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What do you do if you’re a small, two-person business and a large firm comes along offering you a dream role doing what you love most?
…

You joint them! Which is exactly what I’ve done with Ash Brokerage.

Last year I had the opportunity to speak at their annual event, where I met Mike McGlothlin, Executive Vice President of their Retirement Department, and we got on great. I had a chance to meet the team that he is working with and loved them. I met more Ash people, and again, loved to see their dedication with how they work with financial advisors.

They’re a Brokerage General Agency, which means they bring great solutions to financial advisors for all insurance needs, whether it’s life insurance, disability, long-term income planning, annuities – anything along those lines – they bring solutions to advisors. They are product agnostic, which means they’re not pushing any one particular product or company; their main objective is to do the best job possible by you for your client, with bringing you great ideas.

Now, as a financial advisor myself, I know how important that is. When you’re doing a financial plan, you don’t need to then get bogged down in the nitty-gritty minutiae and details of all things insurance. You can simply move this sideways to your Ash Brokerage regional person, let them come back to you with some solutions, present them to you and you and they decide on what’s best for your client.

As Director of Practice Management, I’m going to be able to bring you still the same kinds of idea and solutions to help you build your business as I have been doing, but now I get a chance to interact with a phenomenal team and doing it under the Ash umbrella – a group that really cares for people.

Now anyone can say they do [care for people], but two instances really stuck out to me. Firstly, at this particular event last year. All companies I speak for talk about how much they value their clients, but I had a chance to really interact with Ash’s clients, and the feedback I got from them regarding how Ash people deal with their issues and challenges was phenomenal. They said they can give them a particular problem and they know they’ll have the solution in the next couple of days. The Ash person will offer to present it to the client. They take care of the headaches and bring back great ideas.

Secondly, I got a chance to hear Tim Ash speak. Now, Tim spoke about caring for the client, caring for the customer, above all else, which is easy to talk about. However, when I visited their head office in Fort Wayne, Indiana, it’s true. These people genuinely care for helping advisors help their clients. They had a digital screen up on all floors of their offices counting the number of people they’ve actually been able to provide solutions for this year. It is top of mind for Tim, and it permeates all the way down the company.

So I get a chance to bring practice solutions to you, but now with the added clout and size of the biggest privately-owned insurance brokerage firm in the country, and that, I’m pretty excited about!

So,

1. When you are doing financial plans for people and you come across an insurance need, move it sideways to your Ash Brokerage regional person.


2. Anticipate them coming back with a great answer, while you can then still take care of the real, important value that you bring to your clients about looking at their longer-term financial well-being.


3. Give these people a call and see how ready they are to help you.

If you do get the offer to come on board with a bigger firm, make sure it’s a great fit. Make sure it’s full of wonderful people, and make sure your initiatives and objectives are in perfect alignment. I know mine are with Ash Brokerage, and I’m looking forward to the next several years working with them as a phenomenal firm.

I look forward to bringing you another Distraction-Proof Advisor idea, now under the Ash Brokerage banner, next week.