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: Can you believe that 2025 is right around the corner? This episode is scheduled to air on December 30, 2024, which means it is the final episode of the entire year. It also means that there are only two days left before the Inner Circle Newsletter increases from $99 per month to $199 per month. [00:53.3]
This is it. I've been talking about the price increase for the past few months. You're probably tired of hearing me talk about it. The good news is that this is obviously the last time I'm going to mention it, because on January 1, 2025, the price is going up, and everyone who subscribed at $99 per month will be locked in. They'll continue to pay that price, while everyone else who subscribes after that date will pay $199 per month. If you want to check it out, go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching.
Now I'm going to level with you. Let's forget about all the marketing hype and the promo and the ads, and everything I do to make it seem exciting and urgent and scarce, and all of those other things that marketers do to get people to do stuff. I'm just going to keep it real with you.
If you are listening to this episode on December 30 or December 31, that means you are listening during what is, for a lot of people, a holiday break. Lots of people simply tune everything out during the last week of the year, and I know that because my email open rates go down. My podcast downloads go down. I've been doing this a long time and I see this pattern every year. [01:58.4]
A much smaller percentage of financial advisors actually listen to this podcast during this time of year. However, the ones who do tend to be more serious, more committed and more focused than everyone else, because while everyone else is out doing who knows what, you are here with me right now listening to this podcast episode.
Again, I'm just keeping it a hundred percent real with you. I'm telling you what I know and what I have seen. I know that if you are the type of person who is listening to this podcast episode on December 30 or 31, you are almost certainly the type of person I want to be an Inner Circle member. I talk about filtering and qualification all the time, and this is one of the best filters and qualification mechanisms I have. Everyone else will automatically filter themselves out, because they will not listen to this podcast episode until it is too late. By the time they listen to this podcast, it will be $199 per month, because it'll be in 2025. [02:54.1]
So, if you have been on the fence for a while, you have proof right now, I'm just telling you—forget all the marketing stuff. Forget “Oh, it's super urgent and it's scarce and it's exclusive,” and all that. And while it is, forget about that for a moment—I'm just telling you straight up, you're likely a good fit if you're listening. You are likely the type of person I want to be an Inner Circle member. I would love to have you. Again, if you want to check it out, the link is TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching.
Now let's get into what I promised you in the podcast title, “Things Successful Financial Advisors Do Differently.” Since this is it, the final two days before that price increase, I figured I’d pull back the curtain a little bit and I would share some of the things I've noticed about my most successful Inner Circle members. I've had 10,000-plus conversations with them. I actually did a podcast series about that. I've been writing the newsletter since 2018. I've seen social media profiles, analytics accounts, ads accounts, CRMs, balance sheets and more. I don't want to say I've seen it all, but I've probably seen more real, behind-the-scenes marketing results than anyone else on the planet, and I don't say that lightly. [03:58.1]
I also started recently offering office hours exclusively for Inner Circle members, where we hang out on Zoom once a month and talk about life and business, and whatever else they want. That's actually one of the biggest reasons I'm doing the price increase, by the way, but those office hours have enabled me to deepen my relationship with the people who show up, because I truly do care about them.
Plus, a lot of them email me after and say things like, “Hey, thanks for bringing us up. I appreciate it,” or “I didn't want to discuss this publicly, but ABCD.” That means I see exactly what they want, and that's awesome. It's a virtuous cycle, because I can give them what they want. They give me feedback. I make it better. They give me feedback. I make it better. Long story short, I've noticed a few patterns among the most successful financial advisors and here they are.
No. 1, this is a big one: they think in terms of money-in and money-out, not necessarily ROI. I could also say that they think in terms of absolute profit, meaning, money in the bank, money they actually get to take home instead of ROI. Now, don't get me wrong. ROI is cool. I love ROI. It's incredibly important. However, focusing on ROI by itself is kind of silly. [05:08.0]
Let's say that I give you $1 and you promise me a 100x ROI. That might be a massive return on investment, but it's still only 100 bucks. Now, let's say I give you 1,000 bucks and you promise me a 10x ROI, that's only 1/10th of the return on investment, but I would get $10,000. Pretty big difference, right?
I've talked about this a lot before, but I want to bring it up again. One of the biggest mistakes I've ever made was trying to get the biggest bang for my buck when I should have been focused on getting the biggest bang, period. Let me explain. I was a return-on investment chaser. I wanted to get that return. I thought I was smart. I figured if I could buy a $20-book and use it to make $500 in my business, that was a massive ROI and I was a great business person, and I got a great deal because I got a great ROI. [05:55.0]
But my mistake was focusing only on investments with a massive ROI, and the problem is that these investments are scarce. They're few and far between. What I should have been doing all along was focusing on money-in and money-out. Let's say that instead of a book, I go through a program for $3,000 and I get a 5x ROI. That's $15,000, much better. Or let's say that I go pedal to the metal with my advertising, and I “only”—in quotes here, “only”—get a 2x ROI. If I invest $20,000 a month and get a 2x ROI, that's $40,000 in total revenue, which includes my $20,000 initial investment, plus $20,000 in profit. That sure beats the heck out of a $25-book with a higher ROI. I hope you're getting this. [06:46.3]
I see this in marketing all the time. Some financial advisors will foolishly create or chase or get involved with a certain marketing strategy because it has a higher ROI while ignoring everything else. For example, they might slave away doing things like social media and SEO because it's free, while ignoring stuff like paid traffic and direct mail. I love both social media. I love SEO, too. But the truth is, assuming you have a solid offer, you might be able to pump tens of thousands of dollars into paid traffic and get a modest ROI.
Sure, that ROI might be smaller than organic traffic, but you will get more dollars out, right? It's about the money-in and the money-out, the dollars in, the dollars out, the actual money you have in your hands that you can take to the bank. You can't deposit ROI. I want you to really take that. That is one of the biggest things that I've noticed.
No. 2: they engage. Engagement, by far, is the No. 1 predictor of longevity with Inner Circle members, and this kind of makes sense because if someone engages by asking questions, then I'm able to help that person directly with his or her problems, and that person is far more likely to benefit. I know this sounds wild, but it's true—if an Inner Circle member even asks one question, just one, then that person is likely going to stay subscribed for years. I know because I see it all the time. [08:09.5]
I've never understood the opposite of this, the financial advisors who become Inner Circle members and then leave without ever engaging, asking questions or getting involved in any way. It always seems strange to me. It will be like joining a gym, never actually going to the gym, and then canceling your gym membership. Even worse, actually, you know what? It would be worse than that, because it would be like going to or joining a gym with free access to personal trainers whenever you want them, and then never going and then canceling. I just can't relate to the types of people who think like that and do that. I'll never understand it. I've tried to understand it. I simply cannot relate.
But this goes well beyond the newsletter because these financial advisors engage in other areas of their lives. They ask questions. They get involved. They are active participants in their lives. They don't let life pass them by. It's this proactive mindset that sets them apart. The financial advisors who engage, ask questions and fully leverage the resources they have at their disposal, they're the ones who consistently see growth. [09:12.4]
I'll give you another specific example I've seen. I've noticed that successful financial advisors are far more likely to consume resources, like blogs, YouTube channels, and so on, of the software they're using. They're more likely to contact customer service with questions. Why? Because they want to get the most out of their resources, and it's no surprise that they get better results, because they engage and they get the benefits from engaging.
No. 3: they use multiple marketing strategies. In my opinion, this is the holy grail of all marketing. It is the most effective thing I have ever seen for getting more clients and building a better business. I mean, unless a financial advisor already has a dozen different marketing strategies and he or she could likely benefit from adding another one. [10:00.6]
Let me give you a perfect example. I have been teaching this trifecta for years: website, email, LinkedIn. Here's why, because research indicates that the number one and number two ways investors will search for and/or vet a financial advisor are, 1) search engines, and 2) LinkedIn. That's an important piece of information.
Another important piece of information to have is that the front-end conversion rate for financial advisors is pretty low, extremely low compared to other industries, and that makes sense. It's okay, because it's not like they're selling shoes or low-priced products, or something for 20 bucks or 30 bucks. They're asking people to open up about their financial lives. Of course, the conversion rate is going to be low on the front end. Of course, it is. It is very rare that someone sees a financial advisor for the first time and says, “Oh, yeah, I have to send an appointment right away.” However, the person is likely to do something like subscribe to an email list. [10:58.1]
Why? Because the person isn't interested enough to set an appointment yet, but he or she is interested enough to get involved in the financial advisor’s world, and the email marketing is like the closer in the sales situation. The email-marketing sequence closes the appointment. It sets the appointment. Do you see how this works? You are combining the multiple marketing strategies to get better results, because I promise you, if there's a financial advisor who has only LinkedIn or only email, or only a website, then that advisor's results just would not be as good.
I'll give you another example. Let's say you're giving a seminar, and the goal of your seminar is to get people to set appointments with you. You do your song and dance. You give a bunch of helpful information and then it's time for people to indicate that they're interested. Not everyone is going to be interested in setting an appointment right away.
But if you offer them something else, some other way to engage with you, then your conversion rates will likely go up over time. This could be as simple as adding a slide with your website or your landing page or LinkedIn, or something. Just includes something to get people engaged. Have another marketing strategy ready to go. [12:10.0]
If you only get one thing from all of these 300 podcast episodes, just one thing where, if you wake up in the middle of the night, I shake you awake and I say, “Hey, what's one thing that you learned from James Pollard?” I want you to say, “Multiple marketing strategies.” It is the most important contribution I have ever made to the financial-advisor marketing world. I pioneered this approach in the financial-advice industry. Don't let anyone tell you differently. It is so wonderful and I love it. It has just produced tremendous success for financial advisors. [12:39.4]
Listen up, financial advisors. This is something special I'm doing exclusively for people who listen to this podcast. If you subscribe to the Inner Circle Newsletter over at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching, I will send you a collection of seven copyright-free emails, personally written by me, that you can use right away to begin getting more clients.
I call these my “objection-busting” emails, because they are designed to overcome the biggest objections financial advisors face. All you have to do is send me an email letting me know you’ve subscribed and I will reply with a link where you can download them for free.
I originally offered these in the May 2024 Inner Circle Newsletter issue, and it was one of the most popular bonuses I've ever given away. Today, these seven objection-busting, copyright-free emails are only available to listeners of this podcast, because I'm not mentioning them anywhere else. Go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching to subscribe today. Now, back to the show.
No. 4: they have progression-based hobbies, and what I mean by this is they have hobbies where they can get better, they can improve. I don't have any stats or official numbers for this because I only started noticing it in the past few years, but the most successful advisors I've encountered—and my data for this comes from the Inner Circle Newsletter, simply because I engage with them the most and they're just there, and I've seen what really works and what doesn't. I can't just pull financial advisors out of thin air. I can only speak for what I've seen. But within the Inner Circle, the most successful financial advisors—tend to have these sorts of hobbies. [14:15.8]
I think this is a bit of a chicken or egg problem, because I'm not sure if the hobbies contribute to their success or if they're simply more likely to do those hobbies due to other things that make them successful. Either way, it's interesting to see how pursuits like golf or tennis or jiu-jitsu, or all these pursuits where skill development, discipline, consistent effort, all of those things lead to visible improvements over time. They get better.
I've also seen financial advisors play instruments, musical instruments, running marathons, woodworking, just hobbies that involve things like setting goals, measuring progress, achieving milestones, all the stuff that carries over into business. That mindset involved in those hobbies, it seamlessly translates into their professional lives and it's so cool to see. I'm not going to spend much time on this, because it is what it is. I just thought it was fascinating. They tend to have these hobbies. [15:08.3]
No. 5: they are not extreme extroverts. Here's something funny, and you can believe me or not, I don't really care. I can only share the information with you. It's up to you to accept it. I feel like a lot of you won't believe me. I offer an email-marketing consultant 10 slots per month, and each slot is 5,500 bucks for 90 minutes, so it's not, quote-unquote, “cheap,” but remember what I told you about ROI. The successful financial advisors know that 90 minutes spent with me talking about email marketing will virtually guarantee, I can't promise results, but virtually guarantee, get pretty darn close to guaranteeing a lot more money, provided they apply the information. [15:49.5]
The people who hire me for this consulting usually seem the most introverted, but they are doing so well. I love these people, they are awesome. And how do I say this? Because it seems like some extroverted people love to brag about how well they're doing and how awesome they are, but I see the introverted people in these consulting calls and even in my office hours with Inner Circle members, and I know they're doing much better than the extroverted advisors who just brag and brag and brag.
I don't really have much of an explanation for this, although I have a theory, and I think I might be right. My theory is that introverted people are interested in building systems and that is what makes them successful over the long term. They're eventually going to get to a place where their systems are doing the bulk of the work for them.
Even in my case, I'm slightly introverted. I'm in the middle of the introversion–extroversion scale, but I am slightly more introverted than extroverted, and I'm interested in systems. Heck, this podcast is a system, because while you're listening to this I am off doing something else. I could be eating or sleeping, or playing or working, or doing anything, really. This podcast is not dependent on my time outside of recording the episodes. [17:02.6]
Yet, many extroverted financial advisors use marketing strategies that depend on their time. They like meeting people. They like being one-on-one, and there's nothing wrong with that, but you have to see it for what it is, because what you're gaining in the short term with immediate effectiveness, you're also giving up in the long term because you'll always be tied to your individual effort.
The ideal would be for financial advisors to do a mix of both. But I think it's interesting how many of my Inner Circle members who are doing really well are introverts, or at least not extroverts. They're actually far more introverted than you might think.
No. 6: they are detail-oriented. Whenever I encounter financial advisors who say they want to outsource everything or hire someone to just, quote-unquote, “do marketing,” I chuckle to myself, I shake my head, because I know what's coming. I rarely try to tell them otherwise anymore. I used to, but I don't really do that anymore, because I feel like it's one of those things where they have to learn the hard way. They're just going to have to bang their head against the wall and figure out for themselves that it's a bad idea. Just little old James saying, “Don't do it. Don't do it,” for some reason, it just doesn't get through their thick skulls. [18:10.4]
There are so many things that can go wrong if you simply hand the reins to someone else. I don't say that to scare you, but it's a reality, not just in marketing, either. It's not just marketing. If you hire someone like an attorney or an accountant and you give that person the freedom to do whatever without ever checking his or her work, then you're running a high risk of getting ripped off. It's just the way it is.
If you hire an employee for anything in your business and say, “Look, I'm never going to watch you. I'm never going to check your results. I don't have any metrics for you. I just want you to do whatever,” that is a horrible idea. Even if you say, “I'm going to check on your work. I'm going to track you. I'm going to measure your effort,” if you don't know what the heck you're supposed to be tracking, then you're asking for trouble, too, because you have to know what you want in order to optimize for it. [18:57.0]
There's a quote that gets attributed to Peter Drucker. I'm not sure if it comes from him or not, but the quote goes like this: “What gets measured gets managed.” That has been so true in my experience, you have to be on top of these things. If it's important to you, then you will measure it. Again, it's not just marketing. Even in your personal life, if decreasing your blood pressure is important to you, then you will measure it. If maintaining a household budget is important to you, then you will measure it.
I always thought it was weird how financial advisors can be so deep in spreadsheets and tracking apps for other people, their clients and prospective clients, yet completely go hands off for themselves. They just fly blind. Just do what you do for other people. Keep your financial advisor hat on when you're working for yourself.
Finally, the seventh thing I've noticed that successful financial advisors do is they don't succumb to their mind’s defense mechanisms. Here's what I mean. The human mind is a fascinating thing. We have only scratched the surface here, in the year of our Lord 2024, on what the mind is capable of and what it can do for us. But what we know so far is it will do everything it can to fight improvement. [20:13.6]
It wants to stay wherever you are right now because you're alive and you're surviving, and that's the goal. Change is scary. Our minds have layers upon layers of defense mechanisms designed to push away anything that challenges the status quo. Here's what some of those defense mechanisms look like. I'm just going to share a few with you. Interpreting any criticism as an insult. That's one of the defense mechanisms.
My Inner Circle Newsletter has allowed me, as I said earlier, to see behind the scenes of many financial advisors’ businesses. Like I said, I've seen ad accounts, CRMs, balance sheets, all that good stuff. In other words, I've seen what really works and what doesn't work. Still, still, that doesn't stop financial advisors from perceiving my legitimate, well-informed criticism as an insult in some cases. [21:02.1]
For example, I might say this. I might say, “Hey, changing your landing page to a simple headline, image and bullet points is probably going to increase your conversion rate.” But what a defensive financial advisor will hear is this: “Yo, you big dummy, your website is terrible, and so are you. You're a bad person. Your family probably hates you, and rightly so.” They just hear something that isn't there. They perceive it as an insult.
Here's another defense mechanism: focusing on the messenger to avoid hearing the message. Again, the mind wants to keep you in the same place. The mind wants to keep you comfortable, so anything like criticism or a valid message, anything that comes your way, the mind is going to try to push it away. [21:45.8]
I have heard so many reasons why people don't like me. Some have said I'm arrogant. I prefer to call it confident. Others have called me pretentious. I'm not so sure about that one, because I am the least flashy person I know. I literally wear sweatpants and a hoodie all day. I drive the most basic cars, and just things like that. Others have told me they don't like my religious beliefs, and that's okay, I guess, but it's funny to me because these are the same people who love to screech about how we should be kind, tolerant and accepting of everyone. Hmm, hypocritical, if you ask me. But whether you love me or hate me, truth is truth, and the truth is the same, no matter who tells it.
I want you to imagine someone you despise. Come on, you can do it, think about someone. I can't remember the show, I think it was Family Guy or maybe it was South Park, where it was, like, “Tell me about that girl you don't like.” Think about that girl you don't like, someone who makes your stomach just turn and churn. Now imagine that person telling you gravity is real because any two objects with mass attract each other. Does the principle of gravity suddenly become false because you dislike the messenger? No. Again, truth is truth. [22:58.1]
Another defense mechanism. This is the last one I'll share with you. I don't want to go on forever about this. I'm just going to share one more and then I'm going to close the show. Another defense mechanism is pretending that any self-improvement would somehow be selling out their true selves. This is a big one, too.
Here's a scenario I see quite often. A financial advisor has been in business for several years, maybe even more than a decade, has built a decent client base. He's comfortable, so comfortable, in fact, that any suggestion of trying something new, like investing in marketing or professional development, feels unnecessary, even wasteful, to him. He might notice that his colleagues are surpassing him. He sees people on LinkedIn having success and he's like, What the heck? What the heck are they doing? He sees newer financial advisors growing faster than him, and that really bugs him. He thinks, How are they doing it? They need to pay their dues. [23:48.0]
You see, he has an image of himself. Let's call it his true self—despite it not being true at all, but that's what he thinks of as his true self—and his true self can figure it out alone, because he's tough. He's a go-getter. He doesn't need any stinking help. Other people have images of themselves, too, the self-images. Their true selves might be open to accepting help.
That's the difference. Many financial advisors are afraid to get help, because they either consciously or unconsciously feel like it's not who they really are. They feel like it's not something their true self would do, so they stay where they are. They stay comfortable, even if it costs them, because while other people are refining, updating, optimizing, getting better, they just stay there in their comfort zone. It's sad, really—but here's the lesson for you. I want you to get this. It is perfectly natural for you to feel this way. Like I said earlier, the mind is designed for this to happen. A lot of people need something to jolt them out of their comfort zone. [24:52.1]
With that said, I'd like to wrap up this episode with something that might jolt some people out of their comfort zone, not everyone, but some people, I'm not even going to be a [unclear 25:00.8] marketer or anything. I'm just going to put it out there. December 30 and December 31 are the final two days where the Inner Circle Newsletter will be priced at $99 per month. This is it. On January 1, 2025, it will be $199 per month. Everyone who subscribes at the $99 per month price will continue to pay $99 per month for as long as they're subscribed.
Many financial advisors who are on the fence about subscribing have finally gotten off the fence. A lot of people subscribed earlier this month and last month. That's a good thing. The jolt of the price increase was enough to get them over their natural defense mechanisms. However, many advisors are still on the fence about it. I'm sure they have their reasons. I'm sure they're telling themselves stories, such as, “I don't have time right now” or “I need to make more money before I invest in something like this,” or “I’ve tried similar things and they didn't work.”
Just a side note: if that's you and you think, Oh, I’ve tried similar things and I've done marketing things in the past and they haven't worked, trust me, you have not tried similar things because there is nothing similar to the Inner Circle, period. [26:06.5]
The truth is, most of the success stories you hear from other advisors are not because they had more free time than you or because they were magically more gifted than you at marketing. It's because they invested in a structured approach that was proven to work and they followed through. They got over the defense mechanisms in their minds. They rejected the status quo.
So, if you're on the fence, ask yourself, are you resisting because you truly don't see value at $99 per month, which is the equivalent of $3.26 per day. Actually, less than that. It's just crazy, right? Or is it because, deep down, the idea of being guided to do better than you have done before feels a bit uncomfortable? If you can get past that initial discomfort, you may find that the return on this kind of investment, and the money-in, the money-out, is more than worth it. Something to think about.
If you're interested, you can subscribe at TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching. And I will catch you next week, and actually next year. [27:06.3]
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