Julie Pinkerton, CLU®, ChFC®, LUTCF®'s Linkedin Analytics

I never do New Year's Resolutions. Rather, I had Plan B and updated it for 31 years with new knowledge, experience and a robust network. In 2017, it was time. It took several years to bootstrap the technical development plus the pandemic. In 2021, we went live and haven’t looked back. Tax, legal, investment, insurance & trust professionals state these challenges: * Scaling practices * Increasing women/minority representation * Creating a high firm valuation. ▶︎ The missing ingredient? Organic growth. It’s the leading problem every.single.day. With the surging stock market and easy M&A money, firms had practically stopped marketing. When the winds turned, advisors had to suddenly learn social media while navigating websites and lead services. Overhead rose; results were less than ideal. Financial advisors say they get 64% of their referrals from existing clients. But, they hate asking. ▶︎ The highest quality and most profitable referrals come from other professionals. 89% of high net worth clients find their financial advisors through their CPA and attorney. ▶︎ The most valuable person in a firm is a Rainmaker. Rainmakers make revenue happen by strategic peer-to-peer networking. But, they have no easy way to connect to each other. It could take hours, days (or never) to find "a good estate planning attorney in Austin". Clients demand experience, credentials, niche markets and native languages. If geography is challenging, think how impossible it is to search for all of these needs. The country is on the move, too. Geography no longer matters. Advisors are losing clients as they vacate certain states. Advisors themselves are moving to mountain cabins, lake houses and even abroad. Networks desperately need updating so that they can find the BEST professional for a given problem, not just the closest one to their office. ✅ We created ClientFirst, the only national, fully-diverse network of and for independent Rainmakers in the investment, insurance, law, tax and trust professions. ✅ What used to take days and typically got poor results, now takes less than 90 seconds. It has been a real joy for me to see individuals, firms and enterprises taking note of our growth. Every day we add more top-notch professionals. Our growth allows us to give back, too through OneGenAway, a TN 501(c)(3) that is feeding America. The bulk of our professionals choose Tier 2 - each subscription feeds 1,186 families for a week. ClientFirst is the trademarked platform of Evozen, LLC.