Road To Independence

Last week was a very interesting one. It consisted of appointments with prospective clients, centers of influence, and a business trip to California. What was particularly interesting was the trip to California and the return flight home.

First let’s talk about the trip to California and the events leading up to it. Last May I spoke at an annual conference for Crystal Ball, a global business unit of Oracle. I gave a presentation on the financial planning tool I developed which uses Crystal Ball’s Monte Carlo simulation engine. Crystal Ball liked my presentation well enough that the firm asked me to conduct a Webinar to demonstrate my planning tool, which I did some five months later. About a month after that I received a phone call from a company that had viewed the Webinar and was interested in hiring me as a consultant to develop a similar tool. So I traveled to the firm’s office in California and we had a four-hour meeting that went well.

I’d like to discuss what happened on the return flight home. I sat next to a woman and we had a long conversation. She shared with me an experience she and her husband had with a particular broker who, though he was instructed to invest their money conservatively, saw their account lose about 75% of its value.

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One of the more challenging aspects of being a solo practitioner is choosing what you will do and what you won’t. Since time is our most precious commodity, it’s imperative that you choose wisely. I’ve always been the type of person who has a strong desire to have a thorough understanding of technical topics that are, or may be, useful to clients. Business owners have their own unique needscompared to non-business owners. Retirees needs differ slightly from pre-retirees. High-income/high-net-worth individuals’ needs differ from ultra-high-income/net-worth clients. Compounding this is the fact that the knowledge landscape is extremely broad. From income taxes to estate planning, from investments to insurance; the amount of available information is staggering. Clearly this is more than one individual can master. So what’s a solo practitioner to do? How do you keep from being overwhelmed? This is one of those adjustments we all have to make. If you have a similar personality to mine, needing to know all the relevant facts, it is even more important that you adjust. Here’s what I’m doing.
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I’d like to deviate a bit from my journey and talk about a rarely discussed topic. Your opinion on the matter would be particularly interesting, either to validate my own or render it void. Here’s my supposition.

When a large financial services company hires client-facing individuals, do they want great technicians or great salespeople (not that these are mutually exclusive but the combination of the two is rare)? Do they want people who are independent thinkers? Are they looking for people who are willing to explore new frontiers and create new and innovative ways of doing things? Or are they seeking people who will blindly follow company policy without so much as a question?
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With the New Year here we are presented with an opportunity to reflect on the past and make adjustments for the future. I know we can do this anytime, but it seems that it’s a more natural occurrence at the turn of a year. What have I learned from my experiences in 2007? What changes will I make for 2008?

I’ve learned (or rather I’m reminded) that prospects don’t always see the value of things. That it must be clearly spelled out in a way that makes it impossible to miss. There are two important factors at work in a prospect’s mind that influence how they select an advisor. One is the company itself and the other is the specific advisor.
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