Welcome back to the 342nd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Nancy Hetrick. Nancy is the Founder and CEO of Smarter Divorce Solutions, a consulting firm based in Phoenix, Arizona that provides financial expertise to individuals and couples (and sometimes, mediators and attorneys) going through the divorce process.
What’s unique about Nancy, though, is that after going through her own ‘do-it-yourself’ divorce process – and then discovering after the fact that none of it was enforceable after her ex-husband chose not to comply with the agreement – she decided to become a divorce expert to help other women avoid the same fate… and in the process scaled her divorce practice as high as 8 team members and $1M of annual revenue in divorce fees, on top of growing her RIA to $65M of AUM when her divorcee clients inevitably needed help with rollovers and investment implementation after the divorce was finalized and they received their settlements.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Nancy overcame her initial imposter syndrome and went from finding attorneys to be threatening to realizing that they are just regular people and do not necessarily know a lot about finance by recognizing how important her own life experiences were, how Nancy also did expand her technical expertise by earning not only the CDFA credential, but also became a Master Analyst in Financial Forensics with a Matrimonial Specialization and a Certified Divorce Coach, too, and how Nancy grew her business in the divorce niche through networking events not to connect with individuals going through a divorce, but rather to build relationships that positioned her as an expert who “provides individuals and couples with a kinder, gentler, and much more affordable divorce” with people who could then refer to Nancy their own friends and family who might be going through a divorce.
We also talk about how Nancy explains the value of her divorce planning work to prospective clients and what she actually does to earn her fees on a divorce case, the steps that Nancy took to begin to scale her divorce practice as she built her reputation and the volume of clients grew, and how Nancy ultimately decided that the responsibilities that go along with being the CEO of a growing RIA and divorce practice, from managing a growing roster of employees to dealing with compliance and paperwork, were not for her, such that she eventually decided to fire most of her staff, sell her RIA, and ‘just’ focus on the divorce work as a solo practitioner (and is now happier and has better take-home pay than when her business was much larger!).
And be certain to listen to the end, where Nancy shares how, in reality, there are so many sub-specializations within the divorce planning niche that she wants to develop a national directory to help prospective divorcees right the find divorce financial planner, why Nancy suggests that despite the depth of specialization that’s necessary to work in the divorce space the best approach is to simply dive in and use client cases as a form of on-the-job training, and how Nancy found her own ‘happy place’ by just focusing on the divorce work she enjoys the most – both doing it directly with clients, and training other CDFA designees to build and run their divorce practices more effectively – and let go of the rest!
So, whether you’re interested in learning about how, because there are so many ways to niche in divorce financial planning, Nancy decided to create her own training program to help other financial advisors learn how they can niche focus their practices, how Nancy intentionally met with prospective clients at least 6 times over a 6-month period so that she could build a trusted reputation and gain more prospects, or how Nancy still operates as an IAR for her firm that she successfully merged and has structured solicitor agreements for the foreseeable future, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Nancy Hetrick.
