The Specialist

Cerbone, 28, was personally recruited by Michelle Smith to join Source from J.P. Morgan Private Bank, where she was a relationship manager for more than 80 clients. Cerbone, who came on board last February, accompanies Smith on most of her client meetings and calls to help her prepare for and follow up on the meetings, and she’s a daily go-to person for clients when Smith is busy with her divorce practice or away at conferences or speaking engagements.

Cerbone and Andrew Stewart, 27, the firm’s managing director of investment strategy, are leading Source’s efforts to connect with Gen Y clients. Using direct focus groups Source ran itself, the firm set out to find out why millennials are sitting on so much cash and how to bring these investors to investment advisors. That resulted in a white paper they released last month that described the millennial mind set and the key things that firms need to do to be competitive in that landscape.

“At the same time, we’re trying to mold our practice to be something that would appeal to millennials based on our research,” Stewart says.

The Long Run
Smith says her divorce specialty has brought her many clients who were wives of CEOs, which can involve issues dealing with pre- or post-IPOs. By default, she says she had to become an expert in such areas as publicly traded concentrated stock and lockup periods for founders’ stock. “If you’re a CEO’s wife, I’m your girl because I’ve seen this movie,” she notes. “The divorce strategy has led itself to a lot of different niches.”

Her belief in the power of specialization is the foundation for the newly launched Anatomy of a Specialist program, which seeks to leverage Smith’s coaching on how to boost an advisor’s practice by becoming a specialist in any particular area. Smith is the lone coach of the program, which will be conducted either in her New York office or via phone. The cost is $5,000 a month, with a three-month minimum.

“This is just formalizing what she’s already been doing. It’s not reinventing the wheel; it’s something that’s tried and true,” says Kristen Niebuhr, Source’s president and chief operating officer, who originally teamed up with Michelle at A&J. “She’s done it enough informally and has had enough people ask her about creating a specialty that we decided there might actually be some meat to this so let’s look at this being a revenue stream for us while educating the industry.

“The coaching centers on trying to find a potential specialty,” Niebuhr adds. “The next step is learning how to monetize that by thinking outside the box to deal with every center of influence. Every accountant and attorney knows they’ll get hit up on by financial advisors. There are better ways to approach them to make them want you to help them. The two main stools are identify your niche, and leverage it.”

Sounds like a busy workload for Smith, but she says she thrives on it. “There’s a difference between frenetic and scattered, or just busy. I’m busy. I’ve got a hundred different things going on, and it gives me energy. And I pick the things I like.”

One of those was training for the New York City Marathon in 2012, an audacious task considering she wasn’t a runner before that. She worked with a trainer for six months, and even though her left knee and hip took a pounding during training, she says she was ready to go. Then Superstorm Sandy came along and put the kibosh on the race.

“The one year I decide to train for a ridiculous race at 48 years old when I never ran in my life, and they canceled it,” she says with bemusement. “So I never did run it. I’ll probably try it again, but it’s a major time commitment. It felt right that year, but hasn’t since then.”

But the experience wasn’t a total loss. “Running is now my primary exercise,” Smith says. “I do three to five miles a few times a week. It’s really therapeutic.”