PracticeLab

Why do top advisors who have a niche get 67% more take-home income than those who don’t have a niche? Kristen Luke is the founder of Kaleido Creative Studio, a marketing firm dedicated to helping advisors with their marketing and client acquisition strategies. She is also the author of the Amazon bestseller, “Uncomparable: The Financial Advisor’s Guide to Standing Out through Niche Marketing.” She describes how niche marketing strategies have helped advisors streamline their operations, service more clients with fewer staff, increase their revenue and even reduce their need to continue doing marketing over time. For more, visit PracticeLab.com.

Eliot Weissberg is the president of The Investors Center, a financial and longevity planning practice with $280 million in assets under management. Weissberg talks about how he carved out a niche in longevity planning, including partnerships with the MIT AgeLab and a patented, rules-based system for retirement income. He also shares about going from a 100-hour workweek to a more sustainable approach. For more, visit PracticeLab.com.

Pat Hinton is a co-founder and senior partner at Boston Wealth Strategies, a fee-only financial planning firm under Commonwealth with over $1 billion in assets under management. Hinton describes how he and his partners create a collaborative culture at the firm, engage the next generation of advisors and build a succession and exit plan into their day-to-day operations.

For more, visit PracticeLab.

There are many ways for financial advisors to carve out niches for themselves. In this episode, Scott Oeth of Cahill Financial Advisors in Minneapolis recounts how he carved out his: by recognizing how poorly understood executive compensation was and developing technical expertise in that area, leaning into personal affinities like volleyball and wilderness exploration, servicing 17 clients who worked at the same company, forming study groups with other professionals working with his target clients and creating a robust content marketing engine.

Since Oeth joined Cahill in 2008, the firm’s assets under management have grown from $70 million to over $1.2 billion, of which he manages $230 million. Listen to his episode to learn about how to acquire new clients and grow your practice. For more, visit Capital Ideas.

While a lot of advisors may say they offer financial planning, not all manage to offer dynamic customized plans to clients. For advisors Bart Zandbergen and Letitia Berbaum with The Zandbergen group, a DBA* of Axxcess Wealth Management in Laguna Beach, California, making planning a priority not only helps them stand out, it makes them essential. They are often the first ones called when clients are facing an emergency.  

In this episode, you’ll hear about their planning process, and how it’s enabled by technology and smart teaming. They also explain why they family wealth conversations early and often, and how to have that conversation with clients.  

For more, visit PracticeLab.

*DBA stands for does business as another firm name.

Creating a memorable brand may not come easy to financial advisors, but it can be worth the effort. That’s according to Bart Zandbergen and Tish Berbaum, the team behind The Zandbergen Group, a DBA* of Axxcess Wealth Management in Laguna Beach, California. Over time, the firm built a specialty serving ultra high net worth clients, and their brand evolved to match. Combining notions of transparency, a philosophy about “true wealth” beyond investments, and a general love of food, wine and fashion, the Zandbergen Group delivers what can only be described as a luxury experience. 

In this episode, you’ll hear about Bart and Tish’s journey and learn how the two demonstrate their brand at every client touchpoint — from the office space, to the digital space, to client conversations. 

For more, visit PracticeLab.

*DBA stands for does business as another firm name.

Sometimes financial planning is about more than investing toward goals. For Lynne Knox, a private wealth manager at Capital Group Private Client Services, that often means helping people move from fragility to strength. This is particularly true for women age 65 and older going through “gray divorce” after spending decades in a traditional homemaker role.

These women may have high net worth but little experience making their own financial decisions. They need guidance, but they also want allies they can trust and lean on during a time of great uncertainty.

In this episode, Knox describes the financial advice she gives them, a technique for better client conversations, and how she nurtures these client relationships after the divorce is finalized. For more, visit PracticeLab.

Sometimes financial planning is about more than investing toward goals. For Lynne Knox, a private wealth manager at Capital Group Private Client Services, that often means helping people move from fragility to strength. This is particularly true for women age 65 and older going through “gray divorce” after spending decades in a traditional homemaker role.  

These women may have high net worth but little experience making their own financial decisions. They need guidance, but they also want allies they can trust and lean on during a time of great uncertainty. 

In this episode, Knox describes the financial advice she gives them, a technique for better client conversations, and how she nurtures these client relationships after the divorce is finalized. 

For more, visit PracticeLab.

To truly provide optimal service, Mary Beth Storjohann and her team at Abacus Wealth Partners aim to forge emotional connections with clients. “How do you speak to what’s on their hearts and minds?” she asks. “That’s how you get to know about where your clients spend their time and what they’re worried about.” 

This more-emotional-than-financial approach is not new for Abacus, which was founded nearly 30 years ago by Buddhists seeking to incorporate religious principles into financial services. But the appeal is stronger than ever. 

In this episode, Storjohann describes adapting client service to better connect with women and next-generation clients. She also shares how her firm seeks organic growth by expanding its network of entrepreneurial advisors to share skills and best practices for success. 

For more, visit PracticeLab.

Abacus Wealth Partners was founded by two Buddhists in 1996 with the idea to incorporate their religious principles into financial services. Last year, they stepped away from the daily management of the firm, passing the reins to two women co-CEOs.

The money-and-mindfulness ethos remains at the forefront of the firm’s mission and values, says Mary Beth Storjohann, one of those co-CEOs. Like many financial advisors, Abacus seeks to help clients connect money with their life goals. But the firm also aims to help clients experience what it calls a “sense of enough here and now, not just in the future.”

Abacus aims to show that a spiritual focus is not inconsistent with material success. The Southern California-based firm has about $3 billion in assets under management.

For more, visit PracticeLab.