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: One of the most shocking things I've ever discovered in my adult life is how many financial advisors struggle with money. There's an old saying that the cobbler has no shoes or that the cobbler’s children have no shoes, whatever it is. It means the very people who provide a product or service to others often don't benefit from that product or service themselves, and, sadly, I've seen that play out in the financial advice industry. Advisors who help their clients retire are nowhere near retirement themselves. Advisors who lecture about the importance of saving and investing are living paycheck to paycheck, and if not, very darn close to it. [01:08.1]
I've talked about this before on the show, but I've seen financial advisors try to purchase stuff from me, only to get their credit cards declined. It's so interesting because you have to enter an email address when you buy from me, because that's how the invoices get delivered. They get automatically sent to your email address. Lots of financial advisors use their business email addresses.
So, I can see something like “john.smith@abcwealthmanagement.com” getting declined for a $20 purchase—I'm just making that up, by the way. I'm making up “ABC Wealth Management” and “john.smith.” I'm just making it up—but when I google John Smith and his company, I see he talks a big game on social media about how well he's doing, how awesome everything is, how he works exclusively with high-net individuals. John Smith's got it going on, right? I just sit there and laugh because it's so sad and all you could do is laugh or cry. I choose to laugh partly because I know there's a humongous psychological incongruence between what these financial advisors are doing and what they're trying to get other people to do. [02:12.2]
You can believe me or not, I really don't care. I'm telling you firsthand, secondhand and thirdhand, at this point, that being psychologically and behaviorally congruent is one of the most important things you can do if you want to have a successful business. If you are out here trying to get people to give you thousands of dollars for a financial plan, you are going to struggle immensely if you have never hired anyone for a couple of thousand dollars, if you have not gone through that same thing, if you have not walked the path that you're trying to get your clients to walk.
If you want your prospective clients to convert quickly and easily, you are doing yourself a disservice when you are slow to convert with other people. You really need to be the client you wish to see in your business. Again, you can believe me. You don't have to. It's okay, I am good either way. [03:01.0]
The contact page on my website—now that I'm thinking about this, I want to share this story—has a link to where people can pay me for half an hour of my time. I have not accepted anyone new from that in a long, long time, so just because I mentioned it here, please do not go to the contact page on my website and try to pay for that service. Sometimes, over the years, I will say yes, but most of the time, I say no, and I've been saying no and no and no and no over the past year and a half. But it's the darndest thing, because whenever I pay other people for coaching and consulting, I almost immediately begin seeing more people trying to pay me for consulting. It's almost spooky how it works.
I remember I sent a wire to someone for more than $100,000, and that very day, I had a financial advisor reach out and ask if he could pay to have me. I don't know exactly what he wanted, but I'm thinking it was kind of like he wanted me to be his on-call marketing guy, and I told him no, of course. Then he came back and he said, “We can do weekly check-ins and I could pay you $100,000 up front for the entire year.” [04:11.8]
There's a lot of wisdom in the word “circulate,” as in having money circulate. Think about that. I sent money, about $100,000 to . . . it's not important, but I sent $100,000, and then the financial advisor who wanted to hire me was like, Let me give you $100,000. Now, is that some kind of cosmic law of attraction advice? Maybe. But I think there's a far more practical explanation.
When you put yourself in the position of a buyer, you internalize what it feels like to say yes. You feel what it is like to be a buyer. You remember the skepticism you might have had. You remember the nervousness you felt, the hope and the sense of possibility, and all of the other things that come from that. That experience that you had bleeds into how you show up when you're on the other side of the table. [05:04.5]
I think it's safe to say that I have the most successful marketing newsletter ever created for financial advisors. I mean, that's just straight up objectively true. As far as I can tell, there is no one better in terms of marketing for financial advisors, it is what it is, and newsletters are my favorite product to buy. I absolutely love newsletters. I love how they give me monthly nudges. I love how they give me current information.
When I buy a course—I love courses. I have a bunch of courses. I've taken a bunch, but when I buy one—I'm worried about the information being outdated. But when I buy a newsletter, I know the author wrote it at least somewhat recently. I also love print newsletters because I can sit down and highlight them and take notes. It's not a coincidence that the very thing I love to purchase for myself is also the thing that I've been incredibly successful with using in my business. [05:56.3]
What's crazy is the Inner Circle Newsletter is actually a relatively small part of my business. It's a small part of The Advisor Coach, and if you're on my email list, you can attest to this. You know this is true. You know what I'm saying is the real deal. I plug the Inner Circle in maybe—maybe—a quarter to a third of my daily email, so most of the time, I'm talking about other things. I'm not even trying to sell the Inner Circle for the majority of the month. But guess what? It works well because I believe I am the type of person I want in my world. As within, so without. That's one of the best ways to force yourself to make more money.
Another way to force yourself to make more money is to control your social environment. Everybody knows the old saying that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. If you hang around five millionaires, you're going to be the sixth. If you hang around five losers, you're going to be the sixth loser in the group.
Jim Rohn made that saying famous, if you didn't know. Jim Rohn was the guy who started saying that, and what is interesting is, back when Jim Rohn was speaking about being the average of the five people you hang around, the internet wasn't a thing. Social media wasn't a thing. Now you have two environments. You have your physical environment and you have your digital environment. [07:11.1]
Your physical environment is where you live and who you actually spend time with face to face, and, yeah, in a perfect world, you would surround yourself with people who are doing way better than you so you can learn everything by osmosis. You would wake up in the morning, go down to your kitchen, and, boom, successful people will be right there in your kitchen and you would see everything they do. That would be pretty darn cool. That's the dream scenario, but it's not always possible, especially not if you're trying to level up, because, quite frankly, the successful people probably don't want to spend time with you anyway. I mean, yeah, that's kind of pessimistic, I guess, but it's also true.
If you're not making $100,000 or whatever per year, why in the world would someone making $10 million per year want to hang out with you on a daily basis? It's just not realistic. I have seen people give advice to financial advisors, “Oh, try to find a mentor and take your mentor out for coffee.” Look, the people that you want as your mentors are not just going to sit around waiting for you to invite them out for coffee or something, and if they say yes, that, in and of itself, should be a red flag, okay. [08:10.0]
Just think about what I talked about with the contact page. I have people contacting me, trying to give me money to help them with their businesses, and I'm legitimately just turning them down. Not to plug myself again, but wouldn't you rather learn from someone who legitimately has people in his market throwing money at him and he refuses to accept them as clients, instead of someone who has a bunch of free time in order to go out to coffee with you or some coach that offers 15 different free consultations a month and “Oh, let's just get on a one-hour Zoom call, and no cost to you. It's just a strategy session. Let's brainstorm”? No, it's goofy. It's goofy. Just use common sense here and think about what actually works, okay? [08:51.3]
So, what was I talking about? I don't even remember. The digital environment or something. Yeah, if you want to be the average of five people that you hang around and people are likely not going to hang out with you in real life, the only choice that you have here is your digital environment. You can literally plug yourself into a group of people overnight. You have masterminds and communities, and newsletters and mentorship programs. They're all out there, and, yes, you probably will have to pay to get in, so don't be cheapo. But the truth is that the payment isn't really designed to make money from the members, at least not in the good ones. It's designed to keep the non-serious people out.
When I first did this, I was really nervous. I paid my way into higher-level groups, and it was insane. I started making far more money by being in those rooms, hearing how those people thought and watching how they made decisions. I think one of the most important things I learned was how these ultra-successful people valued their time more than money. That really affected me, because you're going to pay for everything in one of two ways. That's the truth. You're going to pay with your time or you're going to pay with money, especially business experience. [10:03.7]
You're going to have to get that business experience with your time, and banging your head against the wall and your energy and sleepless nights and everything comes with it, or you're just going to pay for it. I would much rather pay with money, and I meant pay in terms of money. I'd much rather hand over a couple of thousand dollars, get the business experience, get the wisdom, get the mistakes out of the way as soon as possible. I'd rather do that.
That's why it crushes me when I see financial advisors struggling to figure everything out themselves or reinvent the wheel when I legitimately already have proven processes ready to go that they could install in their businesses and begin getting better results right away. Besides, there are some things you just can't learn on a YouTube video or in a book, or from a course. You just cannot learn those things. There are some things that you can only learn by putting yourself in the right environments. [10:54.6]
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.
Another way to force yourself to make more money is to learn hard skills. These are the kinds of skills that you can make money with directly and right away—not theory, not someday. Money, directly. Sales is the perfect example of a hard skill that can make you money right away, because if you can sell one on one, you have no excuse whatsoever for ever being broke, because you can walk into any business, any industry, and make that business more money by closing deals. [12:22.8]
Copywriting is another example of a hard skill. That's the one that I chose for the majority of my marketing career. It's salesmanship in print. If you're introverted like I am, then you can learn to sell with words. There's something magical about putting words together in a social media post or an email, or an online ad, and having people respond to it. It's awesome. It's such a good feeling. I wish everyone could feel how cool it is. The top copywriters in the world make millions of dollars per year because those skills directly generate cash. Imagine if you learned a few hard skills and then combined them with everything else I'm talking about here. [13:01.1]
A note about the copywriters. This is not me throwing shade on copywriters. This is merely me pointing out what I have observed. Some copywriters tend to have their heads so far up their butt that all they see is how they can improve the words, and they're so focused on the words in the copy and putting the right sales message out that they completely ignore the other facets of business. They ignore economic models. They ignore what the markets actually want. They ignore the tech that can accelerate their gains in the marketplace. They ignore all sorts of things, because they think, Oh, if I can just write better words and write better words and write better words, I can make more money, and that's true to a point.
But when you throw in a better business model, when you throw in better economics, when you throw in better markets, that becomes a multiplier. So, even the ultra-successful copywriters that make $1 million, $2 million, $3 million per year, if they just applied themselves to learning those other hard skills, they could make $5 million, $10 million, $15 million per year. [14:05.3]
When I say, “Force yourself to make more money,” I really mean it. At some point you have to go out there and do the work. One of the biggest lies people believe about success is that it comes from perfect planning. They think if they research enough, read enough books, watch enough YouTube videos or wait until the timing is right, they'll finally be able to make the money they think they deserve, and that’s complete nonsense. Success does not come from planning. It comes from doing, and I don't mean doing a little bit.
If you've listened to this podcast episode or this podcast in the past with all the other episodes, you've heard me talk about how one of the biggest mistakes financial advisors make is simply not doing enough—so, I mean doing a lot more. I mean getting your hands dirty, putting in so many reps and moving so fast that you basically collapse the learning curve into a fraction of the time it takes everyone else. [14:55.7]
Most people hide in preparation. When you see someone preparing to do something, when you see someone watching a whole bunch of YouTube videos and reading all the books and trying to figure everything out for himself or herself, that person is really just hiding. When those people hide, they think they're being productive because they're learning and they're studying, and they're getting ready, but what they're really doing is avoiding the discomfort of execution.
It feels safe to highlight in a book. It feels safe to take notes from a podcast episode. It feels safe to make another spreadsheet, watch another video, but it's fake. It's fake safety, because the clock is still ticking, your life is running out, and no real results are being produced. You've got to understand, every minute you spend, quote-unquote, “preparing” instead of executing is a minute you're robbing yourself of real progress.
Preparation feels good. It feels good to hide, because there's no real risk. Execution when you're actually out there doing stuff and putting in the work, that feels scary, because there's a chance you're going to fail, but failure is the only way you actually get better, or at least, risking failure. You only get better by doing the reps. [16:01.0]
Think about athletes. You don't become a great basketball player by watching film of Michael Jordan. Sure, you might improve. You might connect a few dots here and there. I'm not arguing that. You could definitely improve by watching film, but you really become great, you achieve greatness by taking 10,000 shots in the gym. You don't become a world-class boxer by reading about left hooks. You become great by throwing punches until your knuckles bleed. Business works exactly the same way.
If you're running advertisements, don't test three headlines and pat yourself on the back. Test 30. Push the system. Get so much data that it becomes impossible not to learn. If you're writing copy, don't obsess over one email for a week. Write 10 in a single sitting. Put yourself at your desk, open your Word document or your Google Doc, or whatever it is that you use, and don't move your bottom. Don't even twitch those buttocks, until you get 10 emails written. Don't move a muscle except your fingers and your hands on the keyboard. Then track which email or emails pulls in the most response. That's how you get better at writing emails, not by tweaking one sentence every seven days. [17:18.6]
Sometimes, financial advisors will reach out to me and ask what they should be doing in their business, as if they just don't have a clue. They're just sitting on a couch somewhere wondering, Gee, what do I do? I have no idea. The answer is almost always some form of getting reps in with prospective clients. In other words, how many people have been exposed to your message in the past seven days? How many people have you talked with? How many people have read your content or watched your videos, however you're doing your marketing? Okay?
How many people are seeing the stuff that you're doing? I promise you, it is a number. It is a quantifiable number. Even if you can't exactly quantify it, it exists, and it's up to you to find it and improve it, or at least, get an idea of what it is. You don't have to be smarter than other people to win. You just have to out-rep them. [18:09.7]
Most people spread their learning over three years when it really should take three months or six months. They dabble. They test a little bit here, a little bit there. They take breaks. They overthink. But if you compress those three years of learning into three months, you're going to be so far ahead. It's going to be insane, and you can do it by ramping up the intensity.
Think of it like language learning, I guess, is a good way to describe it. Someone who studies Spanish for 30 minutes a week might get decent in three years. If you just pull out your little Duolingo app and do a lesson here and there, you might get okay. But if you move to Madrid and you speak Spanish eight hours per day, even when you feel like you can't, you're going to be conversational in about three months. I see the same thing all the time with my products. I see it all the time with the Inner Circle, for sure. Financial advisors will join the Inner Circle and do so much better than their peers in an extraordinarily short period of time because they started putting in the reps. That's all it is. [19:12.4]
Let's say you're a new financial advisor and you're competing with someone who has been a financial advisor for 10 years. Let's assume that we can quantify the reps, and the advisor who has been in business for 10 years has put in 1,000, okay? I'm just making this up, but just to illustrate the point, okay, the advisor who has been in business for 10 years has 1,000 reps. If you can realistically put in 1,000 reps in the next two years, then you will have more, quote-unquote, “experience” in two years than the other advisor did in 10.
People waste so much time. They waste so much of their lives waiting for the perfect time. They think, Oh, once I save more money, I'll start, or, Oh, once I learn more about Facebook ads, I'll launch everything, or, Oh, once I feel more confident, I'll finally start prospecting. But the perfect time doesn't exist. The perfect time is now, and the act of doing creates the conditions for learning. You don't learn before you start. You learn by starting. That's why the people who make stupid amounts of money seem like they're moving at light speed. They're not smarter than you. They're just not waiting. [20:15.7]
Here's something else, and this is ironic. People avoid doing more because they think it will make their work sloppy. They believe quality comes from obsessing over the details, but the truth is, quality comes from quantity. The first 100 sales calls you make will probably be terrible, but by the 101st, you'll be way better than the first one. The first 50 ads you run might flop, but the 51st is going to be better than the first, second, third, fourth and fifth. The 51st one might be your moneymaker. The first 20 emails you send might get ignored, but by email 21 or 201, you've learned the rhythm that makes people click and you are really darn good at it. You don't find quality by waiting. You earn quality through quantity, so flood your system with reps. The faster you stack those reps, the faster you become unstoppable. [21:08.7]
Kobe Bryant had a rule, if practice started at 8:00 a.m. he would be in the gym at 6:00 a.m. or earlier, putting up 400 shots before anyone showed up. Did he need those extra reps? Probably not. At some point in his career, he probably didn't need them. He was probably good enough by everyone else's standards and by the coach's standards, but here's the thing—it was his standard. That's what made him Kobe. He was obsessed with stacking reps that by the time game day rolled around, he wasn't guessing whether his shot would fall. He knew. Business is the same. Most people take three shots. They're satisfied. They go home. But if you want to be great, you have to get those 400 in.
Alright, that is enough for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you want to learn more about what I do and how I can help you, go to TheAdvisorCoach.com. Either way, I will catch you next week. [22:03.0]
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