I noticed that my recent decisions during the pandemic all started with the letter “C”. I still have the big company skill of creating memorable acronyms to guide the thousands of nationwide professionals. Now that I have broken away I don’t need to write terms for a large group to follow. Independent Advisors still need a new rule book for their colleagues and clients to understand what their new firm believes. This week I’ll share rules I have watched independent advisory firms successfully implement. Since you are the boss now hopefully these observations will help you use other letters.
Change
The first wave was brokers breaking away from Wall Street to become independent. The current wave was caused by the Pandemic and with gasoline from Private Equity. The dramatic decrease in interest rates has reduced many businesses cost of capital. The other beneficiary is consolidators who can help established independent firms purchase other firms or recruit new advisors. The final change is better and cheaper investment solutions. The ETF was the first but now new cheaper options are available. The only change is the salesperson is online so free lunch and free golf has changed too.
Cutting Expenses
We have now realized that many of our expenses can be reduced. The first place to start is our office expenses. With Zoom calls and remote work we should realize that most office space is overkill. We also might realize that our remote colleagues don’t need to be paid as much to offset our office expenses. This will be a more difficult cut than golf and free lunch.
Clients
Our coworkers have spoken that they would like to work from home. My guess is our clients might feel the same way and rather than having our quarterly meetings in our office we could have them on Zoom. Who said we needed quarterly mettings anyway? Seems like most of the information our clients need can be shared online. Quarterly meetings are an institutional consulting idea that isn’t a good fit for most taxable Private clients. We need to ask our clients what they prefer.
Covid-19
COVID changed our personal life too. Many of us developed depression. This fourth C can be deadly if not addressed. My response was to meditate. It is not a cure but if done properly it can quiet the voices in my head. I meditate every morning and so far so good. My only concern is the only human I see everyday is my wife and my social media friends. It might be too early to cross off this C until we have a vaccine.
Our guidance is to write and implement your firm’s acronym. If your coworkers and your clients like the new acronym ask them to validate it with the promise that you can always add amendments later. It worked for our Founding Fathers and should work for your new firm. Remember there are 26 letters to choose and we have only taken the C.
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