Ep 327: Growing To $1B By Standing Out With Marketing The Competition Can't Mimic With Marc Horner

Financial Advisor Success

Michael Kitces

News, Business, Entrepreneurship, Business News

4.8 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2023

⏱️ 94 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Marc Horner is the Founder of Fairhaven Wealth Management, an independent RIA based out of Illinois that oversees more than $1 billion in assets under management for 450 client households. Marc has been able to differentiate his firm by drawing upon his years of wirehouse experience to create a distinctly un-wirehouse brand that leverages parody commercials as a way to distinguish his firm's culture from prospective clients.

Listen in as we discuss how Marc developed his unique marketing strategy of writing parody commercials, how he balances the serious nature of financial advising with the not-so-serious way he markets his firm, and how he became comfortable taking such a non-traditional approach to marketing. We also talk about why he decided to go independent after 14 years in the wirehouse world, how he grew his firm from $80 million in AUM to over $1 billion in under 8 years, and how he splits the growth of his team into one-third through organic hiring, one-third through recruiting, and one-third through acquisitions.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/327

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with
0:06.8	financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading
0:12.1	financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success,
0:17.2	and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next
0:21.9	level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone.
0:28.7	Welcome to the 327th episode, The Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is
0:35.0	Mark Horner. Mark is the founder of Fairhaven Wealth Management,
0:38.4	an independent R-A based in Wheaton, Illinois, that oversees more than $1 billion in
0:42.2	assets in our management for about 450 client households. What's unique about Mark, though,
0:47.0	is the way he's been able to market and differentiate his firm by drawing upon his years of
0:51.0	wirehouse experience to create a distinctly unwirehouse brand, going so far as
0:55.9	to create a series of parody commercials that portray stereotypical big firm sales-oriented advisors
1:01.3	who may not have their client's best interests at heart as a way to distinguish in contrast
1:05.7	not only his firm's fiduciary approach, but they're willing to be different culture to prospective clients.
1:12.3	In this episode, we talk in depth about how Mark developed and implemented his unique marketing
1:16.7	strategy of writing parody commercials that feature a satirical sales-centric advisory firm,
1:21.8	Bear Brothers Financial, and how he got mentally comfortable taking such a non-traditional
1:26.7	approach to trying to stand out in his marketing.
1:29.8	How Mark sought to grow his team through a split of one-third organic hiring, one-third recruiting existing advisors with clients,
1:36.5	and one-third hires that are made through acquisitions.
1:40.0	And how, while Mark was in the early stages applying to leave the wirehouse world and go independent,
1:44.2	he made cold calls to other advisory firm owners asking for advice on making the transition,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Michael Kitces, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Michael Kitces and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.