Build a Profitable College Planning Niche and Connect to Affluent Families Ready to Hire You

• Help clients save thousands of dollars in tuition costs when you add a profitable college planning niche to your practice!
• Late-stage college planning is a lucrative, untapped niche that connects you to wealthy families who need help understanding the college funding game and are willing to pay for your expertise…

PROBLEM: Your retirement-focused business doesn’t stand out against your competition and growth is hard as you struggle to replace leaking assets spent by retiree clients or passed along to heirs.

SOLUTION: Master the college funding niche that converts families to clients, drives their friends with similar challenges to you, and opens the door to new strategic allies that will fuel your business.

•  Affluent parents are used to paying to improve their kids’ chances in life, whether for sports, activities, or getting into college…
• Helping pressured families understand the complexities of late-stage college funding wows them and converts them to full clients…
• Learning to use powerful tools that open parents‘ eyes about the true cost of college makes you look like a hero…
• Smart college funding analysis includes tax returns and investment portfolios, which give you important insights that open the door to a long-term professional-client relationship…

5 Reasons to Build a Late-Stage College Planning Niche:

1. Forward-thinking professionals who learn the basics can plant the flag in their communities and be the go-to person in this fledging and incredibly important field.
2. This is a deserted field that the financial industry continues to ignore—what other major life expense isn’t addressed by professionals?
3. You can partner with educational consultants, who are often intimidated by the financial side of college funding.
4. College conversations give you an opening to talk about other financial concerns and potentially bring in more assets. You just need to know the answer to the magic question.
5. This is a time-pressured problem with frazzled parents desperate for your solid advice and solutions for getting the best price for their kid’s education.

BENEFITS OF A RICH NICHE:

• Transforms you into an expert in a market that feels natural
• Provides one profitable solution you can repeat over and over
• Increases the number and quality of referrals
• Puts you in front of wealthy prospects and new centers of influence
• Reinvigorates your business for the next phase of your professional growth

Boost Your Value Proposition, Launch a College Niche, Drive New Client Growth

KEY #1: Build a niche expertise around a topic that has a desperate need but not very much competition—ideally focused on affluent families with college-bound kids.

KEY #2: Connect with affluent families who need help understanding the college funding game and are willing to pay for your expertise. It’s a lucrative, untapped niche.

KEY #3: Conduct a late-stage college funding analysis of how much a family can afford, what they’ll be charged, and how they’ll use their assets to fund four or more years of higher education. They’ll love you for it.

KEY #4: Then help families pay the lowest tuition price, convert them to clients, receive referrals to families with similar challenges, and open your door to new strategic allies that will fuel your business.

Join Savvy College Planning^® Today and Start Reaching the Wide Range of Generations Struggling with How to Send Their Kids to College…

• Yes, I want to build my expertise and service my clients and prospects with Horsesmouth’s Savvy College Planning® client education program featuring Lynn O’Shaughnessy for $597. 

The FA Guide
to Savvy College

Planning®

150 College Planning
Questions Answered

My Savvy College Planning® program includes:

COMPREHENSIVE GUIDES

• The Financial Advisor’s Guide to Savvy College Planning: This guide (300+ pages), written by Lynn O’Shaughnessy, walks you through all the major aspects of smart college planning. It equips you with the technical knowledge and insights you’ll need to educate clients and prospects—be they parents or grandparents—about sensible and cost-effective approaches to find the right college for their family. ($199 value)
• 150 College Planning Questions Answered: What Savvy Advisors Need to Know: This report (65+ pages) gives you specific answers to real-life, difficult college planning questions your clients will face. Lynn O’Shaughnessy spends every day researching, writing, and training parents and other professionals about the tricky world of college planning. Now you’ll have easy access to a body of questions you’ll likely face as you educate clients and prospects about college planning. ($199 value)

On-demand viewing

INTRODUCTORY WEBINAR TRAINING SERIES

• Multi-part webinar training sessions delivered by Lynn O’Shaughnessy: Lynn will walk you through the key material contained in the Savvy College Planning® program. All sessions are recorded for on-demand viewing later. ($499 value)

Here’s an outline of the training program:

Main Sources of College Money

Many families end up searching in the wrong places for college money. Yet understanding where the most promising sources of scholarships and grants are located is critically important in reducing the cost of college. In this webinar, you will discover where your affluent clients will experience the best luck in capturing merit awards.

Here is a sampling of what you will learn in this webinar:

• The four main sources of college money
• Types of colleges that love high-income applicants
• Who gets awards from prestigious private universities
• The latest trend in scholarships at state universities
• What kind of federal and state aid your clients may qualify for
• What you need to know about private scholarships

Pinpointing Your Clients’ Chances for Financial Aid

Affluent parents are often eager to learn whether their children might qualify for financial aid and they frequently want to know if an income cut-off exists for aid. You will learn how you can easily help your clients, as well as attract prospects, by assisting them in answering this critical financial aid question. You will also discover how factors such as assets, home equity and marital status can impact aid chances.

Here is a sampling of the topics tackled in this webinar:

• How to cement client relationships and attract prospects with a simple financial aid tool
• How parent and child investments impact financial aid
• What parents can do when assets are in a child’s name
• What kind of colleges care about home equity
• How divorced and separated couples can enjoy a financial aid advantage
• How grandparents can safely help with college costs

How to Find Generous Colleges

College pricing has become almost transparent, but families are unaware of this reality and they certainly don’t know how to take advantage of it. In this webinar, you will learn how to evaluate the generosity of a particular school tailored to a specific client. Knowing how to pull this off (and it’s simple) can ultimately save your clients tens of thousands of dollars or more per child. Just sharing an easy way to predict merit awards can make you a rock star.

Here is a sampling of the topics covered in this webinar:

• Discover how a federally mandated college pricing tool can be a game changer for your clients and prospects
• Assess the odds of a client’s teenager receiving a merit award or financial aid at a specific school
• Discover how families can make better decisions when using valuable tools from sources like the College Board and The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Lynn will hop on the Internet and research the generosity of individual schools based on your suggestions

Ways to Maximize Financial Aid

Parents are eager to learn about ways to boost financial aid chances. Whether a family qualifies for need-based aid will depend heavily on a handful of factors and some of them you will probably find surprising. In this webinar, you will discover effective ways to boost financial aid. And for your clients, who will definitely not qualify for need-based financial aid, you’ll discover some great ways to boost chances for merit aid, as well as admission chances.

Here is a sampling of the topics explored in this webinar:

• Effective strategies to maximize financial aid chances
• Affirmative action for high-income students (Yes, this exists!)
• Why school selection is key when seeking financial aid or merit scholarships
• Why your clients shouldn’t assume the first award letter is the final (best) one

KEY COLLEGE FUNDING DATA CARD

Key College Funding
Data card

• Key College Funding Data Card (PDF): Help families save thousands on tuition and protect their retirement savings from bad college funding decisions with this handy resource. More than 60 critical data points for college-bound families. Brand with your photo and logo. FINRA-reviewed.

MONTHLY E-NEWSLETTER

Member's only
newsletter

• Savvy College Planning® Newsletter: Each month you’ll receive an e-newsletter about college planning, including important news, updates to the program, and insights and tips, plus answers to select member questions on finding the right college, discovering its true cost, locating scholarships, understanding financial aid, and crafting smart and cost-saving ways to pay for higher education.

9 CFP credits

CE EXAMS

• Take our online exam to qualify for CFP Continuing Education Credits. Certificate of Completion included. CFP Board notified within one month of passing exam. (Only eligible to get credit once every two years)

MEMBER-ONLY UPDATE WEBINARS

Important news
and updates

• Update webinars for Savvy College Planning® members only: Twice a year Lynn O’Shaughnessy will conduct a webinar aimed at answering questions and updating members about new developments in the field and the Savvy College Planning® program. Webinars will be live and available for on-demand viewing later.

CLIENT PRESENTATIONS

70+ slides

Here is a unique way to reach new clients and prospects. Generation X and baby boomers struggle right now with late-stage college planning for their children. Teach them how to surmount the burden of paying for their kids’ higher-ed, while also staying focused on larger saving and retirement planning goals.

Each FINRA-reviewed presentation comes with PowerPoint slides and speaker notes.

Customizable
presentation

• 4 Keys to Cutting College Costs: How to Avoid Overpaying:  Customizable client education presentation. You get 70+ PowerPoint slides and 20+ page speaker notes (45-minute presentation). Ideal for large groups or one-on-one presentations. ($299 value)
• An Inside Look at Qualifying for Financial Aid:
  

  Marketing
  templates

  Customizable client-education presentation. You get: 50+ PowerPoint slides and 20+ pages of speaker notes (45 minute presentation). Ideal for large groups or one-on-one presentations. ($299 value)

MARKETING TOOLKIT

• Marketing Toolkit for Savvy College Planning: Includes 75-page how to guide for organizing, presenting, and following up with workshop attendees. Also includes PDF templates: FINRA-reviewed poster, postcards and press release. ($299 value)
  

  Client handout

PARENTS’ GUIDE

• The Savvy Parents’ Guide to Cutting College Costs: This handout (50 copies) is a 4-panel, 2-sided, 8.5" x 11" reference to distribute to clients and prospects. It explains key concepts necessary to understanding college planning decisions. ($297 value)

Client reprints

ARTICLE REPRINTS

• 10+ Article Reprints (PDF): FINRA-reviewed. Brand these article reprints with your contact information, photo, and logo to create a client touch that is both instructive and memorable. ($873 value)
  

  Members-only website

MEMBERSHIP WEBSITE

• SavvyCollegePlanning.com website: Instant access to key elements of the program, including presentations, marketing toolkits, article reprints, newsletter archives, webinars, CE exams, and more.

Special discount on
College Aid Pro™

SOFTWARE

• Special discount on College Aid Pro™: This all-in-one tool allows your clients to self-onboard, and have you guide them through an apples-to-apples comparison of thousands of colleges and universities across the country. Cost analysis and planning tools, along with white-labeled reports and client-facing solutions, are available with the click of a button.

ANNUAL LICENSE

Annual License

• First Year License: Deliver Savvy College Planning® workshop presentations to clients and prospects for 12 months. After your first year, renew your Savvy College Planning® license and get our annual program update: new college planning developments, updated slides for your presentations, and updated client reference materials. ($497 value)

EXPERT ANSWERS

Q&A

• Question and Answer Forum: Post your College Planning questions for program leader, Lynn O’Shaughnessy, to answer. Additionally, you can browse the questions asks by other program members and benefit from the answers they received.

CLIENT REFERENCES

Reference lists

• Savvy College Planning Lists: Here are five college planning reference lists to give to families and boost your expertise in their eyes.

  • The Ultimate College List Builder
  • The Ultimate List of the Nation’s Most Generous Colleges
  • The Schools That Don’t Provide Merit Scholarships
  • The Schools That Offer Students Full Scholarships
  • Does Where You Go to College Matter?

PROGRAM LEADER

Lynn
O’Shaughnessy

Horsesmouth is pleased to be working with Lynn O’Shaughnessy, one of the nation’s leading experts in the field of college planning. Lynn is a nationally recognized college expert, and higher ed journalist, consultant and speaker.

Her chief goal of Savvy College Planning® is to help financial professionals help families with teenagers become smart college shoppers as they search for schools. College is often the second biggest expense in a family’s life, but financial professional usually don’t understand how to make college more affordable.

She is the author of Amazon bestseller The College Solution: A Guide for Everyone Looking for the Right School at the Right Price. She is a contributor at CBS MoneyWatch and writes about college at her popular blog – The College Solution.

A former Los Angeles Times reporter, she has written and/or been interviewed about college issues for such national outlets as The New York Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Consumer Reports, USA Today, Money Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Associated Press, MSN Money, Huffington Post, Fox Business News, Smart Money, Reuters and The Early Show on CBS.

Prior to focusing on college issues, she wrote three financial books, The Unofficial Guide to Investing (MacMillan), as well as Retirement Bible and Investing Bible (John Wiley & Sons). In addition, she ghostwrote two additional financial books, including one New York Times bestseller.

Risk-Free GUARANTEE for Savvy College Planning® with Lynn O’Shaughnessy

We think educating clients and prospects about college planning issues is so important to your community, your clients and their children, that we’re trying to make it as easy for you as possible to gain this important expertise. So here’s our promise:

Make Savvy College Planning® a key client-education offering for your clients and their friends and families. College planning is a high-interest topic right now to several generations: boomers, Gen Xers, and upcoming Millennials. This topic presents a fantastic opportunity to reach new people in your community and bring in younger families to your practice.

By helping parents better understand the opportunities and pitfalls of college planning, you’ll enter a new field of expertise that will engender trust and “peace of mind” among clients and prospects. They’ll be thankful for your guidance putting together the college-planning puzzle. That’s why I can make the following guarantee when I urge you to join Savvy College Planning® with Lynn O’Shaughnessy:

Learn the program. Present it to your clients and parents in your community. Use it one-on-one and in group settings—as a client education workshop. Do that for 12 months. If you’re not finding that parents are extremely grateful to have a competent, confident and knowledgeable professional guide them through the ins and outs of college planning, we’ll completely refund 100% of your purchase price—guaranteed, no questions asked. Just call and tell us you’re returning all the materials to Horsesmouth at: Horsesmouth, 230 Park Avenue, 3rd Floor West, New York, NY 10169. Phone: 212-343-8760, Ext. 1.

Request a Desktop Demo for Savvy College Planning:

Demo includes:

• The Financial Advisor's Guide and 150 College Planning Questions Answered
• Multi-part webinar training sessions and member-only update webinars
• Quick Reference Guide and case questions submittal
• Client workshop presentation and speaker notes
• Marketing Toolkit
• Article Reprints
• Client Handouts
• Newsletters
• Savvy College Planning subscriber website

Click here to sign up or call (888) 336-6884 ext. 1

Go Ahead and Signup Now—There’s No Risk So Give It a Try

• Become a Member of our Savvy College Planning® program (a $2,896 value) for only $597.

Your “Savvy College Planning®” fee will be charged directly to your credit card. Our online process is secure and you can safely provide your credit card information in the form below.

To save time, your membership will be renewed at the end of its term at $497 per year (you can cancel at any time). You will receive a reminder from us two weeks before your credit card is charged, so you have time to update your card information.

About Horsesmouth

Since 1997, Horsesmouth has been helping financial professionals succeed by providing timely guidance on key topics such as business development, practice management, financial planning and investment strategies.

FOR INSTANT SERVICE Call Toll Free: 1-888-336-6884 ext 1 (Outside U.S.: 1-212-343-8760)

Or simply fax this form to: 212-363-9526