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1. You have to do it all yourself.
The early pioneers into this space really had to grind it out. They had to be do-it-your-self-ers, they had to be willing to deal with some decline in capabilities from the pretty comfortable wirehouse or brokerage they left behind. That's not the case anymore. Now all you need to do is walk around a conference like Schwab IMPACT and as you turn around, you're surrounding by service providers and vendors, who are willing to fill in with all sorts of utility.
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2. Too many legal and compliance pitfalls.
The truth of the matter is there haven't been many significant regulatory developments over the past decade, decade-and-a-half, but nonetheless advisors are anxious. And the reason they're anxious is because throughout their employment they were told that they can't do this or they can't do that, it's a compliance issue, compliance doesn't want you involved in this, compliance says you can’t do it. The reality is very little of that was regulatory compliance. A lot of that was risk management, employment practices, and valid restrictions that an employer needs to impose when there’s thousands of employees. But when there's 5, 10, 20, 30 employees, your perception of risk is different, and the way in which you need to manage risk is different.
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3. Independence isn't for big teams with big dreams.
So early on in Market Council, we considered a sizeable advisor, one who can really earn a living by being an investment advisor. Those tended to be firms that had in excess of $50 to $100 million of assets. Over the years, that increased, and larger firms became firms that had 300 million or $500 million of assets. But many years ago, we crossed that billion-dollar threshold, and we started to do it quite regularly.
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Information as of November 16, 2017.
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