Ep 360: Growing To 100+ Clients With $100M+ AUM With Intentionality To Leave Time For Family With Suzanne Powell
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.7 • 719 Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2023
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Suzanne Powell is a Senior Financial Advisor that oversees approximately $110 million in assets under management for nearly 150 households at Meridian Wealth Management, an RIA based out of Kentucky. Suzanne stands out for her strategic scheduling, amassing over $100M in AUM by concentrating client and prospect meetings into two 3-month periods each year, enabling her to dedicate the rest of the year to family. She minimizes time on prospecting by efficiently managing a continuous stream of SmartAsset leads with a highly automated response system.
Listen in as Suzanne shares her expertise on driving client growth by managing SmartAsset's lead-generation service, setting up effective communication automations, and strategically targeting leads to amass nearly $70M in new assets. We also discuss how she balances a packed schedule of client meetings with preparation and follow-up tasks, using technology to efficiently present financial plans to save time, her method for nurturing long-term client relationships, and her philosophy on integrating work with quality family life now, rather than waiting for retirement.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/360
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 from leading |
| 0:19.2 | industry consultants about how to break through to the |
| 0:22.0 | next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:28.9 | Welcome to the 360th episode of the Financial Advisor's Success podcast. My guest on today's podcast is |
| 0:34.6 | Suzanne Powell. Suzanne is a senior financial advisor at Meridian Wealth Management, an RAA based in Lexington, |
| 0:40.0 | Kentucky, where she oversees approximately $110 million in asset center management for nearly |
| 0:44.3 | 150 client households. |
| 0:46.6 | What's unique about Suzanne, though, is how she grew to more than $100 million of AUM by |
| 0:50.6 | intentionally organizing her schedule from month to month throughout the year, |
| 0:57.4 | clustering client and nearly all of her prospect meetings in the fall and the spring, |
| 1:00.9 | and allowing her to spend the remaining six months away from the office and with her family, |
| 1:06.3 | while still not needing to spend much time on prospecting by leveraging and then almost fully automating her responses to a steady flow of smart asset leads. |
| 1:10.5 | In this episode, we talk in depth about how Suzanne has been able to drive client growth through |
| 1:14.4 | her lead generation service as smart asset and dials the lead flow up and down depending |
| 1:18.9 | on how busy her month is. |
| 1:20.7 | The way Suzanne has set up a series of email and especially text message automations that allow |
| 1:24.5 | her to convert a very high percentage of smart asset leads into clients without needing to be available to immediately reply to inquiries herself. |
| 1:31.7 | And how Suzanne has customized the targeting of which lead she buys from smart asset to |
| 1:35.7 | ultimately generate nearly 70 million of new assets over the past five years for less than |
| 1:40.5 | $100,000 of cumulative marking spent. We also talk about how Suzanne structures her |
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