On November 12, 2012 fi-Plan Partners was the corporate sponsor of the Samford Business Network Breakfast at the Wynfrey Hotel in Hoover, AL. Business leaders from across the city came to network and hear special guest Jason Womack, author of Your Best Just Got Better.
Greg Powell is President and CEO of fi-Plan Partners, an independent investment firm serving it’s clients through financial planning, wealth management and business consulting.
08/22/12: Watch this short recap video of fi-Plan Partners and the National Federation of Independent Business hosting a business owners round table discussion with Congressman Spencer Bachus.
Note: Because of regulations, comments have been turned off.
07/20/12: (Aired on 07/16/12): Earlier this week The Matt Murphy Show, on 100.5 WAPI, Birmingham, AL, invited Greg Powell to talk with Matt about the recent comments made by President Obama about small business. They had a lively conversation.
Greg Powell is President/CEO and Wealth Consultant at fi-Plan Partners, an independent investment firm specializing in financial planning, wealth management and business consulting.
Email Greg here or call him at (205) 989-3498 with your comments and questions. Visit The Matt Murphy Show website here.
03/09/12: Just about every business that wants to succeed has a website. These days, a website can be thrown together in a manner of minutes on any number of “build your own click and drag” websites. On the other hand, a business can spend months developing, creating and fine tuning their site. Your company’s website can work for you, against you or simply do nothing at all… which is the same as working against you in my book.
As the web designer for fi-Plan Partners, I talk often with our business owner clients about their website and advise them on ways to make their site more valuable. If you feel like your website isn’t working for you, here’s my humble, but experienced top five reasons why.
5 Reasons Your Business Website Isn’t Working for You
1. You don’t know what you want from your website
There are very few if any, “set it and forget it” money making sites out there, so don’t have the goal of “making money.” You need to be more specific. Next to having a product or service that is valuable and in demand, you need to have specific goals that you want your website to accomplish. If you desire direct sales, you will need an eCommerce site, which is a totally different kind of website where the goal is to capture leads for potential customer follow-up. You know your product or service better than anyone, so the key is to know your customer, what they want, how they want to receive it, and provide it online in the most user friendly way. When you develop measurable goals, you can track and study your website stats (through Google Stats or your hosting company) and reassess and fine tune your site according to that information. This takes time so be patient.
2. Your site is all about your business and not about your target audience
Experts say that when someone visits your website, you have exactly 3 minutes to convey who you are and what you do. After that, if visitors decide they are interested, you need to show them you understand them and have what they need. Business websites that don’t work are usually filled with content that is just about the company and not about the customer. A visitor is asking you when they visit your site, “What’s in it for me?” If you can’t lead them to the correct answer quickly, they will click away.
3. You are not using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices
How many of us can remember the last time we opened a Yellow Pages book to find information on a business we are looking for? Where is your first place to find that information? Say it with me, “You Google it” (or use Yahoo or Bing). These companies make money from advertisers when people use their search engines. People will use the engine that gets them to the best information online fast. The search engines have criteria by which they judge whether your site has the information people want. If your site does not meet that criteria, your site will be no better than a house for sale on a dead end street with no real estate listing. If it can’t be found… well, it won’t be found.
Just about anybody can design a website these days, but for your website to work for you, your web design person (or company) should know this criteria set forth by the search engines and guide you as you provide content for your site. This is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. If they don’t, it’s time to find another.
4. You’re business is not involved in social media
You need to go where the people are and social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn, are just a few places where millions of people gather online every day to share information. If you can build relationships with those people through engaging dialogue and by providing valuable information, these tools can be the tour bus that brings visitors to your website. There are unwritten rules of engagement to be sure to watch, listen and learn before you jump in.
5. Your site never changes
You must give your audience a reason to come back. If they visit your site once, read everything, then come back a few days later and there is no new and valuable information, they most likely will never return. Why would they? This is where blogging can be your most powerful tool for providing consistent, new and valuable information for your site. Notice that I said, “valuable information.” You can’t just blog about anything. You must provide information that people can use… things that make them say, “I’ll use that today and later, I’ll come back for more.” This establishes your business as an expert in your field and trusted resource… and people love to do business with businesses they trust. I encourage you to check out our daily blog on our site to see how we are striving everyday to give something of value to our readers.
There are many other factors that can make or break your website. These are just a few. If you would like to talk with me and receive a free initial evaluation concerning your business website, please email me here or call me at (205) 989-3498.
Chris Davis
Director of Integrated Communications
Because of regulations, comments have been turned off.
03/02/12: Easy steps every banker wants you to take:
As a former commercial lender in all sizes of banks for many years, I often have the privilege of working with our clients here at fi-Plan Partners to either establish, or enhance, their lending relationships. It’s always helpful to me in assisting their preparations to “place myself mentally” back into my former career and evaluate the relationship as if I were going to have day-to-day responsibility for their account.
It occurred to me recently that whether our clients had private banking or owner-managed business needs, there were certain things that, as a banker, just made the relationship go much better regardless of the type of account that it was. Based on that experience, we hope that the following points benefit and improve your lender relationships!
1. Communicate “early and often” in helping your banker understand your “on-going” risk profile and make sure that he/she is a key component of your advisory team.
When I was a banker, whether the news was good or bad with a client, my best customers were always providing me relevant information before I asked for it. The mistake that most bank customers make is that they will share such detailed information with a CPA or attorney regularly, but not with their banker. Contrary to popular belief, good bankers really want to “partner” with you to improve your situation and are not as judgmental as you may think.
2. Do your homework on a bank’s financials, what is important to them, and how your relationship “fits” with what they are trying to accomplish. “Climate changes” with banks do matter!
Like any business, banks need to be profitable and satisfy shareholders. And, like other businesses, banks have certain relationships that are more “desired” from time to time in meeting their goals.
For example, if a bank has had considerable negative experience recently with commercial real estate loans, their “climate” for such loans is tougher, despite the fact that your credit is “sterling”. I always tell our clients to first get a good “roadmap” of where a bank is financially and what they are emphasizing.
For both publicly and privately traded banks, a great tool is the FDIC.gov website. Under the “Analyst” tab on the site, there is a “bank find” function that allows you to review, in detail, how banks are performing and what types of loan and deposit categories appear “high growth”. It compares these to those that do not appear to get much attention, or have been performing poorly. Simply put, choose a bank that is after your type of business. There are differences among them.
3. Banks look at the total yield produced by your entire banking relationship with them, not what they are making on a singular transaction. Having multiple relationships with one bank does help!
Understand that when a bank evaluates their relationship with you, it is done on a total “yield” basis. In general, customers with multiple relationships are more highly valued. Even if you do not have a significant loan need, offering a bank operating checking account balances helps their returns by lowering costs.
4. Don’t expect a bank to be very receptive to helping with problems that you should really fix on your own.
Banks will rarely lend “into a problem” that does not allow them to create a stronger relationship on the other side. During my banking career, two good examples of loans that I always avoided were: (1) lending to an individual to clear a tax lien, and (2) for companies, lending money to make payroll. Both were signs of deeper problems that “throwing in additional debt” would simply not fix. My best customers were those that used bank debt to get “farther, faster” with a positive, cash flow enhancing, goal. Examples were: (1) financing equipment that would add a product line, (2) loaning money for a new facility that actually lowered the rent payment that the business was formerly paying, or (3) financing the acquisition of a former competitor. In each case, the cash flow production improved.
With individuals, similar cash flow improvements can be made by helping restructure current debt. Frame your request in “cash flow enhancing” terms, which is a language that bankers like and understand!
5. Be a referral source for your banker on quality business like yours.
This is generally overlooked by the borrowing public, but really goes a long way with a banker. Because banking is a very competitive business these days, “raiding” good relationships from competitors is necessary to grow market share. Because of these competitive pressures, sending referral business to your banker on a regular basis is really noticed and appreciated.
6. “Allow” the bank to make good money on the risk that they are taking (particularly early on) as a way to build your relationship with them.
Just like anyone else, bankers don’t like to constantly be “beaten to death” by a customer who wants the bank to take significant risks and then “shops the rate” before the transaction is closed. As a banker, these customers might get a “deal” on the first transaction that they did with me, but I would not go “out of my way” for them on the next, and more significant, transaction. A banker friend of my used to colloquially refer to this as “leaving a little seed corn in the field” for the growth of the relationship. Everyone wants to do banking as cost effectively as they can, but make sure that you are also thinking “big picture” in forging a long-term relationship.
7. Make an effort to meet everyone at the bank that is in the “reporting chain” where your business is impacted.
This has great value, both in the “day to day,” and the long term. My personal private banking relationship is currently with a mid-sized bank in the city where I live. Not only do I have a close relationship with my immediate officer, I have also met her “substitute” on days when she is out, the credit officer assigned to me and the city president with ultimate responsibility.
I have made it a point to implement all of the factors listed above with each, and I can say without question, it is the best banking relationship that I have ever enjoyed! Hopefully, yours can become the same by using these easy steps that bankers really “wish you would know”.
Please email me here or call me at (205) 989-3498 if you have any questions or concerns about your banking relationship.
Ashley Page, JD, MBA
Senior Vice President
Wealth Consultant
Over the years, the fi-Plan Partners staff has had considerable experience, both in this office and in other professional careers, of assisting our clients choose attorneys and watching the relationship “unfold.” We thought that we would share some practical advice outlined in the following steps that may be useful to you. Some may seem obvious, but even in those cases, we’ve tried to put an “experience twist” on it for your benefit:
Ask around. As with other things in life, you cannot ask enough good questions of others when you are seeking an attorney. Your other professional advisors, such as CPAs or firms like ourselves, are great ones to ask because of their high level of interaction with the legal community.
Experience counts. When I was growing up in Baldwin County, one of my father’s favorite expressions concerning hiring legal representation was, “Always get an older lawyer and a younger doctor.” Of course, there are exceptions to this, but in general this has never steered me wrong. Where newer technology and methods may drive medicine more, knowing the “gamesmanship” needed in the legal world is paramount. After all, practicing law is very “precedent” driven, so someone that has been doing it for awhile definitely gives you a leg up.
Hire a lawyer that doesn’t leave their “common sense” at home. It took me a long time after graduating from law school at Alabama in 1985 to realize how important this really is. I have used many different attorneys for a wide variety of tasks over the years, but my primary “go to guy” simply incorporates his common sense better than any lawyer that I work with, and then “backs that up” with solid technical skills. Unlike others, he never gets “twisted around the axle” so much with legal theories and strategies that he forgets what I am trying to accomplish, and most importantly, why. He has a solid, “day-to-day” understanding of the risk that I am trying to control and always keeps that at the forefront of his work with me. Common sense allows him to “anticipate” beautifully in his work with me, much like a quarterback throwing the ball before his receiver makes the final cut in his route. When I’m “looking for the ball,” it’s already dropping into my hands. This keeps my fees down as well, as I’m not constantly “getting him up to speed” on practical things.
Never confuse a generalist with a specialist. Most of the mistakes that I watch happen in choosing a lawyer emerge here. I love John Grisham’s colloquial expression for a generalist, which is what he himself was in northern Mississippi before authorship of “The Firm” opened a new career for him. Grisham calls these “ham and eggs” lawyers, which in many cases, are perfect for what you need. However, like life, many issues that appear simple at first quickly get complicated and call for a specialist in an area, such as taxation or estate planning. Avoid being the “guinea pig” that a generalist is using to be able to claim that they have a particular expertise when they really do not. The quality of your legal work will really suffer.
Hire an attorney that you feel communicates with you very well as a counselor, and enjoys doing so. This may seem obvious, but you would be amazed how many times this gets “off track” with the lawyer/client relationship. There is a very interesting recent trend going on among attorneys that underlies this. I was having lunch with a partner in a major firm here recently who enjoys a sterling reputation in real estate law. His experience and educational qualifications are impeccable, and I asked him what had changed about practicing law in the past 10 years. He told me, “I really miss the role of being a true counselor to my clients. In the world of “on-line” document drafting, I feel that clients just pay me to ‘rubber stamp’ what they have already decided to do.” He feels that the days of really “knowing” the client situation is something that attorneys miss. I suspect that if you offer an attorney an opportunity to serve in a “counselor” capacity rather than just a “transactional” role, they would jump at that chance and you would receive tremendous value.
Have a clear understanding up front of how a lawyer will bill you, for what, and get that in writing. Again, this seems simple and obvious, but we see it as a source of tension with attorneys and clients far more than you would expect. Remember, behind the “mystery” of the billable hour is just plain, old-fashioned math. A good lawyer will bill you with a well-defined, and understandable, system where you can discern the value given for the money paid. Insist on such a system before you begin.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns. I would be delighted to talk with you. You can call me at (205) 989-3498 or email me here.
Senior Vice President
Wealth Consultant
Note: The opinions voiced in this material are for general information and are not intended to be specific advice. Any indices such as the S & P 500 can’t be invested into directly. Past performance is no assurance of a future result.
Because of regulation, comments have been turned off.
09/28/11: 
Business owners need to be aware that there are opportunities in this current economy. But what’s the biggest mistake a business owner can make? Greg Powell, President/CEO and Wealth Consultant of fi-Plan Partners gives you several answers.
Email Greg here with your feedback, comments, or questions.
Note: The opinions voiced in this material are for general information and are not intended to be specific advice. Any indices such as the S & P 500 can’t be invested into directly. Past performance is no assurance of a future result.
Because of regulation, comments have been turned off.
4/12/11
The Vestavia Chamber of Commerce in Birmingham, AL hosted a panel discussion on the current Healthcare legislation with fi-Plan Partner’s President and CEO Greg Powell, Brookwood Medical Center President and CEO Gary Gause, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield Vice President, Legal Services Mike Patterson. With a record crowd in attendance, Jack Nelson, Professor at Cumberland School of Law, presented a summary overview of the current legislation and the panel took turns presenting their assessment and impact on Americans.
Greg Powell brought into focus the critical impact this Healthcare legislation will have on the economy as a whole and small businesses. Here are the main points that Greg made: Continue reading »