The Great Reset

Stop! Take a closer look for the optionality in your environment.

Lets face it, there’s a constant cloud of anxiety that follow Advisors around throughout their days. Our spouses and family members would be the first to point out how fidgety we can be, even during down times - weekends, vacations or family time, we can never put down the device, need to feed the beast with more information.

This constant agitation commonly evidenced by our desperate need to be fully informed at every moment about the stock markets, bond markets, commodity markets, interest rates, changes in bond yield, employment number, inflation, real estate, the play by play events of a long list of companies, political scuffles, changes in weather pattern that could affect trade or commodity prices, gold, oil & gas, copper, lumber, geopolitical events and conflicts.

The curiosity around each of these are amplified when there’s a big change or an impending forecasted activity that can have a meaningful impact.

For the average person, the vast majority of these things are simply meaningless and have very little importance in their days. Are seldom a consideration or source of trepidation, yet for most Advisors, their days revolve around being in the know, with the constant urge to being fully up to date, capable of listing the exact price level or hourly changes in the major indexes.

Much like the ultimate goal is being able to eloquently and effortless speak to their peers only or to successfully debate a colleague about the exact circumstances or development around every narrow micro aspect of equity markets, bond markets, commodity markets, economics, politics, world events or even play by play on individual companies.

If this sounds like you, I have news for you, this stuff is all out of your control and impacts your clients way less that you might imagine.

In my mind there are three categories of Anxiety that every Advisors should be mindful of:

1. Clients

2. Markets

3. Growing Your Revenues

A sense of awareness is important, being able to understand the general nuances and to speak intelligently in dialogue is good, but to immerse your every moment in the noise, well there’s no purpose. This is a only recipe for never ending angst.

If you’ve been following my writing, you’ve probably wondered about the recent break. To that, I would strongly suggest that each of us need a break from this, some time to reflect, time to reboot, more importantly recalibrate before you’re any deeper in.

Time to Get to Work

Without stating the obvious, the unprecedented change being implemented by the current US administration, ongoing trade war & tariff fears and resulting market volatility have certainly been a major source of anxiety for many of us. While retail investors tend to be slow at reacting to this. They are under a lot of pressure and long drawn out periods of uncertainty can have a devastating effect. Many are now taking decisive steps to rethink their lifestyle choices and future plans.

The counsel of a strong Advisor that can help clients navigate and make difficult decisions. You are invaluable in this environment. This is really when Advisors earn their stripes.

Although employment continues to be resilient, the cracks are showing, your clients are already in a economic slowdown.

But this time it’s different, families already had other sources of anxiety. There’s a major war, and in many ways we’re still trying to recover from the pandemic related shocks.

You should know that your clients are in a bigger soup of anxiety, they are getting really worried for good reason. This is not the time to shy away from your clients, more importantly, you need to make an important decision right now, you must decide which side you’re on. Clients move in environments like this, they often move to Advisor that offer real unbiased advice.

Proactively Exploit this Crisis to Grow. 🚀

Are you going to watch helplessly as your clients throw in the towel on you and move to another Advisor or will you Proactively Exploit this Crisis to Grow. 🚀

In periods of recessions and market volatility, clients are motivated to take a closer look at what they are getting from their Advisor. How are you adding value to them.

We’re likely at the a Cusp of a Huge Client Defection Wave. You need to come up with some talking points that will reframe the investor’s anxiety mindset.

Your game plan should be redrawn to first Understanding the Flow of Client Defection, why are people on the move and what are they looking for. Then, you need to create mechanisms in your practice to direct some of that flow inward not outward.

I would suggest that a good first step is to layoff some of the information flow that you expose your self to daily. It will help you to stabilize your own anxiety level. This is something I’ve been doing this year, its been making a huge impact in the way I see the world and how I communicate to clients.

Next, start out proactive outreach to your clients, and their circles, get a sense of where their head it, what are the issue impacting their decisions, and what if anything can you add to improve their situations. This will definitely lead to other conversations, believe me inflation has impacted people from all segments and they are all having this conversation today. You are in a unique position to offer tools and counsel that can provide some sense of the situation, you have to power to help them have clarity about their own personal situations.

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What’s Changed, Why it is different this time!

Let's talk about what's really happening in wealth management right now. It's 2025, and our industry looks dramatically different than it did just five years ago when COVID first hit.

Back then, firms scrambled to get everyone working remotely overnight. Remember those first few weeks? Advisors trying to figure out VPNs, compliance departments panicking about data security, and clients wondering if they could still get their needs met. It was chaos.

But here's the thing – that chaos sparked a revolution that's still playing out today.

"I thought I'd be back in the office full-time by 2021," quips former wirehouse advisor who went independent last year. "Now I'm running a $400 million practice from my home office, seeing clients three days a week in a WeWork, and I'm never going back."

She's not alone. About 70% of independent advisors have stuck with some form of remote or hybrid arrangement. And this shift has created an unexpected opportunity for those thinking about making a move.

When you're working remotely, nobody knows if that "client call" is actually a recruiting conversation with a competing firm. Nobody sees you scanning documents after hours for your transition planning. This privacy has made it dramatically easier to explore options without tipping off your current firm.

The Big Firms Are Changing Their Model

Here's what's happening at the wirehouses and bank-owned firms that nobody wants to say out loud: they're slowly but surely shifting to a banking model for wealth management.

What does that mean? They're consolidating assets into centralized managed models. They're standardizing client experiences. And most importantly, they're reshaping advisor compensation to look more like bank employee compensation – base salary plus performance bonuses rather than true eat-what-you-kill production payouts.

Most Advisor aren’t paying attention to this, but if you look closer, the evidence is clear. Just look at the grid changes over the last three years, every change pushes in the same direction – higher production minimums, more complex qualification requirements, and greater emphasis on selling managed products rather than growing your wealth practice.

This approach is creating winners and losers. If you're already a top producer with $300+ million under management, these firms will continue rolling out the red carpet. But if you're a $100 million advisor or below? The math is increasingly challenging.

The Independent Renaissance

Meanwhile, independent firms have seized this opportunity by positioning themselves as advisor-centric alternatives. They're recruiting aggressively across all production levels and emphasizing what many advisors feel is missing from the wirehouse world: respect for the advisor-client relationship.

There’s a profound difference, its is night and day, it might be cultural or simply the Advisor’s feeling of independence, but advisors at Bank owned firms often started their meetings with 'How do we get more control of client relationships?’ While at independent firm, every meeting starts with 'How do we help our advisors deliver better client experiences?'"

This difference shows up in countless ways:

"My technology budget used to disappear into some black hole at corporate," says a subscriber, who moved his practice last year. "Now I pick exactly what I need for my specific clients, and I actually spend less while getting more."

"I used to waste hours each week justifying why I wasn't cross-selling banking products to my wealth clients," adds another. "Now I focus that time on actual financial planning – you know, what I got into this business to do in the first place."

The AI Factor

The real elephant in the room is now artificial intelligence. In 2025, AI is everywhere in our industry, but firms are using it in dramatically different ways.

Some see AI as a way to eventually replace advisors – or at least dramatically reduce how many they need. Others see it as a tool to make great advisors even better by handling the computational heavy lifting while advisors focus on relationships and complex decision-making.

"When I was evaluating firms," says John a subscriber, who recently moved his $200 million practice, "I specifically asked each one: 'Are you building AI to enhance me or replace me?' The answers told me everything I needed to know about their long-term vision for advisors."

The best firms today provide advisors with AI assistants that can generate portfolio analysis, identify planning opportunities, and even draft client communications – but always with the advisor maintaining control and adding the human element that clients still value.

Clients Follow Advisors, Not Firms

Here's a truth that hasn't changed despite all the technological disruption: clients are loyal to their advisors, not their firms.

Most Advisors are terrified to leave their platforms, they often believe falsely that clients are impressed by the brand of the big firms, and would be reluctant to follow to an independent firm they'd never heard of. If that’s you, think again. I’ve seen massive transitions, with success rates as high as 90% of clients moving in a 60-90 day period.

The data backs this up. According to recent industry studies, when advisors change firms, approximately 85% of their clients follow – a number that has remained remarkably consistent for decades.

“Many advisors dramatically overestimate how much their clients care about the logo on their statements," says a transition specialist to top advisors. "What clients actually care about is their relationship with you, the quality of advice they receive, and the service experience you deliver."

Show Me The Money

Now let's talk about the economics of making a move, because this is where things get interesting.

If you're being recruited today, you'll typically see one of two models: