Modern Financial Advisor

Jason Gallagher of ViewPointe Strategies Group and Terry Mullen, CEO of Truelytics join Mike Langford for a deep-dive exploration of the current state and future of the OSJ model for independent financial advisors and the broker-dealer ecosystem.

Tammy Robbins, Vice President of Business Development at ProEquities shares how she and her team rapidly adjusted to the new reality of working from home while also helping the firm's clients, a distributed population of independent financial advisors who rely on them for support, make the adjustment as well.

Shauna Mace, a consultant and coach who help RIAs achieve higher levels of growth shares how focusing on small, incremental process improvements often leads to the biggest gains.

Runik Mehrotra and Samir Vasavada, Founders of Vise join Mike Langford to share how financial advisors can deliver custom portfolios to their clients without spending countless hours selecting stocks and tinkering with asset allocations. Instead, Vise uses artificial intelligence to do the heavy lifting. As a result, advisors can have custom portfolios that fit each client's specific needs with the ease of implementation that is usually only reserved for model portfolios.

Terry Mullen, CEO of Truelytics explains how RIAs can dramatically improve their performance by focusing on four key areas of their business.

Why is it that we encourage individual financial advisors to focus on niche markets but RIA firms and smaller broker-dealers still roll with the mass market approach? The benefits of target marketing are available at the firm level as well. In this episode, Mike Langford explores how you can transform your business by focusing on a target market for your advisors and the clients they serve.

Dan Cuprill of Advisor Architect and host of The Profitable Advisor Podcast joins Mike Langford for an exploration of how financial advisors can become their own wealthiest clients by focusing on improving the profitability of their business.

Owen Dahl, of the Dahl Consulting Group, joins Terry Mullen, CEO of Truelytics, and Mike Langford for a conversation about how the COVID-19 pandemic might affect valuations, deal structure, and the volume of M&A deals for financial advisors.

There are a lot of parallels between high-performing wealth management firms with top-performing advisors and the top teams and their drivers in auto racing. In this episode, Mike Langford explores what broker-dealers and RIAs can do to emulate the elite teams in Formula 1, Nascar, NHRA, and World Endurance Championship racing to produce advisors that outperform their peers.

Dan Mayes, SVP of Succession Planning and Business Acquisition at Cetera Financial Group joins Mike Langford for a conversation about how one of the world's largest independent broker-dealers is helping their advisors protect their business. The firm's innovative Legacy Builder Progam and Advisor Resiliency Pack are two programs helping advisors through a challenging time and protecting the long-term value of their business.

Catherine Williams, VP and Head of Practice Management at Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) and Tom Orecchio, CEO of Modera Wealth Management join Terry Mullen, CEO of Truelytics for a conversation on the value of benchmarking for RIAs and independent financial advisors. The conversation is moderated by Mike Langford.

Eli Gassert, Chief Technology Officer of Truelytics shares his vision and approach for the rapid development of new technology solutions for a fast-changing wealth management industry. In a space where it is commonly expected to have technologies take years to develop and deploy, Eli explains how it is possible to shrink that time down to a matter of weeks.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act has opened up the opportunity for independent financial advisors, RIAs, and other wealth management firms to access emergency capital as a mechanism to cushion their businesses during this time of economic crisis. Mike Langford is joined by Scott Wetzel of SkyView Partners to take an initial look at the details with an effort to help the Truelytics community get started exploring the programs for their businesses.

Financial advisors and their clients are likely feeling a lot of anxiety in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the economy and society. As a wealth management leader or individual financial advisor, you have an important role to play as a leader. In this podcast, Mike Langford shares some action steps you can take to project leadership and a sense of calm during this time of crisis.

Brad Bergdahl and Brennen Bergdahl of Premier Wealth Management Group sit down with Mike Langford to share how the succession planning process transformed their business. Not only did it secure Brad's legacy but it also set in motion a future for Brennen and the other members of the team. This, in turn, has allowed them to focus on growth.

Terry Mullen, CEO and Co-Founder of Truelytics joins Mike Langford to explore the urgent need to improve the financial advisor recruiting process.

As the pace of advisor transitions and mergers & acquisitions for RIAs picks up in the new decade, the need for financing options to facilitate these moves will increase. In this episode of the Modern Financial Advisor podcast, Mike Langford is joined by Scott Wetzel of SkyView Partners to explore the new range of financing options that are available to advisors.

Recruiting financial advisors to your broker-dealer or RIA firm requires an in-depth understanding of what drives the advisor on an emotional level. Changing firms is a big, risky move for an advisor's business and few enter into that decision lightly. In this episode of the Modern Financial Advisor podcast, Mike Langford is joined by recruiting expert Matthew Bassuk to explore the history of recruiting in the wealth management industry and look at where things are headed.

In a recent study by CNBC and Acorns, it was revealed that 99% of Americans are NOT working with a financial advisor. That means that nearly everyone you come in contact with is likely in need of your services. In this episode of the Modern Financial Advisor podcast, Mike Langford explains why now is the best time to start targeting the 99% and he shares a few strategies for how to find clients.

Justin Paterno, COO of Stocktwits and the newly launched zero-commission brokerage TradeApp, joins Mike Langford to explore the potential impact of the industry's move to zero trade commission on financial advisors. During this episode, Mike and Justin also talk about why social media and building an online brand is important for the modern financial advisor.

Shanna Tingom of Heritage Financial Strategies joins Mike Langford for an exploration of how she and her team are using their website to win new clients at a 66% higher rate than other channels. It turns out these new clients are much more profitable as well. Shanna also shares how she is leveraging Truelytics to facilitate the acquisition of another advisor's practice.

Big news! Truelytics won the Allianz Field Advisory FinTech Pitchfest on September 18, 2019. Also, we are going to be changing the name of the Valuations Podcast to something a little broader in meaning. If you have suggestions, please send them to [email protected] On the show this week, Mike Langford is joined by Jeff Concepcion of Stratos Wealth Partners. Jeff shares his insights into what limits many individual financial advisors and insurance agents as they try to grow their practices into larger businesses. The conversation starts with martial arts and flipping burgers and ends with a discussion about Mike doing karaoke on Jeff's podcast.

In this episode, Mike Langford draws your attention to the one undeniable trend that is changing the wealth management and insurance industries as well as every other business in the world. That trend? Making business easier for clients and for employees. Your competitors are constantly looking to remove friction and make it easier to do business with them. They are also exploring ways to make it easier for their advisors and agents to be productive. In this episode, Mike will shares some ideas of how you can make your business easier to work with... for everyone.

Mike Langford is joined by Andy Ambrose, co-founder & President of Liveoak Technologies to explore how the use of compliant and secure video conferencing coupled with digital signatures and identity verification is transforming the speed of business for wealth management and other financial services firms. Imagine how much better your business would be if you could completely eliminate the need for client paperwork and the constraint of meeting in person for transactional tasks? Liveoak Technologies is making that world possible.

In this episode, Mike Langford dives into the three crucial elements of attracting millennials to your wealth management or insurance business. The key is recognizing and embracing the life-shaping experiences of this generation of talent and empowering them to help you grow the business for the future.

In this episode, Mike Langford shares a story of how he noticed exceptional attention to detail during his recent family vacation to Walt Disney World and how it reminded him how important details are to the valuation of a wealth management or insurance business.

Mike Langford shares a story of how his recent experience of serving as a juror in a criminal case illuminated the importance of helping a buyer get beyond a reasonable doubt for the valuation and acquisition of a wealth management or insurance business.

Mike Langford (flying solo on this episode) explores the strategic value of acquiring another wealth management or insurance business. While it is crucial to base the valuation of a firm on its cash flow, it is also important to remember that the newly acquired business will bring a lot of opportunity above an beyond the immediate cash flow add.

Kirsten Petras of Oak Street Funding joins Mike Langford to explore the rapid increase in acquisition activity in the wealth management industry. As the great wave of transitions heats up for RIAs and independent financial advisors, firms with the right financing in place are aggressively scaling up their businesses by acquiring the businesses of retiring advisors.

Mike Langford is joined by Kelli Cruz of Cruz Consulting Group to explore how wealth management businesses (RIAs, broker-dealers, and individual financial advisors) can increase the value of their firms and the success rate for their transition (either by acquisition or internal succession planning) by focusing on the talent within their organizations.

Victor Gaxiola, Head of Marketing for Tech Girl Financial, joins Mike Langford to explore how he and his team are using social media as well as video and podcasts to grow their business. In this episode you will hear how partnering with a forward-thinking broker-dealer made all the difference and why Victor believes that acquiring an audience is key to increasing the value of your wealth management business.

Brian Margolis, founder of Productivity Giant and author of "The Index Card Business Plan" joins Mike Langford for a refreshingly new look at how to grow your wealth management business or individual financial practice.

Ivan Barretto of RIA Compliance Concepts joins Mike Langford to explore how compliance can be used as a strategic edge by wealth management firms and individual financial advisors.

Jamie Wise, CEO of Buzz Indexes, joins Mike Langford to explore how the use of sentiment analysis and powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools have allowed Buzz to create a new stock index that continuously outperforms the S&P 500.

Grant Hicks of Advisor Practice Management and author of "Guerrilla Marketing For Financial Advisors" joins Mike Langford and Carla McCabe of Truelytics to explore the most important practice management themes for 2019.

Henry Yoshida, founder of Rocket Dollar, joins Mike Langford to discuss the value of providing clients with an easy mechanism for investing in alternative investments within tax-advantaged accounts such as IRAs and Roth IRAs.

Jeremi Karnell, CMO and Chief Product Officer of Truelytics joins Mike Langford to discuss the importance of digital transformation and how blockchain may be leveraged inside of Truelytics.

James Hughes of Live Oak Bank joins Mike Langford to discuss how wealth management firms and individual financial advisors can use debt financing to acquire a business or use it to facilitate the sale of a business. Also, in this episode, we explore whether it is a seller's market or a buyer's market. Who is really in control?

Jim DeCarlo, CEO of StratWealth joins Mike Langford to explore the role company culture plays in the success of today's wealth management firm. Happy employees make happy clients!

Shane Morrow, Managing Partner and Director of Investments at IronBridge Wealth Counsel joins Mike Langford to explore the modern wealth management firm and what's in store for the future of the industry.

Jeff Miller, President and COO of Truelytics joins Mike Langford to explore the ins and outs of business valuation for wealth management firms and individual financial advisors. Jeff also discusses his vision for the future of the wealth management industry. Hint... he doesn't see the robots taking over anytime soon.

Carla McCabe, Director of Practice Management at Truelytics joins Mike Langford to dive in on topics ranging from the valuation of OSJs to the future of the wealth management industry. Carla also draws a parallel between training for American Ninja Warrior and building a valuable financial business. Lots of great stuff! Listen up!

Terry Mullen, CEO and Founder of Truelytics joins Mike Langford to discuss the origin story of the company and explore why wealth management firms and financial advisors need to take valuation and succession planning seriously.