Craig Wear

FintekNews is pleased to offer our weekly feature column “3 Questions”. Each week, we feature a thought leader within a unique sector of fintech and ask them to answer just 3 questions for our audience in their vernacular. This week, we’d like to introduce you to Craig Wear, CEO of Q3 Advisors, which offers Active401k™, a conduit for advisors to offer hands-on assistance with professional portfolio management.

NAME:

Craig Wear, CFP

TITLE:

CEO

COMPANY

: Q3 Advisors, LLC / Active401K

WEB ADDRESS:

Q3Adv.com

What does your firm do/offer within the fintech sector?

We’ve developed an investment advisory technology platform and merged it with the highly relational independent RIA business model. We provide a marketing system devoted to the non-discretionary 401k space to help advisers capture multiple times more relationships. While we do offer investment advice, our primary benefit to the adviser is our marketing system. An analogy we use often is taken from the world of exercise. Having more, and better gym equipment certainly helps one to achieve their goal of a fitter body, but the equipment is not the key. Think of how many pieces of exercise equipment turn in to door stops and clothes hangers. Being motivated to lose weight or get more fit is certainly an important element of the process of doing so, but the motivation is also not the only key.

Many people get temporarily motivated around January 1 of every year, only to fail within thirty days. The key to growing your RIA business is through the development or adaptation of a marketing system that puts together the simple and effective use of the elements of that system. Because we were founded by an independent adviser, we have the benefit of understanding how time consuming and challenging traditional approaches to prospect and client development can be. To solve this we’ve created a system to simply and effectively help any adviser grow their business. The adviser simply needs to provide the desire to grow and the willingness to implement the system.

What is your role within your firm and what do you do there on any given day?

I am Founder and CEO of the firm. Because I’ve spent more than three decades building an RIA business, my job is to develop useful tools that allow any adviser to seize the opportunities that exist. I’m the content person and responsible for casting a vision for where we are headed and how we get there through helping thousands of other advisers achieve more success. At the end of the day, all of us in the adviser world are charged with making sure that our clients get the very best advice about their futures. My typical day involves activities that serve our subscribing adviser’s clients best and make the job of the adviser a little better and less time consuming.

What area/s of fintech do you believe will grow the most in the coming 5 years?

While there certainly will be new devices developed in the coming years, I think it’s pretty easy to say that the biggest growth will occur in firms finding creative ways to integrate existing technology into our client’s lives. The RIA business model has been very traditional and highly relational for decades. Lately, we’ve seen disruption from extreme technology platforms that remove the relationships. My belief is that now we have to figure out ways to maximize the highly relational side of our business through the implementation of technologies that provide a great user experience. One example in the client acquisition process is the use of Skype for meetings. While away from the office for two months last summer, I was able to onboard five new clients that I’d never met before – all by a Skype call. Our own system allows for the beginning of a new relationship with as simple as a name and email address. We make the bar really low to begin a relationship, then take it from there to determine if it is relationship for us to develop over time.

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Craig Wear, CFP® is founder and principle of Q3 Advisors. LLC and Game Plan Advisors, Inc. He has 30 years experience in the industry; almost entirely through his own independent financial planning practice and Registered Investment Advisor firm. He earned the Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) designation in 1988 and started the RIA in 1994.