How to get the right referrals from clients and COIs, with Molly Bennard of Focus Financial

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.