A loss of assets, a loss of clients and a loss of optimism have joined forces to prompt financial advisors to search for the "new, new thing" that will transform their practices, revive their books and restore their enjoyment for the business.

Some advisors are jumping on the multifamily-office bandwagon, while others are grasping at the financial carrot of a new firm in their quest for greener pastures.

Kathleen Pritchard detects the search for recovery in the faces of financial advisors she greets as she crisscrosses the country speaking for Legg Mason, and heading the firm's value-added marketing group. "Practices that were entirely focused on the investment side last year have been ravaged," she says. (In the interest of full disclosure, Legg Mason is a client of LederMark Communications.)

Financial advisors have been negatively affected-depleted assets, disappointed clients, and worst of all, the referral flow has dried up from the same clients who always gave previous referrals. There must be a better way, a silver bullet, or a Third Act.

Chances are, the answers can be found a lot closer to home. There's a lot of talk these days about how the multifamily-office model could be the answer. But bear in mind, it's not all that simple.

First, let's consider just what a family office does.

Life gets complicated when extended family members are connected to each other through a family business, inheritance, one or more multi-generational trusts, foundations or real estate holdings. The investment portfolio is just part of the mix.

The business of the family can take in financial, legal, tax, insurance, real estate and investment issues. And, the family office offers a way to manage them through a single point of contact. The administrative burden could include record keeping and bill paying for individual family members, administering trusts and coordinating with advisors on tax and estate planning matters.

The impartiality and relationship skills of a family office professional are invaluable. Such professionals may preside over family meetings, help prepare younger family members to assume their future roles and line up specialized training.

A smaller number of family offices are even called on as gatekeepers or fixers. They are the go-to people to screen access to family members or who respond when junior has a run-in with the law, or the yacht needs winter storage.

Family offices may keep a low profile but they have tremendous influence in family decision-making. Many of today's charitable givers are prompted either by a family's own values or by advisors who see charity as an essential part of estate and tax planning.

Some family offices manage a family's charitable giving, either individually or through a family foundation or donor-advised fund.

The advisors who have a comprehensive offering were able to bring more to the table when the markets moved against investors.

But, if you had more oars in the water with your clients, chances are you had more buoyancy when the markets ran aground. "The comprehensive wealth management model is simply a better model, combining investments with estate planning, lending, liability management, business solutions and even philanthropy into a comprehensive offering," Pritchard says. When the markets went awry, other things were working.

On the other side of that coin, Pritchard asks rhetorically: "If you were entirely focused on investments, and you went back to clients for a grade, what grade would they give you?"

But before you jump ship to a new firm so you can offer a broader array of services, allow Pritchard to remind you of the real secret: All the individual services that comprise a comprehensive offering are already available to advisors at most major investment firms. These firms, for the most part, have the specialists, the resources and the compensation structure in place to support an advisor who wants to move upstream. "The fact is that mining your existing book for the business opportunities you have been overlooking is a better answer," she says.

Legg Mason, for one, has an offering called the Advisor Partnership Program, which features a wide range of workshops and seminars that advisors can access through Legg Mason's wholesaling force. One of the practice management modules is Leveraging the Best Practices of the Family Office.

"In developing Leveraging Best Practices of the Family Office, we studied the family office model pretty extensively," Pritchard says. Family offices are established to meet the particular family's needs that are created by wealth. Family offices may oversee real estate holdings, pay the bills and clamp down on the children's spending.