My guest today is here to help with one of the most common challenges we face as advisors: getting clients to actually follow through and implement our financial advice. The founder of Sage Financial Solutions, an organization that provides Financial Fitness Coach (FFC) and Accredited Personal Financial Coach (APFC) training and certification programs, Saundra Davis teaches advisors skills and techniques that will help clients make lasting behavior change.
In this episode, Saundra shares how her approach of financial coaching differs from the typical approach of financial planning, as well as how it leads advisors to navigate the client discovery process in a substantively different way. Listen in to hear how both approaches complement each other, why it’s important to guide clients to making discoveries on their own rather than telling them the answers, and what we can do as advisors to not only give technically accurate advice, but also help clients to improve their financial behaviors.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/104
My guest today is here to talk about a kind of success that hasn’t been covered much on the podcast: building a career within a larger firm instead of going independent. Kathleen Kenealy is the Managing Director and Senior Wealth Advisor for Boston Private Wealth—a private bank and trust company that oversees nearly $8 billion of assets under management—and while she manages more than $300 million for seventy-five client households, she isn’t actually responsible for bringing in clients. Instead, she focuses her time on doing financial planning for the firm’s clients and improving the financial planning processes within the company, which recently earned her recognition as an InvestmentNews 40 under 40 honoree.
In this episode, Kathleen opens up about what it’s like to work within a larger advisory firm that has separated out prospecting and business development from financial planning work, as well as how she’s been able to find job opportunities with companies that reward her for being a great financial planner without requiring her to find clients herself. Listen in to hear how she found her way into the financial planning world and navigated her unique career path, why she chose to work within larger firms rather than going out on her own, and where she plans to end up in the long run as she follows this corporate career path.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/103
There has been a lot of buzz over the past couple of years about the breakaway trend that has seen sizeable advisory firms moving away from wirehouses, and my guest today very recently went through that process himself. After spending the first decade of his career at Merrill Lynch, Michael Henley moved on to become co-founder and CEO of Brandywine Oak Private Wealth, an independent advisory firm that manages more than $500 million of client assets, at just thirty-four years old.
In this episode, Michael shares what made him decide to go independent after he’d been so loyal to Merrill Lynch that he had a bull-shaped wedding cake, as well as how he handled the breakaway transition not quite going the way he expected. Listen in to hear what it was like for him to build an advisory firm in the wirehouse environment, the unique way he created the necessary startup capital to fund his transition, and how the grass is—and isn’t—greener in the independent channel.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/102
My guest today comes from a different background than my usual guests, and she’s here to answer the fundamental question of why clients sometimes don’t take the advice we give them. Dr. Moira Somers is a clinical neuropsychologist who studies the complexities of how hard it is for people to change their behaviors, especially when it comes to money. Moira has applied her financial psychology expertise not just to consumers themselves, but also to teaching advisors how to better deliver advice in a way that actually sticks.
In this episode, we discuss how patient compliance research from the medical field is being applied to help clients better adhere to financial advice, as well as how to assess whether someone is truly ready to apply what an advisor suggests. Listen in to learn why it’s unrealistic to expect even good-intentioned clients to always follow through on advice, why it’s important to measure client adherence, and specific steps advisors can take to improve the way they deliver advice in order to significantly increase the likelihood that it will be followed.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/101