Ep 217: Creating Value For Next-Generation Clients By Focusing On Actions Over Projections with Sophia Bera
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2021
⏱️ 95 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sophia Bera is a past guest of the podcast, and originally wrote a guest post for Nerd’s Eye View as far back as 2013. If you missed her before, she is the founder of Gen Y Planning, an independent RIA that serves just under 100 young professionals—and that was also one of the first location-independent firms in the financial planning industry.
Listen in as we catch up on how Gen Y Planning has shifted over the years, why net worth reporting is not at the heart of Gen Y’s planning process, and why their focus with clients is more on short-term goals versus long-term metrics. Sophia will also share how she created a work-life balance that allows her to spend more time doing what she loves, and how she was able to take four months away from the business on maternity leave without the business skipping a beat.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/217
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 217th episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast. My guest on today's |
| 0:34.2 | podcast is Sophia Barra. Sophia is the founder of Gen Y Planning, |
| 0:38.2 | an RAA based in Austin, Texas that serves just under 100 young professionals in their 20s, 30s and 40s. |
| 0:44.5 | What's unique about Sophia, though, is that she was one of the first financial planners to launch a |
| 0:48.7 | location independent firm, specifically to serve millennial clients and using an upfront plus monthly retainer model |
| 0:55.2 | that now averages $4 to $500 per month for each of her new clients. |
| 0:59.4 | Yet uses a one-page financial plan in an action checklist, not comprehensive financial |
| 1:03.9 | planning software to deliver ongoing financial planning value to her next generation clientele. |
| 1:09.7 | In this episode, we talk in depth about how Sophia |
| 1:12.7 | and her fully virtual team help millennial clients navigate the plethora of changes and decisions they face as they |
| 1:18.2 | establish their careers in the families. How Sophia structures her initial client meetings around |
| 1:22.9 | goal and value discovery and then putting together her one-page action checklist before establishing |
| 1:27.8 | an ongoing meeting schedule, why net worth reporting and not portfolio reporting is at the |
| 1:32.8 | heart of her planning process, and why Sophia eschews more mainstream financial planning software |
| 1:37.8 | with its long-term retirement projections in favor of solutions that focus on shorter-term |
| 1:42.6 | goals instead. |
| 1:50.4 | We also talk about how working with Next Generation clients can entail a higher turnover rate than managing portfolios for retirees. |
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