Ep 305: Accelerating Growth Of (Fee-Only) Clients By Making It Clear You Have Nothing To Sell With Mindy Crary
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 1 November 2022
⏱️ 92 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mindy Crary is the owner of Creative Money, an independent RIA based out of Seattle that offers a unique 12-month financial planning engagement that has allowed her firm to work with almost 400 households this year alone. Using organic marketing and harnessing the power of Google and Yelp, Mindy has been able to attract clients who are interested in a firm that will advise them without trying to sell them on anything else—and made it possible for her to profitably scale to nearly $1 million of revenue.
Listen in as Mindy shares the journey that led her to launching her current firm and offering advice-only services with a limited-time engagement, as well as how this structure has allowed her to serve a large number of clients comfortably while scaling her business and charging lower fees than other advisors. We also discuss how Mindy has been able to attract hundreds of leads without much marketing spend, how she was able to stick to her convictions and offer financial planning in a way that made sense for her (despite the doubts of others), and why she believes that the key to enjoying a career in financial planning has more to do with staying true to your core competencies than it does with building your own practice.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/305
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with financial planner, |
| 0:08.4 | speaker and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading financial advisors |
| 0:13.6 | 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 Kitsas. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:28.5 | Welcome to the 305th episode of the Financial Advisor's Success Podcast. My guest on today's |
| 0:34.1 | podcast is Mindy Crary. Mindy is the owner of Creative Money and Independent RIA based in Seattle, Washington, |
| 0:40.0 | that offers a unique 12-month financial planning engagement, or as Mindy puts it on our |
| 0:44.3 | homepage, financial planning that doesn't suck, that has allowed her firm to work with nearly |
| 0:49.0 | 400 client households just this year. |
| 0:52.0 | What's unique about Mindy, though, is how by only offering financial |
| 0:55.5 | planning advice without any ability to provide investment management, her advice-only business has been |
| 1:00.5 | able to attract hundreds of inbound new clients every year through organic Google Search and |
| 1:05.5 | Yelp, who are just seeking an advisor to advise them without trying to sell them on anything |
| 1:10.1 | else, and made it feasible |
| 1:11.5 | for her to profitably and efficiently scale up to nearly a million dollars of revenue providing |
| 1:16.1 | financial plans that cost just $1,800 to $3,200 per client. |
| 1:20.9 | In this episode, we talk in depth about why Mindy attributes the success of her practice of |
| 1:25.6 | structure to the realization that she doesn't |
| 1:28.1 | enjoy selling products for investment management, or dealing with the compliance that goes with |
| 1:32.0 | them, and could more efficiently scale with an advice-only approach to one-year financial |
| 1:36.1 | planning engagements that don't need ongoing relationship management. How, by implementing her 12-month |
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