Steve Phillips is a Pareto Certified Practice Management Consultant at Pareto Systems and has spent over 25 years in the financial services industry as a speaker, trainer and educator working with advisors, product development firms and carriers. He has also trained and led successful wholesale consultant teams whose role it was to support and assist individual advisors, broker dealers and RIA's. As a speaker, team leader and passionate educator, Steve was an early adapter of the processes around practice management, business refinement and client acquisition working with Duncan MacPherson and Pareto Systems for seven years. The total "buy in" came as he saw firsthand the effects on the practices of successful advisors he was working with.

"After doing presentations for thousands of advisors over 15 years, it became increasingly clear that the path to sustainable growth for already successful advisors was not around product or marketing. Moreover, the idea of working with the 'already convinced' in a practice, and turning current clients into advocates who then became the best client acquisition initiative anywhere, was the absolute proof that these proven processes work year after year. Helping the advisors I worked with create professional contrast in their communities and seeing what a shift to a philosophy, planning strategy and process approach meant to creating enterprise value in a firm, not only changed the trajectory of the firms and advisors I worked with, it changed my own path and in fact my life."

Steve understands that the commoditization of the financial services industry is intense and mandates that the focus for the advisors he and Pareto serve is around best practices that perfect the client experience. The difference in the approach to the relationships he has with advisors is that the processes are not on trial. They are drawn from interactions with some of the best financial professionals in the business.