Welcome back to the 346th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Jim Ludwick. Jim is the founder of MainStreet Financial Planning, an hourly, fee-only financial planning firm, and also created Procrastination Junction, a coaching program for fee-only financial advisors looking to improve their sales skills.
What’s unique about Jim, though, is how he’s leveraged nearly 3 decades of experience in converting procrastinating prospects into recurring fee-only financial planning clients, with an approach that’s less about “selling” the value of financial planning and more about simply helping clients with “moving” – from where they are to where they need to be, know they should be, and want to be… but sometimes still need a little help to overcome their own procrastination and move themselves there.
In this episode, we talk about how, as a career-changer after serving in the Air Force and as a hospital administrator, Jim first found success in the financial services industry as an insurance salesman by leveraging the local network he’d built over his professional career, coupled with formal sales training that taught them how to frame conversations in a way that helped clients state the need for insurance themselves (rather than pitching insurance directly), how, when Jim opened his fee-only firm after relocating to a new area where he did not have a natural network, he leveraged the Garrett Network and NAPFA to rebuild a referral pipeline, this time getting business from other advisors, and how, although it meant ‘losing’ more prospects along the way, Jim modified his sales and funnel process over the years to increase the likelihood that he would only be sitting down with engaged, ready-to-act prospects in the first place – which in turn boosted his conversion rate, efficiency, and profitability.
We also talk about why, despite sales being a bit of a taboo within the advice industry, Jim views embracing sales as an essential part of building a high-quality fee-only financial advice business, how Jim built his financial planning business to prioritize work/life balance and transitioned his company to remote meetings long before it was the norm (and even turned it into a value-add for clients who wanted to visit him in Italy for part of the year!), and how hiring not just an assistant, but someone with a strategy mindset who was determined to grow in and with the company, proved pivotal to the growth of MainStreet Financial and led to a successful, naturally integrated succession plan when Jim’s assistant-turned-partner eventually bought him out nearly 8 years later.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Jim shares how surprising it was that, despite his experience in sales and entrepreneurship, it still took 3 years to build a successful advisory business starting from scratch, how shifting the business from hourly to recurring-revenue clients who were expected to come back annually for a check-up proved crucial to Jim’s ability to hire employees and begin to scale, and how Jim’s drive to serve and help others was not only the genesis of a successful advisory business but led him at the tender age of 75 to launch yet another new business… his education program to help fellow fee-only advisors embrace sales, overcome imposter syndrome, and improve their overall communication skills based on his own years of industry experience and success.
