Episode summary
How To Better Help Business Owner Clients Depending On The Stage Of Their Business Journey
Financial Advisor Success (Kitces)
· · 35 min · Hosts: Michael Kitces · Guests: John Bowen
Summary
John Bowen and Michael Kitces map business-owner clients into four stages: foundation, expansion, multiplication, and impact. The core idea is that business owners are not one monolithic audience, and the advice they need changes as they move from simply getting started to building scalable systems, then to creating self-managing organizations, and finally to using wealth for significance, family governance, and philanthropy.
In the early stage, Bowen says advisors usually help with coordination among siloed professionals, but the real opportunity is broader orchestration, not just investments and taxes. In stage two, the business becomes more dependent on intellectual property, business model design, and succession planning because the founder is often the bottleneck. Stage three shifts the focus to governance, partnership structures, and building autonomy so the business can run without the owner.
At the highest stage, Bowen argues the conversation moves beyond asset accumulation to meaning, legacy, family governance, and active philanthropy. He says many advisors overestimate how well they are serving business-owner clients, because clients often want a personal CFO who can coordinate experts and help increase enterprise value, not just manage investable assets.
Key takeaways
- Bowen says business owners progress through four stages—foundation, expansion, multiplication, and impact—and each stage demands different advice.
- Stage two is defined by founder dependency, making intellectual property, business model design, and succession planning especially important.
- Stage three requires advisors to understand governance and self-managed team design, even if they are not the technical expert.
- Bowen says stage-four clients are usually more concerned with meaning, family governance, and strategic philanthropy than with squeezing out more portfolio returns.
- The real advisor value is coordination and curation across experts, not just siloed financial planning.
- Bowen cites research suggesting most entrepreneurs want help with succession and non-liquid assets, but far fewer say they are actually getting it.
Notable quotes
“business owners you know, are monolithic as you talked about and there's really four stages that we saw”
“they really have a hard time moving this out and they get caught in a founder dependency”
“if you can step away, there's a multiplier. The advisor focus, here's what they're looking for”
“They want you to see the big picture and help curate that their success with them”
How the episode opens
Welcome John Bowen to join us again on Nerd's Eye View. — Hey Michael, I always love hanging out with you.
Well, I'm excited to have you join us today and to get to dig in I I think just a little further into serving business owners, right? So many of us advisors serve business owners. I many know I started out in the life insurance world.
We were very focused on business owners. Now frankly back then that was because we wanted to sell you the buy-sell life insurance policy because that was the the life insurance deal, but it was always like find business owner that might have an opportunity. But I I mean I know the reality and like having lived this myself for like there are lots of different types of business owners, right?
Like just literally saying business owner is is a bit of a painful generalization. Like firms are at different sizes, different dynamics of founders. At least from my experience, I've always tended to these think of these stages as being very size-based.
Like tell me how many team members are in your organization and I can start to visualize the kinds of problems you are probably facing as a business owner because of the organizational complexity of your team count. But John, I know you have like recently written a book like now delving into this called The Greater Game with Dan Sullivan of of Strategic Coach world about this I guess like business owner entrepreneurial journey and the fact that there really are some quite predictable stages and evolutions, maybe not size related, but that do flow in a sequence. So I just I'm excited to dig in and talk about like what does that journey really look like and right from our end as advisors, like how do we show like what and what expertise and advice do I need to be bringing depending on where my clients are as business owners?
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- advisory client guidance
- business growth stages
- entrepreneur challenges
- advisor expertise development
- client knowledge needs
Companies and tickers mentioned
- CEG Worldwide
- CEG Insights
- Spectrem Group
Watch the episode
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
More from Financial Advisor Success (Kitces)
-
Helping Clients Who Want A Retirement They Can't Afford - Kitces & Carl Ep 203 -
The Top Factors To Consider When A Client Plans To Move Abroad, With Ashley Murphy -
Ep 515: Crafting Deeper Client Relationships To Drive Loyalty, Referrals, And Gain Career Flexibi... -
Key Rules And Pitfalls To Execute Qualified Disclaimers Successfully, With Dave Haughton -
Ep 514: Optimizing A $160M AUM Solo Practice For Client Impact Over Scale with Nick Ibello -
Value-Based Pricing And Charging As Much As The Market Will Bear - Kitces & Carl Ep 202
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.
