Ep 021: Pivoting An Existing Advisory Firm To A Niche Serving Women In Transition with Evelyn Zohlen
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2017
⏱️ 85 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today’s episode, I speak with Inspired Financial founder, Evelyn Zohlen, an independent RIA in southern California. Her business is focused on working with women in transition, namely divorcees and widows. Her small, cohesive team dominates the niche and innovates constantly.
Evelyn shares the details of how she selected this niche and built her team. They have set up their fees and team to deliver over-the-top coverage to select clients and share responsibilities fairly. Some clients pay for AUM, while others pay her a retainer, which is a growing trend within the industry.
For Evelyn, driving referrals from centers of influence has been the foundation of how she has built her business. This has led her to bring $140M in assets under management in 15 years.
Get the full show notes and transcript for this episode at: www.kitces.com/21
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with financial planner, |
| 0:08.4 | speaker and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading financial advisors |
| 0:13.6 | navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight from leading |
| 0:19.2 | industry consultants about how to break through to the |
| 0:22.0 | next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsas. Welcome, everyone. |
| 0:29.4 | Welcome to the 21st episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast. My guest on today's podcast is |
| 0:36.1 | Evelyn Zolan. |
| 0:42.4 | Evelyn is a financial advisor and founder of Inspired Financial, an independent RIA in Southern California that provides financial planning and wealth management services for about 110 |
| 0:47.2 | families and manages nearly $140 million in assets under management. |
| 0:51.4 | What's fascinating about Evelyn's firm is that her business has focused |
| 0:55.3 | entirely on a niche, working with women in transition, most commonly recent divorcees and widows. |
| 1:01.4 | And by focusing it on a niche, she's been successful in working with affluent women, charging an |
| 1:06.8 | asset center management fee with a minimum retainer of at least $10,000 a year and driving |
| 1:11.8 | almost $1.2 million of gross revenue with a team of just four advisors, including herself |
| 1:17.1 | and two support staff. In this episode, Evelyn shares not only the details of her niche advisory |
| 1:23.0 | practice itself, but how she selected the niche, the way she communicated the transition to her niche |
| 1:29.2 | to her existing clientele is she didn't actually pivot to this niche until after she had run |
| 1:33.8 | her advisory firm for about five years and had already acquired another practice in the process. |
| 1:39.0 | She also talks about the training she sought out to improve both her technical and relational |
| 1:43.4 | capabilities in her niche |
| 1:44.6 | and how she leverages her niche to drive referrals from centers of influence. And be certain to listen to |
| 1:50.6 | the end where Evelyn shares the staff structure of her firm, how she allocates clients amongst |
... |
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