Max Bolka is a 30+ year veteran of the financial services industry who developed and served a nationwide planning and investment clientele. Today he “Builds First-Class Financial Advisors” of all kinds through his dynamic speaking, insightful writing and comprehensive business development mentoring program.

How much do you want to grow your practice? How fast do you want to grow it? It’s relatively easy to increase your average account size from $250k to $500k, and then to $750k, but a funny thing happens as you pass the $1 million mark…You have a lot more competition! How can you differentiate yourself, so you can “swim upstream faster” and build your business with fewer, but larger clients?
The dominant trend in the industry today is to form strategic alliances with other professionals in order to offer a more holistic “one-stop shopping” experience for clients. Why have to sell the client’s accountant and attorney when you can put them on your team? The first step is to identify the wants and needs of the $1M+ market.

Creating Sustainable Wealth
According to Roy Williams in his book, For Love & Money, despite having an estate plan, over 90% of all multi-generational wealth transfers fail by the time the assets reach the third generation, the wealth creator’s grandchildren. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the very survival of the overwhelming majority of America’s family wealth are in jeopardy.
In a recent Morningstar survey, when boomers were provided with five assets they could transfer to the next generation, but could only select one, over 75% of them chose “core values and life lessons” to pass on, while only 12% chose traditional family wealth, such as financial assets. And finally, according to a survey by Mindscape, over 60% of respondents rated “legacy development” as the top advice they needed.
These primary concerns of higher net worth families are not being addressed by their Financial Advisors. By doing so, you can differentiate yourself from the competition, increase your core business income and its value, and position yourself as your client’s primary advisor.

Comprehensive Legacy Planning
Legacy planning, in the broadest sense, means leaving what you want, to whom you want, when you want, with minimum taxes and maximum control. But what about your client’s non-financial assets?
Operating under the assumption that one’s total wealth consists of more than simply one’s net worth, Comprehensive Legacy Planning goes beyond mere finances to help clients clearly define, communicate, implement and perpetuate their total wealth, including their “non-financial” assets. These may include: Core values, family traditions, family unity, family legacy, philanthropic goals, beneficiary preparedness, impactful life experiences and the wisdom gathered over a lifetime.
You can help protect a family’s future financial assets by creating a plan to help perpetuate their total wealth, including their non-financial assets, and leave a true, lasting legacy by passing along their values as well as their valuables.

CLP Benefits To Clients
A Comprehensive Legacy Plan (CLP) helps clients:
• Mitigate the high risk of intergenerational wealth transfer failure.
• Strengthen formal family governance.
• Improve existing financial, retirement, investment, estate and succession plans.
• Expand and reinforce asset protection.
• Clarify philanthropic goals.
• Encourage and enhance family unity.
• Promote direct, sincere, meaningful and inclusive family communication.
• Increase the structure, direction and content of family meetings.
• Increase communication among beneficiaries and trusted advisors.
• Align all existing advisors.
• Incentivize positive behavior from beneficiaries.
• Prepare beneficiaries to handle an inheritance and encourage responsible entrepreneurship.
• Reduce resentment when loaning or granting money to family members.
• Pass along life lessons, messages/advice, experiences of value and accumulated wisdom.

CLP Benefits To Advisors
In addition to giving you a truly differentiating competitive advantage with which to attract and retain higher net worth clients, offering Comprehensive Legacy Planning helps you:
• Expand the scope and depth of existing client relationships.
• Market to existing, warm relationships as well as new prospects & COIs.
• Move “upstream” quicker, gaining significantly higher net worth clients.
• Increase your core business without any disruption.
• Increase both one time and recurring revenue
• Increase financial planning, insurance and asset management compensation.

Referrals Anyone?
Referrals are one of the biggest benefits to Advisors offering CLP. You generate opportunities from multiple disciplines. Tax, financial, investment, insurance and multiple areas of law are addressed as clients progress through their plan. Attorneys, accountants and other non-competing advisors receive vital communication and leadership from you right from the start, allowing you to build credibility and productive working relationships with your clients’ existing team of advisors. For example, your client’s estate planning attorney usually receives more legal work from having to go back and revise documents to reflect your mutual client’s new wishes. You easily get to discuss your core business during these conversations, with CLP differentiating you from competitors. Once the attorney sees the scope benefits along with more billable hours, (s)he becomes open to referring you.

Bonding With Next Gen
When it comes to family wealth, the next generation often feels dictated to, and seeks to have a voice in the vision of the family’s future. CLP provides this voice.
Because CLP expands the nature of your engagement, the entire family now becomes your client. You get to know each family member and build relationships by communicating with each one as they complete a series of exercises designed to help foster clear family communication and unity. And while the subject matter can often be very personal, it’s also very natural, and of extreme importance.
You get to show the next generation how proper planning can help ensure a true, lasting legacy. You show them how, if they follow your advice, there can be enough wealth for both them as well as succeeding generations. You teach them how to become good stewards of their family’s total wealth. You help formalize structures for family governance, incentivizing behavior in alignment with the family’s core values they wish to perpetuate. And you get to place yourself right at the hub of such structures. In short, you become indispensable.

Be A Hero
The largest wealth transfer in our country’s history has just begun. With a 90%+ failure rate, you have a huge opportunity to ride one of the biggest demographic megatrends and become a hero to clients. Help them define, communicate, implement and perpetuate a true lasting legacy by partnering with other professionals to offer Comprehensive Legacy Planning to HNW families.

Max Bolka is a 30+ year veteran of the financial services industry. For over 20 years, he’s also been “Building First-Class Financial Advisors” through his financial advisor mentoring program, where eligible Advisors receive $1M+ fully-qualified prospects. He partners with Advisors to offer Comprehensive Legacy Planning for NHW families and Master Planning For Business Owners. For more information, please visit www.maxbolka.com, call (828) 713-4116 or email him directly at max@maxbolka.com