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: It has been a long time since I've done an episode where I rant for a little bit. This is going to be one of those episodes. What's funny is that my rant-style episodes usually do well and they serve as a way for me to filter the wheat from the chaff, because every so often I have to clean house in my email list, in the Inner Circle, and, yes, in this Financial Advisor Marketing podcast. I talk all the time about how marketing should be about attraction and repulsion, and these sorts of episodes help me filter out the wrong types of advisors from my world. [01:03.6]
Let me give you a fair warning. This episode is not for the easily offended. If you're easily offended, I advise you to stop listening right now. Actually, you should unsubscribe from this podcast because you and I probably aren't going to jive together anyway. For the rest of you who stick around to listen to this episode, I am going to say things that might jolt you awake. I might completely change your world view. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, who knows? Anyway, here we go, the first harsh truth I want to share with you is that you are probably not doing enough.
Every so often, I'll hear from financial advisors who tell me that they feel like they aren't doing enough in their marketing and in their business and guess what, 99.99% of the time they aren't. If you are in growth mode, you should be working. Am I the type of guy to tell you to give up time with your family so you can work on your business? No, absolutely not, because your customers and clients probably aren't going to be next to you when you're on your deathbed, but your family will be. [02:06.4]
So, I'm not going to tell you to put your business over your family, but I will tell you this—if you're watching hours of TV per night, if you're going on these six-hour hikes on the weekend, if you're taking all these little trips and wasting all this time, and your business is suffering, I don't feel sorry for you, not one bit, because you chose to watch Netflix instead of getting off your lazy butt and working.
Honestly, you should be extra ashamed, because you could literally do a lot of marketing work while watching TV. You could have your laptop in your lap or your cell phone in your hand and get your marketing work done at the same time. But you don't do that, do you? And don't even get me started on mindlessly scrolling social media. Oh my goodness, social media, it is like the brain rot of the world. The average person spends something like two or three hours per day scrolling social media. What in the heck is going on here? Does that do anything for your business? No. [03:01.5]
Seriously, think about the last time that your business has been positively impacted from you scrolling social media. If you're going to be on there, on the TikTok or on the Gram, or on the Facebook or on the LinkedIn, or on the X, be a producer, not a consumer. You should use social media instead of having it use you. Guess what? When I'm on social media, I'm responding to messages from financial advisors. I'm replying to comments from financial advisors. I'm sharing content to go out to financial advisors, and that content sometimes gets viewed hundreds of times. Other times, it gets viewed tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of times. I am using social media to benefit my business.
Imagine for a minute how much better the entire world would be if everyone took one hour from social media time each day, or TV time, it doesn't matter, just an hour, and put it into something productive, building things serving others, something like that. We would live in a utopia. It would be amazing. We would have flying cars and the streets would be paved with gold. It would be fantastic. [04:05.7]
Here's another harsh truth. Oh, get ready for this one. Mental toughness is one of the most criminally underrated aspects of business success I have ever seen. Back in 2023, I started tweaking a lot of marketing materials at The Advisor Coach to purposefully attract mentally-tough financial advisors, and it worked really well. In 2023 and early 2024, I attracted some of the best financial advisors I've ever met in my entire life and in the business. They are awesome people.
So, I am sure I made the right move by leaning into mental toughness, but I must confess, oh, forgive me, for I have sinned, I haven't been doing it as much in the past six months or so, and I'll be 100% honest with you, I’ll tell you, I have felt the effects, because I've had a few mentally-weak financial advisors slip through the cracks and it is completely my fault, a hundred percent my responsibility. I accept both responsibility and accountability for it. [05:01.1]
As of today, I'm tightening the reins again, baby, because it is remarkable to see the difference between a mentality of a financial advisor who is just tough as nails versus the mentality of a financial advisor who is feeble and frail. Ooh, that kind of rhymed, didn't it? That was cool. To be clear, I don't think anyone is born with an armor-plated mind of mental toughness, but I think some people are naturally better at it than others. They're wired a little tougher than others, but still, it is a trait that must be cultivated. For the most part, I don't think you're born with it. I think you have to have it trained. You have to train it for yourself.
The word “weak” means “liable to break or give way under pressure.” That is the dictionary definition. If you look up “weak,” that is what it means. Running a business is pressure. That's all it is. You have pressure to perform, pressure to execute, pressure to do things. If you cannot handle pressure, then you are not going to have a good time in business. Sorry, not sorry. It is that simple. [05:58.8]
President Harry Truman had this saying, which I love, “If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” and that is so true. Mental toughness means you will commit. You will persist until your goal is accomplished. Stop believing in magical fairy dust that will turn your life around overnight. Put in the work. Stop “trying stuff” for a month or two and then giving up.
Now, I actually build this stuff into my marketing materials. For example, this is Day 900 of me using the Bible App. Actually, you know what? Let me check, yeah, okay, I have my phone in my hand now I'm looking, it's 901, so every single day for 901 straight days, I have used the Bible App. When was the last time you committed to your goals or to anything for 901 days without stopping?
Mental toughness is closely related to just not being afraid to do things either, because so many financial advisors worry about every little thing and they nitpick and quibble over everything they can find. I was a guest on this podcast about mindset and I'm not a mindset guy. I don't consider myself to be [one]. Every so often, I talk about mindset simply because it's a topic that needs to be addressed, but I don't posture myself as a mindset guy. [07:13.7]
I was asked what I did when I felt afraid or felt hesitation or something like that. I don't remember the exact question, but it was something like that, and I remember feeling that I honestly did not know how to answer the question because I don't feel that. I have beaten the hesitation out of me. My soul doesn't hesitate anymore
Part of this is a Christian thing, because do you know what the most common phrase in the Bible is? “Fear not.” “Do not be afraid.” “Be not afraid.” Basically, don't be scared. Don't be a scaredy cat. Why in the world would I hesitate? Do you understand that the Bible specifically says, “Be anxious for nothing”? Anxiety is not my problem. It's God's problem. 1 Peter says, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” I don't even have to be anxious. Being anxious, that's not my job. That is for God to deal with, not me. [08:07.6]
I've had health scares. I've had personal troubles. I've had times where I've invested huge chunks of my net worth into things and I wasn't sure I'd get my investment back. Was I anxious? I'm going to be a hundred honest with you. I'm going to keep it all the way real with you and say, yes, I was anxious. I did feel that knee-jerk pang of anxiety, but it didn't last. It lasted maybe a few minutes because then I remembered that is not my job, and a lot of financial advisors have seen they have forgotten that it is not their job.
But it's not even a religious thing necessarily. Let's ignore the Christian aspect of it for a minute. Let's just look at it logically. Anxiety cannot do anything for you. It doesn't do anything positive to improve your situation, nothing at all, because fear and love cannot exist in the same space, and you want to grow your business and improve your life from a place of love, because you love yourself, you love your clients, and you love the things that you can do for them, for yourself, for your family, for others. If you're constantly fearful or anxious, then you are driving love out of that space. [09:11.3]
That's why it kills me when I get emails from financial advisors who say they're thinking about joining the Inner Circle or that they'll get around to it. It is literally only $199 per month. If you are anxious and fearful of investing $199 per month into yourself and your business, then you have huge, huge problems, because you are operating in a fantasy land where you think you can parlay those fearful, anxious beliefs into a situation of love and abundance, and it cannot happen. Notice, I didn't say “might not” happen. It “cannot” happen. You cannot have seven-figure outcomes with three-figure anxieties. Ooh, that's a quotable. Let's put that on social media. [09:50.6]
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.
You cannot have seven-figure outcomes with three-figure anxieties. I'm not even going to make it about me or the Inner Circle. Forget about me for a second. Forget about the Inner Circle. Let's say you're a financial advisor and you have a goal of building a million-dollar business. If I ask you how many marketing and business books you've read in the past month, your answer better not be zero, because if it is, then you are living in a fantasy land. [11:16.6]
If I ask you how many mentors and coaches and teachers and guides and trainers you have to guide you to where you want to be, your answer better not be zero, because, again, fantasy land, because that's like believing a baby can be born and somehow accumulate PhD levels of intelligence without any help from the outside world whatsoever, because if you're making a million dollars per year in your business, then congratulations, that's the equivalent of a PhD—at least, for financial advisors. In other businesses, not so much, but for financial advisors, yes.
A baby has to have help from the outside world. A baby has to have parents and teachers and help along the way. I don't know if you know this or not, but babies don't just figure things out. They need modeling. They need examples. Have you ever wondered why a baby born in France speaks French and not Chinese, or how come a baby born in China doesn't speak French? It's because the baby learned the language from someone else. [12:13.7]
You are absolutely foolish if you believe that you'll just figure everything out on your own to do everything yourself with no outside help whatsoever. It is legitimately delusional, and I mean that in the true sense of the word. You are literally having delusions.
Another harsh truth for you. Sometimes people are objectively better than you at some things and you can/should learn from them. I am so sick of how some people attempt to rationalize how they're special little snowflakes or that they can't learn from others and other people have nothing to offer them. Look, the truth is this, some things can be measured objectively. Money is objective. A lot of health metrics are objective. Reading comprehension is objective. There are so many things in life that are objective, and if you refuse to learn from people who are objectively better than you, that is foolish. [13:07.7]
One of my Inner Circle members emailed me asking for advice on how to deal with criticism. Long story short, there's another financial advisor at his firm who keeps criticizing his marketing approaches, and it's always weird to me that financial advisors will spend more time thinking about what the next man is doing instead of keeping their eyes on their own paper, but some people have nothing better to do. Sometimes jumping to conclusions is the only exercise that people do.
This advisor at this firm is telling my Inner Circle member that he thinks LinkedIn is silly, that direct mail doesn't work, and all these goofy things. Basically, this other advisor thinks that everything my Inner Circle member does is a bad idea. So, I asked my Inner Circle member if he would switch places with this person, and he said no way, Jose, because it turns out this guy has been divorced twice. His children apparently don't like him, and he can't seem to hold on to a nickel to save his life despite being in his mid-50s. [14:03.4]
Come on, if you're in your mid-50s, you have had 35-plus years to get your s--- together, and if you haven't done it by now, hey, my hat's off to you. Anything can change. You can turn your life around at any minute, but your track record’s not looking good, bubba.
My Inner Circle member, let's talk about him, he's in his 30s. He's happily married with three young children and I'm pretty sure he's building financial wealth for himself and his family, so I told him to forget that other guy and keep on trucking, because his results are objectively better than the financial advisor who is criticizing him.
I shared that story in an email, which I often do when financial advisors email me about stuff. I take their stories. I mean, I never reveal their names and all that stuff, unless they want me to, but I turn it into stories. I shared that story in an email. I had another financial advisor respond with another story about how he or she—I can't remember the person's name or if it was a man or a woman. I apologize if you’re listening—this guy or gal set something like 15 appointments in two weeks with a social media post. Yet, another advisor at his or her company was ragging on him or her for using social media. [15:11.7]
What the heck? It is objectively working. If you are setting appointments, it is working. I hate to break it to you, but if you're having success in setting appointments, then you should probably keep doing that.
This is one of the reasons I think financial advisors should have some sort of hobby that has quantifiable metrics. For example, I recently renovated my home gym. I shared a bunch of videos and posts online. One of the videos I shared was me repping 225 lbs. on the bench press. That is quantifiable. Either I can bench 225 lbs. for reps or I can't. Also, there is an upper limit. In lifting, it's called your one rep max. That is a number. It's not a feeling. It's not a wish. It is a number, and some people have way better numbers than I do. It would be smart of me to learn from people who have better numbers than I do to see how I can improve my number. [16:05.1]
Another video I shared online from my new home gym was a video of me closing the Captains of Crush 2.5 gripper. I've mentioned this several times on the show how I've hired a grip coach. I've been training my grip strength. One of my goals for 2025 is to close a Captains of Crush No.3 gripper. Only one American and only six people in the entire world did a certified close last year. The 2.5 is one step below the No.3. That is objective. You can either close it or you can't. There is no feeling. There is no wish. There is no kinda sorta, maybe. It's either closed or it's not. Either the handles touch or they do not, and in the case of the No.3, which I'm going for now, only one American—one—completed a certified close in 2024.
Here's something crazy. A few people got butt-hurt when I shared those videos. I even had one Inner Circle member comment on the video of me closing the 2.5, “Please cancel my subscription. I don't want to pay for feats of strength.” This is straight up Level-10 weirdo behavior to me, and I cracked up when I read that for three reasons. [17:14.8]
Reason No. 1, I've never discussed any feats of strength in the Inner Circle Newsletter, aka the thing he was actually paying for and he wasn't paying for LinkedIn. Reason No.2 is—this is going to be one of those offensive things, so here we go—I've discovered that only hyper-insecure men get butt-hurt about someone sharing feats of strength, not that it was necessarily . . . . Whatever, I'll save that story for another day.
Reason No.3 is my post about my recently renovated home gym, about the bench, about grip strength, those videos and those posts have made me more money than 95% of all the other stuff I post on LinkedIn, far more than the traditional business posts. [17:58.0]
Also, think about that, he was following me. I was not following him. Something to think about. Maybe I know a little something, and maybe this advisor could have learned something by paying attention instead of walking away from something valuable. He could have looked at what was happening and he could have been objective about it, and he could have realized, hmm, maybe these posts objectively work better.
I mean, come on, I allow financial advisors to leave the Inner Circle anytime, for any reason, including this. But this was a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. His knee-jerk reaction to me sharing something that, one, has nothing to do with the newsletter, two, is personally profitable to me, and, three, might have taught him a marketing lesson or two, is precisely why he's going to remain stuck right where he is. [18:44.3]
I've noticed, here's a good marketing lesson—if you're looking for a marketing lesson, here's a marketing lesson—people are drawn, but I should say the right people, the right people are drawn to achievement, whether it's closing a heavy gripper, whether it's climbing Mount Everest, whether it's building a successful business. If I can capture attention with a unique feat of strength that is infinitely more interesting than a bland LinkedIn post about some overused business hack, the only people who don't like seeing other people experience success are unsuccessful people. You will never have someone doing better than you criticize you for being successful. And guess what? More attention is more money, and more relationships is more money and a better business, and you can help more people. It's good all the way around. [19:26.5]
But that wasn't even the main reason why I shared this. I talk about my grip training because it's part of my life. It's who I am, and if that authenticity resonates with people who want to learn from me, that's cool. That's awesome. If it doesn't resonate, there’s the door. Don't let it hit you on the way out. No biggie. Yet for him to declare, “I don't want to pay for feats of strength,” that's a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, because the newsletter contains marketing strategies and referral-getting ideas and ways to get more clients. Nowhere in its pages is a single mention of my gripper routine, even though people keep asking me about it. [20:02.1]
Hmm, that might be a lesson in and of itself. People keep asking me about it. Huh, I wonder why. If something is working, then you should lean into it. I don't care if it's a strength thing, a story about your golden retriever, or a random hobby you have, you should lean into it, especially if it sets you apart and attracts your ideal clients, which my grip-training stuff does for me because successful financial advisors are interested in it, believe it or not. Don't worry about offending people who are a few fries short of a Happy Meal. Worry about being invisible.
With that said, I'll share one more harsh truth and then I'll hightail it out of here. If you don't like where you are right now, you probably need to do something different. So many people like complaining about their lives, but they don't do anything to change them. They don't do anything differently. They just accept that they'll be victims forever. [20:54.2]
You cannot say you want to get more clients and make more money while doing nothing differently. This means you've got to identify what you're doing now, what's working, and, more importantly, what is not working, and actively seek new methods, new strategies, new perspectives and new everything to move forward, because you can always filter through the good and the bad.
The truth is, every breakthrough, every real breakthrough in a financial advisor's business, comes from deliberate change, intentional change, purposeful change. If you're just treading water or you're unsatisfied with what you're doing right now, and all you're doing is hoping that things will somehow improve without real effort, you will stay exactly where you are or things will get worse for you. Don't let that happen.
If you're still here, thank you so much for listening. I appreciate you, and I will catch you next week. [21:45.5]
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