You're listening to Financial Advisor 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 TheAdvisorCoach.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: Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. This week's episode is probably going to be a short one. I don't know, it depends on how much I rent, but it's inspired by the Ramsey solutions study of millionaires. I don't care if you love Dave Ramsey or hate him, but you cannot argue with facts. The man has done his research and he got the real facts about what millionaires do and what they don't do. Also, Dave Ramsey is a media monster. It's incredible to watch him grow and watch what he does on YouTube and through his podcast and all the different marketing channels that he has and how he's building systems to go from the Dave Ramsey show to just the Ramsey show and hand things off to different team members and have different systems and place to keep growing. But let's get into this study, it's the Ramsay study of millionaires. Here's some findings. [01:20.6]
79% of millionaires received a zero inheritance. So, if you listened to the media, talk about how people just inherit wealth and they get the money from the mommy and daddy, then it's just not true. 7.9 times out of 10, the zero inheritance whatsoever. 79% of millionaires reach millionaire status through their employer sponsored retirement plan, that's just, it is what it is. I would like to do a deeper dive into this and figure out how many people reached DECA millionaire status through employer sponsored retirement plan. I'm not hating on them. I'm not loving on them either way. I'm just saying, Hey, maybe a million dollars isn't the goal. Maybe the real goal is $10 million, but let's keep it focused on the study. [02:01.0]
Not a single millionaire out of 10,000, they surveyed put single stock in their top three wealth contributing factors. So, they don't bet the farm on a single stock. They're all at least somewhat conservative. They diversify. They don't go all in on Tesla or apple or Microsoft and just say Yolo and let it ride, they don't do that. The average millionaire paid off his or her home in 10.2 years. There's a lot of people who would say, oh, well, you shouldn't pay off your home. You should take out your mortgage for 2.75% interest and invest the rest like, well, yes, you're mathematically, correct. You're not wrong, sir or ma'am, but the facts are the average millionaire paid off his or her home in 10.2 years. So, if you're telling me this and you're telling me the mathematically correct thing, and you're worth negative $40,000, cause you have student loan debts, and somebody has a paid off home and a million dollars in cash and so on and so forth, I'm going to listen to the person who did the mathematically incorrect thing, because all that exist in the world is not just math. [03:07.8]
I love math as much as the next person, but there is a psychological component to a lot of things in life. There's an emotional component to a lot of things in life that needs to be acknowledged. And the world's best financial advisors acknowledged that component as well. When they're talking with the clients, they have empathy, they relate. They talk about these components in addition to the cold, hard math. And isn't that a funny expression, the cold hard math, because that's really what it is. It's just, it's cold, it's distance. It's not very loving, it's not very forgiving that people fall off the path if they need a change in their lives. And the whole idea of hiring a financial advisor is to get change and the financial advisor is the person who fosters that change. 97% of millionaires believe they control their own destinies. That is extremely interesting. [03:57.6]
The average millionaire hits the $1 million market, 49 years old. And the study found that 5% of millionaires, only 5% get there in 10 years or less. That's a little disheartening because if you start working at 20 to 25 years old and it takes you until you're 49 years old to a massive million dollars, like I know that you're the exception to the rule, but still, that seems really late to me. You got to get on the grind, you got to move, you got to make things happen. You got to push it. If it's, if you're 49 years old and you haven't hit that million-dollar mark like, Ooh, Ooh, big Oof for me. And 5% get there in 10 years or less. Well, my hat is off to these people because they obviously had their stuff together and made it happen. 99% of millionaires, nearly 100% said their friends and family members would describe them as hard workers, no shocker there. [04:52.0]
But there's one finding that I want to discuss because I think it can help you become a better business owner and a better marketer. And here it is, the top five careers for millionaires are engineer, accountant, teacher management, and attorney. This originally caught my eye because it was circulating online. And so many people were commenting talking about how about teachers specifically? And I married a teacher, and she wasn't teaching when I married her. But well actually that's not true. She was a teacher when I married her, but when we started dating my wife and I have been together since we were 16 years old, okay. She was my very first serious love interest. I was her very first serious love interest. We've been together. We, we went to college together, we got married, we're still together. So, a lot of people come to us for relationship, advice and whatnot. And I'm not entirely comfortable with that, but I have the results, right? I don't take relationship advice from somebody who's dated five or six or 10 different people who is hashtag forever single, who is divorced. I just don't listen to these people because we obviously got it right. We obviously know what the heck we're doing in a relationship. We make it work. So, there's a little bit of a rant for you. [06:05.7]
But back to the stat. Engineer, accountant, teacher management and attorney, and when it was circulating online, especially on Facebook and different media outlets, people were commenting and saying, oh, teachers can't be millionaires. Teachers only make 40 or $50,000 per year. Teachers can't ever be millionaires, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're projecting their beliefs onto other people. Just because you are broke your entire life doesn't mean that everyone else is broke or that everyone else has to be broke their lives too. There's something about this binding that I want to point out to you because there's something that these five careers have in common. I want you to think about it for a second. What could it possibly be? You have engineer accountant, teacher manager, like a management. You manage a Walgreens or something and attorney. Hmm… [06:56.4]
They follow systems. Yeah, every single one of these five careers is systems based. If you are an engineer, you quite literally don't reinvent the wheel. You build wheels a certain way. You build bridges a certain way. You design products a certain way and you connect wires a certain way. If you're an electrical engineer, the flow of electricity, doesn't magically change based on your feelings, things work independently of your opinions. If a bridge is only rated for five tons and you put 10 tons on it, it's probably going to lead to a bad outcome. Accountants have accounting systems. Then there are literally things called generally accepted accounting principles that you follow. When you do accounting. Teachers have lesson plans; they map out their lesson plans and then they follow them. WHAT? They follow the lesson plans. How, how crazy is that? That these teachers have a plan and then they follow it. What? [07:59.9]
And furthermore, there's a website called teachers’ pay teachers where teachers can buy lesson plans. They're willing to invest in themselves and buy someone else's system. They recognize the importance of systems so much that they're willing to learn from someone else who might have a better system than they do. Financial advisors, you can learn a lot from these people. Managers, managers follow a corporate system. They have to stick to the rule book. They manage things the way that the CEO or the owner sees fit. They work the plan. If you're managing a McDonald's okay, you can't just go off and do your own thing, you have to follow what McDonald's says. There is a plan for you. Of course, you can put your own little spin on things if you want to come in in the morning, you can come in in the morning. If you want to come in at night and you can come in at night, like there are certain freedoms that you have within the system, but you're still following a freakin system. And attorneys have a little system called, oh, gee, I don't know the law that they follow. There's like the law, they can't make up the rules as they go along. There is literally a rule book they have to follow. [09:05.8]
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Head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to learn more. [09:28.4]
Some of you listening to my voice right now, you aren't as successful as you otherwise could be because you're too smart for your own good. You think, you know everything, and you think you're smarter than other people who have already done the hard work for you. It's ludicrous. But there is a balance here because even though these jobs are systems based, these people aren't robots. And I want to give you a little story. So, when I was a teenager, eBay was on fire, right? People were on eBay all the time. They were selling and buying everything on eBay. I mean, I haven't bought anything from eBay in many, many years. I haven't sold anything on eBay in many, many years. But back when eBay was on fire in the 2000’s, well, I sold a lot of coins. I bought a lot of coins. I specialized in Morgan silver dollars. If you're a coin collector, you've got the Peace dollar, you got the Morgan dollar, you've got Buffalo nickels. There are all different types of coins that you can buy. I specialized in Morgan, silver dollars. [10:29.8]
And one of the reasons that I succeeded in flipping on eBay is because I followed a system. I went to Barnes and Noble. I still remember it as clear as day we went, my mom and I and a family friend. We went on a road trip to Washington DC. And we went through Virginia and went to Arlington and Alexandria and all these different areas. And we stopped at the Barnes and Noble in Solsbury, Maryland. And I got a book about how to flip on eBay, how to buy and sell for a profit on eBay. And I read that book in the car, the entire vacation. I think I read it once and then I didn't have anything else to do. So, I went back, and I read it again. And I realized that I had a passion for coins and coin collecting, but I knew that I had to specialize. I had to choose a niche. WHAT…There's that theme again, choosing a niche. [11:21.3]
So, I chose Morgan silver dollars and decided that I was going to make offers and make offers and make offers. And I was going to bid, and I was going to keep my eyes open for different yard sales and estate sales and see what's going on at local coin shops, maybe there was inventory that they couldn't move, or maybe they didn't sell Morgan dollars as quickly as they otherwise could. Maybe they had existing eBay listening listings that I could tighten up. There were things that I did with queen dealers, where they would pay me a fee to improve their listings. I would just go in and I would be a little copywriter for lack of a better term. That's exactly what I was doing. They would pay me a percentage in order to get the darn thing sold. So, I was working on commission before I even knew that that was a thing, right. Well, I mean, it was like quasi commission, but my point is I followed that book. I didn't know anything about eBay. My mom was like, why are you getting that book? Like, you're not going to sell anything on eBay. And she didn't have a clue how successful I would be like a year or two later, cause I got off my butt and I did the work. She just like laughed. And she was like, oh, kids will be kids, right. And she just paid for the book and thought that I was going to do nothing with it. But I started flipping the coins because I knew that this book had the keys to my success. All I had to do was follow it. [12:37.3]
And I guess to the cynics out there and to the skeptics, they might have looked at me and said, oh, the only person getting rich is, the person who's selling that book, or like. It's just goofy. I was dumb enough to follow the system and not try to create my own thing. I didn't try to outsmart the person who wrote the book, like literally wrote the book on how to flip on eBay. And I made more money doing that than my friends did at their jobs at the local golf course and the ice cream shop and the Hardy's and the McDonald's. I was making more money than them because I had a system. But again, getting back to what I was talking about. Even though the jobs are systems base, you've got a teacher attorney manager, these people aren't robots, because think about it this way. [13:22.]
There are some teachers who are more successful than other teachers. I don't know where you went to school, but where I went to school, they did a whole ceremony for teacher of the year. And that teacher was typically both quantifiably and qualitatively better than other teachers. I know we're supposed to be nice and respect each other's feelings, but some people are better at certain things than other people. Tom Brady is better at football than I am. I don't get mad. I don't whine or complain because he has a skill that I don't have. If I run a marketing campaign and I make 57 times my money back and your marketing campaign only breaks even I am quantifiably a better marketer than you. The beautiful thing about math is that it's quantifiable. There's no disputing it. Some of you out there are getting your marketing advice from someone who has been making $42,500 at some desk job for the past two decades, working nine to five and you wonder why you haven't made a million dollars yet. It's goofy. [14:21.4]
And continuing with this example. There are some attorneys who have better records than others. There are engineers who build better bridges, better roads. There are some managers who win awards and have successful stores while others don't. Certain Walgreens stores get cut. Certain CVS has get cut. Certain McDonald's franchises, get cut while others don't because there are some managers who are better. It is quantifiable. People want to get creative, and they want to have their feelings lead the way. And yes, part of that is personality. I get it. I have a psychology background, if anybody understands that I do. But when it comes to business and, and the data like the actual research like these people are actually millionaires, here are the careers that are most likely to have people who have a million-dollar net worth. You're talking about systems careers. [15:11.2]
And the conclusion that I need you to draw from this is that systems gets you in the door. Systems are necessary, but they're not sufficient to get you to the top of the food chain. Let me say this again so, you really get it. You won't even get a seat at the table unless you have systems. If you're out there flying by the seat of your pants and winging it and being creative, you're killing your odds. The actual data doesn't support that. After that, like after systems and getting in the door, it comes down to excelling within your profession. That's when we can get into the nitty-gritty things like becoming a better marketer, enhancing your technical skills and all that fun stuff. But the biggest takeaway I want you to get from this episode is that systems are necessary for you to maximize your odds of becoming a millionaire, especially a millionaire financial advisor, because the marketing systems or client attraction systems, there are nurturing systems. There are so many different systems within your business that you need to at least have, right? You need to at least have these in order to get your seat at the table. [16:14.5]
I don't know where you are right now, maybe a million dollars is chump change to you. If that's the case, then it's necessary for your next million or your next 10 million. I'm rooting for you either way. But I need you to take away this lesson this week is that systems are necessary for you to get in the door. This data doesn't even come from me. I'm not just spouting off my mouth to seem cool or anything. It comes from Ramsey solutions. They did the study on millionaires. 10,000 millionaires were surveyed, they were studied, and the top careers were all systems based. You need to understand this. [16:47.6]
I told you this was going to be a short episode. If you want my help with your business systems, I encourage you to subscribe to the James Pollard inner circle newsletter over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. Every month I dig deep into various marketing business and general growth topics designed to help you become better. And over the past year or so, the newsletters have been written with a systems slant because I want to help you based on real data. Just like the stuff that I shared with you in this episode. Once again, that URL is TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. Thank you for listening and I'll catch you next week. [17:22.3]
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