Intro

Corey: hey everyone corey whalen managing director bridgemark strategies firm has helped over a thousand financial advisors objectively explore the broker dealer and ria marketplace and help them find the firm with the right combination of feel fit and financials for them and their business

What You Gain by Going Independent

Corey: over my 10 plus years of recruiting with helped a lot of financial advisors with edward jones explore the independent channel and typically one of the first questions they ask are what am i actually going to gain by making a move to the independent space and in one word it’s flexibility flexibility in all aspects of your business and there’s a couple different reasons for that

Client Relationship Shift: Their Client Is You

Corey: the first one edward jones client is the client that you’re serving every single day on the independent channel their client is you the financial advisor they’re trying to give you all the tools all the resources and flexibility that you need to serve your clients in the way that you feel is the best fit otherwise you’re going to pick up and you’re going to move your business somewhere else

Ownership + Lower Barriers to Leave

Corey: on the independent channel you own your business you own your client data the firm is not going to compete for your business if you decide to leave so the barriers and challenges of leaving are much lower so that firm has a lot more skin in the game to keep you happy as a business owner

Lowest Common Denominator Compliance Policies

Corey: the other reason is something called lowest common denominator compliance policies every firm out there builds their compliance policies and the guard rails that they put on their financial advisors based off of their lowest common denominator advisor at edward jones there are a lot of financial advisors that are new to the industry that probably need some guard rails in order to keep them out of trouble and be laser focused on growing their business but as you grow to a level five to ten advisor at edward jones as you get more sophisticated and your business evolves a lot of those guard rails don’t come off where on the independent channel a lot of financial advisors didn’t get their start there they got their training somewhere else and because they’re experienced financial advisors the firms are much more comfortable from a compliance standpoint giving flexibility to their business owners in a bunch of different ways that i’m about to discuss

Flexibility 1: Marketing

Corey: the first way you’re going to gain a lot of flexibility is from a marketing standpoint you have the ability to completely differentiate yourself as a financial advisor from all of the other ones out there in the community and explain how you’re different in serving your clients through social media through your website through brochures through email you just have complete flexibility from a message standpoint

Flexibility 2: Financial Planning + How You Charge

Corey: also financial planning you have a lot more ways that you can not only serve your clients but that you could also charge so first off you have the selection of probably five to seven different financial planning tools that you can use not just one but you also have the ability to charge on an hourly basis charge a flat fee for financial planning even before somebody’s assets are on the platform just for a meeting and for your time you have the ability to charge for your expertise

Flexibility 3: Scaling Your Team

Corey: you also have the flexibility to scale your business the way that you want to not every financial advisor grows their business the same way and you have the ability to hire another boa when you want to you have the ability to hire a junior financial advisor that you want to to free up time in your day to focus on serving your clients or growing your business

Flexibility 4: Buying Practices

Corey: you also have a new ability to buy practices the average financial advisor on the independent channels about 60 years old and 80 of them don’t have a documented succession plan in place so it’s a huge opportunity for financial advisors on the independent channel to be able to buy some of these practices over the next four to six years that are going to be sun setting

Flexibility 5: Technology Options

Corey: also you have a lot more control over technology at your current firm if you don’t like a part of your technology there’s not a lot of custom ability and you either have to deal with the technology or wait for it to improve or you have to move we’re on the independent side you have multiple options for crms you have multiple options for financial planning tools client presentation tools etc so you have more control over your client experience

Flexibility 6: Pricing + Discretion

Corey: also from a pricing standpoint you have the ability to price your fee based accounts the way that you want you could go anywhere from 25 basis points up to two and a half percent based on the services that you provide for your clients also at most independent firms day one you have discretion on all of your clients fee-based accounts i can’t tell you how many financial advisors i speak with that have frustrations especially in a market like this where they don’t have the ability to be nimble and they have to call every single one of their clients before they trade it’s not like that on the independent side you have the capability and the technology to trade across all your clients accounts at the snap of a hat

Flexibility 7: Economics + P&L Control

Corey: also from an economic standpoint you’re not paying for the hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising for the brand you’re not paying for all of the different layers of management if you’re in greensboro north carolina you’re not paying for the expensive office space of somebody in l.a or new york or florida you have the ability to manage your p l pay for the things that positively and directly impact the growth of your business and not pay for the things that don’t so the typical financial advisor that goes independent is netting somewhere in between 60 to 70 percent of their top line revenue just because they’re not paying for unnecessary things

Flexibility 8: Ownership + True Market Value

Corey: and then also from an ownership standpoint you’re truly building an asset that one day you’re going to be able to sell for its true market value the way that you want to on your own terms not at ordinary income like at a w-2 channel but for long-term capital gains which is much more preferential from a tax standpoint

Wrap-up

Corey: so as you can see there’s a lot of things to potentially be gained from a flexibility standpoint by going independent if you have any more questions i’m more than happy to answer them give me a call or shoot me an email and would be more than happy to talk thank you