For most of its history, the business of being a financial advisor wasn’t actually about getting paid for advice. Instead, giving financial advice was part of a consultative approach to selling financial services products, which involved identifying a gap, and then getting paid a commission to implement whatever product would fill that gap. But as technology and the rise of the internet are making financial services products increasingly accessible to consumers directly, the business of financial advice is shifting from being paid for implementing financial services products, to being paid for financial advice itself. In essence, financial advisors are becoming financial advicers.
As part of our mission to “Make Financial Advicers Better, and More Successful”, Kitces.com is focused on providing education that helps Financial Advicers be able to command greater fees for greater expertise, which in 2020 led us to launch our first Kitces Course on “How To Find Planning Opportunities When Reviewing A [Client’s] Tax Return”, with a particular focus on not just providing the information, but offering in-depth case studies and providing opportunities for advicers to actually practice applying the knowledge with real-world client scenarios. And now, with more than 1,000 advisors who completed our first Course, today we’re excited to formally open registration for our second, on “Maximizing Social Security for Couples” and how to optimize Social Security claiming decisions and coordinate them with the client’s portfolio and other retirement assets… with a similar focus on not just learning the technical rules, but having opportunities to practice applying the knowledge with real case study scenarios.
In addition, we’re also gearing up for the launch of our next Kitces Summit – this time on “Demonstrating Your [Financial Planning] Value To Clients”. Similar to our first Kitces Summit on Digital Marketing, our upcoming Kitces Summit will not have any consultants or vendors pitching you on services; instead, we continue our “Show, Don’t Tell” approach by inviting fellow financial advicers sharing what they do, that really works in their practices with their clients, when it comes to both showing the value they will provide to prospects, delivering value in their initial planning process with new clients, and showing ongoing value with ongoing clients after the first year. Stay tuned for our next Kitces Summit to open for full registration in the coming weeks.
Additional growth has also provided us with more resources to reinvest into the Kitces platform itself. As a result, today we’re excited to launch a new Members Section homepage to make it easier to navigate to our various White Papers, live events, courses, and CE quizzes, and will soon be rolling out the ability to Suggest Topics for the Nerd’s Eye View to cover (“What would you like us to nerd out on… for you!?”), and to be able to Save Favorite articles to come back to later.
In turn, to manage our ongoing growth, we’re also excited to announce several new members of the Kitces team, including a new Director of Advisor Education, as we continue to expand our Courses and Summits, two new “Financial Planning Nerds” joining our Editorial team producing our free blog and resources for advicers, and a new Membership Manager as the Kitces Members Section crosses 10,000 Advicers.
Notably, though, while the Kitces team expands its expertise, ultimately our goal is to share expertise that’s valuable to the Advicer community, regardless of source. As a result, we’re also expanding the opportunities for all of you, our readers, to share your own expertise through Kitces.com (and get paid for it!), with new ways to submit yourself for consideration as a potential Guest Post Author or Guest Webinar Speaker (in addition to our ongoing opportunities to appear on the financial Advisor Success podcast).
Thank you so much for the continued opportunity to support all of you, the Financial Advicer community. We’re happy to report that the ‘State of the Blog’ is better than ever, but, as always, we remain eager to hear from you on what else we can do to be even more relevant and useful in the content and resources we’re providing to help you be better, and more successful!
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