Before investment advisor Joseph Alfie begins his usual 12-hour days, the 28-year-old does an hour of circuit training at the Adrenaline Performance Centre, a high-intensity fitness centre in Montreal.
Tall and athletic, with neatly parted hair and snappy suit, Alfie gives off a bit of a Don Draper vibe. But instead of offering doses of Canadian Club, Alfie brews short espressos on a machine in his office in the Lachine district of Montreal.
Alfie’s intensity extends to his workday – and appears to have paid off: after less than a decade as an advisor, Alfie now has a thriving practice with HollisWealth Inc., a subsidiary of Scotia Capital Inc. “I target high net-worth clients,” Alfie says of his marketing strategy. “My average client has about $750,000 in investible assets.”
Those clients include business owners and professionals such as lawyers, accountants, architects and engineers. Alfie’s clients now number about 100. Alfie is bilingual, and about 30% of his clients are French-speaking.
“Some have grown to be friends,” he says. “It’s a relationship that you build for the next 20, 30, 40 years. And for the next generation.”
Alfie often is asked how he has managed to persuade so many high net-worth professionals, who have their choice of advisors, to give their business to someone his age. He credits his ability to create, build and sustain relationships. If hours worked is the measure of his commitment, it is at the highest level. His website posts his hours as 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Alfie has won over many clients who are searching for a more complete relationship with their advisors, he says. He adds that many clients have switched their business to him after becoming dissatisfied with the level of fees they are paying.
Alfie’s first step with new clients is to assess their tolerance for risk. He also ensures he understands individuals’ time frames, such as retirees vs clients in the final stages of their careers. Alfie then explains the relationship between risk and return and how that relates to risk tolerance.
Alfie follows established investing strategies. He describes himself as a value investor who uses asset-allocation strategies for clients, combining small-capitalization stocks, large-caps, exchange-traded funds and mutual funds to produce portfolios that pay dividends.
Network of partners
Alfie also offers tax and estate planning, referring his clients to members of an informal network of partners in allied fields, including an accountant, a notary and a lawyer.
“For many high net-worth clients,” Alfie says, “their biggest issue is not really the current money that they have, but how they can get it passed on to their kids or their spouse in the most tax-efficient manner.”
Alfie’s intense focus began before he entered the financial advisory business. He had planned to study industrial engineering, but switched to finance after reading the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, in which author Robert Kiyosaki makes the case for starting and owning your own business and honing “financial intelligence” to accumulate wealth.
Determined to do so, Alfie studied finance at Concordia University. At the same time, he was relentless about doing cold calls as a representative of Berkshire-TWC Financial Group Inc., which was acquired by Manulife Financial Corp. in 2007. Alfie recalls making 300 cold calls a day, expecting 99 rejections for every positive response. He made a game of it: “Every ‘no’ I got would make me happier,” he says, “because I knew I was getting one step closer to a ‘yes’.”
That experience equipped Alfie with the kind of practical knowledge he needed. “I really wanted to understand the flow of money,” he says. “I wanted to understand the ins and outs [of doing business]. I wanted to understand the financial system” – in ways that he was not learning in the classroom.
While at Concordia, Alfie completed the Canadian Securities Course, as well as the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada’s course. He has his financial security advisor’s licence from the Autorité des marchés financiers, Quebec’s financial regulator, among other credentials. This year, he will finish his certified financial planner course. Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, Alfie says: “If you have eight hours to cut down a tree, you had better spend seven hours sharpening your blade.”
Alfie and two friends were recruited by DundeeWealth Inc., then being acquired by Scotia Capital and later rebranded as HollisWealth, in 2013. HollisWealth provides depth in back-office services. “We have support,” Alfie says. “They help us with marketing. They do our compliance.”
Among the supports provided by HollisWealth is its Fast Apps transaction-management system. “Everything is done digitally,” Alfie notes. “It’s efficient, it’s safe and it eliminates wasted paper.”
Indeed, Alfie’s desk has no piles of paper. “Paper is my biggest enemy,” he says, describing his approach as “very neat, organized and electronic.”
Social selling
Alfie now is venturing into what he calls “social selling,” using LinkedIn to reach the self-employed. This strategy allows Alfie to get to know a prospect through his or her posted profile. “The beauty of social selling,” Alfie says, “is that it’s cost-efficient.”
Alfie has no family ties that would prevent him from working 12 or more hours a day. His goal is to have assets under management of $200 million in 10 years.
“You have to work harder than anyone else,” he says about getting started. “You need to be the first one in, the last one out. And you need to put your pride aside because you can always better yourself.”
Alfie also stresses the need for mentors. “I never had one mentor; I had several,” he says. “You just cannot have all the answers at the beginning. Having the mentorship will expedite your success by an exponential factor.”
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