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

In today’s episode, I’ll talk to two financial planners who merged their individual businesses to create a new practice together.

Julia Chung is a partner and senior financial planner at Spring Financial Planning. Julia has been working in financial services since 1997. In 2011, she left traditional financial services to form a fee-for-service financial planning firm in partnership with an accounting firm. She made JYC Financial entirely independent a few years later, eventually merging with Spring Personal Finance to become Spring Financial Planning.  

Julia is also co-founder of Admin Slayer Services and a charter member of Lead Family Enterprise Advisors. She has co-authored several e-books, including “Women & Money,” “Art of Delegation,” and “The Entrepreneur’s Survival Guide.”

Sandi Martin is a partner and financial planner at Spring Financial Planning. After joining the industry, Sandi quickly realized that she could either help clients or get good performance reviews… but not both. Sandi founded Spring Personal Finance, an independent, advice-only financial planning practice, to help ordinary Canadians make the best financial choices with the best information possible. Sandi built a virtual practice so she could serve clients from across the country, and five years later Spring Personal Finance merged with JYC Financial to become Spring Financial Planning.

Sandi is the co-host of the Because Money podcast and co-founder of Autoinvest (now sold), which helps investors compare the services of Canadian robo-advisors. She also co-authored the ebook “Women & Money.”

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

Links:

Julia Chung

Sandi Martin

Spring Financial Planning

Spring Financial Planning Forum

Admin Slayer Services

Lead Family Enterprise Advisors

Because Money

Autoinvest

Quotes:

“The first thing we do is listen.” – Sandi Martin

“I think it’s really important to think about it as a collaborative team, and I think that’s one of the places where people kind of fall off.” – Julia Chung

“We want to find a way to not just have those one-on-one conversations – those are great – but for us to learn from them, to learn from that guy over there and that woman up there.” – Sandi Martin

While we’re sure you want to hear everything Julia and Sandi have to say, here we’re sharing a quick take on three key ideas you won’t want to miss:

For more on the pains of data-gathering, the perils of imposter syndrome, and more, listen to the full episode through the link above or find it on iTunes or Stitcher.

How Julia and Sandi came to merge their practices

Julia says she always had the vision to grow her business and was on the lookout for potential business partners ‒  someone whose values aligned with hers.

She and Sandi met in a LinkedIn group, and when Sandi had the idea to start an informal chat group for fee-for-service planners, Julia joined in.

They found that their communication styles and values lined up, so for about a year before actually merging, they worked together closely, learning about one another's processes and strengths. They got to know each other very well, which was crucial for understanding and mitigating challenges that could come up in their partnership.

Finally, they met in person with their other partner, Krysten Merriman, and prepared to officially launch their new business.

Hint: Sandi insists that their partnership has been successful because of what she calls Julia’s “incredible human business brain.” In other words, she thoughtfully leverages each person’s strengths to make the business thrive. It’s all about optimizing for everyone’s best qualities and skills.

Individualizing your services by collaborating with other professionals

Julia and Sandi are skilled financial planners, and that’s where they want to keep their focus. In fact, they’re not looking to bring on any asset managers any time soon (or ever, really).

Why?

They want to ensure every client gets the best service for their situation. If they hired someone specifically, that person would be fantastically suited for a subset of their clients, but they like the flexibility of being able to refer out to the professional they think is best for each individual.

This means connecting with a lot of professionals in adjacent fields. And as Julia puts it, “it’s really important to think about it as a collaborative team, and I think that’s one of the places where people kind of fall off.” Just giving your client a list of names to contact can be easy, but it’s not necessarily effective.

Hint: Have discussions with the professionals you want to work with and who can benefit your clients. Learn about one another’s businesses so you become part of one another’s processes. That way, you can be sure you’re sending clients to the right person at the right time, based on their expertise and process.

And yes, sometimes this means Julia and Sandi work with robo-advisors ‒ but again, that depends on the client’s situation.

5 tips for starting and growing your own fee-for-service business

Are you interested in moving from a traditional business to a fee-for-service model? Julia and Sandi share their top 5 things to keep in mind:

Hint: For more on pricing your services, Julia and Sandi have a lot to say about that in this episode. And if you haven’t already, listen back to the third episode of our podcast: Pricing and structuring your service offering to make it irresistible to prospects.

4. Understand that you can’t deliver value to everyone. If a prospect doesn’t see value in  your service, that just means you’re not a great fit for one another. And that’s ok! You are a great fit for tons of people out there, so don’t sweat it (easier said than done, of course).

Hint: In your proposal to clients, make sure you mirror back to them what they’ve told you about their goals and challenges. This makes it easier and more likely for them to see the value in your service as it relates to their lives.

5. Most importantly, develop a process. Do this early on, so as you grow, you’re not reinventing the wheel with every client or scrambling to automate when you should be focusing on your clients. Write your process down, evolve it, and let it give you the freedom to grow.

For more of our conversation with Julia and Sandi, have a listen to the episode. To make sure you never miss a single one, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher. You can also sign up below to get new episode notifications straight to your inbox.

Today's guest is David O'Leary of Kind Wealth. His story shows that it’s possible to make a difference in the world through financial planning.

In cliché fashion, David’s life was transformed after a trip to Africa. His ensuing soul-searching led him to quit his Bay Street career on a quest to effect positive change. Currently, there are three levers David is pulling to make a dent. As Director of Impact Investing at World Vision Canada, he is mobilizing capital to help the world’s most vulnerable people. He also founded Kind Wealth, a not-just-for-profit business helping millennials manage their finances in alignment with their values. David also sits on the board of Parker P. Consulting, a social enterprise helping organizations of all shapes and sizes achieve gender equity.

David has lived, worked, and volunteered at various times throughout Africa. One of his proudest accomplishments is founding and running Grassroots Youth Development while living in South Africa. David is a frequent speaker at conferences and in the media. He spent 13 years as Director of Manager Research with Morningstar, a global investment data and research provider. David holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Toronto, an MBA from the Rotman School of Business, and a CFA designation.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

Links:

Kind Wealth

17 sustainable development goals (SDGs)

Email David at [email protected]

Quotes From David:

“You don't have to stick with the status quo. Invent, come up, innovate and do what's right for the client and that will be the business model that succeeds in the long term.”

“What really rankled me about poverty was the uneven distribution of opportunity in the world.”

“Some of the values that we’ve put up front are the commitment to radical truth and radical transparency.”

Listening to David wax poetic about his dreams for a more fair and equitable financial planning model (and world!) is a special treat, and we’re sure you don’t want to miss the whole episode. Here, we’re sharing a quick take on three key ideas that we think you’ll find valuable:

Make sure you catch the full episode through the link above, or on iTunes or Stitcher, to learn more about Kind Wealth (and whether you should work for them!), the future of values-based investing, and more.

How you can completely eliminate conflict of interest from your business

The conflict of interest in commission-based asset management is pretty obvious, but even charging a percentage of assets can land planners in a tricky situation.

Why?

Basically, it’s always in a planner’s best interest for their clients to invest. That means that when clients are choosing between investing and say, paying off debt or donating a significant sum to a worthy cause, the advisor is inevitably going to be biased.

David gives a particularly poignant example: let’s say a client has just retired and is trying to decide whether she should take the lump sum payout or annuity payments. It’s best for her planner if she takes the lump sum since it will increase her net worth, and the planner will get to charge more. However, it might be better for her to keep the pension and take the monthly payouts.

David and his team decided that for Kind Wealth, they wanted to focus on “radical truth and radical transparency.” That’s why they decided on a flat-fee structure for Kind Wealth: they’ve been able to increase transparency and completely eliminate any conflict of interest.

Why the retainer-based model is appealing to younger clients (and beneficial for the older crowd, too)

With commission- or percentage-based fees, planners are always seeking those elusive high net worth clients. This often leaves younger clients ‒ who understandably tend to have fewer assets ‒ out to dry.

David wanted to focus on those clients who aren’t being served as fully by the financial planning industry, and that meant doing things a little differently. According to him, “You don't have to stick with the status quo. Invent, come up, innovate and do what's right for the client and that will be the business model that succeeds in the long term.” For Kind Wealth, retainer-based flat fees were the way to go.

Millennials tend to be pickier about how they spend their money (who hasn’t seen those apocalyptic “Millennials are killing X industry” headlines?), so the transparency of the retainer model is more appealing to them. It’s also familiar to a lot of young consumers who are already used to paying subscriptions for things like entertainment, groceries, and even razors.

Hint: Whether you’re interested in working with ethically-minded millennials or not, having a niche can help you position yourself as an expert in your field.

The irony is that a fee-based model actually works best for older clients, who tend to have more assets and thus benefit more from being charged a flat fee. That doesn’t mean it’s an easy switch to make, though, which leads us to...

What challenges you can anticipate with a retainer-based planning business

Listening to David’s passion about retainer-based planning, you might be tempted to drop whatever you’re doing and start a values-driven financial planning business right now (and if you ask him, he would love to have you join him in that space ‒ the more the merrier!). However, there are a few challenges to be aware of:

Hint: Nip clients’ concerns in the bud by explaining your value in a way that makes sense to them. If you missed it, listen to Episode 002: How to properly articulate the value of financial advice, where John Page of Wealth Enhancement Academy talks about precisely this topic.

That being said, David is running Kind Wealth the way he is because he honestly believes it’s the right thing to do. In fact, next time you hear someone complaining about sleazy financial planners, share this episode with them to restore their faith in the industry.

We hope you enjoy listening to the full episode. Make sure you never miss one by subscribing to the show on iTunes or Stitcher and signing up below to get an email whenever we release an episode.

At its core, financial planning is about helping clients use their resources in a way that will effectively achieve their most important goals. This means that goal-based financial planning is a natural choice for advisors who want to ensure that their clients are having their most important needs met.

Today’s guest is an experienced advisor who has a keen understanding of goals-based financial planning. Ethan Astaneh is from Vancouver and a graduate of the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. He is a Certified Financial Planner, member of the Financial Planning Standards Council, and Financial Advisor at RGF Integrated Wealth Management. RGF has 60 staff including 17 advisors, with $2B AUM. Listen to the episode to hear what Ethan has to say about goal-based financial planning.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

Links:

Ethan Astaneh

RGF Integrated Wealth Management

A sample what Ethan’s clients’ dashboards look like

Quotes from Ethan:

“The outcome [that we were after] was increased confidence and clarity for our clients in what we were doing for them and why we are doing it that way.”

“It really starts at the onset in engaging the clients in dialogue and going through the process of separating the must-happen goals from the want-to-happen goals and also identifying what’s actually not important to them.”

“You can define risk in many different ways, but from a planning perspective, we define risk as the probability of not achieving a goal.”

We’re sure you don’t want to miss anything that Ethan has to say, so make sure you listen to the full episode above. Here, we’ve given our quick take on three key ideas that we think you’ll find valuable:

For more on how Ethan got started with goal-based planning, how he implemented it into his practice, and more, listen to the full episode through the link above or find it on iTunes or Stitcher.

Goal-based planning and why it’s useful for clients

Goal-based planning combines comprehensive planning and investment strategy. It allows you as the advisor to confront the fact that all financial goals are competing against one another and create a plan that ensures clients can achieve their most important desires. Essentially, it means creating a sub-portfolio for each goal, personalizing client’s experiences and ensuring a holistic approach to their wealth management.

When RGF adopted goal-based wealth management, Ethan was surprised by how easy it was to implement into his practice and how positively clients responded.

Why do clients love it so much? It all comes down to two key benefits:

In turn, of course, you will likely find that happier clients provide more referrals. Plus, who doesn’t love working with focused, happy clients?

Helping clients prioritize their goals

Ethan shared his process for helping clients identify and prioritize their goals to come up with the ideal investment strategy that’s relevant to their situation and their goals.

The key is to commit to having a meaningful, in-depth discussion about their goals. This isn’t just a point to check off on a list of questions. Ethan sees this process of drawing people out as more of an art than a science, but here are the basic principles to follow:

Hint: Keep in mind that goals evolve over time. Using the above example, clients may think the only path to success is a traditional education, but that may change over time.

Hint: Ethan emphasizes that the way RGF uses goal-based wealth management is just one possible iteration of the strategy, and he recommends researching other ways people have used it. Reach out to advisors who are using goal-based planning and learn from their experience.

Getting your clients excited about goal-based planning

It might seem daunting to have to retrain your clients to think goals-based. However, it’s a lot easier than you would think with these two tips from Ethan:

For more from Ethan, make sure you check out the full episode ‒ we hope you enjoy it. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show on iTunes or Stitcher, and sign up below so you get an email every time a new episode goes live.

In order to succeed in the financial advisory field, you need to be able to identify your own niche and keep abreast of larger trends in your field and how they might affect you. Today’s guest is an authority in the financial planning industry who understands the importance of clearly defining your own niche and scaling your firm using technology.

Jason Pereira is a Partner and Senior Financial Consultant with Woodgate Financial Inc., which manages $200 million AUM across 180 families with three partners and four staff. He is a graduate of the Schulich School of Business' MBA program where he now teaches classes in Financial Planning. Jason holds an MBA, CFA, CFP, and RFP, among other designations. He has won and been named as a finalist for several industry awards and is Canada's only two-time winner of the PlanPlus Global Financial Planning Awards.

Listen to the episode to hear Jason’s thoughts on finding your niche, using technology in your financial advisory practice, and understanding trends within the global financial advisory field.

Topics Discussed in this Episode:

Links:

Jason Pereira

Woodgate Financial Inc.

Jason's Fintech Impact Podcast

Squarespace

ScheduleOnce

G Suite

Office 365

Salesforce

Slack

RingCentral

PreciseFP

Stripe

Life Design Analysis

FinaMetrica Risk Profiling

Humi HR

Collage

Xero

Fathom

Survey Monkey

Mailchimp

Croesus

Morningstar

Quotes by Jason:

“The same way you take on any adversary that has more resources than you do. You don’t attack them head-on; you attack them in blind spots.”

“Being a good entrepreneur is knowing when to say no. And that’s a challenge.”

“There’s a tremendous amount of background work and tools that we develop to take a lot of complexity and reduce it down to simplicity, and deliver it in an easily digestible way.”

We’re sure you don’t want to miss any nuggets of wisdom from Jason, so make sure you listen to the full episode. However, below we’ve given our quick take on three ideas that we thought you would find the most interesting and valuable:

For more on how to identify your niche, Woodgate’s fee structure, tips for starting out as a new advisor, and more, listen to the full episode through the link above or find it on iTunes or Stitcher.

Competing with larger firms

Large banks have way more resources than you do to dominate in their field, and there’s not much you can do to beat them at their own game. In fact, the worst thing you can do is to try to compete with them directly.

Instead, according to Jason, “you don’t attack them head-on; you attack them in blind spots.”

This means:

The biggest blind spot Jason has noticed among the big banks is that they focus almost exclusively on investments.

They tack on financial planning for free, but that just goes to show how little value they place on it. It’s often just a box to tick because clients ask for it. If there’s ever a conflict between the plan and something the investment advisor suggests, the plan tends to falls by the wayside.

Luckily for you, many folks seeking out a financial planner aren’t looking to squeeze as much as they can out of the market. Instead, they need help with lifelong planning for their finances. Planners like Jason have positioned themselves as fundamentally different from the big banks by prioritizing financial planning and looking at the whole picture. That’s where you can find the best opportunities and truly give clients the service they’re looking for.

When (and how) to say no to projects outside your niche

As you grow your practice, you may be tempted to grow your business by adopting additional models and expanding your offerings. But where should you draw the line?

Jason admits it’s a challenge, but “being a good entrepreneur is knowing when to say no.” Here’s how:

Jason considers his firm as specializing in financial planning and having general knowledge in just about everything else, and he’s able to use that knowledge to direct prospects who fall outside his niche to the right person.

Tip: Jason’s goal is to work with clients who are a great fit for his business. Don’t turn away potential clients who would be wonderful to work with just because they don’t fit every single one of your criteria.

Deciding when to bring in new tools to optimize your firm

When you listen the episode, you’ll hear Jason mention about two dozen tools that he uses for everything from communication to preparing presentations to accounting. Thinking about learning to use all of these tools (not to mention paying for all of them!) may be enough to make your head spin.

However, they can help you optimize your firm by addressing your biggest pain points. Here’s why technology can be a huge benefit to your business:

Your staff are your biggest investment, so focus their time on high-value activities by using comparatively low-cost tools to help with the most time-consuming tasks. Most of the tools Jason uses cost under $1,000 annually, but each one more than makes up for its cost in time savings.

For example, one of Jason’s staff members was spending nearly 70% of her time booking, rebooking, and confirming meeting times. With ScheduleOnce, a booking tool that automated that process, he estimates they got that time down to 20%. Suddenly, she had half of her day back that she could now spend on more productive tasks, drastically improving the firm’s efficiency.

To decide whether it’s worthwhile bringing in a new tool, ask yourself these four questions:

Most of the time, the answer will be obvious and you’ll have peace of mind knowing you’re optimizing your resources.

Hint: If you’re new to the industry or your firm has been fairly low-tech so far, don’t worry about purchasing or subscribing to multiple tools at once. Try them out one at a time, evaluate how they’re working for you, and bring in more as the need arises.

We hope you enjoyed Episode 6 of Growing Your Financial Advisory Practice Podcast. For more from Jason, check out his own newly-launched podcast called Fintech Impact.

Also, don’t forget to sign up below to get new episode notifications straight to your inbox, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.

We’ve talked about creating an advice-centric practice, articulating the value of financial advice, pricing and structuring your services, and conducting your first client meeting. Now it’s time to think about how you can use systems, tools, and referrals to predictably grow your practice.

In the conclusion of my five-part series with John Page, Chairman and Chief Adjudicator of the PlanPlus Global Financial Planning Awards, we’ll be talking in-depth about the tools that you need to grow your practice. Listen in to hear John’s insights about how you can predictably grow your financial advisory practice.

Topics Discussed in This Episode:

Links:

Email John Page at: [email protected]

John Page on LinkedIn

Quotes by John:

“I treat them as a client immediately, as soon as they declare that they are, by signing an engagement agreement, and then eventually they start acting like clients.”

“I know some advisors that get a steady stream of referrals and they never ask anyone, but it’s because of the process they’re using.”

“The reason they feel pretty good is because of the quality of the plan.”

John has talked a lot about process and systems throughout this series, and there’s no exception when it comes to predictably growing your practice. We’ll start today where we left off last episode: right after that first client meeting.

The initial assessment and evaluation

As we mentioned in Episode 4: Conducting Your First Client Meeting in a Way to Maximize Conversions, the next step after learning about a prospect’s values, goals, and financial situation is creating an initial assessment and evaluation. This gives the clients a long-term overview of where their current financial situation and habits will lead them.

People often aren’t too happy with what they see, so they’re motivated to engage you as their financial advisor to help them improve their situation.

Resisting the urge to make recommendations too early

Before you get into recommendations, however, you need to solicit commitment from the client. You want to make sure they’re engaging you as their primary financial advisor, which means they commit to talking to you before making any major decisions with financial implications.

Why do you need the commitment before getting started on recommendations?

John illustrates with an example: You have an initial meeting with a prospect, someone with a large portfolio. You do a great job of explaining how your services compare to the advising or portfolio management the prospect currently has, and based on the prospect’s excitement, you figure you can get started working on recommendations. The client seems interested, but then politely says those dreaded words: “I’d like to think this over.”

Has that ever happened to you?

If this happens a lot, you’re missing the hook: the commitment before you put all that work in. So how do you guarantee commitment from the client?

The one question you can ask to establish yourself as the client’s primary financial advisor

Hint: it’s not “Would you like to engage me as your primary financial advisor?”

That’s just not persuasive. Instead, you want to make sure you review everything you have done and can do for the client ‒ that’s why they’ll be committing to you. Remind them that you’ve worked to understand their objectives and that you will come up with a plan to help the client meet them.

John has the perfect wording that makes it easy for a prospect to commit to becoming your client. He suggests asking the following:

“Based on our conversation and some of the client work we’ve shown you, is there any reason you can think of that you wouldn’t want to engage us as your primary financial advisor?”

Brilliant, right?

Once they’ve committed, the magic happens. The client doesn’t have to move all their money over to you right away, but likely they’ll want to, especially by the end of the second meeting. As John puts it, “I treat them as a client immediately, as soon as they declare that they are, by signing an engagement agreement, and then eventually they start acting like clients.”

Generating consistent referrals

Once you’ve engaged your clients, they are your best bet for growing your business; nothing beats good word of mouth.

Unsurprisingly, John champions a systematic approach to referrals. He says, “I know some [advisors] that get a steady stream of referrals and they never ask anyone, but it’s because of the process they’re using.” In fact, John estimates that he’s gotten about one referral per client annually ‒ that’s the potential to double the business in a year!

The key is creating the opportunity for clients to refer you. You can do that through what John calls quality assurance.

Here are his steps: 

Essentially, you ask how the client feels about various aspects of your services so far, like response time and feeling listened to. Then, put the following two questions at the bottom:

3.  Ask for a name: Later on, preferably during your first sit-down review with the client, bring up the questionnaire and ask whether they had someone specific in mind for a referral. The trick is not to push or make them feel guilty if they don’t have anyone in mind or don’t want to refer you just yet. They should want to refer you based on the merits of the work you’ve done for them and the relationship you’ve formed.

As John puts it, by this point you should have made the client feel great about your services. And of course, “The reason they feel pretty good is because of the quality of the plan.”

Tip: Have your first review meeting relatively early in the process so you can address any hiccups before they become real problems. John recommends having one 90-100 days after engaging the client.

4.  Don’t stop with the name: Instead, create a standard letter that you can plug your client’s name into and send to the prospect.

Tip: Before mailing the letter to the referral, first send it to your client and ask them to handwrite a quick note on the bottom. It can be just a few words ‒ something like “John’s a great guy. Hope you’ll like working with him!” This makes the referral that much more personal.

Of course, it’s important to reiterate that you don’t want to push your client and risk damaging the trusting relationship you’re working so hard to develop and maintain. When it comes to referrals, your work should speak for itself, and they should genuinely want to share your great services with their friends and family.

What if I don’t want their referral?

Sometimes your client will provide you with what John calls a “down referral” ‒ a referral to someone who may not be profitable for you to work with. In fact, you may often come across couples wanting to refer you to their child who doesn’t have a lot of money. Should you still help them out?

Definitely. If you have the chance to make a relationship with the whole family, take the opportunity. Later in the children’s lives, you’ll want them to feel comfortable working with you and trust that you’re someone they can call and ask for advice anytime.

That’s not to say that you need to offer your full gamut of services to a client’s child just because they asked. If you feel an associate could take their case or you can refer a robo-advisor, that’s usually plenty.

The two tools you can’t live without

Now that you know how to grow your business through consistent referrals, let’s talk a bit about some of the tools that will make everything run smoothly. Strangely, a lot of advisors go without the two most important ones, but we want to show you why you should consider using them.

Just as important is the fact that a good CRM keeps you on top of recommendations and follow-ups by sending automatic reminders when you need them.

It can be as simple or as complex as you like; these tools are starting to get really impressive. John’s actually testing a product right now that can search information from clients’ public social media profiles and pull it directly into their files! It’s called FullContact, and you can find out more about it here.

Tip: You need to know when to contact clients, but they should be in the know, too. In the initial plan, include a calendar that indicates when you’ll be checking in with them over the course of the year so they can expect to hear from you (or your associate). 

Factor in things like changing tax laws, and you can see why trying to create your own software can be a nightmare. Most commercial programs will let you make tax updates with the touch of a button, or do this automatically for you.

Some of the best-known ones out there include FPS 2000 from CCH, Naviplan, VisionWorks, and of course, Snap Projections. Some, like Plan Plus, are very comprehensive but harder to work with, while others like RazorPlan are a lot less sophisticated but simpler to use.

The bottom line here is that there’s an entire industry dedicated to creating the best financial planning software, so don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Do your research to find a software you like using, but leave the software engineering to the pros and save your valuable time for helping your clients meet their financial goals.

Focusing your effort where it matters: The action plan

Some planners seem to think that their work is just plugging numbers into a financial plan, printing a report, and considering the work done. However, that’s just the easy part, and it’s often best left to an associate.

In fact, when John trains advisors through the Wealth Enhancement Academy, he prefers to work with advisors who have associates to help with data input, so the advisor has time to focus on client relationships.

If you have an associate, your work comes in on the action plan. This includes:

This action plan would cover a year, and your client should be able to look at it anytime and feel comfortable knowing there’s a plan in place. The specific actions will be anything you need to do to help your client meet their goals; two big ones include repositioning their portfolio and transferring risk to an insurance company.

Of course, you need to rerun the plan annually to account for factors like new objectives, changes in risk tolerance, additional children, and divorce.

Tip: Show clients a comparison of the plan from the year before to demonstrate the progress they’re making. They need to see that your services are worth it!

Interested in learning more from John?

You can probably tell by now that John knows what he’s talking about and is passionate about helping financial advisors improve their practices. If you’ve found his insights valuable and are interested in learning more, we recommend you check out Wealth Enhancement Academy.

John works with advisors who would consider themselves successful ‒ advisors who are smart enough to know they have flaws in their business and who see the value in being coached.

To learn more about Wealth Enhancement Academy and how John can help you develop your practice, you can email him or find him on LinkedIn.

We hope you enjoyed this last episode of our five-part series with John Page. You won’t want to miss any of the other great guests we have in our upcoming episodes, so make sure you subscribe to the show on iTunes and sign up below to get an email every time a new episode airs.