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: Financial advisors, welcome to another episode of the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast. I’ve been getting a lot of good feedback on the guest episodes, so I'm trying to do more of them and to keep them up. I want to sprinkle in some solo episodes every now and then, because sometimes there are topics that I genuinely just want to open up a recording software and talk about with you, whether that'd be email marketing or content marketing, or podcasting, or things like that. [00:55.2]
However, I do have another guest this week. It's Brandon Neely. He started a company called Grandma’s Wealth Wisdom. Now it's Wealth Wisdom Financial. He does a lot of cool stuff with podcasting. Maybe we'll talk about YouTube, I’m not sure. He's had other businesses, which I think is incredibly valuable, because I’d rather learn from someone who has had success, even if it's moderate success in multiple areas in multiple businesses. He has a lot of transferable skills that I think everyone can learn from, not just financial advisors.
I don't want to rattle on too much. Brandon, take the floor, introduce yourself. Tell us your story.
Brandon: Hey, James, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here, and I love listening. I've listened to every show since you started, so I don't know how many episodes, but I’ve had a lot of James in my head.
James: And you're still alive.
Brandon: Yeah.
James: Incredible.
Brandon: It is valuable stuff. And I think that, for us, we didn't come into the financial world to really make money. We came into it to make a difference in the world. Just, somehow, we ended up as reluctant financial advisors, really, or financial professionals, whatever. There's so many terms on that. [02:06.3]
But we were coffee-shop owners previously. My wife and I had a crazy idea to start a coffee shop to change the world through coffee and we were. We did make a difference, but it was through my financial professional, who runs Not Your Average Financial Podcast, that he impacted me and changed my life, so much so that I was able to—and I want your listeners to catch this—because of the systems that we put in place, I was able to sell my business, not close my business. There's a key difference between selling and closing, and because of the systems, the financial systems we had in place, we were able to do that.
Then after I sold that business, I was like, Oh, what do I want to do in life? I applied to work with my mentor and he said no. And I was like, What? What the heck? And he said then, “No, you're too entrepreneurial. I can't have you on my team because you'll screw it up.” So, I was like, Oh, that sucks. [03:08.4]
Then a few months later, he comes to me and he says, “I have an idea. How about you and your wife start your own agency and I’ll coach you.” I was like, Oh, that sounds good because I’m unemployable and my wife is seven months pregnant, so let's see what happens.
Then we learned that Dave Ramsey and the like love to hate on us. I just knew that this system had changed my life and we started with Grandma’s Wealth Wisdom. The tagline was “Sometimes intelligence skips a generation.” We weren't as confident in ourselves actually, and that's why we chose Grandma, but we've learned a lot since then.
James: That's cool, and just to be clear, let's not beat around the bush. The system that you practice and espouse, some people call it infinite banking. It's more of a refined version of that called bank on yourself popularized by Pamela Yellen.
Brandon: Yeah.
James: And it revolves around high cash-value, dividend-paying whole life insurance from a mutual company that practices non-direct recognition, and I know that's a mouthful and I know there are some financial advisors that are going to be like, Oh, infinite banking. [04:14.5]
But, I mean, candidly, I have practiced this in my own life and it works for me, because I do like real estate deals and business and financing, and that kind of thing. I will admit that I am a special use case and more people should look into it than not. I don't want financial advisors to get turned off by this. I also have crypto. They get turned off by that. But I also think that it should be at least considered as a tool in your toolbox, because I’ve never had someone say, “Oh, having access to cash is a detriment to my life,” or “having savings is a detriment to my life.” I understand.
And I know I shouldn't keep talking as to someone with a guest episode with the podcast, but I do want to help people and I want to be clear, there are certain circumstances where, no, it might not mathematically make sense, if you are a perfect human being who invest in index funds and you are a robot. I understand that, but there are certain financial principles that work in spite of the math, not necessarily being perfect. [05:17.3]
Case in point: Dave Ramsey's Debt Snowball Method. People will hate on that and say, “That's not mathematically correct. You shouldn't pay off your debts smallest to largest, assuming that the interest rates aren't from high to low,” and that is correct. However, it still works and works wonders. I would rather be the person with no debt and having a solid financial life than the person who is being mathematically correct and never taking action.
Brandon: Yeah, I think some of what I’ve learned in this is building a solid foundation, and being a business owner, I need some stability in place, and having that stability through a policy was really helpful in case I needed lower premiums or I needed access to capital, right? [06:06.6]
And so, because of the access to capital, I was able to, again, get through a flood in my business. Literally, the roof was off and it rained, and I got a phone call from a staff member saying, “The store is falling apart. You need to come in right now.” I was literally crying.
Come to find out, my wife was pregnant at the time, and, luckily, because I had the access to capital, I was able to overcome that obstacle, because the reality is bills kept coming, right, even though we had no customers because there was water damage and all that stuff. So, that helped me overcome that.
Then, for me, I’m like, I’m not saying you don't do one or the other. You just build a good foundation first, and as you build a solid foundation, you can do a lot more things and grow a lot more. When it comes to marketing, when it comes to running a business, when it comes to all of this, build a solid foundation. [07:08.4]
Maybe that's called systems, right? And you have a good system that you can float things through. Infinite banking is a system. Profit First is a system. Marketing, using YouTube, podcast, systems. How do you do the systems to amplify is kind of the way I think about it.
James: Totally, and I want to talk about marketing, for sure. But I know there's some financial advisors thinking to themselves, Why didn't this guy just have an emergency fund? Why does it have to be whole life insurance, specifically?
Brandon: Yeah, so one of the things I think about as you will insure. If I had a cash machine, I’m going to insure the cash machine, right? And so, here's the thing, I was the cash machine, and I needed to plan for retirement as a business owner and still have access. When I did it in the Roth, it just didn't make sense. I wanted some accessibility. In case a polar vortex happened, before Covid, there was a thing called polar vortex, which meant no one was going out for three months. [08:14.6]
James: Yeah, that was real.
Brandon: That was real, and I was like, Oh, man, we might need to close because no one's leaving their house, and people said, “You know what you need to do is do more marketing.” I was like, Here's the problem. As much marketing as I want to do, they're not going to leave their house. I need some emergency funds to get through the lows and the highs. Marketing is great, but if it's freezing outside, you're not going to leave your home to go get a nice cup of coffee unless it's convenient.
James: Yeah.
Brandon: Learned some of those things, but I’m on marketing stuff.
James: I'm a big advocate of having cash, period, whether it is in a bank. There are certain ways that are more preferable to hold cash and, again, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole. We'll stick to marketing. But having cash is definitely a good idea. [09:05.0]
I, personally, use my cash value to buy property in Florida, a multifamily in Florida in July 2022. That worked really well. This is still making me money to this day. It's just a tool. It's not necessarily one-size-fits-all. It is still just a tool for accomplishing specific goals, and I do think that it is needed. I think that you're doing a valuable service, and I want to segue into some of the specifics of your business.
You mentioned that you worked with your wife and then your wife was pregnant. I know that you work with her. She is an integral part of the business. What are some things that you can share, like lessons you've learned from working with your spouse in a business?
Brandon: Yeah, one thing she's probably the smarter one in the room when there's both of us. She is a certified financial planner, so she has those designations, because she is smart like that. Every time we work with clients, the CFP on board, it's amazing to have that. [10:07.2]
As we ran the coffee shop, there was this idea of front of the house, back of the house. If you’ve ever been in the server world, there's the front-of-house manager and back-of-house manager? Honestly, you need to have both. I'm more of the sales side. I can talk to people all day long, do all this. Somebody needs to do the taxes. Somebody needs to do payroll, those kinds of things, build the right systems. That's her, and we had to learn how to do that.
I remember a staff person, literally, when we hired them, I said, “If you ask me a question about payroll, I’m going to make up something. Tell them I will make up something.” So, it was an off holiday and he asked, “Well, there's a holiday. When do I get paid?” and I made up, “If it's this holiday, then you're going to get paid on the fourth Friday, unless there's no fourth Friday. Then it's a fifth Tuesday,” and he looked at the calendar and realized that there was neither of those days and I just made it up, because I told them, “Don’t ask me.” [11:12.1]
And so, I think the reality is the team. You have to have a solid team, and if it just so happens to be your spouse, that's a great thing. On the flip side, though, make sure you have time away that you do not touch, talk about work. We do certain systems where we have date night regularly, and this is marriage advice here. Do date night, whether you work with your spouse or not, because that's going to set a rhythm of your life, and I think that we should have more and more rhythms, whether that’s marketing, dating, parenting. Create the rhythms or the stability, and a good foundation.
James: I think all spouses help other spouses with their businesses. The question is, how much do they help? And they may negatively help you in certain cases. Obviously, Amanda does not do that. She is a certified financial planner. She's doing some awesome rock-star stuff. [12:10.5]
Your mentor is a certified financial planner, and the reason I point that out is because I know that certain people may have certain judgments or whatever about the processes, but you're working with a team of legitimate certified financial planners and that is awesome. Do you think that has helped the marketing side of your business at all, getting the certifications?
Brandon: I think, if anything, we have to realize that when it comes to economic theory and some of the stuff that's going on in the economy, it's all marketing, really. Politics, it's marketing. So, learning how people think and what's being taught is really important, right? Whether I agree with it or not, or certain ways to invest in funds and all the ratios and all that stuff, that doesn't matter. Learning how that is and being able to, again, go back and say, “How do we help the client reach their goals?” that’s really what's important. [13:15.8]
I don't care if you have a CFP or not. Being a good listener and educator, that's helpful. We can learn all day long. And CFP is a business, too, the board, right?
James: Yeah, they sell the license, or sell the designation, I should say.
Brandon: Yeah, and it's a great designation and there's a lot of rigorous training, but it is, I guess, a human construct that is there, and I’m a person of faith, so I think there's something even bigger than that. So, it's helpful to learn. It's not the end all, be all.
James: Yeah, I mean, we all know people who could work on cars better than an official mechanic or somebody who can fix your computer better than someone in the Geek Squad at Best Buy. Just because they don't have the designation, it doesn't mean they're not brilliant, and just because they do have the designation, it doesn't mean that they're the right fit for you. [14:07.2]
Brandon: Yeah, yeah.
James: And I’m glad that you brought up the client. The client is “the” most important person in the relationship, bar none. If they could fall asleep and you do all the work and reach the goals, and do the plan and help them get the result that they want, and they wake up, that will be great. They really don't need to know about P-D ratios and the ratios, as you've mentioned. They don't need to know the formulas. They don't need to know economic theory. They just want to know, Am I going to be okay?
Brandon: Yeah.
James: Can I achieve peace of mind? Can I get what I want, given my short time, my finite time on this planet? And I think that's an important point for listeners to get.
Brandon: And I do think, though, on the other side is a lot of times we've been sold that they can get this, “If we do these certain things, then it’ll work out. Invest in a 401(k). It'll work out. I’ll do all this,” and understanding again that’s some marketing that maybe, just maybe if you don't understand a little bit, you are being sold something that's not always helpful. And I don't care what it is, right? [15:06.5]
So, we want to have some understanding or learning, and that's why I want to be an educator, because as a guide for you or other people, right, it’s like, okay, they're the one that's driving the ship. We have to be the guides along the way. And if you have a good person that understands how life insurance works in conjunction with your taxes, how does that work -
James: Oh, absolutely.
Brandon: - with doing investing in stocks, right? Because I have clients that are using their life insurance policies to do day trading and I’m not experienced in that world, right? But they're doing well. They have a mentor in that, that sphere, and that's amazing, and you have a great team of people. [15:59.4]
And this is the problem in our financial world is we say, “I have a guy.” Like what? Technically, you should have multiple guys and girls on your team that are helping you reach your goals, but—but—the reality is the client needs to be the master and be teachable to step into those things. Right? Does that make sense? I feel like sometimes we don't want to just be asleep at the wheel. We’ve got to kind of take ownership of our own lives and not just say, “Oh, well, this person or that person will take care of me.”
James: Yeah, that definitely does not happen. There are certain people who believe that a politician or a president or someone will take care of them, but that's a discussion for another day.
Brandon: Yeah.
James: You're a good educator, though. You and Amanda, both are great educators, and you've developed certain acronyms that are great mnemonic devices for helping people learn certain concepts. One of those acronyms is actually the STILL Method. S-T-I-L-L. What is that? Can you expand on this STILL Method? [17:01.7]
Brandon: Yeah, so we are persons of faith, so it came from the Bible, just like our business form, business overflow, and the STILL Method is a framework that we've really thought about. We've been doing or our money for a while, and before I get into what the STILL Method is, I’m going to tell you the inverse of the STILL Method.
Now, the inverse of this STILL Method, another acronym, is CHAOS—and you can write that down. You can't steal it. Don't take this and use it. This is patented, right?—but CHAOS is confusing, haphazard, anxious, overwhelming, and stressful.
The reason we have a whole tax industry is because, I mean, the tax code is, what? Confusing, haphazard, anxious, overwhelming, and stressful. We need somebody to help guide us through it, right? Honestly, I think that the world, pre-Covid and before, has been all in chaos, right? So people are screaming, “This is crazy. This is nuts.” [18:08.6]
So, CHAOS: confusing, haphazard, anxious, overwhelming and stressful. How do you overcome that? First, you have to be still, and this is kind of the Bible. Jesus is like, “Be still and know.” He pulls back and he's hidden, and they're like, Hey, you're supposed to be around these people. What are you doing? He’s like, Oh, I was just hanging out with God by myself, right?
And so, what was he doing? Maybe he was doing the STILL Method, I don't know, but it's “setting your sights.” You have to kind of know where you want to go, yeah, kind of think through, think, have goals, have some kind of plan, right? So, set your sights. Most people don't. Most people, when I’m asking them, “What do you want to be in 30 years?” they have no idea. They don't even know where they're going to be tomorrow. There's another word, “Poor people plan for Saturday night. Rich people plan for three generations or four generations, or 100 generations.” Set your sights. [19:12.4]
That is where I spend most of my time with my clients, right? What do you want the policy to do? Profit? Business? It doesn't matter. Set your sights.
Then you “track your in and out.” This is the B-word, budgeting. Or if you're going to the gym, track your workouts. Track date night. Track whatever, it doesn't matter. Track you're in and out.
Then you have to “inspect your progress.” That's not just tracking, but you're going to have to . . . Okay, what's it telling me? Inspect. Look for 1% adjustments.
James: That’s good.
Brandon: Not 100% adjustments. 1% adjustments. 1% adjustments over time will get you to the results you want. Right? That's marketing. When we say test things in marketing and all that stuff with videos, it's 1% adjustments. [20:08.5]
And then, “live deliberately.” That's the final “L”. And then you move it around again, “live deliberately,” “track,” and you do that over and over again, and this is happening for me fairly regularly because we do this as a business, personally, and in other areas of our life, and this is easy to do. You just write. Write it down and do that stuff.
James: That's some good stuff. I wish more financial advisors knew the 1% adjustment part, because I struggle with that, with trying to talk to advisors, because, again, I do the marketing stuff and help them grow their business, that kind of thing, and I just want to scream at them sometimes.
Let's just say they only make $100,000 per year. If I somehow, some way, managed to help you increase your income 1%, that's $1,000—let's say that, for example, a newsletter. The newsletter that I have, specifically, is $99 per month. Over the course of the year, that's $1,188. It takes me a little over 1% to pay for the newsletter, right? [21:17.6]
If you make $200,000 and I do just a measly, tiny, itty-bitty 1%, you can't get that type of return elsewhere without taking massive risk. And guess what? Nobody's taking it from you. Once you have the knowledge to make that 1% improvement, you can do it again, and nobody can tax it, nobody can steal it. It's yours. It's in your head forever. I just wish I could shake these people awake. If you have any tips for that, let me know.
Brandon: The thing is banks have figured that out, right? They understand the 1% adjustments. Why is it when you're doing real estate, not in your personal residence, but you're doing it as a business, interest rates are usually higher? [22:00.8]
James: Car insurance, too.
Brandon: Car insurance. Things are a little higher because of your business. They're like, Oh, you make more money. Let's take that 1% and roll it over to us. Right? And so, this is where Dave Ramsey is-- I think, and I love Profit First, you want to make sure that you have a trick. You can't trick your way to wealth, but you want to be a good steward. Maybe pay annually versus monthly. Those are 1% adjustments that you can make on cost. But then there's another 1% adjustment on growth, right, and investing in yourself?
And this is the problem in our world. We say either/or. It can only be this way or that way. Stocks versus life insurance, right? Those kinds of things. And what I’m saying is, it's usually a both/and, and you have to kind of be on this seesaw, if you will, and sometimes let's brutally cut expenses in a smart way, and then what's working to grow things. Right? Does that make sense? [23:09.1]
James: Yeah, and I think that's a good point. It should be a both/and. Me, personally, I am not of the opinion that someone that-- sometimes people say, “Oh, life insurance shouldn't be an investment.” Nobody's calling it an investment, but I had access to cash. I have records.
Financial advisors, if you're on my email list, take me up on this. Go to my emails in October 2022. What did I say I was buying? I was buying Amazon. I was buying Meta stock. From October 2020, let’s just go to January, February, whatever, because I sold part of that in that time. How much of a return did I get? This was because I had access to cash. Does that mean that I stopped dollar-cost averaging? Absolutely not. I have a main investment portfolio that I dollar-cost average in the same amount every single week, no matter what. It doesn't matter if the world is falling apart. It doesn't matter if everyone is euphoric. [24:00.8]
However, I’m not naive enough to think that there will never be opportunities that I could take advantage of. Tesla. I posted on LinkedIn and twitter, I believe, about how I bought Tesla stock when it was, like, $108, $111. I went balls to the wall on Tesla stock and it doubled in the course of a month. If I didn't have access to cash-- I’m not sitting here saying, “Oh, everyone should just bet the farm on Tesla stock,” absolutely not. It was a small amount of my net worth, but it was a large amount of my available cash, but I couldn't have done that if I did not have access to capital.
Brandon: And the other thing that I think is important is you know what you're doing and investing in, right? Having the good advisor that understands what is going on, what is happening in that sphere is really important, and if you're just giving it to them and saying, “Oh, you do it,” that's a challenge because who knows, things happen so fast nowadays. What was great yesterday is not today, right? But investing in yourself and being able to be aware of . . . what is that? “Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em.” Kenny Rogers, I think. [25:19.6]
James: Old Kenny. Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, and I’m like, Oh, I don't know. But I’ve learned as I’ve grown, building a good foundation of wealth, that can't be taken away and that's just amazing, because who knows where we're going to be in 30 years here? I mean, all the stuff that we're investing in now didn't exist 20 years ago and Wall Street.
James: Right.
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James: And I also want people to know, this is important, my life would not have been changed had the investment gone to zero, meaning, I wouldn't go move into a different house, I wouldn't downsize. Nothing in my lifestyle would change if I lost 100% of those, quote-unquote, “risky bets” that I took, because I have a barbell of super-super-conservative savings, non-investments, then I have the middle.
The barbell itself is the index-fund portfolio that I have. Then I have crazy mind-melting risky stuff that people shouldn't touch unless they know the space. I mean, my stuff is largely in tech and those are the risks that I take because, as you've alluded to, I know the space and it's just something that I play in. If someone is involved in real estate and they love real estate, and they eat, sleep and breathe multifamily or commercial, then that's what they should do. They should pursue that, because they specialize in that. They can. They know an opportunity when they see it. [27:10.4]
Brandon: Yeah. I think that's where learning how to even barbelling the business and doing some of the YouTube stuff and various things-- When we first started our business, man, we weren't as even confident in ourselves, because I was like, I ran a coffee shop. How am I going to talk about money? I'm not very legit in this, and that's why we chose Grandma as that.
And we learned and why we changed from Grandma to Wealth Wisdom Financial and saying, “Oh, no, we are actually pretty good at this.” Actually, not very many people have run a successful business and sold it. Have we been like a Jeff Bezos or anything like that? No, not yet, but we are building that. And how do we help more people thrive? [28:00.5]
So, that's why we switched from Grandma to Wealth Wisdom Financial, and we've been learning along the way. We've been creating content. When Covid happened, that's when we started our YouTube channel, right? And that was a great experience.
However, I’m not super impressed with our growth, but we've been consistent, and because of having constant content that's going out and getting 1% better, like we've been doing emails, weekly emails which are on the list, I believe. We've been doing emails since we had a coffee shop every week for . . . I have no idea. It's been at least 12 years, that content that we've been writing regularly. Probably need to get better at that stuff, but 1% adjustments and it's helped us educate clients. They come back and you listen to the podcast, and they say words that I’m like, When did I . . .? I said that? I forgot. I did that episode months ago, years ago, actually. [29:10.0]
James: That happens to me. Sometimes people say, “Hey, can you expand on that direct mail thing that you mentioned in a podcast?” What? I don't know, and there are hundreds of these.
You mentioned YouTube and your podcast. Just for people who are listening, Brandon has a YouTube channel, Wealth Wisdom Financial. He also has a podcast, which is the Wealth Wisdom Financial Podcast. But I want to start by talking to you about YouTube. I guess I’ll ask the uncomfortable question. What are some mistakes you made with YouTube that you think other people can learn from?
Brandon: I think one of them is I’m not the most, I don't know, my voice is hard, and I don't know. It's really difficult sometimes in the YouTube world to make a performance, right? I do money stuff, so it's really hard to be a performer, and that's probably why we haven't grown as much, because I’m not a great performer. [30:07.7]
And some people are great performers, but their heart is lacking, right? Or not their heart, but something else is lacking, right? They're great at a great show, but follow up on the process of the business, they're not so great at it.
James:
Brandon: Yeah, so for us, I feel like that's the hardest part. We are pretty normal average people and we're not going to do all this clickbaity type stuff to get people and that maybe is a good thing, maybe not. But it's an integrity thing for me as to why I haven't said the world's going to end tomorrow, click on my video and see why. I don't do that. Some people do and then the world doesn't end, and they’ve got a lot of videos and then they forgot about it, right? [30:55.1]
So, I've learned that, but what I’ve also learned is just showing up, creating that content. It's 1% adjustments. It hasn't been like the big guys that I got 30,000 views. My son watches YouTube videos. He’s four years old. There's a lot of crap on there, literally not good stuff, just horrible things .
James: Yeah, you can get down some dark rabbit holes on YouTube.
Brandon: Yeah, they're just playing video games and I’m like, Really? I should just have him play video games and then people watch my stuff sometimes. But for me, it's about how do I educate the clients? In the end, it goes back to that. How do I create content that's going to change their lives? Right? That's really why I do what we do. Whether it's 30 views or 130 views, that doesn't matter. What I don't like is the manipulation of data. I don't like that because I could falsely show, oh, I’ve got thousands of views and they're all people from India that are robots or Russia, I don't know, whatever, so I don't like that side of it. But it is what it is. [32:05.3]
James: I think you had a good analogy where you once talked about YouTube and content marketing, and marketing itself is like the wrapper to a gift or like a gift wrapping that you kind of have to do that in order to attract people, but the gift inside has to be good to it.
Brandon: Yeah.
James: I don't know which one I would rather be, someone with a great wrapper and no substance, or someone with great substance, but just no clients and no one to share it with. I mean, you obviously have something, because I think you mentioned you have gotten a few clients from YouTube, or maybe that was your audience.
Brandon: Oh, yeah. We've gotten them from both, right? We are getting them. They're more and more trickling in and trickling in faster, right? So, it's really like, again, the first few years of our business, man, I didn't have confidence in us, right? We've grown that. We’ve created our own agency, right? We didn't even have a big brand behind us to say this is it, even though we're part of or mutually on companies that have been around for hundreds of years. There, still, if you think about those mutual companies, most of the time, people don't even realize they exist, even though they've been around for hundreds of years. [33:14.4]
So, that made it a little challenging, but now I feel like we're coming into our own and we have some stories behind it. I’ve used my policies to do real estate. That's what really helps our clients in saying, “This is how I do it,” and I think that if you're an advisor or in any regard, practice what you preach.
James: Oh, yeah.
Brandon: Buy the products that you’re doing.
James: A hundred percent, yeah.
Brandon: Don't be the guy that says, “Oh, you should do this,” and you would never do that. Right? That's not a good thing.
James: I can’t say that enough.
Brandon: Yeah. So, for me, it's just a learning and I’ve learned a lot of what not to do on YouTube. Does everything work? And some of it does not, but we learned doing a podcast, it was easy, because I could have a script, because my wife is a really good writer and we’ll write. We’ll have a book, too, because she's a really good writer. [34:11.5]
But it's harder to do the exact same thing and make it look engaging and not do it-- I mean, if I spent hours rehearsing, that's great. I’ve got to run a business.
James: Right. Yeah, you don’t have--
Brandon: I don't have time for all that. Yes. That's the challenge in our world of marketing now, because we all have to be like entertainers and do it in 144 characters or less and in soundbite, and it's getting smaller and smaller with attention. But I think that we are more complex than that as individuals.
James: And a lot of it is an education play. When I talk about educating prospective clients, sometimes people will misinterpret that. I don't necessarily mean you're sitting down in saying, “This is a mutually-owned whole life insurance company. This is what this looks like. This is an illustration. This is this thing.” [35:08.5]
What I mean is shifting the way people think. If I educate you on the law of sowing and reaping, because, I mean, you've talked about biblically-based off, and I was writing about that this morning. That's why it's fresh on my mind. If I talk about that, “Here it is, this isn't the Bible. Here's the story about it. Here's how it applies to my life,” I have educated you about the law of sowing and reaping.
I'm not sitting here and saying, “In this year B.C., Aristotle wrote about causality and he thought that there were four methods in which we determine effects.” I'm not saying that. I’m telling you a story, and the law of sowing and reaping is essentially the law of causality, but I’m not being boring. I’m not hard teaching. So, people get that confused all the time.
Brandon: And also as somebody that's in this, I’m still learning, too, right? And we've been in the faith-community tithers, but learning about the principles of the first, what you put first matters, right? This is the richest man in Babylon, 10% of all you earn is for you to keep, right? [36:10.2]
So, I’ve been thinking about this in regards to tithe and saying, okay, off the top, which some people will say, “What? No, I don't want to give it. Invest everything and then whatever,” but what I flow into the top first, that's a really important thing, and then I do a percentage-based system. Savings is different than investing for me, but I just let it go through. And here's the thing, it's a percentage. I tithe more than I made 15 years ago, right? It's amazing. But it's all percentage. I never gave a dollar amount, but it's learning and saying, “Okay, there's only two things, again, that we can do: cut expenses, create income,” right?
So, those things, and then where you put them, that's a different story. And how can you put them in a place to create more income? That's a great thing. You just want to be smart about that stuff. [37:09.3]
James: I used to be one of those people. I used to sit there and think to myself, Okay, tithing, I get it, I know that's important. But instead of me giving, let's just say I make $100,000, instead of me giving $10,000 this year, why don't I invest a bunch of money, and then in 40 years, it'd be millions of dollars, and because it's grown, I can then give God that.
No, no, no, because then you're putting your trust in something else and you're missing the point, and that's all about principles thinking. Yeah, so I fell victim to that, where I was like, Maybe if I did it this way, then God will be extra happy, because I’m giving him more money. I completely missed the point. The point is not just to get the dollar amount. The point is to put your trust in, in this case, God.
Brandon: Yeah. [37:53.8]
James: And I think that if financial advisors took that to heart in other areas of their life, like the point of content marketing isn't necessarily just to create content. It is to create an asset. Podcasting, same thing. Email marketing, same thing. Email marketing isn't necessarily just to stay top of mind or just to follow up. It is a demonstration. It is a principle of how you operate. It is a trust builder. So, that's extremely deep. I do have another difficult question for you. You have a YouTube channel -
Brandon: I love difficult questions.
James: - and the podcast. I think you may be the first guest, I'm not sure, so financial advisors, please don't quote me on this, I think you may be the first guest to have both a YouTube channel and a podcast. Again, not sure. If tomorrow, you had to get rid of one, meaning, everything was deleted and it had to be totally gone, you could not keep it, which one would you get rid of and why?
Brandon: I'd have to think about that mainly because the reason we went to YouTube was people were doing a lot of content when Covid happened. They weren't listening to episodes in their gym - [39:09.0]
James: Like in Denmark.
Brandon: - because they weren't going to the gym anymore, right?
James: Yeah, gym.
Brandon: And so, we're like, Alright, what do we need to do to still be top of mind? I wish we would have had that set up earlier. The reality is, podcasts are new. I mean, we were podcasting before I could get better at it. I think it's sometimes oversaturated nowadays. YouTube is searchable, or podcast or not, and I think that that's a challenge and why you want to be in other areas.
Here's the thing. Why couldn't you do both? I mean, literally, we record one thing, send it to them, and somebody strips the audio and puts it on both, right? Hopefully, we're not going to be like, If YouTube shuts down, I’ll be okay. If podcasts get shut down, I'll be okay. I'll just adapt. So, I'm not going to choose both/either. [40:06.8]
I listen to a lot of podcasts. I listen to yours, but I probably wouldn't watch the videos as much, but people are in different places. Be omnipresent, if at all possible, and, yeah, that's kind of the world we're in now.
James: Absolutely. I think that's a good answer. That's a decent answer. I think it'd be hard for me to choose, too. Obviously, I mean, I have YouTube channels. I have YouTube channels for other businesses and I have a little secret one that I just play with all the time. I don't have an official, like the Advisor Coach YouTube channel or anything like that so don't search for it. I like podcasting. I do think that everyone and their mother is trying to launch a podcast. They have no idea, really, what they're doing and it is kind of sad. But I don't know which one I would choose either.
The last thing I want to talk about with you, because I think you're a qualified guest to talk about it, is rebranding, I’ve mentioned several times about Grandma’s Wealth Wisdom changing to Wealth Wisdom Financial, and that, essentially from what I can tell on the outside looking in, involved an overhaul. [41:12.1]
There are some financial advisors who contact me and say, “My business name is John Smith Financial, and I regret naming it after myself and I want to change it, but it's going to be a lot of work,” and there are certain financial advisors that have to go through a similar rebrand. I think that you are someone who can speak to that. What are some things you learned while rebranding your business?
Brandon: Yeah. First off, I got the original brand from our podcast producer, Jonathan Rivera, and we were trying to figure out what's good, what's going to catch, and some people were like, Yeah, it's pink and blah, blah, blah. No one's going to like it. We still got some people who still love that Grandma’s Wealth Wisdom brand, right? [41:58.0]
Learning, one is we are all evolving as people. Our businesses are evolving, too, and being okay to change it and help it grow up. Right? That's okay. Is there going to be learning things? I mean, seriously, I still have my email. Still part of it is Grandma’s Wealth Wisdom email and I’ve got to switch that in my head, and there's a lot of email autoresponder stuff and that is a pain in the butt to do. But sometimes you’ve just got to know, and what's that? Sunk-cost fallacy, right, where you know it's wrong and it needs to change, and you're so invested that you just keep going, right?
James: Wow.
Brandon: That was awesome. We were like, We’ve just got to rip the band-aid off and do it and, over time, there will be still remnants of Grandma out there. There is. It’s on our YouTube channel and podcast. When you go back to the archives, it's a different thing, and the links are going to work, right? Whatever. I’m not going to go spend all my hours changing the links. [43:07.7]
I was actually watching a video today that I did in 2021. I was like, Oh, those are old links. I need to update this and switch it while I’m there before I send it to a client. But I’m not going to spend all day doing it.
So, I think just kind of go with it, and knowing that, as individuals, we're growing. Our business is growing. Our business is five years old. When you start a business, and this is any agency or any business for that matter, you have a newborn. You don't even know its identity yet when it's a new business, right?
James: Good point.
Brandon: You're still figuring it out, right? It takes a little while before you know what it is, right? I mean, you know it’s a child, right? But it takes a little bit. Our business is now five years old. Now, I’m still growing. There's still lots of things. It can do some things on its own and not others, right? But it still does crazy stuff and we're still evolving, and this is one of the things I want people to catch. Don't compare yourself to a 30-something-year-old business when you're a 2-year-old business. [44:14.3]
James: Absolutely.
Brandon: You aren't going to do the same thing. Same with finances and all that stuff. So, it's evolve, roll with it, but don't sweat the small stuff.
James: Cool. I think this has been a great episode, we talked about a lot of different stuff. I hope advisors didn't tune out with the infinite-banking, bank-on-yourself stuff.
And I challenge anyone who is thinking about that, like, Oh, I can't believe that, this is absurd, or whatever, about this. Not necessarily about it, but I can't believe James practices this—I encourage you to read all of Nelson Nash's work.
If you haven't read it, please keep your mouth shut and I mean that in the nicest way possible, because until you read it and understand it, and if you can't explain to me what stealing the peas means and you won't get that reference unless you study his work, if you can't explain that to me, in the nicest way possible, again, I don't care about your opinion, because I would rather listen to the person who has had financial results with it. [45:12.5]
And it's not necessarily a get-rich-quick scheme. It's definitely not that. It’s literally just a cash-flow-management system. Sometimes, and I will admit, I don't like the marketers who try to get everyone to do it. I really don't. I don't like that they try to make it sexier than it is, because, quite frankly, it's one of the most boring things you can ever encounter in the financial space.
Brandon: Yeah, hence why our YouTube channel is slower in growth, probably, but you know . . .
James: Yeah.
Brandon: But, again, I think about me and my wife. We're specialists. We're heart surgeons. When you talk about niching down, I’m like, Dude, we’ve really just niched down in even what we offer and services, and that's great, that's fine. Right? And I am a heart surgeon in that regard. So, knowing that part is really, really helpful. I am a heart surgeon when it comes to this stuff. [46:07.0]
James: Yeah, I think so, too. I think that there's a lot that people can learn from you in branding and business building, and the Overflow Coffee. By the way, overflow coffee story, we didn't really even dig deep into that. Financial advisors, if you search Brandon Neely, if you search his name in your podcast platform of choice, he has a ton of other podcast appearances where he has discussed his story at length, and I think you should listen to that, too.
But with all that said, we're going to close out the episode. This has been a good one. Financial advisors, if you want to contact Brandon, I guess you can do so. How would you prefer they contact you?
Brandon: Yeah, of course, find us on YouTube, Wealth Wisdom Financial. You should be able to find us everywhere. Wealth Wisdom Financial Podcast. Wealth Wisdom FP. That's wealth wisdom F as in financial, P as in partners [dot] com. And if you want to talk shop or have discovery calls on the website, website is still always growing. We're always making it better. Eventually, you'll have Amanda on, because she's going to have a book or something one of these days. [47:14.1]
James: That'd be cool. Hopefully, I can get a copy. I’ll buy a couple of copies just to help you get on the Amazon Best Sellers, if it's on Amazon.
Brandon: I'm sure you’ll be on the list and I’m kind of the ghostwriter on that. I don't know how that works. Anyway, I’ll be on the book's title, too.
James: Alright. Financial advisors, hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I have. And with all that said, I will catch you next week. [47:43.0]
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