Please relax. Take a seat
The best place to solve client challenges is…
In our window laced conference room, with our oval shaped well-polished cherry oak board room table, but don’t forget our perfectly modern hue grey wall too.
One. Only. Please.
That one wall adorns abstract art with a minimum investment of $10,000 apiece. I don’t care if it looks like your 4th grader painted it, don’t be cheap!
Please enjoy our well-framed non-preferred industry credentials as well.
Before we even enter the sanctum of “industry best” thinking…
Take a deep breath in….
Hahhhhhhhhhh….
You can smell this freshly vacuumed office air…
Our meeting rooms bask in the horizon of other downtown sky rises housing the exact same professionals having similar conversations within a stone’s throw of our well-manicured boardroom.
Within these chairs preside numerous decorated older white men. Our team of gentlemen appear in slight variations of ill-fitted American designer suits and blazers. Please don’t fear their pear-shaped exteriors, and manes of valor. As these finely aged relics in attendance do not intend to manicure what god intended to remain.
Wait for it…Okay laughter about traffic and their sunburn from Florida is over…
Next, let’s recount the streams of press releases we sent you: “insight” from our firm “white papers” we constructed, and quarterly “performance” our firm didn’t really create (hint: the market did).
Okay now for your “annual review.”
A Shakespearian spectacle of dramatization regarding “the market.”
It’s all glory, and we have fought for you our loyal client, but alas, we lost again to the benchmark.
Don’t worry we’ll be rescuing the princes of performance from danger next quarter: interest rates, recession watches, emerging markets.
Time to embellish this trusty “situation report” e-mail from this Wholesaler.
I’ll scare you into submission with that.
Wait before you go, please initial our 200-page disclosure.
Don’t worry, it’s all electronic.
Just initial.
I’m so sorry. You won’t have the opportunity to understand our east-coast attorney ex-regulators’ delicate crafted prose laced with get out of future lawsuits cards.
Our firm is named after our founder to express the highest amount of vanity possible, or multiple partner initials.
This way we can see the ambitions of our historical greatness everywhere our eyes should grace.
When we need more differentiation, we search for heightened creativity, so we’ve chosen a popular alternative for a name after the city or state we reside.
Better yet, another moniker representing our prolific guidance in the face of uncertain nature with symbolism: Compass, Pass, Paragon, Ballast, Keystone, Harbor, Cornerstone, and Mountain something.
Just relax.
We didn’t want to confuse you, so we’ve included “private,” “wealth,” and “management” in it too.
Lastly, please take serious note of our strategically placed and angled time and investment “in the community.”
Now we feel so much better about charging you such a high fee: It’s all for the children.
Now you must feel better about paying us too.
Remember?
For our leveraged lifestyle of status signaling the wealth we do not truly have, so you trust us more.
Okay perfect.
To being unique. To being revered.
We are “comprehensive,” “fee-only,” “fiduciaries.”
Anything you want to hear. Don’t worry. We’ll tell you.
Thank you so much for seeing us today.
Here’s a cheat sheet for finding an advisory firm…I always look for…
People thinking the same way, meeting in similar rooms, dressing the same way, using the same vocabulary, reading the same books, naming their firms the same way, charging me the same outdated way, telling me what I want to hear, never in doubt but mostly wrong in predictions, traveling and speaking at the same industry conferences, parroting the same industry leaders, and asking the same questions.
Perfect.
Hoonnnneeeey! I think I found our new firm.