Breakaway Brokers

Be wary of these five common copywriting mistakes I see advisors make on their websites.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought major changes to how advisors are working with clients, especially based on the comments we received during our recent webinar, “How the Pandemic Has Changed Advisory Practices.”

There’s a group of hormones that, when triggered, make us happy. Those chemical reactions make us feel really good. What’s the downside?

The company allows family offices and rich individuals to analyze their public and private investments in one digital platform, and also stores documents for their holdings.

We have heard from five prospects that our site looks “dated.”

I’ll show you how to take your email marketing to the next level with automation.

It started with an offhand comment from a developer I retained for a new website. He asked, “Do you want the website to be ADA compliant?”

Can you reignite the growth of your business in the the second half of 2020? We think so. Here’s why we believe the next six months may hold a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The concept of a website is simple. Understanding its function, crafting a compelling design and implementing your plan is challenging.

The tumultuous environment illustrates why a risk tolerance assessment exercise inspires confidence in clients.

I’m sharing and analyzing five examples of great visual content from financial advisors.

The team is relatively young but also is interested in appealing to advisors who may eventually want to retire to Florida.

If you asked your COIs to give you a grade, what would they say?

Before you invest time and money on marketing, ensure you have these five things in place.

It’s time to dive into a tried-and-true method of building trust with email marketing – sending a monthly email newsletter.

Have you ever experienced a slow computer? The solution is often to clear the cache, which rids it of unnecessary data and permits it to function more efficiently. The same principle applies to your brain.

We have choices when we meet others, but most people aren’t aware of them.

This article examines Reg BI and provides tips and tools for, in particular, independent broker-dealers to consider what needs to be done by July 1, 2020 and the balance of the year.

Shake up a snow globe and the world inside is instantly upheaved, until the flakes settle and a new reality is revealed. This pandemic demands that advisors engage in the same level of strategic upheaval to ensure they thrive in an unsettled world.

I had a recent experience when I became a client and experienced what it was like to be on the other side of the table. It taught me a lesson about fees.

Seasons of adversity reveal our shortcomings. Advisory businesses with the following qualities have the best chance of not only surviving the pandemic but finding ways to thrive in spite of it.

The advisory industry is unaware that the traditional asset-location rules (i.e, put bonds in tax-deferred accounts and stocks in taxable accounts) don’t work in our low interest rate environment. The exact opposite is appropriate for most retirees.

The pandemic created a nightmarish environment for advisors, who must cope with the human and financial toll on their clients. But a few farsighted practitioners are seizing the changes forced upon them to improve the way they serve their clients and manage their teams.

You don’t control the spread of COVID-19 or the timeline for when an effective treatment or vaccine will be available. You can control your expenses.

High-achieving female advisors have five things that they focus on daily.

Are you willing to handle what I call "the boredom of success" – doing mundane things over and over again until you realize your goals?

This is the perfect opportunity to deepen your client relationships by talking about what matters most to them and integrating their financial decisions with their spiritual life.

I have created a series to serve as a one-stop guide to email marketing for financial advisors.

I’ve had three experiences with vendors seeking to assist with my new book. Check out the stories. They illustrate the need to adapt and be flexible.

To improve your website, I’m sharing the top five elements the highest converting advisor websites have in common.

The pandemic has profoundly changed our lives, sometimes in unexpected ways. I wanted to share some of my personal experiences with you in the hope you might find them useful.

Networking is still happening during COVID-19. Let’s compare two types of networking: external and internal.

I’ve pulled together the top five marketing questions I have received from the hundreds of advisors I’ve spoken to who are moving to independence.

You may not need to be active on every social media platform. It depends on the niche you target.

In some respects, my “new normal” is better for me than the old one.

Given the deep disruptions in your life and your practice from COVID-19, what I will share may seem illogical.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the market’s been a bit bumpy lately, so I decided to send out my NewsLetter early to give you something to read other than financial pornography designed to scare the begeebies out of you.

When the harsh reality of the pandemic hit, I took stock of my own situation. A declining portfolio was the least of my concerns.

I know I need to be reaching out and contacting clients. But I feel like a sleazy salesperson calling them when I’m not sure whether, or how, the current situation is affecting them.

What protocol do you follow to assist your clients during these difficult times? Is it supported by peer-reviewed evidence?

Disrupted by the global impact of COVID-19, a pause in “business as usual” is providing advisory firms with an opportunity to review their business development strategy and use of digital capabilities to personalize their service.

Financial advisors are stressed about referrals. Here’s how you manage that stress.

Let’s address some of the biggest financial concerns your clients have as a result of current events, so they can take action and keep control financially.

What is the value of a financial advisor in 2020? We believe financial advisors have never been more valuable than they are right now. This annual Value of an Advisor study quantifies that dedication and the resulting benefit.

This is the best time for you to double down on your marketing efforts and fully embrace a digital communications process.

A by-product of the current crisis is that it’s caused me to consider more carefully about what I’m communicating and how I’m doing it.

I know that “experts” on what’s happening in the world have inundated you (and me) with pontifications, but I can’t resist putting my two cents in too, so I’ll start with the obvious. It’s scary as hell out there and with good reason. Covid-19 is expanding at a geometric rate, global economies are being decimated, and markets are in free fall.

The single biggest barrier to establishing trust in a new relationship is the lack of reciprocity.

What about all the other components of your referral network beyond clients and COIs? Don’t succumb to wearing referral blinders.

Contact your clients and prospects at a rate you have rarely done before. But you must use the right script.

There is a general perception that expensive equipment and expertise are required to create successful video content, but that is simply not true. Here are three simple steps to create professional-looking videos.

I have received several questions about advisors unable to behave appropriately during this stressful time.

Even with all the benefits attributable to closed-end funds—intraday trading, low financing costs of leverage, ability to be fully invested, and consistent source of income—they have some idiosyncrasies that present challenges, especially during extreme volatility

The more I review the research, the more convinced I am that giving advice in almost every context is ill-advised. But I’m receiving a lot of advice these days.

Intellectually, I’m confident the virus will be contained, the economic stimulus (when it’s passed) will reinvigorate the economy and this crisis will pass. The market will eventually recover. Emotionally, I’m terrified.

What does your corona response look like? Consider some of these opportunities.

Unfortunately, the premise underlying your advice may be flawed. You might be doing your clients (and yourself) a terrible disservice.

An area of expertise or niche like retirement-income planning is not enough to stand out and for new clients to find you. Top-growing firms recognize this challenge and have adapted by becoming content marketers.

Future-oriented planning serves a purpose, but it misses the central question: What do your clients want their lives to look like?

Why do good people make bad choices? There are plenty of examples of bad conduct, both in the security industry and by corporate titans.

How will the real professionals, going forward, distinguish themselves from the sales agents who are once again comfortably fitting themselves into sheep’s clothing?

In the easiest of times (are they ever, really?) it’s futile to make predictions about the market with any semblance of accuracy. Clearly, these are not the easiest of times; so the futility is magnified. Even with non-stop coverage of COVID-19; with every question answered, there’s another question to ask.

There are things we can do to help. I’ll mention one big idea at the end of this letter. But first, we’ll take a closer look at what happened in China and how it affects the world economy.

The CFP Board has eliminated compensation disclosures from its consumer-facing website. It may have had good reason to.

I’m going to answer two questions: How much do advisors typically spend to market their businesses? and How much should you be spending?

I didn’t know Clayton Christensen and I hadn’t read any of his writings. He was a Harvard professor best known for writing The Innovator’s Dilemma. He died on January 23, 2020 at age 67.

In a profession heavily dominated by men, female financial advisors need women to serve as mentors, role models, confidants and champions.

I outline what marketing personalization is and how advisors can use it in this digital age.

Sometimes life is an endless exercise in trying to attain goals that are just slightly out of reach. Even when we reach those goals, we’re not satisfied. We set new ones and repeat the process. But I’ve found a surprising “happiness hack” that breaks this cycle.

If you do any of the things below, you are on the “sales prevention team.”

For many advisors, asking clients for referrals remains a messy, uncomfortable situation.

We’ve all gritted our teeth whenever one of the trade magazines comes out with a list of the “top” wealth management firms, ranked from “top” to “bottom” based on the absolute least meaningful way to measure the quality of an advisory business: their AUM. The goal of such lists should be to identify those firms that are best at serving their clients and are managed in a healthy and sustainable way. Here’s a way to rank firms that achieves that goal.

Like the three little pigs building their houses, financial advisors have many choices of how they will build their books of business. Many of the most successful advisors embrace fee-only wealth management. In this blog post, we put some numbers to these theories.

The essence of the activities we enjoy – how we have “fun” – reveals a key personality trait. Identifying that trait and that of your prospects and clients is critical to providing good advice.

What if I told you that you could create one (just one!) blog post to drive your entire inbound marketing strategy?