Ep 434: Attracting HNW Clients By Focusing Not On Estate But Legacy Planning Instead with Vanessa N. Martinez

Financial Advisor Success

Michael Kitces

News, Business, Entrepreneurship, Business News

4.8 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 22 April 2025

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vanessa N. Martinez is the CEO of Expressive Wealth, an RIA based out of Chicago that oversees $135 million in assets under management for approximately 70 client households, including 10 ‘core’ ultra-high-net-worth families. What’s unique about Vanessa is how her firm goes beyond traditional estate planning to help high-net-worth clients engage in in-depth legacy planning. This approach ensures clients pass down not just their assets, but also the values and principles that helped them build their wealth.

Listen in as Vanessa shares how she guides clients through a multi-meeting discovery process to clarify their estate and legacy plans and articulate the family values they want to pass on, encouraging them to document these legacies to avoid future misunderstandings. She also explains how her deep involvement in clients’ lives, along with neighborhood-based client events, helps foster strong relationships and organic referrals. Vanessa also discusses the unique role of her firm’s Chief Clinical Officer in facilitating family legacy conversations and how legacy planning allows clients to pass down not just wealth, but the emotional and intellectual values that shaped it.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/434

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.
0:29.2	Welcome to the 434th episode of the Financial Advisor's Success Podcast. My guest in today's podcast
0:35.0	is Vanessa N. Martinez is the CEO of Expressive Wealth,
0:39.2	an RAA based in Chicago, Illinois, that oversees $135 million in assets and our management
0:43.8	for approximately 70 client households, including 10 core ultra-high net worth families.
0:49.3	What's unique about Vanessa, though, is how her firm, in addition to ensuring clients
0:52.6	have established a traditional estate
0:54.3	plan focusing on efficient transfer of assets, works with its high net worth clients on what
0:59.6	Vanessa calls legacy planning in order to not only pass down their assets to the next generation,
1:04.6	but also the parents' family values that generated the wealth as well. In this episode, we talk in
1:10.2	depth about how Vanessa engages in a multi-meeting discovery
1:13.3	process with clients to first understand where they stand today with regard to estate
1:17.1	planning and intra-family communication and then dig deeper into what the client wants to achieve
1:21.9	through their legacy.
1:23.5	How Vanessa has clients consider their family values for each of the accumulation,
1:27.5	preservation, and distribution phases of their lifetimes, leaving room open to amend these
1:31.8	values as life and financial circumstances change over time.
1:35.3	And why Vanessa has clients write down their values and legacy goals, both to ensure
	...

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