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Growing To $350M AUM By Putting Client Cash Flow At The Center Of The Planning Process: #FASuccess Ep 493 With David Mozeika

June 9, 2026 07:05 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

David Mozeika Podcast Featured Image FAS

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 493rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is David Mozeika. David is the founder of TOMORO, an RIA based in Red Bank, New Jersey, that oversees $350 million in assets under management for 600 client households.

What's unique about David, though, is how he approaches financial planning from a cash flow perspective, treating income as an asset to be distributed based on a client's goals.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how David treats cash flow planning not as a budgeting exercise but rather as an opportunity to default clients into saving rather than spending, how David uses what he calls a "cash flow reservoir" to hold client income, with a portion of the reservoir transferred to the client's checking account for spending (frequently leading to greater savings than transferring extra cash from the checking account to savings or investment vehicles), and how David's approach helps clients reduce their "unconscious spending" (such as on subscriptions that they might not use often) and supercharge their savings.

We also talk about David's four-part "financial positioning" process (which includes protection, growth, estate planning, and cash flow) and the milestones he wants to hit when meeting with prospects, how David treats meetings with ongoing clients as a forward-looking "calibration" process based on changes in their financial situation, and how David puts an emphasis on "defense" in the planning process, digging deep into clients' insurance policies to ensure their coverage is commensurate with the growing wealth they achieve over time.

And be certain to listen to the end, where David shares how he created his own software solution to run his "income under management" cash flow planning system (and began to offer it to other advisors), why David made the transition to the RIA model after building a successful career within the insurance channel, and how David has ultimately found success by leaning into his unique talents to solve other people's challenges.

So, whether you're interested in learning about an alternative approach to client cash flow management, the potential benefits of sending client income to a "reservoir" rather than their checking account, or how to leverage ‘defensive' strategies to improve client outcomes, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with David Mozeika.

Building The Profession Through (Joining) Membership Associations: How Financial Advisors Can Benefit From Being Active With FPA

June 8, 2026 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Planning Profession

Joining your "professional association" has long been a standard for professionals. Doctors have the American Medical Association. Lawyers have the American Bar Association. Upon completing a profession's educational and licensing requirements, membership associations are a typical next step on the journey of professional development. At least, until the internet and the rise of social media began to substantively change the behavior patterns of professionals to find everything from educational content to community online, leading to a broad-based decline in participation at many professional membership associations. Of which financial planning's own leading membership organization – the Financial Planning Association (FPA) – has experienced its own challenges and waning membership in recent years.

In this guest post, financial advisor (and former Board of Directors member of both the FPA and the CFP Board) Dan Moisand discusses why membership associations are still as important as they ever were, and arguably even more so in the case of financial planning, where our recognized status as a profession is still developing in the eyes of the public, which can require a strong membership association to build credibility.

Notably, in recent years the CFP Board has done much to advance recognition of financial planning as a profession. It requires education on an increasingly comprehensive body of financial planning knowledge, administers a robust comprehensive exam, and has repeatedly lifted its code of ethics and standards of conduct to be increasingly fiduciary in its requirements to serve clients' best interests at all times. While also supporting and better recognizing financial planners who take the time to engage in pro bono financial planning services for those who cannot afford the services.

Yet the reality is that CFP Board's scope is limited, where organizations like the Financial Planning Association can have impact. While CFP Board may be helping to drive the profession, the FPA supports the professional in areas that CFP Board is not well suited, from Continuing Education (through new FPA's Competency Model) to Practice Management (with FPA's professionally-diverse community of advisors) to Advocacy (where FPA can uniquely advocate on behalf of professionals, even sometimes including against the CFP Board).

As Moisand ultimately notes, the FPA does still have work to do, to turn around a nearly 20-year steady decline in membership, and the organization is still in the midst of trying to revamp everything from its MediaSource tools (for consumer media leads) to PlannerSearch (for consumers seeking a financial planner) to its series of four national conferences. Still, while other specialized membership organizations are growing, the unique benefits from advocacy to community amongst a diverse group of business models arguably means those who wish to see the profession advance as a whole should consider belonging to their more specialized membership groups and the FPA.

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (June 6–7)

June 5, 2026 02:00 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the news that a survey of financial advisors by CFP Board found that respondents had a median income of $195,000 in 2025, with CFP professionals having 11% higher income than their peers (after controlling for a variety of factors), and that median pay can move significantly higher along with an advisor's years of experience and the number of individuals they manage. The survey also found that 85% of CFP professionals surveyed said they experience personal fulfillment with their careers, with 54% of respondents expressing "very high" fulfillment. Altogether, these findings suggest that financial planning can be a financially and personally rewarding career with a potential bump for those who make the investment in CFP certification (though it might take some time for such benefits to accrue).

Also in industry news this week:

A report finds that while overall financial advisor client satisfaction is high, relatively lower levels of client engagement and willingness to make referrals suggest some firms might have room to grow not only by evaluating their client value propositions, but also by forging closer client relationships
The compliance deadline for affected smaller RIAs subject to amendments made under Reg S-P hit this week, as some firms appear to face challenges securing assurances from third-party vendors that they are properly protecting client information and will be able to meet the notification deadline when a data breach occurs

From there, we have several articles on retirement planning:

Four risks to retirement security, including those that can be mitigated through portfolio-based strategies (e.g., longevity and market risk) as well as those (including mortality and decision risk) that require different types of solutions from the advisory toolkit
Why the relationship between retirement date and lifespan can be particularly hard to disentangle
Three questions advisors can consider to gauge a client's retirement risk, from the composition of their spending to the percentage of their portfolio that is inflation-adjusted

We also have a number of articles on client communication:

Why clients sometimes put off implementing the 'perfect' financial plan and the strategies advisors can use to encourage action
While asking questions early on in the relationship is natural, clients might be more willing to open up if they feel like they aren't being judged based on the response
A three-part framework that can take clients from being merely satisfied to actively engaged with the planning process

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

The difference between being "nice" and "kind" and when each might (or might not) be appropriate
Experimental research suggests that those engaging in generous or kind acts might underestimate the ultimate impact they're able to make
How the ability to stand up for one's interests is a valuable complement to kindness in personal and professional interactions

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

When Clients Use AI To Challenge Your Advice: How To Respond To Deepen Engagement

June 3, 2026 07:06 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Client Trust & Communication

The traditional view of financial planning is that advisors are experts, who learn a specialized base of technical knowledge (e.g., CFP certification), and leverage that knowledge to collect information about clients' current situation and future goals and craft recommendations about what course of action clients can take to get from here to there. In this context, clients come with questions, financial advisors provide the answers, and then clients implement the recommendations (or subsequently delegate those steps to the financial advisor altogether). Yet in recent decades, this paradigm has begun to shift as the internet provides consumers near-unlimited access to information themselves… and now seems to be coming to a head with AI chatbot tools that allow a client to feed an advisor's entire financial plan and recommendations into the engine and come back with questions to challenge what their advisor said!

In this guest post, Dr. Meghaan Lurtz, a leading expert on the psychology of financial planning and Professor of Practice at Kansas State University, discusses how in reality clients coming back with AI-informed questions may not be a signal that technology is undermining financial advisors, and instead indicates that clients are more proactively engaging with their financial advisor in what could become a boon to advisor-client engagement!

When advisors have had years and decades of experience as being "the authority" on financial planning issues that their clients ask questions about, it's only natural to feel challenged when comes begin to double-check what their advisors have said using AI. Yet the reality is that clients who don't understand their financial planning recommendations aren't going to implement… and in the past, clients who didn't understand had little way to learn more, and may not have even known what questions they should be asking to better engage in the process. Whereas now, when clients leverage AI for themselves in a planning engagement, it creates a form of 'hybrid' model that makes it easier for them to engage proactively with their advisor!

After all, if clients really want to circumvent an advisor's advice, they can already do so; they simply go open the trading account, or buy the crypto, or purchase the boat, and don't bring it up to the advisor they already knew would likely tell them not to. The mere fact that clients choose to bring questions back from their AI output and ask "What do you think about this?" means there is a desire to take the conversation with their advisor even deeper. In turn, this means that advisors who invite clients further into the (AI-prompted) conversation create more opportunity for clients to be heard, which further increases the likelihood they'll follow through!

Advisors who want to lean in further and turn client AI-prompted challenges into more constructive conversations can use a four-part framework: first thank the client (I'm really glad you brought this up. This is exactly the kind of conversation I want us to be having), then listen ("What was it about this idea that got you excited? What's the part that feels right to you?") before offering to share perspective ("I appreciate you sharing all of that. Can I offer some additional context that might be helpful as you think this through?"), which opens the door to better understand ("I can see why that strategy looks attractive. Here's the piece I'd want us to stress-test before making a move — what do you think?"), to finally co-create a new future with the client ("This was a great conversation. Keep bringing me what you're finding — this is how we make the plan better together.").

Ultimately, though, the key point is to recognize that clients who bring questions that seemingly are "challenging" their advisor are probably not doing so because they're unhappy or don't value their advisor; it's a pathway for clients to engage with their advisor more deeply, with greater confidence, because the AI may have helped them better get up to speed on what questions to ask, what conversations to have, and in the process may better surface the values and goals that are really most important to them. Which isn't unique to financial advisors; when a patient tells their doctor, "I looked up my symptoms on WebMD," a good doctor doesn't say, "Stop Googling things." A good doctor says, "Tell me what you found and what concerned you", and the patient leaves that appointment feeling heard. The same door of opportunity is now opening for financial advisors, too!

Getting Your (Virtual) Team’s Best Work Through Steward Leadership On The Growth Path To $500M: #FASuccess Ep 492 With Mary Chapman

June 2, 2026 07:07 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 492nd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Mary Chapman. Mary is the chief operating officer of Cummings Wealth Management Group, a hybrid advisory firm based in Charleston, South Carolina, that oversees $500 million in assets under management for 260 client households.

What's unique about Mary, though, is how she has applied lessons from her research into "steward leadership" to build communications mechanisms, processes, and expectations to help her firm continue to thrive as it transitioned into a hybrid work environment.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Mary leverages the steward leadership approach to set high and specific recommendations for team members (for example, picking up the phone after the second ring so they can see who is calling on caller ID), how Mary finds that "clarity is kindness" when it comes to communicating these expectations (both up front when interviewing new employees and during regular evaluations after they join the firm), and how Mary created processes and workflows in her firm's CRM that create accountability for employees while allowing for the flexibility benefits remote work can offer (without her having to micromanage them).

We also talk about how Mary's firm operates a time- and location-hybrid model that has client-facing team members spend more time in the office while allowing the firm to tap into talent nationwide for back-office employees, how Mary's firm concentrates in-person client meetings into two months during the year (allowing for greater location flexibility for virtual meetings during the rest of the year), and how Mary's firm encourages employees to completely check out from work when on PTO (both to allow them to relax and recharge as well as to ensure that clients feel like they're getting the firm's full attention when they reach out).

And be certain to listen to the end, where Mary shares the importance of knowledge-sharing in a hybrid or virtual work environment (which highlights the value of accurate record-keeping in the firm's CRM system), why Mary and her firm seek "work-life integration" rather than "work-life balance" (emphasizing the importance of being 100% focused on the task at hand, whether it's work or time with family), and how Mary has ultimately found success by leaning into her unique strengths and applying them in roles throughout her firm.

So, whether you're interested in learning about leadership best practices for hybrid and virtual teams, why "clarity is kindness" when it comes to communicating expectations, or fostering an environment of "work-life integration", then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Mary Chapman.

Altruist Plans To Launch A New Corporate RIA (And More Of The Latest In Financial #AdvisorTech – June 2026)

June 1, 2026 07:04 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Welcome to the June 2026 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that Altruist is planning to launch a corporate RIA for advisors who want some level of compliance and technology support while remaining functionally independent – which is a first for a major RIA custodian that isn't in the business of actually being an RIA, but may make sense given that the economics of RIA custody are so favorable compared to technology and services that the corporate RIA doesn't actually have to be that profitable as long as it can draw a significant amount of advisors (and their client assets) onto Altruist's custody platform?

From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

Flourish has debuted a platform where advisory clients can compare and obtain mortgages – and by eliminating some layers of costs, is actually able to offer better interest rates than can normally be found on the retail market, creating an opportunity for advisors to add tangible value for clients in a planning area they don't often focus on
TaxStatus has announced a new embedded tax planning function, powered Advice.ai, which generates planning recommendations based on the client's tax data piped directly from the IRS – marking one of TaxStatus's first ventures into forward-looking planning (ironically at the same time as many similar features are rising up to compete with the longtime market leader Holistiplan)
RISR, which makes software for advisors who work with business owner clients to help them grow and protect the value of their business, has released a new AI document analysis tool to expedite review of business tax forms and buy-sell agreements – showing how the use cases for AI document analysis are starting to trickle down from broad-based applications like review of personal tax returns and investment statements into more niche client types

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:

A new survey of high-net-worth investors suggests that although clients feel neutral to positive about whether or not their advisors use AI in general, they are more wary about specific use cases that get in the way of the client-advisor relationship (such as AI-generated recommendations and client communication), and strongly disapprove of advisors not disclosing their use of AI
Despite many claims that expanded access to inexpensive 'vibe coding' tools will collapse the AdvisorTech landscape as advisors drop their software subscriptions in favor of custom homemade solutions, the reality is that the number of technology options is increasing even faster than before – because in reality, advisors don't want to build their own software, but the lower bar to building and developing technology means that a greater number of narrower-purpose point solutions are starting to emerge, solving problems for advisors that previously didn't have a large enough market to support a dedicated tech solution

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular "Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map" (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!

*To submit a request for inclusion or updates on the Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map and AdvisorTech Directory, please share information on the solution at the AdvisorTech Map submission form.