Tapping the Untapped Market for Financial Advice

Sheryl Garrett was a partner at a successful wealth management firm, but still felt she had not completely achieved her life goals. The hours on the job were draining, and Garrett felt she was on-call 24 hours a day, even when on vacation.

Garrett was raised in a middle class family, and she was bothered by the fact that working class people like her own friends, family and neighbors couldn’t afford her services, or might even be turned down as clients by her firm. [Watch her video below or click here to hear her at the Personal Financial Planning Conference.]

“There was always a tug at my heart,” Garrett said, when she had to turn away a hairstylist, postman, or video store owner with the words, “’I’m sorry, you don’t meet our minimums.’”

In 1998, she decided to leave wealth management and become her own boss, creating a new business model. Her goal was to offer hourly, as-needed, fee-based personal financial advice.

She was told that it couldn’t be done—that she couldn’t make as much in revenues charging by the hour as she could selling products or managing money. While she did find that she couldn’t make as much with an hourly-based fee model, it was a sacrifice she was willing to make. She could live comfortably, with an income similar to a lawyer's or consultant's, while serving the clients she wanted to help. Additionally, she was able to do to what she really wanted to do—provide financial advice—without  having to sell anything.

Her business, Garrett Planning Network Inc., tapped into an untapped market. Over 95 percent of her clients had never worked with another financial advisor.

“I was building market share—not competing with anyone,” she said. “The mass market is drastically underserved by competent, objective advisors.”

Learn more about Garrett’s story and her advice for other financial planners when she speaks at the Personal Financial Planning Conference on Tuesday, June 9, at Bernstein Global Wealth Management. Click here to register.