Financial Advisor Success

Andrew Altfest is the president of Altfest Personal Wealth Management, an independent RIA based in New York City that oversees $1.3 billion for nearly 600 affluent clients. Andrew has become the second-generation leader in his family's business, which was started by his parents, and he joins the show to discuss the dynamics of a family business and how he is positioning the firm for the future. In...

Danna Jacobs is the co-founder of Legacy Care Wealth, an advisory firm and accounting practice that she launched with her brother. While Danna handles the financial planning side of things, her brother focuses on the accounting and tax planning as they grow their business together. Today she joins the show to discuss how her firm works with next-generation clients and what it's like running a busi...

Linda Leitz is the president of Peace of Mind Financial Planning, an independent RIA based in Colorado Springs that provides comprehensive financial planning services on a retainer fee basis to nearly 100 clients. Today Linda joins the show to discuss what she has learned over her 20 years of experience, including key takeaways about pricing her services and why her team of four works with clients...

Dan Goldie, the former president of Dan Goldie Financial Services, started out in 1991 with no clients or assets under management. Through focus and drive, he built up his firm to $900 million of assets for 275 affluent clients—all without even a full-time administrative staff member. Today he joins the show to discuss how he structured his advisory business and his approach to customizing everyth...

Ashley Micciche is the CEO of True North Retirement Advisors, a firm she founded with her father. Today she joins the show to discuss how she achieved work-life satisfaction while growing a business and starting a family. Ashley will delve deep into the arrangement she made with her father to be the backup advisor for her clients and how she communicated the news to her clients that she was going...

Donna Skeels Cygan, the President of Sage Future Financial, joins the show to discuss how she runs a firm overseeing nearly $90 million in assets under management and still maintains a work-life balance. After building her first successful firm, Donna decided to sell it and come back three years later to start over again, this time building a much more deliberately-crafted schedule that's intended...

After starting his first of five businesses at the age of 15, there aren't many business activities Justin Goodbread hasn't experienced. In 2009, he founded Heritage Investors, an independent RIA based in Knoxville, Tennessee, in hopes of helping individuals, business owners, and retirees attain their financial goals. Today, Justin joins the show to discuss how his firm has crafted a niche in work...

Jania Stout is the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Fiduciary Plan Advisors at HighTower Advisors, an advisory firm that is focused on 401(k) planning. Her team is responsible for nearly $4 billion in assets across almost 120 businesses. In this episode, we discuss how Jania was able to rapidly grow her business entirely from scratch over the past 5 years, as well as how she built her own perso...

Martine Lellis has had a unique career with Sullivan Bruyette Speros & Blayney (SBSB). She started out as an associate advisor, and after seeing the firm sold to a bank, she later moved into a mid-level management role and continued climbing all the way up to become the firm's Chief Operating Officer and Principal. She then joined four other principals to buy the firm back from the bank, making it...

With sixteen years of experience in the wealth management industry, Sabrina Lowell is a Certified Financial Planner™ (CFP®) and a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach® (CPCC). With a focus on working with career engaged couples and clients in tech, Sabrina brings her expertise to her workplace at Private Ocean and helps clients form and achieve their goals. In this episode, she shares the collab...

Shirl Penney is the co-founder and CEO of Dynasty Financial Partners, a back and middle office service provider for large independent RIAs. With more than $32 billion on their platform across the 47 advisory firms they support, Dynasty has focused itself purely on being a highly-scaled service provider, while allowing the firms it services to remain completely independent. In this episode, Shirl o...

My guest today has one of the largest independent RIAs we've had on the podcast. Brent Brodeski is the co-founder and CEO of Savant Capital, an independent RIA that oversees more than $6 billion of assets under management for nearly 5,000 clients. With a team of 173 employees, Savant has also shared opportunities for ownership across more than 50 employees at the firm. In this episode, Brent share...

My guest today built his firm as a support platform for independent advisors. Jeff Concepcion is the founder and CEO of Stratos Wealth Partners, a corporate RIA and super OSJ under the LPL platform that oversees over $13 billion of assets under advisement across nearly 300 advisors in 100 different locations. In this episode, Jeff talks about the challenges he faced launching his firm, because whi...

Rachel Robasciotti is the founder of Robasciotti & Phillipson, an independent RIA that oversees $140 million of assets for more than 100 individual clients. With 15 years of experience in the industry, Rachel has not only built a successful firm, but also a unique proprietary investment process (dubbed RISE, for Return on Investment and Social Equity) that goes beyond doing socially responsible in...

Manisha Thakor is the founder of MoneyZen, a financial literacy and education platform focused on empowering women, and the VP of Financial Wellbeing at Brighton Jones, an independent RIA with $5 billion in assets under management. After following quite a unique path into the industry, Manisha built her own platform to share her message of financial literacy for women through speaking gigs and med...

My guest today keeps up our recent trend of speaking with advisors who serve a unique niche. The founder of Practical Financial Planning, Kenneth Robinson focuses his planning services specifically on Ohio public sector employees. A former public sector employee himself—before he transitioned into financial planning 20 years ago—Kenneth has managed to maximize the efficiency of his practice by dev...

Jared Reynolds is a partner at Wilkerson & Reynolds, an advisory firm that oversees nearly $160 million in assets under management. With a heavy focus on working with small business owners and their 401k plans, Jared has grown his business by serving a niche of bass fisherman, for whom he regularly organizes fishing and hunting trip expeditions as prospecting activities. In this episode, Jared sha...

Josh Patrick is the founder of Stage 2 Planning, an independent RIA with a niche focus on working with small business owners. Leveraging his own personal experience as a small business owner—before he transitioned into his second career as a financial planner—Josh has been able to create a deeply specialized advice process for his clients that commands retainer fees in excess of $50,000 per year....

My guest today is one of the pioneers of financial planning under the RIA model. Harold Evensky is the co-founder and chairman of Evensky & Katz / Foldes Financial, an independent RIA in South Florida that oversees nearly $1.5 billion in assets under management. With over thirty years of experience in the field, Harold literally wrote the book on taking a holistic, goals-based wealth management ap...

My guest today has crafted a niche of not just serving, but also trying to empower female clients. Hilary Hendershott is the founder of Hendershott Wealth Management, an independent RIA that oversees nearly $75 million of assets under management, as well as the creator of a coaching program for women trying to accumulate wealth and the host of a very successful podcast focused on helping women tak...

Dennis Moseley-Williams is the founder of DMW Strategic Consulting, a boutique consulting firm that works with financial advisors to help them design and deliver a great client experience. Not simply focused on how to improve client service, Dennis studied under Joseph Pine, co-author of the seminal book The Experience Economy , and is trained in applying the book's concepts specifically to the do...

My guest today has made it her mission to empower women to take control of their finances. Stacy Francis is the president and CEO of Francis Financial, an independent RIA with a unique niche focus on recent widows and women going through the divorce process. She is also the founder of Savvy Ladies, a nonprofit focused on improving the financial wellbeing of all women. In this episode, Stacy opens...

Andrea Schlapia is the founder of Ironstone, a practice management coaching and consulting firm for financial advisors who are struggling with the business execution challenges of transitioning from a practice to a business. Building upon her own experience as a financial advisor and a practice management consultant, Andrea has developed what she calls the "fundamental four" pillars of practice ma...

Today I'm joined by our first international guest, who gives us a look at not only what financial advisor businesses look like in other parts of the world, but also how all advisors should start looking at their value propositions. Jim Stackpool is the founder of Certainty Advice Group, a practice management consulting firm for financial advisors based in Australia. With a unique focus on how to p...

My guest today transitioned from working over 70 hours per week to refining his practice to the point that he's now only in the office for four months out of the year. Micah Shilanski is a partner with Shilanski & Associates, an independent RIA in Anchorage, Alaska that oversees nearly $130 million of assets under management for almost 160 client households. Focused on a niche of helping federal e...