The following is being shared with the permission of Ballentine Partners.
It is a transcript of a keynote presentation at the Insider’s Forum conference in Nashville, where Roy Ballentine shared with the audience a number of really important things that he’s learned while creating and tending his highly-successful firm.
We have decided to release this information as a series over the coming months as suggestions for effective practice management.
We should clearly define: What does your firm do? (And not just for the reasons you might think.)
“This may seem like a really simple question, and easy to answer,” said Ballentine. But in his experience, it’s extremely difficult for wealth managers to give a concise answer. Sometimes the explanation will last 15 minutes, and anything past the first minute will have tested the patience of any new person you meet.
“My goal is to get it down to 30 seconds or less,” Ballentine told the group, “and I’ve got various versions that get me there. But,” he admitted, “this is still a work in process for me and for my partners.”
Why a 30-second time limit? Interestingly, Ballentine sees this not primarily as a marketing issue (although it will certainly benefit your marketing messages), but as the guiding principle of your management decisions. “Being able to answer that question concisely forces us to get down to just one main idea,” he said, “and hopefully that one main idea is the primary driver for everything you do. It should become the central focus for the management of the practice.
If we can get down to one main driver for the practice,” Ballentine continued, “it simplifies the decision-making process around the allocation of resources and energy within the practice, because then we can focus on that one idea and make sure we are implementing that one idea as well as it can possibly be implemented.”
Why is that so important? “Every choice to expend resources on something else that is not the main driver of the practice means that those resources are not available to be used ON the main driver,” Ballentine told the group.
If you’re a whole life-friendly advisor who recognizes that “typical” financial planning has failed and that there are better alternatives to delegating our financial futures to Wall Street, big corporations, and the government then you may find that you share the same guiding principles as members of the Prosperity Economics Movement. Learn more about joining us at no cost as an Honorary member.
