Ep 437: Becoming An IRA Expert To Differentiate By Charging The Highest Fee Instead Of The Lowest with Ed Slott

Financial Advisor Success

Michael Kitces

News, Business, Entrepreneurship, Business News

4.8 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2025

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After the 1986 Tax Reform Act, Ed Slott made a strategic decision to specialize in IRAs—a move that not only set him apart in a niche field, but also helped him build a nationally recognized reputation as a leading expert. By leaning into his niche, he intentionally set himself apart from generalists by charging more to reflect the unique value he delivers.

Today, Ed is the President of Ed Slott and Company, a financial education firm based in Rockville Centre, New York, offering seminars and newsletters for both financial advisors and consumers, with a particular focus on IRAs. In this episode, he shares how having specialized knowledge of the ins and outs of IRAs helped him stand out among other tax experts, the marketing strategies that grew his visibility (leading to a nationwide speaking business and the launch of his Elite IRA Advisor Group), and much more.

For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/437

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.
0:29.0	Welcome to the 437th episode of the Financial Advisor's Success podcast. My guest on today's
0:34.9	podcast is Ed Slot. Ed is the president of Ed Slot and company, a financial
0:39.2	education company based in Rockville Center, New York that offers seminars and newsletters for
0:43.8	financial advisors and consumers focused primarily on IRAs. What's unique about Ed, though,
0:49.3	is how he has been able to charge premium fees for his accounting and education services
0:53.7	over time by becoming
0:55.0	a nationally recognized expert on IRA planning, with an intentional strategy to differentiate
1:00.0	from generalists not by charging less than the competition, but instead charging a premium fee
1:05.2	to help express his unique value. In this episode, we talk in depth about how Ed identified
1:10.3	the 1986 tax reform act as an opportunity for him as young accountant to dig into the new rules regarding IRAs that older accountants weren't interested in touching, how Ed was able to significantly raise his fees in his accounting practice with little pushback from clients by focusing on big-ticket tax savings opportunities that emerged from his expertise in IRAs
1:28.5	and how Ed found that charging premium prices ultimately led him to attract even more clients as they
1:33.6	knew they were dealing with a specialist rather than an accounting generalist.
1:37.3	We also talk about how Ed got his start presenting tax seminars to attract high dollar clients
1:41.9	for his accounting and estate planning business.
1:44.0	At one point, withdrawing almost all of his available cash to pay for a newspaper ad to promote
1:48.0	his seminar. How Ed's growing notoriety as an IRA expert eventually allowed him to transition
1:53.3	to conducting paid seminars, charging a premium price around the country, and how Ed leveraged
	...

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