You're listening to Financial Advisor Marketing, the best show on the planet for financial advisors who want to get more clients without all the stress. You're about to get the real scoop on everything from lead generation to closing the deal. James is the founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com, where you can find an entire suite of products designed to help financial advisors grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard. [00:32]
James: Welcome to Financial advisor marketing. I am James Pollard, your host, the founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com and guess whose back producer Jonathan. We've done a lot of interviews in the past few weeks and you're finally back, so that's cool.
Jonathan: All right, I have, I got to tell you I'm, I'm a little bothered that you've been doing shows without me. Can't believe it.
James: That’s okay, you'll get over it. We've had, let me see I've got the list in front of me. We had Samantha Russell, she was awesome, I really like her. Ben Settle, obviously legendary like G.O.A.T in my opinion — greatest of all time.
Jonathan: Yeah.
James: And then Joe Lukcas, coach Joe. So he was awesome too. He's like on another level though, I don't even know if you listened to the episode, could you get, you can listen to in advance but if, he's like the mindset guy. So he was really cool.
Jonathan: Fun, fun, fun. The fam, I'm sure loved it all. [01:21.1]
James: Oh, I without a doubt. I'm sure that future me is going to be swamped with emails. Probably a negative ones with, I can't believe you let that Ben Settle guy on your show.
Jonathan: No kidding!
James: But no, Ben's awesome, Samantha's awesome, Joe is awesome. So I mean I wouldn't have them on the show if I didn't think that they were cool. So, that is that. Yeah, then it's good to have you back. I personally want to start this show off with a little story. As always, we're back to our normal routine and I guess this is something of a public service announcement and it's a deeply personal story. I'm going to get personal on this episode, Jonathan.
Jonathan: Ohhh….Oh. [01:59.8]
James: Not too long ago, my wife and I decided to foster a dog because we're so loving and we're caring and we want to do right by these animals. We decided to foster a dog and we were assigned…I didn't know that they assign dogs to you. I, this is my first time fostering. I've never done it before. I thought you go into the place, you pick the dog out, you say I want this one and they let you take it home. Doesn't work that way. Or at least not in the one we went to. They assigned dogs to you. So that was shocker number one. I, I could have gotten like a Chihuahua or something and.
Jonathan: That’s cute.
James: We were assigned a Pit Bull Jack Russell mix, which is interesting and.
Jonathan: Yeah.
James: A little weird I know, but I, I've had pit bulls in the past. I have never had a Jack Russell of any sort, although I'm open to it. But this is a pit bull Jack Russell mix. If you want to Google what that looks like it’s definitely a different dog. [02:53.6]
And we were assigned to foster this dog for 10 days and we picked it up at 1:00 PM just we got lunch and then went to pick up the dog. And unfortunately we had to return it by 4:00 PM.
Jonathan: Wow.
James: We didn't even have the dog for four hours and or three actually, I mean, not even three hours. And I know maybe all the animal lovers are going to get uptight and up in arms and keep in mind, I absolutely love animals and I'll let people's curiosity wonderful a little bit as to why I returned the dog because it really was a great dog. I loved it! I mean, she was cute, she was good in the car, she didn't jump all over stuff, didn't mess up the car, at least. Everything was going great — but when we took her into the house, she scratched the ever living hell out of our floors. [03:47.1]
Jonathan: Yikes.
James: I mean, she went BANANAS! There were scratches everywhere. And I was in tears, literally in tears, like crying.
Jonathan: Boy you have emotions!
James: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I do…I do. Because it's a dog, scratched up the floors, she ruined the hardwood. I mean this is like a relatively new house and the hardwood floors are beautiful. And this dog, so what actually happened was we went into my wife's office, she was fine in the entryway and then we just turned into my wife's office and she's got this big, or she had, at this time she had a big mirror on the floor because we were going to hang it up. The dog saw her reflection in the mirror and thought it was another dog and then after that we could not get this dog to calm down. [04:31.3]
It is like everything's okay…it's just you…everything's cool….tha..tha..tha. You know, pick up, pick her up, everything's cool. No, this did not work. So I don't know what the heck happened in this dog's past. I feel really bad for her, but she just destroyed it. And I bring this up, this is really weird to talk about on the financial advisor marketing podcast. And it's the reason why we're different than most other podcasts out there and not just in financial services, but I guess in general we talk about stuff like this. And I bring it up because I was thinking about it later that night and I'm thinking that maybe just maybe it's karma for me. And I know a lot of people would be like, KARMA!. Well what the heck did you do?
Jonathan: Right. [05:10.8]
James: Because when I was a kid, I had a Dalmatian and I think this is the first time I've ever mentioned the Dalmatian on the podcast or in an email or anything. I mean this is the first time I'm opening up about my childhood. I had a Dalmatian and totally loved it. Its original name was Lucky, we got it, we adopted it and we named it Spike. So it was a dog named Spike. And I remember that one day my cousin brought this brand new white pickup home and my Dalmatian jumped all over it and scratched it, scratched the tailgate, scratch the side, scratched the doors, everything. And needless to say, my cousin was furious and he also cried just like I did.
Jonathan: Oooh.
James: And I was thinking that after all these years, karma finally caught up with me cause I didn't stop the Dalmatian. I just let it go. I was a little kid; I was just laughing and having a good time. Doggie jump…doggie jump, just scratching the heck out of that pickup truck. And I didn't stop it and I admit it. [06:10.4]
You know, this is one of my flaws, financial advisers I don't stop Dalmatians from jumping all over the pickup trucks. And I wanted to share that story to illustrate that if you believe in karma, well I don't care if you really do or you don't. I personally do. I think it's a little different than what most people think it is, but I personally believe in karma. This is a reminder just to do good things and be a good person. Life really isn't that hard if you're just a good person. It's sounds really simple, but I've found that to be the case and I'm sure you have as well producer Jonathan, just being a good person.
Jonathan: I, I, I do my best.
James: I know you do. You're doing the, we're going to date this podcast and I told you I didn't want to do this.
Jonathan: No.
James: But I know we're going to date it. You've started the daily bread project.
Jonathan: God, I'm hoping it's over by now.
James: Although, as hearing this, the Corona virus. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jonathan: And you were a wonderful and generous guest and I appreciate you brother.
James: Yes, so financial advisors, I, I assume you, you've got it on iTunes already. [07:11.8]
Jonathan: I did thedailybreadproject.com.
James: So daily if I were, if you just search the daily bread, James Pollard, you should find it or something like that. But yeah, we'll talk about the coronavirus and stuff next week if I feel like it. Today though, we're going to talk about building the ultimate lead generation machine for financial advisors because it turns out that there's this little known website where you can sign up and this website will send you all the leads you desire.
Jonathan: What?
James: Oh and wait, I forgot to tell you, there’s even this magical agency where if you sign up to do business with them and then you pay them one arm and one leg per month.
Jonathan: I didn’t know that
James: And they all set up a Facebook business page for you and you'll be flooded with thousands of ideal clients, they'll do all the work for you and you won't ever have to lift a finger. Oh, and let's not forget, there's also an SEO service that can rank you overnight. They're definitely going to help you get tons and tons of cheap leads. That's a joke. [08:10.9]
Jonathan: I thought you were being serious! Cheap leads. Particularly if you have the money.
James: No…no.. All that stuff is a Yes, but the thing is, here's a little test for you. If you're a financial advisor and your heart started racing a little bit and your mouth started salivating a little bit when I was talking about that, maybe this is a reality check for you. All this stuff is just straight up BS. It's, it's insane to me how many people fall for this, how many people chase bright, shiny objects and being the imperfect human being than I am. I will admit that I've given serious thought to me like, well DANG!, if people were just going after this crap, maybe I should hop on the bandwagon, but I'm not going to do that. I’m not going to sell out my integrity, I couldn't live with myself if I just, launch something and like, yeah, get all this stuff overnight, you know, overnight millionaire, overnight business success. It just, it's goofy. This is totally goofy. There are so many people out there, especially within financial services, who they want to believe that there's this easy way to become successful as a financial advisor, and there isn't. And I know that we didn't talk a little bit about it. We had just like a comment on your Daily Bread Project where I'm doing a little bit more video now. [09:15.7]
Jonathan: Yeah. You're doing, I mean, you picked up your video game a lot.
James: Yeah.
Jonathan: What’s that all about?
James: It's and got a little excited about the webcam. And I'm like, time to get this show on the road.
Jonathan: All right. I like it. I respect that bro.
James: Sure. But one of the videos that I did where I was talking about email marketing and I know that a lot of financial advisors are numbers people and they want proof because there really are just so many different so called experts and gurus and stuff out there now it's just, it's nuts. And they all talk in vague generalities and I decided to upload video and I was like…Here you go, here's this statistic, this statistic, this fact, you can verify it here, verify it here you optimaster, campaign monitor AARP, Y charts. Like I'm giving you the sources, email does this, it does this, it does this, it does this. [10:04.8]
And from what I can tell, financial advisors appreciate that because it's no BS. It's not me just saying, Oh email can help you. And it is great because I mean I do that sometimes but when it comes down to it, I also provide you the hardcore proof. This is what it is. So financial advisors, if you want to see some videos, make sure you connect with me on LinkedIn, cause that is primarily where I upload them. I don't really share them anywhere else. I mean every, every now and then I'll put them on Facebook, but I don't really do anything with Facebook really. My assistant is one who goes in and checks all the stuff, so I'm more on LinkedIn, like I'm more personally me on my phone or on my iPad or something, checking LinkedIn. But back to the episode, this episode is going to be really high level. I'm not going to get into any tactics or anything like that. I've explained that I'm moving my business away from that model. I am however going to give you a solid overview of what you need to do to transform your business as a financial advisor. So if you want more leads, make sure you pay attention because this can help you get them. It's not going to be as sexy as some of this stuff that everyone else talks about, but it will help you and it is for real. [11:12.1]
Okay, so start off, the big idea is that you want to get to a point where you've got enough inbound activity coming your way where you don't have to do any outbound prospecting if you don't want to, it is totally up to you. If you want to continue to grow a rapid fire business, get a lot more clients, you're probably going to want to continue outbound prospecting. It's just obvious. Now when I talk about inbound marketing, I mean prospects coming to you, they may set appointments through your email, they may fill out the form on your website, they call you through your website, whatever the point is that they contact you instead of the other way around. The outbound marketing is when you contact them, and this is what I mean when I talk about building a marketing machine. You've got a machine in place that works for you and brings you clients whether you're sleeping, working or on vacation. It does not matter. Clients are still coming in and I talked about that in the video that I mentioned about email marketing. I'm like, hey, go check out this webinar. And I say right in the video, the webinar is automated because I practice what I preach. [12:13.0]
I am not there managing every single webinar and giving the presentation every single time. I am using leverage and I'm using scale. I record the webinar once. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands financial visors are watching it. They're going through it, and I, is there something that I've recorded one time, that's ultimate scale. This is what you want.
Hey, financial advisors, if you're looking for a way to set more appointments with qualified prospects, I invite you to sign up for James' brand new webinar about how financial advisors can get more clients with email marketing. Go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/webinar to register today. On this webinar, you'll discover why email marketing is able to generate upwards of 4400% ROI for smart financial advisors, three fatal mistakes nearly all financial advisors make with their emails, and the proven three-step process for converting prospects into booked appointments using email. All you have to do is head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/webinar and register today. [13:12.6]
And the, the downside of this, the big elephant in the room is that it typically takes a long time to build an inbound marketing system and this is why I kind of cracked some fun at the overnight success people because it takes a long time because you've got to build assets in order for it to sustain itself. Me with the webinar, it took me a little bit of time to script out exactly what I wanted to say, put the presentation together, but once I did that, like it's just going to work for me again and again and again and again. Assets, they're like pieces of content, a strong social presence, a big email list, a decent retargeting audience, all that stuff. If you're doing any advertising on Facebook, it takes a long time to build up a huge retargeting audience. You may start small. That's okay. [13:58.7]
You're doing Facebook lives if, although Facebook live is really tricky with compliance, but if you are able to do them, I know that maybe if you're in Australia, a lot of financial advisors in my inner circle who are from Australia, they do Facebook lives and if you're doing those, you start out with five or six people. That's not a lot, but it's okay because you're building an asset. You can take that video and use it somewhere else and a year from now when you got 600 people who can watch it, you can use that same piece of video content again and again and again. And take this podcast, for example, this podcast being 100% candid with you, 100% transparent, I'm not like trying to tell you one thing and do another. I'm literally doing what I'm talking about. This is a piece of my personal inbound marketing machine. [14:39.4]
I am taking my own advice here, but the key, the thing that you need to understand is that this podcast would not work nearly as well if I only had one or two episodes because people don’t really build a strong bond with you after one episode. And me personally, when I'm listening to a podcast, I need lots of episodes. I need lots of content because I want to connect with the host or whoever's doing the podcast over long periods of time. I want to get to a point where I feel as if I know that person. For example, the the podcast that I listened to a lot is 83 weeks with Eric Bischoff and that's a pro-wrestling podcast. So whether or not if you're a pro-wrestling fan, I don't care, this is probably not something that you want to listen to, but I feel I'm at the point where I feel as if I know Eric Bischoff and I've never met him and I, I totally respect the dude. He was a beast in the 90s. He was the only person to ever take on Vince McMahon and kick his ass for 83 weeks straight. [15:37.1]
So he was a man. He was, he's one of the best ever. He is a total beast when it comes to promotion and marketing and just he really stuck it to him and that's why it's called 83 weeks. But that's an example of how it works. And producer Jonathan, I'm sure that you know this because you run The Podcast Factory. It's better to have I would say 50 episodes when in compared to five. Right?
Jonathan: Well, people, people need to meet. They gotta have the meat, Bro!
James: Totally, totally! It's the same with email. It's the same with your website. It's the same with, if you're doing a YouTube channel, I know there were some financial advisors out there who were doing a YouTube channel. That's cool. The danger though, and I talk about the benefits of it, but I'm a now I'm going to talk about the downside. The downside is that you can spread yourself too thin. I would rather have an amazing email list with amazing email content and stick totally to that. Then have a crappy email list, a crappy podcast, a crappy YouTube channel. [16:40.2]
Yeah, and a crappy social media presence and just on and on and on and on. You kind of gotta…you got to find your sweet spot because you do want multiple marketing strategies, but you want to also make sure that they're good. The reason that I like email so much, the reason that I like content marketing so much is because once you create it, it doesn't demand that much more of your time. When I create a podcast, we're going to be here for what, 20-25 minutes, something like that. And then once I record it, we're good. Like this particular episode doesn't demand any more of my time. It's going to continue to work again and again and again. And financial advisors need to really start thinking in terms like this, especially now, I mean, we're recording this in very early April in the midst of the Corona virus pandemic. This probably gonna come out in June, July, something like that.
Jonathan: June.
James: Probably, hopefully by now you're gonna be like, “Oh, all that's over. I don't really need to worry about it.” Well, yeah, you kind of do! Because like the saying says, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, second best time is today. And if you're not creating a content system, if you're not creating an inbound marketing machine, you're not planting that tree. I mean, you need to think about this and when you create your content, like I said; people will start to form a bond with you. [17:56.8]
They will start to feel as if they know you and with the podcast, the more people who listen to me and realize that I'm the real deal, the more people reach out for help. And it's the same for almost every single service business that I can think of. Accountants, financial advisors, all that, and in reality, here's how this works. A prospect will start researching online and the prospect will come across your website or maybe they find you on social, who knows when they Google your name, your LinkedIn probably comes up on the first page. They check out your online presence. They see if you're legit and a small percentage of those people reach out to you right away, and that's cool. A lot of financial advisors build their business based on these people that reach out right away; but that's just a small percentage. The real money is in the large percentage of people who don't take action right away. [18:44.7]
They need a little bit more; they need a little bit more time. So they read some of your blogs, maybe they save your site, they write it down, and maybe they bookmark it or they put it into the to do list. They come back. Then they see that you uploaded something else, a new piece of content so they know that you still care. And on Facebook, one of the things that makes you spot a crappy Facebook page is if they haven't updated since like 2017 because that's almost, that's worse than like having no Facebook page, just like you had it at one point and then you just abandon it, you don't come back. But when prospects see that you're constantly uploading new content, you're constantly releasing your stuff, they know that you're still care. They know you still exist, they know you're still in the game and that's important to them. So let's say they see that new piece of content, then they join your email list. They're like, okay, this person is still active, that you're still in the game. Everything school, they join your email list, you follow up a few times and then and only then the ready to set the appointment. [19:45.4]
Far too many financial advisors, they delude themselves into thinking that the process is shorter than not. It is not. They think that they could just slap something against the wall one time, have it work, have prospects come in and it's, it's just silly because most people don't. Most people do not take action right away. They get to, they get to our website, they check it out, they leave. They do not book an appointment on their first visit to the website. The reason that this really traps financial advisors is because there's a small percentage of people who do, and like I said, they build their business around that, but if you really want to grow, and you really want to make serious money, you've got to tap into that large percentage. Because you can take your business to the next level by nurturing those prospects a little bit more and that requires building an inbound marketing machine, but because building this machine with tons of content, tons of assets, because it takes some time, you've got to do something that gets clients today, most advisors can’t sit back building content all day waiting for clients to come in. [20:50.2]
I understand that. I know that you can't just write blog posts without having clients come in today. I get it. You, I know you can't afford to wait six months to a year or two years. You've got to get some activity today and that's where a lot of these experts and gurus feel short. They are too focused on the inbound marketing, if they're focused on it. They are too, I don't want to say myopic like it's this is what they are.
Jonathan: Delusional.
James: Yeah, right, exactly. Because the truth is you want to build an inbound marketing machine. Yes, I'm not discrediting that because I've been talking about this the whole episode. But you want to do outbound marketing at the same time. This means reaching out to prospects. It means generating activity while at the same time building your inbound marketing system. You might send out direct mail, which is an outbound marketing activity, while at the same time writing a piece of content. [21:41.0]
You might make some phone calls during the day, which is an outbound marketing activity while putting together your podcast at night because one gets you clients today, the coop, the phone calls while the other one gets you clients tomorrow, the podcast and there's a big parallel here to saving money and investing. So I like to explain things in financial advisor speak where they kind of get it. I speak to them in their own language and there's the parallel here. Most people don't start off with $1 million. I did not get a small loan of $1 million, Jonathan.
Jonathan: Shocker.
James: Did you like my little Donald Trump joke there. Many people will start though with a goal, and a dream retiring with millions of dollars and living off of the passive income and in that case, the passive income is like getting clients to come to you. It's possible and people do it all the time. People get passive income all the time, but you've got to earn and save the money first. [22:44.3]
So you go out into the marketplace and you get earned income. This is like outbound marketing activity. Your earned income allows you to pay the bills today while at the same time working towards that long-term goal of having enough passive income, you've got a big enough nest egg to live off of that money. That's essentially how it works in life and in business and when, especially when you're building a lead generation machine for your own business. Every time you create another piece of content or another podcast episode or putting another email into your auto responder sequence, you are building your business “nest egg,” which can provide you with “passive income”, and here's what's even cooler — you can choose to continue earning money after your nest egg is built. Just because you've got $5 million and you wanted to retire at 5 million, that doesn't mean you have to. You can continue working. You can continue doing your outbound marketing machine and make even more money. [23:42.2]
You call the shots, you build your business however want. If you want to continue doing outbound, that's totally up to you, more power to you. And doing this also, it allows you to smooth out any volatility you can experience in your business or you will experience, I should say, because one of the biggest mistakes financial advisors make, and again, I'm going into financial advisors speak here, is not diversifying your marketing efforts. You pick one or two that you're the most comfortable with and then you never broaden your horizons, which means you never make as much money as you'd like to because the key to building a massive business is financial advisor and a pipeline that's always making a bit bigger on autopilot is to have a machine running with multiple marketing strategies and like I always say at this point, I feel like a broken record, multiple marketing strategies is the most important thing a financial advisor can do to build a business. You want to be able to go out and get clients today while building a machine that will get you clients tomorrow. If you want to get off the prospecting treadmill, you have to do it this way. There is no way around it. You have to master both outbound in inbound marketing if you want to have freedom in your business. And that, my dear listeners is the ultimate lead generation machine for financial advisors. [24:51.6]
Jonathan: Ooh, what's coming up next time, James? [25:00.5]
James: In the next episode I'm going to talk about Millionaire clients and where to find them. I think that's going to be the title. I'm going to talk about that.
Jonathan: Wow! I bet everybody's like, “Come on, let that episode show up already.” All right fam, that is a wrap for financial advisor marketing. Thank you for tuning in and we will be back in your ear buds next time. [25:23.1]
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