Episode summary
Ep 508: Leveraging Video The Right Way To Add $1M Of New Revenue In Less Than 12 Months with Nate...
Financial Advisor Success (Kitces)
· · 1 hr 35 min · Hosts: Michael Kitces · Guests: Nate Hoskin
Summary
Nate Hoskin argues that video is not just a marketing tactic but a skill that has to be learned, measured, and optimized. He distinguishes “performative marketing,” which is activity for its own sake, from “performance marketing,” which focuses on results and uses data to improve hooks, distribution, and conversion. His view is that video fails for many advisors because they treat it like posting content rather than building a system that gets attention and turns it into meetings.
He explains that a website video is usually a sales asset, not the marketing engine itself. In his framing, the real marketing happens on platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, while the website and landing page function more like the brochure and scheduling layer after attention has already been earned. That became clear in his own firm, where educational TikTok videos around Roth vs. traditional accounts and tax diversification attracted a young audience that did not fit his original AUM-heavy model.
After shifting to flat-fee planning and a subscription retainer, he says the firm grew rapidly, onboarding 172 clients in about nine months and reaching close to $1 million of annual revenue, but the pace was unsustainable. He later raised fees, reduced the client count, paused growth, and eventually sold the advisory firm, then moved into helping other advisors build effective video systems through SageContent.
Key takeaways
- Nate Hoskin says video works only when advisors treat it as a learned skill, not a generic marketing activity.
- He argues that website videos are downstream sales tools, while the real marketing happens on distribution platforms such as TikTok and YouTube.
- Hoskin says his original AUM-focused model failed because his audience was younger and needed planning, not portfolio management.
- After switching to flat-fee planning and a subscription retainer, he says the firm onboarded 172 clients in about nine months and reached close to $1 million in annual revenue.
- He says the growth became unsustainably stressful, leading him to raise fees, cut the client base, and later sell the firm.
- Hoskin says SageContent was built to remove the friction that keeps advisors from producing effective video marketing consistently.
Notable quotes
“Advisers are very used to performative marketing, not performance marketing”
“Marketing is designed to get people to the website”
“Video was very much a desperation tactic for me”
“The part that I learned too late, the part that I should have been focused on from the beginning was this idea of a marketing funnel”
“We got an initial bump. I hired an operations manager and then we proceeded to onboard 172 clients over the course of about nine months”
How the episode opens
Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast, where you go behind the scenes with financial planner, speaker, and consultant Michael Kitsus to hear stories of how leading financial adviserss navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next level in your advisory business. And now, here's your host, Michael Kitsus.
Welcome everyone. Welcome to the 58th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is Nate Hoskin.
Nate is the co-founder of Sage Content, a platform that supports financial adviserss in creating videos that generate leads and new clients. What's unique about Nate, though, is how his own experience using video content to generate explosive client growth in his previous advisory firm led him to want to support other adviserss in creating video marketing content that actually provides a positive return on investment. In this episode, we talk in depth about how Nate decided to found his own advisory firm and started creating educational video content on personal finance topics.
How Nate's videos initially generated 80,000 followers in short order, but not necessarily generating new clients because his relatively younger followers weren't necessarily good matches for his firm's portfolio management focus and aum based fees. and how Nate changed his service and fee models, leaning into comprehensive financial planning and changing the subscription retainer fees and soon attracted 172 clients, generating close to $1 million of annual revenue. We also talk about how Nate experienced serious stress amidst this explosive growth, leading him to raise his fees and trim down his client base.
How Nate realized that his passion was in helping other advisers create video content, ultimately leading him to sell his advisory firm. and how Nate's current company offers both lighter touch and fullervice video production services that allow advisers to create effective video marketing content efficiently.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- video marketing for financial advisors
- tiktok content strategy
- converting followers to clients
- marketing performance vs performative
- funnel and data-driven content
Companies and tickers mentioned
- SageContent
Watch the episode
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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Financial Advisor Success (Kitces), this episode and its artwork belong to Michael Kitces. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
