(June 25, 2003) With some 7,000 members and special guests from more than 50 nations attending the 2003 Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT) annual meeting in Las Vegas, Advisor.ca wanted to get some Canadian perspective on the value of this conference. We tracked down top advisors Jim Rogers and Diane McCurdy to get their thoughts on everything from why they came to what they hope to take away:

Advisor.ca: Why are you here at MDRT? What do you hope to get out of it?

Jim Rogers: If you are in the financial advice business, you’re anxious and are forever adding to your education to make yourself more effective. How do you do that? Memberships in associations help. Advocis provides me with two main benefits: One is advocacy, as we get from the name of the association, and the other is practical content on how to be a better financial advisor. I come to the MDRT conference for complementary reasons — I still come for the motivation. I love hearing psychologists and physicians talk about non-financial issues.

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    Diane McCurdy: I come for the synergy I get from each of my international colleagues. I like that this meeting is not about money, money and money. It teaches me how to be a community leader, to give back and also the importance of family time. My staff tells me that when I come back, it’s like I’m shot out of a cannon. I have all this energy. There is so much to learn.

    Advisor.ca: What is the one thing you will take away from this meeting?

    JR: I come for the marketing and public relations ideas. I can still learn from people all over the world about letterhead and brochures and creative ways to reduce overhead and other business issues. There are always new ways to market. I know plenty of advisors who probably know more about financial planning than I do but they are not top performing advisors because they don’t know how to market effectively. To say marketing is unimportant in the advisor world is inaccurate. To me, MDRT provides value and should not be minimized.

    Advisor.ca: Is the MDRT a forward-thinking association?

    JR: The MDRT has to manage diverse programming needs. Inevitably, when you have to do that you cannot be leading edge. The membership is skewed younger so the programming is reflective of the audience. I know that they can’t offer people like me specific programming since I have been in the business for 30 years.

    Advisor.ca: Is MDRT too big to cater to everyone?

    JR: It’s very hard to manage because of the diversity of the people. The needs of people are so different. They have just opened a new office in Singapore to cater to the needs of those members. The Canadian environment is so different compared to the Southeast Asian market (More than 1,000 MDRT delegates came from Asia). They are not anywhere near our insurance landscape yet. So they have different learning requirements.

    DM: There is so much to learn you almost get oversaturated, but you can sift through it and be selective.

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    Filed by Sheila Avari, Advisor’s Edge, savari@rmpublishing.com.

    (06/25/03)