“What is your specialty?”
“We’re good at Social Security planning.”
“What are you focusing on now?”
“We’re really going after millennials.”
Envestnet’s Jay Hummel drew laughter when making a point about being true to yourself as an advisor in Wednesday afternoon panel session at the company’s Advisor Summit 2016 in Chicago. Noting the complexity and amount of change in the industry, Hummel referenced Back to the Future in his remarks.
“Advisors are like Marty McFly standing in front of the large speaker and strumming the guitar and bring blown to the back of the room,” he said.
Hummel was joined onstage by Jean Chatzky, financial editor of NBC’s Today Show, to discuss The Essential Advisor, his new book co-written with Envestnet president Bill Crager, for which Chatzky wrote the foreword.
“The world is changing,” Chatzky said when asked about why she agreed to do it. “It used to be a pension was combined with Social Security and that was it—but know longer. Consumers need help.”
When further asked what advisors and firms can do to strengthen the client relationship, she referenced a point made earlier by Envestnet chairman and CEO Jud Bergman, that advisors add 300 basis points of performance annually, and said, “The focus on fees on people’s mind is front and center. The return on advice is the flipside and should be quantified. We have only one other study on this that is 15 years old, so too old to use. Now that you have this, I would really play that up.”
Hummel concluded the panel with an anecdote.
“A man falls in a hole and can’t get out. A doctor walks by and writes a prescription and throws it down, which does nothing because the man is still in the hole. A group of religious leaders write a prayer and throw it in as well, but the man is still in the hole. Finally his friend Joe comes by and jumps in the hole with him. The man asks why. Joe responds that he’s the man’s friend and know the way out. That’s what you need to do as advisors—to jump in the hole with your clients and show them the way. That’s what we believe you do as Essential Advisors.”