Are these planning clients, or should I just propose managing the assets? Okay, they're planning, but if I go too high on a planning fee, they might not hire me, and they've got a large IRA I could manage. Alright, I'm going for a planning fee, which should be about $2,000. This is a complex case, but that's a lot . . .

In an ordinary year, you have about 2,000 working hours available to get everything done. That's it. Ensuring that each of those hours is as profitable as possible is critical to growing and sustaining your business.

Advisors often associate the idea of fee compression with a reduction in their AUM fees. If you haven't changed your fee percentage in years, you may assume that this isn't a threat to your profitability. But the reality is that the potential for fee compression exists in many aspects of your business. It can manifest itself from the types of clients you work with, your time management habits, and whether or not you outsource or delegate certain tasks.