Heading into the new year, you may be planning to increase staffing so you can capitalize on growth opportunities. But did you know that, according to Leadership IQ research, 46% of new hires will fail within the first 18 months? And our own research suggests that most of those fail not because of eligibility reasons — but because of suitability mismatches. In other words, the candidate’s natural skills, talents, interests and personal values are simply not aligned with the job or the firm. But suitability can’t be determined through traditional interviewing methods, which is why it’s so problematic for most RIAs.

The good news is that we have adapted two highly reliable methods for determining suitability that will help you quickly identify the highest potential candidates — and weed out those who look great on paper (and in an interview setting), but end up as disasters on the job.  Read More

BRIAUD Financial Advisors, Bryan, Texas

In a business as personal and self-reliant as financial planning, the question of succession is critical. And since the average age of currently practicing financial advisors is—roughly—the mid-to-late 50s, the disposition of your business is hardly a rhetorical one.

While studies indicate that more than half of independent advisors are without a formal succession plan, there are a handful of practitioners fortunate enough to be solving the problem without transition coaches or amalgamators.

Instead, in the age-old tradition of small businesses everywhere, they are passing their own life’s work on to the next generation: sons and daughters who will, hopefully, not only retain existing clients, but go on to serve the progeny of those clients as well.  Read More

A football event can teach an important lesson for success as a financial advisor and for success in life.

On November 15^th, 2009, the Colts played the Patriots. It was a great game. (Unless you are a Patriots fan and only a win would have made you happy.) With 2 minutes and 8 seconds left in the game the Patriots were leading 34 -28 and had the ball on their own 28-yard line. Their coach, Bill Belichick, decided to go for it on 4^th down, with less than 2 yards to go for a first down. Success would have almost certainly won the game for the Patriots. Failure would put the ball in the hands of Peyton Manning, the superstar quarterback of the Colts, with less than 30 yards to go to score the winning touchdown. The Patriot’s quarterback, Tom Brady, threw a short pass to the running back, Kevin Faulk, who bobbled the ball before he caught it and was tackled short of the first down. The announcers went crazy! “What a stupid call!” “How could a great coach like Bill Belichick do something so risky!” “Peyton Manning has the ball with plenty of time to score the winning touchdown!” “Can you believe that call?” In fact, Peyton Manning did lead his team to score the touchdown and win the game.  Read More

We’re all guilty of allowing the little things to distract us from what we should be doing.  The fact is that in order to get where you want to be, you have to do the work required to achieve your goals so you can experience ultimate success.

Take a moment and ask yourself where you truly want to be?  Now tell yourself how many things you did today, yesterday, and the day before yesterday that directly contributed to the future results you want.  And then tell yourself how many things you did today that did not contribute to your success.  Those things probably distracted you from what you knew you should have been doing.  Read More

Have you ever been on vacation and wished you didn’t have to come back? Have you ever woken up in the morning and wished that you could just skip the office today? Are you surrounded by mountains of paperwork that seem to mate like rabbits when you are not looking?

The secret to breaking these cycles forever is systems and processes that can be executed by anyone on your team. Imagine a world where every process was documented with easy-to-follow, step-by-step directions. Anyone could tap into your company knowledge base or pick up the manual and be able to execute any process flawlessly. How would that free you up for more productive and exciting work?  Read More

This article is homage to the most popular original “Star Trek” episode: “The Trouble with Tribbles.” For those who are non-trekkies, don’t let the theme dissuade you. And for those of you who bleed green, eat “Gahk,” and who know what a “Jeffries Tube” is, please don’t treat me like “Red Shirt #1.” I am not a “Herbert.”

A Tribble was a cute little furry creature whose only purpose in life was to purr contentedly when petted, thus soothing its owner. We learned that their only other functions were to eat, procreate—in fact, they were born pregnant—and hate Klingons. The Tribbles discovered that the valued shipment of the seed grain “Quatro-triti-cali” was poisoned when some Tribbles found their way into the storage bins and starved to death while gorging themselves on the cargo. The Klingons had perpetrated the foul deed. In the end, as the Klingons beat a hasty retreat, all of the living Tribbles were beamed into the “Bird of Prey’s” engine room, gumming up the works.  Read More

Editor’s note: It’s been a long, exhausting year at your workplace. You’re tired, depleted, and quite frankly just done with  “business as usual.” You’re laying the blame for your fatigue squarely at the feet of the increased responsibilities and long hours you’ve been facing. But according to Jon Gordon, you might be wrong. He insists that working hard—when done with a good attitude in the right environment—can actually be quite invigorating.  In other words, what’s wearing you out at work might not be the work.

“Most people wrongly assume that their tasks and responsibilities are what’s grinding them down,” explains Gordon, author of the newly released Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture. “However, while ‘work’ is a convenient scapegoat, the real culprit is often the negativity of the people you work with and for, their constant complaining, and the pessimistic culture that is now the norm in a lot of workplaces.”  Read More

Top 10 Questions To Ask Yourself

One of the best ways to bring about success in a new year is to celebrate the successes of the current year while. You need to be painfully honest about the failures or lost opportunities in 2010.  This will open the door to identifying positive steps to take in 2011.Involve your staff and conduct an internal audit of your business and your client service progress in 2010 and make plans for 2011.  Involvement of staff is critically important to this process.  You will receive more buy-in to any necessary changes if they help to determine what went wrong and what went right!  Read More

One of the most important tasks independent advisors face is one that rarely finds its way to the top of the “To-Do”  list: Using business metrics as intelligence. While understanding your business metrics can make your firm significantly more productive and profitable, it is often easier said than done.

Even something as simple as measuring your firm’s asset growth as an independent advisor can be tricky. Do you know what factors are most responsible for asset growth? Is it your firm’s performance, bringing on new assets, existing clients making contributions, or simply a strong market? Worse yet, what if you are growing assets, but losing revenue? And how is your firm performing compared to other advisory firms? Especially in today’s economy, using this information to make strategic decisions will help strengthen your margins, and ensure that your firm is working smart.  Read More

Whether you are starting from scratch or seeking to grow an established business, public relations gives you the power to reach your target audience through highly credible, third-party sources. While there are dozens of ways to kick off a successful PR campaign, many businesses overlook the most obvious and close-to-home approach: philanthropy.

I’m not talking about writing a check to your favorite local charity and going on about your day. While this is still a wonderful thing to do, it’s not something that you can incorporate into your marketing or public relations campaign. Rather, find a local charity or local chapter of a national non-profit that you believe in and for whom you feel you could make a difference.  Read More