College graduates are looking for firms that will give them a good work-life balance. They want to be part of a team. They also like to be recruited, at something like a career fair, by younger members of a team.

Getting Into The Retirement Space

Fidelity research found that 91 percent of those advisors currently offering retirement plans such as 401(k)s and 403(b)s are only accommodating the business as part of their broader wealth management practices. If these advisors shift from accommodating retirement plans to accelerating their retirement business, they can be more operationally efficient, better serve their clients and improve their profitability.

Meg Kelleher, EVP at Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services, said retirement plans have great potential, and said advisors even face a risk to the private client side of their businesses if they are not in the retirement plans space. For instance, if an advisor has a top client with a business but can’t serve that business’s retirement plan, another advisor who can will have a foot in the door and might even steal the client away.

Kelleher asked, “Don’t want to know a lot about Erisa or 401(k)? Then partner with someone that does this for a living.”

Know Your Firm’s Value

Valuing your business isn’t just about selling it. A valuation can help it achieve greatness. Why? It allows you to see where your organization is falling short and push you to make improvements.

David DeVoe, the founder and managing partner of DeVoe & Company, said during a presentation on valuing companies, “Your valuation isn’t just a number. Keep the concept of greatness in mind and then tie it back.”

He explained three different ways to value a firm. One is to use book value. He noted that this approach was “dangerous” and not recommended.

The next is to use comparables. This method uses either a multiple of revenue or multiple of cash flow. DeVoe called these approaches “blunt instruments.” For one thing, revenue and cash flow approaches can deliver two totally different results. He showed one example of a company that came up with a valuation difference of more than a million dollars.