#FASuccess Ep 392: Crafting Your Specialization When There Is No Standard Playbook To Learn It, With Kristopher Heck

Nerd's Eye View | Kitces.com

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 392nd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today's podcast is Kristopher Heck. Kristopher is a Founding Partner of Tanager Wealth Management, an RIA based in London, England, that oversees approximately $1.1 billion in assets under management (AUM) for 630 client households.

What's unique about Kristopher, though, is how his firm has scaled to more than a billion dollars of AUM while specializing in working with clients whose personal and financial lives touch both the United States and the United Kingdom, a niche for which there is no set 'playbook' to learn the tax, estate, and other planning expertise needed to serve these clients, which makes the expertise they've crafted for themselves over the past decade to be instantly differentiated in the marketplace!

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Kristopher chose his unique cross-border specialization, in part due to his own experience as a US expatriate navigating the financial issues that come with living and working in the UK, why Kristopher's firm emphasizes the ability to teach other team members about technical planning topics (since team members have to learn most of the specialized knowledge on the job) as a key criterion when hiring and evaluating new staff members to join Tanager Wealth, and how Kristopher's firm uses an internal blog, videos, and regular lunch-and-learns to further transmit their specialized knowledge across all advisors in the firm.

We also talk about how Kristopher's firm has attracted clients within its cross-border US-UK specialization, including by establishing relationships early on with accountants and estate attorneys who were also just starting their practices and working with similar expatriate clients (creating a healthy system of cross-referrals as each of those professionals' own practices have grown over the years), how Kristopher's cross-border specialization has evolved into several sub-niches, including expats who work specifically in the technology, financial, and legal sectors, and how Kristopher's firm's specialized expertise gives them an edge even and including against much larger firms in the broader market for financial advice.

And be certain to listen to the end, where Kristopher shares how his firm's separate advisory and planning teams not only help build and maintain his firm's knowledge base, but also provide separate career tracks for employees who want to be client-facing and those who want to dig deeper into the technical aspects of financial planning, how starting his firm with 2 other partners gave Kristopher the added confidence needed to overcome feelings of impostor syndrome when working with clients in his chosen-but-still-developing specialization, and why Kristopher believes RIAs are, in reality, HR and technology platforms that simply monetize with financial expertise (which emphasizes the importance of having the 'right' people and tech to successfully scale a firm).

So, whether you're interested in learning about how to develop a successful client niche when there is no 'playbook' to learn it, how to organize a firm to ensure institutional knowledge stays within the business, or how to nurture relationships to generate referrals from centers of influence, even when just starting out, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Kristopher Heck.

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