Darrick Hutchens: From Investments to Wealth Management

“A lot of anxiety and many sleepless nights.”

That’s how wealth manager Darrick Hutchens describes his life just a few years ago.

The problem? Hutchens, managing partner at Monon Wealth Management in Carmel, Indiana, was focusing entirely on investing and trying to differentiate himself based on investment products. In effect, he was living or dying by nothing more than performance results. “I felt I wasn’t delivering the value I needed to in order to attract ideal clients,” he says.

It was a hunch that become crystal clear when one such prospective affluent client—a good friend—flatly turned down Hutchens’ offer to work with him.

The trajectory of his practice fundamentally changed, however, when he discovered CEG Worldwide’s coaching program. It was through this program that Hutchens learned a systematic process for delivering comprehensive wealth management—an approach that goes far beyond investing to address key affluent concerns in areas such as tax mitigation, estate planning, wealth protection, charitable giving and more.

“CEG’s wealth management formula showed me how to deliver much more value as well as communicate that value to people and show them how I am different,” he says. “That’s been the biggest game changer to my success.”

Indeed, prior to implementing this wealth management process, Hutchens saw managing $100 million of AUM at 1% as the highest possible peak he could reach. Today he oversees twice that amount. Even better, says Hutchens: “Our clients are all ideal clients—we serve people who I’m excited to work with and who we can bring tremendous value to.”

Delivering wealth management means Hutchens and his clients and prospects rarely discuss specific investment vehicles anymore. Instead, conversations focus on clients’ entire financial lives and the strategies involved in helping them get their desired outcomes across the board. “That’s been huge from a client acquisition standpoint,” he adds.

The wealth management process also adds important aspects of control and discipline to Hutchens’ approach with clients. Instead of being entirely at the mercy of the market’s ups and downs, Hutchens can take actions that help clients with taxes, trusts and philanthropic goals—making a positive impact in clients’ lives regardless of how specific investments are performing at a given moment in time. That, in turn, has helped his clients stay on track with their overall wealth plans rather than panic if asset prices are down.

Apart from the actual process he learned, Hutchens credits two particular aspects of CEG Worldwide’s coaching program as crucial to his growth and success:

• Accountability. Every month, Hutchens meets with his coach to discuss his ongoing progress—which motivates him to stay on target. “It’s easy for life to get in the way of goals, but knowing that I have a coach who will hold me accountable every few weeks really drives me to do those actions I need to do,” he says.
• Peer-based best practices. The advisors in the program aren’t competitors, says Hutchens, so they’re all free to share ideas and insights about what’s working well in their respective businesses—as well as ask each other for advice about overcoming hurdles they’re facing. “We get to talk and compare notes in a very open and honest way, which is something that doesn’t happen very often elsewhere,” he says. “It’s like medicine for my imagination and my aspirations.”

Ultimately, Hutchens is both experiencing a level of success and seeing a world of possibilities that in the past had never occurred to him. His advice for fellow advisors looking to up their games significantly:

1. Commit to success. “Not everyone has to be a wealth manager, of course. But if you want to be a wealth manager, I think you really have to be all-in on it. You can’t pick and choose when you’re going to use it and when you’re not going to use it. Really embrace it and then identify your ideal clients who you’re passionate about serving.”
2. Go beyond what you think you know. Hutchens emphasizes the importance of having an abundance mindset, saying, “Understand the huge opportunity that exists to serve the kinds of clients that you really want to serve. If I could go back and talk to myself 10 years ago, I would say, ‘You can be more than you think you can by bringing more value than you think you can to more people than you currently believe exist.’”