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: I got this email from an inner circle member who shared that in 2021 he hit a personal goal of his and made $1 million. That's awesome. I love this, it's incredible news, but to be 100% transparent, I gotta keep it real with you. I don't know if that's revenue or net personal income. I know I should have asked. I'm silly. I should have asked him. Because I know there are lots of people who brag about having high revenues while having almost nothing in profit. But I'm going to assume that he's talking about net personal income, because that's what I talk about in, in the newsletter. That is the go-to when I talk about personal income. And the reason he shared this with me was because I started the January issue by saying that whatever you made last year should be your new baseline. And that may be difficult for him if he has seen such a surge in income. It may be difficult for you, if you doubled, if you tripled you quadruple your income, if 2021 was your best year ever, you're like, holy smokes how am I supposed to make this my baseline? But you would be amazed at what the human brain can do to maintain a comfort zone. [01:33.3]
And if you've created a new comfort zone with your current income, you'd be surprised at what could happen in the future. He said the biggest change he made was fully embracing my idea of building marketing assets, which is what we're going to talk about in this podcast episode, because it it's such a powerful concept and you can use it to A) increase, your income B) decrease the amount of time you work or C) both. Now here's a disclaimer. I am not saying you will get the same results. I'm using this as an example, only your results will vary based on your situation and your unique circumstances. All of this is for informational purposes only, that's it. Got it? Good. Here's a quote from Robert Kiosaki that I think will lay the groundwork for what I want to discuss today. [02:19.2]
The rich by assets, the poor only have expenses. The middle class buys liabilities they think are assets. The poor and middle-class work for money, the rich have money work for them. Money can be an asset that works for you. You can have your dollars make more dollars. As a financial advisor you already know that money invested in the stock market is working for you to earn more money. For example, Coca-Cola has been paying dividends for decades. At the time of this recording, Coke is paying 42 cents per quarter, which works out to be Hmm, 42 times four is a $1.68 per year. If I bought the stock back in 2010, when it was 30 bucks, that means I am now receiving a 5.6% yield on cost. And that's only going to increase as they increase the dividend over time. And, and in this case, my money is working for me through the asset i.e my Coca-Cola stock. Do you think the marketplace cares where I get $1.68? No, it doesn't care that I got it through earned income or through dividend income. It only cares that I have it. [03:27.0]
So, if I wanted to spend that money without having assets, I would be forced to get it by working with my labor. I would be forced to get it through earned income. Now what's even cooler is I don't have to spend the dividend. Coca-Cola gives me a dividend; I don't have to spend it. I don't have to take it and consume it and give it back to the marketplace. I can take that dividend and reinvest it back into Coca-Cola stock, which will earn even more money. I will have money earning money. The same is true in marketing because the same way that the poor and middle oh class they're stuck in this paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, many financial advisors get stuck in a metaphorical paycheck to paycheck cycle with their marketing. They're constantly working constantly hustling, constantly creating without building assets, to work for them. If you're trying to figure out new ideas all the time, or if you're always looking for ways to reinvent the wheel in your business, you are not building assets. You are stuck on the treadmill my friend. [04:24.7]
I personally don't wanna be creative. I know a lot of people look at me and they're like, wow, James, you're so creative. We love the images that you put out. We love your ads. We love the way that you run the advisor coach. I wish I could be that creative. Look, I I'm not creative. I don't wanna be creative. I want stuff that works. And I want it to work as quickly as possible in to minimize my time investment. Because time is the one thing that you can never get back or it's one of the things that you can never get back once it's invested. I want to maximize the use of my time by getting the maximum out of it. Out of the time, invested out of my investments. I want to squeeze every last drop out of that investment lemon. And the only way I can do that is by creating assets. So, what are some examples of this? Well, a specific example that the inner circle member gave me was that he stopped treating his website like an online brochure and instead started making it work for him 24/7 - 365. And by the way, a lot of you are treating your LinkedIn profiles as online resumes. You don't wanna do that. You wanna treat your LinkedIn profile as an asset as well, but let's get back to the website thing. [05:24.7]
You would be amazed at how well your website can perform when you begin treating it like an income generating asset. Let's say you own a piece of real estate. That's another asset, right? And your cashflow decreases in one month. You probably want to know why, right. Did the water heater break? Did the air conditioner break? Or what, what happened? You would investigate, but when websites stop working, most people don't investigate. A big reason for this is that they don't know. They don't know that the website stopped working at all because they don't track it. You wouldn't treat other assets that way. You don't make your investments by throwing money at anything without examining it and watching it. So why would you do that with a thing that is designed to bring in more appointments and more clients for your business to make money for you to increase your net personal income? Why would you do that with your website? It's crazy to me. Going with the real estate example. If you own a piece of real estate, you can do something called forced appreciation, which is where you can do stuff to improve the property value. This could be improving the landscaping, painting the place, putting new carpets in redoing the kitchen and bathroom and so on. But you're doing these things with the intention of making the asset more valuable. Again, can you see the parallel here with your marketing assets. [06:38.7]
Talking about websites specifically? I would estimate that roughly like 95 to 98% of all financial advisor websites conduct zero split test. Zero, none whatsoever. And even the ones who do split test are not really using the software the best way, or maybe they're not using the software at all. They're just trying to, to track it manually. But when you do a split test, you can force appreciation because if you test one headline against another, and there's a clear winner, you can change that headline and see an immediate improvement in the response of your website. It's just like painting the place and increasing the amount of equity and the asset that is real estate, like a house or a duplex or a triplex or multifamily or commercial property. In, in the February inter circle newsletter issue. I revealed real split tests from real world examples that have generated real results. And speaking of examples, I'll give you a couple. [07:35.3]
There was a two-minute headlines tweak that led to 638% more leads for a Medicare site. There was a landing page change, which generated 91% more PDF guide downloads for a life insurance site. And there was a simple change in wording that was done, which led to 816% more email signups for another website. Think about that. This is an 816%, 8X, just for easy numbers here. An 8X conversion increase with one test. If that business was spending $10 to acquire an email address, that same $10 can now get eight email subscribers. Isn't that nuts? Isn't that something that you want in your business? Why are you not working towards this is? When, when I see financial advisors and just constantly hustling, hustling, hustling, they're in the treadmill. They're not building assets. Like I just think of this and it blows my mind. The 8X improvement, that's like buying Coca-Cola stock for one eighth of the price and getting the same dividend. Does that make sense to you? Doesn't it sound like something you should be doing. [08:42.9]
I mean, come on another asset that you can build within your business is your email autoresponder sequence. This is something that I've talked about a lot on the podcast, because it is so darn effective. But I wanna bring it up again to illustrate the fact that once it's created, it continues to work for you no matter what you're doing. You have to physically log into your email software and turn it off. You have to manually go in, you have to force it to stop. You have to force it to stop setting appointments for you. [09:10.4]
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. [09:32.9]
How long does it take to create an email auto responder? Let's say that you spend a total of 20 hours building the thing. You spend an entire business week. So, five days in a row, you spend four hours per day. You just build it out. You get it over; you bite the bullet. You say this week, my goal is to build an email auto responder sequence, come hell or high water. If you don't want my help, and it probably will take the, that long. If you want my help, then it can take less than two days. but let's say you take 20 hours; you get it done. And let's also assume that you make an average of $2,000 per client, just for easy math. Let's say a month goes by and your email autoresponder sequence doesn't get any clients whatsoever. You've made $0 per hour, but wait a minute, it continues to work for you. No matter what you have to go in and turn it off yourself, you have to force it to turn off, so it continues to work for you. [10:26.5]
Another month goes by and you get one measly little client for $2,000 or $2,000 per client, just for easy math here. But guess what? It required no additional effort from you on the email autoresponder side, which means that your 20 hours is now worth $2,000. Divided by 20 is $100 per hour. Then a whole year goes by and your email auto responder sequence is giving you 10 new clients. Nothing, nothing extreme, nothing wild. I know there are people out there who promised that they can get you four quadrillion, new clients in six nanoseconds or less. Here, I am telling you something. I'm giving you real world examples, walking you through something that actually works and it's like 10 clients a year. Okay? But what happens? Hmm? Your time invested in the, the email auto responders’ sequence now goes from 100 with one client to $1,000 per hour. That's why you wanna build assets within your business because these assets force your dollar value to go up over time. [11:33.8]
And I give you another example of an asset that you can create within your business. It can take some time to create this, but I promise you that it's worth it once you have a winner, it's direct mail. Let's say that you create three separate campaigns and they take you 30 hours to create. So, 10 hours each you create one campaign. You create a second, you create a third. 10 hours, each a total of 30 hours of those three only one is a winner. Is that a bad thing? No, because when you have a winner on your hands, you can roll that out to as many people as you can get your hands on. A lot of times, financial advisors will try direct mail. They would do one thing, send it out to one list and I mean, God, God loved them. They, they try so hard, but they're, they just don't know the right things to look for. You want a market to message match. If direct mail doesn't work it's because of one or two things, or one of two things. [12:24.8]
It's the fact that your message didn't work or your market didn't work. You didn't have the right list. You didn't send it to the right people. I give this example a lot on the podcast, but if you are mailing an Omaha steaks, mailer to vegetarians, it's not going to work because you don't have the market to message match . And I mentioned the February newsletter issue. So, I have it on my mind right now, it made me think of this. In that issue I outlined an example of a direct mail campaign with a financial who is targeting firefighters. I detailed some split tests for her to run, and I even spell out exactly where she can get a list of 30,000 fire stations. How many clients do you think that she could get if she had a winning direct mail campaign load out to 30,000 fire stations across the country? You need to start like this, I'm telling you, and that's not firefighters. That's not 30,000 firefighters. That's 30,000 fire stations each with 2, 3, 4, if it's a little itty bitty rural area to dozens and dozens of firefighters within each station. So, imagine the scale that she's working with, and she can tailor this to each state, she can tailor it to municipalities. She can alert to certain different regions, different little tidbits that she finds within the firefighter niche with different laws that are passing. [13:41.8]
I don't wanna give too much detail because that's reserved specifically for inner circle members. If you wanna subscribe, you can go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. But again, just like I said, this is the way you should think it's about building marketing assets. How more time would it take for her to mail let's say 10,000 mailing pieces, if she was using a mailing house and it was completely outsourced compared to mailing 100? Hmm. It's about the same. It's about the same amount of time, but the amount of money she would make from scaling it up and getting it out to several thousand people about 10,000, it's she it's the magnitudes greater. Many orders of magnitude greater than this smaller investment that she would make. And I hate, I absolutely hate seeing financial advisors stuck on the marketing treadmill. Now there is a time and a place for making the figurative earned income. I mean, if you're out there cold calling, or if you're knocking on doors, that's the equivalent to punching a clock and earning income. I get it, because in the marketplace, you need to have money in order to buy Coca-Cola stock as an asset, you need to get the money somehow in the first place. [14:46.5]
But the name of the game is to take as much of that earned income and to put it into assets, as you possibly can. Marketing is the exact same way. If you're a new financial advisor, you need to work your outbound marketing machine, AKA your earned income during the day and build your inbound marketing assets at night. Go hard. Don't quit, push and push until you get a little trickle from your marketing assets. Just like that very first dividend, that little dollar 68 per year from the single Coca-Cola stock, that's a seed that can grow into something incredible. Take that, trickle that little seed and reinvest it back into your business. Keep going and reap the rewards. If you're an experienced financial advisor and this is the first time that you've ever thought about something like this, don't worry. We all have to start somewhere. I just don't want you on the treadmill forever. Life is much better when your marketing assets are working for you. When your money is earning money, life is much better. When you're getting dividends instead of earned income, life is much better. [15:43.3]
What would you rather have? I mean really when you outline it like this, and when you put it out in clear terms like this, it seems very obvious. Would you rather have $50,000 per year of earned income where you have to work every single day or every single business day, go in, punch a clock, sit there for eight hours. Do whatever it is that you have to do to earn that $50,000, or would you rather have $50,000 in dividends? Hmm. I'd rather have $50,000 in dividends. And a lot of people would agree. The problem though, is that you can't just snap your fingers and get to $58,000 in dividends, you have to get there by building assets, assets, plus time equals results and improved results. And over time, as you continue to build, you will reap the rewards. I promise you because I talk a lot about multiple marketing strategies and that goes over a lot of people's heads. They don't under understand it. They don't realize how profound it is, how powerful it is when it comes to building a financial advisor's business. But check this out. I'm gonna leave you with this. And then I'm gonna end the episode. [16:41.2]
Let's say that you build an asset in the form of your website, for example, and that works and that generates appointments, and you're doing the forced depreciation thing. You, you get it. You buy into what I'm telling you here. They, you throw in an email autoresponder sequence within your website where people can opt in from your website to go to your email autoresponder sequence. Where now you've just put an asset on top of another asset. You built something and they're linked together. Let's say that you change your LinkedIn profile from an on a static online resume to a place where people can learn more about you. They can get involved in your, they can go to your website. They can opt into your email list. They can listen to your podcast, if you have one. Let's say that you did that and your LinkedIn account or your LinkedIn profile now becomes an asset that is working for you. 24/7, 365. And it's linked to, this is important. It is linked to your website, your email auto responder sequence one. Now you have three assets that are working. Now let's get crazy. Let's get really wild, okay? [17:39.0]
Let's say that within your email auto responder sequence, there's a, a part where you ask for people's address the physical address so you can send them something in the mail. You now are building a mailing list, which is another asset. Let's say that you rent a mailing list from somewhere. You have a direct mail campaign that's going out and one of the call to action in your direct mail campaign, maybe it's a follow up postcard. Maybe it's your original mail package sends them to a webinar, sends them to your LinkedIn, sends them to other asset. You now have assets working to create the forced appreciation within each asset. That's kind of like Coca-Cola stock working with Apple stock to make it more powerful. And then Apple stock works with your Home Depot stock to make that more powerful and to pay you more dividends. And, and those dividends pay you more dividends. It's just, it's never ending. It's incredible once you get it, it's like seeing for the first time. [18:35.1]
And I hope this has been eye opening for you. No pun intended. I know I'm talking about seeing for the first time, In my opinion, this is one of the most valuable podcast episodes I've ever done, because this is such an important idea. It is something that can change everything about how you building wealth in your light and in your business. If you like this kind of stuff, be sure to leave a review wherever you're listening, it helps the podcast. And I can't do this sort of thing without your support. I want you to know, I appreciate you. I care for you and I want to see you win. I'll catch you next week. [19:06.3]
This is ThePodcastFactory.com
