Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with financial planner,

speaker and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading financial advisors

navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight from leading

industry consultants about how to break through to the

next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsas. Welcome, everyone.

Welcome to the 154th episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast. My guest on today's

podcast is Mary Beth Storjahan. Mary Beth is the chief marketing officer for abacus wealth partners, an independent

RIA based in Santa Monica, California, that oversees nearly 2.6 billion of assets on our management

for almost 1,700 clients.

What's unique about Mary Beth, though, is that up until very recently, she was the founder

of her own independent

advisory firm, workable wealth, and despite, and in fact because of the successful growth of her

solo practice, decided the best way to continue advancing her own personal mission of expanding

her financial planning impact was to sell her firm and to take on a marketing leadership

role in an even larger firm instead.

In this episode, we're talking in depth about what it means to be a chief marketing officer of a

large independent advisory firm, how Marybeth allocates a marketing budget of just two and a half

percent of revenue that still adds up to nearly half a million dollars to allocate for marketing

purposes. The relative split of marketing dollars towards staff to help implement marketing strategies

versus direct spending on sponsorships and advertising, and how Abacus's marketing team

funnels all of its activity to a lead intake team, whose job is to screen all the firm's

prospects to determine who is qualified and who should be

...