our original articles, white papers, and ACTIVITIEs

 

There is a huge shift taking place in the planning world…

and it presents a myriad of opportunities and challenges for planning professionals. Are you ready?

The purpose of this article is to explain and illustrate how re-framing your role, deliverables, and compensation can dramatically enhance your client relationships, while significantly differentiating your business.

 

The Effective 6-Step Stressed Client Call

During times of crisis, some advisors lose clients, and other professionals gain clients. Those who were being proactive, calling and listening gain clients. Those who do not take the opportunity to build relationships and merely provide data and analysis to their clients lose clients.

The difference between the 90% of families who fail and the 10% who successfully keep their family and wealth together for multiple generations is that successful families add a 3rd ‘component’ to the traditional disciplines of financial and estate planning.

“Transformational philanthropy” may be a new term to some of you. Here is an easy way to understand the concept: imagine a gift that has as profound an impact on the donor who makes it (and often their family) as it does on the organization receiving the gift. That is the essence of transformational philanthropy. In this paper, we will examine the "natural" benefits that accrue to professionals and charitable organizations that help the families with whom they work remain together. In short, we will look at how to create multi-generational, transformational philanthropy, which results in multi-generational philanthropists and donors.

 

The Lead Advisor

In my experience working with very wealthy clients for two decades, I have identified two truths about the dynamics of their advisor relationships: (a) most affluent families actually do work with someone whom they regard as a “Lead Advisor,” and (b) those families who don’t have a Lead Advisor desperately need one.

Person of Influence Activity

This activity provides parents and grandparents with a wonderful opportunity to help children to understand the lasting impact that individuals can have on their lives. Do the activity yourself, and then share with the children.

Sustaining Family Wealth & Unity Across Generations

Our work, plus contemporary studies and the cumulative experience of professional advisors, provided the answer: families who remain strong and unified across generations share many specific ‘elements of success’ in common, including how they intentionally teach and transmit those elements to succeeding generations.

Guidelines for Effective Family Governance

The ultimate goal of Family Governance is to create a high-performance, multi-generational team in which the succeeding generations are participating in decision-making, leadership activities, and hands-on money management long before their parents pass on.

First, Be Intentional

In this article by Heritage Institute CEO Rod Zeeb, the role of intentionality in achieving success is examined, and practical steps for becoming more intentional are explained.

Trust

Everything we do in our personal, professional, and community lives depends to some degree on the value of trust. This article considers the many roles that trust plays in life.