Understanding Dodd-Frank Section 1033: What You and Your Clients Need to Know
Section 1033 of the Dodd-Frank Act is designed to empower consumers by giving them the right to access and share… Read More
Insights and best practices for successful financial planning engagement
• Matt Schulte • November 4, 2021
While the development of COVID-19 vaccines has restored some semblance of normalcy, the Delta variant has thrown a wrench into many firms’ back-to-office plans.
The continuation of work from home has the financial advice industry questioning if there ever will be a true “return to the office” push.
While change can throw us off balance, it also can provide a fresh perspective. This new, digital-first world provides a unique opportunity for financial professionals to build a practice that caters to their interests and desired lifestyle.
While daily life was already becoming increasingly virtual, COVID-19 accelerated this trend to new heights.
A Pew Research Center survey shows that most workers whose job responsibilities can be fulfilled from home rarely or never teleworked before the pandemic.1 By October 2020, 71 percent of those workers worked from home all or most of the time, with over half saying they’d want to keep working from home after the pandemic.1
While teleworking rates have dropped in 2021, there are still significantly more people working from home than before the pandemic.2
It’s been challenging to adapt the high-touch financial advice industry to this digital-first world, but many practices have done so while seeing the same—and sometimes even more—success in client acquisition, client retention, and AUM.
Long term, this fundamental shift in the way we work potentially frees financial professionals from the constraints of geography. Planners can now acquire new business from a variety of locations.
Ultimately, this provides the potential to niche down and build a book of business that reflects their interests, all while complementing their desired lifestyle.
In other words, more financial professionals can adopt or emulate a lifestyle practice model.
In the past, opening a lifestyle practice was thought of as a potential next step for financial professionals who were nearing retirement. For those earlier in their careers, building a lifestyle practice could come with a kind of stigma—namely, the assumption that you don’t have a desire to “be successful” or “hustle.”
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
In the COVID-19 era—when the importance of family and work-life balance has taken center stage—it’s clear that the lifestyle practice taboo is outdated at best and damaging at worst.
For some people, success looks like building a large enterprise firm. For others, it looks like cultivating a finely curated book of business that supports the kind of life they want to live.
Even if you’re not interested in building a lifestyle practice, there’s still a lot to learn from this refreshed version of the lifestyle model.
Understanding what motivates you as a financial planner is fundamental for creating any successful practice.
To identify your “why,” ask yourself some basic questions.
What’s the driving force behind the work you do? What keeps you engaged and passionate? What special skill set or perspective do you have? What kind of clients need your unique value the most?
After you’ve done an honest examination of these questions, consider how the answers could all work together to support a specific audience. This exercise can help you identify fruitful niches for your practice and begin to design a day-to-day practice that’s more meaningful to you.
Ultimately, understanding your “why” translates to providing more value to your clients. When you know who you want to serve and why you want to serve them, you’re able to give the best and most meaningful financial planning services possible.
Here are a few key steps you can take to focus on the parts of your business that only you can do:
If you’re making big changes to your practice, it may require you to change the way you charge for planning services. See our Shifting Your Compensation Model eBook to better understand all the factors you should consider when restructuring your planning fees.
Sources
1. Parker, Kim, Juliana M Horowitz, and Rachel Minkin. “How the Coronavirus Outbreak Has – and Hasn’t – Changed the Way Americans Work.” Pew Research Center, 2020. December 9. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/12/09/how-the-coronavirus-outbreak-has-and-hasnt-changed-the-way-americans-work/.
2. Gould, Elise, and Jori Kandra. “Only One in Five Workers Are Working from Home due to COVID.” Economic Policy Institute, 2021. June 2. https://www.epi.org/blog/only-one-in-five-workers-are-working-from-home-due-to-covid-black-and-hispanic-workers-are-less-likely-to-be-able-to-telework/.
DISCLAIMER: The eMoney Advisor Blog is meant as an educational and informative resource for financial professionals and individuals alike. It is not meant to be, and should not be taken as financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Those seeking professional advice may do so by consulting with a professional advisor. eMoney Advisor will not be liable for any actions you may take based on the content of this blog.
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