Attend Live Events with the Kitces Team and Industry Experts

Following a period of business growth, financial advisors often hit a wall, where there's seemingly not enough time to do financial planning work for all of their existing and new clients while also managing the operational responsibilities involved in running a business. At that point, it can be time to hire support staff who can promote the income and growth potential of the business. 

Whether it is hiring an assistant to support business operations or a paraplanner/associate planner to cover financial planning tasks, bringing on new staff (and leveraging them efficiently) can allow a firm owner to focus on their highest-value responsibilities, including bringing in new (and often, more lucrative) clients. And as additional staff are added, the advisory firm can transition into a bona fide business, where clients are clients of the firm (and not just the founding advisor) and the business generates additional revenue (and profits) by having multiple advisors and support personnel to serve the firm’s clients. 

Join us at the September Kitces Office Hours, where Michael and expert guests Cathy Sutter, Kacie Swartz, and Tanya Nichols will discuss how to leverage a right-hand assistant, paraplanner, or associate advisor so advisors can have more time to focus on growing their business.  

Kacie Swartz - Senior Wealth Manager, Stone Wealth Management
Tanya Nichols - Founder and President, Align Financial
Cathy Sutter - Practice Manager, Integrated Planning & Wealth Management 

A unique element of financial planning is that client relationships can last for a very long time, with many advisors assisting clients over the course of decades as their financial planning needs evolve in step with their personal lives. Due to this aspect of the planning relationship, it is almost inevitable that an advisor will encounter a time when a client is diagnosed with a terminal illness. And while it is important for the advisor to review technical areas of the financial plan (from cash flow to estate planning) with these clients, an even more critical consideration is how to best communicate and interact with a client whose thoughts are consumed by their illness. If the advisor isn’t aware of the strategies for working with a client with a “sick brain”, all the best financial plans will be useless.

While the value of financial planning was defined in the past by the products a broker could access for their clients, the value that an advisor brings to the table today is far more esoteric and relies not only on an advisor’s own knowledge and expertise, but also on their ability to deliver positive client outcomes. 

Join us at the Kitces Monthly Office Hours in August where Michael and expert guests Carl Richards and Bill Bachrach discuss the keys to the pricing conversation and ways to become more confident when communicating the value you provide to clients. At this Kitces Office Hours, advisors will learn: 

• How to evaluate your “lead nurturing” process and how you present yourself to prospective clients 
• How to confidently share the story behind the value you provide to clients 
• How to navigate conversations around price in a way that leads to securing clients who are a good fit for the firm 

Presenters: Michael Kitces with Bill Bachrach - Chairman & CEO, AdvisorRoadmap™ and Carl Richards - Creator of the Behavior Gap

Sometimes there are situations where individuals need access to funds in their tax-deferred retirement accounts sooner than the rules allow. In fact, except for a narrow range of ‘emergency’ situations, the only way most individuals can access these funds without incurring a 10% early withdrawal penalty tax is by setting up “Substantially Equal Periodic Payments (SEPP)”, otherwise known as 72(t) payments.  To do so, however, taxpayers must adhere to several rules that have been provided by the IRS or risk paying significant penalties.  

Join us at the August Kitces Monthly webinar where expert guest, Jeffrey Levine, will discuss the rules to consider and strategies to apply when helping clients who may need early access to their retirement funds.

At this webinar advisors will learn: 

• Which critical 72(t) payment rules must be considered to avoid penalties 
• How to navigate IRS Notice 2022-6 which sets a new 5% ‘floor’ interest rate for calculating 72(t) payments 
• Five strategies to consider when discussing 72(t) distributions with clients

While the work of developing financial plans was originally used as a way to identify “gaps” in a person’s overall financial situation (in order to then sell them something to fill those gaps), the profession has evolved so that the advice itself is now the product. But despite the value that advisors can bring to clients over a long-term relationship, the intangible nature of financial planning services can make it difficult for clients to assess the ongoing value they receive after the initial plan is implemented. With this in mind, one way for advisors to demonstrate ongoing value is to use systematized deliverables and ongoing services that make the ongoing advice more salient to clients without creating any hurdles for the firm as it grows.

Presenters: 

Matthew Jarvis
Co-Founder, The Perfect RIA podcast & President, Jarvis Financial Services

Adam Cmejla, CFP
Founder, Integrated Planning & Wealth Management 

Monte Carlo analysis has become the dominant methodology for advisors to analyze retirement income planning strategies. But the way the results of Monte Carlo analysis are framed for clients can invoke different emotional responses and can affect portfolio withdrawal rate decisions. With this in mind, advisors can take advantage of a range of options to improve their use of Monte Carlo analysis, including framing the results as a “Probability of Adjustment” rather than “Probability of Success”, comparing results using historical scenarios, leveraging regime-based models, and using risk-based guardrails. Using these methods, advisors can potentially provide clients with greater peace of mind regarding their retirement income choices and better help them achieve their specific income and legacy goals.    

Owners of financial advisory firms are frequently called on to make decisions to set the direction of their company’s growth and to ensure that that vision is carried out. As a firm grows in size, however, there are more team members working in more areas outside of the direct purview of the founder, and without a clear framework to communicate the firm’s goals and values, and prioritize which objectives to focus on, teams can be pulled in multiple directions at once, stalling progress and preventing the firm from growing and scaling in line with the leaders’ goals.  

One system that advisory firms are increasingly adopting to stay focused on what moves the practice forward is Gino Wickman's “Entrepreneurial Operating System” (EOS), which offers business owners a framework for defining the vision they have for their firm, and ensuring that it is carried out, in an aligned manner, across all team members within the organization.  

Join Michael Kitces and expert guests Jerry Kauffman (a certified EOS implementer), along with Matt Cosgriff and John Kennedy (two advisors who use EOS in their own practices), as they discuss how they have gained focus, discipline, and better accountability by implementing EOS in their own businesses.  

With consumer prices continuing to surge at a historic rate, the topic of inflation is now top of mind for many financial advisors and their clients. Because rising prices are persisting for longer than many originally predicted, it is prudent to consider how each component of a client’s financial plan is being impacted, including estate planning and gifting. Planning strategies that involve interest-rate dependent transfers, such as intrafamily loans and grantor-retained trusts, are affected by the rate in place at the time of the loan or transfer, making it crucial to optimize the timing of such strategies in order to minimize tax consequences. Join us at the June Kitces Monthly webinar where expert guest Griffin Bridgers, Estate Planning Attorney at Hutchins & Associates LLC, will discuss the estate planning strategies that rely on interest rates and what actions advisors can take with their clients. 

The typical financial planner decided to pursue their career path for the opportunity to be of service to others, and grows an advisory firm over time by delivering value to their clients, and getting referred to others seeking the same value. Yet by serving clients on an ongoing basis, it is virtually inevitable that the advisor will eventually reach their personal capacity of clients that can be served, and need to hire a new advisor to support (and perhaps eventually, take over) some of those client relationships. 

The problem, though, is that few financial planners have ever had to hire, train, and develop other financial planners – a challenge most of us become acutely aware of when we hire our first paraplanner or associate advisor for support. 

Join Michael Kitces, and expert guests Penny Phillips and Philip Palaveev, at our next Kitces Office Hours, where they’ll discuss what exactly paraplanners and associate advisors should be doing to create value as quickly as possible, how senior advisors can establish expectations about what success looks like for paraplanners and associate advisors, and the keys to creating a development pathway that increases retention and allows the firm to efficiently scale. 

College costs have grown significantly in the past two decades, with the sticker price exceeding $300,000 at some of the most prestigious institutions. At the same time, the student loan debt burden has grown significantly, with total student loan debt now exceeding $1.7 trillion. With these concerns in mind, clients often seek out advisors to help them with funding the costs of higher education. However, training on financial aid and late-stage college planning is a small component of most advisor education programs, leaving many advisors with questions on how they can best assist their clients with the important decisions around higher education costs.  

Join us at the May Kitces Monthly Webinar where expert guest, Joe Messinger CFP, ChFC, CLU, CCFC, will share ideas on how advisors can better guide families through the college funding maze and make more informed buying decisions.

Advisory firms historically were transactional, focused on how much time advisors could be out 'selling' to get new clients, and supported by administrative staff to handle the paperwork as the advisor moved on to the next new client. The rise of AUM and now subscription fee models, and their recurring revenue, shifts the focus from 'just' getting the next new client, to servicing existing clients with increasingly deep advice services in order to retain them. Scaling advice services for clients necessitates hiring paraplanners, who have a skill set beyond 'just' admin services, to support the planning process. 

In this Office Hours, Michael and expert guests Caleb Brown and Maria King will discuss: 

• How to write the ideal job description for a prospective paraplanner hire
• Traits to watch for when hiring a paraplanner
• How to attract the best candidates to join the firm
• Best practices in interviewing and vetting candidates to make the right choice
• And whatever else advisors want to learn! 

When the SECURE Act was signed into law in December 2019, it ushered in some of the most significant changes to the rules for retirement accounts in well over a decade. At the same time, however, the statutory language included a number of provisions that were either ill-defined or left open to substantial IRS interpretation. To fill this gap, the IRS issued Proposed Regulations on February 23, 2022, to reflect the changes to the Internal Revenue Code made by the SECURE Act. And while the Proposed Regulations are likely to be amended at least somewhat before they are finalized, they do provide the best window into the IRS’s current thinking on a variety of issues. Join tax expert, Jeffrey Levine, at the April Kitces monthly webinar where he will review the Proposed Regulations and provide clarity around how taxpayers (and their advisors) can start preparing themselves now for how their individual situations might be affected. 

Join us in March for Office Hours where Michael Kitces and expert guest Taylor Schulte, host of the Experiments in Advisor Marketing podcast and founder of Define Financial, will review website examples shared by real advisors and discuss best practices in how to generate prospects from your advisor website.  

The business of financial advice is an interpersonal one, and an element of this interpersonal work is what to do when clients struggle to consistently take action. Knowing how to help clients actually follow through is rarely straightforward, and failing to implement plans can damage the advisor-client relationship overall. But by co-creating implementation plans, advisors can help clients achieve higher rates of follow-through and fulfillment. Join expert guest, Dr. Moira Somers at the March Kitces Monthly Webinar and learn how to develop a co-creation environment for clients and yourself and gain traction on financial plan implementation.

Financial planning advice is incredibly valuable, but many advisors struggle in trying to figure out the "right" fees to charge, or even the "right" fee model to use. In practice, the overwhelming majority of advisors charge a 'traditional' 1% AUM fee. But this doesn't always align well with the needs of individual clients. The rise of alternative fee-for-service models provides more ways for advisors to charge to ensure they're getting paid what they're worth... but also creates an even more overwhelming number of choices in trying to figure out what to charge! 

Join Michael and expert guests, Alan Moore and Stephanie Bogan at February’s Kitces Office Hours as they discuss how to set the ‘right’ fee structure for your financial planning advice. 

An increasing volume of research is making clear what financial planners have long known – that clients do not always act in a purely rational manner. But it’s one thing to recognize that clients sometimes make irrational decisions, and another to really understand what drives those decisions and how to help clients avoid the most damaging mistakes. In this Kitces Monthly Webinar, advisors will learn what the behavioral finance research has shown about our not-always-rational decision-making process, and how to adapt the delivery of their financial planning services to help clients achieve more desirable outcomes through better communication and enhanced trust.

One of the biggest challenges of growing an advisory firm is that as the business grows, the role of the founder/owner begins to change. Business coaches help business owners get moving. In this month's Office Hours, join Michael and expert guests, Diane MacPhee, Ray Sclafani, and Adam Cmejla as they discuss how to evaluate and pick a business coach, how they went about hiring a business coach for themselves, and what kind of impact coaching has had on them.

Advisors use retirement-income guardrails as a convenient and easy-to-understand framework to explain when a client needs to make portfolio adjustments in retirement. Withdrawal-rate guardrails are a commonly used framework, but they do not always accurately reflect a client’s dynamic income sources and actual spending behaviors. Risk-based retirement-income guardrails, on the other hand, have the same benefits of communication and clarity while also modeling a client’s retirement income sources and spending patterns more realistically. At this Kitces Monthly Webinar, join Derek Tharp, as he discusses risk-based guardrails and the impacts of the varying associated parameters.

As advisory firms grow, they tend to attract more affluent clients, which ironically can present a challenge over time. Join Michal Kitces, Lisa Crafford and John Bowen as they discuss how to segment clients as your firm grows, including at what thresholds, into what groups, and what exactly to do for some clients versus others!

During this four-hour virtual conference, you’ll have a chance to see what successful financial planning value looks like, with a unique behind the scenes look at real financial advisors’ efforts to demonstrate their value in their marketing, their financial planning process, and their ongoing advice services. Afterwards, connect with your peers at our Community Event.

Join Jeff Levine, CPA/PFS, CFP®, Lead Financial Planning Nerd at Kitces.com, for our December Kitces Monthly Webinar where he’ll walk through pertinent details of the new/proposed tax law changes, and provide greater awareness of potential changes and tax strategies to implement before closing out 2021 and start 2022.

Join Michael and expert guests Kathleen Burns Kingsbury and Stephanie Bogan as they discuss how to confidently have the fee-increase conversation with existing clients. 

Asking great questions during client conversations is an essential part of the job as a financial advisor. Great questions help advisors gather important information, and great questions can even help motivate clients to take action. Meghaan Lurtz will discuss the different types of questions that are available to advisors as well as how and when to use these questions throughout the financial planning relationship.

As more and more advisors offer increasingly comprehensive financial planning and deliver more service to clients, it’s becoming harder to differentiate between every other advisor who is also doing the same thing. At this Month's Office Hours, Michael and expert guests Kristen Luke and Robert Sofia will share what it takes to really differentiate from the competition, including factors that actually lead prospective clients to choose one advisor over another as well as how to avoid "differentiators" that unwittingly lead to just blending in instead of truly standing out.

Join us at the October Kitces Monthly Webinar where ETF expert Dave Nadig, CIO and Director of Research at ETF Trends, will discuss how and why ETFs are so efficient, as well as where they fall down, why focusing on exposure trumps everything else, and how to understand the true total cost of ETF ownership.

Michael and Matt Oechsli, founder and CEO of The Oechsli Institute will discuss what the research tells us about how affluent investors select their advisors (and why they care more about partnering with their advisors), as well as ways advisors can tailor their marketing to reach more affluent clients and increase their revenue. 

In this late-breaking webinar, Jeffrey Levine will take a deep dive into all the details of the latest Biden Tax Plan proposal, and provide his expert perspective on the planning issues and strategies advisors need to consider as the law is finalized in the weeks to come.

Jamie Hopkins will discuss current proposals and associated drivers that may affect estate planning, as well as the 10 steps of a solid estate planning process that you can easily apply in your client conversations. 

Julie Littlechild, Founder of Absolute Engagement and Dennis Moseley-Williams, Founder of Moseley-Williams Strategic Consulting join Michael for August Kitces Office Hours where they will discuss how the delivery of a great client experience starts with viewing everything about your financial planning process as an experience to be staged for clients, and why, in the end, it's not just about what you do for clients, but what positive changes you bring, and the transformations that are created in their lives.

At August’s Kitces Monthly webinar, Jeffrey Levine will share the strategies and nuances of using a CRT to provide clients with the benefit of a lifetime payout as an alternative to the no-longer-available stretch IRA. In this webinar, advisors will learn how the SECURE Act changed the stretch IRA and the impact of the 10-Year Rule as well as the client factors planners will want to look for and consider when suggesting the CRT as a potential alternative to a stretch IRA.

The ongoing rise of firms providing financial planning value beyond 'just' the portfolio is leading more and more advisory firms to charge advice fees in addition to (or in lieu of) an AUM fee. The good news of subscription and retainer fee models is that the advisor can get paid for giving advice beyond the portfolio, and even be compensated for the advice they provide to clients who don't have a portfolio. Learn how advisory firms are explaining the ongoing value that their clients will receive for the advice fees they pay, and how you can demonstrate your firm's ongoing financial planning value.

Choosing the “right” risk tolerance questionnaire receives little consideration among financial advisors today, despite being a requirement for FINRA-registered brokers and insurance agents, and a matter of fiduciary protection for registered investment advisors. Michael Kitces will explore what exactly risk tolerance is, how it is distinct from risk capacity and risk perception, what risk tolerance questionnaires are designed to measure, and what it takes to create a high-quality risk tolerance questionnaire that will serve as a useful tool for assessing a client's risk tolerance.

Several major changes are expected under the Biden Tax Proposal, which will impact affluent clients in particular, as it eliminates the tax preference for capital gains and qualified dividends for higher-income households, along with the step-up in basis. Jeffrey Levine and Michael Kitces will answer member questions on the proposed changes and how to prepare for them.

To best serve clients in the decumulation phase, advisors must evaluate which risk factors and preferences to incorporate in the plan including age, retirement date, equity allocation, pension wealth, and rate environments. David M. Blanchett, will discuss how to create an efficient and uniquely designed decumulation portfolio for each client using the ‘total wealth’ perspective.

How can advisory firm owners create a natural feedback mechanism to understand whether their decisions are maximizing value? Join Michael Kitces , Brad Bueermann, CEO of FP Transitions and David DeVoe, Founder and CEO of DeVoe & Company as they share their expertise on how to get a handle on what an advisory firm business is really worth, as well as the latest trends in advisory firm valuations.

In order to help clients achieve the ultimate goal of a happy retirement, advisors must account for the psychological impact of generating income from retirement assets, as well as the physical and emotional considerations that affect retirement satisfaction. In our May webinar, Michael Finke, PhD, from The American College of Financial Services, discusses what actually makes people happy in retirement, as well as the planning considerations specific to individuals in retirement.

Despite devoting a lot of time and effort to establishing relationships with local “Centers of Influence” (COIs), such as attorneys and accountants, many advisors struggle to actually get referrals from them. Yet referrals from COIs in your target market generate more affluent prospects on average than any other advisor marketing strategy, according to a recent Kitces Research study. So, what can advisors do to generate referrals from their COI relationships? Join Michael Kitces and expert guests Brett Van Bortel and Jeffrey Levine as they share their expertise on what it takes to actually build relationships with COIs that produce results.

John Nersesian
Head of PIMCO Advisor Education

John will explain to advisors how they can determine a client’s main objectives regarding their stock options, restricted stock shares, and restricted stock options, and apply specific planning strategies to meet those objectives.

LIMITED SEATS AVAILABLE

Congress has just passed new legislation to provide relief to American people and businesses affected by the economic impact of Covid. Jeffrey Levine will discuss key new rules and provisions, as well as immediate planning strategies that can be implemented with clients.

Angie Herbers

Compensation is one of the most influential drivers of employee motivation, and is often used by employers as a way to guide their team’s behaviors. At our March edition of Kitces Office Hours, Michael Kitces and Angie Herbers will discuss the common mistakes that many financial advisory firms make in developing their compensation models for employee advisors, as well as the drivers behind compensation that actually do (and don’t) motivate employees.

Derek Tharp

Lead Researcher at Kitces.com

Monte Carlo analysis has become the dominant approach for financial advisors trying to project out and evaluate the viability of a client’s retirement plan. Yet in practice, today’s Monte Carlo software and associated outputs primarily just show whether a current path is viable, and do little to provide guidance about when and how a prospective retiree might need to make course changes to stay on track. Derek Tharp will discuss how to adapt the Monte Carlo analysis and make it more useful and tangible for clients trying to formulate an actual plan for retirement.

Dr. Brad Klontz, Psy.D., CFP
Your Mental Wealth Advisors

While financial advisors are taught how to analyze client situations and craft recommendations, there is remarkably little guidance in what to do when clients don’t actually follow those recommendations. Because in the end, helping clients actually change their behavior can be difficult, and the best way to push them forward – without offending them in the process – is not always clear.

Taylor Schulte

host of the Experiments in Advisor Marketing podcast

founder of Define Financial

During January Office Hours, Michael Kitces and Taylor Schulte, who wrote the Nerd's Eye View article 2 Ways I Improved My Advisor Website SEO (And How You Can, Too), discussed the do's and don'ts of building your own website as well as provided the best practices on how to create a site that generate prospects.

PREMIER MEMBER Recording

How does one build an appropriate portfolio for accumulation-stage investors? What assets should be considered for an accumulator’s entire portfolio?

Expert guest David M. Blanchett, PhD, CFA, CFP®, will discuss how financial planners should consider traditional investments alongside human capital, housing, and pension assets. Furthermore, David will discuss the risk of each of these assets and how they should be considered with the overall goal of being able to build an efficient, diversified portfolio.

At this Kitces Monthly Webinar, advisors will learn:

• How to build appropriate portfolios for investors in the accumulation stage of their lifetime
• Which assets should be considered in an accumulator’s portfolio, more than just the financial assets
• What contributes, and doesn’t contribute, to the riskiness of human capital, housing assets and pension assets