The Wealth Consigliere

Mr. Pickens, Boone to his friends, passed away on September 11, 2019.  This blog will summarize the numerous lessons that Boone lived and shared with us during his amazing life.  We hope you will reference and adopt them in your personal and professional lives.  Boone shared most of these beliefs with his co-workers, friends, investors and the traditional media.  Many of his beliefs are common to successful people, however, his generous heart is unique. Great at Making Money Boone was great at and enjoyed making money.  It was a challenge that he mastered first as a Wildcatter in the oil business. He understood that every deal wouldn’t work out as planed and he was able to evaluate where he could improve his results on subsequent deals.  He was self-aware.  Boone took his experience to his next ordeal in the public markets with Mesa and as a corporate raider.  Same risk reward profile but the res...

The financial press has been filled with articles about RIA transactions .  I’m happy for the industry but I think we need evaluate how we got here.  My blog this week will examine why RIAs are growing and selling at an unprecedented pace,  One of my RIA friends observed that we got here by positioning ourselves versus the ills of Wall Street.  I’m not as PC as my friend so I will take a hard look at how RIAs need to pick on somebody there own size.  RIAs have a stellar reputation of always doing the right thing for there clients.  We don’t need to be a bully to grow and ultimately sell our practice.  Here are some ways we are picking on our competition. Wall Street Clients and their advisors know that Wall Street has many conflicts of interest.  Selling against that fact seems to have run its course.  The breakaway advisors I follow after they realize that a fiduciary standard does NOT pay well start to adopt Wall Street con...

As we have discussed in the past monthly summaries the number of Podcasts is exploding.  That is the good news but the bad news as discussed in the Wall Street Journal is that the free model with limited advertising is not working.  Specifically podcast listeners are not buying enough products from the sponsors of the shows to pay the bills.  Several popular podcast are signing up name brand (read wealthy) companies to sponsor the podcast and pay the bills.  This reality coupled with the fact that most podcasts hit the wall at 12 episodes has caused us to tweek our monthly categories to include monetary support and frequency.  This “pivot" should improve our summery. Please share your opinions through the comment field.   Funded HBS has the dough and they are releasing numerous podcasts that I have found very helpful.  My current favorite is Cold Call .  I know we hate that term but the podcast covers case studies from HBS and t...

Last week’s tumultuous market moves caused me to revisit an old economics concept of elasticity of demand. Don’t worry there won’t be a test at the end of our post, but we want to examine several real world concepts that impact the wealth advisory world.  Unfortunately the academic concepts and other rules of thumb aren’t helpful in the real world. Fees Most business relationships start and continue with a fee analysis.  The only guaranteed fee reduction is to cut out the middleman.  Once the client identifies the Middleman we can start focussing on the fees that matter.  ETFs and The Internet have been effective disrupters of the Middleman.  The challenge for clients and advisors is that indiscriminately cutting fees can leave us with a poor solution.  We need to understand what is provided for each fee so we don’t end up driving a car that runs but is embarrassing. Tariffs  The trade war with China was one of the many reaso...

Technlogy is a double edged sword.  Technology has made our lives easier but as we bought more smart phones we also became more vulnerable to being hacked.  The Russians and other hackers have attacked our elections and recently have attacked our businesses .  These hacks are news worthy but until we are personally hacked it is someone else’s problem.  I have been hacked but the credit card monitoring software caught the hacker before they could buy a car using my identity.  While it scared me it confirmed Jamie Dimond’s statement that hacking is our country's greatest risk.  Banks will contunue to invest in solutions to combat hackers and we will need to trust but monitor our accounts.  Our monthly  review of our favorite podcats will continue.  Hackers be damned! First Person We are moved by the real world podcasts that summarize the experiences of real people from the first peson perspective.  Real trumps fiction and actual s...

We recently celebrated the Fiftieth anniversary of our “Giant Leap” trip to the moon.  Watching the CBS coverage of the event was informative but the commentators, while they were impressed by the accomplishment, they were also asking what is next?  Mars was the logical answer.  Fifty years later we have not been back to The Moon and Mars is only referenced in movies and John Gray books . Our country also pays lip service to other important items like gender equality.   This week we will examine why these struggles continue and hopefully break the glass ceiling once and for all.  The solution seems obvious but we must be missing something.  The items we have identified will be discussed and hopefully they can solve this issue and we can move on!  It should be easier than going to Mars. Teachers I recently spent time with a family friend who has recently retired from teaching.  I asked her how we could improve our education system a...

Michael Jackson's song Man in the Mirror still plays in my head eventhough it was released in 2007.  This week we will examine what we can learn from The King of Pop as we create our social media profile.  We won't be writing about how to write a hit song, but we will examine some tools that we have at our disposal.  There are a few warnings, but we also list some best practices.  We will start with the warnings and end with best practices. Echo Chamber WARNING!  Social Media can become an echo chamber that sends our ideas back to us creating a false sense of agreement.  Followers and Likes feel good but they can create an echo chamber of feedback and a false sence of importance.  Statistics show that most people who like your posts don't even read them!  Software that tracks time spent on your post is money well spent.  We use Hub Spo t.  Don't use these facts as a reason to NOT use social media.  Use it and comple...