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Kitces & Carl Ep 150: When The Early Years’ Scarcity As A Financial Advisor Prevents You From Growing To The Next Level

October 31, 2024 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Kitces & Carl Podcast

Kitces & Carl Ep When The Early Years Scarcity As A Financial Advisor Prevents You From Growing To The Next Level

For many years, the traditional career track for financial advisors has been an 'eat what you kill' model – where advisors must independently find, convert, and manage their own clients. As such, it isn't uncommon for an advisor's first few years to be characterized by long hours, high rejection rates, and low pay. For many, this can be a stressfully prolonged period that typically eases only as advisors build their client base and establish themselves in the industry. However, the scarcity-driven habits that helped them survive their stressful early years may not serve them effectively in their current state. In fact, these habits may even inhibit their growth, making it harder for them to scale their firm in alignment with their long-term vision.

In the 150th episode of Kitces & Carl, Michael Kitces and client communication expert Carl Richards explore how advisors can acknowledge the psychological habits formed during prolonged high-stress periods and intentionally move beyond them to continue to achieve sustained growth.

When stress arises, especially in the early years, many advisors often do whatever it takes to pull through and build their business. But a scarcity-driven mindset can linger, long after the immediate pressures have faded. This mindset might manifest in subtle ways – like the reluctance to raise client minimums out of fear that new clients won't come, even when capacity is maxed out. At this point, the narrative of survival can keep advisors tethered to past habits, even when logistically, an advisor may be well past that point and their current reality calls for a different approach.

To shift from survival mode to a mindset geared for growth, a first step might be to take stock of the firm's logistical reality: cash flow, client load, and overall business capacity. This can help advisors move from reactive habits to proactive strategies. A helpful question that advisors can ask themselves is, "What would it take to feel secure in this scenario?" Sometimes, a few targeted risk-hedging steps can provide a sense of security. In other circumstances, it may be more helpful to acknowledge the gut-level response to stressful situations – the same survival instinct that got the advisor 'here'. However, getting 'there' – to the next stage of growth – requires noticing, acknowledging, and then rewiring those instinctive responses.

Importantly, it's not just about making technical adjustments; it's more about a shift in mindset. It's the ability to internalize success and recognize that the survival instincts, once crucial, might now be holding back progress. Letting go of those old habits means freeing up mental and emotional space to envision new possibilities for the firm's future.

Ultimately, the key point is that survival strategies, while essential in the early stages of an advisor's journey, may not align with the realities of a growing and thriving firm. Sometimes, internalizing that an advisor has 'made it' is not always easy, but it's a milestone worth celebrating. Embracing this recognition allows advisors to ask the more exciting question, "What comes next?" This shift isn't just about growing a business – it's about building a vision that truly aligns with long-term goals, creating the freedom to innovate and adapt with clarity and purpose!

Why Advertising “Conflict-Free” Advice Could Violate The SEC’s Marketing Rule

October 30, 2024 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Regulation & Compliance

As fiduciaries, financial advisors are required to disclose any conflicts of interest that exist between themselves and their current and potential clients. The conflicts themselves can range from compensation models that impact how much money an advisor might earn as the result of a recommendation (such as specific product recommendations for advisors compensated on commission and 401(k) plan rollover recommendations for AUM-based advisors) to less direct conflicts such as 'soft dollar' benefits provided by custodial platforms that could incentivize advisors to recommend one platform over another.

But no matter the size or directness of the conflict, it still needs to be disclosed to clients, at a minimum on the advisor's Form ADV Part 2A brochure. And given the sheer number and scope of potential conflicts that do exist in the advisory industry (where a wide range of providers seek to incentivize advisors to recommend their products and services to clients), there's a vanishingly small number of RIAs that don't have at least some form of actual or potential conflict to disclose.

However, despite the large number of potential conflicts that exist for advisory firms, much of the financial media and the general public tend to focus specifically on the conflicts caused by commission-based fee models. Which, in turn, has led a small but growing number of RIA firms to describe themselves as "conflict-free" on their websites and advertising materials as a way to distinguish themselves from other firms that may have more directly conflicted business models.

But the downside to using the "conflict-free" label was put into sharp focus recently, when the SEC announced that it had fined several RIA firms for violating its Marketing Rule. Specifically, the firms had all used some form of "conflict-free" to describe themselves on their website, while at the same time, each firm's Form ADV Part 2A described multiple conflicts of interest – or in other words, the firms' claims of being "conflict-free" were directly contradicted by their own required conflict of interest disclosures!

At a high level, the SEC's cases illustrate that it can be highly problematic for an advisory firm to call itself "conflict-free", since doing so violates the Marketing Rule's prohibition on making any material statements that the advisor can't substantiate when the firm really does have conflicts that it discloses in its own regulatory filings. And given that almost every firm has at least one conflict to disclose, there are almost no firms that could accurately (or compliantly) describe themselves as "conflict-free" – meaning it really might be best for advisory firms to avoid the label altogether.

If an advisory firm wanted to highlight its distinction from the commission-based compensation model, it could, in theory, use a more technically accurate term like "commission-free". However, in a landscape where the number of fee-only, fiduciary advisory firms has grown – making "commission-free" less of a differentiator for any one firm – it's worth questioning whether it makes sense for firms to describe themselves in terms of their relative lack of conflicts of interest at all. Because doing so shifts the client's focus away from the advisor's expertise and the value they provide, and instead draws attention to how their conflicts of interest compare with those of other advisors.

The key point is that with the sheer number of potential conflicts of interest in the advisory business, it's better for advisors to be transparent about their own conflicts (and how they work to minimize them) than to downplay their conflicts in comparison to others in the advisory industry. Not only does this help them stay compliant from a regulatory perspective (as the recent SEC cases showed for firms that called themselves "conflict-free") but it also helps build a foundation of trust with their clients – who are ultimately more interested in how their advisor can solve their financial problems than in questioning which practices pose more of a conflict of interest than others!

#FASuccess Ep 409: Adding 1,400 New Clients In A Year As An Extension Of Doing (Profitable) Student Loan Consulting At Scale, With Travis Hornsby

October 29, 2024 07:03 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Travis Hornsby Podcast Featured Image FAS

Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the 409th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Travis Hornsby. Travis is the founder of Student Loan Planner, an RIA and student loan consulting company based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina that serves nearly 1,400 households with ongoing financial planning (as well as consulting with over 15,000 clients on student loan debt).

What's unique about Travis, though, is how he rapidly built out a base of 1,400 financial planning clients in barely more than a single year, by hyper-scaling his financial planning offering from a base of nearly 10X as many student loan consulting clients that his firm had already provided advice to over the past decade.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Travis originally developed his specialization of student loan planning through first correcting the misinformation given to his (now-)wife and her friends in the medical field (and realized that he could give high value to a chronically underserved population), how Travis first started his student loan consulting firm charging for just 1 hour of highly relevant student loan advice (and how Travis vetted which prospects were serious about wanting that advice), and how, while Travis initially priced his consulting work intentionally below-market in order to get opportunities to practice his advice, and build trust and momentum with a high volume of clients, Travis then raised his fees to the full market rate of his expertise once his brand was established (and then even leveraged his price increase as a marketing tactic to drive more business growth, using campaigns such as, "Book a time with me at this price before it's gone!").

We also talk about how Travis built the onboarding and compensation plans for his own (contracted) student loan consultants to scale the business while incentivizing them to take on a greater volume of meetings (and still ensuring that they could give high-quality student loan advice), how Travis decided to diversify his business's income streams when the pandemic and the ensuing student loan legislation wreaked havoc on his consulting business model, and how Travis navigated the leap from student loan consulting to operating an RIA (with all of the additional compliance obligations that came with it).

And be certain to listen to the end, where Travis reflects on how a high quantity of clients and his own personal journey through FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) both give him the leverage to only work with people he truly enjoys, how Travis' journey into niching, even into a fairly broad subject, amplified the number of people who showed up on his website (and subsequently asked for help, paying him for advice that grew his multi-million-dollar business), and how Travis feared launching his own RIA for years but ultimately realized that the risk for the "worst case" for a failed RIA startup was worth the upside ‘risk of success' if he was able to gain traction offering ongoing financial planning to his student loan consulting clients.

So, whether you're interested in learning about developing a profitable client niche, how to effectively raise fees to match the planning value being provided, or marketing strategies that can be used to rapidly gain clients within a niche, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Travis Hornsby.

The 18 Best Financial Advisor Conferences To Attend In 2025

October 28, 2024 07:01 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Conferences

Financial advisor conferences are not what they used to be. Once the domain of membership associations that, especially amongst independent financial advisors, created a central space for networking and community, conferences were primarily built around professional development (i.e., continuing education) and often held a space for the vendors who served those advisors, with organizations like the Financial Planning Association convening the largest conferences for financial advisors.

But over the past 20 years, the shift from commission-based to recurring revenue (AUM and subscription fee) models has, for the first time, allowed advisory firms to begin to size and scale up. What was primarily an industry of eat-what-you-kill solo financial advisors and their administrative staff has increasingly evolved into multi-advisor firms with a wider base of support staff, and increasingly specialized roles within the advisory firms as staged career tracks emerge, departments form, and greater levels of complexity develop.

As a result of this increasing role specialization within advisory firms, conferences for financial advisors have also become increasingly specialized over the past decade. Broad-based conferences that simply convened advisors because they were engaged in financial planning or operating as independents have given way to a plethora of more targeted events, from conferences 'just' on tax planning to events focused on advisor technology, to those hyper-targeting financial advisors at certain stages of business who are seeking peers of the exact same size to discuss best practices about how to deal with their business complexities. These discussions can range from talent development and succession planning to how to systematize and scale their marketing alongside their planning and investment services.

Consequently, the irony is that there seem to be even more conferences for financial advisors today than there were a decade ago (when many lamented that there were 'too many' conferences to choose from!). However, the good and bad news of this evolution is that because conferences are more specialized than ever, there's even more opportunity to get value out of a 'good-fit' conference… and it's even more of a waste of time to go to an event that is not a good fit for the advisor's needs and circumstances!

As someone who has been speaking at 50–70 conferences a year for 20 years myself, I've seen the good and bad of our wide range of industry events, from the industry associations to the broker-dealers and insurance companies and RIA custodians, the rise of vendor conferences and media-driven events, private company events, and more. As a result, I am often asked for my own suggestions of what, really, are the industry's 'best' conferences to attend, and back in 2012, I started to craft my own annual list of 'best-in-class' top conferences for financial advisors.

Having updated our annual conference list every year since, I'm excited now to present my newest list of "Top Financial Advisor Conferences" for the upcoming 2025 year, with a particular focus on highlighting how advisors can find the 'right' conference that fits their interests and business needs, from events on advisor technology (and one dedicated specifically to AI!), to conferences on marketing, learning business development skills, or developing next generation talent, to the top events for those who still use conferences to up their technical game in areas like tax planning. Plus a few events that are simply great well-rounded experiences for those who want to enjoy the conference, the destination, the sessions they attend, and their fellow attendees.

In addition, we've also updated our popular "Master Conference List" for all financial advisor conferences we could find for 2025, both for advisors looking for a wider range of events to attend (if you want to delve deeper into a particular topical area) and for vendors looking for more conferences to exhibit at! (And as more conferences are announced in the coming months, we'll continue to update the Master Conference List well into the coming year!).

So I hope you'll find this year's 2025 top conferences list (and our updated Master Conference List) to be helpful as a guide in planning your own conference budget and schedule for next year, and be certain to take advantage of the special discount codes that several conferences have offered to all of you as Nerd's Eye View readers!

Weekend Reading For Financial Planners (October 26–27)

October 25, 2024 02:00 pm 0 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "Weekend Reading For Financial Planners" - this week's edition kicks off with the news that a recent study by Cerulli Associates and Osaic found that at a time when consumers are increasingly seeking comprehensive planning relationships with their financial advisors, many advisors appear to be overestimating the comprehensiveness of the services they provide. Nonetheless, given Kitces Research findings that being 'too' comprehensive can eat into a firm's bottom line, advisors might seek a 'sweet spot' of providing a comprehensive slate of services (but not necessarily every possible service) that are most valuable for their ideal target client.

Also in industry news this week:

The SEC this week released its list of priorities for 2025 examinations, which include advisers' use of Artificial Intelligence tools, adviser recommendations of complex investment products, and broker-dealers' compliance with Regulation Best Interest
CFP Board has introduced a refreshed ad campaign encouraging students to pursue a career in financial planning after some of its initial ads received pushback from the advisor community

From there, we have several articles on investment planning:

A report from Morningstar found that investors underperformed the funds they invested in by approximately 1.1 percentage points each year during the past decade, signaling a potential opportunity for advisors to help clients avoid this "behavior gap"
A research paper considering the underlying methodology of studies measuring the "behavior gap" suggests that the "gap" might be much smaller than assumed
While financial advisors can add value by managing their clients' "behavior gap", it might not be an effective selling point when meeting with prospects

We also have a number of articles on estate planning:

Strategies for encouraging younger clients (and perhaps the adult children of older clients) to prepare relevant estate documents
The key legal documents needed to help a client plan for their potential incapacity and avoid potentially acrimonious court proceedings
How creating a "digital death-cleaning" plan can give a client peace of mind that their digital affairs will be in order after their deaths and ease the burden on their survivors in the process

We wrap up with 3 final articles, all about intelligence:

4 exercises that can help an individual avoid cognitive biases and make better decisions
Why "wisdom work" is increasingly important in the modern workplace and how firms can tap into the experiences of employees across the age spectrum
Why 'intelligent' and 'smart' are not necessarily synonymous and why each of these play a role in finding success as a financial advisor

Enjoy the 'light' reading!

Quantifying (More Accurately) The Real Impact Of A Financial Advisor’s Costs On Their Clients’ Nest Eggs

October 23, 2024 07:02 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: General Planning

While the financial advice industry has transformed in many ways over the past several decades, one aspect that has remained relatively constant is the use of the Assets Under Management (AUM) fee model as a common way for many advisors to get paid. Though in practice, while a 1% AUM fee is a common 'starting point' in the industry, the actual fee structure can vary based on the firm's approach; for example, some firms may reduce the fee for high-net-worth clients, or charge an additional fee for separate and additional services (from deeper financial planning to add-ons like tax preparation).

However, over the years, the 1% AUM fee has faced criticism from those who argue that it reduces the value of a portfolio by more than the advisor's guidance adds. This argument is particularly common in the financial independence and personal finance space, with financial educators like Ramit Sethi being a notable critic. AUM detractors like Sethi often present a calculation that compares the performance of 2 identical portfolios – one managed by an advisor who charges a 1% AUM fee for 20+ years, and one without an advisor – illustrating how the fee can significantly erode the cumulative value of their portfolio by the time they reach retirement.

With this line of criticism becoming increasingly common in online financial spaces, how can advisors with a 1% fee structure explain their value to curious (or critical) prospects? One key starting point is to acknowledge that technically, all spending reduces the total amount that a person could have saved and had available for retirement. And almost any 'normal' household expenditure can add up to a lot when it's compounded out, at a market rate of return, for multiple decades. For example, buying a new Honda every 10 years, instead of saving those payments, may take a greater piece of a client's retirement nest egg than a 1% advisory fee. So too does the impact of the infamous daily latte. Comparing expenses to what they could have been worth if saved in a portfolio can be misleading – because from that perspective, every expense seems unfavorable! And in practice, even flat-fee and subscription models of financial planning can still have a similar long-term impact on a consumer's financial future, when only the advisor's ongoing costs are considered.

Additionally, it's worth noting that while Sethi and other financial influencers advocate against the 1% AUM fee, much of their criticism targets those who charge a percentage of AUM but focus more on selling products than on supporting a client's long-term well-being, conflating financial salespeople with actual financial advisors. However, many consumers may not fully understand these nuances of the financial advice industry, and could mistakenly assume that all advisors charging AUM fees operate this way.

For prospects concerned about long-term AUM costs – and financial advisors exploring the benefits of a financial planning engagement with them – it may be helpful to highlight the value advisors provide beyond 'just' asset allocation. For example, firms that offer services like tax-loss harvesting, systematic rebalancing, and behavioral coaching often more than 'earn' their 1% AUM fee by saving clients money in taxes and other areas. Advisors who can explain their fee in the context of a holistic strategy – and connect it back to the pain points a client faces – can address these concerns before prospects become clients.

Ultimately, the key point is that while criticism of the 1% AUM fee may be widespread, and it's fair to recognize that financial advice does have a cost that advisors should be expected to offset by the value they provide, advisors who lead with holistic financial planning have a lot of value to demonstrate, especially when engaged on an ongoing basis, to help prospects better understand the true costs and benefits of having a trusted financial advisor in their corner!