Establishing partnerships to round out your services 

I think our best innovation recently has been related to the planning arc of our business. We found that our desire was to move up the market and serve higher-net-worth clients. Obviously, there is a limited number of hours in the day, and you can only replicate yourself so much. But we are passionate about our business, and we think that everybody needs good financial planning. We hated the idea of turning people away or saying, “Oh gosh, you don’t meet our minimum, so we’re not going to work with you.” Because oftentimes those are the people who most desperately need our help. 

So we have partnered with a financial planner. She works with those clients who need the blocking and the tackling. “Hey, you need to be saving into your qualified retirement plan.” “You need to be saving into a tax-preferred type of account.” “You need an emergency fund, and you to be paying down your mortgage.” Just the basics that don’t really require the highest level of planning. 

We’re able to say, “You’re still a client, and if you need us, we are here, but you’re going to be working with Heather on those types of topics.” And then as clients on the higher end say, “I want to be able to talk to a CFP, and I want to be able to reach them every single week because I’m paying attention to this stock. And I want to be able to pick somebody’s brain.” We’ve partnered with John on that end, who is a retired CFP. He lives in Florida and really just wants to be able to work a few hours a week. So we’ve kind of bookended our abilities to be able to say, “Hey, we can solve most of our clients’ needs and desires for how much interaction they have with the planner.”  

Adam Thomas Rex, CFP, AIF, is a 13-year MDRT member from Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA. Hear more in the MDRT Podcast: