After 90 days, participants get ongoing training and Sestina meets once a week with them for a year. He doesn't feed them referrals, though. "This isn't part of the plan," Sestina says. "They must learn to get clients on their own and to be able to service them."
During the first year, a local planner can bring their prospects to Sestina and have him conduct the initial meeting to learn how to land the client. "I do the presentation and answer questions, and if they decide to be a client, then they're a client of the network advisor," he says. "Eventually, through this process, the advisor learns to conduct the prospect meeting on his or her own."
Sestina's purpose isn't to build an empire. Rather, he says, he simply wants to turn out qualified, fee-only advisors. "People grow and go out on their own. Rick Epple [Epple Financial Advisors LLC in Wayzata, Minn.] was with me three years. When he came in, he had a lot to learn about building a client base. Six months ago, he was ready to do it all himself, so we cut him loose and now he's on his own with a great practice."
After trying various approaches, Sestina settled on his current system, which includes daughter Allison and her team providing back-office services. "Now things run like an assembly line," he says.
A few have stayed with Sestina in his own office. Certified financial planner Mark Coffey, for one, has been with Sestina for about 10 years. "He's still in the office and doing well," says Sestina. Under Sestina's training, Coffey- a former attorney-is now a successful advisor and a past president of the Columbus Estate Planning Council who specializes in multi-generational planning.
The other advantage of the Sestina Network is its built-in succession planning. "Since everyone uses the same back-office system, when an advisor dies or wants to retire, his clients can be transitioned seamlessly to another planner within the network," he says.
Sestina's goal is to help build the profession. "I've had to teach people to do financial planning the way I think it should be done," he says. "Sooner or later the media will see an affiliation with the Sestina Network like the Good Housekeeping seal-a system that turns out reputable, comprehensive fee-only financial planners."
Fox Financial Planning Network
Before Deborah Fox founded the Fox Financial Planning Network (www.foxfinancialplanningnetwork.com) in 2008, there was Fox College Funding (www.foxcollegefunding.com), her systematic approach to teaching advisors the ins and outs of college funding opportunities for high-net-worth clients.
"I had no intention of creating an advisor network," says Fox, who has her own advisory practice in San Diego. "But did it on request from other financial advisors."
As she coached other advisors on college funding, Fox says she began to realize the shortfalls in advisors' practices. "When the markets fell in fall 2008, I thought we were less impacted than our peers, partially because of our fee structure [of] annual retainers plus an AUM fee. We survived pretty well and decided the market environment would be receptive to our advisor network.
"There are many challenges in trying to figure out how to provide a higher level of service to one's entire client base," she says. "But we know that when an advisor has a deeper relationship with her clients, she will have a lower attrition rate".