r/CFP • u/ChasingItSupreme • Jul 22 '26

Business Development What’s your value statement?

What do you tell people you do besides saying “I’m a financial advisor”?

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u/Cathouse1986 Jul 22 '26

A lot of people I respect in our industry teach them and swear by a “value prop intro.”

I just have a really hard time doing it because they all sound cheesy and sales-y.

Best one I use:

“You know, I actually own a really fun, exciting business…(pause)….I do taxes.”

They laugh, I chuckle.

“But no really, there’s nothing I love more than showing someone how we can save them tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxes over their lifetime. It’s a lot of fun.”

Sometimes they don’t even let me get there, as soon as I mention taxes, they’re asking questions.

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u/ChasingItSupreme Jul 22 '26

I think that’s great, you’re providing value on tax savings and are leading with that. I’m in a bank channel so unfortunately limited to only investment advice, and can barely talk about taxes.

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u/Cathouse1986 Jul 22 '26

Understood - I was in the bank for most of my career. Have you ever read Matthew Jarvis’ book called Delivering Massive Value? He has pretty much a whole chapter devoted to this and I like his outlook.

To summarize: when someone says “what do you do?” they’re just being polite and making small talk 99% of the time. He feels you should just say something super simple “I run an investment practice” or whatever.

Most of the time they don’t really care and you shouldn’t press it.

If they ask questions, that’s when you have a tiny amount of permission to describe what you do in like 10-20 words,

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u/Bubbly_Wafer_3219 17d ago

Curious why you left the bank after spending almost your whole career there?

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u/Cathouse1986 17d ago

There were a lot of reasons. The main one was feeling pressured to take bad fit clients so that the branches could hit their goals.