Howdy Ags,

I have a business idea and am conducting a bit of "market research" and would appreciate any feedback/guidance/input you may have.

I want to target people that are referred to as HENRYs (High Earners, Not Rich Yet) that are making $150k+/yr in W2 income but have no idea on where to start, how to save, make tax efficient investments.

My content would be a playbook/plan teaching people the basics. HYSA for emergency funds instead of standard savings account, making sure you are maxing tax advantaged accounts before taxable brokerage investing, backdoor Roth IRA, mega backdoor Roth, etc. etc. Of course I would have disclaimers and be careful not to get into the realm of "financial/tax" advice. General guidance of what works for me and what other HENRYs typically do.

Obviously all of this information is freely available on the internet, my pitch is this is distilled down and instead of weeks of research you get a game plan that is actionable in hours.

• Would you pay for this content? Why/Why not?
• What would you pay for this content as a one time cost?
• What would you want to see/learn?
• Anything else you may suggest to me?

Appreciate any feedback or responses I may get, thanks in advance.

I'm really not special.

What I have learned in my interactions with high earners is that a lot of them (way more than I would have guessed) have no clue what to do, where to start or how to make the right moves.

Trust me, there is no "secret sauce" to the information I have, its more of taking all of that information and giving a roadmap of how to get yourself setup and established instead of just stashing cash in a bank savings and letting it go to "waste". Another great example is people that think they are doing right by putting money in a taxable brokerage before they are fully leveraging tax advantaged accounts. Two examples but there is everything in between.

My angle is that if you aren't making the right moves you are leaving thousands on the table. If you want to know how to "fix" that, here is a game plan to go execute without having to research and learn on your own.

Truly, its just content for people with more money than time.

That was me too about 15 years ago. Ended up with a high salary and needed to know what to do, so I researched and learned.

So I totally get that the me and yous of the world aren't the target.

Makes total sense.

Hopefully I can steer people clear of financial advisors that drain their earnings.

To me, this is really just an "eyeballs" game. How many people can you get this in front of to think "Yeah, I would spend $100 to know how to save/make thousands." If you can convert even a small number of people it makes it profitable for me.

My cost is my time to write the content and run the business, which is fairly minimal.

JobSecurity said:

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If you were going to do this your path would be as an influencer. But there are a ton of these influencers out there so that's going to be really tough to gain a significant footing unless you have pretty girl privilege on your side. But if you did gain a big following then you could sell like anything else - set up an email list or newsletter, sell a course or ebook, etc.

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have noticed recently there are a TON of youtubers in the financial planning/retirement sphere now

I think the course and ebook thing has become wholly oversaturated as well.

I think your angle could/should be:

Marketing/advertising to the very specific net incomes and situations you cater to. "Do you have a $1MM net worth but feel like you are missing out on simple tax savings that could save you thousands each year?".

Make it personal, not a course. Don't even go the "fill out this questionnaire" route. Offer each and every person willing to check your service out 15 minutes to ask them over Zoom or in a direct email their financial situation and reply/respond personally where you think they could be saving money.

Then AFTER you've proven your worth, see if you get them to pay the annual fee you are looking for to have continued access to that type content, blog posts, forum, etc...

However the problem you'll then run into is that it's simply not profitable enough. You get 100 people paying $100 a year for the outline, guidance, etc... and after fees, content creation, etc, etc... you'd probably be better off just getting your CFP cert and picking up a few clients. There's advertising/sponsors -- but then you get into a pretty big conflict of interest on your guidance and lose the "only what's best for you" angle.

OP, I like the idea but IMO you are late to the party (unless, as others have said, you already have a large following). I would guess the majority of those HENRYs are all starting to use ChatGPT or similar on a pretty much daily basis, and once they are interested enough to start learning for themselves, will leverage those tools to teach them for free.

Heck, I could probably spend a couple hours prompting ChatGPT right now and generate my own playbook, convert it to an eBook and sell it on Amazon through Kindle Direct Publishing. Then promote it on LinkedIn/social media, financial forums, and buy some ads to drive traffic to it.

I was going to ask the OP how they'd compete with ChatGPT.

I'd suggest to the OP, that there's too much great content on this topic already.

However…I think there would be an opportunity for a more personal approach where if you found someone interested but didn't know how to actually do it. You'd meet them and walk them thru opening an account on fidelity or vanguard and setting up some automatic investments. They own the account, you don't see the passwords or have any access. You just hold their hand thru the initial setup.

I'm not sure what liability you might have, what licensing you'd need, and how it would scale beyond something very localized.

I would definitely second the other thought of taking time to set up 15 min conversations with people instead of having them fill out a brochure. If you can get that automated so people could schedule a time to meet without having to contact you and go back and forth that would probably be good. Younger professionals appear to hate extra dealing with people

If you market it as some type of concierge service that might be good.

My fear would be once someone gets setup they'll figure it out and no longer need you or get sold by their brokerage firm to ditch you and let them manage it.

It's a good idea, but it will take some good execution and marketing.

The well worn path on this is making a course along with a paid community.

There are tons of people out there who do this for all kinds of stuff. Including courses/paid communities on how to create a course and paid community.

As long as you what you're providing is valuable it's not a bad product. I've bought probably a dozen of these on various topics over the years. Some of them are crap or borderline scams but some are helpful and good value.

Your investment is creating the base content for the course and then creating ongoing content to keep things fresh and market the course. This often takes the form of a video podcast.

Yes there are tons of people out there already doing this but that just means there's a big market for it. You have a well-defined niche so that helps.

If you aren't willing to commit to doing this for at least a couple years to gain traction then I wouldn't bother. It sounds like a good idea but It'll probably be tougher than you think.

You'll go broke.
The hardest part to becoming an established FA is gathering clients. No one wants to talk to a rookie FA, why would anyone talk to you? How do you advertise? What software will you use to present a plan? What will you charge? Will you rent office space or work out of your home? Do you hire an assistant? The appearance of being successful is almost as important to becoming successful as knowledge. In other words I have no idea how you'll make money.
And FWIW if FA's drained client accounts like you stated then nobody, and I mean nobody, would use one.

Really great feedback guys, appreciate everyone's input.

I think I have a good handle on why my content is different and how to target a very specific type of high earner.

Luckily, my startup/operating costs on all of this is fairly minimal, so break even should be a pretty low bar to step over. I am talking (low) tens of paid members to be net positive.

Not looking to retire on this idea, just looking for some side money playing with a topic I am interested in.

I would think that making connections at universities and career fairs with degrees with a high likelihood of high earning potential would be a way to get in front of your target audience, and if you're in with recruiters, counselors, etc. they can funnel you potential clients.

What you give them in return is up to you.

This sounds kind of in the realm of a Dave Ramsey Financial Coach (but maybe without the Dave Ramsey principles). There are plenty of people out there that do this kind of work. They are not pulling in millions in revenue but a lot do very well.

I think more than just telling people what to do, a lot of them need accountability and regular check-ups to make sure they are staying on the right path.

I wish this had been available when I first started earning decent money. Even after 25 years, I'm still learninglike how my advisor was charging over 1% until I asked about expenses, or how tax advantages can be maxed depending on account and asset type. There's an opportunity here, but you'll need to compete with "free." For example, I recently filled out a short form online and got 10 quick responses critiquing my portfoliohighlighting strengths and weaknesses. Sure this was from random unknowns on the internet but it provided me the topics I needed to research on my own and figure out my next move.