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If you are a financial professional looking to grow your business, improve your client acquisition and service skills and gain efficiency to help you save valuable time, then the PracticeLab podcast is a program for and about you.
In this series, we go coast-to-coast talking to financial professionals who are finding success through practice management skills, and who are ready to share their best ideas with you. If you're interested in acquiring more clients, attracting high net worth prospects, enhancing your client experience, scaling your practice and more, then you'll want to tune in to these episodes and hear some of the best ideas in the business.
The PracticeLab podcast is brought to you by Capital Group, home of American Funds. You can find all our episodes and more at capitalgroup.com. We hope you enjoy what you hear and — more importantly, what you learn — on the PracticeLab podcast.
On or around July 1, 2024, American Funds Distributors, Inc. will be renamed Capital Client Group, Inc.
In this series, we go coast-to-coast talking to financial professionals who are finding success through practice management skills, and who are ready to share their best ideas with you. If you're interested in acquiring more clients, attracting high net worth prospects, enhancing your client experience, scaling your practice and more, then you'll want to tune in to these episodes and hear some of the best ideas in the business.
The PracticeLab podcast is brought to you by Capital Group, home of American Funds. You can find all our episodes and more at capitalgroup.com. We hope you enjoy what you hear and — more importantly, what you learn — on the PracticeLab podcast.
On or around July 1, 2024, American Funds Distributors, Inc. will be renamed Capital Client Group, Inc.
38 Episodes
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If you're an advisor who's built your practice through the sweat of your brow, through sheer grit, and determination, through countless hours of trying to out hustle your competition, this episode is for you. We're going to unpack capital Group's latest Pathways to Growth research and what it reveals about how top advisors are growing faster, not by working harder, but by scaling smarter.
Offering special needs planning is one way to help distinguish your services to clients and prospects, says Stephen Norton, a chartered special needs consultant (ChSNC) and the president of Saybrook Wealth Group. The father of a son diagnosed with autism at a young age, Norton has an interest in this type of planning that is personal, not just professional. He shares three pointers to help advisors bring special needs planning into their practices.
How can financial advisors sift through all the AI noise? With the help of someone who knows both worlds. Derek Notman is a financial advisor with 20 years of experience and the founder and CEO of Intrepid Wealth Partners. He is also the founder and CEO of fintech Couplr AI, which uses AI and data science to match prospective clients with the most compatible advisors. Listen now as he boils everything down to the most important things advisors need to know about AI.
How can financial advisors turn AI buzz into measurable efficiency? Aneet Deshpande, CIO at $50 billion RIA Clearstead Advisors, shares the blueprint he uses. Discover why your AI journey must start with a clear business strategy, how to identify the parts of your practice where you should consider using AI, questions you should ask when selecting tools and how to successfully implement AI. Listen now to craft an AI roadmap that's about serving your clients and making your practice more efficient — not about new shiny objects.
Do you have a defined referral plan? Do you get as many referrals from CPAs and attorneys as you send to them? Have you segmented your book by how likely clients are to refer people to you, not just their net worth? Molly Bennard is the president of international operations at Focus Financial, a firm with over $400B in AUM (as of December 2024). She joins Capital Group practice management consultants Jon Wainman and Max McQuiston to help advisors create, improve and execute their client and center of influence (COI) referral plans.
Are you considering buying another advisor's book or selling your own? Lloyd Sprague is an advisor at True Wealth Advisors with LPL in Colorado. Since joining True Wealth in 2017, Sprague has acquired seven other practices. In this episode, he shares about how to find a book that makes sense for you to buy, engage with a selling advisor, transition new clients over and position your own practice for acquisition. For more, visit PracticeLab.com.
Where do you turn for help in managing your practice? One resource that should be near the top of your list: a study group. Advisor study groups are among the top five most effective practice management resources, according to Cerulli Associates' 2023 US Advisor Metrics report. John Stadtmueller, Founder and CEO of advisor network Good Advisors Finish First, has spent over 20 years in the industry as an advisor, consultant and wholesaler at firms including LPL Financial and Charles Schwab. He dispels some common myths about study groups and details the steps to forming an effective one that can help all its members better manage their practices and serve their clients. For more, visit PracticeLab.com.
What happens if your succession plan falls through? Good succession planning requires more than just identifying someone to take over your practice. It's about investing in the next generation. Sometimes, they're your own children. That's the story of Legacy Financial, an independent firm with Raymond James in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Bruce Dunbar, Mark Dunbar and Caroline Andrews describe how a culture of transparency, openness and willingness to learn (on both sides) has set the firm up for smooth succession. For more, visit PracticeLab.com.
Why do top advisors who have a niche get 67% more take-home income than those who don't have a niche? Kristen Luke is the founder of Kaleido Creative Studio, a marketing firm dedicated to helping advisors with their marketing and client acquisition strategies. She is also the author of the Amazon bestseller, "Uncomparable: The Financial Advisor's Guide to Standing Out through Niche Marketing." She describes how niche marketing strategies have helped advisors streamline their operations, service more clients with fewer staff, increase their revenue and even reduce their need to continue doing marketing over time. For more, visit PracticeLab.com.
Eliot Weissberg is the president of The Investors Center, a financial and longevity planning practice with $280 million in assets under management. Weissberg talks about how he carved out a niche in longevity planning, including partnerships with the MIT AgeLab and a patented, rules-based system for retirement income. He also shares about going from a 100-hour workweek to a more sustainable approach. For more, visit PracticeLab.com.
Pat Hinton is a co-founder and senior partner at Boston Wealth Strategies, a fee-only financial planning firm under Commonwealth with over $1 billion in assets under management. Hinton describes how he and his partners create a collaborative culture at the firm, engage the next generation of advisors and build a succession and exit plan into their day-to-day operations. For more, visit PracticeLab.
There are many ways for financial advisors to carve out niches for themselves. In this episode, Scott Oeth of Cahill Financial Advisors in Minneapolis recounts how he carved out his: by recognizing how poorly understood executive compensation was and developing technical expertise in that area, leaning into personal affinities like volleyball and wilderness exploration, servicing 17 clients who worked at the same company, forming study groups with other professionals working with his target clients and creating a robust content marketing engine. Since Oeth joined Cahill in 2008, the firm's assets under management have grown from $70 million to over $1.2 billion, of which he manages $230 million. Listen to his episode to learn about how to acquire new clients and grow your practice. For more, visit Capital Ideas.
While a lot of advisors may say they offer financial planning, not all manage to offer dynamic customized plans to clients. For advisors Bart Zandbergen and Letitia Berbaum with The Zandbergen group, a DBA* of Axxcess Wealth Management in Laguna Beach, California, making planning a priority not only helps them stand out, it makes them essential. They are often the first ones called when clients are facing an emergency. In this episode, you'll hear about their planning process, and how it's enabled by technology and smart teaming. They also explain why they family wealth conversations early and often, and how to have that conversation with clients. For more, visit PracticeLab. *DBA stands for does business as another firm name.
Creating a memorable brand may not come easy to financial advisors, but it can be worth the effort. That's according to Bart Zandbergen and Tish Berbaum, the team behind The Zandbergen Group, a DBA* of Axxcess Wealth Management in Laguna Beach, California. Over time, the firm built a specialty serving ultra high net worth clients, and their brand evolved to match. Combining notions of transparency, a philosophy about "true wealth" beyond investments, and a general love of food, wine and fashion, the Zandbergen Group delivers what can only be described as a luxury experience. In this episode, you'll hear about Bart and Tish's journey and learn how the two demonstrate their brand at every client touchpoint — from the office space, to the digital space, to client conversations. For more, visit PracticeLab. *DBA stands for does business as another firm name.
Sometimes financial planning is about more than investing toward goals. For Lynne Knox, a private wealth manager at Capital Group Private Client Services, that often means helping people move from fragility to strength. This is particularly true for women age 65 and older going through "gray divorce" after spending decades in a traditional homemaker role. These women may have high net worth but little experience making their own financial decisions. They need guidance, but they also want allies they can trust and lean on during a time of great uncertainty. In this episode, Knox describes the financial advice she gives them, a technique for better client conversations, and how she nurtures these client relationships after the divorce is finalized. For more, visit PracticeLab.
To truly provide optimal service, Mary Beth Storjohann and her team at Abacus Wealth Partners aim to forge emotional connections with clients. "How do you speak to what's on their hearts and minds?" she asks. "That's how you get to know about where your clients spend their time and what they're worried about." This more-emotional-than-financial approach is not new for Abacus, which was founded nearly 30 years ago by Buddhists seeking to incorporate religious principles into financial services. But the appeal is stronger than ever. In this episode, Storjohann describes adapting client service to better connect with women and next-generation clients. She also shares how her firm seeks organic growth by expanding its network of entrepreneurial advisors to share skills and best practices for success. For more, visit PracticeLab.
Abacus Wealth Partners was founded by two Buddhists in 1996 with the idea to incorporate their religious principles into financial services. Last year, they stepped away from the daily management of the firm, passing the reins to two women co-CEOs. The money-and-mindfulness ethos remains at the forefront of the firm's mission and values, says Mary Beth Storjohann, one of those co-CEOs. Like many financial advisors, Abacus seeks to help clients connect money with their life goals. But the firm also aims to help clients experience what it calls a "sense of enough here and now, not just in the future." Abacus aims to show that a spiritual focus is not inconsistent with material success. The Southern California-based firm has about $3 billion in assets under management. For more, visit PracticeLab.
Can digital marketing drive leads? Yes, says James Comblo of FSC Wealth Advisors in Fishkill, New York. A third-generation advisor with nearly $250 million in assets under management, Comblo is focused on providing holistic planning to clients he calls "blue-collar millionaires." Finding and attracting these clients to the firm's website, however, has been a process he's spent nearly a decade building and refining. Today, his website and the content he creates help garner thousands of qualified leads. In this episode, Comblo describes his trial-and-error process to digital marketing — from updating his website (which, he admits, he has done three times), to becoming a thought leader, to Facebook ad campaigns — and shares what he's learned along the way. For more, visit PracticeLab.
Before advisor Ben Wong sold and consolidated his billion-dollar advisor business with Mariner Wealth Advisors in 2022, he did a lot of careful thinking about his exit strategy. His ensemble team had a big impact on his decision. He wasn't merely selling a book of business, but an operation. He wanted a way for his team to benefit and continue to grow. And he wanted to make himself happy in the coming years. In part two of our discussion, Ben describes his path to succession and why it works so well for his ensemble practice. You'll also hear about how this self-described workflow nerd thinks about staffing and hiring, along with tips for how other advisors can future-proof their practices. For more, visit PracticeLab.
What does it mean to future-proof your practice? For Ben Wong of Mariner Wealth Advisors in Pleasanton, California, it's been an evolution in service, a team transformation and a succession plan that's a win for everyone involved. After recently selling his billion-dollar advisory firm, Viewpoint Financial Network, to Mariner (a large national firm), he's already seeing the benefits of scale. Ben had much to say, so we broke the conversation into two parts. In part one, he describes how his team puts clients first with a unique level of service (or "over service"), simplifying the experience at every step. And he explains how a lack of client minimums helps his firm retain multiple generations of clients and attract more referrals. For more, visit PracticeLab.
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