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Podcast → Episode No. 13

Starting a Firm From Scratch With No Experience

With Matt Becker

April 08, 2026

Featuring

Matt Becker Headshot
Matt Becker

Mom and Dad Money, LLC

What if you didn’t need years of experience to start your own firm… just the right perspective and a willingness to figure it out as you go?

This week, I’m sitting down with Matt Becker, founder of Mom and Dad Money and, honestly, one of the best writers and brand builders I’ve seen in financial planning.

Matt built his entire firm around a very clear niche: new parents. And he didn’t wait until he felt “ready” to do it. He started with zero experience. No clients, no traditional background, no playbook. Just a point of view and the drive to make it work.

I get asked all the time if you can actually do that. Start from scratch, without years in the industry behind you. Matt’s story is a real, honest answer to that question. Not the polished version. The actual one.

In this episode of Behind The Advisor, previously known as XYPN Radio, we talk through what it really looked like to build from the ground up. The doubts, the early decisions, the things he’d do differently, and the advice he’d give to anyone thinking about taking a similar path.

If you’ve ever thought, “Could I actually do this?” this one’s for you.

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Listen to the Full Interview:

Watch the Full Interview:



What You'll Learn from This Episode:

  • The winding path that led Matt to financial planning, and why it didn’t look like anyone else’s
  • What it really took to go from zero experience to launching a firm
  • The moment Matt stopped overthinking and actually made the leap
  • How having his partner fully in it with him changed everything
  • The role blogging played in building trust, audience, and real momentum
  • Why getting specific with a niche made growth feel a whole lot simpler
  • The quiet trap of “should-ing” yourself… and how to finally break out of it

Featured on the Show:


This Episode Is Sponsored By:

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Read the Transcript Below:

00:00:01
welcome to xypn radio where your host Alan Moore brings you into a community of Fe only financial planners who want to profitably and successfully serve Gen X and geny clients if you're ready to get the knowledge you need from leaders in your field learn from Forward Thinking advisors and take action on your own goals xypn radio is the show for you here's your host hello and welcome to this episode of xypn radio I am your host Alan Moore and today's episode is a really exciting interview
 
00:00:30
with Matt Becker the founder of mom andad money.com Matt is honestly the best writer I know in financial planning and one of the best brand builders he's just built this awesome brand around mom and dad money and he's built an entire firm primarily focused on the very obvious Target Market New parents so Matt started his firm with zero experience he had literally never worked with a client a day in his life before he launched his firm and Matt shows that it is indeed possible to do so now I know a lot of
 
00:01:02
listeners will email and they'll call me to ask is it really possible to launch a firm with no experience and Matt is a great showcase that yes it's possible however he does give some words of caution or wisdom shall we say to those looking to do the same so if you're thinking about starting a financial planning firm but you don't have any financial planning experience and you're just not finding the right job opportunities I think this episode's going to give you a really great look
 
00:01:27
into what it means and just what that process looks like Matt also gives us a really awesome inside look into kind of his upcoming plans to create some additional service models between free content you know using a Blog and his kind of full-blown financial planning service that's going to allow him to reach a lot more clients which I think is perfect given his target market because as he notes sometimes new parents aren't ready to sign up for comprehensive financial planning you can check out all the resources that we
 
00:01:55
mentioned and and we definitely go through quite a few at xylan network.com 13 now this month's episodes are brought to you by new planner recruiting which is the leading recruiting firm integrating new financial planners into unique and exciting growth opportunities with firms Nationwide you can check them out at new planner recruiting.com and you can also go listen to our interview with their co-founder Caleb Brown at xyl network.com n so without any further Ado here is my interview with Matt Becker of mom and
 
00:02:25
dad money hey hey Matt Becker welcome to the show man hey thanks for having me on yeah I'm really excited to have you on because you have such a cool story and a really interesting brand and you're working on so much cool stuff so thank you so much for taking the time so for anybody that doesn't know Matt Becker is the founder of mom and dad money which guess what his Niche is it's a very obvious niche market I love it so um let's just kind of get started tell us a little bit about I guess kind of your
 
00:02:53
career path how did you get into financial planning yeah you know it's funny because it's this kind of long Twisted disconnected path that I I honestly don't even remember all of the specific details of how each piece fell in place but basically I mean I was I went to college and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life I think like a lot of people I was a psych major towards the end of my time there I got interested in kind of business and finance and ended up kind of minoring in that stuff and
 
00:03:22
took a couple finance courses at the end that that were really interesting to me and I I guess that kind of served as a starting point but after school I jumped right into a a startup software company which sounds way sexier and more exciting than it actually is it was really tiny it was me and two other people for a while very quiet and kind of isolated but I was there for six and a half years after school I liked the work I liked what I was doing like the people never really felt like it was what I wanted to do long term and you
 
00:03:56
know my kind of early interest in finance coincided with with you know going out and you know living on my own for the first time away from you know out of school away from my parents in an apartment and realizing that if I was going to be able to like go out and have fun with my friends and still have money to eat I was going to need to have some kind of system in place to manage my money so that really is how I started learning personally and I just kind of kept learning and I really loved it and
 
00:04:25
eventually friends started coming to me for advice about investing and and that was really fun to work with people I found some volunteer opportunities in Boston that I could kind of work with low-income residents and help them and I don't even remember how it happened but at some point I realized I I learned that financial planning was like was a career that you could pursue I actually think it was my mother-in-law's financial planner who who was the person who introduced me to this and I was
 
00:04:55
really lucky that he introduced me to the world of fee only I feel incredibly fortunate that that was my kind of first introduction and I just loved the idea of it so you know while I was working this other job at this software company I enrolled in online courses for the cfp education did that for about a year and a half then studied and took the cfp exam this was all 2010 2011 and then we had a baby my wife and I had our first son and life just kind of Stood Still for a while always throws a little bit of a wrench in a Good
 
00:05:29
Wrench but a wrench nonetheless yeah it was you know it was great but you know we weren't sleeping and you know that was our focus of everything and so you know financial plan was still in my mind it was still something I knew I wanted to pursue but I wasn't doing anything with it for a while and then about you know maybe when our son was about nine months old or something I had always wanted to start a blog that was just kind of an ego thing I just wanted to write and have people know who I was I
 
00:05:55
thought that was a cool idea and I'd always been you know with this financial planning idea I'd always wanted to find a way to use it to help people who were kind of in my situation whatever that situation was at the time and you know now that our son was was sleeping a little bit more I had a little bit more brain activity available I just kind of decided to start a blog and I decided to start a personal finance blog geared towards new parents and so I started mom andad money.com before I had my practice
 
00:06:24
uh while I was still at this old job and just started writing and learning that World Learning the blogging World Learning kind of the online space learning how to how to write and connect with people and try to get them to sign up for an email list and all that stuff and I was doing that for about a year when the startup company I was working for started to fail basically you know that's what happens with startup companies sometimes they don't work and so it was kind of a relatively slow
 
00:06:52
windown but eventually it got to the point where the only way that our founder could kind of preserve some of the intellectual property keep the company at least like barely alive and try to to do something with that was to get rid of the employees and that included me and so that was November of 2013 when um I was out of a job and that was pretty scary I had never really been out of a job before we had you know November that was my my oldest son was about 20 months old we were about a month away from having our second son so
 
00:07:29
was it was a little bit of a scary stressful time but that was really my opportunity to jump into Financial Planning and it really came down to this big decision of did I want to try to go find a job somewhere some f only firm where I could kind of learn the ropes and work my way up or did I want to start my own practice which I knew I'd eventually want to do at some point but I never had never really thought of as a realistic opportunity what gave me the motiv a to do that was a couple things
 
00:08:01
one I had the blog which I had some traction there and that felt good and two I mean very honestly I saw people like like you Allan and I saw Sophia and Mary Beth people who were doing this and were doing this in a way that was like mind-blowing to me with the whole like subscription model and all of that and um so I talk I mean I called you Allan I called Sophia I called a few other people and and eventually you know made the terrifying but exciting decision to just make the leap and turn mom andad
 
00:08:30
money.com into you know from this personal finance blog into a financial planning practice that's so huge it's so awesome a couple of takeaways I want to be sure we highlight one is so it sounds like you started your firm Without Really ever having worked with clients yes correct so you had the blog so you kind of had a following in a brand and that sort of thing but and you had the cfp had you completed all the cfp courses and taking the exam by that point yeah so I'd done all the coursework I'd done you know passed the
 
00:08:58
exam but I was not a cfp I was I had no experience so I hadn't met the experience requirement I'm actually still working towards that so I'm still not a cfp that takes brass balls let's just be clear people think each story is is so unique and people think it's crazy that some of us started you know after just a few years of experience but to go out on your own with no experience is huge but it's awesome that that was what was right for your family talk a little bit about
 
00:09:24
because you were leaving in in Boston at the time when you launched or about this time cuz you now live in Florida correct yeah so that is another wrinkle so first of all in terms of you know Having the courage I mean I am proud of of making the leap I do think it took courage I think that really the push was and I've I've written about this in some places before but and this is I think a really good lesson for clients too is you know we had a huge emergency fund that we'd been saving building up for a long time
 
00:09:53
and so we had a big Runway and I would not have done it without that because because I had you know a wife and two children who I needed to provide for so that gave me a lot of confidence and honestly if it had just been up to me I probably would have gone to try and find a job that really actually is more my personality and it was really my wife who pushed me to do it and you know we talked about it a million times and at some point she just finally said you know if we have all the savings if it's
 
00:10:20
not for this then what's it for and that oh I love it yeah that really stuck with me and I mean I always going to remember that and that was kind of the moment when it went from you know cool fun idea that I in my head probably wasn't thinking was going to be real to oh my God I actually am going to do this now aren't I this is terrifying but awesome and so so yeah so I really have to give a lot of a lot of credit to her for pushing me to do that and uh yeah it's probably one of the big things that can
 
00:10:47
only emphasize over and over again and that is that if you have a significant other partner spouse uh long-term relationship they've got to be on board and they've got to be supportive because ultimately they will make or break your start start up because their support when things go bad is invaluable and you know them being there if they're trying to drag you down and they're not a big fans of it I don't think you'll be successful so it's just a really good Testament to your wife that you know she
 
00:11:12
wanted this for you and and for her and for your family as much as you did maybe more so yeah no absolutely she's been super supportive the whole way and that goes back to when I was you know working you know full-time and doing the cfp coursework and exam because I was basically just studying all of the time that I wasn't at work and she was always supportive there so yeah I've been super lucky so did you launch the firm in Boston or did you launch the firm in Florida what did that process like
 
00:11:38
question so okay so I lost a job in November 2013 and it took about it took a few weeks of looking into options and thinking about what we wanted to do before I actually decided that I was going to start this practice so that was in December because I was in a cfp I had never taken the series 65 before or I wasn't actually allowed to be an investment adviser to register so that was a first step I needed to do that that took some time to kind of study and get the series 65 out of the way get all
 
00:12:09
the compliance stuff in place I finally got registered in Massachusetts in about the middle of February and then a couple of weeks later my wife and I very abruptly decided to move to Florida and this is where my wife's from we live in right outside Pensacola now this is where she grew up this is where her family is it's something we've been talking came out for a long time I think we decided to move on March 3rd and we were down here in the house by April 1st oh man that is fast I love it yeah so it
 
00:12:40
was quick and that delayed a little bit people always ask me when I launch and I never really know what to say because technically I kind of launched in the middle of February but then we moved and that threw everything out a whack and then I was doing the new website so Technic I always really feel like I launched kind of in May of 2014 down here here in Florida okay so that's was about 16 months ago something like that yeah so you launched in Florida I'm assuming cost of living is much cheaper
 
00:13:07
in Florida at least don't have state income tax but I'm assuming it's a lot cheaper there than where you were previously so you're able to bring down your household expenses a little bit yeah it is cheaper especially rent is much cheaper it's not quite as big of a difference as I was maybe hoping it would be but it it is cheaper yeah so do you mind me asking does your wife work she's she runs her own practice as well she's a mental health counselor she runs her practice mended wi counseling that
 
00:13:33
specializes in working with people with eating disorders so you both have very specific Niche markets I love it the niche family so just to dig in a little bit on the income side of things kind of where you were at when you were launching so you had the emergency savings so you had some Runway maybe reduce your living expenses at least a little bit in the short run moving down to Florida your wife had some income did you find some ways to supplement income any side hustles or anything like that
 
00:13:57
yeah so when we move down to Florida we had basically no income because my wife was starting her practice again from scratch down here I was starting my practice so we basically had nothing but soon after we got down here I actually started doing contract work for my old company and I was spending about half my day doing contract work for them and the other half of the day working on on my practice and that was incredibly helpful um from an income perspective and that lasted for several months I don't
 
00:14:30
remember exactly how long and provided a good amount of income for us for a while while we were both kind of building up our practices since then I have done some freelance writing that's kind of been my primary source of alternative income you know besides the practice so that's been helpful and my wife has been honestly really successful building her practice and bringing in you know for the most part covering all of our living expenses at this point which has been really helpful so that's awesome I did a
 
00:14:57
couple things myself and you know I have it again support of the spouse there she's been great too her practice has been really helpful let's talk a little bit more about the writing just because people ask all the time about s hustles and we say oh yeah you know you can go write but no one really knows the mechanics of that so how do you find writing gigs how do you price yourself how do you determine if it's a good gig can you just talk us through just kind of what that side hustle looks like for
 
00:15:19
you sure and I'll be totally honest that I am not the expert on this and I've stumbled into a lot of the jobs that I've had but I mean the reason I've been able to get jobs is because I've been blogging and I've been doing it for a little while and so I've through that I've connected with other people who are online and writing I've also you know kind of shown what I can do you know shown that I can write pretty well pretty clearly and can you know explain these Financial topics in a way that's
 
00:15:48
engaging and and understandable and all of that so that's really just doing it again and again and having you know that proof of concept has really what has allowed me to get jobs and then the other part of it is just is honestly just networking because I actually haven't pursued a single freelance writing job I probably I could and I could you know certainly get more of them they've come to me and they've come to me because I've made connections with people in the blogging space in the
 
00:16:16
freelance writing space and job opportunities come up and they've reached out to me so I've been lucky in that way but it's been through my writing and then been through the connections I've made with people in the space that's really where my Jobs have come from and we'll talk more about what it means to have a niche but I think this is a great example of when you have a really clearly defined target market it's easy to interact with other people in your target market because you kind
 
00:16:40
of all live in the same space yeah absolutely and it also you know that you mentioned that that's actually a reason that jobs have come to me is because people are looking for someone who can write specifically about you know Financial topics as they pertain to young families and so you know again that Niche has really helped me there and when people have been looking for someone for that specific purpose yeah and you can refer back to previous episodes of Michael and I kind of talking Niche marketing Niche comes up
 
00:17:07
all the time and and I know we beat the table about it but this is just a really great example of if you're the generalist that writes kind of General content and you know and you're up against Matt Becker who writes content specifically for new parents when somebody's looking for someone to write content for new parents they're going to hire Matt and then when they need content for airline pilots they're still not coming to you they're going to go the person who works with airline pilots
 
00:17:28
and rights for them so well very cool so has that I could give you one more and this is just in you asked about how I determined pricing yeah and I still don't exactly know how to do that but I will tell you that an opportunity came my way to write for a specific company through another blogger I knew and I had no idea what to charge and so I asked the other blogger what he had charged what they had paid him and it was way more than I was expecting way more than I would have quoted and that not only
 
00:18:00
helped me in that job earn a lot more than I would have otherwise but it's helped me when other opportunities have come up use that as kind of my frame of reference for what I charge and it's helped me get make more for each of the other jobs so I mean a couple lessons there I just charge more than you're comfortable charging and and don't be afraid to ask other people some people won't share but this person was and it made a huge difference for me yeah and I'll add into that that especially if
 
00:18:26
you're a good writer you're always going to get these opport unities and the pitch sometimes will be hey just like you're talking about of hey you know come in right and we'll pay you but a lot of times it's oh no we have this amazing audience so you should write for us for free and then you can hopefully Drive leads back I mean are you doing any type of free writing just because it's great publicity or are you only really doing paid writing at this point I have done some free writing and I
 
00:18:51
think that in the right situation it can be great but the right situation are usually not the ones that come to you they're the ones that you seek out because the place you want to write is already in front of the people you want to reach out to and and you're going for the people not for the pay so I do think that can work I think that if you really dive into this world you're going to get a lot of what you're talking about where people want you to write for free and talk about exposure you're also going to
 
00:19:17
get a lot of offers for really low paying jobs and I've just decided that those aren't worth my time but I think that a lot of times the exposure thing in particular is overblown and I've actually been really surprised in a number of instances sites that I thought were big got me very little anything from it very little traffic back you know nothing really came of it so I'd be careful about the exposure thing unless angle unless you really know exactly why you're doing it and
 
00:19:46
it's kind of something that you sought out that's good to know I think that's awesome advice and that is you know if you need the exposure it should be things that you're targeting not people that are coming to you because the people with your audience AR necessarily coming to you saying please write for us it's going to be more you going out to oh the bump is it bump.com you know for new parents like it's going to be going there and saying hey I want to write this article for you cuz you have the
 
00:20:10
target audience I don't know what what all the best ones are for your space but that's I guess the the example I come off off the top of my head that would be how you would Target you know an audience that you really want to be in front of sure yeah and I mean this online space is is huge and there are you know so many sites and so many people you know content marketing is a huge thing right now right so everyone wants more content if you get out there even a little bit you're going to get
 
00:20:34
requests from people who like want to put stuff on your blog or want you to contribute an article and get exposure from them and all of that and you I think it's on you to be selective and proactive about what your plans are and what you want to get out of it and just to throw some numbers out there I mean everyone pays a little differently it depends on word count and how technical versus you know less Technical and how much research and things like that but I mean I really see kind of the low-end of
 
00:20:58
reasonable being what 200 an article anywhere up to I've seen people get paid as much as 500 on article and and if you're in a really tight Niche maybe you can get more than that but does 200 to 500 seem like a reasonable range if people are kind of evaluating different offers yes okay absolutely yeah and especially you know if you have the cfp um which I don't but if you do have the cfp I mean that's a big selling point that has some weight to it that you can kind of throw around a little bit
 
00:21:24
because they're not just getting any kind of freelance personal finance right off the street they're getting an expert a professional who can lend you know that kind of perspective to things and the bigger your social media following this is another thing I've seen is that you can really promote a hey I'm going to push this out to my followers that you know I'm writing for your blog so I'm going to be pushing people to come read this or whether it's a blog or a newspaper or whatever I'm going to be
 
00:21:48
pushing people to come read it and that can be a huge selling feature as well that you know you're going to get eyeballs on whatever you're writing for them CU ultimately they need our content they need our expertise to bring bring people to their website so if you help you know take people to their website they're going to be happy yeah and I think that you know even if you don't have a huge social media following I mean I think that helps a lot but I think just even just the act of sharing
 
00:22:11
it and you know engaging with the content that you write instead of just sending it and forgetting it that's looked upon favorably and you know that might be a good way to either kind of increase your pay for a specific job because you're kind of playing along or you know or work your way towards you know improve that connection which could lead to another job so I think you know having a big social media following or having a big email list is great but even if you don't I think that you know
 
00:22:37
acting like you do kind of and sharing it anyways and being proactive in that way can help I guess we could add not even necessarily big but targeted right if if I'm hiring you to write new parent content I want someone who has a thousand targeted people that are following them on Twitter on the newsletter list not somebody with 10,000 broad you know non-targeted list so having a really well-honed list so we keep kind of dancing around this concept of Niche marketing so talk a little bit about kind of obviously you develop or
 
00:23:06
it sounds like you developed the niche just because that was kind of the space that you were in but what made you decide to go with kind of this mom and dad money concept instead of being Matt Becker you know financial adviser yeah well I mean I started mom and dad money like I said as a Blog and I started it that way because it's what I was going through I was a new dad and we had really honestly all the new stuff we had had to figure out had been confusing and overwhelming to me which I thought like
 
00:23:30
all right I have a pretty strong financial background compared to most people if this is hard for me I'm sure this feels impossible to a lot of people and so that's why I started the blog when I was starting my practice I actually this was a big decision and something I really struggled with was did I want to keep just kind of targeting new parents and and have that Niche or did I want to be a little bit more General I I wasn't going to go for kind of the anyone and everyone but maybe more General kind of like more
 
00:23:58
like Sophia kind of like geny planning like a broader broader spectrum and I paid attention to kind of online business stuff there a few guys like Pat Flynn that I'd followed and you know they talked about the power of having a niche and and I believe that when we talked you know we thought was something that you and I had discussed and so it just felt like one of those things that I was in the middle of myself and it just felt like I could talk about it really powerfully I also really cared
 
00:24:24
about it it was just something that I felt really strongly like I I felt like as you're starting your family you should have the right to have a a strong financial foundation so I really believed in it and and you know I also knew that I could always change at some point you know I was never locked into anything so was actually a difficult decision and I kind of went back and forth for a little while about did I want to stay this specific or did I want to go a little more General and in the
 
00:24:47
end it just kind of felt like what would be right for me and what excited me when I thought about who I wanted to work with and who I wanted to help are you happy with the decision that you made I am most of the time um so I mean I think that the concept of Niche marketing is is really strong and I think we've talked about some of the ways it's helped me with freelance writing it's also really it's helped with you know getting press I've gotten people who reach out to me because they're writing
 
00:25:12
a story on you know the USDA report that came out about the cost of raising a child and that got me on you know CNN money and stuff like that so that's helped I know for sure that when I've gotten a bunch of emails from people who have signed up for my email list and they say you know they can't believe they found my site it's exactly it's written exactly for them and they love it so there are a lot of great things about having a specific Niche if you really care about it and if you're
 
00:25:39
marketing and material and content and all of that really is tailored to them in a way that they can identify with and understand and relate to I have had questions from time to time and we've talked about this a little bit but you know for the same reasons it's scary to pick a niche which is basically you feel like you're limiting yourself in some way you're limiting the people you can work with when your business isn't growing quite as fast as maybe you hoped for whether your hopes were realistic or
 
00:26:07
not you know I've had questions from time to time about whether I picked the right group of people to Target and so I do in the end you know I am I'm very happy with it I'm excited about the direction it's going and the opportunities that are available but there have definitely been moments that I've questioned it and kind of doubted whether I'm on the right track I really appreciate you saying that cuz I know kitus and I are both the you know go niche market really hone in and uh it's
 
00:26:34
good to hear the other side of that which is that it's not all fun and gam sometimes it can be a struggle and even people with just such a sweet Niche an awesome brand in marketing around it can still struggle sometimes with with that decision and listeners can go back to uh let's see episode 11 so if you go to xyl network.com 111 you'll hear a discussion between Michael and I on basically the the value of Niche marketing and if you go to episode 12 actually which which was our first bonus episode you can go
 
00:27:00
hear actually a question that came from Matt in our VIP Community around this like how do you know when to call it quits on your on your Niche and so you can go listen to our response there and and anyway so yeah I I think it's really powerful advice so how are things going I mean how is business in terms of just kind of clients and kind of the prospects of moving forward and and kind of where things are at for you because you've been in business just a couple months over a year now yeah it's good I
 
00:27:26
mean so a couple things one I would say that overall and this is something whenever I talk to people because I get calls from people who are looking to get into this business and and all of that and I always tell people that it is not a straight shot to the top that there's a lot of work that goes into kind of building momentum and it takes some time to build a client base and that's definitely something I've experienced you know when I look at it over kind of a Year's plus worth of Time the numbers
 
00:27:53
are okay they're pretty good but it feels slow honestly and the growth hasn't been quite as big as I maybe would have hoped for at the beginning with all of that said it is growing over time and the number of prospect calls I'm getting every month is is increasing and the number of clients I'm signing on is increasing and I think it's you know it's kind of just a matter of time if you're connecting with people in the right way and if you're you know providing you know explaining what you
 
00:28:22
do and providing something of value that it just kind of takes time and every action you take Builds on the last one so I would say that I would never tell someone that this is a straight shot to the top that you're going to be super rich and have all the clients you need right away and it's been a struggle at times you know I think that that's kind of the entrepreneurs that's just part of being an entrepreneur you have it's really exciting all the you know all the things you're doing and all the
 
00:28:47
opportunities out there and it's also terrifying and sometimes you feel like a total failure so you know there's a lot of ups and downs and uh right now I'm in I've feel like I'm in an upswing so right now I feel pretty good and things have been really good I'd say over the last month or so especially and so you know you got to look at it over over the long term that way so Jude Buro with Upperline Financial before I launched my firm he told me you'll experience the highest highs and the lowest lows
 
00:29:15
sometimes all in the same day and that is entrepreneurship I mean I know we like to put a really nice face on it and say how awesome it is and it is I mean the fact that you know you get to work from home and I hear the kids in the background and I love it you know that's an awesome thing you know and so there are awesome pieces but it's not easy you know I mean this is it is a bit of a grind and and to be honest I mean if you listen back to some of the talking that Michael and I did around Niche marketing
 
00:29:40
a lot of the the pieces that we say to start with you didn't have the advantage of I mean you you didn't have the advantage of having your cfp your list on xyl network.com and napa.org and some of these you know I call them easy marketing resources because they require the cfp to be listed you couldn't go to your previous financial planning boss and say hey send me all your young prospects I mean you know there were a lot of what for some folks are low hanging fruit you didn't have the
 
00:30:03
advantage of and yet you've still been able to build a practice that that you're proud of and that you're happy with and and of course we all want to grow a little faster but you're still in business you know and that's something that a lot of people can't say yeah and I think you mentioned some of the things that that could certainly help like I said I when I I worked for six and a half years at the startup software company where it was between three and seven people the entire time and it was
 
00:30:25
fairly isolated so I didn't have and you know partially for that reason partially because it's just not my personality to get out there and meet tons of people I didn't have a huge you know book of potential clients when I started other than people who were kind of already familiar with my website and so I didn't have that I don't have the cfp I still don't I have no idea what effect that has on my practice to be honest like you said I'm not listed in some of those places but you know pretty much almost
 
00:30:53
no one I've talked to none of the prospects I've talked to have asked about that that or have cared and I think that that's an important lesson because I think that what I've done what I do a pretty good job of is when someone comes to my site one it's easy to connect with me they can sign up for my list get something get a a you know a free giveaway that's really valuable right away and they can build trust with me over time in a way that makes some of those designations maybe not irrelevant
 
00:31:20
but nowhere near as important as they would be if those you know other trust building things didn't exist totally agree I mean if the difference is between hiring a specialist without the cfp or a generalist with the cfp I would personally take the specialist because you know my situation sure sure yeah and that's been great and and it's been really encouraging you know at the same time I have no idea how many people just haven't reached out to me because I don't have the cfp I have no idea what
 
00:31:46
that is and so that's something I'm excited to be able to test yeah to test at some point and and put up there on the website but I I personally don't think most folks are coming to us you know know because of the cfp especially younger clients they just don't know that the cfp just doesn't have that much brand recognition among consumers um I think the advantage is being able to be listed on a few of the websites that that do require it but you do such an awesome job of kind of a lead nurture so
 
00:32:12
let's just talk through and kind of educate listeners on on what some of this looks like so someone finds your website they hear about you you're quoted in the media they click to your website and people can go to Mom andad money.com to see one it is not a very boring website it's very engaging it's very focused so you said something about kind of a free giveaway what is that free giveaway what are you really driving people to do when they get to your website yeah so you know when I was
 
00:32:37
starting my business and when I was working on creating my website I took this amazing website design course that I would encourage everyone to take through this website fizzle.co and it's fantastic but they really hammered home that you need to figure out what your main goal is when someone comes to your website what do you want them to do and you need to gear everything around that so for me and I think for a lot of people who in xypn it's it's getting someone to sign up for the email list so
 
00:33:04
you know I have this thing called the new family financial road map that's an ebook it's essentially created from a big collection of blog posts that I've written over time grouped into topics you know like budgeting life insurance investing saving for college you know kind of the big topics that new parents care about and really kind of walks them through all the major decisions and gives them a lot of step-by-step guidance about how to put all those things in place so when someone comes to
 
00:33:31
my site the first thing they see is a big button that says well it says there's this text says hi I'm Matt and here you are at Mom and Dad money and then it says get the road map and they can click the button enter their name and email address and now they're on my email list and the first thing I do is is send them the road map with some explanation of what it is and then what happens from there is really you know if if anyone listening is familiar with Kristen Herod it's really following kind
 
00:33:54
of the Christen Herod model of you'll give away this free resource send some follow-up emails so I have have a few follow-up emails that kind of go you know highlight some of the key points in the road map and give them some specific you know action steps they can start taking and then you know at the end of that there are a couple of emails that say Hey if you still want some help here's what I do here's how I help people you know click here to schedule a free call so it's basically a way to
 
00:34:19
connect with people and give them an easy free way to get some immediate value and get some immediate advice about how they can start improving their financial situation to build trust with you and then you know for some of those people it's going to make sense to want that they're going to want to work with someone and so you just give them the opportunity and at that point it doesn't really have to be a hard sell it can just say hey we've built this trust over time if you want some more help you know
 
00:34:46
here's how you can get it I love it this is a different era of marketing than we've ever been in the past people can find us without having any idea who we are and they can watch and people watch for a really long time I mean we experienced this at XY Planning Network where I talk to folks that go yeah I've literally been watching your stuff since last April and I just decided you know to call you 18 months later sure um and people will do this on your website as financial planners and they'll sign up
 
00:35:11
for that email list they'll check out the road map they'll kind of you know watch that blog they'll see your quote in the media and then at some point they're ready you know not everyone is is in that action step so sometimes it it takes a little while but sure that's not a small Point that's actually a huge point and ties into I think what we were talking about before about you know how long it takes for growth to start happening because I mean we do this all the time I have tons of people that I
 
00:35:35
follow online who I love and I read their blog posts and listen to their podcasts and you know I've downloaded their free stuff and I've never bought anything from them and it's not because I don't believe in them or don't trust them it's just because I mean it's a big step to buy something from someone you know like that takes a lot and so the reason the email list is so effective is you know what I just talked about that sequence where you know they sign up they get a few emails they get a pitch
 
00:35:59
to work with me it doesn't stop there you know then they start getting my blog posts and they start getting my newsletters and they start getting other updates I send out and just like you said at some point down the line when they decide that hey maybe I want some financial planning you know you're at the top of their mind and if you've done a good job kind of providing value and being helpful to them and being trustworthy you know they're going to call you and I've had that happen
 
00:36:24
actually a number of times recently that's one of the things why I feel as say I'm in upswing now but it's been people who've been on my list for a long time and I've never heard from once and then they schedule a call to talk to me and it's just they're just ready and so it's definitely a longtail approach and I guess I kind of had this expectation like oh I'll set up this you know email autoresponder and all these people are going to want to sign up for Prospect
 
00:36:49
calls right away and it doesn't work exactly like that and so you do need to be patient and give it time and build that trust you know over a long period of time it is a really good point that that content marketing is a Long play and there are going to be the people that show up and they're ready to sign on but there's a lot of people that are testing you out you know they just want to see they want to develop that trust and then when they're ready they'll call so we talked a little bit before we
 
00:37:12
actually started recording it sounds like you have some plans to put some services in between the free content and the full-blown financial planning service so what are you looking at doing over the next 6 to 12 months to kind of continue to to nurture your your list essentially yeah so you know this basic model that that exists so it's give away the premium send up some follow-up emails pitch your financial planning Services hope that some people sign up and then you know continue the longtail
 
00:37:41
marketing it's great it does work I have several things that I've been thinking about that that have been kind of I feel like our limitations at least for me and my practice with it one I'm targeting new parents a lot of whom are kind of in the middle of a huge budget crunch and a lot of them just don't have the money to pay for financial planning even when it is relatively affordable compared to the other options out there or they're just not at the point in their life where they can even kind of
 
00:38:08
Imagine taking on that kind of you know relationship and so that's one and then two a lot of people that come to my site and end up signing for my list I don't think are actually even familiar with financial planning or at least not in the sense that it's relatable to them they might think of you know you know rich people getting investment advice or something like that but it's not something that's even on their radar so the problem with I think my current setup is that it's a really big jump to
 
00:38:32
go from hey sign up for this free thing that's helpful but free to okay now let's start talking about spending a big chunk of money for ongoing one-on-one comprehensive Financial advice that's a big leap for a lot of people so yeah and so what I'm working on is actually a way to do a couple things one give more people guidance and advice and kind of step-by-step help than I could ever work with one-on-one individually so basically help more people two make some money from that so kind of increase both
 
00:39:04
amount of income I'm bringing in and also kind of the the number of sources that it's coming from and three make it a little easier for someone to go from hey I'm signing up for this free resource to hey financial planning might be a thing I can actually take advantage of so the way I'm trying to do all of that there's a lot of background is basically just to add some steps to the process so when someone comes to my website and I'm in the process of implementing all of this so this isn't
 
00:39:28
up yet but when someone comes to my website they're still going to sign up for a fremium and it's going to be a guide that kind of walks them through similar to now all the biggest financial decisions that you have when you're starting a family helps them put them into some kind of priority order and walks through the basics of each one and then they're going to get a few emails following that up and then they're going to get offered a kind of do-it-yourself guide so this will be an expanded
 
00:39:53
version with really detailed kind of stepbystep step do-it-yourself advice for the person who either isn't ready for financial planning Services yet or really doesn't want that kind of guidance really just wants to know how to do it themselves and so that'll be a relatively lowcost product probably like 30 to 50 or 60 bucks somewhere in that range and so hopefully some people sign up and buy that and it's kind of a smaller step from free to you know 30 40 bucks and then from there those people
 
00:40:22
will be pitched on hey let's have a a one-time Maybe minute session for 99 bucks where if you've been working through this guide and you have some questions you want to make sure you're on the right path we'll hop on the phone I'll answer any questions you have as many of them as we can possibly fit in in that period and so that's a chance for someone to again get some kind of one-on-one guidance get some feedback in a really affordable way also in a way that for me is time boxed and is
 
00:40:52
profitable because I'm able to help these people but I'm doing it in a way that you know there isn't a kind of free 30 minute get to know each other session we're just hopping on the call on the phone for 45 minutes and I'm getting paid for that and then some of those people will eventually become ongoing clients and so really there's a couple things here one there're small steps so you go from free to you know maybe 30 bucks to 99 bucks to the ongoing financial planning cost they are smaller
 
00:41:20
increments than you know zero to 100 right zero to the ongoing it also just allows me to help more people because people can benefit from kind of the do-it-yourself service without ever being an ongoing client without me ever having to really even know exactly who they are more people can get that kind of help and it allows me to to some extent stop trading time for money which I'm excited about because I love working with clients it's so much fun but you know there's only so much time in the
 
00:41:49
day and therefore only so many clients I could take on so it allows me to kind of increase my Revenue sources and have some way to kind of grow at least a part of the business and increase the revenue there without having to you know trade my time to do that that makes perfect sense and and there's actually some good research out there showing that once a person buys something from you no matter how inexpensive they are more likely to buy from you again and so you know this is an example of using an incredibly
 
00:42:19
valuable product I mean you're so underpricing what you're doing and I get why you're doing it but I mean the numbers you're talking about are just so sick low for the amount of value you're going to be providing and so people are going to sign up they're going to pay that 30 50 bucks whatever that number is and they're going to get so much value and then they're going to be like oh now I mean in the back of their mind they don't know they're thinking this but
 
00:42:38
they're actually more likely than to sign up for the next level of service and and that kind of one-on-one plan and I would actually encourage you to push that pricing up a little bit because we're seeing folks selling those at4 and $500 for an hourong call but just depends on your target market of course and then kind of moving into that full-blown Financial Planning and I'm sure this is blowing some people's minds because this is not the way financial planning has been done right we've just
 
00:43:03
gone from zero to 1% AUM with a million dollar minimum with everybody we've never had these in between and uh you know my favorite saying is you know I'm out here at Montana and we say you don't have to be faster than the bear you just have to be faster than your hiking buddy so always hike with your out of shape friends but the truth is marketing is the same way you don't have to be the world's best marketer you don't have to be able to you know be the best at optimizing every single little piece you
 
00:43:29
just have to be better than your competition and in financial planning any of these pieces that we're talking about it's really easy to win the marketing game um and all the way down to you know things that typical financial advisers don't do you know most advisers post their website and then they never update it and here you are talking about a year later doing a bit of an overhaul you're probably doing some tests and things like that like you can test the language on your button you
 
00:43:53
know sign up for the road map versus register versus you know whatever language you think might work like you can actually test and see which is getting more clicks and 1% more clicks is huge whenever it comes to like the long-term value of your list so these are just different pieces that you can be considering so how did you learn all this I mean you mentioned fizzle.co which is awesome where else are you getting education on these types of topics yeah that's a big one that's the one I spend most time I'm you listening
 
00:44:20
to their podcast and going through their material andle is what 30 bucks 35 bucks a month something like that yeah yeah super you can sign up for free uh I think you get a month for free or five weeks for free or something like that and yeah so really cheap awesome Community awesome resource and I mean even if if you just listen to their podcast they're great I get so many ideas from them Beyond them I mean I I I follow smart passive income Pat Flyn site you know a few others just kind of here and there and it's really just I
 
00:44:49
don't know it's just kind of bits and pieces you know some stuff I've gotten from copy blogger and you know I don't know beyond fizzle which is really the go-to resource it's just kind of bits and pieces here and there one of the things that really excites me about like doing this kind of thing is that once you have that kind of system setup then there are a lot of really cool things you can do to like get people into that system even more so like one thing I've set up that will eventually start
 
00:45:14
feeding to this system are free email courses so basically you know I have again I've been blogging for a while so I have like I have a bunch of posts on budgeting I can take a few of them put them into an email autoresponder in a way that makes sense you know create this free budgeting email course put it on the site have people sign up send them the emails and then at the end pitch them on whatever So eventually I'll pitch them on my do-it-yourself guide or whatever so you could do that
 
00:45:40
you could do webinars you know when you create a blog post that's kind of meteor and has a lot of stuff in it you could create you know like a PDF download for them that you know kind of walks them through the outline of of the major points whatever there are like an infinite number of ways that you can start kind of leveraging the system to get people into it in different ways and kind of you know appeal to people at whatever point they are at and eventually you know grow that client base I think with a really important
 
00:46:07
point being you don't have to do it all at once right you just have to lay the foundation for this kind of marketing strategy and I'm really glad you mentioned some of those resources cuz I think those are all Rockstar resources and pretty much all the stuff that we use in house is you know fizzle.co copy blogger awesome there's another one called digital Mark that's a really good platform but you learn a lot of this is going to be outside the industry another recommendation would be come out to
 
00:46:32
fincon by the time this airs we will have just been to fincon but every September fincon is kind of the home of bloggers and writers that all talk about money and so you want to talk about a group of Rockstar marketers because they have to earn all of their money online they never get you know in-person referrals it's not their business and so if you want to learn how to do a lot of this stuff fincon is an awesome place and we always well we did it this year and we'll be doing it next year we do
 
00:46:59
the X plan Network Conference in conjunction with fincon because we just think the content's so awesome that we want folks coming to both conferences if possible so as we're kind of wrapping up I actually have one direct question for you and then we'll we'll ask you kind of the question that we ask all of our guests the direct question is you know you started a financial planning firm with literally no experience do you recommend that to other advisers I mean any words of advice particularly for the
 
00:47:24
folks that are out there saying I don't want to work for somebody else I'm a career changer you know I'm a little older what do you tell those folks yeah I would say two things one if you're going to do that I think that I was very lucky on two fronts one we had a very long Runway like I mentioned before we had a lot of savings and I was able to earn some money on the side you know along with that so having a long Runway is important and or having a spouse who can pick up some or all of the financial
 
00:47:52
slack while you're kind of building it up cuz it is going to take time for you to get to the point where you can support your family that's just the reality of it so I would expect that and know that you need that going in and probably more time if you don't have experience and number two I would just say that you know if you have that in place and this is something that you really want to do just know that it is possible and look for whatever you can as kind of like a a foundation for you
 
00:48:19
so for me that was my website I had the website I knew that space at least a little bit that was really helpful that was kind of my Launchpad for you maybe it's a you know a network of friends or colleagues or someone that something that you could use as like a pool of potential clients so know that it is possible and do whatever you can to kind of look at what you already have in place and play to your strengths and use that Foundation as the Launchpad to help you kind of accelerate forward and and
 
00:48:47
you know basically make up for the fact that you maybe don't have as much experience as someone else I love it don't should on yourself you know I mean and this is the kind of stuff where people start going oh I should be blogging I should be networking I should be doing this you need to be doing something but you need to be doing what you're good at and it's okay to not do stuff that you either don't enjoy like I can't work a room to save my life literally you can drop me into a room
 
00:49:10
full of 50 prospects that want to work with me and I will walk out without a name of any of them no business cards no names nothing that is not my skill set so I don't go to networking events because I suck at it you're a great writer so like use writing and use that as your platform you don't have to go do something else just because people tell you should and for the folks that are out there if you're not a good writer it's okay not to write it's okay to use a different platform I'll admit I'm also
 
00:49:33
not a good writer that's why we podcast because this is more my preferred medium to talk to folks as opposed to trying to do it through writing so right yeah I mean there's a lot of things out there in the you know kind of online marketing space that you are quote unquote supposed to be doing and there's a lot that I'm not doing and just like you I'm not good at working a room either that's not my thing I do no local marketing and you you know if I was I probably could get clients that way you know it's not
 
00:49:59
that it's a good idea to ignore it but I think it it is important to kind of to know what you're good at and not necessarily to ignore the other pieces because there could be you know there could be plenty of value there but to make sure that you you do play to your strength and build your practice your business based on what you enjoy doing what you're already good at I love it all right so last question for you if you could go back and give your you know 2012 2013 self a piece of advice as
 
00:50:28
you're looking at this decision launch a company I mean what do you wish you had known then that you know now it's a good question just so everybody knows I always put people on the spot with this one just to see if they ever actually listen to the end of other episodes to know that this question's coming but uh no I'm kidding no I did not know this question was coming it's a really good question I mean I think that I've learned so much along the way about kind of how to
 
00:50:52
connect with people and how to Market in a way that they can identify with and relate to and how to talk about things that other people care about so I guess that would really be now that I say that that's really what I guess I've learned along the way that would have been helpful to know sooner is that this isn't about you it's not about your business it's not about what you want to do or what you want to get out of it those things are all secondary to you know it's about your clients it's about
 
00:51:18
your potential customers and everything you do needs to be in service of them and that is how you gain trust that's how you grow practice that's how you get people to care about what you're doing and want to hear more from you I actually heard we talked about fizzle a lot and I was listening to the fizzle show the other day and one of the guys Chase Reeves was saying whenever he's struggling with creating something he just reminds himself to make a gift just make someone a gift and put it out in
 
00:51:45
the world I think that's great advice and I think the more that you can do that the more you can make it about them the more successful you're going to be that's great advice Matt thank you so much for taking the time time to be on the show this has been so much fun hey thanks Alan it was a lot of fun for me too appreciate it so that that interview was a ton of fun Matt is a really great guy and his story is kind of crazy I mean he and his wife moved from Boston to Florida they both started small
 
00:52:10
businesses at the same time all while having kids in toe so it's such an inspirational story that I hope really connects with a lot of our listeners so as always you can check out the show notes at XY playay network.com 13 and just a reminder if you want to ask our guests like Matt any questions be sure to sign up for our free VIP community at XY planning network.com viip or text xyp and radio all one word xypn radio to 33444 to get access to our free community so this month's shows all of
 
00:52:42
them this month are brought to you by new planner recruiting the leading recruiting firm for financial planners Nationwide new planner recruiting offers many resources to coach and support geny planners as they launch into the profession firms Nationwide partner with new planner recruiting to Source screen and integrate the perfect fit for their needs led by passionate and experienced financial planners new planner recruiting has a refined dedicated and personalized plan to help both candidates and firms position themselves
 
00:53:09
for success I actually worked with new planner recruiting when I graduated college back in 2010 and was really impressed by the process they used to not only evaluate and place young planners but to place them with the right firm for them be sure to check them out at new planner recruiting.com and also be sure to listen to the episode that uh we did an interview with new planet recruiting co-founder and CEO Caleb Brown you can check that out at XY plan network.com sl9 thanks so much for joining us today
 
00:53:37
we'll see you next time you're not alone and you're not crazy it's scary starting building and growing your own financial planning firm and that's why we put together a free private Community Just For You The Cutting Edge financial planner go to XY planning network.com slvp or text xypn radio to 33344 and join a network of thousands ready to change the lives of Gen X and geny [Music] clients
 
 

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Matt Becker

Mom and Dad Money, LLC
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