Growing From $200M To $1.4B In 5 Years By Spending 15% Of Revenue On Marketing (That Still Works): #FASuccess Ep 452 With Gabriel Shahin

Welcome everyone! Welcome to the 452nd episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!

My guest on today’s podcast is Gabriel Shahin. Gabriel is the CEO of Falcon Wealth Planning, an RIA based in Ontario, California, that oversees $1.4 billion in assets under management for 1,500 client households.

What’s unique about Gabriel, though, is how his firm has grown from $200 million to $1.4 billion of AUM in just five years by generating 2,500 leads a month (that lead to 450 to 500 new clients onboarded annually), in part by spending approximately 15% of firm revenue on marketing each year.

In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Gabriel’s firm invests the most marketing dollars in advertising on Google (which is the top source of its leads and clients) and increases the effectiveness of this spend by creating dedicated landing pages and lead magnets targeted at different search keywords, how Gabriel’s firm has created educational content for its website (in written, audio, and video formats) that not only helps with search engine optimization, but also with answer engine optimization (amidst the growing popularity of AI search), and how Gabriel also has found success investing marketing dollars on a range of advisor lead-generation tools (and improves the success rate of this tactic by employing staff members who are responsible for quickly responding to new leads from these sources).

We also talk about how Gabriel’s firm uses a personality-typing system to match prospects with an appropriate member of its business development team and with the advisors who will ultimately serve them when they become clients, how Gabriel employs a revenue-based compensation structure for advisors (allowing them to grow their compensation as they work with more, and wealthier, clients, with a salary floor for those starting to build their client bases), and how Gabriel ultimately views the advisors on his team as his biggest “clients” (given that they are one of the keys for the firm to be able to serve even more clients in the future).

And be certain to listen to the end, where Gabriel shares why he’s willing to invest in hiring and technology spending not just based on his firm’s current needs but rather where he wants the firm to be in the future, why Gabriel’s firm charges an above-average fee to its clients (starting at 2% of AUM and only reaching 1% at approximately $3 million of AUM) based on the high level of service he believes his firm provides (particularly in helping clients find tax savings opportunities), and how Gabriel’s growth over the past several years has come after building a team that can effectively attract and serve clients (without him personally being at the center of these initiatives), allowing him to focus on his role leading the firm into the future.

So, whether you’re interested in learning about the potential return of making significant hard-dollar investments in marketing, leveraging Google and dedicated landing pages to attract prospects, or the challenges of growing AUM by a billion dollars organically in just five years, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Gabriel Shahin.