Financial Advisor Success

Mary Beth Storjohann, CMO at Abacus Wealth Partners and former founder of Workable Wealth, explains how she defines client avatars and reshaped marketing for a $2.6B RIA. She covers where marketing dollars go, event and advertising strategies, and practical steps to remove friction like scheduling and opt‑ins. Short, actionable ideas for consistent branding, content, and low‑cost tactics for solo advisors.

Dan Allison, founder of Feedback Marketing Group who uses behavioral psychology to help advisors get more referrals, talks about why common referral scripts fail. He outlines five practical areas to close the gap between willing clients and productive introductions. Short, actionable ideas include cross-educating clients, coaching introductions, measuring perceived value, and spotting your best referral sources.

Beverly Flaxington is the founder of The Collaborative, which provides sales training and organizational development support for financial service firms. A firm believer that it's not just about knowing what to do, it's about knowing how to change your behavior to actually do it, Beverly joins the show to share the human behavioral coaching approach she takes to teach sales and how to get more comfortable selling your services. In this episode, we discuss how to determine if a prospect is a qualifying client, as well as the right questions to ask a client to get to know them better. Listen in to hear Beverly's advice on how to conduct a meeting with a client, the importance of getting specific about who you serve, and more. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/152

Luna Jaffe, founder of Lunaria Financial and creator of Sacred Money Studios and the Prosperity Pie Shoppe, combines financial planning with accessible community money education. She discusses turning budgeting into a shame-free, values-aligned practice, running a retail classroom-cafe, staffing and operational hurdles, membership vs pay-per-class revenue, and plans to scale affordable financial learning.

Tanya Nichols, founder of Align Financial who helps near-retirement women align money and life, shares her journey from wirehouse advisor to independent practice owner. She discusses reframing planning into a one-page plan, standardizing and raising fees, managing client surges, avoiding burnout, and using community and coaching to find courage and design the firm she wants.

Susan John, Managing Director of Financial Planning at F.L. Putnam and former founder who grew Financial Focus to $350M AUM, explains selling her firm while staying active. She discusses paid upfront planning snapshots, a proactive annual cash-plan and tax-coordination process, team coverage and ownership transition, and how she ensured client continuity and capacity in a rural market.

Laura LaTourette, founder of Family Wealth Management Group and LGBTQ-focused financial planner, built a $45M AUM practice serving primarily LGBTQ clients. She talks about coming out professionally, signaling inclusion through website and certification, hiring a CEO to scale, recruiting younger LGBTQ advisors, and a planning-first, multi-meeting client process.

Jeff Dobyns is the founder of Southwestern Investment Group, a hybrid advisory firm that oversees nearly $3.5 billion of assets under management. Today Jeff joins the show to discuss how he has developed next generation talent in his firm by only hiring new advisors in their 20s and giving them the opportunity to learn alongside experienced advisors. In this episode, you'll hear about the mentoring program Jeff's firm has built, as well as how the firm compensates these new advisors as they are learning. Listen in to discover why Jeff prefers not to hire experienced advisors, what tasks his firm ends up giving to the new advisors, and the marketing technique his team uses to grow their business. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/147

Ross Levin, co-founder and CEO of Accredited Investors Wealth Management, created the Wealth Management Index to systematize planning across an independent RIA. He discusses combining technical checklists with client-focused questions, why he stopped scoring clients, team structures and career tracks, hiring for culture, compensation choices, and succession planning. Practical firm-building lessons and balancing technical skill with relationship work.

Roger Pine, co-founder of Holistiplan and former financial advisor turned fintech entrepreneur, built software to automate tax-return review. He discusses how the tool extracts returns, generates client-friendly observations and projections, the OCR challenges and safeguards, and lessons from turning an in-house advisor tool into a scalable product.