Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 437th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Ed Slott. Ed is the president of Ed Slott And Company, a financial education company based in Rockville Centre, New York that offers seminars and newsletters for financial advisors and consumers focused primarily on IRAs.
What’s unique about Ed, though, is how he has been able to charge premium fees for his accounting and education services over time by becoming a nationally recognized expert on IRA planning, with an intentional strategy to differentiate from generalists not by charging less than the competition but instead charging a premium fee to help express his unique value.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Ed identified the 1986 Tax Reform Act as an opportunity for him as young accountant to dig into the new rules regarding IRAs (that older accountants weren’t interested in touching), how Ed was able to significantly raise his fees in his accounting practice with little pushback from clients by focusing on big-ticket tax savings opportunities that emerged from his expertise in IRAs, and how Ed found that charging premium prices ultimately led him to attract even more clients (as they knew they were dealing with a specialist rather than an accounting generalist).
We also talk about how Ed got his start presenting tax seminars to attract high-dollar clients for his accounting and estate planning business (at one point withdrawing almost all of his available cash to pay for a newspaper ad to promote his seminar), how Ed’s growing notoriety as an IRA expert eventually allowed him to transition to conducting paid seminars (charging a premium price) around the country, and how Ed leveraged a radio show and television appearances to give him access to and help promote key experts who in turn further burnished his own reputation.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Ed shares how his business has grown to include highly popular two-day IRA seminars and an Elite IRA Advisor Group for knowledge-sharing among like-minded advisors, how Ed’s business grew further after making a key hire who challenged him to charge more and came to the table with completely opposite instinctive strengths (with him as a quick start and her being more detail-oriented), and why Ed believes that writing (and the ability to apply complex concepts to real-world examples) is necessary to truly become an expert in one’s chosen specialization.
So, whether you’re interested in learning about winning new businesses by charging higher fees, leading effective seminars on specialized financial topics, or effectively delegating tasks to employees who might be able to do a better job at them, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Ed Slott.
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