JOSEPH ALFIE, CIM, Hollis Wealth® Division of Industrial Alliance Securities Inc. / Myriad Private W
JOSEPH ALFIE
Tony Robbins, American author, entrepreneur, philanthropist and life coach once said, “Success is buried on the other side of rejection.” As a teenaged cold caller, Joseph Alfie learned a thing or two about both. “When I look back I have to laugh, because the office where I worked looked just like the boiler room in the movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness.”
By the time he graduated from the prestigious John Molson School of Business in 2010, Joseph had completed the necessary courses to become an investment advisor. He would cold call businesses from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and residences from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., five days a week. He attributes this intense 12-hour/day schedule to building a large enough book of business that he could take on and mentor his own team of business development specialists. Within a few short years, Joseph received the 2017 distinguished young advisor award from the Knowledge Bureau and Manulife.
The financial landscape has evolved tremendously over the last 30 years. In the mid-1980s the mutual fund industry took off. At the same time, due to growing demand, stock brokers, banks, trust companies and insurance agents all started to offer savings products. By the mid 1990’s, online brokerages started gathering steam and companies like E*TRADE became popular.
Now, people can engage “robo-advisors” to make investment decisions for them. But, is a robo-advisor the best source of financial advice? Today’s investors have even more complex investment choices, investment channels, and access to information. Holistic retirement planning is crucial to a business catering to an affluent clientele. “For any wealth or retirement planning needs, my partners and I wanted to offer our clients, a headache free experience in which there was only one number to call or only one e-mail to send,” Joseph explains.
Professional services at Joseph’s firm, Myriad Private Wealth, with HollisWealth®, a division of Industrial Alliance Securities Inc., include:
• Retirement planning:
The firm helps clients grow their nest egg for a comfortable retirement through customized, and goal specific retirement planning.
• Estate/Insurance Planning*:
The laws in Quebec are different from the laws in the rest of Canada. If you live in Quebec or Ontario, the firm’s team of professionals, including notaries, accountants, actuaries, and lawyers, will recommend strategies that will help protect your income against unforeseeable life events.
• Tax Planning:
Joseph works closely with his clients to minimize the amount of tax they pay to the government by creating the most effective tax structures and identifying strategies to avoid claw back of Old Age Security, reduce T4 income at year end, income splitting with your spouse and kids, individual pension plans etc.
• Investment Planning: “I do not sell products,” Joseph says. “We offer fee-based advice”. The biggest benefit of engaging a fee-based advisor is that he must give advice that is in the client’s (not his own) best interest."
• Corporate strategies:
Business owners want to creditor-proof their assets – setting up a holding company tends to be the best solution for this problem. There is also an interesting tool in Canada called the Capital Dividend Account (CDA account). This nominal account allows business owners to flow money out of their corporations, tax free, to shareholders such as:
1 The untaxed portion of a triggered capital gain, and
2 A portion of life insurance proceeds (if the company is the beneficiary of the policy)
• Corporate Planning/Group Benefits for Business Owners:
To increase employee retention for their business owner clients, Joseph and his two partners, Marcello Naccarato and David Deckelbaum, created Myriad Group Consultants, to provide businesses with group benefits, independently and separately from their services with HollisWealth®, a division of Industrial Alliance Securities Inc.
Joseph prides himself on building strong relationships founded on trust and honesty. Clients appreciate this and often describe Joseph as a, “Trusted advisor who can be relied upon to provide customized advice that is tailored for their unique situation and needs.”
" Our raison d’être is investing our time to build/grow and preserve our clients’ wealth so they can dedicate their time managing and growing their businesses,”Joseph adds.Today, he is as focused and engaged as when he first got started as a teenaged cold caller. “This thirst for knowledge has led me to read everything I can get my hands on about finance, psychology and self-development,” Joseph says. “Unfortunately, our school system spends too little time on making sure students understand finance. My goal is to share the knowledge I’ve gathered in the financial world with the younger generation."
As a final word, Joseph says, “Deciding to commit myself to long-term results rather than short-term fixes involved a lot of hard work, diligence and persistence. If I had any advice to give to young advisors it would be this: Make concise 1, 5, 10, and 20-year goals, and then take those goals and multiply them by a factor of 10. Once that’s in place, be the first one in the office and the last one out. The work ethic you set at the beginning will create a strong foundation for the future. Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.’ Your beginnings represent the axe sharpening process. Once you’ve invested the time sharpening the axe, cutting down the tree is no longer difficult."
This information has been prepared by Suzen Fromstein. Opinions expressed in this article are those of Joseph Alfie, Investment Advisor only and do not necessarily reflect those of HollisWealth. HollisWealth® is a division of Industrial Alliance Securities Inc., a member of the Canadian Investor Protection Fund and the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada. *Insurance products are provided through Hollis Insurance.
Suzen Fromstein is the author of Suits and Ladders, Ten Proven Ways to Keep Your Job Safe - with a few jokes thrown in. Suits and Ladders was an Amazon Best Selling Book in the Career Guides Category
474 McGill, Suite 10
Montreal, Québec, H2Y 2H2
(514) 375 6172
info@myriadprivatewealth.com