Welcome back to the 275th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today's podcast is Michael Chasnoff. Michael is the founder and CEO of Truepoint Wealth Counsel, an independent fee-only RIA based in Cincinnati, Ohio that oversees $4.5 billion in assets under management for 750 client households.
What's unique about Michael, though, is how over a 30-year span, he has grown Truepoint entirely organically through a focus on working with business owners and corporate executives, and has scaled his team by creating a distributed ownership structure with a broad equity participation plan.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Michael has structured his firm with specialty teams that provide not only financial planning but also in-house tax and estate planning advice in order to provide a more one-stop-shop experience for his clients, the way the firm has been able to leverage its truly higher-touch service offering into a steady flow of referrals with an average household of $6M in AUM, and how Michael’s firm has designed its career tracks with the ultimate goal of offering select team members an opportunity to buy into company equity through the sale of his own founder shares.
We also talk about how, early in his career, Michael was turned off by the marketing and sales-centered financial industry and was inspired to start his own firm that concentrated on offering fee-only financial planning back in the early 1990s, how Michael used a three-tiered approach of writing expert pieces for financial media, establishing relationships with Centers of Influence with a more relationship approach with working together on their joint clients, and becoming an active participant in industry organizations to build his reputation, and how Michael has ultimately gotten comfortable with selling down his founder equity shares as the firm has continued to grow.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Michael shares how being told his ideas for starting a fee-only advice firm would never work motivated him even more to be successful and prove them wrong, how Michael incorporates his values of doing what is right above all in his everyday practices with clients, and why Michael believes giving back to others to create a better life-balance is the key to happiness and fulfillment.
So whether you’re interested in learning about how Michael balances his higher overhead costs by recruiting top-dollar clients, how he built on positive client experiences and business growth to create a culture of client referrals rather than asking directly, or why he believes that the baseline principles of doing what’s right, working hard, and treating others with respect are the foundation of the pathway to success, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Michael Chasnoff.