Welcome to “Show Me Your Stack,” a series from Financial Planning where we catch up with those delivering financial advice to see what tools they rely on to make it happen. Rising client expectations are driving the need for more powerful tech tools. We’re digging deep to find out why advisors prefer certain solutions.
Lawrence D. “Larry” Sprung founded Mitlin Financial in 2004 in Hauppauge, New York. Today, the firm has around $155 million in assets under management and six employees, two of whom are advisors, including Sprung.
Sprung, a wealth advisor and CFP with more than two decades of experience under his belt, is the author of the 2023 book, “Financial Planning Made Personal: How to Create Joy and the Mindset for Success” and is the host of the “Mitlin Money Mindset” podcast. He is a founding member of the Investopedia Advisor Council, but not all his pursuits are planning-related. For more than 12 years, he has served on the National Board of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and with his wife, Denise, has raised more than $1.7 million for the organization.
Four years ago, Mitlin Financial made the switch from being independent to becoming a Carson partner firm. (Ron “Omani” Carson, founder and former CEO of the Carson Group, also wrote the introduction to Sprung’s book.)
The decision has spared him time, money and headaches when it comes to Mitlin’s tech stack, Sprung said. Now his tech budget is negligible, as most of those items are covered by Carson Group, its corporate RIA.
“This has saved me tens of thousands of dollars from when I was my own SEC RIA,” he said.
READ MORE: Show Me Your Stack: How many tech tools does an advisor need?
One of the benefits Sprung said he found in being a Carson partner was how it alleviated him of the full responsibility for making decisions about which pieces of his tech stack to add or remove.
“Some of the things with regard to my tech stack I have control over, some I don’t,” he said. “One of the things I found extremely valuable about affiliating with Carson is [that] I’ve taken the vast majority of that off my plate. They’re constantly evaluating and looking at what to add and what’s the newest and the best things that we can improve on, rather than me having to do that and taking away from being in front of families and talking with them.”
READ MORE: Show Me Your Stack: Raymond James advisor cuts through the AI hype to find most useful tools
Overall, Sprung said he feels Mitlin’s current tech stack is as integrated as it could be.
“Like any other organization, you’re always striving and looking to integrate more,” he said. “We’re all striving for that holy grail where everything talks to each other and works together. I call that the utopia that will never happen. But we continue to move in that direction. It could always be a little bit better, but there’s nothing about what we’re doing today where I wake up in the morning and I’m like, ‘Oh, crap. I can’t believe that this is the tech stack I have.’ It works well together.”
READ MORE: Ron Carson stepping down as CEO of Carson Group
Scroll down the slideshow to see what Sprung feels are some of the most important pieces of Mitlin’s tech stack — and why.
