Welcome to “The Summit,” the official First Ascent blog.
If you’re looking for ways to build your practice, investment insights, or advice on how to communicate more effectively with clients and potential clients, then you’ve come to the right place.
First Quarter 2018 – What a Ride…or Was It?
At First Ascent, we take a long-term view towards investing, believing shorter-term moves in the markets are unpredictable and mostly just noise. The first quarter of 2018 was a great example of why we believe this. As a result, I advocate what I call the “Rip Van Winkle” approach to long-term investing. After an incredibly … Read More
Making Business Networking Work for You
“The old adage is wrong,” a professor at my business school would say. “It’s not about who you know; it’s about who knows you.” He would go on to posit that a few deep connections with people who truly know and trust your character can be more valuable than dozens of industry acquaintances who recognize your … Read More
Stop the Dangerous Notion That Asset Management is Commoditized
This article also appears in the Journal of Financial Planning: Practice Management Blog. The emergence of low-cost investment solutions like robo-advisers and model marketplaces has elicited statements by earnest pundits about the “commoditization” of asset management. These well-meaning observers misunderstand the significance of what is happening in our industry and are planting the seed of … Read More
The Importance of Sticking It Out
What a month! As the markets racked up the first full year in history with 12 months of positive stock market returns, the tension that’s been building for many investors throughout 2017 finally broke. To buck the trend, February of 2018 brought us the two largest single day point drops in the history of the … Read More
I Can Make My Video Myself, Right?
The third reason why going it alone is a bad idea. The budget is one of the most common concerns when it comes to a video for your practice. Video done well is expensive. In an attempt to cut costs, it can be tempting to use your webcam to shoot your own video. It’s so … Read More
The annual tsunami of prognostications about how the stock market and the economy will perform in 2018 was beginning to slow to a trickle, thankfully. Then the stock market had a major hiccup and the punditry scrambled back to its soap boxes to give us another dose. Their explanations about why the market took a sudden … Read More
“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” Lance Armstrong It finally arrived. We knew it was coming at some point, but as usual we didn’t know … Read More
Ask Yourself These 3 Questions to Find Out We offer outsourced investment management with a high level of service that we believe is worth far more than our low, flat fee. But even so, outsourcing might not be for everyone. When advisors who haven’t outsourced before contact us, we talk a lot about the advantages … Read More
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