Financial Advisor Success Podcast - Full Episode Archives

#FASuccess Ep 167: Creating More Buy-In To Change Financial Behaviors With A Life Planning Approach, with Scott Frank

March 10, 2020 07:05 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 167th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Scott Frank. Scott is the founder of Stone Steps Financial, an independent RIA based in Southern California that has quickly grown to 67 clients and more than $400,000 of annualized revenue in just 5 years.

What's unique about Scott, though, is the way he's evolved his advisory firm from a highly technical base as both a CFA charterholder and a CFP certificant to a financial planning approach with clients built around George Kinder's five-step EVOKE life planning process, which Scott helps clients implement using all his technical knowledge.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Scott incorporates life planning questions into the first three meetings of his financial planning process. The reasons why he finds some of George Kinder's life planning questions to be so powerful as a way to really understand clients’ goals and objectives to plan towards, the way he creates buy-in from clients into the financial planning process to get them to actually implement the recommended strategies at the end, and where traditional financial planning software intersects with the life planning approach.

We also talk about how Scott has built a business around his life planning approach. The reason he chooses to bill on a client's holistic assets under advisement and not just the assets he manages directly, how he's simplified his pricing and billing processes with a flat fee schedule of 1% for the first $3 million on all assets under advisement and simply updates the pricing once every 2 years, and the way he's built his clientele with the combination of local search engine optimization and generating referrals from other advisory firms in the area that have even higher minimums than he does.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Scott shares why he hired a financial planner himself to work with his family, how he developed his own life planning goals that led him to take the leap and start his own independent firm after nearly 10 years in the business, and how he used that vision of his family's life planning goals to give himself fee confidence to start charging what his advice was really worth.

#FASuccess Ep 166: How Organic Growth Begets More Growth: The Size Bonus Of Building A Local And National Advisor Brand, with Peter Mallouk

March 3, 2020 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 166th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Peter Mallouk. Peter is the founder and president of Creative Planning, an independent RIA based in Kansas City that oversees more than $50 billion of assets under management for over 30,000 client families.

What's unique about Peter, though, is the way he's been able to build Creative Planning to an incredible milestone of $50 billion of assets under management nearly from scratch in the past 16 years and without mergers, acquisitions, or outside capital along the way, and why, after building the $50 billion, he's recently decided to begin the process of acquiring outside firms and to take outside equity investment from a private equity firm.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about Creative Planning's organic growth path over the past 16 years. The way the firm built early on with RIA custodial referrals with a then-unique offering of fully customized client portfolios and comprehensive financial planning bundled into a single AUM fee, how the firm's growth engine has shifted increasingly to referrals from existing clients and even direct inbound inquiries as more and more branch locations of Creative Planning become one of the largest local independent firms in their metropolitan areas across the country, and why it takes a very narrow focus on the kind of firms Creative Planning is willing to acquire to ensure that such acquisitions help and don't hinder its long-term organic growth strategy.

We also talk about Peter's perspective on broader industry trends, including why even with an increasing focus on fee compression and the commoditization of investment management, Creative Planning remains committed to the AUM model and not charging separately for planning, how the industry's professed talent shortage isn't necessarily a problem for firms with a clearly differentiated value proposition in the marketplace, and why he believes that independent advisory firms may be near a peak in valuation multiples, leading Creative Planning itself to recently sell a minority stake to a PE firm.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Peter shares what he actually intends to do with the outside capital that Creative Planning raised (and it's not to fund acquisitions), the firm's aggressive growth plan over the next 3 years, and why even as the leader of a $50 billion RIA, Peter still keeps a base of 100 clients that he sees for the bulk of his time every week and encourages most of his leadership team to keep client-facing roles with a portion of their time as well.

#FASuccess Ep 165: Navigating Broker Protocol When The Firm You Start With Isn’t The One You Want To Stick With, with Steve Kampschmidt

February 25, 2020 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 165th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Steve Kampschmidt. Steve is the founder of Freedom Found Financial, an independent RIA based in northern New Jersey that oversees just over $20 million in assets under management for 30 affluent clients.

What's unique about Steve, though, is that he just recently formed his advisory firm having broken away from the training program at a major wirehouse after realizing that with an entrepreneurial mindset and a goal of building a lifestyle practice with good work/life balance, it was simply far more economical for him to operate his own firm and control his own expenses than to give the majority of his income up to the grid.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Steve built his initial base of clients at the wirehouse through modern cold-calling techniques leveraging ZoomInfo, the salary base that the wirehouse provided while he built his initial base of clients, the type of alternative non-AUM business model he decided he wanted to create that necessitated a shift away from the wirehouse, and why he's now operating with the blend of annual retainer fees and monthly subscription fees for various client types.

We also talk about where Steve went to find the information and consulting support he needed to make the transition smoothly. What Steve actually went through to comply with the Broker Protocol when leaving his firm, the factors that led him to select Fidelity as his custodian of choice, the way he built out his advisor technology stack, and why he chose not to purchase any kind of portfolio performance reporting software and to rely solely on eMoney's financial planning portal instead.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Steve talks about realistic expectations and how many clients will stick with you if you choose to leave a large firm and its national brand, his tips for career-building in the early years especially as a career changer, and why in the end, the biggest key to success is simply having the confidence in yourself, and being willing to make whatever changes it takes to service your clients the way that you want to serve them.

#FASuccess Ep 164: Making The Hard Transition From Financial Advisor To Business Owner Of Your Advisory Firm, With Julia Carlson

February 18, 2020 07:05 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 164th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Julia Carlson. Julia is the founder and CEO of Financial Freedom Wealth Management Group, a hybrid RIA based in Newport, Oregon, that oversees nearly $300 million of assets under management for almost 1,000 client households.

What's unique about Julia, though, is the way that an unfortunate car accident that her daughter was in led Julia to transition very quickly from being the lead advisor that ran her own firm to expanding her staff and becoming the business owner of the advisory firm instead, if only out of sheer necessity of finding the time she needed to support her daughter's recovery, but in a way that allowed the firm to more than quadruple in the eight years since.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about Julia's journey through her advisory career. From her challenges early on gaining professional credibility as a young female advisor where a prospect once told her she was too pretty to be a financial advisor to the way she got her foot in the door talking to small local business owners about their retirement plans and building wealth outside of their businesses. How reading Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover" launched Julia's path towards a more holistic planning-centric approach to clients and the way that she built her client base in the early years with Ramsey's Endorsed Local Provider referral program, now known as SmartVestor Pro.

We also talk about the transformation that Julia's business had to go through, almost literally overnight, when she got the call from her own client appreciation event that her daughter had been struck by a drunk driver and was being airlifted to the hospital in critical condition. How the pain of being forced to try to run her business from the ICU while being with her daughter during recovery led Julia to hire a president to take over running the firm on a day-to-day basis, the way that shift ended out allowing Julia's firm to double in size from $60 million to $120 million just 2 years later, as her time and focus were freed up for growth, and how the firm's adoption of Gino Wickman's Entrepreneurial Operating System has allowed the business to run even more efficiently as it more than doubled again over the past several years.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Julia talks about the real-world challenges of trying to let go of having so much control in your business, or as Julia puts it, how to stay in charge even if you're not in control anymore, the way that she took a hard look at everything that does and doesn't energize her, from week-to-week, to figure out her own strengths and where she should be focusing her time, and how the hardest thing to do in the end was letting go of client relationships but how, once Julia acknowledged that it was a crucial step, the firm quickly figured out how to create an internal training program to ensure that other advisors would service clients up to Julia's standards.

#FASuccess Ep 163: Building A Fast-Growth Practice Without Prospecting By Working Under A Credit Union, with Michael Gennawey

February 11, 2020 07:03 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 163rd episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Michael Gennawey. Michael is a financial advisor and program manager for SoCal Wealth Management, a hybrid advisory firm in Southern California that oversees $260 million of assets under management for nearly 1,800 clients.

What's unique about Michael, though, is the way he's been able to build SoCal Wealth Management under the umbrella of the Credit Union of Southern California, which itself has nearly $1.6 billion of credit union assets serving almost 120,000 members across 18 branch locations and feeds a continuous flow of prospect referrals to Michael's advisory firm, with the caveat that as part of the credit union, they have to take every client that is referred to them.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about the unique structure of credit unions as customers or, rather, member-owned financial institutions, and how the member-centric culture of credit unions can be so complementary to the client-centric culture of advisory firms. The way that Credit Union of Southern California structures its referral program and trains its Member Service Officers across branches to identify members with client needs and steer them towards SoCal Wealth Management at a pace of nearly three new clients per week, and the way SoCal Wealth structures its offering on the LPL platform to keep it efficient enough to run this kind of high-volume client business.

We also talk about the way that Michael's firm uses an internal team member supporting the financial advisors to both set initial appointments with referrals but also to help screen them to ensure they're a fit for the firm in the first place, SoCal Wealth's financial planning process and their two-meeting approach that delivers the plan interactively with MoneyGuidePro, not only to engage clients but to save significant time in the plan preparation process, and the way that Michael's firm segments clients for ongoing services, given the incredible range of who the credit union refers to them, from multimillionaires to those opening their first IRA.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Michael shares how to figure out which credit unions have the right client-centric culture and which are just offering wealth management as a product-based profit center, the typical payouts that advisors receive in a credit union environment in exchange for having to do little or no business development, and the unique structure that SoCal Wealth has built for its advisors where clients that are referred through the credit union must stay behind, but advisors can still have their own personal clients that the advisor can take with them if they leave in the future.

#FASuccess Ep 162: Efficiently Expanding In-Depth Financial Planning Services To Move Beyond The AUM-Only Model, With Tim Bickmore

February 4, 2020 07:01 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 162nd episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Tim Bickmore. Tim is the co-founder and the director of financial planning for LBW Wealth Management, an independent RIA based in Madison, Wisconsin, that oversees more than $50 million of assets under management for 230 client households.

What's unique about Tim, though, is that despite having rapid success and growing their advisory firm to over $50 million in just the past 5 years, they're concerned that what has gotten them here won't get them there – to the growth that comes next, particularly as the firm is focusing more and more on offering comprehensive financial planning advice and trying to manage the additional time and productivity limitations that come with a deeper financial planning process. Leading Tim not only to share his story of business success in getting to this point but also to ask for advice about what they should be doing to grow profitably from here.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about the evolution of Tim's advisory firm, from their initial five years of building around the AUM model, their decision to shift to a blended model with a base monthly subscription fee for financial planning advice alongside a reduced AUM fee for investment management. The way their new business models, helping them both to ensure profitability for new clients regardless of their assets, while also opening up new markets for non-AUM young professionals and business owners in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. And the real-world challenges and how to position a change in your fees and focus of the firm with all your existing clients who may now face a significant fee increase.

We also talk in-depth about LBW's financial planning process for younger clientele in their 20s, 30s, and 40s; the reason the firm left MoneyGuidePro for eMoney Advisor as a better platform to give advice to next-generation clients; the increasingly cash-flow-based approach that LBW has taken, focusing not on long-term cash flow planning and retirement projections but categorizing and reflecting on the client's short-term household cash flow instead; how Tim is implementing a more “Agile Financial Planning” approach in his advisory firm; and how the reality is that even a highly-efficient and profitable advisory firm will still find it less profitable to scale financial planning for the second or third hundred clients than it is for the first 100.

And be certain to listen to the end where Tim shares the unexpected surprises that hit him as a business owner running a financial planning business. How even though they were challenging, he still believes that they were necessary to go through as part of the learning process to build a business, and why in the end it's all been worthwhile to him, not simply because he's been able to grow a valuable business, but because in the end, financial planning itself is first and foremost psychologically rewarding to us in the opportunity to meet new people from so many different walks of life and help them.

#FASuccess Ep 161: Cultivating The Right Firm Culture With A Reality-Based Leadership Approach, with Tessa Felix

January 28, 2020 07:03 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 161st episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Tessa Felix. Tessa is the HR and operations lead for PWL Capital, an advisory firm based in Montreal and Ottawa that oversees nearly $3.6 billion in assets under management.

What's unique about Tessa, though, is her particular focus on developing the culture of her advisory firm, and the systems and structure that she's put in place to help hold everyone on the team accountable for their work, in addition to making the firm an enjoyable environment to work in.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about the Reality-Based Leadership system that Tessa has incorporated into her management approach in the firm. Why the emotional expense of employee drama is such an important cost to manage and save for the firm; Tessa's routine of weekly team meetings, internal team podcasts, and monthly one-on-ones that she uses to maintain the culture of the firm; and why in the end, culture is not just about creating a fun workplace, but about the actions and behaviors that are expressed in the workplace.

We also talk about Tessa's own career journey. From joining her advisory firm in an operations role, earning her advisor licenses to shift into a client-facing advisory role, deciding that she actually enjoys the work of managing people and building culture more than working directly with clients and shifting back into an internal operations role, the way she navigated the challenging transition from being a peer of her co-workers to their manager instead, and how she ultimately became not just the HR and operations lead, but the culture lead for her advisory firm as well.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Tessa shares some of the key books that have influenced her journey of learning how to develop and manage people and culture, the software tool she uses to help manage internal team meetings and employee engagement, and the importance of both cultivating a growth mindset in employees and having a growth mindset as a firm where culture itself will always be fluid and evolving.

And so with that introduction, I hope you enjoy this episode of the "Financial Advisor Success" podcast with Tessa Felix.

#FASuccess Ep 160: Accelerating Growth By Spending More Than 10% Of Revenue On Marketing (That Works), with Gabriel Shahin

January 21, 2020 07:05 am 8 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 160th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Gabriel Shahin. Gabriel is the founder of Falcon Wealth, an independent RIA based in the Greater Los Angeles area that oversees nearly $200 million of assets under management for 370 clients.

What's unique about Gabriel, though, is the way he's built his firm to $200 million of AUM from scratch in barely 5 years by spending proactively on marketing as much as 10% to 20% of his annual revenue, amounting to almost $30,000 per month in marketing spending this year, on which he's typically able to make back nearly double the revenue of his marketing spend in the first 12 months alone, and of course, may have a client for life for all the years thereafter.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Gabriel allocates his proactive marketing dollars. From spending on outsourced SEO experts and Google AdWords to various paid web listings like NAPFA, the CFP Board and SmartAsset, paying for a weekly radio show and spending as much as $8,000 per mailing for an outside firm to help him market educational classes that he uses to teach personal finance and establish a relationship with the students, some of whom eventually decide to become clients as well.

We also talk about how Gabriel handles the sales process given the number of leads he's able to generate with his proactive marketing. Why he ultimately decided to hire a standalone business development associate to respond to all the inquiries and screen them within 10 minutes of contacting the firm, how Gabriel conducts his 2-meeting sales process to deliver initial value to clients and then encourage them to work with him on an ongoing basis to implement, and how Gabriel gracefully handles the leads his marketing generates that may not have the financial wherewithal to be a good fit for his firm.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Gabriel talks about struggles of going out on his own. How we ended out racking up nearly $50,000 in credit card debt doing his initial marketing to get his first clients in the door, the way he was able to attract some clients from his prior firm without violating his non-solicit agreement, and the challenge that even as the firm scales up the revenue much faster than the take-home profits, it becomes increasingly necessary to reinvest into the infrastructure of a growing advisory firm along the way, especially when he's growing quickly.

#FASuccess Ep 159: Navigating Financial Advisor Career Opportunities Under The Employee Model, with Kelly Shikany

January 14, 2020 07:08 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 159th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Kelly Shikany. Kelly is a financial advisor and director of wealth management for Lakeside Wealth, a hybrid RIA based in Chesterton, Indiana, right outside Chicago, where Kelly manages a base of nearly $90 million of client assets.

What's unique about Kelly, though, is her decision to not hang her hat as a solo advisor and instead navigate existing advisory firms that have already established the necessary infrastructure to operate the firm, allowing her to focus on clients and not needing to live in an "eat what you kill" grid-based environment.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about Kelly's career path through the advisory industry under the employee model. From starting out as a trust accountant for ERISA plans with Northern Trust, shifting to become a trust officer with an independent trust company, transitioning to the independent channel under the Wells Fargo FiNet platform, and then joining her current firm with an opportunity to grow by servicing clients that the firm acquires in its own efforts to grow.

We also talk about how Kelly grew her client base in the early years by conducting women's circles as a way to network and establish relationships in her small town community. The reason she decided to pursue the CDFA designation as a way to initially differentiate herself, and how ultimately she decided the best way to differentiate herself was simply her ability to have a different kind of conversation with her clients in the first place.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Kelly talks about how she structures her week to maximize personal productivity. Why it's so difficult for most of the employee model to even figure out the right questions to ask when evaluating potential advisor job opportunities, and why it's important to balance a positive desire to be loyal to your firm and clientele with focusing on your own needs to find a fulfilling career and the right place to work as a financial advisor.

#FASuccess Ep 158: Leveraging Outsourcers To Go From Employee To Independent Without Building It All Yourself, with Stephanie Bruno

January 7, 2020 07:02 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 158th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Steph Bruno. Steph is the founder of Sea to Peak Financial Advisors, an independent RIA with offices based in Seattle and Denver that oversees nearly $70 million in assets under management for 45 affluent clients.

What's unique about Steph, though, is that she transitioned to launching her own independent firm only after a 15-year career as an employee in large and mid-sized financial services firms and recognized that she didn't want to manage the infrastructure of actually establishing and running a new firm by herself, so she found an outsourcing partner that from the start would work with her to provide that structure so she could simply focus on what she wanted to focus on, serving the clients she wanted to serve the way she wanted to serve them.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about what led Steph to take the leap and walk away from a stable employee paycheck to build her own firm from scratch. How she initially tucked under another established hybrid advisory firm for support to grow, the realization that owning her own clients meant she'd have to market for her own clients, and now she was going to market herself anyway, she may as well break out entirely on her own, and why Steph decided to hire a personal coach to help her not when many other advisors do, which is once they hit a capacity wall and need to figure out how to best structure the practice going forward, but instead to get coaching support right from the start to help give her the courage and confidence to get through the difficult early years in the first place.

We also talk about Steph's financial planning process with clients and how she starts by creating a money meaning map using mind mapping software to help provide clients a deliverable to demonstrate her value after the very first prospect meeting, the way she integrates life planning conversations into her planning process, the challenge that Steph had in rebooting her marketing after relocating to a new city, and the way she's beginning to further shift her focus towards a niche of working with busy executives to better strengthen and focus her own marketing process, in particular with e-books and networking meetings going forward.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Steph talks about how, if she'd do it all over again, she would have taken the leap even sooner, but how even though it's worked out, the early years are still incredibly difficult. The role that both her coach and advisor-peers' support played in getting her through those challenging years early on, the reasoning she used when she decided to take an early withdrawal from her IRA to invest in herself in launching her new practice a decade ago, and the importance of recognizing the difference between doing work you're good at and being proud of it versus doing the work you really love to do.

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#FASuccess Ep 167: Creating More Buy-In To Change Financial Behaviors With A Life Planning Approach, with Scott Frank

#FASuccess Ep 166: How Organic Growth Begets More Growth: The Size Bonus Of Building A Local And National Advisor Brand, with Peter Mallouk

#FASuccess Ep 165: Navigating Broker Protocol When The Firm You Start With Isn’t The One You Want To Stick With, with Steve Kampschmidt

#FASuccess Ep 164: Making The Hard Transition From Financial Advisor To Business Owner Of Your Advisory Firm, With Julia Carlson

#FASuccess Ep 163: Building A Fast-Growth Practice Without Prospecting By Working Under A Credit Union, with Michael Gennawey

#FASuccess Ep 162: Efficiently Expanding In-Depth Financial Planning Services To Move Beyond The AUM-Only Model, With Tim Bickmore

#FASuccess Ep 161: Cultivating The Right Firm Culture With A Reality-Based Leadership Approach, with Tessa Felix

#FASuccess Ep 160: Accelerating Growth By Spending More Than 10% Of Revenue On Marketing (That Works), with Gabriel Shahin

#FASuccess Ep 159: Navigating Financial Advisor Career Opportunities Under The Employee Model, with Kelly Shikany

#FASuccess Ep 158: Leveraging Outsourcers To Go From Employee To Independent Without Building It All Yourself, with Stephanie Bruno

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