Ep 089: The Truth About Advisor Marketing And The Scalable Delivery Of Financial Advice with Ric Edelman

Financial Advisor Success

Michael Kitces

News, Business, Entrepreneurship, Business News

4.8 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2018

⏱️ 102 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

My guest today has built one of the largest successful advisory businesses in the country. Ric Edelman is the founder and executive chairman of Edelman Financial Services, a mega-independent RIA with more than $22 billion in AUM, with 165 advisors serving 36,000 clients across 43 office locations from coast to coast. After starting out like any other financial advisor—selling mutual funds in the 1980s as an individual advisor—Ric has spent the last thirty years ultimately building a marketing machine that brought in a whopping 45,000 prospects to his firm last year alone.

In this episode, Ric shares how he grew and scaled Edelman Financial over time, as well as how his marketing of the firm has evolved over the years. Listen in to hear why he considers it the firm’s job to bring in new clients (and the role of advisors to simply service those clients), how he would do things differently if he were starting fresh today, and advice for advisors who are thinking about or actively building a practice from scratch.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/89

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.
0:28.3	Welcome to the 89th episode of the Financial Advisor's Success podcast. My guest on today's podcast is
0:33.8	Rick Edelman. Rick is the founder and executive chairman of Edelman Financial Services,
0:38.3	a mega independent R.A with more than $22 billion of assets under management with 165 advisors
0:44.4	serving 36,000 clients across 43 office locations from coast to coast. What's unique about Rick,
0:50.9	though, is that he started out like any other financial advisor,
0:59.2	selling mutual funds in the 1980s as an individual advisor, doing financial education seminars to local elementary school PTA groups to meet prospective clients and just trying to survive.
1:04.6	But in the 30 years since, Rick grew an advisory firm that far out grew his own capacity to serve clients,
1:11.7	ultimately building a marketing machine that brought in a whopping 45,000 prospects of the firm last year alone.
1:17.2	In this episode, we talk in depth about how Rick grew and scaled Edelman Financial over time,
1:22.9	how they've been able to build a $22 billion firm while staying focused squarely on the mass
1:27.2	affluent and not increasing
1:28.7	their asset minimums, why Rick is adamant about keeping the firm's minimums as low as $5,000 for a new
1:34.3	client, how the firm successfully justifies a fee schedule that still starts a 2% AUM fee,
1:40.0	and why he considers it the firm's job to bring in new clients and the role of advisors to
1:44.9	simply service those clients rather than being burdened with the time and effort of getting
1:49.0	their own. We also talk about how Rick scaled and involved the marketing of the firm over the
1:53.5	years, from starting out conducting seminars to local PTA groups, then getting a guest spot on a
	...

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