Financial Advisor Success Podcast - Full Episode Archives

#FASuccess Ep 146: Systematizing Financial Planning Progress For Clients With Your Own Wealth Management Index, With Ross Levin

October 15, 2019 07:03 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 146th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Ross Levin. Ross is the co-founder and CEO of Accredited Investors Wealth Management, an independent RIA based in the Minneapolis area that oversees nearly $2 billion of assets under management for 475 affluent clients.

What's unique about Ross, though, is the way he systematized the financial planning process across the firm by developing his own Wealth Management Index that prompts clients with specific exploratory questions in each of the core financial planning topic areas and converts the results into a score that clients can use to track their progress over time.

In this episode, we talk in depth about how Ross developed his Wealth Management Index system and the relative balance of delving into the technical topic areas of financial planning, versus trying to ask the right questions to explore the client side of those issues in the first place. Why it's so important to have a systematized process both to do thorough data gathering and to track how clients are progressing in those areas, and why ultimately, Ross decided to retain the Wealth Management Index questions but to actually stop tracking clients' progress scores over time.

We also talk about the path that Ross went through in building Accredited Investors to become a multibillion-dollar RIA with more than 50 employees. The in-depth hiring process they've developed in conjunction with an outside industrial psychologist to ensure prospective hires would be a good fit for the firm's "we over me" team-oriented culture, the succession plan the firm established after losing an initial succession partner that has now brought in more than 10 additional shareholders and will eventually force the co-founders to sell all their shares over the next decade, and the personal mental shift that Ross went through in the early years to better appreciate the value of having a partner who was less focused on business development but more focused on actually building and scaling the business systems and staff of Accredited Investors itself.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Ross reflects on the challenge of trying to maintain a small firm mentality that focuses more on increasing services to clients rather than just trying to get bigger, the way the firm is aiming to leverage technology to speed up the 'fast' work so that they can have more time to do the 'slow' work of client conversations and building relationships, and why Ross believes that the most important thing for advisors to do in building their own advisory business is to figure out what they want to be first or, as Ross puts it, risk ending up with successful businesses but bankrupt lives.

#FASuccess Ep 145: Systematizing Reviews Of Client Tax Returns By Building Software To Automate Them, with Roger Pine

October 8, 2019 07:07 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 145th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Roger Pine. Roger is the co-founder of Holistiplan, a new kind of tax planning software for advisors built to systematize and automate the process of reviewing a client's tax return to find the potential planning opportunities.

What's unique about Roger, though, is that he previously spent 10 years as a financial advisor in an independent advisory firm where he taught himself computer programming on the side implementing custom technology improvements for his own firm, before deciding to shift into becoming a full-time FinTech entrepreneur himself.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about the Holistiplan software that Roger developed. From leveraging optical character recognition to scan all the relevant information from an entire tax return PDF in just seconds, to converting that information into relevant tax observations about the client's tax bracket, phased-out deductions or tax credits, and the eligibility for tax preference contributions to retirement accounts, to the forward-looking tax planning tools that Holistiplan is now building to identify the client's true marginal tax bracket, taking into account all the phase-ins and phase-outs to make better forward-looking tax recommendations.

We also talk about the ever-blurring line between where a CPA's tax services end and a financial advisor's begin, the dynamics of trying to balance providing tax guidance and not unwittingly competing against potential CPA referral sources, and why Roger views Holistiplan's tax analyses as only the beginning of developing a comprehensive expert system that helps financial advisors craft more consistent recommendations across the full spectrum of the financial planning body of knowledge.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Roger shares his own journey and what it's like to transition from being a financial advisor to an advisor tech entrepreneur. Why he ultimately decided to take the leap despite being on a partnership and succession track in his current advisory firm, and his suggestions on what other advisors can do if they too see an opportunity to develop advisor technology solutions to fill the gaps in today's marketplace.

So whether you're interested in learning about the process behind taking an idea for an application and actually bringing it to market, lessons Roger learned when transitioning out of the advisory business and launching a startup, or about his goal to advance the financial planning profession by helping develop "normative practices", then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.

#FASuccess Ep 144: The Past, Present, And Future Evolution Of The RIA Custody Model, with Tom Bradley Jr.

October 1, 2019 07:05 am 3 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 144th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Tom Bradley. Tom is the former president of TD Ameritrade Institutional, one of the leading RIA custodial platforms serving nearly 7,000 independent RIAs with almost $600 billion of assets held in custody.

What's unique about Tom, though, is that he led the original Waterhouse Advisor Services platform when it was first started back in 1992, and has been a part of the growth and evolution of financial advisors operating as independent RIAs on the custodial platform for more than 25 years.

In this episode, we talk in depth about the evolution of the RIA custody model itself. From the early days when advisors had no direct means to actually trade across multiple client accounts and had to manually enter transactions off paper trade confirmations into their portfolio performance reporting systems, to the development of the first wave of RIA custodial tech integrations when few advisors had more than $20 million of AUM and couldn't demand much of their providers, to TD Ameritrade's unique pivot into an open architecture system with its Veo Open Access platform, because their acquisition by Ameritrade in 2006 gave them a unique opportunity to leverage the first wave of APIs that other RIA custodians hadn't fully developed yet.

We also talk about the nature of the RIA custodial business itself. The not always apparent ways that RIA custodians generate their revenue from advisors and their clients, why the RIA custodial options for how cash is invested has become such a hot-button issue, what it really costs an RIA custodian to service an advisor on average and what clients actually pay as a percentage of their assets, and what it would take to develop an RIA custodial platform that itself operated on a truly fee-only basis.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Tom shares his perspective on the future of the RIA custodial business. The gaps he still sees in how advisory firms manage succession plans and the transition of clients after a founder passes away, and why in the end, the fact that RIA custodians may also compete with their RIAs for end investors in their retail brokerage businesses can still be a net benefit to most advisors because it brings down the cost of the custodial platform in the first place.

#FASuccess Ep 143: Getting Local Clients Via Google Search With A Niche Of Serving Independent Women, with Cathy Curtis

September 24, 2019 07:01 am 9 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 143rd episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Cathy Curtis. Cathy is the founder of Curtis Financial Planning, a solo independent RIA in Oakland, California that oversees nearly $60 million of assets under management for 52 client households.

What's unique about Cathy, though, is the way she's positioned her business into a niche of serving women, and in particular, single, independent-minded women who specifically want to work with a female financial advisor as their financial partner, to the point that the majority of Cathy's new clients find her through a Google search.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about why Cathy chose to build into a niche of serving women as a way to better stand out and attract clients in the crowded San Francisco advisor marketplace, how she refined her website to the point that even new prospects compliment her on how it spoke to them, the way she's been able to generate most of her new clients from organic Google search traffic, even though she focuses on working with local in-person clients, and why the business development success of focusing into her niche eventually has forced Cathy to implement a minimum fee requirement just to better determine which prospects were really qualified to do business with her or not.

We also talk about Cathy's financial planning process itself. How her targeted marketing has helped her to get clients who are willing to go through a lengthy, detailed 20-page data gathering questionnaire, why she includes a draft financial plan meeting with clients and uses eMoney Advisor's Decision Center instead of printing out any details of a financial plan, the reason she chose HiddenLevers and Kwanti to be her risk tolerance and investment research tools, and the surge meeting approach that Cathy is using to cluster all of her regular client meetings into just 3 different months throughout the year.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Cathy shares how she got over the impostor syndrome struggles she faced early on as a career changer entering financial planning. Why she thinks new entrants to the profession today should work for another advisory firm for several years before going out on their own, and how the industry pressure to consolidate led her to merge into another advisory firm, only to realize that she really did prefer being an independent entrepreneur, and now simply leverages technology and outsourcing solutions instead to make herself even more successful.

#FASuccess Ep 142: Creating A Structured Relationship-Building Calendar To Enhance Trust With Affluent Clients, With Matt Oechsli

September 17, 2019 07:04 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 142nd episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Matt Oechsli. Matt is the founder and CEO of The Oechsli Institute, which does primary research into affluent investors and how they select advisors, and then provides financial advisor marketing and sales consulting and coaching on how to leverage those research insights to grow their firms by reaching more affluent clients.

In this episode, we talk in depth about how to reach and connect with affluent clients by forming better relationships with them. From why knowing the names of a client's children and pets really is so important in the relationship-building process, to the reason why having non-business social lunches with clients, or what Matt calls a $1,000 per hour activity and are so effective to deepen the relationship and get more referrals, the importance of doing intimate events with a small number of key clients at a time, in addition to broad-based client appreciation events, and how in the end, the point isn't merely to become friends with clients, but that social interactions with clients are really all about having opportunities to demonstrate that you're worthy of their trust, to continue working with you and hopefully to refer you as well.

We also talk about how to bring better structure to your client relationship-building efforts. From developing a relationship calendar of the key activities you intend to engage them with your top clients throughout the year, why it's so crucial to focus relationship building activities on a subset of your top clients instead of trying to reach everyone at once, why you should target one surprise and delight opportunity with key clients every week, the right way to ask for referrals without just asking for a referral, and how even as advisors try to engage in more social relationship-building activities with clients, it's still important to go into those meetings with strategic intent for success.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Matt talks about what he calls the three C's of good client communication: be concise, conversational, and confident, the reason that advisors tend to get stuck in their businesses, and his advice to new advisors entering the business on what it will take to be successful in the future.

#FASuccess Ep 141: Building The Differentiated Foundation For Successful Advisor Marketing, with Kristen Luke

September 10, 2019 07:05 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 141st episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Kristen Luke. Kristen is the founder of Kaleido Creative Studio, a marketing consulting firm that specializes in multi-advisor fee-only RIAs with $100 million to $1 billion in assets under management, doing financial planning for individual clients.

What's unique about Kristen, though, beyond her clear focus on her target ideal client, is the kaleidoscope wheel of advisor marketing activity she's created, and the steps that advisors can take in each area, from basic to intermediate to advanced, in growing their own marketing channels.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about Kristen's marketing wheel, including the six core areas of client referrals, COI referrals, online marketing, thought leadership, community awareness, and conversion, and what it takes to improve in each of those areas, from refining client profiles by first concretely defining the triggering events that bring your target ideal clients in, to the starting steps of online marketing, from various "find an advisor" websites to refining your local SEO, to the reason why you shouldn't write books or try to appear on TV until you have a blog first, and why podcasts are replacing webinars as the hot new advisor marketing channel.

We also talk about what it takes to build the right marketing foundation. Why defining an ideal client profile really is absolutely essential to differentiate and build a successful marketing funnel, how to identify the right target client for your firm if you've already got a wide range of clients and aren't sure where to go next, and the key data that you should start tracking in your advisor CRM now so that you'll be able to measure the results of your marketing efforts properly once you begin to invest into them.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Kristen talks about how she's lived the advisor marketing path in her own consulting firm to advisors, from making a decision or find the focus of her own ideal target advisory firm to work with, how she's been able to grow her own marketing reach without actually spending a lot of money on marketing, and how she followed the path of many advisors in growing her own firm to the point that she had to spend more time than she liked just managing the people, and the reason she ultimately decided to right-size her own firm to better focus on the types of clients she enjoys working with the most, and got a lot happier in the process.

#FASuccess Ep 140: Transforming Your Advisory Business By Shifting Your Mindset After Hitting The (10-Year) Capacity Wall, with Adam Cmejla

September 3, 2019 07:01 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 140th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Adam Cmejla. Adam is the founder of Integrated Planning & Wealth Management, an independent RIA based in Carmel, Indiana that oversees approximately $45 million in assets under advisement for nearly 100 financial planning clients.

What's unique about Adam, though, is the incredible transformation his practice has gone through over the past 2 years, as a shift in mindset has led him to grow revenue by nearly 80% over what he had built the first 10 years cumulatively by both raising his financial planning fees and going all-in on a niche of serving optometrists.

In this episode, we talk in depth about how Adam's marketing process has evolved over the years, from starting out at Waddell & Reed where he immersed himself in local networking groups like BNI and Indianapolis Rainmakers, to beginning to shift his focus towards working with VDOCs, veterinarians, doctors, optometrists, and chiropractors, by focusing his marketing on white coat professions and launching a podcast, to further narrowing down his focus to just serve optometrists after realizing it's actually easier to market it and grow his firm as the target clientele narrows, which in turn has led him from charging as little as $400 a year for financial planning for his legacy clients, to charging $595 per month plus $1,000 upfront or over $8,000 a year in planning fees for his ideal target client.

We also talk about the mindset shifts that Adam went through to reinvent his practice over the past 2 years after hitting the wall from his first 10. From moving away to setting his value in terms of the time he spends on clients and instead looking more directly to what his clients say they value the most, which wasn't the depth of his financial planning data analysis, the steps he took to raise his financial planning fees by as much as 100% to 300% over the past year to fix legacy clients that were being undercharged, and the way he balanced bringing in new ideal clients along with raising fees on existing clients as a way to overcome his own fears that clients might terminate him for the fee increases, even though in the end, virtually none of them did.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Adam shares his top advice to fellow financial planners. If you're really wondering if you should raise your fees, the answer is already yes. How the transformation of his advisory firm enabled a transformation with his wife and children by allowing the entire family to reallocate the time they spend together, and how Adam has institutionalized the processes and workflows he's developed in Redtail CRM to the point that he's now also beginning to consult other advisors on how they can adapt and implement the same efficiencies in their own advisory firms.

So whether you're interested in learning why narrowing your focus can help grow your advisory business, ways to systematize your business processes, or why the answer to the question, "Should I raise my fees?" is almost always, "yes," then we how you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.

#FASuccess Ep 139: Plugging In For Large Firm Support To Refocus Your Time On Clients Instead, with Michele Clark

August 27, 2019 07:06 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 139th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Michele Clark. Michele is the senior portfolio manager for Acropolis Investment Management, an independent RIA based in the St. Louis area that oversees nearly $1.1 billion of assets under management for more than 800 clients.

What’s unique about Michele, though, is that until very recently, she ran her own independent hourly financial planning practice and only recently decided to tuck in or, as she puts it, to “plug in” to a larger firm so that she could worry less about the hassles of being a business owner, from bookkeeping to IT, and simply focus more on what she enjoys the most, which is connecting with and servicing her clients.

In this episode, we talk in depth about Michele’s somewhat nontraditional journey through the advisory industry, from starting out selling mutual funds door-to-door with Edward Jones, to switching to Charles Schwab and becoming a regional investor education specialist until she was so successful the travel overwhelmed her and she decided to switch and become a branch financial consultant instead, and then growing her base of Schwab private clients so large that it once again overwhelmed her to the point that she decided to go out on her own to structure the practice the way that she wanted, only to once again, over the span of 10 years, grow to the point that the business was consuming too much of her life and to make the decision to plug into Acropolis to, yet again, back off when the advisory practice got too big and rebalance both her business and the work she’s doing in it.

We also talk about how Michele built her independent firm, from the way she structured her project-based fees in her hourly business, to the challenges she discovered when trying to properly price renewal plans for ongoing clients, the trick she used to begin to systematize the processes and procedures in her firm as it grew, and what she learned about the changing ways that clients are finding a financial advisor in today’s environment by meticulously tracking her own sources of new business for nearly a decade.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Michele shares her own tips on how to stay lean when starting an advisory firm, the importance of developing an expertise or specializations so that you don’t have to rely on local business development opportunities and can attract clients no matter where they are, and the inevitable challenges of growth in the early years of starting out on your own, even when you’re experienced in business development.

#FASuccess Ep 138: Leveraging A Media PR Strategy To Attract Ultra-High-Income (Millennial) Clients, with Douglas Boneparth

August 20, 2019 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 138th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Douglas Boneparth. Douglas is the founder of Bone Fide Wealth, an independent RIA based in New York City that manages nearly $80 million of assets under management for 100 client households.

What's unique about Douglas, though, is that after starting out in a fairly traditional broker-dealer business model serving affluent retirees, he decided to shift and focus on serving a niche of very high-income millennials, most of whom make half a million to $1 million per year in income.

In this episode, we talk in depth about Douglas's niche of working with ultra-high-income millennials. Why he chose to invest so heavily in a younger clientele that's investing in themselves with high student debt loads that often precede their high-income jobs, the way he structures his fee as a combination of a traditional AUM fee plus a flat annual planning fee of $2,000 and $10,000 that's waived once the client reaches half a million of assets under management, because his clients are so high income, they often reach his asset minimums quite quickly, and how he's been able to be so effective with a media- and PR-driven marketing strategy that he's used to attract such high-income millennial clients to himself in the first place.

We also talk about how Douglas structures his own advisory firm. The reason he decided to transition from being a registered rep with Commonwealth as his broker-dealer to become an independent RIA but stay with Commonwealth to provide his RIA support services, why he decided to stop implementing term insurance policies himself for his clients even though he views life insurance as a critical element of the financial plan, and how he sees the rise of millennial-oriented do-it-yourself technology platforms and financial services as the key to being able to work with and support his own millennial clients.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Douglas shares his views on why the industry still has such a difficulty attracting millennials to become financial advisors, his own advice for young advisors looking to get started in the advisory business on how to navigate the sales culture that still exists at many large firms that do the bulk of the industry's next-generation hiring, and the path he pursued from starting out in his father's advisory practice to eventually deciding to break the traditional industry mold and build the advisory business he wanted to build for himself instead.

#FASuccess Ep 137: The Evolution Of How Financial Advisors Solve Client Problems Across Industry Channels, with Lou Tranquilli

August 13, 2019 07:05 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 137th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Lou Tranquilli. Lou is the founder of Tranquilli Financial Advisor, an independent RIA based in Clinton, NJ that oversees more than $100 million of assets under management for 110 clients.

What’s unique about Lou, though, is the way his advisory firm has evolved over more than 25 years across every channel of the industry, having started out as a traditional life insurance sales agent, shifting to the broker-dealer model, then becoming a hybrid RIA, and now making one more recent transition to the independent RIA channel.

In this episode, we talk in depth about how Lou structured his independent RIA as an experienced practitioner. From why he chose Trust Company of America as his custodian rather than one of the traditional big four custodians, the way he brought together an integrated technology stack built around his custodian, to how, despite criticisms that solo advisors will need more size and economies of scale to compete, the increased efficiency of technology to support his solo RIA over his prior broker-dealer actually allowed him to reduce his staff support and increase his profit margins after making the transition.

We also talk about Lou’s journey through the industry itself, from starting out as a traditional life insurance agent in the 1990s and embracing the sales job, even making top of the table with MDRT, to deciding to walk away from the insurance sales job after a decade of tiring of the environment where, as Lou puts it, you’re out of business every minute you’re not calling somebody, and to walk away from his insurance renewals in order to transition to a recurring revenue AUM model that would allow him to focus more on serving existing clients. How Lou hired a marketing director to help him craft and then focus into a niche and triple his firm in under four years, and the way he sought out confidants and formed a study group to get ongoing feedback and guidance from peers on how to continue to refine his business.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Lou explains how despite the fact that he’s always been focused on trying to help clients solve their problems, his own advice role and the services he provided were impacted and materially different as he switched from one industry channel to another.

So whether you’re interested in learning about how Lou went independent and lauched his own RIA, how he outsources his staffing needs, or how a business development manager helped him grow, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.

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#FASuccess Ep 146: Systematizing Financial Planning Progress For Clients With Your Own Wealth Management Index, With Ross Levin

#FASuccess Ep 145: Systematizing Reviews Of Client Tax Returns By Building Software To Automate Them, with Roger Pine

#FASuccess Ep 144: The Past, Present, And Future Evolution Of The RIA Custody Model, with Tom Bradley Jr.

#FASuccess Ep 143: Getting Local Clients Via Google Search With A Niche Of Serving Independent Women, with Cathy Curtis

#FASuccess Ep 142: Creating A Structured Relationship-Building Calendar To Enhance Trust With Affluent Clients, With Matt Oechsli

#FASuccess Ep 141: Building The Differentiated Foundation For Successful Advisor Marketing, with Kristen Luke

#FASuccess Ep 140: Transforming Your Advisory Business By Shifting Your Mindset After Hitting The (10-Year) Capacity Wall, with Adam Cmejla

#FASuccess Ep 139: Plugging In For Large Firm Support To Refocus Your Time On Clients Instead, with Michele Clark

#FASuccess Ep 138: Leveraging A Media PR Strategy To Attract Ultra-High-Income (Millennial) Clients, with Douglas Boneparth

#FASuccess Ep 137: The Evolution Of How Financial Advisors Solve Client Problems Across Industry Channels, with Lou Tranquilli

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