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
#138 - Mastering the Income Rollercoaster: Austin Preece’s Approach to Real Estate Pros
Austin Preece went from selling insurance to building a thriving fee-only financial planning firm—by doing things differently. He rejected the traditional AUM model in favor of charging 0.5% of net worth, aligning his fees with client outcomes. When he realized a 100% prospect close rate meant his pricing was too low, he raised his fees and built a sustainable practice around clients who truly value his expertise.
Rather than broad marketing, Austin carved out a niche with real estate professionals, using his expertise in 1031 exchanges and Delaware Statutory Trusts to help agents manage feast-or-famine income cycles. From zero clients to now overseeing $40–50 million in assets, his journey is a blueprint for building a values-driven firm—and a must-listen for anyone navigating the future of financial planning.
Austin's Social:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinpreece/
Music in this episode was obtained from Bensound.
How's it going? Everyone, Welcome back to the only fee only podcast, as always. Thanks for being here and quick announcement If you are going to XYPN live next week, on Friday, the 26th, from 7 to 10 PM at least on the Corinne patio at the downtown Marriott where the conference is being held the XYPN live conference is being held. We're going to be having the BC brokerage mixer live DJ premium cocktails. We would love to see you there. If you're not into drinking, we're going to have mocktails available, so don't feel like it is just for those who are going to be having a drink. Everyone is absolutely welcome. Bring a friend.
Speaker 1:In this episode we talked to Austin Priest, who is the founder of Priest Financial Planning. He is an awesome guy. We've been able to work with him for years and he had so many great things to say from early on in the business, talking about kind of getting in on the insurance side, seeing what he liked, seeing what he didn't and finally deciding to start his own financial planning firm. So enjoy this episode without further ado, with Austin Preece 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 Travolo. I'm here with my co-host, brock Buckles, and today so excited to have Austin Preece on from Preece Financial Planning, really love watching him grow and seeing what he's doing in the financial planning space. So, austin, welcome to the show today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yes, you bet. So we've had the privilege of being able to work together, so we know who you are. But for those who don't know, do you want to give a quick overview of who you are and who you currently help?
Speaker 3:player and I've kind of been in the financial planning world ever since. I just really love the comprehensive financial planning side of things. I launched my own firm about two years ago now and I also have a small accounting practice in addition to the financial planning firm. So I do some tax prep and then I have a partner who does bookkeeping and payroll. We work with a lot of small business owners and real estate investors.
Speaker 1:Very cool man. So what made you? Where did the idea come from? How did you know that you wanted to get into financial planning and kind of pursue this? Because a lot of people feel they have a calling and then a lot of people are kind of like I think I want to do this, but then they pivot and they want to go start a planning firm. So where was all that for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think a lot of people kind of have the origin story of like. Well, there was this stock trading simulation in eighth grade and that's what mine was. So I remember doing the stock trading simulation. My dad got a degree in finance and he ran a business. Of course, by that time his degree in finance was 30 years old. So I asked him what is a stock? He did not have a good answer for me. So ever since then I've been curious and kind of doing research, learning more about finance.
Speaker 3:When I was in college, I had a role at a firm that focused more on life insurance sales, so I started to learn a little bit more about how you can help people with this stuff. You know, protect income, start Roth IRAs, and you know, then started to learn, uh, learn a lot more about um, about how much more I could do for people, you know, through tax planning and um, and you know estate planning, other types of insurance, just all the, all the wide range of stuff that's out there. Um, I've, I've always found it incredibly interesting and just all the, all the wide range of stuff that's out there, um, I've, I've always found it incredibly interesting and um, yeah, just keep on diving deeper and and love to be able to help people with it.
Speaker 2:So so after the insurance heavy position, um, if you don't mind sharing, where was it exactly?
Speaker 3:Uhica.
Speaker 2:That's insurance heavy. Did you have to sell to direct market or anything like that? What was that like?
Speaker 3:It was the standard. Write down a list of 25 of your friends and family and call them and try to sell life insurance with this pitch book. I spent about a year there. I was in college the whole time uh and kind of realized I wanted to get towards something that was a little bit more financial planning focused uh, not so much sales focused, A little bit more well-rounded, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I, after that I went to uhton Larson Allen and spent four and a half years there on the wealth wealth advisory side, learned a ton while I was there. I was a part of a great team and, just you know, a few years in was kind of thinking, you know, I, I, I, I, I characterize myself now as unemployable because I, just I, I'm a little bit too, uh, too opinionated when it comes to this stuff. I think there's a specific way that things should be done, and not that not that they weren't doing it there, it was just there were. At a large firm, Sometimes it's difficult to serve your clients the way that you feel you should be able to Um. So that, at the end of the day, is really, uh, really kind of the reason I decided to start my own firm, so that I could, you know, uh, um to serve my clients the way that I felt they deserve, to the highest, highest possible um, you know so there's.
Speaker 1:There's very much the aura when you're at a larger place like this is the way we do things here. And if, like, you don't agree with that, sometimes it's kind of like no, austin, I don't think you understand. This is the way we do things here, right, it's like OK, and you're like, well, it's not the way I'm going to do things forever, so I'm out of here. So I mean, when you decided, man, obviously, entrepreneurship, starting your own thing, all of that can be kind of a scary, intimidating thing, right, because there's a lot of different things going on. There's the finances, in the background of, like, how much runway do I have, how many clients do I have to get? The growth versus the service level. There's a lot of different things to think about. So, going into that, what were some thoughts that you had on your mind in terms of, you know, this is the way I think it's going to be versus you know, once you actually got in there, this is the way it is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean I the the runway piece was kind of the biggest, the biggest piece that I focused on. Thankfully I'm married and my wife has a normal person job, you know, gets paid a salary, has the benefits and stuff. So we were kind of able to figure out you know, if I don't make any money for the first two years, how much do we need. And we were able to, you know, fortunate, to be able to save that up. And then, from the building a business perspective, I wanted to do things really differently.
Speaker 3:I'm not a huge fan of the AUM structure, just charging based on how much you manage in assets. It tends to create too many conflicts, I think, for the way I run my business anyway. So I decided to charge based on net worth. So my fee schedule is a half a percent of net worth for financial planning, because we really are looking at a lot more than just investment. Sure, managed investments right, and with that of course you have to have a minimum fee because some people have negative net worth. So I started to kind of do the math on. Like you know, I want to serve a maximum of like 80 people myself, and then you know what does my average fee need to be in order to hit X income. Yeah, that was kind of how I went about it. And then, man, it has changed a lot since then. My minimum fee is now five times what it was when I started.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so on the negative net worth, you didn't pay them.
Speaker 3:No, I didn't Not. A great way to run a business. Believe it or not no, that's funny so.
Speaker 2:I mean, let's talk a little bit about that, about raising fees. I mean what were just kind of some thoughts behind it or some trigger points?
Speaker 3:Well, in the first few months, every meeting I had, every prospect meeting I had, they said, yeah, we'll sign up. So 100% close rate is not a good business metric and I started to be pretty busy for relatively low income. So I I kind of recognized at that point I needed to do something different. Since then, you know, I I have this I'm in the middle of raising my fee again for the third time and it's been more of a, more of a. You know, I'm comfortable where I'm at. I don't necessarily need to add a lot more clients. Um, my, my income is is in a good spot and the current clients I have will continue to pay me more. Um, so it's been more of a. You know, let's slow down people coming in the door and make sure it's worth it. If they do so, yeah, it changes as the business grows right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's crazy, man, because it really does. But I think one of the biggest things that I've heard from advisors is the thing that I did not do early enough was raise my fees Right. And because I think it's like not necessarily that it's like a scarcity mentality, but it's kind of like we just got to get people in here Right, we got to get people in the door, and I think, as a business owner, subconsciously what you're thinking in your mind is like I've got three years, or whatever it is, of runway until I'm out, and so in the beginning it's like we got to do this thing by all means necessary. And how am I ever going to get that done if I don't have anybody to work with? But then, like you said, it's like if you're closing 100% of the time, usually what that means is there's something in your process that's missing, and if you notice yourself being super busy but not feeling like you're financially compensated enough for that work, that's a pretty good idea, or pretty, you have a pretty good idea that maybe something needs to change Right.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I mean that that resonates. I mean that was I can't tell you how many I've heard that hundreds of times at least like I wish I would have set my fees higher in the beginning, because I think there is something to like knowing your value and knowing your worth and being able to look at somebody and say I know I can help you, right, like me knowing I can help you not a thing with. With that being said, I can only help so many people right, and so if you want to be one of those people, this is how much my time costs, and I don't think that's a selfish thing to do. I think it's actually an unselfish thing to do, because you can focus and concentrate more of your time actually doing good work, rather than scrambling around and trying to serve a bunch of people at once but not giving them the same level of service.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, and I mean now I'm better at it. Right, I have conversations with people who are starting businesses and there are so many people out there in helping professions that just want to help as many people as possible and really what it comes down to is, if that is what is actually driving you, then being more profitable gets you there because you can scale, you can get more people out there doing the good work, but if you're not profitable enough, you're going to run yourself out of business and not be helping anybody.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, being a fiduciary requires, you know, being a cash positive business. Yeah, being a fiduciary requires, you know, being a cash positive business. Yeah, you know it is a for profit business, believe it or not. So, austin, I mean, how have you built this thing? I mean, how do you market? You know when you started. I mean, it's pre-financial, so it's you right. So you started with zero technically on day one, but did you have anyone coming over? What was? You know what's that been like?
Speaker 3:No, I like to tell the story. I literally started my practice, I think, the first week of September in 2023. So we're really close to two years here and in that first week I spent it all pretty much doing a puzzle on the kitchen table because I didn't have any clients to serve. I was trying to get all of the all the networking up and running, you know, and I I had I had already done a lot to start my business. You know, I had built the website and, you know, started to, you know, write up blogs and, uh, and I had a bunch of scheduled social media posts, you know. So those, those types of things were all things that I was doing. Um, I also, early on, kind of how I, how I built most of my practice. I had a few people follow me but, uh, it's a pretty small portion of who I work with now.
Speaker 3:Um, but most of how I built my practice, uh, I had, um, gone through a transaction with someone who was uh selling uh real estate that they had operated their business out of their whole life, so not a real estate investor, but had invested in this real estate for business purposes and I helped them do a 1031 exchange into a Delaware statutory trust.
Speaker 3:1031 exchange into a Delaware statutory trust. So Delaware statutory trust for those who don't know private investment that invests in real estate that you can do a 1031 exchange into to defer your taxes. And the real estate agent didn't know anything about it. So I decided to start presenting to real estate agents just about 1031 exchanges, how they can help their investor clients out and some of the ways that I help real estate investors make sure that their portfolio is working for them and being tax efficient. Haven't gotten a lot of real estate investors referred to me by the real estate agents I've talked to over the years, but now I work with a ton of real estate agents because I went into these groups and showcased that, hey, I know how to work with real estate and real estate agents and, yeah, that's kind of where most of my business has come from and kind of why we focus now on real estate and entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1:See, I think I had a different question, but now I have another question because I know a lot of them and I know a lot of people in the real estate mortgage profession, right, and some of them doesn't matter where they are, they're going to keep on trucking like business has always flown in the door They've got.
Speaker 1:But real estate professionals, they also have a unique thing to worry about, and that is that the amount of interest in buying homes can definitely differ based on how the market's performing, what's going on, what interest rates are, and so what that means is some of them are absolutely going to be better about managing money than others. But it can definitely be like one of those feast or famine industries where it's like when the going's good and interest rates on houses are 1.9% or 2%, they're selling these things like hotcakes and mortgage professionals are refinancing. But when interest rates slowly start creeping up, sometimes it's not as much or the income differs from year to year. Has that been you? Has that been kind of your experience working with, working with these types of clients? And then, what have been some of the things that you've done to kind of mitigate and be like, hey, here's what we need to do to, to kind of make life more, more normal for you yeah, yeah, sure, so, great, great question.
Speaker 3:Uh, I, one of the one of the agents I work with, I, I don't think he had a single closing until the end of march this year, you know, so, like, so, yeah, it really is like sometimes it's sometimes nothing is coming in the door, uh, and then, like I, despite that, you know he's gonna have a really good year, like it, just um it, you can write up and down years, but you can also have, uh, have years where you don't have income for a few months.
Speaker 3:So the things that we, uh, the things that we talk about are having, um, having larger than usual or larger than normal, I guess, and normal in air quotes there, but larger than normal emergency funds, so that you, so that you can kind of support yourself during the months when you don't have as much coming in the door.
Speaker 3:We also because I have an accounting practice as well, a lot of times we're helping real estate agents make the S election to file as an S corp, save some money on self-employment taxes, and that as well can kind of help with cash flow stuff, because it's a different game, right, you keep more funds within the business and you pay yourself a salary so that you are covering your own, your personal expenses on a monthly basis. Um, so, yeah, those are kind of two of the things, and then one one thing that a lot of real estate agents like to do is buy up a bunch of rental properties so that they have another source of of cashflow, right. So it kind of ends up being we're helping in a few different ways. Uh, you know, know, making sure that the rental properties are working for them, taking advantage of the tax strategy that real estate professionals have available to them when they invest in real estate and, yeah, making sure that we have at least one source of some steady income and some plans for the dry spells.
Speaker 2:I love that. So I mean what are some conversations on that? Because I mean right now everyone's trying to Airbnb VRBO on top of just doing, you know, a long term rental like 12 months. I mean, what are some of those conversations like? And maybe what are some misconceptions that you're having conversations with clients and you know, setting their expectations back to reality?
Speaker 3:you know, setting their expectations back to reality, yeah, sure. So I mean, you know a lot of the short-term rental stuff. A lot of times, real estate agents in my experience, the agents that I work with oftentimes aren't doing as much of the short-term rental stuff, in part because they can get the tax benefits of. They can typically take losses from long-term rentals where, like myself, if I ran a long-term rental at a loss, I would be subject to limitations on how much loss I could take because it's a passive activity. Short-term rentals, of course, are considered active activities. So if you have a loss in a short-term rental, you can take it against active income. But for real estate professionals, they qualify for that real estate professional status. So they might just be doing long-term rentals so that they can focus more of their time on real estate sales, which is where they're going to be deriving most of their income. Um, but now that, uh, that bonus depreciation is back to a hundred percent, um, with the passage of, uh, I've been calling it, calling it OB three, one big beautiful bill.
Speaker 3:Um we, we can, you know, buy, uh, buy properties, do cost segregation studies and really accelerate a lot of that depreciation for real estate agents. So we're starting to consider some of that alongside just more traditional tax deferral options like 401ks or SEP, iras, things like that. So yeah, wow, I rambled for so long, I kind of forgot the question that you asked, but did I get?
Speaker 2:it. I think you covered it. Yes, I mean you covered it. The question was about Airbnb and VRBO short-term rentals.
Speaker 1:He gave us all the information we needed to know about it.
Speaker 1:That was perfect I feel like I could maybe go get into it now. No good man, it was good feedback, um. So, like you know all that, you're obviously an expert in your space, um, which I think brings up another point it doesn't matter where you start, it matters where you finish right, which is so cool. Like you know, a lot of people will look down at, like the, the northwestern mutuals or the primary, because theyicas or some of the places we started at Northwestern, obviously, and people are like, oh, those insurance sales guys. But I think it's so cool. You started there just because there was something that piqued your interest and now you have this wealth of knowledge you're able to take to your clients every day at Priest Financial Planning. I just think that's cool, man. So I want to commend you for that, because I think a lot of people are like you know, they're not sure where they're starting or if it's the right move, and it's like just get started and you can figure out the rest later. Yeah right, yeah. So, um, well, man, for people that are out there that are interested in potentially.
Speaker 1:Actually, there's one more question I want to ask you before we get to that one, because Because I think these are both. I like to ask these every podcast. You could go a few different directions with this thing right, so you could eventually hire some people. Hire an assistant, create a boutique, go the large-scale enterprise, have a massive RIA one day. But different things matter to different people. So what do you want to do with Priest Financial Planning in the future?
Speaker 3:Yeah, right now, now I'm on the growth trajectory. We'll see, uh, we'll see how that, uh, how that pans out. But, um, yeah, in the past, uh, gosh, in the past year, uh, I, I added an advisor. He ran his own fee only RIA, so he kind of joined in with me, um, hired an intern and uh, and have a partner in the accounting firm now so that the team is growing and we plan to keep on doing that.
Speaker 3:Um, I'm trying to get to uh, we're at we're between 40 and 50 million AUM right now and trying to get up to a hundred so that we can, you know, register with the SEC. And then we'll see to 100 so that we can register with the SEC. And then we'll see if we want to continue to keep growing from there. But right now the idea, I think, is to really grow the footprint and be able to offer really good in-depth financial planning across a team of advisors. Um, is is kind of the. The goal, you know push out, you know take, take, uh, take market share maybe from from the uh advisors out there who aren't doing quite as much, um, although there are a lot of great advisors out there doing the same stuff.
Speaker 1:I am so sure, yeah, I love it, man. And and, uh, the last question I would have would be, you know, for all the people that are out there that are maybe in their first place in finance, or maybe they're not even in finance but they want to get into it and eventually start their own firm Uh, what would be a piece of advice that you would give them that you think would be pretty impactful?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I, um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say two things, if that's okay. Cool, yeah, man, as good as you want, um, first, I, I got really good advice from one of my professors when I was in college when he saw um, saw that I had joined Primerica and I it was because I actually had a Northwestern mutual thing sitting on my desk and he was like, why don't you come talk to me after class? So I talked to him and he said what? What you should do is you should just, uh, look up advisors in the area, give them a call, email them, see if you can buy them coffee and and just ask them about their career, what they would do differently. And you know, try, try to learn from them and by the end of it you'll kind of you'll have an idea of uh of the type of advisor you want to be someday.
Speaker 1:And that that was great advice you know to to learn.
Speaker 3:for over that next summer I think I sat down with seven or eight different advisors just in my area and I mean all of us want to help people, you know like that's why we're in the industry. So no one says no to a college student uh which is just great to know, um.
Speaker 3:The second thing is try to try to get a job at an RIA. You know, um, that that does good work for people. Um, and you're going to have an idea of what that looks like after talking to all these, all these advisors that you've already reached out to, um and uh, you know, just try to do some of the get a job doing some of the behind the scenes work, not having to be out there driving sales. Um, if you're at a place that's asking you to drive sales, you're there. Their number one intention is probably not to train you in on how to how to be good at the craft. So, um, try to find some place that that is going to help you learn. Uh, cause it takes a long time to learn all this stuff. You know there's there's a lot to it. So, yeah, those are the main things. Just reach out to to other advisors and uh, and try to learn as much as you can from experience.
Speaker 2:Definitely good tips. Um, before we let you go, austin austin any um other nuggets you wanted to share or something that you're thinking about before coming on the podcast today no, I kind of wish I did, but I feel like I got to share a lot.
Speaker 1:So no, man, it's all good stuff. It's all good stuff. Well, for people that want to follow along, man, where, where? Uh, cause you put out great content. Linkedin, what's the best place?
Speaker 3:Yeah, linkedin is is probably the best place to to follow me. Um, yeah, I I. I thought I was going to do a podcast and that didn't end up panning out. I like being guests on podcasts instead, because there's less work to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so LinkedIn is the best place to find me.
Speaker 1:I also publish blog posts on my website priestfpcom every once in a while, so those will always be on LinkedIn too, though. Awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for the time. It's always great to talk to you, man, and, yeah, look forward to keeping in touch.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks.