Niche Mastery in Finance with Emily Haberkern

Charlie Van Derven: 0:16

Hello and thank you for tuning into another episode of RIA Collective. I'm your host, Charlie Van Derven. We're joined today by Emily Haberkern. Emily is with Evangelista & Associates in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We're going to talk a little bit about niche marketing because they're in such a great place. And actually, I didn't know the name of the firm. I knew the name of the website before I knew the name of the firm, Emily, because you guys have done an absolutely awesome job in niching down in your marketing. So we're going to get your story today, Emily. And of course, at RIA Collective, we're going to learn what you did well on this transition into working with Evangelista & Associates. We're going to learn a little bit about maybe what you didn't do so well. Right. And maybe it was something you might change from your past. So before I go any further, Emily, because I tend to drag on a little bit, welcome and thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to spend it with me and our listeners.

Emily Haberkern: 1:09

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Charlie Van Derven: 1:11

Yeah, you got it. You got a fun track record. And so everybody in this industry seems to have a unique path. Emily, I'm excited to learn more about yours. Of course, I got the details, but we'll bring that to our listeners. It wasn't always easy. Doesn't sound like.

Emily Haberkern: 1:28

No, it has not been easy. But some may call me stubborn. I was never willing to settle for a place I knew wasn't going to fit for me long term.

Charlie Van Derven: 1:39

Yeah.

Emily Haberkern: 1:40

I think working with clients, unless you really believe in what you're offering from a solution standpoint, the way that you're offering it, all the philosophies of the firm, to me, unless I could align with every single thing in a company, it wasn't going to work for me.

Charlie Van Derven: 1:53

That's awesome. Stubborn. You might want to use that word. I'll use persistent. I'll also say you knew what you wanted, so be stubborn, right? As far as I know, we only get one go around. So spend it doing something you love doing instead of something you know you're going to hate doing. Let's start with that. You spent some time with a couple of larger firms, captive firms, and that doesn't sound like it was a great experience. Part of that was, of course, mindset, which we'll talk about. But you mentioned to me that part of that was gender. Right? Part of it was scratching and clawing as a woman coming up in a large firm that will leave names out of it. We don't have to do that. We're not trying to bastardize anybody here. So talk about that. What was it like, especially interning, right? What was it like being a young woman coming up in one of these firms?

Emily Haberkern: 2:45

Yeah. Obviously it's a male dominated field across the board. I just don't know that I've ever had any issues on that front. On the independent side, I really only felt like was treated maybe a little bit different on the captive side. And really just with the first captive agency I worked with, we had one morning that were in training with the intern manager, and were doing a role play where he was the advisor and I was acting as the client, and he was asking me how much money I made, and he asked me how much money my husband made. I don't remember the numbers, but I want to say that I said I was making 80,000 and my husband was making 70 or something. And he couldn't stop laughing. He thought that was hysterical, that I thought I would make more money than my husband someday.

Charlie Van Derven: 3:28

Wow.

Emily Haberkern: 3:29

Which was just this completely fictitious role play. Like it wasn't real life. But that was eye opening to me at the moment that he thought that was so funny that to think that a woman was going to be making more.

Charlie Van Derven: 3:41

Look condescending.

Emily Haberkern: 3:42

It was a little. And I found out later into that internship, one of the main reasons they had hired me was because I was female, and they thought if they hired me, that would convince other women to come on board, which I think they thought telling me that was a compliment, but it was a little offensive to think that was the only value I brought, was to do child work.

Charlie Van Derven: 4:05

I'm going to announce to the world on paper, my wife makes more than I do, too. We were partners and social advisors, and then she's a photographer on the side of that. So her income from photography. Yeah, listen, I hope she makes all the money. I'll go snowboarding. No, that's not realistic. But how stinking. Condescending.

Emily Haberkern: 4:28

Yeah, it was. It was just a couple of warning signs, that lawn serum. I knew working there wasn't going to work out for me.

Charlie Van Derven: 4:35

So the gender, let's call it discrimination. I think it's fair to say that, right? The affirmative action mindset, hey, if we hire a woman, more women will come over. Those are weird things, outdated things. But then I think a lot of the captive firms in our industry are a little bit outdated in much of what they do. I still hear advisors have to write down their 250 closest people to them. And then let's spam the hell out of family members and friends to see if we can't get clients.

Emily Haberkern: 5:07

That was the deal with both captive agencies I worked at.

Charlie Van Derven: 5:12

Still pretty standard. That's crazy to me. I've told this story. I'll be brief, but I told this story on the show a couple of times, so our listeners may. This may be redundant for our listeners. I've got bad knees. I'm 50 years old. I've been an athlete most of my life. Right. So my joints suffered. I started drinking this juice called Mona V that had glucosamine in it. Emily made me feel great. It was an MLM. And so I decided, I'm going to change the world. Right? This juice has been so good for me, but of course it would, right? You get your daily dose of fruits and vegetables, plus a little glucose amine for your joints. I bought the sticker for the car, and then everywhere I went, I was the juice guy, right? I think the sticker lasted on the car, like, six days or seven days before I pulled that sucker off. But I say that only to say how weird that is to have to approach your uncles and your aunts and your cousins and your parents friends. That's really a weird dynamic. Now all of a sudden, they're afraid for you to show up at family reunions.

Emily Haberkern: 6:18

Yes, dynamic. I work very hard to keep my personal life and my work life a safe wall between those two.

Charlie Van Derven: 6:27

Yeah. Well, thank God you knew what you didn't want.

Emily Haberkern: 6:31

Yes.

Charlie Van Derven: 6:32

Right. We're going back to those captive firms were like 20 10, 20 11, 20 12. And then you find Evangelista & Associates, what, 2014? Is that?

Emily Haberkern: 6:45

Right? Yes. So I had worked at another independent agent in between, but I've been at Evangelista & Associates for a long time here.

Charlie Van Derven: 6:52

That's awesome. And it was small at the time, right?

Emily Haberkern: 6:56

It was. So when I first started, it was just John Evangelista, the principal of the firm, Kelly, his assistant. And then I started as a pair planner on the team. So there was just three of.

Charlie Van Derven: 7:08

And what is. How big is the firm now?

Emily Haberkern: 7:11

And now we actually have five advisors on the team, including myself, an equal number of support staff, and always hiring, growing very quickly.

Charlie Van Derven: 7:21

Very cool. Well, before we close out, ideally, we've got advisors that are looking for that escape from captive. So before we close out, we'll get your contact information in case anybody is looking for a soft landing place and perhaps they want to reach out. And if they fit, right? I mean, not for everybody, but if it's the right person. Maybe we can make a connection.

Emily Haberkern: 7:43

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say, because I've changed roles a few times, I've had my experience in job searching. And how do you find a connection with a small firm? Because there are small firms, and it's hard to make that connection. So where do you go? Who do you talk to? What do you look for? So I'm happy to help if people are looking for resources.

Charlie Van Derven: 8:04

Tell me, what was it about Evangelista that excited you? You came out of environments that were not right for you. So what was it that you saw in this small ria that was exciting and attracted you to the firm?

Emily Haberkern: 8:16

I love the niche here. So I love specializing, working with university faculty and staff, so black and white from the list of family and friends. So working with people based off of what we are able to do for them specifically, it's really been an underserved communitY. They have great benefits, but not a lot of people teaching them how to use them. And so it's been a great fit. So I enjoyed that side of things. And our firm is extremely planning oriented. And I always had the background of being analytic mindset and loving crunching the numbers and doing every detail I can possibly find. I get to do that here.

Charlie Van Derven: 8:54

Thank you. For the brain that's motivated by that, because that's the stuff that makes my eyes glaze. So, listen, we all need somebody on our team that'll do that, whether it's our personal team or our professional team. My brain is big thinking, and then I need people to assemble the pieces. So complementary, I suppose.

Emily Haberkern: 9:13

Yeah. Which is the case for most of our clients hate this stuff. That's why they work with us.

Charlie Van Derven: 9:18

Yeah, exactly. And trust you. And that's great. So you let the cat out of the bag on the niche. Niche. Whatever. Marketing. Right. Let's tap into that a little bit. I asked you when we met a few weeks ago, I said, tell me something good that you guys, as a firm, have done, and you brought up the niche marketing. It reinforces something I tell every advisor I talk to, right. Is really get narrow, understand who you serve, the value you create, so that all your messaging can pertain to those people. Now, the website is Universitywealth.com. I thought that was the name of the firm.

Emily Haberkern: 10:02

And there's a lot of clients that come in here thinking that it's pretty normal. It's on the front of our office. It's on our website. It's on our email addresses. It's out there.

Charlie Van Derven: 10:13

It's awesome. How great is that? That it's not necessarily the name of the firm? And I hope, you know, John doesn't get his feelings hurt that not everybody knows his last name. Right?

Emily Haberkern: 10:25

Yeah.

Charlie Van Derven: 10:25

But love that you guys have gone so far as that. Your domain name, not just your website messaging, not just your social, your emails, and all the other marketing that you do, but your domain name pertains directly to that niche as well.

Emily Haberkern: 10:39

Yeah. I'll credit John for making those decisions. Early on in the business, before I even came along of everything was university across the board and done very well for our clients over the years. It's done very well for the firm over the years. And there's a lot of good advisors out there. And I would say we do very good service for our clients. But compared to other advisors within the university community, there's just no comparison. The things we know about their benefits, about the retirement plans, other people just don't even know. They just don't have the capacity to help them the way that we can.

Charlie Van Derven: 11:11

Yeah. As generalists. Right. They're handling so many other cases, whereas you guys can get really narrow. I mean, if we relate it to healthcare, for example, you wouldn't go to a general practitioner to have your knee fixed.

Emily Haberkern: 11:23

Exactly.

Charlie Van Derven: 11:25

That's awesome. Tell me a little bit more about attracting that niche right now. Here's the stats, just as an FYI. And I don't know if you know these, Emily, or not, but I'll get the numbers close. As of, I believe FINRA's number 2021 is like 612,000 registered reps in the country.

Emily Haberkern: 11:46

Okay.

Charlie Van Derven: 11:47

If you put the iars on top of that may not have a series seven. It's like 65 additional. 65,000 additional. So we're talking in the ballpark of 680,000 financial advisors in the US. Now, we know not everybody's practicing right, but greater than 50% are right. So that's 300 and 5400 thousand professionals that I'll tell you, eight out of ten advisors I talk to say, oh, Charlie, I'm looking for that pre retiree, 55 to 65. So long as they've got money, I want to work with them. And you go, wow, good luck, dude. Good luck. That's a really competitive place. But when you get very specific, your messaging speaks directly to your audience, you remove your competition, and at some point, and I imagine year nine into Evangelista, at some point, you become de facto for that audience.

Emily Haberkern: 12:44

Yeah, I was going to say we. Well, a lot of it's University of Michigan. Just because we're in Ann Arbor. So we have a number of other universities we work with as well. But I would say the bulk of it is University of Michigan. But we found once we work with one person in a department somewhere at the university, then word just spreads. And we have several departments. We work with pretty much every single person in that department.

Charlie Van Derven: 13:05

Yeah.

Emily Haberkern: 13:05

Once people know that we're out there and we exist, it spreads very quickly.

Charlie Van Derven: 13:10

It's so awesome. I mean, it really is. You guys are a perfect case study for niche marketing. Good job. If you're watching on YouTube, you know, I'm applauding. If you're listening, maybe you can hear that in the background. All right, that's the good. Emily, let me ask you about the bad. As you look back on, you come out of those captive environments. You're looking for that next step in your career. If you look back on that time, is there anything that you'd change?

Emily Haberkern: 13:40

I don't know if there's anything that I would change. Just because I think every firm I went to that wasn't a good fit taught me more of what I was looking for. So it helped me get closer and closer over time. I would say when I left the second captive agency, I didn't have another job lined up and I don't regret it. As soon as I knew I wasn't going to stay there long term, it didn't feel right to me to keep talking to clients as though I was going to stay there forever. I didn't think that was fair to the clients. And so I think that was the right decision to leave. It was just obviously harder on me to be leaving without another role lined up and start searching from scratch all over again. So I'm not going to say it was easy, but I would have done the exact same thing all over again.

Charlie Van Derven: 14:24

Yeah. So maybe if there's a little piece of advice in there, know what the next step is before you jump off the first one or something.

Emily Haberkern: 14:31

Yeah. And I would say, as much as people can keep an open network, especially if someone's looking in the RIA space, I think there's such a good community of people that want to help other people and the more you can stay connected and then when you are out of position, you can reach out and say, hey, I'm looking. And then that person might not be hiring, but they might know their friend who's also in the industry, that is. And so it's a very close knit community if you can start to create some ties there.

Charlie Van Derven: 14:56

Listen, I love that, and I'll elaborate upon. I had a meeting with a young man who actually, I spoke to his graduating class at Utah State. I think it was a financial planning program or whatever the name, gosh, five, six, seven years ago. And he's between things and reached out to see who I knew. So I gave him a couple suggestions and people to reach out to and tried to pave that path. But you make a really important point, right? If you're sitting at a Morgan or a Merrill or one of these large firms and you know it's not a right environment for you, start using LinkedIn and LinkedIn. That's how you and I met Emily. It's pretty much how I meet everybody I know now, professionally anyway. So start using LinkedIn to reach out to RIAS in your area.

Emily Haberkern: 15:44

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say if someone's ever looking to stay in the same area, local FPA chapters do a ton of events to bring people together, too, which is great.

Charlie Van Derven: 15:55

Yeah, absolutely. Wonderful suggestion. The other thing you mentioned, and I'll second this, so in 25 years, I've worked really exclusively with Wirehouses. I worked with independent broker dealers. I do a lot of work with RIAS. Now it seems like. What's the word I want to use? It seems like this space, the RIA space, is the most. God, I hate to alienate anybody when I say this, but it's almost the most nurturing and giving portion of our industry. Right. It is the purest. Right. Anyway, so all my friends in a captive environment, I'm sorry for saying that, but it's the truth, right? The people I've met that have made that transition over the years are seeking something different than the traditional industry gives them. Hence the move. So when you reach out to RiAs, you will be typically met with reception. Warm reception, I was going to say.

Emily Haberkern: 16:54

And even, like I said, if you're talking to someone and they're not hiring, they usually know someone else. That.

Charlie Van Derven: 17:00

So? Yeah. Really, really cool suggestions. Emily, you mentioned earlier the firm is always growing. So you're okay being a resource if one of our listeners wants to reach out and say hi?

Emily Haberkern: 17:10

Yeah, absolutely.

Charlie Van Derven: 17:11

Cool. What's the best way to find you?

Emily Haberkern: 17:14

Probably LinkedIn, I would say, is the easiest, or email. So I already mentioned our email is the same as the website, so it's just. Emily, at university Wealth.

Charlie Van Derven: 17:26

I can vouch for the fact that you're very responsive on LinkedIn.

Emily Haberkern: 17:30

I try to be.

Charlie Van Derven: 17:32

Well, that happens to me, too. I mean, I try to spend a portion of my day every day on the platform, but sometimes a day or two might go by.

Emily Haberkern: 17:39

Yeah, exactly.

Charlie Van Derven: 17:42

But I do know you get back because that's how we started chatting. Tell me a little bit about personal goals and goals of the firm. I mean, where are you guys headed? The growth has been pretty great over the last eight or nine years since John propped up the firm.

Emily Haberkern: 17:57

Yeah, I was going to say there's still a huge group within University of Michigan that we haven't worked with yet. There's over 50,000 people that work there. So there's a large body of employees that we can help. But we also feel so strongly in what we've been able to do within this local community that our goal, long term would be able to bring that to other communities as well. To other university communities.

Charlie Van Derven: 18:21

Well, I love it and what a great model you guys have created. So if there's an advisor in another university town, listen, I've been to Ann Arbor a few times. What a fun town. You can get a lot of trouble in that town if you're a young person.

Emily Haberkern: 18:34

It is a very unique town and has things that you're not going to see anywhere else.

Charlie Van Derven: 18:39

Yeah, it's a lot of fun to hang out. We're both big Ten people. I grew up in Wisconsin, so I love that rivalry. But I really enjoy any time I spend in Ann Arbor. I liken it to Madison when were 1819 years old and looking for trouble, looking for fun, but finding trouble. It was often in Madison, Wisconsin. Yeah, cool Town. Emily, thank you so much. I appreciate you sharing our story. I think if there's other young women out there that have had the same experience as you as in one of these large traditional firms, and I'll let you know. I think someone told me a couple of weeks ago, 13% of advisors are women. So it is really an underserved portion of our industry. And this gives me an opportunity to plug my friend Sheryl Hickerson. Sheryl's awesome. Emily, if you don't know and others who are listening, females in finance is a group that she runs, so you can find them on LinkedIn or their website. I think it's femalesandfinance.com. Anyway, they're all over the place. Sheryl does a great job and is such a great resource for women and for women in the industry, but also men who are allied in supporting the growth of women in the.

Emily Haberkern: 19:54

Say, outside of just those experiences. I mean, being a mom and a financial advisor in general has its own challenges. So anyone that's looking for support, I'm happy to offer it.

Charlie Van Derven: 20:05

That is awesome. Emily, that is cool. And hit up my friend Sheryl. I think it's like a six or A-9-A month.

Emily Haberkern: 20:11

All right, I'll check it out.

Charlie Van Derven: 20:13

And she's so active. She does such a great job.

Emily Haberkern: 20:16

Yeah.

Charlie Van Derven: 20:17

Emily Haberkern, pardon me, at, I want to say university wealth, though, that's the website. You guys have done such a good job with your niche at Evangelista & Associates in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Thanks for being here and sharing your story with our listeners.

Emily Haberkern: 20:30

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Charlie Van Derven: 20:32

Got it. On behalf of myself, Charlie Van Derven and my guest today, Emily Haberkern. And we want to thank you, all of our listeners, for taking some time out of your day. We hope that you learned something. If you've got any questions whatsoever, you can find us at RIAcollective.com. If you know somebody I should interview, pass them along. Emily is at Emily@university-wealth.com. So now we don't do big sponsorship. Maybe one day, but this isn't a money making piece of our business or anything like that. So we are really sincerely trying to give captive advisors the confidence to move to independence. There is a world out there for you. So if you know anybody that needs to hear this message, please share the podcast with them. And of course, if you review us and like us on your favorite listening platform, we get a little more exposure. So thank you for helping us grow. And Emily, once again, thanks for being here today.

Emily Haberkern: 21:27

Yeah, thanks for having me. Have a good one.