“So, we can add a lot of value by giving them advice with regards to where the money is at and also finding things which their money should be in that they have no prior knowledge of,” he added.

In one instance, Hubler suggested to a couple who are clients that instead of buying stocks and bonds, they should buy real estate in the town where their kids attend college and rent out the rooms and teach them responsibility. This way, the couple will have a non-correlated asset when the kids graduate.

In another example, when a client who owns several fast-food restaurants sought advice on how to invest $500,000, Hubler suggested that he uses it to update his restaurant with a flat screen. “He’s done that before and he gets a 28% return on his investment,” Hubler said, explaining that if he wasn’t a retainer-based advisor, “my job would have been to find the best $500,000 thing I could put the money in for him, and there is nothing I feel comfortable in that would have given him a 28% return.”

“But being retainer-base, I can look at it from a bigger … kind of like a 50,000-foot level saying if you upgrade your restaurants, you are going to get a better return and not have to add more money in the market,” Hubler said, adding that it’s that kind of honest and agnostic advice why clients engage the firm for more than a year.

The firm charges clients between $5,000 and $20,000 for one year based on the complexity of their financial situation. If a client wants to continue working with him for a second and third year, the fee may not be as much as the first because the firm has already done the upfront work of building the client’s portal, he said.

Hubler, who now has clients in 11 states, said his is one of the only practices that focuses on retainer-based wealth management. And he doesn’t understand why, especially since he believes the industry is five years away from Siri going on your phone and saying, “Based on your retirement and your risk, the market is down, push this button and you can get more S&P Index.”

“You don’t need an advisor to do that. It’s all numbers. So I think asset management is having a sea compression, but we are not really adding value to the end user because they can do his themselves,” Hubler said, adding that we used to need a stockbroker to explain what a ticker was and to buy it. But a 12-year-old today can explain that because it’s all out there on your phone. “So, the information is no longer what’s valuable, it’s how you use it.”

Huber said when he attends conferences and everyone in the room is an advisor, “and they get to me and I say I run a retainer-based advising firm, the conference at some level becomes about me,” he said, explaining that people would follow him to the bathroom wanting to know how he does what he does.

“I think that the real interesting thing is, I use to, like everyone else give away the advice, hoping someone brings money over to manage, hoping they buy a product from us. But three years ago when we made the change, I said, 'Why are we giving away advice?' Why don’t we charge for advice and then be very open and agnostic on where they put the money? So we could have money at Vanguard and not charge any money for the clients to have it there.”

Hubler said he created the Retainer-based Academy as a side job “to help other financial planners, advisors and wealth strategists change the game.”