The Wealth Consigliere

My friend Carey Perloff, the long-standing artistic director of ACT, begins the MFA program every year with a question.   What do you give an audience that doesn’t cost you anything – it is free!    A provocative question to start your masters program and a question that every service providers should ask themselves too.   If we don’t ask technology disruptors will.  Let's  learn alongside ACT’s MFA students. MFA Class Carey Perloff is a legend in her field.   Even if you don’t love live theater I would recommend reading or listening to Carey’s book Beautiful Chaos .   It reads like an entrepreneurial journey with experiences and guidance that can benefit us all.   In addition to the business similarities discussed in her book the training ACT provides actors can benefit anyone who needs help making presentations that will mesmerize and impact their audience.   Several companies agree with me and have hired ACT’s trainers to ...

This is my 100 th blog post!   While I don’t believe in milestone birthdays this milestone seems worth celebrating (no gifts please)   Celebrating is important so I can recognize the many contributors to this blog and I hope it will be helpful to others who are considering joining the blogosphere as a positive contributor instead of a snarky anonymous commenter.   Start In retrospect everything looks obvious.   When we started our new blog in 2008 blogs were not as mainstream as they are today.   Getting an article published in the Wall Street Journal or your local newspaper was still the primary PR goal.   With that in mind my blog partner, Randy Baum , and I created a team with publishing experience. Our first partner was Lori Marshall who is a professional ghostwriter with several best selling books.   We also partnered with an ex-journalist turned PR and Marketing professional, Greg Berardi , from Blue Marlin.   Randy also ...

I’m constantly searching for answers to the big questions in my life.   While I haven’t found the answers yet I continue to search in ancient religious texts , academic papers and recently I find that blogs and podcasts are a good place to look.   One of my favorite Podcasts is Invest Like the Best .   A recent episode talked about how we don’t have enough data to make the three major decisions in our life.   Let’s check out how we can improve each major decision.   House Part of the American dream is to own a home.   We don’t question the belief that when we reach a certain we age we should buy a house no questions asked.   James Altucher has written extensively about why buying a house is a horrible idea .   I wouln’t go that far but I do wish I had more information before I bought my first house.   In retrospect I should have been concerned with the overwhelming consensus opinion of just do it because everyone else is. ...

My parents use a concierge doctor.   They both love it!   I asked why and after several minutes I had to stop them - OK I get it!   It made me think, if this approach is so great why don’t wealth managers become concierges too?   It is worth taking a look because we share a similar clientele. Shortage The medical and financial services industries face similar problems.  Both have an acute shortage of professionals. The   Association of American Medical Colleges   (AAMC) estimates, the United States will face a shortage of more than 91,500 physicians by 2020.   The financial services industry has lost 40,000 financial advisors since 2008 while at the same time wealth creation has exploded.   A survey asking why people aren’t applying for wealth advisor jobs produced a sobering list of reasons.   Neither group has a credible plan to solve the problem.   My belief is that a Concierge business model can help because it app...