You're listening to Financial Adviser Marketing, the best show on the planet for financial advisers 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 TheAdviserCoach.com, where you can find an entire suite of products designed to help financial advisers grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard. [00:32]
James: Financial Advisers, welcome to another episode of Financial Adviser Marketing. I am your host, James Pollard, and I am here with producer, Jonathan Rivera of ThePodcastFactory.com who handles all of my podcast stuff and they do a lot of great work Transcripts that you may or may not get from me. Sometimes I offer transcripts as a bonus that comes from the podcast factory, the uploading of the stuff. All the work behind the scenes, they do a lot of a great job. So if you want to start your podcast, go to ThePodcastFactory.com that amazing.
Jonathan: So I didn’t even have to pay for the Ad. This is amazing!
James: Yeah, you’re right in here,yeah. So producer Jonathan, a few days ago, I mentioned that my win for the week was finally hiring a cleaning company.
Jonathan: Yeah. [01:16.1]
James: Yeah. So for the financial advisers, let me explain the story here. So I moved in August and I had a cleaning company come in to my apartment that I was living in before. I mean, it was a nice place. I will admit it was a better location, but you know, housing unit per dollar in that area was just outrageous. So I wasn't gonna buy in that area, but I bought in a different area and got a pretty nice place. But the thing is I never rehired a cleaning company. I didn't we hire them, cause they, they, it wasn't in their service area, but I never hired another cleaning company. So what I would do is just clean lightly and listen to audio books. So like every single night I would just like wipe down a countertop or something and listen to an audio book or just like vacuum or whatever. I was doing the work myself. And it was kind of like therapeutic, you know. [02:06.8]
Jonathan: Yeah right.
James: A little bit. I was listening to my stuff. I would zone out. But then I just woke up one day. I was just like, this is so dumb. Why am I still doing this? Because like I tell people not to do it. And here I am doing it. I'm being super duper hypocrite. And I've officially hired the new cleaning company they're coming today. Like literally after we're done recording.
Jonathan: Sweet.
James: But here's the thing, the guy sent us we, we do a deep clean at first that's… And for anyone who's going to hire a cleaning service or ever hires your cleaning service, make sure you do a deep clean first. So they, they were scheduled to do a deep clean, and he sends us the text message invoice and it says regular clean, like, no, no, no. It's the deep clean, you know, give us a call. So it gives us a call and he says, I don't remember what I quoted you for the deep clean. Can you tell me what I quoted you?
Jonathan: A dollar. [02:58.5]
James: Yeah, $15 I don't know. It was like, I don't even remember. It was several hundred dollars, like a lot, but I like really seriously. Like, I mean, I gave him a pass and he ended up discounting it a little bit because it was his error and he didn't write this stuff down. But like use that as a little inspiration here, because if this guy can run a fairly successful business, I guess is a pretty successful cleaning company, from what I can tell. If this type of mistake happens like that’s good, this inspiration for you. Because if you're, you can even halfway run a business and you can succeed. You can make it. If this guy can do it, you can do it just like bros.
Jonathan: Is this true?? James, here, here's why I'm asking you because I think you're like us and, and very organized, but I see disorganized people doing better than me. And I'm wondering if I'm doing it wrong.
James: So there's, I don't want to get into the science behind that, but there's a lot of it. It could be that the disorganized people are just using their personality better.
Jonathan: Ahhh. [03:58.0]
James: In the same way that I talk about financial advisers selecting their marketing strategies based on their personality. If they really like to write a, maybe direct mail, an email is good for them. If they are truly extroverted and really get a lot of energy from being around people, Hey, maybe cold calling and seminars, and that's better for them. None of the marketing strategies that I discuss is either right or wrong. It doesn't matter. It's all neutral. It just is. But there are some that are better for other people than others. I just, the way it is. And so that's the way it is in business too. But the point is, if you think about how stupid the average person is, and you realize that half of all people are stupider than that, pheww, cause that's how statistic statistics works. You've got the average, stupid person that half of all people are stupider. That's a pretty darn good feeling to know that if they can do it, Hey, you can too. Cause successful businesses happen all along the spectrum here, but let's get into the episode here.The title is 95% of financial advisers will ignore this marketing strategy. And I've realized that you can't do right unless you see right. [05:05.4]
You've got to have a vision for what success looks like in order to pursue it. The guy, this cleaning company would do better if he knew better. If he had another example for him, if he had a, another model for him of how to run his business, how to take notes, how to be more organized, maybe he would do better. And I'm trying to give you the vision of what your business should be like of what your client getting processed should be like with this podcast. At some level, I'm not like a motivational speaker. I'm not inspirational or whatever. And probably never will be because my personality is not geared for that. I've tried that in the past. I've tried to kind of like fake it. Like yes, everything is great. And this is fantastic and positive. I'm just not that person. I'm very straight shooting. Very cut and dry. Very, I don't want to say abrasive, but it's at some level I am. I'm like the abrasive side of the sponge is it tends to be me. But I do want to you, I do want to help you get a clear picture of what you want in your life. It's very important. And I also want to help you see what not to do. And that's what I'm going to talk about in this particular episode. [06:05.8]
It's 95% of you are going to ignore this marketing strategy. And I got the 95% number from the social security administration. They started tracking where people ended up after 40 years of work and they found the following. And I discussed this in more detail in my inner circle newsletter in May, I believe May, 2020, but I'm just going to give you the numbers here. I'm not going to reveal any proprietary information, just gonna give it to you. 20% of people end up broke. 60% of people struggle all the time. 15% make an okay living 4% end up affluent or well off. And only 1% ends up rich. So you got 4% affluent. 1% ends up rich. This has not changed in decades. And historians have written about how it hasn't changed in millennia like forever centuries, centuries hasn't changed. And I don't think it will change all throughout history. There's always been a small percentage of the population who gets its hands on wealth. [07:08.4]
These people will always be with us. This is what you need to realize. The majority in this case, the 95% who is struggling or broke or below broke, I should say almost always wrong on everything, every single topic. The people who are broke, obviously you're wrong about money, but 95% of the population is wrong about how you should raise your kids wrong about how you should drive. A lot of people say, Hey, I'm on, I'm an above average driver, but statistically that cannot be true. Some of you suck. Some of you cannot drive for crap. I was out of the Wawa this morning and I pulled up in a parking spot and there was a van they're like, I don't understand why people do this. There was literally five open parking spots at the front of the store. I just pull in and park near the back, this van again, I'm getting kind of frustrated thinking about it.
Jonathan: I can hear it. [08:05.1]
James: Right next to me within inches, within inches. And there's like five spots. Think seriously, parking one of the other ones. Why are you gotta to park right next to me? I could barely open my door. And there's all these other spots. So this driver of this man is a member of the 95%. So there you go. And I'm sure I'm sure that financial advisers see this type of behavior. This type of thinking with their clients all the time. A large percentage of the population lives paycheck to paycheck. And I'm not saying that the financial advisers clients do, but in the pop, when dealing with the public and dealing with the population, this is what you see. Most people have some form of debt, whether that's a car loan, whether it's a student loan, a credit card debt, guess what? If you don't want to end up like these people, you cannot do what they do. And when I say it like that, financial advisers tend to agree. And on an intellectual level, they say they nod their head, they say, yes. If I don't want to be in credit card debt, I can't hang around and model and imitate the people who are in credit card debt. [09:03.2]
So they get it at least intellectually, but they don't practice it because they continue to copy what other financial advisers are doing. And by definition, that means you're copying the majority. And if you're copying the majority, you probably doing stuff wrong. And this is in every industry by the way. If, if you own a car dealership, you would likely go to seminars and conferences and hang out with other car dealers. You would read the car dealer magazines and interact in online groups with other car dealers. You would just, you would have this incestuous type relationship with all of them and just hang together in this big pot and bucket or whatever. And you just mix each other's ideas. It just copycat everywhere. Now, the reason that I think that one of the reasons I think you're successful producer Jonathan, is because the masterminds that you're a part of are not just podcasters. You were exposed to a plethora of ideas, a plethora of philosophies and ideologies that you can basically pick the best parts out of these ideologies and implement into your business. [10:07.3]
Jonathan: Yes Sir.
James: Is that a fair assessment?
Jonathan: Oh and and it's going to be the buzz word I think for 2020 intentional. I make sure that I go into a mastermind where there was nobody else like me.
James: Oh, wow. Okay. So I didn't, that's like a whole new level. You're intentionally saying that I want to be the only podcaster type business in this mastermind.
Jonathan: Of course. And you know why I do that? And I I'm sure you do this too, is because when you join one, you want to be able to bring value. And if you're doing what everybody else is doing, how much value could you really bring? You're coming from a whole other place, everything you bring seems like value. [10:40.7]
Hey, financial advisers, 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 advisers can get more clients with email marketing. Go to TheAdviserCoach.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 advisers, three fatal mistakes nearly all financial advisers 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 TheAdviserCoach.com/webinar and register today. [11:20.6]
James: That's true. That's true. And that is exactly what financial advisers need to understand is that you can get ideas from other industries. You can get ideas from watching Ray crock documentary, watching Elon Musk. You can get ideas from watching people do it wrong, and you can learn what not to do. But I want to talk specifically about financial advisers who basically copy other financial advisers and make incremental improvements. But the problem with incremental improvement is that no breakthroughs happen ever like none and people don't really get it. I mean, intellectually that, like I said, they nod their head. They say, yes, I understand what everybody at a deep level, like actually implementing it into the business, they do not understand that when you are making incremental improvements, no breakthroughs happen. It's just straight up linear thinking. You, you work hard, you get one unit out. You say I'll work a little bit harder. I'll get two units. And I get three units. You will never ever wake up one day and say, Boom I got 10 units from, it just doesn't happen. [12:20.6]
It cannot happen with incremental improvement. I'm not saying that incremental improvement is a bad thing. I like to have incremental improvements because if you stack a whole bunch of them on top of each other, you can grow a business. But I like having breakthroughs. I like having exponential growth even more. It's just that you can never get those when you're copying what the majority is doing. Let me give you some examples. In my experience, 95% of financial advisers, again, this is just my rough approximation based on the data for money and for health and for all the other stuff and basically saying the majority here. The financial advisers are too dependent on one to one mechanisms to grow their business. This is the face to face stuff. It's the door to door stuff. It could be sending messages out and asking for someone to hop on a call without ever qualifying that person in the first place. Stuff like that takes a lot of time. And it's time that you can't get back. One of my favorite quotes is from Ben Franklin— ‘Lost time is never found again.’ [13:16.5]
Let's say that you messaged someone on LinkedIn, which is a perfectly valid marketing strategy, by the way. And you ask for a phone call right away, the person agrees and you spend an hour on the phone, chatting away with this person who ends up not being able to do business with you. And then you both go your separate ways. Is that a good use of your time? I, I don't know, but most financial advisers operate that way. And if most financial advisers operate that way, it is probably not a good idea. So what if you took the same hour of your time and you created a piece of marketing collateral that separated your time from your income, would that be better? I don't know, but if the majority of financial advisers don't do this, probably because you will go from a one-to-one marketing mechanism and you would elevate your game to a one to many marketing mechanism. This is how you go from $50 per hour to $5,000 per hour, because that same hour of your time can grow, can compound and time becomes your friend, not your enemy. [14:17.5]
The reason why my inner circle newsletter even exists is because I'm taking advantage of this is literally what I'm doing. I'm being a hundred percent transparent. Like I'm taking advantage of a one to many marketing mechanism, because think about it. You get this paper and ink newsletter along with the ability to ask me questions for $99 a month, I literally cannot offer one-on-one coaching for $99 a month. I cannot do it. I wouldn't have a business. I wouldn't even have a house, a place to live. It just, I wouldn't make enough money. It wouldn't happen. I’d go bankrupt. I wouldn't be able to help anyone. Instead, I offer that newsletter to a large audience of financial advisers. So not only is the price lower for them, but it still makes economic sense for me. It's a win, win. And only a small percentage of financial advisers are doing this at all. And it's almost exactly like the percentages I gave at the beginning of the show. I would estimate that only about 5% of financial advisers are doing this as a regular healthy part of their business. And only about 1% of them are doing it well. [15:25.0]
The top 1%, there are the financial advisers who are consistently advertising online, growing an email list. Maybe they have a podcast, maybe they write a successful blog, all that good stuff. It's all one to many marketing. And the point is, I guarantee you, 95% of financial advisers. If you took a, a look, a broad brush, look at 200 to 300,000 financial advisers in the United States. Right now, you would find that 95% of them are not regularly and consistently employing this strategy in their business. One to many is it's a goldmine and lots of people have gotten rich by doing this. Frank Sinatra is one of those people. So think about this years after his death, Sinatra's voice can still be heard in restaurants, bars, airports, and homes, all over the world. He basically created the songs and they exist separate from his time. [16:22.6]
So his song, it's a dependable turnkey system. It works predictably systematically, automatically and effortlessly. It doesn't matter where Frank was or what he was doing. If the song was playing, he was making money. It was producing income. And by the way, interesting fact, the bulk of his assets were actually placed in a trust prior to his death. So I guess he had a good financial adviser who recommended, Hey, Frank, why don't you put all your money here? But the contents of that trust have never been made public. But I imagine the Sinatra trust that thinks you gotta be making bank.
Jonathan: Yeah. [16:59.8]
James: Like throwing off some major cash, got that Elvis money that Michael Jackson money, we talked about Michael Jackson in an episode where he rented out a whole freaking grocery store or a mall. He rented out the whole mall. I remember that now.
Jonathan: Yeah.
James: Yeah, but Frank, but the point is, if Frank Sinatra can make millions of dollars for his family after his death, which is what your real goal should be, your real goal should be legacy wealth, generational wealth, the decades, and decades and decades for your family, for your children or your grandchildren or your great grandchildren. How awesome would it be for your great grandchildren? I mean, you're your Dad, you're long gone for them to have your picture or your portrait, I guess, I guess on a hundred years from now, there'd be no portraits. It'd be all be like a hologram, right?
Jonathan: Hologram, yeah. [17:42.6]
James: The point up, they look at your hologram, they say, that is my great, great grandfather, Jonathan Rivera. And he's the reason that I was able to have amazing health care. He was the reason I was able to go to the best school. He was the reason I was able to have a network, which in many ways is more valuable than money. And they just, they honor you. And they've never met. You never met you in person because you're long gone. How awesome would that be? And financial advisers, you need elevate your game. You need to think about this. And I think that the Frank Sinatra example, new musician example is a good one because it illustrates the difference between doing a concert and recording a song. You've got to like, get this ingrained. But most financial advisers are just doing metaphorical concert after concert, after concert.
Jonathan: They are gigging.
James: Yeah. Yeah. If, if you perform a show, that's one paycheck and it could be a big paycheck. I'm not lying. I'm not going to try to cover it up. It could be a big paycheck. You get a lot more money for a concert upfront. Let's say you make $20,000 from a concert. That's cool. But once the concert's over there, ain't no more money. You cashed the check and you're done. But let's say you hit the recording studio. You don't get paid for recording, in fact, you have to pay. But once you're done, you don't have to record the song again, that song can deliver a consistent, predictable performance all around the world again and again. [19:09.9]
And guess what you're getting paid every time it plays, I'd rather do that. And I'd rather record dozens and dozens and dozens of songs. So I can build up this recurring income stream. And the same idea is true in any financial advisers business? No, it is not easy. It kills me. When I see you see these people on LinkedIn and Twitter and online and Facebook ads and all this they're promising fast results, quick results, easy. We'll send you 30 clients a month or whatever. Like it's just, it's all bull crap. It really is. It's complete and utter bull horse, cow, dog, crap. Every animal you can think of. It's just, it's just not true, because if it was true, then these companies would literally be a billion dollar business. Like sit back and really think to yourself, use your freaking common sense that these companies could really honestly, truly could send you 30 clients a month or whatever the outrageous claim is. Just do the math. [20:03.3]
If they're charging a thousand bucks a month for it to do this, this multiply that by how many financial advisers they should have. And then you get like a billion dollar business seriously. But I tell you the truth, it's a little harder. It's not easy, it does take work. But I promise you if you keep working and you keep putting these assets together, you can eventually do whatever the heck you want to do. Frank Sinatra has something like 1400 recordings, it's a lot.
Jonathan: Wow.
James: And that didn't happen overnight. Anyone who thinks that Frank Sinatra just went to the recording studio once and built this entire generational wealth throwing off millions of dollars per year, it didn't happen overnight. It happened over decades, but his family now has a huge collection of assets that continue to pay them. My message to you is this. You can do the same thing in your business with your marketing and to wrap up the show. I want to leave you with a good example of one to many marketing and that's direct mail. [20:57.2]
Once you have a winning direct mail piece, as an example, the hard work is over. It's like you hit the recording studio, you have recorded your song. You hit the word processing document, you write your direct mail letter. Maybe you hire a copywriter or whatever, once you do that, the work is done. All you gotta do is mail it and you can take that same letter and mail it to 10 people or you can mail it to 10,000. And if you're, if you're curious and learning how to get clients with direct mail, I encourage you to head over to TheAdviserCoach.com/coaching and check out the inner circle newsletter. Because one of the bonuses that you get is a 46 minute MP3 download called, this is the actual title I'm not very creative with this stuff ‘How financial advisers can get results with direct mail.’
Jonathan: What??
James: Very simple, very basic, not a fancy title there, but it's actually an interview I did with Craig Simpson, who is arguably the greatest direct mail marketer of all time. You know this guy, Jonathan?
Jonathan: Of course. Who does….I mean we do. Who doesn’t in our case, right? [21:55.1]
James: Sure. The marketers of the world know Craig Simpson. Like he, this is all he does. And if you've never heard of him, he sent more than 300 million direct mail pieces. He's a master of generating appointments through mailers and you get that interview for free, completely free of charge. It's, it's available as soon as you sign up, it's on the thank you page when you subscribe through, subscribed to the newsletter. So go check that out one more time the URL is TheAdviserCoach.com/coaching. And I think that's it for this episode.
Jonathan: All right, what's coming up for us next time, James?
James: Next week's episode is going to be titled ‘How Financial Advisers can run profitable online ads.’ Again, not very creative, but I'm going to show you what to do if you want to run ads online.
Jonathan: Wow, can't wait. Fam, thanks again for tuning in and we'll be back in your ear buds next week. [22:45.2]
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