Steve and Nick Mayne run a father-son advice firm outside Melbourne.
Eighteen months ago, their average new client fee was $12,200.
Today their average new fee is $22,025.
They haven’t changed their clients.
They repositioned their approach and engagement process.
Their client base is made up of the insurance and SMSF clients they always had – the difference is how they engage and re-engage.
It’s no longer limited to a scope, helping with insurance and SMSF issues, but has a comprehensive scope, project managing the client on everything that needs help.
Here’s how they did it.
THE INVISIBLE OPPORTUNITY
“We’ve always had good clients,” Steve told me. “We just didn’t realise everything we could do for them.”
Even though the relationships were about more than just products, Steve and Nick’s process didn’t reflect that value.
Many of their clients weren’t “insurance clients.”
They were business owners with succession issues.
They were families concerned about cash flows, estate issues, outliving their savings, and making career changes.
Their clients needed comprehensive advice.
In so many ways, Steve and Nick were helping comprehensively, but they didn’t have a process to manage it or price it.
THE SHIFT
“It has shifted our insurance and SMSF clients into comprehensive relationships,” Nick said.
How?
Three changes:
First: They stopped identifying clients by product (insurance clients, SMSF clients, investment clients).
Second: They started running methodical Discovery Conversations with every client – not to sell them new services, but to understand what they valued and what concerned them.
Third: They repositioned their existing advice based on complexity, not products.
Result?
Clients who’d been paying $12,200 for “insurance, financial planning and SMSF” advice were now paying $22,025 for comprehensive advice – because they finally understood what they were getting.
Same clients. Broader offering. Different methodology.
“We nearly doubled our fees from clients we’d always had, but never realised,” Nick said.
PROCESS > DEPENDENCY
Here’s what’s interesting:
Steve and Nick didn’t double their fees because they became better advisers or worked harder.
They doubled fees because they focused on a process clients valued.
The Certainty Advice Nine Discovery Conversations gave them a consistent, methodical framework.
When mastered, these frameworks ensure clients engage with a process, not personalities.
That’s the difference between:
– “I need to talk to Steve” (dependency)
– “I need to contact Mayneline” (process)
One scales. The other doesn’t.
YOUR 2026 QUESTION
Not whether you have ideal clients.
You do.
The question is: Are you positioning value the way Steve and Nick learned to?
Or are you leaving value on the table with clients you’ve had for years?
I’m accepting 12 firms into Certainty Advice for 2026. The investment is $3,300+GST/month.
If you start before January 31st, you get 2025 pricing: $3,000+GST/month.
If Steve and Nick’s story sounds familiar, reply to this email.
Jim
P.S. Steve and Nick implemented this in 18 months. Not years. The difference was having a clear framework and a community of firms doing the same work