Carly Golias: Customized Client Services Driven by Personal Experience

Having the right partners and resources creates a thriving practice

In the video below, LPL financial advisor Carly Golias shares how offering specialized client services, along with access to the right tools, helps her run a more effective and efficient business.

Family, flexibility, and being your own boss

Working over 80 hours a week in her family’s restaurant while in high school, financial advisor Carly Golias learned what it takes to be successful at a young age. “My criteria for life was flexibility, control, and being my own boss.” She knew she wanted to be a mother, make her own choices, and be financially stable for herself and her family.

After choosing finance as her career path in college, Golias said, “It was a decade of really long hours and really hard work.” She persisted, knowing she could grow within the financial industry and have different experiences every day. “Sometimes it’s a new goal to achieve, or it's a pivot because of a circumstance that happened. It’s like putting like a puzzle together.”

Golias sincerely enjoys being a source of financial guidance for her clients. She feels it gives her the ability to make things simple in difficult areas of their life. “We’re solving problems and making things happen. I love being part of that process.”

A financial advisor since 2012, Golias joined the founder of Arrow & Bow Wealth Advisors and the team partnered with LPL Financial in 2019. She has two young daughters, and is about to receive her CFP® certification. She remarked, “This career is just perfect. I have the ability to shape and mold it, the flexibility to spend time with my family, and be everything I need to be for my clients.”

Providing a clear financial picture when it matters most

Along with her Accredited Investment Fiduciary (AIF®) designation, Golias is also a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA®). “Divorce is never easy, whether you have young children, older children, or lived your whole life together or a couple of years together,” she said. “It's something that completely throws you for a loop. And whether you dealt with the finances or didn’t, there are a lot of questions.”

Golias is passionate about helping clients who are going through this situation. “I went through my own divorce a couple of years ago, and I was very knowledgeable about what it would look like. But a lot of people aren't and the fear of the unknown is so big at that time.” Golias feels it’s important to provide her clients with a clear picture of their finances in order to give them a sense of comfort.

“It’s not just, ‘Am I going to be able to retire?’ It's, ‘Do I need to move? Am I going to be able to purchase another home? What about interest rates? How does my budget change?’ The incomes change and goals ultimately change because you've got less money going to different spaces now,” Golias said.

Golias shared that clients often need more than financial services when going through a divorce—services from an attorney or a mortgage lender. Arrow & Bow partners with other professionals and third parties and often provides those resources to them.

The Arrow & Bow team is mainly comprised of advisors who have worked together for over 10 years. Team members offer specialized areas of focus to help their clients individually, such as social security and legacy planning, in addition to divorce. “We are a very like-minded, collaborative group, in both the processes with our clients, but also with each other,” Golias said. “We know and trust each other, and love each other like a family. It’s just who we are.”

Understanding taxes is key to financial planning

Financial planning is the core of Arrow & Bow’s business. Golias knows a deep understanding of taxes is crucial to building solid financial plans for their clients. And not only understanding how taxes work today, but how they will work in the future due to tax law or tax bracket changes, or SECURE Act legislation updates.

“We don't do anything without first having a true financial plan in place. And that always involves taxes,” noted Golias. “There will always be a reason to reevaluate your financial plan. Sometimes you're on a path and you have to understand how to pivot. Or if you continue on the same path, will you ultimately achieve your goals? If you don't have someone constantly looking at those areas, when things change, you might not know where you’ll be standing.”

Before joining Arrow & Bow, Golias and her colleagues felt they didn’t have the right resources to help their clients in the best way, especially with financial planning. “While there are thousands of investments people could be in, clients didn’t really understand. ‘What does all of this mean? What does everything put together look like?’ And that's when we decided we needed to go independent.”

“We were looking for the best tools in the industry for financial planning,” Golias said. “And that's ultimately why LPL was the choice.”

Financial tools and resources for increased productivity and client service

“We wanted to offer the best possible financial solutions to our clients, but we needed the right tools to do that,” Golias said. “When we decided to come to LPL Financial, there was nothing we felt we were missing or that we couldn't use.”

The team takes advantage of the available technology platforms for LPL advisors, which makes doing business easier: they use Wealthbox for CRM purposes; OnceHub for setting up client meetings; AdvicePay for streamlined, digital billing and payments; FMG Marketing Suite; WealthVision for client access to financial planning tools; and MyRepChat for compliant, efficient texting with every generation of their clientele.

Given her firm’s focus on financial planning, Golias finds using the RightCapital platform extremely useful and effective. It offers an intuitive design to make complex financial planning concepts easy to understand. The flexible, modular platform includes interactive retirement scenarios, tax-efficient distributions, insurance evaluations, student loan management, estate planning, and more. “The time it takes to uncover clients’ tax returns and other detailed financial information is enormous,” said Golias. “With RightCapital, I can dive right in and see where we are quickly.”

Additionally, Golias appreciates the option to post podcasts and YouTube videos, so she and her team can brand their business and offer more personalized messages to their clients. “Our clients work with us for a reason, as we have those personal connections and relationships. With social media, we're able to give them us, and LPL allows us to do that.”

How partnering with LPL can optimize your business

Golias began her career right out of college. She said, “With experience, time, and knowledge, I realized to do the very best for my clients, I needed to partner with someone.” After she and several of her colleagues joined Arrow & Bow, the opportunity to join LPL presented itself. “I knew it would be a great fit for our team and my clients. LPL delivers the necessary scale and support.”

“LPL’s great in the sense that every time I said, ‘It would be nice to do this,’ I’d find out it was an option. And that was a game-changer because that wasn’t something we had before,” Golias said. “Now, it’s so nice to say, ‘We want to do this, can we?’ And the answer is often, ‘Yes, you can.’”

Golias feels partnering with LPL gives Arrow & Bow the best of both worlds: they have access to the tools they need to run their business more efficiently and effectively, and can serve their clients with individualized, tailored attention. “We're able to use basically every resource out there, but add our boutique touch. It’s everything we need.”

Featured in the video

Carly Golias, Wealth Advisor, CDFA®, AIF®

• Arrow & Bow Wealth Advisors
• 5 years with LPL
• Business Model: Corporate RIA