I have been in this profession for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything like the young people we are hiring today – lazy, unmotivated, but still thinking they deserve the trophy.

My firm’s leader had a major unexpected undiagnosed medical issue. He walked out of the office one day and I haven’t seen him for four weeks.

In preparation for the new year, let’s look at the importance of celebrating what’s been done and learning from mistakes made.

During our holiday party, one of my longest tenured advisors came up to me to say how appalling he thought it was that we held such “an expensive party.”

The client had been with us for more than 15 years. When she left, I called her to ask if there was anything we could have done differently or better.

We have someone we have been carrying for quite some time and we need to ask him to leave.

As we enter the end of the year to celebrate other holidays, consider improving your emotional intelligence (EQ) and connecting with your clients in deeper and more fulfilling ways.

With all the market ups and downs, we are not as profitable as we have been historically.

Why do team members often resist change?

How come the focus is always on the leader and never on the team members getting on board and playing their part?

I will share some insights for leaders in large and small firms to make change happen, manage results and continue to grow your businesses.

We are debating whether to expand our niche or whether to expand at all.

I find it hard to like someone when I don’t know the context of what I would do to interact with them.

I was recently approached by a recruiter about a president position at another advisory firm.

I’ll share some insights as you encourage your team to be more open-minded and innovative and to help with facilitating change efforts within your organization.

Our leadership is forcing changes on us at a rapid pace that don’t make sense.

I need someone to tell me if it’s time to get off this treadmill or if things will change and I can go back to being exhausted only on Thursdays and Fridays instead of every day of the week.

Several of our team members have had some very difficult life experiences over the last year.

We are frustrated by the lack of new clients this year.

I will share some ideas for how create a special event to honor a client.

We have a team of advisors who are the kings and queens of gossip.

We are trying to grow our marketing team.

Some of our funds have underperformed, although we tout our ability to “not lose as much when the market goes down.” But we’ve lost way more than the market has over the last few weeks in a few of our strategies.

Have you seen a situation where the person running the advisor team is former college football star and every single story – I mean every one – is about football?

The leader of our firm is not a nice person.

The issue is that John is very involved in politics in our community and his political leanings are the total opposite of the rest of the family and of mine.

We have a terrible time with internal meetings. They don’t happen. They happen but there is no agenda.

I’m finding some questionable accounting as I am going through the financials from the last few years.

I’m having a hard time training one of our newer advisors on how to be a good listener.

Here are a few important ideas for my readers on making cold pitches and trying to gain traction in the market with those you don’t know and who don’t know you.

My staff told me that we have “become totally focused on AUM and fees. It isn’t a nice place to work anymore.”

I’ve done what many people dream of doing in their lives, but I’m ill at ease.

He bullies team members, the other partners and most of our vendors.

Is it odd some newer people would have such negative things to say about me?

The issue is that she doesn’t listen. She interrupts clients.

We have a woman on our team who seems to enjoy stirring things up.

We were planning on an in-person event, but some of our team members were exposed to people who tested negative. How are firms solving for this issue now that we are not really back and still getting sick?

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on strategies to become more time efficient. Since that time, I have been inundated with advisors asking questions such as…

When does researching someone’s background and looking for ways to connect become uncomfortable for a person, wherein they might accuse us of stalking them?

Recently one of our best advisors gave notice. He said we don’t “value youth.”

I’ll share some of the insights into how advisors can get the most value when they pay for training solutions..

Advisors tell me they don’t have time to focus on what they need (and often want) to do.

I’m having an existential crisis with a few of my advisors.

I am interested in any guidelines on paying and compensating my assistants.

My father is about to celebrate a very big birthday. He retired at 60 and has been retired for 40 years. It makes me realize how very narrow minded we are in our profession about the way we speak about retirement.

We have the new program installed, but no one is using it.

I’m not averse to having clients tell their friends and family about me; I’m just averse to making it sound like they need to do it because we need them to do it.

We have team members turning on one another because much of the new client servicing standards we agreed to set in place are not working.

I don’t know if we should downsize and move into a smaller space, give people the option to WFH and then lose the great camaraderie that has always made us so great.

Recently one expert asked whether the letters I receive are authentic or perhaps I make them up. I’d like to use this column to address this and ask financial professionals to consider things we often don’t talk about in this industry.