by Jim Stackpool | Dec 1, 2025 | Advice Clients, adviser fees, capacity to serve, Client Offerings, Fee For Service, Ideal Advice Client, Median Fees, Minimum Fees, Minimum Pricing, Pricing Advice, uplifts
Wayne is a client of mine. He has a problem with two of his clients, Tom and Jerry. Tom is paying Wayne $22,800 a year and rarely makes contact. Jerry is paying $10,780 and is constantly in contact. They have opposite problems. But they are paying for similar value....
by Jim Stackpool | Nov 3, 2025 | Advice Clients, Brand Development, Client Care, Client Offerings, Delivering Value, Niche Market
Most founders of advice dream about this. The niche that fills the new business pipeline with quality opportunities, keeps clients coming back, and doesn’t depend on one subject-matter-expert adviser to survive. Is there such a thing as the perfect advice niche? I saw...
by Jim Stackpool | Jun 19, 2024 | Activity v Productivity, Advice Clients, Advice Clients, Advice Conversations, Advice is not a Product, Certainty Advice, Client Offerings, Future of Financial Advice, Leadership, stages of growth, Successful On Purpose, Value Proposition
I’m a COBOL programmer. We moved out of our family home of 32 years last weekend, and I found an old coding template with a few punch cards that I have kept since the late 1970s. I didn’t think I was a hoarder (maybe?). It took me back to when the talent...
by Jim Stackpool | May 29, 2024 | advisers v distributors, client conversations, Client Meetings, Client Offerings, Separation of advice from product, Success Stories, Transformative Advice, valuable advice, value, Value of Advice, Value Proposition
What do advisers do? Maximise returns, protect risks, anticipate complexities, minimise costs, reduce stress, remove distractions, test assumptions, and change client’s long-term habits. Advisers are in the confidence business. They convert a client’s doubts into...
by Jim Stackpool | May 1, 2024 | Advice Conversations, advice skills, Business Performance, Certainty Advice, CERTISTICS, client conversations, Client Meetings, Client Offerings, Consistent, Consultative Approach, Impact, Measures of Success, Methodical, Mindsets, Quality Advice, Successful On Purpose, Value Proposition
We listen to a lot of adviser-client Discovery conversations. That’s our job. We can’t transform advice skills without working deep into the details of what’s said in client meetings, which only recordings of Discovery and Engagement conversations can provide....
by Jim Stackpool | Nov 2, 2023 | Activity v Productivity, Advice Conversations, best practice, Business Performance, Client Meetings, Client Offerings, Collaboration, Covid-19, Delegation, Future of Financial Advice, Impact, Leadership, Rugged Individualist
My wife Anna loves book club. She comes home from their dinners with a new thought-provoking discussion sparked by the book, regardless of whether she liked it, read it or hated it. Their latest was Lessons in Chemistry, which also recently began as a series on Apple...