Ep 334: Finding Clarity On Fees And Clients By Allowing The Business To Evolve Over Time With Meg Bartelt

Financial Advisor Success

Michael Kitces

News, Business, Entrepreneurship, Business News

4.8 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2023

⏱️ 101 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Meg Bartelt is the Founder and Lead Financial Planner for Flow Financial Planning, a virtual RIA serving mid-career women in tech that oversees almost $60 million in assets under management for 60 client households. Meg has transformed her business over a period of 7 years since its inception by continually adjusting her niche focus, exploring various fee models, testing different meeting schedules with clients, and altering her support team size and structure.

Listen in as she reveals how she raised her minimum fees from $150 per month to $10,000 per year, why she chose to focus on women in tech as her niche market, and why she eventually evolved her niche focus from working mothers to early-to-mid-career women with a specialization in pre-IPO and IPO planning. We also discuss how she realized that she could create better efficiencies in her practice by simplifying her client offerings, how she became okay with having to let go of a team member due to financial constraints, and how she is transitioning into a new stage of life that prioritizes relationships and creating more space and freedom.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/334

Transcript

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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.
0:28.8	Welcome to the 334th episode of the Financial Advisor's Success Podcast. My guest on today's
0:34.4	podcast is Meg Bartelt. Meg is the founder and lead financial planner
0:38.0	for Flow Financial Planning, a virtual RIA serving mid-career women in tech that oversees
0:42.8	almost 60 million in assets and our management for 60 client households. What's unique about
0:47.6	Meg, though, is how over the span of seven years since launching her firm, she's evolved the business
0:51.6	by repeatedly adapting her niche focus, iterating on different
0:54.9	fee models, experimenting with various client meeting cadences, and both increasing and decreasing
0:59.5	her staff headcount with various support team structures on the journey of honing in on the right
1:04.8	type of practice that Meg will enjoy running and serving clients with on an ongoing basis.
1:10.4	In this episode, we talked in depth about
1:12.1	how when Meg launched her firm, she began with $150 per month minimum fee, but quickly realized
1:17.3	it wasn't enough to sustain the business that she wanted to build and began raising her fee
1:21.5	minimums to what ultimately became $10,000 per year after her business coach helped her realize
1:27.0	what her financial planning
1:28.0	is really worth to her clients. Why Meg evolved her niche focus from working mothers in tech to
1:33.6	early to mid-career women in tech with a specialization in pre-IPO planning as she realized being
1:38.5	more specific, she could create better efficiencies in her own practice by simplifying what she did
	...

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