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. [00:31.7]
James: Welcome to another episode of Financial Advisor Marketing. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much, I appreciate you and I'm glad to have you back. If you're a new listener, good to have you, but I want to make sure you know, that I strongly recommend that you do not depend on these free podcast episodes and the free blog posts and all the free content. The reason is because financial advisors put themselves in unnecessary danger when they try to figure out things on their own. They usually do this by, they read a bunch of blog posts, they listen to different podcasts, they follow all these “influencers” on social media. And if they're especially ambitious, who knows, they might spend $10 on Amazon for a book. What crazy! Big spender there, Jonathan. They're investing in themselves 999 for a Kindle book. [01:25.5]
Jonathan: Seriously
James: Wooow! Slowdown. This reminds, people who do that, they remind me of a guy who has had three or four karate lessons. You know what that guy's learned Jonathan?
Jonathan: Nothing.
James: He has learned just enough to get himself stomped silly, if he ever foolishly decides to darken the door of a tough biker bar and the same is true with marketing. Some advisers know at most enough to just spin their wheels and to remain stagnant for years. Even if they make some incremental improvements along the way, they're quickly evaporated by mindless mistakes they make by not implementing correctly. This is kind of like learning to squat on your own, like weightlifting, powerlifting, and doing it incorrectly. You may not feel it at first where you're doing like 135 pounds or like 140 and then 145. You don't feel it because the weight is light enough, right? But once you start squatting again and again, you squat some serious weight, you're going to experience some dysfunction. [02:30.2]
Now with this at worst financial advisors burn through their money. And they can stupidly categorize that as a marketing budget, whatever, like tell, tell yourself whatever you need in order to justify and rationalize it, right? But they set into motion, a chain of events that leads to going out of business or quitting. You can, you can believe me, you cannot believe me. I really don't care, it doesn't impact my life whatsoever. I'm just telling you what I see. It's just stupid, just totally stupid to just on influencers and free stuff. Cause if you think about it, it's available to everyone, lots of people listening to it, but are these lots of people getting these results? Compare that to something where maybe you have a group of, let's say 500 financial advisors and it's a small group is underground, people don't really know about it. But those who do out of that 500, let's say that 475 of them get really, really, really good results. Hmm…I'd rather be there. [03:28.1]
And you just, you need to go deeper than surface level content because I'll be 100% honest with you as a podcast host as a, I don't really blog that much anymore, but as a blogger and has an email marketer, I cannot go deep enough into a topic in one episode to truly be of tremendous benefit to you. Yes, it can help you. Yes, it can give you a little nudge in the right direction, but as far as long lasting deep, real change, I just can't do it. All I can really do is give you some light tactics. If you're a longtime listener of the show, you know, I pounded your noggin, the tactics, and only get you so far. I want you to succeed. I want you to get everything you want in life and tactics really won't do that for you. They just won't. So what are we talking about today? We're talking about ‘My Advice for Soon-To-Be-Rich Financial Advisors.’ [04:18.6]
And once upon a time, I worked with a financial advisor who told me he specialized in working with Henrys, H E N R Y and then S because it's plural. And if you're not familiar with the acronym, it stands for High Earner, Not Rich Yet. And it includes families who earn about 250,000 and $500,000 per year. Some of them actually earn quite a bit more than that, but it's typically, it's at least $250,000, but they feel far from rich because they've got so many different obligations. They take care of their living expenses; they pay taxes to make debt payments, all that stuff. A perfect example of this is young physicians. They may make a decent amount of money, but with all the student loans, they have, I forget what Dave Ramsey calls it. He calls it like Doc-itis or something like that, where they get out of school. When they buy a BMW, and then they buy a Mercedes and they buy a big house and they buy fancy furniture. They just spend, spend, spend, spend, spend, because they've delayed gratification for so long, that's just like an exhale. And they put themselves in a bunch of debt. So they're a long way from rich. [05:24.5]
And I've discovered that many of the newish financial advisors who follow the, the Pollard way of doing things, they're also Henrys because once they learn the right way to market their services, they find themselves with a fully booked calendar, they get flooded with new new clients and as a result, they make more money. And I mean, that's what, that's what good marketing is all about. You invest a dollar to get two, three or four back. So these people they're new financial advisors, they hit the ground running when they take my advice. Now, disclaimer, not everybody of course. I'm not saying that you'll get these results because I don't know you or your situation. So throwing that in there, but I mean, it's hard not to dispute what's going on. [06:06.5]
So here's my advice for the Henry financial advisors. The most important thing for you to do, if you're a Henry is to put on your financial advisor hat, it is crazy to me, how many financial advisors, how they can get all these certifications. They can read all these personal finance books, but not have their own financial house in order. So put on your financial advisor hat, imagine yourself as one of your clients, what would you tell your clients who are in the same position as you? Well, you would probably tell them three things. You would probably tell them, pay down your debt. Then you would tell them to reduce any tax burden and then three save like crazy. And you probably also stressed that you shouldn't forget the N R Y part of Henry, which stands for not rich yet. So don't act rich if you are not rich. [07:02.2]
And if you're a Henry, you should invest in yourself to accumulate wealth. It's, it's critical to make purchases that add value to your life. And by the time this comes out, it's going to be too late. But in the September, 2020 issue of the inner circle newsletter, I'm actually talking about this in pretty deep detail, basically thinking like a financial advisor, how there's certain investments that you should make, just pretty high level information. And I've also discovered that Henry's people who are eventually going to become rich. They're deep thinkers, they aspire a lot. And if that's you use it to your advantage, I want you to sit down for 30 minutes. That's it just 30 minutes, one weekend. I want you to brainstorm a bunch of ideas about how you can improve your business. That 30 minutes will probably be more valuable than 10 hours spent listening to someone else, even me. Because you're listening to that small, still voice inside that has all of your accumulating knowledge, has all of your accumulated experience and since nobody knows your business better than you, it probably makes sense to listen. [08:11.4]
Hey, financial advisors – if you’d like even more help building your business, I invite you to subscribe to James’ monthly paper-and-ink newsletter, The James Pollard Inner Circle.
When you join today, you’ll get more than one thousand dollars’ worth of bonuses, including exclusive interviews that aren’t available anywhere else.
Head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/Coaching to learn more.
James: And the other piece of advice I want to give soon-to-be rich advisors is to avoid talking a big game, if you can't back it up. I'm not saying to avoid talking big game, I'm just saying, don't do it if you can't back it up. And I talk a big game about my email marketing system; it's hands down the best marketing strategy you a financial advisor can use. I say that loudly and proudly because I can back it up, but don't do that with the money you don't have. Jonathan, I'm sure you see a lot of marketers making big claims that they can't back up, talking to big game, flashing their cash, just gets old after a while, am I right?
Jonathan: You know what it reminded me of when you were saying that is my copywriters writing and making a bunch of claims and then not backing it up. And I'm like, ah, Hey, you're just giving people a reason to not believe us. [09:38.4]
James: Yeah, you got to back it up. You got to have proof. I mean, if you go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/appointments, I mean, you don't even have to buy the thing. You don't have to invest in it. You don't have to invest in yourself, but if you just read it, you'll see, I've got fact study fact graph, proof, proof, more proof. And I even say that if you were to hire an email copywriter to do the stuff for you, because we give you 20 email templates that you can use and plug and play right into your business, you can just Google it. How much does an email copywriter cost? And you'll see the answer is between $100 and $2,000 per email. So I'm giving you 20. Do the math 20 times 100 at the low end is $2,000 and at the high end, it's $40,000. So you just do the math, like a proof proof, proof, and more proof. [10:26.3]
And I want to tell a little story to illustrate this point. I've talked about my charity work in the past. I talked about how I love supporting charities that give books to kids. I wish I could have like an official agreement with these companies where I could put on my website, Hey, for every inner circle member who joins the first month is going to this charity. Legally, I can't do that because I don't have an agreement with them. So don't, don't listen to that, don't put any credence there. I wish that we could come to some sort of agreement where I could do that because that's what I would do is when people join the inner circle, I will give the first month to DonorsChoose. But from a marketing standpoint, it's very difficult to do Charity advertising is my point. So legally, I can't say that, but hypothetically that's what would happen. So I've talked about my charity work in the past. I love supporting all these charities. I love First Book. I love DonorsChoose in particular. I give a little bit more money to DonorsChoose because I like picking the classrooms, but both of them are good. That's my thing. That's what I've decided to support. If you like it, then, cool. If you don't like it, that's fine too. [11:26.4]
But several years ago I ran an offer where people interested in coaching could donate $250 to a children's charity to have a consultation with me. So that was the offer. I put it together, I basically said, do you want to have a consultation with me? If so, donate $250 to this children's charity. And here's the actual email, I'm going to read it to you. Just so you know, like what it actually is. So the email said, Hey, you've been on my coaching waitlist for several months. And I'd like to give you a free 30 minute consultation, but I want to make sure you're not a cheap flake who just wants free information and no matter how good I am, you will never hire me. So all I'm asking is that you pay $250 for the consultation, which is a small percentage of what I normally charge and to make sure, you know, I'm not a flake, I don't even want the money. I want you to donate the money directly to First Book, which one of my favorite charities. Send me proof of your donation, and we will set up a time to talk. The downside is I'll have wasted 30 minutes of my time and you'll be out $250. The upside is that the children will be better off and you and I will work together. [12:35.3]
So that was the actual email, I just finished reading it to you. And when it was all said and done this particular offer, it was a big success. I must admit financial advisors got a lot of help from me. The kids got books that could change their lives forever. And if that's not a win-win, I don't know what is. So it was a success. I will categorize this as a good campaign. I probably would never do it again cause it got a lot of response and took up a lot of my time. But I mean, if I did it in the future, I probably asked for a bigger donation, but I tell you all that to tell you that I was amazed, amazed at how this small sum of money, $250 separated the wheat from the chaff. Because my aim with this offer was to filter out all the low level tire kicking financial advisors, who I'd never want to work with anyway. Now keep in mind, I only sent this to people who are in my coaching, wait list. So as the months went by, I had the wait list and the people just kept adding to it and adding to and adding to it. So I was like, I, I feel pretty bad that they just been sitting on here and waiting essentially for months. [13:33.6]
And some of them had been on for like a year at that point. I was like, I kinda need to do something with this. So I did an offer and there were financial advisors who were talking about how important they were, how money is “ no object”, how they run this big company. But then when I asked them to donate $250 to a legitimate charity, all of the sudden they have to think about it. Hmmm…Isn't that interesting? It's like, Hey yeah, you are, you make over a million dollars per year. Oh, okay. Let me have a consultation with you. But I wanted want you to make a $250 donation to First Book. Oh, I got to think about it. Know that you're, you're asking too much, I can't do it. Like stupid, stupid. Like you're obviously, obviously not a good fit. And I guess there are two morals to that little story. The first moral is to have a qualification mechanism in your business; I did that by requiring a donation versed. And I'm not saying that you have to do the exact thing and you probably aren't even allowed to, but the take the idea here that you need a qualification mechanism. [14:40.0]
I got rid of a lot of people who would waste my time. If you're a financial advisor and you're trying to build a serious business, you've got to have something like this. You've got to have a way to filter out the people who will waste your time. It's not nice to say, I know it's not as sexy tip or tactic or whatever. And I know that it's not necessarily pleasant, but it is a reality in business if you want to increase your productivity in your, extract a maximum amount of money, with a minimum amount of time, this is what you need to do. And the second moral is to stay focused. Keep your head down and stay focused. Work on you, work on your business. It doesn't matter what watch Joe's wearing. It doesn't matter what car Andre's driving. It literally doesn't matter. You don't see their bank balance. You don't know if they're swimming in debt. Don't let all of these status symbols; fool you into thinking that people are successful. Most of the time, it's all smoke and mirrors. [15:34.8]
Anyway, if you've ever seen any of my videos, it's literally me sitting in a chair talking to the camera. I'm usually wearing a hoodie or something. Honestly, I like wearing the same thing every freaking video. People like, do you own any other clothes right there? But there's nothing flashy, there's no cars, there's no fancy suits, there's none of that garbage. It's just me talking with you and helping you build your business. That's it, that's all that matters. The same is true with your business, focus on you and what you do best. So that is it for this episode. But before we go, I do want to say, I get asked all the time about how to join my email list. So go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/57, the number 57, because that's what it is. It's, it's an email opt in where you opt in and you get 57 marketing tips for financial advisors. So go there or at the bottom of any article over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/blog. If you read a blog, post would be the opt in there, you can get 57 marketing tips for financial advisors for free. [16:36.4]
It can absolutely change your life; just to be completely transparent my goal obviously is to give you a little something, talk about how you can grow your business. You use that information to make more money. You take that money, you join the inner circle newsletter and you just keep flipping it. Right? My goal is to get you to become an inner circle member, but even if you don't subscribe to the inner circle newsletter, it will freaking rock your world. And that's a wrap for this week. [17:01.4]
Jonathan: Fire! What do you have coming up for us next time, James?
James: Next time I am going to talk about stories and I'm going to help people with their storytelling and it's going to be titled ‘How Financial Advisors Can Tell Better Stories.’
Jonathan: Right on the nose there. One of my favorite topics, can't wait. Bam! That is a wrap for another financial advisor marketing. Thank you for tuning in. And we will be back in your buds next time. [17:29.2]
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