Tag: advisor-practice-management

A study published in October by Cerulli Associates, a Boston-based research and consulting firm, found that only 7% of financial advisory practices were suited to do their own research and portfolio construction/management. Yet, according to the same study, 62% of advisors are in fact performing these functions on behalf of their clients. We do not necessarily agree with the assertion and prefer to frame this conversation in the context of fiduciary responsibility and best practice.

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Approximate Reading Time - 3 and a half minutes

Recently I answered a few questions for an author working on piece about gratitude in the workplace.  Gratitude has a huge impact on business culture, and I thought the topic was spot on for a blog, especially leading up to this season of gratitude – Thanksgiving. Read on for a few thoughts and observations from the last 50 or so years.

My partner and I started Blueprint years ago, propelled both by a renegade streak and the desire to help improve people’s lives. We wanted to create a business of our own and something better than was available in the marketplace.  If successful, we also believed it would afford us the ability to have families and provide for them. Perhaps it’s something that only the founder of a business will truly understand.

Excitement, fear, joy, anxiety, and back again, all before your morning coffee.

“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Lord Henry Wotton, A Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

While Wilde’s masterpiece was published in 1890, there’s much about it that feels prescient today. This quote in particular calls into question the futility of yearning for the possession of material things. Sticking with the theme of 19th-century paragons, it was in 1899 that economist Thorstein Veblen coined the term “conspicuous consumption” in his most famous work, The Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen’s concept can be illustrated by the desire to drive a luxury car rather than an economy car. Though both serve the exact same function, the former calls to attention the apparent affluence of the driver. Both Wilde and Veblen would likely agree that the price of this good exceeds its actual value.

If you are like me, you probably spend a lot of time marveling at and studying the likes of Amazon, Google, and even Facebook. Each is only about 20 years old, yet they each occupy a spot in the world’s ten most valuable companies. Casting aside the varying forms of backlash they have experienced recently, there is much to admire about each firm’s growth and ubiquity.