The Perfect RIA

Key Links

• Carl Richard's Website
• Malcolm Gladwell book which profiles Tom Gau: The Tipping Point

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During the episode, host Matthew Jarvis supplies us with nine crucial rules to follow regardless of if you are an advisor, CPA, actuary, or if you are just concerned with imparting understanding and reassurance in the minds of clients. These nine rules range from the necessity of practice to the headache-inducing method of trying to shrink a whole financial plan onto a single page.

Using the metaphor of speaking a foreign language to someone who doesn't know the tongue, Matt communicates just how difficult it is for common people to understand the financial and legal nomenclature so easily referenced during consultations and financial-advising meetings with clients. He gives the advice to simplify speech, not as a tool for talking down or belittling the client, but to cover all bases during the consultation. One wouldn't talk down to an English-speaking tourist vacationing in China for not knowing a wide range of Mandarin.

Matt also draws from a lot of biographical experiences where he was forced to act as a translator because the financial experts who were involved had a hard time self-censoring the depth of the language they used. In other words, it is very easy for smart, technically-gifted people to have a hard time not using their specialized jargon—terms that would confuse the average person (of any levels of education). Matt says this confusion should not be there, and he teaches listeners of this episode how to prevent most language barriers from forming.

Key Links

• Athena Executive Services | Website | Facebook Page

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In this installment of the Perfect RIA podcast, CEO and Founder of Athena Executive Services joins us in the studio and shares her wisdom on why hiring an executive assistant can and should be an enriching and ultimately game-changing decision in one's professional life. By giving clear-cut examples in her interview, Gina establishes the importance of "inspecting instead of expecting" results from your executive assistant. In brief, when an executive has done their due diligence and inspected adequately, then proper delegation of tasks is possible.

Gina states that once the appropriate amount of time has elapsed, and any learning curves have been superseded with mutual understanding, the investment made in an executive assistant (or a virtual executive assistant) is worth the initial time it takes to get on the same page.

And to design the correct dynamic between executive and assistant, an executive needs to truly inspect the work that is done. This means that guidelines need to be expressed clearly, and tasks explained properly. Once the input and output coalesce into a coherent whole, a very streamlined process is the outcome. And as a result, you have successfully created a mechanism that enhances the value of your enterprise and your time.

There's more to life than AUM -- assets under management -- to understanding the success of you and your firm. Listen in to learn more.

Subscribe to the show and leave us your comments at ThePerfectRIA.com.