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 originally shared these ideas on LinkedIn back in late-December and got some good feedback, so I figured I'd expand on it in a podcast episode. If you're not connected with me on LinkedIn, go ahead and do that now. Search James Pollard on LinkedIn. I'm the goofy-looking one. As soon as you see the goofy-looking guy in your search results, you'll know it's me. I've got a buzz cut. I've got a suit on, even though I haven't needed to wear a suit in years. But I guess that's . . . I don't know why. I can't remember why I did the suit. Maybe it's a credibility thing, who knows? [01:03.0]
Anyway, I wrote this post, and I said, if you're a financial advisor making $150,000 to $300,000 per year, here's how to get to $500,000 per year and beyond. Obviously, I can't guarantee results because I don't know you, your specific situation, your circumstances, your background, your experience, and all the things that come together to earn the income that you earn.
However, the reason I said 150,000 to 300,000 is because I've seen many, many such cases with my Inner Circle members. I've seen hundreds of financial advisors who are either going through that or have already done it. Financial advisors who are making less than roughly $150,000 per year really just have a proof-of-concept problem. They haven't really fleshed out their ideas and offers and services in the marketplace yet. [01:53.2]
Sometimes I'll get new financial advisors who ask me if the Inner Circle makes sense for them, and the truth is probably not. I mean, if they can easily afford the $199 per month, then, yeah, I'd love to have them, and it will almost certainly pay for itself in no time flat. However, the majority of the advisors I help are at least already somewhat successful. The reason for this is because, if you already have business systems in place, all I likely need to do is help you make a few simple changes, and you'll benefit.
What's even cooler is that a lot of the stuff I do as a marketer is designed to increase conversions, and conversions operate on a percentage basis. That means the more money you're making right now, the more money I can probably make you. For instance, if you just started and you're only making $50,000 per year and I help you grow your business by 10%, then that's “only”—and I say “only” in air quotes—“only” $5,000. It's more than enough to pay for the Inner Circle membership, yes. But if you're making $500,000 per year, and I hope you achieve the same percentage increase, that's an extra $50,000 added to your business. Again, percentages don't care. [02:59.6]
I'll give you a good example. A few months ago, I did an entire issue about how financial advisors should price their services. I went deep into the psychology of pricing, how it impacts other aspects of your business, and just so much more. The percentages don't care. They do not care. A 15% increase will still be a 15% increase, no matter what you're making. The absolute dollar amount will change, of course, but the percentage will stay the same. I hope that makes sense, because it's one of the reasons why I say I do my best work helping winners win more.
Now, what did I share about financial advisors who go from the $150,000–$300,000-per-year range all the way to $500,000 per year? Here it is. Step 1 is to go through your current marketing, the stuff that you're doing right now, with a fine-toothed comb. Leave no stone unturned. What is working? What isn't? [03:58.0]
I recently had a conversation with an Inner Circle member and he told me he was getting great results with LinkedIn. I told him to . . . and this is a super complex marketing strategy, so I hope you understand this—I told him to do more of that. It seems so obvious, but many financial advisors either lessen or abandon winning marketing strategies to pursue other things. They get caught in the shiny-object chase. Don't do that. Don't replace what you're doing if what you're doing is working. Add to what you're doing. That is the core of my multiple marketing strategies philosophy. It is the number one most important thing I can possibly share with financial advisors.
The reason you want to add instead of replace is the marketing strategies you add will impact the other marketing strategies you already have. A simple example is this: a prospective client who evaluates both your LinkedIn profile and your website is far more likely to become a client than someone who only looks at one or the other. Now add phone calls and handwritten notes and direct mail, and seminars and webinars, and podcasts and YouTube channels, and you can really get somewhere. [05:07.0]
Of course, you don't have to do all of those things, but adding one additional marketing strategy on top of what you're already doing is usually a surefire way to increase conversions. Remember, I'm playing in the “increase conversions” space. I'm increasing financial advisors’ businesses. I'm operating in a percentage fashion.
Step 2: focus on marketing assets that operate independently of your time. If you listened to last week's episode with Michael Kitces, you already know he mentioned this several times, and it felt so good. I even said at one point, maybe I said it twice, “I am so glad you're saying this, because if financial advisors don't believe me, maybe they'll believe you.” He explained something that blows a lot of people's minds and it's that financial advisor marketing tends to get more expensive over time, not cheaper. How is that possible? It's because your time becomes more valuable as your business grows. [06:06.4]
Think about it, in your first year, an hour spent cold-calling might cost you $25, because your time isn't in high demand. But fast forward three years, and that same hour could cost you $100, because you're juggling more responsibilities and higher-value tasks. It's just that your time is more valuable. This is why you need to invest in marketing assets that work for you without your constant involvement, without your time.
Let me break it down with some examples. Your website, this is an obvious one. Done right, your website can function 24/7 for you, capturing leads and answering people's questions without you lifting a finger. Websites seems so obvious. It seems like such a basic thing and I think it seems so basic that people take it for granted that it's such a powerful marketing tool.
Do you have email-marketing sequences? I talk about these all the time. Once you set up an email-marketing sequence, it can nurture prospects for weeks or months. It keeps you top of mind. You can focus on other things. It just works in the background for you no matter what. [07:07.8]
Then you have things like webinars and podcast episodes and YouTube. Those things allow you to connect with your audience at scale, creating content that works for you over and over and over again. Is your time tied directly to creating a YouTube video or a podcast episode? Yes, but as you scale it, the proportion of results that you get from each unit that you put into it is just disproportional. You should grow and grow and grow over time.
So, even though you spend one hour creating something, like a blog post or a YouTube video or a podcast episode, if you get one client, then it's one client per hour. But then as you grow, it's two clients and it's two clients per hour, then three clients, three clients per hour. It should probably outpace what your time is worth. But, remember, once you create the thing, you don't have to go back and create it again. It's already created for you. [08:00.7]
This is yet another reason why my approach of helping winners win more is so effective, because, again, I know I sound like a broken record, but I'm focusing on percentages most of the time. That makes your hourly value irrelevant, because if you increase 10% or 20% or 200%, it will be the same across the board.
Step 3: shift your focus from activities to outcomes. F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” That quote applies here because when you're starting out from zero to the mid- or low-six-figure mark, you want to focus on activities and not outcomes. You want to release all attachment to the outcome and just put in the work. You need to prospect every single day. You need to get in front of more people. Those are activities. Early in your career, you need to be extremely activity-focused. [09:07.3]
However, as you grow, you should shift more and more of your focus to outcomes, because many advisors measure success by how busy they are, like how many calls they made, how many emails they sent, or how many posts they created for social media—and, again, that is fine early in your career, but if you want to get to the mid-six figures and high-six figures and beyond, as I'm talking about in this podcast episode, then, eventually, you're going to have to shift to outcomes.
Activity is not the same as productivity. Just because you're busy doesn't mean you're productive. Imagine this: two advisors both spend an hour prospecting, whatever prospecting means to them. Advisor A thinks prospecting is cold calling, so Advisor A makes 50 cold calls and books one appointment. Advisor B thinks prospecting is building systems that bring warm leads to him. Again, his time is not involved. We talked a little bit about this. Advisor B spends that very same hour following up with only five warm leads in his system and he books three appointments. Who is the real winner? [10:13.0]
It's not about how much you do. It's about how much of what you do moves the needle—so, instead of saying, “I sent 50 LinkedIn messages today,” ask yourself, how many of those messages led to meaningful conversations? Outcomes matter far more than raw numbers, especially as you grow in your business.
Again, don't get this twisted. You need to focus on activities in the beginning. When you're a new advisor, you need to get off your butt and do stuff. You need to experiment. You need to put yourself out there. But if you find yourself in the low-six figures and you want to get to mid-six figures and beyond, this is a shift you will probably have to make. [10:50.4]
Listen up, financial advisors. This is something special I'm doing exclusively for people who listen to this podcast. If you subscribe to the Inner Circle Newsletter over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching, I will send you a collection of seven copyright-free emails, personally written by me, that you can use right away to begin getting more clients.
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I originally offered these in the May 2024 Inner Circle Newsletter issue, and it was one of the most popular bonuses I've ever given away. Today, these seven objection-busting, copyright-free emails are only available to listeners of this podcast, because I'm not mentioning them anywhere else. Go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to subscribe today. Now, back to the show.
Step 4: stop working with people who drain you. This is the hardest step for a lot of people, especially when they are in growth mode. It feels counterintuitive to fire clients when you're trying to grow, but trust me on this—letting go of bad clients is one of the fastest ways to free up your time and energy for better ones. [12:10.4]
Here's something I hear every so often. An advisor has a bad client. The advisor knows it's a bad client because the client contacts them all the time and wants endless hand-holding, and not only that, the bad client complains about fees and second-guesses everything and says, “Oh, well, my cousin said,” or “My brother said,” or “I saw an article from Motley Fool that said this,” or “Dave Ramsey said.” If you've been there, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Eventually, the advisor gets so frustrated that he works up the courage to finally fire the client—and then something interesting happens. He will probably onboard two or three or four clients who are thrilled to work with him.
Why does this happen? It's not just a coincidence. It's about creating space. Bad clients don't just eat up your time. They take a toll on your mental energy, your confidence and your overall ability to focus on what truly matters. They clog your schedule. They keep you from doing the work that attracts the kind of clients that you actually want to work with. [13:09.8]
When you finally let go of the bad apples who constantly second-guess you demand never-ending hand-holding, who complain about your fees, you are not just freeing up time in your schedule. You're freeing yourself up to show up better for your other clients and prospects.
So, that is extremely important, and that's the last step. Those are the four basic steps. This is a very high-level overview of the process. I've noticed that these are the steps that advisors use to get to $500,000 per year. But, wait, there's more. I'm going to give you a little bit more value in this podcast episode. I'm going to share four more things that I've noticed about financial advisors who go from $500,000 to a million dollars per year and beyond. So, we started with $150,000-ish to $300,000 or so per year to $500,000 per year. Now we're going from $500,000 per year to a million dollars per year and beyond. [14:09.8]
Over the years, I've had the privilege of working with many advisors who have crossed this milestone, and to be completely transparent—I try to keep it as real with you as I possibly can. This is just the truth—there is no “one size fits all” formula for success at this level. Really, for any level. I mean, there is more of a “one size fits all” formula from zero to one, but from one and beyond, it really depends. These advisors come from different backgrounds. They have different beliefs. They all take relatively different approaches to running their businesses. However, these are still four key patterns I've noticed among them that are worth exploring.
First, they've identified what I call their broken slot machine. You know that one of the jobs that I had was working in a casino. I worked in the marketing department of a casino. Can you imagine that? Me doing marketing, what? Let's start with one of my favorite metaphors. Good marketing is like playing a broken slot machine. [15:10.6]
That's because every lever you pull represents a marketing effort, whether that's sending an email, running an ad, hosting a webinar or posting on LinkedIn. The key difference between this slot machine and a regular slot machine is that, with a regular slot machine, the house always wins. It's rigged in favor of the house. It depends on the machine itself, but it's 90% on some machines, 88% on some, 92% on another, which means if you cycle $100 through the machine, you're only going to get $90 back, or $88 or $92 back.
But with this one, for every $100 you cycle through the machine, you're going to get $101 or $105, or $110 back. Does that mean it will work every single time, no matter what? No. But the longer you play, the more money you cycle through the machine, on average, you're going to get far more money back. [16:08.4]
Seven figure financial advisors understand this principle deeply. They don't waste time chasing shiny new marketing tactics every single month. Instead, they figure out what works for them. They find that broken slot machine, whether it's direct mail, LinkedIn, outreach, webinars, referrals, it doesn't matter. They triple and quadruple down on it. They don't just double down. They quadruple down.
Here's a quick story. One advisor I worked with discovered his broken slot machine was hosting live webinars for small business owners. When he started, his first few events did not generate massive results. I always say your first day is your worst day. That is absolutely true. But he noticed a pattern—every few webinars brought in one or two high-value clients. He might get zero with this one, zero with the next one, and then three on the one after that. Then he might get one, then he might get zero, then he might get two. He just noticed that he got some every so often. [17:06.5]
So, he refined his process. He invested in better slides. He polished his delivery. He promoted the webinars more aggressively. He added an email follow-up sequence. He improved that email follow-up sequence. He just got better and better and better, and within a year, those webinars became his primary client-acquisition channel. Every time he does a webinar, he pulls the lever. Does he win every time? No. But successful marketing isn't about winning every time. It's about consistently pulling the lever on your broken slot machine, on a strategy that has the odds tilted in your favor. If you want a guaranteed win every time, go get a job with a salary. You'll get a paycheck every two weeks for a guaranteed amount of money. Otherwise, this is the way to do it.
Second, they are way, way more productive. Let me tell you something that might sting a little. Most people think they're productive, but they're not. I've seen it time and time again. Advisors who are just starting out might feel like they're working hard, even when they're making mid-six figures. They might feel like they're really productive and they're doing a lot, but when they meet a real killer, a seven-figure advisor, they realize they're not even close. [18:20.3]
Seven figure advisors don't just work harder. They work smarter. For example, they have all sorts of systems to track their task and goals and things they want to do. Some of them just use pen and paper. Some of them use the Notes app on the phone. Other people have stuff like Todoist or Notion or whatever. There's a whole suite of productivity tools out there in the marketplace.
One advisor I know swears by a physical notebook. I used to use a physical notebook for . . . forever. This guy, every single evening, he writes down his top three priorities for the next day and doesn't stop working the next day until those three things are done. Whoa, what a productivity system, right? Very simple, but his results speak for themselves. [19:02.7]
Another advisor uses automation for a lot of stuff, and he is far more productive because he has machines that do pretty much everything for him. The difference isn't in the tool they use. It is the discipline they bring to using them, and that discipline makes them far more productive. If you quantify productivity in terms of economic output, meaning, how much money they're making, someone who is making a million dollars per year is obviously more economically productive than someone who is making $50,000 per year. That's just how it breaks down.
Third, they've mastered the art of saying no. This is a game changer. Successful financial advisors know they cannot be everything to everyone. They learn to focus on their niche and stick to it, even when it's tempting, it's so tempting to take on clients or opportunities outside their expertise. One advisor I worked with specialized in helping tech entrepreneurs. He regularly turned down prospects who did not fit that niche, even if they were high-net-worth individuals, even if they seemed like great people and they’d get along, and it is tempting. Like I said, it's tempting. [20:11.7]
But he turned them down because he knew his expertise was laser-focused on his target market, and that focused allowed him to charge premium fees, to build a good reputation, to be more efficient and just have a great business. But it's not just about saying no to clients who don't fit. The seven-figure advisors also say no to distractions, unnecessary meetings and all these little activities that don't align with their long-term goals. They say no, no, no, no.
Here's a tip for you. Try a distraction audit. For one week, write down every time you say yes to something you did not want to say yes to. At the end of the week, I want you to reflect on how much time and energy those distractions cost you, and how much more productive you could have been if you said no and replaced that time with valuable activities. [21:05.0]
Finally, the last thing I'll share is that they're obsessed, and I mean obsessed, with personal development. If there's one thing that sets seven-figure advisors apart, it is their commitment to personal growth. They understand that their business success is a direct reflection of their personal development. Lots of people believe that business life and personal life are completely separate things. They are not. Your business is an extension of you. Your business success reflects you.
If you're a Christian, you believe that your children are reflections of you. Your children reflect your behavior as a parent and how you have raised your child. Actually, that's not even a specifically Christian worldview. I mean, lots of people have that worldview, but Christians, for sure, have that. Your business is your child. The way your child, your business operates is based on what you have done. Your crop is based on the seeds you have planted. [22:00.3]
Let me give you an example. I'll give you another example. One of my Inner Circle members reads a new book every single week. He devours content on marketing and leadership, and psychology and sales. He's constantly looking for new ideas to implement in his practice.
Another Inner Circle member has a bunch of different coaches and mastermind groups, and he's been in office hours and he has talked about “Oh, I was in this mastermind group and they said this, and I was in this thing and they did this, and one of my coaches told me this,” and that's cool. I encourage that. I want that. He told me this. He said, “I don't see coaching as an expense. I see it as an investment in my future self,” and that mindset has helped him consistently outperform his peers.
The key difference between these advisors and average advisors isn't how much they spend or invest, or do in personal development. It's how intentional they are about it. They don't just read books or attend seminars for the sake of checking a box. Lots of people do that. They read a book because they want to perceive themselves as someone who is smart and reads a book, but it gets them nowhere. They go to seminars because they want to see themselves as someone who attends seminars, but it gets them nowhere. [23:10.1]
The seven-figure advisors apply what they learn. Whoa, what a concept. Again, simple, very simple. They apply what they learn. They measure their results and then they refine their strategies. That is the key.
All right, let me stop there. I don't want to give too much value in a free podcast episode. I already feel like I'm breaking one of my rules by giving away too much for free.
Again, if you're not connected with me on LinkedIn, you can find me by searching James Pollard. Feel free to say hello. I promise I'm not as grumpy or as grouchy as I am on this podcast. Maybe I am, but you should still connect with me.
Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you, and I will catch you next week. [23:54.4]
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