I’ve recently engaged in an interesting dialogue with industry consultant and ghost writer Matthew Jackson of Dialektic (his current venture is writing books in collaboration with advisors who are looking to colonize a niche market with demonstrated expertise) about the evolution of the profession. Both of us have been eager to include younger voices in our writings and efforts to serve the advisory profession, because, you know, we value fresh perspectives as an antidote to stagnating service and business models.
I still believe that the profession is not evolving as rapidly as the landscape around us, in part because many founding advisors are aging in place and slowing down the adaptations that their next generation wants to implement. But Jackson turned the conversation around and noted the value of accumulated wisdom possessed by those founding advisors is not being passed on.
Many advisors are on the verge of retirement, he said, and it is possible that the profession may, at this moment, be at a point of “peak wisdom.” Those retiring advisors will take with them valuable accumulated knowledge that could be lost forever if it is not passed on to the next generation.
So (he asked) how would we, as practitioners, encode and capture and preserve this wisdom on behalf of the profession as it goes forward? How do we prevent a drop in the profession’s aggregate level of wisdom?
What kind of wisdom are we talking about? How to create a business? How to guide a business from startup to sustainability? How to identify the team members that are needed to provide client service?
There are a lot of practice management resources, but not nearly enough on the client relationship and service issues. “Service” is a broad term, but in this context it means how to creatively apply the tools of financial planning to the myriad client circumstances that advisors are presented with. This is an infinitely complicated task, and I suspect that one can only get good at it through a lot of real-world practice.
As we discussed the various components of accumulated wisdom, Jackson recalled a quick story by Greg Friedman of Wealthspire, where he met with an attorney who came in as a new client, was earning a great income and said that he was planning to retire in 10 years.
This, Friedman said, was an excellent opportunity to throw the income and portfolio numbers into a planning software program and come back with a recommendation: Save X amount per year for the next 10 years, and here is the retirement budget that the program has generated.
But Friedman continued probing during the initial interview, and he picked up on two important factors that cannot be plugged into any software solution. The first was that the attorney was under a lot of stress in his job, to the point where he confessed that he felt like it was “killing him.”
And the attorney had always wanted to write legal thrillers, like his hero John Grisham.
Friedman decided to create two plans for this client. The first was a standard financial plan as described above. The second one involved having the attorney client take off one day a week to concentrate on writing his first novel. The plan assumed that the attorney’s income would take a hit due to the four-day workweek, but there would be less stress in his life.
You have probably guessed that the attorney chose the second option. During subsequent meetings, he reported that his quality of life was much better. Working on his writing, doing something he was passionate about, made the rest of the week much more tolerable. He told Friedman that he had interviewed multiple advisors before choosing him, and that Friedman had been the only one who had probed deep enough to create that custom plan that was exactly right for his situation.
There is no end to these stories, but the progress report shows that the attorney did not lose any income for working four days a week, and he finished and self-published his first book. Then he wrote a second book that was picked up by a publisher representative – who decided to take on both books.
The point here is something you know already: Applying planning expertise is a very complicated art form, a skill that is acquired over time, but which (I believe) can be accelerated if there were a way to capture many of things that soon-to-be-retired advisors have learned through years of practice.
How would that happen? I’m imagining a series of podcasts, where advisors of a certain age talk about the most important things they learned about working with clients, and then each is invited to create a sample dialogue between planner and client to illustrate some of what they’re talking about.
If any readers are interested in participating in this wisdom-capture initiative, please get in touch with me at [email protected].
And if you have thoughts on other areas where wisdom should be captured (marketing and finding new clients, closing prospects, hiring mistakes and successes?), then please let me know your best ideas, and we’ll work out a way to structure that in as well.
The more wisdom the better.
Bob Veres' Inside Information service is the best practice management, marketing, client service resource for financial services professionals. Check out his blog at: www.bobveres.com.
A message from Advisor Perspectives and VettaFi: To learn more about this and other topics, check out our most recent white papers.
Read more articles by Bob Veres
I’ve recently engaged in an interesting dialogue with industry consultant and ghost writer Matthew Jackson of Dialektic (his current venture is writing books in collaboration with advisors who are looking to colonize a niche market with demonstrated expertise) about the evolution of the profession. Both of us have been eager to include younger voices in our writings and efforts to serve the advisory profession, because, you know, we value fresh perspectives as an antidote to stagnating service and business models.
