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: This episode is going to be about giving up stuff. So, I figured I would start off by telling you a story about something I gave up recently. For the past few years, as I've been drinking something called Bulletproof coffee. And for those of you who don't know what that is, it's coffee mixed with butter and MCT oil. I rarely eat breakfast instead, I'll have that. And it will keep me going for several hours after waking up. There's a lot of health benefits that come from the healthy fats and MCT oil and the butter and caffeine in coffee can be healthy. It is a stimulant when used appropriately, but the thing is I've been drinking Bulletproof coffee every single day for essentially years. And before that, when I was a power lifter for a few years, I would have pre-workout all the time. I tried a whole host of different pre-workouts and they all have caffeines. So, I would have maybe coffee or an energy drink ink in the morning, and I would do my thing, go to work, whatever it is. And I would have pre-workout later at night before my workout and I just have caffeine on top of caffeine on top of caffeine. [01:33.3]
And caffeine, it's a bit of a, a wonder drug. When you study human history, you realize that human beings really became more productive in, like for example, England practically took over the world when they had caffeinated tea and coffee and chocolate. And in American capitalism, something called the coffee break was introduced to keep workers more productive. Workers would be productive for the first few hours of the day, and then they would get tired. So, the coffee break was introduced and workers kept working after having break. So, coffee and caffeine has a whole host of benefits, we wouldn't be where we are today without it. However, at the beginning of this year, so 2022, I started thinking that it was finally time for me to take a break from coffee. I wanted to quit it completely. I read a book called Caffeine Blues. So, if you're in the same boat as me where you're thinking, maybe I should take a break from caffeine and just see what life is like without coffee every single day or without an energy drink, or pre-workout every single day, this book can be for you. Once again, it's Caffeine Blues, it's on Amazon. You can buy it. And it's all about the dangers of caffeine. So, to really like scare you to stop drinking it kind of like if you wanna quit smoking, I imagine you would wanna get scared into quitting smoking. [02:44.0]
And I decided to quit cold Turkey for two weeks. So, I didn't have any caffeine whatsoever outside of like, maybe if there was caffeine in my diet, I didn't have any coffee or caffeinated drinks or tea or anything like that. And let me tell you, it was a great experience. Here are some takeaways from that book though. Here are some quotes that I'm gonna read you. Using stimulants is like whipping a horse. They work for a short time, but prove disastrous when used repeatedly. So, if you're someone who drinks coffee every single day, it's like you're whipping the horse. You're just, you eventually get used to it. You build your tolerance. And the whole idea behind me quitting coffee was to get back to a point where I didn't have a tolerance where if I really “needed or wanted” to use coffee as a, a true stimulant as a productivity tool that I could use it and be really effective with it. I wouldn't just whip the horse every single day. [03:33.3]
Here's another quote, “If caffeine were proposed today as a new food additive, the FDA would never approve it. Any substance that causes such extreme reactions, heart palpitations, anxiety, panic, insomnia, and even birth defects would be treated as by the FDA as a new drug and denied status.” People actually I mean, if you think about it and you read the book, I mean, it was pretty eye opening. People ingest a lot more cat than they think the majority of researchers, what they do is they refer to a standard cup of coffee as a six-ounce serving. But when you ask people how much they actually drink, they're drinking from mugs and tumblers, and they had the Curig machine with the 10 ounces and the 12 ounces. And they drink that they had, they drink far more coffee than a couple standard cups, right? They racking up their bodies constantly with these stimulants. And there was one psychologist in the book who concluded that the effects of caffeine were no more stressful than watching a suspense thriller on TV, but here's what you have to get. [04:32.0]
You have to understand that people don't watch five or six suspense movies every single day for years. So, I mean, imagine a long-term damage that can come from that. And here's something else that's crazy. This I seriously, I want you to do this with me, okay. I want you to open your mouth as wide as you can, like, AAHHHH, as wide as you can and close it slowly, very slowly, close your mouth. Do you hear any popping or cracking when you do that? That's associated with stress. Okay. And it's associated with caffeine intake because caffeine and stress, what they do is they cause a, a tightening of the jaw muscles and that contributes to misalignment. And that causes a whole host of problems, including headaches. So, if you have the caffeine headaches, if your jaw feels really tight, again, open your as wide as you can and then close it slowly. And if you hear any cracking or popping it, it's probably related to caffeine. I'm not a doctor. I'm not giving you medical advice, but something to think about. [05:31.8]
Anyway, I gave up caffeine for two weeks, that completely cold Turkey didn't have anything. And it was amazing, it really was granted, it sucked at first, but I felt my body resetting to the way that it was supposed to be. And at the end of the two weeks, I was calmer, I felt more rested, I could think more clearly, I could think clearer than ever before. I am drinking coffee again, but only half the amount that I used to drink and I'm avoiding it on the weekdays and days when I feel like I don't need it, which are more common now. So, I feel like I don't need coffee most of the time. But if I have a really a day where that has a lot of high energy task or a lot of mentally demanding task, I will have it and it will give me an edge. So, I began to thinking about things, financial advisors should give up if they wanna get more clients and improve their businesses. And I came up with a few things. [06:22.3]
Number one, reliance on any one marketing strategy. The single most important business building tip I can give financial advisors is to embrace multiple marketing strategies. If you're an inner circle member, you have had this pounded into your head with every single issue. This is more important now than ever before, because there's a lot of research coming out, which demonstrates that consumers want to learn about their financial advisors from multiple places, from multiple angles, whether that's a Google search combined with a LinkedIn profile, like a LinkedIn search, which is the most common way for checking out a financial advisor, or it could be checking out a financial advisor's website and then going on to an email list, which is also extremely common, which is why I have the client getting website over TheAdvisorCoach.com/website. And I have the email marketing webinar that can tell you all about how I'm helping financial advisors get more clients with email over TheAdvisorCoach.com/webinar. There's a method to my madness. The reason I have these things and I have products and services available for financial advisors in this way is because consumers are looking for financial advisors in this way. I don't offer stuff that doesn't work, quite frankly, I wouldn't do it. It would be business suicide. [07:33.3]
I'm giving financial advisors access to the tools, the services, the products that they need, the, that they need to succeed in the world in which we live the way that people are searching for financial advisors, I don't wanna say that it's changing because it's not the human psychology isn't changing, but the tools, the techniques, the way that they approach it, it really is changing. You need to put yourself in a position to win in multiple areas. The cool thing about the multiple marketing strategies approach with like LinkedIn and websites and all that other stuff is that they work together. For example, if you haven't gone through the how to get clients with LinkedIn video training, you should go through that and you should pay close attention to video number five, which is literally titled the multiplier using LinkedIn to strengthen your other marketing. And the video is about this concept. People don't realize that each marketing strategy should strengthen all the others. There's even an AESOP fable about this, which goes like this. [08:29.5]
A father had a family of sons who were forever fighting among themselves. Nothing the father did or said did any good for them to get them to stop fighting. So, he decided to show them something, instead of tell them, he figured actions spoke louder, louder than words. He asked his sons to bring him a bundle of sticks, which they did. He handed the bundle to each of his sons and asked them to break it. Each son struggled really just tried to break the bundle, trying his best to do so, but couldn't then the father untied the bundle and gave the sticks to his sons to break one by one and they did. Snap, they took each little twig, snap, they broke it easily. Your marketing needs to be like the bundle. It cannot be like the twig. It cannot be an individual stick. If you have multiple marketing strategies, you become unbreakable. [09:28.0]
Number two, attachment to your prospecting outcomes. This is especially true, when you're following up with perspective clients. There are so many people who send these, like just touching base or just checking in emails and they're so needy because they're attached to the outcome. There's a difference between following up and being needy. Sadly, some financial advisors think any follow up whatsoever is needy, this is not the case. Follow up is not necessary. Some financial advisors hate it. They don't wanna do it. That's why they don't do it. But it is absolutely critical to a business building strategy. And eliminating neediness from your follow up often requires a big shift in mindset. You need to understand that you're not following up because your prospect “needs” what you are. You're merely putting yourself out there as a resource. If prospects wanna work with you, that's great. If they don't wanna work with you, just move on. [10:24.3]
Now I mean, sometimes financial advisors will encounter prospects who have unrealistic expectations about retiring early. The people who can't budget whatsoever, who have no idea what's happening with their money, or they consistently make bad financial decisions. These are the people who truly, again, “need” a financial advisor's help. However, if these prospects firmly refuse, the help being offered, then the advisor should move on. Focus your efforts on people who see the value. This is like somebody who has lung cancer from smoking five packs of cigarettes every single day for 40 years or whatever. And you say, look, you need to stop smoking. You're going to die. Then if that person lights up another Siggy, dude, move on. They obviously don't want the help. [11:06.9]
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. [11:29.2]
So, in the financial advisor sense, you're following up until you get a firm. Yes or no from the prospect. Because until that happens, you don't know for sure. If the prospect is refusing your help. If someone flat out says, no, I do not want this. I don't want a financial advisor, please go away. Then go away. That's what you want, I would rather have a no than, than a yes or I'd rather have a no than a, maybe. I would never, you know what I mean? Like I would rather have somebody say no than to just ghost me or to stop responding to messages or to not give me any indication whatsoever. When you chase something, it's because you have a deep, emotional attachment to that thing. And that can be good, in some situations, you, you want to be involved. You wanna have some emotion, but it kills a financial advisor's follow up. So, what's the solution? Cultivate outcome independence. You should not be emotionally invested in whether or not someone works with you. At its core, the cause of neediness, it's really fear. And fear is one of our strongest emotions. We have the fear of uncertainty, the fear of loss, the fear of rejection. Once you get rid of this emotional attachment, you will begin to find that people are drawn to you like moths to a flame. [12:44.9]
Number three short term thinking. I had a conversation the other day with this guy, he's a super successful entrepreneur. I asked him why he thought he was successful. And he told me it was because for as long as he could remember, he focused on the long term. He focused on the big picture. He thought about 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, instead of just like next weekend. He's in his fifties right now and he told me a story about how he invested $50 a week as a teenager. He did odd jobs around the neighborhood. He did a part-time job at the Dairy Queen. I think that's what he said, either Dairy Queen or Tasty Freeze, one of those. And I did the math and I figured that each $50 he invested in the S&P 500 would be worth roughly $1,900 today. So, let's say he saved a total of 50 or not 50, Holy moly. What type of person would earn $50,000 a teenager back in like the seventies or whatever, let's say he saved a total of $5,000 and for those of you keeping track, that would be $190,000 today after all the growth. And that's just from $50 per week as a teenager, he mowed lawns, he raked leaves, he'd wash cars, did odd jobs, he would paint. He did whatever it took to get that 50 bucks a month. And he still had spending money. He told me he still had money to take girls out on dates to fill up his car, to do all that other cool stuff that you wanna do as a teenager. But he focused on the long term. [14:08.9]
Now I know that you wish most teenagers would be like, be like that or be as responsible, but he just was. A lot of you live listening to this right now. I'm just gonna keep it real with you. This might hurt, but a lot of you don't have that same drive. Most people don't have it. It's nothing to be ashamed of, it doesn't make you a bad person, but it just means you don't have it right now. You can have it. You can foster that. You can make your flame grow brighter. You can become a better person. You can become more diligent, more disciplined, more responsible, but most people in America, at least in, in the whole world, it's just human nature. I, I don't really know. They just don't have it. Especially as teenagers, they would rather have the latest video game. They'd rather have the newest sneakers or whatever some multi-millionaire celebrity tells them is cool. They would rather spend hours watching other multi-millionaires play sports instead of working to accomplish their dreams. There's a quote from Bill Gates, which I really, really love and it's this one, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years.” [15:07.6]
I, I'm not telling you to avoid your short-term goal or to live for the moment and be present and all that other stuff, because life is merely a collection of moments. That's, that's all it is. It's just a collection of us being here in the present. And that's awesome. That's a wonderful gift that we have in front of us, but you need to keep your eyes on the target, know what you want out of life and have a plan to get there. You know, what's frustrating to me, it's when I explain to financial advisors that they can split test like an email autoresponder and they can crush other marketing strategies. Or that they can do the same thing with their website, literally 10 X conversions over time, or that they can do the same thing with direct mail. I just outline the strategies. I give it to them. I tell them exactly what to do. And they say things like, oh, oh, but, but that sounds too hard. Yes, but you know what else is hard living a life of mediocrity. I realize that by definition, it has to be this way. Most people are going to live average lives. There's always going to be an average. Most people are going to be average because that's what average is. So, it can be no other way. But if you're listening to this show right now, chances are you are above average. So, you can't fall into this trap where all you're doing is living for the weekend and you can't see past next Friday night. I don't know about you, but my great, great grandchildren are going to know who I am. They are going to benefit from the work I'm doing today. Can you say the same? [16:29.7]
Number four, being the smart person in the room. You have to give this one up. You have to give this one up. Stop being a big fish in a small pond. If you are the most successful person in your family and you come from a lower- or middle-class family, you need to get out of your own way. You need to get around people who are doing much better than anything you've ever seen. You're either growing or you're dying. Some of you listen to this, you were put in the gifted class at school. You took the little task, you show great skill, great promise, whatever it is in middle school, your teacher said, yeah, this person should be in the gifted class and you peek there. You felt so good about yourself that you ended up coasting and then the real world slapped you in the face. And I don't mean general intelligence either. When I say be the smartest person in the real room, I don't mean general intelligence. There are some people who have top 10% IQs and bottom 10% bank accounts. I want you to get around people who can help you accomplish whatever it is you need to accomplish. For example, I'm pretty good at marketing. I'm pretty good at growing financial services businesses. I'm pretty good at getting in the marketing guts of really any business, but I'm good at helping financial advisors. So, if you're a financial advisor or a, or a financial planner, chances are I can help you. I can grow your business in ways that you never thought possible. However, I'm not the best at fitness. If I wanted to get in better shape, it would be smart of me to get around people who know more about fitness than I do. [17:48.6]
The only fitness I know is fitness, whole pizza in my mouth. I don't know enough about nutrition and how certain foods work and how certain foods impact my ability to sleep well think clearly and so on, which means it would be a smart move for me to talk to nutritionist who quite frankly, know more than I do. That's what I did with the sleep. When I started one to track my sleep and to get better sleep and to think clearly because of my sleep, I hired people who knew about this. They just told me I didn't have to waste my time watching 500 hours of YouTube videos, listening to 67 podcasts. I didn't have to do any of that stuff. I hired someone that person over the course of, well, the first hour was pretty intense because there's like a law of diminishing with turns here, you get as much information that you can handle right away. You implement it. And then you come back and you fine tune it. That's what happens with everything in life. I got a bunch of information in the first hour and I hit the ground running. That's what I did. Some people are embarrassed of not knowing things. They feel bad. They feel ashamed to admit that they don't know something, but how are you supposed to learn? I would rather look dumb for five minutes and get the results I need than live without the results. I think that's the difference between me and average people. And you need to be that way too. [19:00.0]
So, moving on number five, this is the last thing you need to give up if you wanna build your business, if you wanna get more clients. I, I know these things aren't tactical. I know I'm probably gonna have people whining and complaining that these aren't tactics like give up this specific strategy or whatever, but I want you to give up other people's definition of success. Only you can do this. This is about you giving up stuff to get more clients, but who is to say, what's right for you. Maybe you wanna run a lifestyle business. Maybe you don't wanna grow that much. I don't know. What's weird is that if you ask most people to describe what success looks like to them, they will give you a somewhat similar definition. And it typically revolves around three things, a good job, a good income and a good education and like a good family life. I guess that would be like a number four. That would be a success. In America, success is about being smart and ambitious, but you might not be as smart or as ambitious as other people think you should be. And who cares? [20:00.1]
The only person who can live your life is you. And I see this in the marketing realm in a few ways. First, some financial advisors are still hung up on how they should look. Meaning think they need to have the proper buttoned up completely professional image at all times. But what they don't understand is that it's intimidating to prospective clients. It, it makes them appear standoffish. There have been studies done that prove this. There there's been surveys. There have been different tests that prove this, that people are intimidated by it. They don't want that. They don't want the buttoned up perfectly professional image. Now, of course, there are exceptions to every single rule. There are people who do wanna work with financial advisors who have perfectly quaffed whatever, like suits I don't even know what the right term is. Of course, and by the way, if you're someone who is naturally super professional, that's just something that you do then be yourself. [20:49.5]
But I've even, even myself, I've conducted split test with financial advisors in suits versus them in regular clothes and the regular clothes won. They're much more approachable that way. And by regular clothes, I mean something similar like khakis and a polo, something like that. I also see it when financial advisors tell me that they should be marketing a certain way, because so, and so is doing it. A competitor has a podcast, so, they need a podcast. A competitor has a video on his homepage, so they need a video on the homepage. Who gives a crap? Until you can see the other person's bank account, until you see what money they have and what money they don't have and you can compare that to your bank account to see improvement, none of it matters. Giving up other people's definition of success, it it's so liberating and it can allow you to fully express who you are and how you want to run your business. You get to call the shots, you get to do what you want, no matter what other people think it is your life. You have one life to live so, make the most of it. [21:46.4]
And to recap, here are the five things you should give up if you want to get more clients. First reliance on any one marketing strategy, attachment to your prospecting outcomes, short term thinking, being the smartest person in the room, and finally other people's definition of success. That's it for this episode, I'll catch you next week. [22:08.7]
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