Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 432nd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Seth Scott. Seth is the founder of Heartwood Financial Planning, an advisory firm affiliated with PlanMember Securities Corporation that is based in Fresno, California, and oversees approximately $100 million in assets under management for 850 client households.
What’s unique about Seth, though, is how he has created what he calls an “input deliverable” that allows him to demonstrate value more tangibly to his ideal prospects by helping them solve a key tax planning pain point… but without the time-consuming busywork of having to create a separate output for each individual client household.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Seth built and provides his input deliverable (which calculates the appropriate amount of tax-exempt housing allowance pastors can take based on their individual circumstances, and even prepares a request and subsequent resolution that the Church’s Board can then use) to demonstrate his expertise to prospective clients in the ministry, how Seth saves time by using this “input deliverable” (which he only has to create once, with prospects filling out their information in it themselves to get the output they can use) compared to creating an “output deliverable” (where an advisor has to collect and organize data and produce the deliverable document separately for each prospect), and how Seth’s willingness to give this deliverable away to prospects allows him to get his foot in the door with his target clients for when they’re (eventually) ready for a more holistic planning relationship.
We also talk about Seth’s journey to financial planning as a career changer (after finding that previous jobs in urban planning and real estate either took too much time away from his family or weren’t compatible with his values), how Seth’s connection with a family friend eventually led him to assume the books of business of three retiring advisors under a vesting earn-out agreement that didn’t require him to commit capital upfront, and how Seth uses the revenue generated from serving a broad base of clients through the vesting agreement as the business-building runway to “keep the lights on” as he grows his long-term ideal client base of working with pastors and their churches.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Seth shares how he decided to become a Certified Tax Preparer after buying a retiring advisor’s tax practice (and why he is planning to earn the Enrolled Agent license to gain more specialized training to better serve his clients’ tax preparation needs), how Seth is gaining inroads with churches (and their pastors) by helping them set up 403(b)(9) retirement plans that require little upfront cost on the church’s part and offer their pastors unique tax benefits, and how Seth’s faith has helped him weather the ups and downs of the major life transitions that come with a career change, taking over more than 800 clients to serve, and looking to what he wants his long-term ideal practice to be.
So, whether you’re interested in learning about creating “input deliverables” that can demonstrate an advisor’s value to clients and prospects alike, a path to serving a large client base soon after career changing into the financial advice profession, or how to gain inroads with clients in a specific profession, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Seth Scott.
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