Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 379th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Hans Blake. Hans is the founder of Intelligent Investing, an RIA based in Greenville, South Carolina, that oversees $50M in assets under management for 40 client households.
What’s unique about Hans, though, is how through a desire to create a more centralized dashboard to help his clients understand their financial health, coupled with a deep fascination with technology and its potential as a behavioral finance tool, led him to create Intelligrations, a form of financial dashboard software that dynamically consolidates a client’s key asset data points and assembles them into an easy-to-understand 1-page visual statement of their entire financial picture.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Hans prioritizes Intelligrations to focus on higher-level financial goals and what can actually be controlled to reduce the risk that clients are tempted to financially misbehave, the journey Hans took in developing and building his Intelligrations software within his firm, from an Excel wireframe idea to actual software code that integrates with key industry vendors to automate the input of the right client data, and how Hans and his wife built Intelligent Investing as a couple to be a boutique advisory firm with a white-glove approach to serving high net worth executives approaching retirement to navigate that emotional, financial transition.
We also talk about, how Hans has implemented a set of core values within the firm that not only remind themselves why they do what they do, but also demonstrate their service approach and value to each potential client up front, the discovery process Hans has implemented to learn about a prospect’s current financial state, share the firm’s passion and core values, and ultimately separate his ideal, long-term clients, from the short-term, emotional ones, and how, through many conversations and initial rejections, Hans realized that “No’s” aren’t always permanent and, through creativity and patience, a solution to any problem standing in the way will eventually reveal itself.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Hans shares his struggle with imposter syndrome and self-doubt, having to constantly remind himself to reflect on the years of work, experience, and sacrifice it takes to build a firm or innovative technology, and to enjoy, with gratitude, the hard-earned fruits of his labor, Hans’ realization that finding what his key skillset was and focusing on it, while also understanding his weak spots and outsourcing the help he needed was incredibly valuable in building his business, and how surprising it is to Hans to struggle to get clients when he’s worked hard to build a great firm and an exceptional technology tool, only to find himself surrounded by countless other companies that claim to do the same innovative things that his firm actually does.
And so, with that introduction, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Hans Blake.
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