Financial Advisor Success Podcast - Full Episode Archives

#FASuccess Ep 157: Building Your Own Personal Brand To Complement And Not Compete With Your Advisory Firm, with Peter Lazaroff

December 31, 2019 07:31 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 157th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Peter Lazaroff. Peter is a shareholder and the co-chief investment officer of Plancorp, an independent RIA based in St. Louis that oversees nearly $4.4 billion of assets under management for almost 1,300 affluent clients.

What's unique about Peter, though, is the way that he's been able to build his own personal brand as he's grown his career, both as a mechanism to build a client base of nearly $100 million of assets under management while still in his 20s and 30s to help him navigate career opportunities as well to build even further.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how exactly Peter built his personal brand. From simply proactively taking notes on what he was already reading and sharing them with co-workers to launching an email newsletter and pursuing networking meetings as a chance to build his email list, pivoting later to a blog that would further allow him to expand his readership and reach, publishing a book to go even deeper still to reach his target clientele, and how now his personal brand is producing such strong results in generating new clients that his advisory firm is investing into his personal brand to help refine it even further.

We also talk about the practical challenges of building a personal brand inside of a larger advisory firm. Why Peter's original firm was comfortable with him launching a newsletter but concerned about having him own a separate blog, how Peter got his new advisory firm on board with his branding efforts by first spending time writing for the firm's own website to show his value, the way Peter handles his blog content for compliance purposes and why he set up a separate LLC structure to own the intellectual property of his blog content and email list and then licensed it back to his advisory firm, and why Peter, despite the fact that many advisory firms are wary of their employees building personal brands outside of the business, thinks that firms allowing employees to do so will actually have a better chance at attracting and retaining the most ambitious, growth-oriented advisors.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Peter shares why he wishes he had launched his blog website earlier rather than just sending out an email newsletter. The importance of being proactive and getting your firm's leadership and compliance officer on board to be successful in building a personal brand that will complement and not compete with the firm, and the realization that Peter had after getting immersed into the so-called FinTwit community of financial advisors on Twitter, that while it's great to connect with colleagues through blogging and social media, in the end, it's crucial to stay focused on the target clients you want to reach to really have success in the world of blogging and social media.

#FASuccess Ep 156: Establishing Next Generation Career Tracks And Business Development Training For Long-Term Sustainability, with DeLynn Zell

December 24, 2019 07:05 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 156th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is DeLynn Zell. DeLynn is the Co-Founder and CEO of Bridgeworth Financial, a hybrid RIA based in Birmingham, Alabama that oversees nearly $1.6 billion of assets under management for almost 2,000 clients.

What's unique about DeLynn and her firm, though, is the way they decided from the start to build an advisory firm that would be sustained past the founders, and have taken steps over the years to establish the necessary career tracks, and equity and compensation structures to attract and retain next-generation talent for the firm in order to be sustainable for the long run.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about the four-tier career track that Bridgeworth has created. From a planning coordinator who focuses on the technical work for a base salary, to associate advisors who are involved with client meetings but also have the responsibility to start networking to establish themselves in the community; lead advisors who have the primary responsibility of relationship management and some incentives for business development; and partners who have not only a heavier responsibility for business development but also a greater financial participation to incentivize their ongoing efforts to keep growing the firm and its equity value.

We also talk about how Bridgeworth structures its compensation for partners. The unique way the firm allocates partner salary based on credits for both their business development and revenue or other leadership responsibilities to compensate their ongoing work in the business as separate from their equity ownership of the profits, which in turn is based on what they originally brought to the business when it was formed, how and why Bridgeworth is reinvesting into the business development training for its next-generation advisors so they too can become eligible to become a partner in the future, and the way the firm is developing advisor teams that each have their own specializations to support their individual business development activities under one common firm-wide umbrella.

And be certain to listen to the end, where DeLynn talks about how, even with the long-term success in the business, it was still incredibly difficult in the early years. Why she thinks in the long run, the advisory business is an especially good fit for women; how the gender split of CFP professionals may shift in the future; and why the most important thing when selecting an advisory firm to build your career is not the firm's compensation or particular role, but instead, its culture and whether it's a place you want to be in the long run, and then to let the role and your opportunity evolve as it may over time in a firm and culture you trust.

#FASuccess Ep 155: Eschewing A Bricks-And-Mortar Office For Reduced Overhead And (Virtual) Flexibility, With Derek Notman

December 17, 2019 07:09 am 3 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 155th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Derek Notman. Derek is the founder of Intrepid Wealth Partners, operates as an agent for New York Life and an IAR for Eagle Strategies, and oversees nearly $50 million of assets under management for almost 200 clients.

What's unique about Derek, though, is the way that he's evolved his advisory firm from a traditional bricks-and-mortar office space into an entirely virtual practice, born out of sheer necessity when he moved halfway across the country for an advisory firm merger that fell through and then had to figure out how to operate from two office locations, and evolved into a firm that has no office space at all.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about Derek's journey from a high-volume bricks-and-mortar office-based practice to an entirely virtual one. From starting out as an insurance agent where the pressure was on generating a high volume of clients that ultimately culminated in a practice of more than 1,000 clients in his first 10 years, how a move from where Derek started in Vermont out to Wisconsin forced him to start meeting with his team and then eventually clients using video chat, the way Derek eventually built out the entire virtual team he operates with today, and the way Derek has been able to grow his income and his freedom by transitioning nearly 80% of his clients away to other advisors while working with his clients sometimes as far as a continent away.

We also talk about how Derek's efforts on growth and business development have changed over the years. From the way he aggressively sought out networking opportunities and referrals in person to expand his client base in the early years, to a shift of generating 100% of his new clients online and virtually today through the use of a blog and social media, his decision to create a narrower niche focus on small business owners and CEOs, and how declaring that he works virtually with clients right on his homepage as their "virtual wealth partner" has actually helped him to attract new clients by promising not to meet with them in person.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Derek talks about why he regrets having tried to build a big practice in a bricks-and-mortar office, the pain points he's worked through in trying to get a large insurance company on board with his virtual model, where the greater challenge was not running his firm virtually and digitally, but simply trying to market for clients online, and how Derek is now trying to teach other advisors the virtual tools and systems that he had to figure out the hard way.

#FASuccess Ep 154: (Re-)Igniting Your Advisor Marketing By Defining Client Avatars And Removing Impediments To Action, With Mary Beth Storjohann

December 10, 2019 07:11 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 154th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Mary Beth Storjohann. Mary Beth is the chief marketing officer for Abacus Wealth Partners, an independent RIA based in Santa Monica, California that oversees nearly $2.6 billion of assets under management for almost 1,700 clients.

What's unique about Mary Beth, though, is that up until very recently, she was the founder of her own independent advisory firm, Workable Wealth, and despite (in fact, because of) the successful growth of her solo practice, Mary Beth decided the best way to continue advancing her own personal mission of expanding her financial planning impact was to sell her firm and to take on a marketing leadership role in an even larger firm instead.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about what it means to be a chief marketing officer of a large independent advisory firm. How Mary Beth allocates a marketing budget of just 2.5% of revenue that still adds up to nearly half a million dollars to allocate for marketing purposes, the relative split of marketing dollars towards staff to help implement marketing strategies versus direct spending on sponsorships and advertising, and how Abacus's marketing team funnels all of its activity to a lead intake team, whose job is to screen all the firm's prospects to determine who is qualified and who should be referred out instead.

We also talk in-depth about how Mary Beth developed avatars for the firm's marketing, formerly defined marketing personas like builders, protectors, and changemakers that the firm uses to more clearly determine where they should be and not be targeting their marketing dollars, how the firm developed a brand style guide so all the advisors of the firm can communicate in a consistent manner when marketing, and why Mary Beth decided to remove the contact form from the Abacus website altogether and instead, just install an embedded scheduling app to let prospects instantly and immediately set up a time for an initial call with the firm.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Mary Beth shares her ideas about what any advisory firm regardless of size can do to better improve its marketing, given her own experience in both a very large advisory firm, and having previously worked as a solo practitioner. Why often the biggest improvement that advisory firms can make is simply removing the impediments they're unwittingly creating that may reduce their marketing effectiveness, and Mary Beth's philosophy that the long-term key to marketing is all about brand consistency, which means it's better to spend a small amount of marketing dollars in a very consistent manner for a long period of time than to spend a large amount of money in a very short period of time.

#FASuccess Ep 153: Generating More Productive Referrals By Closing The Gap Of Prospects Who Are Referred But Never Call, With Dan Allison

December 3, 2019 07:06 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 153rd episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Dan Allison. Dan is the founder of Feedback Marketing Group, a marketing and sales consulting firm that helps financial advisors to increase their growth by teaching methods to actually generate more referrals from existing clients.

What's unique about Dan, though, is the way he approaches the challenge of referrals with a background in clinical and behavioral psychology, an approach that's focused specifically on how to reduce the client's own mental and other barriers to make it easier for them to provide effective referrals in the first place. Based on his discovery that, in the end, the problem for most advisors is not that their clients aren't referring them actively, but that there's a gap to be closed between how often clients refer and how often that referred person ever actually follows through to contact the financial advisor for help.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about Dan's approach to referrals and the five key points he focuses on helping to generate more and more productive referrals:

Making sure that you are really offering the services your clients want and would be willing to refer, recognizing that, unfortunately, not all advisors actually provide services worth referring in the first place;
Ensuring that clients are well educated about your firm and the full breadth of what you really do, given that clients will often only think of their advisor services based on what the advisor did for them personally and not actually the full range of the advisor services;
Communicating that you're actually looking to help more people and have capacity, and the kind of people that clients should be trying to spot that would be a good fit for you;
Working with the client to figure out if they do refer someone, what their introduction strategy will be to ensure that you'll actually be able to connect with and have a chance to help that referral; and
Categorizing your own clients to figure out who the potential referral goldmines might be, and more importantly, who the referral landmines are that, once identified, you'll simply know not to ever have the referral conversation with anymore.

We also talk about the fundamental dynamic of client referrals themselves. Why the "I get paid in two ways" or "the greatest compliment you can give me is a referral" and similar approaches that try to guilt clients into feeling like they should be obligated to give their financial advisor referrals is mostly doomed to fail, the difference between transactional referrals versus relationship referrals and how the very nature of client referrals has changed as the financial advisor business model has changed, but why even in a relationship model, it's not enough to simply serve your clients well and wait, hope and pray that they'll start sending you referrals, because, as most advisors know, that often doesn't really happen in reality.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Dan shares some of his own journey as someone who built and sold an incredibly successful business while still in his 20s, the somewhat random way that he landed in the financial services industry, with a background in psychology and mental health, but how in the end, the career of being a successful financial advisor is all about that mental game of preparing yourself, not for the sprint of launching your firm but for the marathon of building a successful practice over the years and decades to come.

#FASuccess Ep 152: Getting Comfortable With Sales By Simply Seeking To Find Qualified Prospects To Inform, With Beverly Flaxington

November 26, 2019 07:06 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 152nd episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Beverly Flaxington. Bev is the founder of The Collaborative, which provides sales training and organizational development support to financial services firms.

What's unique about Bev, though, is the human behavioral coaching approach that she takes to teach sales and business development skills. Recognizing that, in the end, with financial advisors (as with our own clients) it's not just about knowing what to do, but figuring out how to change your behavior to actually do it.

In this episode, we talk in depth about Bev's approach to sales training and how to conduct a meeting with a prospective new client. Why it's so important to set upfront for the prospect an expected outcome for the meeting, the importance of figuring out whether someone is a qualified prospect by determining if they're suited for your firm services, willing to pay and really ready to make a decision, how to get permission to ask deeper questions to the prospect to get to know them further, and why it's ultimately a kindness to a prospect to ask for their business when that moment comes, instead of just waiting and praying for them to volunteer that they're ready to sign up with you.

We also talk about the challenge of differentiating in today's crowded advisor marketplace, the value of having a niche, at least for your outbound marketing efforts, why getting more specific about exactly who you serve makes it both easier to generate referrals from existing clients and reduces that awkwardness of talking about what you do in social settings, and the importance of defining clear triggers so those who might refer to you know exactly what situations to watch out for that might be a good opportunity to refer.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Bev talks about how advisors who find the sales process icky or uncomfortable can reframe it in their own minds to understand that in the end, settling is simply about letting people know what you do, how you can help them, that you genuinely want to work with them and do good work, and that your job is simply to help them make a decision they're confident about, which hopefully will end out being to hire you to do the work!

#FASuccess Ep 151: Expanding Your Advisory Firm’s Reach With A Retail Prosperity Pie Shoppe, with Luna Jaffe

November 19, 2019 07:04 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 151st episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Luna Jaffe. Luna is the founder of Lunaria Financial, an advisory firm in Portland, Oregon that oversees nearly $55 million of assets under management for 100 client households.

What's unique about Luna, though, is that in an effort to solve the challenge of building an advisory practice that ends out with minimums too high to work with everyone, she launched the Sacred Money Studios & Prosperity Pie Shoppe, an actual pie shop across the street from her advisory firm office that offers low-cost financial education programs on budgeting and what Luna calls her Wild Money process.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about what Luna has learned in trying to expand the reach of financial education through a retail store. Why she ultimately decided to charge a standalone fee for each money class instead of an ongoing membership fee, the budgeting philosophy in the Wild Money process she teaches that she has found resonates with those seeking help with their finances, and the real-world challenges that come with opening up a retail store that has to manage retail employees.

We also talk about Luna's own advisory firm. Her unique year-long financial planning process that can run up to 18 meetings by incrementally helping clients implement changes step by step along the way, the exercises she uses from mind mapping to vision cards she created to having clients write a love letter to their money, how Luna integrates the eMoney Advisor portal into her somewhat non-traditional process, why the firm uses the You Need a Budget, YNAB tool to help clients actually change their spending behaviors and the flat fee structure that Luna adopted to ensure she is properly compensated for her time-intensive planning process.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Luna shares why despite the retail challenges, she hopes to ultimately take on investors and expand the reach of Sacred Money Studios, the additional challenge she faced when she decided to break away from Edward Jones to start her own independent firm, and why her biggest tip to other advisors is the importance of finding a mentor, not just one who will listen to you, but one who will pull you forward into what you can really become.

#FASuccess Ep 150: Getting Unstuck And Re-Aligning Fees To Build The Solo Advisory Firm You Want, With Tanya Nichols

November 12, 2019 07:20 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Financial Advisor Success Podcast Episode 150 With Tanya Nichols

Welcome back to the 150th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Tanya Nichols. Tanya is the founder of Align Financial, a hybrid advisory firm near Duluth, Minnesota that oversees nearly $50 million of assets for 80 client households.

What's unique about Tanya, though, is the way she took a leap last year to start her own independent advisory firm after nearly 20 years of working in a larger firm environment, not because of the opportunity for more money or independence, but simply because she found a community of others with a similar growth mindset that would support her in the journey.

In this episode, we talk in depth about Tanya's journey through the advisor industry. From why she left the wirehouse environment to join a smaller independent firm as their succession plan, only to have the plan fail a few years later, to the moment of realization she had that she needed to go in another direction that led her to both leave the firm and become a solo advisor and also divorce her husband all in the span of two weeks. And how she set her current goal to double her revenue to $1 million by age 40 while working only 30 hours a week and laughing more with her kids along the way.

We also talk about how Tanya has completely restructured what she does in her advisory firm itself. From implementing a firm-wide realignment of fees to ensure she was getting paid what she's worth by every client, even if it meant a nearly 50% increase on some clients who've been working with her for over a decade. The meeting surge approach that she uses to schedule all of her client meetings for the year in just two two-month clusters, in the fall and the spring. How she refined her financial planning process leveraging MoneyGuidePro to do the analysis but summarizing it all in a one-page financial plan of observations. And why she starts off every prospect and client meeting with the simple question, "What has your attention right now?"

And be certain to listen to the end, where Tanya shares why she refocused her business on the alignment of our life and money, thus the Align Financial name, how a redesign of her website has generated more inbound inquiries from prospects who say that her website speaks to them, and how ultimately, the biggest surprise of her advisory career is that she never actually thought she'd be running a firm on her own until she got to the point in her career where she could actually give herself permission to do so.

#FASuccess Ep 149: Managing Capacity And Ensuring Continuity For Clients By Selling Without Retiring, with Susan John

November 5, 2019 07:23 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 149th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Susan John. Susan is a financial advisor and the managing director of financial planning for F.L.Putnam, an independent RIA with offices across New England that manages more than $2 billion of assets under management.

What's unique about Susan, though, is that she only just recently joined F.L.Putnam having spent nearly 25 years building her own independent financial planning firm from scratch up to $350 million in assets under management before deciding to tuck into F.L.Putnam as part of her succession but not retirement plan.

In this episode, we talk in depth about the financial planning process that Susan has developed over more than three decades of experience, which now is done on an interactive basis using eMoney Advisor, where clients don't even ever receive a big printout but just a summary of recommendations, pros and cons, and the firm's rationale for the recommendations it's making; why Susan chooses to charge a full upfront fee of $3,500 to $15,000 to do these financial planning snapshots for every client before even considering whether to take them as an ongoing AUM client; and how, on an ongoing basis, Susan starts every year with an annual cash plan that evaluates exactly how each retired client's retirement paychecks will be generated from their portfolio for the coming year, given both their cash flow needs and the current portfolio and tax situation.

We also talk about how Susan grew her advisory firm to $350 million by proactively asking for referrals and running intimate client events, including entire weekend ski getaways to deepen those client relationships. How Susan expanded ownership of the firm over the years with buying opportunities to several of the firm's employee advisors, and why, for the sake of her firm's fiduciary duty to clients, she ultimately decided to sell externally and tuck into a larger advisory business rather than continuing to transition succession equity to her existing advisor partners internally.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Susan shares why she has become increasingly active in the financial planning profession with leadership roles in both NAPFA and the CFP Board, how she structures her week to try to balance her obligations within the firm and beyond, and why Susan views it as imperative for both newer and established financial advisors to join and get actively involved with one of the industry's membership associations.

#FASuccess Ep 148: Building A Small-Town LGBTQ Niche While Coming Out To Your Broker-Dealer, With Laura LaTourette

October 29, 2019 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 148th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Laura LaTourette. Laura is the founder of Family Wealth Management Group, a hybrid advisory firm in Dahlonega, Georgia that oversees $45 million of assets under management for 86 client households.

What's unique about Laura, though, is the way she's built her advisory firm to work primarily with the LGBTQ community in her rural Georgia town while navigating her own challenges of figuring out when and how to come out of the closet to her own broker-dealer.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about Laura's financial planning process. The series of four financial planning meetings she goes through with every client that includes a unique draft plan meeting, where she presents a tentative series of recommendations to clients not for their implementation, but simply for their feedback, how Laura sets her minimum of financial planning fee that's separate from what she's subsequently paid to help clients implement, and how in recent years, she's begun to refine everything from her website to her data gathering form to better speak to her core LGBTQ niche clientele.

We also talk about Laura's own journey through the financial services industry and building her firm. The way she started out trying to build a multi-advisor agency with centralized support but ultimately found it just wasn't profitable to do so, the path she took to shift away from the multi-advisor model after 10 years to operate a solo advisory firm that she's enjoyed far more, how a desire to build a succession plan is leading her once again to start building towards a multi-advisor ensemble practice, and why she recently decided to hire a new CEO to support her solo advisory firm, who specifically does not have client relationship or business development obligations.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Laura shares her perspective on why it's so important to be authentic to who you are when you're working with clients to build trust, what she's done to find support for herself through the challenging ups and downs of being a lesbian advisor in both a town and an industry that are still not very accepting of the LGBTQ community, and why she joined the Women in Financial Services organization and is now launching her own Rainbow Network to support LGBTQ advisors.

So whether you're interested in hearing about Laura's challenges (and successes) as a part of the LGBTQ community in a small town in northern Georgia, how she structures her entire financial planning process, or how she's developing a network for other LGBTQ financial advisors, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podast.

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#FASuccess Ep 157: Building Your Own Personal Brand To Complement And Not Compete With Your Advisory Firm, with Peter Lazaroff

#FASuccess Ep 156: Establishing Next Generation Career Tracks And Business Development Training For Long-Term Sustainability, with DeLynn Zell

#FASuccess Ep 155: Eschewing A Bricks-And-Mortar Office For Reduced Overhead And (Virtual) Flexibility, With Derek Notman

#FASuccess Ep 154: (Re-)Igniting Your Advisor Marketing By Defining Client Avatars And Removing Impediments To Action, With Mary Beth Storjohann

#FASuccess Ep 153: Generating More Productive Referrals By Closing The Gap Of Prospects Who Are Referred But Never Call, With Dan Allison

#FASuccess Ep 152: Getting Comfortable With Sales By Simply Seeking To Find Qualified Prospects To Inform, With Beverly Flaxington

#FASuccess Ep 151: Expanding Your Advisory Firm’s Reach With A Retail Prosperity Pie Shoppe, with Luna Jaffe

#FASuccess Ep 150: Getting Unstuck And Re-Aligning Fees To Build The Solo Advisory Firm You Want, With Tanya Nichols

#FASuccess Ep 149: Managing Capacity And Ensuring Continuity For Clients By Selling Without Retiring, with Susan John

#FASuccess Ep 148: Building A Small-Town LGBTQ Niche While Coming Out To Your Broker-Dealer, With Laura LaTourette

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