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.
James: I've spent a large chunk of my financial advisor marketing career getting financial advisors to realize that tactics alone cannot be responsible for success. There are so many financial advisors out there who believe that they just need to find this one thing that they can do and then success will be easy. They hop from online ads to SEO to hiring a lead gen agency to paying for a coach, and another coach and another coach, and a program and another program. It never ends. They are constantly chasing this pipe dream that one thing will finally make everything else work, their entire lives, their personal life, their business life, everything. [01:10.5]
What they fail to realize is that success comes from within, failure, too. I've always thought it was interesting that I could give the exact same strategy to two different financial advisors, and one could get dozens of new clients with it, while the other could struggle and not see any results whatsoever. Of course, it gets even weirder when you realize that the strategy might be proven to work and has been repeated hundreds, if not thousands of times. I'm going to attempt to explain to you what this feels like to me, just so you can empathize with me. I know that may be a foreign concept to some of you, empathy, but let's see if you can empathize with me.
I want you to imagine that you, another financial advisor and I are standing in a dark, empty room together, and we are next to a light switch. I tell both of you, “Hey, there's a light bulb hanging from the ceiling. If you flip this light switch, then that bulb will turn on and the room won't be dark anymore.” [02:08.0]
Then I demonstrate it for you. I flip the switch up and the lights turn on, down and the lights turn off. I do this a few times, up, down, up, down, lights on, off, on, off, to show you that it is predictable and repeatable. Every time I flip the switch up, the lights come on. It happens every time, 100% guaranteed. It never fails. Every time I flip the switch down, the lights turn off.
After that, I let you try. You flip the switch up and down and up and down, and sure enough, the light comes on and off, no problems yet. The third person won't even approach the switch. That advisor says he doesn't believe it will work and he gives all sorts of excuses for why he can't do it. That is truly what it feels like when I try to help financial advisors with deep limiting beliefs. I mean, the strategies obviously work. They are proven. It's like flipping a switch. It either works or it doesn't. You can objectively tell. That's what marketing is. [03:09.5]
I hate to break it to you, but marketing can and should be objective. If Person A tells you to run an ad and Person B tells you to run an ad a different way, one of those ads is, for sure, going to work better than the other. I'm sorry, that's just the truth. For all of these people who say, Oh, marketing can't be measured. Give it time. Give it one year, and then two years, and then three years, and keep paying me and keep paying me and keep paying me without any results, that's just goofy, right? Marketing is supposed to be objective. One headline should beat another headline. One email should beat another email. One cold call script should beat another cold call script, and if you're not getting the results that you want, you're just not doing the right things, period. You're not flipping the switch.
Keep in mind what I just told you, this example, as we go through this episode. This is going to be a deep episode, because I'm going to talk about some beliefs that can destroy your marketing efforts and even make your clients hate you. [04:00.0]
No, that is not an exaggeration. Clients do not like being around financial advisors with these beliefs, and I'll explain why. That means, not only can these beliefs prevent you from getting new clients, but they can cause your existing clients to fire you, to run away from you, to actually tell other people that they should not hire you. It's really bad. You don't want to do this.
These beliefs that I'm going to talk about came from a man named Dr. Albert Ellis. He's one of the greatest psychologists of all time and he is the creator of cognitive behavioral therapy. You don't really need to know about CBT, as it's called. You don't need to know about any of that, but it's arguably the most common type of therapy used today, just to give you some context, to let you know how influential he has been.
This therapy is based on the idea that our thoughts, feelings and behaviors are interconnected, and that by changing our thoughts, our beliefs and how we think, we can then change our feelings and also change our behaviors. He argued that three major dysfunctional beliefs directly ramp up distress and destructive behavior. Here are the three beliefs. I'm going to give you all three and then we're going to talk more about each one. [05:07.4]
The first belief is “I must do well and win the approval of others.” The second belief is “Other people must do,” and I'm using finger quotes, “‘the right thing,’ or else, they are no good and deserve to be punished,” and the third belief is life must be easy without discomfort or inconvenience. All of these beliefs have sub-beliefs that can impact your emotion and your behavior. That's what he is talking about or was talking about. He's gone now. But he was talking about changing people's emotions and changing their behaviors through their thoughts.
Let’s break down each of these main beliefs. Then I'm going to talk a little bit about the sub-beliefs, and I'm going to relate it back to marketing and why clients don't like it. What was that first belief? Do you remember? “I must do well and win the approval of others.” This belief is rooted in a need for external validation. [05:56.4]
There have been multiple studies which have shown that people who are externally motivated, meaning, outside of yourself, those people are usually not as successful as people who are intrinsically motivated, meaning, they want it for themselves. They're doing it for themselves. Put simply, when you want to do things for other people, you are more likely to burn out and quit because your heart isn't truly in it. You're not doing it for yourself.
Now, from a marketing perspective, this belief makes financial advisors inflexible, because they might resist trying new marketing strategies or approaches because they're afraid of what other people will think. I'll give you a few examples. I once had a financial advisor ask me about which sorts of videos work well with online ads, and I told him, “Just take out your phone, record a video. Do you have an iPhone? Just a front-facing camera. You can see yourself. You can see how you look. It doesn't have to be fancy.” [06:44.6]
In fact, here's the truth, the fancy stuff, more often than not, not always, but more often than not performs worse than amateur-looking videos, and that blows a lot of people's minds, because there are these video marketing services that say, We're going to charge you thousands of dollars to record these fancy videos and we want you to look a certain way, and we're going to have fancy lighting and all of this B.S., when like the actual, literal marketing test results that can be objectively quantified and verified, like I can show you these results, okay, that the fancy stuff, more often than not, performs worse than the just a video shot on the iPhone, or Android, I guess, if you have it, although Android records like a potato sometimes, but that's neither here nor there.
That financial advisor, when I told him that, responded that he didn't want to do it because he thought it would look unprofessional. So, he didn't do it. Now, I want you to think about this. I told him straight up what works. Now, I know I've seen behind the scenes of my Inner Circle members. I've worked directly and indirectly with tens of thousands of financial advisors over the years. I've been helping financial advisors get more clients since 2015. I've been doing marketing a heck of a lot longer than that, so I kinda sorta know, right? Without saying I can tell you, for sure, this is what is going to work and this is what is not going to work, right? [07:58.8]
Remember, the light switch? He chose a limiting belief. Instead of flipping the switch and getting the results he wanted, He sat in the corner and said, No, that's not going to work. I'm not going to flip the switch. I'm not going to get those results.
Another problem with this belief is it's a subtle cue that the advisor measures his or her self-worth by popularity. This is bad, because things that are popular are not always right, and things that are right are not always popular. Plus, a lot of advisor-specific marketing relies on getting people to do stuff that isn't popular. Hello, have you realized that? Because reaching financial freedom is not popular, meaning, most people don't do it. Planning for your future, period, isn't popular. People would rather live for today. So, when financial advisors adopt this belief that they must win other people's approval, they're setting themselves up for a world of hurt. [08:51.2]
I also want to talk about a few sub-beliefs of each of these beliefs, the main beliefs. The sub-belief is the belief behind the belief. Goodness gracious, take a shot every time I say “belief,” right? Because I've discovered, if you really want to change people's lives, you can't just look at things from a superficial level or on a superficial level. Most of the time, you have to dig deeper.
One sub-belief of the “I must do well and when the approval of others” belief is you must have love and approval from everybody, and that won't happen. Some people will always find a way to dislike you, no matter what. Some people choose to never be happy with you. Don't spend your life trying to make these people like you. It is a waste. Don't waste your life.
This sub-belief causes advisors to target too broad of a group. They try to make everyone like them. They want to believe that they can work with everyone and that everyone needs what they offer. That's not the way to optimize your marketing, though. You should accept that not everyone will resonate with your message, and that's okay. It is perfectly okay. The world will not end because Joe or Bill, or Sally or Susie, those people don't like you. I promise you, everything will be okay. The sun will still come up tomorrow. [10:04.5]
Another sub-belief is that you must not do anything that would cause others to think less of you. This creates fear, a lot of fear around taking risks and marketing. It creates fear about or around experimenting with bold messaging or trying new things. You're just walking on eggshells and that's no way to live. It causes advisors to stick to safe, conventional strategies that don't stand out.
But what you need to understand is that calculated risks are necessary for growth, and again, some people won't like it, and again, that is okay. You need to learn to be okay with that. Dr. Ellis outlined that the emotional consequences of constant approval-seeking are depression, anxiety and harsh self-criticism. [10:49.5]
Constantly seeking approval and fearing disapproval can lead to feelings of inadequacy, because it is so hard to measure up to what other people want, especially because some people constantly move the goalpost. The pressure to meet those unrealistic and constantly moving expectations causes anxiety. Of course, it does. Why wouldn't it? That makes it difficult to do anything. And self-criticism, that ruins your confidence.
The reason this would make your clients hate you—now, I have to live up to the title. I put it in the title, why it will make your clients hate you—is because the very act of trying to make them like you leads to those negative, emotional consequences and behavioral consequences. The behavioral consequences would be shyness, procrastination, and unassertiveness. That creates a vicious cycle that you do not want to be trapped in. [11:38.3]
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The second belief, if you remember, is “Other people must do the right thing, or else, they are no good and deserve to be punished.” One of the sayings that we have around here on Planet Pollard is that dogma is dangerous. People with disbelief have swallowed a certain dogma hook, line and sinker, and those who don't subscribe to what they think are not good and must be punished. [13:00.8]
You see this with a lot of financial advisors who whine and complain about other advisors' fees. Who cares? Honestly, who cares? Imagine being a grown man or woman and spending that much of your time worrying about what other adults choose to do with their lives and their time and their money. It's just weird, downright weird. If you happen to be one of those fee complainers, don't hate me, I'm just a messenger. I'm merely telling you what Dr. Albert Ellis, one of the greatest psychologists of all time, said throughout his career. He found that this belief ruins lives. I am merely sharing it with you, and I'm just spreading the message here.
This belief is rooted in a rigid and unrealistic expectation that others must always act in accordance with your personal standards, because you somehow know what is truly right. It assumes that you're infallible. It also assumes that others should cater to you as if you're the center of the universe. [13:58.8]
I've noticed a few specific marketing problems and client-relationship problems with this belief. First, like I said, it makes you rigid. When your clients and prospective clients don't do exactly what you want them to do, it makes you feel bad, and that leads to frustration and conflict.
Next, it assumes a sense of moral authority over others and this alienates people because it makes them feel judged rather than supported. You do not have moral authority. It also assumes a clear-cut difference between right and wrong that often doesn't exist that oversimplifies complex situations. In marketing, this can manifest as an inability to see the nuances and why you should keep certain activities and get rid of others.
For example, some financial advisors—this is a pet peeve of mine, by the way—refuse to do anything that they don't deem revenue-generating, and most of the time, they think that only outbound marketing activities are revenue-generating. That's a black and white way of thinking, because even a little bit of time spent in inbound-marketing activities could reap far more rewards for those advisors over the long term. They just have this black and white thinking, I'm not going to do it if it doesn't generate revenue. I'm not going to do anything but revenue-generating activities. That's weird, too. [15:11.6]
Finally, it makes people blind to human fallibility. I don't know who needs to hear this, but human beings are fallible. We all have struggles and problems and challenges. When someone doesn't accept that people make mistakes, that person can react harshly, and that harsh reaction damages relationships. That's the part that can make your clients hate you with this belief. When your clients screw up, either with a big blunder or a tiny little mistake, and you overreact, you can wreck the relationship.
There are a ton of sub-beliefs with this one, too, but I want to focus on what I believe to be the most important one, and it's this. Here's the sub-belief of that belief: “Everybody should treat everyone else, especially me, the one with the moral authority here, in a fair and considerate manner.” Don't make me laugh. If you believe this, then you are going to be very unhappy when you start any sort of marketing and prospecting campaign, because let me tell you, people can be total a-holes. [16:10.8]
Trust me when I tell you that there are lots of people out there who do not treat people in a fair and considerate manner. You might think that I'm falling victim to this belief a little bit here, because I am deciding what I consider to be a fair and considerate act. Instead, what I'll do, just to not impose this moral authority of mine, I suppose, onto you, is I will look up the definitions of the word, so hopefully we can agree on something objective.
The definition of “fair” is impartial and just without favoritism or discrimination. The definition of “considerate” is careful not to cause inconvenience or hurt to others. I am not describing what I believe to be fair or considerate. I'm trying not to do that. I'm just going straight to the dictionary definition. [16:56.6]
It seems to me, based on my experience, people, or at least some of them do, they practically live to cause inconvenience to others. They thrive on hurting others. That is not fair or considerate, and we call these people psychopaths and sociopaths and narcissists, and all sorts of things. In my experience, again, it is primarily narcissism, because these people believe they are so important that they can impose their standards onto you and have you bow down and just take it.
If you think that you can go through life without encountering these people, you are downright foolish, in my opinion. If you are a financial advisor and you expect everyone to treat you with fairness and consideration, you are, again, my friend, setting yourself up for a world of hurt. [17:48.4]
The third belief Dr. Ellis said causes distress and destructive behavior is “Life must be easy without discomfort or inconvenience.” Based on what I've seen working with financial advisors over the years, this is the biggest dream destroyer of all three, because it can get you to give up when you encounter any difficulties. This belief represents a desire for a life free of challenges. It reflects an expectation that things should go smoothly, and when they don't—it’s not an if. It's a when—when they don't, it can lead to frustration, stress and a sense of unfairness. There's that word, again, fair.
I feel like this belief has gotten a lot worse over the years, maybe in the past few decades, and I think it's due to a number of factors. For starters, you have the media. Oh my goodness, traditional media and social media alike often portray this ideal of life where happiness and success and fulfillment and all these great things are easily attainable without any struggle whatsoever, or at least not significant struggle. [18:51.8]
Then you've got parenting styles which have changed dramatically over the past few decades. I think my generation was the first generation to really get coddled, where helicopter parents were a thing, kind of. The parents started to not let their children go outside. You started to lock your doors. You couldn't drink water out of the hose and all these things where you just coddled your children.
Parents who overprotect their children. I mean, yes, it's a duty of a parent to protect the child, but when children are overprotected, then they think life should be easy. When children are shielded from failure and struggle, they grow up to be adults who expect everything to be easy. They also never get taught how to deal with failure, even though I think you learn more from failure than you do from your successes. Throw in the fact that humans are wired to seek comfort and avoid pain, and you have this cocktail of factors all pushing people towards this faulty belief that an easy life with no obstacles is possible, and it's not. [19:50.8]
The most common way this belief wrecks financial advisors’ marketing efforts is it gets them to resist the hard work necessary for growth. Plain and simple, that's it. That is the thing I want you to get. So, financial advisors with this belief avoid tasks they perceive as difficult or unpleasant. What would that be? Prospecting? Okay, pretty much required. Handling difficult client conversations, also pretty much required, or learning new skills, again, pretty much required.
It can also get their clients to hate them, because when conflicts or misunderstandings arise, they feel frustrated or disillusioned, and that leads to strained relationships, because they think to themselves, Wow, why did this happen? My life isn't supposed to be like this. I'm not supposed to have difficult client conversations—yes, you are.
Even worse, when these things happen, advisors who expect life to be easy may find those situations very overwhelming, far more overwhelming than, quote-unquote, “the average person” would. So, financial advisors with this belief react to, again, frustration and anxiety, and even a sense of defeat where they just give up. You should understand that setbacks are a natural part of any business and they can provide valuable insights for future success. Not all failure is bad. You can learn a lot from it. The seed of future growth is in your failure, and I think that's a healthy mindset to have, and I'm sure Dr. Ellis would agree with me. [21:13.0]
I actually think you should approach life as if it's going to be more difficult than it likely will be. I was reading this morning that the average time to run a mile for a 45-year-old man is about 10 minutes. It was something like nine minutes 54 seconds. I'm just going to say 10 minutes. If you can run a mile faster than 10 minutes, you are in the top 50% of men, if you're a man. This is for men only. Women, the number is a little bit different.
Let’s say you're a man and you wanted to be in the top half. I personally would not set a goal of a 10-minute mile. I would set a goal of a nine-minute mile or even an eight minute mile. That way, I would set up the systems and processes that would almost certainly enable me to reach a 10 minute mile, even if a ton of stuff went wrong. [21:56.8]
When you approach life with the expectation that it will be more difficult than anticipated, you create a buffer margin that allows you to absorb setbacks and still achieve your goals. For instance, if your goal is to bring in 20 new clients per year, don't plan for just the bare-minimum activities that might get you 20 clients. Plan is if you need to bring in 30 or 40. That way, even if some strategies fail or challenges come up, and they usually do, you're more likely than you would have been otherwise to hit your target.
That's why, even in my own marketing, I am constantly talking about how marketing requires hard work and effort, because I do not want to associate with financial advisors who expect everything to be easy. They are huge pains to deal with and I just don't want them anywhere near me. I'm at a point in my life where I get to choose what I want to deal with and I can say no to a lot of things, and I'm incredibly grateful for that, and I want to say no to dealing with financial advisors with this belief. [22:51.6]
It's also a big reason why I have my blacklisting policy with the Inner Circle Newsletter. I have a “once in, once out” policy, meaning, if you leave, then you are gone for good. The newsletter is not a game of hokey pokey. I have this policy in place to guard against people with the belief that things should be easy, because people who leave are just quitters. That is the actual definition. You quit the newsletter, so you are a quitter.
I have a no-tolerance policy for quitters, because Inner Circle members literally get direct email access to me for their questions, meaning, if they were encountering any sort of difficulty, they could have emailed me and asked for help instead of running away like a scared little baby. Might be harsh, but true.
I am definitely keeping this policy in place now that I have the monthly office hours, because if you are struggling with your marketing and you can't take the initiative to show up for a two-hour-long office hours over Zoom that is free. It's the internet. You don't have to leave. You don't have to put on pants. I mean, make sure that your camera is chest-level and above if you don't put on pants, but you don't have to, I guess. If you can't do that, you can't make that, that is 100% your fault for not getting help, because the help is available and you are not willing to accept it, if that's you. [24:06.9]
But enough about that. If you're interested in checking out the Inner Circle Newsletter, go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. However, seriously, I mean this, please do not subscribe if you aren't willing to commit, put in the work, actually read the newsletter issues—yes, reading is required—and implement what is inside. I can't wait to welcome you with open arms if you're a good fit. With that said, I will catch you next week.
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