How ex-Amazon employee grew his tech client base

investmentnews.com:

As the saying goes, it isn’t about who you know, but what you know. And Eric Franklin is one of those advisors who left an industry and ended up finding their way back to it.

As a former employee of Amazon, Franklin co-founded Prospero Wealth with a former colleague at the retail behemoth in 2016, blending his knowledge of tech and wealth. Naturally, he eventually decided to focus on serving tech-based clients.

“This space really chose me because after you work in it for 23 years, that tends to be who your network is,” he admits. “When I got into this, I didn’t have that strong of an opinion of whether that was my target demographic, as I started with friends and family. I have friends in all sorts of different industries.”

It wasn’t until he went full-time with Prospero in 2021 that he realized the last 20 years of his career had blossomed into a network of people who fit into that niche.

“I realized that was going to be a really interesting, endless niche to explore,” he said.

Franklin says serving in the tech niche, or even having a niche in general, can help an advisor’s growth model. “The growth model for our business is once you understand who that client is or that client profile you’re going after, then you can get really specific about curating your services, your pricing and your offering to that niche,” Franklin says.

Franklin noted that while many senior professionals are constantly targeted by various financial advisors, the industry experience held by the lead advisors at Prospero Wealth prioritize a data-driven and iterative approach to financial planning.

“We have that shared language and approach,” he says. “We’re much more iterative with our approach than a lot of financial service companies or