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: Welcome to Episode 250 of the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast. It feels surreal to say that, but we are finally here. To celebrate, I'm just going to chat with you this week. I'm going to share a little bit about my life, The Advisor Coach, how I approach business, and maybe a few tidbits about this podcast. I'm not really sure. It's just going to be you and me. [00:54.5]
I've been running this cool little experiment, where every few weeks I will send a long stream-of-consciousness email where I talk about anything that's on my mind. Some of the subject lines have been literally a long, rambling email about Financial Advisor Marketing or stream-of-consciousness ramblings. But what's interesting is, those emails have been well received. I'm going to do something similar here, where I just hit record and talk with you about anything that comes to mind.
First, 250 episodes is a lot. Thank you so much to everyone who has listened, is listening now, and will listen in the future. I am so incredibly grateful. What's interesting is that I have actually recorded more than 250 podcast episodes, if you want to get technical, because I used to have a show called The Advisor Coach Podcast, and that had a few dozen episodes, I believe. It may have had 50. I really don't remember right now. That was years ago. But back in late-2018, early-2019, we rebranded as the financial advisor marketing podcast that you know and love, or, hopefully, love, and I haven't missed a single week since. Isn't that cool? Every single week, I’ve cranked out a new episode for you. [02:11.3]
I also want you to think about how many solo episodes I have where it was just me talking or, back in the day, it was me and Producer Jonathan. Of course, I’ve had some amazing guests along the way and I'm so thankful for them, too. However, the bulk of my episodes are solo shows. I want to take a moment and brag a little bit, because that is pretty difficult to achieve.
I mean, recording an episode with the guest is easy. All you have to do is show up, hit record and let the guest answer your questions. It's easy to have a conversation. We have conversations all the time with family, friends, colleagues, you name it. But how many people can literally create hundreds of podcast episodes about their area of expertise? Very, very, very few. I am proud to be one of them. I hope you at least respect how difficult that is. [03:00.0]
However, I live to serve financial advisors. I have literally dedicated my life to helping them succeed—and, after all, there are tons of people out there who claim to be able to help financial advisors with their marketing, but how many of them have created 250 episodes about financial advisor marketing as I have? How many of them have written 2,500-plus emails about helping financial advisors as I have? How many have published a monthly physical newsletter for six years with high-level business-building and client-getting information as I have? I’ll wait. Sure, some people have newsletters, but how many people have podcasts, the blog articles, everything else? Hmm, I'll wait.
Let's say that each podcast episode is an average of 20 minutes long, and I’ll now have 250 episodes, so 250 times 20 is 5,000 minutes or more than 83 hours of content—so you could stay up for three days straight and still have 11 more hours to go. That is a lot of content. [04:06.5]
Each newsletter issue that I published, the James Pollard Inner Circle Newsletter over at TheAdvisorCoach.Com/coaching, that's about 20 pages long each issue, 15 and 20-plus, depending on how long it takes me to cover the information inside. Let's just call it 20 for easy math. That's 240 pages of content per year, and that doesn't even include the bonuses I throw in every once in a while, and I’ve done that for years.
I have literally never missed a single episode of the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast. I have literally never missed a single newsletter issue for years. That's one of the reasons why I don't have much patience for people who try something once and then give up. Try doing something for at least a year and then we'll talk. [04:51.5]
I also want to say that if you haven't listened to the previous two episodes, you should go back and listen to them. They're about lessons I’ve learned from having 10,000-plus conversations with financial advisors. You see, Inner Circle members get direct email access to me for their questions, and over the past six years, I’ve had at least 10,000 conversations. I say 10,000 in the title because that's a number that will get attention and will get clicks. If I said 13,000 or 14,000, it probably wouldn't get clicked as much.
But I’ve talked with financial advisors about marketing, business-building, productivity systems, everything. I’ve seen so much. I’ve seen the best of the best, I’ve seen the worst of the worst, because the newsletter is really only one part of my business, because I have other products. Every so often, I will offer services. I have affiliate relationships, although, to be fair, the newsletter, it's amazing. I'm so grateful, so thankful every single time I think about it, because it has grown like a weed in the past few years, and I guess it comes down to putting out good content. If you put out good content, financial advisors want more of it, and if you liked this podcast, chances are you would love the newsletter. [05:58.1]
The monthly cancellation rate—and I want to brag a little bit—it is lower than Netflix, Disney Plus, Audible, Spotify, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, and Peacock. I could go on and on and on. That's wild when you consider that the newsletter is $99 per month. It's not $10 or $20 per month, like all the other streaming services.
And, honestly, my, quote-unquote, “real” cancellation rate is even lower because it includes failed billing attempts, and the people who have failed billing attempts, they automatically get canceled after a few tries. It will try to rebuild, for example, three times, and if you don't update your credit card within those three times, you get automatically canceled.
That means my churn rate, which is lower than Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Spotify, whatever, it includes people who have had their credit cards expire and never purposely canceled. They never sent me an email saying, “James, I don't like your stuff,” or “James, I want to cancel. James, take me off your mailing list or whatever. I don't want that anymore,” so that's amazing. [07:00.8]
Am I bragging? Yes, I am bragging because I’ve built something incredible. You would brag, too. I know how much of my life I’ve dedicated to helping financial advisors. I've seen so many people come and go over the years, so many people who claim to care about financial advisors, who say they're going to be there for them, who talk a big game, who say they're marketing experts who can help them get more clients. If they were such good marketers, then how come they couldn't use their marketing skills to market themselves to stay in business? Hmm, that really makes you think, doesn't it? Well, I'm still here.
I talked about this two episodes ago, but I remember so many people who talked down to me and hated on me for a myriad of reasons. I mean, I give people a lot of material to work with, let me just tell you. Just being straight up, I give people a lot to work with. But I remember trying to network with people and having them ignore me or straight up diss me. [08:00.2]
I remember sending handwritten cards to people in the mail, telling them how much I appreciated them, how much I admired their work, and very few got back to me. I can't even begin to tell you how discouraging that was for me. But I didn't give up. I persevered, and because I persevered, I have been able to change tens of thousands of lives—so, let that be a lesson for you. Don't give up. Even if you're discouraged, keep going.
Some of the stuff people said to me was so hurtful and, truthfully, there are still lots of people who don't like me for whatever reason. But what's weird is these are people who have never met me, never hung out with me in real life, and never had a Zoom meeting with me, none of that. Yet they know enough to make a judgment. Isn't that wild? Isn't it sad that there are grown men and women who live their lives that way? [08:53.4]
Allow me to let you in on a little secret. I think one of the reasons that this podcast has resonated so well with you, my dear listener, is because I lean into my personality. I have, for lack of a better term, created a character. Now, of course, that doesn't mean I'm pretending to be someone I'm not necessarily. What I mean is I’ve taken my natural personality and I’ve amplified it.
I am a naturally grumpy person, for example. I do get angry and irritable. However, it's not like I walk around in real life ranting and raving all the time. But I lean into that for the personality aspect of this podcast. I lean into that for emails. I lean into that for social media posts.
I grew up a pro-wrestling fan, okay? And I'm still a fan. I like it. Of course, I think the stuff in the ’90s and the Attitude Era in the early-2000s were just the pinnacle, right? But that's also a product of my age and who I am. I think it's amazing entertainment. That's what it is. Notice how I use the word “entertainment.” It's not like I believe the wrestlers are actually hurting each other or actually fighting. I see it for what it is, entertainment, and in pro wrestling, the best entertainers are the ones who lean into their personalities. [10:09.4]
For example, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, when he was in the WWF, now the WWE, he was really charismatic. Did he walk around in real life screaming at people and raising his eyebrow all day? Did he do that at McDonald’s or Walmart or Target, or at the doctor's? No, no, he simply took his existing charisma and cranked it up to Level 10. I'm doing something similar.
So, I think some of the people who don't like me are the ones who can't tell that I'm purposefully being entertaining for people. I imagine these people sit down and watch Top Gun and truly believe that Tom Cruise is a fighter pilot. These people can't tell the difference between a person and a character. But, again, I'm just taking my personality and cranking it up. The people who get offended by that are the people who make a judgment about me or make a judgment about someone who is trying to be entertaining for an audience. [11:00.0]
This is another secret here: the best content uses personality. But you know what else? The best content mixes entertainment, which is the personality aspect, and information anyway. I’ll tell you what else. I think people who listen to podcasts solely for information are the most boring, uninteresting and drab people on the planet. I mean, how boring does your life have to be for you to listen to a podcast solely for information?
Now, to be fair, I'm on the other end of that spectrum. I, personally, do not listen to podcasts for any information whatsoever. I can't stand it when people try to hard-teach on podcasts. I say hard-teaching, it's as if they have a blackboard and they're saying, “No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, and I'm just going to tell you step by step,” and all this other stuff. I listen to podcasts solely for entertainment. As a consumer, that is how I personally consume podcasting. [12:02.4]
However, I know I'm rare in that respect, so with this show, I tried to mix information and entertainment, with a slant toward entertainment, simply because that is what I like. That is what I would like to consume. I know that I am not necessarily my market. However, it is easier for me to lean into my personality that way.
I used to say this in the early days of the podcast, my goal is not to teach you anything. I have never once sat down and thought to myself, Gee, what can I teach advisors this week, or what value can I provide? I hate the term “give value.” I think giving value is the dumbest marketing strategy ever invented. Yet, here's another big takeaway for you. Some of the most valuable podcast episodes I have ever done have been the result of trying not to give value. Meditate on that for a little bit. [13:00.0]
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.
My wife says that even though I don't purposefully attempt to give value, I still provide value, in the sense that I get people to think differently, get them to explore their options and help them shift how they view the world—and I can see how that will be valuable to people and I'm not denying that it is valuable. But my point here is that I never sit down and pursue that as a strategy. I never sit down and say how can I give value today? Because I believe if you pursue something, it will likely flee from you. [13:50.2]
The same is true with attempting to directly give value. I've discovered that people will flee from you if you try to do that. This is true in dating and relationships as well. I mean, how much respect do women have for men who do everything for them and won't give them any room to breathe? Not much, right? How much respect do men have for women who are ultra-needy and want to cling to them every second? Not much—because, think about this, how much does the average teacher get paid? I googled it not too long ago and the average teacher salary is something like $60,000. Cool. Now, what do entertainers get paid? A lot more. Hmm, maybe there's something there.
Anyway, I'm proud of the community I’ve built around this podcast and I'm proud of the messages I’ve helped to spread. I'm proud that I’ve helped financial advisors become better thinkers, because that is so much more important than knowing which button to push in which color your landing page should be, or all of this stuff that people just try to spew. Tactics are abundant. You can walk down the metaphorical Podcast Street and bump into a hundred different tactics without even trying. However, knowing how and why you should apply the tactics is rare. [15:07.2]
I'm also proud to say that I’ve helped financial advisors think like investors. That means a lot to me, a lot, because I don't just want financial advisors to become better marketers. That's cool and all, and kudos to them if they are better marketers, but I want financial advisors to become wealthy and I know they can become wealthy by thinking like investors and acquiring assets, because that is how wealth is generated.
If you study wealth, you will notice a pattern. Every single person bar none has acquired assets—hmm, your business is an asset. Your human capital is an asset. Your network is an asset. All of these things are assets that you can leverage to become wealthier.
I also talk a lot about creating marketing assets. That's another one of the biggest things I want financial advisors to get from this show, the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast as a whole. I want them to understand that their marketing can work independently of them and generate appointments from them or for them, no matter what they're doing. [16:08.0]
For instance, your website is an asset that can generate income for you, no matter what. The same is true with your email marketing system and your social media profiles, and if you decide to work on them, you can tweak them so you get a disproportionate return for your effort. That is thinking like an investor.
That's one of the ways I’ve been able to get crazy good results for financial advisors, because I get them to focus on building assets. I don't really care about what you can do. I care about what your assets can do. And I don't really care about what your assets can do in one day. I care about what they can do in a year or five years, or 10 years.
At the time of this recording, let me share, this is interesting, Warren Buffett is expected to rake in more than $700 million in Coca-Cola dividends. Do you know how much the CEO of Coca-Cola makes? In 2022, the CEO made roughly $23 million in total compensation—so, $700 million for the investor, $23 million for the CEO. [17:12.0]
A lot of you want to be the CEO. You want to be the boss or whatever, and that's cool, whatever floats your boat, I guess, but I'd rather be an investor. I'd rather be the guy earning $700 million in dividend income, no matter what. I could be doing anything in the world. I don't have to attend a single board meeting. I don't have to be anywhere face to face. I don't have to talk to a single customer. I don't have to deliver a single bottle of Coca-Cola to Walmart or Target or Costco. I just let the company, the asset, do the work and I reap the rewards. That's how I think about marketing.
Of course, the big difference here is how you get the asset, because in Warren Buffett's case, he bought Coca-Cola stock. In your business, you will likely build the asset, and I’ll tell you that, personally, the way I’ve been able to build a little bit of wealth in my own life is by building businesses and then taking some of the money and putting it in assets that don't depend on me whatsoever. That is the play. [18:05.4]
If you're looking for a little secret or whatever, then that's it. Build a business that can generate a bunch of money for you, and then take that money and invest it. Then use the income from the investments to pay your expenses. In a financial advisor’s case, the initial income comes from a job, and I’ve talked about this in past episodes. Whether you like it or not, I know there are so many entrepreneurs out there and gurus’ and business-owner books to tell you to work “on” your business instead of “in” your business. But I legitimately don't care about any of that junk. I only care about the money coming in and the financial freedom you will experience in the future.
If you are working “in” your business and you're doing the thing, and you get paid $1 million per hour to do it—let's just go to an extreme example—how much would you work in your business? You probably work a lot, and honestly, only you can make this decision. I know some people would rather have a business that makes $200,000 per year with a relatively small time commitment than a business making $1 million per year with a larger time commitment. I get that, that's a lifestyle business. [19:09.6]
But here's how I look at it. What if you worked your butt off for a few years and you got to, let's just say, $500,000 in personal income after taxes, and then you lived on $100,000 of that? Once you get to that level, for example, you can save four years, one, two, three, four years of expenses in cash for every year you work. That's power.
Mr. Money Mustache has this cool chart in an article titled The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement. Here are some of the assumptions he had made. I'm going to give you some really crazy stats here. So, these are the assumptions. You can earn 5% investment returns after inflation during your saving years and you’ll live off of a 4% safe withdrawal rate after retirement. You can just google “The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement” from Mr. Money Mustache and you can see this for yourself. [20:05.8]
If those assumptions, 5% investment returns, a 4% safe withdrawal rate after retirement, and if those are true and you save 80% of your income, then you will be financially free in 5.5 years. That's it.
But let's say you decide to waste a little bit more time, spend a little bit more money, because life is short, YOLO, that sort of thing.
Let's say you save half of your income. It'll take you 17 years.
Let's say you save 30% of your income. It'll take you 28 years.
And if you only save 10% of your income, aka The Richest Man in Babylon approach—and as much as I love that it introduces people to investing, it gives them a false sense of security, because it tells them that they should save 10%—I have a huge beef with that, because if you save only 10%, it'll take you 51 years until you're financially independent. [21:00.0]
Guess what the average savings rate in America is. It fluctuates, but it's around 4–5% in the past. At a 5% savings rate, according to Mr. Money Mustache’s chart, it will take you 66 years to be financially free. If you start working at age 20 and you diligently save 5% of everything, as the average American does, you will be financially free at age 86. That is way too long for me. I would rather hustle, go hard and build assets, and open up some options. Most people don't think this way and that's why most people are broke.
Look, I'm not making up the numbers. This is math. I didn't make the laws of mathematics. Nor did I make up the number about the personal savings rate. Go ahead and google “average American savings rate” and tell me what you see. Please don't shoot the messenger. I'm simply telling you that you should think like an asset builder and you should be focused on financial freedom. A good way to do that is to take the money from your job—because that's what it is, a job, even if you call it a business—and invest that into other assets. [22:05.4]
What if you built an email marketing system that got one additional financial plan for you per month? And what if you charged $4,000 for that financial plan? That is $48,000 in revenue per year. We'll cut that in half and call it your profit. That is $24,000 in profit from your email autoresponder.
Right now, the S&P 500 dividend yield is 1.54%, so you would need to invest $1.5 million in order to get a $24,000 dividend. So, let me ask you this—what do you think is easier, building an email marketing system that gets one client per month on autopilot or scraping together $1.5 million and investing it?
That's the shift I want you to make. That is the gift I want to give you on this magical 250th episode. I know this is the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast. I know we talk about marketing strategies and tactics, and all that fun stuff. However, I'm in the business, again, of making financial advisors wealthy, and I do that, largely by getting them to think differently about what they do and why they do it. [23:17.3]
Lastly, I want to end this episode with a note of gratitude. Every morning when I wake up, I am reminded of the incredible community that is formed around this podcast on my email list and in, obviously, the Inner Circle Newsletter. I know a lot of newsletter subscribers have networked with each other. They've met each other in person in their cities, at conferences. I've even had subscribers fly to Australia together on the same flight. That's a true story and, no, they did not plan it. It just so happened that they were on the same exact international flight at the same exact time, and they were both Inner Circle members. Isn't that amazing? [23:53.8]
Every email, every comment, every message I receive is a testament to the impact we're making together—and I say “we” purposefully, because it's not just me. It's you, too. I am profoundly grateful for every single one of you who takes time to listen to this podcast, and for those of you who share your successes and your challenges with me.
The journey of the Advisor Coach and the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast was not a solo endeavor. It was built on the collective energy, feedback and aspirations of thousands of financial advisors like you. Without your engagement, your questions and your thirst for knowledge, the Advisor Coach wouldn't have evolved into the platform it is today.
You are not just the audience. You are the heartbeat of this community. You are the reason I am motivated to research, explore and release new episodes every week. Your success, the stories you tell me, they fuel my passion, and your challenges inspire me to find solutions. I am endlessly thankful for your unwavering support and the trust you place in me. [25:01.0]
So, reflecting on our journey together, as we wrap up this monumental 250th episode, I want to leave you with more than just a challenge. I want to leave you with a vision, a vision of what you can become, of the heights you can reach and the impact you can make.
I challenge you not just to think bigger, but to believe bigger, to see bigger, to have a bigger vision, to dream without boundaries, to set audacious goals for yourself in your business and to relentlessly pursue them—because from my vantage point, as just James Pollard, founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com and the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast, the newsletter and all this, and I’ve interacted with so many of you, I see what you're capable of. I genuinely believe that with the right mindset, the right strategies, and the unwavering support of someone who believes in you as much as I do, there truly is no ceiling to what you can achieve. Let's continue to break barriers, redefine success, and shape the future of the financial advice industry together.
Thank you so much. Episode 250 is a wrap. How cool is that? I will catch you next week. [26:13.8]
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