Ep 356: Scaling To (Nearly) $2M Of Revenue As A Flat-Fee, Advice-Only Firm, With Sarah-Catherine Gutierrez
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.7 • 719 Ratings
🗓️ 24 October 2023
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sarah-Catherine Gutierrez is the founder of Aptus Financial, a fee-only financial planning firm based out of Arkansas that is nearing $2 million in revenue for 480 client households. What stands out about Sarah Catherine is how she has built a multi-advisor, flat-fee, advice-only firm, challenging the industry's common reliance on AUM. Her success is attributed to sustainable marketing systems that allow advisors to concentrate solely on efficient financial planning, free from the distractions of client prospecting.
Listen in as Sarah-Catherine shares her strategic approach to transparently communicate her value through her financial planning fee structure and the creation of a trust-based Center of Influence, which eliminates the stress of prospect acquisition. We also discuss her efficient onboarding process that transforms prospects into clients within just two calls, her decision to segment planning fees, and the inspiration behind her custom financial planning spreadsheet. You'll hear about her tailored cashflow strategies for new physicians, her journey in trusting her instincts as a founder, and the ways her unique marketing approach has opened doors to speaking engagements and fresh prospect avenues.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/356
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 financial planner, |
| 0:08.5 | 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 Kitsis. |
| 0:27.9 | Welcome, everyone. Welcome to the 356th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. |
| 0:33.8 | My guest on today's podcast is Sarah Catherine Gutierrez. Sarah Catherine is the founder of Aptus Financial, a fee-only financial planning firm based |
| 0:40.8 | in Little Rock, Arkansas. |
| 0:41.8 | That's approaching $2 million in revenue and works with over 480 client households. |
| 0:47.0 | What unique about Sarah Catherine, though, is that despite the common industry belief that |
| 0:50.7 | the only way to build and scale a firm is through AUM, she has built a multi-advisor |
| 0:55.1 | firm serving hundreds of clients while operating as a flat fee advice-only firm, which is expedited |
| 1:00.8 | by Sarah Catherine's focus on building sustainable marketing systems so that her advisors aren't |
| 1:06.1 | distracted by the time-consuming task of prospecting for clients and solely focus on the efficiency |
| 1:11.1 | of delivering financial planning to existing clients instead. |
| 1:14.8 | In this episode, we talk in depth about how, despite some of the false starts and initially |
| 1:18.5 | problematic underpricing, Sarah Catherine intentionally built her financial planning fee to |
| 1:23.0 | transparently communicate her value in the work that she does as an advisor while also pricing |
| 1:27.5 | within a range for her originally accidental but now fully embraced niche of recently graduated |
| 1:32.3 | physicians. How Sarah Catherine build a trust-based center of influence and referral system that's so |
| 1:37.7 | strong that she no longer has to worry about where the next prospect will come from. And how Sarah |
| 1:41.9 | Catherine uses her onboarding process to convert ready-to-act |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
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.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.