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: I recently got this message, and it made me laugh because it means I'm doing my job the right way. It says, “I used to listen to your podcast, but stopped because you rubbed me wrong, not what you said, but the way you said it. I tried again and I am now a fan. You haven't changed. I have. I appreciate you,” and I love that. I really do. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Stuff like that means a lot to me, and it means I'm doing my job correctly, because I'm a big believer in repulsion marketing. [01:01.2]
There's a fine art to repelling people who don't have the right mindsets and belief systems to get serious and do real work. Sometimes people just don't want to do that. We're going to talk about that concept a little bit in this podcast episode. There's an old saying that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear, and the truth is that not everyone is ready for my help. Sometimes they have to adjust and adapt in order to be ready. Sometimes they have to leave and then come back. That's okay. I want people to come in when it's the right fit at the right time for them.
I also want to explain that since the very early days of this podcast, I have stressed again and again that this is a form of entertainment, not necessarily education. I am here to entertain you on this podcast. Teaching is my business. If you want me to teach you, then you're going to have to pay me, because the game is sold, not told. If you learn something along the way, that's awesome. I'm happy for you. I'm thankful that you did, but just know, rightly or wrongly, that has never been my intention. My intention is to entertain. [02:06.0]
I always have to laugh when people say I rubbed them the wrong way or I came across like a jerk or something, because, again, I view this as an entertainment medium. I wonder if people would go up to Jack Nicholson and say, “I would have liked you, but you rubbed me the wrong way in The Shining.” I mean, no, they wouldn't do that. Of course, not, because The Shining was entertainment. They understand that Jack Nicholson, the human being, is different from Jack Torrance, I believe, was the character in The Shining. Whoever his character was in the movie, if they believed that it was the same person, they would need to get their head checked.
Now, did Jack Nicholson amplify parts of his personality and dig deep into his knowledge base to play that character? Yes, it was still really Jack Nicholson playing that character, but there's also a clear line between what he was doing for entertainment and what he was doing in everyday life. That's how I view this podcast. I guess a better example would be Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry David plays himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm, but he is not like that in real life. [03:07.5]
I've always thought it was really strange that people would make a judgment about me as a person based on what they hear on, again, what I've said multiple times is a source of entertainment. It is an entertainment medium. Yet that doesn't stop people from assuming stuff when they have never met me, have never shaken my hand, have never been on a Zoom call with me, have never done business with me whatsoever. There are people crafting these entire narratives about who I am and what I'm about despite literally never interacting with me in real life. Isn't that crazy? I think that's a little bit crazy, if you ask me.
Since we're on the topic of entertainment, I'm going to ratchet up my personality a little bit today and rant about 15 things I cannot fix, because the bottom line is, I run “the” most successful financial advisor marketing community on the planet, bar none. It's the Inner Circle. We all know this. The success stories coming from that community are unreal. [04:04.7]
If you're not an Inner Circle member, I really don't know what to tell you, especially if you've been listening to this podcast for any length of time and you've heard the mid-roll, you've heard me talk about the Inner Circle, and you have made a conscious decision to keep yourself locked out. It's just goofy. It is just awesome, and if you're not in it, then there's really nothing I can do to explain to you that it's really beneficial for financial advisors.
I am viewed as something of a fixer, meaning, financial advisors will lean on me to help them when they aren't achieving their goals as quickly as they like or when their business needs a little pick-me-up, and I can fix a lot of things, but I cannot fix these 15 things—and they are, No.1: victim mentality. I cannot help people who believe everything happens to them instead of for them. [04:51.8]
At this point, I've seen advisors from all walks of life experience the exact same things and have different responses. Death, childbirth, marriage, getting a flat tire, having a sick dog, I have seen it all. The victims will always be victims until they snap themselves out of their self-inflicted doom patterns. If you have the victim mentality, I cannot help you.
No. 2: failure to take responsibility. I also cannot help people who refuse to accept that their actions led them to this exact point in their lives, for better or worse. You are where you are right now because of the decisions that you made in your life up to this point. A popular money show surveyed its audience. It got 25,000 responses from different people and found that the average net worth of the respondents in their 30s was $650,000. The average net worth of someone in their 40s was $1.3 million.
I saw so many comments in response to that survey, like, “You're not behind,” and “Everyone runs their own race.” My friend, if you are behind, then accept it. Yes, there is such a thing as being behind. It is real. There is an objective reality that you're refusing to face if you are not taking responsibility. It's called average life expectancy. [06:10.4]
The average life expectancy in the United States is 79 years, so if you have 10,000 people that form an average, and someone is 78.9 years old and that person has $0 saved, then, yes, that person is behind. That person is, again, based on the averages, likely to die soon and not have that much money, and it's just bad, right?
It also means, if you achieve a high net worth in your 30s, you are legitimately doing better in terms of time to enjoy it and the use of money for your benefit, that sort of thing. I'm not talking about spiritual or love or family or anything. I'm literally just talking about money. You are doing better than someone who achieves that same net worth at 78.9 years old. [06:54.0]
We have a very limited time on this planet. That is an objective reality. I don't care what you think. All else being equal, it is better to get your stuff in order as quickly as possible. So, when people say, “You're not behind,” what they often mean is, “Don't feel bad,” but pretending that pace doesn't matter, pretending that time doesn't matter, but pretending that urgency does not matter, is absolutely useless.
If you are 38 years old and still sitting on like $65,000, and all of your peers are clocking 10 times that amount, that gap is trying to tell you something. Listen to it. Don't be ignorant and just plug your ears and say, “La-la-la-la-la, I can't hear you.” Don't do that.
It's just wild to me that people would rather have others tell them what they want to hear instead of just doing the work and improving their lives, but society makes a lot of money off that victim mentality, so whatever they can do to milk that out of you, they're going to do it.
No. 3: limited world view. If you think your little corner of the world is the entire universe, then you will keep recycling the same tired ideas and wondering why nothing changes, because you're just stuck in your own little bubble. You cannot see outside of everything that you do. [08:05.8]
Speaking of that, No. 4 is small thinking, lots and lots and lots of financial advisors want a champagne business with a beer ambition. It cannot happen. It won't happen. In the marketing world, this shows up as the financial advisors who reach out to three or four people per day and think that's somehow going to set them apart from everyone else.
I have said this so much on the show, but lots of advisors fail simply because they don't do enough. They are thinking way too small about what it takes to succeed, especially now in the year of Our Lord 2025. You have to get your stuff together. Almost 2026, can you believe it? Time flies when you're having fun, so it feels like a blink of an eye to me. [08:46.4]
No. 5: fear-based decision making. I cannot help you with this either. If every single move you make has to be 100% safe, you will never be highly profitable. A capitalistic society rewards risk-taking behavior. Now, of course, disclaimer here, there are ways to take, quote-unquote, “risky bets” while minimizing risk, but that's a topic for another day.
Actually, that's a topic for my Inner Circle members because that's something I talk about all the time, how to take seemingly super risky things and make them not very risky. Warren Buffett says that risk comes from what you don't know, and that's kind of my philosophy as well. [09:23.0]
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.
I've been laughing a lot recently because of all these things. I laugh when financial advisors act like joining the Inner Circle is this big, scary, risky thing, when every single day that passes is another day closer to death and another day where they have to figure everything out on their own. It's another day where they could have shortened their learning curves. They could have accomplished their goals, or at least gotten closer. Fear is the thing holding them back.
They're afraid to part with that all too precious, $199 per month. They just can't do it. Oh, they need it. They need that $199 so much. They need to have Netflix, Hulu, and all these subscriptions, and they need to spend it on some nonsense. [11:03.1]
Again, speaking of that, the No. 6 thing that I can't fix is stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. Sometimes advisors will tell me that they're saving money by not investing in things, by not investing in a tool that can help them, by pausing a marketing campaign or not marketing at all. They think that's saving money. That's so dumb. It's crazy to me that people who give financial advice for a living are so susceptible to this trap. It is not saving money.
If you could have made an investment that yielded you 300%, but you didn't, then how much money did you save? You didn't save anything. Apply that logic to investing for retirement. “Oh, I could have put 1,000 bucks into an index fund, but I didn't do that, so I saved money.” No, you did not. You did not save money. You actually have negative savings now, because your decisions have cost you money. That's what happens to financial advisors every single day. [12:01.5]
No. 7 is chronic excuse-making. If you have a story for every little thing that you cannot do, then I can't help you. “Oh, but James, my compliance department.” “Oh but James, my niche is different.” “Oh, but James, people in my area don't respond to this.” Yeah, okay, sure, whatever, believe what you want to believe. You are the one financial advisor in the world who is trapped in a pocket of alternate physics and alternate reality where the marketing principles don't apply, I got it.
Financial advisors will look for any excuse. If they have this chronic excuse-making behavior, they will look for any excuse. If I have 10,000 financial advisors in my world from Canada, then I will have a financial advisor reach out. “All of your marketing principles and systems and strategies, do they apply to people in Canada?” I don't know. I have no idea. I just know that 10,000 people have used it and made it work, but for you, it probably won't work. They do it with Edward Jones. “Oh, I'm at Edward Jones, so I'm special.” “Oh, I'm at Merrill Lynch, so I'm special.” Get over yourself. [13:02.8]
No. 8: motivation hunting. People who need to feel good before they do good usually fail to do good, because they're never really going to feel good. They're seeking this chronic motivation and they just need it all the time. It's goofy. It's like needing all of the lights to be green before you ever leave your house on a trip. If you need all the stars to align, you're going to be stuck forever.
No. 9: dabbling. If you're just trying a marketing campaign or if you're just thinking about growing your business, then congratulations, you will get absolutely nowhere. The best advisors I work with. They make serious commitments. They plant their flags. They burn their boats. Whatever metaphor you want to use, they do it. They just get to work.
No. 10: wanting shortcuts, but hating the work, hating to do the work. Doing the work is what sets the winners apart from everyone else anyway. Lots of people would accept shortcuts. That's not new. That's not a special thing. If you accept a shortcut that does not make you part of the 1%. What makes you part of the 1% is doing the work that the 99% will not do. [14:11.6]
The trippiest part is that doing the gosh-darn work is the greatest shortcut there is. It's right there. It's in front of you. It's right in front of your face. You see it. You know if you do the work, then you can get the result. Someone is where you want to be right now because he or she actually did the work instead of wasting time.
Do you want a shortcut? Here it is: put your butt in a chair at your desk and do the things that you know you need to do. Do not raise your gluteus maximus and gluteus minimus from that chair until the work is done. There, that is your shortcut.
No. 11 is being allergic to feedback. Sometimes advisors will tell me that they want to grow, but then get offended when I tell them that their messaging is confusing or the calls to action are limp, or whatever marketing advice I give them. I am not a yes man. I will not say yes to things that are stupid. I will not stroke your ego if that means your business will suffer. [15:09.3]
I know this is news to the horrible financial advisors out there, but I actually care about your clients. I really do. I truly do. These are family members and friends, and mothers and daughters, and fathers and sons, and brothers and sisters. These are people out there with real lives and real hopes and ambitions, and they have money and they're trusting you with it. I'm not going to let you do stupid stuff. I'm just not. I'm not going to say, “Yes, that's a great idea,” for you to go out and screw up your business and, by extension, screw with your clients’ lives. I'm just not going to do it.
I have met many people who are so concerned about their fragile little egos that they insulate themselves from any and all feedback. To be fair, 99%, I'd say, 99.9% of feedback is complete and utter B.S., so you shouldn't really listen to that much feedback. You also shouldn't accept any feedback from people if that feedback is irrelevant to your goals. [16:02.8]
However, let's say that your goal is to get more clients as a financial advisor. If you're talking to me, someone who specializes in doing just that, someone who has literally created some of the most effective client-getting marketing campaigns in financial advice history, then maybe you want to take my feedback on the subject. Okay? Maybe my feedback is the feedback that matters.
No. 12: analysis paralysis. Some advisors have been researching their marketing plan longer than some marriages last. They've read every book, taken every course. They've built color-coded spreadsheets that look so pretty and they're mapping out all 47 possible ideal client avatars. They do all of this stuff, but somehow their client is emptier than a gym in February. It's a ghost town.
Here's the uncomfortable truth—analysis paralysis is just fear wearing a fancy disguise. You are afraid. You're not being strategic. You're scared. It's okay to be scared. I'm scared every single day. I'm terrified. Every single day, I'm terrified of something, right? Everybody is scared of something, every single person. I don't care who tells you otherwise. [17:13.8]
So, stop rearranging furniture. Stop mistaking motion for progress, which is actually the 13th thing I can't fix. We're going to talk about that. The success you seek is hidden behind your action, even if your action is imperfect, which it will be anyway.
I've already given away No. 13, which is mistaking motion for progress, mistaking activity for progress, whatever you want to call it. Whatever it is, it is a classic. Some advisors confuse being in motion with actually moving forward. They've got the calendars and the to-do lists, and the highlighters and the focus music playlist, and by 09:15 a.m., they've already convinced themselves that they're crushing it. But after all of that busyness, what do they actually have to show for it? Nothing but a spotless inbox maybe. Maybe they've hit Inbox Zero. They've got a pretty spreadsheet or something. They've got a slightly used Keurig. [18:03.4]
These are the people who brag about working 12-hour days, but can't point to a single measurable result. They confuse responding to emails with building a business. They think that organizing files is a lead-generation activity. They are the productivity equivalent of a hamster sprinting on a wheel. There's a lot of effort there. The wheel goes round and round, but there's no destination. There's no progress actually being made.
I have seen advisors spend hours prepping to make calls. They do things like rewrite their scripts and check their CRM. They get mentally ready. They psych themselves up—and then they don't really do anything, and then they think that they had a good day. A good day? You didn't talk to a single prospect. You just stretched before a game you never played. It's silly.
No. 14: ignoring data. Not going to say much about this. It's just that you can't improve what you don't measure, so if you ignore data, then you're not going to improve. You're just flying blind. [19:00.6]
No. 15, the final thing I cannot fix is expecting me to care more about your business than you do. I wake up every single day eager to help financial advisors build their dreams. Nothing gives me more joy than getting feedback from financial advisors who have better lives because of my help—but I can't want it more than they do.
As much as I wish I could be in every advisor's office, moving their arms like a little puppeteer, moving their hands for them, and doing the actual work, I can't. I can't do that. I'm just a guy. I'm just a guy in his office, and that's all I can do. Still, the Inner Circle Newsletter is the next best thing—so, let me be clear, if you're going to subscribe, be ready to do the work and implement. [19:50.7]
Also, subscribe with the mentality that you're going to stay subscribed for years, because you and I can build something special together. If you're not interested in building something special together over years, please don't bother. If you're interested, if that sounds good to you, go to TheAdvisorCoach.com/coaching, or google “James Pollard Inner Circle.” However you want to get there, get there.
Either way, I will catch you next week. [20:18.0]
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