You Can't Be Premium and Volume at Once

0:00Uh, my name is Rick and I sell financial planning services to uh, young big tech on uh, employees, W-2 employees. Uh, we do about half a million in revenue. I'd love to be at 5 million within the next, you know, 3 years or so. Um, and what's currently stopping me is just a time resource management issue where I'm currently doing the, you know, fulfillment of meeting with our our clients and I hired a new full-time associate planner to start to take over these relationships. And so I think my current constraint is figuring out how to replicate teams as I continue to to grow the business.

0:36>> Mhm. >> Um, we're doing relatively We're just doing organic marketing, content mostly on LinkedIn. >> Mhm. >> Um, and we write a daily blog which I post to the website and an email list, a small email list. >> How many sales a month do you do? >> Uh, about two. >> Two sales a month. And is the model like 1% assets under management? >> no. And that was another question that I wanted to get your thoughts on was um, one of the big swings that I took about four or five years ago was to change the traditional financial planning model. So instead of charging the 1% AUM fee, we charge a 25 basis point AUM fee and then a monthly subscription which is 275.

1:14So it nets out to be about 5,000 per client per year. Um, on an annual basis. >> Mhm. Okay. >> And obviously bigger clients pay more, you know, >> Okay. >> AUM. >> Interesting. Okay, got it. Um, okay. So typically >> with your your your type of business, um, they're usually demand constrained, not supply constrained. Like managing lots of lots of people and lots of money usually doesn't actually take too many resources relative to how much they make you. And so I think that the the big issue is probably just acquisition. Um, so getting two sales a month is probably the big the big bottleneck. And so I would So what's the big incentive for someone to get on the phone with you?

1:55>> Um, you mean what's in it for them? Like do they contact us? Uh, initially it's to get their financial house in order. We do a lot around uh getting people's financial independence like at by age 50. >> Yeah. >> Um, so we're helping people retire. >> a million dollars or the >> Retire, yeah, fire movement, you know, so we're well, yeah. >> Um, I so, you know, as as as much as you may hate what I'm about to say, uh there's a reason that all the big dogs do the same exact playbook, uh which is they run to either virtual or they run to in-person workshops uh because in one or two days or even a half day you can gain a lot more trust than a very long time online. Um, and I would probably use that as my lead magnet. Cuz that sometimes like for a lot of you guys like one of the biggest levers you can have on like when we unlock like a easy 5x, it's usually something at the very front where it's just like we just swap the lead magnet from like hey book a call to hey get this thing and then a call just happens to be part of it or a workshop happens to be the vehicle for delivering that outcome.

2:52And when we do that like that's and all of a sudden your lead flow goes from making two sales a month to eight or 10. And I think that for me that would be the biggest issue. Now you managing customers it's like I think I think you just need more cash flow which more customers will help you with and then you can get an account manager who can kind of like run those relationships, but most relationship guys can handle many many many customers. Cuz people don't I mean also the higher up you go they tend to in my experience actually need less. >> Yeah, that is true. [clears throat] We meet with people on a monthly basis so we're

3:20>> Is that required? >> Uh, it is it's sort of like our our sort of bread and butter. So where we do a lot of accountability, a lot of like coaching, a lot of like >> for them to like save more money and stuff? >> Save more money, save on taxes, tax projections, manage their income. >> you're I think you're under undercharging and over not overdelivering but doing too much. >> Yeah. >> Like meeting every month, that's almost like personal finance coaching more than like wealth management. >> Yeah.

3:47>> Cuz I feel like those are two different offers. >> Yeah. >> So it's like there's a there's the Dave Ramsey of like hey stop spending money silly pants and then there's the like well once I have money what do I do with it and I feel like you're kind of blending those but you're not but you're but you're doing both services and pricing like one. >> Okay. >> But like lower. So I think >> Can you expand on that a little bit? >> Basically you're not making enough money per customer to do the work you're doing. >> Okay. Okay. >> Sure. >> Like 12 meetings a year is a lot. Most of the wealth management firms that like come through here one.

4:16>> Yeah. >> Maybe. >> Quarterly at most. Yeah. >> Right. >> [laughter] >> And so like you're doing 12 times the work >> Yeah. >> and billing less. >> Yeah. >> So unless you had a tech enabled way of making that the model I would I would change the pricing. >> Okay. Okay. >> Cuz fundamentally like just for everybody like you're either the volume player and you have tech built in since day one and the entire model model is around cost efficiency or you're premium. There's really not a lot of room in between.

4:44>> Yeah. >> Like best for at least like people it's hard time for people to perceive that value. >> [clears throat] >> So I just think you're doing way too much. >> Okay. Can I ask you this? One of the one of the reasons why I designed it that way was so that we could fish further upstream than most financial planning firms. So we start to work with people in their early 30s right? When they're making you know a few hundred grand a year and then you know a lot of those relationships that blossom into people you know doing big things at Meta you know making 5 million a year right? Um do you think that's a smart play or is that you know

5:12>> I don't think it's I don't think it's I don't think it's it's dumb. I think it's I think you have a you have a you have you have two elements. You have a personal finance thing and you have an investing thing. And you're getting the people who are younger with the personal finance thing and they're still not they don't have enough assets to make their AUM like really worth it. >> Right. >> Right. And so like I would probably have a more traditional private wealth management model and if you just find out that get it you can acquire customers really easily on personal finance much more easily than you can here but then the ascension is much higher then like that's a great model. Like I think that's a really interesting play but I think trying to combine both of them in terms of both the delivery and the pricing, I think that's where it's feels off to me.

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