The Problem

Building a successful tax practice is a lot harder than hanging out a shingle and waiting for clients to pour into your office. There are over 700,000 CPAs and Enrolled Agents trying to eat your lunch, and you can’t just offer the same old tax and bookkeeping services if you want to stand out from all that competition.

At the same time, technology – in the form of artificial intelligence and machine learning – are conspiring to make your challenge even harder. For the last 40 years, technology has been helping you do your job more efficiently. In the next 10 years, it’s going to start doing your job for you. If you’re in the business of putting numbers in boxes, you’re a dinosaur, whether you see the meteor coming or not.

Most smart tax professionals are waking up to the reality that just recording history isn’t enough anymore. They’re looking to turn themselves into advisors.

The Solution

For many tax professionals, adding financial services is the answer. Financial services deepen and strengthen client relationships as they provide steady recurring revenue. But merely adding “financial services” doesn’t go nearly as far as you can go in positioning yourself as uniquely valuable.

Most Americans generally get piecemeal help and service from volume-oriented vendors. They do their banking at a local retail branch. They get tax preparation from H&R Block or a low-end independent preparer. They get investment management from Schwab or Fidelity, or a low-end broker like Edward D. Jones. They get term life from Select Quote or their property-casualty broker. They get basic estate planning from LegalZoom.com or a local sole practitioner.

Affluent clients demand, and get, a higher level of service. They do their banking at the same institution as their middle-class neighbors, but might take advantage of private banking service. They get business accounting and tax prep from a CPA or EA. They get investment management from a wirehouse like Merrill Lynch or an independent advisor like Financial Gravity. They buy whole life from a Guardian or Northwest Mutual. They get more sophisticated estate planning from a white-shoe law firm.

In either case, though, there’s generally no coordination between a client’s different advisors. The client serves, in effect, as his own general contractor, hiring and firing subcontractors who don’t talk with each other, and might even be working against each other.

What’s worse, even for higher-income clients, most advisors are presenting bottom-up, sales-driven solutions. Ultimately, the client winds up with a grab bag of insurance and investment products working toward an ill-defined goal.

Ultra-high net worth clients – generally, those with $50 million or more to invest – have solved that problem. They bypass the retail financial services ecosystem entirely by establishing a family office – an entity dedicated to managing a single family’s wealth, managing its risk, and in many cases providing concierge-level services to its members. (Alternatively, they might join a multi-family office providing the same level of service to a small group of families, usually connected through a common source of wealth like Standard Oil or today’s Facebook.)

The family office steps in as the general contractor to identify and vet the best subcontractors and supervise their work in coordination with each other. The “secret sauce” comes from building it all around the client rather the vendors. The family office is a fiduciary, not an agent. It doesn’t care which products or services are necessary because it’s focusing on the client.

The Family Office Exchange estimates the number of family offices has grown from 1,000 a decade ago to 3,000-6,000 today. This growth proves that once clients discover the concept, they’re hungry for the level of service and coordination that family offices provide. The problem, of course, is that establishing and maintaining a family office is expensive. That’s why they’re generally limited to families with $50 million or more to invest.

Enter the Fractional Family Office®

Where can a successful business owner who doesn’t have $50 million turn to get that level of service? That’s where Financial Gravity’s Fractional Family Office® comes in! If you’re familiar with fractional CFO services, fractional jet ownership, or timeshare ownership, you’ll immediately grasp the Fractional Family Office® concept. Think of it as “Uber for family offices.”

The Fractional Family Office® begins with tax planning as the tip of the spear and builds the plan on a foundation of controlling taxes. This reduces the risk of the product-centric, “hammer looking for a nail” sales model mentioned above. It combines all the necessary financial services under one roof. Finally – and most importantly – it’s built around clients, not products and services. We understand that when a client starts a relationship with a Tax Blueprint®, there will be plenty of opportunities to profit from implementing that plan. You can be completely agnostic about which opportunity implements the plan when you profit from delivering them all of them.

Plenty of CPAs and EAs have already gotten licensed to give clients “one-stop shopping” for tax, wealth management, and risk management services under one convenient roof. There’s nothing new about that. But few of those advisors have packaged their service as anything more than just “CPA+,” and none have created a brand as attractive as Fractional Family Office® to communicate a unique selling proposition to prospects and clients.

Financial Gravity’s Fractional Family Office® lets you attract and retain clients with a uniquely appealing service model that none of your competitors can match:

·       You’ll open doors with the proactive tax planning that you already know your clients really want.

·       You’ll open doors to state-of-the-art wealth management solutions that take advantage of innovative technology that “legacy” wealth management providers and traditional broker-dealers simply can’t match.

·       You’ll have access to life, health, and disability insurance solutions to keep pace with changing markets and regulatory environments.

·       You’ll have access to legal service providers who understand financial services and understand how the kind of creative tax planning we do enhances the client’s overall financial position.

·       You’ll have access to a nationwide network of specialized service providers for implementing high-value tax-planning strategies.

The Fractional Family Office® Opportunity

Financial Gravity is looking to partner with select tax professionals across the country to bring the Fractional Family Office® concept to clients. Do you have what it takes?

• Do you realize the traditional business of putting numbers in boxes is no longer enough to sustain a practice in the face of technological change, shrinking margins, and competition from new sources?
  
  
• Do you want to use tax planning as the tip of your spear to define your value and distinguish yourself from your competition?
  
  
• Are you hungry to add new services and new recurring revenue streams to your business?
  
  
• Are you willing to delegate day-to-day operations that are outside your core competency to a back-office team operating with state-of-the-art technology and systems that you simply wouldn’t be able to create yourself?

   

• Are you willing to act as a fiduciary with respect to your clients?
  
  
• Are you willing to offer wealth management and insurance services?
  

Your Fractional Family Office® license comes with branding and intellectual property to position your new service. You’ll still use your own name for your business. But you’ll immediately identify yourself as offering clients so much more. Which do you think will attract more interest? Smith & Company, CPAs? Or Smith and Company, CPAs: A Fractional Family Office®?

The Fractional Family Office® positions you as the quarterback of a complete financial team.

The Fractional Family Office® Commitment

The Fractional Family Office® involves three steps. First, you’ll join the Tax Master Network as an “Elite” level member (or upgrade your current membership). Next, you (or someone in your firm with the necessary licenses) will join as an Investment Advisor Representative with our preferred firm. Finally, you’ll execute the Fractional Family Office® License Agreement. There’s no special “Fractional Family Office®” cost beyond your regular TMN Elite membership dues and financial services licensing and compliance costs.

Ready to talk? Click here to schedule a Discovery Meeting with a member of our team. We’ll discuss where you are now, where you’re hoping to take your business, and whether Financial Gravity’s Fractional Family office® is the route to get there!