For example, if someone casually asks Richards how much house they can afford to buy, or whether they should pay off their student loans early, he can invite them into Elements, have them answer a few questions, and give a more specific answer using actual dollar amounts instead of simply saying “it depends.”
Elements was founded by Reese Harper, co-founder of Dentist Advisors, a South Jordan, Utah-based RIA, who developed similar technology to help financial advisors serve dentists through a model of continuous financial planning and interaction.
Most client-advisor interaction should involve “minor course corrections” and need not result in wholesale adjustments to a financial plan, said Richards.
“What we’ve found is that financial problems often need quick responses, there’s a mistaken belief that financial advice requires you to always be precisely correct today, but the reality is that financial planning is about being a little less wrong tomorrow, and even less wrong the day after that,” he said. “So the idea is that we get an assessment on Elements, and then we can approach people at different wealth levels and tell them the different ways tehhy can work with us. Most advisors didn’t get into this business to help clients figure out how to get the biggest deduction for their private jets—they want to help people, and a lot of them want to be able to serve anyone.”
Richards became the "Sketch Guy" after simple drawings and videos he created explaining basic financial concepts to clients and prospects became popular. In some ways, Elements is an extension of Richards' ongoing efforts to simplify, streamline and democratize financial planning.
Richards said that platforms like Elements are allowing a lot of advisors to start working further down market.
“The industry is built to serve 3% of the population, the tools we’ve had in the past were designed to sell product to a very select group of people, they were intentionally not built to answer rapid questions,” he said. “Those tools were built for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.”