Hiring a financial advisor could be one of the most important decisions you make—but the lack of transparency in the industry makes it risky. In this episode, James Nutter lays out 7 crucial steps to help you find the right financial planning team that truly serves your best interests.
In a re-released and highly relevant episode, James Nutter exposes the hidden realities of the financial advisory world. Drawing from his experience and past features on the Financial Residency Podcast, he outlines 7 key steps every physician should follow when hiring a financial advisor.
You'll learn why not all financial advisors are created equal, what the different licenses mean (Series 6, 7, 63, 65, 66, and CFP), and how to distinguish between transactional, reactive, and proactive advisors. James also explains why working with a fiduciary—especially one who specializes in physicians—can protect your financial future.
Whether you're looking to delegate, get coached, or go full-DIY, this episode will arm you with the knowledge to make informed, empowered decisions.
This isn’t just another finance podcast—it’s a movement. We’re challenging the status quo, cutting through the noise, and giving physicians real strategies to take control of their money and their future.
Because true wealth isn’t just about numbers—it’s about freedom.
Find and follow the show on YouTube.
James Nutter is on a mission to help physicians reclaim their financial power. With a deep understanding of the unique challenges doctors face, he provides real-world strategies that cut through the noise and lead to lasting financial freedom.
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[00:00:00] What's going on everybody? James, from I Am Wealth Here. Forget another episode of The Life Lived, a Physicians Guide to Wealth podcast where we help you take control of your money so you can live a purposeful life. And thank you so much for being here. Seriously, this has been such a joy for me to be able to create this and have our own platform to get our mission out and to help you get the real financial education that you deserve.
So we're having a ton of fun. If you tuned in to last week's episode, we're all about right now. Exposing financial advisors. There's a lot of noise going on in the world. There's a lot going on with the Department of Education. There's a lot going on in the economy. Things are volatile. The news is bombarding you left and right.
Just remember, they're competing for your attention so they can solicit you with an advertisement on the back end and they know the fight or flight response system that's programmed in your brain to grab your attention. Being negative. That's just a fun [00:01:00] aside, but it is a noisy world. So to help you cut through the noise, we are currently, or I am currently re-releasing a series that I did on the Financial Residency Podcast last year when that was still in existence.
Shout out to Dr. Tammy Krause. Thank you so much for giving me a platform and space to do this because I would not be here if that did not happen. So this series is all about. Exposing financial advisors. It's almost like the White House confidential files, but for financial advisors, right? So every single thing that you need to know to navigate a difficult time.
By finding an advisor that has your best interest at heart and will help you make decisions. So today I'm gonna walk through the seven steps to hiring the right advisory team and helping you understand everything that you need to know. The [00:02:00] truth that most advisors won't even tell you, but you need to know.
Not all financial advisors are held to the same standard of care that you're held to as a physician and for whatever reason in this country, we don't talk about it. Nobody's aware of it. There's a lot of gray area and there's a lot of physicians getting buried. So anyways, I just wanted to record this intro so you know, there might be references in it that, speak to different events.
This was recorded about six, eight months ago. The series was super relevant and I didn't want to go ahead and rerecord it because I thought, we did a great job getting the message across, so hopefully during this time, this is not a time to go hide. This is not a time to avoid having money conversations.
We find our most successful client families dig deep and dive in head first when the economy is the way that it is, or when it's in a negative time, right? It's like the Warren Buffet quote when he says, be fearful. When others are greedy, everyone's been pretty greedy since covid. The market's been booming the last three or four years, and B.
Greedy when everybody's fearful. So I [00:03:00] will let you take that with whatever you'd like. But a good advisory team should be proactive with you in both good times and bed times. And without further ado, let's jump into the series so you can get to know everything you need to know about finding a team who's gonna help you take control of your money so you can go on and live a purposeful life.
Thank you, and we'll see you inside.
What's going on everybody? Thank you as always for being here. If you were with me, the entire Financial Wellness 1 0 1 series throughout the course of the summer, give yourself a big congratulation.
If you did all the work from it, give yourself an even bigger congratulations. 'cause that is a lot. Work. Sometimes that could even take six to 12 months. And if you don't know what the heck I'm talking about, what the Financial Wellness 1 0 1 series is, I'd go back to the end of June and I think there's about at least 12 different episodes of everything that we do to help families take control of their money during our onboarding process in the first 120 days.[00:04:00]
And our goal through that entire series is to help you get it together forever. Financially. So it's almost like 120 days of pain for a lifetime gain, right? Most people go through life. Never making a plan, never being intentional, never carving out time to be intentional in 120 day period. And then they spend their whole life almost like they're, drowning, right?
The positions that you, horror, stories that you hear about living paycheck to paycheck. So it takes time, it takes intentionality. I would definitely encourage every listener, even if it takes you the next year, to go through every single episode in that series and do it from start to finish, do all the homework and action items,
I can't guarantee anything, but I can say with confidence based on results that we've seen for the 97 families that we work for, and our renewal rates being around 95% year after year that we're doing something right? So I would definitely encourage you to go through that, and our goal for you would be that you get it together forever.
You have more confidence and more clarity than you've ever [00:05:00] had before as it relates to your finances and money. So in continuing this series. We're gonna do a little bit of a pivot here. I've had a lot of great feedback from individuals that I've talked to that listened to a podcast and ended up on my calendar or whatever it might be, or downloaded one of our free resources.
And I talked to 'em on the phone and they really enjoyed the series that I did this last spring about exposing financial advisors. And this is one of my favorite topics as well. 'cause typically we built our business model about look at every, what every single financial advisor does, and then just do the opposite and it'll be really easy.
I'm joking, sorta, but I really enjoy this topic because I feel like there's a huge lack of transparency as it relates to financial advisors. There's a ton of gray area. There's a ton of financial advisors out there that are being compensated in ways that families probably don't even know about.
There might be hidden fees, there might be wrap fees on their plan. If someone's managing $3 million for you and charging 1% a year, that's $30,000 a year. [00:06:00] So is the ROI on that time worth 30,000 also, when they're managing that money for you? Is there a conflict of interest? If you need the money, if that's the only way that you're compensated and you want to take out 2 million of that 3 million, they're gonna lose 20 grand a year in revenue, right?
So they might say hey, let's hold onto it for a couple years. I don't think you're quite ready to buy that boat. I think we need to wait a few more years. So just things to think about. Huge lack of transparency, huge lack of gray area. So today. The Financial Advisors exposed series and extending the financial wellness 1 0 1.
I talked about the last couple episodes of are you gonna be a full Blown, Do it yourselfer with your finances? And if so, are you gonna implement the 5 3 1 action plan? If you don't know what I'm talking about, revisit the last couple of episodes. Are you gonna be a done with you type right where you want a coach?
Similar to like having a trainer at the gym, you put in the reps, you do the work. Except you have a financial coach walking you through the process similar to what we do with our clients, or do you want more of a done [00:07:00] for you approach where it's actually kinda like that, like family CFO or family office style that you hear about those like billionaire families that have a whole staff of 25 to 30 people doing all their finances for them.
So you have to decide what do you want? Do you wanna delegate your finances? Do you want somewhere in the middle where it's done with you? That's typically what it looks like for us and our clients. Or do you wanna go full DIY. So in this little mini financial advisors exposed series, I just wanna help you discover if you do want to hire a financial planning team.
What you need to look for, what you need to look out for, everything that you need to know so you can make an informed decision because you deserve to know. And there's way too much freaking gray area out there of people in my shoes running around selling products to people, right? So let's jump in and continue with today we're just gonna talk about seven crucial steps to consider when hiring a financial.
Planning team, and I'll just start by saying that typically, [00:08:00] and this is just my opinion, I see three different kinds. Of financial advisors, and I'm gonna keep out like robo-advisors, like the little online calculators that you see on your retirement plan. I'm just gonna talk about actual human beings, not deep fake AI people, but who knows?
Maybe people are getting fake doubt. I'm just kidding. Hopefully it doesn't get to that place, but we'll see. So three different kinds of advisors. I typically see proactive advisors, reactive advisors. Transactional advisors, right? You've all seen him before you were in training. Your buddy got a job with an insurance company.
He hit you up and tried to sell you a whole life insurance policy and disability insurance. Not that those things are necessarily bad, but every single conversation you have with that person is them trying to persuade and sell you something that is a transactional advisor. Or maybe they put you into an A share mutual fund where they make a 5% commission every time you move money into that a share.
So that is a transactional financial advisor. They earn commissions on your trades, and we'll talk more about transactional advisors, but they are not [00:09:00] held to fiduciary standard. There's reactive advisors, so there's a lot of great, money managers out there. I typically put money managers in the reactives type of advisors where they basically gather ~your assets.~
~I. Hoard ~your assets charge you 1% a year and sure, maybe they give you eight, 9%, you net eight, great, so your money's up. But what level of service are they giving you? Are they helping you with your student loans? Are they helping you send your kids to college? Are they helping you make decisions about moving across the country and accepting a job every time you want money out of the accounts So they really conservative and they won't let you take money out and they say you need to hold onto it, right?
So it's a little bit more of a reactive advisor. Maybe you see them once or twice a year, and typically the conversations are just based on your portfolio and what it's doing. And there's a lot of great advisors in the shoes that are more proactive, but most that I see are very reactive to their clients.
There's no service really involved. It's just they're managing your money in a portfolio and getting you a return and charging you 1% for that return that they're getting you, right? So you have to decide do you [00:10:00] want that type of client experience or do you want a more proactive team? Take some more coaching approach.
This is how we built our client experience for our clients, and we see our clients, a lot of them monthly, sometimes quarterly, and it's a very proactive approach, talking not only about investments, but student loan planning, kids college planning. How to build an emergency fund, how to, I have a client right now who just had accepted an employment contract in a different cities, so coordinating with the realtors and mortgage bankers and everything like that.
Or delegating like a lot of clients we meet with their CPAs, with them or on their behalf and strategize, so I. Do you want the proactive? Do you want the reactive or do you want the transactional? And maybe when I walk through these seven steps, it'll give you a little bit more insight into what you're looking for when hiring an advisory team.
So step one is just understanding their qualifications and then also their. Credential. So I just want to go through a few of the different licenses that you can have as a financial planner. And then I would say definitely really important [00:11:00] to have someone on the team with their CFP certified financial planning.
License. This individual, my business partner, Jeff, founder of our company, he has A CFP. We also have a team member behind the scenes that has CFP. I personally do not have my CFP, but I'm still held to a fiduciary standard. A CFP is essentially just like advanced training, and once you get it. You must always be held to the fiduciary standards.
So does a member on their team have the CFP license? So what I want to do right now, I'll talk a little bit more about the CFP here in a second, is talk about the Series six, series seven, series 63, series 65, series 66, and just to put it into perspective for you, I just have currently at this stage of my career, not elected to get my CFP license because we have two members that have it.
It just, a good amount of time invested. So a lot of times when I need advanced planning, I just lean on those other two members to help make decisions that makes you uncomfortable. Totally get it. But I also set myself up to act as a fiduciary at all time. [00:12:00] So series six license, and you can ask your advisor what licenses do you have.
And advisors can be dual registered as well, meaning that they can move in and out of acting as a fiduciary. So just keep this in mind so someone can have a like multiple of these licenses, right? So they can move into being a fiduciary and then they can move out of it and earn a commission. So a series six license allows advisors to sell mutual funds, variable annuities, and some insurance products.
The standard that they're held to is the suitability standard, meaning recommendations must be suitable based on the client's financial situation and needs as a physician. Are held to a best ethical standard fiduciary recommendation standard versus a suitable standard. I'll talk more about this in a future episode.
Compensation with the series six license is typically through commissions once again on product sold, a little bit [00:13:00] more of that transactional type of advisor. If you go buy Apple, they make a commission on it, right? If they put you in an annuity, they make a commission on it. Series seven license. I used to have my series seven, but we dropped it as a firm last year.
You'll understand more why in a second, but it basically just allows advisors to do more. They can do a broader range of securities, stocks, bonds, options, mutual funds, et cetera. The standard here is also the suitability standard. It's not the fiduciary standard, and compensation can be through commissions, fees or some type of combination of both.
So once again, with the series seven license. You can still earn commissions on trade. So at Im Wealth, we made a decision to drop our series seven licenses last year for more transparency. And I couldn't even earn a commission if I tried on any type of investment vehicle. So just more transparency.
You shouldn't have to pay a 5% cover charge [00:14:00] to go buy a share of Apple, right? You should be able to just access it. So next is the series 63. This allows advisors to do, it just requires for selling securities within a particular state. So it focuses on state laws and regulations.
So if you're gonna be managing money in the state of Michigan, for example, you have to have this license and then you have to get registered with the state. So the standard, it just ensures compliance and state regulations essentially. And it's not directly tied to compensation, but it's necessary for state registration.
Series 65. What this allows advisors to do is act as an investment advisor representative providing fee-based investment advice. So we'll talk more about investment advisor representatives versus broker dealers, et cetera. In a future episode, the series 65 individuals are held to a fiduciary standard, meaning they must act in the best interest of their clients.[00:15:00]
Compensation is typically through fees such as hourly rates, flat fees, or a percentage of assets under management, that like 1% model of managing assets. Now, a series 66 is typically a combination. Of the 63 and 65, it's a harder exam, which is why some advisors, you know my route. I went, I did the series seven and I did the series 66 when I was like 23 years old.
Those are the paths that I took. A lot of advisors, because the series 6 63 and 65 are a little bit simpler. They might choose to do those three, or maybe they just do their six and 63. If they only have their six and 63, then they're never held to the fiduciary standard. When I had my seven and 66 if I wanted to, even though I didn't, I could have moved in and out of being a fiduciary I could have, with my 66 acted as a fiduciary,
then I could have moved out of being a fiduciary and sold a share at Apple and made like a commission on it. So another reason why I dropped my series seven, if that makes you feel any better, I [00:16:00] studied a year for that license. So basically a year of my life gone. But I have no regrets in doing it 'cause we are a hundred percent fee only fiduciary firm couldn't earn a commission if we tried.
So back to the series 66, this allows advisors that combine, combines the 63 and 65. Allows advisors to act both as securities agents and investment advisors. Representatives. You are always held to a fiduciary standard in the series 66, and compensation is similar to the 65. It's usually fee based, right?
So fees are rates, flat fees, or percentage of assets under management. So for example, I am at I Am Wealth. Jeff and I both only have our series six and six licenses in the way that our clients. Hire us as, we have a $4,000 service. We have a $6,000 service, we have a $12,000 service, and we have a $24,000 service.
And typically, the main differences between those services is just how much work we're doing for our clients, how much is delegated, how much time we're [00:17:00] spending with them. A lot of it can be based on complexity, how much they wanna see us, kind like concierge medicine, how quickly they can get in for an appointment, et cetera.
So that's how we're set up. And it's a 12 month contract for our clients. Then they can annually renew after that. So those are the key differences between those licenses. And I just wanna talk briefly about the certified financial planner license, which, like I said, two members on my team have. The focus of that is personal financial planning, including retirement estate planning, tax planning insurance, the standard you're held to a fiduciary standard.
Compensation once again is typically fee based, including hourly rates, flat fees, percentage on of assets under management. So that's a key thing to look out for. So jumping back, that'll be the longest of the seven steps. I'll jump back in and it'll be fairly short from here. So step two in the seven set steps.
If I am you actually, sorry. If I'm me and I need to have surgery, I. My elbow, I would want to have an [00:18:00] orthopedic surgeon that specializes in elbows, right? I don't want a general surgeon that typically removes gallbladders. So very similar to this. You as a physician, see, should. Seek out an advisory team that specializes in working with physicians, not firefighters and school teachers and whatever else it might be.
Because you have a unique set of problems and circumstances and challenges that a lot of normal working Americans don't have, right? And big one right out of the gate is the six figures is, typically student loan debt. So you want to find. Those that specialize and know and understand you and don't just work with every single human being on planet Earth, I strongly believe you're just gonna get a better.
Experience and service out of a team that specializes, and outside of financial planners, realtors, mortgage bankers, CPAs, everything, like everything you look for, should have a physician specialist [00:19:00] involved. They should be specializing in physicians. Next up, the third step is just making sure they're held to the fiduciary duty or fiduciary standard.
Once again, this ensures that the advisor act as a fiduciary, meaning they're legally obligated to act in your best interest. So more on this in a future episode. Step four, you want to know and understand their fee structure. So understand how the advisor is compensated. Ask them how they're compensated.
Common fee structures include fee only, like how we're set out charging a flat fee and hourly rate. Or like I talked about earlier, commission based earning commissions on products sold. Or if you have a series seven and a series 66, you can do both, right? Which I view as a conflict of interest, but that's just me, right?
Or maybe they're like an assets under management advisor where you have $2 million, they're charging you 1% a year for that $2 million. If they are doing this, ask 'em if there's wrap [00:20:00] fees involved. It typically means that they're broker dealer. Charges an additional fee on top. The mutual funds themselves have fees inside of them, so you might think you're paying one and all of a sudden you end up at 1.7, right?
So if you have 2 million with someone, they're charging you, let's just say for simplicity, 1% a year. Which is $20,000. Are you getting a $20,000 service and $20,000 worth of value out of that advisor and out of that service? So understanding their fee structure. Step five is determining their services offered, so what service the advisor provides, right?
Some may offer comprehensive financial planning similar to what we do. Actually building you a roadmap to bring all of your goals to life. While others might solely focus on just being money managers and investment management only. Every time you meet, they're just gonna be looking at your portfolio with you and talking about what the market's doing.
They're not gonna be talking with you about like your kids' college and your student loans and your unique challenges. As [00:21:00] a physician. So you need to understand and decide, do you just want a money manager or do you want a comprehensive financial planning team that's gonna coach you in many different areas of your financial life?
Almost think of it, comprehensive financial planning as like you're hiring a CSO for your family that's gonna help you make decisions and alignment with your goals and your values. On the other hand, investment management, great. But they're really just gonna be focused on your portfolio, right? And try to outpace s and p 500 or whatever, versus trying to bring your goals to life.
Step six is understand their communication and compatibility. So it's important to feel comfortable with your advisor. I. Understand their communication style. Are they gonna be proactive with you in down markets? Are they gonna be proactive with you when the market's hot? Are they gonna be proactive with you when loan student loans are in forbearance like they are right now?
So we built something in called swoop notifications where we reach out to all of our clients when we feel something's extremely important going on in the economy. It's our job, right? And then communication as well. [00:22:00] How often? Will you be meeting with your advisory team? We find that our clients, the more often we meet with them in our higher services, they just get results faster.
It's as simple as that. It's like having someone, like if you meet with a trainer five days a week versus two days a month, how quickly are you gonna get a six pack? With five days a week versus two days a month, right? How long is it gonna take you to get to those outcomes? So having somebody hold you accountable to the actions that you need to take typically result in quicker results, and then also too similar to concierge medicine.
How quickly are you gonna be able to get access to them? Like when you have something going on, are they gonna get back to you in your next quarterly meeting three months from now? Or will they, do they have systems set up where they'll get back to you within the next four business days like we do at IM Wealth, depending on service level, right?
Top level service, the same day, second level service, the $12,000 service is within one business day. $6,000 services within two business days, and then our $4,000 service is within four business days. So you need to decide. [00:23:00] How quickly do you want access to your physician in concierge medicine or your financial planning team in the event that you need timely advice based on what's going on in your life?
Couple recent examples. Client accepting a new position in a different state, so we have to be on call talking to their mortgage bankers. Realtors, et cetera, right? So just that, just one simple example of they reached out to us, they need timely advice asap. Another client traveling in Europe as we speak, got an alert for credit fraud while they were over there.
So how quick do you want your team to be available to you to help you deal with challenges, problems, and give you advice? Step seven is references and reviews. So check references when you're interviewing advisors. Ask, say, do you have any clients that would be willing to be a reference and jump on a phone call with me that I can ask about their experience?
I am Wealth has clients that will do that. And then also as of the last couple of years, up until the last couple years, we were not allowed to have any reviews. Like most financial advisors [00:24:00] that you Google. Like we are not currently allowed to have Google reviews. However, we do have reviews on our website.
This just became a thing about two years ago, right? So check to ask, do you guys have any reviews? From your clients and where can I find them? And if they do have Google reviews, either there's something I'm not aware of or they might not have their investment licenses. There's a lot of financial advisors out there that just have their insurance licenses and disguised financial products and whole life insurance and annuities, right?
So keep that in mind too. If you want to discover a financial planner, what licenses they have. You can just go to broker check.com. You can just Google Broker check, I think it's broker check.com. I'll type it in, broker check.finra.org. Okay. I was way off. And then go ahead in there. Put in James Nutter if you want, and then you can see what licenses I have.
If someone isn't showing up in there, I would view that as a little bit of a red flag and maybe ask them what [00:25:00] licenses they have. So anyways, that was more than I anticipated going through in this episode. But I would say those are the seven steps to follow right out of the gate if you're considering hiring a financial planning team.
And this will allow you, you deserve to have all the facts to make an informed decision. This is a major decision for you and your family in a really important decision. And last thing that I would say is just the sooner the better. Clients who began conversations with us in training are so far ahead of the game.
They're the client that maybe hired us in their mid forties. Not that we can't get clients in the future further ahead, but those that started the conversation, started learning and started taking control of their money earlier, had better results. Just like preventative care, just like getting in shape at the gym, everything right.
Don't wait until it's too late. Don't be the richest one in the graveyard. Okay, we will continue this series in our next episode and I look forward to seeing you again soon
any topics you want me to. Discuss anything like that, please reach out to that [00:26:00] email address or journey@iamwealth.com, like the Band Journey and I am wealth.com. We will be sure to talk about exactly what you want to hear or if you want to a MA ask me anything, I'm happy to do a podcast on that style as well.
So please reach out and I'll see you again for another episode and cheers to transparency.