Ep 022: Serving Gen X Professionals With A Net-Worth-Plus-Income Retainer Fee Model with Jude Boudreaux
Financial Advisor Success
Michael Kitces
4.8 • 696 Ratings
🗓️ 30 May 2017
⏱️ 78 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jude’s firm Upperline Financial has a unique fee structure that allows them to help clients and families of varying net worth while providing a holistic, vision-driven financial plan.
In this episode, Jude talks about how he carefully considered the decision to open his own RIA, and how he timed the transition to be able to spend more time with his family and also grow the business at a slower but more sustainable rate.
Be sure to listen to the end, where Jude talks about his upcoming merger with The Planning Center and why he’s excited about the future of the business. By merging with another firm, Jude will maintain ownership of Upperline, yet be able to focus his energy on the parts of the business he loves - working with clients - and delegate those that he isn’t as good at and doesn’t enjoy.
Get the full show notes and transcript for this episode at: www.kitces.com/22
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 22nd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's |
| 0:35.0 | podcast is Jude Boudreau. Jude is the founder of Upper Line Financial, a financial planning firm in New Orleans that works primarily with Gen X professionals in their 30s and 40s. |
| 0:45.2 | What's fascinating about Jude's practice is not only that he works with a much younger clientele than the typical financial advisor, but his unique pricing model, an annual retainer fee that's calculated as |
| 0:55.9 | 1% of the client's income plus half a percent of the client's net worth, which makes it feasible |
| 1:01.0 | for him to work with those younger clients and deliver holistic financial planning, |
| 1:05.3 | even though they don't have any assets to manage and he's operating as a fee-only financial |
| 1:09.2 | planner. And thanks to his unique |
| 1:11.6 | model that's so well aligned to his target clientele, Jude has managed to grow his practice to |
| 1:15.7 | capacity at more than 150 clients and $400,000 of annual revenue in only six years. In this episode, |
| 1:23.9 | Jude shares not only the details of his unique business model, including how he handles |
| 1:28.2 | billing when there's often no portfolio to bill from, but also his highly structured process |
| 1:33.0 | for meeting with clients on a rotating basis three times a year, the kinds of planning issues |
| 1:37.6 | he covers in those meetings to validate his fee structure, and what he did to fill the income |
| 1:42.8 | gap while he was still growing his |
| 1:44.7 | practice to the point that he could replace his prior salary. Jude also shares the exact |
| 1:49.2 | marketing strategy he executed to get his 150 clients, built around using blogging, Twitter, |
| 1:54.8 | and media interviews to get him up to the number one ranking Google result for fee-only |
... |
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