How the FPA sexed up its 2013 Business Solutions Conference

Brooke’s Note: We talk about virtual conferences. Tim Welsh continues to bring new meaning to the concept by covering far-flung RIA events in a descriptive, perceptive and graphically-depicted (he takes pictures) way that spans early sessions to the last rounds of the late night festivities. We all owe Tim a debt for his timely and energetic reports back from the front lines. Here he captures the FPA’s technology conference, an event whose organizers that have no easy task as a follow-up act to T3, but seem to have found a few worthy flourishes.

Innovation as a necessity of growth was the theme at the Financial Planning Association’s annual practice management event, Business Solutions, which took place just outside Chicago last week. More than 200 advisors gathered for two and a half days of practice management content, networking and technology demonstrations, all focused on how to run a better business.

Kicking off the program was a compelling keynote speech on innovation from Luke Williams, professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

“In this day and age, businesses are rising and falling faster than ever before, which requires that we need to think differently to drive innovation,” he said, citing the example of the photo industry’s Kodak bankruptcy around the same time Facebook Inc. was paying $1 billion to acquire a much smaller startup, Instagram.

Williams cautioned advisors against the “self-similarity principal” — a common trap that organizations fall into, which is the tendency to hangout with people like themselves. “We need to get out of our comfort zone and meet new and different people outside of the industry if we want to enhance and make things different,” he said.

“Ideas need to have sex with each other” in order for true innovation to happen was Williams’ colorful description of the process.

Outgoing FPA chairman Paul Auslander welcomed attendees, encouraging them to maximize their time and put the key ideas to work.

Borrowing from TED

Continuing the theme of innovation and change, this year’s agenda featured a new twist in conference programming. Instead of the traditional one-hour slot for sessions, the task force charged with creating the content stepped out of the conference comfort zone and deployed “TED talks” throughout the agenda to introduce various business management topics, and then provide a follow up session to drill down into more specifics.

For those not familiar with TED talks (www.ted.com), these are 18-minute presentations designed to tell a story and engage the audience to want to learn more. TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate “ideas worth spreading.”

Prof. Luke Williams: 'Ideas need to
have sex with each other’ in
order for true innovation to happen.

In this context, attendees appreciated the chance to preview a session to help them select from various topics to attend, such as creating a value proposition, learning the ins and outs of a merger, compliance issues regarding social media, technology security, creating client advocates for service excellence and how to use Google to better prospect for new clients.

While we haven’t seen much innovation in the RIA industry’s conference format in many years, these TED style presentations were a welcome development that will hopefully spread and be adopted by other conference organizers.

One of the more popular sessions was the TED talk and deep-dive session provided by Greg Friedman as he shared the inside scoop and personal experience of merging his firm with another to create the two-time Schwab IMPACT award winning Private Ocean. See: What Schwab’s best three RIAs for 2011 say about how they got there.

FPA chairman Paul Auslander FPA chief
executive Lauren Schadle and Michael Kitces

Friedman, also the CEO of Junxure, provided a first-person narrative for the rationale for merging and the do’s and don’ts to make it successful. “The qualitative issues are everything in a merger,” Friedman said. “Most advisors approach the topic with lawyers and accountants, when what they should be thinking about is, can I live with this person forever? A merger is just like a marriage, however without the sex,” he quipped. See: Greg Friedman is set to finally bring Junxure to the cloud and beat back the Salesforce-ification of the industry.

Google U

Another extremely popular TED talk and deep dive was delivered by Sam Richter, senior vice president of ActiFi Inc.. Richter engaged the audience with his stories and techniques on how to use Google and other search tools to find a wealth of information about clients and prospects, and explained why advisors need to enhance their online and social-media presence.

“Before Google, prospects were willing to spend two hours over lunch to get to know you,” said Richter. “Now, they’ll just Google you and check out your social-media presence for 10 minutes to learn that same amount of information.”

He continued: “These days, over 90% of people do an Internet search prior to buying products and services, so this has to be a primary focus for you.”

In a very clever session, Richter put on a “Google University” and showed the many tips, tricks and techniques advisors can use to find out key information through the giant search engine so that they are prepared for prospect meetings. He also showed ways to identify and cultivate referral sources in their LinkedIn networks.

Greg Friedman spoke about what 'forever’
looks like in a merger.

Breakout growth

Probably the most popular and well-received session featured three RIAs sharing their approach and their “epiphanies” on how they have built multibillion-dollar enterprises.

Tom Muldowney, founder and chairman of Savant Capital Management Inc.; Heather Locus, a principal of Balasa Dinverno Foltz LLC; and Mike LaFontaine, a vice president of AZA Capital Management Inc., openly discussed their strategies and approaches for building fast-growing firms in a panel discussion moderated by Christine Gaze, director of practice management at TD Ameritrade Institutional. Each firm had a specialization or niche that has fueled their growth.

Savant Capital Management made the leap by taking on all sizes of investor accounts, knowing that if they serviced the client well, even if the assets were relatively small, they would grow over time and take the firm with them. “We have never sent away a client,” Muldowney noted. See: Why a pair of Zero Alpha RIAs are combining and out-and-out avoiding roll-ups and private-equity money.

Tim Wyman of the Center for
Financial Planning Inc. [one of the
largest Raymond James OSJs] and Spenser
Segal, CEO of ActiFi.

Balasa Dinverno Foltz climbed the asset mountain by systematizing its business, documenting processes and establishing a nimble infrastructure so it could free up principals for business development. “Because we had such a solid foundation, we could spend our time in building out niches, such as focusing on women in transition and female corporate executives,” said Locus.

AZA Capital is fueling its growth through strategic partnerships with other financial advisory firms to develop referral engines for specific asset management niches, such as options and municipal bonds. “We can approach a client situation with these specialties and combined with our active asset allocation, we have a powerful offering,” LaFontaine said.

Christine Gaze led perhaps the most
popular discussion — a sort of
intellectual speed-dating.

The one commonality for all of these firms in their growth was to standardize their client service delivery and invest in the systems and operations needed to build scale. “We keep upgrading our operational role, from manager to director to now we have a chief operations officer,” advised Locus.

The session proved to be so popular that advisors asked the panelists to continue for 45 minutes beyond the scheduled time. In what I have to believe is a conference first, advisors hijacked the agenda and extended it so that they could continue to learn from these highly successful firms.

Cream of the crop

Consistent with past Business Solutions conferences, the speaker lineup was a “Who’s Who” of the most sought-after industry experts, consultants and thought leaders. The conference task force led by Brian Stimpfl, senior vice president of ActiFi, gathered industry notables such as Bill Winterberg of FPPad.com, Kelli Cruz of Pepin Consulting Corp., George Tamer of TD Ameritrade, Abby Salameh of Fusion Advisor Network, Dan Bernstein of MarketCounsel, Jon Reiners of Orion Advisor Services LLC, Spenser Segal of ActiFi, David Selig of Advice Dynamics Partners and other experts such as Mary Anne Ehlert of Protected Tomorrows, who provided an emotional keynote on how her firm has focused on clients with special needs.

Fighting for share

Kelli Cruz of Pepin and Abby
Salameh of Fusion Advisors Network.

While the FPA Business Solutions conference is in its eighth year, its traditional spot on the calendar challenges it for attendance. The FPA has are nearly 25,000 members, but less than 1% showed up for one of the industry’s most valuable events in terms of the actual return on investment that can be directly tied to building business value.

Trapped between popular industry events such as T3, Barron’s, TD Ameritrade’s annual blockbuster event and tax time, Business Solutions faces an uphill battle for attention on the conference circuit. See: T3 goes big in Miami but Fidelity steals the show with avatar advisors and smart coffee tables. Those issues, combined with its traditional location at an airport hotel, make it difficult to motivate advisors to slog their way to the likes of O’Hare International Airport in early March. Fortunately, the FPA is making practice management a priority in building out its member benefits, and the outlook on that front is bright.

Bill Winterberg, Brian McLaughlin CEO of
Redtail and Michael Kitces of Pinnacle
enjoy some Chicago-style pizza.

Despite the snow on the ground, attendees made the most of the conference nightlife by enjoying receptions in the exhibit hall, dining at local Chicago-style deep-dish pizza restaurants and frequenting the nearby casino.

Who knew this much fun and business-building content was available in Rosemont, Ill.?

To learn more about what went on at the conference, follow the #FPASolutions hash tag on Twitter.

Timothy D. Welsh, CFP®, is president and founder of Nexus Strategy LLC, a leading consulting firm to the wealth management industry and can be reached at tim@nexus-strategy.com or on Twitter @NexusStrategy.