feed - Part 54

6 Types Of Niches For Financial Advisors To Differentiate Themselves

July 8, 2019 07:05 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Marketing

As more and more financial advisors deliver comprehensive financial planning and wealth management services to clients, it’s becoming harder and harder for any particular advisor to differentiate themselves from all the other advisors offering substantively similar services. The good news is that as long as clients are well served, they tend to remain as clients (maintaining good retention for the advisory firm). The bad news, though, is that firms who are unable to differentiate will struggle to grow further, even if they’re serving their clients well and providing good value… because the prospective client’s perception is that every other advisor does, too.

Which means the key to growth as a financial advisor is not merely to be better, but to be different as well… crafting a unique value proposition that is relevant for the particular target market (or a subset thereof) that the advisor wants to serve. Which, in turn, requires the advisor to identify the specific niche solution they can provide to attract some or all of that target market. Except for most advisors, the struggle then becomes: how do you pick the “right” niche in the first place?

In this Guest Post, financial advisor marketing consultant Stephen Wershing shares his perspective on how advisors can better understand the range of niche choices in order to pick the one that best suits them. Because the reality is that not all types of niches are the same in the first place.

For instance, an “Affinity” niche is about developing relationships based on a common social circle (e.g., business development at the yacht club or the local chamber of commerce), while a Values niche builds relationships based on shared Values (e.g., shared religious beliefs, or a Values system like the Boy Scouts). An Educational niche focuses on prospective clients who are looking to get more educated about a particular problem or issue, while a Psychosocial niche focuses on prospects who need to address more emotional needs (e.g., recent divorcees or widows), and an Experiential niche tries to differentiate by crafting a unique experience that will resonate with a particular type of clientele. And some advisors will differentiate with a Technical niche, where they bring to the table a unique and specialized expertise that is relevant for a particular niche clientele.

Ultimately, advisors can differentiate themselves with any of the 6 different types of niches, and which will be most appealing depends on the advisor’s own interests, style, existing relationships, and natural market. The key point, though, is simply to recognize that differentiation isn’t just about being better, but about being different… and the best way to be different is to focus on a particular type of clientele who have unique needs, and develop a niche solution that is especially relevant (and differentiated) for that particular clientele!

The Latest In Financial Advisor #FinTech (July 2019)

July 1, 2019 07:06 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Welcome to the July 2019 issue of the Latest News in Financial Advisor #FinTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors and wealth management!

This month's edition kicks off with the announcement that Fidelity is launching a new Managed Account XChange (FMAX), in what appears to be a shift in the Fidelity business model to capture the ongoing advisor shift from internal portfolio construction to outsourced third-party managers and models, and also a re-positioning of Fidelity itself to compete more directly with Envestnet’s own manager marketplace in the future.

From there, the latest highlights also include a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

Envestnet putting its own Insurance Exchange into full production, with the potential to finally catalyze growth of fee-based annuities in the RIA channel
Plaid announcing a new Investments API on the back of its Quovo acquisition, that may put even more investment-related tools directly in the hands of consumers through various financial apps
Canadian FinTech Equisoft acquires Grendel CRM to potentially push into US broker-dealer and insurance enterprises
LifeYield rolls out a new “Income Advantage” tool to assist advisors in figuring out exactly which investment retirees can sell to raise spending cash in a tax-sensitive manner
Two new advisor matchmaking platforms – Harness Wealth, and MyPerfectFinancialAdvisor – launch as demand continues for outsourced lead generation for financial advisors

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including Tamarac rolling out digital onboarding tools to overlay Schwab and TD Ameritrade, Advisor Group launches an internal financial planning payment processing tool called “eQuipt for Financial Planning” as broker-dealers increasingly pivot into fee-for-service financial planning advice, Personal Capital launches its own high-yield cash offering as Wealthfront raises their cash yields to an industry-leading 2.57%, and XY Planning Network announces the finalists for its 4^th annual FinTech competition for advisor technology to support the delivery of financial planning to the next generation of clients.

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular new “Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map” as well!

I hope you're continuing to find this new column on financial advisor technology to be helpful! Please share your comments at the end and let me know what you think!

*And for #AdvisorTech companies who want to submit their tech announcements for consideration in future issues, please submit to [email protected]!

Weekend Reading for Financial Planners (June 29-30)

June 28, 2019 02:54 pm 2 Comments CATEGORY: Weekend Reading

Enjoy the current installment of "weekend reading for financial planners" – this week's edition kicks off with the buzz that, once again, the White House is considering an Executive Order that would index cost basis of investments to inflation, effectively eliminating capital gains on the inflation portion of growth and taxing only real dollar returns instead... at least, unless the plan succumbs to a legal challenge.

Also in the news this week was the House of Representatives passing a spending bill that includes a prohibition on the SEC from using any of its money to actually implement and enforce Regulation Best Interest (in what appears to be a delay tactic by the Democrats hoping that they can take control in the 2020 election and unwind Reg BI thereafter, but one that may not get through the Republican-controlled Senate anyway), and the announcement that former DFA co-CEO Eduardo Repetto is launching a new asset manager called Avanatis that will make an alternative version of DFA-style factor-based funds in an ETF form and without being tied directly to an index (allowing the ETFs to respond even more quickly to shifting factor data than just waiting for changes to the underlying indexes themselves).

From there, we have several articles on aging and retiring, including one that explores how financial literacy tends to decline (by an average of 1.5%/year) in our later years but financial confidence does not decline (leading to a growing gap between what we believe we can do, and what we're actually capable of, that may help to explain the rise of financial abuse and exploitation of seniors), a new crop of "apps" that are emerging to help protect the elderly from such financial abuse and exploitation, and a(nother) wave of financial apps emerging to help adult children more easily manage their parents' finances (especially from afar when their parents aren't geographically local).

We also have a few articles on cash flow and budgeting, from one that provides some good starting steps to get clients onto a budget (first hint: don't call it a budget, but a "spending plan," because that has fewer negative connotations!), to another that looks at the rise of apps that help children track their own chores and allowance and begin to learn (digitally-based) financial management for themselves, and a few tools that are emerging to help people get control of the ever-growing number of (sometimes no longer useful at all) subscription fees as seemingly every business converts to an "as a Service" monthly or annual subscription fee.

We wrap up with three interesting articles, all around the theme of finding what we love to do (and have a passion for): the first looks at the growing body of research around "finding your passion" (and how in practice, not having a passion doesn't necessarily cause significant unhappiness, and that it's having a passion not pursued that is more problematic); the second explores how there isn't always a connection between your passion and what makes money, but when it comes to financial advisors in particular, there often is a lot of overlap (at least, as long as the advisor adjusts their firm over time to best align with their own skills and strengths); and the last is a fascinating discussion of how, in the end, it's the setbacks we face that really help us identify our passions and what we enjoy... because setbacks that we feel compelled to push through are a sign that we've found a pursuit we really believe in, while setbacks that make us want to do something else might actually be the best clue of all that it really is time to try something different (that we may ultimately enjoy more)?

Enjoy the "light" reading!

Advisor’s Guide To The SEC’s Final Regulation Best Interest And Form CRS

June 26, 2019 07:07 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Regulation & Compliance

On June 5^th of 2019, the SEC issued its final version of Regulation Best Interest, which will require brokers and their broker-dealers to act in their clients’ best interests when making an investment recommendation, by meeting four core obligations: Disclosure (providing certain prescribed disclosure before or at the time of recommendation, about the recommendation and the relationship between the retail customer and the broker-dealer); Care (exercising reasonable diligence, care, and skill in making the recommendation); Conflicts of Interest (establishing, maintaining, and enforcing policies and procedures reasonably designed to address conflicts of interest); and Compliance (establishing, maintaining, and enforcing policies and procedures reasonably designed to achieve compliance with Regulation Best Interest).

In addition to Regulation Best Interest itself, the SEC is also implementing a newly required “Form CRS” (Customer/Client Relationship Summary) that both broker-dealers and RIAs will be obligated to provide their prospects, to further explain the nature of their services and relationship, their fees and costs, and their standard of conduct and conflicts of interest. Which will provide both new light on the business practices of broker-dealers – by requiring them to disclose upfront if they are using proprietary products, or receiving revenue-sharing or other behind-the-scenes payments – but also require new disclosures of RIAs (e.g., to state upfront their asset/account minimums, and to disclose how their own advisors are compensated and any advisor-level conflicts of interest that may be present as a result).

As a part of its Regulation Best Interest and Form CRS rulemaking, the SEC also issued updated interpretations of an RIA’s fiduciary obligations (a Duty of Care to provide best-interests advice, seek best execution, and provide ongoing monitoring when agreed upon, along with a Duty of Loyalty to act in the clients’ best interests) and the RIA’s requirement to avoid or at least disclose any attendant conflicts of interest, along with an updated (re-)interpretation of the solely incidental exemption for broker-dealers providing advice (that such advice will not trigger RIA status at a broker-dealer if the advice is offered “in connection with and [is] reasonably related to the brokerage services provided to an account.”

Ultimately, while Regulation Best Interest did not impose a full fiduciary duty on broker-dealers, it does materially lift the standard of conduct that applies to them, requiring greater disclosures from broker-dealers of their business practices, a requirement for broker-dealers to take active steps to mitigate the conflicts of interest their incentives create for brokers, and an outright ban on certain sales contests, quotas, and similar (and especially problematic) incentives.

For RIAs themselves, the new Regulation Best Interest rules have limited impact (as the new standards are specifically for broker-dealers), and, in practice, Form CRS will likely be easy to comply with (becoming a new Part 3 to Form ADV, drawing primarily from information already provided in the Part 2A brochure, and delivered alongside the RIA’s existing ADV requirements). Which means, in practice, the largest impact to RIAs may not be Regulation Best Interest itself, but simply the difficulty for RIAs to differentiate themselves in a world where broker-dealers can legitimately state that they, too, have a “best interests” standard when providing recommendations to their clients.

In the end, though, it seems that no rule related to the standards of conduct for broker-dealers and RIAs is “final” until it survives the seemingly inevitable court challenges that tend to emerge. Though given that the broker-dealer community itself has largely been supportive of Reg BI – if only because it wasn’t even worse and more burdensome for them – it remains to be seen who might even challenge the SEC’s Regulation Best Interest and supporting rules in the first place.

Without a challenge, the new rules of Regulation Best Interest and Form CRS themselves are set to take effect on June 30^th of 2020 (providing a 1-year transition period). Though the ripple effects are likely to continue for years to come.

Announcing The Kitces & Carl Podcast And New Kitces Team Members & Initiatives

June 24, 2019 07:07 am 2 Comments CATEGORY: Nerd's Eye View

The ongoing growth of the Nerd’s Eye View blog has made it possible for us to reinvest more and more into the overall Kitces platform, from the expansion into offering CE credits for CFP, IMCA/IWI, and CPAs, to the launch of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, and more. And as the platform continues to grow, we continue to reinvest more, into both the content and solutions we offer via Kitces.com itself, and the team that supports it. Which this month includes a number of exciting new announcements!

First and foremost, based on your feedback and requests, our popular Kitces & Carl video segments are now being made available as a standalone podcast: Kitces & Carl – Real Talk For Real Financial Advisors. Launching today, the podcast is now available directly on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher, starting with all the prior episodes we’ve already recorded in video format since the beginning of the year (which will be released at 1 per day for the next two weeks), and continuing with new episodes to be released every other week going forward (starting a week from Thursday). We hope you enjoy the content in a convenient audio format!

In addition, we’re excited to announce several new Kitces team members. Jim Koford joined us last fall as an Associate Editor, and is responsible for ensuring that all of our articles post properly and go out via the various email, social media, and RSS channels. And Brian Boyer is joining us as a new Director of Platform, responsible for both re-building the back-end of our Kitces platform as we prepare for the next stage of growth, and making site improvements for all of you – the readers – to make the Nerd’s Eye View and our Members Section easier to read, navigate, and use.

Through the second half of the year and into 2020, we’ll be working on a number of additional new features and enhancements as well, from adjustments to our search functionality and site/category navigation (to make it easier to find articles we’ve already written), more options about how you receive your Nerd’s Eye View blog emails, more audio content options, and overall improvements to the usability and navigation of the Members Section webinars and CE content. For those who are interested in having an even-more-involved role as a “beta tester” for new features rolling out in the future, you can submit your interest to [email protected], and we’ll be in touch as we begin work on some exciting new site features for 2020!

Notwithstanding the incredible growth we’ve already had with the Nerd’s Eye View over the past 11 years, I’m more excited and energized than ever to build the platform further and provide even more to the advisor community. So stay tuned for more announcements, more opportunities for feedback… and if you want to be a part of the Kitces team, more Career Opportunities as we continue to hire in the year(s) to come! ?

Kitces & Carl Ep 10: Transitioning Long-Standing Clients To Create Room To Grow

June 20, 2019 07:07 am 4 Comments CATEGORY: Client Trust & Communication Kitces & Carl Podcast

The perennial problem facing financial advisors throughout their careers (and especially at the beginning) is simply getting in front of prospective clients… and then convincing them to actually hire you and pay for your great advice. However, for those advisors who eventually reach the point where their business is sustainable, and have clients who understand the value that a “real” financial advisor brings to the table, the problem can easily morph from not having enough clients to keep the lights on… to having too many clients to be able to serve effectively (and no remaining capacity to add more and grow further).

Because the reality is that we can only do so much before our calendars (and our brains) reach their limits. It’s at that point where the most obvious answer is to start hiring some team members to help. But that solution can create all sorts of new challenges, and there are plenty of advisors aren’t interested in all the other stuff that comes along with hiring and managing employees… and find that they’re stuck as a result. They don’t have room for more clients, and they’re not interested in hiring and managing employees to create more capacity. And so the question then becomes: how can you, as a financial advisor, create room in your practice to be able to start growing again, especially if you do not want to increase your staff headcount (and management responsibilities) in the process?

In our tenth episode of “Kitces & Carl”, Michael Kitces and financial advisor communication expert Carl Richards sit down to discuss some reasons you may need to start transitioning long-standing clients (some of whom may have given you a shot early on when no one else would, but consequently pay you far less than what it takes to service them) to make room so you can help others, some practical steps for communicating such a transition to those clients, and why arguably it’s your duty to do so… in order to ensure that all of your clients are getting the level of service they deserve.

As a starting point, it’s important to recognize that creating more capacity in your firm by transitioning away some long-standing clients isn’t about just booting those clients to the curb for the sole purpose of finding other, more profitable clients. But the reality is that the clients who you’ve “outgrown” would probably be better served somewhere else anyway. Or put more simply, your “C” clients are almost always someone else’s “A” clients. Which means transitioning them can be win-win-win for you (creating capacity), for the client (receiving better service as an A client), and for the other advisor (who may be thrilled to grow with the clients that aren’t a good fit for you anyway now!).

That still doesn’t solve the problem, though, of communicating this to your clients, some of whom might well have their feelings hurt by your decision. Practical ways of effecting this transition include: raising your minimum fees (in order to serve your clients well, and do all the things you do for them through the year) and letting the client decide for themselves if they value your (higher-fee) advice enough to continue on as your client, sitting down and simply telling them that you’re changing the direction of the firm and (with their blessing) would like to facilitate their transition to another advisor who’ll be a great fit for them, or simply telling them that you’ve been examining all of the relationships in your practice and feel that you’re simply not a good fit for them at this point in their lives.

Because at the end of the day, you are running an advisory business, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. Taking on the responsibility of advising clients on the best way for them to manage, grow, and use their life savings is the very mission of that business, and ultimately you have to ensure that the direction of your practice is aligned with what your clients need… and if it’s not, it’s your job to tell them.

#FASuccess Ep 129: Building The Lifestyle Practice Of Your Dreams By Selling Your Firm And Starting Over, with Donna Skeels Cygan

June 18, 2019 07:06 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 129th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Donna Skeels Cygan. Donna is the founder of Sage Future Financial, an independent RIA in Albuquerque, New Mexico that oversees nearly $90 million of assets for about 40 client households.

What's unique about Donna, though, is the way that she successfully built her first advisory firm to over $100 million of AUM with 5 full-time staff members, and then found herself so mired in the time it took to run the practice and serve her clients that she sold it and came back 3 years later to start over again, building a much more deliberately crafted structure that's intended to only ever have 40 affluent clients.

In this episode, we talk in depth about Donna's journey of building both her first and second advisory firm. The way that years of continued growth allowed her to hire more team members but frustratingly never got to the point where she was able to free up her time to spend more of it with her family, why she ultimately decided that the only way to relieve the burden of the firm was to sell it, the reason that Donna ended out coming back to start a second advisory firm after all, and how her current structure with just 42 clients paying an average of nearly $18,000 a year in fees allows her to run so efficiently as a solo advisor that she finally has the work-life balance she wanted, needs only 2 part-time assistants for support, and is able to drive nearly 80% of the firm's revenue to the bottom line.

We also talk about Donna's actual process in serving clients. The way she arranges two meetings a year with clients that include a biannual rotation of ongoing planning topics, the structured agenda she uses for each client meeting that includes new and pending issues, financial planning topics and an investment review, the way she leverages her virtual assistant to maximize her time in meeting with clients, and the software she uses to run her advisory firm.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Donna talks about why despite the ongoing buzz in the industry about the need to consolidate and grow to gain economies of scale, she has no concerns about her ability to remain competitive as a standalone solo advisor, and actually feels even better than ever about having sold her larger advisory firm and started over with the goal of building a smaller but far more profitable one instead.

So whether you're interested in what being intentional about starting over and building a new lifestyle practice looks like, how she manages to run such high margins while serving 42 clients, and the services she provides for her clients, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.

#FASuccess Ep 127: Creating A Stewardship Report To Show Your Ongoing Value To [401(k) Or Other] Clients, With Jania Stout

June 4, 2019 07:07 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 127th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Jania Stout. Jania is the co-founder of Fiduciary Plan Advisors at HighTower, an advisory firm focused on 401(k) plan consulting that's responsible for nearly $4 billion of plan assets across almost 120 businesses.

What's unique about Jania, though, is the way that she's been able to rapidly grow her 401(k) practice to $4 billion entirely from scratch over the past 5 years by leveraging nearly 20 years of immersing herself into the 401(k) community to build her own personal brand and reputation as a trustworthy fiduciary.

In this episode, we talk in depth about the 401(k) plan consulting model. The way Jania's business operates as either a 3(21) or 3(38) fiduciary on a flat fee structure for 401(k) plans but tier to asset levels because plans still benchmark their fees to AUM competitors, what it takes to service and support mid-to-large-sized 401(k) plans with tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars for a fee that itself may be tens of thousands of dollars a year, the tools that Fiduciary Plan Advisors uses to support its fiduciary governance consulting with 401(k) plans, and the unique stewardship report that Jania built and automated in her CRM to show all of her clients all the behind-the-scenes work that the firm does on their behalf every year as a means to justify why her clients should stick with her and even accept an increase in their fees going forward.

We also talk about Jania's own path in growing the 401(k) business. From getting involved with SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management and doing CE education classes for members of their association to being active on LinkedIn and leveraging LinkedIn Groups as a way to network with other professionals, leveraging the industry's various best firms list to generate more inbound requests for proposal inquiries for 401(k) plan opportunities, and why Jania was ultimately willing to break away from her prior firm despite a non-compete and needing to start over entirely from scratch in her mid-40s in order to build her business independently the way she wanted.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Jania talks about the challenges in going independent, where you no longer have a national brand's name and logo on your business card, and what she did to establish her own credibility, even when the firm was little more than her and just a team member or two.

So whether you're interested in learning how Jania built her 401(k) advisory business, how she and her team demonstrate their ongoing value to clients by using "Stewardship Reports", or her advice on how to enter the 401(k) space, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.

The Latest In Financial Advisor #FinTech (June 2019)

June 3, 2019 07:06 am 1 Comment CATEGORY: Technology & Advisor FinTech

Welcome to the June 2019 issue of the Latest News in Financial Advisor #FinTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors and wealth management!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that Vanguard is apparently working on a new "technology" platform for advisors – adapted from its own Personal Advisor Services solution – that, at a minimum, appears to be a form of robo-advisor-for-advisors offering, and may even be an entire RIA custodial platform to compete with the likes of Schwab, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, and Pershing… and potentially force the other custodians to stop charging more for Vanguard (and DFA) trades and instead reconfigure their own custodial business models to be better aligned with the advisors they serve?

From there, the latest highlights also include a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

Goldman Sachs acquires United Capital for $750M, at the least to expand into the "mass millionaire" wealth management marketplace… and possibly to leverage UC’s FinLife technology platform to power its own RIA custodial solution in the future?
Morningstar launches its own Model Marketplace but chooses a more "fee-only" approach of charging for its software directly and not being compensated by asset manager incentives, even as most model marketplace competitors are reducing the costs of their software (subsidized by asset manager revenue-sharing commissions)
Carson Group partners with Galileo Money+ to offer independent RIA clients traditional banking services, from a checking account paying 1.24% to a savings account paying 2.20%, along with a debit card, online bill pay, and mobile check deposit.
280CapMarkets announces its first enterprise partnership (with United Planners) to offer its BondNav solution for individual bond trading as rising interest rates increase the demand for advisors to build individual bond ladders
OpenInvest launches Optimus, a new Direct Indexing solution structured as an SMA that relieves advisors of the need to implement their own Direct Indexing strategies but with the flexibility to customize index funds to specific client ESG preferences

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including Redtail’s cybersecurity incident that exposes a slice of private client data (as the challenges of managing a growing web of third-party integrations becomes exponentially more complex every year), RIAInABox launches its own cybersecurity training solution for RIAs and their employees, Salesforce rolls out a new "big data" initiative for Financial Services Cloud users in partnership with its Einstein AI platform, and North Capital launches its own proprietary financial planning solution for free to consumers for lead generation as Zoe Financial wins the Morningstar FinTech competition for its new digital lead generation platform for advisors… as the FinTech world struggles to recognize that the real challenge to serving the masses is not the technology to serve them, but the marketing difficulties and high client acquisition costs to reach them (and gain their trust) in the first place!

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular new “Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map” as well!

I hope you're continuing to find this new column on financial advisor technology to be helpful! Please share your comments at the end and let me know what you think!

*And for #AdvisorTech companies who want to submit their tech announcements for consideration in future issues, please submit to [email protected]!

#FASuccess Ep 126: Climbing The Path Of Personal Development To Partnership At A Large RIA, with Martine Lellis

May 28, 2019 07:08 am 0 Comments CATEGORY: Financial Advisor Success Podcast

Welcome back to the 126th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Martine Lellis. Martine is a principal and the chief operating officer at Sullivan, Bruyette, Speros & Blayney, an independent RIA with nearly $4 billion of assets under management serving 1,100 affluent clients in the Washington, D.C. area.

What's unique about Martine, though, is the way that she climbed the ladder at SBSB, starting out as an associate advisor only to see the RIA sold to a bank shortly thereafter, and then later moving into mid-level management roles and climbing all the way up to become the firm's COO, and then participating with four other principals who did a management buyout of the firm back from the bank and take the company private again.

In this episode, we talk in depth about Sullivan Bruyette's model for serving affluent clients. Why the firm offers tax preparation services for its most complex clients on top of their financial planning and investment management, the way the business involves its dedicated investment team directly with clients to the point that it's the investment team and not the advisors themselves who are primarily responsible for discussing investment results and the markets with clients, why Sullivan Bruyette hired a director of advisor services and development to become an internal practice management coach for their 10 advisor teams, and how the firm prices out its core financial planning and investment management services a separate fee for tax preparation and another separate fee for the especially big and complex financial planning projects their affluent clients sometimes need help with.

We also talk about Martine's own career path through the firm. The way she invested heavily in herself throughout her 20s by going back to school for both an MBA and her CPA license while also working full-time and largely paying her own way for the sake of her own career advancement, how her role in her 30s shifted more to learning the skills of management and developing her teams of people, and how now in her 40s her career focus is shifting again into more bringing in and developing the next generation of the firm's leadership and figuring out how best to motivate them while growing the firm. And what it took for Martine to get comfortable to take on a substantial amount of personal debt as a key employee to buy back the firm as part of the management team.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Martine shares the challenge that surprised her the most in building the business and her own career. Why the hardest time she worked were also some of the most exciting, and what the key breakthrough was in her own career that ultimately allowed her to grow to the next level.

So whether you're interested in learning about how Martine actively pursued opportunities to advance her career, how Sullivan Bruyette integrates tax preparation with their financial planning and investment management services (and how the firm prices out those services), or about the factors that drove the decision for an internal group of principals to buy back the firm from the bank that purchased it years before, then we how you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.