Ep 064: Scaling Up To $1.4M Of Revenue With (Only) Hourly Financial Planning Fees with Mark Berg
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2018
⏱️ 92 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s guest has completely destroyed the myth that hourly financial planning can’t be scaled effectively. Mark Berg is the founder of Timothy Financial Counsel, an advisory firm that does purely hourly financial planning and made $1.4 million in fees last year. Perhaps even more impressively, 75% of the firm’s clients are recurring hourly clients.
In this episode, Mark shares how he was able to successfully scale the reach of Timothy Financial, as well as why his clients are willing to pay between $280 and $400 an hour for financial planning services. Listen in to hear what led to the firm’s whopping 83% close rate on qualified prospects last year, why most advisors fail at hourly financial planning despite the tremendous opportunity in using this model, and so much more.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/64
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with |
| 0:07.1 | financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading |
| 0:12.4 | financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success |
| 0:17.4 | and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next |
| 0:22.2 | level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:28.4 | Welcome to the 64th episode of the Financial Advisor's Success podcast. My guest on today's podcast is |
| 0:34.1 | Mark Burke. Mark is the founder of Timothy Financial Counsel, an advisory firm that |
| 0:38.4 | does purely hourly financial planning for hundreds of clients in the Chicago area. |
| 0:43.1 | What's unique about Mark's practice, though, is that while hourly financial planning is usually |
| 0:47.2 | characterized as purely transactional business for less affluent middle market clients that can't be |
| 0:52.2 | scaled effectively, Mark's firm actually did a whopping $1.4 million of hourly financial planning fees last year |
| 0:59.0 | across a team of five advisors and two support staff with 75% of the firm's clients as |
| 1:03.8 | recurring hourly clients. |
| 1:06.4 | In this episode, we talk in depth about how Mark structures the hourly fee model at Timothy Financial |
| 1:11.3 | with a series of five levels of service based on complexity and hourly rates that vary from |
| 1:16.6 | 280 to $400 an hour, depending on which advisor is serving the client, why he publishes all of the |
| 1:22.6 | details about his fees and service tiers on his website for clients to see before ever talking |
| 1:26.9 | to him, and how doing so has led to a whopping 83% service tiers on his website for clients to see before ever talking to him, |
| 1:33.1 | and how doing so has led to a whopping 83% close rate on his qualified prospects last year. |
| 1:38.3 | We also talk about some of the myths of the hourly model, including how market has been able to successfully scale the reach of the firm, why he believes that firms interested in doing hourly |
| 1:43.6 | planning should only do hourly work to focus on efficiencies, how he believes that firms interested in doing hourly planning should only do |
| 1:45.1 | hourly work to focus on efficiencies. How he's been able to drive the growth of the firm because |
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