Ep 402: Accelerating Early Advisor Growth With A (Federal Employee) Specialization That Evolves Over Time with John Mason
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 10 September 2024
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John Mason is the President of Mason & Associates, an RIA based out of Virginia that oversees $370 million in assets under management for approximately 390 client households. What's unique about John, though, is how joining a firm that served the niche of Federal government employees allowed him to quickly accelerate his own learning curve and demonstrate his expertise early in his career as a 20-something—ultimately enabling him to more quickly begin bringing in his own clients.
Listen in as John shares how his firm’s specialization in serving Federal employees allows it to operate efficiently and develop deep relationships with clients, and how his firm generates client leads through a podcast focusing on the issues facing its ideal target client. He also discusses his firm's transition from a broker-dealer to the RIA model, which boosted its per-client revenue while bringing down all-in costs for clients, how he managed the delicate process of transitioning unprofitable clients to more suitable advisors, why he thinks fee-only advisors sometimes underrate the importance of insurance planning, and more.
For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/402
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with |
| 0:07.1 | financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading |
| 0:12.4 | financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success |
| 0:17.4 | and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next |
| 0:22.2 | level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:28.8 | Welcome to the 4002nd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's |
| 0:34.3 | podcast is John Mason. John is the president of Mason and Associates, |
| 0:38.1 | an R.A based in Newport News, Virginia, that oversees 370 million in assets under management |
| 0:42.9 | for approximately 390 households. What's unique about John, though, is how joining a firm that |
| 0:48.8 | served the niche of federal government employees allowed him to quickly accelerate his own learning |
| 0:53.1 | curve and demonstrate his |
| 0:54.1 | expertise early in his career as a 20-something, ultimately enabling Johnness more quickly |
| 0:59.3 | begin bringing in his own new clients, which also came about faster because he was able to |
| 1:04.4 | plug into his newfound expertise into the firm's existing marketing strategies. |
| 1:09.4 | In this episode, we talk in depth about how John |
| 1:12.0 | and his entire firm serves the federal employee niche, with a particular focus on the areas |
| 1:16.6 | that make their client situations different from others, such as the federal government's |
| 1:20.8 | unique retirement system. How John finds that specializing has allowed him to serve them |
| 1:26.3 | with greater efficiency because he |
| 1:27.7 | doesn't have to relearn the ins and outs of each client's unique employment and retirement benefits, |
| 1:32.2 | which in turn provides more time in meetings and to forge deeper relationships with clients as well. |
| 1:38.4 | And how John was able to build credibility with clients as a very young advisor early in his |
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