You're listening to “Financial Advisor Marketing”—the best show on the planet for financial advisors 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 advisors grow their businesses more rapidly than ever before. Now, here is your host, James Pollard.
James: In this episode, I'm going to talk about why some financial advisors never get ahead, why they stay stuck, and this episode can be applied to all sorts of businesses and professions.
I've been talking a lot about your beliefs and how to become a better thinker and that sort of thing in previous episodes, so I've been in tune with the words people use to describe their situations, because words reveal what someone is thinking. There are even terms like Freudian slip to describe secret desires. [01:04.2]
But what I'm really talking about is how people can blatantly reveal what they think about themselves. This is when they say things like, “I could never do that. I'm too poor. I don't know enough people,’ or whatever. Rather than be vague and abstract, I'm going to tell you a story and I'm going to tell you exactly why I'm making an episode about this.
There is a relatively famous internet marketer who has built a $20-million-plus business, and along the way, he has learned how to run online ads, how to scale up companies, and he's done it for hundreds of people, so he has a success formula that is proven and repeatable—and, no, it's not me. If you're thinking it's me, it is not. It is someone else. I'm not going to reveal his name out of respect.
He did an offer one week that went like this: “If you are at $100,000 per month and you want a 5x that within six months, then attend the webinar.” It was a $1,000 deposit. “If you show up, you’ve got your money back. If you don't show up,” or if you didn't show up, he kept the money and he promised to spend it on something stupid like a golden bidet. [02:16.2]
Now, take a second to really think about this offer. Here is someone who is offering to show you what you need to do to go from $100,000 per month to $500,000 per month and all you need to do is put a $1,000 deposit down, and that deposit is refundable. It comes with a money-back guarantee. I literally cannot stress this enough. He said, if you show up, you get your money back. Yet people were still so negative. Here are some of the comments I saw.
“I didn't realize we're all stuck at $100,000 per month. So difficult.”
“When I hear numbers like this, I picture Scrooge swimming in his pool full of money.”
“I wish that was my biggest problem.” [03:00.2]
“No kidding, man. I can only afford three houses on my measly 10k per month.”
“I am of the mindset that if you are at $100,000 per month, retire. Then focus your time and money on helping the broken around you.”
Like, wait, what? What? I honestly cannot relate. This is the type of thinking that keeps people stuck and cynical, and the saddest part is that these people don't even believe it's possible to make $100,000 per month when there are thousands and thousands of people out there doing it every month like clockwork.
I will admit that the whole idea of hopping on a webinar and seeing how to 5x your business, to most people that seems super cheesy. It seems like a scam. I hate the word, when people say it's a scam, but it does seem a little scammy, if it didn't come with a money-back guarantee, right?
And my point is not necessarily with the money either, with the dollars and cents. It's with the thinking. It could be $10,000 per month to $50,000 per month. If these comments were about making $10,000 per month, I would be sad for these people, too. Same thing with $1 million per month or even $100 per month, it doesn't matter. [04:05.8]
I've always asked myself this question: “Is it possible? Is there another human being on this planet who is doing what I want to do?” and if the answer was yes, then it had some semblance of possibility. I didn't immediately write it off. It hurts me when I see other people just immediately writing off whatever it is that they want to do if they desire something and they tuck it away and they say, “I can never have the thing that I desire.” That hurts me. It really does.
There were also people who were saying things like, “This webinar has all the magic sauce. You won't ever know unless you go,” sarcastically, of course.
“He can review everything in a simple webinar. Yes, this is, for sure, possible.” Also very sarcastic. A lot of sarcasm in these comments. [04:51.2]
These are people when they say things like this, when they say, when they have objections to the money part, “Oh, he can, for sure, teach me how to get to $100,000 per month or $500,000 is per month,” they're thinking in terms of tactics, and I've said it so many times on this show, but tactics are not enough. Tactics keep people stuck. Tactics are necessary, but they are not sufficient to succeed, because if you're already making $100,000 per month, I promise you, I promise you, you already have the tactics to succeed. You don't need another one.
People were very sarcastic about his ability to provide so much value in a single webinar because they didn't believe it was possible, but I can tell you that the big players who attended that webinar were focused on high-level strategies. They wanted to see how he thought, how he operated and his philosophy—that's very important, his philosophy for life—because those are the things that dictate his moves, and I was one of the people who attended that webinar.
As soon as I saw that offer, I was like, I have to sign up. This is something that I have to do to move myself forward, to move my business forward. Even if I only learn one thing, this is going to be worth it. Why? Because it comes with a money-back guarantee, which is what I'm going to talk about here. [06:02.8]
Let me stress this one more time. The webinar came with a money-back guarantee if you showed up, and this is the part that bothered me the most. Even though this is someone who knows what he's doing with a proven track record, offering to help people with a 100% money-back guarantee as long as they showed up, people still resisted. They still hated on him. They still stayed stuck. This is how strong limiting beliefs can become. They can trap you into avoiding help from someone even when it's risk-free aside from maybe a two-hour-long webinar.
Let's say you learn something in those two hours that will enable you to make an extra 1,000 bucks over the course of your lifetime. I'm not talking about making $500,000 per month. I'm not talking about scaling up to the moon and beyond and 5x and 10x or whatever. I'm not talking about that. What if it was only an extra $1,000 over the course of your lifetime? That's still $500 per hour from the time that you invested? But most people don't think like that. [07:06.2]
What if you learn something that'll make you an extra $10,000 over your lifetime? I'm not talking about making $1 million in a month. I'm not talking about any of the fancy claims or whatever. I'm talking about $10,000 extra material value to you over your entire lifetime. That's still $5,000 per hour because you're trading the two hours for whatever it is that you're going to get in return. Again, people don't think this way.
I know a lot about copywriting, for example. I've written thousands of emails, tons of sales pages, social media posts, stuff like that. I've written direct mail pieces and entire webinar scripts, but I still take copywriting courses and I even pay people to look at my copy. Why? Because if I learn one thing, I can make my money back.
I'm subscribed to so many newsletters. I spend at least $1,000 per month on subscriptions, trying to learn, trying to improve. When I tell financial advisors, “Hey, newsletters are awesome. You should subscribe to newsletters, not just mine, but other people's,” it's because they freaking work. I do it. I do it. I love newsletters. Newsletters are my favorite product to buy. [08:11.8]
I also love buying expertise. I'll give you a good example. I paid a copywriter. This is back in 2017. I paid him 1,000 bucks to look at one of my pieces and I can tell you that he spent maybe 10 minutes looking at my copy, because it wasn't a long sales page. It was actually pretty short, so 10 minutes looking at it and giving me feedback. That's it.
Some of you are going to do the math in your head right now and then you’ll say, Huh, 10 minutes. There are six blocks of 10 minutes in an hour, so six times $1,000. Gasp, $6,000 per hour, that's highway robbery, or whatever it is that you're thinking. But you'd be missing out on the point because I've been able to take his feedback and apply it to other pieces and make so much more money than his fee. [08:56.2]
How much was that worth to me? Far more than what he charged, I can tell you. Plus, it prevented me from wasting my time trying to lead 40 different books or watch 10 different YouTube channels. I went straight to the source, got the information, extracted it from him and applied it to my situation, and applied it again, applied it again and applied it again.
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 $1,000 worth of bonuses, including exclusive interviews that aren't available anywhere else. Head on over to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to learn more.
And that's another thing that keeps people stuck. They don't think about the cost of not making moves. They don't think about the opportunity cost that comes from not having the information as soon as possible. For example, I have an email marketing course that helps financial advisors set more appointments through email. Let me be conservative and let me say that it only helps you get two extra appointments per month. Nothing crazy, just two, right? [10:04.0]
If your conversion rate from appointments to clients is that you get one client out of every four appointments, this means that, every two months, you let slip by without implementing this material, without getting it and implementing it, it's equal to one new client you could have had if you had that material. Does that make sense to you? This doesn't even include and doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what it would take, all the time, the energy, the resources, to try to figure out the stuff on your own or the cost you would incur along the way for that.
Imagine that instead of just going through the email marketing program, you decided to do some testing yourself or read some articles, or try to reverse-engineer what I do, which is dangerous, by the way, because there's a lot of backend stuff that you don't even see and you will never see that would cost you time, energy, and money. What is that worth to you? What is it worth?
A few years ago, the Build-A-Bear company—you know where you go into the mall and there are the little stuffed animals. You can stuff them yourself and then put the clothes on them. Build-A-Bear—they had a sale called Pay Your Age. You can Google it. Google Build-A-Bear Pay Your Age, read about it. [11:14.4]
This thing was so popular and it had such long lines that the police had to be called and it had to be shut down. The idea was exactly what it sounds like, pay your age. If your son or daughter is four years old, you pay $4 for a bear that would normally cost, I don't know, 30 bucks. This means people were willing to take off work. I'm serious now. You could read it, verify what I'm saying here. I'm not B.S.-ing you. I'm not selling cap right now. They would drive out of their way and stand in lines for hours, hours, to save a few $10 bills. Isn't that crazy? If that's not crazy to you, then you are part of the problem.
Some of you think you're smart, okay? You think you're so smart and you think you're saving money by not investing in courses, programs or subscriptions. News flash: you're not saving anything at all. You're actually costing yourself more money with every passing day. Not so smart anymore, are you, genius? [12:11.5]
Again, I don't care about the specific dollar amounts. I really don't. I care about the principles here, and I understand if you're flat broke, if you have no dollars in your wallet, no dollars in your bank account right now. Then you have to invest time to get the money. But as soon as you get the money, you should invest it back into yourself and your business.
Still, this isn't even about the money because the guy offered to teach what he knew with the money-back guarantee. If you have credit cards, if you borrow it from a friend, you could get the money. All you had to do was show up and people couldn't even be bothered to register. They couldn't be bothered to even register, to even give it a shot, and if I sound frustrated, it's because I am, because I genuinely care about people and I want them to succeed. [12:57.3]
I also empathize with the guy because a lot of my products come with money-back guarantees, too. I put my money where my mouth is. I literally say, “If this product doesn't work for you, you get your money back,” and people still hesitate. They still make excuses. They still rationalize. They still sell themselves on some B.S. that only they believe. It's nutty, if you think about it.
People think getting results within their business, within their life, with their health, with their marriage, whatever, they think that getting results is so hard, and it can be, for sure, don't get me wrong. Some stuff is hard. Life is about doing hard things for the most part. But you can find people who are willing to help you along the way and who are willing to back up what they do.
What if you could identify three areas within your business where you want help and then seek out help that comes with a money-back guarantee? Because either you solve your problem or you're back and the same spot money-wise. Doesn't that sound like something you should probably do? One more time, most people don't think this way. They don't think, Gee, if I want X result, I should just find someone or something that guarantees X result. [14:11.4]
Now, I love money-back guarantees as much as the next person, but I feel like I should be completely transparent with you. Money back guarantees can hurt you sometimes because they provide a safety net or an escape hatch. Scientifically speaking, you are less likely to implement information that comes with a money back guarantee because you don't have real skin in the game.
For example, my monthly newsletter, the James Pollard Inner Circle, it does not have a money-back guarantee. There are no refunds whatsoever, and someone once asked me about this, and this is what I said. I'm going to read this to you verbatim. “The absolute best thing I offer, the newsletter, intentionally has no money-back guarantee. This is done strategically. Here's what I mean. In the short term, I could certainly pocket more money by offering a guarantee and boosting my conversions. This or the double-edged sword, however, is that it guarantees to provide a safety net, which makes people less likely to implement the material. [15:14.4]
“With my newsletter specifically, it's imperative that I get subscribers to do something each month to make their money back. When they do stuff and see results, they're more likely to stick around. This means in the long term, I make more money by not offering a guarantee. Crazy, but true.”
It blows a lot of people's minds when they realize that, but when they have skin in the game, they're more likely to do something, and when they're more likely to do something, they're more likely to stick around, and if they stick around the cycle, it just turns into a virtuous cycle that rinses and repeats, rinses and repeats, rinses and repeats. They make more and more and more and more.
If I offer the money-back guarantee, then somebody will be fired up. Let's say they sign up on the 27th of the month. The newsletter gets shipped out on the first of the month. They get it by like the 10th of the month, and when they get it, they're like, Oh, yeah, I don't really want to do this. The money back. Give me a refund. Refund. This is what people do. This is how they operate. [16:09.8]
Some people will literally set a countdown or a calendar notification in their phone to remind them when to ask for the money back. These are people who are just dead set or ripping off businesses, and when the motivation wears off, they ask for the money back and they don't do anything, and they stay stuck. It is sad, but it's true.
All right, I'm going to wind down this episode. I hope this has helped you. Let me recap some of the concepts. Watch what you say to yourself and other people because your words reveal your thoughts. If you joke about never being able to make $100,000 per month or $100,000 per year, then that will likely become your reality, and it breaks my heart. It totally breaks my heart when people who are more than capable of achieving their goals, they talk themselves out of it. [16:57.8]
Les brown once said, “The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream.” A beautiful quote.
Realize that when you invest in yourself, you're not only paying for the new information that can benefit your life. You're also paying so you can avoid costly mistakes. You're paying to compress time. Why spend a year learning something when you can pay up and learn it in a few days? Yes, I understand that this comes down to cash-flow restraints. I get it, everybody has cash-flow restraints. But even if you make $52,000 per year, you can spend up to $1,000 for something that will give you at least an additional week's worth of productivity, because then you will be profitable. But one more time, most people don't think like this. [18:02.4]
All right, that's enough for one episode. Think about that for now and I will catch you next week.
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