Tips for Tough Times from Top CPA Planners
Successful CPA investment advisors plan the work and work the plan.

by Rick Telberg
At Large for the AICPA

The stock market is schizophrenic. Interest rates are jumping upward. The housing boom is threatening to go bust. Investors are dazed, confused and often angry.

So you'd think it'd be a hard time to work as a CPA financial planner? But you'd be wrong.

In fact, there is every indication that established CPA planners are having some of the best years of their careers. If it's true that when the going gets tough, the tough get going, then CPA financial planners appear to be going at warp speed these days.

I recently had the chance to talk to three CPA Planners: Ben Coulter, of Coulter Financial Advisors in Juno Beach, Fla.; Gordon Bernhardt of Bernhardt Wealth Management in McLean, Va.; and Jim Trippon of Jim Trippon & Co., in Houston, Texas. And, to a man, they are each exuberant about business today and their prospects for the future.

"Business is very good," says Trippon. "Wonderful," Bernhardt adds. "Great," Coulter agrees.

But why? Bernhardt thinks he has it figured out:

High-wealth individuals are migrating from commission-based brokers to fee-based and fee-only advisors.
"The downturn," he says, "has made people realize that they are not as smart as they thought they were." And so they are seeking professional guidance.
As research mounts, more investors are turning to better proven strategies, like the passive investing/index-fund/buy-and-hold disciplines that sophisticated planners provide.

To Coulter, the answer lies in the possibility that investors, once burned, have gotten smarter, are turning away from what he terms the "financial pornography" of 24-hours cable news and hyperventilated magazine headlines. "I discourage my clients from being involved day-to-day in investing," Coulter says. "That's what I'm here for."

Trippon, on the other hand, says his success -- not unlike those of his colleagues, by the way -- comes from targeting only the best, most affluent, most receptive clients, and shunning the low-margin distractions of small clients and traditional accounting work. Speaking of running a CPA practice and a brokerage business, Trippon warns: "It's difficult to do both well at the same time."

Maybe the real lesson from all three practitioners is that success is a result of personal passion. They have almost single-mindedly focused on planning their practices and practicing their plans. For them -- and their clients -- it's paying off.