Bob Veres

For the past several months, I've been working on a new conference, The Business & Wealth Management Forum in Chicago (Oct. 13-15), that will feature a "dream team" program schedule and a recently added session about using software to incorporate macroanalytic forecasts into client portfolio design using regression analysis of stock/fund/ETF performance against a variety of different economic conditions and changes.

I just got back from my yearly pilgrimage to the Northern California regional conference in San Francisco, which is always one of the best financial planning meetings of the year, and two interesting nuggets caught my eye.

I've put on my annual to-do list that sometime this year I'll create a Facebook page, and Lord help me, I may even start twittering before long. This means I'm about to stick my toe into the dreaded Social Media world.

The time and energy that the advisor focuses on the client produces far more terminal wealth for that client than anything you can get from the traditional investment management services.

The royal wedding, eliminating the notorious mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks--this is going to be a week to remember forever. But I also wonder whether it might represent another milestone.

If you had an extra 100 hours each year (two extra hours a week) how would you spend it?

I have a very simple question to ask all of you. Suppose, by some miracle, that you were given an extra two hours a week to spend in your office. How would you spend that time?

Some advisors are averse to even DISCUSSING the value of portfolio management, possibly believing that we all spend too much time talking as if financial planning and portfolio management are the same service--which they clearly are not.

What portfolio management activities provide the MOST value for your time/money/energy/attention, and which activities provide the LEAST value for your time etc.?

One of the most interesting things to come out of this conversational thread about the regulators is the amount of fear advisors are expressing about speaking openly.

The current SEC inspection and audit process is kind of silly, at best, and a waste of resources, at worst. FINRA's process, from what I've been told, makes even less sense. But what can we do to improve things?

I see a lot of advisors who get very little interaction with the sponsors, and there is little in the design of today's exhibit halls that encourages that interaction--and THAT was my point.

One of the biggest wastes of time and talent that I see in the financial services industry is something you probably take for granted: the conference exhibit hall.

The more you hear about the SEC examination process, the more you realize that the examiners can't quickly recognize the honest advisors from the crooks, and are generally more interested in finding fault with the honest advisors than identifying the crooks.

It seems we have reached the absolute bottom of the barrel in terms of regulatory efficiency. If the SEC is spending weeks on trivial issues and completely missing Bernie Madoff then it is clear that something is seriously broken.

There's a lot of passion among advisors who, I think, suspect that there will eventually be standards that don't include them.

Having attended hundreds of practice management and motivational sessions at various conferences over the years, it has become clear to me that most of our roadblocks to business and personal success are (get ready to wince) self-created.

A lot of advisors seem to confuse their value proposition--and it hurts them in the long run.

There seems to be a lot of "energy" (and sometimes anger) around the idea that some people provide full-service financial planning and some people call themselves planners while actually selling products or managing assets for a living.

We call this the "financial planning profession," right? So here's a topic for discussion: how is it that many people calling themselves a financial planner don't actually do financial planning work for their clients?