Growing Your Financial Advisory Practice | Insights for Financial Advisors, Planners and Investment Managers

Helping people improve their financial literacy and understand the best ways to use their money is a powerful way to help improve people’s lives. Often, the people who most need this kind of advice are those who are least able to afford financial planning services, or who are in demographics that may be ignored by traditional financial planners. Today’s guest is a money coach who feels called to use his considerable skill and knowledge to help others.

Trevor Van Nest is a Certified Financial Planner and professional money coach who founded Niagara Region Money Coaches. Trevor has been the recipient of several awards for his unique education-based approach to financial planning, including Professional Services Business of the Year in Newmarket. Trevor was also a Finalist for Outstanding New Business of the Year for the Greater Niagara Region in 2015. Before becoming a money coach, Trevor spent 20 years at American Express – 8 of those years as Vice President of Marketing. In addition to his work and family life, Trevor is an active member of his Rotary Club in St. Catharines and has been involved in board work for several philanthropic organizations.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

Links and Resources:

Niagara Region Money Coaches

Quotes from Trevor:

“I feel better now than I ever have about not having a target market. I think I’m a better money coach because I don’t have a segment that I focus on.”

“I’m assessing people all the way through from the first contact until the last so that I can provide the best and most customized advice I can.”

“My primary objective with this company is not to make as much money as I can. It is to help people. That really is the reason I’m doing this.”

Trevor’s frustration with the financial industry and his passion for helping people led him to leave a VP role at American Express and offer flat fee financial coaching. Read below to learn:

Don’t forget to listen to the full episode by clicking the link above or finding the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

Why Trevor thinks he’s a better money coach because he doesn’t have a target market

It may sound counterintuitive ‒ especially given his background as a marketing professional ‒ but Trevor decided early on that he didn’t want to target a specific niche as a money coach. There were two main reasons:

What a full engagement looks like from start to finish

To give you an idea of Trevor’s process, we thought we would lay out a typical client engagement from start to finish. The relationship generally lasts about 4 months and spans 6 hours of meetings (plus 8-10 hours behind the scenes including unlimited phone and email access). Here’s how it works:

Hint: Trevor has a huge network of professionals including lawyers, accountants, and even marriage counselors ‒ anyone whose services his clients might need.

How Trevor prices his services to ensure he’s profitable while keeping his services accessible to anyone

From his insider’s understanding of the financial industry, Trevor realized that a flat fee was the only possible antidote to what he sees as an industry whose purpose is to sell debt and prey on insecurities and consumerism.

He charges between $1,200 and $1800 for a full engagement... and if you think that sounds low, you’re absolutely right. It’s quite a bit lower than the industry average.

But that doesn’t bother Trevor. His main concern is to ensure he doesn’t price himself out of the market he wants to help. Many of his clients’ net worth is below $100,000, and some are in debt ‒ and those are precisely the clients who need his guidance and education most.

His fee gives him a reasonable hourly rate and still allows him to fully meet his clients’ needs.

If you want to hear more about how Trevor makes his business work, including the event that triggered his jump into money coaching, how he found his first clients, and how he maintains his unbelievable 9.8/10 satisfaction rate, catch the full episode on iTunes, Stitcher, or here on this page. And to ensure you never miss an episode, subscribe and sign up below to get an email notification every time a new episode comes out.

Who needs financial planning advice? Realistically, everyone, no matter their income level, can benefit from financial planning advice – so why not make financial planning more accessible, even to people who aren’t necessarily in higher income ranges? That’s what Shannon Lee Simmons set out to do.

Shannon is recognized as a trailblazer in the financial planning industry. She is a Certified Financial Planner, Chartered Investment Manager, and founder of the New School of Finance. She is also an author. Her book Worry-Free Money is a national bestseller. Shannon has built her career around helping ordinary people navigate the economic climate. Listen to today’s episode to hear more about how Shannon arrived at her business model, why she believes emotions matter in financial planning, and her unique approach to referrals.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

Links and Resources:

New School of Finance

Worry-free Money

 Quotes from Shannon:

“It’s easy for me to look back now and say “you can have it all, it’s a balance, blah, blah blah,” but I worked my butt off for a very long time working outrageous hours and evenings and doing free talks at every condo party room for a long time.”

“Never take any client – anything – for granted.”

“I think there’s nothing worse in the world than trying to get financial advice and then being priced away from it.”

Shannon is a known financial planning innovator, pursuing her own vision of what great financial planning advice looks like. Below we’ll share three highlights from our conversation with her:

Don’t miss the full episode though ‒ click the link above or find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher to listen.

How to profitably serve the cash-flow constrained client segment

Shannon became interested in serving her current demographic of clients in 2008. She noticed that while high-net-worth clients had access to excellent advice to help them navigate turbulent times, everyone else had… well, nothing.

But how can she remain profitable when she can’t charge her clients the rates that high-net-worth clients would pay? Shannon credits her success to two key elements:

Hint: In addition to exploring opportunities to diversify your offerings, think about how you can keep your costs low. Maybe you can go paperless (do you really need to print those 50-page reports?) or institute office-sharing to cut down on overhead.

Successfully diversifying your revenue streams

There are tons of resources out there to help people learn about personal or small business finance for free. So why are people willing to put down money for New School of Finance online courses?

It all comes down to the power of curated content resulting in trust.

Many of the students are Shannon’s current clients who want to complement the advice she provides one on one or they just can’t physically come in for an appointment. Others are referred by friends or found her through her blog, but they can’t afford her services.

The common factor here is that anyone who takes the New School of Finance courses learned one way or another than Shannon is someone they can trust. They saw or heard that she knows what she’s talking about, and they’re eager to learn from a trusted authority figure.

Hint: If you’re thinking about selling educational products like courses or books, your reputation as a trustworthy expert has to be stellar. Remember what Shannon was saying about word of mouth?

The emotion-driven side of financial planning

Everyone knows the basics of personal or business finance: spend less than you earn. In theory ‒ simple.

But according to Shannon, “money has nothing to do with math. I think that it’s all emotional.”

All the information in the world won’t do clients any good if they simply don’t have the money to put it into practice or if their financial decisions are driven by emotion.

The main emotions that Shannon sees come up in money talks?

Guilt and inadequacy.

Shannon always calls them out when she sees them (and she’s always on the lookout), hoping to help clients understand where those feelings are coming from.

“My job is 80% life coaching … and 20% a spreadsheet,” she jokes. Seriously though, Shannon sees the coaching aspect as so valuable that she’s actually a certified life coach.

Hint: You don’t need to be a certified life coach to succeed as a financial planner, but you do need to understand a bit about why clients behave the way they do when it comes to their finances.

No matter how many robo-advisors come onto the market, “the human capacity to understand how another human being is feeling and work within that emotional space is still where we provide value.”

If you want to hear more of what Shannon has to say, including her approach to referrals, tips for helping clients get out of debt, and more, catch the full episode on iTunes, Stitcher, or here on this page. And to ensure you never miss an episode, subscribe and sign up below to get an email notification every time an episode goes live.

Building your own practice can be a delicate balancing act. You want to give your clients the best service possible while also expanding your client base and making enough money to cover your own needs and expenses. Today’s guest understands what it’s like to grow a business that does both: maintains high standards for serving clients and benefits from meeting those standards.

Jamie List is the co-founder of the wealth management firm Bearing Capital Partners. Bearing Capital is a multi-disciplinary, team-based financial consulting practice. Jamie has many credentials and accreditations: he is a Certified Financial Planner, Canadian Investment Manager, Fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute, Chartered Life Underwriter, Financial Management Advisor, and Chartered Professional — Strategic Wealth. Listen to the episode to hear about how Jamie’s firm works, how he developed high service standards, and what he believes helped him achieve success in his career.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

Links and Resources:

Bearing Capital

Quotes from Jamie:

“I think I’ve always thought about the challenge, if you will, of maintaining a client as a conversation that you have to maintain over a very long period of time.”

“Service tends to beget new clients.”

“Let’s just say that the service model obviously speaks very much toward keeping people happy, but deals less with the transactional and business-building nature of what we do.”

Jamie’s firm Bearing Capital is all about serving clients’ needs, as the clients themselves define them. Today Jamie shares with us what it means to offer a high level of service and how that doesn’t have to compete with your business’ needs. Below we’ll share three highlights from the episode:

For the rest of the episode, including Jamie’s thoughts on what it means to run a multidisciplinary business, his biggest ongoing challenge, and more, click the link above or find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

Designing a business with a high level of service standards at its core

For Jamie, high service standards aren’t just lip service; from the beginning, they were actually a factor in how he built his business. In fact, he believes that if service is important to you, it needs to be part of how your business is structured from the ground up.

One major example is compensation. The truth is that we all want to do more of what pays. If you’re paid a commission for each transaction you make, it’s inevitable that you’ll look for more opportunities to make transactions that pay you; this can create a conflict of interest and doesn’t necessarily lead you to provide the best service for your clients.

Similarly, if you’re paid to acquire clients through upfront commissions, then that’s what you’re going to focus your energy on (rather than ensuring your current clients are happy).

Instead, Jamie and his partners chose to structure their business so that they can spend a lot of time servicing clients and being available to answer questions as they come up. They chose to reward themselves for maintaining clients and servicing them well.

Hint: Think about the values (like service) that you want to guide your business, and ensure that all aspects of your business are actually allowing you to live by them. Structure your compensation so that it’s based on doing things that align with what’s important to you.

The benefits of having high service standards

It’s obvious that high levels of service benefit clients, but what’s in it for the advisor? Jamie sees two main benefits:

Whether it’s preferable to do financial planning up front or spread it out over a longer period of time

Jamie finds that when he works with clients, they often think about their finances on a very limited timeline ‒ maybe just a few months or years.

However, Jamie needs to be able to see how decisions made today will affect his clients in the long term ‒ and his clients need that, too.

That’s why he always ensures that he writes a goals-based financial plan at the beginning of a relationship with a client. If he doesn’t know what his clients’ goals are, he feels that he can’t serve them well.

This is because everyone has different goals and different definitions of success. Without a plan, Jamie can’t make good recommendations because he can’t know how different decisions will affect the client’s ability to meet their goal.

At the very least, he needs to understand what a client is striving for, so he can come up with a timeline of what needs to be done and why. All decisions can then be measured against that financial plan, and he can compare different options based on how they affect a client’s ability to stay on track moving towards their goals.

Hint: Of course it’s important to revisit a client’s goals on an ongoing basis, too ‒ and that’s what high service standards are all about!

If you want to hear more of what Jamie has to say, listen to the full episode on iTunes, Stitcher, or right on this page. You can also sign up below to get an email notification every time an episode goes live.

Financial advisors ask their clients to place a large amount of trust in them. When you’re advising someone about how to manage their assets and investments, they’re entrusting you with their future and with their security. To advise your clients effectively, you need to build trust first. Starting with financial planning lets you builds trust quickly.  

Adam Schacter is a Financial Advisor with Mandeville Private Client Inc. and a Certified Financial Planner with Mandeville Insurance Services Inc. in Ottawa. Adam is an experienced financial advisor and financial planner. In today’s episode, he talks about his approach to financial planning and wealth management. Listen to the episode to hear why Adam recommends starting with financial planning first, what Adam teaches other advisors about compliance, and where advisors can add the most value for their clients. 

Topics Discussed in This Episode: 

Links and Resources:

Adam Schacter

Mandeville

Quotes from Adam:

 “We live in a world of skeptics, and so to really gain trust early on is an invaluable resource.”

 “People, they don’t care really what you know until they know that you care.”

 “In all facets of life, if you’re not going to be you, then you’re not going to be happy.”

In today’s show, Adam tells us what he’s learned from running his own practice and teaching other advisors. Here, we’re sharing three highlights from the episode:

For the rest of the episode, including the real meaning of due diligence, why Adam recommends switching from MFDA to IIROC, and the simple secret to making compliance a cinch, click the link above or find the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

The benefits of starting with planning

Adam always begins his relationship with any client with an extensive discovery process. He includes both quantitative and qualitative aspects, as well as speaking with members of their professional team, like their accountant and lawyer.

As you can imagine, this process takes time, both for him and for his client who has to attend several meetings and provide a number of documents. So why start with such a labour-intensive process? For Adam, there are four main benefits:

Hint: This skepticism also means you have to be careful how you begin the relationship. Adam makes sure his very first meeting with a client is just 15 to 20 minutes with no business talk ‒ just getting to know one another.

3.You can help your client save money in taxes right off the bat, which makes them happy… and if you charge a percentage of assets under management, the benefit is even clearer: if they invest that money you help them save, that’s more money in your pocket. Win-win!

4. Planning is a critical part of investment selection and portfolio construction. Here’s a great example: if you ask a roomful of CFAs what the best bank stock to own is, they’ll each give you a different answer. They’ll all have a great reason for their choice, but some will be wrong, and some will be right. But over a number of years, the truth is that the specific bank stock won’t matter nearly as much as say, making sure it’s owned in a TFSA instead of an RRSP or a non-registered account. And you can only decide the appropriate allocation if you’ve done the work to get to know your client.

Adding value with vivid scenarios

We all know the typical risk assessment questions on a client intake questionnaire. Sure, Adam asks the standard questions, and most of his clients pick the middle answer because it seems like the answer they’re supposed to pick.

But he also likes to make sure he really understands his client’s risk tolerance by doing a so-called fire drill. He takes his client through a scenario, asking them to imagine they’re 63 and hoping to retire in two years, with $1,000,000 in assets under management. He explains what that means for them ‒ about $50,000 of income (assuming a 5% rate of return) plus CPP and OAS.

Then he asks them to imagine that a month later, the portfolio is suddenly worth $900,000. How do they feel? Do they trust him to hold tight? Then a month later, let’s say the portfolio’s down to $800,000. What do they do if he suggests they actually re-balance and buy more equity at the lower price? What if the portfolio falls to $700,000 next month?

Much more than a questionnaire, this scenario helps Adam understand their real comfort level with risk. He wants to know what their tipping point is, so he can be sure never to let them get to that point.

Hint: Bring your strategies and client education to life with brief scenarios that get your client thinking about different possibilities for their future.

Educating your clients so they stick with you and bring you more business

In addition to teaching other advisors, Adam spends a lot of time educating his clients. He wants to make sure all of his clients know two main things: how they pay him (and how much) and what the value of his advice is (like how he chooses the right investments for them). He does this for two key reasons:

Looking for more from Adam? Catch the full of the episode here, or on iTunes or Stitcher where you can also subscribe to the show. And to ensure you never miss an episode, sign up below to get episode notifications directly to your inbox.

In order to be a successful financial advisor, you need to be able to find and acquire the clients who are right for your practice, service those clients, and manage your business efficiently. That can be harder than it sounds, especially for new advisors or for those who have hit a plateau in their growth. Today’s guest provides coaching services that are aimed at helping financial advisors manage their practices in a way that ensures they are prepared for the future.

Grant Hicks, CIM, is an author, coach, and speaker. Before he began coaching financial advisors, he had his own successful advisory practice. Now he runs his own financial coaching and consulting firm, Advisor Practice Management, and speaks at conferences and workshops for financial advisors. His book Guerrilla Marketing For Financial Advisors is part of the Guerrilla Marketing series, which has sold over 21 million copies worldwide.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

Links and Resources:

Email Grant at: [email protected]

Advisor Practice Management

Free E-book: Guerrilla Marketing for Financial Advisors

Bill Bachrach’s Advisor Roadmap

Quotes from Grant:

“What I discovered that was lacking in the marketplace was the need for solid metrics to measure success for the financial industry.”

“I’d say the first thing that I see all the time is that advisors are targeting too many young clients.”

“If you want to grow your practice, feedback is valuable.”

Grant is passionate about helping advisors manage their practices in a way that prepares them for the future, whether we’re talking about changes in technology, regulations, pricing, or consumer behaviour. Today’s show is focused on finding and engaging your ideal clients, and we know you’ll love his insights. Below we’re covering the following three highlights from the show:

To learn more from Grant, including a quick exercise you can use to identify your ideal clients,  the three secrets to his success as an advisor, and more, catch the full episode through the link above or on iTunes or Stitcher.

The four biggest mistakes advisors make when it comes to finding clients

As a former advisor and current coach, Grant has seen (and, he admits, made) plenty of mistakes in the field. He shared his top four with us, so you know to avoid them:

Hint: If 50+ isn’t your crowd, never fear! Check out the full episode for Grant’s three-step process for identifying your ideal client regardless of what your niche is.

 2. Poor time management: Too many advisors focus their time on the wrong things and the wrong clients. For instance, everyone is searching for those ideal clients, but are you actually putting in the work, or are you spending too much time with clients who aren’t helping you meet your own revenue goals? Top advisors spend a lot ‒ about 20% ‒ of their time with ideal prospective clients.

Hint: The prevailing wisdom used to be that advisors should seek out as many clients as possible, but wouldn’t you rather have fewer clients and earn more money? Focus on delivering more value rather than seeking out more clients.

3. Not meeting enough people face to face: Social media and digital marketing are great, but consider how many more people you could convert if you actually sat down with them and had a chat face to face. Look for more opportunities to meet people in person, so you can actually show them that you really want to help them.

4. Focusing too much on referrals: This might sound strange, but Grant makes the distinction between referrals and favourable introductions. The problem with referrals is they are often focused on a one-on-one approach. Instead, he suggests asking your client, “If I were to meet successful people like you (pilots, surgeons, entrepreneurs, or whatever their profession), where should I go?” Have them suggest an event or gathering that you can come to, and have them introduce you to the whole group, not just one or two people. You’re not the expert on how to market to people like them ‒ they are, so make the most of their knowledge.

The six people you need to have in your database

Grant suggests having six centres of influence ‒ six people whom you can count on to cross-refer and to help you help your clients. They’re people who can take care of your clients in specialized ways, and they include:

How to convince your prospective clients to pick you over their current advisor

Most of your prospective ideal clients is that they probably already have an advisor, and they’re probably happy enough where they are. They’re not going to switch over unless you can definitively show them how you can provide more than their current advisor.

Grant suggests doing this through education.

For example, many people don’t even know what they’re paying their current advisor or institution. Sure, they might be able to throw out a percentage, but do they understand what that means in dollars? Do they know what they’re actually getting for that money? Prepare a fee audit to help them understand what they’re currently paying and what they’re getting for that monthly or annual fee.

Hint: This is especially important if your work is fee-based and your prospect’s current advisor charges a percentage. Your prospect might not even know how to compare these rates and yours might seem high until you can show them what they’re paying and what the gaps in the service are.

Want to know more about the fee audit? Shoot Grant an email at [email protected]. Also, don’t forget to sign up below and subscribe to the show on iTunes or Stitcher to make sure you never miss an episode.