Hi Robert, nice article and idea to publish your "Letters to Tony". I am looking forward to the next ones. But how can you get along with 40 k gross per year?

"Explain investment topics in simple, no-nonsense language."
Yes, that is what clients are looking for most.

"...investment returns will be low in the decade ahead. As a consequence, investors will shift to less-expensive forms of financial advice..."
I will try to go the opposite way, keeping returns and fees the same through separating Pure Beta with 50% stocks and REIT ETFs and Pure Alpha, resp., Alternative Beta with 50% of well-selected Liquid Alternatives with stock-like high but un-correlated returns and risks. But no bonds, Smart Beta or commodities.

Nicolas Rabener suggested this here also recently as a smart approach :
https://blogs.stage.cfainstitute.org/investor/2019/09/23/smart-beta-vs-…

During the last 2 years, I achieved similarly high returns with this approach both in the pure alpha/alt. beta and trad. beta allocation but with a much reduced worst drawdown of the whole portfolio of just -4% instead of -15% of the world equity index at the end of last year.

I think that is it, what clients want to see most, especially when the times become much rougher than used for the past decade. They hate changes and will probably reward advisors for preventing them, even with unconventional approaches like the pure alpha & beta approach or the leading Yale Model of David Swensen, if they are also explained well with easy words.