As your firm grows and evolves, you’ll surely face different hurdles. Sometimes, the challenge is centered on your bandwidth or your ability to deliver on your service model. At other times, it’s a desire to share expenses and have a colleague with whom you can collaborate. In these situations, hiring an advisor may seem like the most logical solution. You may find, however, that it gives rise to a number of questions.

If you've ever remodeled your home, you've no doubt experienced the joy and the pain of the construction process. It might begin with a small job, one that you can tackle yourself. But as the projects become more complex and more numerous, you may decide to call in extra help, either because you don't have the expertise for a particular task or because completing the work yourself isn't the best use of your time. The same goes for remodeling your business. Faced with growing responsibilities, when is the right time to start delegating in your financial services firm?

For quite some time, you've probably heard about the changes that will take place in the workforce when the baby boomers retire. Guess what? Whether you're ready or not, the future is now. According to Dr. Bob Nelson of Recognition Professionals International, an association of human resources professionals, baby boomers (ages 47–66) represent 38 percent of today's workforce, while Generation Xers (ages 27–46) and millennials (ages 18–26) combined represent 57 percent.

It is commonly assumed that creativity has little value outside traditionally creative fields like architecture, advertising, and entertainment. But organizations in all fields—including financial services—can benefit from tapping into the creative capacity of their entire employee base. By leveraging everyone within your firm, you can uncover a wider variety of ways to improve it. Sometimes these changes are profound. Often, however, they are simple 1-percent improvements that, when combined, can make a big difference over time.

As a financial advisor and business owner, most likely you've periodically reviewed your business planning process. This process presents an opportunity for you to share your firm's strategy, policies, and practices with employees. But it's also the chance to set the expectation that performance evaluations will be based on contributions to the firm's goals.