About a year ago, Kevin Graham, an advisor with Princeton, N.J.-based Princeton Retirement Planning, teamed up with Jose Selaya, a CPA in Elizabeth, N.J. Selaya had been Graham’s personal accountant for over 20 years, and one day Graham approached Selaya with the idea. Graham would provide financial planning services to Selaya’s accounting clients who needed it, while Selaya would provide a source of referrals to Graham’s practice. In November 2010, Selaya became licensed with Cambridge Investment Research, Graham’s broker/dealer. Since then, he’s added about a dozen new clients as a direct result. In honor of our teams package hot off the press in April, I spoke with Graham about the ins and outs of his partnership with a CPA. If you’re thinking about teaming up, especially with a CPA, there are some important lessons here.
Registered Rep.: Besides a revenue-sharing agreement, what do both of you get out of the partnership?
Kevin Graham: From my side of it, it was certainly another source of referrals. From his side, it was something where I could bring a lot more experience. Prior to teaming up, he was licensed to sell securities with another broker/dealer. Primarily what they were doing was old-school retail mutual fund stuff, not getting into, especially with higher end clients, managed money and so on. So I was able to bring something different to the table. From his point of view, because he’s got maybe over 1,000 clients, it was a way to bring in an additional source of revenue for himself without having to put in 100 percent of the work for it...
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(Read more from Staff Writer, Diana Britton on her blog, Yield of Dreams.)