Nerd's Eye View blog

Helping Clients Live Intentionally And Generously With Charitable Giving Events (That Also Drive Growth): #FASuccess Ep 461 With Zac Larson

October 28, 2025 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 461st episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Zac Larson. Zac is the co-founder of IntentGen Financial Partners, a hybrid advisory firm based in Naperville, Illinois, that oversees $550 million in assets under management for 895 client households.

What's unique about Zac, though, is how he has found success in part by placing charitable gifting at the center of his firm's identity, not only in exploring planning tactics that can help clients give more efficiently but also in seeking to work with employees and clients who want to "live generously".

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Zac refers to his clients as "engaged partners" who want to explore the purpose of their money and go beyond discussions of net worth to talk about their net impact, how Zac devotes time in client meetings to being curious about the people and places that are most important to his clients (which can help identify their priorities and eventual giving opportunities down the line), and how Zac's firm tracks and publishes the charitable donations it facilitates (raising its profile in its local community and attracting potential clients who might be interested in expanding their own giving).

We also talk about how Zac's firm emphasizes its five core values (live intentionally, find solutions, be real, grow purposefully, and live generously), applying them both internally when hiring and evaluating team members and when engaging with potential external partners, how Zac uses a ‘pod' structure to expand advisor capacity (supporting them with a "planning coordinator" (who serves as an extension of the advice function) and a "service coordinator" (who helps ensure follow-on action items get done), and how Zac's fee model of a flat planning fee plus separate AUM fee allows his firm to serve clients with variety of circumstances (as long as they want to be truly engaged partners with the firm).

And be certain to listen to the end, where Zac shares how his firm holds in-person events that bring together clients and community members with local non-profits to raise money for these groups and demonstrate his firm's generosity-centric approach (boosting client engagement and attracting like-minded prospects in the process), how Zac further boosts client loyalty through extra personal touches (for example, by holding a phone call instead of sending an email) that help him better understand what's going on in their lives, and how Zac has ultimately found success by trying to attract clients who want to work with him rather than chasing those who might not be fully sold on his firm's approach.

So, whether you're interested in learning about making charitable giving a core part of a firm's identity, using giving events as an opportunity to demonstrate a firm's culture to prospective clients, or creating a service model to work with clients with different levels of wealth, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Zac Larson.

The 17 Best Financial Advisor Conferences To Attend In 2026

October 27, 2025 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Conferences

The rise of the internet fundamentally changed how financial advisors learn and advance their craft. Short of waiting for an industry 'guru' to periodically publish a book every few years, the only ways to keep up with the latest strategies to grow your practice or better serve your clients were to read an industry trade magazine – and absorb whatever fit in a two-page article spread – or to go to a financial advisor conference. In this context, going to a conference wasn't just about earning CE… it was literally the primary way of Continuing your Education as a financial services professional.

But now, the internet serves up an endless variety of CE credits for barely 1/10th what most financial advisors would spend on a single conference… raising the question of what, exactly, the ROI is to pay $2,000 in registration fees, travel expenses, and multiple nights of hotel accommodations, just to see content you could have read online, heard on a podcast, or watched on YouTube.

Yet the reality is that taking time to travel to a conference isn't just about a particular session itself… it's about the topical immersion when you go to a "tax conference" or a "retirement conference" or a "marketing conference". Or connecting with other advisors in similar circumstances facing similar challenges, from whom you can learn. Or simply the experience of getting out of your office and enjoying an event where you get to tax-deduct the travel to a beautiful location to enjoy while you learn and connect with others.

Still, the fact that "the content is available online" means modern financial advisor conferences can't survive by simply having a reasonable lineup of speakers and content. Instead, similar to how financial advisors themselves are growing in the current environment, conferences are increasingly specializing, putting together a full agenda and experience to address a particular segment of advisors and the particular (knowledge or practice management) problems they face in their firms. Which increases the relevancy – and thus the ROI – of the conference for advisors who are a good fit.

As someone who has been speaking at 50–70 conferences a year for 20 years myself, I've seen the good and bad of our wide range of industry events, from the industry associations to the broker-dealers and insurance companies and RIA custodians, the rise of vendor conferences and media-driven events, private company events, and more. As a result, I am often asked for my own suggestions of what, really, are the industry's 'best' conferences to attend, and back in 2012, I started to craft my own annual list of 'best-in-class' top conferences for financial advisors.

Having updated our annual conference list every year since, I'm excited now to present my newest list of "Top Financial Advisor Conferences" for the upcoming 2026 year, from events on advisor technology (and a new one focusing specifically to AI!) to conferences on creating and marketing your personal brand, learning business development skills, or developing next-generation talent, to the top events for those who still use conferences to up their technical game in areas like tax planning, estate planning, and retirement planning. Plus a few events that are simply great, well-rounded experiences for those who want to enjoy the conference, the destination, the sessions they attend, and their fellow attendees.

In addition, we've also updated our popular "Master Conference List" for all financial advisor conferences we could find for 2026, both for advisors looking for a wider range of events to attend (if you want to delve deeper into a particular topical area) and for vendors looking for more conferences to exhibit at! (And as more 2026 conferences are announced in the coming months, we'll continue to update the Master Conference List well into the coming year!).

So I hope you'll find this year's 2026 top conferences list (and our updated Master Conference List) to be helpful as a guide in planning your own conference budget and schedule for next year, and be certain to take advantage of the special discount codes that several conferences have offered to all of you as Nerd's Eye View readers!

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (October 25–26)

October 24, 2025 02:00 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that with a December 3 deadline for large RIAs to comply with new amendments to Regulation S-P related to client data protection and incident responses (as well as a June 3 deadline for other firms), some firms are working with their third-party tech vendors to change language in their contracts to ensure timely notification of data breaches, allowing the firms to fulfill their responsibilities to their clients. Which (alongside the reaction to this week's Amazon Web Services [AWS] outage, which hindered the performance of several cloud-based software tools) could provide an impetus for firms to review their incident response and business continuity plans to ensure that internal and external lines of communication remain open and client data remains available and secure in a variety of contingencies.

Also in industry news this week:

How this week's AWS outage could lead some firms to assess their reliance on a particular cloud provider (including their exposure from third-party software tools)
A recent survey found that 90% of Americans plan to claim Social Security benefits before age 70 (when they would receive their maximum benefit), creating an opportunity for advisor-client conversations that discuss the full range of considerations that inform this decision, from evaluating the various risks involved (e.g., mortality and longevity risk) to discussing the client's personal preferences (e.g., whether to front-load their retirement spending)

From there, we have several articles on investment and tax planning:

An analysis of the upsides and downsides of different tools (including Section 351 ETFs, exchange funds, and 'side portfolios) that can be used to diversify a client's portfolio with large embedded capital gains while deferring taxation
A quantitative evaluation of whether to sell highly appreciated (but underperforming) assets and how the availability of a basis-step up affects this analysis
Tax strategies that can help investors to get comfortable with unwinding investments with large capital gains, from establishing a "capital gains budget" for the amount of capital gains to be triggered each year to engaging in a "donate-and-replace" strategy that leverages the tax preferences of contributing appreciated securities for a tax deduction

We also have a number of articles on practice management:

Four unconventional KPIs that can measure a firm's productivity, including revenue per hour worked and an impact score to measure the value of different client touchpoints
How firms and employees alike can get the most out of annual performance evaluations, from the value of tying employee objectives to firm goals to the benefits of getting upward feedback
How investments in training, including hard-dollar commitments and the creation of formal development plans, can help firms boost employee retention and ensure a strong pipeline of next-generation talent

We wrap up with three final articles, all about workplace flexibility:

While flexible work arrangements (both in terms of location and work hours) appear to have staying power (and can boost employee satisfaction), taking a consistent approach to implementing these programs and taking steps ensure team cohesion can help firms maximize their benefits while minimizing potential downsides
Why maximum work schedule flexibility can sometimes lead to burnout for busy professionals and how a more structured approach (that still allows room to balance priorities inside and outside the workplace) could lead to greater satisfaction
How declaring "meeting bankruptcy" to evaluate which meetings are truly needed (and which might be shifted to an asynchronous approach) could create greater time savings for a firm (and perhaps allow employees to shorten their workweeks)

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Minimize The Data-Gathering Slog: Using “WOOP” Framework To Get Clients To Act

October 22, 2025 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Client Trust & Communication

For many financial advisors, one of the most frustrating bottlenecks in the planning process is the data-gathering phase, where client procrastination frequently stalls progress before it even begins. Onboarding requires effort from clients themselves: locating documents, completing forms, and granting account access. This work is often tedious, emotionally charged, and unglamorous, which can cause even highly motivated clients to get stuck. However, these delays don't necessarily reflect a lack of interest or commitment; clients can deeply value financial planning and still struggle to act on it.

The core challenge stems from what behavioral psychologists call the "value-action gap": the disconnect between what people say they want and what they actually do. Clients often defer onboarding tasks not because they doubt the advisor's value, but because the tasks feel overwhelming or uncomfortable. This behavior isn't unique to financial planning; people procrastinate things they care about all the time, from exercise to decluttering. At the heart of this struggle is a concept called "momentary distress tolerance" – the ability to endure short-term discomfort in service of a longer-term goal. While some advisors aim to work around this with synchronous "Get Organized" meetings or similar solutions, it's difficult to eliminate client ‘homework' entirely. And when motivation falters, discomfort often wins out, leading to stagnation.

Traditional motivation strategies – like emphasizing the benefits of completing onboarding – often fall flat because clients are already convinced of financial planning's value. In many cases, the barrier is more often an issue of bandwidth, not desire. Gabriele Oettingen's WOOP framework (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) offers a practical, research-backed strategy to bridge the gap between intention and action. WOOP encourages clients to articulate not only their goals but also the internal and external obstacles likely to impede them – and to create if/then plans for overcoming those obstacles. For example: "If I get bored looking for paperwork, then I'll set a 20-minute timer to stay focused."

The real power of WOOP lies in its simplicity and adaptability: it doesn't require worksheets or a rigid script – just a natural conversation about the client's goal, why they want it, what might stand in their way, and how to get around it. Advisors can guide clients through this mental exercise informally in meetings, particularly when assigning tedious or low-reward tasks like gathering account statements or completing estate planning documents. By helping clients visualize potential friction points and prepare responses in advance, advisors make it more likely that clients will follow through and avoid the limbo of incomplete onboarding. Over time, this practice builds more client self-awareness while reinforcing the advisor's role as a thinking partner – not just a taskmaster.

Ultimately, when clients are supported in identifying their own motivational roadblocks and equipped with strategies to overcome them, they're more likely to stay engaged, follow through, and experience the true benefits of financial planning. This allows advisors to spend less time chasing paperwork and more time delivering meaningful, high-impact advice to their new clients!

Establishing The Operational Systems It Takes To Truly Serve Ultra-HNW Clients Effectively: #FASuccess Ep 460 With Stephanie Hughes

October 21, 2025 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 460th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Stephanie Hughes. Stephanie is the CEO of Wiss Family Office, a multi-family office based in Florham Park, New Jersey, that oversees approximately $1 billion in assets under management for 220 client households.

What's unique about Stephanie, though, is how she has established the operational systems required to serve Ultra-High-Net-Worth (UHNW) clients efficiently and securely as her practice has grown beyond $1 billion in AUM in just seven years.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Stephanie and her firm are able to provide clients with a "one-stop shop" for their financial, legal, and tax needs (reducing the stress clients face when personally managing stakeholders across several different firms), how Stephanie finds that integration across the firm's different services (and active communication amongst team members across the business) is a key driver to the firms success (and a differentiator from firms focused on one primary service area), and how Stephanie prioritizes having strong internal controls in place given the volume of high-dollar client transactions her team processes that (if mishandled) could create significant tax burdens or expose them to fraud.

We also talk about how Stephanie encountered challenges hiring for positions in her multi-family office environment because of how her practice's processes differ from what candidates might have experienced at other wealth management firms, why Stephanie looks beyond a job candidate's skills to take a deep dive into their personality and motivations to ensure they'd be a good fit for her firm's culture, and how Stephanie finds that gaining experience in client service is valuable for aspiring advisors at her firm because it exposes them to the complex nature of UHNW clients' service needs and the importance of diligence when managing money movements and other transactions.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Stephanie shares how her clients can use a dedicated email address that goes to several members on their planning team (given that a question might require tax, wealth management, and/or legal expertise), why Stephanie's firm is creating an internal workflows tool to manage its robust approvals process (as well as another tool to monitor accounts and communications to detect signs of fraud, such as changes to their phone number and address), and how Stephanie finds that being linked to an accounting firm not only provides her practice with a steady flow of good-fit clients, but also fosters an immediate sense of trust given new clients' years of experience working with the firm on business and personal tax issues.

So, whether you're interested in learning about what it takes operationally to serve ultra-high-net-worth clients, the importance of internal controls when handling these clients' high-dollar transactions, and how proper staffing can ensure a high-quality experience for these clients, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Stephanie Hughes.

Charging For Estate Planning And Document Prep: Navigating Regulatory Hurdles And Real Pricing Benchmarks From Kitces Research

October 20, 2025 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Practice Management, Research

While estate planning has long been an integral part of the financial planning process, most advisors' roles have historically been limited to identifying the need for documents and referring clients to attorneys. New technologies, however, are transforming how advisors approach estate planning by allowing them to go deeper—both through enhanced visualization and modeling tools and, more recently, through document preparation platforms that enable clients to complete core legal documents within an advisor-supported environment. Kitces Research projects that by 2026, nearly half of advisors will employ technology to support their estate planning.

Between 2024 and 2026, 1 in 10 advisors are projected to incorporate tech to support estate planning for the first time. As advisors expand their involvement, many face questions about whether to charge for these services – and if so, how to structure those fees.

Some firms may choose not to charge, integrating estate planning into their existing service offerings as a value-add to increase client loyalty, strengthen multi-generational relationships, or differentiate themselves in the marketplace. For firms intent on charging, concerns typically center on avoiding the Unauthorized Practice of Law (UPL), justifying fees to regulators and clients, and uncertainty about how much to charge. Each of these concerns, however, is surmountable. Advisors can generally avoid UPL by refraining from drafting documents or giving dispositive legal recommendations, and instead focus on providing education, modeling, and facilitating client-directed document creation via third-party tools. These platforms often include built-in guardrails that prevent advisors from crossing into legal advice while still delivering meaningful client value to justify a fee.

Advisors who do choose to charge for estate planning typically follow one of four approaches: 1) bundling it into AUM fees; 2) bundling it into existing planning fees, 3) adding a dedicated estate planning tier to their fee schedules, or 4) charging a flat estate planning fee. The most appropriate pricing method depends on whether estate planning is positioned as a core service for all clients or as an optional offering for a select group. Broad integration often supports modest, across-the-board increases in AUM or planning fees, while limited use is better aligned with tiered or flat-fee models, in which increased fees apply only to clients using these services. For advisors uncertain about how much to charge, benchmarking data is offered for each of these pricing structures.

Crucially, advisors adding estate planning services must also communicate the change effectively to clients. When estate planning is introduced as a value-add within an existing service offering, messaging can be straightforward and positive, emphasizing the new offering. If estate planning is offered as part of a separate tier or standalone fee, the tone can be more invitational, putting the decision in the clients' hands and clarifying that they pay only if they choose to use the service. Finally, for advisors implementing estate planning across their entire client base and raising fees as a result, a value-centric approach works best, focusing on the additional benefits clients will receive.

Ultimately, the key point is that estate planning services – whether traditional scenario modeling or technology-supported document preparation – can provide meaningful value sufficient to justify a fee. By determining the right pricing structure and communicating changes clearly and empathetically, advisors can deliver added value, ensure they're fairly compensated for the additional work involved, and confidently provide these services within regulatory boundaries – helping clients build clarity, confidence, and peace of mind!

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (October 18–19)

October 17, 2025 02:00 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that a recent white paper and related survey from Cerulli Associates and Parametric suggests that affluent investors are increasingly seeking financial advisors who integrate tax planning into the portfolio management process in order to seek a higher net return (in line with their goals) rather than simply maximizing the absolute return on investments. Though notably, with only 47% of advisors surveyed indicating they provide these types of tax planning services to clients, there appears to be room for firms that are willing to go deep into personalized tax planning to stand out in the eyes of prospective clients who are seeking a more holistic and tax-informed approach to financial advice.

Also in industry news this week:

Charles Schwab is raising the client asset threshold to $2 million (from $500,000) for referrals to firms that participate in its Schwab Advisor Network referral program, signaling that it wants to keep more clients within its own wealth management service
Financial advisors and their clients are being targeted by AI-powered scams, according to NASAA, as AI tools available on black markets allow fraudsters to impersonate advisors and clients alike in an increasingly sophisticated manner

From there, we have several articles on retirement planning:

A newly proposed approach to retirement income planning suggests a combination of TIPS and a broad-market U.S. equity fund could allow retirees to cover required spending throughout an extended retirement while protecting against inflation and offering potential upside that could boost discretionary spending as well
An exploration of two options for how clients can sustain consistent inflation-adjusted portfolio withdrawals in a retirement that could last beyond 30 years
Strategies that can allow financial advisors to create a steady "paycheck" for clients once they begin generating income from their portfolio in retirement

We also have a number of articles on charitable giving:

Why donor-advised funds could be a particularly valuable tool for clients in 2025 amidst changes to charitable giving deductions under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that go into effect next year
How comparing the upsides and downsides of custodian-based donor-advised funds with those held with community foundations can allow advisors to help their clients achieve the right balance of personalization and cost to meet their needs
How an understanding of "proportion dominance" can help clients overcome hesitance to make contributions where their relative impact might be small, but their absolute impact will be large

We wrap up with three final articles, all about expertise:

While it can be frustrating when a reader can't recall all of the facts from a book they read in the past, it's likely that they have already reaped significant benefits from this effort
Why the best "deep dives" into a particular subject often take a multi-faceted approach (from books to interviews) and seek a variety of perspectives
A research-backed process for developing expertise, starting with an understanding of the conceptual basis for the topic to a willingness to seek feedback over time (and why this process needs to be challenging)

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Visual Sketches As Conversation Starters To Help Clients Make Better Financial Decisions: Kitces & Carl Ep 175

October 16, 2025 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

One of the core challenges of financial planning is that it requires both in-depth technical knowledge and the ability to connect those technical skills to a client’s personal, long-term goals. There are many tools to assist with the technical side, but far fewer to support the personal side – which often represents the deeper motivation behind a client’s decisions and goals, and the greatest opportunity for advisors to do meaningful work for the client. Yet it takes considerable skill and care to begin these conversations in a productive way.

In this 175th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards discuss how Carl’s upcoming book, "Your Money: Reimagining Wealth In 101 Simple Sketches", can serve as a powerful propellant for conversations about what money really means to clients. In this episode, Carl shares several of his illustrations, including the following:

"Real Financial Planning": a Venn diagram of "Your Money" and "Your Life", with the overlap labeled "real financial planning". Financial advisors often help clients navigate money questions through the lens of life questions. Because money and life aren’t either/or issues – they are constantly in conversation with each other, from decisions around careers to decisions about spending. The challenge – and opportunity – for advisors is learning how to navigate both conversations at once.

"Money Isn’t Just Math": contrasting advice from an algorithm (a straight line) with real life (a scrawled mess). While the math behind what a client should do may be (relatively) straightforward, the reality is often more complex. For example, retirement planning doesn’t just mean running the numbers; it also involves navigating complex family situations, evaluating long-term priorities, and balancing the tension between enjoying wealth and preserving it for heirs.

"Range Of Outcomes": showing "Now" as a singular point and "The Future" as many diverging paths. While advisors plan for various contingencies, it’s impossible to predict what will happen between now and the future. Unexpected market changes or life events can alter priorities and plans. One of the core values of good financial advice is that, when change happens, the advisor has helped clients prepare for it – and can help them adapt.

Ultimately, the sketches from Your Money can create an open space for reflection, vulnerability, and connection between clients and their advisors. Used thoughtfully, they can serve as powerful visual aids, gentle encouragement, or simple conversation starters. Most importantly, they invite conversations not just about money itself, but about how it shapes the emotional and practical corners of a client’s life – helping deepen the advisor-client relationship and bringing greater clarity to both money and purpose!

Alternative Investment Due Diligence For RIAs: A Framework For Compliantly Evaluating Private Funds

October 15, 2025 08:58 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Investments

For financial advisors bound by a fiduciary duty, acting in the client's best interest goes beyond avoiding conflicts of interest: it also requires a duty of care. This means prudently evaluating whether an investment is suitable and fully understanding what's being recommended. It follows that the more complex or opaque an investment is, the more due diligence work is required to have a "reasonable basis" to believe a recommendation is in the client's best interest. As alternative investments have become more accessible to retail investors – and more aggressively marketed to financial advisors – cutting through the marketing noise to evaluate each potential investment on its own merits has also become more difficult.

The SEC has made clear that fulfilling the duty of care requires a documented due diligence process. In a 2023 Staff Bulletin, the SEC outlined essential considerations for evaluating an investment's appropriateness, including its objectives, cost structure, risk profile, liquidity, tax implications, and portfolio role. However, there is no one cookie-cutter process; the level of scrutiny an advisor applies must scale with the investment's complexity. Publicly available research tools (e.g., Morningstar) may suffice for evaluating straightforward products like index ETFs. But as advisors move up the complexity curve to alternative investments like options strategies, hedge funds, or private equity, the due diligence bar rises dramatically. Advisors must go deeper, not only in understanding the mechanics of a product, but also in stress-testing assumptions, vetting management, and evaluating operational integrity.

Private fund investments, such as private equity and private credit, present unique challenges. Technology platforms like CAIS and iCapital have lowered barriers to entry, and fund managers are tapping new pools of capital, leaving advisors flooded with opportunities to access products that were traditionally exclusive to institutional and high-net-worth investors. However, there's a critical distinction between access and appropriateness. Unlike public markets, there's no index for private funds: each is actively managed, often opaque, and highly variable in performance. Picking the wrong fund could lock up client capital in a poorly managed or even fraudulent investment with limited recourse – up to and including total loss. Advisors must therefore assess not only whether private investments make sense at the category level (given their illiquidity and downside risk), but also whether individual managers have credible strategies, sound operations, and fee structures that don't unduly erode returns.

Effective due diligence on private funds therefore requires a multi-layered analysis. At the client level, advisors must evaluate risk tolerance, liquidity needs, and whether simpler public-market solutions could meet the same goals. At the manager level, advisors must evaluate investment strategy, operational controls, and costs. Additionally, going beyond a fund's marketing materials is necessary to verify its stated investment strategy and adherence to it, ensure third-party oversight exists for fund accounting and audits, and analyze its fees and costs (including its provisions around leverage, incentive hurdles, and 'catch-up' provisions). As illustrated in a 2014 SEC Risk Alert, useful due diligence practices include demanding position-level transparency, conducting background checks, and even vetoing investments based on operational red flags.

The key point is that most alternative assets were historically limited to institutional investors presumed to have the resources to evaluate complex and risky investments – and when advisors recommending alternatives, they assume that evaluative responsibility. Outsourcing parts of the due diligence process to third-party providers like outsourced CIOs can help, but the fiduciary responsibility remains with the advisor. Ultimately, due diligence – whether outsourced or internal – must be thorough enough to reasonably justify that a given investment is in the client's best interest, protecting clients from unsuitable or dangerous investments and reinforcing the advisor's role as a prudent steward through thoughtful, well-informed recommendations.

Working More Collaboratively With Clients’ CPAs For Better Tax Planning (And Cross-Referral) Outcomes: #FASuccess Ep 459 With Steven Jarvis

October 14, 2025 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 459th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Steven Jarvis. Steven is the CEO of Retirement Tax Services, a tax education and preparation firm that works with financial advisors nationwide.

What's unique about Steven, though, is how his experience as a CPA who has worked alongside many financial advisors has given him insight into how advisors can best "play nice" with CPAs to ensure the best outcomes for their mutual clients.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Steven finds that proactive communication (to avoid surprises when tax filing season arrives) is one of the keys for financial advisors to build trusting relationships with CPAs, why Steven thinks such communication is particularly important when clients have 1099-Rs (to help the CPA understand the background of a particular distribution, for example, whether it was a Roth conversion or a Qualified Charitable Distribution), and how Steven has seen advisors build stronger CPA relationships (and prevent tax return errors) by providing a year-end tax summary for each client (that they can send to their CPA directly) outlining the different tax forms that will be generated based on the advisor's work and the context behind them (including information on closed accounts that the client might not have considered).

We also talk about how Steven finds that making CPAs collaborative decision-makers on key tax planning strategies (alongside the financial advisor and their client) can help build the mutual professional-to-professional relationship, how Steven finds that advisors can further support CPAs by being mindful of their annual workflow (for example, by discussing a potential Roth conversion in the summer or early fall rather than during tax season or at the very end of the year, when the CPA is likely to be very busy), and how Steven notes that major tax legislation (such as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) not only impacts financial advisors but also CPAs themselves (as they have to adjust to new IRS guidance and changes to tax forms).

And be certain to listen to the end, where Steven shares how advisors can offer value for clients by reducing the amount of friction involved in executing tax planning strategies, how Steven faces many of the same challenges as financial advisors in running his own business (including matching hiring needs with expected future workloads), and how Steven finds that proactive communication and mutual respect can ultimately lead to more accurate tax returns for clients and to opening the door for cross-referrals from CPAs.

So, whether you're interested in learning about how to "play nice" with clients' CPAs, developing mutually beneficial relationships with CPAs that lead to cross-referrals, or how financial advisors can help their clients avoid common tax pitfalls come tax time, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Steven Jarvis.