How One Advisor Doubled His Book in Six Years

Building a future — brick by brick

For more than 20 years, I’ve made a successful living in financial services, with most of that time spent as a Wealth Advisor. But it might surprise you to know that when it comes to operating a business and servicing clients, some of the most important lessons I’ve learned came from my first career: bricklaying.

I began working in construction in my teens. The 1990s were a terrible time for housing, and with margins so slim and labour at a deficit, I learned the value of taking initiative. In order to best contribute, I knew that I should always be doing something; my hands should never be empty. I got a sense of how my work impacted other peoples’—if you do a poor job with the drywall, for instance, it’s going to affect the electrician and the plumber. And I came to understand the importance of paying attention to detail. Measure twice, cut once was the saying—or, to put it another way, always do your due diligence.

There has always been something about building things from the ground up that has appealed to me—laying brick on top of brick to create a solid foundation. This is just as true now in my career as an Advisor, in which I construct customized wealth management and retirement plans for my clients, as it was during my time as a tradesman. I will always be grateful for those formative years, which taught me the value of organization and structure, and provided me with tools that I’ve been able to carry with me ever since.

“Never stop learning”

My transition to financial services began with studying economics in university, which provided a valuable top-down perspective that has informed the rest of my career. After several years as a junior Advisor, I shifted into a role as a wholesaler with a boutique asset management firm. There are many similarities between the responsibilities of a wholesaler and an Advisor, and this position helped me hone my storytelling and business-building abilities—identifying opportunities, following up with prospects, and ultimately growing trust with clients. It also helped me develop connections within the Ottawa financial services community, including with my current firm, Ecivda Financial Planning Boutique. They were valued clients, and when I made the decision to return to Advising in 2017, that longstanding relationship served as the perfect bridge to the next stage in my professional development—and an opportunity to apply the lessons I’d learned on the asset management side of the industry.

If there’s one big take-away for Advisors that I can share from my experiences as both an economics student and a wholesaler, it’s this: never stop learning. There are always new skills and knowledge that you can add to your toolkit, and that will ultimately improve the level of service that you can deliver for your clients. As Advisors, this applies not only to the macro picture, but also to new developments in the investment space.

For instance, it was during my time as a wholesaler that I became well acquainted with structured notes, an asset class that was equally appealing and time-consuming. The notes offered tremendous value to clients’ portfolios, both because of the above-market yields and the contingent downside protection that buffered against potential drawdowns. However, as an MFDA-licensed advisor, I was unable to access them. And even if I had, the administrative burden of managing a portfolio of notes was overwhelming—the sheer effort required to track, analyze and roll over each note was a job unto itself.

That’s why I welcomed the introduction of the BMO Strategic Equity Yield Fund (SEYF), an actively managed fund that replicates exposure to a diversified basket of autocallable notes. It’s a standard mutual fund, which means no additional licensing, and a huge time saver—one I only found because I’m always on the lookout for innovative strategies to help my clients meet their investment goals. In my role not only as an Advisor but as Ecivda’s Chief Investment Officer (CIO), I feel it’s my responsibility to identify a signal in the noise: determining how shifts in the economic landscape will affect the client’s bottom line, and finding new solutions to meet the challenges ahead.

A foundation for success

This spirit of innovative thinking has served me and my firm well. Over the past six years, Ecivda has grown significantly, both in employees and assets under management (AUM): we now have five Advisors and 12 full-time employees (up from four employees in 2017) and have more than doubled our AUM. That type of growth doesn’t happen by accident—you have to be willing to get up every morning and do the things necessary to keep the ball moving forward. There will be times when you’re really busy handling your day-to-day responsibilities and feel like you haven’t identified a new prospect in a while. But even in those times, it’s important to keep an eye out for opportunities and find a balance between client service and business growth.

Ecivda typically caters to growth-minded professionals and business-owners, and we’ve been similarly proactive and growth-oriented. My business partner, Shawn Todd, and I are currently in the third year of a succession plan to acquire the practice from Shawn’s stepfather, who first founded it over 50 years ago. We’ve also purchased two other small books of business from departing Advisors. On the referral side, we benefit from word-of-mouth within the Ottawa business community, and our sizable group benefits and pension department also helps drive interest in our services.

While social media isn’t a silver bullet when it comes to developing new business, our strong social footprint has paid dividends, as has our website. In our view, that kind of brand-building is table stakes for Advisors looking to grow—if a prospective client looks you up online, there better be something compelling for them to find.

Just prior to the pandemic, we also launched a podcast, Mind and Money, which features market commentary and interviews with business leaders from across the country. It’s one thing to see Advisors’ website and social media; it’s another to actually hear them speak. Though we did not start the podcast solely as a way of attracting new business, it does help prospective clients envision what it would be like to sit across from us and have a coffee—in other words, to establish that we’re people they can trust. Interviewing is a learned craft—especially when you’re aiming for a conversational tone—but it’s one we’ve taken seriously, and we’re proud to have grown to over 2,000 subscribers in over 20 countries. Like social media and our website, it’s just one ingredient in the prospect-generating recipe, but it’s been a successful one for us.

BMO Strategic Equity Yield Fund: The right building block for client portfolios

As my years in construction taught me, a solid structure requires the right building blocks. Building client portfolios is similar—your foundation is only as solid as the strategies used to put it together.

Structured notes have long been a tool available to IIROC Advisors, but they’ve been out of reach for MFDA professionals. The BMO Strategic Equity Yield Fund (SEYF) fills that gap, offering contingent downside protection with a steady 8% target yield. That’s pretty attractive for a wide variety of clients, especially at a low-to-medium risk rating and an MER of 0.73.¹ For Advisors, it’s as simple as adding the Fund to your model base portfolio.

The BMO GAM structured products team is composed of highly tenured experts with a combined 100+ years of experience in capital markets. That provides a lot of confidence and reassurance for both me and my clients.

To learn more about the BMO Strategic Equity Yield Fund, contact your BMO Global Asset Management Regional Sales Representative.

¹ For the F Series. The listed target Management Expense Ratio (MER) are estimated. As the series of funds are less than one year old, actual MER costs will not be known until the fund financial statements for the current fiscal year are released. Risk is defined as the uncertainty of return and the potential for capital loss in your investments.