Yesterday Dan Arnold, president and CEO of Boston- and San Diego-based LPL, revealed the giant independent broker-dealer's three-pronged "awesome plan to win".

Dan Arnold LPL Financial CEO

Arnold took the stage at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center first thing yesterday morning to welcome FAs, fundsters, and other FA allies to LPL Focus 2017, giving the LPL-connected community a chance to get to know him better. Arnold took over LPL as CEO in January, succeeding Mark Casady. And while Casady came from the retirement plan and asset management worlds, Arnold is a career broker-dealer executive, a 23-year veteran of LPL and UVest (a bank- and credit union-focused B-D that LPL bought back in 2007).

Arnold pushed back against doom-and-gloom predictions about the future of financial advice and argued that LPL and its independent FAs have "the opportunity of a generation." His three-pronged plan for LPL "to be extraordinary," Arnold said, is to "continue to stand up for independence," to help its FAs' practices thrive, and to "match a good strategy with extraordinary execution." He called this strategy LPL's "awesome plan to win", borrowing a line from his 10-year-old daughter, Blanche, and her preparation for a national dance competition. (When Arnold helps out with such planning, he quipped, he becomes "Dance Dad Dan.")

Arnold revealed other tidbits yesterday, like the fact that in the late 1980s at the age of 22 he was one of the owners of an Atlanta bar, "Far Side", where he worked as a bartender.

Also yesterday at LPL Focus, before Arnold took the stage, the Silhouettes shadow play dancers of America's Got Talent fame received a standing ovation after wowing the Focus crowd with a performance (set to "God Bless America" and "I'm Proud to Be An American") in which they created shadow images of iconic pieces of American history like the Washington Monument, the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, and more.

After Arnold's speech, CBS Boston anchor Lisa Hughes interviewed entrepreneur and inventor Lori Greiner of Shark Tank fame. Greiner shared tidbits from her life and offered FAs advice, such as paying as much attention to the people behind a product or idea as to that product or idea itself.

"There really, truly is no bad partner worth getting involved with," Greiner said.

Today is another full LPL Focus conference day. This morning Andy Kalbaugh, managing director and divisional president of national sales & consulting at LPL, will bring to the stage a host of other LPL leaders, including: Matt Enyedi, executive vice president of national sales; Brad Hearn, EVP of IAS business consulting; Jeremy Holly, senior vice president of strategic business solutions; Kirby Horan, SVP of investor and investment solutions; Rob Pettman, EVP of product and platform management; and Dimple Shah, EVP of corporate strategy.

After that Seth Godin, known as "the world's foremost marketing provocateur," will speak to the crowd, and then FAs will divide up for a host of different breakout sessions. And at the end of the day MFWire will be hanging out at City Bar at the Westin Boston Waterfront right next door to the convention center. Stop on by! 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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