How Advice Chaser is Democratizing Financial Knowledge

This inspiring story is of a rising startup called Advice Chaser, started by Megan Coelho. Advice Chaser is an independent financial concierge service. Their mission is to improve your investment experience by helping you access better financial advice. They listen to your specific needs and goals to offer you a custom-tailored connection to reputable advisors. Think of them as a boutique financial dating service. Here is the story of Advice Chaser in Megan’s own words.

Introduce us to the idea of Advice Chaser

Our product is all about empowering people to achieve financial security. What makes us unique is this: unlike other investor-matching services, we do not sell recommendations. Advisors pay to be considered for our select list, but they can’t purchase a place there. We keep only the consistently reputable advisors.

What’s your strategy story? What led you to start Advice Chaser?

Advice Chaser was founded by Anthony Tomashefsky, a data hound, and Ben May, a former financial advisor. They worked together at Riskalyze in its early days and saw that some of the best professionals in the field were having a lot of difficulties communicating well with potential clients.

They founded Advice Chaser with a mission to give investors easy access to solid education about personal and business finance and to help them connect with ethical, highly qualified, and experienced financial advisors.

What we’ve learned over the three years that we’ve been in business is that investors are hungry for advisor accountability, they just don’t know how to find it. With the current regulatory environment, it’s very difficult for advisors to share a lot of detail online about what they’ve done and are doing for their clients. What we’re doing is vetting advisors for skills, experience, regulatory history, public presence, and demeanor and making introductions for investors based on the investor’s situation and preferences and the advisor’s expertise.

What marketing, operation strategies are you adopting at Advice Chaser?

Marketing is the meat of our business, and it’s a lot simpler and lower cost than popular wisdom would have you believe. Inexpensively mass-produced solutions to most problems, including financial planning problems, are widely available. What’s often missing from the modern marketplace is a focus on giving individuals highly specialized, uniquely tailored service. Our secret sauce is finding out what consumers want and following through on what we say we can do for them.

Our best cost-saving strategy has been to value our team members by paying them as much as we can, getting their input on their own roles and the ways we can support them, and making sure that they are able to enjoy a life outside of their jobs. There is no greater asset to our company than the loyalty of the people we employ.

Any strategy mistakes you have made and what did you learn?

I think our most glaring error cropped up early in our founding. We were lucky to catch it and to be able to respond to it quickly enough to stay in business. We didn’t account for differences in priorities and communication styles between advisors and investors. Ben and Anthony were very comfortable in the finance space and were able to talk shop really well with the advisors. They knew what they wanted to communicate to investors, and they were very good at getting investors’ attention, but they didn’t quite grasp the emotional state most people experience when they review their retirement plans.

They brought me in about a year after founding to bridge the gap. As a writer and a mom who isn’t super excited about poring over budget spreadsheets, I was able to build programs and content that make the experience much more comfortable for everyday folks.

Finally what advice do you have for your fellow entrepreneur readers?

The biggest lesson I’ve learned from running Advice Chaser is that professionalism, attention to detail, and follow-through are much more rare than they ought to be. No marketing strategy is likely to surpass the effects of going the extra mile to make sure folks have a pleasant experience with your company.

Disclaimer: The information in the above story is provided by the startup and The Strategy Story takes no responsibility for the authenticity of the product and services offered by the startup. Reader’s discretion is advised.

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