UlTImATE SUccESS GUIdEwhether I’d had client complaints, whether I’d ever been sued by a cli-
ent, and whether regulators had audited, fined or sanctioned me. If any-
thing undesirable had been found in my background, I would have been
barred from membership. And the NEA takes it a step further by look-
ing into an adviser’s personal life. If an adviser has any DUIs or judg-
ments, liens, bankruptcies or the like, then he can’t be a member of the
NEA. The association does spot checks throughout the year and a full-
blown background check annually. If an adviser is sued, or if anything
else changes, membership is denied. Here in the greater Louisville area,
there are more than 1,000 financial professionals, including bankers and
insurance agents. Over the years, the NEA has tightened standards, and
each time we have lost members. At the time of this writing, I am one of
the members. Membership in the NEA is taken very seriously, and we’re
all proud to belong to that organization.
(4) hoW hAve YoU PeRFoRMeD oveR
the lAst 10 YeARs?I’ve been in the industry since 1997, but I’ve also been a student of the
markets, and it is very important to find out how an adviser has per-
formed over the last 10 years.
It is common for me to meet people whose
investments haven’t gone anywhere for
eight, nine, even a dozen years. Almost
every day, people tell me they’ve watched
an investment go up and down for a de-
cade without earning anything. If it takes
you 5, 10, or 15 years to recover from a
bear market, you have never really recov-
ered, because you have wasted all that
time making your money back when you
could have been building upon it from the
start. You are that many years older and
closer to retirement, if you’re not already in it, and inflation has rendered
your money unable to purchase what it would have bought when the
bear market began.
In 2008, a lot of investors lost money. When they called their advisers,
they heard this line: “Everybody’s losing money. Nobody saw this com-
When the stock market
is growing, it’s very
easy for an adviser
to make his clients’
money; but making
money even when the
stock market is going
down is what separates
the professionals from
the amateurs.