Natalie Slagle, CFP
Founding Partner / Fyooz Financial Planning / Portland, Ore.
Back when Natalie Slagle worked as a waitress, she took pleasure in putting every dollar she earned in envelopes and watching them grow.“ I just loved seeing the envelopes literally get thicker,” she says, noting that she has always had an appreciation for saving and wealth.
She first helped people with money during an internship at a credit union in 2011. But she wanted to learn about the investment side of things, and interned at the financial planning division of another bank. She left her home state of Minnesota for Portland, Ore., with her husband, Dan Slagle, also a financial advisor.
In 2019, they created Fyooz Financial Planning, which caters to millennials with household incomes above $ 300,000 and investable assets of more than $ 500,000.( The name is the phonetic spelling of“ fuse.”)
Slagle says focusing on millennials was a no-brainer, as friends and family were willing to pay for their advice at their previous
firms. But she says those firms were not built to work with younger people and address the issues they face.
Slagle says the obvious thing to do was create an offering that provides for people who want and are willing to pay for her firm’ s expertise.“ We wanted to make sure to provide a platform that really honors the complexities that people 10, 20 years from retirement are actually facing today.”
The days are gone, she says, where the only thing you talk about with your clients is investments. She notes that issues such as tax planning and cash-flow planning are on top of clients’ minds.
She tells those looking to enter the business that there are many roles to play.“ What I’ ve realized is not everyone gets as much joy out of relationship building and talking with people as I do. But there’ s still a place for you in this industry.”
At the same time, Slagle says she is shocked at the little progress the industry has made in diversity in her 13 years.“ The needle has not moved.” She urges newcomers to“ be a part of the movement to make change in the industry and not just stay on the sidelines.”
Brooklyn Brock, CFP, CEPA, CKA, ChFC
Founder / Ellevate / Tulsa, Okla.
financial advisor for other financial advisors? How
A does that even work?
Brooklyn Brock knows how, and she figured it out at a young age. She was at an XYPN seminar a few years ago and when somebody asked consultant Michael Kitces what the best niche was, he said serving other advisors.
To Brock, financial planning was a family business— her grandfather had built a broker-dealer affiliate and brought his sons onboard to help run it, then eventually Brock herself. She helped retain almost all of the clients after one advisor left, she says.
But a bit of three-generation family drama over the succession came afterward( arguments over who was leaving and when and who was getting whose clients), and Brock says there was an emotional moment when she told her father she was leaving for another firm. Five years ago, she launched Ellevate in the middle of the pandemic.
She saw catering to other advisors as a science experiment, she says:“ Can we get advisors to take care of themselves the way
they do for other clients?” Many people told her she would fail— that“ it’ s not a repeatable service model.”
Five years later, she says she has done a lot of onetime plans but has also kept a dozen regular clients by fiercely sticking to the niche. Some of the first clients saw her as their personal paraplanner. A lot of it was showing the advisors’ spouses what they could afford to do and how they’ d be taken care of. They might not ponder their own deep values. They( or their spouses) might not be aware they are overspending.
Exit planning turned out to be the key for Brock— succession planning, continuity, and career-changing help. Not a small thing in a field where there’ s a lot of post-sale regret among firm-selling advisors. Brock and her colleague developed a succession planning business for advisors and their G2 teams.
She gets business from speaking engagements at conferences about this sort of continuity planning.( No cold-calling.)
What’ s also unusual about Brock’ s business is that everybody is parttime, even Brock herself( and she works in France in the summer). That was by design, because she believes everyone at the firm has other things to do( she herself does paraplanning for another firm in free hours).
36 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | MAY 2025 WWW. FA-MAG. COM