Financial Advisor Success Podcast Archives

Welcome back to the 375th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Rob Schultz. Rob is the Senior Partner of NWF Advisory, a hybrid firm based in Los Angeles, California, where he oversees nearly $500M in assets under management for 200 client households.

What's unique about Rob, though, is how he's systematized his meeting process, from his meeting prep down to a standardized agenda flow that allows him to dig into client-specific details while also maintaining an efficient meeting process… which has allowed him to scale up to over 20 client meetings every week… and still keep his sanity and energy levels up so that this is sustainable to him as he builds his firm.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Rob sets the agenda for his 20+ meetings per week with his clients using a structured flow that always touches on the same key areas for every client, the way he leverages his paraplanner to prep a stack of client meetings so that he can knock through a week's worth of meeting preparation in just a few hours every Monday morning, and the way Rob leverages the built-in audio transcription features in Microsoft Word itself to quickly wrap up his post-meeting notes at the end of each day.

We also talk about Rob's journey from getting an undergrad in Kinesiology and starting med school to moving into accounting and then ultimately becoming a financial planner through the program at UCLA (because financial planning was the perfect blend of helping people the way he wanted to in medicine, and working with numbers the way he did in accounting), the way Rob has been able to grow by executing a series of "succession plans" where he buys out and takes over the practices of retiring advisors, and the way Rob has been able to scale up his efficiency further by getting more systematized with his investments, especially the rise in recent years of outsourced TAMP providers and the availability of ETF model portfolios.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Rob shares the impact it had when a mentor pointed out how he could be the smartest advisor out there, but if he couldn't make enough money to last, he wasn't going to be able to help anyone, how much Rob has realized that soft skills are required to get his clients into a mindset where they are on a good path and can use any extra money they have to make their own lives better, and how getting to the point where Rob was actually able to say "No" to prospective clients who he knew deep down really weren't a good fit – but Rob finally felt he had the freedom to act on that reality – became the breakthrough that added greatly to his own mental health as a financial advisor .

So, whether you're interested in learning about how to grow your firm through succession plans, how much soft skills and client mindset are just as important as the knowledge you have as an advisor, or how to effectively manage an overwhelming amount of client meetings with ease, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Rob Schultz.

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Welcome back to the 373rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast! 

My guest on today's podcast is Ben Hockema. Ben is the Founder of Illuminate Wealth Management, an RIA based in Barrington, Illinois that oversees $100M in assets under management for 55 client households.

What's unique about Ben, though, is that he spent 13 years successfully working his way up the career track at a growing advisory firm, starting as an intern and eventually making partner… only to realize within 18 months that it wasn't a good culture fit for him and that he'd need to leave, but then figured out how to take on passive equity investors in a new startup RIA who helped to finance his ability to buy out a portion of his client base from the firm he was leaving in order to build the business he really wanted to build.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Ben leveraged some of his personal relationships to find 2 passive investors who were willing to give him money in exchange for a 25% stake in his new RIA and the 16 existing clients he'd be buying out from his prior firm, how, through developing a structured annual client service calendar guiding their offerings month-to-month throughout a given year, and a fee schedule structured around a client's net worth, Ben has been able to attract prospects and rapidly grow his client base from $16M to $100M in just the past 3 years, and how Ben's successful growth phase led him to do a second round of capital with a wider base of 13 investors where he sold another 10% of his equity in order to further paydown his debts incurred in the original RIA transition and launch.

We also talk about Ben's journey from a 3-summer long internship at his first firm, to being offered the opportunity to take over an acquired firm and its client base in Chicago, to being asked to become part of the ownership team, how Ben then realized that his entrepreneurial goals and willingness to take risks on new ideas were ultimately misaligned with the desires of the other owners and that staying in an environment that had admittedly been very successful for over 30 years would still likely leave him bored and disengaged, and how Ben found that he needed to spend time working with a therapist to manage the grieving process that came from realizing he'd need to sever business relationships he'd spent more than a decade building.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Ben shares how he took it upon himself to find his own advisor study group of peers that ultimately become his most valuable support asset through a decade of transitions, Ben's discovery that, despite his imposter syndrome throughout several shifts in his career, that being willing to ask the questions that you fear might be 'dumb' questions and are afraid to ask can help open doors and bring growth opportunities to light earlier, and how Ben has now transitioned from having been the intern who grew all the way to advisor and then partner to trying to create a work environment that affords a safe space for younger, newer advisors to similarly get the opportunity to grow and develop as he did in his early career.

So, whether you're interested in learning about how to listen to your gut when you find yourself misaligned with the business you're deeply invested in, ways to structure your client services calendar in a way that allows clients to let go of their worry about money because of the trust they have in their relationship with you and your firm, or how to build a team, no matter how small, that truly fits with the trajectory of the firm and proves to be the perfect balance you are looking for, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Ben Hockema. 

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Welcome back to the 370th episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Tim Goodwin. Tim is the founder of Goodwin Investment Advisory, an RIA based in Woodstock, Georgia, that oversees $275M in assets under management for 370 client households.

What's unique about Tim, though, is how he leaned into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Google Reviews in particular – coupled with paid search ads to capture consumers actually searching for "financial advisor near me", and in the process has created a robust prospecting pipeline, which has generated so much demand that Tim has had to triple his minimum fee requirements in the last 2 years.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Tim built a pipeline for growth by systematically asking for reviews online, which has resulted in almost 50% of his clients posting Google Reviews, how Tim leverages those 150+ Google Reviews, alongside signing up for Google Screened, and investing into paid search, targeted, and remarketing ads, to build prospects' trust and get them comfortable in reaching out over the internet, and how Tim has reallocated his marketing dollars from third-party lead generation platforms and instead invested more deeply in his firm's own SEO and Google results, driving a 2.5X return in new onboarded client revenue for every $1 spent in marketing.

We also talk about how Tim's marketing success led to a level of growth and in-flow clients that created significant capacity constraints, and why he ultimately decided to decrease the quantity of prospects and increase the quality of prospects by increasing his firm's minimums (and then crafted an options-focused framework to 'graduating' clients who didn't meet those new minimums and ensure they could transition in an empowering way), how Tim navigates the sometimes contradictory pull between running a profitable firm, preventing employee burnout, and a desire to serve clients… (who may no longer meet the firm's growing minimums), and why Tim has made the health and happiness of his employees, not his clients, his priority as a founder and leader – because as Tim highlights, a cared-for and happy staff ultimately give better a better client experience anyway.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Tim shares why he has found that clients – who already enjoy and understand the company culture and objectives – can yield great dividends as a place to find new employees, how, as a 22-year old tackling the hurdle of not just finding, but also establishing trust with older prospects, Tim was able to get over the initial painful ramp-up by giving himself a 2-year deadline to make the firm pay for itself, and how Tim has intentionally sought out and created 2 of his own Mastermind groups as a way to cope with the challenge that as a founder, it can be lonely at the top, and helps to have peers who understand and can empathize with the weight of being in charge and having team members rely on you for their livelihood.

So, whether you're interested in learning about how Tim's ongoing investment into a healthy and a SEO-reputable website resulted in a multi-dimensional prospecting in-flow, how Tim manages SEC marketing compliance while still consistently asking clients for referrals, and how Tim has built a 'fireproof' hiring process putting people in roles that matched their natural aptitudes and inclinations, then we hope you enjoy this episode, with Tim Goodwin.

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Welcome back to the 368th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Thomas Kopelman. Thomas is the co-founder of AllStreet Wealth, a financial planning firm for millennial business owners and those with equity comp based in Indianapolis, IN, that has quickly grown to more than $500,000 of run-rate revenue generated from serving 70 ongoing client households.

What's unique about Thomas, though, is how he's been able to use social media, and Twitter in particular, to attract over 170 new prospects this year alone by educating, nurturing, and making a lasting impression on his followers, with relatively short blog posts that seem rather 'simple' but hit his specific prospects' pain points, so that they when finally decide they need a financial advisor… they wouldn't think about going to anyone other than Thomas for Financial Advice.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Thomas has built his social media strategy around generating a steady cadence of relatively short but directly-relevant-to-his-ideal-prospects blog posts that allow him to sustainably create content in less than an hour and without getting stuck trying to make it "picture perfect", how Thomas' ability to maintain his ongoing flow of relevant content compounds his social media impressions and has led to an influx of qualified prospects that maintain through both busier and slower months of the year, and how having a hook in the title of Thomas' posts – that isn't click-baity but truly relates to his target audience through set-up, context, and contrasting – is key to getting conversions from potential clients on the fence about whether they really want to have a planning relationship.

We also talk about Thomas' growth in leads led him to create an increasingly stringent filtering process to ensure he only spends time with the most qualified prospects, and minimize discovery calls that would otherwise turn out to be a bad fit, how Thomas' planning process builds up to what can be a 20 to 40 itemized list of recommendations but uses a quick-wins approach to prioritize just a few upfront and spend literally years helping clients through the rest, and how Thomas used the design platform Canva to craft his own customized financial plan template, rather than using financial planning software output, that not only lay out relevant graphics and action items for each client, but are much more visually appealing and easily digestible than traditional Word or Excel documents.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Thomas shares his journey from barely using social media and forgetting his own Instagram password to leaning heavily into Twitter to generate explosive growth in his firm, how Thomas learned the financial planning process in his early years and used social media to seek out and work with advisors that had leveraged the exact techniques he wanted to emulate while growing their businesses, and why Thomas initially planned to be a solo firm but changed his mind and ultimately chose to hire staff, that he enjoyed being around, to get the support he needed to sustain his firm's growth.

So, whether you're interested in learning about creating content that resonates with your target audience, implementing a social media strategy that will effectively turn readers and impressions into real client prospects, or creating a financial plan that not only is attractive, but also contains actionable items of advanced value to your clients, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Thomas Kopelman.

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