Brought to you by the PridePlanners Knowledge Circle: The media landscape has been transformed by the explosion of finfluencers, digital noise, and always-on content. So how do real financial planners cut through the clutter and become the real voices journalists trust most? In this session, you’ll learn how to demonstrate credibility, deliver value to reporters, and turn media placements into powerful third-party validation for your brand and standing as a trusted, qualified financial planning professional. With fresh insights from FPA MediaSource query trends, you’ll walk away with practical strategies to build reporter relationships and show journalists—and the public—why your expertise matters.

Competency Level: Foundational 
FPA Competency: Critical Thinking, Interpersonal Impact
CFP Board Topic: Practice Management
CFP Board CE Credit Hours: 0

Brought to you by the Women & Finance Knowledge Circle, join Gretchen Halpin, Co-Founder of Beyond AUM, for an interactive discussion on what it really takes to grow an advisory firm in today's evolving landscape. As traditional marketing gives way to AI-driven search, changing client expectations, and increasing competition, sustainable growth requires more than generating new leads—it demands alignment across your marketing, operations, client experience, and team.

Together, we'll explore the many paths to growth, from organic marketing and referrals to new markets, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships. More importantly, we'll discuss how to build the internal systems, culture, and client experience that allow your firm to grow without compromising the relationships that made it successful in the first place. Be prepared to participate, share ideas, and learn from your peers.

What You'll Learn:

• How advisory firms are creating new business through organic, inorganic, and relationship-driven growth strategies
• The evolving role of content, SEO, and AI in helping the right prospects find—and trust—your firm
• Practical ways to expand into new markets while maintaining a consistent client experience
• How to balance growth with operational capacity so scaling strengthens, rather than strains, your business
• Strategies for creating a culture where your team understands, embraces, and contributes to your firm's growth

Whether your firm is looking to accelerate growth, enter new markets, or simply build a more scalable foundation for the future, this session will provide practical ideas and engaging discussion to help you grow with greater clarity, confidence, and intention.

Competency Level: Foundational
FPA Competency: Critical Thinking
CFP Board Topic: N/A
CFP Board CE Credit Hours: 0

Unlock the hidden potential of centers of influence to build powerful referral relationships that consistently introduce more of your ideal-fit clients. Many advisors understand the value of COIs, but far fewer have a repeatable strategy for identifying, engaging, and activating them. The most successful advisors don't simply network—they build intentional partnerships that create mutual value and drive long-term growth.

Competency Level: Intermediate
FPA Competency: Critical Thinking
CFP Board Topic: General Principles of Financial Planning
CFP Board CE Credit Hours:

Advisors will learn:

• How elite advisors identify and activate the right COIs
• The partnership model that produces consistent introductions
• How to turn COI relationships into long-term growth engines

Retirement decisions often hinge on knowledge consumers do not realize they lack. In this session, Jamie Hopkins, co-creator of the Retirement Income Literacy Study, interviews Eric Ludwig about findings from multiple waves of consumer research and a companion study of financial advisors. They explore persistent retirement-income knowledge gaps, the disconnect between confidence and actual understanding, the impact of working with an advisor on retirement outcomes, and links between professional designations and advisor literacy. The conversation concludes with practical strategies for improving client education, identifying misunderstandings, and communicating expertise clearly without overwhelming clients while helping advisors build trust through informed conversations.

Competency Level: Intermediate
FPA Competency: Critical Thinking
CFP Board Topic: Retirement Savings & Income Planning
CFP Board CE Credit Hours: TBD

• Identify at least three major areas in which older Americans demonstrate low retirement-income literacy.
• Distinguish demonstrated retirement-income knowledge from self-assessed knowledge and explain why the difference matters in client conversations.
• Apply findings from the consumer and advisor studies to improve client education and evaluate professional-development priorities.

You know the feeling. A prospect seems genuinely interested, books the meeting, nods along, and then goes quiet. Not a decline, just gone. Most growth-minded planners read this as a marketing problem, or write the person off as a bad fit, and respond by spending more to fill the funnel. It rarely is either one.

This session draws on hundreds of interviews Francesca has conducted with people who hired a financial professional, and on a pattern she has seen repeat across them: the seven distinct beliefs every prospect must form before committing, and a close look at the specific points where great prospects most often stall.

You'll leave able to spot where your own process is losing people, understand why "they booked the meeting" isn't enough, and walk away with one concrete change to make before your next first appointment.

When someone who needs planning goes quiet, that's a breakdown in your process, not just a lost client, and it's fixable without spending another dollar on marketing.

Competency Level: Intermediate
FPA Competency: Client Care & Communication, Critical Thinking, Professionalism
CFP Board Topic: Practice Management
CFP Board CE Credit Hours: 0

After this session, attendees will be able to:

• Identify seven beliefs prospects commonly form before deciding to hire a financial professional.
• Distinguish which of those beliefs marketing shapes and which the planner's own process shapes.
• Diagnose where in their current client acquisition process good-fit prospects most often disengage.
• Apply at least one technique to strengthen a prospect's belief in fit, credibility, or timing before they go quiet.

When client sentiment improves during a meeting, they’re significantly more likely to trust your recommendations, move forward, and deepen the relationship.

This webinar breaks down how top-performing, high-emotionally intelligent advisors consistently lift client sentiment (and how you can apply the same behaviors immediately).

You’ll walk away with both:
The data (the “what”) — what’s actually happening inside the best client conversations
The playbook (the “how”) — how to shift your own meetings to create stronger outcomes

And perhaps most importantly:
Small changes in how you structure conversations can meaningfully improve how clients feel, and what they decide to do next.

Competency Level: Intermediate
FPA Competency: Critical Thinking, Client Care & Communication
CFP Board Topic: Professional Conduct & Regulation
CFP Board CE Credit Hours: 1

By the end of the presentation, participants will be able to:

• Understand what actually drives client sentiment. Learn how life events, fears, and conversation dynamics shape how clients show up AND how they leave.
• See what top advisors do differently when meeting with clients. We’ll break down real examples across four key behaviors with live coaching: talk time, open-ended questions, empathy, and emotional check-ins.
• Apply simple shifts that lead to better outcomes, Walk away with practical ways to guide conversations toward trust, clarity, and forward momentum.

Larry Pon wants to continue the tax conversation with you! Have questions? Larry has answers! Join us for a LIVE Q&A session where Larry answers your tax-related questions and provides up-to-date insight on laws and regulations. 

In September, Larry will be joined by Matt Hougan and they will be discussing Cryptocurrency ETFs.

If you have questions ahead of time, you can send them to [email protected]. 

Competency Level: Advanced
FPA Competency: Critical Thinking, Leadership
CFP Board Topic: Tax Planning
CFP Board CE Credit Hours: 0

Winning a client isn’t the finish line—it’s the starting point of long-term growth. The firms that grow consistently aren’t just good at converting; they’re intentional about what happens after. This session focuses on how to reinforce value post-conversion, deepen client relationships, and create the kind of experience that naturally leads to referrals. We’ll explore how consistent communication, proactive engagement, and thoughtful touchpoints turn satisfied clients into loyal advocates. Because retention isn’t passive—and referrals aren’t accidental. They’re the result of a structured, relationship-driven approach that compounds over time.

 What you’ll learn:

• How to reinforce your value after a client says yes
• What drives long-term loyalty in today’s client relationships
• How to create natural, low-friction referral moments
• Where most firms underinvest post-conversion—and how to fix it

Competency Level: Foundational
FPA Competency: Interpersonal Impact
CFP Board Topic: Practice Management
CFP Board CE Credit Hours: 0

Learn a practical, proven enrollment framework for transforming sales and referrals from occasional wins into a repeatable growth engine. Most advisors know growth matters. Fewer know how to create it consistently. The strongest advisors don't rely on chance, charisma, or market conditions. They rely on intentional conversations, proven systems, and repeatable behaviors that turn trust into action.

Competency Level: Foundational
FPA Competency: Critical Thinking, Client Care & Communication
CFP Board Topic: Professional Conduct & Regulation
CFP Board CE Credit Hours:

By the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:

• Frame a discovery meeting
• convert first meetings into second meetings
• and how to generate more consistent referrals

Brought to you by the Investment Planning Knowledge Circle: Every adviser has met the client with one stock, a very low cost basis, and a substantial gain they do not want to realize carelessly. This session starts with client priorities: liquidity, retained exposure, cost, risk, and tax management. It maps those priorities to practical solutions in seven families, including staged selling, hedging, and giving. Before the technical work, though, we ground the discussion in the extremes: what happens if the client sells today, and what happens if they just keep holding?

Competency Level: Intermediate
FPA Competency: Critical Thinking
CFP Board Topic: Investment Planning, Tax Planning
CFP Board CE Credit Hours:

• Rank a client's priorities across liquidity, retained exposure, cost, risk, and tax management, and identify where those priorities conflict.
• Quantify the two extreme outcomes, selling today and continuing to hold, and use them as the baseline against which every other solution is measured.
• Map a given set of client priorities to the family of solutions.