Executive Summary
Many advisors focus on attracting and serving high net worth individuals and families, and with only a limited number of such clients to go around, this can be a competitive space. The higher net worth that a family has, the more that an advisory firm has to stand out in order to gain them as clients. However, advisors who can speak directly to the concerns of this client niche can give themselves a unique – and differentiating – advantage to best serve this segment of the population!
In this 'hybrid' video-based article, Michael Kitces and John Bowen, CEO and founder of CEG Worldwide and CEG Insights (formerly Spectrem Group), dive into CEG's extensive data on what ultra-high net worth (UHNW) families are really worried about and how advisors can serve this group more effectively.
The first major concern is macroeconomic risk. Nearly 80% of UHNW families worry about inflation, market volatility, and geopolitical instability. While they recognize that no advisor can control these forces themselves, most families expect proactive strategies, clear communication, and coordinated access to top-tier specialists who can help them navigate economic uncertainty. Many families seek bespoke guidance at a high level of service on topics such as alternative investments, charitable planning, and estate planning. At the same time, expectations for investment returns have moderated, with many clients content with ‘just’ 6%-8% returns on investment if their portfolio comes with strong principal protection. For advisors, the new challenge lies in clearly aligning their investment philosophy with a client’s concerns: Perhaps by maintaining a consistent strategic allocation or by making tactical adjustments, but in either case showing an awareness of what’s going on in the world and an understanding of how to manage to the current reality.
The second concern for these families centers on security and legacy. Beyond market risk, UHNW families fear threats such as litigation, divorce, and cyberattacks. Multi-generational wealth transfer raises the additional challenge of "will my heirs squander it?": More than three-quarters of UHNW families worry about wasteful heirs and want advisors to engage their children and grandchildren early to prepare them for stewardship responsibilities. At times, this may even extend to creating governance structures (sometimes formalized as family constitutions) that define decision-making and preserve values. Cybersecurity has also emerged as a priority, with many willing to pay for specialized protection, which gives advisors who can connect clients with the right services the opportunity to provide peace of mind without necessarily being cybersecurity experts themselves.
The third concern is quality of life and significance. Many in this wealth bracket are older and acutely aware that without health, wealth is less meaningful. They want access to concierge health and longevity services, along with strategies to ensure that their wealth supports a purposeful, multi-generational legacy. Advisors in this space must think less like "family CFOs" and more like general managers, orchestrating vetted specialists across legal, tax, investment, insurance, philanthropy, and wellness. Importantly, these teams don’t need to be built in-house; clients simply want a coordinated, high-caliber network that works seamlessly on their behalf.
For advisors, moving into the UHNW segment is not a matter of scaling up existing mass-affluent practices or building out more and more in-house services. Instead, it requires fewer but deeper client relationships and robust external partnerships to connect clients with a vetted team of experts to meet their needs. Serving UHNW also demands a proactive, holistic approach that addresses not just financial needs, but also family dynamics, personal security, and quality of life.
Ultimately, the reward of serving UHNW clients is both financial and professional – commanding higher fees for delivering truly differentiated value in a space where 60% of successful entrepreneurs are open to changing advisors within the next two years. Advisors willing to embrace this shift can position themselves as indispensable partners in protecting fortunes, guiding families, and helping clients live lives of lasting significance!
Show Notes
- The Three Concerns Keeping $25M Families Up at Night – Download (PPT)
- The $25 Million-Plus Advisor Playbook: Strategies for Thriving in the Ultra-Wealthy Segment
Full Transcript
Michael: Welcome, John Bowen.
John: Well, thank you, Michael. It's always a pleasure to come hang out with you.
Michael: I appreciate you coming back to join us for... I guess this is now becoming a little bit of a periodic webinar series. You do these series of studies from CEG Insights with a particular focus on high-net-worth folks, what those clients want, what advisors have to be doing to serve them. As everyone knows, I love me some good data to delve into and better understand the landscape. And so, I'm excited today to get to talk a little bit about some of the latest research that you all have around working with, I guess, even high-net-worth clients, but we'll call them the ultra-high-net-worth clients, where the needs start to show up a little bit differently.
John: They do, Michael. We have a research company, a coaching training company. CEG Insights is our research company. And we study typically 14,000. I think this year we're going to do 18,000 wealthy people, so high-net-worth, ultra-high-net-worth. We're studying constantly. Matter of fact, before we turned on the recorder, I said that I literally just got a new update on the $25 million and above that we're going to be talking about. And what I'm excited about, you shared with me, I'll just put up, you wanted to share the three concerns for keeping $25 million families, to help them go to sleep at night. And as advisors, this is a market we can work on. We got to make a conscious decision, but it is a great market.
Michael: I guess just even saying the tone for folks. I know labels like high-net-worth, ultra-high-net-worth, kind of get thrown around with some fuzzy threshold. So, you just sort of highlighted on that image, $25 million-plus. So, that's the mental frame we should be coming in with to this discussion. That's the level of very high-net-worth, ultra-high-net-worth that we're talking about here.
John: Yeah. Below the family office. So, these studies, typically, we do them... Actually, it could be phone, mail, and internet. And this is a group that's hard to survey. People with $25 million or more, not counting personal residence, up to typically about 250, because after they get to 250, then they have a family office. And this is an area where one of the things I would encourage all your listeners is that it is a great market to work in. It's extremely profitable, but it's very competitive. So, even if you're not sure you want to be there, the insights that you're going to gain from this are going to turn... the future is faster than you think. It's happening a lot quicker. And whatever we were...as Michael and I were talking about, I'm a kind of a car guy, and I have a whole bunch of cars, but I have one that I love. My airport car is a 2010 BMW 12-cylinder,760. And I think, at the time, it was probably about $150,000. Today it's probably worth about $8,000.
Michael: That depreciation's brutal.
John: Yeah, and it's still a great car. That's why it's my airport car. But at the same time, all the advanced technology was unbelievable in 2010. Today, in the lowest entry-level cars, it's there. That's what happens here.
Michael: So, I think it's very interesting framing because we see this in our research as well. Most of us, as advisors, just in general, have a tendency to gravitate, I don't love the label, but upmarket over time. I get more experience, I get more established, I want to work with higher-dollar clients who often have more complexity and are willing to pay more. Our research has shown for a long time, this really is one of the most direct paths to increasing productivity. In fact, way more so than trying to implement all the cool fancy technology to make us incrementally more efficient. I love me some good technology improvements, but going from half-million-dollar clients to million-dollar clients who pay you 2X the fees, it's really hard to find technology that literally 2X is your productivity versus sitting down with clients that have higher dollars. And that scale continues to move all the way...
John: And they can be way over two times too, type of thing on the size and the complexity.
Michael: Yeah, the scale continues to move up, not quite indefinitely because as you work with larger clients that have more complexity, often they take more time, which means you actually need fewer clients that you're focusing in on. But if you just kind of boil down how much revenue am I generating and how many hours am I working with clients, you find pretty quickly, mass affluent clients effectively pay advisors $250 an hour. Multimillionaire clients will pay advisors $500 an hour, and ultra-high-net-worth clients will pay advisors $1,000 or more an hour because that's their level of complexity, that's the level of expertise that they're seeking. And when you can bring that well, it's a very significant boost to your productivity. The caveat... Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
John: No, and I was going to say, really at the very high level, we see advisors approaching $10,000 an hour in this space too, just so that I want a level set. The opportunity is huge. Now, there's a little bit of work to get to that level.
Michael: Litte bit. And I think that's part of what I do want to focus on here, right? The little bit of work that there are interesting changes to me that happen when you really start moving up the net worth scale. One of the things I found very early on in my career, there is this interesting phenomenon that, as I put it, you can only diligently save and invest your way so far. You can save hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you start young, you can save a million dollars. If you make a good income, you can save two or three million. If you have a good income, married to a good income, and you both save well, you might get to five to seven million. It's remarkably difficult to get north of $10 million, though, unless you are in some way, shape, or form attached to the value creation of a business. You were an executive, you were the employee, you were a founder, you inherited from one of those people. It's hard to get there until you get to business ownership and equity.
John: Michael, I'll give you a statistic, 89.5% got the way you're describing. So, there is a small set. You can pick your parents well. You can marry in, but it's not paycheck to paycheck. Even if you're a corporate executive, it's very seldom that they're able to do that.
Michael: And to me, the reason why it matters is, once you get to folks that have been attached to value creation from a business from equity, just the dynamics change, the complexity often spikes. It's not even just more money, more problems. It's more money, different problems. A different set of concerns and fears start to crop up kind of apropos to our discussion today. And so, I think part of the goal of the conversation to me is maybe just to help folks who are listening reorient if your experience is working with clients who have hundreds of thousands or a million or two, and a great client might have five to ten, and you're trying to figure out what does it look like over the next mountain, over the next horizon, if I want to move into the next level of client affluence? What's really on their minds? What are they worrying about? What do they care about? How does it show up differently than maybe the clients that I'm used to? For which I know you have all of this research with the 14,000-plus ultra-high-net-worth folks out there to go straight to the proverbial horse's mouth to understand. What are the concerns that start showing up when ultra-high-net-worth folks become decamillionaires or multi-decamillionaires?
Three Core Dimensions Of Ultra-Wealthy Client Concerns [08:40]
John: Well, let's break it into segments so that we can go in a little bit. So, what we find is there's three areas, Michael. There's a macroeconomics, what's going on politically, economically, and socially. And I think all of us would agree there's plenty going on, whatever your political belief and so on. Second is security and legacy. One of the things that we all do is, as we go up... yeah, I always think of it as we go up in the world. I've been blessed. Yeah, I'm fairly affluent. I would be one of these clients, type thing. And I like being there. I don't want to go down.
Michael: Yes. Wherever we are, it's part of human nature. You get accustomed to a certain standard of living. It does not feel good to go backward from that standard of living, even though you were lower than that at some point before you got to the point where you are.
John: Oh, there was a time in my early career, if I ever made $50,000 a year, that would be phenomenal, type thing. And the numbers change, and you'll see this. And for most of the people, it's more scoreboard, but they're very concerned with, and we'll go into more detail, but the wealth protection not going down. This is where really the heirs, the kids, particularly grandkids, there's a lot of concerns. And then lifestyle. All of a sudden, now, family governance, charity, really thinking long-term purpose, but also health issues. I'm going to turn 70 in a couple months. And all of a sudden, when I was a pilot in the Navy, I was immortal. Okay. Now I feel a little less tight. And so, particularly at this level, most people kind of love their lives, and they... So, they want an advisor and a team that's going to address all of these areas, Michael, and this is where we see it. And I think if we just kind of dive in one at a time, it could be really valuable for everybody.
Michael: Yeah. So, I am curious to dive into these a little bit further. I mean, I guess just one moment before we even go there. I am struck just as you put those up, right? Income tax savings, tax planning wasn't on there. My alternative investments that are so popular in that space right now weren't on there. And I guess that's not necessarily to say these aren't relevant services perhaps to offer or bring to the table, but this is not the proverbial what keeps you up at night. They're not waking up 2:00 in the morning wondering if my tax planning is good. They might wake up at 2:00 in the morning wondering, "Are my kids going to blow all the money that I spent a lifetime creating?"
John: So, what we're focused on those three, those are the big concerns. When you get to taxes... I live in California. There's plenty of taxes here. I love California, or I would leave. But the challenge is that... Yeah, I'm concerned with that, but that's a tool. So, as advisors, we have to have tools to address the concerns. The concern is I don't like going down. Okay. I write pretty large checks to the federal and state. I don't want to write any bigger than I have to. I want to pay my fair share and all that. But that's where... Don't mix those up. There's concerns, there's tools, resources. They want access to state-of-the-art experts that are going to help them address the concerns.
Macroeconomic Concerns And The Gap Of What Ultra-HNW Clients Want From Advisors [12:33]
Michael: Okay. So, then take me deeper into the concerns. I think the first thing you said here. So, macroeconomic.
John: I just put up the slide we prepared before I had the data last night. But this is the top worry that it's inflation, volatility, geopolitical. Some of us will know that we have a new president. And whether you're right, left, or in the center, I'm a libertarian, there's a lot going on that can cause worries here, even if you're fully supportive. And so, when we start thinking of top concerns, right now it's 79.4% the data from really a week ago is inflation, and then geopolitical is 77.3%. What we're seeing is that it's down slightly from 2024, which I found pretty interesting. And one of the things that's... We always cut everything by generations, and the least worried are the World War II people, the silent generation.
Michael: It turns out the younger you are, the more you're concerned about the long-term state of the world, is my takeaway from that chart.
John: Yeah. I wanted to put that in just because I thought that was really interesting. And what we have is there is these concerns. And because of that, and I want to bring up kind of the tools, the services, the experiences, there's a very large gap that we're seeing. We're seeing a lot of things that the wealthy people, ultra-wealthy, have a 60-point gap or more. Just two examples. We hear a lot of talk, Michael, on alternative investments. As you become wealthier, people want access to things that poor people don't have or just simply affluent. Now, you got to make a business decision on whether you should provide that as an advisor because at CEG, we're agnostic on investments, but there are good alternative investments, but there are some really bad ones out there. And there's a high correlation, the more you charge on something, the lower the returns are. I don't know how...
Michael: I read that in a book somewhere, yeah. So...
John: But let me give a statistic just real quick. On alternative investments, there's a gap between what they want and what they get, is 75.8%. Same with charity. They're very charitably inclined, but 75.3%. So, very few advisors are...
Michael: 75% is the difference between how many want and how many give. So, 90% want and 15% give sufficiently, and that's how you get a giant gap like that.
John: It's a huge, huge gap-type thing. And because they don't feel... They are perceiving from their advisors that they're being guided in these areas. And that's where the door opens on addressing concerns through services.
Michael: Because I was going to ask, just when you talk about macroeconomic factors, what am I supposed to be doing here? Is this a counseling empathy-style conversation, or it's I'm trying to get my clients comfortable with the fact that the world has risks and how to navigate them? Is this meant to be an investment problem? I'm supposed to be designing different kinds of portfolios to help them navigate some of these risks? What level of expectation is there about what I'm supposed to do? Because I can't actually control geopolitical risk or inflations, right?
John: I thought you had a lot of power, Mike.
Michael: But I can only do so much here. So, what realistically are they looking for? Do we think they're...?
John: Yeah. No. So, what they're telling us is they want help being proactive. How should I be investing to deal with this? And they want briefings, and they want to have some of these gaps closed by specialists. They don't believe any one person can have knowledge on all of this. But where this becomes really important, I'll take the extreme, whether you're extremely active or passive using broad on your investment philosophy, it should be consistent with how you're going to be advising them through this. So, if you have a passive side, you say, "Hey, we're going to be very strategic asset allocation, we're going to do some rebalancing as appropriate, type thing, and staying consistent." If you're active, you're going to be doing a tactical or dynamic asset allocation. They just want to understand what you're doing and why, and that you are aware of what's going on in the world.
Michael: So, as I read that, so there's maybe some aspect of, "I need more investment team, I need more investment nerds, I need to be prepared for portfolios where I can show I'm doing more to deal with these risks than 'just', well, we own a diversified asset-allocated portfolio. There comes a point, yes, but I'm worried that the dollar can implode and the financial system can explode. So, what are we doing about that?"
John: And what we're seeing is return expectations have reset. So, people have lower expectations. 28% expected, the ultra-wealthy, just 6% to 8% returns on their wealth on the portfolio, which, to me, that's way down. And this is where we've got an opportunity where we can say, "Okay. We need to do a good job of understanding the risks they want to take. We should be using the tools out there. One of the things, if that's their level set, you want to think through what would be the appropriate amount. And if anything, on the... There's a dichotomy, Michael, going on that 63% feel that they should have some speculative investments. 66% want to prioritize above everything, principal protection. They don't want to go down, as I was talking about. So, this is where advisors are needed. Many of the ultra-wealthy, you would assume that they understand wealth at a very high level and investments, and so on, that you would be wrong.
Security Of Legacy And 'Wasteful' Heirs [19:20]
Michael: So, does that feed, I guess, into the second concern that you'd highlighted that security starts to kick in, that there's some wealth level where, at least for a subset of clients, it is no longer about growing it, it's how many different ways can we make sure that it really, really won't go away? Because I don't want to go... I don't like that scenario to go down once it's up at a certain level.
John: Yeah, there's a lot of different ways. So, when you think of it, this is what we were talking about before, is core fears. There's asset protection, and it's not only the erosion from the markets, but it's also lawsuits. There's great concern about litigation. They're a higher profile in their communities, typically, also divorces, multi-generational. You brought this up, 77.5%. That's pretty high. Three out of four are concerned about their errors, wasted money. They use different terminology. So, I would just use wasteful. The solutions they're looking for, how do you blend these estate structures? And they want a little coaching. They want you to talk to their kids before they're 26, grandkids as well. The earlier, the better. And if you don't do that, you will lose for sure the ability to manage that. And the payoff is...
Michael: Wait, I just want to pause there for a moment because a lot of advisors talk about, I want to build relationships with clients' kids and the next generation anomaly because at some point, the parental generation is going to pass away, and I want to be there to continue to manage the assets that go down the family tree. But it sounds like what you're talking about is different. I'm not trying to do things for the kids because... I'm just trying to build a relationship for me to be there when they inherit money. Mom and Dad want me there because Mom and Dad are genuinely concerned that their kids are not going to be able to handle the money that they're inheriting. And it's on my shoulders, at least in part, to help them with some version of the parental wealth load of how do we do this properly so we don't "screw up" our kids?
John: Well, we don't have kids, my wife Jeannie and I. And we have a fair amount of wealth. So, I'm giving a bunch to charity, we're setting up a private foundation right now, but we're really doing some allocations in our extended family. Probably every extended family, there's some dysfunctional people.
Michael: I've heard they show up from time to time.
John: And giving them a lot of money does not make a lot of sense, type thing. So, then we go, "Okay. What are the structures? What are the trusts? How do we establish it appropriate?" And they're looking for guidance on that. One big thing they're looking for is family governance, and they want to have a framework. And this is a conversation. Some families call it a family constitution, but they want a decision so that the kids are getting involved early, and grandkids and the heirs are being prepared so they don't just go through the money-type thing that's taking this generation their whole life to build up.
Michael: So, it feels to me like I... I guess a version of this sort of extends to the macroeconomic end as well. We're very much in a, "I've built all this wealth. How do I make sure it doesn't go away? How do I make sure it doesn't go away to economic factors? How do I make sure it doesn't go away because my kids screw it up as it were? All right, I don't want my kids to screw up the wealth, and I don't want to screw up my kids." So, there's two factors going hand in hand there. But this is the concern keeping me up at night kind of stuff for advisors...
John: Well, there's another one that I should put in, and I don't have on the slide here, but it's about two out of three of these individuals are highly concerned on cybersecurity. And I am a good tech user, Michael, you are as well. And I just employed for my personal side one of these high-profile cybersecurity, and I had a meeting this morning, type thing, going over all the things they found on the dark web. And it's just...
Michael: I just don't really want to know. I'm sure there's a lot of dark web things. I don't think I'm going to sleep better at night when I find out what they are.
John: And they were describing, because of my role with so many advisors, they want to... I'm sure I'm getting more attention than I deserve. It's a service $10,000 a year, and protecting all our... And I've got a pretty complicated system here at our home. And it's really interesting to see, and it's kind of a whack-a-mole type thing. And I have had some challenges with data, with cybersecurity.
And again, you don't need to be the expert. It's a classic who-not-how type thing. You can't learn all this stuff. You can find the people, and this is where they're so interested at the higher wealth levels of doing this type thing. We found that we call it, can you bring down the family office experience and do it? We call it a virtual family office. And that has gone up dramatically. It's now across all generations 67.8, but it's really at Millennials and younger. If they're in this category, it's universal. They want a turnkey system. And this is, if you're going to be competitive in this market, and this is something, if you're future proofing your business going forward at every level of wealth, because with all the new technology, the AI, yeah, it's going to be unbelievably competitive at the mass affluent. And you're seeing...
We work with all the major firms. They're doing everything they can to figure to move up. The people at the family office are moving down. So, there's an opportunity here. And just one last number, about a month ago, we surveyed 3,108 entrepreneurs, average $15 million. And again, we talked about how do you get into this level of wealth as business? 60% of them want to change advisors over the next 24 months. There's a huge fear of missing out that even if they're getting good experiences, they don't feel that they're really getting it to the level they want. And that's that coordination of issues that I'm bringing up.
Michael: So, number one, macroeconomic, right? I don't want inflation, geopolitical, and other things to make the money go away. Number two, security legacy. I don't want hackers or my kids to make the money go away. And I also don't want to screw up my kids in the process.
John: We're finding one universal truth, I want the money to stay type thing.
Michael: Yeah, I'm getting the theme. I'm getting the theme. So, then what's number three on the concerns list here?
The Outcome Of A Great Life: Aligning Values With Planning Process [27:10]
John: Yeah, this is where... One of the things that we did is we trademarked building an amazing life of significance. And the reason for it, in every study we found, we get into the concerns, we get into the services they want, but we see, over and over again, what they really want is the outcome of a great life, an amazing life of significance, lifestyle, and values, and they want to take that down to the generation as well. And they're concerned that that's not happening.
And one thing that's really important if you're going to work with this market is that... I joked about immortality. I'm in Silicon Valley. There's a lot of longevity health span people with the idea that if you can make it the next 15 years, Ray Kurzweil, who's head of research at Google, but one of the kind of the Thomas Edison of today's world, Ray believes that we're reaching longevity escape velocity. And what that means is that once that hits, the technology, the ability to do all these, yeah, we won't go into that detail, but you will actually lose years going forward on your biological. And so, there's a... Confucius, I think, gets credit for this, a man with his health has a thousand dreams. A man without his health has only one. And we see that is...it's always a supermajority of concerns that wealthy people, they tend to be a little older in age. They are concerned...
Michael: It takes some amount of time to get to that dollar level, yeah.
John: Yeah, typically you don't do it. I don't know. I didn't pick my parents well. I don't know if you did, Michael, with the big trust fund from day one type thing. But the idea here is the concierge services, the longevity-type things. They are looking for you as, think of yourself as not the quarterback, where you have to know how to play everything, but the general manager, and you're bringing franchise players together. This is a big part of the virtual family office. They want introductions. They want...though it's a team that you're working together, and that's a big area as well.
So, the role is, yeah, we have to do all the key things. We've got to make sure that we're taking care of the investments, helping them make smart decisions about their money. They want to mitigate taxes. They want to take care of their heirs. They want to protect their assets from being unjustly taken. They want the charitable. And because these are business owners, there's six concerns. I named five. The sixth is they want to have a succession exit plan. They want to go to one group that's going to be able to do that and do that well.
Michael: So, I'm struck by the language you used at one point there. You said, "This is not quarterbacking." This is something else, which I'm struck by, I say, a lot of us I find in the advisor realm, to start using various versions of family quarterback, family CFO analogies. So, can you explain that a little bit further? How is this different?
Building The Elite Team To Move 'Upmarket' And Address Ultra-HNW Needs [30:38]
John: I don't know if you've ever built a house or an office building. I've done those things. And one of the most important things I can do is hire a general contractor. And the reason is they need a lot of subs to make anything happen. Well, the reality, if you're going to deliver an experience to address the major concerns of wealthy people, particularly ultra-wealthy, you can't do it all on your own. And they won't believe it's credible. It's one of the reasons why packaging up kind of a private client wealth experience, we use the term virtual family office, but there should be where you're bringing together these state-of-the-art experts. In sports, we would call them franchise players. In...
Michael: The idea is these are people I'm hiring. This is how I have to expand my team or not necessarily.
John: Fortunately, no. This is where the beauty of today's world and particularly after the pandemic. Michael, you and I, before the pandemic, we've been at a couple of conferences. We ran into each other. Okay, now I'm forgetting where you live. I mentioned I'm in California, Silicon Valley. I know you're not here. You're on the East Coast somewhere.
Michael: Yeah, I'm in DC area.
John: Yeah. But we can get together instantly. Okay, well, that's the nice thing about experts now. Everybody's relatively available. And what they're looking for, people want a... They don't want to go, "Hey, I know somebody." That's not very clear. What I want is I want a coordinated elite team. So, the more you can...
Michael: I've vetted 17 people, and this gal is the best. This is who you want to work with.
John: Oh, and this is who handles my own situation as well as our clients. Now, we'll work with whoever you have, or we can bring in our team as well. And that is huge because, remember what I said on entrepreneurs, 60% want to change their financial advisor, but it's equally as high on the accountant, the attorney, the insurance specialist. They don't know that... And they could be delivering a great experience, but they feel they outgrew them. There's been an explosion of wealth since March of 2009, type thing. And if you owned assets, you're doing well.
Michael: So, it strikes me that, from the perspective of an advisory firm, a perspective of an advisor who's been doing financial planning for clients, and we accumulate our client base, and we move sort of incrementally upmarket, at least to million-dollar clients as we build our reputation experience in our community, that just the level of stuff that you're talking about here strikes me that this is very directly an if I'm going to do this, I need fewer clients. I'm going to have to actually shift my client load to have any chance to do this work at the amount of time that it takes to do for the clients that you're talking about. The good news is there's enough money at stake that I should be well remunerated. But just practically speaking, this feels like a very different kind of shift for a firm that you actually have to figure out how to create client capacity to do this.
John: Yeah, this is where what so happens is we start more mass affluent to the lower level of affluent. And we actually have... This is a great industry. You can have a lot of success in that space.
Michael: Oh, absolutely.
John: Yeah. And what happens, though, is, we call it in our coaching company, that's the... You reach the good enough line that, just as you said, oh, this is going to be work to do this stuff. And I don't know how to do it. So, I'm going to just pass it. I mean, that's why we have a very large-scale training and coaching company. We're training... This year, I think it will be well over...I think it'll approach 15,000, but at least 12,000 advisors. And the reason is there is a clear path. I was an advisor. I grew my practice in the late '90s. I sold it. It was a $2 billion practice. We were the largest one at Schwab. We were early in this. And I always felt I was in an entrepreneurial fog. And it's really tempting to just stay where you are.
And what happens, though is, or if you wanna move up market, one, I think you should consider it because of the competition of technology. I live in Silicon Valley. I'm also talking to venture capitalists in Massachusetts and MIT affiliates. They're coming after financial advisors like crazy. It's pretty amazing. We're doing executive briefings for some of the VC and private equity groups. They believe they can capture the complete mass affluent. We can all debate whether they will. They've been trying to do it, but there's...the technologies have improved dramatically on that. But as you go up in wealth, people want...they want you to use technology, but they want that personal relationship. And I think that it's very defendable, it's much more profitable. And it...
Michael: I think it's an interesting distinction, right? It's not that technology doesn't show up there, it's these are really big, high-dollar clients. They don't want to use the fancy tech. They want you to use the fancy tech, and they want to pay you to use the fancy tech because if they built to that level, they've hired dozens or hundreds of people already in their businesses. They are used to hiring and delegating.
John: They're very much so, Michael. And there's little nuances that AI doesn't pick up that you're going to be able to do, and they don't have this necessarily the people that can do the things. And that's where it really comes together nicely. There is a path to do this. This is why we write research reports for the corporate, and this is why we do the coaching and training, that there is a big opportunity here. But don't think that you can do what you've been doing in the mass affluent to play at the high level.
Michael: So, as we come to the end, John, just for folks that are interested in seeing the research and all the gory details, where can folks go if they want to get all the numbers and details and go more into the research that you all have done?
John: Yeah, let me just show just... We do a couple of things. So, if you go to http://www.cegwin.com/ultra-kitces I don't know if you take ultra, Michael.
Michael: I appreciate it. I appreciate it. We'll take ultra.
John: Yeah. And I think my team could have come up with a little easier one, but we'll put it in whatever link...
Michael: Yeah, we'll make sure it's in show notes on the video on the website as well for folks who just want something clickable.
John: Yeah. And if you come into it, you'll get to this landing page and just click on, I'm going to say, click here. When you click on this one, what it does is it opens what we call a flipping book, which is a quick way if you want to just look at the research, very detailed. There's all kinds of insights. And what's nice is everything we do at CEG is always about action. So, it gives the actions that we would take if we were you for this. And then the second part, as you go down a little further, this is the PDF, that's the playbook. So, do this so you can download it and save it. And if you'd like to... If you make over $250,000 net income or more now, we have a consultation that we do, a two-part, where we'll do a mind map of where you are, where you want to go, and then we'll put together a plan of whatever market you want to work in, exactly what we would do, what are the vital few things. You can just hit the button, and it will go ahead and open up the calendar. We're recording this in July at the end. But there'll be plenty of dates. We've got a pretty large company on all this, Michael.
But the key thing I always like is, and this is one of the things I think we get along so well, is the research, don't... Get the empirical research first. It's a lot easier to get. Michael puts out a lot for a relatively small price for the paywall. I'm giving it to you free. You don't have to put your email address, just download it. And I want you to be really successful. If speed's important, do the play-to-win consultation. It will help you like crazy. And then we won't mention it until the second meeting at the end if we're even a good candidate. To help you go fast, we'll give you the plan, the strategic stuff, without that type thing because we know we're not right for everyone. But if you want to work at the move-up market, we are very, very good at that.
Michael: Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you, John, for joining us. Appreciate the conversation today.
John: Well, we get a chance to get together, Michael, and then helping very wealthy people get their concerns addressed, and having your advisors watch and listen, big opportunity for them to be hugely successful by making a difference. Their future clients are counting on them.
Michael: Yes, it is indeed. Awesome. Thank you, John.
John: Thank you.
Michael: Thank you.
