Building your business the right way is an important element to ensuring sustainability. Unfortunately, there are key elements many business owners forget to take into consideration – including compensation structure, equity pathways, cash flow, and entity set-up.
Business Growth | Entity & Business Structure | Internal Succession
Organizational Structure
As businesses evolve they tend to move into a structure where value is attached to individual books rather than to the entity as a whole. To avoid this you need to set up a structure that is a business unit instead of just an accounting conduit. This webcast explains how improper structure can be dangerous for the ongoing growth of your business.
Targeted Growth Solutions for Financial Advisors
Today’s independent financial advisors face a daunting array of opportunities (and challenges). The key to harnessing ownership opportunities is to identify impediments before they arise and develop strategies for tackling the issues that present the greatest opportunities for improvement and growth. Discover actionable guidance for seizing ownership opportunities and facing challenges head on.
Business Growth | Internal Succession | Compensation | Next Gen | Acquisition
Issues Advisors FaceIndependent financial advisors face an almost overwhelming set of challenges, but with challenges come opportunities. These opportunities and challenges are often interconnected and fall into areas of mergers & acquisitions, growth & profitability, talent retention, and succession planning.
Controlling What You Can, Learning from What You Can'tIn times of uncertainty, it is always wise to focus on what you can directly control. Whether we look at politics, markets, regulation, news, or the state of the industry, there have been (and always will be) many events outside of your control as a business owner. How do you deal with this constant noise? Recognize it for what it is and focus on the things you can control with direct action.
Business Growth | Regulatory Issues | Compensation | Continuity
Revenue Strength vs. Enterprise Strength
In this webcast we explores the differences between revenue strength and enterprise strength, and how each contributes to the value of your business. We explain how paying consideration to factors that drive both the cash flow and equity value of your business will keep your exit planning options open down the road.
Business Growth | Value & Benchmarking | Entity & Business Structure
The Case Against Revenue SplitsWith all of the modern tools for practice valuations and equity management solutions available, some financial advisors still choose to use revenue splits, or a revenue-sharing arrangement, as a makeshift succession plan. For a practice owner, this can be a poor and shortsighted business decision.Revenue splits encourage the eat-what-you-kill strategy and drive an individual’s book of business rather than support the practice as a whole.
Compensation | Succession | Continuity Planning | Next-Gen | Deal Structure
The Three Pillars of a Successful Advisory Business
FP Transitions President & Founder, David Grau Sr., JD, dives into the three pillars of a strong advisory business and explores how each one is integral to the ongoing growth and sustainability of the enterprise. Working on the foundations of your business is an integral process that both encourages and supports growth in a perpetual cycle of success and profitability.
Defining Your Enterprise: Taking Stock & Moving Forward
Whatever the goal, we have found a targeted terminology helpful for classifying and discussing financial advisory enterprises. It allows us to offer tailored advice to each and every client, and to be as precise as possible in addressing different areas of growth and sustainability. These industry-specific descriptions of "job/book," "practice," "business," and "firm" in this post are guides for determining where you are today, where you’d like to be five or ten years from now, and what will be required in the meantime.
Remodeling Cash Flow
There are two ways to make money from a financial services business: wages and profit distributions. But, there are four ways to build wealth from the same model: 1) Wages (including bonuses); 2) Profit distributions; 3) Equity income from sale of ownership stake; and 4) Equity value, or stock appreciation. Properly structuring cash flow and compensation are key to maximizing profit, encouraging business growth, and creating sustainability.
In this Roundtable Talk, FPT experts Ericka Langone, JD, and Eric Fettig discuss the details of setting up (or restructuring) your entity to suit your business' unique situation, including: documentation, filing timelines, and key players in the process. They highlight the importance of proper entity elections to support your overall short-term and long-term business goals.
Roundtable Talk - Benefits of Proper Entity StructureEMS Exclusive Resource
FPT Experts Ericka Langone, JD and Eric Fettig discuss the benefits of proper entity, including liability protections, governance for business leadership and operations, structure and value for future ownership, and tax treatments that make sense for your specific enterprise.
Entity & Business Structure | Next Gen | Tax & Regulatory Issues
Destabilizing Value With Revenue SharingA large percentage of advisory practices have built in “fracture lines” by using a revenue-sharing arrangement to compensate multiple professionals in one office. In the independent sector your focus should be on creating a team of advisors that work together—compensated for contributing to an supporting a single enterprise—rather than individuals building their own books and leaving the practice with the clients and cash flow they’ve generated.
Internal Succession | Entity & Business Structure | Compensation | Next Gen
8 Considerations for Your Merger Strategy
You and the rest of the ownership team have decisions to make about the merger process itself, as well as decisions to make about the business you’ll create. These details should not be left for discovery and sorted out mid-process, but should be understood and planned for before implementing your merger strategy.
Business Growth | Entity & Business Structure
Sustainability, Structure, and Acquisition StrategyCreating a unified and sustainable business structure promotes a more successful acquisition strategy by: improving enterprise strength, increasing business value, facilitating growth, and laying the foundation for retention of new advisors and clients. Successful and enduring enterprises–in all industries–realize that a specialized and centralized business structure makes it easier to solve unfamiliar problems with innovative answers.
Roundtable Talk - Mergers: Prepping Beyond the NumbersExperts Rod Boutin, JD and Ericka Langone, JD explore preparation beyond determining value. They highlight the importance of reconciling the expectations and goals of all parties, the considerations that may warrant an assigned premium share value, and the benefits of a holistic approach to the entire merger process.
Governance & Control for Shifting Ownership EMS Exclusive Roundtable Talk
FPT transactions experts Rod Boutin, JD and Ericka Langone, JD discuss common areas of governance and control that many owners (existing and future) have concerns about during any (re)structuring or additions to the ownership of a financial services business.
Navigating Income & Entities with a FINRA FocusEMS Exclusive Resource
In this exclusive Roundtable Talk, FPT experts discuss this regulated flow of revenue from a Broker Dealer as well as how to properly sweep it into the entity. They cover appropriate documentation between advisor and entity as well as avoiding common troublesome situations when it comes to BD revenue.
Ship vs. Liferaft - What Are You Building?
When it comes to understanding an "equity-centric" business model the structural details can be difficult to grasp. The parable of ship vs. liferaft will help to illustrate the problems many independent financial advisors face when trying to evolve their structures as they progress from a job to a practice, and ultimately, to a business.
Organizational Growth - Client Success StoryUnexpected circumstances forced Floyd to quickly reduce his work hours at his firm, Cornerstone Wealth, from 45 to 20 hrs a week. Too young to retire, Floyd incorporated existing staff into the ownership structure to ensure his business not only survived, but thrived. In this client success story the team discusses the transition and their new ownership mentality.