11 Ways Advisors Can Be Smarter About Growth

Although the average advisory firm isn't growing, there are several steps that a firm can take to rise above the pack and help their businesses this year, Aaron Klein, co-founder and CEO of Riskalyze, and Michael Kitces, head of planning strategy at Buckingham Wealth Partners and chief financial planning nerd at Kitces.com, said Feb. 2, during the webinar "Accelerating Firm Growth in 2023." Advisory firms can make 2023 the year in which they win prospects faster, drive a personalized client experience at scale, and attract and retain the best talent, according to Klein and Kitces. The first thing to figure out, however, is if your firm actually has the capacity to grow, Kitces told viewers. "I talk to a lot of advisors where they say they want to grow because essentially they're not happy with this equation of 'I do too much work for not enough money. I would like to grow [and] do this much work. I would like to make more money for what I'm doing.' And I think that's a great thing to shoot for," Kitces said. But he added: "If your problem is 'I'm doing too much work for not enough money,' just stuffing more clients onto that does not actually help solve the problem. You just start drowning in your own capacity limitations." One sure sign that an advisor may not be ready to grow is if he or she is about to take on a new client with a lot of wealth and the first thing he or she can think about is how much extra work will be involved, Kitces said. See the gallery above for 11 ways Kitces and Klein said advisors can think smarter about their strategies in 2023.