Shane Mason is the co-founder of Brooklyn FI, a fee-only RIA that was founded in 2018 in Brooklyn but that has since shifted to being fully virtual. Brooklyn FI was built in the style of a tech startup where their financial advice service offering is a product unto itself, and they currently serve 159 next-generation clients charging a fee of around $500 per month. Listen in as Shane explains why Brooklyn FI decided to launch into a niche of high-income sole proprietors before deciding to pivot to working with people who work in the tech industry, and how their new niche has resulted in nearly all of the firm’s new clients coming from referrals. Shane also shares how the pandemic pushed Brooklyn FI to be virtual, why they post their fees directly on their website, and how Shane’s 50/50 partnership with his co-founder has been the secret sauce to their rapid growth. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/220

Coventry Edwards-Pitt is the Chief Wealth Advisory Officer at Ballentine Partners, a wealth management firm that oversees nearly $8 billion in AUM for 230 ultra-wealthy families. Breaking down the math, that means each family that Ballentine serves has an average of $35 million of investable assets, making their wealth management practice highly unique—with a focus on the issues that reach far beyond this generation and the next. In this episode, Coventry shares how serving ultra-rich clients comes with challenges that many advisors will never manage, as well as what it really means to provide wealth management services to clients with millions in net worth. She also dives into parenting children in ultra-high net worth families and shares the common factors of well-grounded and well-rounded wealthy children. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/219

Maura Griffin is the founder of Blue Spark Financial, an independent RIA that oversees more than $150 million of assets for nearly 90 clients who are primarily single women making financial decisions on their own for the first time. Maura built her practice from scratch by charging high school parents a flat fee to help them with financial aid planning for their children, which she was then able to turn into established relationships that led to more comprehensive planning relationships. In this episode, Maura shares how having a financial reserve when she launched her firm was so crucial to give her not only peace of mind and confidence, but also the flexibility to build her business with intention—and without feeling pressured to take on work that she didn’t want. She will also dive into how she used a specific niche to help grow her firm, why she decided to pivot to focus on working with her current base of clients, and why she has made the intentional decision to structure her business as a lifestyle practice despite the naysayers. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/218

Sophia Bera is a past guest of the podcast, and originally wrote a guest post for Nerd’s Eye View as far back as 2013. If you missed her before, she is the founder of Gen Y Planning, an independent RIA that serves just under 100 young professionals—and that was also one of the first location-independent firms in the financial planning industry. Listen in as we catch up on how Gen Y Planning has shifted over the years, why net worth reporting is not at the heart of Gen Y’s planning process, and why their focus with clients is more on short-term goals versus long-term metrics. Sophia will also share how she created a work-life balance that allows her to spend more time doing what she loves, and how she was able to take four months away from the business on maternity leave without the business skipping a beat. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/217

Jason Zweig is a financial journalist who not only wrote one of the first books on behavioral finance neuroeconomics, but also writes “The Intelligent Investor” column for the Wall Street Journal. A senior writer for Money magazine and a guest columnist for Time magazine and CNN.com, Jason has a truly unique perspective on the financial services industry, having covered it for nearly 25 years. Listen in as he shares his perspective on the financial services industry, including why the AUM model is outdated, how he views the evolution of the financial advice business, and why he sees the future of the industry as more curatorial. You’ll learn his take on where he believes new advisors should be focusing their energy for success and why it’s actually a good thing to admit when you don’t know the answer to a question. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/216

Shawn Tydlaska is the founder of Ballast Point Financial Planning, an independent RIA based in the San Francisco Bay Area that serves 117 high-income young professionals across the country, helping them turn income into wealth. Ballast Point is unique in that it uses a blended model of a minimum $5,000 retainer paid monthly, plus an additional fee of ten basis points above $2 million to adjust pricing upward for the most complex clients. In this episode, we talk about how Shawn structures his services and the foundation that forms the basis of his planning process with clients. Listen in to hear about the tracking system he put in place to not only show his worth to clients, but also to increase his own confidence in what he offers. You'll learn how he was able to build his firm so quickly in the five years since he started, what he says was key to his firm’s growth in the early days, and more. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/215

Olivia Summerhill is the founder of Summerhill Wealth, an independent RIA based near Seattle that exclusively works with ultra-high net worth women who are adjusting to life during—and after—divorce. Olivia is a great example of how many of us navigate through the industry, having gone from a large national firm to launching her own firm focusing on this very specialized niche. Not only does Olivia’s niche make her unique, but her fees and client base are also specialized: she charges $20,000 for an engagement and commits to working with no more than five active clients at a time. As a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, she provides financial advice and planning, and she holds the hands of clients as they navigate through many “firsts” after divorce, including buying a house and managing a budget. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/214

Dave Yeske is the co-founder of Yeske Buie, an independent RIA based out of San Francisco that oversees $740 million of assets under management for more than 300 affluent clients. Dave has successfully blended together academic financial planning research with the practice of financial planning to culminate in an evidence- and policy-based financial planning approach that sets clients up with the confidence to handle any number of future scenarios with ease. Listen in as Dave shares in detail how his firm applies evidence-based planning and how this approach helps to reduce client stress during market volatility. He will also discuss why it’s important to be ready to adapt to change instead of trying to predict the future, where his passion for academic research came from (and how he applies it to financial planning), and why he was motivated to create what may have been the very first financial planning client portal ever. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/213

Alex Hopkin is the founder of Simply Paraplanner, a job board and training portal for U.S.-based virtual paraplanners. Simply Paraplanner is not just a way for paraplanners and firms to connect, but the platform also supports the ongoing evolution of paraplanning from an entry-level support role into a dedicated career path. In this episode, Alex shares why she created Simply Paraplanner, what paraplanners really do in an advisory firm to make it more efficient, and the best way to divvy up tasks between a paraplanner and an advisor. She’ll also discuss how the internal process of creating a financial plan needs to change when a paraplanner is crafting the plan but a lead advisor is actually executing it, and how the technical demands of the paraplanner role have changed to the point where traditional certifications are no longer sufficient to be successful as a professional paraplanner. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/212

Kristin Harad is the founder of a marketing consulting firm that focuses on coaching solo advisors to reach the next level and outsource CMO services for RIAs and mid-size firms. In addition to working as a marketing consultant, Kristin also has her own advisory firm that she launched from scratch and grew to six figures in fee-only revenue in just three years. She now uses her experience and expertise to coach other advisors to scale in the same way. Listen in as Kristin shares how her journey through the consumer goods and financial industries set the stage for her advisory and consulting passions, how her interest in life coaching played a role in the launch of her own advisory, and how she was able to market in an extremely cost-efficient but effective way to her niche client. You’ll learn how she has been able to have one of her best years in business despite the global circumstances, what challenges she faced when uprooting her family and moving to Australia, and more. For show notes and more visit: https://www.kitces.com/211