Welcome back to the 319th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Jim Niedzinski. Jim is a Co-Founder of Motive Wealth Advisors, an independent RIA based in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan, that oversees $250 million in assets under management for nearly 50 families.
What’s unique about Jim, though, is how he and his partner have successfully built a ‘small’ boutique firm that effectively competes with big wirehouses to attract and retain ultra-high-net-worth families and have differentiated themselves by developing and implementing a client task management system that goes beyond traditional CRM to really ensure that the advice they are giving actually gets implemented by their clients.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Jim and his partner felt they could differentiate themselves from bigger firms by trying to maximize how many of their financial planning recommendations actually get implemented by clients, and decided to build their firm around Asana – a task and project management tool – instead of a traditional CRM system, to ensure that the advice they give is set in motion, how Jim leverages relationships he built with accountants, attorneys, and other professionals through cold calls early on in his career to now be able to gain a steady flow of referrals of very HNW clients, and how, through referrals only, Jim and his partner have grown their firm from $0 in AUM to $250 million in less than 3 years since breaking out on their own.
We also talk about how Jim and his partner leverage back-end support from Tru Independence so that they can have more time and capacity to help their clients with their complex financial issues, how Jim has found in his move ‘upmarket’ to more affluent clients that there is actually less fee sensitivity that’s led him to increase his fee schedule after the first few years, and why Jim and his partner are intentional about serving no more than 25 clients each as they want to have enough capacity to serve their clients well and continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Jim shares why, even though he didn’t initially set out to own his own firm when he started his career, he is happy that he pursued entrepreneurship as he felt validated with the amount of support he received when he launched (and the amount of clients that followed him), why Jim believes that younger, newer advisors making decisions about where to work should focus on finding a firm based on the character and quality of people they could work with (rather than a fancy website) and where they could gain a mentor that would allow them to absorb as much information as possible, and how Jim’s perspective on building a client base was impacted by Greg McKeown’s “Essentialism” that you can be more present and effective in client relationships by being more focused… which has only reinforced his focus on keeping a small and focused client base with whom he can be maximally effective as a financial advisor.
So, whether you’re interested in learning about how Jim utilizes Asana instead of a CRM to track and manage client tasks, how leveraging back-office support helps Jim and his partner gain more time to provide even more value for their clients, or why Jim places importance on truly, deeply caring for clients and their needs, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Jim Niedzinski.
