This week, Jack Sharry talks with Len Reinhart, President of Reinhart Consulting Group and a pioneer in fee-based advisory services. Len has spent decades shaping the evolution of wealth management, from his early days in large brokerage firms to helping build and scale some of the industry’s first fee-based advisory platforms.

Len and Jack take a walk down memory lane to discuss the origins of Unified Managed Household (UMH) and goal-based wealth planning, and how Len's prediction about UMH is finally taking root. From the early days of EF Hutton to the founding of Lockwood Advisors, Len shares the story of how the financial services industry transitioned from commission-driven transactions to the fee-based advisory model we know today and how he brought goal-based investing to everyday investors.

In this episode:

(00:00)- Intro
(02:06) - Len’s career journey and the origins of fee-based advisory
(06:08) - Early experience inside large brokerage firms
(07:40) - Transitioning from transactional business to fee-based models
(12:15) - The development of goal-based investing
(16:33) - Key ideas from “A Managed Account Odyssey”
(21:04) - Why change in financial services takes decades
(24:31) - The role of UMH and AI in the future of wealth management
(28:10) - Len's interests outside of work

Quotes

"The one thing that has bothered me over my years in this business is how slow change happens in the financial services industry. There's a lot of stuff going on with different types of investments, but the way to do business changes very slowly." ~ Len Reinhart

"One thing we realized about why change takes so long in this business is that the end advisor, you have to catch them at the right time. We didn't do it with the biggest producers. We did it with the wannabe producers, and we helped them become big producers." ~ Len Reinhart

"AI is coming. AI can take this technology and impact the advisor dramatically. And for an advisor to have the value add they need to retain a client, they've got to be doing UMH. If they don't, they're going to lose the client." ~ Len Reinhart

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How Unified Managed Household Was Born with Len Reinhart