Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 434th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Vanessa N. Martinez. Vanessa is the CEO of Expressive Wealth, an RIA based in Chicago, Illinois, that oversees $135 million in assets under management for approximately 70 client households, including 10 ‘core’ ultra-high-net-worth families.
What’s unique about Vanessa, though, is how her firm, in addition to ensuring clients have established a ‘traditional’ estate plan focusing on the efficient transfer of their assets, works with its high-net-worth clients on what Vanessa calls “legacy planning” in order to not only pass down their assets to the next generation, but also the parents’ family values that generated their wealth as well.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Vanessa engages in a multi-meeting discovery process with clients (to first understand where they stand today with regard to estate planning and intra-family communication, and then to dig deeper into what the client wants to achieve through their legacy), how Vanessa has clients consider their family values for each of the accumulation, preservation, and distribution phases of their lifetimes (leaving room open to amend these values as their life and financial circumstances change over time), and why Vanessa has clients write down their values and legacy goals both to ensure their permanence (and to prevent misunderstandings that can develop when values are simply communicated verbally like the telephone game down the family tree over time).
We also talk about how Vanessa’s intimate involvement in her clients’ lives (from attending major life events to supporting family members going through life transitions) helps drive client referrals to their friends in similar life (and financial) situations, how Vanessa uses neighborhood-based client events (such as a ‘stocks and sip’ evening of financial education and wine sipping) to draw in a select group of clients and their friends (without having any awkwardness for not inviting her full client roster that don’t live in that neighborhood), and how Vanessa has found success holding client events on Thursday nights given that attendees are often a good mood (with only one workday left in the week) while also avoiding filling up a valuable weekend night that prospects may not be willing to let go of to meet her.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Vanessa shares how she uses a practicing psychologist in a “Chief Clinical Officer” role to provide personality and communication assessments for her team and to facilitate communication when she brings together clients and their children in a family meeting to discuss the results of her legacy exploration exercise, how Vanessa has found that getting clients to focus on their legacy while still alive can allow them to answer questions from their children and to eventually deepen their relationship with their kids before any wealth is inherited, and why Vanessa ultimately views legacy planning as a way for clients to share their stories with the next generation so they value not just the dollars they will receive but also the emotional and intellectual wealth being passed on to them as well.
So, whether you’re interested in learning about the difference between estate and legacy planning, how to engage in deep legacy planning conversations with clients, or using intimate client events to attract new prospects, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Vanessa N. Martinez.
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