Download Kathleen Rehl's "Widows, Wives, and Friends – Estate Planning & The Legacy IRA presentation" below, and check out "Legacy IRA" Rollover To A Charitable Gift Annuity: Using This New Tax-Advantaged Opportunity To Help Clients Achieve Charitable And Retirement Goals on creating Legacy IRA rollover to a Charitable Gift Annuity to support chosen nonprofits.
Kathleen Rehl’s Estate Planning & The Legacy IRA Presentation
Kathleen Rehl’s IRA-To-Gift-Annuity Illustration And CGA Agreement
Download Kathleen Rehl's "IRA-To-Gift-Annuity Illustration " and "CGA Agreement" below, and check out "Legacy IRA" Rollover To A Charitable Gift Annuity: Using This New Tax-Advantaged Opportunity To Help Clients Achieve Charitable And Retirement Goals on creating Legacy IRA rollover to a Charitable Gift Annuity to support chosen nonprofits.
![Cary Carbonaro Podcast Featured Image FAS](https://www.kitces.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Cary-Carbonaro-Podcast-Featured-Image-FAS-347-150x150.png)
Welcome back to the 347th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today's podcast is Cary Carbonaro. Cary is the Senior Vice President & Director of Women and Wealth Services for Advisor Capital Management, an independent RIA with offices around the country and headquartered in Ridgewood, New Jersey, that oversees more than $6 billion in assets under management for 1,700 client families.
What's unique about Cary, though, is how she navigated selling her practice to United Capital and after several years of establishing herself in a leadership role, she then had to navigate the sale of United Capital itself to Goldman Sachs, and the complexities and challenges that followed as she found herself in a very different kind of culture that wasn’t aligned to her media-driven approach to advisor marketing.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how, in 2001, Cary left her Director of Marketing role at Lord Abbett selling mutual funds and in the face of the tech crash realized that mutual fund companies were so cutting their marketing budgets that she may as well just launch her own advisory practice instead, how after years of growing successfully on her own, Cary realized her gift was bringing clients in and that she needed help with scaling her back-office and consequently decided to sell her practice and tuck into United Capital and their support systems, and how Cary dealt with the sudden sale of United Capital to Goldman Sachs that virtually overnight forced her to change the way she’d been marketing herself as an advisor for nearly 20 years because of the new corporate policies of the buyer.
We also talk about how Cary tried to navigate the 2-year non-compete clause in her contract and even offered to buy back her practice and undo the non-compete, how Cary ultimately reached a compromised path with a 6-month non-compete and decided that was good enough to be able to make a transition and not have to totally start over, and how, after the 6-month non-compete period was over, Cary was ultimately able to retain nearly 90% of her and her lead advisor’s clients and decided to move her practice to a new RIA where she could go back to serving her clients as she wished and continue her work in the media that she enjoyed.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Cary shares how she faced a messy divorce while also navigating the 2008 financial crisis and had to move her practice to smaller firm so that she could prevent her husband from seeking retribution and give herself time, how, in the early years of launching her practice, Cary dealt with feelings of inadequacy because she felt she needed to have all the answers to her clients’ questions but over time and by teaching CFP courses herself was able to overcome her confidence issues, and how Cary’s definition of success is evolving as her career grows from ‘just’ increasing the size of the practice to now finding the freedom and time to pursue her passion of speaking, writing, and appearing in the media… with the focus on influencing and changing the financial services industry to create better opportunities for other women to succeed in their careers.
So, whether you’re interested in learning about how, prior to the United Capital sale, Cary’s practice was a diamond tier practice and ranked as one of the best performing practices of the firm, how Cary walked away from 2 $500,000 a year jobs so that she could manage her practice the way she saw fit, or how Cary is working on her second book detailing her challenges with the sale of her firm and her vision for making the industry more female-friendly, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Cary Carbonaro.
![Jim Ludwick Podcast Featured Image FAS](https://www.kitces.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Jim-Ludwick-Podcast-Featured-Image-FAS-346-150x150.png)
Welcome back to the 346th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today's podcast is Jim Ludwick. Jim is the founder of MainStreet Financial Planning, an hourly, fee-only financial planning firm, and also created Procrastination Junction, a coaching program for fee-only financial advisors looking to improve their sales skills.
What's unique about Jim, though, is how he's leveraged nearly 3 decades of experience in converting procrastinating prospects into recurring fee-only financial planning clients, with an approach that's less about "selling" the value of financial planning and more about simply helping clients with "moving" – from where they are to where they need to be, know they should be, and want to be… but sometimes still need a little help to overcome their own procrastination and move themselves there.
In this episode, we talk about how, as a career-changer after serving in the Air Force and as a hospital administrator, Jim first found success in the financial services industry as an insurance salesman by leveraging the local network he'd built over his professional career, coupled with formal sales training that taught them how to frame conversations in a way that helped clients state the need for insurance themselves (rather than pitching insurance directly), how, when Jim opened his fee-only firm after relocating to a new area where he did not have a natural network, he leveraged the Garrett Network and NAPFA to rebuild a referral pipeline, this time getting business from other advisors, and how, although it meant 'losing' more prospects along the way, Jim modified his sales and funnel process over the years to increase the likelihood that he would only be sitting down with engaged, ready-to-act prospects in the first place – which in turn boosted his conversion rate, efficiency, and profitability.
We also talk about why, despite sales being a bit of a taboo within the advice industry, Jim views embracing sales as an essential part of building a high-quality fee-only financial advice business, how Jim built his financial planning business to prioritize work/life balance and transitioned his company to remote meetings long before it was the norm (and even turned it into a value-add for clients who wanted to visit him in Italy for part of the year!), and how hiring not just an assistant, but someone with a strategy mindset who was determined to grow in and with the company, proved pivotal to the growth of MainStreet Financial and led to a successful, naturally integrated succession plan when Jim's assistant-turned-partner eventually bought him out nearly 8 years later.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Jim shares how surprising it was that, despite his experience in sales and entrepreneurship, it still took 3 years to build a successful advisory business starting from scratch, how shifting the business from hourly to recurring-revenue clients who were expected to come back annually for a check-up proved crucial to Jim's ability to hire employees and begin to scale, and how Jim's drive to serve and help others was not only the genesis of a successful advisory business but led him at the tender age of 75 to launch yet another new business… his education program to help fellow fee-only advisors embrace sales, overcome imposter syndrome, and improve their overall communication skills based on his own years of industry experience and success.
When a financial advisor first opens their own firm, they often start with few (or no) clients and little revenue. And while they might have an ideal target client in mind, it can be tempting to bring on any client who can pay the advisor’s fee so that the advisor can simply ‘keep the lights on’. But as the firm grows, these initial clients might not generate as much revenue as the firm’s newer clients, perhaps because they were grandfathered into a lower annual fee schedule. While an advisor might be loyal to these clients (particularly those who came on board during their early days and have stuck with the advisor since then), without a "kill criteria", continuing to serve them can sometimes create challenges for the firm’s bottom line.
However, deciding to move on from a less profitable client can be hard for advisors because they might not want to let down a client who has stayed with the firm for several years or with whom they have developed a personal relationship. Which means that without establishing objective criteria to determine when to let a client go or setting a date to do so, advisors can end up with ‘1-more-year’ syndrome, where they continue to serve these clients at the cost of their firm’s profitability or the available free time to enjoy for themselves, putting off the conversation of raising fees or of terminating the relationship for 1 more year.
In her book "Quit: The Power Of Knowing When To Walk Away", professional poker player Annie Duke suggests a potential solution to this type of problem: implementing "kill criteria", objective measures that can help someone decide when to quit an activity. For Duke, the best kill criteria have both a "state" (i.e., an objective, measurable condition) and a "date" (i.e., a specific time set to measure the state and take action). For instance, an advisor might set a certain date each year where they identify the clients whose annual fees are less than the average per-client overhead costs for the firm, or perhaps clients who generate well-below-average revenue but take a well-above-average number of hours to serve. And because actually following through on kill criteria can be challenging (e.g., letting a client go), it can help to have a ‘quitting coach’ to hold the individual accountable for their pre-commitment. For an advisor, such an individual could be an actual professional coach, or perhaps a mentor or trusted peer willing to hold the advisor accountable for the kill criteria they set.
When advisors identify clients that match the advisor’s kill criteria, they have several potential options to choose from to move on from the client, including referring the client to another advisor who might be a better fit, ‘graduating’ the client to handle their finances on their own, or, if many clients meet the criteria, engaging in a partial sale of the business. Advisors could also consider instituting (or increasing) minimum fees, which could give clients the option of continuing to work with the advisor for a higher fee.
Ultimately, the key point is that because moving on from smaller clients can be a challenging decision, using kill criteria not only can help advisors objectively identify these clients, but also can make it more likely that the advisor will follow through on letting the clients go when the kill criteria are met. Which can ultimately improve the financial health of a firm and, potentially, the advisor’s own wellbeing as well if they are able to work fewer hours serving more profitable clients!
![Lori Van Dusen Podcast Featured Image FAS](https://www.kitces.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Lori-Van-Dusen-Podcast-Featured-Image-FAS-345-150x150.png)
Welcome back to the 345th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today's podcast is Lori Van Dusen. Lori is the CEO of LVW Advisors, an independent RIA based in Pittsford, New York, that oversees more than $2 billion in assets under management for over 450 small-to-mid-sized institutions and ultra-high-net-worth families.
What's unique about Lori, though, is how through her multi-decade career, she has built a deep expertise in the investment intricacies and complex issues faced by small-to-mid-sized institutions and ultra-high-net-worth-families with $10s of millions of dollars each, and has built an RIA that focuses on that serious investing expertise as a differentiator.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Lori built her in-depth investment knowledge while working with large institutions and endowments at wirehouse firms like Shearson Lehman Brothers and Citigroup Smith Barney, how Lori approaches portfolio management with an approach of "don't fix what isn't broken" and assumes most large portfolios she manages will only need incremental changes from what they've already got (which she identifies by stress testing every portfolio in Hidden Levers to identify where they need to be shored up further), and why Lori and her firm developed a governance calendar to systematize and scale their quarterly deliverables and check-ins with ongoing clients.
We also talk about how Lori dealt with being sued by Citigroup and the lengthy legal battle that ensued after she decided to break away and go independent (and how she ultimately won because she was diligent in following the Broker Protocols when leaving), how Lori learned the hard way about conducting her own due diligence on advisor platform after the RIA she decided to join upon leaving Citigroup didn't have the level of technology she thought they did to support her business which ultimately led to her deciding to leave them too, and how Lori dealt with the aftermath of deciding to leave the RIA she partnered with and launch her own RIA only to discover that choosing to transition twice made many of her institutional clients lose confidence and issue RFPs which ultimately led to billions of AUM leaving that Lori had to rebuild.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Lori shares why, even though she has experienced turmoil in her business, she tries to maintain a positive outlook because without these experiences, she would not have developed the specific expertise or become the advisory firm owner she is today, why, after dealing with a personal tragedy and not coming back to work for a year, Lori realized that she had finally built the team support she always wanted and decided to reward her loyal employees (and not just advisors) by offering a deferred compensation plan and defining a clearer pathway to equity ownership, and why Lori believes that younger, newer advisors would benefit from finding a mentor that can help them grow and being objective about their strengths and passions so that they can focus their career on what they are good at and love to do to build their own successful career.
So, whether you're interested in learning about how Lori spent a year right out of college learning SPIN sales techniques from Xerox's sales training which has shaped how she digs deeper into her clients' issues, how Lori dealt with her legal issues and moving her clients to a new RIA all while the economic crisis in 2008, or how Lori learned that when making big decisions, it is important to listen to your gut and to always make sure your values and culture are in alignment with what you want to achieve, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Lori Van Dusen.
![Brad Barrett Podcast Featured Image FAS](https://www.kitces.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Brad-Barrett-Podcast-Featured-Image-FAS-344-150x150.png)
Welcome back to the 344th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today's podcast is Brad Barrett. Brad is the Managing Director and Partner of One Capital Management, an independent RIA based in Westlake Village, California, with locations across the country, that oversees $5.3 billion in assets under management for more than 2,000 client households.
What's unique about Brad, though, is how he helped his large multi-billion-dollar firm develop what they call business segments… which are essentially multiple niche specializations, each with their own advisor leader and team, all built upon their centralized investment management process and similar private wealth target clientele, but done in a manner that allows the firm – and each of its advisor teams – to differentiate themselves and create new channels of direct clients to help scale and grow the firm organically.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how developing business segments such as Fire and Police, Sports and Entertainment, and cross-border Canadians, helped Brad and his firm scale and grow because they could leverage having their advisor teams seen as specialized experts in many different channels without needing to fully commit the entire firm to just one, how Brad and his firm have further accelerated their growth by seeking out and acquiring niche practices to turn into business segments for One Capital (which means they pay an even higher multiple for niche practices than to acquire 'just' a profitable generalist financial advisor), and how Brad has built out his firm's media department by hosting radio programs, podcasts, and YouTube videos, focusing on a specific topic each week that affects clients in one of their business segments, and adjusting the length and depth of the conversation to fit each of the media channels he is using.
We also talk about how One Capital Management began offering its investment management service as a sub-advisory for other advisors (which created the centralized scale that then inspired the firm to delve deeper into its business segments approach to better facilitate the distribution of their investment strategies), how Brad and his partners regularly evaluate the firm's business segments to both ensure that they are continually providing the services their clients want and need and to ensure that they can continue to profitably grow and scale their business segments further, and how Brad and his firm structure their advisor compensation splits based on the overall profitability targets for each business segment.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Brad shares how he learned the hard way that finding the right partners in business endeavors is critically important (after he and his firm worked on an 8-month long project of creating a new vertical to the firm, only to find that the person they partnered with was only using the position to leverage a better job offer elsewhere), how Brad wishes he realized in the earlier stages of his career the benefits of going narrow and deep with specializations because he now understands that his fear of limiting himself in fact ended up generating greater opportunities in pursuing organic growth, and why Brad feels it is important for younger, newer advisors to set the expectation that it may take roughly 10 years to be at a place where they are no longer treading water… but to not be discouraged, and continually push to find the right firm and the right opportunities for them so that they can build a more successful career and get to that long-term level of advisor happiness and financial success.
So, whether you're interested in learning about how focusing on business segments helps Brad and advisors of the firm worry less about business development, how Brad creates and brands marketing content for his firm, or how Brad has restructured his schedule to give him more time to create even more branded content for his firm, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Brad Barrett.
![Rita Robbins Podcast Featured Image FAS](https://www.kitces.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Rita-Robbins-Podcast-Featured-Image-FAS-343-150x150.png)
Welcome back to the 343rd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today's podcast is Rita Robbins. Rita is the Founder and President of Affiliated Advisors, a Super-OSJ with Royal Alliance that provides support to 90 financial advisors and collectively oversees $3.5 billion in assets under advisement.
What's unique about Rita, though, is how as the founder of one of the first woman-owned Super-OSJs nearly 30 years ago, she has witnessed first-hand the evolution of the Super-OSJ model from providing local oversight of brokers selling proprietary products, into back-office platforms that provide an increasingly open-architecture product shelf coupled with compliance, technology, marketing, business management, and other support to independent financial advisors.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Rita experienced the evolution of broker-dealer platforms throughout her decades-long career where the technology and compliance, that was once the core of what Super-OSJs provided, is now increasingly supplanted by more in-depth services to support their advisors, how Rita has grown and scaled her platform by focusing on 3 levers of recruiting advisors, organic growth from the advisors and platform itself, and inorganic growth from advisors buying and selling practices with about half being internal sales, and how the growth of Rita’s firm accelerated in the pandemic because of the middle- and back-office support it provides its advisors through technology, including and especially the ability to work remotely as so many banks and wirehouses were ill-prepared for the digital transition.
We also talk about how, despite not being a financial advisor herself or ever working with clients, Rita became very familiar with the needs of the advisor community after spending 10 years on the road as a wholesaler, which gave her the confidence to launch an OSJ, how Rita was inspired to start her own OSJ after helping an insurance company launch their own broker-dealer platform and realizing that she wanted to have more control over her own success which could only be done if she went out on her own, and how Rita has expanded the leadership of her platform to include 2 new partners that each have their own specializations so the new partners expand – rather than merely dividing up – the capabilities of the firm.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Rita shares how she dealt with the early-career pressures of having to show up and even dress the same way men did to prove she was trustworthy, how Rita was able to overcome the trauma of discovering a business partner and long-term friend had been embezzling money from the firm that was only discovered when a team member discovered their health insurance had lapsed because the business partner wasn’t paying the premiums, and how Rita still struggles with the balance between getting caught up on things that can't really be controlled and giving time for business challenges and business cycles to work themselves through to the next stage of growth.
So, whether you're interested in learning about how Rita structures her broker-dealer platform to support advisors, why Rita believes that Affiliated Advisors' values helps her platform stand out amongst others in the industry, or why Affiliated Advisors deliberately does not have an independent RIA, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Rita Robbins.
![Nancy Hetrick Podcast Featured Image FAS](https://www.kitces.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Nancy-Hetrick-Podcast-Featured-Image-FAS-342-150x150.png)
Welcome back to the 342nd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today's podcast is Nancy Hetrick. Nancy is the Founder and CEO of Smarter Divorce Solutions, a consulting firm based in Phoenix, Arizona that provides financial expertise to individuals and couples (and sometimes, mediators and attorneys) going through the divorce process.
What's unique about Nancy, though, is that after going through her own 'do-it-yourself' divorce process – and then discovering after the fact that none of it was enforceable after her ex-husband chose not to comply with the agreement – she decided to become a divorce expert to help other women avoid the same fate… and in the process scaled her divorce practice as high as 8 team members and $1M of annual revenue in divorce fees, on top of growing her RIA to $65M of AUM when her divorcee clients inevitably needed help with rollovers and investment implementation after the divorce was finalized and they received their settlements.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Nancy overcame her initial imposter syndrome and went from finding attorneys to be threatening to realizing that they are just regular people and do not necessarily know a lot about finance by recognizing how important her own life experiences were, how Nancy also did expand her technical expertise by earning not only the CDFA credential, but also became a Master Analyst in Financial Forensics with a Matrimonial Specialization and a Certified Divorce Coach, too, and how Nancy grew her business in the divorce niche through networking events not to connect with individuals going through a divorce, but rather to build relationships that positioned her as an expert who "provides individuals and couples with a kinder, gentler, and much more affordable divorce" with people who could then refer to Nancy their own friends and family who might be going through a divorce.
We also talk about how Nancy explains the value of her divorce planning work to prospective clients and what she actually does to earn her fees on a divorce case, the steps that Nancy took to begin to scale her divorce practice as she built her reputation and the volume of clients grew, and how Nancy ultimately decided that the responsibilities that go along with being the CEO of a growing RIA and divorce practice, from managing a growing roster of employees to dealing with compliance and paperwork, were not for her, such that she eventually decided to fire most of her staff, sell her RIA, and 'just' focus on the divorce work as a solo practitioner (and is now happier and has better take-home pay than when her business was much larger!).
And be certain to listen to the end, where Nancy shares how, in reality, there are so many sub-specializations within the divorce planning niche that she wants to develop a national directory to help prospective divorcees right the find divorce financial planner, why Nancy suggests that despite the depth of specialization that’s necessary to work in the divorce space the best approach is to simply dive in and use client cases as a form of on-the-job training, and how Nancy found her own 'happy place' by just focusing on the divorce work she enjoys the most – both doing it directly with clients, and training other CDFA designees to build and run their divorce practices more effectively – and let go of the rest!
So, whether you’re interested in learning about how, because there are so many ways to niche in divorce financial planning, Nancy decided to create her own training program to help other financial advisors learn how they can niche focus their practices, how Nancy intentionally met with prospective clients at least 6 times over a 6-month period so that she could build a trusted reputation and gain more prospects, or how Nancy still operates as an IAR for her firm that she successfully merged and has structured solicitor agreements for the foreseeable future, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Nancy Hetrick.
![Thor McIlrath Podcast Featured Image FAS](https://www.kitces.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Thor-McIlrath-Podcast-Featured-Image-FAS-341-150x150.png)
Welcome back to the 341st episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today's podcast is Thor McIlrath. Thor is the Owner of McIlrath & Eck, an independent RIA based in Arlington, Washington, that oversees more than $610 million in assets under management for 970 client households.
What's unique about Thor, though, is how he has structured his firm so that clients rotate through different advisors at the firm each time they come in for a meeting, eschewing the traditional industry approach of trying to help clients form a deep relationship with one individual advisor and instead intentionally creating an environment where clients get advice from multiple different advisors about their situation over time.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about why Thor was inspired to create a rotating advisor structure because he found that in other professional services like medical teams that implement a similar structure, advisors shared details and in-depth knowledge of each of the firm’s clients, which creates a team environment where the client benefits from differing expert perspectives and increased oversight (and it also decreases the likelihood that clients will follow if an advisor should leave the firm), how Thor first rolled out his rotating-advisor approach (which wasn’t the way the firm operated originally) and despite his trepidation a clear explanation of the benefits of the approach meant that only about 20% of McIlrath & Eck’s clients have been adamant about continue to work with a singular advisor at the firm, and the meeting notes template that Thor implemented for his advisors to centralize their notes and client information to keep everyone up to date as clients rotate.
We also talk about why and how Thor built a 6-hour adult education class on retirement at a local community college as a way to both give back to the community but also drive a steady growth of dozens of new clients every year, how Thor tracks the success of his adult education classes and finds that about 70% of the students from his classes on average will schedule a meeting with the firm (and 70% of those would ultimately become an actual client), and how while Thor initially worked from a third-party template of a presentation he bought he has over time customized his classes by simply taking the key parts of the CFP curriculum that he believes pre-retirees need to hear the most and teaching it to them in a way that fits how Thor likes to explain the concepts.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Thor shares how he is happy to be the rainmaker so that his advisors can focus solely on providing the best service for their clients and then when hiring advisors focuses on qualities like compassion, empathy, and other traits that go beyond how many clients they can produce for the firm, why Thor believes that it is important to be wary of accepting just anyone as a client because not everyone will be a good fit and he found that he could cultivate more loyalty from his advisors by showing that he was willing to let go of bad clients to maintain a positive work environment, and why Thor feels that younger, newer advisors should strive to achieve their CFP designation and then can make a choice to either go get their own clients, or simply look to find another advisor who is good at getting clients and work closely with them instead.
So, whether you’re interested in learning about how Thor didn’t have intentions to teach classes but quickly fell in love with teaching after seeing how eager his students were to learn, how, through his passion for flying airplanes, Thor has found the systematic process of using checklists as a helpful tool and was inspired to utilize checklists in his own firm to ensure the needs of all his clients are met, or how Thor believes in a “work hard, play hard” philosophy and structures more frequent meeting cadences in the winter so that his employees can enjoy more time off and half-days on Fridays in the summer, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Thor McIlrath.
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