Homer Smith has been in the industry for over 20 years, beginning his journey as an advisor the week of 9/11/2001. About 10 years into his career, Smith pivoted to working with business owners and opened his own practice.

“What I recognized is the wealth management space didn't have a lot of great solutions for business owners if they were still owning their business, running their business and not liquid yet,” Smith explains. “And so I started building an entire client service model around that.”

Aside from founding and running his own business at Konvergent, Smith has also recently released a best-selling book: Optimizing the Financial Lives of Clients: Harness the Power of an Accounting Firm’s Elite Wealth Management Practice.

From his experience, Smith has an important takeaway for financial advisors: Embrace partnerships with CPAs and attorneys – which is a basis of Konvergent’s business model.

“We help them dive deeper with their client relationships and uncover ways for themselves as a CPA to add more value and more services. Inevitably, a lot of the solutions we might help them uncover could lead back to wealth management.”

The second guest in today’s episode, David Canter, also has a long history in finance – but has recently taken over as President of Bluespring Wealth. Just four months into the new role, Canter spends his time working with financial advisors and teaching the importance of succession planning.

Canter sees the wealth management ecosystem on a growth trajectory, and reminds advisors that their success will largely be built on strong relationships.

“Every advisory firm has one unfair advantage that they so often overlook: They know more about their clients and their clients’ lives than virtually anyone else, except perhaps their own family.”

Listen to the full episode to get all the details from Smith and Canter, and check back again next week for a brand-new episode!