General Manager - Estate Planning for Financial Advisors

Location: New York, NY (Hybrid Work: 3 days in the office)

Employment Type: Full-time

About Us & the Opportunity: Estate Planning for Financial Advisors is a new venture launched by FreeWill Co., the largest provider of estate plans in the US. Financial Advisors are increasingly looking for ways to add estate planning as a service as part of holistic wealth management. This venture’s goal is to deliver exceptional estate planning services to financial advisors, their clients, and their prospects. We believe that through driving delightful estate planning experiences and making it easy to leave money to charity, this business unit could be the fastest driver of new gifts to charity in the world. 

We are seeking an enthusiastic and driven General Manager to lead our early-stage business operations and go to market efforts. We have already seen traction with this product in the market, and are seeing major adoption tailwinds in a greenfield market. We are looking for a self-starter who can take us from 0.5 to 1, and grow this business to $10M ARR and beyond.

Role Overview: As a General Manager of Estate Planning for Financial Advisors, you will play a pivotal role in shaping our company's future. You will be responsible for driving sales growth, managing day-to-day business operations, and becoming the top player in the estate planning market for financial advisors. This is a unique opportunity to make a significant impact, set strategic direction, and lead a passionate team. The role will report directly to FreeWill’s Co-Founder and CEO, Jenny Xia Spradling. 

Key Responsibilities:

• Get this business from 0.5 to 1:
• Get to GTM-fit: meaning repeatable, scalable way to win the financial advisor market with solid unit economics.
• Get to product-market fit: Ensure early clients are successfully implementing and benefiting from Advice+/Estately. 
• Business Operations and Management:
• Oversee all aspects of the business, including budgeting, financial planning, and resource allocation.
• Manage everyone who works on this business unit (currently ~10 people with potential to grow).
• Strategic Planning:
• Define the long-term vision and business objectives for Estate Planning for Financial Advisors.
• Identify and explore new markets and product offerings, including estate planning for lawyers, or tax planning for financial advisors.

Sample day-to-day activities for first year:

• Ultimately activities will be determined by GM, but here are some examples of what the role might entail in the first year:
• Talking to potential customers, channel partners, competitors, experts in FA software (10 conversations a week), developing effective interview guides, summarizing and synthesizing notes. This includes In-person visits with financial advisors and estate planning lawyers to map workflows, identify pain points.
• Closing sales, including cold calling, getting referrals, attending conferences to network, developing proposals, pricing experimentation
• Deciding on new branding, including name, acquiring a domain, visual branding
• A/B testing marketing strategies to FAs
• Developing marketing and customer success collateral
• Developing customer success playbook, experimentation, and implementation
• Driving product vision and prioritizing roadmap with Dylan and spacepod
• Negotiating and making the most of the Mercer relationship
• Creating a new brand (name, website, domain, visual assets)
• Culture and team building activities
• Budgeting and resource allocation
• Data analysis on user usage (with product team)
• Hiring where needed

Qualifications:

• 3-5 years of leadership experience in a fast-moving software start-up environment, founder or C-suite experience preferred
• Strong familiarity with estate planning or financial services is strongly preferred
• Proven track record of achieving business objectives and driving growth
• Management experience hiring and growing a high-performing team is strongly preferred
• Ability to deeply listen to understand customer needs and translate to a product vision
• Ability to inspire and lead cross-functional teams
• Ability to sell a vision
• Ability to make fast-paced high-stakes decisions
• Ability to execute and get stuff done
• Ability to make data-driven decisions
• Ability to create an excellent team culture
• Excellent communication, leadership, and interpersonal skills
• Ability to travel for industry events and conferences

Comp structure:

• $150K base
• Performance-based: $1M ARR at the end of 2024 -> $200K bonus. $3M ARR at the end of 2025 -> $300K bonus. $10M ARR at the end of 2026 -> $500K bonus
• FreeWill exec level equity, and opportunity for further equity refreshes commensurate with the performance of the BU