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Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 410th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Emily Biehler. Emily is the co-founder of TrailWise Financial Partners, an RIA based in Golden, Colorado, that oversees approximately $80 million in assets under management for 200 client households.
What’s unique about Emily, though, is how her firm ensures every client can be served profitably through a combination of a complexity-based minimum fee arrangement, coupled with a structured data gathering, plan delivery, and client communication processes that encourage client accountability and follow-through on action items recommended by their advisor so every client really sees the value they receive for the fees they’re paying.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Emily’s firm created a custom workbook that asks clients to explore their goals and values, on topics ranging from education and travel, to whether they expect to need follow-up from their advisor regarding their follow-through on action items, allowing their advisor to get permission to give nudges to actually implement their recommendations, why Emily’s firm chose to build a custom software program to present her planning analysis, findings, and action items in a more digestible way for clients than just the output of off-the-shelf financial planning software alone, and how Emily’s firm evolved from focusing on full-length financial plans that could reach more than 100 pages to providing clients with a one-page document that clearly explains their advisor’s planning findings and more importantly the action items for them to take during the next year.
We also talk about the meeting and communication cadence Emily designed to further boost client accountability to follow through on their planning recommendations, why Emily’s plan delivery meetings are often split into 2 meetings in order to keep clients focused and engaged (with the first covering overall plan health and cash flow and the second focusing on more specific planning areas such as tax and insurance planning), and how Emily uses what she calls “Accountability Personal Podcasts”, 3- to 5-minute videos sent to each client every 90 days during their first year with the firm, to keep them on track with required action items and to remind them that their advisor is there to hold them accountable to getting it all done.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Emily shares how her firm developed a complexity-based fee model that combines both the number and types of planning services they require and the level of complexity in their overall financial situation, to ensure that each client can be served in a profitable manner, how Emily uses a fee calculator not only to clearly demonstrate to clients how their fee is based on their unique planning needs, but also to explain why some clients really might price significantly higher than others (and remove the temptation for her to offer fee discounts to big clients), and how Emily and her business partner faced a failed succession at their previous firm based on their inability to steer the larger firm in the planning-centric direction they desired and decided to start their own firm to give them the freedom to create the accountability-based client service model that they thought was best for their clients.
So, whether you’re interested in learning about creating structured data gathering and plan delivery processes that encourage client accountability, using asynchronous videos to efficiently communicate with clients between meetings, or implementing a complexity-based fee model to ensure each client can be served in a profitable manner, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Emily Biehler.