09/17/2026
Picture this.
You’ve worked with the same financial advisor for years, sharing your goals, dreams, challenges, concerns, and hopes about your future. You’ve developed a long-term plan for your family, and now it’s the exact moment you need your advisor most because…
Your retirement day (and all the important decisions that come with it) is finally on the horizon, or…
You receive an offer to sell your business, or…
Your long-term employer changes ownership, and you are downsized, or…
Your spouse tragically and unexpectedly passes away…
And suddenly you’re at a crossroads where the path forward is anything but clear. You have some big, timely questions, so you pick up the phone to call the advisor you’ve trusted all these years…
…Only to find out that they’ve retired or moved on, and are no longer with the firm.
Surprised, you’re patched through to someone new who “took over their book.” They seem nice enough, but they know nothing about you, your family, your goals, your values, your concerns, your financial and tax situation, your faith convictions, or the plan that you have been working towards for the past decade.
It’s the moment you need them most, but before you can even ask the questions you need to ask, you have to try to bring a stranger up to speed in the midst of an intensely important situation — all at a time when you have the least time and energy to do so.
This is what we call “falling off the relational cliff.”
This happens when an advisor working within the traditional “solo advisor model” (where a client or couple is assigned to a single advisor) retires, moves to another firm, or leaves the industry altogether. Even though this historical advisor-centric model creates multiple, potential downsides for clients, the financial industry’s compensation and organizational structures have made it difficult to transition away from this approach.
Here at LifeGuide, we’ve built our firm from the ground up around a fundamentally different model: a client-centric, team-based advisory approach. This approach, also known as an “ensemble advisory model,” allows clients to benefit from being assigned to a team of advisors who work together to collectively serve and advise them.
We see this team-based model as one of the key distinctions that allows us to better serve our clients both now and, even more importantly, in the future.
In a recent blog post, we explore these two models, what each one means for you as a client, and why we believe that more heads are better than just one.
Read the full article here 👉 https://lifeguidefa.com/blog/the-importance-of-having-a-team-around-you/
