The big question for financial advisors right now is: “What is your future going to look like?” Do you want to build a highly-scalable business, focus on the “fast things,” drive up your AUM, and spend the rest of your career hoping technology doesn’t sprint past you? Or, do you want to enter into relationships with people and differentiate by focusing on the slow things?
“We have never focused on assets under management as the metric for success,” Levin said. “What we have focused on is doing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, with the belief that we are going to get rewarded for it.”
Of course, going slow and growing big aren’t mutually exclusive—Levin’s firm does manage about $2 billion in assets after all.
The future of the traditional RIA is to automate what makes sense, but then really focus on the slow things, really focus on the relationship you have with your clients and how, through that deep, trusting relationship, you can help them get to a place they never thought possible.
That’s your advantage over the scale players, and over the advisors who cling to automation to compete with them. It’s your humanness, and your ability connect with your clients’ humanness as well.
So instead of asking how to scale your practice, it might be time for you to start asking, “Do my clients want to be scaled?” The answer…NO! Mountains and fish are for scaling, not people.
Rather, we should slow down, and have meaningful conversations about life, money, and financial planning that your clients can only have with you—a real human being.
Steve Sanduski, CFP, is the co-creator of ROL Advisor, a discovery process technology system, a New York Times bestselling author, podcast host, international speaker and blogger at BelayAdvisor.com.