Most of you are familiar with our magazine's website, www.financial-planning.com. Well, we have so much fun on that site that we decided to start another. This month, AdvisorMax (www.advisormax.com) makes its debut, and it will take our online efforts to a new, exciting level. The site will offer unique content, practical tools--and, most important, will foster a new community centered around practice management.

As advisors, you are accustomed to thinking about the well-being of your clients. It's easy to spend so much time on your practice that you end up giving short shrift to the well-being of your business. Ironically, the fact that you have financial training leads everyone to believe you know all about running a business, although financial management and business management are quite different. The way I see it, planners wear three hats: trusted advisor, investment manager and business owner. For most people, the third hat is the most challenging one to wear well.

How many of your clients are profitable? Are you growing? Have you structured your business--your staff, technology, communications--to serve an expanding client roster? Are you developing deep, enduring client relationships? As vital as these questions are to your future as an advisor, they are also easily ignored in the crush of the day-to-day routine. It's easy and tempting to leave business questions like these on the back burner.

AdvisorMax will provide a forum to puzzle over your business issues in the company of your peers. Best of all, you'll find experts and coaches waiting to discuss them with you. We're hoping that as you spend more time on AdvisorMax, you'll make the site your own, and take its community discussions places we can't anticipate.

To help get you in the frame of mind for practice management, Senior Writer Elizabeth O'Brien asked seven industry leaders to give their take on the challenges facing advisors today. One of them, Deborah McWhinney, appears on our cover. She has great faith in the business acumen of financial advisors--but her company, Schwab Institutional, is paring the number of advisors in its referral network. Business will flow, but only to the select few. The clear (if harsh) message: Making your business strong--and keeping it that way--is more important than ever. We believe AdvisorMax will help make the difference.

In my own life, I struggle to make time for wrestling with larger questions, whether about the future of this magazine or about my individual career. Often, I fail--there are just too many deadlines to meet each day. If only there were an EditorMax....

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