Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with financial planner,

speaker and consultant Michael Kitsis to hear stories of how leading financial advisors

navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight from leading

industry consultants about how to break through to the

next level in your advisory business. And now here's your host, Michael Kitsis. Welcome, everyone.

Welcome to the 26th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is

Steve Wersh. Steve is a practice management and marketing consultant for financial advisors with a particular

focus on how to generate more referrals to grow your business.

But what's unique about Steve is his approach to referral marketing, which starts with a simple

statement, stop asking for referrals.

And instead of asking for referrals, focus on how you can make yourself more referable in the first place by having a clear niche. Because as Steve puts it,

a niche is simply a need. And if you can fulfill a clear need, then people with that need will be

referred to you without even asking for it. In this episode,

Steve talks about the six types of niches that financial advisors can form, including technical,

educational, experiential, psychosocial, affinity, and values niches with great examples of each.

And based on his own experience as a former financial advisor and broker-dealer executive,

Steve talks about how advisory firms can interview their clients and leverage a client advisory board

to better understand what they're really most valued for and then formulate a niche around that

value over time. Because the reality is that while it's not required, it's still usually

easiest to build into a niche where you already

have some initial connection or solution in the first place. And be certain to listen to the end,

where Steve talks about how to manage a niche practice over time and why it's okay that your

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