New Financial Planner Starter Kit

An article from the FPA Journal, then Real World Resources

Professional Coaches: Planners Seek Help in Making Dreams Reality

By Nancy Opiela

I’ve never had a conversation with a financial planner who didn’t stress the amount of time he or she spends with clients trying to help them identify goals to allocate their financial resources accordingly. When it comes to planners having a handle on their own hopes and dreams, however, it may be the story of the cobbler’s children going without shoes. With so much time spent on providing clients with exceptional service, many planners find it impossible to carve out the time to evaluate their own business goals.

Professional business coach Dick Zalack of Focus Four/Results Plus in Brunswick, Ohio, makes the point that, in addition to time, planners may not have the necessary skills to move their business forward. "I find financial planners are very sincere people, very service-oriented and very committed to helping the people they work with. They know how to find the business and work with people, but the skills they use to help others are not the same ones required to build a practice that meets their goals."

This could explain the emergence of coaching on the financial planning scene. More and more, planners are seeking out coaches for the kind of help they provide—the emotional support and technical tools necessary to identify goals and make them a reality. According to coach Bill Bachrach of Bachrach & Associates in San Diego, planners generally look for help in three different areas. "There are strategic coaches to help with strategy and planning, accountability coaches to help with short-term goals and skill coaches to teach the business building skills," he explains.

Here, planners who have used coaches share their experiences, and others offer alternatives for getting the helping hand they need. Maybe you’ll see yourself in some of their stories.

Succeeding at Business, But Losing Your Life

Increasingly, planners with successful practices are turning to professional coaches to help them work through growing pains. The coaching they receive may concentrate on building efficiencies, changing operational procedures, adding staff—even taking the business in an entirely new direction. Particularly because financial planning is a relatively young profession, growth—when, who and how to control it—presents a range of difficulties. Most troubling for planners is that sometimes a practice takes off so quickly that there is no time to stop and consider the future.

For Bruce Jentner, CFP, of Jentner Financial Group in Akron, Ohio, not having time to reflect on his rapidly growing business was rooted in the difficulty he had delegating responsibility. When Jentner started working with Zalack 6 years ago, he had been in practice for 13 years and had built a business that was bottlenecked around himself. "I really enjoy the technical side of planning and I was wearing many hats—technician, producer, marketer, financier. I had less time off yet my employees were able to get home and spend time with their families," he says.

Zalack encouraged Jentner to step back from the day-to-day work and view his business as a tool to accomplish what he wanted out of life. In examining his practice, Jentner realized that in addition to the bottleneck he’d created, his business model itself ran counter to his goal of building an interdependent practice.

Explains Jentner: "I was using what I thought was the industry model and employing CFP professionals as independent contractors. We had five- or six-year cycles that began with me training new planners and ended with them leaving to start their own practices. I never faulted them for that, but it was discouraging that I was not getting closer to my goal of an interdependent team. The payroll and operational expenses also created a tremendous financial stress."

What Jentner learned from Zalack prompted him to change his business model. Since January 1998, his practice has consisted of three CFP licensees, all employees, and four professional staff. Clients are clients of the firm and Jentner has converted to a fee-only practice. "We’ve referred away 80 percent of our business and kept the 20 percent who meet our profile—clients with $1 million or more under management. We are attempting to provide world-class service to this clearly identified client base," he says.

Most important, Jentner’s established his interdependent team and reduced his stress. "Under my old model, I felt I had to always act heroically to stay current on the shifting sands of knowledge. Now, we all have our areas of expertise and can lean on each other to provide good coverage to each of our clients," he says.

In addition to his thriving practice, Jentner is enjoying more time off. He took the month of August off and another partner took off for three weeks in September. "The beauty is that the company continued to operate successfully during our absences," he concludes.

Growth Tough on Partnerships

The experiences of end-of-year Gilbert, Lois Carrier, David Maurice and Pamela Benzer, all CFP partners in the firm of Gilbert Carrier Maurice Benzer in Johnson City, Tennessee, illustrate that quick growth can be especially stressful in partnerships. Explains Gilbert, "We were in practice for five years when we suddenly became extremely successful and began to lose control of the business. The growth we experienced in 18 months just about crushed us. We recognized that something needed to change. Our coaching program helped us translate and apply what we were figuring out ourselves."

Again, Zalack encouraged the planners to look at the business not as the end result, but a tool to get themselves someplace else. Says Maurice, "We had routinely taken retreats to talk about the business. Yet we still had four separate financial planning businesses and didn’t know what was common in our long-term goals."

Through Zalack’s coaching, the partners discovered that they started in business for four different reasons and wanted something different out of it. "We worked together fine, but differences in our goals were making it difficult to build the business," says Benzer.

Adds Carrier: "I had always assumed that we shared the same long-term goals. Confronting our differences was scary—particularly because we enjoyed a friendship in addition to the business. Since we didn’t share the same long-term goals, did our partnership have to end?"

Rather than abandon ship, the partners worked to refocus their business, building on strengths and allowing each partner to focus 100 percent of their time on an aspect of the business they enjoyed most. Today, Benzer deals with operating the business, Gilbert handles the research, Maurice focuses on client service and Carrier works on building professional relationships.

The firm has targeted business owners as well as those who are retired, or preparing for retirement, and their growth is under control, with no danger of burnout. "I ask myself every day—Am I involved with the right parts of the business? Am I working toward my goals?" says Benzer. "In a successful business, everything looks like something you want to do. We’ve learned to look at an opportunity and to say, ‘No, this is not where the four of us are heading.’"

Differentiating Yourself in the Market

Dan Sullivan of The Strategic Coach in Toronto, Ontario, has been a professional coach for ten years and says that while it’s certainly helpful for planners to become more efficient and get their lives more in balance, it’s more important to address what is causing the lack of control and imbalance. Sullivan encourages planners he works with to study the changes in the financial services industry in order to best position themselves for the future.

Explains Sullivan: "Planners need to understand that it is the world we live in that causes this imbalance. They may try to get better organized, but in some cases that can be like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Sure, after the program they are better organized and neater, but the fact is that they haven’t paid attention to the world they are living in and the global changes that are taking place."

Sullivan asserts that, with increasing competition in the planning arena, one of the chief problems facing financial planners is that they have a hard time differentiating themselves from their competitors. "Planners need to concentrate on how they can package themselves uniquely," he says.

Scott Fithian, CLU, ChFC, of The Legacy Company in Boston, has worked with Dan Sullivan for six years. His practice has grown from learning to delegate tasks and become more productive with his own time. Now he works with Sullivan on distinguishing himself in the marketplace.

Says Fithian, "It’s better to be different than it is to be better. We’ve taken our entire methodology and packaged it into something called the Legacy Planning System. Before, when I’d talk to clients about financial planning and estate planning, they’d fall asleep. Now, I talk about the Legacy Planning System and I get a much different response. We need to package our services in a way that clients can associate value with it."

Fithian is also concentrating on building client relationships. "The rise of the Internet and CPA firms merging into the financial services industry are threats to business. The only thing advisors have that is totally under their control is the ability to build and sustain quality relationships," he says.

Moving in a Different Direction

Whether it’s zeroing in on a new market niche, changing compensation methods or creating a new business, a new direction often requires new skills or a reorganization. At the very least, planners note that an outside perspective can be especially valuable during a transition period when additional work is heaped onto already full plates.

When Diahann Lassus, CPA, CFP, of Lassus Wherley & Associates in New Providence, New Jersey, noticed that her financial planning efforts were beginning to merge with her partner’s accounting practice, she suggested hiring a coach to help them align corporate resources to support what would really be a new company.

Rather than identifying a goal or developing new skills, its accountability Lassus and her partner Clare Wherley, CPA, CFP, are seeking from their coach. "We are very good at figuring out what needs to be done, less good at ensuring that it gets done. It’s nice to work with someone who will keep us honest—by meeting over the phone to check on our progress," she says.

The value Lassus and Wherley place on setting short-term goals and monitoring progress has also resulted in weekly staff meetings. "Everyone is responsible for reporting on something from technology to marketing. It’s important that we all be involved and up-to-date," says Lassus.

Lassus also values a new, outside perspective on her business. "It’s just so refreshing to work with someone who really thinks outside the box. We’ll be caught up in a problem, and our coach will ask, ‘Did you try this?’—and it’s just what we need. The bottom line is that we have to remember that we must treat our business like a client," she says.

Coaching can be also effective in the transition from a commission-based to a fee-only practice. For example, Mark Van Leeuwen, founder of Van Leeuwen & Associates in Richmond, Kentucky, found he needed help with cultivating a new kind of relationship with clients. "Under my old business structure, if I was involved in a complex deal and sitting with a client’s other financial advisors, when it came to the big questions, the client’s eyes went to his attorney or CPA. I wanted to be the point person in situations like that," says Van Leeuwen.

Coach Bill Bachrach worked with Van Leeuwen to build the skills necessary to create high-trust relationships and be perceived not as a salesperson but as a trusted advisor. Says Van Leeuwen: "I’d been in the business for five or six years and I didn’t spend any money on myself. Money spent here is totally worth it."

Examining Your Own Issues

In addition to working with coaches on strategy, skills and accountability, Richard Wagner, J.D., CFP, of Sharkey Howes Wagner & Javer in Denver, stresses the value of coaches who help planners focus on themselves, as well. "With a lot of opportunity in front of us, it is very helpful to talk with someone who can help you gain perspective. I work in a complex environment. I have three partners and although we have an amazing amount of intimacy between us, we are still three different people with very different priorities," he says.

Coaching has helped Wagner answer the question—How do you run a business with four strong partners? "You need to understand your feelings and be able to identify why things are happening," says Wagner. "It takes a lot of brutal self-honesty. With three partners, sometimes it’s just a matter of understanding who I am in relation to them."

Wagner has been working with his coach for a couple of years and they meet monthly by telephone. In between checkups, there are exercises and priority setting. One exercise Wagner finds particularly helpful is to write 15 to 30 minutes, three days in a row, about issues that concern him. He also enjoys exploring his own relationship to money.

"To claim the territory of being an advisor to others, you’d better be pretty clear about your own self," says Wagner. "When financial planning was primarily a sales profession, it did not matter as much—you could just sell, sell, sell. But when one purports to be an advisor and a source of wisdom, then being clear about one’s own issues is more important."

Concludes Wagner, "We kid ourselves that because we have the education, or whatever, we automatically have our act together—but we don’t. People ask me what I think the difference is between coaching and therapy—I like to say therapy spends more time dealing with what is wrong and coaching is more an exercise on how to build on what is right—what you have and how to use it. You must invest in equipment and staff, but it’s just as necessary to invest in ourselves and our own mental health."

Looking Elsewhere for Support

It is possible, of course, to find the kind of support a coach provides someplace else. For example, since the 1980s, Karen Spero, CFP, of Spero-Smith Investment Advisors in Cleveland, Ohio, has received ample business support and counsel from her advisory board. As Spero defines it, "An advisory board should comprise people you respect who are not part of your operation and have expertise in different areas, and who can objectively look at your business. They should be able to help you move your practice forward and hold you accountable to what you say your mission is."

Spero meets with her board three times a year and notes that paying these advisors to come in helps her stay on top of business issues. She stresses, however, that strategy and planning are ongoing issues and should not be construed as a problem. "This should be an enthusiastic endeavor to improve your business and help you to take it in whatever direction you like—and it doesn’t have to be growth," she notes. "Our clients want ongoing help from someone who can help them reach their financial goals and help them have a better financial life. That’s what my advisory board does—they help me keep my business running smoothly. They help me plan our future instead of handling things as they come up and moving from crisis to crisis."

One thing Spero’s board recently challenged her on was making appointments with prospects who did not meet her client profile—primarily high net worth people. Explains Spero, "There are only so many hours in the day. Yet when you are building a practice, often you’ll talk to everyone—we hate to say no. Someone else can say, ‘What are you doing?’ when it wouldn’t have occurred to you to even come up for air long enough to ask yourself that question."

Spero stresses that an advisory board can be helpful with a practice of any size. "People think they can’t do this unless they want to grow their practices. However, this is really about what kind of practice you want. If you’re a sole practitioner, you can still benefit from someone from the outside looking at what you are doing and brainstorming with you about how to make it better," she says.

Rather than hire a coach or create an advisory board, Sheryl Garrett, founder of Garrett Financial Planning, Inc. in Overland Park, Kansas, structured her practice to provide the kind of support she needs. "When we founded our firm, my partner and I spent a lot of time looking at the big picture and determining what we wanted our company to be. Studying The E-Myth by end-of-yearel Gerber was very helpful," she explains.

Garrett looks to her partner, Trent Carter, to keep her focused on the day-to-day tasks. "Trent brings me down to earth and says, ‘Here are the things we need to take care of.’ I know I need to surround myself with people who will help me accomplish what I know I should be doing. Otherwise, I’d be just doing all the big-picture stuff," she says.

Other tools to keep Garrett and Carter on track include contact management software, daily staff meetings and operational procedures that don’t take them away from the planning. For example, to eliminate billing issues, their clients pay before they leave, just like at the dentist’s office.

Considering a Coach?

If you’re considering a coach, you might begin your search for the right helping hand by consulting Personal Coaching for Financial Advisors, by Edwin P. Morrow, ChFC, CFP. Published by the Financial Publishing Centre, the book provides a description of more than 30 coaching organizations. In addition, Morrow offers two quizzes you can take to determine if you are ready to be coached, as well as tips on finding the right coach and implementing any suggested changes into your practice.

In closing, Wagner offers a prediction and a warning. "I see more and more planners gravitating toward using coaches. In fact, I’m not sure that coaching isn’t an offshoot of financial planning, or part of the same deal," he says. "However, you want to be careful in choosing your coach because coaching is not regulated—that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. You need to ask whether the coach offers you a rigorous discipline or whether the coach is just an expensive good friend."

Nancy Opiela is an associate editor of the Journal of Financial Planning and is based in Medfield, Massachusetts.

Ensuring Your Coaching Relationship is Effective

Clear your calendar for all the dates to be scheduled for the coaching sessions.

Clear the day after each session for personal implementation of whatever you learned during the coaching session. Prompt action is essential. Do not assume you will execute this follow-through later because you won’t.

Explain to your key staff people that you will be using a coaching program to improve your effectiveness and to increase profitability. Coaching will not result in staff reductions—in fact, it frequently encourages participants to staff up to increase the efficiency of the key producers.

Explain to your spouse or significant other about the coaching program and that one of your goals is to eventually free up more personal time.

Involve your key staff people immediately in your efforts to follow through on the coach’s recommendations and help you with your commitments to change old habits.

Post your priority lists or charts in a visible location as a constant reminder of the habits you are changing. If necessary, bring a bulletin board or easel into your office.

Don’t be too impatient for results. Coaching requires the breaking of a few old habits before the new ones can be learned.