For advisers, not clients
The hardest part was never the advice. It's the pipeline.
Almost every adviser and banker I speak to says a version of the same thing: their biggest challenge is a sustainable flow of the right clients. Most have already put real time, money and energy into roadshows, purchased leads and asking existing clients for referrals, and found the results don't hold.
That is rarely a work-ethic problem. Usually it's a method problem.
If this sounds like you
Two people I tend to work well with.
You have been in this a while, and it has stopped moving.
You qualify. You have done it for years. From outside it looks like a career going well, and from inside it feels like running the same year again with a different date on it.
The work is not the problem. You already work hard. What is missing is a way of finding the right people that keeps producing without you starting from nothing every January.
You have done well elsewhere, and you want it to be yours.
Senior professional, or an executive with a real track record. You have built something valuable for someone else, and you have started asking what it would look like to build it for yourself instead.
You are not looking to escape work. You are looking for work where the effort compounds into something you own, rather than something you hand over.
The advisers I work with tend to arrive from one of these two places. None of them needed to be told to try harder.
What they tend to share is wanting a practice that lasts: one built on doing right by clients, not on having a good quarter.
What I teach
Fifteen years of working out what actually holds up.
I built my own practice on these methods: more than 800 clients, Top of the Table, and MDRT Life Member. They are not secrets, but they are specific, and they are teachable.
A different way to find the right clients
Not roadshows, bought leads or leaning harder on the clients you already have. A repeatable approach to meeting the kind of people you actually want to advise, which is the part most advisers are missing.
An advisory process that holds up
A structured way to run a first meeting, a fact-find and a recommendation, so the quality of your advice does not depend on how you happen to be feeling that week. This is the same process I use with my own clients.
A platform that carries some of the weight
A firm with a wide product shelf, and a dedicated client support team so administration stops eating the hours you should be spending in front of people.
What it has produced
Two of the advisers I mentor. Both broke through in their first year.
For context: the Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) is an international standard that marks the industry's top-performing advisers. Double MDRT is twice that standard. Court of the Table is three times it.
Court of the Table
He had already been in the industry for years and had never once reached it. He hit it in his first year working with me.
Double MDRT
A mid-career switch from outside financial services entirely. He reached it in his first year in the business, and was later featured in The Business Times.
Look at these two together. One had years in the industry and had never broken through. The other had no financial services background at all. What changed was not how hard either of them worked. It was what they were working with.
These are individual results and are not a projection of what any particular adviser will achieve. Outcomes depend on your own effort, market and circumstances.
Speaking
Invited to speak to other advisers.
On building an advisory practice, to rooms of practising advisers.
Notes for advisers
Some of what I would teach you, written down.
Rather than ask you to take my word for how I work, you can read it. These are written for people already practising, not for clients, and they cover the parts that took me the longest to work out.
How I mentor
I take on three advisers a year.
Deliberately small. At this stage of my career I would rather bring a few people a long way than a large group a short distance, and mentoring properly takes consistent time that does not scale.
If that sounds like the kind of attention you have been missing, it's worth a conversation.
To be clear about how it works: the mentoring happens within the EXO team at finexis, because the method and the platform are built around each other. Whether it is a fit is not something a website can settle, and it usually takes a few unhurried conversations to find out. That part I enjoy.
Who should reach out
Three things I can't teach.
01
Character
You genuinely want what's best for the client, including on the occasions when that costs you the case. I can teach the rest. This is the part you bring yourself.
02
Hunger
You want more than where you are now, and you're prepared to do the work to get there.
03
Coachability
You're open to changing how you work, not just doing more of what you already do. Being corrected matters more to you than being comfortable.
Beyond that, this tends to suit people who are:
- Already practising, whether at an agency, a bank or another FA firm
- Or considering the move from another career entirely
- Working hard, but not seeing the pipeline hold up over time
In my own words
How I got here, in about three and a half minutes.
How I got into this, a client who was angry with me and what I did about it, and what I wish I had understood sooner about building a practice that does not depend on working twice the hours.
3 min 35 sec. The part about scaling a practice and what a mentor is for starts at 2:15, if that is what you came for.
Before we even speak
Find out where your growth is actually blocked.
Fifteen questions, a few minutes, and a report telling you which part of your practice is holding the rest back.
Most people are surprised which one it is.
Built by advisers, for advisers. It is hosted on a separate platform and asks for your name and email so it can send your report. I'll walk you through the results.
Your growth report
Sample
62/100
Your practice is converting well. It is starved of the right conversations.
Your biggest blocker
Outreach. You are good in the room. You are not getting into enough rooms.
Illustrative example of the report format, not a real result.
The team you'd be joining
EXO Advisory Group
You wouldn't only be working with me. EXO has its own leadership, its own culture and its own track record, and it's worth a look before you decide anything. See the EXO site.
EXO's award winners, celebrating together.
Some of my mentees and grandmentees.
More of my mentees and grandmentees.
Where to start
A coffee or a Zoom call, and no pitch.
I'd share how I work and what I've found, you'd tell me where your practice is stuck, and we would both get a sense of whether there's a fit. If there isn't, I'll say so.
If you are not ready to talk yet
Read us first.
My team publishes The X Tribe: a twice-weekly newsletter and a podcast, written by advisers for advisers. It is free, and most of it is not about me. If you want to know how we think before you decide whether to meet anyone, that is a better place to start than a conversation. Subscribe to The X Tribe.
Looking for financial advice rather than a mentor? Start here instead.