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Advisor Innovations: Dr. Daniel Crosby on Understanding a Client’s Money Mindset

Advisor Innovations: Dr. Daniel Crosby on Understanding a Client’s Money Mindset

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In this episode, David Armstrong talks to Dr. Daniel Crosby, Chief Behavioral Officer at Orion Advisor Solutions. The son of a financial advisor, Crosby holds a Ph.D in psychology from Brigham Young University, and has spent his career bridging those insights to help people understand how they think about, and plan for, money and finances. He was a consultant to the industry for many years (and a one-time columnist for wealthmanagement.com) before joining Brinker Capital as chief behavioral officer in 2018. He holds the same position at Orion Advisor Solutions following that firm’s acquisition of Brinker. At Orion, Crosby is bringing behavioral finance insights into the design of Orion’s advisory platforms to help advisors build – and maintain – better financial strategies for their clients.

Dr. Crosby discusses:

  • How to translate traditional advice into effective tools for financial planning
  • How to address the changing dynamic in a person’s life through their financial plan
  • The impact of personal ideology on major money decisions
  • The role of advisors against the stress of money and irrational decision making
  • And more

Resources:

Connect With Dr. Daniel Crosby:

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About Our Guest:

Educated at Brigham Young and Emory Universities, Dr. Daniel Crosby is a psychologist and behavioral finance expert who helps organizations understand the intersection of mind and markets. Dr. Crosby recently co-authored a New York Times Best-Selling book titled, Personal Benchmark: Integrating Behavioral Finance and Investment Management.

He also constructed the “Irrationality Index,” a sentiment measure that gauges greed and fear in the marketplace from month to month. His ideas have appeared in the Huffington Post and Risk Management Magazine, as well as his monthly columns for WealthManagement.com and Investment News. Daniel was named one of the “12 Thinkers to Watch” by Monster.com and a “Financial Blogger You Should Be Reading” by AARP. When he is not consulting around market psychology, Daniel enjoys independent films, fanatically following St. Louis Cardinals baseball, and spending time with his wife and two children.

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Advisor Innovations: Brian Portnoy on Helping Clients Rethink Wealth

Advisor Innovations: Brian Portnoy on Helping Clients Rethink Wealth

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Sometimes, your clients might get emotionally carried away and make irrational money decisions, especially during times of high market fluctuations. It is your responsibility, as their advisor, to remind them that money is not the end goal, but only the means to the goal — a joyful and meaningful life.

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by author and founder of Shaping Wealth, Brian Portnoy. Brian explains why the true definition of wealth should be “funded contentment,” or the ability to live a life of purpose and meaning. He also reveals the tools and language that help financial advisors and clients with their subconscious biases. 

Brian discusses:

  • How funded contentment helps underwrite a meaningful life
  • The right language to provoke conversations around money mindset with clients
  • Why financial advisors shouldn’t pathologize the human experience of money
  • How he works with financial advisors to promote financial well being

Connect With Brian Portnoy:

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About Our Guest:

Brian is one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of money.  He has written multiple bestselling books, including The Geometry of Wealth, and has 20+ years of experience as investor and educator in the hedge fund and mutual fund industries.  He is a CFA Charterholder and earned a PhD at the University of Chicago.

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Advisor Innovations: Carter Gibson on Planning for the Future of Your Firm

Advisor Innovations: Carter Gibson on Planning for the Future of Your Firm

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In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Carter Gibson, vice president and head of advisor M&A at LPL Financial. Working with a network of some 20,000 independent advisors, Gibson and his team have consulted with firms across the spectrum, giving him unique insight into how advisors think about, plan for, and execute, successful succession strategies. Whether that’s transferring a firm to junior advisors or merging with another, the process, he stresses, should be based first and foremost on your objectives and goals for the future of the business and your career; identifying those aspirations is a crucial first step. Gibson discusses what is driving the recent frenzy in M&A, what to look for in buyers or merger partners, and the best post-transaction practices to ensure a successful integration. 

Carter discusses:

  • What’s driving the recent frenzy in M&A activity and firm transitions.
  • Why today’s challenge isn’t a lack of buyers –– but finding the right one for your firm.
  • How current succession-planning transactions are structured
  • How to identify “cultural fit” and why it’s so important, even if the plan is to sell the firm outright. 
  • The three lenses to every deal –– financial, operational, and emotional –– and why the emotional one is the trickiest and most likely to derail a plan. 
  • Why the fear of alienating clients during a transition is overblown—if the process is planned correctly. 

Connect With Carter Gibson:

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About Our Guest:

Carter Gibson is a senior vice president at LPL. He brings 15+ years of experience across business strategy, corporate finance, investor relations, and mergers and acquisitions. Carter currently leads the company’s M&A, succession, and catastrophe planning groups.



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14. How To Invest Sustainably with Jay Lipman

14. How To Invest Sustainably with Jay Lipman

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Clients largely respond positively to values-based investing—when it can be explained to them. 

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Jay Lipman, co-founder of Ethic, a direct-indexing investment platform for advisors. Ethic can demonstrate to clients how to construct portfolios that reflect their values, or demonstrate how far their current portfolios are from their personal ideals. Jay shares how Ethic provides advisors with comprehensive data about each company’s impact on different social and environmental issues.

Jay discusses:

  • How Ethic helps advisors dig deep into data based on the values and priorities of the client
  • The biggest hurdles advisors face when it comes to sustainable investing.
  • The trade-offs between “off-the-shelf” ESG portfolios and customizable portfolios when it comes to values-based investing.
  • The trouble with data and standardization when it comes to current ESG investing.
  • Why investment impact is an area where many investors want more information.
  • How Ethic’s founders started the company and the technology incubators and early investors that supported them.

Connect With Jay Lipman:

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About Our Guest:

Jay Lipman seeks to understand and simplify sustainable investing, climate change, human rights and how investing can be a driver of positive change.

At Ethic, the mission is to accelerate the global transition to sustainable investing. Jay works closely with investors to help them understand and craft their unique approach to sustainable and impact investing.

Jay has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30.

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13. LPL’s Tom Murphy on the Firm’s Efforts Toward Modernizing the Advisor-Client Relationship

13. LPL’s Tom Murphy on the Firm’s Efforts Toward Modernizing the Advisor-Client Relationship

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In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Tom Murphy, senior vice president of LPL’s advisory program. Tom discusses how LPL has augmented advisor services while the industry has evolved from facilitating transactional relationships with clients toward a more holistic planning approach, with all the inefficiencies and customization that requires. He gives an insider look into how LPL is arming advisors with investment and planning platforms to.

Tom discusses:

  • How LPL has helped advisors transition their relationships with clients.
  • What types of client investments fit best in a traditional brokerage service.
  • Why LPL’s model wealth investment platform is growing twice as fast as LPL overall.
  • How advisors are using LPL’s investment platform to customize portfolios for clients with a combination of sleeve-based models and the advisors’ portfolio decisions. 
  • LPL’s advice, and tool, for advisors looking to use digital marketing platforms for growth. 
  • How advisor technology does not have an innovation issue, but rather an adoption issue, and how it is incumbent on the platforms to help advisors better use the tools available to them.  

Connect With Tom Murphy:

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About Our Guest:

Tom Murphy currently serves as Senior Vice President of LPL’s Advisory Programs within the Wealth Management Solutions team.  In this capacity he is responsible for the management and strategy of LPL’s fee based investment programs.  This includes the programs’ investment offering, technology capabilities and pricing.  Prior to this he has held a variety of investment product and advisory roles at LPL.
Mr. Murphy joined LPL Financial in 2006 from Wells Fargo where he held positions in both finance and investment product management.  He served on LPL’s Finance team for five years prior to joining the Wealth Management Solutions team ten years ago.
Mr. Murphy has a Master’s of Business Administration from the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.  He also has a Bachelor of Science in Commerce from Santa Clara University.

This podcast is sponsored by LPL.

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12. Christopher King on Advising Advisors About Cryptocurrency

12. Christopher King on Advising Advisors About Cryptocurrency

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As more RIAs become interested in managing cryptocurrency portfolios for their clients, several tech providers are trying to build easy access that fits into advisors’ existing workflows. 

In this episode, David Armstrong is joined by Christopher King, founder and CEO of Eaglebrook Advisors, on why advisors should consider crypto, why separately managed accounts are the best way to get access, early financial backers of Eaglebrook—including many well-known names in wealth management—and which companies he considers his biggest competitors (it’s not who you think, and it’s not an ETF.) Eaglebrook has made significant inroads, being adopted as the crypto platform by large RIA firms, including Mariner Wealth and Dynasty Financial. 

Christopher discusses:

  • Why advisors should bring cryptocurrency options to clients
  • What percentage of portfolios most advisors are dedicating to crypto on the platform. 
  • How he found big-name wealth management backers in the advice space, including Marty Bicknell of Mariner Wealth Advisors and Mark Casady, former CEO of LPL. 
  • How advisors are thinking about bitcoin as both a gold substitute and an appreciating asset class.

Connect With Christopher King:

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About Our Guest:

Christopher is the founder and CEO of Eaglebrook Advisors, the largest separately managed account (SMA) platform in the crypto market, managing over $90 million in assets. Although he originally got involved in Bitcoin and digital assets in 2014, Christopher moved into the industry full time in early 2018 as a venture capital investor at Morgan Creek Capital. During his tenure, he executed deals into 16 crypto companies (e.g., Coinbase, BlockFi, Bitwise), four digital asset investment funds, and liquid digital assets such as bitcoin and ether. 

 

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11. Brian Hamburger on The Advisor Transition Game

11. Brian Hamburger on The Advisor Transition Game

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Brian Hamburger is the founder of Hamburger Law Firm and Marketcounsel, providing legal and regulatory support to financial advisory firms.

In this episode, David Armstrong talks to Brian about the pioneering work his firm did helping wirehouse brokers “break away” and establish their own RIAs, and how his firm’s services have evolved alongside the growth of the RIA industry. 

David and Brian discusses:

  • The newest regulatory challenges to RIAs
  • How advisor transitions have changed from the early days of the “breakaway broker.”
  • What the erosion of the broker protocol means for advisors moving firms
  • The potential troubles brewing as asset managers and outside investors buy their way into the RIA channel
  • How Brian learned about the industry from his father, a financial advisor, and why he chose not to be an advisor himself. 

Connect With Brian Hamburger:

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About Our Guest:

Brian is the Founder, President and CEO of MarketCounsel Consulting, the leading business and regulatory compliance consulting firm to the country’s preeminent entrepreneurial independent investment advisers. He is also the founder and managing member of the Hamburger Law Firm, a boutique law firm with its practice in virtually all areas related to the investment and securities industry, entrepreneurial and employment matters. MarketCounsel Consulting and the Hamburger Law Firm are the result of an incessant entrepreneurial spirit and genuine desire to provide an unexpected level of value and service. Together, the consulting and law firms represent an unparalleled combination of preeminent counsel and uncompromising service to participants in the retail securities industry.

Brian is an entrepreneur, attorney, columnist, and outspoken industry advocate for independent investment advisers.  For the past 19 years, he has served at the helm of the MarketCounsel companies and the Hamburger Law Firm. Brian was named an Innovator in InvestmentNews’ 2020 class of Icons & Innovators and included in “The IA25: Investment Advisor Magazine’s Annual List of the Top Influential People in the Industry” in 2020.  In 2015, Wealth Management named Brian as one of the top thought leaders in wealth management saying, “Over the past decade, Hamburger has been the architect behind almost all of the highest-profile breakaway deals in the industry, helping advisors navigate the legal thicket of transitioning away from brokerages and into independent business models. As such he’s been a central, but often unheralded, force in the evolution of the RIA industry.” In 2014, REP. Magazine featured Brian on its cover as “The Engineer” of the RIA evolution.

Brian is often called upon to speak at regional and national conferences, not to mention his own annual gathering of the industry’s top advisers and thought leaders. While he has delivered the keynote address to the country’s state securities regulators and met with members of Congress on proposed legislation, he is more comfortable addressing school-age children. He is currently a regular contributor for CNBC and has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Dow Jones, and Reuters as well as every investment industry publication.

 

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10. Rick Ferri on His Career, Mistakes He Has Made and Why He Thinks Most Advisors are Overcompensated.

10. Rick Ferri on His Career, Mistakes He Has Made and Why He Thinks Most Advisors are Overcompensated.

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Rick Ferri has been an outspoken critic of many standard practices in the investment advisory industry. He was an early advocate of John Bogle and index-based investing, claiming most clients were better off with passive investment portfolios over using active, and more expensive, investment managers. More recently, he’s argued that advisors who give investment advice and still charge fees based on a percentage of the assets managed are in the wrong—fees for advice should be divorced from fees for portfolio management—and why many advisors are paid too much for the work they do.

In this episode, David Armstrong speaks with Ferri about how he got his start in the industry, how his thinking has evolved around Wall Street, and whether or not a fee structure that charges clients for investment advice based on assets under management can really exist in a fiduciary framework.  

Rick discusses:

  • His background in the financial industry, including his transition from Wall Street to investment advisory services.
  • Why Rick decided to sell his first $1.5 billion company—and the lessons he learned about what can go wrong.
  • The need to charge separate fees for asset management and financial advice, and why many advisors are charging too much for what they do.
  • How he decided on his hourly rate for advice.
  • The possibility of a AUM based fee existing inside a fiduciary framework
  • Whether ESG investing for most clients is a real trend, or just another way for asset managers to charge more.  

Resources:

Bogle’s Mutual Funds Perspectives Intelligent by John Bogle 

Connect With Rick Ferri:

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About Our Guest:

Rick Ferri, CFA, is an hourly-fee adviser for cost-conscious do-it-yourself investors. Visit RickFerri.com for details. Rick has over 30 years experience in the investment industry including ten years as a financial consultant at two major Wall Street firms and the founder and former owner of a large portfolio management firm. Rick is a financial analyst, author, mentor for young advisers. Rick graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a B.S. degree in business and an M.S. in Financial degree from Walsh College in Michigan. Rick has published extensively including several books on index funds, ETFs and asset allocation. Major Ferri is also a retired Marine Corps veteran and flew fighter aircraft.

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9. Greg Friedman and Cynthia Greenfield on Why Culture Matters in RIA Mergers or Acquisitions

9. Greg Friedman and Cynthia Greenfield on Why Culture Matters in RIA Mergers or Acquisitions

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Mergers and acquisitions can be a rewarding path to growth for an RIA firm, but also complicated for the companies involved. Often, the most overlooked, but most important, component to making the transaction a success is the firms’ “culture.”  But what is culture, how is it formed and reinforced throughout an organization, and how can culture be maintained through a merger?  

In this episode, David Armstrong sits down with Greg Friedman, chief executive officer & founder of Private Ocean Wealth Management and Cynthia Greenfield, chief experience officer at Private Ocean Wealth Management to talk about their most recent book, Integrating Culture in Successful RIA Mergers and Acquisitions, and their own experiences—both good and bad—maintaining their company’s culture during a merger or acquisition. 

This podcast is an opportunity to hear Greg and Cynthia’s expert advice, and some tips and tricks to make the transition easier for everyone involved, as well as increase your chances of a successful merger. 

Greg and Cynthia discuss:

  • What “culture” in the RIA industry means to them
  • Greg and Cynthia’s own personal experience with mergers and acquisitions 
  • A view into why most RIA firms get culture wrong when they are approaching M&A
  • How to read unspoken signals coming from potential partners
  • Where the most common conflicts happen during a merger or acquisition and what firm leaders can to do to mitigate them
  • How the size of the acquiring firm may change the culture equation 
  • Maintaining the culture in the pandemic, and what they see happening in a post-pandemic world.

Resources:

Integrating Culture in Successful RIA Mergers and Acquisitions by Greg Friedman and Cynthia Greenfield

Connect With Greg and Cynthia:

Connect With Adam Holt:

About Greg Friedman: Greg Friedman is the CEO of Private Ocean, an innovative West Coast wealth management firm, and the founder of Junxure, a CRM platform that defined technology for financial advisors. In 2007, Charles Schwab honored him with its prestigious IMPACT Award® for “Best in Tech.” In 2008, Financial Planning Magazine included Greg in its elite list of financial “Movers and Shakers”. Greg was also recognized in InvestmentNews’ 2017 Class of Icons and Innovators for his contribution to the advancement of the financial advice profession and for conceiving new ideas and tools that have propelled the industry forward. In 2018, Greg was named CEO of the Year at the WealthManagement.com Industry Awards.

About Cynthia Greenfield: Chief Experience Officer, Leadership Coach and Author. Cynthia develops strategies that deliver on a company’s mission and enhances the employee and client experience through organization, communication and engagement. She combines over a decade of experience in the financial services and technology industries with life coaching techniques to help build people stronger relationships that lead to successful partnerships. She is a community liaison who strives to partner firms with non-profit organizations and external vendors and she spearheads the event strategy for a $2B+ RIA firm. An advocate of healthy company culture, she helps drive cultural integration efforts during times of growth and transition and is responsible for developing and training staff on how to deliver a consistent client experience. In 2021, Cynthia co-authored the book, Integrating Culture in Successful RIA Mergers and Acquisitions, aimed toward business leaders within the financial services industry.

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8. Matthew Enyedi on Business Solutions for the Modern Advisor

8. Matthew Enyedi on Business Solutions for the Modern Advisor

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The modern advisor is not just a financial advisor to their clients, they are also business owners.  LPL, with their Business Solutions Suite, helps advisors with everything from office administration to real estate needs. 

How comfortable are you with hiring new staff or handling all the office administration within your practice? 

In this episode, David Armstrong speaks with Matthew Enyedi, managing director at LPL Financial, about the many ways in which LPL assists their advisors to run their businesses more efficiently.

David and Matt discusses:

  • A deep dive into LPL’s business support services for advisors
  • How hundreds of LPL advisors are using LPL employees as administrative assistants.
  • The assistance LPL gives advisors when it comes to mergers and acquisitions
  • An explanation of the business service support subscription fees
  • How LPL’s support for advisors will evolve in the future

Connect With Matthew Enyedi:

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About Our Guest:

Matthew Enyedi has served as managing director, business solutions of LPL Financial since November 2020. He is responsible for developing and deploying a suite of automated professional services to LPL advisors, and aligning them with the firm’s other programs that support advisors as business owners.  Prior to his promotion to managing director, Matt served as executive vice president, national sales from March 2015 to January 2020. In that role, he led the firm’s data analytics and business intelligence efforts, and oversaw a team focused on providing front‐ and middle‐office capabilities to help advisors grow their businesses and reach new segments of clients.

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