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: Financial advisors, what's going on? I have a special episode for you today because I'm going to talk about something that I've talked about in my emails. I've talked about it on social media. I've talked about it, for sure, in my Inner Circle Newsletter, yet I've never discussed it here on the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast. [00:48.7]
Let me lay some groundwork for you. I think there are a handful of things that I'm known for in the financial advice space. First, I'm known for the physical newsletter that I have, simply because it's so unique. As of right now, I published 84 issues of the Inner Circle Newsletter. Are there other newsletters in the financial advice space? Yes. For example, Nick Murray has a newsletter. I've never subscribed to it, although I've heard that it's fantastic. I love his books. I recommend his books to financial advisors all the time.
I am a huge Nick Murray fan, but a financial advisor asked me how my newsletter would compare to his, and, honestly, I wasn't sure, because, again, I've never subscribed to his newsletter. I've never read a single issue of it, so I went to his website and I downloaded the sample one and I was shocked to see it was only eight pages.
Now, I am the first to tell you that value does not equate to a length of pages or a number of pages at all. You can pack more value in a single page than other people can in 100 pages, I get that. But my newsletters are usually longer than 20, and I include bonuses and I give away bonuses as soon as you subscribe, and I have monthly office hours where financial advisors can get real personalized help on the spot. [02:03.8]
This is not a knock on Nick Murray. Again, I love Nick Murray, and, honestly, I want you to subscribe to his newsletter. Yes, I want you to subscribe to his and I want you to subscribe to mine, but the truth is that you can't really compare eight pages of stuff about a bunch of topics on the economy and the markets and practice management and all that to 20-plus laser-focused pages every single month about marketing and business building. Marketing, business building. Marketing, marketing, marketing. Like I said, that is all I focus on. If you're talking about marketing specifically, there really is no comparison. Again, not a knock. Love his stuff, but I'm just speaking the truth.
The second thing I'm known for is obviously this podcast, the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast. This makes sense because I rarely do guest episodes, so I will be no more at this point. I think I have more than 300 solo episodes talking about marketing and building your business. [02:58.8]
I’ve frequently told financial advisors that if they don't feel like they have the money to join the Inner Circle, then they should listen to this podcast, implement the information—that's the most important part—make some money, and then come back and give me a little bit of the money they made so they can make even more money. They're basically reinvesting into themselves. They are cash-flowing the Inner Circle Newsletter. Anyone who sits around and only listens to free podcast episodes is fooling themselves, honestly.
The third thing I'm known for is email marketing, and at this point in my career, I feel comfortable saying I am almost certainly the best financial advisor email marketer in the entire world, and truthfully, I don't think there's anyone out there that would dispute that because I've been emailing every single day longer than many people have been in business, plus, the emails I've written for myself—yes, I do it for myself—and for financial advisors have been tremendous successes. So, in this week's episode, I want to talk about a particular type of email that I've been writing for several years now, and that is my—drum roll, please—stream-of-consciousness emails. Literally, that's what's in the subject line and that's the style. That's all it is. [04:10.8]
Now, when I'm writing emails, I will usually focus on one topic. For example, I will talk about prospecting and that's it, or advice for new advisors and that's it, or LinkedIn marketing and that's it. But on June 6, 2023, I didn't feel like writing about a single topic, so the first line of that email said, and I quote, “I don't have any one topic for today's email, so it will be a stream of consciousness about things I've been thinking about lately.”
Then I started talking about everything, from some writing I was doing to meetings I was having to how I've helped financial advisors get more clients, and so much more. Whatever came to mind, I wrote it down, and let me tell you, that email blew the metaphorical hinges off the door. It was a monster winner for me, and ever since then, every few months, I will send another email where I do nothing but sit down and write about whatever comes to mind. I have no plan, no structure, anything. I just talk to the people on my email list. [05:11.0]
A couple of days ago, I sent this email with the subject line, “Stream-of-consciousness ramblings - Part 12,” because it was the 12th installment of this series, and guess what? That one worked really well, too. It just seems like there's something about these emails that just works really well for me. I want to clarify, does this mean you should start writing stream-of-consciousness and emails? Absolutely not, because few people understand that these are some of the most difficult, highest-level emails you can send, because you can only pull them off if you know your market inside and out.
If you don't deeply understand your audience, like the pain points, desires, fears, everything about your market, if you don't know your market extremely well, then you won't be able to, quote–unquote, “ramble” in any way that actually resonates. It'll just sound like noise. This is not for beginners. Do I make myself clear? It is not for beginners. If you are not emailing, if you do not know your market, do not do this. [06:11.8]
Beginners should follow formulas. They need structure. They need templates. They need step-by-step guides. I know I clown on them every so often, like, “Oh, little baby needs a template to walk 10,000 steps a day.” You know what? Not to go off on a tangent, but once upon a time, I wrote an email about productivity. It was about fallback tasks or tasks that I do when days just go off the rails. That way, I can end the day knowing that I had a success. Every single day, I try to get 10,000 steps, but my fallback task if things go wrong or go awry is to get 15,000. That way, I know even if things got screwed up or meetings got canceled, or I lost money somehow for something, just a bad day, then I can still go to bed. I can lay my head on the pillow at night, knowing that I had a success in some way. [06:58.3]
Someone was like, Do you have a step-by-step guide or a template for how to get those steps or how to get 15,000 steps a day? Something like that. I was like, Are you kidding me? You put one foot in front of the other and then do it again 14,999 times. It's something like that. I couldn't believe it. I probably blocked it out, because it was in my memory and I thought it was so ridiculous.
Anyway, back to stream-of-consciousness ramblings. You have to know your market, and when you know your market, then you can start writing like that. That's when you can break all the rules. That's exactly what I do and what I did in these emails. If I gave that subject line, “Stream-of-Consciousness Ramblings,” to email marketers, they would tell me it's an absolutely awful subject line and they'd be right according to their rules, but I'm not playing by their rules.
Another rule in email marketing is that you should only write about one thing at a time. Generally speaking, this is a hundred percent true. If my life was on the line and I had to make an email marketing campaign work, I would only write about one topic in my emails. I almost always write about one single, solitary topic when I'm writing for other people, because I know that's where my odds are the best. That's where I can bet that I'm going to have a monster campaign. But when I'm writing for myself, I feel more comfortable breaking the rules. [08:19.0]
There was one email where I talked about, I think seven or eight different topics in the same email, and that's kind of crazy. If you go to a marketer or a copywriter, you say, “Hey, do you think it's a good idea to talk about seven topics in a single email?” they would tell you, “No way.” But one after another, they started coming to mind, so I let it flow and it was magical.
I tried to find an official definition of stream-of-consciousness on the internet and there are a few. I'm going to give you three of them here. One is “The continuous, unedited, chronological flow of conscious experience through the mind.” Okay. “A narrative style that tries to capture a character's thought process in a realistic way.” good. And “A person's thoughts and conscious reactions to events perceived as a continuous flow.” They're all correct. They all describe what I'm doing in these emails. [09:08.8]
In fact, I think one of the reasons they're so powerful is because they are unedited. They do include my reactions to events. In the original email I sent back in June 2023, I talked about how many of the people in the “help financial advisor” space are either Inner Circle members or they have been subscribed in the past. I have literal receipts to prove it. Do you know how kids say they have the receipts to prove something, like, I’ve got the receipts? I have the literal receipts.
I mentioned that selfishly. I wish these people would give me credit where credit is due because it's obvious that I have inspired their work to a great degree. I talked about how I wish they would just be honest with people and say, “This content is inspired by James Pollard.” Just say something. Just give me a little credit. Just give me one sentence. [09:52.7]
Right after that, when I said that in the email, I segued into evaluating people and marketing campaigns, and a good rule of thumb is to ask yourself when you're evaluating, “Do these people do their own marketing, and if so, how?” An example I gave in the email was that I have been sending daily emails and podcasting for many years, and chances are, if you're a financial advisor, especially if you're a financial advisor in the United States, there's a 99.9% chance that if you're on the internet, you have seen my online ads on Facebook, LinkedIn, or some other ad network.
I have spent over a million dollars of my own money working on my business, promoting my business, TheAdvisorCoach.com. That means I put my money where my mouth is, and if it doesn't work, I lose my money. I'm not playing with someone else's money. It is my money. If you're considering marketing help and those people aren't spending their own money on their own marketing, run. Run away. I'll give you a story to solidify this concept. [10:54.2]
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.
I call these my “objection-busting” emails, because they are designed to overcome the biggest objections financial advisors face. All you have to do is send me an email letting me know you’ve subscribed and I will reply with a link where you can download them for free.
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.
The greatest living copywriter is a man named Gary Bencivenga. He's been retired for nearly 20 years. Actually, you know what? He kinda sorta just came out of retirement because he's writing these new emails now, but he's been retired for a long time. He was a copywriter for 40 years. He spent over a billion dollars in split tests to figure out what works, what doesn't work, which is another lesson about spending money. You have to spend money to figure out what works. [12:15.8]
When he was starting out as a writer, do you know what he did? He ran his own ad promoting his own services. Whoa, what a concept, huh? It makes sense, though, because if someone claims to be a good marketer who can get attention for other people, that person should at least be able to get attention for himself or herself. That's why I always think it's funny when financial advisors message me or email me with doubts about whether my marketing methods work and I think the irony is lost on them. [12:45.5]
I've told several of these people, at this point, I usually don't reply, but if I'm feeling spicy, I will reply and I will say something like, “Take a step back. Think about what you're doing now. Think about what had to happen to get you to this point. You had to hear about me, get involved in my world and stay long enough or get involved deep enough to find my contact information”—because I don't make my contact information that accessible—“and, finally, contact me. So, you had to go through all of those steps, and here you are in my inbox or my DMs, on LinkedIn or somewhere else. I'm not in yours, so obviously, this marketing works at least at some level.”
When I tell them that, some of them get it and some of them don't. Some of them realize—Hey, you know what? I am listening to his podcast. I'm reading his emails—and they kinda sorta understand that “Yes, this this is marketing,” but other people don't get it. The irony is lost on them. They don't understand that they're the ones emailing me. They're the ones listening to my podcast. They're the ones on my email list. I'm not on theirs. I'm not listening to their podcast. They just don't understand that that is marketing that works. [13:55.5]
Once again, the stream-of-consciousness emails are very advanced. They are not for beginners. If you want to try something similar, do so at your own risk. If you are not advanced, they probably will not work for you, as well as formulaic emails.
With that said, I went back and studied every single one of my stream-of-consciousness emails, and I'd like to share a few reasons why I think they work so well. First, they're extremely conversational. I write as if I'm talking directly to a friend. I'm not stuffy. I'm not formal whatsoever. I write the same way I would talk with you if we were out to dinner together and you said to me, “Okay, James, tell me what really works for getting clients for financial advisors.”
Second, I tell story after story. That’s stream of consciousness. These stories are not complex. They are very simple, and in your emails, if you want to try this at your own risk, they can be very simple. Actually, the simple stories perform better. To give you an idea of what types of stories I'm talking about, I told a story about changing my car's air filter. I told a story about having wasps fly around my house in the same email. These are not historic stories. These are not complex. These are just very simple, like, Hey, wasps are flying around. They're being annoying. [15:12.5]
My hypothesis for why the simple stories work better is because they're relatable. This goes back to knowing your market. If you know your market, you can tell simple stories to make them relate to you. Did I do an exceptional job here? Probably not. Maybe I could have done even better by talking about something specific to financial advisors. But almost everyone has experience with wasps. People don't like wasps, so when I talk about that sort of thing, it's a safe bet that it's going to resonate with people—and none of this is faked. It is all genuine, because it's a flow of what I'm thinking and my thoughts come from things happening in my life.
Third, there's a lot of subtle positioning in the stream-of-consciousness emails. When I write them, I will frequently reference the work that I do with financial advisors and the marketing campaigns I'm running and the things I'm doing in my business. This is another reason why it's an advanced strategy, because you must really do this sort of thing. You cannot try to pigeonhole a great story in there if it doesn't seem natural. You have to actually be doing cool stuff in your life. [16:17.8]
But I really do get emails from financial advisors all the time. I really am working in the world of marketing. I always have something interesting to talk about in the marketing world, so stream of consciousness is very easy for me to do.
Fourth, and this is a takeaway, a huge one, these emails inherently demonstrate authenticity because I'm tapping into what I'm thinking and feeling in the moment. There's no filter. There's no attempt for me to craft a professional voice or image, and that sort of raw honesty is appealing to people and many tell me that it's refreshing. [16:55.3]
We live in a world filled with people who want to be polished and perfect sounding it all the time, and they've got these great little marketing messages and just perfect 90-second videos that they put on social media. Everyone's tuned into the usual marketing tropes. They understand that you're trying to give off this image that's not really you. When you show up with something that feels off the cuff, because it is off the cuff, it is instantly more attractive. People want authenticity, and when you write in this manner, they can sense it.
Finally, I want to highlight one more principle. It all comes down to trust, all of it. If you can write this way, conversationally with anecdotes from your life and where you're referencing your expertise, and you're you don't hold anything back, you build massive trust, and trust is a linchpin for persuading people to listen to what you have to say, whether it's about marketing or personal finance, or any other topic. People do business with people they trust. They listen to advisors they trust, and if they believe you're genuine based on the real-life relatable details that you include in your emails, they will stay connected with you. [18:05.2]
Since I started talking about these emails, I've gotten financial advisors who have asked me for, again, some sort of guide or template, or step-by-step instructions on how to write them, and I just have to laugh when I get these requests, because they are literally stream-of-consciousness emails. It's right there in the subject line. What do you not understand about stream of consciousness? There is not a template or a guide for you to follow. If you have to map out every detail of your life using a spreadsheet, then this probably isn't for you.
I cannot stress enough, I know I sound like a broken record, this is an advanced tactic. I don't think financial advisors should commit to it unless they have a deep understanding of their market. But I'm going to try my best to give you some semblance of how I would do this with emails. This is not a step-by-step guide or template or anything. I know it's not. I'm just going to try my best to put something together to help you. [18:57.3]
First start with a real experience or a thought. That is the whole point of stream of consciousness. It's something from your mind, from your head. The advice I have for you is, and this is the best way I can describe it, just take a quick snapshot of something that happened to you. It could be a conversation with a client. It could be a funny moment with your kids. It could be something you noticed while you were running errands. It could be anything that genuinely resonated with you when that happens. Click, click, click, take a snapshot.
After that, let the story write itself. Once you have that initial spark, you just start and you don't stop until you feel like you want it to end. Let the words flow without worrying about structure, grammar or how professional you sound. If you get stuck, move on to the next thought. That’s stream of consciousness, when one thought ends, another one begins. What do you think? What do you feel about the thing that happened to you? Do other thoughts pop into your head? Write about those. [19:54.1]
I know I mentioned positioning, the subtle positioning that happens. You can do that, too. It shouldn't be forced, but when you think about your unique value proposition or you think about how you help your clients and how that's related to the story, tie that back. A single line or two is often enough to do the job, and sometimes, I will break my own rule here because there are no rules and do an entire paragraph about positioning, but that's the beautiful part of the stream-of-consciousness emails. You can do whatever the gosh darn heck you want.
At the end, once you're done, I would recommend reading it and asking yourself, “Does this sound like I'm talking to a friend?” and I would ask, “Am I forcing this or is it flowing naturally?” Those questions will help you figure out if you've done a good job or not, but, ultimately, the final judge is your market. That's why you should not panic if you think your life is boring.
One of the greatest misconceptions is that you need epic stories or big life altering events to make these emails compelling. Not so. One of my best emails was about stapling papers together. Seriously. You could talk about something as mundane as a grocery-store visit and that can resonate with people. That can be a very impactful email. [21:06.2]
You can say, “I saw a sale on peanut butter and I realized that it's a lot like undervalued stocks,” or “I was so busy making a shopping list and I forgot to put half the items in my car, kind of like forgetting to double-check your tax strategies.” I know it seems a little silly, but if the market is the judge, whatever it is your daily routine, whatever you do, if you think it's mundane, I'll put it this way—what you view as mundane and boring, other people see as relatable. Okay, I'll just leave it at that. Your market will decide what's good and what's not.
To wrap up, I know stream-of-consciousness writing is unconventional. I don't think I've seen a single other person in the marketing world, let alone the financial advisor world, specifically talk about this style of writing applied to marketing. I even googled it several times, actually, and I couldn't find any results for it. I put it in ChatGPT. I put it in Claude. I went to Perplexity. I was like, Find me someone who has written about stream-of-consciousness emails. Nobody. Not a single person has talked about it. As far as I can tell, I am the first person in the entire world to use this strategy. [22:09.0]
That way, if you see some financial advisor, coach, consultant, guru or lead-gen agency out there doing this, you know where the strategy came from. Again, I have the email receipts to prove that I did it first, because it was in June 2023. I know it's unconventional. I know it can feel uncomfortable and I know there's no ironclad formula for success, but if you have a solid grasp of your market, if you're willing to share your real day-to-day life in a way that feels natural, it can be an incredibly powerful tool in your toolbox.
Thank you for tuning into this episode. As always, if you want to check out the Inner Circle for yourself, go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. You get the monthly physical newsletter delivered directly to your door by the mailman or mailwoman, or mail dog, whatever you have, or mail drone. Plus, you get access to monthly office hours where you get to hang out with me and a bunch of other financial advisors, and we all chat about marketing and whatever comes up, and just silly things. We just have a grand old time together. And with that said, I will catch you next week. [23:12.1]
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