There is a great article by Louis S. Harvey of Dalbar entitled

In business and in life, you are constantly managing projects.  You could break your projects into three categories: Personal Projects Family Projects  Business Projects To achieve happiness, you must have a good balance between these three projects.  A couple of my friends wrote a great book, Juggling Elephants, which describes this process really well. By [...]

The past ten years have been labeled “The Lost Decade for North American Securities”.  Investors have lost confidence in financial markets and hope that their financial goals may someday be realized. Financial advisors, I have spoken with recently, talk about how the industry isn’t fun any more.  They tell stories about how they cringe when [...]

What makes the top 20% of financial advisors, who manage over 80% of the industry's client assets, so successful?  In the analysis below, I have identified and ranked both the top 3 personal characteristics and the top 10 business characteristics of North America's top advisors: Personal Characteristics 1.    Have high levels of personal confidence 2.    [...]

How’s your day going?  Need a boost? Below is a video off

In 2011, I took a sports psychology course to help financial advisors to deal with problems similar to those experienced by professional athletes.  By learning the skills and techniques used by sports psychologists, I felt I could be a more valuable resource to help you improve mental preparation and overcome mental game challenges that may [...]

A few years ago, I read two books entitled Audible.com. If you are unfamiliar with Audible, it is a website that sells audiobooks. I have a gold membership that allows me to download one book each month for $14.95 per month. This is a great solution if you are working out or driving. Both books [...]

If you are going to make changes in your business, why not start with the most important factor – your client relationship management processes. Financial advisors, in general, do a pretty poor job of managing client relationships.  That is both a problem and an opportunity.  We will look at both in this article. Your clients [...]

If you have seen the movie or read the book Moneyball, you know the story of how Billy Beane, GM of the Oakland A’s, who following a loss in the post season, the loss of three star players and the inability to complete with the “big boys” payrolls, hires Peter Brand,  a Yale economics graduate [...]

I did a personality assessment a few years ago and was impressed that it not only advised me on what I needed to focus on to be successful but also on what I needed to avoid.  In the spirit of that assessment, here are my top 5 things that I believe advisors in general should [...]