2025 has had a tumultuous start for most advisory firms, as tariffs-driven market volatility has increased client anxiety and the amount of required hand-holding, forcing advisory firms to manage their own expenses a bit more closely in the face of greater revenue uncertainty. In the meantime, the buzz around AI continues to increase as well, less now about whether the tools will replace financial advisors (they don’t), and more about how advisory firms can better leverage the technology to be more efficient in serving clients. Still, though, the reality is that the financial advice business is first and foremost a service business – humans in advice relationships with other humans – which means that while technology may help, it’s the firms that are best able to attract, develop, and retain talent who are best positioned to win.
With summer approaching, though, we are entering the season of respite – a time when most advisors take more time off (if only because clients are harder to pin down for summer meetings, especially as post-pandemic summer vacations away from home are back in full swing)… and find some time to read and catch up on a few good books!
For those who love to read, though (and especially for those who have limited time and will only get to read just one or two books over the summer), the perennial question is always, “So… what’s a good book worth reading this summer?”
As a voracious reader myself, I’ve always been eager to hear suggestions from others of great books to read, whether it’s something new that’s just come out or an ‘old classic’ that I should go back and read (again or for the first time!). And so, in the spirit of sharing, a few years ago I launched my list of “Recommended (Book) Reading for Financial Advisors”, and it was so well received that in 2013 I also started sharing my annual “Summer Reading List” for financial advisors of the best books I’d read in the preceding year. It quickly became a perennial favorite on Nerd’s Eye View, and so I’ve updated it every year, with new lists of books in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and a fresh round last year in 2024.
And now, I’m excited to share my latest Summer Reading list of top books for financial advisors in 2025, from the benefit of not over-diversifying your business strategies and instead focusing on the few things that create the biggest impact, to a pair of books on succession planning (one for founders, and the other for successors) and how to approach succession for mutual success; from how to better position your value as a financial planner by describing not the long-term intangible benefits of financial planning but the shorter-term more quantifiable benefits of particular ideas your clients might implement, to interesting profiles of financial services industry legends like Bill Gross and Ray Dalio; along with a system to better institutionalize your advisory firm culture (and the behaviors its truly meant to espouse), to a primer on what it’s really like to continue to manage and lead an advisory firm after private equity becomes an investor.
So as the summer season and summer vacations get underway, I hope that you find this suggested summer reading list of books for financial planners to be helpful… and please do share your own suggestions in the comments at the end of the article about the best books you’ve read over the past year as well!
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