Strength in Independence
“We hold these truths to be self-evident (…:) Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Many of you have undergone the process of breaking away from the “old guard” brokerage firm structure, going independent to create your own RIA, and enduring and enjoying everything that comes with those changes. Forsaking safety for uncertainty in the name of doing what’s best for the client—instead of what’s best for the company—and choosing the open seas over safe harbor. Whether your breakaway was two or twenty years ago, you could not have seen COVID-19 looming on the horizon of those seas. Many small businesses around the country are forced to ask themselves how they will survive this economic crisis—how they will keep the ship, in my analogy, from sinking. And many of those people operating small (or medium, or even large) businesses are your semi-affluent clients, and I would imagine many of you are having conversations that involve materially re-thinking the plan in the face of the pandemic threat.
All around the country, advisors like you are working to adjust to a new paradigm. And as you adjust you will do as you have always done: use what works, and discard what doesn’t. You will inevitably find that some ideas and processes won’t work as well as they did before the world changed—others will work will better, will have a higher utility. Share these insights and observations with your clients. Ideas will spark other ideas as is their nature. The best ideas will be collectively vetted, integrated, and made better by your focused teams and organizations. Other things will flop miserably on their face—and all of you know by now how valuable the information generated by failures often proves to be. You can almost imagine each organization as an individual experiment in finding a better way through a new world.
By definition of being an independent advisor in your community, you are a leader. That is the nature of your role. Help your local businesses organize to work against the oppression of COVID, and the intrinsic challenges brought on by well-intended but maladroit policies meant to fight it. Somewhere out there is a balance—that we would find it perfectly is a vanity, but that we would seek it is our duty. The value of your power as an independent leader in the business community can’t be overstated in this environment.
You are also local, and so will be many of the most effective solutions—the solutions needed in Texas are likely not identical to the solutions needed in California, in Florida, in New York, or in Illinois. This is a time for each community to focus on and identify their unique problems, and the best next steps in confronting those problems effectively. You are vital to the fabric of your local ecosystem—you have a symbiotic and shared need with your community that you would both be strong, physically and financially. One is not whole and healthy without the other. All of this, of course, eventually works its way all the up to become the strength of our union—but it starts, brick by brick, in local communities, who belong to their leaders, who belong to their ideas and processes. Today we need you the local financial leader to step forward. Our strength is in our independence.
Written By: Chad Ramberg
Today’s BPI Advice: Our independence is our strength. Take a minute to read the Declaration of Independence. How can we each use our unique and individual strengths to reboot and recharge our great economy?
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