In this episode of Financial Behavior Thought Leaders, Dr. Mary Bell Carlson welcomes Evan Beach, CFP®, EA, AWMA®, a nationally recognized wealth management speaker, author, and one of Financial Behavior Keynote Group’s exclusive speakers. Evan stands out in the industry not just for his engaging keynotes but for being a true practitioner—he continues to work directly with clients while bridging the gap between financial research and real-world application.

Mary and Evan dive into his signature keynote, “Retain and Gain: An Evidence-Based Client Communication Schedule to Maximize Referrals and Retention.” Evan shares his journey from cold-calling in a Philadelphia boiler room to leading growth and business development for a major RIA firm, drawing on his years of front-line client work and his passion for translating academic research into actionable advice. This conversation is especially relevant for financial advisors, planners, and event organizers looking for practical, research-backed strategies to improve client retention, boost referrals, and challenge the “we’ve always done it this way” mindset in financial services.

Throughout the episode, Evan reveals how he crafts keynotes that blend storytelling, real-life results, and interactive insight. Listeners will get a behind-the-scenes look at how he developed his evidence-based communication schedule, and how it dramatically changed both client outcomes and firm growth at his prior firm. He also shares personal stories that shape his approach to client work, keynote speaking, and life—including a powerful lesson learned from the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

About Evan Beach:

After graduating from the University of Delaware and Georgetown University, Evan pursued a career in financial planning and is a practicing CFP® professional and IRS enrolled agent.  He was the first G2 partner at a $1B+ RIA before selling his shares back to launch Exit 59 Advisory.

Evan’s extensive experience in retirement income and tax planning as well as practice management has attracted industry and media attention. Evan is a columnist for Kiplinger and a frequent contributor to Yahoo Finance, CNBC, Credit.com, TheStreet.com, Bloomberg News, and U.S. News and World Report, among others. He served as a special topics instructor at Texas Tech University’s highly regarded undergraduate and graduate personal financial planning programs for over eight years.

A native of Bethesda, Maryland, Evan spent almost all his adult life in the capital region. Evan lives in Old Town, Alexandria, with his wife, Ali, daughters Viv and Lucy, and dog, Tenley.

Five Key Takeaways:

1. Break Free from Tradition – Let Data Drive Your Process
2. Evan underscores the importance of moving beyond “the way we’ve always done it” in client communications. Rather than sticking to annual meetings or quarterly investment updates out of habit, advisors should turn to research and client feedback to shape their engagement cadence and content. By asking “why?” at every turn, advisors can uncover practices that truly add value rather than just ticking a box.
3. Evidence-Based Communication Yields Big Results
4. Drawing on research from Texas Tech and other universities, Evan demonstrates that the frequency and nature of client communications tangibly impact both client retention and referrals. He details how his firm shifted from annual to more frequent, targeted touchpoints—such as monthly investment updates and biannual meetings—which significantly increased client satisfaction and loyalty.
5. Tailor Communications to Client Needs (Not Just Firm Preferences)
6. One of the biggest lessons is that value is defined by the client, not the advisor. Evan encourages advisors to ask clients directly what they find valuable, monitor their engagement (such as email open rates), and adjust their approach accordingly. Not every client needs or wants the same frequency, especially as the relationship evolves—newer clients may initially want more touchpoints, while long-term clients usually prefer less frequent, high-impact meetings.
7. Bridge the Research-to-Practice Gap
8. Evan’s career has centered on bringing rigorous financial planning research to life in actual practice. He shares examples of how research insights can—when thoughtfully applied—immediately enhance advisory workflows, improve client communications, and boost overall results. But he also highlights the reverse: real-world implementation sometimes challenges or refines academic theory, creating a two-way street between research and practice.
9. The Power of Proactivity (and Real-Life Stories)
10. Advisors should prioritize proactive client engagement—answering questions before they’re asked, and addressing concerns before they become problems. Evan illustrates this with systems like sending regular, relevant video updates based on client questions, and proactively sharing the “why” behind portfolio moves. He also shares how his keynote is shaped by a sense of urgency and perspective, drawn from personal experiences like the Boston Marathon story, inspiring both advisors and audiences to take immediate, meaningful action.

If you’re searching for a keynote speaker who brings together real-world advisory experience with research-based insights and the heart of a storyteller, Evan Beach delivers clarity and impact that resonates. To book Evan or learn more, visit keynote.financial/evan-beach/.

Subscribe for more behind-the-scenes conversations with the leading voices in financial services, and tune in every other week for actionable strategies to educate, inspire, and move your audience.

Welcome to Financial Behavior Thought Leaders. I'm Mary. And this podcast takes you behind the scenes with the top speakers in financial services. So whether you're an advisor booking a client event, an event planner looking for the perfect keynote, or a financial professional wanting to learn more from industry thought leaders, you're in the right place. Today we're featuring Evan beach, one of Financial Behavior keynote group's exclusive speakers. Evan is a nationally recognized wealth management speaker and author, but what makes him truly sound out is he's a practitioner first. His keynote, retain and gain an evidence based client communication schedule to maximize referrals and retention is all about challenging the status quo and using data, not tradition, to reshape how we engage with clients. Evan, we're excited to have you here today.

Welcome.

Thank you. Yes. Super excited to be here.

So I have to ask, before we jump into the meat of your keynote, I want to back it up a bit. How did you get into speaking? From client working with clients to getting on stage?

Yeah, it was really the working with clients part, or I should say trying to work with clients. I, I started in the profession in 2009, which was less than ideal. Um, but I, I was literally sitting in a. In a boiler room in Philadelphia making cold calls. And I, you know, I got lucky a few times with that. And I had a client who was a plastic surgeon basically in New York City, and he had just come out of residency, and so that's why he hired us. Like his life had just changed. He went from making, you know, almost nothing to a lot.

And he said, hey, we have speakers. Come every Thursday if you want to come up and, and buy lunch and speak to us. And candidly, the thing I was most nervous about was buying lunch. I was like, like, when you say lunch, like, are we. Is this Panera or is this something A little bit more than that. So I drove from Philadelphia to Montefiore Hospital in New York City. And I don't know, it was probably 10 or 15 people at this lunch and learn like that we've all been to. And people go there when they can't afford their lunch.

But I remember thinking afterwards, it's like, wow, that was so much better than calling 15 people. And you get to educate and it was fun. And I thought, think I could be good at it. And so I did a. I did a few of those. And then in 2011, the firm I was with ING moved me down to Virginia, and my parents had just hit. Let me do this math. Yeah, they, they had just hit Social Security Eligibility.

And so them and their friends are always asking me questions about Social Security and Medicare and all these fairly dry, complex topics. And so I started hosting Social Security Socials where. And this is like, I mean we were really just piecing things together. Like I would rinse off the labels from Trader Joe's wine bottles because that's what I was buying and put on like an, an ING logo that said Social Security Social, like Evan beach cfp. And I would get somebody from my office to come and bartend, like another advisor there. So it was really just piecing things together. But. But it worked.

And then, sorry, this is a long story, but 2015, I ended up switching to the RIA side of the business. And the firm I went to was doing about 50 events a year, like prospecting events per year. And we split them like that. That's why I got hired. And so I went from speaking, you know, once a quarter to speaking every other week, then every week, then twice a week. And so there were a lot of reps there. And in that I applied. This was also in 2015, just through like a next gen FPA thing to speak to FPA National Conference.

And I got picked to speak there. And that's where the started this parallel speaking track of okay, I'm speaking to consumers, but now I'm also speaking to financial planners and aspiring financial planners. So.

So I think that's part of the interesting conversation that I've had in many of these conversations is it's the reps, right? It's doing it again and again and perfecting that craft over and over. But I really like your take on it is you've really seen it for from the ground up. You've really taken it from. I work with clients, you still continue to see clients and own your own advisory firm. But while also carefully crafting that message that resonates not just with clients, but advisors as well. What you're specifically really known for is bridging that gap between research and practice to where you mentioned Texas Tech earlier, you've really taken a lot of not just theory, but practical application of what that looks like on a daily basis. Tell us more about what makes that unique and resonates with advisors.

So I had a conversation when I was at Texas Tech and I was sort of new to the academic world and fascinated by it because I didn't go to a financial planning program. You know, I went and did my CFP work when I was already in the industry. And so it was very intriguing to me to see these kids who are 18 and 19 learning all this stuff I learned when I was 25, but I was down at, in Lubbock and I was talking to John Salter who, you know, and he was a practicing PhD, so like he had a PhD in personal financial planning, but also was, was a partner at an advisory firm. I said, how many people do you think there are like you, that there are PhDs and practicing? And now that number is much bigger. Right. Because you know, probably most of the people who are doing it, but it's, you know, it's like 10 times that number. But it was like five, it was almost none. And they all came from Texas Tech.

And I said, wow, like imagine in the medical field if like all the research that was done never actually made it to the patients. Like that's what I was thinking was happening in financial planning. And I think to a large extent still is. Like you can go and read these academic publications but like is anybody out there actually taking them and putting them into practice? Yes, not very many. So that was the idea behind it. And I pitched the editor at the time of the journal Financial Planning for this idea called Research in Action, which was just that it was taking research and saying, here's this research, it's very applicable. Here's how you apply it in practice. And so that, that was the, the genesis of it.

And.

Well, and I think that's the important part of it. It's not just here's the research, but it works actually as a two way street because as we apply research we find sometimes the brokenness of the theoretical model. Right. And so it's important for both the practitioner to utilize it. And I love your example of the medical and vice versa. Practice also informs us on the research side of what's working and what's not.

Yeah. And I think I've seen that play out in the presentation we're going to discuss today. Like I, I had to go back to the, the folks who did that research and say, hey, look, I know your research says this, but the real world says something else. And that that's in one instance and in another it's like, I know the research says this, but it's totally unattainable in the real world.

Totally. Well, let's dig in. So your speech is called retaining gain an evidence based client communication schedule to maximize referrals and retention. Dig in.

That's long. Yeah, I tried to get AI to cut it down and I just didn't like anything it came up with. So that's a future goal. That presentation, it's based on research that came from Texas Tech. There are actually a few different folks from different universities, one of which was Texas Tech. But the idea of it, when I read it, is the way we've always done it, is not a good reason to do something right. And so this, I guess I'll start from a very high level. This research basically goes through and says, how often should you communicate about investments? How often should you meet with clients? How often should you send handwritten notes? How often should you communicate about hobbies, communicate about planning? So those are the five things.

And. And each of them does a different thing for retention and for referrals. Can increase retention or decrease retention. It can increase referrals or decrease referrals. And when I read it, I was like, this is the answer to the test. But, like, when we join a firm, especially a big firm, and you ask, okay, well, how often do we meet with clients? Once a year? If you ever followed up and said, why? The answer is always. It's just the way we've always done it.

Bob's that way.

Yeah, we're doing it right. Exactly right. So the same is true about investment updates. So we do them quarterly. Well, why? Like, it's all based on just. Somebody set this president 20, 30, 40 years ago, and it hasn't been revisited. So why don't we just ask the clients what they want to do? Why don't we ask the clients if they plan on sticking with us based on what we're doing? Why don't we ask the clients if they've given a referral in the last 12 months based on what we're doing, and then we can gauge, well, what's the right amount? So that's what this research says. And once again, it's based on the premise, like, the way we've always done it is not a good reason to keep doing it, otherwise people wouldn't have easy passes.

Right. Like, it's.

Right.

You could point to this in every facet of your life. Like, it's why we use smartphones instead of a flip phone. And so it's just the next iteration of client communications for. For our profession. And that's what the presentation is. It just gives you the answers. And then I say, and here's how I've applied this in practice, which I think is a unique angle there.

Yeah, well, and I want to go back to really what you're saying. What's the value? What do your clients see as value add? Not what do you think the value is? That you're providing, but what are they actually receiving as value? And I think that may be the interesting part for most advisors is what they're doing may not add that much value at the end of the day.

Yeah, and I knew you had Carl on a few episodes ago, but like, he, he talks about in, in the Kitces and Carl podcast, cutting things out and seeing if people actually cared. And, and there's time that's easier to do than ever because you can look at open rates and you can see what referral rates. You can see all of those things through digital marketing. But yeah, it's like, what. You're probably doing a lot of stuff you don't need to, and you're probably not doing a lot of stuff you should do.

Totally, totally. All right, so every good keynote really digs in with a story. So tell us. You don't have to give the whole story away, but give us a good taste of how this is applied in your keynote.

Yes, I think the opening to, to this presentation. But let me back up. I spent eight years at. I spent six years at ing, then I spent eight years at an ria. And we grew from. And I was hired for growth like that. I was the, the head of business development at this firm. And we grew from like 200 some million, just under 300 million, to 1 1.1 billion in.

I think we did it in six years. So 2015 to 2021. The firm was acquired in 24 at about 1.4 billion. So it was a success story. It was super intense. But basically the opening story is me just walking. And I remember this vividly, like, being walked down the hallway of this firm and meeting each person and hearing about what they did and being, I guess maybe bold or stupid enough to ask the why questions like, oh, this person schedules meetings for us. It's like, well, how often do we meet with clients once a year? Why? I don't know.

It's the way we've always done it. It's like, well, why does that person call everybody? Why don't you just schedule like the dentist does? I don't know. It's the way we've always done it. And this is Mark. He runs investments. And. Well, how often do we talk about investments with clients once a year? Why? It's the way we've always done it. And like, I'm sure that guy Rich, so if he ever listens to this, so he may remember this too.

Probably want to be like kid in the backseat. Why? Why? Why?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like my own kids. Gosh. Was probably wanting to throw me out of the car. Using that analogy. It's like, why did we hire this guy? Yeah. So that, that's how we open the presentation and then we just go through like, okay, here's, here's the answer to the test. Here's what we were doing, here's how we applied it in practice, and here are the results, both good and bad.

Because not all of these things were like, oh, yeah, that worked perfectly. Yeah.

And what I'm hearing, especially in this presentation, it's very hands on. Right. Like you're going to be able to walk away from this with applicable, actionable advice that you can implement right away.

Yeah.

Give us a couple of examples of how you've seen advisors apply this and make a big change in their own practice.

Well, I just go in order. Like investment communication, we always do it quarterly. Right. Like the, an investment communication is, is the greatest indicator of retention, which I think a lot of people don't realize. But the right cadence is actually monthly. And that's so, so when I started at the, at this ra, the RA was Campbell Wealth Management. When I started there, it was, you do like one monster meeting every year. You update the financial, like all the old school stuff that we were taught walk through the portfolio.

And so that, that was the biggest gap I identified. It's like we're losing clients here. And I don't know if this is why we're losing clients, but I know that, that based on this research, like the best thing we can do is communicate monthly on investments, which a lot of people shy away from because. And I fall in this boat too. It's like we use passive investments. Like we don't want, we don't want our clients watching the market every day. And so I think that the wrong way to apply this is you just sign up for like a newsletter service and have them white label your investment communication. So what we did is we were already rebalancing portfolios called four to six times a year.

So I'll put it in the middle of five times a year. And every time we did that, we'd send, or we'd send an internal letter out to all the advisors. Here's why we did what we did. So then we just polished that up and every time we did a rebalance, that letter just went to the clients. This is way easier with ChatGPT now or Gemini or Grok or pick your AI tool. So that, that got us to five. Then we were meeting once a Year. The right cadence for meeting with clients, and this is one where I really had to challenge the researchers, is four times a year.

I. I think. I think that's too many. But I understand the consumer perspective because I've had a lot of new clients come on who say, I want to meet four times a year, but they never stay there. The joke I always make, and it's not really a joke, but it's because I've seen it happen, is when you meet with clients once a year, you miss weddings, right? Like, you don't know that they got married or had a grandkid. Like, we work with the retirees. You miss, like, those milestone events when you meet with them four times a year. You're, like, talking about how hot it is.

Like, crazy snowed a lot this year, or it's hot or it's raining a lot, or it's like some stupid conversation that you're trying to fill air with. So, anyway, we went from one meeting a year to two meetings a year, which I do think is the right cadence, once again, for retired clients. That will depend on your clients. But then that's two market updates per year that we're doing in advance of those meetings via video. We're doing it via loom. So now we've gone from one investment communication per year to two, plus the five rebalance updates. We're at seven. And then all we did is once a quarter.

We emailed all the clients and we said, what are you thinking about the markets right now? What questions you want answered? And we took the questions that typically, like four or five questions that. That we saw most frequently, and we just recorded a video and sent it to all the clients. And it was like, yeah, everybody. Everybody's gonna ask the same things, same five questions in different ways. Why don't we proactively answer these things? And I think so much about this is just proactivity versus reactivity. Like, advisors are always like, oh, I get back to everybody within 24 hours. It's like, well, what if you communicated what they cared about so they didn't reach out in the first place, Right? Like, what if you. It's like spraying your lawn before the weeds come out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well.

And I think part of this, too, that I'm hearing is the sheer fact of what's right for that client. So maybe what I was hearing four times, maybe right for a new client who is unsure, doesn't really know what to expect or how to expect. And then over time, as that process becomes more streamlined, it changes. Right. Just like the relationship changes and deepens. There's less check in or making sure you're doing your job. I think what I love about this is just the sheer fact that you can walk away with so much in your cue that you can be like, why am I doing this? Like, you're probably going to leave with more questions of where did this come from? I think we'll all turn into Evans at the end of the day, right? Why? Why start questioning the things that really don't make sense?

Yeah. And it's like every. When it comes to communication, I, I would, I would say that pretty much everything you've done is probably a result of the way it's always been done.

And I think what you're doing is adding not just that academic side, but that behavioral side. Right. Again, if we were just all computers or robots and expected this versus the human side, what does that client specifically care about? Maybe they don't care. Care to receive an investment update five times a year because it stresses them out. Right. And so how do you interact that human aspect with it? Well, I love this. I do have one final question though for you. And this is going to be a little more personal, but what is something that most people don't know, but it does influence the way you show up as a speaker.

I'll have two stories and feel free to edit one or both of them out. It gets too long, but the, the first one. And I think the problem with, with conferences in general is that we don't implement what we learn. Right. Like you go from one session, you open up your phone and you're like, oh, I have a million emails. Right. We are always prioritizing what's urgent over what's important. And so I think, you know, the closing story of this is like 2,013.

My dad was actually, he's a marathoner and he was, he was set to break the record for most consecutive Boston marathons. And so we all flew up to Boston and he was running, I think it was number 46. So he's run a lot of Boston marathons. And we're flying from all over the country and my family has a routine there. We take the T out, which is like the Metro out. And we saw my dad run by at mile nine. We get back on the tee. We go between like mile 18 to 20.

And since number 40, so since his 40th marathon, he's got something called dystonia, which is like a Parkinson's cousin. So it makes it very hard for him to run. And then at this point, he actually doesn't run anymore. But one of us, my brother, sister, I would get in at mile 20 and run the final six miles with him just to try and get him there.

Yeah.

Yeah. So this year we had grandstand passes, which we've never had before. Those are the bleacher seats on the finish line. And we got it because my dad was breaking the record this year, or that year, I should say. And so we all went to the. The same thing. Mile nine. See my dad, we're getting text updates.

This is before, like, an app tracked you the whole time. And we know that something is wrong between mile nine and 18 because his splits are getting so much slower, but we don't know what. And so eventually he gets there, and he had hurt his achilles at mile 10, and he just basically had to walk. So it didn't really change what we were doing. We just got in there and started walking. Walking briskly, but walking with him. And this is when you go. If anybody who's listening has ever been to the Boston Marathon, you'd be able to picture this.

These are the Newton Hills, so you're going uphill for a long time, but you're going through the Boston College campus, and it's a huge party. It's a holiday in Boston. It's usually like, drunk kids, you know, like, screaming at you. And it's really exciting. But this year, people were talking about explosions. You could hear people talking about explosions at the finish line. And I've actually never been in that situation before and don't know what I would do if I were in it again. But we just kept going.

And then the race, which is four lanes at this point, narrowed down to two. I've been there many times. I've never seen that happen. And there were buses of National Guard going by, and she just knew something was wrong. And finally we got to mile 24, and the race was just canceled. Like, there was blockades up. And so you probably figured this out. 2013 was the year of the bombing at the Boston Marathon.

And if you look at my dad's time for the first nine miles or 10 miles, he would have finished four minutes after the bomb went off had he not gotten injured. Obviously, nobody wanted him to get injured, but that injury kept my entire family out of those grandstand seats and safe. Yeah.

Wow.

So I. I tell that story not to. To give away the punchline at the end of this event or to make people depressed or whatever, but it's. I wear this blue band around which you can't see because this is audio, but basically as a reminder, like, the things that I know I should do today or want to do today, to do them today, because we don't know when our road ends.

Yeah. Yeah.

So told that story, I don't know, 500 times, but still get choked up. So that, that's one is like, I, I want people not just to like, oh, this is cool. But like, I wanted. One of the, the things I got on the, the feedback form was like, just like Nike. Just do it. Right. I want people to walk out of there and say, like, I'm gonna do this. And it'll be great for your clients.

It'll also be great for you. So maybe that's long enough for the ones.

I also know you have a very competitive family, so tell us a little bit about how that influences how you show up.

Yeah, so I, I just told My dad was a very good runner. He. I think he ran 15 sub 40 marathons, which is sub 40. Sub two 40 marathons, which is very, very good. And I'm the youngest. My brother's an attorney. Very, very smart. Both my parents are attorneys.

Not to just brag about my family, but it's really just to put down myself, but. And then my sister was an incredible athlete. So she won. She went to University of Maryland. She won two NCAA championships. She was the Washington Post athlete of the decade. So I, I grew up sort of in this ultra competitive environment, and I was like, sort of good at sports and not so good at school. Good enough to play some college sports.

But I think it changes the way I approach speaking and that I approach it from like a competitive mindset, from an athletic or an athlete's mindset of like, I'm not there to like, hey, just pass out information. You can get information on Google. You can get information now. Better information on Gemini. I'm there to win. Like, I, I want people to walk out of there and be like, whoa, that was. That was different. That was not what I expected.

And I, like, can't wait to actually do some of these things. Like, I think we all have speakers that we've seen like that in our lives. Like, I remember for me, Jesse Itzler was that way. And I remember walking out and being like, I'm like, going to do something awesome right now. And that's what I want people to take away.

Yeah, well, and I think it speaks to what you started with the beginning as the reps. Right. An athlete doesn't become an athlete by waking up the next morning and sitting on the couch. It's that every day, that practice, that rep, that trying again and falling. I mean, to go back to your other example, it's sometimes falling and messing up and figuring out the right way to do things or questioning the right way to do things.

Yeah. Yeah.

Evan, thank you so much for coming and spending some time with me today. It's been really awesome. If you're looking for a speaker who blends real advisor experience with research backed strategies to improve your client relationships and business outcomes, Evan beach delivers clarity and impact. You can learn more and book evan at financialbehaviorthoughtleaders.com thanks for joining us on financial Behavior Thought leaders and we'll be back more with more conversations that bring you closer to the leading voices in financial services.