Financial Advisor Success

Latest Episodes:

Ep 490: Attracting And Retaining HNW Clients By Being More Available For Their Multigenerational Family Needs with Liz Miller May 19, 2026

Show notes

For high-net-worth clients, financial planning is often not just about managing their money during their lifetimes, but also a matter of preparing the next generation to inherit family wealth. Which suggests that meeting with clients' children can both offer value for current clients and also begin a relationship with the next generation that could last for decades to come.

Liz Miller is the founder of Summit Place Financial Advisors, a $300M firm she built by focusing on deep relationships and multigenerational planning. Listen in to hear how she raises multigenerational conversations with clients and their children and how she converts clients' children from regular contacts to fee-paying clients. Liz also discusses how she finds that ensuring "nothing falls through the cracks" can be more valuable than chasing returns (and the value of checklists to support this task) as well as why she lets her high-net-worth prospects lead off discovery meetings with their most pressing concern rather than starting with her own qualifications and services.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/490

Ep 489: Winning More Clients By Talking Less And Reducing Friction For Prospects with Sara Grillo May 12, 2026

Show notes

For financial advisors, it might seem intuitive to spend time with prospects explaining the value they can offer. However, doing most of the talking can leave prospects unsure whether the advisor truly understands their needs, potentially discouraging them from becoming a client.

In this episode, we welcome Sara Grillo, a marketing specialist for financial advisors, to discuss how focusing less on an advisor's expertise and more on what their prospects are truly worried about can lead to winning more clients. Sara also shares how to reduce friction in advisior marketing so prospects are more likely to take action and her practical approach to content creation, including how to turn real client questions into high-value content and how targeted content can drive both visibility and referrals.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/489

Ep 488: Bringing Hiring In-House To Support Rapid Growth After Doubling AUM To $600M In One Year with Joe Schmitz Jr. May 05, 2026

Show notes

How do you scale a financial advisory firm to 40+ staff and $630M AUM in just a few years without breaking your hiring, culture, or client experience? In this episode, you'll hear about the hiring and marketing strategies fueling this kind of growth and how being open about a firm's values can lead to greater retention of both clients and team members. Joe Schmitz Jr. is the founder of Peak Retirement Planning, a hybrid advisory firm based in Columbus, Ohio, that oversees $630 million in assets under management for approximately 1,000 client households. He joins the show today to share how he built a high-performance hiring engine that attracted over 5,000 applicants in a single year and turned them into a values-aligned, growth-focused team. He also talks about how his firm uses a structured, tech-enabled hiring process to identify the right people, why recruiting straight from colleges has been a competitive advantage, and how engaging in multiple synergistic marketing tactics has led to the strong flow of prospects his firm receives.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/488

Ep 487: Building The Team And Tech To Serve Thousands Of (Advice-Only) Clients Efficiently with Lori Atwood Apr 28, 2026

Show notes

Growing a client base from the hundreds into the thousands requires both tech and talent. Today's guest discusses how she's done both in order to serve more than 3,000 advice-only clients over the past three years.

Lori Atwood is the founder of Fearless Finance. In this episode, she shares why she built her own internal planning software platform to meet the needs of her ideal target clients, how her "hub-and-spoke" advisor structure helps maintain culture and consistency across her firm, and how she spends 18% of her revenue on client acquisition yet ends up with a per-client acquisition cost that's lower than the industry average. Lori also discusses how prospects (who sometimes use AI tools to answer personal finance questions) often come to her for "confirmation, not information" on their financial situations and how she's found it gratifying to be the first call her (largely working-age) clients make when they face an unexpected financial contingency and to be able to provide them with meaningful solutions.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/487

Ep 486: Lessons Learned from How Mega-RIAs Are Scaling Their People to Support Growth with Lisa Crafford Apr 21, 2026

Show notes

What does it take to scale an advisory firm from a small practice into a true enterprise? Today's episode offers a deep look at what really happens as firms grow into multi-billion-dollar businesses, including hiring strategies, leadership team growth, and equity strucutres for employees.

Lisa Crafford is the Head of Advisory at Constellation Wealth Capital, and she joins the show today to discuss the importance of the human resources function for growing firms, how advisory firm leaders can start to shed the many 'hats' they wear, and why adding to the executive team can be a force multiplier despite the compensation they might earn. Listen in to learn why scaling an advisory firm eventually becomes less about clients and more about people, leadership, structure, and building an organization that can operate beyond the founder.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/486

Ep 485: Exercises to Help Clients Better Navigate the Transition to Retirement After Having Done It Yourself with Michael Kay Apr 14, 2026

Show notes

While financial advisors and their clients often focus on creating a succesful retirement income plan, a successful, meaningful retirement goes well beyond dollars and cents. In this episode, we dive into the deeper side of the retirement transition and why many high-performing professionals (including financial advisors) underestimate the psychological shift that comes with leaving a decades-long career.

Michael Kay is a retired financial advisor and a current life coach and author, and joins the show today to share the personal challenges he faced transitioning from advisory firm owner to retiree. Listen in to learn practical exercises and questions that financial advisors can use to help clients prepare for life beyond their careers. You'll hear how to help retirees design what their weeks will actually look like, how to think through changes in social structures after leaving the workplace, and how finding new ways to make a meaningful impact can create purpose in retirement.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/485

Ep 484: Scaling To $1B AUM By Recognizing Your (Rainmaker) Strengths And Delegating The Rest with Jake Falcon Apr 07, 2026

Show notes

At some point, firm founders often find that their time is divided between attracting new clients and serving current ones (and running their business). This episode explores how it's possible to delegate technical work to a centralized planning team, segment clients by revenue, and leverage asynchronous communication tools to create client touchpoints while devoting significant time to closing new clients.

Jake Falcon, founder of Falcon Wealth Advisors, has built a $1 billion advisory firm for nearly 900 client households in part by focusing on his strengths as a 'rainmaker' bringing in new clients while stepping back from day-to-day planning analyses and regular client meetings. In this episode, Jake shares how abandoning scripts and prioritizing authentic connections transformed his business development. He also discusses how he's using Instagram to meet potential clients 'where they are' and demonstrate his authentic personality, why he invests client assets directly into stocks and bonds instead of mutual funds and ETFs, and how he hopes that bringing in direct business development hires will help his firm grow well into the future.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/484

Ep 483: Closing (More Affluent) Clients in The First Meeting with an "Approach Talk" Method to Create Urgency with Erin Botsford Mar 31, 2026

Show notes

What does it take to close a high-net-worth client in the very first meeting? For Erin Botsford, the answer is for an advisor to position themselves as a risk expert and to create a sense of urgency to act in the prospects' minds.

Erin is the founder of The Advisor Authority, and has developed a step-by-step formula for advisors to close more upmarket clients faster. She joins the show today to share how advisors can create positive first impressions by creating a "founders video", help prospects recognize their potential risk exposures in estate planning and insurance, and create urgency naturally. Listen in to also hear Erin's insights on setting effective fee structures as well as how founders can strategically extract themselves from every client case and ultimately scale their firms more effectively.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/483

Ep 482: Growing To $500M AUM In 7 Years by Connecting with Your Ideal Clients on LinkedIn with Justin Brownlee Mar 24, 2026

Show notes

What if just the 10 'right' people seeing your content could grow your firm faster than 10,000 random viewers? Growing an advisory firm doesn't always require reaching the largest audience. In many cases, the right audience—clearly defined and intentionally engaged—can be far more powerful than broad visibility.

Justin Brownlee has built a $500 million RIA serving just 75 households by targeting a specific niche and using LinkedIn with intention. In this episode, we break down how he created focused blog and podcast content for his ideal target client, strategically built a LinkedIn network inside target companies, and prioritized quality engagement over vanity metrics. Listen in to hear why Justin focuses on revenue-per-client as a key business metric, how his fixed-fee model attracts high-net-worth clients while increasing asset consolidation, and how Justin weathered the challenging early months of business ownership on his path to success.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/482

Ep 481: Leveraging Technology To Rapidly Scale Growth Delivering Financial Planning To Next Generation Clients with Adam Dell Mar 17, 2026

Show notes

Reaching next-generation clients at scale often requires rethinking how financial planning is built, priced, and delivered. This episode explores how a tech-forward, flat-fee model can expand access to planning, create a consistent client experience, and unlock new growth channels both through direct-to-consumer marketing and partnerships with other advisory firms.

Adam Dell is the founder of Domain Money, an RIA that operates virtually nationwide, serving 1,400 clients and expecting to generate approximately $10 million in revenue this year. Listen in as Adam shares how his firm built a financial planning software solution from the ground up to address the specific needs of his ideal clients. You'll learn how his firm uses AI to reduce administrative burden (while deciding what must be handled by an advisor, reviewed by a human, or automated entirely), as well as how a tech-forward, flat-fee experience attracts clients who may not fit traditional asset-based fee models.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/481

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected