Welcome back to the 197th episode of Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Ashby Daniels. Ashby is a financial advisor with Shorebridge Wealth Management, a hybrid advisory firm based in Pittsburgh, where he personally oversees $38 million in assets under management for 43 retired clients.
What’s unique about Ashby though is the way he launched his current practice, breaking away from a major broker/dealer after nearly 10 years in the business in the face of a noncompete and nonsolicit agreement, and the path that he built for himself at Shorebridge to give himself enough runway to make the transition without putting his family’s financial situation at risk.
In this episode, we talk in depth about how Ashby negotiated and structured his unique compensation agreement with Shorebridge to handle the first two years of relaunching from scratch. How he navigated the noncompete and nonsolicit agreement to eventually win back at least a subset of his prior clients, how the transition and leaving most of his clients behind allowed Ashby to begin to focus on bringing in the right clients, and the way his business has evolved deeper and deeper into a niche with retirees in the years since.
We also talk about how Ashby has built his current marketing funnel through blogging or what he calls “the introvert’s dream to marketing,” the way he initially started his blog anonymously just to see if he could do it and build a readership, how Ashby’s blog eventually helped his former clients find their way back to him, why blogging can theoretically attract clients from anywhere in the country but Ashby is using it specifically to grow his local clientele online. And the reason Ashby has now started launching a series of short paperback books for his retiree niche leveraging his blog articles.
And be sure to listen to the end, where Ashby shares how he manages his own time as an independent advisor. The way he splits his time for mornings to work in the business, conduct meetings with clients, and handle internal business tasks, and the afternoons to work on the business, including blogging and his other marketing efforts. How the book Essentialism changed Ashby’s own personal time management process, the daily productivity sheet that he now uses for himself to ensure he always spends at least some time on tasks that will “move the needle” for the business, and how Ashby implemented a meeting surge approach to further focus his time and create more flexibility for the rest of the year to grow the business.
So whether you’re interested in learning about how Ashby transitioned from a broker/dealer despite a noncompete and nonsolicit, how he finds inspiration for his blog, or why his ideal client changed from government employees to retirees, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast.
