Only Fee-Only
This podcast interviews fee-only financial planners to learn about how they are helping their clients and serving their specific niches.
Only Fee-Only
#107 - Scaling Rapidly and Mastering Content Creation with Thomas Kopelman
Curious about building a thriving RIA in just three years? Thomas Kopelman, co-founder of All Street Wealth, shares how he did it by focusing on content creation and tailoring services for high-income millennials and professionals with equity compensation. In this episode, Thomas walks us through his unique tax planning approach—adding value that goes beyond standard advice.
We also dive into the balance of scaling a firm while keeping a boutique feel, from hiring specialized planners to keeping communication crystal clear. Thomas reveals the power of authentic client relationships and content as a growth engine. Tune in for practical tips on scaling your advisory business and strengthening client connections!
👉 Want more from Thomas? Check out his social media course to level up your online presence and reach the clients you want!
https://www.allstreetacademy.com/advisor
Social:
x: @TKopelman
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomaskopelman/
Welcome back to the Only Fee Only podcast and, as always, we appreciate you being here. In this episode we got to talk to Thomas Kopelman, who is the co-founder of All Street Wealth, and it's been so cool to watch Thomas build his firm from the ground up. I mean, literally in three years. This guy has accomplished more than a lot of people do throughout their careers and a lot of people do in literally in three years. This guy has accomplished more than a lot of people do throughout their careers and a lot of people do in business in 10 years of starting their RIA. So it's really cool to see what he's built. There's been a lot of things that he's done that are really cool to see. I mean his content creation, his consistency, being on the Michael Kitsis podcast and also recently passing $100,000 of monthly recurring revenue. It's just awesome to see. So enjoy this episode, sit back, relax. This is Thomas Kopelman on the Only Fee Only podcast.
Speaker 2:What's up everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Only Fee Only podcast. I'm Peter Travalo. I'm here with my co-host, brock Buckles. How's it going today, brock?
Speaker 1:I'm doing well, man. I'm excited We've got a legend on the podcast today.
Speaker 2:That we do. The man, the myth, the legend himself, thomas Kopelman from All Street Wealth, very excited to have him back on. He was actually the second episode of our podcast, so very excited to have him back on and share so much of his growth and all the tricks that he has up his sleeve. So, thomas, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks for having me on. Guys I mean Brock and I. We just did, I think, three episodes a couple weeks ago on my podcast and obviously I talk to you guys all the time. So this feels very normal and natural.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we love it. You want to give a quick overview of who you are and what you do as a financial planner.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I am co-founder of All Street Wealth. We've gone through a lot of deviations, I would say, or kind of niching, further and further down. When we first started it was, hey, we work with millennials, and then it became slightly higher income millennials, then it became millennials with equity comp, and then it became mostly millennials with equity comp and business owners, and now it's really like seven-figure income earners, mostly business owners, but some people it's all 30s to 50s. Pretty much Most are business owners. Then some are like head engineer at SpaceX or lawyer for a publicly traded REIT, but really focused in on tax planning.
Speaker 3:So what we found is that what people want from their CPA is not what they're getting, and there's a lot for why this exists. Part of it is that CPAs aren't very good at selling tax planning right. So people pay them the $150 for their filing and they think they're getting tax planning, but in reality they didn't do that. And so now these CPAs have 500 to 1,000 clients. They don't really have the time and capacity to be on that. Multiple meetings per year forecasting making sure people make the right tax payments, what they're going to owe, above and beyond that. And so we were like, hey, if this is what people want. They're not getting that. Why don't we build that internally?
Speaker 3:So we really do all the financial planning, but then we also do all the tax planning. What are they going to owe? What do they need to pay in safe harbor? What are they going to owe come April? What are all the tax planning moves that they're going to make? And so we brought an enrolled agent in-house to help on that planning and so we've scaled a lot. I mean it's funny. I look back and we started our fees were $200 a month, $250 or $300. And now our fees are $12,000, $16,000 or $25,000, just depending on your employee, business owner and then for complex situations. So a lot has changed since the last time that we've talked just who we work with, how we work with people and where we're finding that people really what they really want out of a good planning team.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I mean, let's dive into that, because I remember, like when we talked originally, we had like a phone call and you're like, hey, man, I think I'm going to launch my own firm. I was like, well, that's super exciting, getting ready to do it. And then you did it and that was a big deal. And I know that in the beginning it's like holy crap, I'm doing this, this is going to be interesting. There's a million things to focus on. You're always a solid content creator, but if you could talk to Thomas that was starting All Street back in the day, knowing where you're at now, what's some of the perspective that you gained and what would you contribute to some of that success? Man, now, I mean, what's some of the perspective that you gained and what?
Speaker 3:would you contribute to some of that success, man? Yeah, I mean, I think some of the things that I did right was focusing on content early, because not only did that become the thing that drove all of this to our firm, right, I mean, I think this year we'll probably add 50 households at a minimum fee of 12,000 or above, and that's not something that's normal, right, like you have to have a really good marketing channel to drive people there, which is what Twitter is for. X is for all street wealth. But I think the even better thing that did for me is it forced me to learn faster than you ever would without it, right? So all I was saying is I need to become a better planner. I feel like I know quite a bit, but I have just this. Like you know, I think I'm always driven by this insecurity that I could always be better, and so I think I take that into like great, well, I got to be better then and so, like anything I had to learn, I turned into content and so, you know, early on my content we were like man, he knows a lot, but it's really like I'm learning this, right, Like I am learning this.
Speaker 3:So I'm reading, I'm listening, I'm writing and then I'm teaching and then I'm helping clients on it, and so you know, part of the issue in our industry is that you don't get real experience almost anywhere, right? There's not that many good planning firms, and of the good planning firms, 98% are going to be for retirees, right? There's not a lot of places you can go learn how to help high income business owners with their personal and their business. So I had to go learn that myself, and I think for me that was the best thing, because I've always been driven on sink or swim. Figure it out, or your business isn't going to really make it, and so I think that pressure and creating the content and everything was probably the best thing I could have done.
Speaker 3:And, looking back, I think I wish I would have raised fees earlier, because now I look across my client base and I have just under 100 clients and 60 of them are great and they amount for 95% of our revenue, and so I just have this thing of like. Maybe I shouldn't have taken on some of these early clients, but the thing is we've added a lot of value. It's been good. We've been really helpful to them. I don't know who would have helped them. It's just going to create this hard thing over the next year or so, to be like hey, I have another advisor I can send you to, but I can't work with 200 clients and so I want to have this very ideal 100 clients that are high fee.
Speaker 2:Very cool. So that's how you see scaling your business. You're going to grow to 100 preferred households and you're going to be able to service them accordingly, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's hard to say what the right number is until we get through a full year of those reviews, because you know, I do the math on, like how many meetings can we do? How many meetings do I want to do? What are the required meetings I have to do with my clients to be valuable? And how do I create enough space that when my clients need me it's not two months away? Because I have 30 client meetings a week. That isn't really manageable.
Speaker 3:I think it's going to be between 100 and 150, but I also have full-time ops person, full-time EA planner and me around my client base. So I mean that's 120 hours a week per for around our clients. And I'll probably hire one more person to do more of, like you know, more background type work of like CR, maybe not CRM, but like financial planning software. Like we write financial plans and they have to get built into Canva that takes a long time, like could they take that whole part off of it. Onboarding comes in, can they get everything right and write capital, versus my EA having to do that.
Speaker 3:So I think every month I look back and I'm like we are so much more efficient than we were before because we have three people, all in different lanes and all getting better in that lane, that it's hard to say what capacity is, because my ops person's only been here for three months, and that freed up a bunch of time. And then Trayton, my co-founder I've hired him recently. He edits my podcast, he distributes my YouTube, distributes my newsletter, edits my newsletter a bunch of stuff. So now I'm freeing up more time that way. So I'm just trying to keep freeing up more and more time to work with more clients, because it's way cheaper to do that than not be able to take on another client.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. I mean delegation is one thing that you've gotten really good at, and obviously you left the solopreneur thing a while back. You haven't been doing that for a while now.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of advisors who are like, man, I just never want to have to manage people and what I've realized is it's because they've never done it, because I'm not managing people. I'm working together on a team and everybody gets to be with an area they love to do. Because, like you think about the role of being the solopreneur and doing all the planning, all the paperwork, all the billing, all the compliance, like you ask anybody, there's not one of you. One person's going to tell you they love all those roles and my thought is, why wouldn't I hire them then? And then I realized how amazing this was, because the last week my EA and my ops person was gone and I was like this sucks.
Speaker 3:It's so much more fun to work on things together. It's so much more fun to not have to focus in on a thousand tasks but focus in on specific tasks. And there's just no argument that our business will probably make three to four X the revenue we would than if I was a solo Purdue or like it's. There's just no way around it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I'm reading this book right now and it talks about like decentralized leadership and being able to, as an owner of a company, like give up responsibility for some of those pieces of the business that you just don't want to work on, right?
Speaker 1:So like you don't want to do the canvas stuff, you don't want to do the newsletters, and it's like okay, but leave it up to somebody like Trayton, who's insanely talented at graphic design, insanely talented at website design, all that stuff, to leave you to do what you want to do. So now, that's interesting that you said that, because you kind of find yourself at a crossroads. No doubt, with the lead flow that you have, the revenue that you guys are bringing it in, you could continue to go and go and go hire advisors, take the enterprise route, but it sounds like you're pretty happy getting to like a very highly specialized, high fee, complex planning and be like I'm cool with that, like there's no temptation, especially from that insecurity, of wanting to be better and do the next thing to, you know, do the enterprise thing. Are you feeling pretty good?
Speaker 3:I'm a big question mark on what I'll do there because I have this whole side of like. I can basically give a true financial planner the dream role. Just be a financial planner, I'll give you the clients. You don't have to worry about anything. Literally, come be a financial planner and specialize in something. And so the reason why I'm waiting to hire is because I just don't know if I want to do it. If I hire, I'm going to hire a lot. I'm going to have retirees, I'm going to have equity comp, I'm going to have medical professionals, like I'm going to source all of the experts and I will give them all. The clients have to just become manager of the entire business, because I still want to be grower. I'll still be the person that drives them in, I'll still be the person that converts them and gets them to the right advisor, and I still would want to work with a segment of clients. That's one option. The other option is I will raise my minimum fee to be $25,000 to $50,000 a year minimum and I'll have 100 clients and you'll have some above that, because I do have some AUM clients that are higher than that now. But if you get an average fee of 30-some thousand a year, 100 clients, 3 million. You pay your team.
Speaker 3:Well, it's hard to argue that that's not a great life, but I've known myself and until this job, my whole life was basketball. Get really put as much work in, always try to get better. Ball get really put as much work in, always try to get better. And I have this thought that if, as soon as I transitioned to like, maintain my business, sure, like, can you find things to improve and be better on? Yeah, but I feel like I'm just I like building and so I think I will go to that, but I'm not forcing myself into that until I know I want to do that. So it's this hard side of things. I can see myself going both ways. I could see that being really, really great.
Speaker 3:And then I could also see, like you know, then what if that person leaves? And now, oh my gosh, now we have all these extra clients Do I have to take? What if the people manager I oversee them leaves? And now I have to oversee them? You know it becomes this like you come work with me, you get 80% of your client revenue, 20% goes back to the business. Because I'm just like, what do we get out of that? And what do you really get out of that? You get compliance, the firm, the brand, everything. Like if I'm going to do it, it's going to be somebody who doesn't care about sales and their job is, hey, you manage a million of client revenue. You get paid $400,000 a year. It's a really good life for you and, like I, get to commoditize the brand and what we bring in. But, like you know, I've had people who are really good marketers want to join all street. I'm just like I just don't see the mutual win there, right, like there for me to have to oversee somebody, have the compliance issues, all those things that come along and have to be like hey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really good point because so many people they think that just hiring bodies get better and deliver more value and do more of what our clients want, because there isn't again, there isn't a path to doing working with who we work with really right.
Speaker 3:There's like the family offices and then there's like financial planners who don't really do full planning for business owners. It's a lot of product sales, you know they don't really know about tax and so, like you know really every quarter, every, you know every. We're like what can we do better for our clients? Where are the pain points? What are they're asking? Perfect one that we've been finding right now is people don't pay their quarterly taxes. You can tell them when, you can tell them how much, like hey, go get this done. They do it after the meeting but then they forget the next ones.
Speaker 3:So now we're building workflows and process around every client emails before what they owe, when to do it right, and that's a huge value add because they're avoiding penalties. They don't have to think and remember it. Their CPA isn't doing it for them. So we're just constantly trying to find those little things that add a lot of value and we're really building that communication side of things and we're building out their team. So now we have a few very good CPAs we found who partner with us. Great client, you don't have a good CPA, here's a new one. We'll update them on your situation. We'll sign paperwork that we can share everything between each other. We'll prep for meetings together. They'll come to planning meetings afterwards. They already know what they need to get done. You don't have to communicate because we found that that was a huge issue, right them communicating with their CPA, getting them to respond every two weeks and so we're forcing them to come on the proactive side and meet on a regular basis.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. I mean, man, one of the biggest parts of your practice, your business has always been content creation. You're amazing at it. You do a really good job. Your follower count's constantly gone up. It's just been a big deal. I mean, it's a big thing for you. A lot of people look at you and it's funny how many advisor intro meetings that I'm in they're like yeah, you know Thomas Copeland, like I want to do my marketing like him, like I do know him. He's really good at it. So for some of those people that are aspiring to kind of get into that, or you know, kind of following your footsteps of the way that you've been able to build it and quickly for you to build that kind of following, but even if they do it slowly and it's a slow roll, what would be your advice? I know there's always the consistency thing, but what have you seen really work there and what advice would you give planners that are trying to focus on that stuff more?
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you. Appreciate the kind words I'll say. First one I'm going to plug the social media course that we built, which is allstreetacademycom slash advisor. So me, trey and Rachel Camp, who I think are all great marketers, we spent a ton of time doing this because it's the number one thing I get asked. I probably get 20 plus advisors a week saying can I meet and sit down with you? And I don't do any more advisor one-on-ones because I did so many for so long and right now, like I've no available time and so I try to put out resources like this to talk about it. You know I have my Kitsis blog. You know I've been on a bunch of other podcasts talking about it, but the course is packaged everything from like teaching people what marketing is as an advisor Cause.
Speaker 3:I think the first issue is that people think it's marketing like you're selling a shoe or like selling a t-shirt from Nike, when in reality, like this is personal branding. All you're trying to do is say here's who I am, here's what I believe, here's what I know. Whenever you need that help, reach out to me. And if you look at most advisors' marketing, that is not at all what they're trying to do. They're trying to tell you why that advisor is bad. They're trying to sit over there and talk about their firm when really yours should be about. Here's the pain points I know my people have Let me constantly talk about and educate them around it.
Speaker 3:The big thing here a few things. One of them is don't only talk about the unique things to them. I had an advisor reach out. I was like dude, I feel like I'm running out of content ideas. I'm like great, who do you work with? He's like teachers in California. He's like I'm talking about this, this and this. I'm like well, what about budgeting? What about Roth IRAs? What about saving for retirement? He's like, yeah, but that's not unique to them, it doesn't matter. They need to know that. Right, they still need to learn all of the things that relate to everybody's financial life, plus the things that are nuanced and unique to them.
Speaker 3:So I think the biggest piece of advice is think about that one client that you really want to work with, think about the questions they have and then just go by every area of personal finance, cash debt, investing, retirement insurances, estate planning, business planning, equity comp all those things and if you ask any advisor to tell me 20 facts about all of them. They could, but they'll tell you that they can't come up with content. Right, just literally go down the list, create posts and then create opposites. Right, you could talk about how Roth IRAs are great. Then you could talk about the opposite. Right. Here's times you wouldn't contribute to your Roth IRA, or there's just so many different ways to do it and then repurpose your old content.
Speaker 3:So I think that's the best thing that I've become really good at is people look at my content. Nobody would know whether my content is new or old. Right, why? Because you don't remember my content from six to 12 months ago. If you do, well, then that means my content was so good it's stuck in your mind that that's already a win.
Speaker 3:But I'd say 80% of the content I post is repurposed. Maybe it's edited slightly, maybe it's the exact same, maybe it's expanded, maybe it's shortened, but in general, I repurpose over and over and over the best content. And how I always tell people about this is Justin Welsh, one of the best creators out there. He has this quote that says don't show me your new content, show me your best content. So I look backwards. I had 15,000 followers to start this year, I think the year before I was at 7,500, the year before I was at 800, right, so that means I have almost 15,000 new people, right? The people who've been following me before that, the original 15,000, they probably were going to work with me by now if they were gonna, so I'm not really worried if they're like oh, I've seen your post, because I need to put out my best content to my new followers so they can learn from me on those best pieces as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, to my new followers so they can learn from me on those best pieces as well. Yeah, those are a bunch of goodies right there. Everyone better take out their pen and paper for that. So, thomas, I mean you put out so much and I mean you really know your numbers and efficiency. Like, are there any tools or technologies that you're using that are really helping you on the day to day?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mean I use hype theory to schedule Twitter, linkedin. I still schedule, you know, inside, because all I do is post to Twitter what did well on Twitter. Schedule that to LinkedIn, because I do way less on LinkedIn than what I do Twitter. So I really am only creating once, originally on Twitter. I'm scheduling through there, I'm scheduling blogs through there. You know that's probably the most impactful piece of content Because, again, if I do a lot of threads, scheduling threads versus having to go post that day is obviously a big game changer.
Speaker 3:I think there's a lot of good tools on video that I don't edit my own video anymore, so I'm not the expert there. But I think if you are doing video, there's Opus, which you could put in this podcast. It's going to cut clips for you and you can find the right one. There's different ones that'll do kind of all the wording, subtitle type things if you want. But in general I would say if I was just picking one piece of content or one piece of tech to use content wise, it would be Hypefury. And because the biggest thing is right, if I go to LinkedIn, I'm like here's the post I. And because the biggest thing is right if I go to LinkedIn, I'm like here's the post I got to go, click October 29th at noon, hype Fury. I schedule like I want to post at eight noon and five and I just type and it just moves it to the next available one, which is a lot cleaner and easier than any of the other ways.
Speaker 1:For sure, for sure. Well, man, you're always full of golden nuggets. Definitely appreciate the time. Anything else you want to bring to the table before we let you go?
Speaker 3:I mean, I just think maybe I didn't go into too much advice on the content side of things, but I think the other thing too for most people that they need to know is like one start small, just do something that you know you're not going to give up on, because the biggest thing on all content is that most people give up before they see any success. Success takes a while. So start small, become good at it, but understand that you're not going to win very much business or very many new clients by not being active. And so if I think about a channel like Twitter, in general the post is up for a couple hours, unless it's a really great one that maybe lasts a day. So the statistic I've seen is 20% of your audience sees each post. So if I think about that, right, if I have three posts a week, 12 a month, half of them aren't educational. You know six. That means my average audience is going to see like one post a month, and maybe that wasn't even relevant to their situation.
Speaker 3:And so I think a lot of times people think, great, I put out a few posts, I'm going to get clients in a few months, and that's just not the sales cycle or how it works at all. Really, what you're doing is staying in front of them, educating them, and then all of a sudden, their business blew up and they're like gosh, I have this huge tax bill I know Thomas can help me on that right or got a new job. I have all this equity comp. Thomas has been educating me on equity comp for years. I'm going to reach out to him. That sales cycle is just very different than how people think of it. You're not putting a post and they're like that's super smart. I got to work with him, unless they were already at that pain point and already searching. So start small, expand on it, understand that activity wins and it's really just all about nurturing people. I think that would be the biggest piece of advice I have.
Speaker 1:Yeah, stay on top of mind.
Speaker 3:Exactly that's the only goal right Be on their mind when they think they need help from an advisor.
Speaker 2:Yep For sure.
Speaker 1:Well, cool man. Well, thank you so much for the time Always great. We will link your social media down below and also the link to that course if you guys want to check it out. Definitely worth checking out and be sure to follow, thomas man. Thanks so much. It's always good to talk to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me on guys All right, thanks, thomas.