In This Issue 

Swim Coach or Lifeguard. Ben on a rip current, his son, and the day fear beat knowledge.

Taking the Stage at LPL Focus in San Diego. What Ben and Angel shared with thousands of advisors at LPL Focus.

Before You Tour a Campus This Fall, Watch This Golf Show First: Jim Bode and college advisor Eric Simonelli on a starting line that comes earlier than most families expect while trying to beat 9 under.

Swim Coach or Lifeguard?

I spent part of the summer in Myrtle Beach for my son Griffin's baseball tournament. You stand on the dunes down there and look north, look south, and it feels like somebody forgot to put an ending on the beach. The water is warm enough that you want to sprint straight in without giving much thought to what is happening underneath the surface.

Walking over the dunes that first morning, the first thing I noticed were the red flags. Rip currents.

So before we got in, I stopped Griffin and explained what that meant. If you get caught in one, the worst thing you can do is exactly what every instinct in your body tells you to do. Do not fight it. Swim sideways, get out of the channel, then head back to shore. Then I walked him over to the lifeguard, figuring he should hear it from somebody besides Dad, who by definition knows nothing when you are thirteen. Same message. Perfect, I thought. Dad says it. Lifeguard says it. That will be enough.

We were in the water a while before a wave came through bigger than the rest and knocked him off balance. As the water pulled back out, you could feel it grab.

I was standing a few feet away. Shallow water. Not dangerous. But I watched his face change, and everything he knew disappeared. He did not swim sideways. He swam straight for shore and fought it with everything he had.

Fear beat knowledge.

There is a phrase I wrote on our office wall a few years ago, borrowed from Greg Glassman: swim coach or lifeguard? The swim coach teaches you how to move through the water while you are still safe. The lifeguard shows up after everything has already gone wrong.

I have thought about that phrase a few thousand times in this career. Standing on that beach, I understood it better than I ever had.

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Taking the stage at LPL Focus in San diego

Once a year, thousands of advisors gather to compare notes on how they do this work. This year, Ben Beck, CFP® and Angel Costanza had an opportunity to teach others how they lead.

Hayden Hawkey and Tammy Stoerkel worked the floor all week with Jack Casady capturing moments throughout the conference. It was Hayden and Jack's first Focus. It was Tammy's twelfth!

Ben presented A Clear Investment Strategy You Can Explain, Defend, and Build a Practice Around on Monday afternoon at Focus.

He started where the strategy started. Mid-2000s, a Thursday in the Merrill Lynch boardroom in downtown Boston, and the speaker that week was David A. Mallach, a longtime Merrill advisor out of Philadelphia. What caught Ben's attention was what Mallach left out. No accolades, no assets under management, nothing about himself. Just a set of rules he had worked out with clients since the early seventies. Ben left with his business card and his book, Dancing With The Analysts, read it that weekend, and changed how he invested from that point on.

Those principles come down to three questions any game plan has to answer before you start: what to buy, when to sell, and where the proceeds go next. Ben walked the room through how we narrow four thousand companies to the fifteen or so that make it into portfolios, and told them plainly that the second question is the one most of the industry never answers.

He closed where we close with you. The Goals Planning Statement, the document central to the progress we make with clients, and an open offer to send a copy to anyone in the room who asked.

Angel, presented Architecture for Scale: Building the Capacity That Growth Demands later the same day.

Her case was that growth exposes whatever a firm was actually built on. Add offices, add people, and the workarounds that used to hold start to show. Her line stuck with the room, that an org chart with no authority is just a diagram. Build it with intention, and every office operates as one team behind your goals.

Before you tour a campus this Fall, watch this golf show First

The format is simple. Nine holes, one guest, and a real conversation somewhere between the tee and the green.

Episode 2 sends Jim Bode to Oakley Country Club with Eric Simonelli of Academic Admissions Advisors, the college advisor Jim's own family used, to talk through the thing every parent eventually has to think about.

Somewhere around the third fairway Jim asks it plainly: when does college planning actually start? Eric's answer is earlier than most people assume, closer to ninth or tenth grade than to senior year, because colleges look at grades nine through eleven and because, by his count, most students end up changing their major along the way.

The one that will change your August: campuses are only full in fall and spring. If you are touring this month, Eric suggests treating it as a first look at the place rather than the school, and going back once students are on it. He compares it to shopping for a car you have not driven.

New to the show? Episode 1 is nine holes with Vinny Savio, and it ended at even.

We would love to have you for the premiere of Episode 2 on YouTube. 

→ Watch Episode 1
→ Set a reminder for Episode 2 on August 27 at 5:00 p.m. ET

A Final Thought

August has a way of making everything feel like it can wait until September.

Most of it can. The things worth doing early rarely announce themselves, which is why they get pushed. A conversation in a calm year. Expectations written down while writing them is easy. A campus walked in October instead of this month.

None of it feels urgent on the day you do it. That is precisely what makes it work.

If Ben's piece landed somewhere, or a question has been sitting on your list since spring, bring it to your next review. That is what the time is for.

Enjoy the last stretch of summer. Fall will be here sooner than you can expect.

Thank you, as always, for the trust you place in us.

— The Beck Bode Team

P.S.

July's cover was the lighthouse at Gillette Stadium. Thank you to all those who sent their guess in last month.

This month's cover is a place that can easily "take your breath away." Let us know your guess!