About Bob Simpson

I started my business career in 1973 with Balfour Guthrie Canada Limited, a Vancouver-based import/export company, in their Toronto office. I can still remember filling out forms on my first day and one of them said “Expected Retirement Date: March 14, 2016”. I remember thinking “That’s crazy! I have no idea what 2016 will be like”. I was hired right out of school as an International Commodity Trader and my job was to find companies with products to sell with buyers. I bought Malabar Black Pepper from India and sold it to Canadian spice milling companies or 500 metric ton shipments of Palm Oil and sold them to Canadian food manufacturers or frozen blueberries from Ontario and sold them to a company in Sweden. My experience there shaped my business future: “Find companies with great products and help them with distribution.”

I was then hired by Firmenich of Canada Limited, one of the world’s most successful flavour and fragrance manufacturers, head officed in Geneva. My job was to manage relationships with many of Canada’s major food and cosmetic manufacturers. This was a great experience as I worked with Marketing, Research and Development and Purchasing departments and it helped me to broaden my personal and business networks and better develop my business development skills.

In 1981, I took my first step into the financial services industry by joining one of Canada's leading "stock brokerage" firms, Nesbitt Thomson Inc. as an "Account Executive". Over an eight-year career with Nesbitt, I built a $120 million book and was one of the top dozen advisors (ranked by production) in Canada. To put that size of book in perspective, the average advisor at that time managed less than $5 million in client assets.

I was able to achieve this through taking a very conservative approach with client assets. Interest rates were high and I focused mainly on fixed income investments, when most advisors were trading oil stocks. Management told me I was wasting my time and that I should focus more on equities but the money kept rolling in and I was able to run a very successful practice.

While at Nesbitt, I developed expertise in managing large institutional bond accounts and was recruited by a publicly traded insurance company who insured the trucking industry. I also took on the role of VP Business Development. Unfortunately during the recession in the early '90's, my company experienced significant underwriting losses and the company was eventually sold to Kingsway Financial. ​

In 1993, I accepted a position with Canada's largest independent financial services firm, Midland Walwyn. During a four-year period, I had seven different jobs:

• Fixed Income Specialist on the FAST Desk (Financial Advisor Support Team)

• Fixed Income Strategist

• Branch manager of a new branch that was designed to hire and develop new financial advisors (some who have close to $1billion in AUM)

• Manager Training and Development

• Branch Manager for the third largest branch in the system

• Branch Manager of the $million producer branch

• SVP National Sales Development

OK, why the hockey puck? While branch manager of the "rookie" branch, I ran into Ron Eliis, a former member of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Team Canada 1972. Ronnie was working at the Hockey Hall of Fame (HHOF) and I knew him from my fitness club. I asked if we could rent the HHOF and he arranged to not only rent the Hall but also to have HHOF member Johnny Bower and the guy (Paul Henderson) who scored the biggest goal in Canadian hockey history (Canada-Russia 1972 Summit Series). Ronnie ran shooting drills for the kids, while parents attended investment seminars and everybody got autographed pucks and their pictures taken with the Stanley Cup. Every advisor opened new accounts and increased their AUM and this one event kick started many careers.

In 1998, Midland Walwyn was acquired by Merrill Lynch and I was "designated for assignment". I had been warned that management in the financial services was a "dog-eat-dog" world and I decided to get back to working for myself. In February of that year, I opened Synchronicity Business Coaching Inc.

This was largely influenced by my decision to step away from a very successful "book" and pursue a management career. Being an advisor is tough and often advisors misunderstand their relationship with their businesses. Stress creeps in and it just isn't fun any more. Through my relationships with advisors across North America, I am told that I have played a significant role in reinvigorating many careers.

About a year and a half in, I decided I needed additional training and materials to achieve my goals. I reached out to Michael Gerber and EMyth Worldwide. The EMyth was one of the most successful books and they had developed a 21 module program, based on key principles, such as, "Work On Your Business, Not In your business". I became a Certified EMyth Consultant and delivered group and individual programs. Eventually, I was able to develop programs more suitable to my target audience - Financial Advisors and stepped away from this program.

One day on a business trip to the US, I was stuck on a runway for 90 minutes and read the book, Who Moved My Cheese, by Dr. Spencer Johnson. As soon as I returned home, I was on the phone to their head office in Salt Lake City and signed up to become trained as a "Cheese" presenter. Over the next two years, I presented to major companies, educational facilities and groups of individuals. I even got a call at midnight and was on a plane to a US Army camp in Missouri to deliver a talk to their troops.

I even had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Johnson, who is one of the most successful business writers of all-time. One thing I will always remember is "When you change what you think, you change what you do."

If you know me, you know I am an 80/20 guy. I believe that 20% of activity gets you 80% of results. But I am also a 90/50 guy. Yogi said that baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical. Three keys to a successful marketing strategy are "write your story", "believe your story" and "tell your story".

I have been a life long athlete (lacrosse, softball and hockey) and wanted to learn more about the mental side of performance so I signed up for Dr. Patrick Cohn's Mental Game Coaching Program. I learned how to help people to improve focus, concentration and most of all confidence. Confident athletes simply perform better and so do confident business people. I passed this course with flying colours and use many of the concepts to help business owners today.

I have been a featured contributor to Advisor Analyst over the past four or five years. Advisor Analyst is a wonderful information portal for financial advisors. I have been featured in both the Practice Growth and Investment sections of their website. If you are not on their mailing list, you should visit their site to see how you could benefit from their service.

About five years ago, I developed a relationship with YCharts. YCharts is a web-based research tool that simply makes advisors smarter. It combines fundamental and technical information to help advisors build and maintain profitable strategies. I have spent over 3,000 hours researching equity, ETFs and mutual funds and have developed many strategies that have helped the advisors that I have worked with to improve investment performance with clients.

In 2019, I decided to change my business model. Through my consulting practice, I met an interesting group of people (Western Wealth Capital) with an amazing business concept: to purchase working force housing, multi-family apartment buildings in high job growth markets in the USA (in states with no rent controls) and convert them into communities where families could live safely and comfortably. By making simple renovations, they can increase Net Operating Income of the properties and sell them at substantial profits to help investors to grow their wealth.

To be able to connect investors with Western Wealth opportunities, I wrote and passed the Exempt Market Dealer's exam to become a "Dealing Representative" and joined Portfolio Stewards, a division of Wealth Stewards, where I took on the role of Director, Private Debt and Equity". Go to the Wealth Stewards tab for more details.