Ep 110: Adapting The 4-Hour Work Week Into A Highly Profitable 4-Month Work Year Lifestyle Practice with Micah Shilanski

Financial Advisor Success

Michael Kitces

News, Business, Entrepreneurship, Business News

4.8 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2019

⏱️ 116 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 employees with their retirement benefits, the firm has streamlined its processes and increased efficiency to maintain Micah’s unique schedule while still growing 20% per year.

In this episode, Micah shares how he’s managed to grow such a profitable practice despite his time out of the office, as well as the steps he’s taken to make the most of the time he does spend working at the firm. Listen in to learn how he sets client expectations about his unusual schedule from the very beginning, how he differentiates his practice to justify their above-average fees, and advice for any advisor who wants to improve his or her own efficiency at work.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/110

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with
0:07.2	financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading financial
0:13.1	advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight
0:18.7	from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the
0:22.1	next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone.
0:28.6	Welcome to the 110th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is
0:35.0	Micah Shalansky. Micah is a partner with Shalansky and Associates, an independent RIA in Anchorage, Alaska,
0:41.1	where Mika personally oversees nearly 130 million of assets under management for almost 160 client households.
0:48.2	What's unique about Mika, though, is that over the past eight years,
0:51.2	he's transitioned from working 70-plus-hour work weeks to refining
0:55.5	his practice down the point where he can service all 160 clients while being in the office
1:00.3	for only four months of the year, an endeavor that he first started simply to get more efficient
1:05.5	and better work-life balance, and then had to extend further out of necessity over the past
1:10.4	several years to
1:11.3	unfortunately support a sick child. In this episode, we talk about how Micah manages his client workload
1:17.9	and meeting processes to be able to sustain 160 clients while being in the office only four months
1:23.0	of the year. How he blocks together a whopping six or seven client meetings a day for five weeks surges in the spring and the fall.
1:30.2	The way he handles meeting preparation and client notes in the midst of maintaining such an intensive client meeting schedule.
1:36.2	How he sets a communication policy with clients during the onboarding process to set their expectations around his somewhat unusual schedule.
1:43.9	And the way Micah overcame his
1:45.5	own severe dyslexia to keep rigorous notes in his CRM by using a combination of audio dictation
1:51.6	tools and video emails to clients. We also talk about how Micah has managed to not only maintain
	...

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