Follow clifp's advice, and OP will be in a pickle with his business client.........
Why is this? Now to be sure my advice is mostly factious designed to get rid of an aggressive EJ broker. But I think the principal is sound. People that are promising to perform a service, almost always provide references. I went to see a carpenter about doing kitchen cabinets recently, he happily showed me the cabinets in his kitchen and all of his other wood work. If I was interested in pursuing in further he would have provided me with the phone number of other satisfied clients. For some reason this isn't common in the financial "service" industry.
A bit of background in 1999 when I retired I was 39, had 3+ million in lottery winnings (i.e. stock options). I was a reasonably knowledgeable about investing, with both credentials (MBA) and 17 years of investing experience. But FIRECalc, internet forums other than the Motley Fool, researchers like Wade Pfau etc and other source of info were all well in the future.
So like many new folks on the forum, I had anxiety about being able to manage my money by myself. I met with several potential adviser finally narrowing the list down to Fisher investments. After a few meeting and many hours I was leaning to signing up with them. I asked the two Fisher investment guys for proof that their strategy produced good returns.
"I'd like to see the annual returns all the money under your management, as well as a the monthly statement for a couple representative accounts that are similar in size and objectives to my portfolio with the names and account numbers removed."
"Ah well we can't do that for privacy reasons" they responded. "Ok well how about providing me with your personal portfolio statements", I asked.
They smiled and shook their heads. At which point, being pretty annoyed I said. "Look you guys want me to give you $30,000 a year to manage my money, and you aren't willing to make some extra effort to show my why I should hire you, do I really look that stupid."? Schwab periodically rolls out new investment advisers, and I happily attend the seminars they invite me to. I have meet with a few advisers, and pretty much always ask for the same thing, (generally with more tact), and it always ends the conversation. Which isn't a bad thing after all.
Still I felt vindicated when Warren Buffet required everything I asked for plus tax returns before hiring two investment adviser to run Berkshire's portfolio.
Now there are definitely easier ways of telling the EJ guy to get lost. The one advantage of my approach is the OP could look his business friend in the eye and tell him. "Thanks for the referral, but unfortunately he wasn't willing to do business with me." Which may lead to conversation about how good the EJ guy really is and lead his business client to figure out that we was paying a lot for very little. Which might lead to very happy customer when he ditches EJ.
