If you have not been following this series of articles, you should. It gives some great insight on the struggles of running a financial planning firm. The series starts when the firm was in a home in March of 2006 and goes through technology issues, software selection and even a merger.

It’s interesting to talk to different Advisors and see how they decided to grow their business. Since successful entrepreneurs (including Independent Advisors) tend to be a-type personalities, they all have their take on what it takes to be successful, how to grow the business and the right way to do financial planning. All the successful ones are right.

More surprisingly, is that I’ve never met an Advisor unwilling to share their history and help other Advisors grow their businesses. This is an open community where everybody is willing to help others. It’s a great industry to be in.

Back in my early days in this field (around 1992), I was becoming a financial planner. While working on my ChFC and CLU, I had clients and worked for a large firm as the operations manager. The firm I worked for was run by a person that was in the top 10 producers at our large broker/dealer and we had a lot of clients.

One of the advantages of working in this firm was going to the Broker/Dealer conferences and was able to meet the other top 10 producers. It was interesting to hear their stories and receive great advice from people that really knew what it took.

All of the top producers had a different take on how to grow the business, and all of them were right. One producer did nothing but small IRA accounts and had somewhere around 15,000 clients making monthly deposits. Another did only family planning and had a total of 40 clients. Our firm was a marketing machine, we did several seminars a month with each one targeting different audiences.

After I left this firm, I went on to another firm that was also in the top producer category. It was run by several partners who each brought a strength to the table and had their own practice within a practice way of doing things. Some of the partners were laid back and some were very aggressive marketing and sales types. It was a great mix and very different from the firm I was in before.

There were some things all these people had in common — they were all driven self-starters. They all knew that their way was the best way and were basically evangelists for their style of practice management. I think they had all at one time or another hired a practice management consultant to tell them how to grow their business and had pretty much ignored what the consultant told them.

Also at the conferences would be the not-so-successful firms. Generally, these guys were floundering. They did not really have a direction or strong market they were after or a vision for their firm. When you ask them where they will be in five years you got the Deer in the headlights look.

In-between are the people who aren’t chasing the top producer slots. They want a practice that enables a lifestyle, not a practice that is a lifestyle. I would also consider them very successful, these are the guys that live in Hawaii and only come back to their primary state once a quarter. They might also the people that only want to work one or two days a week.

Here is what I think it comes down to; you have to build the practice that you want. Some people want to be close with their individual clients, they want to know when junior gets good grades or learns to drive, or when Aunt May passes on. Others want to get a lot of small clients that take very little time or resources. Some people just want to play golf three times a week. There really is no wrong way, only the way that works with your personality.