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: Hello. Welcome to Financial Advisor Marketing, your favorite podcast. I know it's your favorite podcast because you wouldn't dare say any other podcast is your favorite. This week's episode is titled The Three Best Habits of Rich Financial Advisors, but can I even say "rich," Jonathan? Isn't that a dirty word?
Jonathan: Only for the suckers that don’t know any better.
James: Rich. Rich. Rich. I'm going to get rich. You're going to get rich. We're all going to get …
Jonathan: Filthy rich. [0:00:58.8]
James: Now, I'm not going into some long spiel about the mental side of earning money and all that. We'll save that for another time because we're just going to talk about habits. So if you don’t have your mental side right, this probably isn't going to be very valuable to you. You're not really going to get any results from it, but if you do have your mental game right and you do… you got all your ducks in a row about it, attracting money and being comfortable with it, being comfortable with the idea of being rich - the reason I say "rich" so much in the beginning of this podcast episode is because if you have any feelings of discomfort or unease, it's a sign that you probably aren’t … you don’t have your mind right about making money. First, I want to answer a question I got from a financial advisor, and I thought it was such a good question that I wanted to put it on the podcast. Now, I don’t have the exact question in front of me because I couldn’t find it, but she had essentially gone through "How to Get Clients with LinkedIn" and she was beginning to build up her network, and I can't remember what her niche was but she definitely had one and her question was, should she remove the people who weren’t in her niche from her network, and I think she has several hundred connections who weren’t in her niche and she was about to remove them all because I mean, she already had a LinkedIn profile. [0:02:07.0]
I don't know, she had like 300 or 400 people in it and then she decided that she was going to work towards a niche and work in her target market and all that. She wanted to know if she should remove the people who were already there, and I thought it was such a good question and I told her, I would keep the connections she already had even though they weren’t in her niche. Now why would I tell her that? Because people have connections. People have connections to her niche and one of the biggest powers that LinkedIn has is the ability to leverage your second degree connections. So by removing the people who weren’t in her niche, she would have been decreasing the amount of people in her second degree networks. So that's my answer to the question. I would keep the connections and besides, people are connected to lots of different people on LinkedIn. I'm pretty sure I'm connected to chemical engineers right now and I don’t need any chemical engineering services. I don’t even know exactly what they do. I don't know what chemical engineers do, but I've kept the connection because I know my network equals my net worth and that same mindset applies to financial advising. [0:03:12.7]
Now, on to the show. Let's kick things off with the first habit of rich financial advisors. First habit is they constantly and consistently prospect for new business. One of the biggest differences I see right away - it's so obvious, between super star advisors and everyone else is that the superstars are consistent prospectors because everyone in financial services has to prospect in some shape or form and the world's best advisors are masters of doing it consistently and in a way consistency trumps proficiency because if you keep at something, if you keep doing it and you keep going after it, you're going to get good at it anyway. You'll eventually get the proficiency. I'd rather have somebody prospect all day and be terrible at the beginning than to have someone prospect once or twice per week and be okay at it. I would rather have someone suck, like be completely terrible and never get any clients right at the beginning because I can work with that. As long as they keep putting the work in and they keep doing the thing, I can sculpt you into like a meticulously crafted masterpiece. [0:04:18.0]
Jonathan: Ooooh - Michelangelo.
James: I'm the Michelangelo of building businesses - yes. But if you don’t do the stuff, and I tell you to set up an email marketing system and you only do it halfway and you don’t really implement it the way I tell you or if I tell you to get on LinkedIn and do something and send 50 messages a day and you send 50 a week, it's … I can't, I can't help you because I… there's not enough there for me to work with. So consistency trumps proficiency and one of my Inner Circle members is an absolute beast when it comes to prospecting and prospecting doesn’t just mean cold calling either, although he does cold call. I can't remember his exact system, but he's got several different marketing methods working for him at the same time, which is based on my philosophy. [0:05:02.2]
So this guy sends out direct mail pieces every week. He makes phone calls and followup calls every day. He's got an email marketing machine working for him, every day. He's active on social media every single day. He can automate this. I think he uses Buffer or Hootsuite or something like that to automate his social media and he does a seminar or two - I think he does two - every month. I mean, he is crushing it and I know that sounds like a lot but when you think about it, you can use a software like, or not a software, you can use a website like ClickToMail.com to send out your direct mail pieces. It takes 15 minutes to upload a .pdf, upload your list and be done with it - 15 minutes. Literally, 15 minutes. You know, you take an hour or two out of your day to follow up with your current clients, to follow up with some prospects. Then you got your email marketing machine working for you at all times. That's automated. You've got your social media. That could be automated. Your seminar - that's a result of your online marketing and your advertising and your direct mail. You just go and knock it out two a month. [0:06:02.2]
Like it's not that much work, and he's getting better and better with every passing day because he's consistent. He's constantly tracking his numbers. He's constantly prospecting. It just… you can't stop this guy because he's getting better and he is improving at such a rapid pace, it's like it's… it's amazing to me, and I'm seeing this stuff. I've seen the best of the best and the worst of the worst and he … this guy is really impressing me. His competition will never be able to catch up with him because he is so consistent. He's got so much data. He's got so much activity that he could look back at say, this worked and this did not work. It's just … he is going to crush everyone.
Number two: They monitor their metrics. When I first started interacting with people who were at the top of their game, this really took me by surprise, and I have seen it in executives, business owners, even pro athletes. They're all obsessed with their metrics, and about a year ago, I wrote a story in my Inner Circle newsletter about this NFL football player and how he tracked everything that had to do with his fitness and his health - every calorie, every nutrient, everything that went into his body was tracked and measured and it was intense. [0:07:16.0]
It was a wedding and I got the chance to sit with this guy because they put everyone who wasn’t really a family member at the same table and they just happened to know this football player. He went to the wedding and I was like, you know, cool - I got to meet him. I'm not going to name drop, but it was pretty darn cool and if you watch, let's just say, a Northeastern football team, you know who this guy is. He just tracked everything and I know you just got off the health kick or maybe you're still on your health kick, Jonathan. I know you were probably tracking your stuff.
Jonathan: Oh yeah. I'm on 75 Hard for the second time, and I do track everything I put into my body and my sleep and everything.
James: Now how important would you say that tracking is?
Jonathan: I couldn’t do it… like, it would be impossible for me to get any results if I didn't track.
James: Because you can't see where you've been. [0:08:01.6]
Jonathan: Right. Troubleshoot. Look for correlation and make adjustments and you know what - you helped me out a ton with that with the sleeping. I was starting to really dial into sleeping and adjust 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there to really dial into sleep.
James: Yeah. I mean, when you wake up, it's like you don’t want to wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle. You want to wake up at the right time. You want to track all this stuff and if you want to operate at a high level as a financial advisor, you need to become familiar with your numbers.
Hey financial advisors, are you ready to take your business to the next level and get more clients with less stress? I invite you to join the James Pollard Inner Circle, a paper and ink newsletter that gets delivered directly to your door every month. When you join now you'll also get a 90-minute instant download called, "Five Keys to Success for Financial Advisors", a $97 value for absolutely free. All you have to do is head over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/newsletter and join today.
James: What's your total revenue so far this year? How much of that is profit? How much do you make per client? How much… how much are you spending on marketing? Do you know? What's your most profitable marketing strategy? Do you know? These are all questions you should be able to answer and if you can't answer them, then you're essentially operating your business with one arm tied behind your back. I mean, think about this one number - client lifetime value. Once you know that number, business becomes more like a game because the minute you know a client is worth $10,000 over the course of you working with that client, you can start making decisions based on that figure, which means suddenly spending $5000 on a marketing campaign isn't such a bad deal and I'm currently working with a financial advisor who is thinking about buying a book of business and the numbers essentially work out where he's going to pay, I think it was like $8000 per client in that book of business, and it sounds okay when you think about how the lifetime value is higher than 8000, but you also have to realize if in his own marketing machine, he could acquire clients for less than half that cost, plus when you acquire a book of business, the retention rate isn't so good. [0:10:19.5]
I mean, there have been studies done where a third of financial advisors admit that 50% of the clients leave them after they acquire the book of business, which means that the number that you agree on, the price that you agree on to buy the book of business really isn't the price and your numbers are screwed up because you can't predict who is going to stay and who's not, but we're not going to get into all that right now, but you want to figure out what the lifetime value is, what you can spend up to the point and I even talk about this on the sales page for "Appointments on Autopilot." If you want to look at it, you can go to the TheAdvisorCoach.com/appointments. I explain how some financial advisors charge $2000 or $3000 for a financial plan, which means all the program needs to do is get them one client to pay for itself - one. It's insane and a lot of financial advisors are merely playing business. They're not really in business. They're just playing. They're playing like little kids play dress up or doctor because they don’t know their numbers. If you don’t know your numbers, you're just playing business. Am I being too harsh, Jonathan? [0:11:17.6]
Jonathan: No. I love it. I love it.
James: You got to know. You got to know your information. Number three: They reinforce their goals and the most successful people, not just financial advisors, I'm talking about on planet Earth, they tend to be intensely goal oriented. They know where they want to go. They have plans to get there. I personally keep a white board on my fridge with my goals written on it and simply seeing them there every single day is a reminder that I need to do something every day to make progress. When I go to get something to drink, I just did - we were recording this podcast - I had to take a little break to go get something to drink. I went up to the fridge, saw my goals immediately, and I reinforced my purpose. I know why I'm doing this podcast. My goal is to help as many financial advisors as possible. I take a lot of money and I donate it to DonatorsChoose.org. I donated the first book. I help the children. I've got a goal. [0:12:08.3]
I know why I'm doing this and maybe I do get a little tired of recording these podcasts and doing the transcripts and the outlines and the newsletter and the daily email and the social media but when I go to the fridge, and as silly as it may sound - when I go to the fridge to get something to eat - right - when I go there and I see my goal, I'm fired up again. I know exactly what I'm doing this for, who I'm doing this for, the people that I can help, what I'm doing. It's just I get right back to work. It's just like fire. If you've ever seen the movie Hercules, the cartoon movie from Disney, Hercules, where Hades gets mad and all that fire comes up. That's like me. When I see my goals, boom, I'm like Hades with the fire. I want to give you a guys a book recommendation. This book changed my life and I don’t give that many book recommendations. I mean, I throw a few out there, but I only really talk about it if it's made a significant impact on my life. This book is called Goals. That's literally the title and it's by Brian Tracy and some financial advisors have hated on Brian Tracy. Other ones love him. [0:13:08.6]
They're like Brian Tracy fan boys. So whether you love or hate Brian Tracy, depending on how you feel about him - I personally love him. I think he's done a great work, a good job. He's had a great life. When you go through Goals, it walks you through goal setting in every area of your life and if you go through it, make sure you answer the questions at the end of every chapter. Make sure you take it seriously. I know a lot of books have questions at the end, the end of the chapters. They're like, answer these three questions or these five questions. I know a lot of people just skip over them. You don’t want to do that with this book. You want to take it seriously and if you get that book and you go through it, send me an email at james@theadvisorcoach.com and let me know what you think. I read it about once a year so I can get clear on my goals, but that's a really good book to read. If you're not focused on your goals, you're really rudderless. You don’t have a vision. You don’t know where you're going. [0:14:02.9]
You wouldn’t embark on a journey without a map, without a way to get there without a plan and that's kind of what your goal allows you to create. A lot of people get caught up in thinking that their goal has to be some fantastic vision or something bigger than life and they hesitate and they don’t set a goal because they think A. it's not big enough or B. they think it's unrealistic. Just get something out there because the purpose of the goal isn't to just get you fired up, even though it gets me fired up. The purpose of the goal is really to get you to start thinking about how you can get there because if you write a goal - say I want to make $500,000 this year - that's a good goal to have and for some financial advisors, that may be peanuts. For others, that may be …may seem unrealistic to them right now. But when you write that goal down and you see it every day, all of the sudden you start having ideas and your mind starts… there's wheels that start turning a little bit and you start thinking, well, sure - how can I get $500,000 this year and then you start getting some ideas. You start writing them down and you start developing a roadmap to how to get there. That's the purpose of the goal. [0:15:04.8]
That's why you want to reinforce it. You don’t want to reinforce it because of some mystical thing or some law of attraction thing. You want to reinforce it because it sparks ideas. It sparks your creativity. It sparks your imagination. In order for you to get ideas, to lay out the groundwork, to lay out the map, to lay out the plan, to get to that goal. Now I know this is a short episode, but it is a valuable one, and if you didn't catch those three habits, they are the best financial advisors consistently prospect for new business. Remember - consistency trumps proficiency. Exactly like I said - I would rather have someone who prospects every single day and is terrible at it than someone who does not want to prospect, that doesn’t prospect at all and maybe only prospects once or twice a week and is mediocre or even great at it. Number two - they monitor their metrics. Extremely important. You've got to know your numbers. I rattled off a lot of questions, and if you didn't know the answers to those questions, you've got a problem. That is a serious red flag for you in your business. Number three - they reinforce their goals but not just because. They do it because they want to spark their creativity, spark their imagination to create a plan for getting to those goals. So, that's it for this week. [0:16:20.9]
Jonathan: Boom - mic drop. What's coming up next time?
James: I'm actually going to keep this a secret.
Jonathan: Ohhhh.
James: Because I know we end these episodes giving people a little teaser about what's coming up in the next week, but this time, the episode is going to be ridiculous. So I don’t even want to give away the title. I'll just say that if you’re a financial advisor, it is definitely in your best interest to tune in next week.
Jonathan: Wow. I cannot wait. Love that. Love that. Love that. Alright, fam. That is a wrap for another Financial Advisor Marketing. We'll be back in your ear buds next time. Thank you for tuning in.
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