The independence is the product

Deloitte recommends AWS. Accenture recommends Microsoft. Both have a platform to sell, and over time the recommendation tends to follow the platform. That is not a scandal. It is structure. When a firm carries reseller margin, a partner quota, or a back-end product, the advice bends toward what the firm needs to move.

We have none of that. No reseller margin, no partner quota, no platform waiting in the wings. That independence is not a tagline. It is the product. Our recommendation is the one you would make for yourself, if you had the time, the team, and the senior judgment to make it. It is the single reason a recommendation from us reads differently from one shaped by what the firm needs to sell.

The test is simple, and you can run it on any advisor, including us. Ask what they sell on the back end. Then ask whether the recommendation in front of you would change if that product did not exist. If the answer is yes, you are not buying advice. You are buying distribution.

One specific move this month: list every platform decision you have made in the last year, and next to each, name who benefited from the recommendation. If the name is consistently a vendor or the firm that advised you, the independence was never yours.

Want a read that has nothing to sell you on the back end? The Readiness Scorecard scores where you stand in ten questions, no platform attached. Take the Scorecard