by Jim Stackpool | Dec 22, 2025 | Best Interests, Brand Development, Business Performance, Business Planning, Career Management, Certainty Advice, Financial Legacy, Goals, Greater Good, growth, Leadership, Measures of Success, Professionalism, Wealth Management
Oli runs a good advice firm. Possibly too good. Revenues of $1.23m. He’s built a solid young team of six, including an adviser in her mid-thirties, an associate adviser who completed his professional year last year, an award-winning paraplanner/client service...
by Jim Stackpool | Sep 12, 2024 | Growth Stress, Leadership, Measures of Success, wobble theory
As a kid, I always wanted to be bigger. Grownups could stay up late, didn’t have to go to school, could do what they wanted and had money to buy whatever they wanted. Little did I know my life as a kid was privileged, safe, happy and secure. I also didn’t...
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 | Sep 7, 2023 | Advice is not a Product, advisers v distributors, best practice, Business Planning, capacity to serve, Capacity-To-Serve, Career Management, Consequences, cost to serve, Cost-To-Serve, future of advice, Future of Financial Advice, Measures of Success, Pricing Advice, Value Proposition
I can still see the surprised looks on their faces. It was November 1989, during a three-day “Agent As A BusinessPerson” workshop MLC asked me to design and facilitate. One of the last sessions for the twenty-five accountants and financial planners had...
by Jim Stackpool | Dec 8, 2022 | Advice Conversations, advisers v distributors, Best Interests, Business Performance, Business Planning, Client Offerings, difficult conversations, Future of Financial Advice, Leadership, Measures of Success, Ongoing Relationships, perfectionism, Pricing Advice, Separation of advice from product, Successful On Purpose, What Price Value, worth
Listened to any of Pushkin’s podcasts? They pump out some great ones. A favourite is “The Happiness Lab”, which lives up to a promise showing how our brains are not always our best guides for our well-being or progress. Another one – “Against the Rules” – is just as...
by Jim Stackpool | Sep 29, 2022 | Advice is not a Product, advice skills, Benchmarks, Business Performance, Business Planning, Career Management, Client Offerings, Commoditisation, Competitive pressures, future of advice, Future of Financial Advice, Goals, Measures of Success, perfectionism, Quality Advice, Successful On Purpose
The first benchmark of significance to me was a number of flip-flaps. When I could do ten flip-flaps at one time, I’d make the school’s gymnastic team. Gary Kurtz from my class did it. But I could never get to 10. I have slowly moved on from my missed benchmark of...
