do introduce Jamie to new, similar, clients who also want the same thing.

Of course, this isn’t something a new advisor can do right from the beginning. It takes time to build up the trust and the clientele, and momentum builds slowly over many years. Still, the lesson of focusing on current clients is a valuable one whether or not you’re marketing yourself to new clients.

Hint: For more on why providing value to current clients is just as important as seeking out new clients — if not more so — listen to Episode 33: The 1-Page Marketing Plan for Your Financial Advisory Practice with Allan Dib.

To hear more from Jamie, make sure you catch the full episode where he talks about the most challenging part of growing his practice, the opportunities out there for new advisors, and more. You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. 

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Ryan Fraser is a nationally known Planned Giving expert. His firm, Quiet Legacy, helps individuals incorporate their personal values into their financial planning experience. Ryan is a past president of the Estate Planner Council of London and a past chair of the Canadian Association of Gift Planners (CAGP) London Roundtable. He has served extensively in leadership positions on boards and committees of numerous not-for-profit organizations including the Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada, London Heritage Council, Trillium Plus Music and Letters and many others.

Listen in to hear what Ryan has to say about how his firm serves clients, how to balance personal values with financial returns, and what is most misunderstood about charitable giving.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode::

• Why Ryan’s firm focuses so much effort on helping charities (3:15)
• Niching down by purpose and outlook—rather than demographic (6:10)
• Ryan’s top tools and strategies for prioritizing clients’ values (19:00)
• The major challenge around balancing values with returns (29:00)
• Why and how you should calculate the cost of serving your clients (39:50)
• What people misunderstand about charitable giving (45:55)

Links and Resources:

Quiet Legacy Planning Group

Canadian Association of Gift Planners (CAGP)

CAGP Conference

Ted Talk: The Way We Think About Charity is Dead Wrong (Dan Pallotta)

Quotes by Ryan Fraser:

“Before we have the numbers conversation, we’ve had some really deep conversations about what are the motivating factors in their lives and what are the things in their past that led these values to be really strong for them.”

“The thought that the most important thing to a client wasn’t the return is not something our industry ever contemplates.”

“I like to joke that my underlying business plan is I don’t want to deal with jerks.”

For some time now, Ryan’s career has been partly in the not-for-profit world and partly in financial services. His current practice, Quiet Legacy, is the perfect blend of the two: about 30% of his firm’s time is spent working with charities, including audits of their charitably owned life insurance policies, and talks on planned giving for their donors amongst other services. The other 70% is helping individuals with wealth management, insurance and financial planning.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• • Niching down by purpose and outlook, rather than demographic
  • Why Ryan’s niche is underserved by the industry—and what he’s doing about it
  • Two major misunderstandings about charitable giving

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

Niching down by purpose and outlook, rather than demographic

Quiet Legacy gets its name from the clientele the firm serves— the people Ryan calls the “quiet millionaires next door.” These are people who want to make charitable giving part of their financial and estate planning. They have saved up significant resources, live modestly, and are serious about sharing their wealth.

The obvious demographic here, of course, is the 60+ crowd. And they do make up a significant portion of Ryan’s clients.

But Ryan also works with a lot of professionals in their late 30s and early 40s. Like the 60-year-olds, they feel that the welfare of the world and the people around them is of utmost importance. And they’re people who want to act on these values.

And yet, these younger consumers have a hard time finding professionals who are willing to help them incorporate charity into their financial planning because they don’t fit the expected demographics for major charitable giving. Many advisors pick their niche around a certain age, marital status or career, so they’re ignoring clients who could otherwise be a great fit.

Ryan’s niche is based more around so-called tribal, or purpose-drive, marketing. He finds people with similar outlooks rather than similar physical or social characteristics, and he’s built his practice around them.

Why Ryan’s niche is underserved by the industry—and what he’s doing about it

Another way in which Ryan’s niche is underserved is the assumption that returns are the most important thing to clients.

And sure, there are consumers who care most about returns. But for clients in Ryan’s target market, money is a tool, not the goal itself, and they want to use it according to their values.

Ryan recalls meeting one of his largest clients when she hired him for hourly fee-for-service planning. Early in Ryan’s conversation with her, it came up that she’s a stringent environmentalist and very concerned about the environmental impact of the oil industry.

Looking at her portfolio, however, Ryan noticed that 37% of her existing portfolio was invested in the oilsands. When he pointed this out, she immediately engaged Ryan to manage her assets. No one had ever bothered to discuss her values with her and show her how she can align her investments with them.

This is really a case in point for the importance of getting to know your clients and understanding what drives them.

Sure, it can be difficult to model a financial plan that makes use of various charitable strategies. And yes, your AUM may decrease when you help your clients give their money away. However, Ryan is confident that you easily make up for any additional effort or risk through the deep relationship you build with your clients when you help them use their money to reach their actual goals—not just a certain rate of return.

Hint: To hear more about charitable giving and estate planning, listen to How to Successfully Prevent Clients’ Biggest Mistakes around Estate Planning with Bill Green.

The major misunderstanding about charities’ expense ratios

A lot of people are concerned about charities’ expense ratios—and for good reason. A commonly cited truism states that no more than 25% of a charity’s expenses should be in administration, with the rest directly spent on delivering services.

But Ryan has a more nuanced way of looking at this. First of all, a food bank is not the same thing as say, a not-for-profit museum or a hospital foundation, and they all have different expenses with different administrative needs. It’s not fair to compare them against each other.

Secondly, people seem to expect charities to do things that most successful businesses can’t do. According to Mark C. Tibergien and Rebecca Pomering in their book Practice Made Perfect, the most effective financial advisory practices have a 44% profit margin; when you hit around that point, there’s not much you can do to optimize beyond it.

A 25% expense ratio is a 300% profit margin. If we expect a 44% profit margin from financial service professionals, why do we expect a 300% profit margin for charities? We expect businesses to make investments to increase revenue, but balk when charities do the same. However, if investing more in staff can make a charity reach more donors, raise more money and provide more services, why shouldn’t they do it?

If a charity has an expense ratio similar to, or ideally slightly lower than, other similar organizations, it’s a sign they’re likely on the right track, no matter what that exact ratio is.

Hint: Watch out for charities with unusually low expense ratios, too. It might mean that they’re underpaying and overworking their staff, which your clients probably don’t want to support.

For more advice from Ryan, make sure you catch the full episode where he covers topics like his methods for uncovering clients’ values and why it’s critical to calculate the cost of serving a client (plus how to do it). You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes.

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Joining the podcast today is Eric Wachtel. Eric is the national chief compliance officer for IDC WIN where he is responsible for maintaining and strengthening IDC WIN’s compliance programs and initiatives. He has 24 years of experience in the life insurance industry and has worked steadily to build IDC WIN’s compliance programs while maintaining a pro-business environment.

Eric is also the compliance chair of Legislative Affairs for the Canadian Association of Independent Life Brokerage Agencies (CAILBA) where he participates in numerous insurance industry working groups and committees which help shape the direction of compliance in the life insurance industry. 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• What fair treatment of consumers means and why it’s becoming so important (3:55)
• What exactly you need to do to be compliant (11:00)
• How templates can make compliance a lot easier—but they don’t do the work for you (17:10)
• How good compliance is good for business (33:05)
• Why Eric is excited about how the insurance industry is handling compliance lately (39:15)
• Why it’s critical to have the right support when it comes to compliance (41:10) 

Links and Resources: 

Email Eric

Call Eric at: 905-366-3866 EXT#3228 

Quotes by Eric Wachtel:

“Good compliance equals good production and good service to consumers.”

“I tell advisors to resist the temptation to take your template, customize it, get it done, then throw it in a drawer and don’t look at it for a year. Because that is a pitfall.”

“Compliance these days is synonymous with professionalism.”

Historically, there has been a lot of angst around compliance because advisors haven’t been clear on what exactly they have to do. That’s because insurance compliance is principles-based (rather than rules-based like securities), which can lead to ambiguity and uncertainty. But Eric is here to share the exact steps you need to take to be compliant and have peace of mind.

Hint: If you’d like to hear more about compliance in wealth management, listen to our episode with Jamie List where he explains how high service standards make compliance a cinch.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• How to keep your practice compliant
• How to keep your client files compliant
• How good compliance is good for business

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

How to keep your practice compliant

In order to run your practice correctly, there are three manuals Eric says you need to have that demonstrate your understanding of, and processes around, anti-money laundering, privacy, and general compliance.

• Anti-money laundering regime
• First, you must comply with the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act. You should have a manual that demonstrates the following:
• You have an appointed anti-money laundering compliance officer in your practice.

• Hint: Yes, you can just appoint yourself, but you must have written, dated documentation demonstrating your appointment.
• You have to have written policies and procedures for detecting and reporting instances of money laundering. It’s not enough to rely on insurance companies’ documentation as they don’t always have updated forms (and if you print out forms from them, you might be using outdated ones anyway).
• You have completed a risk assessment of your business. This can be kind of fun—think like a criminal, and see how your practice might be vulnerable.
• You and your staff engage in ongoing training for fulfilling your policies and procedures.
• You review your anti-money laundering regime once every two years.

• Privacy regime
• You should also have a manual that outlines the same five points as above, but for privacy (for example, appointing a privacy officer and having policies and procedures on collecting, retaining, sharing, and protecting consumer information).
• This one often feels more relevant as you’ve undoubtedly heard many instances of privacy breaches in every industry out there—and probably a bit less about money laundering. Considering that you’re handling a lot of very private information about your clients, it’s easy to see why you need to take privacy seriously.
• General compliance regime
• The third manual that Eric recommends based on what he’s heard from advisors who have been audited is a general compliance manual. In this manual, you should demonstrate that you and your staff understand industry rules and operate based on them (this includes aspects like needs-based selling).
• How to keep your client files compliant
• Eric also explained that when auditors look at your client files, they want to see that you’re following a seven-step approach to your work with clients:

1. Advisor disclosure, which outlines who you are, who you’re contracted with, how you’re paid, and how you handle conflicts of interest.
2. A document that shows that you are managing client expectations by telling them exactly how the two of you will work together and what your individual roles and responsibilities are.
3. Evidence that you have engaged in fact finding to collect and understand a client’s unique situation and needs.
4. A needs assessment that quantifies the needs based on your fact finding.
5. Your recommendations and advice for the best course of action that the client should follow.
6. A Reason Why letter that outlines in layman’s terms how you and the client arrived at a decision— how you based your recommendation on their needs and any differences between your suggestion and their chosen course of action. This should also include any currently unmet needs that the client may want to address in the future, as well as an invitation to contact you if they have any questions.
7. Product information that you have showed to your clients to help them make their decision.

Hint: The client files also don’t need to have each step separate—you might have documentation that covers a few steps in one go, and that’s fine.

How good compliance is good for business

Contrary to how some people talk about it, compliance is not just a necessary evil. In reality, every piece of the required client files benefits both you and the client.

For instance, if there’s ever a claim against you, you can have peace of mind knowing that you’ve met all of the regulations and have a clear way to defend yourself.

But more importantly, being compliant has the double duty of providing excellent service to your clients. For example, making expectations clear from the beginning quells misunderstandings before they happen and avoids conflict later on in the relationship—which is ideal for everyone. 

Similarly, the Reason Why letter reminds clients of unmet needs that you can help them with in the future and invites them to be in touch if they have questions. This helps clients move away from a transactional, one-and-done approach to insurance and keeps the business relationship going.

And having a solid privacy regime means that your clients can trust you to keep their most private information safe. 

Moreover, your clients, whatever industry they happen to be in, are likely used to compliance and are themselves experiencing a surge in regulation in their field. Clients will respect that you have a process that you follow and that you take their business seriously. As Eric puts it, “compliance these days is synonymous with professionalism.”

To learn more from Eric, like why you’ll be hearing a lot more about fair treatment of consumers in the near future and why compliance needs to be part of your weekly process, catch the full episode right here on this page or subscribe to the show on iTunes or Stitcher.

Adam Chapman is a native of London, Ontario, where his practice is currently located. He completed his B.ACS at Western University, back when it was UWO, and has added his CFP and CLU designations since starting his business back in 2005.

Adam focuses on retirees and people who are about to retire. He's paired this niche audience with a business model that has him focused on switching his services over to an almost exclusively fee-based and fee-for-service offering in the next one to two years. 

What You’ll Learn in This Episode: 

• Why a young advisor like Adam is the perfect fit to work with retirees (3:45)
• Adam’s transition to a fee-based practice (7:10)
• Adam’s process for wealth management (17:15)
• The psychology behind transitioning to retirement (22:00)
• Why Adam has left behind the transactional model of financial planning (26:20)
• 3 compensation mistakes Adam sees other advisors making (34:05)
• How the delivery of financial advice is evolving in Canada (42:50) 

Links and Resources: 

Email Adam 

Quotes by Adam Chapman: 

“It didn’t seem fair that I have to take a pay cut just to do what’s right for the client.” 

“That fear of running out is what prevents people from using the money.” 

“If we can help clients step out of their comfort zone a couple times in retirement and do something they never thought they could ever do, that’s phenomenally motivating and powerful for me.”

Over the last three years, Adam has entirely switched his practice over to being 100% fee-based. This unique experience, along with his insight into the psychology of retirement, has brought advisors to him asking for advice about running their own fee-based practices; today, he’s sharing these insights with you.

Below, we’re covering three key ideas from this episode:

• Transitioning to a fee-based practice

• 3 compensation mistakes Adam sees other advisors making

• The psychology behind transitioning to retirement

Transitioning to a fee-based practice

About five years ago, Adam became frustrated with his commission-based compensation. Since he works with retirees, he was helping clients take money out of their accounts to spend, but his compensation was supposed to come from selling products— which at this point in their lives, his clients often didn’t need.

“It didn’t seem fair that I have to take a pay cut just to do what’s right for the client,” he says. So he quit cold-turkey, and in the last three years, he switched to his business being 100% fee-based.

While he expected to lose some income through the transition, that hasn’t actually been the case. For one thing, his clients seemed much happier once he educated them about how the fee helped him remove bias from the equation.

His client engagement also increased significantly. In the past, his clients would sit on their questions, not wanting to call him to ask and risk being a bother. Instead, it would all come out in an annual review meeting, at which point it would be too much to address all at once.

Now that clients see the fees they pay him, they feel more comfortable reaching out to him more often—the fee raised the level of engagement and spurred more referrals, which actually made his revenue increase and become more stable.

3 compensation mistakes Adam sees other advisors making

While Adam has found great success with his compensation change, there are certain pitfalls you should take care to avoid.

Dropping fees to low

This is all about confidence; if you don’t understand and acknowledge the value you provide to clients, you’ll have a hard time charging them what you’re worth.

Niching down helps—people are much more willing to spend money on expertise rather than general financial advice. Concentrating on retirees and soon-to-be retirees increased Adam’s confidence, helping him feel like his offerings were worth what he charges.

Hint: To get a sense of what his clients would experience with his new pay structure, Adam hired a business coach and paid the same fees that his highest net worth clients would be paying him. This helped him understand what it means to get value for that kind of money.

Having a complex compensation structure

Giving clients too many choices can muddy the waters and cause both them and you to overanalyze the options.

Instead, Adam offers the exact same services to all of his clients, even though he charges them different amounts based on their portfolio.

How can you justify charging clients different fees for the same work?

Keep in mind that you’re charging your clients based on what it’s worth to them. Your services have a higher impact on a higher net worth client than on someone who has a lower net worth (who is paying less money, but perhaps a higher portion of their income). When you think about value for the client, it makes sense that some pay more for the same service.

Calculating a rate based on hourly pay

While it’s not the same as embedded commission, an hourly rate still has an element of conflict of interest—the client would obviously love to pay less while you might prefer to spend more time on their plan so that you earn more money. Hourly rates are also not a good measurement of the value you provide.

Instead, Adam recommends figuring out your operating costs to determine what your breakeven cost per client needs to be so that you can keep the lights on and pay yourself and your staff. That will help give you an idea of the minimum you need to charge to provide the service you offer.

The psychology behind transitioning to retirement

While many people expect retirement to be a smooth and seamless transition into bliss, that’s not the experience of most retirees. For this reason, Adam insists on speaking frankly with his clients about the realities of retirement to help his clients prepare.

The reality of entering retirement

It’s easy to forget that retirement is a time of loss—the loss of structure and camaraderie when leaving the workplace, to start. In Adam’s experience, it can take three to five years for someone to settle comfortably into retirement. And later in life comes further loss of family, friends, and spouse. It’s critical to be aware of—and prepare for—these coming changes.

Hint: Recognizing a need in his niche, Adam decided to receive training in bereavement and palliative care. Consider the needs of the clients you serve and whether you can get additional training in divorce, entrepreneurship, or whatever else might be relevant to the clients who make up your nice.

Getting accustomed to decumulating

Because people tend to be quite worried about having enough money in retirement, Adam has noticed that most of his clients are actually saving more than they need to retire comfortably.

And that transition—from accumulating to decumulating—takes some getting used to. Adam wants his clients to get used to it sooner than later so they don’t regret not spending their money, on themselves or on their family, later in life.

He helps clients focus on what really matters to them: getting value out of what they’ve saved in the form of a lifestyle they can enjoy. Sure, he worries about things like rate of return and tax savings, but that’s in the background—the explicit goal is to help them make the most of what they’ve earned and saved.

Hint: For another perspective on retirement income planning, listen back to our episode with Howard Dixon on the art and science of retirement income planning.

Personally, Adam’s goal is to get his clients to step out of their comfort zones at least a few times in their retirement; he wants them to get uncomfortable—whether that means paying for a Disney cruise for the whole family or a treat just for themselves—because those are always the experiences his clients cherish the most.

To learn more from Adam, including why retirees are his perfect fit as clients, why he’s not too concerned about growing his business too quickly, and more, make sure you catch the full episode. You can find the show here on this page, or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes.

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

So how can you make the process as painless as possible for your clients and help them start the conversations that will make things easier for them and their families down the road? This is what today’s guest, Bill Green, tackles in today’s episode.

Bill is a Certified Financial Planner, Financial Management Advisor, and Chartered Financial Divorce Specialist. With over 29 years of experience in the industry, he holds his Chartered Investment Manager designation and is a member of the Nazrudin project, an international advisory think-tank. Bill is the author of two books and now works as a fee-only financial planner on an hourly basis, largely offering second opinions and financial plans for other advisors’ clients.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The biggest mistake people make in tax and estate planning (6:55)
• Bill’s response to the idea that working with a financial planner is too expensive (10:50)
• How Bill helps his clients involve their families in the estate planning process (12:35)
• Strategically using charitable donations (18:15)
• How Bill successfully combats misinformation about personal finance (22:10)
• Why Bill believes mentorship is critical to both new and experienced advisors (31:10)

Links and Resources:

Bill Green

The Success Tax Shuffle

I Am… Three Little Words from A to Z

“Just because something worked for somebody doesn’t mean it will work for you.”

“We are stewards for our economy and stewards for the people out there who aren’t as fortunate as some other people, and I think that the people that have the money should share with the charities that are out there.”

“We all go to school and get an education, but they teach us how to get a job. They don’t teach us how to manage money.”

With nearly 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, Bill has the experience — and plenty of great anecdotes — to help dig into estate planning and the joys of pure financial planning.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• The biggest mistake people make in tax and estate planning

• How Bill successfully combats misinformation

• Using charitable donations strategically

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

The biggest mistake people make in tax and estate planning

The biggest mistake Bill sees clients making in their estate and tax planning is approaching issues with a one-size-fits-all mindset.

Often, people get most of their financial advice from two sources:

• Family and friends: Clients’ loved ones are full of ideas and suggestions about what they should do with their money. But as Bill puts it, “just because something worked for somebody doesn’t mean it will work for you.”
  

• The media: It’s easy to forget that the business model of most media companies is to make a profit by selling advertising, not necessarily helping their readers. And one great way to get more people to view their content is by eliciting strong emotions like excitement and fear — emotions that are terrible for consumer behaviour when it comes to finances.

The problem with these kinds of advice is that they’re generic. And in financial planning, advice specific to the client is key.

Even relying on the advice of just one professional isn’t a good idea. A lawyer will give a legal opinion while an accountant will give an accounting opinion; ideally, people should speak with both to get a well-rounded perspective.

Or better yet, they should work with a financial planner — who might not know all the answers, but who can certainly see the bigger picture and connect them with the right professionals who can help.

How Bill successfully combats misinformation

While you can’t control the types of misinformation your clients will come across as they move through the world, you can help them avoid making costly mistakes based on that misinformation.

As Bill puts it, “the job is to educate them and hold their hand.” And that takes some work.

Listen to their concern

The first part of educating is really listening. In order to hear and accept that you have a better approach, your clients need to know that you actually hear them, especially if they’re really interested in or scared about something that they heard from a friend or radio show host.

For example, Bill has seen a lot of people worried about probate; and while it certainly can be a concern, he’s found that it’s not actually what they should be focusing on the most when planning their estates. But since the prospect of someone’s will being questioned or challenged can be frightening, he’ll always start by hearing out the client’s concern first.

Give real-life examples

Next, Bill loves giving real-life examples of scenarios he’s seen with past clients — the pitfalls of joint ownership, tax bills being triggered that shouldn’t have been, and OES clawbacks because people did something at the wrong time.

He can explain to his clients how he’s personally seen the issues that the capital gains tax and deferred tax liability have caused when people have not adequately taken taxes into account. These personal stories hit home much easier than statistics or facts and help him explain important concepts in a way that clients can understand.

Using charitable donations strategically

Bill’s favourite way of avoiding huge taxes on clients’ estates is through charitable donations. Where do you think your clients would prefer their money go — to the CRA or to their favourite charitable cause?

And from Bill’s perspective, there’s no upper limit — “the bigger the donation, the better.”

It’s a piece of estate planning that is often forgotten; lots of people make annual donations or give when someone knocks on their door, but they don’t think about the ways they can leave something behind to the causes they love. And as a bonus, donations can significantly help reduce tax liability.

Hint: Encourage clients to get their families involved in setting up a charitable donor fund and get them to decide together where the money goes. It teaches strong values and helps their family better understand their wishes and goals for the money.

Bill is particularly fond of in-kind donations, especially when the amount is over $1,000. Help clients identify a share in their portfolio that’s had a big capital gain and suggest they donate that in kind to offset tax liability.

Consider using an asset that has appreciated a lot — particularly a T-SWP or T-Class (depending on the provider), which allows an investor to withdraw up to a certain percentage of their capital as a return of capital resulting in little to no tax paid on distributions. Then they can donate that investment in-kind which eliminates all capital gains so the charity avoids paying any tax on the donation received.

It’s also important to remember that donations made in a client’s estate can be carried back to the year prior to death to get back taxes that have already been paid — Bill has even seen cases of clients able to eliminate all of their tax liability through donations (and have money to leave to their families).

Hint: To hear more on this topic, listen to our episode on estate planning according to clients’ values with Sterling Rempel.

For more helpful advice from Bill, catch the full episode and hear about the large family meetings he facilitates for his clients, how he combats the misperception that hiring a financial planner is too expensive, and more. You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes.

Janea graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with a degree in Marketing, then decided to start her own financial advisory firm in 2008. She started as a personal financial advisor offering independent insurance and investment product, but after obtaining her CFP in 2012, she decided to drop her mutual funds license and become a private wealth advisor with Raintree Financial Solutions.

Janea is listed as a top advisor within her investment dealer and her managing general agency, she has been nominated for the Women in Wealth Management Young Gun of the Year Award, and received the Saskatchewan Award of Merit for Business Leadership in 2016.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why Janea decided to drop her mutual funds license (3:40)
• The reason Janea always focuses on cash-flow first (12:10)
• The tools Janea uses to serve her clients (18:40)
• How the former marketing student markets her business today (21:05)
• Janea’s unique approach to compensation (23:50)
• The most difficult aspect of offering alternative investments (25:10)
• Why Janea recommends new advisors grow their book of business organically (32:00)
• The place Janea sees for alternative investments within the evolution of the financial services industry (33:45)

Links and Resources:

Janae Dieno

Brightrock Financial

Finding the Money to Fund Financial Planning Webinar Registration

Quotes by Janea:

“All my friends are, you know, buying gas and cigarettes and trying to get booze and I’m opening an RRSP. Ok, sounds good.”

“You really have to go through... educating them on the fact that investments don’t just end with stocks, mutual funds, bonds, and GICs. There’s a whole other world out there of investments.”

“If you’re willing to kind of pull up your socks and do a little bit of hard work in the beginning, growing your book organically I think has so much more meaning because then you really get to work with the clients you want to work with.”

Janea Dieno always had an interest in finance — first from listening to her father and uncle talk about it at the kitchen table, and then at the age of 16 when her uncle helped her open her first RRSP account. She’s now owned her own practice for 11 years, and considering that she’s “never done anything easy in [her] life,” she has a lot of lessons to share from her experience.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• Why Janea decided to drop her mutual funds license
• Janea’s unique approach to compensation
• The most difficult aspect of offering alternative investments

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

Why Janea decided to drop her mutual funds license

Soon after earning her CFP, when Janea was a few years into running her practice (not to mention expecting her first child with her new husband), she made the unusual decision to drop her mutual funds license.

At the time, she owned a home and a rental property that she and her husband were managing themselves.

Janea recognized the importance of having investments outside of the public market, but being on call 24 hours a day for her tenants was getting exhausting. She was looking for a better way to diversify her portfolio and invest in real estate and different asset classes without actually having to own a property.

She realized that mutual funds couldn’t offer everything she wanted in her own portfolio. That’s what led her to explore alternative investments in the first place. And once she saw how useful they were to her, she wanted people like her clients — most of whom are in the $100,000 to $3 million range — to have access to these investment opportunities, too.

How she makes it work

Janea found Raintree Financial Solutions — a private capital market dealer — to be her back end office, dropped her mutual fund license, and became a Private Wealth Advisor associated with Raintree.

She’s found that she trusts the diligence Raintree puts into selecting quality private investments. And importantly, they have referral arrangements with portfolio managers, so she can still offer great managed portfolios to her clients.

“It was kind of the best of both worlds,” she says.

Janea’s unique approach to compensation

The debate over fees and compensation can be a heated one, with one common argument for fee-for-service arrangements being that clients don’t like it when their advisor works on commission. There’s this idea that you’ll always work in the best interest of whoever is paying you. If the client’s not paying you, it’s hard to ensure you’re always in it for them.

That’s why Janea decided to offer her clients a choice: they could either pay her an hourly rate for financial planning, or she could earn a commission from any insurance or investment products she helped them implement as part of the plan.

So far, not a single client has ever chosen to pay the hourly rate.

The reason is that they trust the plan she has created — which she completes before officially engaging the client. They see value in what she has done for them and how her suggestions will benefit them, so they don’t have any issues with her earning her living through commissions.

The key here is that Janea is transparent about the possible methods of compensation and what they mean, and she gives her clients the option of choosing what they’re most comfortable with.

The most difficult aspect of offering alternative investments

One challenging piece of Janea’s business has been educating her clients about alternative assets and “the fact that investments don’t just end with stocks, mutual funds, bonds, and GICs. There’s a whole other world out there of investments.”

She’s certainly careful about informing clients of the risks associated with private investments, but she also wants them to know the potential benefits.

For instance, she shares that she works with private investment companies that have good track records, large employee bases, and good board management.

Managing investor behaviour around alternative investments

Janea’s been working with one couple for the last three years and spent a lot of time telling them about what private investments can bring to their portfolio and how she ensures those investments are diverse.

For a long time, they were very wary of the risks. However, they did eventually implement some private equity.

Then 2018 came along. It, of course, wasn’t a great year for the public market. In the meantime, the couple’s private equity investments went up, and their portfolio as a whole remained stable.

Now, Janea has to reign them in the other way — now that they’ve seen the benefits of alternative investments, she’s advising them to maintain a balanced portfolio and not err in the other direction.

Hint: Even if you don’t offer private investments to your clients, you’ve probably had to help mitigate the effects of both fear and excitement on investor behaviour and portfolio stability. For more advice on managing investor behaviour, listen back to our episode with Steadyhand’s Tom Bradley.

To learn more from Janea, make sure you catch the full episode where she discusses the importance of cash flow management, her tips for marketing yourself in a smaller city, and why she recommends that new advisors build their book of business organically.

In the episode, Janea also mentions a cash-flow specialist course that helped her completely change the way she addresses cash-flow with her clients.  We’ve partnered with CacheFlo, the company that created this course, to run a free webinar: Finding the Money to Fund Financial Planning. To learn about why traditional budgeting doesn’t work, why cash-flow is about so much more than just math, and how to unlock its value for clients, register for the webinar — we’ll see you on the inside!

Jamie Robb is the Principal and Senior Wealth Advisor at FIDUCIA Wealth Management. Since he began his career in 1999, Jamie has worked with Canadian business owners and families to help them successfully manage their wealth. He’s also an expert at working with other professionals and acting as the cohesive force that brings their knowledge together to help his clients achieve their vision of financial success.

Listen in to the episode to hear how Jamie manages relationships with clients and other professionals, how he helps his clients decide what financial success means for them in the first place, and how he managed to build a successful business as an independent wealth advisor.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• How Jamie went from working in a nickel smelter to running a successful financial advisory practice (4:20)
• The importance of having a philosophy for financial decision-making (10:00)
• Jamie’s value-first approach for working with clients (15:45)
• Why Jamie doesn’t believe in niching down (23:35)
• Working effectively with other professionals (28:10)
• The mantra Jamie feels has brought him success (36:50)
• The major gap in the value proposition of robo-advisors (43:00)
• Jamie’s mission to make sure everyone he knows has an up-to-date will (50:25)

Links and Resources:

Jamie Robb

Jamie on Twitter

FIDUCIA Wealth Management

Willing Wisdom Index

Quotes by Jamie:

“When we have specialization, it really falls to the client, the end user, to be the general contractor who’s directing all these people building the house.”

“The only way you’re going to be a long-term client for me is if you really trust me and if you trust that I can deliver value for you.”

“If you just do the right things over and over again, eventually the right things will happen.”

Having spent 20 years in the business and holding seven different professional designations, Jamie has a lot of experience to draw from to help us understand more about the financial advisory business.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• Jamie’s value-first approach for working with clients

• Why Jamie doesn’t believe in niching down

• Working effectively with other professionals

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

Jamie’s value-first approach for working with clients

One of the most common first questions a prospective client will ask their potential new advisor is “How much do I have to pay you?”

It’s a question Jamie isn’t keen to answer.

Building trust

Instead, Jamie wants the opportunity to actually deliver value before asking someone to sign a contract and hand their money over to him. It’s like a no-obligation free trial — something common in many other industries.

Hint: In our previous episode, Allan Dib discusses various ways you can apply marketing tactics from other industries to financial services. You can listen to it here.

That’s because he’s in it for the long game, and he wants to work with his clients for the long term. The way he puts it, “the only way you’re going to be a long-term client for me is if you really trust me and if you trust that I can deliver value for you.” He wants to ensure they’re comfortable with him first. Delivering value first is essential to building that trust.

This means that after an initial discovery meeting (or more), Jamie takes the time to roughly sketch out a plan so he and the client have a framework to work from. At this point, he has enough information to make some recommendations about how he can help the client, what kind of value he can deliver, and what kind of compensation will make sense for the situation.

A practical benefit

Waiting to discuss compensation has another, more practical, benefit: simply, it’s hard for him to know what exactly clients will want from him just from the first meeting. Maybe they have a family friend who has always managed their money and they just want his advice; maybe they want him to manage all aspects of their finances. Until he digs in, he can’t be sure that he can deliver enough value to justify the compensation he needs.

Once he and the client are clear on what Jamie will be providing for them, then he can come up with how compensation can work for both of them.

Why Jamie doesn’t believe in niching down

Profit-wise, there’s no question that specialization is key — being known as the expert in your niche is the best way to grow your practice.

However, Jamie doesn’t think that approach is all that good for the client. “When we have specialization,” he explains, “it really falls to the client, the end user, to be the general contractor who’s directing all these people building the house.”

And most clients don’t have the skill or knowledge to manage a team of specialists, no matter how amazing those specialists are. What they end up with is a group of professionals with limited perspectives with nobody to bring all that expertise together.

That’s why Jamie believes that multidisciplinary advice is the future for financial professionals. In other words, he decided to “make a specialty out of being a generalist.”

He considers himself to have expertise in a couple of key areas, but his real value-add is that he has enough knowledge of the other areas to be a cohesive agent for his clients. He can speak the language of accountants, lawyers, and other professionals and be that force that connects everything back to the three parameters he uses to gauge a client’s financial success: security, efficiency, and enjoyment.

Working effectively with other professionals

Working with other professionals can be a risky business.

When choosing to work with you, a lawyer or accountant has a lot to lose. If you fail a mutual client somehow, their reputation with the client and within their firm can be on the line.

And in order to effectively help your client, you have to be able to work well with other professionals; if your relationship with them isn’t solid, you’re going to have a hard time working in your client’s best interest.

A big part of this is having that level of knowledge about what they do, being able to speak confidently about that knowledge, and thinking about things from their perspective — but it’s not just about that.

Treating other professionals like your clients

Jamie views working with another professional just like working with a new client. And true to form, he focuses on building trust and delivering value to them first.

He has made it a point throughout his career to help other professionals solve problems for their clients without much in it for himself. Jamie has earned a lot of respect from professionals who hear directly from their clients about the ways Jamie has helped them — often for free.

It’s a long game to play, certainly.

But Jamie has found that he hasn’t had to do almost any marketing in quite some time, simply because nearly all of his clients now come to him through referrals, many of them from other professionals.

When you take your relationship with other professionals seriously, “they really start to see you as part of their team and they want you involved with not just the clients you already work with, but the ones that you don’t already work with.”

Hint: Jamie is also very strict about never accepting money or paying for referrals; he believes that as soon as the arrangement includes compensation, the trust — which is the whole point — is gone.

For more helpful advice from Jamie, catch the full episode to hear his success mantra, learn why decumulation is a huge opportunity for new financial advisors, and more. You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes.

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Today’s guest not only understands why a marketing plan is critical to your business’ success, but he also has a simple framework for a 1-page marketing plan that you can create quickly and easily.

Joining the podcast today is Allan Dib. Allan is a serial entrepreneur, rebellious marketer, and best-selling author. Over the course of his career, Allan has founded and grown businesses across several industries, including IT and telecommunications.

His book, The 1-Page Marketing Plan, offers a simple, fast, and reliable way to implement a marketing plan that works for your business. Listen in to hear how the plan can work for you, a simple question to help you to identify your ideal target market, and how you can differentiate yourself from your competitors.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why Allan wrote The 1-Page Marketing Plan (5:25)
• How the 1-page marketing plan works (8:05)
• The “Before” phase: Finding and reaching your target market (10:15)
• The “During” phase: Building trust with potential clients (19:00)
• The “After” phase: Why marketing doesn’t end when you get the client (30:25)
• The #1 mistake that small business owners make (39:40)
• What you might not know about successfully implementing your marketing plan (44:00)

Links and Resources:

Allan Dib

The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand Out From The Crowd

Successwise on Facebook

Download The 1-Page Marketing Plan Canvas for Free

Quotes by Allan:

“If you only ever got paid for getting results, who would you work with?”

“When your target market sees your ad or sees a message from you, you want the reaction from them to be, ‘Hey, that’s for me.’”

“You’re in the business of marketing financial services. You’re not in the business of just doing financial services… That mindset shift alone will be massively amazing for your business. It will make all the difference.”

After spending a decade figuring out how to market a business well, Allan decided to create something comprehensive that people could follow to market themselves. His book and plan are the holistic resources you can follow to take someone from never having heard of you to becoming a loyal fan of your business.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• The #1 marketing mistake that small business owners make

• Why marketing doesn’t end when you get the client

• What you might not know about successfully implementing your marketing plan
  
  

For the rest of the episode (where we dive into the plan step by step), find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

The #1 marketing mistake that small business owners make

Following a one-page marketing plan isn’t necessarily complicated. In fact, the major mistake business owners make with marketing has nothing to do with the plan itself.

Rather, what they have is a mindset problem. It’s thinking, “Well, I’m a financial planner, so I’m just in the financial planning business.”

Sure, this mindset works for employees who just deliver a service and then go home to their lives at the end of the day; all they have to think about is the deliverable, and that’s fine.

But as a business owner, you need to think differently. The deliverable you provide is important, sure — you have people’s financial futures in your hands, after all. That’s a major responsibility and honour.

But your clients will never know how great your services are if they don’t know about you in the first place. Your marketing will lay out their path to finding you — it’s the critical first step to getting them through the door to begin with.

As Allan puts it, “You’re in the business of marketing financial services. You’re not in the business of just doing financial services.”

Why marketing doesn’t end when you get the client

If you’ve already taken a look at Allan’s 1-page marketing plan canvas, you might have noticed that a third of it focuses on steps you take after someone has become your client.

Many financial advisors believe that marketing ends once someone has signed the engagement letter — that all that’s left now is delivering the service.

But that’s just not the case. Here’s why marketing is important even once you’ve signed on clients:

You want to retain the client

Of course, part of the reason for this work is to retain the client; you don’t want them looking elsewhere because they’re not satisfied with your service.

You can use it to create loyal fans

Amazing marketing creates raving fans. And these fans are more likely to buy more services from you because they already trust that you have their best interests at heart. But more than that, happy loyal customers are less likely to complain, they’ll always pay on time… simply put, you can help create your own ideal clients.

You’ve already put in most of the effort

Think about it: by the time you’ve signed a client on, you’ve already done the most expensive and difficult parts of marketing. You created a plan, spent time (and likely money) putting yourself out there, and shown yourself to be the best person to meet your clients’ needs. Why waste all that hard work?

It takes just a little bit more effort to ensure your marketing continues to pay off. There’s maintaining regular communication with the client, showing them that you really care about them, and asking them for referrals. That’s what the marketing encompasses: everything outside of just straight delivering your service.

For example, this might mean spending a few minutes every month writing out handwritten cards for all of your clients who have birthdays coming up. It could mean making it easy for them to offer value to their network by referring you to friends and colleagues.

The key is to have all of these activities as part of your plan and systematically ensuring that they’re happening when they need to.

Hint: For a great example of an advisor who goes above and beyond for his clients, listen to our interview with Jamie List on successfully growing a practice with high service standards.

What you might not know about successfully implementing your marketing plan

Even with limiting your marketing plan to one page, you might feel overwhelmed by all the marketing activities you need to do to make your business thrive.

The thing is, you don’t have to do them all alone.

Allan explains that every business needs three types of people:

• The entrepreneur (the visionary and risk-taker)
• The specialist (the expert in the field)
• The manager (the person who ensures the business runs smoothly)

If we had to guess, we’d say you’re the entrepreneur, the specialist, or both. That means that making sure the office runs efficiently every day — that clients are taken care of and marketing campaigns are happening — probably isn’t your favourite activity.

And by all means, focus on your strengths: coming up with great ideas and delivering an amazing service.

There are people who do love the systematic aspect of taking care of day-to-day tasks. Those are the people you want to hire to take care of your marketing (and other business tasks you may not love).

Implementing your marketing plan is key, but you don’t have to do it all yourself. Plan out what needs to get done every day, week, and month in terms of your marketing efforts, and then decide who can implement them for you.

Make sure you listen to the full episode to hear an in-depth explanation of the 1-page marketing plan and how you can apply it to your financial advisory practice — including how you can differentiate yourself from other financial advisors and what really drives referrals. You can find the show here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes.

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Gregg Filmon is the President of Value Partners Investments, one of Canada’s fastest-growing financial firms. Gregg works side by side with his clients, helping them build wealth to finance their dreams for the future. Value Partners Investments has already created over $820 million in investment gains for families across Canada. Listen to the episode to hear Gregg’s insights about the critical importance of planning and how he leverages second opinions to bring in new clients.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why Gregg’s firm’s structure is so unique (1:10)
• What goes wrong for families who are trying to build wealth — it actually has very little to do with money (9:05)
• Where Gregg starts the planning process with clients (11:20)
• Why investors need to develop an ownership mentality (12:10)
• Why good investment advice starts with good planning (23:40)
• Gregg’s foundations for building a successful business (28:00)
• How Gregg recommends new advisors get into the business today (35:50)
• Why Gregg is becoming an expert in offering second opinions (39:05)

Links and Resources:

Gregg Filmon

Value Partners Investments

Quotes by Gregg:

“We fundamentally believe that the financial decisions that people make in their lives should reflect their values. It should reflect who they are and what they’re trying to accomplish.”

“We’re going to change their lives by helping them make the most of their life’s work.”

“I could make the argument that you should not be investing anybody’s money until you understand specifically what the money is intended for.”

Owned and operated by independent financial advisors across Canada, Value Partners Investments is a great example of a firm that centers financial planning in everything they do. As the president, Gregg has a unique view of how critical this is both for clients and for the company’s sustainability.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• Why good investment advice starts with good planning
• Gregg’s foundations for building a successful business
• Why Gregg is becoming an expert in offering second opinions
  

To listen to the full episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

Why good investment advice starts with good planning

Every day, Gregg sees portfolios that bear no resemblance to what clients need or want from their lives. Portfolio managers select securities based on commissions or what they’ve seen work in the past without looking at the client’s specific needs.

Often, plans are added on as lip service or one small piece of a massive checklist. A plan is drafted, then sits gathering dust on a shelf and is never revisited — making it essentially pointless.

At Value Partners Investments, though, the plan is the very centre of the service.

Gregg illustrates the reason with the example of a corporate farm, which has huge risk and cash flow variability from year to year. If land becomes available, it’s usually a good idea for them to snatch it up right away. In a case like this, a 100% cash portfolio might actually be ideal — definitely not a one-size-fits-all option. And when it comes time to transition their land to the next generation, the portfolio would have to switch up once again.

In Gregg’s view, any investment should begin with the goal in mind. According to him, “you should not be investing anybody’s money until you understand specifically what the money is intended for.”

Gregg’s foundations for building a successful business

With 51 people on staff, $3 billion AUM, and about eight thousand clients across Canada, Value Partners Investments is by no means a small firm. Gregg pinpoints four key reasons for their success:

The belief

Gregg feels that the core of any successful business is the belief that people need what you are offering. If you don’t even believe that what you provide is valuable, you’ll have a hard time putting all your focus into it — or convincing anyone else that they should use your services.

The written plan

So many advisors who help their clients plan their financial futures don’t write down their own goals. Gregg suggests writing down very specific goals and working back from them to find out what actions you need to take to reach them.

For example, Jim Lawton, the founder of Value Partners Investments, decided he wanted to double the firm every 5 years. This meant 15% growth compounded annually. From there, they had to figure out every single piece that they needed to get there: the systems, people, processes, marketing, service level, software, and so on.

The scorecard

Furthermore, Gregg’s team has a scorecard — which has targets for new clients and new assets, as well as a clear action plan — that all employees keep front of mind. Without it, they couldn’t evaluate how well they executed on action points, how that translated into results, or what they could improve on for next time.

The people

Growth is stressful and challenging — what works early on in your business won’t necessarily translate as your client base and staff grow. And it’s impossible to do it all yourself.

That’s why it’s important to bring the right people onto your team. Whether you grow your staff or keep an informal network of specialists you can refer to your clients, you need motivated and invested people to help you bring your vision to life.

Hint: To hear how Steadyhand’s Tom Bradley works with other professionals to best serve his clients, check out our recent interview with him.

The other side of this, though, is relinquishing control. Once you bring people on board, you have to give them responsibility and trust that they’ll be accountable for their actions. At Value Partners Investments, the staff members are all owners, so everyone is invested in the long term success of the company — and of each client.

Why Gregg is becoming an expert in offering second opinions

You already know that an ideal client is one who really sees the value of good financial advice. Unfortunately, the flip side of this is that most ideal clients are already working with a financial services professional.

Maybe they don’t have a financial planner, but you can be pretty sure they have somebody — maybe an insurance advisor, an accountant, or a portfolio manager.

However, very few Canadians are getting the full picture of their finances or the personalized service that will help them make the most of their life’s work.

For this reason, Gregg and his team have been working hard to position themselves as experts at providing a second opinion. They focus on reaching out to folks and being bold enough to ask them, “Are you getting the service you need from your advisor?”

There’s definitely a fearlessness required to ask people this — but that fearlessness is also critical to growing your business.

For the consumer, a second opinion is a win-win. Either they walk away knowing that their affairs are indeed in order, or they get specific recommendations to improve their financial situations (and hopefully choose your practice to implement them).

Hint: For more on identifying your ideal clients and convincing them to work with you, listen to our episode with Grant Hicks.

To learn more from Gregg, make sure you catch the full episode where he dives further into the qualities of ideal clients, the importance of an ownership mentality for investors, and more.

You can find the episode right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes. And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below.

Jim Greenwood is a Managing Partner at Blue Sky Lasting Wealth. A CFP with 25 years of experience, he most recently transitioned to IPC Securities and founded BlueSky Lasting Wealth. Listen to the episode to hear what Jim has to say about managing changes — both in your career and in the industry.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• How Jim is handling major changes to his business (1:25)
• How Jim got into wealth management — and how the landscape is different today (4:10)
• Meeting high service standards with amazing communication (7:00)
• Approaching transition and succession plans (13:40)
• How a financial plan is like a marathon (16:05)
• The most difficult aspect of advising clients — and how to overcome it (19:50)
• Combatting clients’ number one concern about referring you to their friends (24:10)

Links and Resources:

Jim Greenwood

Blue Sky Lasting Wealth

Quotes by Jim:

“Our clients recognize the need for professionals or specialists in all areas of their life – doctors, accountants, mechanics, you name it – and we are that person for them when it comes to their financial situation.”

“I didn’t necessarily identify exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn’t want to do, and that was be in some sort of unionized or corporate situation where all of the hard work I do wouldn’t really be reflected in my level of success.”

“I think too many people who might want to call themselves entrepreneurs or businesspeople are afraid to take chances.”

Jim not only has 25 years of experience in the business — he is also in the thick of some major changes in his practice, including moving to a new office, transitioning to serve more and more high net worth clients, and working with another advisor on a succession plan. Today he’s sharing his advice for keeping your clients happy while navigating major transitions in your business.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• How Jim got into wealth management — and how the landscape is different today
• Prioritizing values during a succession
• Meeting high service standards with amazing communication

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

How Jim got into wealth management — and how the landscape is different today

Jim has always been interested in the financial services industry and always thought he would be an accountant — until he did a work term with an accounting firm and hated it.

During his co-op terms, he realized he wanted to be self-employed. “I didn’t necessarily identify exactly what I wanted to do,” he says, “but I knew what I didn’t want to do, and that was be in some sort of unionized or corporate situation where all of the hard work I do wouldn’t really be reflected in my level of success.”

Eventually, this led him to financial planning.

Starting out as an advisor today

Jim recalls his time starting out as an advisor wasn’t easy. But he sees that today, the barriers to entry, and in particular the expenses of being in the business, are even higher.

So when people ask him how they can get started as advisors, he doesn’t recommend doing what he did.

Instead, he suggests that aspiring independent advisors start their careers at a bank or an insurance company, or work for another advisor, to experience the business and get their credentials while earning a salary.

Hint: To hear another perspective on starting out in the business by working in an adjacent industry, listen to our interview with Jason Pereira on how to compete and win in the Canadian HNW segment (his advice for new advisors starts 42 minutes into the episode).

Prioritizing values during a succession

Jim and his staff are currently working on a succession plan to help another advisor, Grant, transition out of the business over five years. They’re spending the next year and a half combining their clients and staff.

The shift is bringing up a lot of questions for Jim and his team. But he’s focused on two priorities:

1. He’s serious about the level of service he provides, and he wants to make sure he can keep doing it — in fact, he wants to increase the quality of service he’s already providing clients.
2. He’s “fiercely protective” of his and his staff’s time — and their free time in particular. He doesn’t want anybody to be constantly working overtime to keep the practice running.

These two competing interests mean that Jim and his team need to make some hard choices. They need to very carefully and explicitly define everyone’s roles. And even with additional staff, they’re realizing that they can only really serve 250 clients well (which is how many they currently serve). This means that they will inevitably have to let some clients go — any more, and they would either have to work more or cut down on service levels.

Meeting high service standards with amazing communication

One of the main ways Jim offers such a high level of service is through excellent communication with his clients. You’ve probably already heard that the main reason clients leave their advisors is because of a lack of communication, and Jim wants to take that issue off the table.

Templating communications

Keeping in touch with so many clients can be a struggle, so Jim has made it as painless and automatic as possible. He segmented his client base, determined how often he should meet with clients in each segment, and broke down how many meetings he needs to do every week to fit everyone in — then, it’s up to his assistant to fill those meeting times with clients.

Additionally, he’s decided to check in a certain number of times with each segment of clients — he calls some once a quarter and others once a year. Every month, he gets a list of clients to call and makes his way through the list over the course of the month.

Proactive communication: The “wow experience”

Jim never wants a client to feel like they need to check in with him because they think something is wrong. So recently, his office started a new initiative around proactive communication to really go above and beyond.

For example, pension transfers can often take weeks to complete, but no new client wants to be waiting for weeks or even months with no word, wondering if Jim has forgotten about them. Instead, his assistant sends them an update every Friday to let them know where the transfer is at, so they don’t have to worry.

Regular contact: A fine balance

In addition to the above initiatives, Jim’s clients get a Blue Sky Bulletin every other month with updates about the market and other information they may find valuable. His head office also sends out an automated newsletter.

However, Jim is thinking he’s going to cancel the newsletter — he doesn’t want his clients getting so inundated with information that they don’t open the important emails.

Good communication is always a matter of balance: sharing high-quality, relevant information that people actually find valuable.

Hint: How can you more easily automate communication with clients? Whether it’s setting up automatic reminders to check in with certain clients or sending out a newsletter or bulletin, there are plenty of opportunities to make it simpler for yourself.

We’re sure you want to hear more from Jim, so listen to the full episode where he talks about overcoming the most difficult aspect of advising clients, combating the number one concern around referrals, and more. You can find the show here on this page or, better yet, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes.

And to get new episode updates right to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below so you never miss an episode.

A Certified Financial Planner, Dean began his career in the financial services industry in 1987. Over the years, he has served as Principal of Horizon Financial Services, Sales Manager of Manulife Financial/Manulife Securities, and District Vice President of RBC Global Asset Management. His firm, OPES Wealth Management, is a boutique wealth management firm that caters to business owners and professionals.

Listen to the episode to hear what Dean has to say about providing value to clients by always delivering on what you promise.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Dean’s 3-step process for providing integrated advice (5:50)
• How Dean makes sure his services are worth the fees (9:20)
• How Dean identified his sweet spot of 125 clients (15:55)
• Applying Investment Planning Counsel’s Total Client Experience in the field (20:20)
• How Dean’s practice is moving toward a family office structure offering a lifestyle concierge service (23:45)
• Planning social events to engage with prospects (29:20)
• The emerging 3-tiered financial advice system (35:15)

Links and Resources:

Dean Trudeau

The OPES Wealth Management

Quotes by Dean:

“I love when we put a plan together and people share their goals and dreams with me, and we’re able to find out where they are, figure out where they want to go, and then put a great plan in place and have it get there.”

“Everybody pays fees. And we want to make sure that they get the value of the fees they’re paying.”

“Most advisors actually don’t do that. They don’t create a plan, they don’t follow the plan, and they don’t update the plan.”

It’s Dean’s passion for delivering on promises that has made his practice so successful, and he’s here to share his insights with you.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from this episode:

• How Dean makes sure his services are worth the fees
• How Dean identified his sweet spot of 125 clients
• Planning social events to engage with prospects
  
  

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or click the link above.

How Dean makes sure his services are worth the fees

Dean suspects there are advisors who don’t necessarily earn the high fees that they charge.

Sometimes this happens because they take on too many clients and can’t give anyone their full attention. Maybe it’s because they’re charging simply for assets under management regardless of how much work a particular client requires. Other times, people who call themselves wealth advisors, financial planners, or the like don’t offer the full set of planning and advising services their title or designation would suggest.

Following through on promises

For Dean, it comes down to always doing what you say you’re going to do. As a wealth advisor, he creates, follows, and updates financial plans for his clients, advising them on all aspects of their wealth.

This also means he reviews his clients’ plans every single quarter ‒ and he’s upfront with his clients as to how often this happens. Looking at the goals and targets, he measures them up against a simple goal tracker to plot their progress and see how close they are to reaching a particular financial goal (within a certain range, of course, to account for typical market fluctuations).

While he doesn’t meet with most clients every quarter, they can be at peace knowing that he’s monitoring their situation to make sure they’re on track to reach their goals.

Hint: More recently, Dean has made a habit of explaining to his clients what he does for them between meetings, and many appreciate hearing that he’s always keeping an eye on their progress behind the scenes.

How Dean identified his sweet spot of 125 clients

As mentioned above, one reason that some advisors can’t deliver on their promises is that they take on too many clients. This is why Dean has made it a point to take on no more than 125 clients at a time. Knowing his limits is an important strategy, but he came to the number with some pretty simple math.

First, he figured out how many weeks he works every year (he takes about 3‒4 weeks off every year for conferences and vacations).

Next, he divided his weeks into free days, buffer days (when he’s catching up on work, planning, or working on other aspects of his business), and focus days (when he’s actually meeting with clients). He also calculated how many clients he can reasonably see in one day.

Finally, he decided how frequently he needs to meet with each client; for most, three meetings a year does the trick, in addition to electronic follow-ups and updates throughout the year.

Putting all this together, he realized that if he serves more than 125 clients, he won’t be able to give them all the attention and level of service that he wants to deliver.

Hint: Dean has worked with coaches at a couple of points in his career to help him with strategic business planning. If you’re interested in learning more about driving business growth strategically, check out our episode with Chris Paterson on creating a solid business plan.

Planning social events to engage with prospects

Even with a strict limit on the number of clients he takes on, Dean and his team still have to do outreach to meet new people.

While referrals are a great source of new clients and social media marketing is becoming increasingly important, too, small events are a unique way of getting in front of prospects.

Dean invites current clients to what he calls “senses seminars.” These are fun events centered around the senses (sight, taste, smell, etc.) that also have a certain message that he wants to impart to his guests. He’s upfront with his clients that these events have two purposes: to thank them for being great clients and to help him meet new people.

One recent example was a cooking contest where groups of four competed in a gourmet cooking competition that included mixing two boxes of Kraft Dinner with high-end ingredients. The event tied into Dean’s message that “ingredients matter” in financial planning. And since each team typically included one couple that he currently works with, he also got to meet whoever that couple brought to compete with them.

Hint: To hear about another way you can do client appreciation events, listen to our show with Chris Rawles and Spencer Tilley about differentiating your practice from the big banks.

To hear more from Dean, including how he plans his clients’ business and personal finances, the steps he’s taking to turn his office into a lifestyle concierge service, and how he prices his services, listen to the full episode on this page or subscribe to the show on iTunes or Stitcher.

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below so you never miss an episode.

Chris Reynolds is the Co-Founder, President, and CEO of Investment Planning Counsel. With over 25 years of experience in the business, he uses his knowledge and skills to work one-on-one time with advisors, helping them improve their businesses. Under his leadership, IPC has become one of the fastest-growing wealth management companies in Canada.

Listen to today’s episode to learn from Chris about what advisors can learn from Disney, simple steps that can make a big difference in your business growth, and new opportunities in the sudden money segment.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why wealth management is as important as healthcare (5:10)
• IPC’s Total Client Experience system and what it borrows from Disney (6:55)
• Four factors that will make the biggest difference in client experience (15:45)
• How financial advisors can improve the digital experience to stay relevant (19:45)
• The simple change that helped one advisor grow his business by 33% in one year (28:15)
• Why commodified offerings like best returns or lowest fees are a bad idea (30:15)
• Where the biggest opportunities for advisors are right now (32:00)

Links and Resources:

Chris Reynolds

Investment Planning Counsel

Quotes by Chris:

“Well, my personal view is wealth management and financial planning is one of the most critical services that can be provided to consumers.”

“What makes a business great is the experience a client has with that business.”

“You’re supposed to give great advice to clients, but if you can combine that great advice with a great experience, that’s what puts you ahead of everyone else.”

Chris has spent a lot of time figuring out how Canada’s best financial advisors ‒ and indeed, the world’s top companies ‒ set themselves apart. At IPC, he has developed systematized processes to help advisors grow their business by creating an unbeatable client experience.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from the show:

• Four factors that will make the biggest difference in client experience
• The simple change that helped one advisor grow his business by 33% in one year
• Where the biggest opportunities for advisors are right now
  

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

Four factors that will make the biggest difference in client experience

It can be hard to decide where to put your focus to grow your business, but there are always a few key moves you can make that will create the biggest impact. Chris has four easy tips you can implement to create a great client experience right from the beginning of the relationship.

Clarity in the initial appointment

It’s common sense that consumers will have some questions for you before trusting you with their money ‒ things like your qualifications, how you get paid, and how your team works.

One of the best ways you can differentiate yourself is by addressing their questions and concerns before they even have to ask. Transparency and openness are key to forming a trusting relationship.

Hint: Check out this episode with John Page to learn more about maximizing conversions during your first meeting with a client.

Less talking, more listening

Advisors can spend too much time talking and giving advice ‒ and not enough time listening. An in-depth questionnaire can help you avoid this pitfall by really getting the client talking.

A great questionnaire goes beyond just a prospect’s risk tolerance and net worth ‒ it gets at what Chris calls “return on life” ‒ the hopes they have for their children, where they want to retire, and what they admire (or want to avoid) in the lives of retired folks they know.

Discovery letter

To show you were paying attention and really demonstrate your value to a client, Chris suggests sending them a discovery letter. Here you can articulate back to them what they said their needs are and show them how you can help address them.

An aligned philosophy

Before you get in too deep with a client, make sure that your wealth management philosophy aligns with theirs. If you believe in long-term asset allocation but your client is more interested in trying to beat the market, the relationship won’t be a good fit no matter how hard you work.

To ensure your philosophies are aligned though, you need to be very clear and specific (both for yourself and to your client) on what your philosophy is.

The simple change that helped one advisor grow his business by 33% in one year

One of IPC’s most successful advisors had fairly static growth for a period of time; then, seemingly out of nowhere, his business growth was in the double digits ‒ and stayed that way over a period of five years.

When Chris asked him what he was doing differently, he said, “I’m actually talking to my clients.”

Every week, he randomly calls four clients just to see how they’re doing and if there’s anything they need help with. The call is unscheduled and with no agenda other than to check in.

The first year he started doing this, business went up by 33%, showing that personal contact really trumps everything else.

He’s even gamified the process for himself: if he gets all four calls in by Thursday, he gets to take Friday off.

Hint: You might think a lot about motivating your clients to manage their cash flow and to be patient with their investments, but how can you motivate yourself to grow your business? For some ideas of concrete goals to drive your business, listen to our episode about the major drivers of advisors’ business growth with Chris Paterson.

Where the biggest opportunities for advisors are right now

If he were starting his financial advising business today, Chris knows exactly which segment he would go after: the sudden money crowd.

In Canada alone, $1.4 trillion of wealth is predicted to move from one generation to another in the next 15 years. That’s a lot of money changing hands.

But it’s not just inheritances ‒ people who spend their lives building a company and then liquidate or sell it often have a windfall they didn’t expect (farms are a great example).

Individuals in both of these groups often have no idea how to allocate that money to meet their needs going forward. They need comprehensive advice and guidance, as well as a methodology to maintain communication and progress on a regular basis. No matter the advances in fintech, these things can’t be replicated by a robot ‒ and the client base in this segment is rapidly growing.

For more advice from Chris, don’t miss the full episode where he talks about how IPC is helping their advisors create a better digital experience for their clients, why you should avoid making your value proposition about the best returns or the lowest fees, and more.

Listen to the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher ‒ and don’t forget to sign up for our mailing list below to get a message every time a new episode goes live.

Sterling Rempel has more than 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. Twenty years ago, he founded his own independent financial planning firm, Future Values Estate & Financial Planning, where he serves as the principal advisor.

Sterling is a Certified Financial Planner, holds the distinction “Fellow of FPSC” and is a two-time finalist in the PlanPlus Canada Financial Planning Awards. Listen to the episode to hear what he has to say about estate planning practices, the importance of education for bringing in new clients, and more.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• What planners get wrong about the financial planning process (7:05)
• The three questions to address in estate planning (10:50)
• Sterling’s transition from mutual fund dealer to securities dealer (18:15)
• How Sterling has evolved his methods for finding new clients and leads (23:25)
• Sterling’s “fee-agnostic approach” to pricing (25:55)
• The ongoing opportunity for advisors in an increasingly tech-driven industry (29:55)
• Why successful advisors are never satisfied (33:10)

Links and Resources:

Sterling Rempel

Future Values

Quotes by Sterling:

“Estate planning is more than the tax and the charitable giving; it is how to transition that wealth to the next generation most effectively.”

“I find that clients aren’t as hung up on the nature of the compensation, more so they just want to understand it.”

“We as an industry have to do a better job of identifying that financial planning is a valid exercise no matter what a person’s financial net worth statement says.”

Celebrating 20 years as an independent financial advisor this year, Sterling Rempel jokes that he thinks he “might survive in this industry at this point.” Far more than surviving, he’s built a successful business doing what he loves and helping people feel confident in their financial future and the legacy they’ll leave behind.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from Sterling:

• The first step of financial planning: How Sterling identifies values and goals

• Three critical questions to address in estate planning

• What Sterling wishes he knew about transitioning from mutual fund dealer to securities dealer
  

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or click the link above.

The first step of financial planning: How Sterling identifies values and goals

Sterling has always been a believer in the importance of values ‒ the name of his company is a nod not only to the financial concept of future values, but also to the critical role a person’s values play in financial planning.

So when he’s working with a client, that’s where he begins. He leads them through a values exercise from Think2Perform, which gets them to narrow a list of about 50 values down to 5. This (often challenging) exercise gives him insight into who they are and what drives them.

Next, he learns about his clients' goals ‒ and, often, helps them uncover goals they didn’t realize they had. He uses a goals-based exercise where he has his clients fit different activities into one of four quadrants: things they want to do now, things they want to do later, things they feel they have to do now, and things they feel they have to do later.

These activities help crystalize ‒ both for Sterling and for the clients themselves ‒ what motivates them and what they’re working toward.

Hint: For more on helping clients manage their finances in alignment with their values, listen to our episode with David O’Leary.

The three questions to address in estate planning

When thinking about their financial future, there are three questions people tend to ask:

1. “Will I be ok?”
2. “Will my family be looked after?”
   
3. “How can I give back to my community and to causes that are important to me?”
   

But they can’t get to the second and third question until they’ve confidently answered the first ‒ so you need to determine their core capital needs and whether they’re meeting them. Then they can look at being generous with their family and friends.

One easy way to start the process is by looking at the client’s past tax returns ‒ what kinds of charitable donations have they made already? That gives a start for identifying what causes are important to them. Beyond that, it’s critical to probe the client to help them decide where they want their money to go when they’re gone.

Identifying how one wants to give back is just as personal as the values and goals exercises discussed above. “That charitable giving conversation arises out of the most important part of people’s hearts,” Sterling says. “What is it that they care about? What is it that they love?”

Giving responsibly

Once a client has identified who or what they want to leave their money to, your job is to help them do it in a way that makes sense.

One key aspect of this, of course, is identifying tax liability and addressing strategies to mitigate it. But it goes beyond that, too. “Estate planning is more than the tax and the charitable giving; it is how to transition that wealth to the next generation most effectively,” Sterling explains.

For instance, in Sterling’s experience, leaving a 16-year-old a large sum of money can actually do more harm than good because someone that young just isn’t ready to manage a lot of wealth ‒ looking into a trusteeship or annuity opportunities is usually a good idea in these cases.

What Sterling wishes he knew about transitioning from mutual plan dealer to securities dealer

Sterling’s decision to transition from the MFDA platform to the IIROC individual securities platform is a bit of an unusual one. However, he felt it made sense for his business for the following three reasons:

• His ability to better serve current clients: Sterling had clients he couldn’t fully serve in all areas. Now he can serve clients with individual securities and ETFs, and most importantly he has greater flexibility around structuring any client portfolio.

• Fewer missed opportunities: Sterling noticed that though he had a great rapport with some ideal potential clients, he was missing out on their business because they weren’t willing to move their assets into managed funds.

• Business continuity and succession: While Sterling loves his work and has no desire to retire anytime soon, he wants his clients to have peace of mind knowing that they’ll be taken care of when he eventually leaves the business. To that end, he’s working with another team to determine business continuity, and his transition has made that relationship possible.

A challenging transition

The move, though, wasn’t as smooth as he’d hoped. For one thing, he was dealing with a health crisis through the summer, and that made things a lot more difficult.

But for another, he had underestimated how much time the transition would take him ‒ the onboarding and paperwork ended up being full-time work for him and his three staff. As a result, he had a lot less time to attend to his insurance clients.

He says he wishes he had known the extent of the impact in terms of time and income in advance ‒ but all that said, he’s glad he made the transition.

To hear more from Sterling, including more of his thoughts on estate planning, the importance of your business name for succession planning, and his “fee-agnostic” approach to pricing, catch the full episode here on this page. You can also subscribe to the show on iTunes or Stitcher and sign up for our mailing list below to ensure you never miss an episode.

Chris Paterson is the National Director of Sales Development for Ivari. He’s worked in the industry since 1995 and has many years of experience working in advisor support roles. He worked with one of North America’s largest financial services organizations where he led a multi-channel national wholesaling team of 30 specialists that doubled the number of advisors selling living benefits insurance from 7,000 to 14,000 over two years.

He’s also been an advisor, consulted in the private wealth management industry, and has been an advanced case consultant for high-end financial professionals. Listen to the episode to hear Chris’ thoughts about what separates the most successful advisors from the rest, whether you should implement financial planning into your service offerings, and how to best market yourself online.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• How the most successful advisors rise to the top (3:05)
• How you should be thinking about financial planning in your business (11:30)
• Common advisor misunderstandings about financial plans (16:55)
• How you can leverage stories and research to show the value of financial planning to clients (20:45)
• The 3 tech must-haves in 2019 (23:45)
• Online marketing best practices (28:00)
• 3 key opportunities in Canada’s evolving financial services industry (34:10)

Links and Resources:

Chris Paterson

Ivari

Quotes by Chris:

“It seems all too often that many advisors, when you ask them what their business plan is… they say ‘I want to grow by 10%.’ And that’s barely a goal, and it certainly isn’t a plan.”

“People can’t expect that there’s a magical potion called the internet that then people are going to come on and ask to buy product from... It’s just a destination ‒ they have to help people get there and then interact with them.”

“What is your changing lives forever number? What is the impact you have for your clients in your community?”

With a proven track record of helping advisors grow their businesses, Chris Paterson can help you grow your practice with simple, actionable advice. Today, he’s sharing the importance of a solid business plan, how you can leverage technology to grow your business, and more.

Below, we’re sharing three key ideas from the show:

• How the most successful advisors rise to the top
• The 3 tech must-haves in 2019
• Online marketing best practices

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

How the most successful advisors rise to the top

Many business owners in Canada don’t even have a business plan. In fact, Chris was surprised to find that advisors who are really good at helping their clients plan are often not great at doing it for themselves. But without a specific goal and a plan to go with it, it’s hard to sustainably and successfully grow a business.

Create a concrete goal

“It seems all too often that many advisors, when you ask them what their business plan is or what their goal is... they say ‘I want to grow by 10%,’” Chris says. “And that’s barely a goal, and it certainly isn’t a plan.”

Top advisors aren’t satisfied with 10% growth; inflation, rising rates, and the occasional referral will get you to about 10% growth without any unique ideas or additional effort.

Instead, the best advisors have goals like aiming to double their business within a couple of years. They ask themselves, “How do I change what I’m doing and focus more on what my unique abilities are to get in front of more of the people that I naturally connect with best?”

Hint: A mere dollar figure may not keep you motivated for long, so consider translating it into something real. For example, maybe that extra revenue that you’re aiming for will allow you to hire an assistant so you can get in front of more clients or spend more time with family. Maybe it means a down payment on a new property. Either way, try to visualize what achieving that goal will bring you.

Have a business plan

Next, you need to have an actual plan for achieving your goal. This usually means breaking those big dreams down into action items and targets ‒ what do you actually need to do every month, every week, and every day to get in front of more potential clients?

Hold yourself accountable

Finally, you need to actually follow through and complete the goal you’ve set out for yourself. You might think about working with a business coach, a mentor, or an accountability group of other advisors. The key is to maintain good habits and hit your short-term targets so you can stay on track with your goal.

The 3 tech must-haves in 2019

In our digital world, Chris believes there are three tech table stakes for any advisor. If you’re missing any one of these, you might have some work ahead of you to catch up:

A web presence

The first thing people do when they hear about you is search your name on Google, and you want to make sure they can find relevant information about who you are and how you can help them. At a minimum, this means having a website or webpage, as well as a social media presence on whatever platform your target market uses (more on that in a minute).

Electronic records

A CRM or something similar isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore. It’s in CCIR and CLHIA guidelines, and many dealers mandate it, too.

Electronic transactions

We could talk all day about how electronic transactions are more efficient, save money, and reduce error rates. But the bottom line is that’s what consumers expect from any service. People want customized solutions in real time ‒ and they’re getting them in just about every industry, so make sure you’re meeting their expectations.

Hint: To hear more about great tools that you can use to grow your practice and learn a simple process for deciding what’s worth bringing in, check out our show with Jason Pereira.

Online marketing best practices

When it comes to marketing yourself online, it’s easy to waste a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing and don’t plan in advance. Fortunately, Chris has 6 simple ground rules to help you make the most of your efforts online:

Go back to your business plan

Your online presence has to align with your goals. Think about who you’re trying to reach, how much time you can put into it, and how much money you’re willing to spend. Maybe hiring a social media manager is your best bet; maybe you prefer to use an app to schedule your posts in advance yourself.

Be where your ideal clients are

There’s no point being on a social media site unless your target market is active on it, too. Find out which platforms your ideal clients use, and make sure you post content there regularly.

Bring people to your website

There are nearly 2 billion websites out there, and the chances of someone just stumbling across yours is slim. As Chris puts it, “it’s just a destination ‒ [you] have to help people get there.” Share your website on your social media profiles and let your clients know about it so people actually use it.

Interact with the people who follow you

Just as you would follow up with prospective clients who leave you a voicemail, you have to interact with and reach out to people who show interest in you online ‒ otherwise, you’re missing a valuable opportunity to connect. If someone is commenting on or sharing your content, respond to them and follow up, maybe inviting them to jump on a call with you.

Commit the time

You don’t want to spend all your time on Facebook or LinkedIn, but ensure you block off a bit of time and commit to your plan. This might mean just 10 minutes a day spent posting or scheduling interesting content and interacting with whoever engaged with your previous posts.

Make sure you’re compliant

Chris bluntly chalks this down to the “unspoken don’t-be-an-idiot-and-put-something-stupid-rule.” Luckily, most companies have compliant material that you can share on your profiles.

For more helpful advice from Chris, make sure you catch the full episode where he talks about deciding whether financial planning is for you, why over-focusing on tax savings is a mistake, and three big opportunities in the rapidly-changing industry. You can find the show right here on this page or subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher so you don’t miss any episodes.

And to get new episodes directly to your inbox, sign up for our mailing list below so you never miss an episode.

In addition to being President and Co-founder, Tom is a director and shareholder of the firm. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Manitoba and an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business. Prior to founding Steadyhand, Tom worked first as an equity analyst at Richardson Greenshields, then at Phillips, Hager & North as a research analyst and institutional portfolio manager. While at Phillips, Hager & North, Tom eventually became the COO and later president and CEO before resigning in 2005. All told, he has more than 30 years of experience in the investment industry. Listen to today’s episode to hear why Steadyhand’s long-term clients see their fees decrease over the years, why Steadyhand is so transparent about co-investing, and how his firm helps clients who need financial planning.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• What prompted Tom to resign as the leader of one of the largest asset management firms in Canada to start Steadyhand (5:00)
• Tom’s investment philosophy of undexing (6:20)
• Steadyhand’s unusual pricing model ‒ why long-term clients pay less (8:40)
• Gaining trust through transparency and co-investing (13:05)
• How Steadyhand partners with financial planners… and whether you’re a good fit to work with them (14:45)
• What investors misunderstand about the market and how you can help manage their behaviour (20:45)
• How Steadyhand differentiates itself in a world where banks are king (26:10)

Links and Resources:

Steadyhand

10 Years Wiser

Quotes by Tom:

“I really do believe that behavior – investor behavior – is the most important variable in returns.”

“As much as I was well-known in the institutional world ‒ I had more of a brand there ‒ I just felt that there was such an opportunity to make a difference.”

“I’m sure many of your listeners think it’s heresy, but the reality is, a client that’s been with us five years does not cost us as much to service, and we tell them that up front.”

An experienced, successful and well-respected voice in the financial services industry, Tom Bradley has important and unexpected tips for running your business. Today, he’s sharing his thoughts on partnering with financial planners, managing investor behaviour, and more.

Below, we’ll take you through three key ideas from the show:

• Gaining trust through transparency and co-investing
• Steadyhand’s unusual pricing model ‒ why long-term clients pay less
• How Steadyhand partners with financial planners
  
  

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

Gaining trust through transparency around co-investing

Tom describes his firm as “obscenely transparent” ‒ and he couldn’t be prouder.

One example of this is that every year, Steadyhand publishes the rate of co-investment at their firm ‒ the average percentage of their teams’ financial assets that are invested in Steadyhand funds. As of June 2018, that number was at an astounding 88% ‒ over $30 million invested in Steadyhand portfolios by employees and their families.

Understandably, clients love knowing that their fund managers have their own money invested in the same funds as them. They know that the Steadyhand team is gaining ‒ and losing ‒ money right alongside them, which makes them confident to put their money in those funds, too.

Hint: For more on walking your talk and how that builds trust with your clients, listen to Episode 22 of our podcast where we chat with Diane Dekanic about practicing what you preach as a financial planner.

Steadyhand’s unusual pricing model ‒ why long-term clients pay less

In general, Steadyhand’s pricing is fairly standard and based on a management expense ratio.

The MER is based on three things:

• Asset mix
• Size of assets (every dollar invested over $100,000 is calculated at a reduced rate)
• How long the client has been with the firm
  

That last one is where it gets unconventional. Rather than offering bonuses, reduced rates, or iPads to new customers, any client who has been with Steadyhand for five years or more has their rate reduced by 7%. After 10 years, they enjoy a 14% reduction.

Why?

For one thing, Tom wants to reward loyalty. To explain the importance of this, Tom shares a story of his wife renewing his Sports Illustrated subscription ‒ he’d been a subscriber for 40 years ‒ and pointing out that she could go online and get him a lower rate as a ‘new’ subscriber.

You can imagine how surprised and unhappy he was to learn that as a longtime loyal reader, the company valued him less than brand new subscribers. He knew he never wanted his clients to feel the way he did then.

Another reason is that clients who have been with Steadyhand longer are actually easier and less expensive to serve than new clients ‒ and he’s not afraid of being honest about that. Once they know the client well, there’s the occasional life event that might warrant a portfolio restructuring, but otherwise, a lot of the hard work was already done at the outset.

How Steadyhand partners with financial planners

If there’s one thing that Steadyhand excels at ‒ other than exceptional investor service ‒ it’s knowing their limits.

This definitely comes to bear when they decide how much advice they should give their clients. For the majority, investment advice alone is enough.

But for the rest of their clients, those who are looking for a bit more guidance with their finances, they’ve developed a Canada-wide knowledge base of fee-for-service planners that they can recommend when needed.

They like working with planners who have experience and asset sizes between $250,000 and $2 million. Their ideal partnerships are with planners who have some knowledge of investing but who want to refer their clients out for specific investment advice and management.

Steadyhand also has a CFP on staff who vets the plans of the professionals they work with to ensure they’re sound ‒ he doesn’t need to agree with the whole plan, but it has to make sense and be of good quality.

Working with investment managers

Are you a planner looking for an investment manager to collaborate with and refer clients to? Tom has a framework you can use to evaluate and choose the best firm to work with ‒ it’s the same strategy he uses to hire managers and the way he suggests consumers pick their own investment managers, too.

He calls his framework the 7 Ps. They stand for people, parent, philosophy, process, price, performance, and passion. To learn more about each principle, you can read his excellent explanations here.

Hint: If you’re looking for more tips for successfully collaborating with other professionals, go back to our episode with Julia Chung and Sandi Martin of Spring Financial Planning.

We bet you don’t want to miss anything Tom has to share, so make sure you catch the full episode right here on this page or on iTunes or Stitcher ‒ he also shares why he left a great position at a successful firm to start his own business, his “undexing” investment philosophy, and the ins and outs of what his collaborations with financial planners look like.

If you want to be notified every time a new episode goes live, sign up for our mailing list below so you never miss an episode.

Today’s guest can help you answer all of these questions. Jason Watt is the CEO and a full-time instructor at Business Career College, delivering web-based training to students across Canada who are in pursuit of their certifications. Jason has been at Business Career College since 2006 after 14 years serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. He also spends time providing pro bono financial planning services to disadvantaged populations. In today’s episode, you’ll hear what Jason has to say about the cost and time investments you’ll need to make to earn a CFP designation, how you can get more from your continuing education, and how to pick the best business model for your practice.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The best time to start pursuing designations (6:45)
• Two things the most successful students have in common (11:30)
• What to prioritize when considering continuing education (15:00)
• How changes in designations will affect the industry (17:20)
• Why some people think they don’t need to continue learning ‒ and why they’re wrong (19:20)
• How you can earn CFP Continuing Education credits by listening to a podcast (22:45)
• The different advising models Jason has seen work (26:20)
• Why it’s important to plan out your education (35:05)

Links and Resources:

Jason Watt

Business Career College

CE Drive With Jason Watt

Business Career College YouTube Channel

Quotes by Jason:

“Even if you’re in a fee-based or fee-only model, I think this is largely true: your first responsibility has to be to build a business.”

“If you feel like you’ve learned everything, that there’s nothing more for you to accomplish, then you’re going to be frustrated in class.”

“I would really love to see people plan out their education the same way that they help their clients to plan for retirement.”

Jason Watt has worked with many financial planners and advisors over the years as an instructor, and today he’s sharing why you should plan for your education just as you encourage your clients to plan their finances. Below, we’ll take you through three key points from the show:

• Why it’s important to plan out your education
• The best time to start pursuing designations
• Two things the most successful students have in common

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

Why it’s important to plan out your education

In Jason’s experience, many planners and advisors don’t fully consider how their education affects their career. Often, people jump into new opportunities because of circumstance ‒ a flash sale on a course, a client or friend making a recommendation, or even a boring day at work. They’re not making intentional decisions based on their long-term goals.

Jason recommends identifying your business goals and figuring how education can help you achieve them. Just as you would tell your clients to plan out their own goals and finances, you want to think through some big questions, like:

• What do I want to achieve?
• Where are my pain points and challenges?
• How can I best address these gaps?

This way, you ‒ and by extension, your clients ‒ will get the most out of your learning.

Furthermore, by taking the time to consider your options, you might find that you can achieve your goals with unconventional learning methods that you might not have considered.

For example, rather than seeking out traditional insurance continuing education to brush up on family law, you might benefit from training offered by a law firm or your province’s legal education society. Perhaps a financial planning conference in the US might have opportunities you’re looking for. By figuring out what gaps you’re trying to fill, you can be more intentional with your research and ultimately give yourself more options.

The best time to start pursuing designations

While everyone is different, and some individuals pursue a designation either as part of their post-secondary training or, on the other end of the spectrum, many years into their careers, Jason thinks the ideal time to pursue a designation is two to five years into your financial services career.

Spending a few years in the field gives you the time to figure out your business model, sit down with a variety of clients, and yes, make some mistakes. You’ll have an idea of your strengths, but you’ll also see what you have yet to learn.

Waiting until you’re a couple years into the business also gives you time to become profitable, which means you’ll have the funds to invest in courses and reduce your work a bit to manage your course load.

Hint: According to Jason, a CFP typically costs about $7,000 and takes 5-10 hours a week over a period of 18-24 months, so be sure you’re ready for the hit to your finances and time.

On the other hand, once people have spent longer than five years in their career, it can be easy to get stuck in a certain way of doing things and harder to accept new lessons and change. Additionally ‒ and this is a piece many people don’t realize ‒ once you have a set way of running your practice over a number of years, it can be difficult to rearrange things and fit such a big commitment into your life.

Of course, this is a big generalization, and Jason has seen planners and advisors at different points in their careers be very successful in their courses ‒ but overall, 2 to 5 years in seems to be the perfect window.

Two things the most successful students have in common

Regardless of when you decide to pursue a designation, Jason has identified three key traits that most of his successful students possess. They are:

1. Willingness to commit: The reality is that earning a designation takes dedication. It’s important to be realistic about the time and effort that it will take and to commit to blocking that time into your schedule. Unexpected business and life events happen, but the most successful students are able to adjust to changes and prioritize. This doesn’t mean completely putting life on hold for a year or two, but rather being flexible and willing to stick with the program.
2. Somebody who feels they have something to learn: While some people simply want to slug through courses to get those three letters behind their name, the most successful students go in eager to learn and understand that they don’t know everything. To get the most out of a program, Jason suggests going in with an open mind: “If you feel like you’ve learned everything, that there’s nothing more for you to accomplish, then you’re going to be frustrated in class.”

To hear more about Jason’s thoughts about designation envy, why teaching to the exam isn’t always a bad thing, and how his new podcast can earn you CFP Continuing Education credits, listen to the full episode here on this page or find the show on iTunes or Stitcher. And if you haven’t already, join our mailing list to get new episode notifications delivered right to your inbox.

Marc is a founding partner of Ryan Lamontagne Inc. He specializes in comprehensive financial planning, investment counseling, and tax planning. Marc has also delivered numerous seminars and workshops across Canada. He’s a recognized expert in the field and has appeared in publications such as the Globe & Mail, the Financial Post, CBC, Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Star, CTV Morning Live, and MoneySense magazine. Listen in to hear why he wanted to offer a comprehensive financial planning service that even includes tax preparation, how he gets clients to implement all the recommendations on his financial plan, and how he ensures his business is always growing.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• Why Marc offers tax preparation as part of his financial planning offerings (4:00)
• Marc’s trick for getting clients to implement his recommendations (7:25)
• How a financial plan is like a new car (12:45)
• What people often misunderstand about fiduciaries and financial planning (14:20)
• The unexpected way Marc found his niche (20:35)
• Marc’s multi-pronged approach to marketing (23:50)
• The two questions Marc asks himself to help him reinvent and grow his business (29:30)
• How recent changes to the FPSC will impact the industry (31:55)
  

Links and Resources:

Ryan Lamontagne Inc.

Quotes by Marc:

“One of the things I always tell clients is that the implementation process is just as important as the planning process because all the planning in the world isn’t going to do you any good unless you implement it.”

“I always used to joke that a financial plan is kind of like a new car: it loses about 20% of its value the minute you drive off the lot because as you know, over time, your financial situation may change, your life may change, your goals change.”

“Sometimes what you have to do is look around you and say is there some sort of structure that's preventing me from expanding my business? Because if a business isn’t growing, it’s dying.”

Marc’s mission with Ryan Lamontagne Inc. was always to offer as much as possible to his clients in one place so that they wouldn’t need to seek out teams of people to help them with their finances. Today, he’s sharing lessons and tips from his extensive experience in the field. We’ll share some highlights from the show here:

• Why Marc offers tax preparation as part of his financial planning offerings
• Marc’s trick to get clients to implement his recommendations
• The two questions Marc asks himself to help him grow his business

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or just hit the link above.

Why Marc offers tax preparation as part of his financial planning offerings

Ryan Lamontagne Inc. is unusual among financial planning firms in that they offer tax preparation as one of their services. Marc feels it’s an important part of his firm for three reasons:

1. It adds value. This is especially true for those who have complex financial situations or who just don’t have the time to handle their taxes themselves. Not everyone needs the service, of course, but for the clients who do take advantage of it, it’s invaluable. And it doesn’t cost Marc’s firm a lot to provide the service.
2. It helps them learn about their clients. A financial plan is very in-depth, sure, but getting to see a client’s full tax return gives Marc even more insight into their financial situation, meaning that he’s able to give them the most relevant recommendations.
3. He sees the consequences of his recommendations. Everyone loves seeing the fruit of their labour, and seeing clients saving real money on their taxes is a tangible way for Marc to see (and show!) the value he provides.

Marc’s trick for getting clients to implement his recommendations

Every advisor knows the frustration of giving their client sensible and simple recommendations that get neglected year after year.  Recommendations like, say, having an up-to-date will.

“One of the things I always tell clients is that the implementation process is just as important as the planning process,” Marc says, “because all the planning in the world isn’t going to do you any good unless you implement it.”

Of course, Marc can only do so much to help his clients outside of creating the plan itself. But while he can’t be with them every day to help them stop racking up credit card debt on unnecessary purchases, he did find a sneaky way to get his clients to knock off important to-dos right from his office.

Action items like writing a will are tricky because they don’t seem urgent to clients, and so they’re not very likely to do them. However, Marc has learned to actually book the client’s appointment with the lawyer during his meeting with them. That way, all they have to do is show up.

Even better, he tells them he will go with them to the first meeting. Not only does this help the lawyer since Marc can just bring all the financial information the lawyer needs (with the client’s permission, of course), but the client is also far less likely to cancel on him since they already have a solid relationship.

Hint: What are some ways you can offer more value to your clients? There are always ways to do so, whether it’s offering tax preparation or hands-on help with implementing recommendations from a financial plan.

The two questions Marc asks himself to help him reinvent and grow his business

Marc found that his firm would hit plateaus where he felt busy enough with clients, but wasn’t finding ways to grow his business. This can be a problem because as he puts it, “if a business isn’t growing, it’s dying.”

When he finds himself in this position, he pauses to ask himself the following two questions:

Is there some sort of structure that's preventing me from expanding my business?

What do I need to change?

These questions help him identify and address challenges and opportunities that he needs to address. In fact, he believes that a business should basically reinvent itself every five years to adjust to changing markets. For example, about 12 years ago when he and his partner were licensed through the MFDA, they realized that structure was limiting them and they needed to evolve to ETFs.

Such changes aren’t always easy to make, but they are often necessary in order to keep your business relevant.

Hint: As the adage goes, make sure that you’re always spending time working on, and not just in, your business.

Listen to the full episode to learn more great tips from Marc, including how he keeps his pricing fair for all clients, how he overcame five tough years before his firm was established, and how recent changes to the FPSC will affect financial planning in Canada. You can also find and subscribe to the show on iTunes or Stitcher, and make sure to join our mailing list to learn about new episodes as soon as they air.

Chris Rawles and Spencer Tilley are co-founders of RT Mosaic. Chris is a CFP, RFP and CIM and has 15 years of experience in the industry. In 2018, he was named a finalist for the "Multi-Service Advisor of the Year" award through Wealth Professional. Spencer, a CFP, RFP and CFA, has extensive experience in the areas of retirement analysis, tax minimization and corporate planning.

Together, Chris and Spencer strive to provide their clients with an unbiased wealth management experience. Listen to the episode to hear how they show clients the benefits that independent portfolio management and financial planning firms have over the big banks.

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

• What unbiased wealth management means to Chris and Spencer (4:30)
• The value of screening clients (7:00)
• The best way to show clients the value of financial planning (12:00)
• What new advisors misunderstand about the industry (12:55)
• The four keys to a successful partnership (17:30)
• Getting to know your clients outside of the office (19:50)
• Preparing clients for inevitable market downturns (22:45)
• How Chris and Spencer want to help other advisors start their own practices (24:30)

Links and Resources:

RT Mosaic

Quotes from the Show:

“There’s an inherent conflict of interest in the industry from my perspective as far as third-party compensation, and so that was one of our core pillars ‒ removing that inherent conflict.” – Spencer Tilley

“Everyone’s unique and each engagement’s different, so that’s where the human element comes in to juggle everyone’s unique needs and what their goals are.” – Spencer Tilley

“Really, we want clients who are actually going to listen to us.” – Chris Rawles

Chris and Spencer have known each other for 25 years and have worked together for nearly a decade. In this episode, they share their expertise from running their boutique portfolio management and financial planning firm in downtown Calgary. Here, we’re highlighting three key ideas from the show:

• The value of screening clients
• The four keys to a successful partnership
• Getting to know clients outside of the office
  

For the rest of the episode, find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher, or hit the link above.

The value of screening clients

Chris and Spencer provide comprehensive portfolio management and financial advice, tailoring their approach for each client; this is quite an involved process. Many cases, depending on their complexity, take a lot of time, and they want to make sure they can provide excellent service for each client throughout the year.

“It’s not just a six-month meeting schedule,” Chris explains. “If something comes up, they have access to me at all times.”

Due to this intense involvement, each of them works with no more than 75 households a year. This means they don’t just take on anyone who wants to work with them.

But unlike the big banks, Chris and Spencer don’t just think about assets under management. Rather, they want to make sure the client is someone they want to work with for years to come.

Specifically, they want clients who will trust them. And while it’s their job to build that trust in the first place, if they meet with someone who tries to dictate everything, they know pretty soon that it’s not going to work out.

“Really, we want clients who are actually going to listen to us,” says Chris. They look to work with people who will follow through with recommendations they make and who will be pleasant to work with.

The four keys to a successful partnership

Success doesn’t come accidentally, and partnerships especially require a lot of work. Chris and Spencer break their success down into four key behaviours:

1. They stay stubborn: The first few years of their business were not easy, but they believed in their mission, so they were able to stick it out through the tough times.

2. They stuck to their morals: Chris and Spencer started their business mindful of the major conflicts of interest in the industry, and their goal was always to do what’s best for their clients. They maintain their integrity by always putting clients’ needs above their own ‒ even if the client wouldn’t know the difference.

3. They work as a team: Their professional partnership is one of the most important relationships in their lives. This requires a deep respect for one another’s’ skillsets and opinions.

4. They are careful with how they allocate their time: Over the years, they learned to specialize ‒ since they each have specific skills, they have gotten better at focusing on what they’re good at and delegating the rest.

Getting to know clients outside of the office

Recently, Chris and Spencer started focusing more on the client experience outside of their biannual meetings. For example, last year they sponsored a chuckwagon at the Calgary Stampede, a world-renowned rodeo and festival. They invited some of their top clients to enjoy drinks while watching the chuckwagon races and meeting the drivers.

While some planners like to host events that have an educational or even a salesy purpose, Chris and Spencer believe in hosting small and intimate gatherings that are strictly social. They feel this is crucial for two reasons:

5. They learn about their clients: There’s only so much you can learn about someone at a meeting twice a year. Events like this give them more of an insight into who their clients are as people, which helps them learn how to serve the clients better.

6. Their clients learn about them: On the flip side, they too like to give clients a peek into their personal lives. They bring their families and introduce them to clients, showing that they’re more than just number-crunching robots. This continues to build trust and goodwill for clients.

Hint: If these kinds of events aren’t your thing, think about other ways you can elevate the level of service you offer both in and out of the office. For example, Chris and Spencer are always open to holding meetings right in their clients’ homes.

To hear more from Chris and Spencer, including why comprehensive planning is more than just running a projection, how they want to help advisors open their own businesses, and more, listen to the full episode right here on this page, or on iTunes or Stitcher. And sign up for our mailing list to be the first to know about new episodes.