You're listening to Financial Advisor Marketing, the best show on the planet for financial advisors who want to get more clients without all the stress. You're about to get the real scoop on everything from lead generation to closing the deal. James is the founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com, where you can find an entire suite of products designed to help financial advisors grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard. [00:32.0]
James: Welcome to the show. I am so glad to have you here and I'm happy that you listening. Make sure you subscribe and leave a review because I really enjoy bringing these episodes to you every week. This is like episode 60 something 70 something depending on how we structure it and had no sponsors so far, our producer Jonathan, none whatsoever.
Jonathan: Give me a break, bro. Like TheAdvisorCoach has sponsored every one of these.
James: Yes, that's true. I am the sponsor. I bring, I have no outside sponsors on this show. I had been toying with the idea of bringing on some affiliate partnerships, but I, I only want to endorse products that I personally use. Like I would like to have an affiliate relationship with Toggl. I have one with BedJet, but the link is so darn complicated that I'm not going to read it on the show. But yet no, no sponsors really, just me. TheAdvisorCoach.com , The Advisor Coach LLC so yeah, make sure you leave a rating and review and show your love and cause I'm not really not really trying to sell you like Viagra [01:35.5]
Jonathan: Viagra for your business.
James: Yeah. Hey try these underwear and like, Oh by the way, Jonathan, have you tried this bald spot cream? I don't do that. It's me. TheAdvisorCoach.com/products, that is the sponsor. Now before we were recording this show, I was doing some organizing and I found an old external hard drive and this thing has got to be at least 15 years old and I forgot I even had it.
Jonathan: Wow.
James: So yeah. Cause, I mean, I had it when we were living at the old apartment and obviously when I was a kid, I had it at my parents' house. And then I took her to the apartment and it was in a choke and we just, I literally never opened the tote. And then when we moved to the McMansion, I took the tote and never, never opened it. We just had it in the storage where, but I opened it and had the external hard drive, plugged it into my computer and it was like traveling back in time. [02:35.3]
I got to see all the things I thought was important along with videos and music and photos and all of that stuff. But perhaps the most striking thing, and by the way, the, the new MacBook pro doesn't even have a USB.
Jonathan: Yeah.
James: I don't know if you do you have your laptop, MacBook pro
Jonathan: Yeah and I have to buy the adapters for it.
James: Yeah, the little dongle thing or whatever.
Jonathan: Yeah.
James: Yeah, so 15 goes by, we now have laptops that don't even have the USB, but I've got the fancy desktop rig and all that. So I was able to just plug it in and I see all this stuff and Wow. Things have changed. 15 years ago, Facebook was still in its infancy. Netflix is, as far as I know, didn't exist. A lot of email auto responder services we use today didn't exist. Zoom didn't exist. Podcasting wasn't really a thing. Not that I know of. Do you know, when did podcasting start? When? When did that really take off? [03:28.9]
Jonathan: Oh, well not, we'll take off I think a, phew. Oh, I don't know. It was in the early two thousands I think, where they started creating a serialized audio packet content. What's his name? Adam Curry, the old VJ. He's one of the original pioneers.
James: Yeah. I think I, I think I, I know what you're talking about, but yeah, it's just stuff like that. It wasn't like the thing that it is now. So a lot of the stuff we have in our world today is relatively new and I don't see this trend slowing down 15 years from now, the world is probably going to look a lot different than what it looks like now. 15 years. I mean Huddy is going to be in college?
Jonathan: Yeah.
James: At that point. Or if he chooses to go to college, you'll be an adult. He'll be a grown man. He'll be able to kick your butt.
Jonathan: That's coming soon. [04:21.7]
James: Well today we are going to talk about ‘Five signs you're going to be a successful financial advisor.’ And I wanted to share that story about my hard drive because it ties directly into the very first sign that you'll be successful. And that is number one, ‘Your Adaptable.’ Because if you want to succeed as a financial advisor, you have got to adapt with the times. Email marketing is by far the most effective marketing channel I'm seeing right now. Yet most financial advisors aren't emailing at all and the ones who are emailing, they're not even doing it right, or at least most of them aren't. So if you can start building an email list today and building an email marketing machine today, it'll be like buying Apple stock at his IPO. You will be so far ahead of everyone else, it's not even funny. I'm seeing this where my inner circle members, they email me, they get a little bit behind the scenes. They get a little bit more than average people because they're paying for it. [05:18.8]
And they are just blowing my mind right now with the results that they're getting, the stuff that they're doing with email. I've had a couple people send me some screenshots and appointments and all that, like --Whoa, this is just, it's, it's amazing to me and I had high standards to begin with, but this stuff is just ridiculous. You've also gotta be adaptable within your marketing strategies though, because maybe you try something this month, it doesn't work out even though you thought it would. I've shared some of my experiments in the past, it didn't work out the way I thought they would. You've got to be able to shift and try something new even if it's a change within what you're already doing. For example, you may be sending direct mail pieces that aren't working for you right now. It’s not that direct mail doesn't work because it does, but maybe your headline is off. Maybe your targeting is off. You've got to remain flexible enough to adjust as you go along. And in my experience, being adaptable will make you happier because you'll know that whatever comes your way, you can adjust to it. You'll be able to rise up and meet whatever challenge comes your way. [06:24.6]
The ability to change gives you the freedom to be happy regardless of your circumstances, even if your life sucks right now, even if nothing is going your way. By knowing that you can change by knowing that you have the ability to make a positive impact in your own life, even if it's over the long term, even if it's not gonna happen right away. Just a sense of freedom. I know financial advisors focus a lot on financial freedom, but what about social freedom? What about the ability to hang out with people that you like? Get kicked the people you don't like to the curb, that's social freedom. What about time freedom? The ability to spend your time however you want with whoever you want, doing whatever you want. That's freedom too. So start really thinking about that. You don't want to be successful just from a financial standpoint, even though it's extremely important, but you want to have freedom and success in every area. [07:13.5]
Number two, number two, sign of being a successful financial advisor and if you have this, it's a sign you will be a successful advisor, is that ‘You're immune to criticism’. And I remember wanting to call producer Jonathan shared, you shared your screen where this guy wrote in all caps like F you.
Jonathan: Yes sir my favorite kind of fan mail.
James: Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point.
It's fine. Now there's a Zig Ziglar quote that says, I've got some, by the time you listen to this advisers, this probably already be out. I've got some big things coming with a member of the Ziglar family. I don't want to give too much away, but although I guess I could, I'm trying to do an interview with Tom Ziglar cause by the time this comes out it will be done. And he is just; the stuff he talks about is amazing. The he, he's been around Zig Ziglar, his father his whole life obviously. [08:10.6]
And he, if you can name a motivational speaker, a personal development person, whatever he has probably been in the green room behind the scenes, actually making conversation with these people, seeing what they're really like. And he is a wealth of wisdom. And there's a Zig Ziglar quote that I like and I may be butchering it. It may not be the exact quote, but it’s like, “For some people the only taste of success they'll ever get is taking a bite out of you.”
Jonathan: Hmmm.
James: What do you think of that?
Jonathan: Love it.
James: And I talk a little bit about this in the January, 2020 inner circle newsletter. I don't want to give too much away here because I want to respect the people to pay for the information and I'm not going to give the information away for people who righteously paid for it. But the basic idea is that good marketing almost always gets criticized. Everybody has an opinion. Your parents, your spouse, your kids, your peers, other financial advisors, everybody's got an opinion. They're like buttholes, everybody's got one. They all stink. [09:12.7]
The only thing that matters is results and dollars in your bank account. And the social freedom and your time freedom and all that cool stuff. Other people's opinions really don't matter. Just like with the email thing, when I talk about how financial advisors shouldn't send silly stock market commentary emails, I get criticized, but the data, the numbers, the results show that story-based entertaining emails blow them out of the water, so I'm okay getting criticized. Because I've got the results to back it up and because I can provide results to the financial advisors in my audience, they're happy and their opinions. If there, if there ever was an opinion that counted, it's theirs. Because theirs, they're the people who are getting the results from it. You've got to develop thick skin with the ability to ignore critics and if you have a hard time ignoring critics, check this out. [10:06.2]
Hey, financial advisors, if you're looking for a way to set more appointments with qualified prospects, I invite you to sign up for James' brand new webinar about how financial advisors can get more clients with email marketing. Go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/webinar to register today. On this webinar, you'll discover why email marketing is able to generate upwards of 4400% ROI for smart financial advisors, three fatal mistakes nearly all financial advisors make with their emails, and the proven three-step process for converting prospects into booked appointments using email. All you have to do is head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/webinar and register today. [10:46.0]
One of the most successful movies of all time is ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’, which came out in 1966. Have you seen that movie, Jonathan?
Jonathan: I'm on mute brother, but you know I haven't seen it.
James: Alrighty. No, I have not seen ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’. Well, the reason I bring it up is because critics bashed that movie. They called it dull boring and just another average movie. But the audience, if there ever was an opinion that matters or be the audience to people paying for the tickets, they packed the theaters, they loved that movie and other example is Scarface. Now I know you've got to, you've got to have seen Scarface, Scarface, your movie that you like producer Jonathan. Critics hated that movie when it first came out, but other people loved it. They packed the theaters and another thing you've got to realize is that the person who is criticizing you is not even talking about you. [11:46.5]
They are talking about themselves. If someone makes fun of your marketing, their own marketing is properly and competent. If call you a charlatan or a fraud, they probably feel like a fraud themselves. Criticism says nothing about us and everything about the people who dish it out. You've got to remember that that's one of the most important things you can ever get all your road to success. And number three, here's another sign that you're going to be a successful financial advisor, ‘You're always looking for ways to improve’, and I don't mean in business or just in business, I should say. I mean in every aspect of your life. I think one of the reasons financial advisors enjoy my content so much is because I don't talk about just dry, boring stuff. Sure. I talk about some statistics here and there and I talk about some numbers and the math behind building a business, but for the most part I talk about a wide range of topics from pop culture, Brittany Spears and NSYNC to my own life, to my own struggles, stuff in my own personal life. I go beyond mere business and when it comes to improvement, I give you the real stuff. [12:50.2]
I encourage financial advisors to learn how to speed, read, how to delegate task, how to get better sleep, how to become healthier. All of that goes beyond just marketing because the most successful financial advisors appreciate this approach and they know that they have to improve themselves everywhere. The best financial advisors, even though they're improving themselves all the time, everywhere, they don't necessarily compete with other people. They compete with themselves. They want to get better than they were yesterday. They understand that looking at the next man doesn't do anything to help them. They keep their eyes on their own paper and they continue growing. Long time ago I had an advisor email me talking about how the other people in his company were making all this money and he felt like he was just spinning his wheels. [13:40.5]
The problem was he was focused on them when he should have been focused on himself. Because looking at other people in his office did nothing to make his situation better. The only thing that could have made his situation better is focusing on what he could do to get more clients and make more money. Number four, ‘You're intensely goal oriented.’ The more I see this, the more I appreciate this idea. My favorite book of all time is ‘Thinking Grow Rich’ by Napoleon Hill and in that book he talks about having a burning desire, something you want above everything else. It becomes your singular focus and it propels you to move forward every day fulfilling that desire. If you haven't read the book you have got to read it. It changed everything for me completely changed my life. I can't even imagine where I would be if I didn't read ‘Thinking Grow Rich’. [14:32.6]
It got me started down this long, long path of self-improvement, goal setting, all that good stuff. I realized that virtually 100% of the world's elite performers in every single field, from athletics to business to politics, all of these people are intensely goal oriented. They eat, sleep and breathe their goals. They keep their eyes on the prize and I always knew that you should have a goal and all that. I knew you should have something, but these people, they take it to another level. They've got their goals written on the fridge. They've got it as a phone screensaver. They've got an index card in the car. I mean they are focused on their goal. Everywhere they go, they've got little reminders. The more I implemented this into my own life, I realized how smart it was because it helps you to constantly, constantly think about your goal and the more you think about the goal, the more ideas you can generate on how to get there. [15:28.8]
Let's say you set a goal to make $500,000 in personal income this year. You put an index card with that goal on your desk. You put it as your phone screensaver. You put one in your car, you put another laminating index card in the shower. Even another one. Hey, don't hate, don't hate the game. Don't hate the player. Hate the game Jonathan. Put that index card in the shower. I'm not. No, I can neither confirm nor deny that I do that.
Jonathan: Tattoo it on your head.
James: Well now there's an old joke. I can't remember how it goes, but it's about someone getting a tattoo on their head and then when they die and in their will it says to shave it. Ah, I had a joke prepared for Mr. Neely over grandma's wealth wisdom. Who's an evil, evil man who sells life insurance. I had a joke for him, but I, I never told him. Here it is. I made me try it on you Jonathan.
Jonathan: Ok. [16:23.0]
James: What is the difference between me and a whole life insurance policy?
Jonathan: You and a whole, I don't know.
James: A whole life insurance policy eventually matures.
Jonathan: I love it.
James: I'm sure he will appreciate that. I'll drop it by him
Jonathan: Oh, he’d listen.
James: I’m sure. Oh, but the goals thing. Yeah. It sounds silly to people with the screensaver and the index card in the shower. If you do that, like I said, neither confirm nor deny, but it just puts your goals in front of you all the time. Then number five, fifth sign you're going to be successful as a financial advisor is that ‘You're humble’ and I guess I'm not, oops, maybe I shouldn't have put this in the podcast, but yeah, at some level you are humble and did it for the inner circle members where we interact on a regular basis and like people who are actually involved in my business building efforts like I'm, I'm actually, despite what you may believe, I'm actually a pretty chill guy. [17:22.6]
The thing is, I have to exaggerate my personality a little bit on the podcast, and I have said that in previous episodes, I think it was the, the episode called ‘The only real way to reach your goals’. I said at the very end that I've exaggerated my personality a little bit, and I had one advisor email me and say, I love that, but I don't believe that you're exaggerating your personality whatsoever.
Jonathan: Make me a coffee, pick my brain.
James: Okay, whatever works for me. But yeah, it's just with the podcast to me, like getting you motivated and everything, it's, it's, it really is me, but it's turned up a notch. But no. Yeah, you want to be humble. It's very easy for people to talk about themselves and bask in the glow of their own accomplishments. But here's the, here's the truth. There were always be someone richer than you. There will always be someone stronger than you, smarter than you and so on. And even if you're the smartest person on earth, even if you are the strongest person on earth, and even if you are the world's richest man, which right now I think is Jeff, Jeff Bezos or bill Gates, they're like neck and neck or they're swapping or whatever. There's other people out there with a better combination. [18:27.2]
Maybe there's someone with a better average of strengths, intellect, the family life, they've got a better total equation. So they may not have the same combination as you. And you've got to realize that. I see that sometimes in my inner circle newsletter because some advisors write to me about how they think they're hot stuff because they make $250,000 per year. And then later that day I will get an email from an advisor who made $1 million last year, who wants to get to 2 million?
And I see this right. I know the advisory makes $250,000, has no idea that four hours later I get an email from an advisor who made 1 million bucks and wants to get the 2 million. They have no idea. They don't see it. But I see it and I see like the ecosystem of how advisors interact and how success..successful people approach business and approach life and how unsuccessful people do it. Successful people continue to ask questions. They continue to seek advice. They continue to humble themselves in order to get what they want. They're after results and they value those more than they're their own fragile ego. [19:26.6]
Being humble means you put your ego to the side and you allow yourself to grow because your ego prevents you from hearing necessary feedback. Not criticism. Criticism is different, but feedback. If you're, you have a big ego, you're not going to hear feedback from other people.
It also makes you overestimate your own abilities. You think you're better than you really are. It may also cause you to underestimate how much effort it would take you to accomplish your goal. I see that a lot with optimist or advisors who thinks that they're high staff. I mean they start thinking that because they already make $500,000 that they won't have to work very hard to get to a million or they won't have to work very hard to triple their income so they don't work as hard and their ego ends up sabotaging them. Now that by itself, that one little like group of sentences I just gave you that could be like an entire product by itself. That could be an entire podcast episode by itself. [20:21.6]
Ego really gets in the way. But if you're humble, you may overestimate how much effort it would take to achieve your goals, which means you'll probably be pleasantly surprised when you get there compared to the person with an ego who never gets there and thinks that he or she is entitled to everything. So to recap, here are the five signs you're going to be a successful financial advisor :
1. You're adaptable,
2. You're immune to criticism,
3. You're always looking for ways to improve.
4. You're intensely goal oriented and
5. You're humble.
And for the teaser next week, I don't want to give too much of a preview, but I will give you the title of what I think it's going to be. I think it's going to be ‘The ultimate lead generation machine for financial advisors.’ So if you want a lot more interested prospects looking at your business, make sure you tune into that episode.
Jonathan: You don't want to give too much, just enough to have them feening for the next one. Alright, fam, that is another financial advisor marketing. We will be back with you next time. Thank you for tuning in. [21:25.2]
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