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Between Now and Success

We interview top financial advisors and visionary voices to bring you the strategies, tips, and tools you need to make a difference in people's lives. So rope up and get "On Belay" as we climb the summit to success with your host and Chief Belayer, Steve Sanduski.
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Now displaying: April, 2016
Apr 29, 2016

I’ve always taken the attitude that you’re never too smart to learn or too good to improve. So even though I get paid handsomely as a professional speaker, there’s always room to become better. And at a recent Master Class with top professional speaker Michael Port, I picked up three excellent speaking tips when he critiqued my performance.

Michael was a guest on my podcast (Read the show notes/listen to it here) and I was looking forward to meeting him in person at the Social Media Marketing World Conference where he was a featured speaker. We met and I got to practice my speech at during his workshop and here are three key tips he shared with me. These are speaking tips that can help you too.

Apr 25, 2016

Ric Edelman is one of those rare people who can make bold, provocative statements AND have the experience and track record to prove that he’s not just blowing smoke.

If you ask industry people who has been the most successful financial advisor over the past 30 years, Ric Edelman would likely top the list. Starting from scratch in the 1980’s, Ric built a juggernaut with 30,000 clients, 125 financial advisors, 500 employees in 42 offices, and $15 billion in AUM.

When I asked Ric what the next 10 years looks like, he said, “10X. Add a zero to everything.”

What’s even more impressive than the raw numbers Ric has generated to date is how he did it--through organic growth.

Ric leveraged his journalism background and became a massive media star spanning multiple bestselling books, a nationally syndicated radio show, and a popular television show. Through educating the public, Ric Edelman gained trust and the clients followed by the thousands.

Be sure to visit BelayAdvisor.com and read the special article I wrote to accompany this episode. I cover some of the highlights from this episode along with my color commentary. 

Apr 15, 2016

Knowing what you know now, what would you do over if you could restart your business today?

I posed this question to 6 successful advisors and their answers were insightful. And here's the funny thing, you can implement these ideas now and benefit from their hard-fought mistakes. You'll also hear my color commentary on each of their do overs.

Apr 11, 2016

How well are you using advisor technology to automate your business, augment your work as an advisor, and segment and personalize the value you deliver to your clients? Have you thought strategically about your business model and how you use technology to support it in a profitable way?

In today's show, I chat with Michael Schrage, who is one of the world's most provocative thought leaders on innovation. He's also a research fellow at the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, a columnist for Harvard Business Review, Fortune, CIO Magazine and MIT’sTechnology Review, and the author of multiple books. Perhaps no one knows more about how to maximize return on investment from innovation processes than Michael.

I first became aware of Michael nearly 20 years ago when I read his article, The Relationship Revolution. In the article he said we should think about technology as a way to enhance relationships, and not just a way to add value to information. It stuck with me.

Our conversation covers several topics including:

  1. How to align using advisor technology to automate, augment, and segment and personalize the work you do.
  2. The importance of figuring out your business model (e.g., a highly automated mass market model like Betterment, a high-end, hands-on boutique like AdvicePeriod) and how you use advisor technology to support it.
  3. How you can use advisor technology to gather information that leads to insight that allows you to deliver greater value with greater confidence to your selected clients.
  4. How advisor technology can deepen your client relationships instead of just "scaling" them.
  5. How to use data to optimize what's in the best interests of your clients.
  6. Why robo-advisors are not commoditizing investment management--despite what many people believe.
Apr 5, 2016

Financial planning as practiced today is going away and will be replaced by an entirely new way of interacting with and delivering value and connection to clients. The days of offering a free financial plan in order to snag AUM are done.

In today's show, I chat with Phil Cunningham, CEO of Advicent, the global provider of SaaS technology solutions for the financial services industry. You may know them better through their products including NaviPlan®, Profiles™ and Figlo™ financial planning tools, the Advisor Briefcase® marketing tool and the Narrator™ application builder. Advicent has about 100,000 advisor clients across North America so Phil has a bird's-eye view of what's happening in the fintech space.

Our conversation covers the spectrum including:

  1. The changing role of the financial advisor (See: Going beyond money management to make a deeper client connection).
  2. How advisors can stay relevant and add value.
  3. The impact of technology on the client experience, managing your business, marketing it, and advising clients.
  4. What "big data" means for advisors and how you'll benefit from it (See: Jud Bergman discussing big data).
  5. Where financial planning fits into the equation and how the definition of financial planning is changing radically.
  6. What you should do with Robo-technology to benefit from it instead of being threatened by it.
  7. How to compete against a big brand like Vanguard.
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