‘Sketch Guy’ Carl Richards, CFP®, Joins Elements as Chief Evangelist

Experienced financial planner, renowned columnist and two-time author brings his aligned vision for deeper, more philosophical financial planning to the firm

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Elements, a mobile-first, client-centric financial monitoring platform, today announced that longtime financial planner, author and New York Times ‘Sketch Guy’ columnist, Carl Richards, CFP®, has joined the firm as its Chief Evangelist. Richards has more than 20 years of experience in financial planning and is a behavioral finance expert who is adept at conveying complex financial concepts with just a sharpie and paper.

Richards’ weekly column appeared in The New York Times for more than a decade and he has written two books: The One-Page Financial Plan: A Simple Way to Be Smart About Your Money and The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways to Stop Doing Dumb Things with Money.

"I have been hyper-focused on developing ways for financial advisors to have truly meaningful conversations with their clients, which I consider the art of financial planning,” Richards said. “As I learned about Elements from Reese, I became fascinated by the elegantly simple way they enable advisors to objectively measure their clients’ financial vital signs to facilitate deeper, more impactful discussions at scale.”

Elements created an easy-to-use mobile app for the modern client where they can quickly input their financial data, enabling financial advisors to have targeted conversations with them using 12 key financial vital signs, one for each major area of personal finance, no matter the client’s net worth, including savings, tax and burn rate.

“We founded Elements to create a new, simplified way to approach financial planning, while making the entire experience an enjoyable one for clients,” said Reese Harper, CFP, CEO, Elements. “Adding Carl’s unique insights and way of distilling difficult concepts into easy-to-understand terms will be an invaluable tool for advisors and will further our mission for advisors to achieve efficiencies while having meaningful conversations with clients.”

Elements closed its successful seed fund round in November with $4 million, which included participation from: Kickstart Fund, Venture Capital, Grand Ventures, Forward VC, Dan Wiener, Tyler Hogge and Dave Grow. Elements will be working on its Series A in the coming months.

For more information about Elements and to book a demo, click here.

About Elements

Elements, a financial monitoring platform, is simplifying financial planning while dramatically lowering the costs for advisors to both acquire and serve clients. Elements encourages better behaviors with clients that promote financial health by displaying digestible pieces of critical financial data, including debt, savings, spending, insurance, investments, and more, that become the building blocks of a comprehensive, easy-to-monitor financial plan. The Elements scorecard provides advisors a way to capture vital client data quickly and easily and present a holistic picture of their financial life in a tangible and understandable way. For more, visit getelements.com.