Welcome back to the sixteenth episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!
Our guest this week is Deena Katz, the co-chairwoman of Evensky & Katz / Foldes Financial, a $1.6 billion independent RIA in Coral Gables, Florida. In addition, Deena is an author, editor, and contributor to 9 books on financial planning and wealth management, including 3 specifically on practice management for financial advisors… one of which had a tremendous impact on me when I was early in my own career!
More recently, Deena transitioned from financial advising to academia, and is now a professor in the financial planning program at Texas Tech University as well! Though in point of fact, Deena’s transition to becoming a professor isn’t entirely surprising, because she was also a teacher early in her career before making the change into financial planning almost 40 years ago.
In this interview, Deena talks about the early years of financial planning, how she and her partners established one of the first sizable fee-only financial advisory businesses, and how she was able to break through in her own career – at a time when there were even fewer female independent advisory firm owners – by adopting a niche of working with recently widowed and divorcee women.
We also talk a lot about the delivery of financial planning itself, and various business models, including why it is that Deena’s firm does not provide full-length comprehensive financial plans to new clients anymore (and instead breaks up their financial planning process into modules over the first year), the simple process her firm uses to demonstrate its ongoing financial planning value over time, and why success isn’t about following your passion but practicing your skills instead.
And be certain to listen to the end, where we talk about various types of financial advisory business models, the future of the AUM model, and the infamous question of whether it’s better to charge separately for financial planning, or not.
So whether you’re looking for perspective on the future of financial advisor business models (from a woman whose firm has tried almost all of them at some point or another!), ideas in how to get your growth going by focusing into a niche, or are looking for inspiration about how to get started in your financial planning career from here (especially as a woman in a still-male-dominated industry), I hope you enjoy this latest episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!