1:Many

In this section, the focus is to give you an idea of how you can successfully implement a scaled 1:many offering in your practice. The idea here is you are serving multiple people at one time and charging a lower cost for that service instead of serving people 1:1. We’ll cover: 

• What People Want
• Compliance Basics
• How to Create Your Model Efficiently
• Ongoing Service
• Marketing

What People Want

There are two main things that people desire in this service offering: some level of access to a financial professional and answers to their financial questions. 

For your traditional financial planning clients, this probably looks like multiple meetings per year, full access to phone calls/emails, and maybe even proactive monthly touchpoints utilizing the Elements® service calendar. This is much more time-consuming and expensive than what you can offer with a 1:Many solution. 

This isn’t meant to be a perfect blueprint to follow, but here are a few ideas on how advisors are providing their 1:Many clients with access and answers to their financial questions at scale (more details on each of these under “Ongoing Service.”

• Monthly Office Hours
• Free Financial Assessments
• Limited Meetings Throughout the Year
• Elements Messaging Access
• Exclusive Monthly Emails

Compliance Basics

You must determine whether you plan to launch your 1:Many model inside of your RIA or consider it an outside business activity (OBA). 

Both have pros and cons, so we encourage you to reach out to your compliance team for guidance. 

OBA

Pros

• No state de minimis requirements.
• Members aren’t required to sign an agreement  (less friction to begin working with you).
• More flexibility for marketing and servicing members.

Cons

• Managing a separate entity from your RIA. 
• Limited to education (cannot give specific investment advice). 

Inside of your RIA

Pros

• Only managing one entity. 
• Can discuss investments depending on your signed agreement.

Cons

• Dealing with state de minimis requirements. 
• Must get signed agreement to work with members. 
• Required to prove to regulators that you are adding ongoing value (trickier in some states vs others).

How to Create Your Model Efficiently

We encourage you to focus on launching your MVP (minimal viable product) instead of trying to “perfect” it. A valuable MVP includes: 

• Access to the Elements® App
• Email Marketing Software
• Zoom/Webinar Software

Pricing

The cost of your 1:Many model should be directly correlated to the amount of access someone has to you and your team. For example, a client who only has access to monthly office hours and a free financial assessment per year should pay less compared to a client who also has access to one or two meetings with you per year. 

Group Financial Coaching (Least Access) - $27/month

• Monthly group office hours
• Access to Elements app plus messaging
• Membership portal (not required at start up)
• Quarterly progress reports (automatic through Elements)

Personal Financial Coaching (Medium Access) - $79/month

Everything in group coaching plus:

• 3 private strategy sessions
• Occasional proactive touch points through Elements insight tab

Ongoing Service

At the beginning of this model, it’s best to keep client service simple, as there is no one right way to do it. Here are some options for what you could offer: 

• Monthly Office Hours
  • Advisors are setting aside one hour per month for clients to join. Typically, the advisor has something to share (i.e. one of the elements scores) and also leaves plenty of time for client questions. 
  • Whether one person or 100 people show up, it’s one hour of your time while still offering access to your clients in this model. 
  • Requirements: Zoom/webinar software, 1-1.5 hours per month
• Free Financial Assessments
  • You offer one or more free financial assessments per year to your 1:Many clients. This can help personalize their experience while requiring only a small portion of your (or an associate advisor on your team) time. 
  • Requirements: Elements® app, 10 minutes per client per year
• Limited Meetings Throughout the Year
  • If you want to provide even more personalization, you can offer clients a certain number of meetings per year. Since the client is responsible for keeping their Elements updated, you can minimize your prep time for these meetings by briefly reviewing their scorecard before the meeting. 
  • Requirements: Elements® app, 1.25 hours per meeting (includes prep time)
• Elements Messaging Access
  • You could choose to allow your clients to message you through the Elements app. If it’s a basic question, perhaps you could respond to them directly. If you are worried about this taking up too much time, you could direct people to your monthly office hours and answer these questions at that time. 
  • Requirements: Elements® app, minimal time per client per year (can answer questions during Monthly Office Hours)
• Exclusive Monthly Emails
  • You may already be following the Elements® service calendar for your financial planning clients. Instead of offering a personalized email to clients in your 1:Many model, you can send out one email each month to all clients in this model. For example, create a generic email about Liquid Term sharing why it’s important, where to find it in the app, and general guidelines for what a “healthy” score should be. 
  • Requirements: Email Marketing Software (Mailchimp, Mailer Lite, etc.), 10 minutes - 30 minutes per month to create/send the email

Additional Value-Adds NOT Required for Initial Launch

Membership Portal with Exclusive Content

While this seems very valuable, advisors are saying that clients simply aren’t taking advantage of it. Due to this, we would encourage you to launch your model first, and then determine if creating a membership portal is worth the time, cost, and effort. 

Community/Group

This can be created easily with a Facebook group, but again, advisors are telling us that they haven’t gained much traction with a community yet. 

Resources: 

Brandon webinar:

https://vimeo.com/839110476?share=copy

Ongoing Mastermind group:

Get access to a community of Elements® advisors who have launched (or building) their 1:Many service offering. We meet on Zoom for one hour on the second Wednesday of the month at 12:00pm Pacific.