One of my favorite stories comes from Napoleon Hill’s legendary book, Think And Grow Rich.

The tale revolves around a man named R.U. Darby, who during the gold rush era, caught the gold fever and went west to dig.

He staked a claim and started digging. After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore. He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly, he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home in Williamsburg, Maryland, told his relatives and a few neighbors of the "strike." They pooled money to buy the needed machinery and had it shipped.

The first car of ore was mined and shipped to a smelter. The returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado! A few more cars of that ore would clear the debts. Then would come the big killing in profits.

Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Darby and Uncle! Then something happened! The vein of gold ore disappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow, and the pot of gold was no longer there. They drilled on, desperately trying to pick up the vein again—all to no avail.

Finally, they decided to QUIT.

They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars and took the train back home. The junk man called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised that the project had failed because the owners were not familiar with "fault lines." His calculations showed that the vein would be found just three feet from where the Darbys had stopped drilling! And that is exactly where it was found!

I think about this story all the time because I frequently see financial advisors stop three feet from gold.

• Actively participate in our private Telegram AF MasterMind chatroom for AFG Advisors.

• Our motto is "No one is as smart as all of us."

• Ask, Answer, Discuss.

• This is one of our most under-appreciated resources.

Clients

Our broker/dealer (IP) is 'agnostic' when it comes to investment philosophy and products. They leave it up to us to craft the best strategy for our clients (as long as it is compliant and suitable). IP doesn't have an 'agenda'. You want to do all-equity, A-share, mutual funds a la Nick Murray? Fine. Or a more traditional 80/20 split via fee-based? It's your choice.

However, as a Team (AdvisorFirst) we  do have a belief system and we  do think there are right ways and wrong ways of doing things. Though we will never prohibit you from writing particular products and methods of generating revenue, we will do our utmost to help you do the  best for your clients.

• IP doesn't charge extra fees to clients, such as ticket charges on B/D accounts.
• IP Advisory doesn't charge extra fees on fee-based accounts. Many firms charge an additional fee purely for profit (my previous B/D added an  extra 0.15% fee - you guessed, for pure profit!).
• IP also allows you to lower your Advisory fee down to 0.1%, if you need to be competitive.
• IP doesn't 'create' their own proprietary products and promote it to the salesforce. My former B/D did this twice (you can guess why).

Advisor Fees

• IP has given our Team an  exclusive discount of $750 on startup/transfer fees! That means the total start-up cost (not including exam/study fees) is  less than $200 (depending upon the states a rep adds).
• For those starting brand-new in the industry and getting licensed, IP will reimburse them 20% of your Kaplan study material after they've written their first securities sale. This discount is exclusive to our group.
• The monthly fees are $185. This  includes E&O! IP has one of the lowest cost Errors and Omissions (E&O) Insurance that covers life insurance, securities  and RIA business. These are  very low and reduces the barrier to entry. Compare that to Px's $470+ per month.
• If you want a FINRA branch, the annual cost is only $200.
• Visit our licensing fees calculator.
• Note: for life-only reps the E&O is $50 / month. No start-up costs. Yes, we can hire life-only reps, who may or may not continue to get securities licensed.

The Expense Ratio of the ICA A-share mutual fund (AIVSX) is 0.56%. What does that represent (not including the initial charge)?

1. Only the fund management costs.
2. Only the fee to the BD and Advisor.
3. Only the operating expenses.
4. All above but you need to add the 0.25% trail.
5. Total cost, including all of the above.

Answer = 5