Advisor Credentials, the Recent Nick Murray Event, and other Odds and Ends

Addressing avoidance behavior, advisor confidence, advisor competence, and plans for a 2026 event you will not forget

Let me start by saying that the day I sent the last edition of B2Bahnsen was the day Amazon’s web servers went out for the day, and AWS powers Substack. And because I had so many people say they didn’t get it, I am just re-posting the piece here for safe measure. In it I explore the issue of how advisors whose function on planet earth, whose value proposition to clients, whose major day-to-day focus, is supposed to be managing client behavior, delivering value through planning, and providing solutions that account for mistakes made because of human nature, have some duty to understand capital markets and macroeconomic affairs. I guess a better way to say it is, “do advisors have such a duty?” and once one answers the question affirmatively, “what does that look like?” I think it is a fair issue for advisors to wrestle with, and I hope my wrestling with it in the last piece is useful for you.

A few questions and comments came out of the last issue and they are worthy of being addressed:

You stated, “I know that the things which most made The Bahnsen Group successful over the last 25 years were not the various nuggets of financial granularity I have stuffed into my head over this time, but I also know that I have to be true to myself, and I have always believed that my moral authority and trustworthiness was enhanced by my own desire to learn and grow.”

This reminded me of some of your thoughts in “Full Time”, which I’ve purchased for several colleagues, but I wanted to ask at what point does stuffing knowledge into our heads become an excuse for not doing the work to help our businesses grow?

I’m wrapping up my EA after getting my CFP, and I’m contemplating what’s next. I think of your mentor, Nick Murray, and how he would say any letters behind your name don’t make prospects more inclined to talk to you, but I too have a desire to learn as much as possible with the days the Lord grants me.

Sorry for the long-winded email and question, but would just be curious to hear your thoughts on if there’s a particular direction you would look to next.

That is always a real risk – stuffing knowledge into one’s head as an avoidance behavior. I don’t know the solution other than each individual advisor having the right wisdom to not lean into intellectual apathy and on the other side to not lean into avoidance behavior. It takes judicious discernment, not a prescribed formula. I would say that if one if NOT growing their business, but reading a hundred pages of research per day, they probably know the answer.

I couldn’t agree more about the credential deal. Classic avoidance behaviors AND impostor syndrome. I not only believe there are advisors who chronically pursue new initials after their last name to avoid doing the job of prospecting and doing the job of serving clients, but I think it is high time we have a conversation as grown-ups about how the designation industry has become a scam that does nothing – nothing to validate an advisor’s competence, and in fact generally reveals a deficit of self-confidence and even capability. I myself have my CFP and my CIMA, and I do not post them on my business card or email signature any longer (just because I find it odd to run a business of the size I do and hold out those rather pedestrian designations as some sort of signal of competence or legitimacy). That said, we have over twenty CFP’s at our firm and I encourage all of those advisors and planners to show theirs in email signature and business cards (we are a planning-forward firm and that mark indicates something different for them than it does for me). It is subjective and not a hard and fast rule. But I would say that when you get past JD, CPA, CFA, and CFP, and you start talking about an academic degree (MBA? Really?) and a whole bunch of internal industry-manufactured designations that lack the institutional credibility and pedigree of the obvious ones, I believe it belittles the profession, belittles the person, and is more likely to be counter-productive than people realize. I do not say this as any offense to people who are proud of the extra online courses they took and internal credentialing their firm offered, etc. I think people getting initials as a by-product of them obtaining specialized expertise is what it is, but I would say there is power in silence, too. Learning something your competitors don’t know, but not attaching an alphabet soup to your LinkedIn profile, has a sort of self-confident aura to it. The psychology behind this stuff matters. Self-confident advisors do not muck up their branding with initials that make no sense to the outside world. Or at least, they shouldn’t.

As someone preparing to graduate and begin a career in wealth management, I wanted to ask one follow-up question: What practical steps would you recommend for someone just starting out to build both competence and credibility in the field?

Your advice has already been deeply encouraging, and I appreciate the guidance you have shared.

In a nutshell: Read

Reading, preparation, study, becoming a student of the business, becoming a sponge to learn all you can. Credibility comes from confidence and confidence comes from competence and competence comes from diligent study. There is nothing one can do when they are pre-employed in the business but learn. Read FT, WSJ, Bloomberg. Read from other B2B resources in the business. Read about capital markets and economics. That honestly is the #1 thing I would say, with a huge gap between this and #2.

But I also would say that once you are in the wealth management profession, if you have a client-facing role or one where the duty revolves around being in relationship to clients, your soft skills, people skills, communication skills, and EQ are going to matter a lot. In fact, for those whose job is to develop a book of business, and then serve and grow that business, your success comes down to competence and likability. I would begin thinking through your ability to interact with others, to hold a conversation, to develop listening skills, to meet new people, to enjoy people in public forums, to be comfortable with people in private forums, and if I can say the same thing twice in one sentence, to develop listening skills.

So much is up in the air still if you are still in school and not sure exactly what venue or path you will begin in wealth management. But the universals are that your future will be about competence and likability. Develop lifetime habits now of reading, and lifetime habits now of listening. You’ll be shocked the headstart this will give you.

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About four weeks ago now I attended the annual Nick Murray symposium in New York City, an event he began doing in 2009 at the Marriott East Side in midtown Manhattan, and that I attended every single year he ever did it (he moved to the Marriott Marquis around a decade ago). There were a couple years off for the event due to COVID, but this annual event was a “no miss” affair for me, and some of the early events in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis were seminal moments for me in my life and career. The content has always been directly correlated to what Nick’s entire ethos is in his monthly, not-to-be-missed subscription newsletter (where readers perpetually rip him off by paying substantially less zeroes in the annual cost than the value it delivers), but I always found the verbal, in-person delivery, even more impactful than the newsletter. Over the years certain messages from these events either changed or reinforced major elements of my own advisory belief system, and they are hallmark events I will never forget.

• “You have the life you want”

• “Inputs, not outcomes”

• “You do not have to work with a client who does not like you, and you do not have to work with a client who you do not like”

• “They are not interviewing you; you are interviewing them”

There are many, many more, and the newsletter captures these nuggets of wisdom well. But as Nick taught these things to me many years ago they did not merely impact me as an advisor – they impacted me as a human being. My own ethos as a person was enhanced out of his annual events. There was a point a long time ago where I was no longer going to hear something new at one of Nick’s events – he is consistent and rigorous in reinforcing a pretty well-established belief system. In other words, I am sure I had “heard it all” a long time ago. But I wouldn’t have missed one for the world, because I needed the reminders, I appreciated the reaffirmation, and I was emotionally and professionally recharged to be with a peer group and advisory mentor who were so committed to truth-telling.

At the recent event (which Nick has said will be his last year doing this), a group of other long-time attendees and I were talking over breakfast before the sessions began, sharing what our major takeaways were from Nick’s work over the years. We actually spoke a bit about certain things we might disagree with here or there … and yet, what each of us said, was that the undeniable, incomparable value proposition of Nick’s events and writings for us was the mentality he advocated. Certain particulars here and there are negotiable. But the mentality advisors live and operate with if they are bought in to Nick’s teaching is career and life changing. It was for me. It was for them. And I will miss Nick’s annual event a great deal.

But many of you will not have to. I am happy to report that B2Bahnsen is going to host an annual day-long event next year where both Nick and I will speak, complete with lengthy open-forum Q&A fireside chat, at no cost whatsoever. It will be on Friday, October 30, and B2Bahnsen will be sponsoring the whole event. Advisors will pay for their own travel and accommodations, but the event will be free. Breakfast and lunch will be provided. We will have the venue confirmed shortly and plans for registration (first come, first serve, of course) will be announced soon. It will only be open for advisors. More to come!