We talked with Mary about:

• Embracing the “blue ocean mentality” instead of competing 
• How to elevate your voice to make an impact in the thought leadership space
• The consistent effort and ongoing learning it takes to be a thought leader

About Mary Carlson:

Mary Carlson is a financial expert with a passion for integrating financial education and human behavior. After earning a financial planning degree from Texas Tech University, she worked as a lobbyist for the Financial Planning Association, focusing on retirement, taxes, and financial education. Her career later took her to the Pentagon, where she taught military personnel about budgeting, savings, and retirement planning. While earning her doctorate in financial therapy, Mary researched the financial behaviors of soldiers, deepening her understanding of the emotional aspects of money. She also spent three years at the CIA providing financial counseling. Today, she runs her own consulting business, Financial Behavior Keynote Group, using her unique blend of financial knowledge and behavioral insights to help others.

Featured Resources 

• Dr. Mary Carlson on LinkedIn 
• Financial Behavior Keynote Group on LinkedIn
• Financial Behavior Keynote Group on YouTube
• Financial Behavior Keynote Group website 
• Kitces.com

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• Telling Finance- and Caused-Based Stories through Filmmaking with Robin Hauser
• Making Noise to Tackle the Financial Education Problem 
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Full Audio Transcript:

00:00:00 - 00:06:24

Lauren Hong

Mary, thank you for joining us today.

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00:06:26 - 00:08:29

Mary Carlson

Yeah. It's so great to be here. Thanks, Lauren.

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00:09:01 - 00:33:04

Lauren Hong

Oh my gosh. Yes, I had the best time checking out your website. You work with so many amazing folks. Not to mention your speaking credentials and how deeply you know the advisory community and the work that's going on there. You've done such a great job of positioning yourself, and I am really looking forward to hearing from you today, not just about how you got here in your journey and the day-to-day work you do.

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00:33:07 - 00:51:04

Lauren Hong

But I know we're going to get into a little bit more about how you even get going with identifying a topic and speaking and really building a thought leadership platform. So we have a lot to cover and a short period of time. Over to you. How did you get into this world?

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00:51:04 -00:54:04

Lauren Hong

And tell us a little bit more about your business.

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00:54:07 - 01:12:05

Mary Carlson

Sure. I thank you so much, Lauren. And yeah, I feel lucky every day to be able to work with some of the most incredible minds in the industry, some of the most developing thought leadership I've ever experienced. So it has been really fun. But let me take you back really quick and give you a quick backstory of where I came from.

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01:12:05 - 01:33:00

Mary Carlson

So I came out of Texas Tech's financial planning program. I love financial planning. It just makes me so excited to know these things I feel like everybody in the world needs to know. And so my little 25-year-old self, and I have a degree under my belt and thought, I'm going to go to Washington, D.C. and knock on the halls of Congress and teach the world financial education.

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01:33:00 - 01:55:20

Mary Carlson

So that's what I did. I came out to D.C. Long story short, I ended up at FPA as a lobbyist and did that. I had a portfolio of retirement, taxes, and then financial education. We met in the Treasury's Gold Room and I had some really cool experiences with senators and representatives and in the White House a few times, some really cool, interesting things.

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01:55:23 - 02:12:27

Mary Carlson

And I just kept being a fan. Well, long story short, I ended up going into wealth management for a short period and never found my footing. I just never felt like it was a total fit after I had these big dreams. I'm a big dreamer and a big idealist. And so of course, I went to the Pentagon instead.

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02:12:29 - 02:42:23

Mary Carlson

That's the next logical bit of it. I had a great experience traveling all over the world teaching members of the military about financial education principles and everything from budget and savings to their specific retirement plan to how very specific military benefits and services work. And that was really fun. So that's where I got into this idea of speaking and really latched on and thought, I really like this.

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02:42:26 - 03:13:16

Mary Carlson

Fast-forward, I ended up going to Fort Riley, Kansas, which is right next to Manhattan, Kansas, where Kansas State is, and worked on my Ph.D. simultaneously while also working on the military compound there. And I worked with families of the fallen. And so specifically, what they would get, almost half a million death benefit and gratuity, after their loved one died, which really came with a lot of emotion attached.

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03:13:16 - 03:35:10

Mary Carlson

That felt like blood money. I'd much rather have my loved one here. But in this program and the Ph.D. program I was in, we were in financial therapy. We're talking about financial behavior. And that's where my real interest in this idea of money is not just money, right? Money is so tied to emotion and behavior and psychology.

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03:35:17 - 04:02:02

Mary Carlson

And I was seeing it firsthand play out in a life and death scenario. The quickest we ever saw half a million spent was three months. And there's so much guilt and shame and anger and all those intangible feelings that came along with that. And so I ended up writing my dissertation on the financial behaviors of soldiers before and after deployment and really fleshed out what that looked like.

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04:02:04 - 04:35:14

Mary Carlson

And we were actually right there. And so we were able to get over 800 soldiers before and after deployment. And mind you, this was a time when they were going to war zones four or five, six times, back to back to back. It was putting a lot of stress and strain on these families. So that really kind of was my entrance into this whole idea of money's not just about learning what to do and what not to do but it's that whole integration of the human side of money and what makes us us. I went back to Washington, D.C. and worked for the accounting associations.

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04:35:14 - 05:22

Mary Carlson

I've worked for federal. I've been on the Hill, worked at the federal and local level as well and then I got married, started having kids and decided — You know what I wanted? I've always wanted to own my own business. So I started a consulting business and ended up at the CIA and spent three years at the Central Intelligence Agency doing financial counseling for members of the CIA.

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05:22 - 05:27:04

Mary Carlson

And so it was really, really interesting to learn. They are very different from my military experience. Yeah, a population but also some different experiences and the coolest part of that experience was I was embedded in an EAP or employee assistance program. So they work with therapists. So I was working right next to marriage and family therapists, counselors, psychologists, and social workers who could help with addiction.

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05:27:07 - 06:04:07

Mary Carlson

And it was a really cool experience for those three years to be able to say we can come at issues with a holistic approach, right? So if you have a gambler addicted to alcohol, you're not just sending him to me to fix the financial side of it but you're working with the social worker who works with the marriage and family therapist who works with me, and there was a lot of back and forth and integrated work, and that's where I saw the beauty of all these different service providers come together and solidify. So fast-forward, what came along after that experience was over.

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06:04:07 - 06:23:24

Mary Carlson

I still teach at a couple of universities and have taught for University of Georgia for several years now but really wanted to do even more. And that was when three years ago, I came together and said, hey, there were three other academics with me; why don't we do more speaking, consulting together?

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06:24:01 - 06:43:04

Mary Carlson

And so hence the idea of Financial Behavior Keynote was born. We have these backgrounds and experiences in this group but really honing in on behavior. And I would say that's what sets us apart from any other group out there. It's a very niche group. It's especially niche in the speaking arena, right?

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06:43:06 - 06:44:04

Lauren Hong

It is.

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06:44:09 - 07:21:07

Mary Carlson

We really want financial behavior but we also have this component. Our tagline is “Where education meets experiential learning.” And so part of learning that you have to have is the research side, right? You want that research side, that empirical research to back up what we're doing in practice. And so that's a lot of what we're trying to do is bring practice and academia together and facilitate more conversations and have more conversations and make the research we do know about more understandable to be able to be practically implemented.

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07:21:07 - 07:29:06

Mary Carlson

And so that's what I get up for every day now. That's what excites me. But that's kind of the background and how I got into it and where I came from.

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07:29:06 - 07:48:26

Lauren Hong

So, oh my gosh, it personally speaks to me so much. I spent time in D.C. — my husband's navy. So it's just hearing you talk about your journey and of course, I work in the financial services space. There's so many connections, connecting the dots in so many ways.

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07:48:26 - 08:08:24

Lauren Hong

So let's dig a little bit deeper. I feel like we need to have a whole conversation about these things that impact more or unpack them more. But let's dig specifically a little bit deeper for you're working with people and correct me if I'm wrong, who have really established their focus, right?

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08:08:24 - 08:19:19

Lauren Hong

And in this work you're then helping them, placing them for various speaking opportunities. Tell us a little bit more about that component of the business.

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08:19:21 - 08:47:24

Mary Carlson

Sure. So really when it came together, the four of us were like, hey, we want to do more of this. The whole idea behind it is to leverage each other's social networking ability, right? Because I'm a big believer in a blue ocean mentality. I think too often we sit in what I call lobsters in a bucket where we kind of tear each other down or little circles and fight over some little piddly thing and sort of look out and say, there is enough.

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08:48:01 - 09:19:12

Mary Carlson

There is enough work. There are enough people, there's enough space. And your voice needs to be heard, who you are. And so regardless of someone else speaking on your topic or doing what you do instead of fighting about it, let's garner together. Yeah, harness those assets to move forward. And so that's where that idea came from. And as we started to band together, what we started to find is some incredible speakers, Paul Richards, Sarah Newcomb, some really incredible people came and said we want to be a part of this.

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09:19:12 - 09:39:18

Mary Carlson

We said, well by all means, come, let's make it happen. Why not? So it quickly grew. We started last year with four. We ended last year with 32. And it grew so quickly that at one point last fall I was like, time out, I don't know what I'm doing.

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09:39:18 - 10:05:16

Mary Carlson

We've got to slow down because typically what happens in a speaker's arrangement or a setting is a speaker's bureau is really not interested in you until you're charging a minimum $10, $20,000 or more. And so if you think of a lot of speakers' bureaus, you're looking at the creme de la creme. You're looking at people who have studied this, who have done it, and who have spoken a lot like in houses of the world, right?

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10:05:16 - 10:25:21

Mary Carlson

Or if you go to the Washington Speaker's Bureau, that's like the who's who of every political act, president, or director or some sort. But the problem with those is what about those who have been charging nothing and they just want to improve, or those who are maybe charging a thousand bucks? No speaker bureau is interested in taking on someone charging 1,000 bucks.

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10:25:21 - 10:50:24

Mary Carlson

So I just felt like I was sitting in a speaker course in January, and I looked around and there were 60 people in this room, and I thought, all of them are great. There was an FBI hostage negotiator. There was a cartoonist. There was one other financial services person. I thought, oh, yeah, I can go to this FBI hostage negotiator and get help with my speech but he's not going to know the ins and outs of this topic.

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10:50:24 - 11:11:06

Mary Carlson

I'm going to have to spend more time explaining the topic than I am the stuff. And so the idea hit me of we need community. And that kind of added to that blue ocean mentality. Instead of being an elitist group that's like, well, unless you charge X amount, right, it becomes, hey, are you interested in this topic?

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11:11:06 - 11:30:19

Mary Carlson

Do you want to learn more? And are you willing to put forth the work it requires to go? And so that was born this year. The idea of a thought leadership community. And so that's what we have and that's what we grow. And really we have a lot of really different individuals. Some want to be speakers, some don't.

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11:30:21 - 11:54:22

Mary Carlson

Some want to just come and learn, some want to be better communicating with their clients. Some want to teach, create online courses, or teach in an online type format. We even have writers in the group of people who want to be better bloggers or podcasters. We do have a few of those. So at one point we had called it content creators, and I wanted to get away from that.

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11:54:22 - 12:14:19

Mary Carlson

And here's why I think it's in the DNA trend. Experts are everywhere, right? You just get a YouTube channel and call yourself an expert and suddenly you're an expert. The other thing is, there's so many influencers out there it's hard to tell an influencer to create content, right? And that's not what we're in the business of.

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12:14:21 - 12:51:04

Mary Carlson

We're in the business of thought leadership. And I think the important takeaway from this is it's not just blowing smoke up and saying, hey, this is something I read about one time but this is rich, developed, evidence based content we can implement. And so that's what this group has become, a really rich, diverse group that has various forms of communication — written, verbal, etc. — that is coming together and saying, hey, we created content before, how did that work?

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12:51:04 - 13:13:04

Mary Carlson

How did you have the lifespan of it? What did this look like? And what I find to be the most beneficial, and those in the group do as well, is it's not learning. There's no teacher, right? I'm not the Amy Dani that has all the answers but instead it's us learning from each other. It's that blue ocean of everyone has something to give and everyone has something to learn.

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13:13:04 - 13:23:18

Mary Carlson

And as we learn and grow together, we become stronger together than we are separate. And that's what that really is, that community and thought leadership.

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13:23:20 - 13:45:05

Lauren Hong

Oh my goodness. So I'm sure there's folks who are listening and thinking, I want to be in that thought leadership space or I'm being told I should be in that thought leadership space or they’re sort of pulled toward it. They feel a tug for that, right? To be able to better educate prospects and clients and just to really position themselves, especially if they really defined a target.

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13:45:11 - 13:56:20

Lauren Hong

Where do you recommend people even start with this? If, like you said, you can be a YouTuber, you could do a blog, you could do so many things, speaking, where should folks start?

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13:56:22 - 14:17:13

Mary Carlson

Yeah, that's a great question. I would say first off, start with where you feel most comfortable. There's so many who are teaching great things on video or how-to bloggers will take a course on it. I don't care if you take a public speaking 101 from your local university, get a little interest and get your feet wet, try something new out.

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14:17:13 - 14:45:28

Mary Carlson

It's expanding those horizons. I'm a lifelong learner, and I find many of those in the group are just constantly learning. Some are far in their career and almost ready to retire but they want to continue teaching. And so that's what's cool about it. Now what we do inside the community is help people take them from where they're at and add a little more value. Bring everything you have is essentially what I say and see if we can't add to it because of that collective wisdom together.

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14:46:03 - 15:02:25

Mary Carlson

And so by all means, we want you. If you're a financial planner and just want better communication skills and how to communicate maybe better through your newsletter or better on video, we've got that community now. We don't teach video one-on-one like some others do, but we will refer you to those groups.

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15:02:25 - 15:29:19

Mary Carlson

We also offer discounts because we have that ability to offer the services we need. So we're not speaker coaches, we don't do speaker training ourselves but we have the ability to collectively come together and say, yeah, there's three individuals to take your pick, and here's a discounted rate for that. So we have some cool opportunities inside the community just because we've come and banded together and said, let's see what we can build together.

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15:29:22 - 15:45:18

Lauren Hong

Yeah, I know whenever we're talking with folks, sometimes I think it's just like, what's the most natural? If you don't like writing and you feel like you're like, where do we even start? Then maybe you explore something else. But if you've got that tug and that pull to be able to lean into it, you’ve got to listen to that, right?

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15:45:18 - 16:03:05

Lauren Hong

When we talk about thought leaders, you can't just do one blog post and then all of a sudden you're a thought leader or something like that. How do you define thought leadership? When it comes to either frequency or it’s around a subject matter expert, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your thinking.

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16:03:07 - 16:05:23

Lauren Hong

And the group's thinking around thought leadership.

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16:05:25 - 16:31:00

Mary Carlson

Absolutely. So we purposely call it a thought leadership group because we know what we thought. Leaders are created over time. It's a lot of work to get there. And that's not everyone's bailiwick. But I think it's really important to recognize thought leadership as it goes in. And so one of the things we've started to recognize over time and realize is one, let's go back to experts.

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16:31:00 - 16:55:14

Mary Carlson

Experts really since the rise of YouTube. It used to look on it like, hey, you've got great certifications, you must be an expert in that field. And we're just seeing it watered down between the influencer world and the ability to get degrees and certifications. And I mean fly by night stuff. So this idea of just being an expert really isn't enough, right?

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16:55:14 - 17:11:20

Mary Carlson

And so experts teach you what you should do versus a thought leader is someone who sees the future and breaks it down to envision how you can get to that area.

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17:11:22 - 17:14:01

Lauren Hong

Yeah to frame it, but keep going. Yes.

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17:14:04 - 17:34:00

Mary Carlson

Well, whether you think that or not, right? Let's use Bob Veres. Bob Veres has been a thought leader in this business for decades. And so we're not pretending to make everyone a Bob Veres after this. But what we are saying is what gives you particular insight, and how can you maybe be a visionary for your own clients?

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17:34:02 - 17:54:18

Mary Carlson

But it can be at a very large level, like a Michael Kitces or a Bob Veres where you're helping tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. But it could also be how do you better serve those you help every day and that takes skill because it requires good communication skills. 

17:54:21 - 18:19:23

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Mary Carlson

Like you, I use those two examples. Bob and Michael are incredible writers. They're incredibly able minds. And so how can maybe you take one skill that's a weak skill for you and strengthen it just little by little? And by adding this component of a helpful community, that helps strengthen that thought leadership. So we're there to create thought leadership in a space we want to see thrive.

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18:19:23 - 18:46:26

Mary Carlson

We want to see variation. We want to see not just variety in how financial advisors look and who they serve but also in how we think and how we do financial planning, right? And we think that comes from a broad scope, from with a lot of different voices and a lot of different input, and yet it will look different in every single person's practice.

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18:46:26 - 18:54:25

Mary Carlson

And that's the coolest part, is how you implement it. It's going to be different. And that's okay. That's good. We want that.

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18:54:28 - 19:14:08

Lauren Hong

Love it. I also really appreciate the learning model you have created, and that it's collaborative and you've got that push and pull versus kind of the preaching to. So hats off to you. I'm sure there's pull just from your numerous amounts of speaking and being in the classroom and years of experience there.

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19:14:11 - 19:21:06

Lauren Hong

I appreciate that too. Do you guys have a forum? Are you just meeting in person or Zoom or how does that work?

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19:21:09 - 19:43:04

Mary Carlson

No. Great question. So we use a circle community. So it's an online platform. It's a community. We do a lot of virtual opportunities as well. And they just have a lot of communication ability. We haven't had an in-person yet. Occasionally, several of us will meet up at a conference. But what we really like is this new age ability to connect people.

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19:43:04 - 20:03:24

Mary Carlson

Literally. We have people in this thought leadership who are all over the world. And that's the other cool part about financial behavior is whether you're in England or South Africa or Australia. Yes, behavior is about people. We're going to tax law, right? Tax law is going to be dead in the water, totally different.

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20:03:25 - 20:31:27

Mary Carlson

But yet when you really get into the cycle of money and how people interact, we're human at the base level, whether you're in Asia or whether you're in South America. It's about how people work regardless of language or lack of money or more money, right? So we also don't differentiate on ultra-high-net worth versus emerging, middle market, or low income or whatever, everyone.

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20:31:27 - 20:52:04

Mary Carlson

And that's why I think the power of this group is there are so many different speakers who speak to all and we need more of that. But whoever your target market is is going to look different. And that's good. Because these are important messages that need to get out to the world to change the world.

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20:52:04 - 21:03:27

Mary Carlson

That and we believe through a speech or through the written word or through video — that's how you change the world little by little by little. By helping yourself and inspiring people around you.

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21:03:29 - 21:19:19

Lauren Hong

I love that in the force of bringing it together. Oh my goodness, I feel like we could talk for such a long time. This is a fascinating topic. Not to mention, I know you can speak on a number of topics. You have quite an impressive portfolio for a variety of topics you speak on and the group and what have you.

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21:19:19 - 21:28:04

Lauren Hong

So where can folks learn more? Where should we go if we want to learn more about everything we've been chatting about today?

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21:28:07 - 21:47:12

Mary Carlson

I love it. Yeah. Go to keynote Dot financial. So k-e-y-n-o-t-e dot financial. So if you are hosting an event and let me pause right there on this part, this is primarily what we do with clients is help you get a client or get a speaker at your event. So that could be a chapter.

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21:47:14 - 22:12:10

Mary Carlson

That could be a large conference. It could be a small conference. It can even be client events. And so think about wanting to add value to your clients, what do speakers love? Doing these intimate events where clients are touched. Because our speakers can speak not only to B2B but also that B2C side. And so we'd love to work with you on any of those realms.

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22:12:12 - 22:29:23

Mary Carlson

So you can go there, you can see our list of speakers. We constantly are updating topics and ideas. And if you're like, hey, Mary, I don't have a clue, reach out to me, let's have a call and I'll help you find the right fit for your speakers because the ones you're seeing on the website are really the tip of the iceberg.

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22:29:23 - 22:53:11

Mary Carlson

We've got a lot more great minds behind the scene. If you're interested in learning more about this but don't really have an event, go to our education page. And on that education page we offer monthly webinars, and I'm really excited to announce next year we'll be offering longer term workshops. So right now we do webinars and book studies, which are very popular.

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22:53:13 - 23:12:11

Mary Carlson

And we're going to start offering workshops that will be smaller broken down chunks. I'm showing you exactly how to do something and how to implement it rather than just a one-hour webinar takeaway. So be on the lookout for that. And if you're like me, I'm still wanting more, then join our community. We would love to have you.

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23:12:11 - 23:38:18

Mary Carlson

And so that would be our community tab and just jump in there. If you're like, I have no idea where to start, just get on my calendar. And we'd love to talk to you, and see where you're at in your journey. But we're really excited about talking about what we know. It really started out where I began, if I came to Washington, D.C. to change the world, because I feel the information we know inside is so important, it's so valuable, and so many people need this.

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23:38:20 - 24:03:09

Mary Carlson

And so now it's fun to look back 20 years later and say, wow, this is how I believe we are going to change the world, and it's not going to be me by myself. It's going to be a whole ocean of us together saying these are really important and we want to change your life. Whether it's B2B, B2C, or you're helping hundreds or thousands at a time.

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24:03:09 - 24:10:12

Mary Carlson

And so that's the exciting part behind it. So go to our website, check it out, or just jump on my calendar. And I'd love to have a conversation with you.

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24:10:14 - 24:25:26

Lauren Hong

Oh my goodness, Mary, thank you so much. This was such a fun conversation and so many good insights, right? For folks who are looking to get involved, there are a number of ways, or looking to bring a speaker and also just tips. So thank you for sharing your knowledge and also just your passion for the work and what you do for this community.

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24:25:28 - 24:31:24

Mary Carlson

Thanks for having me on, Lauren. It's been great.

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We talked with Catherine Tindall about:

• Why planning, forecasting, and analysis are essential components in building an effective tax strategy
• Key tax considerations for advisors and firms as year-end approaches to help optimize income taxes and future growth
• Why working with a tax professional who understands the advisory space — and knowing the right questions to ask — can help enhance an advisor's CPA relationship, experience, and outcomes

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About Catherine Tindall:

Catherine Tindall, CPA, is the founder and head tax strategist at Dominion Enterprise Services and host of the podcast “Financial Advisors Want to Know.” Specializing in helping RIAs, independent broker-dealers, and other 1099 financial advisors, Catherine goes beyond routine income tax return filing to offer proactive planning that supports growth and expansion. Observing a gap in strategic tax analysis and planning, Catherine takes a client-focused, holistic, and proactive approach to tax strategies — the opposite of legacy CPA firms — to help advisors and firms grow more efficiently and achieve their current and long-term goals.

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Featured Resources 

• Catherine Tindall, CPA on LinkedIn
• Financial Advisors Want to Know Podcast
• Dominion Enterprise Services 
• Financial Advisors Success Podcast with Michael Kitces

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Enjoyed This? You’ll Also Love:

• Business Growth Tips for Accountants, Bookkeepers, and Financial Services Business Owners
• Using a Coach Mindset to Unlock Your Full Leadership Potential
• How to Navigate Financial Services Compliance in 2024

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Full Audio Transcript:

00:00:00 - 00:25:18

Lauren Hong

All right. You guys are in for a treat. We have Catherine Tindall joining us today. She is a CPA, specifically working with advisors, and I'm excited for her to share a little bit more about her story. I should say, not just advisors, independent registered advisors, independent broker-dealers, and other 1099 financial advisors. What is your background?

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00:25:18 - 00:29:09

Lauren Hong

How did you pick this space? We'll just dive in.

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00:29:12 - 00:59:13

Catherine Tindall

Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Lauren. So it's funny because I'm a second-generation CPA. My parents had a tax practice growing up. And I always knew I wanted to go into tax once I was in college and had gone through different things. In my firms, specifically when I worked for other CPA firms, I was pretty dissatisfied with the model of service delivery a lot of the time, because they were more interested in getting forms executed than actually looking at what is the client experience in relationships.

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00:59:13 - 01:28:19

Catherine Tindall

And so when I started my firm, five years ago now, a big part of that was wanting to switch the service delivery model. So our firm has always been really focused on planning first and advisory work first, and tax compliance work second. And then over the course of our firm's experience, I realized my favorite clients I was working with were financial advisors because they were growing quickly.

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01:28:19 - 02:06:17

Catherine Tindall

They understood it. They like strategy. They want to understand, and for them, the income tax piece is really significant. It's a really big cash flow hit. It's hard to manage. There's not a lot of ways to shield it and they want to be proactive about it. So we decided to niche into just working for advisors because I realized there wasn't really anybody leading in the space for serving them in this capacity of doing the tax strategy work for their firms as they're growing, and they have really niche and weird issues. Some of them have statutory W-2s, and a lot of them are subject to FINRA rules that regulate how they’re able to recognize income

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02:06:17 - 02:23:05

Catherine Tindall

and where they can record it, and entities they're trying to buy other people's books of business. And there's different ways you can structure that. And there's just a lot of dynamic activity going on, especially to that. They grow really fast so the income tax piece becomes really challenging really quickly.

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02:23:08 - 02:43:09

Lauren Hong

Super interesting. And then I also can appreciate too, that you have that focus on customer experience and so many firms also. That's really important to them. And that high-touch relationship, so you made that a part of your business versus just the transactional component just feels like there's a good fit there. 

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02:43:09 - 03:05:18

Lauren Hong

Okay. So tell us a little bit more like what else is unique and working with these firms? I know you mentioned some other pieces. Are there any unique periods firms should be aware of when they're thinking about that growth phase — they might be a 1099 or just getting started to really expanding and growing their firm? What are some of those key milestones advisors should be thinking about?

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03:05:20 - 03:25:19

Catherine Tindall

Yeah, I think the big one I always take away when I have these conversations with advisors is a lot of the time I ask them, okay, what does five years from now look like for you? And it's so funny, they are so good at doing this for their clients. But I think for themselves it can be really challenging because I ask them are you just trying to build up a lifestyle practice?

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03:25:19 - 03:43:07

Catherine Tindall

Are you trying to build something big? And it really depends on what that initial goal is to then what the trajectory of the firm is going to look like. And then also when we're going to do tax strategy work, what that looks like, because I'll give a very different recommendation to somebody who tells me I read 10X is better than 2X.

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03:43:14 - 04:04:03

Catherine Tindall

And we're going to go to a billion under management. Well, we're going to have a very different strategy of how we're going to get there versus — I had a client prospect come in a couple weeks ago who we're working with going through an assessment, and he wants a lifestyle practice. He's going to eventually get up to a top-line revenue of about a million, million a half, something like that.

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04:04:03 - 04:22:00

Catherine Tindall

And that's where he wants to end up. And he doesn't want to hire a bunch of people. So we're taking a very different approach. So I think for a lot of advisors, there's an initial point where they're kind of in the same pack together, where they're in that building stage, and then some of them will just stay on the lifestyle firm side, and then others will be I want to grow.

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04:22:00 - 04:41:02

Catherine Tindall

I want to build an empire under me. For that first threshold they're together in the same pack. The biggest initial question is usually entity structure, because a lot of them will be going from maybe they were somewhere else where they were a W-2 advisor, and then now they're okay, I can bring my book with me.

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04:41:02 - 04:57:07

Catherine Tindall

Hopefully you can bring some of your book with you. And then it turns into, okay, when do I get to the point where doing something like an S Corporation makes sense? Or if I'm really going to have an aggressive M&A strategy, do I need to have a more complex entity structure? Am I going to have junior advisors under me?

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04:57:07 - 05:05:04

Catherine Tindall

Am I going to have partners? How am I actually going to go through the growth phase and then getting your entity structure to reflect that so you can grow into it? 

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05:05:05 - 05:22:05

Lauren Hong

Super interesting. That makes sense logically just for how businesses grow. But I think for the advisory community, if it's an LLC or like you said an S Corp or however the cards fall, it would probably be much different strategically depending on the goals. So that makes a lot of sense.

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05:22:05 - 05:41:07

Lauren Hong

So tell me a little bit more — shedding the light on so many different firms. And I assume that's one of the reasons people are coming to you. You've kind of seen the behind the scenes. How much are you using that to sort of guide decision-making or is it just super unique for each firm and where they're at?

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05:41:09 - 06:02:07

Catherine Tindall

Oh, it's really dependent on their particular situation. But it's also industry things. It's really funny the things I learn in certain cases, because we're so specific in the niche we work with, we get to use the same material in all the client relationships. And so I was having a conversation with somebody earlier and they were struggling with something.

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06:02:07 - 06:18:04

Catherine Tindall

And I said, oh, well, this other client we had used this vendor for this and had a really good experience — do you want an introduction? And it's a lot of that kind of a thing. Or we had a client who had the same issue with Northwestern Mutual and the way they were recording income or whatever.

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06:18:10 - 06:32:21

Catherine Tindall

And this is how we were able to structure the entity to make it work for them and also be compliant with the IRS rules. And so just being able to have those experiences of, well, this is what we did in a previous situation and this is how we were able to make it work.

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06:32:26 - 06:56:05

Catherine Tindall

It's kind of similar to yours. We're able to go more quickly through those decisions. But I think with a lot of strategy work, it's so integrated with people's personal lives too. Like in the assessment process. For us, it's really a lot of conversation around really personal things because it all ties into what's going on.

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06:56:07 - 07:14:06

Catherine Tindall

Just the way your tax code is structured, it's really personal. I always joked earlier on in my career, if you were a really creepy person, becoming a tax professional's actually a way to get the most information about people than probably anybody else. Maybe financial advisors get more information.

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07:14:08 - 07:14:18

Lauren Hong

A little bit.

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07:14:18 - 07:36:18

Catherine Tindall

But we know about the medical bills, we know about the kid's tuition. We know where the kids are going to college. We kind of know everything about people. And it's because your income tax touches every part of your life. So it does end up being really unique. But in a lot of ways, especially with the different institutions people are working with — we've gotten used to now, okay, you're with LPL, this is how we're going to be seeing things.

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07:36:21 - 07:41:23

Catherine Tindall

You just get used to some of those nuances and then how to navigate it to make it more tax- efficient. 

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07:41:23 - 07:58:27

Lauren Hong

Super interesting. We feel a similar thing; we've worked with LPL firms before and we're familiar with their compliance processes, so on and so forth. Or you're alluding to that kind of quarterback who can help make those referrals because you've got those interconnections or you've seen other similar examples.

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07:58:27 - 08:19:12

Lauren Hong

So you can help shed the light before someone gets there, to help with that proactive decision- making. So I hear you, I think it's one of the unique things that makes it really valuable. And working with an outsourced partner that really knows your space. So you mentioned earlier you just really enjoyed working with this demographic.

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08:19:15 - 08:34:20

Lauren Hong

Because you ended up working with this demographic, did you just sort of learn along the way and deepen your roots in this industry? How have you learned about all the ins and outs? Because I do feel like this world is very — I mean, you can't just jump into it, right?

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08:34:20 - 08:43:20

Lauren Hong

There's plenty of jargon. And in connection, tell me a little bit about your journey in finding this hub and really kind of learning the ins and outs.

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08:43:22 - 09:10:25

Catherine Tindall

Yeah. I guess for me, I've had advisor clients for a lot of my career. So I’m just used to working with them in that capacity. And then really just diving in, listening to podcasts and just engaging with things, finding thought leaders and listening to them and watching the different kerfuffle that goes on, like the CFP Board advertisement thing that's going on right now.

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09:10:28 - 09:29:27

Catherine Tindall

And it's just one of those things where once you find a niche of people you like, you just kind of get into it. And if you're curious and genuinely, I think for me it comes from a place of the better educated I can be holistically, the better my niche advice, my specific slice of things on the tax side is going to be better advice.

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09:30:02 - 09:53:19

Catherine Tindall

Because what I deal with is kind of the remnant of everything else that's going on in their situation. Like the tax at the end of the year is a reflection of their activity, of what's going on. And so if I don't have a more holistic approach when I'm just talking about this tail of the dog, like in order for me to do a good job on the tail of the dog, I kind of have to understand the whole dog, right?

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09:53:19 - 10:14:21

Catherine Tindall

So that's been my approach with it and the curiosity and running my own podcast and those kinds of things come from that place of me knowing as much as I can about my clients and what they care about and what's important to them besides just the piece I touched, which is the tax advisory, it's just going to make that so much better.

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10:14:24 - 10:33:00

Catherine Tindall

It's so much more robust and having those deeper relationships with them, being in the cockpit with them, trying to advise them. And I see so many tax professionals where they're not genuinely interested in their clients and they're really great at tax but they're not genuinely interested in the client and more of a transaction.

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10:33:02 - 10:51:11

Catherine Tindall

And so it ends up you give bad advice. And so I see different maneuvers that happen. For instance, people being told, hey, you got a big tax bill, why don't you get an SUV? Because then you can get a big write-off. Well, I don't like that advice.

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10:51:11 - 11:11:12

Catherine Tindall

Why don't you invest into a coaching program? Because that's going to produce an ROI. And I know if you can work with this coach, this coach or this coach, this is about what you could expect on an ROI. You'll get a deduction this year but then you'll defer the taxes into the growth in the future years you'll get from doing this versus an SUV, which is just all depreciation.

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11:11:14 - 11:23:02

Catherine Tindall

So it's stuff like that where I think once you really get to know, okay, what's the end game you're really trying to drive toward. It just makes the advice so much better. And I'm sure you've seen the same thing on the marketing side.

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11:23:02 - 11:24:12

Lauren Hong

Like literally, I mean.

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11:24:12 - 11:25:06

Catherine Tindall

Big difference.

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11:25:09 - 11:40:22

Lauren Hong

We see sometimes firms will come to us and they're really hungry for organic and they want it now and they're getting pitches like that or just drinking from a firehose of you pay X number of dollars and ad dollars and this and that, and all of a sudden you're going to have this flood of clients. It just doesn't happen like that.

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11:40:22 - 12:05

Lauren Hong

You're still dealing with humans, lifecycles, trust building. So it's a balance, right? I mean, maybe you could have something like that if you've got a huge base built, and you've got a full funnel, pieces in place but there are absolutely cautionary points on all of it.

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12:07 - 12:20:08

Lauren Hong

Okay. We've got a little bit of time left. So as we look ahead, we're toward the end of the year going into the next year, what should firms be thinking about from the tax side or what are you trying to make sure is on top of folks’ minds as they go into the end of year and beginning of next year?

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12:20:10 - 12:36:02

Catherine Tindall

So I'd say a big one is — and it will be completed by the time this comes out — for advisors who are listening to this and are interested, I have a guide that goes through all the major questions I get from advisors, like should I be an S Corp? Just all the things I'm constantly hearing from people.

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12:36:02 - 12:51:19

Catherine Tindall

I'm putting it into a guide people can get. So if you're interested in that, just send me a DM on LinkedIn and I will send it. I'm not going to put it online on our website or whatever, just send me a DM and I'll send it to you. It's going to be partially like what we use internally in the firm too.

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12:51:22 - 13:22:05

Catherine Tindall

And my user on there is just Catherine Tindall, CPA. You can find me and ping me for that. That's going to be a much more comprehensive answer than what I can give you right now. But so basically, looking into next year, everybody's talking about election stuff and my crystal ball is imperfect. I think a lot of the things people are worried about, we just won't be able to tell until we get farther in in terms of things that are going to be sunsetting from the TCG act like, is the QBI deduction going to go away, all of those kinds of issues?

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13:22:05 - 13:40:26

Catherine Tindall

It's just too hard to tell. Like the fact we don't have a strong sense of who's even going to be in the Oval Office. It's just going to be hard on the tax policy side. What I have been seeing is a number of tax proposals that get pushed out there and sound bites that sound good. 

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13:41:04 - 14:04:04

Catherine Tindall

Are they actually going to turn into tax policy, yes or no? So the things people I think actually should be paying attention to are the parts they can control. A common issue I see with advisory firms is that a lot of them really want to have tax planning work done and they just do not have a CPA partner who has a deep understanding of what their requests are..

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14:04:04 - 14:32:14

Catherine Tindall

I had an advisor this week who had asked his CPA for two years in a row, should I be an S Corporation, and the CPA was like, no, I don't think so. And that was the level of planning that went into that versus when we actually dug into his situation, he had wasted over $100,000 over the course of a couple of years, which was meaningful money for him and his practice size.

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14:36:09 - 14:37:21

Lauren Hong

Regardless of practice size.

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14:37:23 - 14:55:27

Catherine Tindall

Especially when it's just waste. It's tax waste. Absolutely. He was like, well I asked the CPA; is this malpractice? And I asked if he actually did a real engagement for you or did he just think it was a casual conversation, not realizing that actually we should do some analysis here.

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14:55:27 - 15:24:14

Catherine Tindall

Like let me run some projections, let me run some numbers. Let's do a reasonable comp study and see, because that's one of the core issues with corporations is you have the owners have to pay themselves a reasonable compensation. Let's do some math. Like let's see what it would actually be. And so I think for a lot of advisors, that's something you can control — if you haven't had tax planning work done that's a formal engagement, you should be signing up for it. I think a lot of time they will ask for that from tax professionals.

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15:24:17 - 15:44:19

Catherine Tindall

And the tax professionals just don't see what they do a lot of the time. And our firm is different. We're completely structured that way. But if you're happy with your existing tax professional and need to advance that forward, sometimes it's having that conversation of, hey, I need more. 

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15:44:23 - 16:02:17

Catherine Tindall

They just think they're being hired to get the forms filed on time, rather than looking in the future, into what you've got going on. The number of times I've had advisors come back to me and they're like, yeah, they gave me estimated payments that were 20% of what they should have been because we grew double this year.

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16:02:19 - 16:20:28

Catherine Tindall

And I called them and said they never did anything. So it's like those are things you can control. If you're not having a responsive relationship, make sure you've set that relationship up correctly for your growth and for what you've got going on so you're not walking into a surprise at the end of the year.

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16:21:00 - 16:37:24

Catherine Tindall

Because I always tell everybody, the carriage turns into a pumpkin at midnight, December 31. That tax bill is set. There's a couple of maneuvers you could do with retirement planning but for the most part that tax bill is basically set. And so it's not a mystery.

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16:37:24 - 16:47:09

Catherine Tindall

You should know what that is. And it's not something where even during the year forecasting into, we can do math, we can do forecasting and things like that.

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16:48:01 - 17:10:07

Catherine Tindall

And so I think for a lot of advisors, my piece of advice going into the end of years is pay to have some projection work done, figure out if you've had significant change, figure out what that's going to be so you can cash flow forecast for that. And so if you're getting big quarterly brokerage checks, you know how much to push aside, there's a plan there; you have a plan on how you're making your estimated payments.

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17:10:09 - 17:21:24

Catherine Tindall

And if you're going to be making a change going into tax season or a change into a relationship, now's a good time to do that. Because then if there's other issues, you have the time to correct them before the end of the year.

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17:21:25 - 17:40:14

Lauren Hong

Such good advice — that forward thinking, not just looking at the kind of the business plan, right? Which I think a lot of times folks are doing end of year, thinking strategically about the new year. But it's the other parts of the business that, well, this just taps directly into the business plan. But it's a component that's worthwhile to take that time and energy to look ahead on.

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17:40:14 - 17:55:03

Lauren Hong

Well, this is wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing so many good case studies and just examples of how you have been able to help advisors and firms with projections and just supporting them with where they're at. So we can find you at Dominion dot CPA. Did I get that right?

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17:55:03 - 18:12:01

Catherine Tindall

Yeah, that's the website. Best way to get me though is LinkedIn. I'm really active on there. So for people who are interested in the work we're doing, send me a message. I'm always interested in learning what's going on in your world and being able to provide resources that'll help people get where they need to go in terms of questions they have.

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18:12:01 - 18:17:18

Catherine Tindall

Hey, I heard this; I get a lot of those kinds of emails. Hey, I heard this.

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18:17:21 - 18:32:22

Lauren Hong

Hey, you know, we do that too. I watched this video. Somebody told me I should be doing this. I'm like, okay, let's take a pause. Do we really need to do that shiny object? Unpack it, like you said. That's awesome, Catherine. Thank you so much. Always good to chat with you. I appreciate your time.

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18:32:29 - 18:35:09

Catherine Tindall

Yeah. Likewise. Lauren, thanks so much for having me on.

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18:35:11 - 18:41:02

Lauren Hong

Of course.

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We talked with Brandon about:

• How early financial education can help service members avoid common money pitfalls
• The importance of understanding and maximizing military benefits, available resources, and financial tools to grow wealth
• How financial advisors can effectively reach the military community to support members as clients

About Brandon Lovingier:

Brandon Lovingier, ChFC®, MQFP® aka The Enlisted Money Guy™, served over 19 years in the Army — including deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. After navigating his own financial challenges, he became committed to helping other service members avoid similar pitfalls he experienced and achieve financial freedom. Through his Enlisted Money website, blog, and educational videos, Brandon shares practical resources and strategies to empower the military community to make smart financial decisions.

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Featured Resources 

• Enlisted Money
• Enlisted Money Confessions
• Enlisted Money Success Stories
• MilMoneyCon
• ChooseFI Military Facebook Group
• Military Financial Advisors Association

Enjoyed This? You’ll Also Love

• A Journey from Army Officer to Fee-Only Financial Planning through Reading and Teaching with Ian Gates
• Scale Your Financial Services Team By Hiring Military Spouses With Instant Teams
• Financial Literacy: The First Step in Becoming Your Own Money Boss with Jamie Bosse

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Full Audio Transcript:

00:00:00 - 00:08:11

Lauren Hong

All right, Brandon, thank you so much for joining us today.

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00:08:13 - 00:13:08

Brandon Lovingier

Hey, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be on the show and get to chat with you a little bit here.

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00:13:10 - 00:24:17

Lauren Hong

Yeah. So, we're going to get into it, and I am excited to hear about — is it enlisted money guide.com? Is that the website?

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00:24:19 - 00:26:16

Brandon Lovingier

It just enlisted money.com.

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00:26:18 - 00:38:21

Lauren Hong

Okay. So we were just chatting a minute ago. How in the world did you get in the space? What made you look for this? Tell us about who you are, your background, and Enlisted Money.

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00:38:24 - 01:02:15

Brandon Lovingier

Yeah, I'm a little bit all over the place but long story short, I was terrible with money and ended up realizing in a cold, stinky tent in Afghanistan that financing a brand-new pickup truck maybe wasn't the best idea and kind of realized that I could have almost bought the truck I had before that I loved in cash for what I'm paying in interest on this truck.

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01:02:15 - 01:25:02

Brandon Lovingier

So that led me down a whole long journey, through blogs and all that. Ended up doing the Total Money Makeover thing, the Dave Ramsey deal, getting out of debt. Fast forward, all that change has been really excellent in our life. And I wanted to help other people. And when I finished my bachelor's degree, I kind of had a void there.

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01:25:02 - 01:42:20

Brandon Lovingier

I was used to getting up at 4:30 in the morning, doing my studies and all that kind of stuff. And after I finished my bachelor's degree, I just started reading a lot of personal finance and getting into it and pretty soon I was like, I'm kind of at the end of all the 1.0 stuff, so where's the 2.0?

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01:42:20 - 01:56:14

Brandon Lovingier

The 3.0? And so that's when I really started kind of getting into just digging deeper and ended up looking into coaching, planning, all that kind of stuff. So that was really kind of the nexus for me, getting into the space in the beginning.

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01:56:16 - 02:07:01

Lauren Hong

So tell me about the 2.0 version. Have you been to it? I’d love to hear about how you unpack that and how you're supporting other people and that side of things.

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02:07:04 - 02:29:25

Brandon Lovingier

Yeah, I think there's so much stuff, especially whenever you get into a lot of blogs and stuff like that, it's like save more, spend less. What? Whatever. I got that. I got Roth versus traditional but why? And then I’m like a little kid — why is it like that and why is this like that and why is that like that?

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02:29:25 - 02:50:13

Brandon Lovingier

And what is this thing? So just the more threads you pull, the more questions you have. The internet has some ideas but there's nothing concrete. And so that was where I was like, I'm gonna have to go back to school to really understand this stuff because I wanted to help other people but I wanted to make sure I knew what I was talking about.

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02:50:13 - 03:09:19

Brandon Lovingier

I needed that confidence to make sure I wasn't giving bad advice. And so I originally looked at coaching and it seems like that's not really that well regulated. You don't have to have anything to be a coach, or you could do this AFC thing, or you could do, you know, whatever.

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03:09:19 - 03:36:26

Brandon Lovingier

But then I kind of stumbled into financial planning. I literally had no idea there was a profession called financial planning. And then before I knew it, I found a scholarship through the American College, applied for that and fast-forward, I've started a pair of planning businesses, started a couple different blogs, and I'm just doing stuff and trying to help people like me.

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03:36:29 - 04:02:14

Brandon Lovingier

Well, preferably somebody who was like me when I was 18, before I made all the mistakes. So that's really kind of what I'm trying to do and circumvent people having to learn the hard way. I've already made those mistakes. There's a lot of us who have already made those mistakes. And so I'm trying to kind of share what I know, and share other stories as well so people can see that and go, oh, I don't have to do it that way.

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04:02:14 - 04:08:25

Brandon Lovingier

I can do it a different way and have a much better life. So that's really kind of what I'm trying to get into as far as all that goes.

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04:08:27 - 04:20:13

Lauren Hong

So tell me a little bit more about who you're specifically targeting. Are you exclusively working with the military community? Or tell us a little bit more about that.

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04:20:15 - 04:43:14

Brandon Lovingier

So basically for my personal project, Enlisted Money, I'm trying to find PFC Lovingiers of today and help them out. But also, interestingly enough, I've been starting to write about preparing for my own retirement. And so I've been getting a lot of good feedback and a lot of questions and dialog with that.

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04:43:14 - 05:02:10

Brandon Lovingier

So I've been kind of leaning into that a little bit here lately. But ultimately I'm trying to get that information out. So literally if I could find somebody who’s coming into the military and be like, here's the information you need — do this, don't do that. And you'll never have to worry about money.

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05:02:10 - 05:13:04

Brandon Lovingier

And that's kind of what I'm trying to do. I even wrote the first draft for my book this summer. So hopefully I'll get that going too.

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05:13:06 - 05:21:29

Lauren Hong

Wow. Congrats. That's a huge undertaking. Yeah. Any sneak peeks you want to share? 

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05:22:01 - 05:45:14

Brandon Lovingier

Yeah. The working title is Enlist to Wealth, The Enlisted Service Members Guide to Avoiding Money Mistakes and Living a Better Life. I think that’s the subtitle now. I finished it in June, and then just said, I'm going to set it aside and I'm going to come back with fresh eyes later on.

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05:45:16 - 05:59:11

Brandon Lovingier

And plus I'm in kind of a busy season. I'm still on active duty. And so, I'm doing all this stuff in the margins before work, over lunch, at night. So I have to pace myself a little bit.

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05:59:13 - 06:14:02

Lauren Hong

Yeah, that's totally fair. Well, it's kind of nice that you're still in the thick of it because I'm sure you're having conversations and things are coming up so you definitely have your ear to the ground with all of that. But early congrats on the book. Do you have a timeline for launch?

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06:14:04 - 06:34:23

Brandon Lovingier

I don't. I'm just giving myself a little bit of space and taking my time with it. I'm not going to let it sit there forever. You know there's a tendency to be like, I could always make it better and all that, but my plan is to this winter, dig in and do my own first self-edit.

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06:34:25 - 06:42:23

Brandon Lovingier

And then save up a little bit of money to pay for an editor and kind of go through that process. So hopefully about the time I retire I'll have that ready.

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06:42:23 - 07:21

Lauren Hong

That's so awesome. Okay. So since you've been going through this whole process of writing the book and figuring this out, and then also just like your own personal experiences, are there any stories like the one you shared earlier about how you bought your truck?  

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07:23 - 07:18:08

Lauren Hong

Are there any stories that would help listeners, kind of like lessons learned if they were in your shoes? It was a great example about the truck. Any other kind of thoughts like, hey, if you do X, Y, and Z or be aware of this big red flag, what would you like to tell folks?

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07:18:10 - 07:45:16

Brandon Lovingier

Yeah, really the biggest thing is just understanding what pay and benefits you have and what you can actually do with that. And being really cautious about that. There's so many people out there who really prey upon service members and go, hey, look, you've got this steady paycheck. You're making the big bucks now or whatever and then get you to finance everything.

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07:45:16 - 07:59:29

Brandon Lovingier

I literally mean that. It’s kind of laughable now but I literally financed our wedding ring set at a place you could also buy subwoofers. So just to give you an idea of the kind of places that soldiers find themselves.

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07:59:29 - 08:03:12

Lauren Hong

It’s a real story, right? So go ahead.

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08:03:15 - 08:24:01

Brandon Lovingier

And as a recruiter, I got to see this a lot as a lot of us came from places where money management wasn't a thing because there was no money to manage. And so you're kind of in an uphill battle to a certain extent, at least with the enlisted folks.

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08:24:03 - 08:39:21

Brandon Lovingier

But getting back to stories and things like that, I actually have two pages on my website, one for Enlisted Money confessions and one for Enlisted Money success stories, just to be able to share those kinds of stories and things like that.

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08:39:21 - 08:57:26

Brandon Lovingier

So I don't have a lot of them out there yet but I'm starting to build up a few, I think. I just posted success story number five. And I think I'm up to confession number three or four. So we're getting there. I’m just trying to share that and let people know you're not alone.

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08:57:26 - 09:10:29

Brandon Lovingier

There's other people who are going through this or have gone through this. And, if you just take small, consistent action over time, you can do a lot with even the little pay you think you have there.

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09:10:29 - 09:26:16

Lauren Hong

So, with that, are there any good habits or takeaways or things you would say if you could go back to your former self and say? I’d love to hear that too.

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09:26:19 - 09:46:06

Brandon Lovingier

Yeah. I think the biggest thing is just understanding some of these things that are out there, and understanding the power of some of them, like for instance, when I joined, the only thing I remember from my brief on the TSP, which is our equivalent of a 401(k), is they're going to take money out of your check and you can't use it until you're 60.

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09:46:06 - 10:04:16

Brandon Lovingier

And I was like, hey man, I need this now. I don't know if you know much about my life but I need this cash now. And so I didn't invest anything in the TSP. Just by really dumb luck, I ended up starting a Roth IRA and putting 50 bucks a month in there.

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10:04:19 - 10:27:04

Brandon Lovingier

Before I knew it, there was $20,000 in there. And then it doubled, and it's continued to grow. I was like, man, if I would have done this, like 5% with my TSP from the get-go, I would have been in a much better spot.

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10:27:04 - 10:48:11

Brandon Lovingier

And I would have never missed the money. I spent money on cigarettes and everything else, and I never missed that money. If I would have put a little bit into something like that, I would have been in a much better position and I would have had a lot more confidence to leave the military sooner, if that was my choice.

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10:48:11 - 10:53:17

Brandon Lovingier

But I kind of always felt stuck, at least in the beginning part of my career. 

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10:53:20 - 11:10:27

Lauren Hong

Well, like you said, there's a lot of mixed messages. And then also, when you jump into the beginning part of your career, when you're thrown in, you're going for it, so you might be 18 but you're doing stuff — they throw you into the deep end of it.

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11:10:27 - 11:14:15

Lauren Hong

So there's that too. All of it.

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11:14:20 - 11:36:27

Brandon Lovingier

Yeah, definitely. And there's a book called “Scarcity” that I really like, and it talks about that a little bit too. When you have a lot of stuff going on and you're getting thrown into the deep end on many different fronts, you don't make the best choices because you're just doing everything fast and in a hurry.

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11:36:27 - 11:52:05

Brandon Lovingier

And there's so much information that's getting thrown at you. The way the military trained you a lot of times it's just drink from a fire hose. You get bombarded with all these mandatory trainings and you just become numb to it.

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11:52:05 - 12:05:06

Brandon Lovingier

And maybe it's good information. Maybe it's okay but you just end up going, this is too much. And I'll figure it out later. And then later comes and you're like, oh gosh, this isn't exactly where I wanted to be in life.

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12:05:08 - 12:23:05

Lauren Hong

Yeah, well, I appreciate what you're doing because by educating others who are willing to pick up the book or read the stories or listen, whatever it might be, hopefully you're cutting through the noise to be able to say these are decisions you don't want to make super quickly. These are the decisions you make to be smart for your long-term planning.

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12:23:08 - 12:43:15

Lauren Hong

So I appreciate that you're paying it forward in that way. Any other kind of thoughts you have for people who are at their 2.0? What things should they be thinking about at that point? Should they be talking with someone like yourself or what advice would you have for someone who maybe has done the Dave Ramsey, they've taken in these tips.

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12:43:15 - 12:47:26

Lauren Hong

And now they're ready to kind of go upstream.

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12:47:28 - 13:09:01

Brandon Lovingier

Yeah. I think that unless you want to do what I did to actually go back to school, there's a lot more resources available out there. The Military Financial Advisors Association is definitely one of them that's growing. I've got the MCV designation, the military qualified financial planner designation.

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13:09:03 - 13:29:26

Brandon Lovingier

So there's some grassroots efforts to create some of those next-level military-specific places you can go and you can turn to and get advice. And there is some advice on the options if you want to do that. There's a lot of different coaches and things that are available as well.

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13:29:28 - 13:55:28

Brandon Lovingier

Also another thing too. There are a lot of folks who just don't know they have some of these resources available, like having a personal financial counselor they can go to on post and pick their brain. That's literally their whole job, to answer questions, help you with a budget, talk you through the TSP, talk you through home buying, credit building, all those kinds of things.

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13:56:01 - 14:21:13

Brandon Lovingier

But just knowing that, getting the basics right, is the first thing. But then, once you have a little bit of — I like to call it Play-Doh — you can't make a great model if you don't have a lot of Play-Doh but once you have a little bit of Play-Doh built up and you can start making some cool stuff, then it's helpful to have somebody who’s been there before to say you might want to build this framework first before you start piling stuff over here and make it a mess.

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14:21:13 - 14:24:03

Brandon Lovingier

So yeah, that's kind of the way I think about it.

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14:24:05 - 14:43:21

Lauren Hong

Yeah. That's fair. I think sometimes there are so many resources for military personnel that it can also be overwhelming. And I often see too, if there's somebody who’s been through this or you can lean on, maybe they can just help connect that dot with the right resource to go to or what have you.

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14:43:23 - 15:12:07

Lauren Hong

Those are really good tips. And then any other kind of thoughts for folks who are listening in who might have a target market of working with the military and supporting them with making sure they're making smart money decisions? Any thoughts about how to reach that audience or things about how they communicate and talk with that demographic?

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15:12:09 - 15:40:25

Brandon Lovingier

Yeah. As far as financial professionals who want to serve the military community or think they might want to serve the military community, I would definitely first say get yourself out to ___________ at some point. I'm a huge fan. There’s a lot of wonderful people out there but there's a lot of different spots and things like that where you can find some other like-minded individuals; there's Choose Fi military Facebook group, things like that.

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15:40:25 - 15:57:11

Brandon Lovingier

There are some folks out there, good people. You just have to be cautious of folks who want to try and get you to replace all of your benefits with a particular policy of sorts, and things like that.

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15:57:11 - 16:21:17

Brandon Lovingier

So there's a lot of people who would rather have money to put into a product as opposed to letting you use your benefits. So people got to be cognizant of that, I guess. But if you're looking to get into this, I think that it’s really rewarding. And the military personal finance community is fairly small but the nicest and most welcoming group of people I've ever come across.

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16:21:17 - 16:25:10

Brandon Lovingier

I absolutely love this community. It's really awesome.

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16:25:12 - 16:42:06

Lauren Hong

So awesome. I really love hearing that. And thank you, among all the things you're doing in between writing a book, full-time active duty, and all the other pieces, you're running a website, all the things you have going on, just for taking the time to be able to share a little bit more behind the scenes of what you're doing to pay it forward.

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16:42:08 - 16:49:25

Lauren Hong

That's not easy to be able to squeeze out. And as you were saying earlier, in between everything that's going on. So we appreciate you sharing some insights today.

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16:49:28 - 16:59:16

Brandon Lovingier

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it. I love talking about this kind of stuff and yeah, if we can help somebody out then it's definitely worth a few minutes of my time.

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16:59:18 - 17:05:03

Lauren Hong

Well, thank you. And I'll just say like, go Chiefs there, a shoutout to your background as well.

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17:05:04 - 17:07:18

Brandon Lovingier

Thanks!

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17:07:20 - 17:11:01

Lauren Hong

Awesome. Well, thanks again. Have a great rest of your day.

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17:11:04 - 17:16:27

Brandon Lovingier

All right. Yep. You too. Thanks.

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We talked with Ellie Alexander and Josefina Terrera about:

• How simple website upkeep can keep your inbox from going spooky silent 
• Haunting compatibility issues and how keeping up with today’s “digital hygiene” like routine backups and testing can keep you from spooky surprises 
• Cross-platform compatibility and how to keep your brand materials looking their best no matter what program they’re viewed in 

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About Ellie and Josefina:

At Out & About Communications, Ellie and Josefina are dedicated to guiding clients to achieve their brand and digital goals. As design director, Ellie collaborates closely with clients to refine their brands and showcase what makes them unique. Her background spans traditional ad agencies, in-house branding, and boutique marketing, all of which have shaped her expertise and approach. Josefina serves as senior developer, crafting visually appealing and functional websites to meet client needs. Together, they bring creative precision and dedication to Out & About website projects, helping clients stand out and connect authentically.

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Featured Resources 

• Ellie Alexander on LinkedIn
• Josefina Terrera on LinkedIn

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Enjoyed This? You’ll Also Love:  

• FAQs: When to Engage and How to Navigate Outsourced Marketing in Financial Services
• Website Redesigns: The Process Behind Building Websites for Financial Services Companies 
• Financial Services Branding: When and How Should You Redesign Your Company Logo?

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Full Audio Transcript:

00:00:00 - 00:22:21

Lauren Hong

All right. Welcome. We have a spooky on purpose podcast today for Halloween. Ellie, you are dressed very much in color. And Josephine, you’ve kind of got it going on. Maybe we should have worn costumes; that would have been fun.

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00:22:21 - 00:25:25

Josefina Terrera

I was going to bring a flashlight and a hoodie but decided against it.

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00:25:25 - 00:48:25

Lauren Hong

I've got a lot of princess gear around the house with kids. So many ways to dress up. Okay, so speaking of Halloween, we have seen some spooky things. We have some spooky case studies regarding website design — all kinds of things where you're like, oh, I didn't want that to happen.

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00:48:28 - 01:09:20

Lauren Hong

We're going to talk through some of those and how we can avoid them. So, Josefina, I'm going to pass it over to you because you have a pretty meaty case study you were able to pull up that I think really helps to connect the dots. If you're a small company or if you're a pretty large organization, you can be in the way of a digital threat.

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01:09:20 - 01:13:21

Lauren Hong

So, you want to share with folks?

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01:13:28 - 01:39:11

Josefina Terrera

Yeah, sure. Well, for me, I guess the spooky part is the things we cannot control and in our websites we cannot control what other people are doing. So I was howling about this story that happened in 2016, and I knew about it because it was all over the media. It involved many presidents and prime ministers.

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01:39:13 - 02:06:00

Josefina Terrera

It's called the Panama Papers Breach, and it's the largest breach documented, because it involved 11 million documents. I just read about it at the time and how all these people were involved with tax evasion and offshore activities. But as you know, I was reading recently that everything started with a WordPress website, from a law firm in Panama.

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02:06:02 - 02:33:03

Josefina Terrera

They had an outdated side and the plugin Slider Revolution, which is what you would use for your slideshows. And hackers were able to enter the site through that plugin. But it didn't stop there. They didn't have the 11 million documents on the website. They had them on the server, which they were sharing with the website.

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02:33:05 - 02:58:01

Josefina Terrera

Well, everything else is history. People went to jail and whatnot. But it does leave some very important takeaway lessons from other people's mistakes. Number one, keep your website up to date, keep your plugins up to date. Plugins are somebody else's code and you don't know what they're doing.

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02:58:01 - 03:29:18

Josefina Terrera

You don't know they're maintaining it. Personally, I don't even like to use that many plugins. I trust some basic building blocks — HTML, CSS, JavaScript — and use as few plugins as possible because you know you're giving too much control up to other people. Keep your themes up to date. Number two, practice some digital hygiene where you keep your website in one place and your sensitive data in another place.

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03:29:18 - 04:03:00

Josefina Terrera

Be very cautious about what data you're taking from your clients. We're dealing with financial companies. People are very cautious about their data. So treat it with respect. And then I think number three is to have a password manager, which seemingly contradicts digital hygiene because you are having all your passwords in one place. But password managers work all day, their brand is working all day to keep your passwords safe.

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04:03:02 - 04:38:25

Josefina Terrera

So I guess also encrypting your passwords, suggesting hard to guess passwords and everything they can do in terms of security they're going to apply because they're training for that all day. So I would say if you have a password manager just memorize that password or maybe you can write it down in your one safe spot, have two-factor authentication, and as an extra level of precaution sign in from a browser that doesn't have any Google extensions.

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04:38:27 - 05:10:18

Josefina Terrera

Because somebody could sometimes inject malicious code. I think if you do all of that, you should be relatively safe. I have other stories too. I just don't want to take over because we have not experienced some serious hacks in our websites. I do remember at some point we had a situation that is very common in WordPress where things just get abandoned.

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05:10:21 - 05:37:00

Josefina Terrera

So you buy a theme, you build the whole website around the theme but then the developer decides it can’t be yours. Then the theme is there but you still have to update WordPress and the plugins and it's like WordPress goes this way and your theme stays here, and they're just not synced anymore.

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05:37:03 - 06:08

Josefina Terrera

What happened to a website was that every time we would do an update, we would risk having all these shortcodes and gibberish appearing on the website, and we had to recreate components. That's something to think about when you're building with WordPress. Eventually there was a happy ending; they didn't get hacked, fortunately.

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06:08 - 06:26:05

Josefina Terrera

And they got a new website. But you have to be very vigilant. Don't depend so much on plugins. I guess if a plugin has one million installs, it's steady. You can trust that plugin because then you only know that one million people will have your same problem. But you don't need a plugin for everything.

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06:26:07 - 06:36:19

Josefina Terrera

I'm very adamant about adding things that later on, you just have to deal with, all that junk on your website and you don't know why.

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06:36:21 - 06:50:06

Lauren Hong

Yeah. And we should run quick introductions too. So for folks who are listening and aren't familiar with your background, you might just share a quick intro and then Ellie we’ll pop over to you to do a quick intro. And then unpack some stuff because I'm sure you're like, yes, I've seen this and I've seen that.

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06:50:06 - 06:56:10

Lauren Hong

So yeah. Josefina, you might just do a quick intro.

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06:56:12 - 07:13:10

Josefina Terrera

Well, I'm Josefina and the developer here at Out & About. I'm based in North Carolina. I love geeking out about this stuff.

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07:13:12 - 07:33:12

Lauren Hong

Totally. And you are so well versed in a number of different things. You’ve worked on a number of different backends. You're not platform agnostic. And you also know a number of different languages, website development languages. So you've seen a lot over the years.

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07:33:14 - 07:52:03

Josefina Terrera

Yeah and over the years you just develop your preference and your way. It's not even your preference, oh, I like to do things this way, I find it more sustainable doing things this way or that way. But I know from experience.

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07:52:05 - 07:53:24

Lauren Hong

Ellie.

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07:59:29 - 08:19:09

Ellie Alexander

I'm Ellie, I'm the design director here at Out & About. So my specialty is a little bit more design focused and broader. Josefina knows much more of the technical background, like web development stuff. And my purview is more of the design side, the esthetics, and the brand.

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08:19:11 - 08:32:03

Ellie Alexander

I've been in the industry for, gosh, about like 15 years now. And I've worked in small agencies, corporate, all over the place and I still see the same issues pop up, the same spooky things over time.

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08:32:06 - 08:38:10

Lauren Hong

What kind of spooky things are we seeing? I feel like we need some intro music.

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08:38:12 - 08:59:04

Ellie Alexander

Yeah, I know. So one of the most serious ones — none of mine are as serious and catastrophic as Josefina’s example — I guess that's since I'm coming more from the design side. But one of the more serious ones I have seen is not having your website at least somewhat accessible. 

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08:59:06 - 09:11:26

Ellie Alexander

And to be accessible in this context means for people who might be hard of sight and have to use a screen reader, or for people who might have other disabilities that make it difficult to interact with websites.

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09:11:28 - 09:12:06

Lauren Hong

Yep.

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09:12:14 - 09:33:05

Ellie Alexander

And at its best, it can simply be that the text is too small. And if you're someone who even just needs reading glasses, you pull it up on your phone and you're like, well, I can't read this. Thanks, guys. This isn't helpful. Or not having good enough contrast, like if the text and the background are too close in color or tone it can be really difficult for certain people to read.

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09:33:08 - 09:49:29

Ellie Alexander

And including text in your images is another thing I see a lot that's just a big no no because then it's completely not screen reader-enabled. Or if someone just even happens to be on a bad broadband connection, the image just won't load and they might miss a really important piece of what the content of your website is.

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09:50:01 - 10:12:06

Ellie Alexander

But worst-case scenarios, especially for midsize to large organizations — and I've seen this happen at past workplaces — there are predatory people whose whole job is filing predatory lawsuits on companies whose websites aren't accessible, and they just scour the internet for websites they can think they can file a reasonably founded lawsuit.

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10:12:06 - 10:36:09

Ellie Alexander

And it's just unfortunate because in these cases it's not coming from anyone disabled who is actually impacted by it. It's just people looking for people they can sue to make money. So that's one of the more serious ones I've seen. But other ones are just not having your website optimized for mobile. That's gotten a lot easier over the last couple of years, since now drag and drop platforms like Squarespace and Wix will let you do more customization for mobile.

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10:36:16 - 10:54:24

Ellie Alexander

But if you don't take that into consideration, you could just end up with content that's out of order and no longer makes sense. Or as I mentioned before, is simply too small to read. So in this situation, it's more just usually like it makes your website look awkward and not as professional. That's usually not a catastrophic issue, like a lawsuit or a breach or something.

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10:54:27 - 11:14:16

Lauren Hong

Totally. In going back to Josefina’s point, I've literally seen websites on the brink — they look great on the outside but on the backend it's a hot mess. So I really appreciated your takeaways too about how we make sure we're keeping up the backend so it doesn't fall apart on the frontend.

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11:14:20 - 11:41:12

Lauren Hong

And what you're saying too is like on the frontend that it's accessible for people if they're on mobile, if there's like you were saying, a challenge with being able to see or access the website from a variety of different angles. So any other like spooky situations or things you guys can think of that we run into or things to avoid?.

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11:41:14 - 11:59:22

Ellie Alexander

This is one actually. It honestly just popped into my head while we were talking, and it's more from a consumer angle. I've actually taught a couple of my friends this. There are so many borderline, questionable e-commerce sites that pop up these days. Say you get an ad on Instagram and you're like, oh, this looks cool.

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11:59:24 - 12:04:00

Ellie Alexander

And this is why it's spooky. Because the websites can look pretty legit.

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12:04:02 - 12:09:19

Lauren Hong

Definitely, like Tiffany and Company. I’ve totally seen fake websites like. 

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12:09:21 - 12:25:17

Ellie Alexander

That's spooky. Yeah, that's really scary. You’re usually like, it must be a small startup I've never heard of but no — and then you've got the product and it's complete garbage. There are ways that people who are really savvy at doing that can make it extra impressive.

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12:25:17 - 12:45:13

Ellie Alexander

But a really good way to tell is, especially if it's a retail site, look at the photography and see if the photography is all done in the same style. That's one way I've been able to get them and teach my friends about them. If you look at all the clothing and one photo is done on a white background and one photo is in nature and another one is very bright and another one is very dark.

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12:45:13 - 13:11

Ellie Alexander

If the photography is all over the place, it's probably because they stole the pictures from different websites. So that's a big red flag. If the photography on a website, especially their product photos, is not consistent, unless you know it's legit, probably don't trust it because they're probably just stealing those images.

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13:14 - 13:12:03

Lauren Hong

Yeah, totally. I know we do a lot of website backups too. I don't know if you want to talk to that because that's another preventive way to avoid issues or just the importance of digital hygiene.

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13:12:05 - 13:40:29

Josefina Terrera

Yeah, just do regular backups because sometimes malicious code is just so hard to take out or whatever, just having previous versions of it and an external backup. Many hosting companies provide you a backup for 30 days but sometimes it's hard to know when things happen. One code gets injected.

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13:41:01 - 14:11:16

Josefina Terrera

I mean, what Ellie was saying about sometimes what they do — there was like a famous case of pharmaceuticals where hidden things get injected into the website and people pressed a link from the pharma website, and then they go and buy something on a counterfeit company. So you don't know what may have happened over 30 days ago.

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14:11:16 - 14:40:01

Josefina Terrera

So it's good to just keep those regular backups outside of the hosting and going back to that ecommerce website like Ellie was saying, I am very cautious with my credit card. At this point, I don't pay anything unless it has PayPal, Stripe, or Apple Pay. You know, I just don't trust your website.

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14:40:08 - 15:13

Josefina Terrera

I don't trust it. Random websites holding your credit card data is not safe anymore. And you know there's safer methods to do it. So if that's a product I like and they don't offer alternative methods of payments, I'll just learn to wait.

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15:15 - 15:26:29

Lauren Hong

Totally fair. And I think that's also a good reminder. If you are looking to take digital payments, make sure you have a secure methodology to be able to take that payment in. I totally hear you. Ellie, you were going to say something. Do you agree? You had mentioned earlier before we started, one thing I think is super spooky and very real — broken forms — so that's a very real thing.

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15:26:29 - 15:30:24

Lauren Hong

What was it? The other thing that you said was a snag.

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15:30:27 - 15:39:07

Ellie Alexander

It is a snag. I don't remember the thing I said. There was a snag in the contact form; maybe you can remember while I'm talking. So I don't recall. Yeah.

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15:39:07 - 15:40:04

Josefina Terrera

Yeah.

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15:40:06 - 15:53:24

Ellie Alexander

The contact form, especially for small businesses. I definitely think people are like, oh, I'm just surprised we haven't gotten leads in a couple of weeks. Why? What's going on? Maybe we need to do more in a marketing push. Well, have you checked your contact form to make sure it's still working? 

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15:53:24 - 16:15:14

Ellie Alexander

It could be a WordPress plugin issue like that plugin is no longer supported. So the form is simply not working. Or did the person who used to get your inquiries leave the company and we forgot to set the contact form to redirect to somebody else? Or did you, as an organization, change the format of all your email addresses?

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16:15:14 - 16:29:27

Ellie Alexander

And that didn’t get updated. There's lots of reasons why a contact form can just not work — if it's just being sent to an old inbox or not going through. So just check that, especially if it seems like you're getting a lot lower level of leads recently; just make sure the contact form is working.

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16:30:00 - 16:48:28

Lauren Hong

Totally. It's basic. I've also seen hackers input malicious code through contact forms too, which I think is another good thing to know. And Josefina, to your point earlier, keep those plugins updated and it's so easy to do shortcuts. So I'm going to throw another plugin on the site, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that.

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16:48:28 - 17:05:18

Lauren Hong

And then you forget about it. And then you go to the backend of the site and you're like, oh my gosh, there's like 50 plugins here. We're only using five of the 50. Those other ones need to just say goodbye to, so just that idea of hygiene. I don't know, Josefina, if there's anything more you want to share on that too.

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17:05:21 - 17:31:21

Josefina Terrera

Yeah, it's definitely a very important step. Like being on top of what’s in your house. What happened? What is all this stuff in the closet? It’s good to always be checking. The more familiar I am with a website, the easier it is for me to maintain that hygiene, because it's like, okay, I know this.

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17:31:21 - 17:56:06

Josefina Terrera

I know when this was inserted. One common thing I like to do is deactivate things, keep them deactivated for a while. Nothing happens. Then we consider deleting them. There're many WordPress plugins that have to do with searching or nothing that will affect your frontend; they are just tools.

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17:56:13 - 18:18:15

Josefina Terrera

So those are the easiest ones to delete. And then there's one like Slider Revolution that goes with a slider somewhere. Because I've learned many stories start with Slider Revolution. I for one don't like sliders and don't like plugins for sliders. 

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18:25:29 - 18:52:17

Josefina Terrera

And as far as forms, I'm very attentive to forms because it's what the whole marketing effort is about, from beginning to end. You want to reach people. You can have the most awesome website but if you have a form that hasn't been set up properly, the whole thing feels incredibly frustrating.

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18:52:17 - 19:21:25

Josefina Terrera

So, I'm very intentional about it. I know with our own website, we even have a backup because ours is with Webflow. So even if we miss some submission or whatever was to happen to our integration, Webflow will say whatever was submitted. So that's my favorite platform; I always feel safest with that one.

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19:21:28 - 19:46:21

Josefina Terrera

You can still get hacked with a Webflow website because there's always the possibility that you can add a third-party library. You can always inject some code or there's always the login credentials, everything is vulnerable. But at least with that, it is a hosted platform. So everything that's a plugin, even HubSpot.

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19:46:21 - 20:17

Josefina Terrera

I don't like HubSpot but it is a hosted platform. So they are going to handle security stuff with WordPress. Sometimes it does feel like the wild, wild West, so you have to be very diligent. 

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20:20 - 20:24:10

Lauren Hong

Yeah, yeah. Different people maintaining different code, which is not bad. Actually there's a beautiful thing about it, right? There's an art to being able to pull these pieces together but you just want to be smart about how you do it. I think just another takeaway, as you guys are talking, is that these things, why they seem simple are never really simple, because like you were talking earlier about, well, I'm going to take a plugin away and I'm going to wait to see if it impacts anything else.

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20:24:10 - 20:39:24

Lauren Hong

Sometimes there's domino effects. So just being really cautious about changes that are being made, and taking those backups and just that overall digital hygiene is important as you proceed forward. So any other thoughts guys?

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20:39:26 - 21:13:09

Josefina Terrera

Yeah, I mean there's a lot of spooky things. We were talking about CSS stuff. Fortunately many of those things have been solved with time but it used to be the worst thing having to deal with Internet Explorer. Because let's just say, I used to create websites for pharmaceuticals and many boomers use IE.

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21:13:12 - 21:35:14

Josefina Terrera

So you have to be building for IE. So let's just say you have something, some component that's working perfectly in any browser but it's not working in IE8. But then if you Google analytics I was like oh, I guess people are still using IE8. You know, you call your doctor.

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21:35:16 - 21:38:23

Josefina Terrera

I used to be using IE.

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21:38:25 - 21:41:26

Lauren Hong

In finance too, which is crazy. 

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21:42:03 - 21:49:04

Ellie Alexander

So secondly, I thought what you were talking about was AI. I was like, I'm embarrassed to ask. That is oh my gosh, Internet Explorer. That's a throwback.

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21:49:06 - 22:10:05

Josefina Terrera

Yeah. But this wasn't so much way back. Let's just say 2018, 19. And yeah, what was interesting is sometimes you had that dilemma and fixed it at IE but it looks a little bit more messed up now in Chrome. I'm making compromises for the sake of IE.

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22:10:07 - 22:38:22

Josefina Terrera

Even Microsoft has said we stopped supporting IE, so it's like you were really on your own. Or they would stop supporting older versions. They were using Edge. Eventually Edge started using Chrome. So it just became a more homogeneous environment that (       ) and different browsers, videos, we use BrowserStack, which solves a lot of these issues.

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22:38:22 - 23:01:26

Josefina Terrera

So it's like a virtual computer that allows you to login to your website on any computer, on any device you can think of. Let's say you run your analytics and you realize many of your clients use Android, then maybe you want to focus a little bit more on Android. it's worth it.

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23:01:26 - 23:23:15

Josefina Terrera

So those are some other spooky things. There’s a lot of things you have to keep in mind when you're building components and yeah, with CSS, all kinds of fun things. 

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23:35:21 - 23:46:27

Ellie Alexander

This is borderline website related but something you just said Josefina about things being updated and new versions of things aren't supported anymore.

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23:48:28 - 24:06:01

Ellie Alexander

One thing that just drives me crazy is, especially now with cloud storage and like, some organizations use Google Drive and they use Google Docs and they use that and some organizations use Microsoft programs, and you think, oh, I can just put one into the other. 

‍

24:06:01 - 24:36:26

Ellie Alexander

Especially if your organization is using both or people in your organization are using different versions of those, it can really mess up your documents. Because a lot of our work focuses on business to consumer materials but we also do a lot for just organizations internally. And so if you're even making your email signatures, if you create a beautifully designed email signature but then you send it to someone in your organization who uses Outlook and someone in your organization who uses Google or Apple Mail, they could put them in and they would look completely different because those programs use different default fonts or they’re running on different versions.

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24:36:26 - 24:52:23

Ellie Alexander

And it's just so spooky how you can design something like a beautiful PowerPoint template or a beautiful Word doc. But then as soon as it starts going off to different machines and gets uploaded into Google and then downloaded back and used in Microsoft again, it can just get trashed. And it drives me crazy.

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24:52:29 - 25:13:10

Lauren Hong

You know, again, it's not just machines, like you're saying. Sometimes it's just because you're on an Apple or a PC or different versions or printers. Yeah, it is kind of wild and there's ways to avoid certain things but there's also system upgrades. You can get it just perfect and then it's like, whew, like email.

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25:13:12 - 25:37:20

Lauren Hong

That could be a whole other podcast. So oh my gosh. So fun. Really appreciate the conversation expertise you brought to the table and to some really good takeaways. I think, like websites, all of this can totally be spooky but making sure we're a smart website with digital hygiene and backups, and not taking shortcuts on things is the way to go.

‍

25:37:20 - 25:40:17

Lauren Hong

So thank you guys for your time.

‍

25:40:20 - 25:45:18

Ellie Alexander

Thanks for having us.

‍

We talked with Brendan about:

• How to listen on a level that involves engaging with empathy and curiosity
• Why building relationships with clients should start with understanding their fundamental motivations and desires 
• Creating deep connections by making clients feel heard and understood 

‍

About Brendan Frazier:

Brendan Frazier is a former financial services consultant with over a decade of experience helping financial advisors across the country. Through his interactions with thousands of advisors, he recognized a recurring theme: many felt they were acting more like therapists than financial planners. This insight led Brendan to explore the often-overlooked human side of finance, prompting him to launch his own advisory business. Committed to improving his understanding of behavioral psychology and communication, he started a podcast where he interviews experts in these fields. Brendan’s passion for merging the human aspect with financial advising has created a growing community of like-minded professionals eager to learn and evolve in their practice.

Featured Resources 

• Brendan Frazier on LinkedIn 
• RFG Advisory 
• The Human Side of Advice Podcast
• Psychology of Money
• Advice that Sticks
• Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss
• Shaping Wealth
• Money Quotent

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Enjoyed This? You’ll Also Love: 

• Using a Coach Mindset to Unlock Your Full Leadership Potential
• How to Develop and Infuse Generosity Into Your Company Culture
• Enhancing Advisor Success: How to Add Value Beyond the Numbers Through Human Connection
• Six People You Need in Your Life to Develop Your Career

Full Audio Transcript:

00:00 - 00:07

Lauren Hong

Brendan, thank you for being here.

‍

00:07 - 00:09

Brendan Frazier

Well, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

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00:09 - 00:29

Lauren Hong

Yes. And we're talking about your topic, the human side of advice. You are a podcaster, keynote speaker, going to conferences, doing all kinds of things. How did you get into this world? How did you get into the whole human side of advice? I'm just going to throw it over to you. Share a little bit more.

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00:29 - 04:01

Brendan Frazier

Yeah. So I mean really the short and sweet version of it is because I often imagined when I did these things, I always wonder how much do people really care? I want to know about the background of my journey and how much are they just wondering, what can you teach me and tell me that I can take back and use to make myself better off? So I'm going to tell this story, short and sweet. Here’s the setup. I used to be — about a decade ago, a little less than that — in financial services, working as a consultant to financial advisors. So the luxury of that or what that meant was I got to meet with, over the course of time, literally thousands of advisors around the country. So you learn a lot from that. You learn about how to do things, how not to do things, what you like, what you don't like. One thing I learned, because it came up over and over and over again, was you would hear something along the lines of, you know, Brendan, sometimes I feel like more of a therapist than a financial advisor. Or if it wasn't that, it would be, you know, Brendan, there's times where I think I'd be better off with a degree in psychology than I would a degree in economics or accounting or finance or financial planning. And so you'd hear it over and over and over again, and if you've ever worked with a human being about money, if you haven't said that out loud, you've at least started at some point. It's just the nature of the job we're in. And so I heard it over and over again, and I kept thinking, okay, what do we do about that? That's true. That's how we feel. Let's say it's at least equally important. A lot of people would say that. It feels like it's more the job. Let's say I don't believe that to be true. So let's say it's equally important. Then what do we do about it? We have trainings, designations, and certifications we can take to hone the money side and the technical side. What do we do for this human side? And then the most common response I would get was first of all, blank stare. And then second, it would be, I mean, read a book, man. Hey, is that good enough? I don't think that's good enough, right? If it's that important, we probably should be doing something more. So I started my own advisory business, got into that side of things. And so at that point in time, I decided, you know what? I want to get better at this. I know how important it is, this human side. I want to get better at it. I want to go on this journey to get better. And so why don't I start doing some research but then also start this podcast? I'll get to talk to some really cool, awesome, smart people who are experts in behavior and psychology communication. Worst-case scenario, I'll learn a lot, get to apply a lot, and use it in the work I do and in my business. Best-case scenario, it turns out there are other advisors out there who are like, you know what? I'm interested in this too but I didn't know at the time, right? So I launch this podcast. I'm learning a lot. Next thing you know, look at six months later, a year later, two years later, and lo and behold, there's an appetite for this out there. And so that's when I sort of started doubling down and went, okay, there are people who really want to know and learn this stuff. So I'm going to keep doing more podcasts, more research, more articles, speaking trainings, and all that. So it was sort of like this natural evolution of I sort of dip my toe in. I didn't know it was going to happen. I saw there is interest and demand for it. And I was enjoying learning the human side more than I was working with clients and learning the technical side. And so eventually just decided, hey, if you're having more fun, if you're enjoying it more and there seems to be an opportunity here, why not go all in and see what happens?

‍

04:01 - 04:22

Lauren Hong

Super awesome. I hear that too. You know, like sales is all about people, right? Relationships. Like being able to pull out the nuances of conversation. That's all the people side of it. So you're right, it's not solely the things you know; it's the street smarts a little bit. Super interesting. So after having these conversations, are there any key takeaways you've had? I mean, doing this podcast and you know, giving these talks, any kind of themes you've seen across the board.

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04:30 - 06:41

Brendan Frazier

So first of all, I just mentioned a second ago that I was going to go on that little rant there but also bring it back and make an example out of it. And so this kind of ties into what you just asked. But one thing we can learn from what just happened at the beginning of that conversation is you asked me a question about myself that was easy to answer. It had an emotional component. It was exciting to answer because it went back into my past and let me tell about myself in my past. And so, whenever we get to talk about ourselves, there's this part of the brain that lights up. It feels good. It's like a pleasure center. It's the reward part, the same area in the brain that lights up when you engage in sexual activity and eat chocolate. And so, as I'm sitting there talking about myself, I'm like, man, I enjoy this, this is fun. I mean, I'm not thinking it right. It's subconscious, right? But I'm enjoying it. It feels good. And what you've done, whether intentionally or not, is sort of create this conversational flow and momentum that can carry you through the rest of the conversation. And that's something you can apply to every single conversation you have, whether it's a podcast episode or just a meeting with a prospect or client. You sort of prime the pump. I'm getting a little bit out of my head, into my heart, feeling emotional and feeling good about talking. And you did a great job listening as I was talking. So, yeah. So I wrote a whole article and recorded a whole podcast episode. I now have a presentation called The Top. So sure, the human side of advice. And so what that was, was me going back and saying, we've done over 120 episodes. There's a lot in there. You could literally learn something every single episode. But what are the core themes that emerge that we can learn from, that we can take away? And most importantly, the core themes you can apply immediately in your practice that can make a big impact. And so there's 10 of them. I probably can't mention all 10 — that would take a little while — but I can pull out a few. There's one that always sticks out to me every time. And there's one that comes up over and over and over again. So it's what I've eventually decided to deem the most important skill in financial advice. So on the podcast.

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06:41 - 06:44

Lauren Hong

Drumroll I feel like!

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06:44 - 09:18

Brendan Frazier

Cliffhanger! I had to tease it. I know I've had the experts on and it's cool. I think back on those that are at education skills. I just had another guy on who teaches at Stanford, teaches communication skills. And everybody in the world of communications says the most important skill for improving your communication is the ability to listen but not just listen, right? But actually truly engage and listen with empathy and curiosity. And I don't even team up for this, by the way. If you had to pick one thing, we know listening is important. How important is that? It naturally comes up and also they'll just mention it. By the way, the most important thing you can do as far as communication is improve your listening skills. So it's one of those things I always knew was important, thought was important. One of the questions I ask on the podcast, to every guest, is who's the best listener in your life and what do they do so well that makes them such a great listener? But naturally this keeps coming up over and over and over again, which is just kind of cool because I believe in how powerful listening is. It's just really, really hard to do. So that's one of the main skills. And the big wrap up, time and again, is this idea of doing better planning and having better competence around money by not just focusing on their goals and what they want to accomplish financially but actually on Earth — what they value most in their life and are trying to create. How do you create a process that goes beyond what you want to do but goes into why you want to do it? Because once you know not what people want to do but what really lies behind it, the emotional motivating reason why, you really get to the point where you can align money with life, and then you take your conversations and your relationships to the next level. So some people are like, okay, what does that look like? Well, it's not the fact that I want to retire at 65. That's what I want. That's what the client wants to do. And that's good. That's fine. What do you want to do? I want to retire at 65. Okay, great. Well, behind every what lies a why. Why is it that you want to retire at 65? There's a driving force behind it. And so like one example would be, well, I want to retire at 65 because I want to be able to maximize the time I have with my family while I still have the energy and the ability to do so because my dad died when he was young, and we felt like we got robbed of time we should have had together.

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09:18 - 09:19

Lauren Hong

It's the heart and soul of it.

‍

09:19 - 10:22

Brendan Frazier

And it just changes the entire planning conversation. Now it's not like, oh, you don't want to retire. You want more time with your family. Are there other ways we could create that for you? Or is there a way you could retire now and then still do the work on the side, and you still make some money while maximizing time with family? I was talking to an advisor yesterday. He's in one of my mastermind groups and said, hey, what's going well this week? What do you guys run into? He was like, I've just been reminded lately of the power of what we do and how cool it is when I can just sit down with somebody and point out or show them, hey, I know you're planning on retiring in four years but here's a way to do it today. And they just look at me with a sense of relief. And so they're like, no way. Thank you so much. I didn't even know. What do you want to do? And have them say, I want to retire at 65, plan now and walk off. You've got to truly understand, hey, do you really want to retire at 65? What's actually the why driving the what. So those are two things are super cool.

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10:23 - 11:39

Lauren Hong

It's really interesting. So we probably like a lot of organizations run a Net Promoter score. And you get the word bubbles at the end. And one of the things that always comes up is communications. And I've also had firms say to us that listening component, which is really interesting to hear, the way you pin it down because firms will say to us, you really listen to us and we're able to pin down who we are and where we want to go, not just all this kind of other stuff the world is trying to tell us. So I think applying it across businesses, right? And just relationships of really being able to listen but then being able to pull out those nuances is really interesting too. So, okay, so we covered those kinds of conversations, how to be able to stage different pieces is really key. I think you said there are 10 parts in your book or in the presentation you're doing. Are there any tips you would give to firms that go, we feel like we're doing a pretty good job with us but we want to do better, like ways to either train employees, maybe how they onboard or hire, I don't know if it's like coaching conferences they go to, just mentorship. What would you recommend to those firms that are saying we want to dial it up and aren't sure where to turn.

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11:39 - 15:18

Brendan Frazier

Yeah. So real quick, I have to go back to something you just said before that question. I'll come right back to this because I think this is a really important point. You were talking about how you'll have like the call, you'll have clients say, and across businesses, one of the things they enjoyed or valued the most was that it felt like you truly helped me pin down what it was that I wanted, what it was I valued. So translation, what does that mean? It means they feel heard and understood, right? Which is what at our core, that's what all human beings want is for somebody to know you, trust you, and feel understood. And so, the “Harvard Business Review” did a study across industries where they found if you can create emotionally connected clients, if you can get to know clients and their fundamental motivations and desires, the things that truly matter to them, that creates clients they call emotionally connected clients, clients that pay more, refer more, follow through, and do what you ask them to do. And then also and for financial services specifically, they're more willing to consolidate or bring up doing more. That hey, there's this thing you can do, this method you could take or follow through and then collate assets. So you'd be like, tell me more about it. But that's ultimately what it boils down to, is creating emotionally connected clients by understanding their motivations and desires, make them feel heard. And okay, so I had to get that in there because I think it's the study that's out there that I've known about for years using a lot of my training. If for some reason it hasn't, I feel like we need to know more about it. So I just want to mention that. But yeah, so your question is what would you say to somebody who says, hey, we think we do this pretty well but what can we do if we want to do it better, do it differently? I mean, that's the fundamental question because everybody wonders if it's important. Everybody wants to know what to do about it. First thing I would say is that, just know in this realm, just like on anything on the technical side but in the realm of the human side, I've never met anybody who's nailed it to 100% completion where they're just like, we're great at it, and there's nothing more we could do to get there. It's like it's a constant practice. You have to be working on it growing over time. But I would also say I've met very, very, very few people or firms who are even really good at this stuff. So if you think you're good, maybe you are. We could be. And there's like some checkpoint assessments you can do to sort of feel that out. But I would just start that with the assumption that there's a lot of improvement to be made. So that's number one. And then where do you go from there? Why start a build? That's sort of what I started trying to focus on was to say, okay, how do we bring this to the firm so they can incorporate it, embed it, and simpler, I think it comes down to two things. At the highest level, number one is skills. So you first have to learn, know, and hone the critical skills of communicating and dealing with humans. And then the second part after skills is systems. So you've got skills and systems and systems is zero. Basically how can I apply this, embed this in my practice and my processes so it's there and it's consistent. And I'm not always wondering what I could do but it's just embedded in every part of your process throughout your practice. So now those are like the two places where you start. What skills do I need to learn how to develop? And then where can I systematize this? Where can I put this in our systems and our processes to make it a consistent, repeatable experience.

‍

15:18 - 15:51

Lauren Hong

Are there any tips you would give to firms where sometimes certain skills are really hard to train to and sometimes people skills are really hard to train to when they're hired, like cues or red flags to watch out for, for candidates. Because there's a technical skill. But is there anything as part of the process, like questions asked when hiring or the way the job description is written to be able to pull that human side of do we have the right fit or can we further train to that skill set for the right fit?

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15:52 - 17:10

Brendan Frazier

Yeah, I don't know. I've never really delved into or talked to anyone who researched how you filter and learn in the hiring process whether someone's got communication skills, right? I do think communication skills are important pretty much in any area of life, right? So they can always be honed and trained. But I think the principle that would probably apply is even if you hire somebody, if you're hiring somebody for a client-facing role, they need to have some level of skills, or they at least need to be willing to work, hone, and adapt those skills. If you have somebody you find out just doesn't have it and they don't really care, and they don't want to get you better at it, and they just want to look at spreadsheets — well, they just don't want to be client-facing because it really is that critical, right? But if they have an appetite to get better at it and learn, I think you can always hone and practice these skills. In fact, I would take somebody who as far as communication skills goes is a C but has a desire to grow over somebody who’s naturally a B but doesn't want to get any better and thinks they've already got it completely nailed down. I think the main point is to put people in roles they excel in but if you don't have these skills, they can be trained and developed. Doesn't mean it's easy, right? I guess I'll say that too. It's not easy to do but it can be done.

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17:09 - 18:04

Lauren Hong

Yeah, I hear you. And I know earlier I talked about how you've consulted with tons of firms and have kind of the luxury to see the inside. I feel that too because we're consulting and working with tons of firms, and it's a real luxury to be able to do that and have that vantage point. One of the things I often see, too, is just the value base, making sure you've got that right value base when hiring, and even little things. Like for us personally, thank you notes. I know that sounds little but it's like those little extras that can make a really big difference. Just to see if that person does have that kind of extra thought to go above and beyond. Any final thoughts or things I should be asking that I haven't or any good books? You've got so many books back there; are there any good ones to read or things we should be watching out for?

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18:04 - 21:29

Brendan Frazier

So I'm trying to think. I guess I would say two things. A question I get a lot of times so I know this is important is where should I go? What should I do if this is something I want to focus on, learn and get better at; where should I go? What should I do? So naturally, the answer to that question is almost always what resources are available? And that is important, and I'm going to get to that. But what I found, and it took me a while to figure this out, by the way, so I would have not have these trainings, have these advisors come in and teach the same things, you would give them the same resources, the same curriculum, same exercises, the same deliverables. And two people would get different results all over. Two people get completely different results. And so it bothered me for a while. I was like, I'm letting this other person down. And there's certainly an element of it, in terms of just like, being brought in and engaged. But it wasn't like that didn't seem to be the main differentiator. What I eventually sort of started passing out was those who got the better results. Those who truly saw the impact of embracing the human side were those who fully believed in why it was important in the first place. In other words, it's one thing to know, yeah, I think this is kind of important, and I want to try a few things here and there. It's another thing to fully embrace or have this mindset that if I embrace the human aspect, it's going to lead to better client relationships, better conversations, more levels of trust, more referrals. It's not only going to enhance my client relationships, it'll help them get better outcomes, and it's going to grow my business as a result. And so you first have to start with, why is this important? Now back to the why thing, right? What's the purpose? Why is this important? And then once you're dialed in there and you kind of have this foundation of why the human side is important, then you can go and that'll direct you in terms of now what do I need to go work on next? So now do the resources part, right? So as far as books go, “The Psychology of Money” is always a great intro, kind of a gateway book. Then another great gateway book is called “Advice That Sticks” by Dr. Moira Somers. It's up here in the bookshelf. Every time I mention that book, I always make a note to say it should be required reading for anybody who works with human beings and their money; it should be like CFP® and then “Advice That Sticks.” “Never Split the Difference” by Christopher Voss is one of the best tactical or practical books on communication skills. And then, other resources would be — I mean, I really don't want to do this because it feels awkward to say — but that's why I started the podcast; we really do work hard to try to make it the best resource for this out there. If you hear me say that and you're rolling your eyes, I got you. Don't download it. It's not going to hurt my feelings. But I think I would feel bad if I didn't at least mention it. And then, as far as trainings go, there's more and more that are cropping up. You've got Shaping Wealth and Building the Behavioral Advisor. There's the Kinder Life Planning Institute. Golden Gate University has some good programs. Money Quotient has some good programs. So there's also some trainings out there as well. And I think there's more that are cropping up. But that's where I would start essentially from the resource side. 

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21:29 - 21:45

Lauren Hong

I love it. I also appreciate just directing folks to the podcast. I do appreciate it that you can get nuggets of advice to be able to take it in. Sometimes I think these things are like building habits, and being just self-aware of the things that are going on. So I like the kind of bite-sized content to be able to apply to your day to day.

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21:46 - 21:58

Brendan Frazier

Yeah. No doubt. Now my podcast is not bite-size by any means but you'll definitely get good ideas from it because our whole focus is not what do you need to know but how can you apply? How do I apply? How do I apply?

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21:58 - 22:13

Lauren Hong

So I really love it. Well, thank you again for your time today and just for digging into this topic and helping people connect with people. And I mean, ultimately to be able to keep business, take good care of their clients, and just help people feel heard. So appreciate your time.

‍

22:13 - 22:20

Brendan Frazier

Well, thanks for having me and for shining a light on what I obviously in a biased way consider to be an important topic in the industry.

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22:20 - 22:22

Lauren Hong

Absolutely. Thank you for your time.

‍

22:22 - 23:26

Brendan Frazier

Yeah. Thanks, Lauren.

‍

We talked about:

• How to effectively collaborate with your C-suite or leadership team to ensure outsourced marketing efforts align with business objectives
• Why providing solid input to outsourced partners is essential for integration and consistency across the organization
• Why investing in pinpointing your ideal prospect is crucial — and how it can influence various aspects of your business strategy

Featured Resources 

• The Role of Marketing and the CMO in Today’s Financial Services Industries with Nick Richtsmeier
• Business Growth Tips for Accountants, Bookkeepers, and Financial Services Business Owners
• Tips for Effective Branding and Website Strategies for Financial Services
• Financial Services Branding: When and How Should You Redesign Your Company Logo?

Audio Transcript

00:00 - 00:36:10

Lauren Hong

We're talking about outsourced marketing. Sometimes what happens is we start an engagement and we have a client who says okay, we're ready to outsource, ready to go online and dial up our marketing. But what are we going to keep in-house versus what makes sense to be able to outsource? What are you guys going to run with and what are some swim lanes or domains that we would put up, such as it makes sense for us to keep XYZ in-house because this makes sense for us to really lean on our team for that?

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00:36:13 -00:41:25

Lauren Hong

Okay. Let's share some examples. So I think it'd be really helpful to just share what we've seen.

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00:41:27 - 00:52:05

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah, I think the biggest differentiator for data points is whether they actually have someone in-house for marketing.

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00:52:07 - 00:53:16

Lauren Hong

Totally. Yeah.

‍

00:53:18 - 01:22:13

Tiffany Silverberg

If it's someone's extra job that they also do marketing. So if they have someone in-house doing marketing oftentimes then scheduling of things, calendaring of things falls to them. And then we can come in and fill in blanks where they need support, often for design or doing technical stuff like SEO research, things like that, that they're just not ready to do day-to-day.

‍

01:22:15 - 01:31:15

Tiffany Silverberg

But if it's someone's extra job on the side, we can come in with that more stretched strategic operation, taking stuff off their plate so they can keep moving forward.

‍

01:31:17 - 01:52:14

Lauren Hong

Totally. I can also see, okay, so you have a situation where copy, written words, is really, really close to people's hearts. And sometimes there's firms and clients we work with, their voice is what makes them different. It's their selling point, the human part.

‍

01:52:17 - 02:09:02

Lauren Hong

So I feel if you're in a seat where you're leading the copy team and you do such a great job of helping. I feel like clients also feel like I don't have to totally give that up. My voice can still be a part of what's written without me having to literally type every single word.

‍

02:09:10 - 02:20:13

Lauren Hong

That's another place where it's kind of like a hybrid between you kind of keep it in-house but you can also outsource some of it. I don’t know if you want to talk to the specifics of that.

‍

02:20:16 - 02:42:15

Tiffany Silverberg

Oh yeah, I mean, it can really look different for every client. So for some clients, it really is like whoever and I’ll make up a name like Sarah here at our agency loves to write and is really good at it. She's basically become our voice. So they can write things and we can clean it up or support them.

‍

02:42:18 - 03:02:02

Tiffany Silverberg

Templating things like this is what we need written and then we run with it because they just know it's going to feel like them. Or we're at a place where, thinking about other clients, where they have a specific voice, they can feel it. We can feel it. But they trust us to be able to deliver that.

‍

03:02:02 - 03:24:01

Tiffany Silverberg

And so maybe they send bullet points or maybe they send recordings of their voice and things like that. And we can kind of step in and create that voice. So, like you said, it really looks different for everyone. I don't know what's really valuable to them. I mean, it's always valuable but like you said, it just feels really like this is our thing.

‍

03:24:01 - 03:24:14

Tiffany Silverberg

This is our baby.

‍

03:24:14 - 03:47:25

Lauren Hong

I’ll give you another example of a company we're currently working with, and they have a whole in-house graphics team that does a lot of work. But there are certain things where it's like, hey, if there's additional support that's needed, more arms and legs, we can totally help with that. I can you give another example of a firm we've worked with that's rather large.

‍

03:47:25 - 04:05:19

Lauren Hong

They've got a whole marketing department but they just need support because their team just can't take on the project. So why couldn’t their team keep it in-house? It's a bandwidth thing too. I feel like that's another kind of great example of when we could keep it in-house but this is going to be a backburner project.

‍

04:05:20 - 04:13:00

Lauren Hong

If it's really a priority, we've got to be able to figure out how we're going to get some fuel in the engine.

‍

04:13:02 - 04:45:23

Tiffany Silverberg

Well, and sometimes I'm thinking of a couple other clients too, where they're a department within a bigger company. They need to get their — well, let's talk about trains — they have to get their wheels rolling on that little project. And so we can come in and use all the data, use what this marketing department has worked really hard on, to create style guides and all that, to get this off the ground because they're busy with their day-to-day, what’s happening in the next month or whatever.

‍

04:45:29 - 04:47:21

Lauren Hong

You need a trusted agent.

‍

04:47:22 - 04:54:12

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. And like you said, the volume I think that's a big part of it too, is just how much volume support is needed.

‍

04:54:14 - 05:30:28

Lauren Hong

Okay. Another question talking about outsourced marketing. So we've seen situations sometimes where there is a CMO, an internal leader, and oftentimes we're in that role too, right? We're more in that strategy role. And you're trying to balance both the business needs but then also just the super shiny object of marketing, massive data points, different levels of understanding of what you can do with marketing, if it's digital or not or what, how marketing is connected to sales, all these kinds of things.

‍

05:31:00 - 05:46:04

Lauren Hong

It would be kind of fun to have a conversation about how you navigate the C-suite just to make sure we're constantly connecting it back to the business strategy. And you do such a great job of that, Tiffany, being able to really hear the clients and connect the dots.

‍

05:46:04 - 06:05:11

Lauren Hong

So I’d love to hear about some of those lessons learned along the way, not just for how we navigate conversations but also for folks who are in more strategy roles. How do they make sure they don't lose the strategic direction of the decision-makers as we're proceeding forward? 

‍

06:05:13 - 06:32:09

Tiffany Silverberg

It feels like that's the case with so many clients. So some clients are the founder and CEO and that's our main point of contact. So that's a little different conversation. But oftentimes our day-to- day point person is someone in the business or that marketing person, and they really do have that tough task because at the end of the day, everyone wants leads, which equals sales, right?

‍

06:32:09 - 06:56:25

Tiffany Silverberg

Everybody just wants more clients. And so trying to figure out how to connect those dots. I think we've spent a lot of time in conversations just turning down the noise but calling our focus down because there's just so many data points. And I think this marketing world is just so like data, data, data.

‍

06:56:25 - 07:20:13

Tiffany Silverberg

And there's so much data available. And I feel that's been kind of the buzzword of late that every data point is promising something. But I think just again, just focusing it down to okay, if we know this is going to be presented — I'm thinking of a few clients that tell us every year at this time, I have to give a marketing presentation.

‍

07:20:15 - 07:28:22

Tiffany Silverberg

How am I going to help connect those dots? So it's again, it's helping them say, okay, you need five leads or whatever it is.

‍

07:28:24 - 07:29:18

Lauren Hong

Right?

‍

07:29:20 - 07:47:20

Tiffany Silverberg

So your lists have grown or this many people are coming to your site, not even your site but this particular landing page we've built for this project. I think zeroing in a little bit is the answer because it's just so easy to kind of go all over the place..

‍

07:47:22 - 08:04:11

Lauren Hong

I feel like there's like 1,000,001 dials you can turn, which is very easy to do in marketing. Because we get all the noise, right? So I totally resonate with what you're saying: okay, let's not turn up the volume on everything; let's just turn it up on the right piece.

‍

08:04:11 - 08:13:25

Lauren Hong

That connects back to the business strategy. And that's where we really need to turn up the focus and the noise. And then we can turn it down there or we keep it in whatever kind of state it is and then turn it up elsewhere.

‍

08:13:25 - 08:40:03

Tiffany Silverberg

And again, thinking of a couple specific clients, here's the buzzword but it's also the target market or the niche. It helps if they can say in those marketing meetings, presentations, if they can say, well, here's the — I don't want to say growth — but here's the activity we've seen in this particular area.

‍

08:40:05 - 08:58:16

Tiffany Silverberg

And this particular thing we all know as a company is so important that we're hitting this client right now or this cross arena. I think that kind of helps too, so that it's not just so broad — everyone's like we need to reach these 500 million people and we're all going to Zoom.

‍

08:58:16 - 09:29

Tiffany Silverberg

It's just that.

‍

09:01:01 - 09:21:06

Lauren Hong

And also just to underscore all this, I think we can't take away from the fact that obviously you've got to be light on your feet, right? And they're in a meeting. But the prep that's required, I'm thrilled to do that and turn over all those stones and really be able to make sure we're helping the team navigate that so we're not saying you need to flex and bend, right?

‍

09:21:06 - 09:31:22

Lauren Hong

As an organization, you're always evolving but you're not deviating so much that you lose sight of the bigger picture between those reporting kind of meetings or conversations.

‍

09:31:24 - 09:56:01

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. And really again, when you're zeroing in on the data points, making sure they are really strong data points. I think marketing can also get a bad rap for making up the numbers along the way. And so I think that's where it can get tricky. For those who are in that CMO sort of role, they don't want to feel like they're just bringing in numbers for the sake of it, you know?

‍

09:56:01 - 10:04:28

Tiffany Silverberg

So I think, again, zeroing in and really having hefty, meaningful data points. Yep. There's a lot to that.

‍

10:05:01 - 10:11:10

Lauren Hong

All right. Ready for another question.

‍

10:11:12 - 10:15:02

Lauren Hong

I can throw it out, okay. You ask me..

‍

10:15:08 - 10:33:29

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. Actually, I have a good question for you. So, talking about outsourcing, we were just talking about sometimes they keep copy in-house or sometimes they only keep this or that in-house. So there's probably different levels of outsourcing people can go to. Can you talk a little bit about that and how do they know what they need?

‍

10:34:02 - 10:52:25

Lauren Hong

Oh my gosh okay. So I can think of a company, they were about, I don't know, maybe 150 employees at the time. And they had a situation where their Salesforce, which was their CRM, needed to be customized so they could tweak and turn the dials. This isn't really related to marketing but it's an example of “we need something done quickly.”

‍

10:52:25 - 11:12:25

Lauren Hong

So they went on, I think they ended up finding someone through Fiverr, somebody to stop the bleeding, just help us turn these little tweaks and dials so we can make the output stronger. And they're a big company, right? But they just needed to find a trusted agent to be able to slowly kind of adjust the styles as they proceeded forward.

‍

11:12:27 - 11:34:16

Lauren Hong

I can think of another example if you go up the food chain, going from a one-off quick piece to now we want to get really specialized. There is another client I can think of where they realized strategically they really wanted to work on SEO but they wanted to be in the thick of it.

‍

11:34:18 - 11:53:12

Lauren Hong

Like they wanted to see the backend of all the data and the numbers, and they wanted to help with the manipulation of it and really unpacking all of it. And so they worked with an outsourced SEO team that could literally take them in the kitchen and show them around; this is how we make everything.

‍

11:53:12 - 12:15:04

Lauren Hong

And these are our processes and that kind of thing. So there's kind of that one-off, I need a quick provider. It could be a freelancer engagement. It could also be like a very specialized kind of partner. And then a lot of our clients are like, okay, we need a whole marketing department but we're not ready for that yet.

‍

12:15:10 - 12:33:16

Lauren Hong

But we need strategy and all the other parts and pieces of marketing. And so that's a good fit for an agency. Or you might have a marketing team of maybe two or three people, and you need additional support both on strategy and implementation, or you have a whole marketing department but you just need a little bit more, like an agent,

‍

12:33:21 - 12:53:00

Lauren Hong

a trusted agent that can help you with a project. So it kind of depends, honestly, where you're at and you can outgrow your provider. Or you could sometimes work with multiple providers at one time but it really depends. There's a lot of things you can outsource and a lot of different ways you can outsource.

‍

12:53:00 - 12:54:24

Lauren Hong

So feel free to jump in.

‍

12:54:26 - 13:16:01

Tiffany Silverberg

Maybe we can chat about the difference between that specialty provider and an agency. So like you were talking about the SEO provider. So how does someone know when it's like, I just want to focus on this thing, like I said, I want to know the nitty-gritty versus I need everything.

‍

13:16:01 - 13:36:18

Lauren Hong

Okay, so this is kind of like a catch-22 because you could go with an SEO provider, let's say I'm just going to specifically work with an SEO provider. But if you're leading that engagement, you're also helping with the input to make sure it connects not only with the business goals but then the umbrella of all the other marketing.

‍

13:36:24 - 14:03:14

Lauren Hong

So you just want to make sure if you're leading that initiative, either you or the individual who’s leading it is seeing how those efforts kind of sweep across the company at large, and likely that provider and your resources are really going to be like a deep dive on that particular specialty. We're on the agency side; we act as that umbrella to see how everything is integrated across the board.

‍

14:03:17 - 14:25:03

Lauren Hong

But then we would have those deep dive conversations with an SEO specialist or developer, someone who just does video, all these other kinds of facets — graphic design, website development — those facets of it. So we kind of work as I'll call it that strategist, to be able to connect the dots, manage the projects, and then implement them and bring in the providers as necessary.

‍

14:25:06 - 14:39:18

Lauren Hong

So this is a different kind of engagement. And if you're going to do just a specialist — I shouldn't say just; it's a left right. If you're going to engage with specialists, you just want to make sure that the input is solid so the output can be solid as well.

‍

14:39:21 - 14:49:14

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. And what about, I don't know if we talked about a business consultant or a CMO sort of role. How would that differentiate?

‍

14:49:17 - 15:24:15

Lauren Hong

That's a good question too. Okay. So feel free to jump in here. We have seen situations where a business strategically may need to have an offsite to really unpack everything, pull back layers of the onion and put it back together. And an offsite would be a great opportunity for a business consultant to be able to come in to support with that and might be behind a particular initiative, like a target market: where are we going to go after and what does that look like, and how are we going to put our efforts behind it?

‍

15:24:18 - 15:48:07

Lauren Hong

It could be conversations around strategic goals and mission, vision, value statements, maybe unpacking that a little bit more. And it could be a reshaping of understanding — how does the business strategy specifically connect with the marketing strategy and help identify needed campaigns or what have you, before you even bring in a team?

‍

15:48:09 - 16:25:19

Lauren Hong

And those conversations are usually had in a little bit bigger organizations. And they oftentimes kind of unpack things related to fee structure or your service offerings. It could be, gosh, it could go a number of ways. Your target market, your culture. So those offsites more are the business consultant, marketing consultant sometimes while you zero in on hopefully a key project you might want to focus on, which is then going to help all your other efforts when you actually get to the implementation side of it, be that much more successful.

‍

16:25:19 - 16:34:14

Lauren Hong

So feel free to jump in. I feel like that was a long-winded answer to basically say it's more of like leaning on the business strategy.

‍

16:34:16 - 17:05:01

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. And I think like the question earlier of how do you know when you need each thing. But I think that's the kind of stuff that if those are the pieces that are missing, it has to sort of happen before you bring in a marketing team because you don't want to be operationalizing, putting calendars together or things like that, but still not really knowing who is our target market or like you said, even more, like what sort of offerings are we even providing, what makes us different?

‍

17:05:01 - 17:24:11

Tiffany Silverberg

Those sorts of things. I think when you don't have that clarity and we see this time and again when you're sort of trying to figure out clarity in the midst of strategizing it gets tricky. And I guess I go back to the earlier question too, about keeping everyone focused when everybody knows what the goal is.

‍

17:24:14 - 17:31:21

Tiffany Silverberg

And we're not still trying to do development midway. It's so much easier to get everyone to that same page.

‍

17:31:23 - 17:37:15

Lauren Hong

Yeah. I totally like what the goal is and why that goal. 

‍

17:37:18 - 17:46:18

Lauren Hong

Not just we want to grow. Because as I was saying earlier, why do we want to grow? How is that going to impact the company? How is that going to impact the team? And what's the heart and soul behind that?

‍

17:46:18 - 18:12:03

Tiffany Silverberg

So yeah, absolutely. Okay. One more one more question. Or maybe there's more. But so this kind of ties into something you said earlier but now it ties into this question too. So marketing, marketing and sales always sit together. We talk about that. But marketing also is involved cross- departmentally and it impacts other things, especially when done really well.

‍

18:12:03 - 18:17:19

Tiffany Silverberg

So I don't know if you want to sort of touch on that.

‍

18:17:22 - 18:40:28

Lauren Hong

Oh my gosh. Yes. So you really feel this when the company gets bigger. So you start to feel it if the employee count is around a dozen. Because what happens is marketing is your face to the world, right? It's a reflection of, ideally, your mission, vision, values, your business strategy, where you want to go.

‍

18:40:28 - 19:04:09

Lauren Hong

It's kind of that first interaction someone's going to have with the brand. But if you're at that dozen employee-ish place, you probably have a CRM in place, or you might have onboarding materials or ways you hire people, like job descriptions, things like this, right? And all of these are going to require considering how does the company sound, like in a job description?

‍

19:04:09 - 19:29:18

Lauren Hong

What's the voice and tone of the company? We're going to have our logo out across our CRM. And what does our training look like? And does that feel like the brand, the voice and everything kind of exuberate through all these other parts of your business. And so that's when you start to see marketing really plug into other parts of the business.

‍

19:29:18 - 19:52:08

Lauren Hong

And then as you grow. So now let's say you’re at 75 employees, 150 employees. Marketing is connected across departments because what happens is you're going to have one department, any department, it might be HR. And so they're going to have all kinds of communications that are going to go on just within their department.

‍

19:52:13 - 20:12:29

Lauren Hong

There might be another department that's working on webinars that are externally facing. There could be another department that has regular communications that are really timely that need to go out. And so marketing acts like the glue for all of that but it's making sure the brand doesn't lose its essence as it grows, because that's so critical, frankly, to the value of the company.

‍

20:12:29 - 20:25:01

Lauren Hong

If you're going to value the company. And then as you're hiring, you want to make sure people really exuberate in the brand personality. So who the brand is and how they show up. But you can totally talk more to this.

‍

20:25:02 - 20:44:07

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. And I was thinking of one particular client who, I don't know their employee count but I think it was around a dozen and they were struggling to hire. They weren't attracting the right people. And it was having those conversations with us, the marketing team, where all of a sudden it was like, this is what makes you really special.

‍

20:44:07 - 21:06:22

Tiffany Silverberg

You need to go positive with those things that are making you really special. And then everything trickled down, the visuals became really obvious for social media posts around that hire, the job description, everything just became really clear because everybody knew this is what your brand is about. So yeah, it definitely matters cross-department.

‍

21:06:25 - 21:11:28

Lauren Hong

Totally. Okay. Any other things with outsourcing we should chat about?

‍

21:12:00 - 21:13:02

Tiffany Silverberg

All the things.

‍

21:13:04 - 21:15:09

Lauren Hong

I feel like we could do this for a long time.

‍

21:15:12 - 21:16:19

Tiffany Silverberg

Yes.

‍

21:16:21 - 21:18:29

Lauren Hong

Okay. Plus rapid-fire questions.

‍

21:19:02 - 21:19:29

Tiffany Silverberg

Yes, okay.

‍

21:20:01 - 21:26:15

Lauren Hong

We're talking big picture. What's the best way to identify your ideal prospects?

‍

21:26:17 - 21:28:13

Tiffany Silverberg

So that's a rapid-fire question?

‍

21:28:16 - 21:45:02

Lauren Hong

Yeah, sorry, I know that's not a very good rapid-fire question. I should be asking you something really simple that you can respond to. Like where is your favorite place to vacation? Okay. So let's just unpack that a little bit.

‍

21:45:05 - 22:10:09

Tiffany Silverberg

Now that's a really good one. Because we were saying earlier, if you're going to work with a business consultant, a big part of it is kind of figuring that all out. But even in the marketing level, the best answer to the rapid fire question, the best way to identify your ideal prospects, I don't know, who do you love to work with and who's bringing in good money?

‍

22:10:11 - 22:26:20

Tiffany Silverberg

Which is not always the same. So we'll start with the first one. Who do you love to work with? You want more of those. There's all kinds of tips out there about putting them all on a spreadsheet and how much money they bring in and which are the ones you want to call more.

‍

22:26:23 - 22:47:06

Tiffany Silverberg

But that's really the answer. Who you really, really are good at serving. There's data points you can look at too. You have a starting point of who your ideal clients are — maybe we'll use the obvious one.

‍

22:47:06 - 23:09:26

Tiffany Silverberg

Retirees. You can start to look at your data and see popular blogs the people are reading. Which newsletters are my clients actually opening? Those sorts of content data points can help kind of go, okay, we tend to track that. I think that's happened with a few clients too, where they're like, we've been writing a lot about this particular thing.

‍

23:09:26 - 23:28:27

Tiffany Silverberg

We have one client in particular who had one person in there — I'll be vague about this; I don't call them out — but one person in their firm had a previous job where there was an obvious connection there of the kinds of people they could serve. It just became obvious, so we put stuff out.

‍

23:28:27 - 23:39:09

Tiffany Silverberg

Everybody loves it. Well, we should just put more of that out and make that a target because people eat it up every time we post it. So I think that can make it obvious.

‍

23:39:15 - 23:57:16

Lauren Hong

There's so many ways I'm like that. I'll just say I'd encourage folks, if you're going to narrow a target market, spend the time on it because it's one of those forks in the road with your business, where then you get behind it and there's a lot of effort, so you don't want to just kind of do this stuff like willy-nilly.

‍

23:57:16 - 24:21:27

Lauren Hong

You really want to take the time to invest in it as a team. And if you're smaller, then you're in more of a decision-making hat and you can have those tough conversations but then act accordingly. But it's worth the time and energy to put it behind either hiring a consultant or doing an offsite or working with an agency, whatever kind of makeup that looks like.

‍

24:22:01 - 24:28:28

Lauren Hong

But to really kind of unpack that because then you start aligning everything behind that strategic decision.

‍

24:28:28 - 24:46:19

Tiffany Silverberg

So, yeah, like you said, if the whole team can be behind it, that's the best because I just gotta say we've seen it get a little tricky when some people are super excited, some people are not. The flip side is I'm thinking of one particular client, they have a new target market and everyone's excited.

‍

24:46:24 - 24:54:13

Tiffany Silverberg

The website's going to be about it. Social is going to be about it. So the opportunities are immense because they're ready to go all out.

‍

24:54:15 - 25:12:11

Lauren Hong

What I was going to say too is like, sometimes it's really scary to get behind a target. Especially if you come from a second generation of owning a company. You don't want to ruffle feathers. If you have a lot of different stakes in the game, like a lot of different players.

‍

25:12:11 - 25:32:11

Lauren Hong

But part of that leadership we see that's so successful is when you do have a team or an individual who gets behind that and invests in it, and that's really where you start to see that traction. It's a hard call to make but it's one that when you make it, it's kind of where it all starts to funnel into.

‍

25:32:13 - 25:52:17

Tiffany Silverberg

So yeah. And one more thing: it doesn't always have to be like a demographic, right? So you’re like we have to go after dentists or whatever. And then especially bigger firms, they're like, well we're not all going after the dentists. So they start to know our clients are just into this kind of investment or they like this kind of philosophy.

‍

25:52:17 - 25:57:17

Tiffany Silverberg

How we serve them is different. And I think that can absolutely be a target market for them.

‍

25:57:18 - 26:14:28

Lauren Hong

Yeah, even to the bigger firms, like sometimes how the targeting starts to happen is by geography and locale. So it just depends where you are and kind of the bend of the strategy. So okay, we could talk about this for a whole other thing but super fun.

‍

26:15:00 - 26:20:29

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. Thanks.

‍

‍

‍

We talked about:

• How no campaign is truly isolated — exploring how the CFP Board recruiting ad campaign reached unintended audiences and the unexpected consequence that followed
• Why staying true to your brand’s identity, values, and mission is key to creating marketing campaigns that resonate and deliver the outcomes you want
• The surprising silver lining of the marketing misstep, and how it gave the financial planning community an opportunity to showcase its passion and profession in a new light

If you enjoyed this episode, you will also like: 

• Tips for Effective Branding and Website Strategies for Financial Services
• How a Brand Personality Can Drive Company Culture and Build Trust With Your Audience
• Your Media Marketing Strategy: Start By Letting Your Why Shine Through

Full Audio Transcript:

00:00 - 00:28

Lauren Hong

All right. Tiffany, so we’re doing this recording to talk about the CFP Board and the recent campaign that came out. It's a tricky topic. There's a lot of emotions and feedback, right? Where do we start? 

‍

00:29 - 00:48

Tiffany Silverberg

Well, like you said, it's very tricky. And we're not on the inside. We saw it come live, just like everyone else did through so many LinkedIn posts and people sharing and the reactions. So we've talked about it a lot internally. We want to make sure we're not being reactionary because again, we weren't there.

‍

00:48 - 01:00

Tiffany Silverberg

We didn't get to make the decisions. But we're also seeing kind of how it's impacting people. And just kind of want to have a conversation about that and about how marketing means something. Marketing impacts things.

‍

01:01 - 01:28

Lauren Hong

So it does and it has a domino effect, intact or not. And that can happen internally with an organization or externally as well. So to be a little vulnerable here when this campaign was released, it reminded me of a campaign that came out about five-ish years ago. I'm not exactly sure.

‍

01:28 - 01:51

Lauren Hong

And the reason it feels vulnerable is because it's a campaign that was really close to me. So I'll just kind of share this to maybe help frame it. You know I love my undergrad, Drake University — I've sat on boards, I've flown back. I mentor students. All these things. It's a place that helped me grow up, right?

‍

01:51 - 02:09

Lauren Hong

And they came out with this campaign, and like I said, about five years ago, they did all the research. It was a campaign that was to help recruit new students to come in. They did research. They spent budget. They tested it. They did focus groups. They came up with all kinds of ads.

‍

02:09 - 02:34

Lauren Hong

But when it was released, it didn't sit well. Drake University starts with the letter D. It was D+ for a collegiate university focused on education, a grade with a D+, or that's how it was perceived and did not sit well with those who received it. But the concept was supposed to be, okay, you come here and you're going to get this.

‍

02:34 - 02:57

Lauren Hong

Like first you have these experiences, you get this plus this. And so part of it was to send this out to all these new students to let them know, okay, you've been admitted and you get this and you're going to have a plethora of experiences and things you can dip into to explore. But the messaging and the way it came off from an alumni standpoint was bad.

‍

02:57 - 02:59

Tiffany Silverberg

It was that you chose poorly, right?

‍

02:59 - 03:20

Lauren Hong

Yes.

‍

03:20 - 03:03

Tiffany Silverberg

You could have gone to the A school but instead you chose the D school.

‍

03:03 - 03:26

Lauren Hong

Yeah. And we're all like, oh my gosh, this is not the intended message. It just didn't sit well. And especially an organization that you take so much pride in and helps you to be able to stretch your own wings. And so messages from alumni were flooding inboxes and there were conversations and there was social media, public comments.

‍

03:26 - 03:57

Lauren Hong

And, the university rallied behind the messaging. And it helps to explain the why for what had gone on. But part of it, for lack of a better word, is a little bit of damage control. To be able to really help put things in place. But I think one of the takeaways for me was kind of what you were just alluding to earlier, too, that marketing does touch everyone, even if it's just related to this particular demo or graphic, we feel it in different ways.

‍

03:57 - 04:07

Lauren Hong

Yeah. So I don't know what your thoughts are on that. But that was one of the things I was like, okay, do you want to pull up those skeletons again because it feels personal, right?

‍

04:07 - 04:28

Tiffany Silverberg

The skeletons came out for you. It felt like you were living it again. Well, and I think it's a good similarity to this situation because as things came out, it became very obvious this campaign was meant to be, well, interestingly, the same thing, a recruiting campaign meant to be very siloed.

‍

04:28 - 04:46

Tiffany Silverberg

And I think, again, I'm sure they did all the research. I'm sure they did all the focus groups and things like that. But I think the idea sometimes is that, well, it's all going to be okay. I'm sure everyone thought it was a great idea but it'll be okay because it's a separate thing.

‍

04:46 - 05:13

Tiffany Silverberg

It's a separate audience. It's going to be on a different platform. These guys probably aren't going to see that but that's the way the digital world works. And we have a colleague who we were hoping could join us but it didn't work out who always shares this phrase and I'm going to butcher it. But basically the marketing either adds to your brand or it takes away from your brand. Everything that goes out is either going to add more to your brand or it's going to take away from it.

‍

05:13 - 05:42

Tiffany Silverberg

And I think that's what we saw here is I know the idea was that it was supposed to be separate but everyone else felt it. And especially, again, alumni or those who hold the CFP®; there's so much pride there, there's so much identity there that when they see something they feel is taking away from what they've built internally, what's so much a part of them, I think that's where a lot of it came from.

‍

05:42 - 05:59

Tiffany Silverberg

It's not that it was necessarily a bad idea, I mean, maybe it was or maybe it wasn't, but not to pick on the idea or the creative but it's just the feeling that it took away from something that I hold dear. 

‍

05:59 - 06:19

Lauren Hong

And that was kind of the parallel with how I felt too, and even feel that kind of vulnerability of being able to kind of pull up those skeletons, right? Because the way it came across wasn't the perception of how I think others perhaps saw that, even though that wasn't the intention behind it.

‍

06:19 - 06:36

Lauren Hong

But yeah, shoutout to Jimmy, our colleague, who has that great quote of everything you're doing is either adding to the brand or taking away from the brand. And so I think it's almost like a good buffer to say, is this helping us along our mission or is this deviating from those pieces?

‍

06:36 - 06:45

Lauren Hong

And how do we react in times where things might feel like they're a little bit off course, right?

‍

06:45 - 07:09

Tiffany Silverberg

So yeah. And that's kind of the thing about the silo, because it can be easy to just connect the dots. I mean, we talk about connecting the dots all the time — we want this piece, whatever this campaign is, to hit these targets. We have these goals. We want people doing these things. But again, I think it's just like looking at the big picture.

‍

07:09 - 07:32

Tiffany Silverberg

How is it just going to make people feel? Is it reflecting the greater part of what we're trying to accomplish? Does it reflect our mission statement? So, just let the cat out of the bag, like we always talk about when we put a brand book together or a strategy document, it's got all the pieces: mission statement, vision statement, values, and brand personality.

‍

07:32 - 07:50

Tiffany Silverberg

What do we want people to feel when they interact with us? And all those components are kind of the filter for anything we design or any words we put out. And it's always like it. It has to stay within those guardrails. Anything outside of that is just not going to work. It might be fun.

‍

07:50 - 08:03

Tiffany Silverberg

It might be creative. And I think especially in a TikTok world where new trends are happening, it's like, we should go do that. But if it's not within our values, it doesn't mean they're bad. It doesn't mean that thing outside of it is bad.

‍

08:03 - 08:04

Lauren Hong

It is judging, right? And simply.

‍

08:04 - 08:18

Tiffany Silverberg

It just means it's not us and while we might all like it, some of our teammates are going to be like, oh, that wasn't us, because it's not in those guardrails, that fence.

‍

08:18 - 08:45

Lauren Hong

I love that. That's a really good analogy. The guardrails. And I feel like it's what helps keep you along that path. And from a business standpoint, like you mentioned earlier, mission, vision, values; I love the brand personalities we put together. I feel like that really helps to exuberate in a word or two, what's the energy we want to really channel through those guardrails.

‍

08:45 - 09:05

Tiffany Silverberg

And that's kind of what the two examples we're talking about — it was the energy that was missing. That's not how we want to be perceived in the world. That's not the energy we want to put out. And so it's not that it wasn't clever. Both of the examples — it wasn't that they weren't clever or even potentially even potentially even hitting those goals.

‍

09:05 - 09:22

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. But openly, it's not putting out the energy we want to be perceived like. When we talk about personalities and just the whole brand, whether it's somebody picking up the phone talking to you or a social media post, we want them to feel the same energy.

‍

09:22 - 09:44

Lauren Hong

That's right. And that's easy to be able to pull out through every visual piece or how you're hiring or training or keeping that momentum going. But it gives you that. Again, you said like those guardrails to be able to go back to. And I also think in challenging times, I mean, we see this with all kinds of situations, right?

‍

09:44 - 10:27

Lauren Hong

I feel like there can be unexpected things that happen or clients have to really kind of pull back. I think it really helps you keep on pace amid the unexpected — I don't even know if I want to use that or crisis. But sometimes in a crisis just to be able to say, okay, if we're showing up in every day, this is how we're showing up in every day but how do we show up to be able to keep that energy along those guardrails so that it's a calm, cool, and collected or if it's we've got your back or whatever that message might be, that there's that continuity.

‍

10:27 - 10:58

Tiffany Silverberg

Exactly. We talk about that in voice guides all the time, right? That there's going to be a tone that might have to shift, maybe something's more urgent or it's left less urgent. Maybe it's a social media post versus a memo but the voice is always going to be the same. And I just thought of a great example of a wealth management and planning firm we work with, and they brought out the point that they're coming from a place of trust — that's a core part of their personality.

‍

10:58 - 11:18

Tiffany Silverberg

And so they're like, well, we could play outside of that and we could play on fears but that's never going to feel authentically us. Every time we show up, it should be promoting trust. It should be building on that. Like aspiring to more and more, trust me and take it down a notch and kind of play around with that.

‍

11:18 - 11:20

Tiffany Silverberg

But it just will never feel right.

‍

11:20 - 11:23

Lauren Hong

It's sort of going against the grain.

‍

11:24 - 11:36

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's where even situations like this one where it was supposed to be funny, if it feels so opposite of what we've built, then I think that's where the problem can come in.

‍

11:36:24 - 11:44:04

Lauren Hong

Yeah. It was the deviation. It's just too far. Too far off.

‍

11:44 - 11:53

Tiffany Silverberg

Yeah. Or maybe not even that. It was too far off but it was literally the opposite. And now that's what I'm working against. 

‍

11:53 - 12:14

Lauren Hong

Sort of scribbling against those guardrails or it's growing outside of the lines of what's been established. I think of another example, there's a firm we've worked with for a number of years now, and very much has that calm, cool, and collected feel. But they had a totally unexpected issue that happened.

‍

12:14 - 12:32

Lauren Hong

It might have been last year. And part of it was a crisis situation. Not going to go into all the specifics but it was almost like externally you don't want to have that sort of Doctor Jekyll, kind of like Mr. Hyde. Like you’re flipping from that work of calm, cool, and collected. We got it.

‍

12:32 - 12:54

Lauren Hong

You know, there's that trust like you were alluding to earlier, in these kinds of pieces. And then all of a sudden it's like everything's untangling. And so part of it on the inside, which people don't always see, is to take that stress anxiety out, right? Because they're trying to do the right things for their clients or trying to take care of things, make sure things are buttoned up, and people are well taken care of.

‍

12:54 - 13:18

Lauren Hong

But trying to take all that energy and then saying, okay, let's return back to our brand. Like you said, we can slightly adjust the tone. I mean, not even slightly, right? But we're adjusting the tone enough so there's that constant, like, we've got it taken care of, right? And we recognize what's going on but we've taken this step that is consistently aligned with how we show up every single day.

‍

13:18 - 13:19

Lauren Hong

So yeah.

‍

13:19 - 13:31

Tiffany Silverberg

The same firm I'm thinking of also just won a pretty great award. So obviously when they're posting something about that the tone is going to be different than having to put out a memo communicating about that serious thing.

‍

13:31 - 13:32

Lauren Hong

Yeah.

‍

13:32 - 13:52

Tiffany Silverberg

But we're about, like you said, trust and confidence. And if they had put out something that was anxiety-ridden in that first one, it's kind of like we said, everything adds to or takes away from the brand. And it would communicate to clients that, oh gosh, if things got crazy on my end, like if I was in a crisis situation, they're going to panic.

‍

13:52 - 13:54

Tiffany Silverberg

Like, that's who they are.

‍

13:54 - 14:16

Lauren Hong

So yep, it's so true. So another thing that personally helps me is I like to get a lot of big ideas. And they're not always realistic, right? Sometimes you think, I'm going to do this project, it's going to be no big deal. And you're like, okay, let's take a minute back to see where does that fit in?

‍

14:16 - 14:36

Lauren Hong

And I think to connect the dots here is this idea of are we adding to the brand or are we taking away from the brand allows us to take ideas and say, that might be a great idea but that's not the right idea that's going to propel the company forward for the the business objectives we're trying to hit.

‍

14:36 - 14:42

Lauren Hong

So it does help to be able to keep within that one line.

‍

14:42 - 15:01

Tiffany Silverberg

So yeah, I think that's what we saw too with people reacting to the CFP campaign. Or again, I know there was something strategic, we're hoping to get these outcomes. But I think a lot of people felt like the way we got to those outcomes, and even the outcomes themselves might have deviated from what they felt was the business goal.

‍

15:01 - 15:20

Tiffany Silverberg

And that's a big disconnect too. I was thinking about it. It's almost like sometimes we see marketing as like the kid brother building mud pies in the backyard; it's just fine. Whatever you build, it's fine. But I don't know, probably because I'm a mom. I feel like it's more like marketing for the mom. Like she's setting the tone.

‍

15:20 - 15:34

Tiffany Silverberg

She's setting the schedule. Not that we're running the show but setting the tone. It's not just like, whatever Bobby does in the backyard. It's not just too far.

‍

15:34 - 15:53

Lauren Hong

The energy impacts everything, right? If you're inside of the house or not. So, yeah. So, it's keeping that constant and it's a tricky campaign to talk about because it has a lot of emotions and reactions and what have you.

‍

15:53 - 16:04

Tiffany Silverberg

You know, there's a lot of people who were involved or weren't involved and I know a lot of people feel a lot of things about it. So that's a tough one.

‍

16:04 - 16:30

Lauren Hong

But I also think it's an opportunity to also reflect on businesses like your own business and say, how does this impact me and how can I take lessons learned here? And then, also a reminder that we're not all on the inside, right? Not having those initial strategy conversations, what's happening, what's the direction and the thinking.

‍

16:30 - 16:36

Lauren Hong

So really. All right. Any other thoughts?

‍

16:36 - 16:55

Tiffany Silverberg

I think the only other great takeaway I saw happening from all this is just what an amazing community the CFP® community is and how quickly people were like, let's flip it on its head. Let's remind people of all the amazing things we do for our clients. Let's remind them of the fun stuff. You know, the good stuff we do in our free time and taking care of our community.

‍

16:55 - 17:11

Tiffany Silverberg

And it's been really fun to see people step up and play with it in that way. You see that passion, right?.

‍

17:11 - 17:18

Lauren Hong

Because we can all be passive and just sort of throw your hands up. But that's not been the reaction. There's a lot of heart and soul people who care, have opinions, are sharing their own thoughts, having side conversations, all those sorts of things.

‍

17:18 - 17:37

Lauren Hong

And I felt that, linking back to the Drake campaign too. I felt that energy almost just like it's on the surface. It was like almost after a rainstorm, where they're like, oh my gosh, all these things surface. The soil’s rich and you feel that sort of piece of it.

‍

17:37 - 17:45

Lauren Hong

And so I think that's also a reminder, like you said, just about the positive energy that's going on with the community.

‍

17:45 - 17:47

Tiffany Silverberg

So thank you.

‍

17:48 - 17:54

Lauren Hong

All right. All right. Thanks. Good.

‍

We talked with Broc about:

• The power of authenticity and trust when cultivating long-lasting relationships
• Digging deeper to ask the right questions when choosing an insurance partner
• How to align values and goals to spark collaboration 

About Broc Buckles:

Broc Buckles is the co-founder of BC Brokerage, a company dedicated to serving financial planners across all 50 states. BC Brokerage focuses on providing honest, efficient, and transparent insurance solutions exclusively for financial advisors and their clients. Recognizing the challenges financial planners face with traditional insurance brokers who often push products for commission, Broc and his team offer a trustworthy alternative. BC Brokerage empowers advisors, especially fee-only fiduciaries, to confidently implement insurance plans without concerns about upselling or misaligned incentives.

Featured Resources 

• Broc Buckles on LinkedIn
• BC Brokerage on Instagram
• BC-brokerage.com 
• Alan Moore on LinkedIn
• Michael Kitces on LinkedIn

Enjoyed This? You’ll Also Love:  

• Business Growth Tips for Accountants, Bookkeepers, and Financial Services Business Owners
• Reaching Gen Z: How Financial Services Companies Can Engage and Hire the Next Generation with Mary Wisniewski
• How Authenticity Can Help You Attract Your Tribe, Find Your Target Market, and Add Passion to the Bottom Line

‍

Full Audio Transcript:

00:00 - 20:03

Lauren Hong

All right, let's do this. So excited to hear from you today about business, insurance, online yards. You guys are an indie. Where should we start? I'm gonna throw it over to you to share a little bit about background. Like what you guys got going on over there.

‍

00:20 - 00:46

Broc Buckles

Yeah. For sure. Well, thanks. Thanks for having me on, Lauren. Good to be here with you. My name is Broc Buckles. I'm one of the co-founders of a company called BC Brokerage, and we work all over the country — all 50 states — with specifically and exclusively financial planners to help their clients be able to implement insurance in an honest and efficient and fair way so they don't have to kind of deal with the dark side of the insurance industry.

‍

00:46 - 1:11

Broc Buckles

I know a lot of people come from broker dealers or captive places where they're kind of pushed to do one thing, and it always feels like people are being sold one thing. And so the idea behind creating the company was really just to give advisors, who we believe are the true fiduciary, the true advisors of the world, which is fee-only, the opportunity to be able to implement things for their clients.

‍

1:11- 1:34

Broc Buckles

But when we were talking to them early on, one of the biggest things was, I don't know what's going to happen when I ask my client to get some insurance from these random people, and a lot of times they end up selling them. And so, we really pride ourselves on being the antithesis of that. And whatever they come recommended with is the insurance they get.

‍

1:34 - 1:52

Lauren Hong

Okay. So let’s kind of back up. How did you decide to work specifically with the advisor community? And how did you kind of navigate that path for you guys in the insurance world before? And then you kind of narrowed in here, or was it the other way around? Were you on the advisor side? And then you go, hey, you know, we see a problem.

‍

1:52 - 1:53

Lauren Hong

How did that come about?

‍

1:54 - 2:19

Broc Buckles

Yeah. Good question. So we started our careers — actually Peter and I met the first day of intern training — at a big Fortune 500 company that I eventually became kind of disenfranchised with. I was there for about five and a half years. Peter was there for a couple of years and kind of got on the brokerage side. Basically we met up one day, and I was like, I'm not happy with what I'm doing.

‍

2:19 - 2:45

Broc Buckles

And he said to me, well, it's funny because there's this type of financial planner who's out there. They don't do insurance but obviously good financial planning includes insurance. And so I think there's a good opportunity out here. And it was so funny because he always said to me, you know, get the phone to ring the other way — make good B2B relationships with people and then have them call you when they need help with their clients.

‍

2:45 - 2:50‍

Broc Buckles

And back then I thought he was crazy because the model we were using is you cold call everybody.

‍

2:50 - 2:51

Lauren Hong

Oh yeah.

‍

2:51 - 3:05

Broc Buckles

No one's going to call you. So he kind of told me about it and I said, hey, you know what? Let's run with it. And we started in January of 2020, which was a great time to start a business, right before a big pandemic hit.

‍

3:05 - 3:06

Lauren Hong

Yeah. Yes.

‍

3:06 - 3:18

Broc Buckles

It was rough but we were very disciplined about it. He took advantage of his operational strengths. And I love talking to people. And so it just kind of worked. And here we are today.

‍

3:18 - 3:43

Lauren Hong

So it's a whole world, right? Like the advisor community. There's a lot of jargon, a lot of inroads to be able to figure out and what have you. How did you guys go about that? Did you or Peter come with a base or a subset of that, or how did you help to navigate this community and kind of learn to speak their language and their needs and their clients’ needs?

‍

3:43 - 4:01

Broc Buckles

Yeah. So I mean, it came with just the very small sample size of the people in the Indianapolis area we had talked about. And then we had conversations with them and just asked them, what are your pain points? What is it you struggle with? What are the experiences, both good and bad, you've had when implementing insurance?

‍

4:01 - 4:24

Broc Buckles

And so we took that small sample size and just very literally applied it into a national concept and just said, hey, you know what? We're going to start going to these conferences. We're going to start looking at people who are only on LinkedIn. And honestly, it started with me probably calling 10,000+ people just trying to get appointments because that's what I knew how to do.

‍

4:24 - 4:26

Lauren Hong

Yeah. You were used to that.

‍

4:26 - 4:47

Broc Buckles

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, those days aren't really here anymore. We don't really do those anymore because there's a lot more inbound stuff. But it was that. And then we just kind of started meeting with more and more people. The more we met with people, the more we actually realized it's a small but it's a large world.

‍

4:47 - 5:09

Broc Buckles

It's a lot smaller than other parts of the industry but you definitely have everything from solopreneurs all the way up to firms that have billions and billions and billions of dollars under management. And we work with all of them, solopreneurs all the way up to the firms that have close to 100 advisors.

‍

5:09 - 5:26

Lauren Hong

Wow. Yeah. So you really see the full spread there, what's going on. Definitely challenges of those growth periods. So I know you guys work with a lot of IT firms that are part of the Philly network. They're doing really good work out there. I'm assuming a lot of NAPFA firms.

‍

5:26 - 5:35

Lauren Hong

We were talking right before this but just to give a shoutout to XYPN. I know you said it earlier. You're doing their conference, I believe.

‍

5:35 - 5:57

Broc Buckles

Yeah, we're going to be sponsoring it. Shout out to the XYPN community. Awesome community. And what an opportunity Alan Moore and Michael Kitces have given to people who really want to go out and do their own thing. So it's been so cool to watch that grow. And I mean, it was going five or six years before we even started our company; to see the evolution in the five years we've been around has been huge.

‍

5:57 - 6:07

Broc Buckles

And the people I talk to who have been there since the beginning can't believe it. It was like  one roundtable when it first started. And now there's thousands of advisors with them. 

‍

6:07 - 6:21

Lauren Hong

Well, they tapped into a need and yeah, shoutout to Alan too. We had him on our podcast here. It must have been several months ago but he gave a really good overview of how they built that up and the communities they're building and all that. So I'll make sure to link it to.

‍

6:21 - 6:38

Lauren Hong

Okay. So just to go back to what you were saying earlier about this subset, right? You're like, okay, like let's talk with people in our local area, figure out what their needs are, apply that at a national level. I'm sure you guys have learned a ton since then. So if you were in an advisor’s seat, right?

‍

6:38 - 6:52

Lauren Hong

What questions should they be asking if they're thinking about working with someone like you? What are the questions, the top questions they should be thinking about asking? Maybe what people start telling them to make sure it's like the right fit for wherever they are.

‍

6:52 - 7:03

Broc Buckles

Yeah. So I mean, there are obviously other firms out there that do what we do. But I think first and foremost, you have to make sure people have honest business practices, right?

‍

7:03 - 7:05

Lauren Hong

So have that alignment.

‍

7:05 - 7:24

Broc Buckles

Yep, exactly. Just mirroring their fiduciary responsibility in our own work is, I think, one of the things we pride ourselves on the most. And we encourage people to grill us and ask us questions, like why are you choosing this carrier for this client? Why are you deciding to do that? Planning this way? Why are you making this recommendation?

‍

7:24 - 7:42

Broc Buckles

And we build a lot of trust through things like offering some free offerings. We'll review policy analysis with people. So I would say the big thing you want to get a feel for very quickly is, is this a person you're just going to send business to and they're going to make money off the clients you're referring to them?

‍

7:42 - 8:06

Broc Buckles

Or does it really feel like an authentic partnership? And one that's going to create reciprocity and make sure you actually feel like you can lean on them not just for implementing business but also asking questions, and understanding things about the insurance world that maybe are a little bit more nuanced, that you're just not spending your day, every single day as a financial planner, focusing on.

‍

8:06 - 8:20

Lauren Hong

Okay, so the first thing is really just basically getting value alignment. Is this a fit? How do they go about picking their carriers and making choices so they can be rolled along the way and that's okay.

‍

8:20 - 8:21

Broc Buckles

So absolutely.

‍

8:21 - 8:28

Lauren Hong

Any other questions that you feel like advisors should be asking when picking the right vendor to work with?

‍

8:28 - 8:54

Broc Buckles

You know, I would say to ask them what their philosophies are on certain types of products is a really good thing to do. Like, I have advisors all the time ask me about the big, bad permanent insurance world where it's like a lot of advisors are recommending term insurance all the time but they want kind of as a test to ask why, when, and where do you recommend permanent insurance?

‍

8:54 - 9:12

Broc Buckles

And you better have a pretty good answer for that question. There are certain situations where it definitely makes sense; if people are over $10 million net worth, they have special needs planning, if you're looking to do long-term care planning. But ask them questions that are related to not just everyday product lines, right?

‍

9:12 - 9:35

Broc Buckles

Ask them questions about specific products and what situations you would use those products in to see if you align. Because I think you could say, are you going to be honest? Okay, can we trust you or are you going to sell our clients? And that's one thing. But if every single time you recommend something, they're trying to lead you in a different way or it's just a very hard conversation that's never going to work.

‍

9:35 - 9:45

Lauren Hong

So are most of your engagements where you're building the relationship with the advisor, and then they're referring you to their client? Just to make sure I'm following that.

‍

9:45 - 9:45

Broc Buckles

That's how it works.

‍

9:46 - 10:03

Lauren Hong

Okay, cool. That's helpful. Another thing I see sometimes is you can work with a provider and everything looks great on paper with the communications. It's totally want want, like it just falls flat, you know? What do you guys do to make sure that follow-through happens, right?

‍

10:03 - 10:13

Lauren Hong

And making sure people have what they need and the check-ins. Do you have any kind of systemized cadence you've got working with your clients? Because things can get stale, right?

‍

10:13 - 10:34

Broc Buckles

Yeah, things can get stale. So yeah, that's a really good question. And that's more of Peter's department. He's the operation mind. But we have definitely done some things that have truly improved the efficiency and the way things get done. So one of the things was automatic email reminders, right?

‍

10:34 - 10:51

Broc Buckles

So we have a cadence once a week from the time we're introduced. They're going to get a reminder; I would like to say we're pleasantly persistent. And so once a week, we're going to politely remind them to please fill out their intake form if they haven't done that. When we hit a month, we loop the advisor back in.

‍

10:51 - 11:09

Broc Buckles

And then we also created a portal. You know, I think we're a very tech forward firm in the way we want to keep everybody in the loop. So it's a portal that actually talks to our CRM. And then every advisor has an account name, and all of the deals we do underneath their account name with their clients, they can follow along instantaneously.

‍

11:10 - 11:20

Broc Buckles

So the minute we have an update about a case, there's no manual process of email, anything like that; everything happens right away. So that's cut down on processing time, which has been cool. 

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11:20 - 11:36

Lauren Hong

And communications with the advisor too because they've got that transparency, the same with your system or what have you. Oh that's really neat that you guys have built that in tandem. So it's not just like a referral relationship but you actually have a portal where they can have that hub and have that transparency to develop that trust.

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11:36 - 12:02

Broc Buckles

Yeah, exactly. We took a survey in the beginning, asking how are you keeping track of your clients’ insurance policies once they've been completed? And we heard way too many say via Excel spreadsheets and so were like there has to be a better way. So, when they're done and we've completed something, they can literally go into that portal, click on the policy’s tab and see every policy we've ever implemented with them.

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12:02 - 12:17

Broc Buckles

They can actually also add policies we haven't even implemented just to have a filing cabinet system for everything insurance related. There's a note section. So it's literally everything you could want from an organizational standpoint.

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12:17 - 12:21

Lauren Hong

Super cool. That's really helpful. Like that one-stop shop.

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12:21 - 12:22

Broc Buckles

Yeah.

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12:22 - 12:45

Lauren Hong

I also really appreciate how you guys are like, I don't know, in a high tower thinking about what people need but you're actually talking to people, like boots on ground, and then creating real solutions to be able to solve those problems. So, it's good to hear that too. Okay. So you've got the advisor side about how to potentially see if you guys would be the right fit.

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12:45 - 13:02

Lauren Hong

But let's kind of flip the table. So let's say an advisor is talking with a client. And they're trying to figure out if they need an insurance solution. What questions do you often tip off to advisors to help them kind of guide them down those right questions if their client does need a service like yours?

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13:02 - 13:07

Broc Buckles

So I want to make sure I understand your question. Like how are they figuring out if the client needs the insurance?

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13:07- 13:09

Lauren Hong

Yep. You got it.

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13:09 - 13:24

Broc Buckles

So, I mean, a lot of them, some of them come from the insurance world so they have a pretty good handle on it. Others, kind of the extent of the insurance knowledge they have is what they learned in the CFP® curriculum, which is not a ton. So there's a lot of on-the-job learning.

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13:24 - 13:49

Broc Buckles

But as a general rule of thumb, most people need life insurance. It's just a matter of figuring out how much. For disability income, that's one of those things to where you probably have some through work. Most of the time it's taxed. And so we tell them, if your clients can't live on 40 to 45% of what they're making right now if something were to happen, we probably need to be having a disability conversation.

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13:49- 14:07

Broc Buckles

Annuities and permanent insurance, that's getting into the weeds a little bit. So that's a lot different. But then we also recently started within the last about six months offering property and casualty, both commercial and personal, across the United States so that more or less just has to do with, hey, let's check your current coverage, make sure everything's adequate.

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14:07 - 14:24

Broc Buckles

Your limits are where they should be, if you wreck into the back of a Lamborghini, you're not going to have to pay out of pocket for it. And that's a little bit more black and white but that's kind of the way we just put the things into their ears and say, here's what you should be looking at.

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14:24 - 14:30

Broc Buckles

And like I said, a lot of people already know how to do it. But for the people who are kind of new in this space, those are kinds of the tips we try to give them.

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14:30 - 14:36

Lauren Hong

Yeah. So here's a spread of options. Here's the key things to be thinking about when talking with clients. So they have an idea.

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14:36 - 14:37

Broc Buckles

Exactly. Yeah.

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14:37 - 14:52

Lauren Hong

Okay. Do you mind putting this into reality too? Can you share a case study, maybe an advisor you worked with and kind of like how that engagement went, maybe like a timeline and how things are built over time. And working with them and their clients.

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14:52 - 15:10

Broc Buckles

Yeah. It's like a sample case of how we have moved forward with relationships with advisors, as I was talking about.

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15:15 - 15:01

Lauren Hong

Yeah, yeah.

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15:01 - 15:18

Broc Buckles

Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny how this happens, actually, we have an advisor we've worked with basically since the beginning. And in the beginning it was very much like, here's what the client needs, this is what we want. A lot of the dialog was not rigid but very specific about what the client needed.

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15:18 - 15:34

Broc Buckles

And then, as they continue to work with us and we work with case after case and they knew our planning philosophy, when it came to certain product lines, was about the same as theirs was, it's been really cool because now the emails consist of, this person needs this product, take it away.

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15:34 - 15:53

Broc Buckles

I trust you guys. And so it was really cool over the last several years to be able to build that relationship to a point where they just know we're going to do the right thing. And when the relationships get to those points that feels really good because that means we're all doing a really good job of making sure we're on the same page.

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15:53 - 16:10

Lauren Hong

Yeah, I hear you. It's that trust component too. I think that goes back to your earlier initial question of make sure the value base is there. I mean, that's a good question for vendors in general, make sure there's a good value for it. But I think in this space in particular, like you said, there can sometimes be a bad rap that's associated with it.

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16:10 - 16:15

Lauren Hong

And being able to make sure there's that alignment, that philosophy alignment and fiduciary alignment.

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16:15 - 16:29

Broc Buckles

So yeah, and you have to stay on your stuff because one thing is for sure, you got to keep people happy. Because, like I said, it can be kind of a big community but it can also be a small community. So you need to make sure you're doing a good job for people.

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16:29 - 16:39

Lauren Hong

That's right. That's so true. Okay. So any other final thoughts, shoutouts you want to give anything to?

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16:39 - 17:03

Broc Buckles

Yeah. The thing I would say is if you have any questions about what we do, feel free to reach out to me. It's Broc at bc hyphen brokerage.com. Check out our website, BC hyphen brokerage.com. And if anybody's listening who’s thinking about starting an RIA and wants me to put you in touch with someone who's been doing it, I know a lot of people who are very generous with their time, so I'm happy to do that.

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17:03 - 17:07

Broc Buckles

And if you want to bounce ideas off me, please don't hesitate to reach out.

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17:07 - 17:13

Lauren Hong

Broc, thanks so much. I also want to give you a plug for your podcast as well. So is it fee-only? Is that right?

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17:14 - 17:23

Broc Buckles

Only fee-only podcast. You can find us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Those are the two main hubs.

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17:23 - 17:38

Lauren Hong

Okay. Sweet. So we'll make sure to include that link below also to your website, BC Brokerage, as well. So thank you. Appreciate your time and the work you do for this community. Paying it forward. Thank you for sharing your time and insights today.

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17:38 - 17:40

Broc Buckles

Yeah. Thanks a lot. Was great to talk to you, Lauren.

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17:40 - 17:44

Lauren Hong

Thanks.

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We talked with Gretchen about:

• Talents versus strengths and how to turn a talent into a strength 
• How overusing a strength can turn it into a “weakness” 
• If you are giving away your strengths for free 

About Gretchen Pisano:

As the CEO and co-founder of pLink Leadership, Gretchen Pisano focuses on executive coaching and leadership development, aiming to align individual and collective growth with organizational strategy. She finds joy in the challenge of guiding teams, likening it to steering an aircraft carrier—a hard but rewarding task. Her journey reflects the idea that no experience is wasted, as she believes her early career in graphic facilitation laid the foundation for her expertise. For seven years, she traveled globally, illustrating live conversations during high-level corporate meetings. This experience honed her ability to listen deeply—not just to what was said but also to what was left unsaid, across various cultural contexts. It led her to facilitate strategic conversations, where she noticed while organizations invest heavily in systems, they overlook the importance of changing how people think. This realization spurred her to pursue a master’s degree in applied positive psychology, combining her street smarts with evidence-based theories. 

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Featured Resources 

• Gretchen Pisano on LinkedIn 
• Gretchen Pisano on Instagram
• pLink Leadership on LinkedIn
• Clifton Strengths 

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Enjoyed This? You’ll Also Love: 

• Reaching Gen Z: How Financial Services Companies Can Engage and Hire the Next Generation with Mary Wisniewski 
• Tips and Trends for Hiring and Onboarding the Right Team in Financial Services Firms with Caleb Brown
• Using a Coach Mindset to Unlock Your Full Leadership Potential

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Full Audio Transcript:

Lauren (00:05):

Gretchen, thank you for joining us today.

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Gretchen (00:07):

Thank you for having me.

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Lauren (00:08):

Yes. I was just reading again, your bio before you joined, and you have such an incredible deep background of working with companies of all different sizes and cultures and what have you. I think what really resonated with me, I actually have to read the lines about when you work with organizations, the outputs around really increasing revenues, establishing honest and inclusive cultures, aligning mindsets and behaviors that really impact and foster just a positive working relationship and culture within an organization. That is not easy to do. So there are so many components, emotional, psychologically to intermix with that, not to mention just org structures and all kinds of stuff. So I want to get into some of that today but I don't want to steal your thunder. I'd love just to hear from you a little bit more about your background and how you got into the really impactful work you're doing today.

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Gretchen (01:08):

All right. Well, it's a story but aren't they all, and I think this is a great example of no experience is ever wasted, how it all kind of weaves together. So early in my career I did something called graphic facilitation. And in graphic facilitation, you're literally illustrating the conversation that's happening in the room. And so large organizations use this when they're doing large-scale meetings. And all that meant was I had seven years of literally traveling around the world in different companies, working with different facilitators at the time, and listening to the way the people think. And when you're illustrating a conversation, your back is to the room. And so you're really listening not just to what people say but also to what isn't being said and breathing patterns and how that differs when you're in North America or in Asia or South America.

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And so that was, I really think about that as my 10,000 hours in relation to listening to how people think. And that led me directly into facilitating strategic conversations. I was naturally good at that. We're going to be talking about strengths. It was one of my strengths and I spent a lot of time with very senior teams helping them think through strategy. And I noticed people were spending a lot of time and money designing organizational systems and they were not spending the same amount of time or money helping people think and changing the way people think and the number one obstacle to successfully executing on a great idea is people, is human nature. And so that got me really interested in the field where I am now by passion and by project. So I evolved into a master's in applied positive psychology to help me partner up my street smarts with some good strong theory and evidence to understand that.

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And then I scaled that into pLink Leadership, where we do executive coaching and leadership development that is designed to be an enterprise solution. And I just qualify that because sometimes when you think about executive coaching, it's like a one-off outside benefit. And the way we approach it is that this is integrated into your strategy and the goal is to make it all fit together so people are working both individually and collectively on the things they need to be working on to be able to advance the strategy. And it is hard. I mean, it's really fun and we love doing it. I love doing it and it is hard. It's like turning an aircraft carrier to get a whole bunch of people pointed in the same direction but hard stuff is worth doing and I love doing it.

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Lauren (04:08):

It is. So tell us a little bit more about the strengths component. I know you were alluding to that too. How are you, when you're working with individuals and teams, really defining strengths? You talk about strengths versus skills and how do you define those two?

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Gretchen (04:26):

I mean, we go back to the theory on that—we are not the original authors of the strengths theory. Really that would be the CliftonStrengths, which roots back to Gallup. And so they are really the preeminent experts in this area. So they define a strength as a talent plus knowledge plus skill plus time invested. So what's important about that is that a talent is a naturally occurring way of thinking and feeling and doing. It's something you don't have to think hard about doing. You're just sort of drawn to it and maybe you are naturally good at it but it doesn't become a strength unless you flank it with knowledge, flank it with skills development, and then invest the time. So you can have raw talent that never becomes a strength. A strength is when you've invested that time in; it just becomes a part of who you are in terms of your thinking, feeling, and doing. And that trio is important because behavior we know is motivated by emotion, and emotion is driven by thought. So it all kind of works together to make us very good at something with less effort and a lot more enjoyment. Like the act itself delivers satisfaction, not just the output. And that's a strength, that's a strength in action. And then a skill, you can be really good at something that is not a strength. The distinction is that exercising a skill consumes energy. Exercising a strength produces energy even while it's putting it out.

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Lauren (06:15):

That's such a great way to think about it sort of in simple terms. So can you maybe share some examples for how you've been able to pull out strengths among teams or skills among teams? How do you kind of slice and dice that when you get involved with an organization and being able to pull out those nuances?

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Gretchen (06:36):

So it's important to know that people cannot make change successfully if they're not standing on firm ground. So we always start with helping people be sure they have a clear understanding of who they are in their current context. And that's important because context shows change. You can take a great leader in one context, change their context, meaning they go to a different company altogether or maybe their role completely changes, and all of a sudden they're starting to get negative feedback or the other way around, they're struggling over here, they get lateral and they just bloom and bloom. So the context is important. We help them to really understand who they are in that context. Strength is a big component of that; so are values. So is how you see your future best self. And so we use the CliftonStrengths assessment to get a baseline and we tell people going in, this is not truth; it's a doorway to insight. And we ask them to read through the strengths insight report and say, which of this feels most true to you? Give a blank version of your guide to somebody who knows you well and ask them which things in here stand out for you as being true, and then work with that. And then from there, we help them to think through which of these ones that feel most true—I know this would be true about myself for as long as I can remember.

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And then we really move forward from there to help them understand what does that look like when it's in excellence, meaning it's serving you really well and you're using it in the way that makes sense and is productive and where might you be overusing it. I think this was one of my early really big insights, which is that oftentimes an area of development or what people refer to as a weakness. I don't like to use that language because it implies it's an inherent flaw in us when really a weakness is just something other people don't like. Just like a weed is still a plant. It's just a plant growing in a place you don't want it.

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So I like the notion of an area of development or an area of opportunity, and we have these areas of development we hear all the time—you're honest to a fault or why don't you ever sit down? Or how come it's so important to you to be the architect of what's going forward? And we hear it so many times, and it's connected to one of our strengths in excess because we have to remember when we're using a strength, it feels fulfilling to us. It feels natural to us, it leaves us rewarded but sometimes we can overuse it and other people experience that as a flaw.

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And so then they give us that feedback and they tell us, you shouldn't be like this. But then we tell ourselves, well, how can I not be like this? This is who I am. So then if we start to understand it's about volume, we are like, oh, we just have to learn how to modulate the volume. So if I have the strength of ideation and I love to throw ideas around when I'm hanging out with other people who also have the strength of ideation, we're speaking each other's language and we can go to town with that. But if I'm in a room full of people who maybe are in charge of making the plan real, they're more of the executing strengths. I need to temper my ideation because I'm just thinking out loud. But to them, they become overwhelmed with all the different directions something can go or how would we make that real?

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Lauren (10:45):

I see that as well oftentimes, or can frankly just get off track from a strategy that's preset and making sure we are aligned, right?

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Gretchen (10:56):

Totally innocently, they don't even know. We don't even know we're doing it unless we've done the work to understand our strengths and what they look like in excellence. We just pop off with an idea and then we're shocked when other people don't love that we're contributing an idea. And somebody else might say, Gretchen, we're 10 days down the path on this. We're not going to change right now.

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Lauren (11:21):

Right. So when you're going through and doing these strengths assessments, are you doing this across the team or is it just within a department or a leadership team, or is it sort of case by case with the engagement?

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Gretchen (11:34):

Yeah, I was going to say yes. And so if we're doing individual coaching it’s part of every coaching package but it's also not uncommon at all to start this way. If you are bringing a team together for the first time, or say you have a new leader to a preexisting team, it's a great opportunity to do a strengths inventory to understand who's on the team and help people have the conversation with each other about which of the strengths they see most present in their leadership style, in their current context, what they lean into when they need courage or when they're making a decision. We have a conversation where we ask people to share what they see as their superpowers in kryptonite. So it's not like you say, oh, my superpower is futuristic ideation maximizer. That doesn't mean any sense to anybody. It's like, wait, how does that even translate? But if you're able to say, my superpower is in really helping people figure out where they can make their contribution, or my superpower is in seeing around corners, or my superpower is in helping us think about a different way of doing something, then people are like, oh, okay, I get it.

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Lauren (12:53):

I get it. It feels more tangible or real or what have you.

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Gretchen (12:56):

Yeah, it's like what you see every day. So that's how a team would use it when you're first coming together and building a foundation.

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Lauren (13:04):

So fascinating. So you've given the example earlier about ideation. You'd be in a work setting and there's maybe someone who's in more of a senior leadership role, a CEO or what have you, it's just they're an ideator. But sometimes those situations where they're perhaps over indexing and their strength innocently comes out in just natural ways. What role do you play—I don’t know if the right word is intervene—but to be able to help kind of coach teams along the way, and those things that are just naturally coming up through the day. Is it those one-on-one conversations? How do you be that fly on the wall to help guide the teams?

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Gretchen (13:48):

Yeah. Well, I think that is different by engagement. It really depends on what they're asking you to be in there for. But the initial meeting we do, typically it's a one-day session where you've got a team together either virtually or in person, and you're doing both values and strengths to lay the foundation, and you're helping them to have that conversation with each other. We give them an artifact afterwards so they can see how the team lays out. It would also be really important for me to say out loud that just because something's not your strength doesn't mean you're not really good at it.

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So a common mistake, we see people being like, this is so great. I want everybody to have a placard with their strengths, and we put that outside their office or their cubicle. And this is a terrible idea because it's like you wouldn't say, hello, Lauren. Lauren doesn't have any strategy strengths. We're just not going to invite her to this conversation. Just boxing people, boxing. And that's also not how it works. The strength piece of it is that you are more naturally good at it and you're going to be drawn toward wanting to do it. So that piece of it is different and it's going to energize you doing it. Typically, you'd also say people have a higher, faster rate of learning when they're in a strength. And people by virtue of knowledge and skill and time invested can become very skilled at something and how they recharge afterwards. That's none of our business. So I think it's really important to make sure people are clear that as an individual, it's your decision point about how you want to navigate your role and where you want to be investing yourself. What I'll say as a coach with many years of experience is that it's not uncommon to see people build entire careers on their skills because we believe we deserve to be paid for what feels hard, and we give away what feels easy.

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Lauren (15:54):

Interesting.

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Gretchen (15:54):

So people volunteer in their area of strength, people discount their services in their area of strength. They give it away for free in their area of strength, and then they're like, this is where I'm going to charge. And then you end up creating a structure, a lifestyle portfolio of services or clients and then you're like, why am I doing this? I'm not enjoying it. I'm really good at it, but I don't enjoy it.

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Lauren (16:19):

You look around and you go, gosh, not everyone's as good at doing what I'm doing. 

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Gretchen (16:25):

Right. The other things. Yeah. So I would just offer that. So going back to your question, our goal would be to equip the team to talk to each other about the strengths and then to be able to do some one-on-one coaching with, for example, the more senior people to help them to understand where they might be habitually. Part of our workshop is understanding which of the ones that you might have a habit of over-indexing on and what might trigger that.

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Lauren (16:56):

Yeah, super interesting. So it sounds like bringing not only self-awareness but not boxing that self-awareness, and then along the way, helping to coach individuals so they can flourish where they might not have recognized strengths before. 

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Gretchen (17:14):

Yeah, so I think in organizational development, the hardest part is you're thinking on three levels all the time, like an individual team and then let's call it mission. So you kind of have to be thinking about that all as an individual. How do I want to think about my own strengths as a leader? How do I want to capitalize on the strengths of my team? And as a person has responsibility for the mission and the vision? How are we doing moving toward that and who might I need to move around or what responsibilities might I need to move around to make that journey easier?

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Lauren (17:50):

So fascinating. Oh my goodness, Gretchen, this is such a deep topic and it's so important and impacts all of us and the workplace, and so I really appreciate you sharing your insights and depth of perspective and working with teams, especially all different sizes. Are there any other final thoughts or takeaways you'd like to share with folks as well?

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Gretchen (18:15):

I guess what I would end with is that we spend so much time at work. We spend so much of our waking hours at work, so why wouldn't we want that to be as enjoyable as possible? And some of that is about other people interacting with us and what we can manage and what we can't manage. But a lot of it has to do with the work we do. And so if we job craft ourselves, we don't even have to change jobs. If we just craft ourselves into a set of responsibilities that tap our strengths, it not only makes our outcomes better but it changes our quality of experience.

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Lauren (18:58):

Mindset lifts up.

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Gretchen (19:01):

So at the end of the day, you're like, oh, I feel filled up. That was so good, as opposed to just feeling wiped out and drained.

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Lauren (19:09):

Yes. So well said. Well, Gretchen, thank you again for your time. We'll make sure to include links as well to your bio and website and what have you but so fascinating. So many great nuggets to take away. So thank you again.

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Gretchen (19:21):

Good. You're welcome.

We talked with Seth about:

• The power of content creation in business growth 
• Key chapters in your accounting strategy you can’t afford to miss 
• The importance of shifting your focus to the outcomes rather than on time spent or number of tasks completed 

About Seth David:

Seth David, Chief Nerd at Nerd Enterprises, Inc., has a unique journey that combines creativity with analytical expertise. After majoring in computer science and dabbling in theater, Seth shifted his focus to finance, working as a stockbroker on Wall Street. He later earned an accounting degree and built a successful career as a senior revenue accountant. Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, Seth went on to found Nerd Enterprises, where he helps accountants, bookkeepers, and financial professionals run their businesses more efficiently. Today, he thrives as a leader, blending technical skills with a passion for business.

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Featured Resources 

• Seth David on LinkedIn 
• Nerd Enterprises, Inc. on LinkedIn
• David Allen’s Getting Things Done
• Slack‍

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Full Audio Transcript:

Lauren (00:06):

Seth, thank you so much for being on the show today. I'm glad to have you here, and I feel like I kind of already know you because I've been checking out your website, watching your podcast, all kinds of stuff. But why don't you share with folks a little bit about your background. You've got a really interesting story and what you've created is very interesting as well. So I'll hand it over to you.

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Seth (00:28):

Thank you. I'll try to give you the very short version of what feels like several lifetimes of a story. But yeah, real quick, I got out of high school and I majored in computer science. I was a total nerd. I liked learning how to write code. The code we wrote in those days was very, very different from now. The languages we wrote in don't even exist anymore, I don't think. At least not in their original forms. And at the same time, a friend of mine invited me to get involved in theater, so I started doing acting. But at least in my view I didn't have any talent for it but I enjoyed it and then I got better at it over time. So long story short, I got into that and then left that at one point because my interest in academics was declining and I didn't want to waste time and money on college that I wasn't really putting in the effort toward. So I left. And my goal at that point actually was to get a job, make enough money to travel across to California, and make it in the acting world. I had this grand master plan, the kind of plans 19-year-olds tend to have. 

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Lauren (01:39):

Totally. I love it.

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Seth (01:39):

Very, very romantic. I was going to drive across the country in a Jeep with the top down and all the stuff you'd imagine that would go around us.

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Lauren (01:46):

Totally can see the picture.

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Seth (01:49):

And so that didn't happen. But along the way, as the means of making that money, I figured I needed to save up 10 grand to buy the Jeep or something like that. Again, we're talking many years ago.

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Lauren (02:02):

Prices were a little different. 

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Seth (02:04):

But still you get the idea. I needed to save up. So I was already kind of becoming a planner, like, all right, I needed 10 grand for the Jeep and then enough money to get across the country, and then I'd figure it out from there. So as I'm looking for jobs, I was looking to work waiting tables at restaurants, and all of a sudden I noticed stockbroker trainee $10,000 a month. I'm like, done. I can be there in a month. I can have my Jeep in one month. So next thing I know, I'm in stockbroker trainee programs with a company and studying to take my Series 7 license, and I'm like, I don't know where this comes from. This totally didn't feel like me but the guy who I worked for, the first one, he was a very good salesman and he was very good at getting you to open up so he could figure out what to sort of leverage to sell you on what he wanted you to do. And so he's like, oh, this is just an acting job. You're basically getting on the phone and painting a picture that you're this Wall Street tycoon. And I'm like, oh, is that right? It's just acting on the phone. Perfect. Done. Let's do it

So I did that. And then again, very long story short, I ended up actually doing pretty well. The years went on, I was 21 now working as a stockbroker on Wall Street, and I was convinced by my then girlfriend's brother as well as my own family that I should still go back and get a degree in something just to have something to fall back on. So I left that business and went back to school and got my accounting degree. And along the way I said, well, I should give this a shot since I've just put in a lot of time and effort into getting an accounting degree and Wall Street will still be there. And so there we were. And then a very long story, very short again, and I don't know how in-depth we want to go but I'll give you the simple version for now.

I know time is limited. I decided I needed a significant change in my life. And so I ended up coming to California but for very different reasons than I originally intended and started over and worked some temp jobs and eventually landed at a very large publicly traded company, moved my way up, worked as a senior revenue accountant for them, and then I went to a CPA firm. And then little by little I started my own company because frankly I just hated working for other people. And I came to the conclusion that I was unemployable because I couldn't stand having to listen to other people, especially when I didn't agree with the way they did things. So that's how Nerd Enterprises was born, quite literally. And then I just kind of carved it out. I was like, let me figure out what I really like to do and leave out the stuff I don't like to do or delegate it. I learned that early on, do what I'm really good at and the stuff I'm really good at tends to be the stuff I really enjoy doing. And when I don't enjoy doing something, I probably suck at it anyway, so I should give it to somebody else.

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Lauren (04:53):

Yeah, it's delegate or die syndrome. So I totally hear you on that. What you built is pretty amazing. I know you do a lot of consulting work for different businesses but you've also got this community. Can you tell us a little bit more about the facets of the business you've been able to build and why you've invested in these different wings of building out these offerings?

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Seth (05:16):

So a lot of it just happened organically, really just figuring things out as I go. So years ago I had a guy I partnered up with and we started a website based on a course I had written. It was like a bookkeeping basics course, and he had the marketing expertise. So we came in and we started building a whole business and I developed a bunch of other courses. And again, long story short, he and I parted company, and when we did, I actually walked away. I said, you know what? You keep the business. We just did not agree on how we did a lot of things, kind of the same old story, same reason I didn't like working for other people. And I said, I can own it. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm just not a good team player or something. So I said, you keep the business, I'm going to go do my own thing. Excuse me. This got me out of any kind of non-compete or anything like that. We didn't sign anything formally. We just said we're going to part ways so I go my way and they go their way.

And so I'm sitting here one day going, all right, I need to rebuild. I'm still going to do courses and things but I'm going to do it on my own. Question is where do I start? What do I do? I don't want to deal with all the headaches that seem to come with having a subscription-based site because I knew what he was struggling with. It was just constant, especially as the business grew and we had a lot of subscribers and I can't find my password. It's amazing to me how many people still did not know how to click that password reset link at the login screen. Anyway, so I just said, you know what? I don't want to deal with that. And I knew about the site Patreon and I said, you know what? I can kind of structure it through that. I'll create different tiers. I'll offer different course content. I'll put the videos up on Vimeo so I can make them private and only give them access to people at the right tier. And this way they handle that business part of it. If somebody has trouble logging in, Patreon handled it,

And I did that for a while until I got tired of it because obviously I was paying them a fee on top of the processing fees for the payment processors. And so eventually I said, okay, it's growing big enough that it's worth it for me to spend the time now and deal with the headache of running my own subscription site. And meanwhile, I had to establish these different tiers, one of which was based on $97 and up. I built out an official sort of name for a program that I called Accounting Business Academy but it was based on that tier from Patreon. And I kind of just ported them over and said, look, you're going to get all the same stuff but new platform and login.

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Lauren (07:48):

Better bells and whistles, much better whistles and so forth.

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Seth (07:50):

And the 97 please.

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Lauren (07:52):

Just to break, what was the threshold that you go, okay, I know you talked about it got to big enough point to move it out. Was it based on just the volume of individuals? What was that threshold for you?

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Seth (08:08):

I think the threshold was, again, very organically. It was based on a feeling like, I don't want to pay all these fees anymore that I'm paying to Patreon plus waiting for them to pay me out.

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Lauren (08:18):

It wasn't a community size. It was more of kind of where you were, you saw the evolution of where it could go.

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Seth (08:23):

Yeah, and I'm sure that was largely driven by the amount of people I was accumulating, and ultimately I wanted to get it on a platform I truly owned. So did it on WordPress with a subscription plugin, and eventually I was guided actually by a colleague to move it to Kajabi, which is what my site is built on now, because that's just an amazing platform that's built for course creation and just content creators and you manage the whole thing. All my emails go out from that system. It's beautiful.

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Lauren (08:56):

Okay, so you've got this pretty amazing community you built, and I know you do consulting work as well. So can you tell us who is in that community? 

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Seth (09:12):

It's mostly accountants and bookkeepers. I've got a sprinkling of business owners who aren't accountants per se but they just feel like they get value added but very, very minimal. It's almost exclusively accountants and bookkeepers who are looking for my guidance to help learn the tools and systems and strategies and processes to help grow and run their practices better. A lot of them have the same struggles. They're up to their eyeballs and work but aren't really making enough money. If you look at the money by itself, it might look good but when you compare that to how many hours and energy they have to put in to make it, it doesn't really feel like a lot of money. And so they want to learn how to scale and just do better and have more freedom. And by the way, the name 97 and Up just stuck. People liked it. Even my wife was like, yeah, it's a catchy name. You should just stick with that.

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Lauren (09:57):

It's easy to pronounce all those things, simple. Okay. So accountants and bookkeepers, and you've got this community. Are they leveraging the content you built? It sounds like it's evergreen content from a while ago. Are you doing community groups and conversations? Is there a forum? What kind of bells and whistles are inside of the actual community itself?

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Seth (10:18):

So they get access to a bunch of courses for free. That's just included with 97 and Up. They get deep discounts on any new courses. I have a series of courses called Bulletproof Bookkeeping. So these are major in-depth courses and they get deep discounts on those. We do two weekly calls. So we do a call every Tuesday and Thursday at 11 a.m. Pacific for an hour. And some of them I have open so people can just come and ask questions and we answer them. Others I have planned topics for and it's funny, bringing things forward to 2024, I'm actually using ChatGPT alot to help me outline the content. I would never dare have it write the content for me but I love having it write the outline for me because then I go in between the lines and fill in the details. Just saves time.

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Lauren (11:01):

Yeah, I hear you on leveraging that. Okay. So tell me more about this community. You've got all these super in-depth offerings. You've got these calls that are going on. What are the common threads of questions you see that are coming up over the years? Is there a common set of questions folks are asking or their deep dive need? And what kind of things are you seeing as trends within the community you’ve built?

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Seth (11:27):

So there's two kinds of major camps I want to put the topics in that I get asked most from the accountants and bookkeepers and the major camps are based on being in two different places. So a lot of them, of course, want more clients and their struggle is with how to get more clients. Accountants and bookkeepers notoriously I want to say rely exclusively on word of mouth and referrals. And some do very well that way. And so it works, it's fine. But in my opinion, humble or not, it's just leaving too much in the hands of the universe. And I prefer something more systematized. So I know I have a process that involves doing something to encourage the universe to drive those leads my way. You know what I mean?

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Lauren (12:12):

To be able to pull them in and say, hey, I'm over here. I can do really quality work and be able to validate that trust out in the marketplace. So one camp is basically, I need more clients. How do I get more clients? I'm assuming you as well as the community itself is helping to pour into those answers.

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Seth (12:30):

And by the way, it's in Slack. I've tried the experiment of using all these other platforms. When Salesforce bought Slack, I got worried they were going to kind of crush the small guy because Salesforce typically deals with such big businesses. And so I left Slack for a while. I tried Mighty Networks, I tried Discord, I tried a bunch, and I landed back on Slack because none of them quite measured up as far as I was concerned. It's funny, it's one dumb little feature that really drove me back that I really missed, which only Slack seems to have where I can go into a message and click the little ellipsis and say, remind me, and I can choose in an hour, three hours, on Monday, or customize the time I live by that I would drop so many balls if it wasn't for that feature. Discord doesn't have it. That one feature alone I think drove me back to Slack.

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Lauren (13:18):

User experience. Yep, yep. Okay. So pouring into those, are there any kind of automatic advice you're giving to folks looking to get more business? I know you mentioned earlier this kind of automation, let the universe know to pull you in. What kind of conversations are you having or at-large recommendations you're seeing for folks where they are wanting to pull in that business?

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Seth (13:42):

So number one, of course, and I've tried to work around this a bit because the number one way I'm naturally going to tell people to bring in clients is based on what I've done, which is produce content, videos, blog posts, podcasts. There's so many different ways to do it but a lot of accountants come back to me, excuse me, and say they're just not going to do it. They don't have the personality, they don't want to get on video, they don't want to turn their camera on. I say, fine, then keep your camera off but you can still do a screen share video and teach a thing in QuickBooks online or something. I mean, that's really how I did it initially; I took the questions I was being asked most frequently by my accounting clients and made videos about them, frankly out of laziness because I was tired of writing out the same answers in emails. So I made a video and said, here's a video. It'll do a much better job of showing you what to do than I can do in a wall of text for you.

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Lauren (14:33):

Yes, I hear you.

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Seth (14:35):

So anyway, you can fire up your Camtasia with your screen and don't turn on your camera. That's fine. But the other thing is the time. And that brings in the other problem. The other question in the other camp that a lot of them have, which is I'm up to my eyeballs. I can forget about taking on more clients. I need to figure out how to manage the ones I have and keep everything organized.

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Lauren (14:52):

That's scalability,

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Seth (14:54):

Especially in accounting, you have so many important deadlines. It's not like, look, let's face it, if a marketing company misses a deadline for producing a blog article, it's not the end of the world. I mean, it's one article.

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Lauren (15:06):

It's going to be okay. 

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Seth (15:08):

Yeah, exactly. But if I miss a sales tax deadline for a client, that costs the client money, a lot of it potentially. So there's a different kind of level of pressure for accountants and bookkeepers to make sure they don't drop any balls. And so that's the other camp where I work with them. And a lot of times a classic thing people will look to do, and this is not just for accountants, this is for any kind of company, is they see they don't seem to have capacity. So what do they do? They hire people. And that actually makes the problem worse because if you hire people into a non-system, all you're doing is amplifying the disorganization of that system. And so now you just have more disorganized people.

So usually the answer is not hire somebody but let's dial in the systems. Let's take inventory. I've made a very thorough study recently, actually again, of David Allen's “Getting Things Done” so I could use that to inform how I work with accountants and bookkeepers and say, first let's just inventory every little thing that's pinging and dinging at your brain that's causing you stress and let's get it out of your brain and into, I don't care if it's on an actual piece of paper, just get it out of your head. And really what that all points to is they don't have a good system, they don't have a process. And the biggest mistake they make, and I suspect this is also beyond just the accounting industry, is they get the project management app and they think, oh, now I've got the system. But the problem is the app is not the system.

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Lauren (16:41):

That's right. It's the organization that goes into the system.

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Seth (16:43):

Yes, the system has to exist devoid of any apps. Then you use the system to figure out how you're going to execute using the app as the tool you use to execute the system. And they miss that. So they go from app to app thinking it's the app, and yet it's that definition of insanity being in the same place and expecting different results, doing the same thing and expecting different results.

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Lauren (17:05):

Yeah, I love “Getting Things Done” too. I've read it several times and one of my favorite takeaways from it is if it's going to take two minutes, just go and do it. If it's not, then put it on your list. It's just simple rules to be able to keep things going because you go, oh, this isn't going to take me that long. Two hours later you're in it, and then everything else is just shuffled around. So I want to back up. So you've got this amazing community. We've got kinds of different camps of conversations or questions that are coming out of it. You're also on the consulting end too. You're talking with businesses of all different sizes, I'm sure, different folks, and are there stair step themes you’re also seeing at different junctures of business, either from revenue size or employee count or what have you? I'd love to hear what themes you hear coming out of those consulting conversations.

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Seth (18:02):

So yeah, I think this is where it gets interesting because you're right to point out the size of the business and then how that drives the nature of the question. So the smallest businesses, all they care about really is how much money did I make and how much do I owe in taxes? And I never really liked working with clients on that level. I just felt like I wasn't adding a lot of value. And so eventually I reached a point where I would interview a prospect and if I got the sense all they cared about was getting a P&L and a balance sheet so they could get their return filed, I didn't want them. I'd pass them to somebody else. 

I wanted clients who wanted to really strategically use the accounting information I could compile for them. And so that made a difference. And for that, you're talking about your micro businesses that are doing say from a hundred thousand a year maybe up to half a million gross revenue. Just to kind of illustrate the point even further, years ago I had a client at this level, she probably did just about a hundred K a year. I used to try and encourage her to look at the balance sheet with me and she's like, no, no, no, I don't care. I just want to see the P&L. I just need to know how much money I make — until she got audited. And she was just randomly selected for what they call a desk audit, which means nobody's going to come in person; they're just going to request information and we send it in.

Well, looking at the auditor's questions, it was pretty clear to me what they were questioning because she had been in business for about five years. She was showing losses each year. And their essential question — they didn't ask this directly but it was evident from the questions they did — was how are you still in business running these losses? And the whole answer was on her balance sheet, which by the way, when you're a small business like that and you're just filing a Schedule C, there is no balance sheet. So they can't see that. But if I was able to show once, it was clear to me what they were going after; she had liabilities that equaled almost to the dollar the cumulative losses year over year. So I was able to basically put the picture together, and this is the thing about numbers for businesses as they tell a story, and this told the story of how she financed these losses based on debt. It's that simple. So anyway, it's interesting in that way. And then of course she got real interested in the balance sheet. After that she was like, okay, I want to learn about the balance sheet. I didn't even bother with the statement of cash flows.

But so then you scale up in size and all of a sudden, to me, it gets much more interesting because the questions get more interesting. Now they get more interested in how do I use this information to scale and grow? What kind of decisions can I make based on this? Okay, so if I look at your financial statements month over month, which I always insisted on doing, never just running it for the year in total but month over month. I want to look at trends. I want to look at the months where we did poorly, and then I want to understand why. And the clients, as you get to the million and up level, that's where they get interested in that stuff. And by the way, that's where they recognize a lot more value in what their accountants can do for them, which is where you can command much better fees. And also you get much fewer complaints. It's always the small clients that complain the most about your bill. At this level, they're like, I don't care, I'll pay you whatever you need. Just make sure I get the information. In other words, these clients at this level really want to save time and they'll pay a lot for that.

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Lauren (21:11):

Save time and resources so they can make more strategic decisions zeroed in on the numbers so they can adjust and flex. And if you're able to be there as a partner, I mean, that's tremendous value, right? 

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Seth (21:21):

Yeah, that's where the value is. And I still, going back to the conversations I have with the accountants, a lot of it is they're still attaching value to the inputs of what they do. And people like me in the accounting space have been working really hard for years now to try and get them to disassociate value with the inputs and reassociate value with the outcomes. And that's so important because we were just discussing the real value is in what I can help the client do differently with their business. It's not in how much time it took to reconcile their bank accounts or how many transactions they had. I hate that. By the way, when people talk about pricing based on transaction volume, it's such a low value way to price your accounting service.

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Lauren (22:02):

No, it's fair. So let me just back up again. So is your kind sweet spot in working with folks who are under the $5 million point, or how do you scale up with who you work with?

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Seth (22:17):

At one point I actually established I wouldn't take on a company that wasn't doing at least a million dollars a year. But funny story, I got into e-commerce by accident. I had a client come in my door who had seen my videos on YouTube and was convinced I was the guy, even though initially I was like, I don't have e-commerce experience; there are people who specialize in that.

But he kept insisting. So I chose to take him on. When I started working with him, I want to say he was probably doing well over a million dollars a year. By the time we parted company because he outgrew me and hired his own internal accounting staff, he was doing a million dollars a month. So I mean, it's quite a range I was able to work with. But with e-commerce, that's not uncommon, especially with big Amazon sellers. So it's hard to gauge it only based on revenues. There are companies that do very high ticket deals but the transaction volume is low. So that could be a $50 million a year company and yet not a whole lot in the trenches, so to speak.

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Lauren (23:23):

That makes sense. So it just really varies.

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Seth (23:28):

And by the way, when you get to his level, the companies that are doing $12 million+ a year, again, the conversation changes because now you're likely dealing with a board of directors and other stakeholders where I'm answering to my client who's answering to them. And so when my client and I had this happen, I can be honest, when my client gets ripped a new one, quote unquote, because he can't explain the numbers properly, guess who else is going to have that same experience? He's going to come back to me; that's going to blow back on me. And I've had to have those uncomfortable conversations where it's like, hey, I'm sorry but let's address this and get it fixed. So now you're dealing with several layers as the accountant; you're dealing with several levels because you've got your client and then the people your client is answering to. And then at one point, I was working with companies who were going right up to the point of going public. What I used to say to them is, the day you have to do your first SEC filing, I'm out. That's above my pay grade. The buck stops there for me. I'm not doing any SEC filings.

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Lauren (24:33):

That's fair. Oh my goodness. Well, this is so helpful. I appreciate you sharing, kind of like you said the mountaintops, just some of the themes you're seeing within your community, within your clients and what have you. I also just want to give a shout out to your content as well. Landing on your website, hearing your story, like I mentioned to you before, it's so human and so real. And you've got a podcast, Guide to the Galaxy, right? So super fun. I appreciate that realness. And also just you can tell there's that people-first educational piece to all you do. So I appreciate you sharing some of those lessons learned with folks.

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Seth (25:10):

Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

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Lauren (25:11):

And we'll make sure to include a link to your website as well. So this is great. Thank you again for your time and looking forward to just checking out all the great things you're doing and seeing more podcasts come out.

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Seth (25:23):

Fantastic. Thank you.

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Lauren (25:24):

Thank you. 

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