Advisor Coach Reveals the 5 Challenges He's Asked About Most

Fourth: A lot of advisors don’t feel they’re the go-to advisor in their local buying community. You should be known as “the advisor of choice”: If something [major] happens [in their lives], people will automatically think of you.

Lastly, when advisors sponsor events hoping that will lead to meeting their next high-net-worth prospects and it doesn’t happen, they feel they’ve wasted their money.

What’s your advice about selling a practice? What were your assets under management when you sold yours?

Just under $300 million. It’s a model I use in coaching.

When advisors are growing their practices, so many focus on scaling and building revenue. What they need to be thinking about is: How do I position this business to possibly sell it down the road?

The best way is to think of it as a franchise model: Put a process in place where you can literally step out of the business and someone else can step in and run it exactly the same way,

Because: If the business is overly dependent on the owner, the multiple someone is willing to pay for the practice goes down dramatically.

There are numerous financial advisor coaches. What’s something special that you bring to the party?

Step 1 of our coaching model is to identify a concern that the advisor cares deeply about — say, an injustice they want to right.

So you need to have “generosity of purpose.”

This will [help you] stand out and decommoditize yourself.

When you promote a cause you care about, you’re helping to solve a problem, and it attracts people that have money who’ll want to work with you.

You started out at American Express Financial Advisors and sold annuities. Did you continue to do so as an advisor?

In certain cases, if appropriate, an annuity as a small portion [of the portfolio] could be an option.

We took a highly customized approach and let the client know that there were other options as well.

I would often bring in family members and the client’s attorney to [make sure] we were all on the same page and that the client was getting high-quality advice from all stakeholders.

How did you nab Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey to be on the “Good Money” podcast, aimed mainly at financial advisors?

He had a new book out [in 2021]. I didn’t know him. So I contacted his PR firm and told them I would promote him and his book after the podcast too. I also bought 100 copies of the book and said I could make a donation to his favorite charity.

On the podcast, he talked about the difference between his bank account and his “soul’s account.”

What’s an insight that another guest, Marc Randolph, co-founder of Netflix, gave your listeners?

He said you have to lean in — you think you’re going to fall, to fail. But by doing that, you don’t.

His point was that in business and in life, there’s typically about three seconds when you have a decision to make: whether to approach something in fear or to approach it firmly in faith, believing that a positive outcome can happen.