20 Lessons Learned From 500 FAS Podcast Episodes: What I Learned Building An RIA From Scratch In My 20s
Building a consulting firm from scratch is difficult under the best of circumstances. While CFP educational programs teach financial planning knowledge, they don’t teach it in practice—and there is surprisingly little established training or curriculum. From figuring out how to find or attract prospects in the first place, to establishing your planning process, investment approach, and overall value proposition, and putting it into action, you still have time to do it. in But the business also works on The Business – These are all challenges faced by consultant-owners. Fortunately, we can learn from other consultants who have generously shared their experiences.
In this guest postJeremy Epley shares the key milestones of his Silverstone Financial growth journey, told through the lens of lessons he’s accumulated and applied to his practice while listening to the All 500 Financial Adviser Success podcast. It highlights 20 lessons as a starting point for the most important practice management lessons (and another 30 ‘bonus’ lessons for those who want to go deeper).
Jeremy begins by emphasizing the importance of the key structural decisions you make how First of all, to build the organization. The channel you choose (eg, RIA versus broker-dealer) will influence what tools you can use or what solutions you can initially offer to clients (Section 192). Having a payment structure that generates enough revenue as if Customer viability (in terms of AUM, plan, or subscription fees) is important. to the Forward Measure (section 244). But you don’t have to pay Everything You do, enough to make the business work; Hence the appeal of giving away parts of the initial planning process for free… because clients who want and need your help will ask you to implement it anyway (Part 20)! All this only works if you take care to manage yours. His own Costs and lifestyles will roll over as a consultant (so your personal care won’t affect the stability of the business, especially in the early years, in Part 1).
In practice, it is also important to choose the right platforms, from choosing a technology guard (chapter 350), making your CRM system really the center of the consultant’s business (chapter 272) – as well as establishing the right team structure to use the lead consultant’s time, how many different relationships he has with the company (EP2) realizing that not every client will be suitable for the company, (chapter 233) those customers who fear their incoming phone calls (for your business, and for your personal health and sanity) it’s okay if you suggest.
This creates a niche for how you want to serve your specific customer—and the clearer you are about who your ideal customer is, the easier it will be to create a unique offering (Section 173). In Silverstone Financial’s case, giving clients confidence means not having to spend at least 12 months of each year pooling funds between two different financial planning software platforms (Section 285) to have more confidence in market volatility (Section 391) and partnering with an offshore tax preparation firm to provide your clients with a “one-stop shop with you in CA”. (Episode 421)!
In the end, the bottom line is that while every consulting firm is different, every consultant/founder has probably faced a problem in a way that we can all learn something from hearing each other’s journey. Podcasts like the Financial Advisor Success series offer great lessons to absorb while you’re walking the dog, mowing the lawn, cooking in the kitchen, traveling, or exercising. Or as Jeremy puts it, “An hour and a half walk (with the Financial Advisor Success Podcast)… is a great way to pay off some of your health debt and build some educational assets at the same time.
