We talked with Tiffany about:

• What is a brand personality and why does it matter?
• How do we create brand personalities and what does that process look like? 
• How can brand personalities serve every department?

About Tiffany Silverberg:

A self-professed “word nerd,” Tiffany Silverberg carries a wealth of marketing expertise spanning freelancing, journalism, and her current position as content director for Out & About Communications. While Tiffany has a passion for words, she also brings a profound understanding of the significance of crafting brand personalities for clients. She recognizes the pivotal role a well-defined brand personality plays in establishing a distinctive identity and building meaningful connections with target audiences. In her role at Out & About, Tiffany collaborates with various members of the team, from copywriters to the creative and marketing director, to establish well-defined brand guidelines that provide clients with a strategic roadmap, or North Star, to maintain brand identity and foster a lasting and impactful brand presence. 

Featured Resources 

• More About Tiffany
• Tiffany's Linkedin Profile

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:04):
Tiffany. Hi. Welcome.

Tiffany (00:08):
Thank you. Oh my goodness.

Lauren (00:10):
So Tiffany is our content director at Out and About Communications, and we've been working together for five or six years.

Tiffany (00:19):
Yeah, I think, yeah, probably five or six.

Lauren (00:22):
It's been a while in the best way. I think what's been really cool in the time we've worked together is that Tiffany’s seen so much growth and changes with clients, I mean clients we've had for a number of years and been able to see them grow along with us growing. And you all are in for a treat today because Tiffany listens to so many of our clients, so many of our financial services clients, and is directly hearing from the C-suite about their business objectives, where they're going, growing, and really helping to shape the messaging and the tone for numerous organizations of varying sizes. And so she has a really keen ear for listening to what's being said but what's not being said. And then also helping to shape any piece of content you can think of, blogs, podcasts, social media, and so on. And even crisis communications to make sure it is brand aligned. So we're going to talk about actually a tool we use for a handful of our clients called Brand Personalities Today, and Tiffany's going to have a chance to really go into what that is and get into more details as it applies to content applications. So Tiffany, do you want to share a little bit more about your background before we get into brand personality or any of the work we do together?

Tiffany (01:44):
Yeah, absolutely. So we have been working together for five or six years. I think I base it on how old my daughter was when we got started. So I think it's been about five years now since she's six. So before that I did a lot of freelancing or contract type of work for a long time. I've been in marketing for quite a long time. Before that, I was a journalist at a little newspaper, and I've just always liked words, even in college, pre-college, every opportunity. I had jobs that always revolved around stories, words, and the power of communication. I think marketing often gets a bad rap, maybe has a bad reputation for being like we're trying to convince people of things. And I think I come at it feeling, especially with push marketing being more what we're doing now, it's less about convincing people and more about trying to meet them where they're at and they're already looking for the solution. What's the best way we can communicate it? So yeah, that's just kind of a little background.

Lauren (02:54):
And I love the word nerd part of it too, right? I feel like you're like, okay, check out this.

Tiffany (03:01):
Yes, there are a lot of dictionaries in thesaurus right here.

Lauren (03:05):
You're like, okay, check this out. And then you're like, let me explain the background of this word or this symbol. And a lot of those nuances and the language we're choosing is really important. And it especially is important if you're looking at a mission statement or like I said, we'll get into brand personality or even just the voice and tone. So that's part of the fun part of it. And those words make a difference. And even the company culture and how we think and go about our communications. So with that, let's talk about the brand personality. I should phrase this as we kind of get into it. I'd like to be able to explain kind of what it is but then how do you actually create a brand personality? So let's talk first about what a brand personality is and why it is important to the work we're doing for our clients as a tool to utilize and uphold brand standards. Share more about what this beast is.

Tiffany (04:02):
Yeah. So I think we do brand personalities a little differently, and not to pit anything against each other but I think a lot of times when you see brand personalities, it's more of a brand avatar, often sort of chosen from a circle of 16 or eight or there's different ways to put it. And again, I don't want to pin anything against each other. I think those can be really helpful, especially if you're new in business or you just haven't really spent a lot of time defining your values and where you're coming from as a business, that's kind of like the Myers-Briggs way of doing it. But for us at Out & About, we take a slightly different approach, and I think it's just because of where our clients are at. So our clients are often coming from a place of, I've built this brand really organically, really authentically, but now I'm sort of in a next level of growth. I've brought on new employees. It's kind of getting beyond what I can hold, and I need tools like you said, that can help hold all that together without me having to hold all that together. So for us, it comes from a place of like, okay, we're going to pull in, and maybe this is getting more into how we create it…

Lauren (05:14):
That's great.

Tiffany (05:14):
We're going to pull in your values, your history, your future, where you're trying to go, and it's like the essential oil of your brand. We're going to take all those things and pull it all down into one phrase. So that's how we approach it. Instead of saying like, okay, you are a thing. One of these 16. We try to narrow everything down into a little phrase, and we do it a little differently for each client but it's usually two to four words at the most, really, really short. And it's just really, as concentrated, as pithy and strong as we can make it. And then that really becomes a North Star for everything out of that. So all our visuals, all our communication, and if we can do it really, really well, also internal communications and decisions we're making, it can always come back to, does that feel like us? Does it feel like that phrase we've created? Or if not, how can we get it back there?

Lauren (06:20):
Okay. So once we've landed on this two- to four-word phrase, how are we defining it or defining what it is or what are the pieces of it?

Tiffany (06:31):
Yeah, so again, talking about it from a tool perspective, we put this in the brand book and obviously because they're words and because I'm a nerd about it, if we're going to use a phrase, we have to make sure to also define it really well. So we'll often break it down into three or four pillars. Because another way to think about a brand personality is how we want people to feel when we interact with the brand. So we can define that in different ways. We want them to feel courageous, we want them to feel confidence, we want them to feel comfortable or cared for. Those are all C words, it doesn't have to be, but just these are the things we want them to feel, and this is what that looks like and why that's important to us. And then oftentimes, again, with the definitions, we make sure to say, okay, just because it's confident doesn't mean it's arrogant. Sometimes pushing the negative too. It doesn't need to go there, it doesn't need to go there.

Lauren (07:29):
So yeah, really kind of helping to splice out that stuff or those words of support, the overarching brand personality. And then how do you get through to that kind of essence, to that one page of this is our brand personality. Is it conversation? I know you mentioned the mission, vision, values, and kind of this turning point, but what's the process to narrow that down?

Tiffany (07:51):
So a lot of times when we're creating them, it's kind of when we're first starting to work through a discovery process with the clients. So we'll pull a lot from just those initial meetings. And the nice thing about those meetings is there's a lot of us coming needing different things from the meetings. So we're pulling marketing strategies out of there, and we're pulling plans we want to put together for the next 18 months. There's a lot of stuff that comes out, which is kind of nice because oftentimes we'll sit in those meetings, we'll review the recordings later, and sometimes just little phrases will bubble up from the clients. They'll just say the same thing over and over in different ways or just in answering different questions. So that's always really helpful. And then honestly, with the nitty gritty here at Out & About, we have a director team, so the creative director and marketing director, like I said, we all have to come from those discovery meetings with different plans. Okay, I've got to go build this. I've got to go build this, so I have to do the brand personality, some of the voice side. We'll sit down and say okay, what did you hear and what did you hear? And we'll kind of just talk it through and pull…

Lauren (09:03):
…it all apart. Yeah.

Tiffany (09:04):
Yes. And kind of help push and pull things across the table. I saw that. Does that help you? And then to be totally honest, sometimes we get a little silly with it and start going, did that feel like this kind of cartoon to you? Does that brand feel like this pop culture song to you? And I think that kind of helps. Then you start feeling the feelings. It totally feels like a Katy Perry song. From there, then you're like, okay, well what's the actual word that defines that? And not just the song or the cartoon or whatever.

Lauren (09:37):
And then how are these presented then to clients to be able to get sign off on and for them to also have that feeling where they're owning it too.

Tiffany (09:49):
Yeah. So first of all, I think it is super important they feel like they're owning it, right? It needs to not just be a label we're putting on. So we just went to a really silly place about cartoons and pop culture but it needs to feel like something they're very proud of and very, this is what I've been building. Finally, someone is describing what I've been feeling for so long, what I've been trying to pass on from the founder team or C-suite. But then also it needs to be able to trickle down and get everybody rallying around it feeling like, this is us, this is who we are. It's almost like a mascot. It's not a mascot but it's that feeling of like, oh, we're all behind that animal or whatever. So as far as how it's presented, so again, from a tool perspective, we present it in what we call a big brand book.

Everyone kind of calls it something different, and it's really as we present it kind of the middle point. So we'll talk through all the different target markets and UVPs, unique value propositions, and your positioning statement, all those pieces, values and vision and all those things that brought us to this point, and kind of boil them down. And it's that crux that's the brand personality halfway through. Then we're like, okay, all those things boil down into this neat little bow. And then from there, voice guides and brand guides and visuals and all that will sort of flow out of it. So I like to think of an X. And then as far as once we've built it and we're ready to present it, it really helps to kind of have that initial group, whoever the key decision makers are, there's a C-suite or whoever that is, sit down and talk. There are times they're like, that word is not a word we would ever use, or in context with the history of our company random things will come up. So that's really nice to tease through all of that. And then once we're all on board and we all agree that's the word, that's the phrase, whatever, then we'll kind of present it to the executive team or department heads or the next layer of leadership. And then if the company is big enough, they'll kind of take it from there to their teams as needed.

Lauren (12:15):
And can you share maybe an application, so once it's actually put together and it's agreed upon and it's been agreed upon with the C-suite leadership, if there are department heads and employees starting to get buy-in too, then how does it actually apply on the marketing side and maybe even cross department? How have you seen it be a tool for upholding that personality?

Tiffany (12:40):
Yeah, so from a marketing perspective, like I said, we use it kind of the middle point of a brand book. So even as I said in those initial meetings when we're all kind of deciding, okay, it's going to be, this is what it's going to be, it helps us then decide, okay, key phrases, key messaging that's going to define the brand. They all have to sound like that, or colors or new logo or various visual applications. They all have to look like that and feel like that. So that's the starting point. And then again, once we've all decided on it, it really serves as a North Star. So whether we're writing social media posts, or visual posts, our copywriting team, our design team, everyone can go back to this. And I think from a really practical perspective, again, we have that whole book; that's like, it will have this color, it will not have this color, here's a way to say it, but I think when someone sits down and says okay, I have to write a series of social media posts, I have to write a series of emails, it's nice to have just that mental place to sit and go, okay, I have to be here as I'm writing as opposed to pushing up against a guideline, if that makes sense.

Lauren (14:03):
Yeah. So could you maybe share how we use it internally and even share it with our copywriters or copy editors as well? How are they utilizing that to channel the essence of that brand voice and tone?

Tiffany (14:17):
Yeah, exactly like that. We do share it with them and share it with them every single time. So it's not just like you see it once but every time we have to sit down and write again, social media or an email or an ad or anything, they'll have that to go back to. We also do create a video, a little Loom around it too, so someone's explaining it because again, words can be misinterpreted or interpreted different ways so there's someone saying, this is what that feeling is and supposed to be. 

Lauren (14:53):
Yeah, it does. No, you're right. It's used all the time. And I think not just in copy but in design as well too.

Tiffany (15:03):
Yes, exactly. All pieces of copy, but design, same thing. Again, it's easy to say, here's your logo, here's your colors, and we have to have those so nothing strays. But I think it's nice to be able to sit when you want to come up with a really cool new ad or print ad or social campaign, and you want it to be creative. It's nice to know I'm coming from this place of, we were talking earlier confidence, or am I coming from a place of fun? Or where am I starting with that and what do I want people to feel?

Lauren (15:34):
What kind of energy you're pulling, it almost seems like maybe it's like your, I don’t know if baseline is the right word but if you were to present this ad, you could go, does this feel like our brand personality?

Tiffany (15:47):
Yes, exactly. It’s like a filter.

Lauren (15:50):
Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. And then any applications for how it's been used for other departments or outside of marketing?

Tiffany (15:59):
Yeah, I think again, I think when it's done really well, it can serve as, I think that's almost like the sign that it's working really well is when it can start being used internally. And again, when people start getting really excited. And we've seen that happen ourselves and with our clients where just randomly people are like, is it that? Are we being that thing? Or just having that conversation or just almost talking about, it's almost, again, I think about sports teams, it's that time of year, but it becomes a rallying cry or something. We're this, people get excited.

But yeah, I mean, one thing that came up for us that we've talked about for our own use is just kind of getting everyone on the same page before a meeting or even internally when you have to have conversations like, well, we need to come from this place because we all agreed upon it. And I think it's important too, to talk about, it's not just like, I need to put on this facade again. If it's done really well, it should be organically from the brand. So it's not just, I know we've talked about this internally too. It's not just, okay, I'm going to put on this face before this client meeting and then I'll take it off afterward. But it's more like, I was hired for this reason, I belong in this team, and so I'm stepping into this thing that's natural for me. This is who I belong to, if that makes sense.

Lauren (17:26):
Yeah. That energy that's projected as the brand is coming, it's not just one person but it's really across the board, it’s holding the values but is sort of like you said, the essential oil of the brand, I think.

Tiffany (17:39):
Yes, exactly. We all smell like lavender.

Lauren (17:41):
Yes.

Tiffany (17:44):
But it's that idea of really narrowing it down.

Lauren (17:45):
Or like you said, it's that Katy Perry song, that feeling, right? And what's the feeling if you were to interact with this person or that person, there's a consistent standard and energy across the border, and that you would feel that in design or copy and what have you.

Tiffany (17:59):
Yeah. And that's what I mean about it not being fake, because at least, I mean, for us, we hire for values and we hire for being an authentic, natural part of the team. So it's like when I'm putting on the brand personality, I'm not putting on something fake. I'm putting on, this is why I belong here, this is who we all are sort of together. 

Lauren (18:21):
Well said. So anything you think could be a good takeaway that I haven't asked? I know we're wrapping up quickly here.

Tiffany (18:29):
Yeah, no. I guess one other story, we were talking with a new executive at one of our clients, and she was just saying, this is a client where everyone's really embraced their brand personality. And she was just saying, I could feel it at all the touch points, every interaction. And she's like, it wasn't until you explained it, because we gave the whole presentation to her, and she's like, now I understand what that was. I have a word for it now but before it was like I could just tell everything felt like this brand who we are but I didn't know what that meant. So it was nice that we could actually get the words for it.

Lauren (19:10):
And that's the hard work of leadership, being able to set that company culture, those values are so essential to, you said earlier, hiring, and just the energy that's brought into every day. And then how do we take that and distill that? You were saying, then it gives us a place in which we can come from copy and design.

Tiffany (19:32):
And I guess one more point to that too, we keep mentioning values, and I think the differentiator between your values and your brand personality is just that, well, first of all, for values often we all kind of use the same ones, we say the same words. And so it's nice to have something that feels very, well, for lack of a better word, branded to your brand. We use this phrase, oftentimes we'll choose words that are slightly juxtapositioned or slightly funny together because then once they come together they’re more powerful. So I think that's the difference too. Then you have this separate thing that's almost an inside joke. Everybody's just like, this is our thing. We get excited about it versus values, which are important, but sometimes they're like, well, we all talk about whatever those five things are.

Lauren (20:26):
And it also takes those, comparing what you're saying too, taking those values and mission, vision, all these big pieces. Like you're talking about sort of that X, right? And it funnels it down to sort of you said, get the essence of it.

Tiffany (20:36):
Yeah, exactly.

Lauren (20:38):
So fun. Well, thank you Tiffany for taking time, sharing a little bit of the behind the scenes of what we do here at Out & About, and also that process to be able to get through a really important piece, especially as businesses are growing. So thank you for giving us a sneak peek and sharing more about what makes things stick here.

Tiffany (20:58):
Absolutely. It's been fun. Thank you.

Lauren (21:00):
Absolutely. All right. And we'll include links as well to additional information about brand personality or all of that, and don't hesitate to reach out with questions. Thanks, Tiffany.

Tiffany (21:10):
All right. Thanks.

We Talked With Derek About: 

• Why we need to shift to human connections and consumer-driven lead generation.
• How to build trust into the whole process of a client relationship, starting with leads.
• How the Couplr fintech solution works, including how bio questions came together. (Hint: They’re super fun and you may want to grab some of these for your own bio!)
• The science behind this lead generation tool and how people make financial decisions.

About Derek Notman:

Derek Notman is on a mission to “fix money.” Working in the advisory space, Derek saw one pivotal issue: the need for trust in professional financial relationships, especially for people looking to hire a financial advisor. Essentially, lead generation was broken. His solution: focus on the human element and the power of human connection. Leveraging the latest trends and science, Derek founded Couplr, a lead generation white label solution. Its core purpose? To help clients match with their ideal financial advisor based on who the advisor is professionally and personally, ultimately empowering clients to make informed decisions on their own timeline when choosing an advisor to help them along their journey. 

Featured Resources

• Derek Notman’s LinkedIn Profile  
  
• Couplr
• Couplr on Facebook
• Couplr on Linkedin

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:03):
Derek, thank you for joining us today.

Derek (00:05):
Great to be with you, Lauren. Thank you.

Lauren (00:07):
So I know we kind of got started in this crazy world of LinkedIn. I saw an interview you had done about Couplr, this new technology company you've started. I'm super intrigued by it, so I appreciate you taking the time today to share more about the journey you've taken to get this new company off the ground. But I think also importantly, hearing the why and what in this kind of space in the market you see missing. Why don't we start there? I'd love just to hear from you a little bit about your background and how did you identify this gap in the market to get to where you are right now?

Derek (00:43):
Well, like a lot of your listeners, I am a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™. I actually still have my own RIA. So I've been an advisor for over 17 years now. I cut my teeth in the insurance broker-dealer world and now I'm fully independent. And the number one problem I always saw, because there’s so many advisors who wash out of this business, a tough business.

Lauren (01:06):
It's a tough business, especially in the beginning.

Derek (01:08):
Oh my God, I have gray hair for a reason. I didn't start with gray hair but the number one thing I always saw was lack of lead gen. I'm sure like a lot of your listeners, when I started I was told to do a project 200 and cold call. We had phone clinics multiple times a week.

Lauren (01:27):
Yeah, I know. Even door knocking, right?

Derek (01:30):
It was tough and I did it and I did it. I hated it but I did it and I was good enough at it where I was able to make it but it always bothered me because the process just seemed so disjointed and broken for the advisor. It's really kind of soul crushing. When I decided I wanted to be an advisor, I wasn't thinking about having to do lead gen and marketing, I was thinking I want to help people retire and save and invest and all this stuff.

Lauren (02:02):
The relationship building pieces of it, the why. Yeah.

Derek (02:06):
It was so, so important. I think most advisors have that passion. That's why they get in. They want to help people with their money but the process to get clients isn't very transparent initially when you're trying to get into the business. And then once you're in, you're in. So you got to go. So that was always frustrating. It really is not a fun process for advisors but it's a terrible experience for the consumer too. They're getting cold called or maybe they put their name and their email address and how much money they have into a website, and then next thing they know their phone is blowing up. It just feels bad all the way around. So I figured, okay, what if we can fix lead generation? What if we can make it better? And that's where Couplr spun out was asking that question. That's how I came up with Couplr originally.

Lauren (02:59):
Yeah, I appreciate just your honest narrative about the difficulty of being able to get going and just that kind of, I don't know what you want to call that, that mud you've kind of got to get through to be able to get to the other end of really the real work, the work you want to be doing and being able to help people and support them. So tell us more about Couplr. What's sort of that identified gap in the market and how are you trying to solve that initial challenge?

Derek (03:32):
Well, I'll start at a really high level and then boil it down as we go. So ultimately we're on a mission to fix this thing we call money when we don't have great financial advice, education, and so forth. A lot of bad things can happen when we make bad financial decisions or just don't make decisions at all. But if we do have good guidance and education in our lives around money, a lot of great things can happen.

Lauren (03:58):
Absolutely.

Derek (03:58):
And advisors, human advice, is not going away. So advisors tend to be a very big part of that for their clients and helping them realize their hopes, dreams, and goals. So we're on this mission to do that, and the opportunity is huge. We know over a hundred million people a month just in the U.S. alone are looking for help with their investments, their insurance, retirement planning, whatever. We know that depending on the numbers you look at, if you count registered reps, life agents, and so forth, you've got over 600,000 professionals just in the U.S. There's over 4.1 million globally. So you've got these great two markets that need to support each other, that need to connect. And Couplr was like, okay, why don't we change how people are connecting with advisors? Couldn't the consumer drive this process instead of the advisor? Shouldn't we be? And here's the thing, money is very personal.

Lauren (05:00):
It is. It's hard to talk about. 

Derek (05:02):
It’s really hard to talk about. And so if I'm going to open up about my financial skeletons, mistakes I've made, things I don't want to acknowledge, how much money I have or don't have. If I'm going to share that with an individual, I better trust that person. And last time I checked, zip code and net worth do not determine a trusting relationship.

Lauren (05:25):
Absolutely. 

Derek (05:27):
They really don't. But that's what all these lead gen solutions are doing. They're saying, hey, we'll find the best advisor for you. Give us your zip code, email address, phone number, and how much is in your 401(k).

Lauren (05:39):
Right, right. 

Derek (05:40):
Well, wait a minute.

Lauren (05:40):
Baseline stuff. It's not really deep stuff. What's funny, just as a note on that to sort of back it up, we look at a lot of firms’ websites. Everyone goes to the About Us page. They want to know who this person is, and it's not like the credentials are important. It shows this level of, okay, check the box. Right? Totally validation. They're really critical. But once you've got that check, it's your entry card if you will but then it's about the human stuff. Can I relate to that person? Do they have a family? What are their hobbies? What is that connection? So to your point, I mean it is so much more and I think it's really easy to forget about that, especially when you're sort of passionate about doing the work, but it's that human element. So let's talk a little bit more about that connection and what you're trying to cultivate too.

Derek (06:39):
Yeah, you're spot on. It's the human element. It's the human connection. If we have shared commonalities and so forth, we set the stage for trust. If we went to the same school, we're both dog people, we love to travel, etc., etc., etc., you're like all of a sudden, oh man, this person's just like me. That's cool. So the consumer feels more comfortable but also the advisor's like, oh, I just got a lead. They like dogs. They like to travel. We went to the same school, we got something to talk about right off the bat. This is great. So Couplr does that, and how we're doing it differently is that we are a white label solution, and this is really important because trust is a really important part of the process for someone getting advice and finding an advisor. So if I'm on, I could use Fidelity for example, or Morningstar, if I'm on that website researching something about Roth IRAs or retirement planning or whatever, I'm already there, so I'm thinking about my money. That's good. Okay. So that's already a warmer lead.

Lauren (07:44):
Proactively starting to find a solution.

Derek (07:47):
And we know over a hundred million people a month are doing this. But then if there's this call to action to say, hey, use this tool by this other non-Fidelity brand, we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. I think I like Fidelity but what's this other thing, this other brand you're going to make me go use to find an advisor? That feels shady. I already don't really want to be here, so I'm gone. Or the tool's just too invasive because it's asking your net worth and your email address and you're like, well wait, I don't even know if I want to go on a first date with you yet. Just hold on a second. 

Lauren (08:21):
That's right. I know. 

Derek (08:22):
Back up a little.

Lauren (08:23):
I know it's like already down for a proposal and we haven't even had a conversation.

Derek (08:27):
Right?

Lauren (08:28):
Yes.

Derek (08:29):
Like chill out. Let's hold on. So we embed in situations like that; we leverage the existing brand. That's why we're white label.

Lauren (08:38):
Got it. That makes sense. So it's like a back-end tool.

Derek (08:41):
So you don't know it's not really a Fidelity tool. So we want to leverage, because Fidelity or any company has spent a lot of money and time and resources driving their own brand. So why would they want to detract from that? They don't.

Lauren (08:54):
Makes sense.

Derek (08:55):
And so we take that warm traffic and then we ask the consumer to go through a brief quiz longer than anything else that's really out there. I timed my wife doing it, I stood behind her and just hovered and it took her just over three minutes.

Lauren (09:09):
Oh my gosh. That's like music to my ears for folks. When you think about if someone's searching online, they don't have a lot of time, that they can just pop through it real quick. You always have a drop off at the beginning, right?

Derek (09:23):
You always will.

Lauren (09:24):
A 20-question survey, you're like, oh my gosh, okay.

Derek (09:28):
Yeah, this one, it's lightning fast. It's quick and it's long enough to be like, okay, there's some value here, but it's not too long to be like, eh, I'm out. But what's cool is that we don't ask the consumer to give us a name, an email address, what their income is, any of that stuff. Bumble has a really good approach, if you know about the Bumble dating app.

Lauren (09:51):
Yes, yes.

Derek (09:56):
Well, I signed up for all these things.

Lauren (09:59):
I am familiar.

Derek (10:02):
I had to get permission from my wife. I signed up for all of the dating services.

Lauren (10:07):
Well, you're getting the user experience.

Derek (10:10):
The user experience feeling. So we empower the consumer to make that first move. So then they get matched now based on a variety of human elements with the top advisors at that institution. So not 100 I have to try to sift through because once I get over a couple, three, four, five choices, I'm gone. Anyways. Too many for me to think about.

Lauren (10:32):
Yes, yes.

Derek (10:33):
That's actually based on something called the paradox of choice. That's science that's been written about previously, and now the consumer can vet their advisors. They get to see the profile. Who is this advisor? What are their specialties? What are their credentials? Let me see their disclosures, broker check.

Lauren (10:53):
Wait, wait. So a consumer comes in, they answer the questions, and then they're kind of fed a list of advisors? Just want to make sure.

Derek (11:00):
They're instantly matched with only the top three or so advisors at that firm.

Lauren (11:04):
Okay. So also just to back up one step, this white labeling tool is really for a firm or for a company like a Fidelity for example, or I don't know if that would be the right kind of fit, but that would have kind of a volume of advisors.

Derek (11:20):
It needs volume. It needs volume at this point. Technically, we could probably serve a firm as small as one with seven advisors.

Lauren (11:29):
Okay. Just to really narrow it. Yeah, that makes sense though, right? They're not having to read through every bio and Yelp. Okay, so sorry. So we'll swing back to the narrow. Now they've three or so advisors.

Derek (11:45):
And so then the consumer gets to look at them. Why was I matched with them? Who is this person? Who are they personally and professionally? Let me check them out on social, their websites, all of these things. Because as a consumer, if you're telling me I'm connecting with these top matches for these different human elements, I already feel better about it. And I feel like, okay, wow. All right. We both like to surf. We both travel, dog people, whatever. So then within 10 minutes or so, you can do your due diligence as a consumer.

Lauren (12:17):
It helps. It's time saving,

Derek (12:19):
Major time savings. We've really queued it up well. And then when the consumer is ready, they will initiate contact with the advisor or advisors they want to speak with about working together.

Lauren (12:31):
Got it. Okay.

Derek (12:32):
The advisor does not get any access to these leads until the consumer initiates contact.

Lauren (12:39):
Okay. So can you talk about how the consumer actually initiates contact?

Derek (12:45):
So there's different ways we want to empower the advisor to have their contact info and stuff like that there. But the main call to action we ask for is to use our instant messaging feature, which is FINRA compliant. And that's how they initiate contact with the advisor. Hey Bob, I got matched with you. I really liked that. We went to the same school and we both love dogs. I need help with this thing. I'd like to find a time to meet with you.

Lauren (13:12):
Okay. So and then at that point of conversation is when they would be passing over their contact information.

Derek (13:19):
It’s up to them. They don't even have to give their contact info because we let the advisor respond to the DM.

Lauren (13:24):
Ph, it’s very trust focused then.

Derek (13:27):
Very trust focused. We do not want the consumer to ever feel like they're going to start getting spammed or bombarded or have to give anything away. So it's totally up to the consumer. But what happens when we do this and it's a good match, the advisor now has a warm inbound lead they know things about, like, hey, this consumer needs help with retirement planning. They've been thinking about it for three months. They want to get it taken care of in the next seven days, and they love dogs. Oh, okay, cool. So Bob gets this warm inbound lead, and unless Bob is really bad at his sales process, how can you not close that lead now?

Lauren (14:03):
Yeah, you already have a connection. You've got starting points, something about them that is of interest and they've already been narrowed down. Okay. So that's the point of handing off this qualified lead. Then how about on the advisor's end? How is this platform, the white label piece, getting set up to make sure of the inputs? Are there a bunch of fields or forms the advisor has to fill out to do the appropriate matching? What does that kind of onboarding look like on the firm's end?

Derek (14:32):
Very easy onboarding. We work directly with the enterprise. That's who we partner with initially. They will give us a list of whatever advisors they want in part of this program. We bulk upload advisors. Each advisor gets an invite email. They have to complete a very similar quiz for matching purposes because of how our algorithm works, and then take a few minutes on setting up their bio headshot, tell us more about you, links, all that kind of stuff. And they're not allowed to let that bio go live until they've completed everything, including disclosures.

Lauren (15:03):
Got it. That must be a fun bio to put together. I mean, how have you guys been adding more and more details? How have you narrowed down what goes into this matching process?

Derek (15:13):
It's pretty cool. There's a lot of different things we're asking about. What would you do on a free night off? We have a question about that. Unexpected.

Lauren (15:21):
Yeah.

Derek (15:21):
Do you feel about international travel? We ask almost nothing financial other than what is the consumer looking for? We also ask the advisor, what are services you primarily help clients with? Things of that nature. Do you work only remotely or will you work in person or do you care? A lot of different elements around that but we're connecting on the human level. We're all wired to connect that way anyways.

Lauren (15:49):
Right. So how did you even come up with these questions? Did you survey different folks? Did you work with a sort of expert who really knows survey questions, if that's sort of the right term?

Derek (16:00):
There were a couple things. So part of it was my own research into the science of interpersonal trust. So our tool is based on three different types of science we've actually baked into it, which has never been done before, which is kind of cool. So part of it was on my research and figuring out what are the types of personality and human connection questions we should be asking. But also one of our founders, Megan Lutz, has her PhD in behavioral financial planning.

Lauren (16:29):
So she's like, this is…

Derek (16:31):
…totally up her alley. She loves this stuff. She and I nerd out on it probably more than we should but it's great stuff. And so we work together. We're actually even working on it today. So it's really fun to figure out what we should be asking both sides, why that's important, what part of the personality box that ticks off, and then how are we connecting people based on all this?

Lauren (16:55):
Got it. Oh my goodness. That is a really fun project. I mean, more than a project. I'm sure it's ever evolving. We always say websites are ever evolving. I'm sure this is probably.

Derek (17:05):
Oh, it totally is. Marketing and websites. It's part art, part science. So there's a lot that goes to it. And is it ever evolving? One of the things we're really excited about is that we actually don't know when and why people make financial decisions. It's never been found out. It's never been learned.

Lauren (17:25):
I feel like that's actually quite bold to say, because I feel like someone makes a financial decision when X point happens, right? There's some big life transition. So tell me more about this. I feel like that's definitely something different than the status quo.

Derek (17:44):
There are a lot of knee-jerk reaction solutions that happen like, oh, I just had a kid last week. I should probably get life insurance. Oh crap, I'm going to go do that. So one of the other sciences I mentioned is something called the transtheoretical model of change, and that was actually originally done in the ‘70s to understand why people quit smoking and when they quit smoking. So we've just applied that to this space to find out, okay, I'm thinking, I know we're expecting a kid and it's six months from now, so I'm thinking about it. Maybe I went to a life insurance company's website to learn a little bit more but I'm not ready yet. And so now we can start to track this process and change, well, this consumer's hit this website five times now over this timeframe. Now they eventually got something done and we just don't know that type of stuff yet, and we're going to be able to learn it at scale for a variety of different things. And then what we're eventually going to do is we are an AI company, so we'll start training some AI models where we can get even better and more predictive to help people with this type of stuff.

Lauren (18:54):
Wow, that's fascinating. Oh, so fun. What a great space to be. It's pretty cool. It is super cool. Also, with all the changes that have happened in the last few years with so much M&A activity, I myself, as a consumer, when I go to another firm's website and you go to the team page and it's like, oh my gosh, where do I even start? It's like, you can just keep scrolling. There's so many people. And then it's like, do I go by location? You don't want to read through every bio. Maybe you're lucky if you get through three of them. So this is a really interesting way of trying to do that matchmaking, if you will, between the consumer and the advisor. 

Derek (19:31):
We think so, and we're pretty excited about where it's going. We'll see what happens but it's pretty awesome. We're doing it for the right reasons, which is great. People need to connect for the right reasons.

Lauren (19:41):
Yeah, that's important. Oh my goodness. I appreciate you sharing more. I know we're about at the top of our time here but anything else you think would be good to share more about this platform or what's coming up next for it?

Derek (19:55):
Yeah, I think definitely go to our website: CUPLR.ai, couplr.ai, and you can sign up for our newsletter on there. And then we've actually published some articles that really dive into the science and the reasons behind our solution. And then you can also, even if you're an enterprise listening, you can sign up for a demo from there as well from us. And if you want follow me on LinkedIn just because I'm pretty darn active on there.

Lauren (20:23):
Yeah. Even hearing about this research too, I would even think as just an advisor looking to make connections, being able to understand that deeper or anyone frankly who's in sales, it feels like it would be good information to have to be able to bridge those relationships.

Derek (20:41):
No question. Because I mean, as you know, you serve a ton of advisors. Very few advisors signed up as an advisor to become a marketer. They want to be an advisor. They need help with all the marketing stuff and the lead gen and all that. But if they can learn those insights so they can work with people like you to make their website better or whatever, everybody wins.

Lauren (21:02):
Yeah. It's a win-win. And it is about that human connection, as you talked about earlier. A hundred percent. Oh my goodness. Well, Derek, thanks so much for your time today. We'll make sure to include links below to Couplr and some of the other pieces you mentioned. Again, I'm excited to see this roll out and the learnings that come from it.

Derek (21:22):
Likewise. Thanks a ton, Lauren. I really appreciate it.

We Talked With Stevyn About: 

• The parallels of the financial services industry and health.
• Why being “wellthy” starts with awareness.
• How to find your health credit score and steps to improve it .

About Stevyn Guinnip:

As the daughter of a financial advisor, Stevyn Guinnip grew up watching her father help people build financial success and prepare for retirement, only to get sick or die prematurely because their health was neglected. She also saw financial advisors ignore their wellness for decades and found herself asking, “What good is wealth, if you don’t have your health?” Stevyn went on to earn a master’s degree in exercise physiology and became a certified health & wellness coach. A near-death experience in 2016 brought her to an epiphany—the same skills it takes to be financially successful are the ones necessary for staying healthy. Stevyn founded Grow Wellthy and teaches her clients that health is their biggest asset. Today, she helps financial advisors, investors, and their clients retire “wellthy” by earning back their health.

Featured Resources & Shout Outs

• Stevyn Guinnip’s LinkedIn Profile  
• Stevyn Guinnip’s Instagram Profile 
• Grow Wellthy on Facebook
• Grow Wellthy website
• Find Out Your Health Credit Score 
• Well-Advised Newsletter 
• Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity by Peter Attia, M.D. 
  

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:02):
Hi, Stevyn. Thank you for joining us.

Stevyn (00:05):
Hi. Thank you so much for inviting me. This is exciting.

Lauren (00:08):
Yes. Like I shared earlier, I've been following you on LinkedIn. I know we've got all these small town connections, small world connections. It's really fun to see that all come together. But I'm really looking forward today to really hearing about your company and what you bring to this world and financial services and the financial advisory world and all of those good things. And in particular about Grow Wellthy. So why don't we start there? What's your story? How did you get to where you with your offering?

Stevyn (00:40):
Yeah, sure. So Grow Wellthy is a play on words, obviously it's W E L L, it's wellness wealth. It's the other wealth that a lot of people aren't talking about. And if anyone's listening, I would just say the one main concept I teach is that your health is an asset, just like your 401(k) is an asset or properties you may hold are an asset. It is something we want to treat like a financial portfolio to be there for us in the future. So because of that, the name of the company is Grow Wellthy because we're actually trying to not go bankrupt in this space of health and wellness because we need it in retirement just as much as we need those dollars. And so I came into this because my dad is a financial advisor. He was for 32 years in the industry.

So I jokingly say I've been in the industry since I was 11 when he started that business. And I got to see from the inside out what it takes to be in this industry with the stress, the sedentary, the pressure, all of the things to grow a business, to be seen, to be heard, to be relevant, to take care of your clients. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's a lot. I don't want that. My dad asked me, he said, do you want to go into this business? He had a booming business. And I said, no, I don't want this because I've seen too much of the high producers, the very successful financial professionals, what it takes from them, and I didn't like it. So I went and became an exercise physiologist. I said I'm going to fix this from the other side. So for 20 years I did that, and it was when I almost died in 2016 while living in Australia that my two worlds collided.

And that was the world of understanding the financial services industry and understanding what health is. And my own near-death experience made me realize they're the same. They're identical industries. It's just that one of them has an asset of money, one of them has an asset of health, but you follow the same principles to achieve success in both—long-term thinking, small deposits, consistency, staying out of debt, having all these different concepts. And I was like, oh my gosh, all we have to do to help these people who mean so much to me is skill transfer all these concepts they already know just to a different medium, which is their health, and then they can get to retirement, not be bankrupt, not have one good year, die at the desk, all these things I've heard. And that's where Grow Wellthy was born when I kind of made those two worlds come together.

Lauren (03:09):
So share a little bit more about who you serve today. What kind of things are you doing for them?

Stevyn (03:15):
So I serve financial professionals, people who understand money. I help them to assess how they're doing with their health, look at the trend that's been happening, and then we find the gaps and we change that trend to a better place. So I work with financial people to transform their health, to get out of debt with their health and to become an abundance of wellness. And we do that through coaching, group coaching and private coaching. And that's something I've been doing for years now and most recently, which is kind of interesting for your people, is that we've started to actually integrate that into the culture of the company and to say, okay, this is great for me as the financial professional to change my health, but how do I integrate this into the culture of my company and help my clients to understand how this is an important thing for them too? So we've started educating and offering value add and ways to attract and retain more people by delivering these concepts through what I call the quarterly wealth webinar series. So there's kind of two arms to what I do.

Lauren (04:29):
So when people come to you, are they at a breaking point? What is the trigger? Are you trying to, I'm assuming, of course, wanting to try and reach them before you get to that, but what's the reality?

Stevyn (04:43):
Kind of in financial services, the younger the person is, the less they're willing to take action and save for retirement, even though they should, they should start decades earlier.

Lauren (04:57):
Really, there's many things you should do, right? 

Stevyn (05:00):
Right. It's the same with health. They're like, okay, when should we start? Two decades ago, that's really when we should have started. So people come to me, they're like, yeah, I kind have been neglecting this for a while. So there's two big triggers. One of them is turning 40. They're like, I'm at 40ish and I've been not doing what I should be doing, and I feel like it's going to get serious soon if I don't do something. That's one. The others are people who are maybe 50, maybe even 60, who are like, okay, my bloodwork does not look good. My doctors want me to take this medication. I'm at risk for a heart attack. I've got these issues that are not making me feel healthy, and they're going to turn into a really big problem soon. And so then we're really trying to make changes quickly to get them out of the danger zone and back on solid ground again. So there's kind of the people who are more preventive in nature and the ones who are trying to fix a problem.

Lauren (05:52):
So just in the wealth management space, there's triggers in all of it. Someone gets scared, has a baby. So you're sharing that these triggers are really turning points with your age. Something happens medically, what have you. And I'm assuming there's been other factors that are sort of off so they know they should be doing something. So what do you do to help them get that in line? I mean, as business owners and a lot of advisors, you're going out, you're hitting the ground, it's high energy, it's hard to fit in these other things and make them a priority, even sort of fit it in to what's going on, or well kind of get their own buy-in, right?

Stevyn (06:35):
Right.

Lauren (06:36):
I see the alignment with a little bit of what you're talking about with the financial planning side of it, but keep going. 

Stevyn (06:42):
Yeah. Well, I've interviewed 500 financial professionals because I'm writing a book on this topic. And the three things I consistently hear, and I see this in my own clients too, there's three barriers that keep people from actually doing it. Everybody wants to be healthy but not everyone is doing it. And so that creates this frustration gap. So the three things are that they are unmotivated—they know they should do it but they're just not that motivated to make changes. So they use excuses, I just don't have time, or things are too busy right now, or whatever. And so what we have to do is address that and make it a priority by showing them what I call longevity metrics. When they see their longevity metrics, they're like, whoa, I had no idea. I am 52 but my metabolic or biological age is 67.

What? No, this can't keep going. I'm going to die too young. So we take some of these really key metrics and help them to see where they really are as opposed to just like, oh, I probably should do something. They're like, this is where you are. And that's really motivating, and it creates perpetual motivation. You start to see these numbers create a trend, and then you get excited about it. So that's number one. Number two, it's just utter confusion. They're like, well, I tried keto and then I was told I should probably do this 75 HARD program. And then someone said if I just ate asparagus or whatever, there's a million ideas of somebody's cousin's aunt who did something and lost 30 pounds, and it's like analysis paralysis. They don't know what's right for them. And so that's what we have to do too, is ask what are the best practices?

And then what are they based on? They're based on three authorities, which is how you feel about it, what your results say, and what does science say? So we kind of clear the mud and make it really actionable on a few items that get them to where they're wanting to go in a very strategic way. And then the third thing is that they may know what to do and they're motivated but they just can't be consistent for whatever reason. They'll go a few days and then miss a few days. So we work on the consistency pieces, what to do, the right time of day to do it, and we embed it into four of the habits they're already doing in their day. They're four routines that are happening every day no matter where they are, and it throws it on autopilot. I call these the High ROI routines, and that's basically just making sure you're doing the least amount of effort to create the biggest amount of impact on your health so it's sustainable over the next several decades. And that's the process we go through and it works.

Lauren (09:17):
And is it customized to each individual? How are they monitoring this? Is it through an app?

Stevyn (09:26):
I have a coach portal.

Lauren (09:26):
Yeah, share a little bit more.

Stevyn (09:28):
Yeah, I'm the coach. I have a portal that is HIPAA compliant. They get a username and password. We actually go through and communicate constantly through that, through either data exchange because a lot of these wearable devices and things we do are actually auto ported right into it. So I can see what's happening behind the scenes and I can give them direct feedback on that and say, I noticed this happened. You might want to try that, or how come we're doing this? And we just kind of start to build this customized process. But there are five main concepts they go through, and I teach everyone the same main concepts but how those play out to each individual is very unique. So there may be one gentleman who’s really working hard on fixing his meals and balancing out his macros and his fiber because he’s just way out of whack.

Once we get those balanced, all of a sudden his weight starts to fall off. I have somebody else who's just incredibly stressed. So they're going to spend more time in that module working on those techniques to get their heart rate variability, their HRV, down so they can actually start to achieve their goals. And so each person may have specifics they're working on but they all work for everybody, generally speaking. So what I'm trying to do is help them become their own wealth manager. So as their body changes and their lifestyle needs change over the years, they just go back to these five concepts and rearrange things and rebalance their portfolio and their health continues to stay as high as possible. And I call it living long and dying short, or just trying to extend their health span so their sick spans shrink and they're not losing their quality of life or spending money on stuff they don't want to spend it on.

Lauren (11:16):
Yeah, okay. It sounds like it is customized to each individual but are there tricks you've seen, especially for busy professionals? Does everyone calendar it out or does everyone have a wearable device? What are those efficiencies that keep that sort of pattern of accountability in there that make it as easy as possible? It's like a meal planning program. I’d love to hear more on that because people are busy and you have to make it fit or else it can feel more friction, and that can also, I would assume, deter people. 

Stevyn (11:53):
Yeah. Well, more friction creates more cortisol and more cortisol in your system prevents you from reaching your goals in a state of breakdown all the time. Stress can be mental but it can also be physical. And so the last thing we want to do is create more friction. We want it to be fun and easy. That's our guide. I call it becoming a dopamine detective. Dopamine is the feel-good hormone in your brain. So when it feels good and it's good for you, follow that, follow that. And sometimes that's where people start. We're just like, if I give you everything you should be doing, you're going to become overwhelmed. It's not going to work. Where's the place that feels good to you? So I would encourage anyone listening to this or watching this to say, what's something—just do an audit of your life.

What's something that feels good and is good for you? For me, it's hiking. I love to get out and hike, and I always have really great numbers on my wearable whenever I get outside. So how do I build more of that into my life? Or I love my shoes. I know this is crazy but my running shoes are kind of a purple and blue, really crazy colors, and when I put them on they make me feel happy. Sometimes it's just that, just get a new pair of shoes that make you feel happy that you want to put them on, and that can catapult you into more things because we have to follow the dopamine. That's why people get stuck in eating snacks late at night because dopamine feeds in their head, because it feels good to do that. We just have to find other feel-good things.

And so that's where I would tell people to start: what do you like and what actually is good for you as well? And the other thing I would say is get the book Outlive. If you're looking for another book to read, I highly recommend this book by Dr. Peter Attia. He’s got great stories. He's a physician but he also comes from a background of risk assessment for the banking industry. It's a really cool kind of combo hybrid skill set, and he's got some great concepts I think people could learn a lot from. So if you need a book, I would recommend that one. Also, I think a good place to start is ACT. So ACT is an acronym, and it's obviously three letters. The A is your awareness, what are you actually doing? As soon as someone says to me, I try to exercise three days a week, I know immediately they're not doing it.

Lauren (14:18):
Red flags. 

Stevyn (14:19):
Yeah, red flags.

Lauren (14:20):
We've all been there. You're like, there's these little subtle words and you're like, I try. Yeah, I hear you. I know we've totally all been there.

Stevyn (14:30):
Yeah, so be real, it's the reason why some people don't go to financial planners. They try to save 10% every month, but they're not; in fact, they're going into debt and they don't want anybody to know that. But you can't actually get better until you see it for what it is. So A is awareness, and you can get that through getting a wearable, like this is a Fitbit. You can get an Apple watch or a ring, whatever, but what are you doing? And then the next letter is C, which is curious. Get curious. That's just start posing questions. I wonder what it would be like if I did go to bed an hour earlier. And sometimes just posing the question is enough for your subconscious mind to start to chew on it and create space for that thing you've just asked for. And then the T is find something, take some action. Any action will start to build momentum. You can't feel motivated and then take action. Action creates the motivation, so do something and then the motivation will show up afterward. So hopefully that gives people some ideas.

Lauren (15:31):
Yeah, those are really good tips. It can be scary to be able to commit to something like this, right? You've got to show up and then you've got to be able to act on it. So I'm sure you help to hold that action accountable too, but to help, how do you ease that scariness? Are people having to get gym memberships? What kind of volume of time is required even to sort of get going, and then when do you see it sort of level out where a pattern is actually quite consistent?

Stevyn (16:03):
If someone were to work with me, what's that commitment look like?

Lauren (16:07):
Yeah, what's kind of the ramp up to actually get to a place of steady consistency and what's the initial kind of commitment?

Stevyn (16:16):
It usually is about six weeks to find consistency and automation in these habits, and there's a bit of confusion.

Lauren (16:26):
That’s long. I have to say that because I mean, I was thinking you're going to say like 90 days or something like that at least. But yeah, it’s about patterns. Is it in 30 days a pattern can be created, something like that?

Stevyn (16:39):
Some people say 21 days. Yeah, the first two weeks of working together is very much data collection. We're just trying to figure out what's going on and where the issues are. And then after that, once we understand them, then we can pick the best practices that work for that person. And then it's a matter of working it out and figuring out where these things fit and how they're going to be easy and automated and not something they're going to, I can do it. I know I can. I'm talking myself into it. No, can you see yourself doing this in five years? Well, no. Well, then let's not do that. We're not going to pick that one up. We'll pick up something else that seems easier. So that takes us two or three weeks to kind of figure that part out. And then we kind of refine things.

And the last week of working together is called High ROI routines where we bring all of it together into this beautiful web of wellness where you actually get 16 opportunities to make choices for yourself throughout the day. And by that time, I'm like, we're launching now. You've got what you need. It's time to actually take off. And then they can either go on their own and take their plan and execute on their own, or they can stick with me on a monthly membership to hold them accountable. And a lot of times people stay with me for a year. I have several people who started four months ago and they've already reached first goals and they're into second goals. Like, oh my gosh, I never thought I'd be here. One of them was to be under 200 pounds. He hit 199 within I think two months.

It was like 30 pounds of weight loss, and he's feeling great. He's achieved all three of his goals we started working on. He's like, I'm ready for my next goals. Let's keep going with this. And so it's really up to the individual where they set their goals and what they want to continue to pursue. But as far as initially setting up this framework, which is why I have it this way, I used to teach these concepts over a year and just drip it out very slowly and slowly improve people's lives. It doesn't work very well that way. Give them the plan and then slowly implement the plan so they can see the whole picture that works for their goals, get all that stuff done, and it works so much better to achieve, to actually get it done for good and never revisit those higher weights or blood pressures or cholesterol levels.

Again, I have one gentleman who went through this and within four months he had reached his goal. He went back to the doctor and the doctor's like, you did it. I've been bugging you for 10 years to take blood pressure medication and now you don't have to anymore. Your cholesterol's fine, your blood pressure's fine. He's like, do you know how good that feels? To not have to say, I promise I'll do it this time. It's done, right? It's done. And he's the first one to say it's, I've got my habits. It's like clockwork. I just do these things all the time now. So to me, six weeks is nothing. You take six weeks, you commit an hour a week to learn the concept, and then you take some action and communicate with me through the portal and this beautiful thing just blooms of your new habits.

Lauren (19:37):
So a lot of advisors will often refer to themselves as the financial quarterback for an individual. So I'm sure you've heard this expression as well. So do you find yourself in sort of a quarterback role? Are you liaising with others to be able to help that individual reach their goals? Or is it kind of a one-stop shop but it's that individual's responsibility to, I don't know what it might be, if it's identifying an easy meal planning program or something like that. How does that side of it work?

Stevyn (20:09):
Yeah, I help them find all of those resources. So if it's to understand, we use apps; I've got a customized thing that we can actually say, okay, what foods don't you like? What do you like? And we can build a meal plan specific to their likes and dislikes and give them a whole collection of meals that are what they want that meet all their goals. So we have those resources. I tell them what blood tests to get. I say, here's the scale you need to order off of Amazon. It's $25. It's going to tell us a whole bunch of different body composition numbers. I help them figure out which of the wearables is going to be the best one for them. Some of them love their Rolexes, and so they're not going to wear something like this. So we have the Oura Ring and they wear just the ring, and that works out fine too.

So we figure out all of that stuff. And then if they have a doctor who is going to work with them on this stuff, great. If they don't have a doctor who’s willing to work with them on this stuff, then we help them either supplement the testing with just their own tests they get themselves or find a new doctor who is going to help them. Because some doctors are just like, you're fine. Stay on cholesterol medication, stay on blood pressure. You don't need to worry about this. You're fine. And when they come and they say, no, I'm taking back some ownership of my health here and I want to get off these medications, I want to get to this new weight, I want to do whatever. Some doctors just aren't willing to work with that and some are. So we have to help them navigate that too.

Lauren (21:36):
Okay. Oh my goodness. So many things to consider. So on a related topic, to just swing back to the initial part of the conversation. You also had shared that you talked with, it sounds like employees as well, or even potentially those advisors referring you out to their own clients. So are you doing workshops for employees around this? Am I understanding that right? And what kinds of topics are people interested in?

Stevyn (22:04):
So we started in 2023 in January. We've done three of these. Now the next one's coming up; there are four, we'll say there's four a quarter, or sorry, four a year, one a quarter. And it's a live event with me where I teach on a specific topic. Last time we did it, it was healthspan versus lifespan and what that means for your financial portfolio. So it's connecting the dots between a client's health and their wealth and helping the advisor have better conversations with them in their planning meetings. The one before that was tax-free health, how to reduce taxes and keep money, more of your health for retirement. Then we did one on health as well. And then I think we've got one coming up that's called Your Health 401(k).

Lauren (22:49):
Oh my goodness.I love that title, Your Health 401(k). It’s so fun.

Stevyn (22:59):
Yeah, so that's the one that's coming up in October. And so we do this in two ways. We educate, they're educational, and we're not working on the transformation. I'm not coaching people, we're just educating on these ideas. And so sometimes in a financial firm, we're just educating within their own structure, within their own support staff and financial advisors to help them as a value add. But then sometimes they take this and they invite their clients to it, and they use that to drive referrals or to keep this thing interesting, build themselves apart, build an event, customer appreciation. And the feedback we've been getting is fantastic. No one's ever done this. No one's ever talked to me about this before. I had no idea these things were so connected. What do I need to do? And they start taking more interest in their health because they realize how connected it is to their own financial portfolio. Oh, that's great. Yeah, that's been really fun. 

Lauren (23:55):
It's a new unity, like a built-in event. And sometimes what we see too is with prospects, they're not ready to talk about the numbers. They're thinking about what am I going to consult about after I've retired? Or other topics that are more here and now. So it's an interesting sort of even lead into prospects, especially if you're sort of looking at those time periods you mentioned.

Stevyn (24:16):
Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren (24:17):
Oh, fun. Well, we're about at our time here. Any other final thoughts or things you think would be helpful to share for folks who might be interested in exploring this kind of a service?

Stevyn (24:29):
Yeah. Well, I think a good place for anyone to start, like I said, is with the A awareness of that ACT acronym. And one way they can do that is go to my website@growwellthy.com slash quiz, or it's just on the homepage too. And you can get your health credit score in that quiz. So basically you answer, I think it's 15 questions, and it's going to give you a score from 400 to 850—what your credit score looks like for your health, because that's your buying power for your future, your purpose, your relationships, all the things you want to do in retirement depend on that score. And so that's a good place to be like, just how am I doing? And what that will do is give you information, some steps to follow, but it also gets you onto my newsletter, which is called Well-Advised and Well-Advised goes out once a month.

And I share interesting topics, people who are doing great things in this space, in the industry and spotlight, and maybe even someone who’s listening with you wants to be a spotlight who's doing great things in this space. But my whole goal is to plant seeds of thought and open new concepts that this is part of financial planning. Your health is part of that, and it affects your assets, and it is its own asset. And how you deal with that, with your own life and with your clients’ life and how you infiltrate that into your culture, I think is really important. So a good place to start is how am I doing? Where's my credit score? And just go take that quiz on my website.

Lauren (25:59):
Oh, I love it. And like I said, I really enjoy hearing about the fusion between this world and wellness. So interesting.

Stevyn (26:07):
Yeah, it's fun.

Lauren (26:08):
Thank you again for your time, Stevyn. Really appreciate it and I'm looking forward to staying in touch.

Stevyn (26:12):
All right. Thanks so much.

We Talked With Suzanne About: 

• The reason your marketing strategy should always start with identifying your why
• Using storytelling versus data to create more impact and build layers of credibility
• The importance of being what you believe is a good representation of you and your expertise

About Suzanne Siracuse:
Suzanne Siracuse is a visionary in the financial services and media space. Leveraging her extensive knowledge in both arenas, she has become a leading consultant for financial advisors and financial services firms, guiding them into creating innovative business strategies, impactful marketing programs, and advocacy initiatives around diversity, financial literacy, and next-gen talent. As the former CEO and publisher of InvestmentNews, Suzanne's trailblazing efforts were instrumental in launching an impressive catalog of initiatives in support of the evolution of the financial advising profession. Today, as CEO and founder of Suzanne Siracuse Consulting, LLC, she continues to share her wealth of experience with advisors. Her unique approach helps advisors and firms discover their why, identify their niche, and forge meaningful connections with the media, ultimately setting them apart in a competitive market.

Featured Resources & Shout Outs

• Suzanne Siracuse’s LinkedIn Profile
• Suzanne Siracuse’s Facebook Profile
• Suzanne Siracuse’s Instagram Profile
• Suzanne Siracuse Consulting
• Heather Fortner’s LinkedIn Profile
• Lori Hardwich’s LinkedIn Profile
• Josh Brown’s LinkedIn Profile
• Jim Pavia’s LinkedIn Profile
• Michael Nathanson’s LinkedIn Profile
• The Net Positive Pledge  

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:00):
Thank you for being here today.

Suzanne (00:03):
Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm very honored and I'm excited for our discussion.

Lauren (00:07):
I am as well. So without further ado, I feel like you'll be able to give a proper introduction about your journey to InvestmentNews and now to your consulting firm today. Tell us about how you got there. And I want to hear a little bit more, even just your time at InvestmentNews, which I know we'll get into more. But what was your journey to get there and then if you can share a little bit more about where you are today as well.

Suzanne (00:30):
Absolutely. So when I graduated from college, I thought I wanted to write commercials for a living. I wanted to get a job at an ad agency writing jingles in a very creative field. And that's not the easiest job to get right out of college, let's put it this way. So what I ended up doing is I kind of compromised and I ended up becoming a salesperson in the advertising department at the Philadelphia Business Journal. I grew up right outside of Philadelphia. Go Eagles. And I just got involved in working with clients, and I loved my boss, I loved the people I worked with. In fact the publisher was a woman, the head of sales was a woman, and my boss, who was the marketing manager, was a woman.

And so when I think back and when I reflect back on that time, it was real foreshadowing of really being able to see someone in a position and successfully doing it. And that's actually a big influence of why I wanted to become a publisher, right? When I started out at the Philadelphia Business Journal, I was right out of college and didn't really know what I wanted to do, but after being there for a little bit, that first job experience can either go really, really well or not so well. And mine went really, really well. And that really fueled how I got to InvestmentNews. So I stayed there for eight years and started working with a lot of financial service firms, and then realized I wanted to move to New York.

So I started working at Pensions & Investments, which was the sister publication of InvestmentNews, and the publisher of Pensions & Investments, after about a year said, hey, we're really noticing a trend in the RIA space and in the intermediary space. And we're looking to launch a newspaper. At the time, there were no websites; that's how long ago this was. And I’m wondering if you want to move over and help us launch this? So I absolutely love launching things, new ideas, being creative. P & I was a little dry. So we launched InvestmentNews, and that was in 1998. I was running sales for many years, then became the associate publisher and became the publisher in 2006. And during that time period, I really got to understand the wealth management space and the evolution of it, quite frankly.

So when I think back, there were two major things happening, right? There was the evolution of the financial planning, wealth management business from traditionally broker model investment focused to now much more holistic, focused on an independent model. And at the same time in the media business, which is what I did, it was showcasing that changing or that evolution in consumption of media and consumption of content from traditional print, magazines, newspapers, to digital, launching websites. So you really saw this evolution in both areas I was working on, which was incredibly exciting, especially after being there for so long, seeing the print model.

That top revenue source was continuously kind of going down this way and digital was going up. And so really being able to create so many new offerings and products featuring great content for advisors. So, the website and newsletters and webinars and video, and then we launched a ton of events and award programs and all of that. So those were really important pieces to where I am that got me to where I am now, right? So when I think about some of those, I like to call them the GA, game changing offerings, right? Like 40 Under 40, right? Like Women to Watch, Women Advisor Summit, Diversity and Inclusion Awards, Best Places to Work. Those were all kind of bigger initiatives that encompassed lots of different moving pieces, right?

Not just editorial, not just video, not just webinars, not just research, but just all of the above, to really put on these really important industry events and offerings that are still going strong today. So when I left, which is now four years, I can't even believe it, I was able to take a lot of that information and a lot of that experience that I learned in the 22 years I was there. And translate that now to advice and consulting for firms that are trying to do business with the RIA market or the wealth management space. So I'm very, very specific in my niche, which is working with firms that are trying to work with financial advisors and financial advisory firms. And my three pillars are business strategy,

marketing strategy, and supporting and developing advocacy initiatives that include DEI, next-gen talent development, and financial literacy. So I have clients that range from very, very large RIAs where I'm helping them with their M&A strategy to fintech companies that are trying to get advisors to take a look at what they offer to alternative investments to organizations like the Financial Alliance for Racial Equity. So all over the board, which is the way I operate. I like to have my hands in a lot of different things. And it also really helps me continue to keep an important pulse on what's going on in the industry.

Lauren (07:22):
I love hearing your journey, and you're so right about it was such an interesting time you were there, right? There's so many things that were happening within the media, traditional news market versus digital, even the RIA space and that sort of hybrid. What a fun time to really be shaping that out. And then I think also to see where it is today, right? And to be able to say we went through that threshold of growth, right? And in two different avenues to now see all the successes and be able to move with the market from where it's at. So I appreciate you sharing that. Also, something that resonated with me when you first shared your story is just this idea of it is sort of not always about the job, but it's about the boss, right? And be able to have that mentorship. And I feel like that sounds like this sort of guiding light for you as you stepped into where you are today, but now you're also not maybe in a mentorship role, but you're helping to coach and sort of be that guiding light for other folks where you've had that share of knowledge. 

Suzanne (08:24):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I just shot my podcast earlier today with Heather Fortner. She's one of the few female CEOs of an RIA firm. SignatureFD. And we were talking about the evolution, again, I keep using that word, but the evolution of your management and your leadership style and how it really does change with your experience level.  And so I feel like I became a much better leader now then I was when I first started. Which I think most people feel. But now because I'm a consultant I do not have employees purposely. That's where I wanted to be in my life. I now can mentor people I choose where they choose me.

And it's been absolutely wonderful. And then most of the people I did mentor at InvestmentNews were people who worked directly for me and just to see where they are now is really unbelievable. So I'm giving advice now to a lot of women who are looking to step out of their organization or have stepped out of their organization and formed their own firms. And that's just so much fun because you learned a lot along the way. And I had some terrific women who jumped in and helped me when I started my firm. Lori Hardwick, who is a mainstay in the fintech space, she had started her consulting firm and shared a lot of great best practices with me. So I always say, developing that network is an important goal for a variety of reasons, not just for business development. Right, right, right. Which is maybe originally how we all start thinking about a network. But really as you continue to evolve in your career and on your journey and what you want to do, part of my business model is my connections with a lot of VIPs in the industry. So that is something to just keep in mind. That's a really important technique when you're growing your business.

Lauren (10:44):
Absolutely. I think not just being able to build those relationships, but maintaining them and that sort of thing. So I think it is also rewarding to see folks as they've grown over their career and what they're doing. I know for myself, I have the fortune of being able to see really C-suite from a variety of organizations at different stages. But you can sort of like cherry pick a little bit, kind of the best of the best, or even just learnings for what to do and what not to do. And so it's fun to hear you talk about where you are at the point in your career to be able to, like you said, sort of pick and choose, but then also as you're coaching, to be able to help folks, but then give them kind of the best of the best as they're growing with their professional career.

So, shifting, I want to shift topics a little bit. So one of the pillars you talked about was marketing. You have been at a seat, at InvestmentNews, you've been able to see how folks interface with the media from a variety of angles. And we work with a lot of RIAs, a lot of advisors, and PR always comes up, right? I know trends in PR have obviously changed and there's so many different ways of approaching it, but I'd love to just hear a little bit about that side of things. How do you recommend advisors even go about PR and reaching out to the media? And what's a first step if someone's thinking about just being a little bit louder with thoughts. 

Suzanne (12:06):
Yeah. So this could be a five-part series, right? Because there's so much to it. So we're going to scratch the surface a little bit, but I think what I always would recommend is before you start with anything, you start with the why and why you should make as an advisor this a priority, meaning marketing or PR, and put some money behind it. I think making sure you are very clear on the why, why you wish to pursue a media relations strategy. What are you looking to accomplish?. Because if you just say, oh, everybody says I need to have a media strategy, so I need to have one, you're missing an important foundational step. You need to understand and create a plan and goals of what you actually are trying to accomplish.

And some of those whys, some of those goals, could be I want to do this because I want to establish credibility with prospects and current clients. Because when they see your name quoted in a third party, like CNBC or InvestmentNews or Barron's or Wall Street Journal, it gives the impression that you're an expert on a particular topic. So I would say that's probably the number one why, right? Understanding that and also for branding and an awareness-building tool. I mean, PR is second to none for that. It's also an essential part of an overall marketing mix. It's not the only part. So I always caution if you're only going to go in on PR and not do all the other pieces that are important to that, you're not going to get the most out of it.

And that's where I just say, really understanding what your overall marketing strategy is, in which PR is one of those spokes. And then when you get that PR content, so you get an article posted or a column featured, how are you leveraging that in the rest of your media strategy? That's why having that larger picture strategy is important. The other thing around a why is the Google search relevance. In this day and age, there's very few people who are going to do business with you until they've Google searched you. And so if nothing comes up, that's not great. So having some articles or webinars or quotes, something you're doing, speaking at an event, adds that layer of credibility. And it also increases your probability of appearing during Google search.

It helps get more interviews with other media. So if you jump into your first interview, that will eventually lead to more and more down the road. So I just gave you a couple of the whys, but before that, define what success looks like so you can measure what works and what doesn't. So ask yourself again, what you want to accomplish, and then write it down because you're more likely to follow that plan if you write it down. So that would be first and foremost before you do anything. Then focus on the topics you are an actual expert in. Simply saying you're a retirement planning expert won't move the needle. It’s not going to cut it.

It's way too general. So what are you an expert in, but also what are you passionate about? And I talk about this too, when I speak about niche markets and segmenting your client base. I just interviewed on my podcast an advisor who focuses on the LGBT niche. Actually gay women who have dogs. So that's a big niche, right? But there's plenty of them. But again, when you look at being very, very niche in your client segment, it actually allows you to be much more niche in your marketing efforts. It's much easier, quite frankly. So again, what are you passionate about? What are you an expert in?

What differentiates you from other advisors? And then define if you want to focus on the consumer market, right? So CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Yahoo Finance. Or the B2B market, right? Your industry. And I recommend having a plan for both. But it’s probably easier to start with B2B so you can have a foundation that will help you with your B2C plan. Mm-hmm. And I would also say decide if you have a budget to hire a PR person to help you with the outreach and ideas. And if not, create a wishlist of the top three to five media outlets you want to be a source on. What do you watch? What do your clients watch? What do they read?

What websites are they on? Maybe get an informal poll from some of your current clients. So that can help you in determining which outlets you need to focus on, because this isn't a full-time job for you, you're an advisor. Once you determine the outlets, then find out who the right person is at those outlets because various editors cover different things. So know which reporter handles investments or financial planning or the markets, those are a couple of different things. And then you can submit columns as well as being a source in various news stories. So those are just a couple of things you could start out with.

Lauren (18:53):
Yeah. I feel like this is fantastic. Give us a quick start guide to just PR. Where do you start and then where do you actually take it to the action steps, which is a great way to get started. Sometimes we have firms we work with and they go, we want to be featured in the New York Times. And I'm like, that's great, but let's get into it— because it can be such a shiny object, you know? I think sometimes it's hard to know where to start and often just reminding folks if they do want to DIY that people are people and it's got to be authentic and it's got to actually add value to their readers, to what they're writing, these kinds of things. So it's a two-way street. And to your point about knowing your target, right? If you're passionate about it, you're probably going to be able to then just naturally speak to it. So it becomes a win-win for what they're trying to work on as well. So they meaning the editor, whoever's writing it. 

Suzanne (19:45):
So, absolutely. Absolutely. And again, having a very clear understanding of what you're trying to accomplish before you start anything. To me that is the biggest mistake—the biggest mistake of those who don't do that.

Lauren (20:01):
Yes. And just answering the big picture question too. That why. What's the end goal? What are we trying to accomplish with this? This is great, like I said, a really good quick start guide for where you start with it, right? Because it can sort of be shiny. So I appreciate you breaking that down. And you're also just from your perspective, from where you are as well. So is there anything in the media you feel like is missing? Any stories, any kind of topics you're seeing? Are you seeing kind of an undercurrent of conversations even that you're having with the firms you're consulting with? Do you feel like there's topics that would be valuable in the financial services media landscape to hit on more?

Suzanne (20:43):
Yeah. So I think, again, step one is are you talking about B2B? Are you talking about B2C? So again, that seems so simple to maybe you and I who play in this space every day. But for an advisor who’s not, this is not second nature to them, right? I have talked to more advisors who are just like, I just need a good website. Can somebody help me do that? My focus is on providing great advice to my clients. Or creating a business to business development strategy for my firm. So this feels uncomfortable. What I would say is start with where are you primarily wanting to get your media attention? Is it in the B2B space, meaning the wealth management industry, like InvestmentNews, wealth management.com, the financial advisor magazines, or is it the mainstream media?

So I think you can create stories and topics based on those audiences. So for example, I think for both of those audiences utilizing case studies and real-life examples to show what your clients are looking for in terms of services, like more and more are looking for tax and estate, things like that. More comprehensive financial planning services, and then product offerings, ESG, crypto alternatives, guaranteed income, whatever it would be. So thinking about it from that way and telling a story through the lens of here's how I helped my client. I think people like to throw a lot of data around but the more impactful thing is when you can actually cite an example of how you as an advisor worked with a client to achieve a particular goal doing X, Y, or Z.

So I think that is a piece that is really, really, really important. And it's also important to show on your website. People want to be able to see, oh, I have that problem too. Or, hey, that's something I worry about as well. So that could be one angle. Reporters and editors right now are seeking out diverse voices, whether it's racial diversity, age, LGBTQ+ or next-gen advisors, but also diversity of thought. And what I mean by that is you need to be a tad contrarian at times. If you're constantly just agreeing with what's already being said, they want somebody who maybe has a unique point of view, somebody who can shed light on something and have maybe an interesting stance on it.

I use Josh Brown as an example. He is very well spoken. He uses humor. He's obviously very intelligent and very knowledgeable, but he uses his personality to really drive that home to the media too. And he's done a great job of it. So again, he's not saying the same thing everybody else is saying. So again, that diversity angle, but also diversity of thought. And then for the B2B side too, maybe best practices in growing your business, a unique way you've advised a client. Those types of things I think are always really valuable to the media. And then finally, I was just on the phone with an editor from CNBC today, and they're always looking for someone who can comment very quickly when immediate news comes out. So if interest rates go up, if there's a meeting with the Fed, if there's the job report, those types of major news cycle things that are happening in the market now. If you can immediately say, I'm always available, here's my cell phone, I can comment—because they're always on a tight deadline—so realizing that, I think that's another way you can really have a good relationship with the media.

Lauren (25:37):
Yes. And to that point, I feel like sometimes media opportunities will come in and they don't always come in. And I think it's a good reminder too, if there's a firm that's working with a PR agency when that comes in, it's a critical response time. Response time is very critical. Kind of like when the New Deal would come in, right? You want to be able to respond in a very timely manner as well. But you make a good point—being that trusted resource for really knowledgeable advice and making yourself available is a way to build that relationship. 

Suzanne (26:09):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Lauren (26:11):
Oh my goodness. Well, so many great tips. I feel like our time's just absolutely flown here. Any other kind of last minute thoughts or pieces you'd like to leave us with regarding media trends you're seeing? 

Suzanne (26:27):
I would say the most important thing, and you hear this a lot in marketing, is just be authentic. And I alluded to Josh Brown being himself, and that's what people want. That's how people identify and actually want to do business with you, is if you are just authentically you. So don't try and be something you’re not; if you're not super analytical, don't try to be that. Be what you feel is a good representation of you and your expertise and what you bring to the table. The other thing I would say is with the media it's not about what you want, it's about what they need.

Lauren (27:13):
Yes. Thank you. 

Suzanne (27:15):
So understand what is important to the media and work your pitch and your angle around that, not the other way around. And then understand who their audience is and what their main focus of content is so you can tailor your angle or your idea to them, right? So I don't know if you follow Jim Pavia on social media, but he's the personal finance editor for CNBC. Jim and I worked together for many years at Investment News, and he's hysterical, right? So he loves to publish the horrible things that come across his email, meaning this PR person sent me a pitch that has nothing to do with personal finance. So again, that's an extreme example. He'll give so many examples of people not knowing what he focuses on. And how annoying that is. So that's just a best practice. Make sure you are very clear about the right person you're working with, what they cover, and make sure you are tailoring your pitch and your angle directly to them and what's important to them and their readers.

Lauren (28:39):
Yeah. So well said. And I feel sometimes there's just nothing better than old fashioned personalization, knowing what your interest does, but then just being real, like you were saying too. It's different to just send a cold pitch that's cut and pasted to hundreds of people versus actually, I've been following you and this is something I noticed you wrote a few months ago and, and I love what you said about this, or however it's spun, right? But that's what I think you were alluding to earlier, the passion piece, right? It's just you pulling the thread all the way through, and if you want to say the magic or what have you, I feel like that's where the relationships kindle and the opportunities are built. 

Suzanne (29:24):
Yeah. And you just reminded me of something. The other thing I highly recommend you do to establish relationships with the media, with the reporters, with the editors, is follow them on social media, read their stuff, subscribe to their stuff and comment on their stories. Share their stories. Hey Ryan, Neil just wrote a great story about a new fintech firm that's going to help me with my scale, my holistic planning services. Hey Ryan, this was great. I'm going to look at these couple of companies you referenced. That small, again, personalized approach is going to be so appreciated by that reporter. And will definitely get you a relationship going with the reporter much easier once you are actually showing you're reading their stuff, you're promoting their stuff, you're engaging with them versus just you want something from them. Sales 101, by the way—before you ask for something, why don't you give them something?

Lauren (30:43):
Oh, absolutely. So well said. I appreciate your time. So many great takeaways and good reminders, but also things you just keep top of mind—not only for media outreach, but just for outreach in general, if it's sales, if it's building relationships or what have you. But I think those pieces carry across the board so well. Well, thank you so much again for your time. Thank you for all you're doing within this industry and consulting. It's fun to hear. I know we didn't get to get into that as much as I hoped you would today but it's okay.

Suzanne (31:15):
Listen, I'm so busy and I like leaving an impact. Michael Nathanson, who is the CEO and chairman of the Colony Group, has an initiative right now. I'm gonna plug it because I think it's so important. It's called the Net Positive Pledge. He is looking for RIA firms to come together as groups. To pledge that they are going to leave the profession in a better place than when they came into it. And I think one of the things they're doing is eliminating plastic bottles, right? So they're tallying up how much that is saving the environment. By saving on plastic, each firm can do something.

And so really collectively thinking about how you already as advisors doing such amazing work, I mean, truly amazing work, helping people feel secure to retire in a place where they feel secure. Now what else can you do for the profession that's been good to you? So that's what I would leave with. I'm doing a lot of work in that area. Leaving an impact is incredibly important for all of us. And I feel very blessed to have been introduced to this great industry 25 years ago.

Lauren (32:46):
Oh, so fabulous. Well make sure to link to that resource as well below. And I appreciate you sharing that. You're just such a wealth of knowledge and thank you again for your time today and again, all you're doing for this space.

Suzanne (32:57):
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Lauren (32:59):
Of course. We'll be in touch.

We talked with Jamie about:

• How financial literacy is important but creating positive behavior habits with your money is an even bigger factor
• Giving your children the tools to understand financial concepts and space to practice while they are under your roof, which will help set them up for the future    
• How the earlier you can instill the habit of saving, the better

About Jamie Bosse:
Jamie Bosse is a financial planner, author, and mother of four with a passion for mentoring and financial literacy. From blogging to books, she shares her deep financial knowledge to help clients and others understand, manage, and improve their financial situations while educating future generations about saving and decision-making as early as possible. She’s the author of the children’s book series, Milton the Money Savvy Pup, and her first “grown-up” book targeted at helping parents take control of their lives, Money Boss Mom, Helping Young Parents Be the “Boss” of Their Financial Future, was published in 2021. Jamie has 19 years of financial planning experience under her belt and is currently a financial planner with Aspyre Wealth Partners.

Featured Resources

• Jamie Bosse’s Bio
• Jamie Bosse’s LinkedIn Profile 
• Jamie Bosse’s Instagram Profile 
• Jamie Bosse’s Facebook Profile 
• Moneybossmom.com 
• Money Boss Mom book 
• Milton the Money Savvy Pup books 

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:00):
All right. Well, Jamie, thank you for joining us.

Jamie (00:03):
Thanks so much for having me.

Lauren (00:04):
Yeah. As I was mentioning just a few minutes ago, I have had so much fun following you, and just really admire that you've really put yourself out there. I know we're going to get into it with the books you've written but also just really embracing this idea of being a mother in this financial planning world and professional world, if you will, and being very comfortable with that. And so, I'd love just to start with you sharing a little bit more about your journey to where you are today but then also want to hear more about the books and sort of what led you to that. So I'll pass the baton and let you share a little bit more.

Jamie (00:42):
Okay. Sounds great. So I have been a financial planner for 19 years now, which is so funny to say. And I actually got a degree in financial planning, so I graduated from college with that degree but I got into the field completely by accident. I was a first-generation college student and went to school to become a teacher actually. And I think that was more just because I didn't know all the jobs that were out there. But when I was a sophomore in college, my parents filed for bankruptcy and that raised a lot of questions for me.

Lauren (01:14):
Oh, goodness.

Jamie (01:15):
I was like, how did this happen? What does this mean? Are they going to jail? How do I prevent this from happening to me? That's when I really realized I must not know very much about money or have good examples about it. So I wanted to learn how to handle money myself, and ended up taking a personal finance class at Kansas State University just for me, not to major in it or anything but just for my own knowledge. And so I ended up taking that first course and then another one. And then as I got more into it, I realized what a cool profession, right? It's a great way to help people avoid mistakes and create a better life and get organized. And it just seemed like a really rewarding profession. So I ended up changing my major my junior year and becoming a financial planning graduate.

Lauren (02:15):
And here you are. And it's stuck, right? So I don't want to project or fast forward but now you've written these books, right? So now you're sort of getting into this idea of educating the future, right? About financial planning. Tell us more about that and kind of the why, how did the spark, how did you actually get to producing the books? So tell us more about not just being a full-time financial planner but also now thinking about these kinds of, if you want to call them, side projects. 

Jamie (02:49):
Yeah. So the writing piece—I've always loved to write, so I did write blogs and company education things for where I worked along the ways, for example, when I worked at a bank, they would come out with the new benefits for the company benefits signup, and I would help explain things to people and I'd get the same questions from people. So I would do a writeup and be like, hey, here's what you think about when you're filling out your 401(k). Here's what this short-term disability policy means and how it works. And so I like to communicate through writing, and I think explaining things through writing is really helpful. So in my current role at Aspyre Wealth Partners—I've been there for about 10 years and that's kind of where the motherhood journey started as well. So when I first started at Aspyre, my first child was six months old, and then I've had three more since. So I found I was living a lot of the experiences clients were going through, right? So you talk about like, oh daycare is really expensive, right? Well, I was dealing with it myself, right? We were working people.

Lauren (03:59):
It’s very relatable.

Jamie (04:00):
How do we figure out how to add this $1,200 a month line item to our budget? Where does it fit? How do we move things around? And then just all the things that go with it, right? You need to buy the bed and stroller and rocking chair and all these new things. And so I was kind of writing about it as I was going through it. And trying to make it kind of funny. So I ended up writing a lot of blogs, kind of targeted to that young mother audience, working moms trying to figure things out and you're balancing all these competing priorities of paying off your own student loans, but you're also now saving for college for a child and all these things. So that's really where the journey began. And I remember thinking I could maybe write a book about this, with the money boss mom vibe, and I actually bought the domain name Money Boss Mom in 2017. Well, I didn't actually write that book until 2021.

Lauren (05:06):
I love it. It's in the works; it's been brewing and everything,

Jamie (05:10):
So, it's percolating. So I started organizing some of my blogs into chapters and just kind of putting them in folders, like, okay, I'll get to this one day.

Lauren (05:18):
Right.

Jamie (05:19):
But it took a lot longer than I thought it would. But the first book I actually published was Milton the Money Savvy Pup: Brings Home The Bacon. And that is a kid's book about money that focuses just on the basics of identifying coins and their value, understanding money is earned by working, and sometimes you have to wait and save to get what you want. That book really started because I couldn't find a lot of great books out there for kids about money. Because at this point, I had a three-year-old and a one-year-old, and I was like, oh, I need to start teaching these kids about money.

Lauren (05:57):
Right.

Jamie (05:58):
What's out there? So I kind of bought whatever I could find, and then by the time my son, my oldest son, was five, we were shopping at Target one day and he's like, oh, I really need this. And it was a $60 remote control, right? A giant truck thing. And I said that's not in our spending plan today. And his response was, we'll just buy it on Amazon then.

Lauren (06:24):
Yeah.

Jamie (06:24):
And I was like, okay, so clearly my son doesn't understand that buying things on Amazon is actually also a financial purchase. And so I really started digging into like, okay, what concepts can a five-year-old understand about money and how can I put those into a framework where we can talk about it?

Lauren (06:44):
Right. So I have to ask—I'm a mom as well. And I've got two little ones. We do the star system. You earn, you get chores, you do chores, you get stars, and you can earn things like you get to go Starbucks for a cake pop or something. 

Jamie (06:59):
I love it.

Lauren (06:59):
When do you really feel like you can start talking about money to kids? And what kind of things have you learned along the way to be able to help them kind of have those moments, right? Like it's not just stars and this or that but your family is working to, for lack of better words, put food on the table, right? I'd love to hear a little bit more about sort of when that's introduced and how have you helped to sort of create positive saving patterns and just that kind of thing for children.

Jamie (07:32):
Sure. Well, it's a work in progress, you know? 

Lauren (07:36):
Yes, parenting always is.

Jamie (07:37):
They’re still all too new to rate. They might not be learning anything but what's been fun on our journey is I feel like when you give kids money and you give them some power with it, right? So you give them the decision-making power. So if you say, okay, you earned $5 for these chores you did, and now we will take a trip to Target at the end of the month and you can get whatever you want. It’s your money. And it's really exciting to watch them kind of put things together and see, okay, how much does this actually cost? How much do I have? If I spend money on this, then I won't have any more to buy something else with.

Lauren (08:18):
Right.

Jamie (08:20):
And so I feel it’s just really cool to see them start thinking that way. And I don't think they really get there until like seven or eight where they're really thinking about it, really flexing. Because my five-year-olds, they get paid and they have money too but they just give it away to their friends. They'll be like, oh, here, they'll put it in the yard. They just don't value it.

Lauren (08:42):
Yeah, that makes sense though. Which is why I was asking about the age, the timing of this. 

Jamie (08:48):
But I think with older kids, especially my 10-year-old, when we're shopping, he's very thoughtful now about, okay, I'm kind of interested in this thing, and so I'll take a picture of it with my phone. So we have a picture of the item, a picture of the cost, and then he'll leave it there and be like, I just want to think about it. And then we'll walk around some more, he'll shop some more. And now most of the time he actually decides not to buy something and he's like, you know what? I'm going to keep saving for something bigger. I don't know what it is yet but I'm going to keep saving.

Lauren (09:16):
Yeah.

Jamie (09:17):
But my eight-year- old is like, he'll look through a bunch of things, he'll dump it all in the cart, like yeah. And it'll be $70 worth of things. He has $30. So then we have to talk about, okay, well, what's a priority? Do you really think you'll enjoy having this toy? Why do you want this one over this? But I think just the act of decision-making and seeing what things cost is really the learning part of the process. Because technically you want them to kind of spend money on silly things now.

Lauren (09:54):
Yes. 

Jamie (09:55):
And make mistakes and figure this out. So they are learning from the mistakes now while it's not a big deal. But they're not making these mistakes when they're in college or something.

Lauren (10:06):
Absolutely. So I love the idea of books too, right? We're all about books over here, and I feel like there's such a good way to introduce children to the world for whatever it might be. To be able to expose them to just anything, anything from hiking to potty training to just learning about the world, right? Travel, all of it. So you started with this book, right? To be able to help tell the story and the journey but then what sparked you to write more than one book? It's an endeavor to be able to write one alone, let alone multiple. What happened after you wrote the first one and then what sparked the next ones?

Jamie (10:48):
Okay. So the first Milton book, like I had said, I'd researched the different concepts kids can understand at different age groups. And that first one told a good story about waiting and saving and learning you earn money by working. And then I felt like there were just more concepts kids could still understand. So the second book is really about the kind of give, save, spend concept where you have the three jars where each time you get paid you don't just spend it all, you allocate to giving, you allocate to saving, and then you can spend the rest. We actually use those jars with my kids. And so I wanted to kind of solidify that story and what that means because I feel like when kids get money, people never say, how much are you going to save? Yeah. They're always just like, what are you going to buy? Whatcha gonna buy with that? It's burning a hole in your pocket. But there's other things you can do with money instead of just spending it.

Lauren (11:50):
Expanding on that first idea of then what do you do with it? 

Jamie (11:55):
Yeah. So now you're earning the money in the first book, you're identifying the coins and their value, and then okay, now you know there's a better way I can work with this money. 

Lauren (12:04):
Right. Absolutely. 

Jamie (12:05):
And I feel like that saving habit, the earlier you instill that habit of every time I get money, I save a portion of it, that will really help you in adulthood because I feel like a lot of adults struggle with that. And so yeah. If we can make it a habit, that's the goal.

Lauren (12:23):
Okay. So just to also take a step back here, putting on the marketer hat, right? You've spent all these years of writing blog content, raising children, building these communities. Have you found yourself having more and more families come to the firm? Has that attracted that target since you've put that energy out there? Or has it just been that this is sort of a value add to your current clients? I'd love to hear a little bit about that too.

Jamie (12:50):
Yeah. So I would say right now, the clients I work with now and the clients I bring to the firm typically are people in their 30s and 40s, dual working parents who have kids at home. They're figuring out life and life changes every couple years when you have another kid or whatever, so I think it has really zoned in on parents as that's who I'm best at working with. And I feel like when I started the books, I thought it would be a great gift for clients, like if they're having a baby or if they were older clients who are having grandkids. But it has been a good marketing tool where I don't really pursue these people as clients but they see some content, they see my books, and then they might reach out to me to do some planning.

Lauren (13:44):
Yeah. It’s sort of an indirect effort. You don't realize you're adding value out to that community and then it just happens to, I dunno, like breeds, right? So it's something you write. It sort of comes with it. It's a validating, I guess answer, if you will. Even if that wasn't the intent, sometimes that's the best, right? It's not the intent but it's just literally like, this is something I'm passionate about, I want to make the world better, and I see an opportunity here. And it happens that it not only helped but it's creating other people you can help too.

Jamie (14:16):
Um, exactly. Yeah.

Lauren (14:17):
It's a win-win.

Jamie (14:19):
Agreed.

Lauren (14:19):
That's so great. So, okay, just taking another step back here. So now you've kind of leaned more into this idea of supporting this, you said 30s and 40s, group. Putting together books about financial literacy, I'm sure it's opened up other conversations in this space around financial literacy, educating children, the next generation. What kind of things are you hearing, I'll call it in the financial planning world, related to these kinds of conversations? I love to hear if there's certain undercurrents or themes or just if you notice patterns of other people who go, I'm so grateful you did this, I also needed those books, or what are you hearing?

Jamie (15:01):
Well, I feel like in the industry in general, literacy has always been something that's very important. And it's something that people aren't learning in school. So what they do learn, they are picking up from their parents, just by observation or they're learning by trial and error and they're making a lot of mistakes along the way. So there's been a big focus and a lot of great organizations are really working on financial literacy, content, activities, books, and those sorts of things. But I feel like a lot of the conversation I hear with practitioners now is like, literacy is one piece of it. The education is important, and if you don't have that baseline education it's hard to make good decisions but the biggest factor is really the behavior side of the equation too.

So, you might know what you should be doing but do you do that and why not? So kind of looking at more of the bigger picture with whoever you're talking to or working with or yourself if you're analyzing the way you act around money, and people do what they do with money in a subconscious way almost. It's their Money Scripts® by Dr. Brad Klontz of how they grew up and how they learned about money. They might hoard money for some reason because they saw their parents suffer or they might be a spendthrift because they never had anything growing up so they want to buy all the things now that they can. 

So a lot of it's getting to the behavior side of things too, and working around, okay, I know this about myself now, or I know this about my client now—what systems can we put in place to make this more streamlined for them so they can say yes without having to think about it or getting in their own way.

Lauren (16:51):
That's absolutely fair. It's meeting the individual where they are. But I also think a lot of what you're working on too is bringing up that next generation and creating those positive behavior patterns. And helping just to be aware of that and creating a tool to be able to do that. I would imagine even just talking with your clients too, those kinds of conversations probably help their children and so on and so forth. So it would come full circle. So fun. Well, this is really great to hear about. As I mentioned when we started too, just kind of opening up here, I also just admire that you've put yourself out there as a mother, as a working professional, because it's not an easy fleet, right? It's totally hats off to working parents because being one of them, I know it's just part of it. So I love that you put yourself out there but not only have you been able to hold that professional space but also to be able to support the next generation. So it's like I said, many win-wins.

Jamie (17:59):
Thank you. It's exciting and I think if you can give your children the tools to at least understand financial concepts and give them some space to practice things while they're still young and under your roof, I think that'll just set them up for a lot of success in the future.

Lauren (18:17):
Yeah. So fair. So any last thoughts?

Jamie (18:22):
I don't think so. I'm working on a couple more Milton books. I have a good night story I'm working on that doesn't really have a lot to do with money but it's cute. And then one more that's more gratitude focused in terms of we always want to buy new things but also being grateful for what we already have and celebrating that. So hopefully those will come out, probably next year in 2024.

Lauren (18:51):
Oh, I love it. We'll have to watch out for that. Well, thank you so much for your time. We'll make sure to include some links below as well to the books and to your bio and all those good things. But again, thank you and I'm excited for those books to come out.

Jamie (19:03):
Oh, thanks Lauren.

We talked with Matt about:

• Why advisors should be more proud of who they are, what they do, and what makes them unique and different 
• How all great marketing is slow and is momentum marketing
• Why podcasting will not work if you don’t have a niche

About Matt Halloran
Matt Halloran shares creative and thought-provoking insight about the power of podcasts to help financial advisors build influence and rise above the noise. Now co-founder and chief relationship officer at ProudMouth, Matt broke into the podcasting world in an unlikely way. After earning a degree in applied ethics and landing a highly competitive internship, he found himself in Omaha, Nebraska. He later served in a role at Boys Town, which sparked his interest in becoming a therapist. He earned a degree in therapy and a master’s as a life coach, and landed his first coaching role at Peak Advisor Coaching, which ushered him into financial services. Matt met Kirk Lowe at a small conference in 2015. That meeting sparked a collaboration that ended up solving one of the biggest obstacles professionals and companies face: the ability to consistently produce authentic and valuable content to power their content marketing strategy. It led to the creation of ProudMouth, an influence accelerator that uses podcasts to help advisors “be their own loud” by sharing who they are, what they do, and what makes them different to become the most sought-after provider in their niche market. Today, ProudMouth is the largest podcasting company for financial advisors in North America, so far producing 7,000 episodes and a quarter-million social media posts, with much more on the horizon.

Featured Resources

• More About Matt Halloran
• Matt Halloran’s LinkedIn Profile
• Kirk Lowe’s LinkedIn Profile
• ProudMouth
• ThePodrocketAcademy.com
• Misty Lynch’s LinkedIn Profile
• Kristen Luke’s LinkedIn Profile
• Kristin Shae’s LinkedIn Profile
• Gary Vaynerchuk’s LinkedIn Profile
• Candace Parker’s Instagram Profile
• Practice Makeover Archive
  
  

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:02):
Matt, welcome.

Matt (00:04):
Hi. Hello.

Lauren (00:05):
So good to have you. I feel like we were just chatting and I'm like, how have we not talked more? Like our worlds are colliding.

Matt (00:13):
There are so many overlaps too. You know this person really well, and I know that person really well and how we never met. I don't know how that's possible but I'm very grateful to be here. Thank you for having me.

Lauren (00:25):
Of course. We're so glad you're here. Thank you for your time. So we have both ended up in this financial services world. How the heck did you get here? What's your story? I can't wait to hear about the climb to where you are but how did you land where you are?

Matt (00:39):
Well, from quite an unlikely place actually. I'll give you the truncated version. I graduated from college with a degree in applied ethics and got one of four paid internships in the United States doing biomedical ethics at a hospital system in Omaha, Nebraska. So that landed me in Omaha, Nebraska; I had a bunch of jobs there. That first one was a really difficult job, and that could be a podcast in itself, what I had to do as an ethicist. Not a lot of fun. Everybody died is kind of the way I couch all of that. And then my wife and I worked at a place called Boys Town, and that got me wanting to become a therapist. So I went to graduate school and I got my degree as a therapist and a master's degree as a life coach.

I found out I was not a great therapist, which would've been great if they would've told me that in grad school. Like, hey, dude, you suck at this. You should probably go in a different path. So after I had hung my own shingle, I just cried every day, because all they do is people just dump stuff on you. And I'm not opposed to that. I don't think it's any less manly to sit and sob. Actually, I think it's very manly actually to be in touch with your emotions. But then I applied to a place called Carson, which actually was called Peak. It was Peak something, some Peak Advisor coaching, and then it became Peak. So I worked with a guy named Ron Carson in his coaching program. I did that for about four or five years. And that's how I got into financial services.

Lauren (02:05):
Oh my gosh. So a whole path. So were you with Carson for some time then?

Matt (02:11):
I was, so I was there from 2006 to 2012 or2011, right around there. 

Lauren (02:18):
Okay. So how about ProudMouth? How did it get started? Why the name? It just makes you smile when you say it. So it sounds like the next turning point in your career was getting to what you've got going today. So tell us a little bit about that.

Matt (02:34):
Yeah. I met this crazy Canadian guy at a conference, right? He was speaking about branding and I was speaking about PR because I'd just gotten off the second season of Practice Makeover for Investment News, which was a reality show for financial advisors where we basically deconstructed their practices. So much fun. Me and Matt Ackerman, we had such a great time doing it.

Lauren (02:54):
That sounds really fun.

Matt (02:55):
In fact, I don't even know if it's out there still but it's really good. I mean, not because I was there but because how Matt produced the whole thing. He's a genius. If you don't know who Matt Ackerman is, whoever’s listening to this, you need to follow this guy because he is the bee's knees. So we were at a conference and Kirk came over and said I'd like to find a way for us to work together. And I had heard of him. I was like, okay. So we hung out. We had dinner and all that sort of stuff. And so then I went home and he went home. I started googling him and then he was like a dog on a bone.

He was like, hey dude, I'd like to meet. I was like, hey, there's something here. So we decided to fold both of our companies into one company, which at the time was Top Advisor Marketing, what we started with. And we started that in about 2016. I’d say 2017 was our start. We had no clients, no product. In fact, Kirk floated our business with his branding clients until we had enough stuff to get started. And then about two and a half, three years ago now, we rebranded to ProudMouth after my partner had gone to the largest marketing meeting, a private invite-only marketing meeting where the marketers from Apple and Land Rover and Nike are there, people speaking on stage called The Gathering. He met the guy who wrote the book called Fix, which is how to build a cult brand. He came back and he said, we're going to rebrand with this guy. We need to budget for it. Much like you, we bootstrapped everything from the beginning and that's how ProudMouth was born. We just really think advisors should be a lot more proud of who they are, what they do, and what makes them unique and different. And we also know they talk for a living. And so that was just kind of the mashup that ended up happening. They had a great graphic design team and it was freaking cool.

Lauren (04:49):
Oh my gosh. So tell us about what you're doing today, how you're working with firms and getting them going. And your team is huge too. I mean it's grown like wildfire.

Matt (05:03):
So we're the largest podcasting company in North America for financial advisors. We've done 7,000 episodes and about a quarter of a million social media posts for financial advisors. So what we do is we help advisors rise above the noise and be their own loud and stop being the best kept secret in their area. And we do that by podcasting. So we also offer video services and things like that because you have to do all of that, right? But basically what happens is advisors talk for a living. We have professional co-hosts who help the advisors. It's an interview format. And most of our clients do two podcasts a month, and then we create anywhere from 14 to 20 pieces of customer and social media assets based on that thought leadership. And we actually post for them, because advisors don't do that. And we've got a secure way to do that. The other thing about us is we are a hundred percent compliant. And so we have had zero compliance issues since inception. I am the person who is basically the chief compliance officer. I meet with every broker dealer, every RIA, so that's our day job. And we're producing anywhere from 100 to 150 episodes a month right now. 

Lauren (06:14):
Holy smokes. That is a lot. You guys are keeping busy. You're doing editing, you got social content, you probably got a million different tabs open. I think we all do to some degree. So tell us just about podcasting; what's the process like? We could probably both speak to what the process is like but I mean on your end. I was talking with an advisor the other day and he's like, I'm thinking about getting this podcast going, blah, blah, blah. And then I started going to the volume of time and just the energy it takes and it's not everybody's jam and some people think they can DIY, which they can, but it's like your time tradeoff, yada yada. So how would you kind of frame this from a cost benefit or maybe even just a cost time or however you want to kind of frame it, for someone who's entertaining it?

Matt (07:08):
Well, we offer absolutely 100% free ability to start your own podcast. If you go to podrocketacademy.com, we have a podcasting 101 course that will tell you every single solitary thing you need to do to start a podcast, a compliant podcast, including graphic design, the whole nine yards. But if you're going to do it yourself, the calculation is first off, it's very difficult to do it yourself. So you're going to have to hire graphic designers and generally you're gonna have to hire an audio producer, right? Because you have to do post-production, take out the sneezes, coughs, intro, outro. If you're going to do all those things, you're looking at about 12 to 20 hours of your time a month to create your own podcast that will be successful.

Lauren (07:55):
That sounds about fair. And who’s got 20 hours, right?

Matt (08:00):
Lauren, who does, nobody does. They should be doing other stuff. I know. And so if you use our MI, what we refer to as our managed influence services, we do it for you. So we actually kind of force you to show up. You have to be prepared. All you have to do is the outline of the show. Then you get behind the mic, we interview you, you drop the mic, we do the rest. You have to deal with the compliance component of it but it’s only two to four hours a month, depending on the frequency of podcasts.

Lauren (08:26):
Right. Okay. So taking a step back, right? You got podcasts as a content drip platform, right? So what are your thoughts around using that platform for more lead generation efforts? Like creating drip campaigns, throwing these into a part of a regular drip newsletter, those sorts of things. What kind of conversations are you having with firms to then be able to go, yeah, we got this drip feature, but how are we going to capture those leads? How are we going to be able to measure success? 

Matt (08:56):
So that is a very, very deep question because I know I am going to throw a curveball at you.

Lauren (09:01):
That’s all right.

Matt (09:03):
Here's the deal—we have to change the conversation because marketing should not equal leads. That is actually not the appropriate question or the appropriate calculation. So the first thing you have to understand is marketing should be any kind of marketing, whether it's podcasting, blogs, video newsletters, or anything that should be a client communication tool. So you actually need to allocate time and budget as a client retention, client communication component. That's vitally important. Now when it comes to generating leads, we are slow marketing; all great marketing is slow. If anybody comes in and tells you that we're going to be able to get you leads in 30 to 45 days, first off, they're not going to be qualified. They're not going to be the right people. And you're going to be selling to skeptics, not to fans. Our process takes 18 to 24 months. So ours is momentum marketing. All great marketing is momentum.

Lauren (09:56):
Okay. So to back it up though, you got the momentum marketing going over 18 to 24 months. Is there any other kind of additional flows the team is working on to be able to support that? And maybe talk a little bit more about that. Is it access to special VIP podcasts? Is it a side group? Is it a drip piece? Tell us more about that so we can hear a little bit more about how it goes into the kind of the at-large ecosystem just to help folks think about beyond just having the slow and steady, but also when someone's ready to engage at a deeper level. 

Matt (10:33):
So the crazy thing is, we call it pull marketing, not push marketing. And so people actually end up calling you saying, I'm ready to work with you. How does that get into the nurture sequence? Well, we have nine podcast growth tactics we take all our clients through. And one of the most, well, two that are really fantastic is one, driving them to an event, whether that's an educational workshop or a client-focused or prospecting event. And then the other one would be white papers. Man, I can't tell you that is still such a magnificent lead magnet. People love the top 10 things you have to know about claiming Social Security, right? The top 10 mistakes business owners make when they sell their companies, honey, people click on that stuff and they will gladly put their email in. Because what you've done is you've put enough wisdom into the karmic pool of knowledge that it's okay for you to ask them to do something. We have something called a perfect podcasting formula. It's storytelling, education, entertainment, call to action. You have to have those four things and everything you do, newsletters, vlogs, video, whatever you want to do. And that call to action needs to be successively more pointed.

Lauren (11:43):
Stronger, yep.

Matt (11:44):
Yeah. And so at some point you're going to say, listen, we're 79 episodes into this podcast. For those of you who are listening who haven't picked up the phone yet, you have to ask yourself, what are you waiting for? Is it really just not the right time? Or are you afraid to have the conversation? If you're afraid to have the conversation, just give us a call. Listen, it's no pressure. You see what I'm saying? I mean, there are ways to be able to do that because here's the thing, and people don't like hearing this. Podcasting sucks all that other stuff because for instance, I can’t get rough demographic and psychographic information on listeners. Because of the way podcasting works in the world, it's hard to glean that information. And you also have to have a very specific technique in the show notes, the summary of each PO, in order to drive people so there are things they can click on and then I can start tracking 'em.

Lauren (12:33):
I know it's so complex, right? Because there's this idea of the actual podcast but then there's the outpour of all the steps that happen next and then tapping into SEO and pushing content and leveraging channels and the whole thing. It's the whole kit and caboodle, if you will. So what kind of trends are you seeing in the podcasting world? Is there anything in particular from a trend perspective that people are leaning into or doing maybe the length of a podcast or maybe if it is a style of how they're interviewing folks or not even an interview. Maybe it's talking. Tell us a little bit more about that.

Matt (13:12):
Yeah. We're not a huge fan of solo casts. Unless you are a professionally trained actress, it's very difficult to hold somebody's attention. And the numbers are still numbers—27 minutes is the ideal podcast length. It's because that's the commute. It's about how long people take to get ready in the morning. It's about how long it takes people to cook dinner. It's about how long people can exercise before they have a heart attack. And so we know that is the right length. What are the trends? The trends really are all about the interview format. Most of our clients, their first six episodes are really about them. So it's our people interviewing them to pull out their brilliance and what makes them unique and different. And then the podcast really switches and then the interviews are brought to the listener by the financial planning firm.

But it's generally not about Roth conversions and 401(k)s. It's about interviewing people who are like their ideal client or centers of influence because—so I'll tell you a very quick story. So there's a woman named Misty Lynch, and she's somebody everybody needs to be paying attention to because she is probably going to be, if she isn't already, on the top 100 people to watch in financial services; she will be within the next probably 12 months. So she has a podcast, she's an unbelievable marketer. She uses her podcast to prospect. She only works with successful female business owners in the greater Boston area. So all she does is she calls up female business owners—hey, would you like to be on our podcast? She talks to them about what the podcast is about. She interviews them within that 30 minutes. She deepens that relationship with them so much because podcasting is so intimate. She closes, and she just spoke at Jolt and I'm probably going to get this number wrong, but I think she said she gets 50% of the people making an appointment to actually talk to her about being their planner.

Lauren (15:00):
Wow.

Matt (15:01):
That's what marketing does. I mean, that's insane. But she's very hyper-focused and she's really good at what she does.

Lauren (15:09):
She knows her target well. So she's got a platform that is an opportunity to engage them and like you said, bring out their brilliance. So fun. Okay. So when you're talking about the profiles earlier of the 27 minutes, I don’t know if you looked at Entrepreneur on Fire, I don’t know if it's still on his website, but he's got this awesome profile of who his target is and the things you're saying. It's on the way to work, the length of time or dropping off the kids to school or whatever. And it gives this idea, right? It goes back to this idea of knowing your target—why you would record something for as long as you would the whole thing. So very cool. So any advice you have for advisors? I know your team's totally leaned into this podcasting platform. If someone's even thinking about it are there any tips you have for folks? You've got I'm sure a number of case studies.

Matt (16:03):
We do. And actually we have some really great case studies on our website. So there's really three things. The first thing is—and you'll love this as a fellow marketer—you can't market to everybody.. So the first mental hurdle you have to get over is you have to have a niche. Podcasting will not work otherwise. So if you don't have a niche, don't podcast. Just don't do it. It's not worth your time. That's great. It's not worth the expense. So there's number one; number two, you have to know what you're talking about. So before we ever want you to hit record, we take people through how to come up with your first 12 podcast topics. And it's rather long, so I'm not going to go through it today.

But we've already got all sorts of content out there about that. So you guys can just hook me up and they can find that. So that's number two. Please know what you're talking about. And then three, hit record. Okay. Hit record. We were talking before that you have all of this equipment. Yeah. I'm literally a professional podcaster but you can just use your phone. Just use your phone. Use your AirPods. In fact, what's really great, and I don't have 'em right next to me, the old Apple corded things. There's a magic fairy in that microphone. It's unbelievable.

Lauren (17:20):
Yes.

Matt (17:21):
But that's it. Just hit record. Practice. So one of the things people don't really understand about podcasting, it's a show. So Lauren, I have a whole pregame by the way. So I did this in preparation for you, and I do it for all the episodes I do because I want to make sure that it's show time. You hit record. Lights, camera, action, let's go.

Lauren (17:43):
So you have to ramp up.

Matt (17:45):
You do. You have to get ready. If you look at anybody who's a professional, right? And I love to challenge advisors with this all the time. When's the last time you warmed up before a client meeting?

Lauren (17:54):
Oh, you have to.

Matt (17:56):
But they don't. Because it's like, oh, well I do this all the time.  So let's look at somebody like Candace Parker. So Candace Parker's one of the greatest basketball players of our time. She is unfreaking believable. Now she's doing more play-by-play stuff and analyst stuff. But she was really one of the greatest basketball players we've ever had. In the world of basketball, she warmed up for 45 minutes taking shots. She's taking thousands of shots. She's stretching. She's meeting with her coach, they're going over plays. How come advisors don't realize they need to be that level of professional when they show up to work? And I love challenging them with that because I think you just can't phone content in.

Lauren (18:33):
Yes. It's so true. I love it. I mean, we like prepping for client meetings; we've got one individual on our team—she's amazing. She's like gone through it, she's rehearsed it, she's ready to go, and she's like, I'm ready for the questions. I've got all my tabs open, yada yada. And it's part of that, right? It's being able to just be like you said, an athlete. It's following the same formula. So the tip is basically get revved up. Practice. Know what you're talking about. All those things. I found when folks identify with a topic that is really their jam, it's just so natural and just that passion, being able to see that is really, really cool. So shout out act actually to Kristen Luke. She's got a new book that's coming out. We actually just interviewed her recently about a whole platform to be able to really find who your niche is. I have it right there. She just sent me my advance copy. She quoted me about podcasting so I'm actually in the book. Amazing. I have it sitting right over there. It's called Uncomparable. Everybody needs to buy the book.

Matt (19:31):
There are a couple of books like that just, I'm sorry, you just went on a tangent. I'm gonna chase this rabbit real quick. Kristin Shea has a book too. It's basically about social media for financial advisors. I'll try to get you that link so maybe you can put that with something. It is probably the best, most frank look at content marketing I've ever seen in a book. She's another one of those rising stars. You might not want me to say this out loud on your vlog here, but she's probably going to be one of the people who is the most sought after marketer in financial services very soon.

Lauren (20:26):
Oh my goodness. Well, to be able to have pieces that are so valuable and to be able to take the time to put them together is a great opportunity regardless. It takes a village, right? We're all sharing knowledge and that's part of why we're here too. So, okay. We're getting close to 27 minutes. So any final thoughts? 

Matt (20:47):
So there's two things I want your audience to hear from me. Number one, content marketing is the only marketing left that really works, right?  I mean, do you have to have all the lead magnets? Yes. But everything has to be done infusing your own personality and what makes you unique and different. If you're not communicating that, if you're using other people's content, if you're just repurposing stuff that's approved from a compliance standpoint, you're really not doing yourself a lot of favors because what people want is you, they want to know, like, and trust you. And you can do that through great content marketing. And the last thing I want to talk about is just very quickly about podcasting. When is the last time you were introduced and actually invited into your clients’ and ideal prospects’ centers of influences?

Quite some time, right? Because it's creepy, right? You're not just going to show up and start talking to them through the window while they're cooking dinner but they opt into listening to your podcast. And people listen to podcasts when they're doing things in their private time. What an amazing way to build a very intimate relationship with people at scale, right? Talking about the things you're passionate about, which is why we think the power of podcasting is so strong. Video is amazing. We offer video services but here's the deal. Video's not as portable. Can't watch a video when I'm driving down the road. Well, let me rephrase that. I shouldn't watch the video while I'm driving down the road, right? I should be listening to a podcast. And we also firmly believe in the whole Gary Vaynerchuk model of do it once and then cut it and do a million pieces, right?

So we record all of our episodes with video. We have a video component, we strip out the audio, then we take that audio and we transcribe it because you have to do that for compliance. Then we take that transcription, we scrub it to make sure you didn't say anything stupid. And then what we do is we turn that into social media assets and then put it out for the world to hear. And so that's who we are and that's what we do. And marketers like you, we don't do what you do. And so this is why stuff like this is so fun. And I honestly believe Lauren, that the world of financial services is really changing. I think more of us realize we should really play nice in the sandbox with each other because man, we can change the industry or just your company and my company and you know what, it needs to change.

Lauren (23:03):
There's so much opportunity and that's part of these conversations. It's being able to identify the undercurrent. And that's what we're talking about here is that it's part of the change. It's part of helping folks to think differently about how to go about marketing and about how to go about their business model, their service model, whatever it is. So yeah, that's the fun stuff. So it's trying to look ahead for the next gen too. Awesome. Well thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and giving us some insights. I feel like there were so many awesome shout-outs. So we'll make sure to show those in the notes below and we'll be talking soon.

Matt (23:37):
Thank you so much. Thank you.

‍We talked with Lindsay about:

• How a human-first, holistic approach helps ensure advisors and clients are being taken care of beyond the financial
• How new generations are looking for a life coach with a side of financial planning and asset management
• How her approach to assisting clients achieves desired outcomes by first mastering their minds 
  
  

About Lindsay Troxell

‍
Lindsay Troxell is a certified life coach who started her career working in a variety of financial services roles. She realized pretty quickly that she wasn’t meant to be a financial advisor; she was meant to be a business consultant and coach for financial advisors, helping them become better entrepreneurs. Over time, she saw the financial services industry falling behind as clients began seeking support not only in financial matters but in managing their overall mental well-being during uncertain times as well. Lindsay dedicated herself to targeting the need for an integrated approach to wealth and health. She led the charge and established Our Coaching Initiative, offering life, career, business, and retirement coaching for financial advisors, their team members, and clients. Today, Our Coaching Initiative helps financial advisors and firms provide comprehensive services focused on the whole client, providing guidance for life and overall wellness. Lindsay encourages a human-first and holistic approach and aims to help advisors and clients grow emotionally, mentally, and spiritually as they create a deeper connection with themselves and their purpose in the world, directly impacting their bottom line.

Featured Resources

• About Lindsay Troxell 
• Lindsay Troxell’s LinkedIn Profile
• Our Coaching Initiative
• Fidelity Value Stack
• Samantha Allen’s LinkedIn Profile 
• Matt Halloran’s LinkedIn Profile
• ProudMouth
• Stephanie Bogan’s LinkedIn Profile
  

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:02):
Lindsay, thank you for joining us.

Lindsay (00:04):
Thank you for having me, Lauren.

Lauren (00:05):
Yes. I was thinking we've known each other for a long time.

Lindsay (00:09):
We have, and I don't remember exactly how many years it's been.

Lauren (00:15):
It's been a long time. And by no coincidence or by coincidence, however you want to say it, we connected in the wealth management world back when I think you were at TD. And here we are today. So over that time there's been a lot of changes and things happening. Why don't you just tell us a little bit more about your background, because it's very impressive. You're a speaker going to conferences, coaching advisors, and now you've started your own initiative. You have seen the C-suite of so many firms, of so many sizes, and have really gotten into the behind-the-scenes conversation. So anyway, I don't want to steal your thunder, but share a little bit more about your journey and what's led you to where you are today.

Lindsay (01:10):
Well, thank you again. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today. So I started in financial services about 20 years ago, if you can believe that, right out of college. I was actually a bank teller in college. And then after I got out of college, staying in the financial world, I moved over into the insurance side of the business and I was a financial representative for a little while. But what happened for me was really quickly I realized I wasn't meant to be a financial advisor. I was meant to be a business consultant and coach for financial advisors. And so I'm really grateful that light bulb went off so quickly and I was able to tap into some of my true passions and gifts. I went to school for entrepreneurship and I grew up in an entrepreneurial family. So that natural transition of helping advisors to be better entrepreneurs came so naturally to me. And so I started a program at Northwestern Mutual early on in my career, and then went over to LPL and worked with some of the top firms associated with LPL, helping their C-suite to really maximize their engagement with their advisors and with their clients. And then went over to TD Ameritrade, which is of course where we met. And then I spent a little bit of time in a small consulting firm. And then most recently I was in the asset management space, still as a coaching consultant but working on the other side of the fence. So I feel as though I've seen it from all different angles and have been able to work with advisors of all different shapes and sizes and having different focuses on and whatnot. And so I've really bounced around but have always stayed true to that coach and consultant role.

Lauren (03:08):
So tell us about where you are today, because you've seen it's a gift, right? To be able to see that kind of lens at so many different stages of business growth, and also to be able to see that across the industry. I'm sure you're hearing conversations over here that are impacting other conversations you're having over there, and I'm sure that helps with just also hearing trends, right? But trends that might not even be public that you just have a pulse on. So tell us about where you are today and kind of what led you to now you starting your own business.

Lindsay (03:40):
Well it's interesting. I think some of the reason I started my own business was that things haven't been changing as much as I would hope they would have over the last 20 years. There's a saying that we have said, as coaches and consultants, you kind of hear sometimes like the stuff is the stuff. We've been talking about the same stuff for a really long time. I mean, we've been talking about the wealth transfer for what seems like the entire 20 years I've been in the business. So some of this is just a frustration around not seeing enough change and seeing the financial services industry falling a little bit behind in terms of the trends that are taking place in other areas, right? You've got your clients who are experiencing other businesses and interacting with other businesses outside of the industry that are shaping the way they wanna interact with you. And so things like social media and curating experiences, that's having an impact on the way clients and investors want to be working with their advisors. So part of why I started my own business was to bring a little bit different perspective and start to blend specifically this idea of integrating health and wealth together. One of the things I did well at my last firm was start to bring about more opportunities to extend to end clients, topics around health and wellness and thinking about their mental well-being and their physical well-being and their emotional and spiritual well-being and how that impacts the life they live. 

Lauren (05:27):
Just to clarify now, when you're talking about well-being, are you talking about advisors specifically, their clients or both?

Lindsay (05:32):
Both really. It affects all of us—our mental well-being, our physical well-being, everybody as a human. We all need to be paying attention to it more than I think we do sometimes. So it's not just working with the advisor and their team to make sure they're living their healthiest and therefore wealthiest life but really extending those opportunities to advisors and clients to make sure they're being taken care of beyond the financial—beyond making sure their portfolios are sound and their plans are going to help them achieve what they want to in life, but to make sure that they along the way are doing everything they can to be as fulfilled as possible.

Lauren (06:19):
So tell us a little bit more about how you do that. Is it one-on-one coaching? Tell us more about how you're kind of pulling that out and helping that advisor to be able to be their best self when they're showing up. I don't want to put words in your mouth but I'm assuming also so they can support their clients, but what does that process look like? I'm sure it's something that doesn't come overnight either.

Lindsay (06:44):
Yeah. It definitely doesn't happen overnight, that's for sure. It's a journey. We talk a lot about being human first and being holistic. And so holistic is one of those terms you hear a lot in financial services, quite frankly, right? Holistic financial planning, comprehensive.

Lauren (07:07):
All these words. I know. Yeah.

Lindsay (07:10):
Yeah. What does that actually mean? What does that mean? I think it's been thrown around inappropriately, and I think it's been overused, misused. So when we think about how we help teams add this more holistic and human-first element to their value offering, what we do is we work in a couple of different ways. One, we work with a team, so any team that’s saying, yeah, we are really interested in bringing more human-first and truly human-centered offerings to our clients beyond the financial. What are we doing for the team? Are we providing tools and resources to help them think about maximizing their energy throughout the course of the day? Or do we have a team that's truly burnt out and burning the candle at both ends. So the first thing we do is take a look at the team and the resources they have access to so they can live that healthy life. And then second, we look at who the firm is trying to go after. So who their ideal client is. I'm a huge fan of creating niche markets, however you want to go about saying it. Whatever your favorite flavor is, right? There's riches in the niches. I’m a huge fan of having a niche market and being able to dive into that idea of what does your client value? What do they believe? Where are they spending their time? What do they get motivated by? What are their core frustrations? What are they investing in, in terms of their own self-development? So understanding who the client is of the firm, and then helping the advisor to add in some of these more ancillary services like coaching to attract and then also retain their best clients. So we really help them with adding coaching, being an outsourced solution for life coaching. We really do four different areas. We do life coaching, we do career coaching, we do business coaching and we do retirement coaching. And so if you're thinking about this, right? An advisor does a great job of making sure you are prepared for retirement financially. One of the things my clients have come to me and said is, you know, we've got a client who's about to retire. They've told us they feel comfortable and ready to retire because we've done such a great job but they don't know what to do next. Like, where are they going to spend their time?

Lauren (10:07):
Yeah.

Lindsay (10:08):
So this gives them the ability to outsource that to us. You can of course bring that in-house, right? There's so many wonderful ways you can do that. There's the life planning designation from Kinder. You can become a coach, you can become a financial therapist. But if you don't want to do that and you want to outsource it to somebody else, that's what we do. So we take that responsibility on and we provide coaching and collateral kind of content, marketing resources, videos, stuff you can send out. And then we also have a little bit of a community element to it as well where people start sharing stories about what they're going through so everybody can learn from everybody else.

Lauren (10:50):
So you must have been talking with advisors and firms of various sizes to sort of feel this need that was going on. And then you're so well suited based on your coaching experience and knowing this industry so well to step into a role to really support both ends. It sounds like the advisor end as well as the client end. So the value add there. Tell us more. It's a relationship business, right? So there's definitely a component to that and it's about building trust, and then there's the actual deliverable, the service that's being created in the plan and the support, et cetera. So tell us more about what those triggers are? How do you get clients to open up and maybe kind of uncover some of those perhaps problem spots if it is a so-called problem spot in a limited window.

Lindsay (11:44):
Well, there's a couple of different ways. So the first way is quite honestly, most of the clients, when they're having conversations with their advisor, there is kind of a key trigger. They'll say something like—I just actually had this conversation this morning with one of my clients—he said, I was on the phone with one of our clients. She talked about how her career is blowing up in a really great way; she's got offers coming in from multiple directions and she doesn't know how to make the decision around which direction to go. And I'm like, that's a perfect example of when we can come in and we can do coaching. And so a lot of the conversations start with the advisor just sitting down and doing a review with their client or even in prospect meetings. I had another client where he said I was in a prospect meeting; we sat down, we started talking about these life planning, life coaching solutions that you provide to our team. And the prospect's eyes just lit up and he is like, oh my gosh, I was thinking about hiring a coach. This is so incredible that you have this as part of your offer; that makes me really think you've got a more comprehensive approach to it. So some of those triggers are just kind of obvious when they happen. But to get a client to open up, they've got to want to, and they've got to be ready for it. It's not one of those things where you push it on them in any way, shape, or form. And you also have to be careful, which is why my clients, all of the advisors we're working with, love the outsourced solution because there is that fine line between coaching and therapy. And knowing the difference, right?. And knowing if there's any kind of trauma. That needs to be addressed. I mean, one of the things we are seeing is more of that financial therapy space pop up in our industry. There are wonderful people out there who can help you in that vein, if that's the direction you want to go. But we make sure we stay on that true line of coaching. So the way I like to think about it is that coaching is not to necessarily fix a problem; it's more so when your life is going really, really well and you want to elevate it even higher. And so it's pretty easy to get people to want to open up and talk about the things that are currently holding them back. Usually it's as simple as a thought, right? We have over 60,000 thoughts every single day. And 70 to 80% of those tend to be negative. So even if things are going really, really well, when we're interpreting the things that are happening around us, what we're making it mean then causes us to feel a certain way, right? Whether it's overwhelm or excitement or motivation, whatever it is. And so what we dive into is how do you manage your mind more effectively to continue to get the results you desire in life, or to take a new direction maybe you hadn't taken before. So it's not necessarily to treat something that's broken, it's more of how do you enhance what's already working really well.

Lauren (15:14):
Very good. So when you're working with these advisors, are you taking it case by case where they may come into you with a client situation, how do we sort of handle this? Or maybe are you helping to coach them on the questions to ask or sort of the next path? How does that kind of work? 

Lindsay (15:32):
Kind of all of it. So what we have is we've got an individual solution. So if there are one-on-one conversations that need to happen, we do one-on-one coaching. And so I'll be meeting with the advisor team multiple times throughout the course of the month, and we'll talk at a very high level about situations. And then they won't obviously give me any client information that's private in that exchange, but what they'll do at the end of that conversation, after we've talked about it and decided is this maybe a good fit for coaching, then they'll make the introduction to their clients and then we go off and we start doing what we're doing. The other way this works is more in a group setting. So we have tons of resources, we've got group coaching office hours that happen multiple times throughout the course of the month where your clients can just come to those sessions and talk openly within the group. What people have found is that listening to other people and what they're going through makes them realize that I had a similar situation And I'm going to benefit from just watching the coaching that's going on. But we also have videos and workbooks, so all of that kind of additional collateral for people to passively absorb in their own time and kind of listen to almost like a private podcast. That's the way I kind of think of our community—it's a private podcast where the clients get to engage in conversation with us to guide us exactly where they want to go. So it can be very personalized or it can be more on this scalable group side so you can get broader exposure to the work we're doing.

Lauren (17:28):
Got it. Now that you're on this side of the fence, right, and kind of deeper into the consulting piece of it, are you feeling this loudness for the need? What is it? Because it's a little different but not totally different, right? There's a similarity, but what is your takeaway? Are you starting to see trends in working with your clients? Are you starting to see needs? Are you feeling people just need a place to be able to talk about this?

Lindsay (17:57):
Yeah, definitely. As I said at the beginning, we've been talking about the wealth transfer for so long. We know, was it $16 billion is going to exchange hands in the next decade? And we also have all of those wonderful resources that are provided from the Fidelity Value Stack study. And it's just overwhelmingly we're finding that your clients, advisors’ clients, are really wanting to have that higher level of fulfillment conversation. And so in terms of the noise across the industry, I'm seeing it over and over again, whether it's people, advisors wanting to outsource the solution so they can tap into something like what we've built, or they're wanting to build it internally themselves. So some of my clients are coming to me for consulting because they want to build it themselves in-house but they don't necessarily know how to do that. So we're also working with a number of teams to go through that entire process of let's look at your niche market, let's get really clear about who that avatar is and then let's start to build out additional ancillary services that are going to meet their needs at that level of fulfillment. 

Lauren (19:15):
That makes sense.

Lindsay (19:16):
Yeah. It's a huge thing that's taking place, a shift that I started to really see almost 10 years ago at this point in time but now that noise is even louder. And especially like I said, that Fidelity Value Stack research, Samantha Allen has been posting a lot about it and saying the millennials and the next gen, Gen Y, Gen Z, they're really looking for a life coach with a side of financial planning and asset management. And that's what this is.

Lauren (19:49):
Yeah. So we always hear that advisors in particular are going to have clients come to life-changing events. It's somebody getting married or retiring, all these changes that happen throughout life. And what we've seen, which I think parallels a lot of what you're talking about, is that it's the event or the upcoming event that's the spark. And then the financial side of it almost comes after. And sometimes we see advisors who are so passionate and firms that are so passionate about what they do that are trying to lead with the service first. But if you really focus on that human element first and connect that with the value add, then that's sort of the gateway. At least that's what a lot of what we see too, and understanding that target and kind of where they're at and how to be able to sort of reach them. It's not necessarily when they've gotten to their retirement but it's even thinking about what are they going to do post-retirement, right? Kind of a little bit like what you're alluding to.

Lindsay (20:48):
Right. So I think those triggering events are really easy opportunities to spot where you can add additional value. What I think is a little bit more nuanced—and this is what we're really asking for advisors to start thinking about—is also the same thing that life planners are really starting to think about and financial therapists. What are your belief systems around being able to live your ideal life? What do you believe about your ability to create your ideal life? When I first sat down, and you know who my financial advisor is, my dear Corey. But prior to Corey becoming my life partner, he was my financial advisor. And the first time we sat down and started having a conversation, he was like, what do you want to achieve in your life? And I painted this grand picture. It was huge. And he looks at me and he is like, okay, the numbers don't align. They just don't align. So where you are and what you're currently making, he's like, that's a dream; you're here and you're trying to be here and there's a massive gap. How are you going to bridge that gap? And I'm like, you know what? I don't know. That's part of what I want you to help me figure out. And part of our life has become that. And I stole something from you and your husband, the life planning activity you do. I just absolutely loved it so much that we've adopted it throughout the course of the years, and that's what I am wanting to bring to the advisors and to their clients, this ability to really think about how do you live life by design instead of by default? Yeah. Just because you are in one location today and have these dreams of getting to this other location, society comes in and piles all of its junk on top of you. And then our limiting beliefs will come in and start to chip us down a little bit further. And so when I looked at Corey in that moment, I was like, I don't know how I'm going to get there but I'm going to get there. And what I need you to do along the way is make sure the numbers align but also help me identify what are the habits that are getting in my way. What is the reoccurring thought that's inside of my mind that's keeping me from taking some of these big chances? What could I do differently that will allow me to align myself so on a daily basis I'm feeling fulfilled because I'm living my values instead of living somebody else's values? And so that's really what this helps to do is change the conversation from where you are today to where want to be.

Lauren (23:45):
Yeah. Living life by design. You can manifest it. That future. Ah, so cool. I love it. So to kind of just put a bow around things, if you could wave a magic wand and look for sort of a change in the industry, if you were to look forward in the next 10, 15 years, what do you hope to see changing? And I know you're part of working toward making those changes, but if there's any sort of undercurrent you're working to get stronger and change, what would it be?

Lindsay (24:22):
Yeah. More human first. I think it's beautiful to see conferences like Shift and Future Proof out there and other fractional services you can tap into, whether it's financial therapy or coaching, really bringing in some of these services. I would love to see more firms be niche focused. I would love to see them curating their service offering and content. And I think about Matt Halloran and what they're doing over there. How do you become your own loud that comes from understanding your market better than anybody else? So I hope that trend continues. I also think we also need to see advisors just start to learn how to manage their own mind. I know that you had a conversation with Stephanie Bogan—the work coaching is so great, not just for your clients but for you as well. We stop ourselves and I see a lot of advisors stopping themselves from going in a more powerful direction because they've got their own mind, drama and junk and they aren't managing that. You have to start there. If you can't manage your own mind, you can't hope to help other people to manage theirs. So I hope we start to see more advisors tap into the power of coaching for themselves so they can manage their minds more effectively to be better for others. I guess the last thing I would say is take better care of your team. People are so burnt out right now. I see this time and time again where teams are just not getting access to the tools and the resources they need to be their best self.  So don't just think about yourself, think about your team too.

Lauren (26:17):
And it's such a different dynamic than it was a few years ago, pre-COVID. So it's a different way to even map your mind around that and training and virtual work and all these sorts of things. So pros and cons, right? But I'm inspired, Lindsay. This is really fun. It's fun to do a recap. It's also fun to see really where you are and the impact you're making. I so appreciate you sharing, and we'll make sure to provide links and everything below. I feel like there's so many great resources. So thank you again for your time. And we'll keep talking because I know there's going to be a lot more good things to continue to come.

Lindsay (26:55):
Thank you Lauren. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Lauren (26:58):
Of course.

We talked with Kristen about:

• How strategy starts with the kind of client you want to serve
• Why having direction for your marketing does not mean alienating your brand of existing clients
• How to be so well suited for your client type that no one compares

About Kristen Luke

Kristen Luke is a powerhouse marketing expert who built her career helping financial advisors and firms create simple marketing systems that actually work. She founded Kaleido Creative Studio in 2008 and offered outsourced marketing services for many years before deciding to narrow her focus to an area she believed in most: niche. The goal was to help independent registered investment advisors become more successful by staying focused and consistent on one very specific audience. She packaged her idea into a program to make it accessible to more people and launched  OnNiche™, expanding to help firms nationwide. Her book, Incomparable: The Financial Advisor’s Guide to Standing Out Through Niche Marketing, offers practical advice with a refreshing perspective on business differentiation and actionable steps for standing out in a crowded marketplace. 

Featured Resources

• Kristen Luke’s bio
• Kristen Luke’s LinkedIn
• OnNiche™ website
• OnNiche™ free online course
• Tungsten Branding 
• Stacy Ennis’s Nonfiction Book Book School
• Get Kristen Luke’s book: Incomparable: The Financial Advisor’s Guide to Standing Out Through Niche Marketing 
  

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:02):
Kristen, welcome. Thank you for joining us today.

Kristen (00:05):
Thanks, Lauren. I'm so happy to be here..

Lauren (00:07):
I had so much fun, not only following your journey with this upcoming unveiling, which I'll let you share more about, but also just over the years; you're such a powerhouse in marketing and the financial advisor advisory space. So it's been really fun to see the lead-up to this launch. Like I said, we'll talk about that but also just what an imprint you've had across this industry. So thank you so much for all you've done and the advice you've given to so many firms. But without further ado, I'll let you do a proper introduction and share a little bit more about your background and journey to where you are today.

Kristen (00:42):
So, gosh, I've been in this industry now for I think 18 years. I fell into it. When I was finishing graduate school at San Diego State, the first job I got was a marketing job that ended up being at an RIA. And so I spent three years there really learning the ins and outs of the industry, even though I had no financial services background. And after those three years, I decided to go out and start on my own. And so I started a company that is now Kaleido Creative Studio. It's had different names over the years but I started that in October of 2008, which was really interesting timing because for people who remember it was when the stock market was crashing and it was not a great time to be in this industry but I made it work.

So because my background was being an internal marketing person at this RIA, I really developed my business to be an outsourced marketing department. So that's really where I spent most of the last 15 years. About three years ago, I had this epiphany. I'm like, God, marketing is getting really hard and I don't know if you feel that, Lauren, with your career, but it's just getting so much more complicated than it was when we first entered this area. And I thought, this is just getting really complicated. And I decided I was going to focus on the area I personally believe in the most, which is niching and then also just what I've seen work really well for other advisors. And so for the last three years, my business has really been focused on helping people, helping financial advisors identify a niche and develop a strategy and messaging platform for that, to really just become an expert in their niche. So that's where we are today. Which leads to the launch of my new program, which is called OnNiche™. And so that's really the culmination of the last three years of work. We've been doing one-on-ones with advisors and we've packaged it up in a way that it can just be more accessible to more people. And so that's what we've been working on for the last few months here.

Lauren (02:54):
I love how your story started too, and that you didn't come from this background but you've learned about it. It's funny, the more and more I talk with folks who are in the space and I think really leading the charge in a variety of places, that's how they came, right? They stumbled into it, learned about it along the way. And here you are helping firms nationwide, really helping to narrow their focus. Tell us a little bit more about this new program that's rolling out. There's a book, so I'll let you share a little bit more about that as well. What does it look like, what's the story, and who's your target? I'd love to hear a little bit more about all of that. 

Kristen (03:31):
Yeah, so my target market has always been independent registered investment advisors. Mostly we've done work in the fee-only space but sometimes we do some work in the hybrid space as well. And so the program is really meant for that group but really kind of anyone who fits into that. So it could be the solo practitioner who's just hanging out their sign for the first time. It could be RIAs who have been in business for a while and are just kind of tired of banging their head against the walls, just trying to figure out what marketing works and what doesn't. And it can be the big enterprise, multi-billion dollar RIAs that have advisors who just need more direction about what to do for their own marketing. And so in that case, it's not a firm-wide niche, it's individual advisors with the niche.

So that's really who this program is designed for—how OnNiche came about. I would love to take credit for the name but we actually hired a naming and branding agency called Tungsten and they've been really amazing and they've actually worked with a couple of our clients too. So if you're looking for a name, I would highly recommend them. And the idea behind OnNiche is that in this industry we always say marketing industry, I should say,  we talk about being on message or on brand, and that's really about focus and consistency. Well, OnNiche kind of takes it to the next level, which is like being focused and consistent on a very specific audience. So that's kind of the origin of this program.

Lauren (05:01):
And so I'm assuming as part of this program, you're helping advisors or firms go through and really identify who their target is probably to be on niche but what does that process look like? And then what's kind of the outpour of that? Are they changing their websites? Are they creating different processes? How do you help them with those pieces of it? What does kind of that A to Z look like once they've identified who they want to work with as part of your programming?

Kristen (05:27):
Yeah, so this program is very strategic and so we start with who it is that you're trying to serve. So what is that niche? People usually come to us with an idea in mind, a general idea, but we help them get more narrow and be very clear on what that ideal client looks like. Then from there we help with developing a message for them. To me, I think messaging is probably the most important part of marketing because if you can have a clear message other people remember and can repeat, you're just going to be better in all areas of your marketing. So we help them with that. We also give them content to update their website. Now some people will go ahead and just go all in and put it on their homepage. Other people, and I'd say most other advisors, they just end up creating another landing page on their site for that specific niche while they're getting used to this.

They don't want to alienate their existing clients. They don't want to do anything to turn away business that's coming in from referrals or maybe other marketing they're doing. And so it's a way to ease them into doing a niche. So once they have that, then we start looking at what is the overall strategy. And so we look at what kind of content should they be creating, so not only the communication method but also the topics that are going to resonate with that niche. We look at what marketing channels they should be using. And I really encourage people to think of marketing channels outside of Facebook or LinkedIn or kind of the ones everyone goes to— just really get an understanding of who your market is and find out where they're spending time.

And then we also look at what are you doing to nurture those relationships once they get into your ecosystem. And so it's very strategic, and people can then really implement it in a couple of different ways. The first way is they can empower their own team to do it. We work with a lot of firms that have some admin usually or aspiring marketing professional in their office who can take this and run with it. We give them a lot of templates, we give them a lot of ChatGBT prompts now on how they can get things created.

Lauren (07:36):
I can see using that on your weekly updates too.

Kristen (07:39):
I do. We're big fans of AI as long as you know how to use it correctly and don't get lazy with just taking it exactly how it comes out. So empowering their own people. We are actually building relationships right now with other marketing agencies who are familiar with our platform and can implement those pieces. So that's another option. And then a third option for them to implement it is a lot of times advisors or firms already have freelancers or marketing agencies that may not be in our industry and this gives them direction. And I find a lot of times, freelancers or even a lot of agencies don't like the strategic part of it and so they're happy to just get direction and be told what to do. So we're giving the steps and everything they need to do, either on their own or with some sort of help and then run with it from there.

Lauren (08:30):
Yeah. So really providing the framework then. 

Kristen (08:32):
Yes.

Lauren (08:32):
I’d be curious, so what's the outpour, what are the results you're seeing? Are you seeing it shift cultures? What are advisors saying after they've implemented these changes?

Kristen (08:45):
Yeah, well it does take a long time to do a niche. As much as I would love to say it happens instantly, it almost could take three years to see exponential results.  But I find once people do make that shift into a niche, they end up not having to do any marketing at all after a while, either because they don't really see it as marketing because they're just kind of a thought leader or an expert being asked for their own expertise or maybe they're not doing anything at all. They just do a newsletter and people get to know who they are, word of mouth, and they just keep getting this inflow of clients. And that's really our goal: hey, this is gonna take a lot of effort in the first three years but then after that it should just come pretty easily and you don't have to do marketing anymore.

Lauren (09:32):
Yeah, that's fair. This idea of being able to really lean in and then you reap the rewards later on. Because I see a lot of advisors, I think just individuals starting businesses where you're just kind of going everywhere, right? But not really focusing your time and energy, your messaging, all of that. But if it's focused and you're focusing on what works, then that's where you get the traction. 

Kristen (09:50):
Yeah, I actually find that when advisors niche, they usually find one marketing thing that works and they just do that. And it could be very simple; it does not have to be very difficult at all.

Lauren (09:59):
I know, versus everything under the sun. I think sometimes there's this idea that we've got to do everything to be successful but then you do a lot of things and nothing really, really well or frankly even really focused, which is what you're helping folks with.

Kristen (10:12):
Yep, exactly.

Lauren (10:14):
And something else we see, and you alluded to this earlier that it sounds like you're seeing something similar, is that advisors sometimes are afraid to pick, take a niche and run with it.. How are you managing that and helping them to be able to lean into that for a lot of the issues like you mentioned earlier, just they don't want to alienate or are not quite ready to step into that or what have you? How are you helping them navigate those waters and make sure they know that this is going to be beneficial long term?

Kristen (10:42):
Right. I think the first thing is that just knowing you don't have to go all in at the very beginning; this is just what your time and effort and energy are going to be going forward. So you don't have to change your website, you don't have to change the clients you're taking in like referrals. You can keep doing all of that. When I'm asking them to niche, I'm asking them to put all of their energy and effort into this one strategy and a lot of times they're not doing any marketing or they're just kind of throwing things at the wall. So that's kind of an easier sell because it's like, okay, well at least I have some sort of direction for my marketing. They are scared but the biggest thing is if I can promise them that we're not going to alienate their existing clients or stop them from taking other business, that really helps. And so that's the core thing to know.

Lauren (11:31):
Yep. That's fair. It gives a little bit of peace of mind. And sort of sense of comfort to be able to lean in. Are you out of curiosity often fighting yourself working with just an advisor or group of advisors in the firm to focus on that? Or is it more of a firm-wide architecture of that particular niche?

Kristen (11:48):
It really depends on the size of the company. Smaller firms will usually—when I say smaller, like under 100 million in assets under management—they almost always go firm-wide and they all focus on one niche. When we're dealing with a billion dollars and over then we're talking about multiple advisors, each with their own niche. I think the hardest part for niching is people or firms between 100 million and 500 million because they're scared to go all in on one niche but they don't have the resources to be able to implement multiple niche marketing strategies at once. And when people are thinking about whether they should do one niche or multiple niches, I say, well, do you want to implement one marketing plan or five marketing plans?

Lauren (12:33):
Right. That's fair.

Kristen (12:34):
And they just don't have the resources or the people to be able to pull that off. And yet they have such a wide client base that it's hard for them to just focus. So it's kind of like that no man's land. So we usually work with firms under 100 million and then above a billion.

Lauren (12:49):
Yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Just where they are in their growth phase. 

Kristen (12:53):
Yup.

Lauren (12:54):
Okay. I'm going to shift gears a little bit here. So you're not only rolling out this new platform but I'd love to hear about your book. Tell us about it, the journey in writing that and it's really been done it sounds like in parallel with the unveiling of this new offering. So two major undertakings. So tell us, tell me about it. Why a book? What sparked all of this? Tell us a little bit more about that.

Kristen (13:22):
 I have always wanted to write a book. I'm someone who likes to write. My marketing has always been focused on blogs and guest posts and things like that. I never really knew exactly what I wanted to write about. I knew it was going to be focused on financial advisor marketing but there's just so many things I could have covered. And so when I started focusing on this niche idea, I thought, okay, this could be a good book topic but what really encouraged me to move forward on this is that I had a couple of clients—actually I still have a couple of clients—who have written books and use them as a marketing tactic for their RIAs. And I was so impressed by how well it works as a marketing tool. And so I thought, well, I'm going to be rolling out this new niche program. I think it makes a lot of sense to have a book that goes with it. And so one of my clients introduced me to his book writing coach; her name is Stacy Ennis and she has a program called Nonfiction Book School. And so I signed up for that last April. It actually took me about three months to write the book. 

Lauren (14:27):
Remarkably finished fast.

Kristen (14:29):
Yeah. Well, I've written so much over the years, so I was able to take a lot of that and I've written for kitces.com a few times and those were 7,000 words alone.

Lauren (14:38):
Yes, I know. Not long- or not short articles. Excuse me. Yes. 

Kristen (14:42):
Yeah. So when you're writing 45,000 words that goes a long way. So it actually didn't take me very long but what I've learned about the book writing process is that's just the first part, and then you have to go through editing and then formatting. And so from the time I finished writing it to the time it was published, it's almost a year. 

Lauren (15:04):
And so after that three months is really when, that year, when that time period, would start clicking.

Kristen (15:09):
Yeah, I finished in August, so the book came out in July.

Lauren (15:15):
That's remarkable. So tell us a little bit about the book. What is it about? The program you're offering? Is it just a case study? I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

Kristen (15:25):
Sure. So the book is called Incomparable and it is really about how financial advisors can stand out by focusing on a niche. And the idea is that you become so well suited for one specific type of client that they literally cannot compare you to anybody else out there that they might be looking at. It actually follows the same philosophy as our own niche program. The beginning of it is really an argument for niche marketing and why you should consider that. I don't know Lauren, in your experience, but it sometimes can be hard to convince people that they should niche. And so really the purpose of the book was how can I convince people that this is a good strategy? So that's how it begins. And then we go into the framework of how you would go about becoming an expert in your niche so you do become incomparable. And then the final part is really more tactical, like, here's what you do, here are all the things you should focus on. Here's a year by year plan for the first three years. So it's really a guidebook.

Lauren (16:27):
Okay. So there's  a theory or sort of an approach philosophy to it but then there's also more of like you said, a guidebook or toolkit component to it as well.

Kristen (16:36):
Right. I feel like people who are high level could just read the first part and people who just want to get the details could read part three and then both people would be happy.

Lauren (16:45):
Yeah. So you can sort of jump to where you want, if you will.

Kristen (16:47):
Exactly.

Lauren (16:48):
Oh, that's fantastic. I'm excited to take a look at it and, and turn the pages. 

Kristen (16:53):
Well, a copy's coming your way..

Lauren (16:55):
I'm looking forward to it. Really appreciate it. Well, anything else you'd like to share about the new program or book unveiling or anything else you think would be beneficial to folks especially, or maybe even just two cents if someone's thinking about picking a niche and/or why.

Kristen (17:13):
If someone's looking to pick a niche, I think that can be really hard for a lot of people. I'm going to do a little plug here. We have a free course on our OnNiche website that just helps people really pick a niche that's appropriate for them because there's really two pieces of picking a niche. The first is, is this niche viable on its own? Is there money to be made here and do they have a need? And then the second part is, is this advisor suitable for this niche? And so through our free online course, you can brainstorm different ideas and we have you look at first, what are you passionate about? Where do you find joy in your work? And then second, what, what is your aptitude? Do you have some sort of special education or background or skill set that would make you appropriate for a specific niche? And then finally we have you look at profitability, because really it's all about making money here at the end of the day. And if you can't figure out a way to be able to make money, working with a niche is not going to be a good fit in the long run.

Lauren (18:18):
So smart. Got to do that upfront work. And I love the piece about passion too, right? If you're passionate about it—I sometimes see advisors where they've had another life before where they are currently and so they're kind of bringing in that past life or that experience or what have you to their niche. It just comes naturally, the words, the terminology, all of that kind of rolls off their tongue, which shows, to your point, it's going to be a fit.

Kristen (18:48):
When I work with advisors, I think they think they're looking for a needle in a haystack but really it's just uncovering something that's pretty obvious. It's just not obvious to them. And it usually has something to do with background or something they already have a lot of experience in.

Lauren (19:02):
Yeah, that's absolutely fair. So, well, fantastic. Kristen, thank you so much for your time, for sharing. We'll make sure to link to the book below and you mentioned a number of resources, so we'll make sure to link to those as well. I appreciate your sharing and congratulations on all the success and getting to this milestone.

Kristen (19:19):
Thank you so much, Lauren.

Lauren (19:20):
Great. Thanks. We'll be in touch.

Lauren (28:40):
Thank you.

‍We talked with Scott about:

• Staying true to your passion and what you set out to be
• Being adaptable and taking bold moves in your firm to meet your clients’ needs
• Realizing that failure is a learning experience that will just make you better

About Scott MacKillop
Scott MacKillop is a visionary in the financial services realm who took the courageous leap of stepping outside the box to transform the industry after recognizing a gap in the market. Led by his passion to make a difference for independent financial advisors, Scott forged his own path and founded the first mutual fund TAMP. Up against much speculation, he also implemented his unconventional idea of flat fees. Through sheer grit and innovative thinking, Scott transformed his vision into reality, creating a groundbreaking service model. Today, many firms are shifting to embrace Scott’s revolutionary idea in an effort to better serve clients. His bravery and willingness to embrace risk not only made him successful but he also inspires others to follow their dreams and fearlessly pursue their passions. Scott is currently the award-winning CEO of First Ascent Asset Management. He has published over 100 articles and papers and participated in more than 100 speaking engagements. His achievements include a Wealthy Award and an Advisor Luminary Award, among many others. Scott’s journey serves as a testament to the transformative power of thinking differently and taking bold action to make a lasting impact. 

Featured Resources

• Scott MacKillop’s Bio
• Scott’s MacKillop’s LinkedIn Profile
• Market Timing: The Sweet Dream that Never Comes True by Scott MacKillop
• AI vs. Mr. Market — Who Wins? By Scott MacKillop
• Do Clients Really Want Personalized Portfolios? By Scott MacKillop

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:02):
Scott, welcome and thank you for joining us.

Scott (00:04):
Well, thank you for having me, Lauren. I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

Lauren (00:07):
Yeah, I am as well. Like I was just sharing with you, it was so funny because I was bouncing around and I crossed your profile and was so impressed. I think, let's see, you've written over 160 papers—I don't know how updated that number is—and spoken at over 100 conferences, and your practice management is award-winning. I mean, a Wealthy Award, which is one of the most notable awards in this space and an Advisor Luminary Award. I mean, the list will go on but I'll let you do a brief introduction and we can link to your bio and all that good stuff below. But I'm excited to get into it and especially excited to hear more about this flat fee model and also just more practice management in general.

Scott (00:55):
Yeah, I'll just jump in. I'll just give you a little bit of background about my professional career. I actually started out life as a lawyer in Washington, D.C. I was a securities lawyer for about 15 years, and then went to work for one of my clients down in Atlanta.  And that was a pension consulting firm, so consulting on investment matters to very large institutions. We were approached by some financial advisors who were interested in a lot of the things we were doing for the institutions, and they wondered if we could put something together that would address the needs of independent financial advisors. And so we had no idea really what the world of independent financial advisors looked like at that point. I mean, this was 30-something years ago.

And we ended up developing what was the first mutual fund TAMP. So that was the first ever; there were a couple TAMPs that were doing separate account work but we were the first mutual fund TAMP. So we grew that business. And then PMC, which is based here in Denver where I am now, bought our firm. And at PMC we built the first platform that had both separately managed accounts and mutual fund portfolios on it. And then PMC was sold to another firm. I culturally didn't really mesh as well with that firm so I left and formed my own consulting firm and did a lot of work with larger firms— Frank Russell, Nationwide Insurance, Schwab, JP Morgan Asset Management—and helped them develop investment programs for financial advisors.

And then I ended up going to work for one of my consulting clients in Houston, U.S. Fiduciary, and we built I think what was one of the first platforms for brokers who were leaving the wirehouse world and wanted to come out and have both a brokerage capability but also a TAMP, somebody who could help them manage their assets. So I did that for a while. And then I moved on to another TAMP that was run by some people I knew from my earlier career. And we grew that business to a couple billion dollars. And that's the kind of cool thing we did there, we started working with platforms like investment and so forth to bring investment capabilities to the platform world. And that was a good experience.

But at a certain point, I started developing these crazy ideas about flat fees. And my partners at that firm weren't as wild about my flat fee ideas as I was. And so I left that firm and started First Ascent Asset Management with some people, most of whom I knew from earlier days; I'd worked with them before. My son actually was one of the people who joined the firm. He and I had worked together before too. We took this idea about trying to deliver outsourced portfolio management services to financial advisors but for a flat fee so the fee didn't keep going up as the account size went up. The idea was pretty simple and straightforward, and it just dawned on me at one point that if somebody was going to do that, and if it wasn't me, then it was going to be somebody else. So we started down that path.

Lauren (04:26):
Can you share a little bit more? Did you feel like that's really been a differentiator for you in the market?

Scott (04:32):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's been huge. We're still the only TAMP in the marketplace that provides a full-service flat fee offering. And so it's been really a  godsend for us just because it's so clear everybody understands what it is. It's a differentiator that is immediately understandable by anybody who hears about it. And the benefits are very obvious. You can do the math and you can see how the clients would benefit greatly from having a flat fee.

Lauren (05:06):
Can you share a little bit more about that? How did you get to that bottom line, for lack of a better expression? And I would love to hear about how you positioned that as well, you know? 

Scott (05:20):
The thought process was pretty straightforward. So, as I mentioned, at my previous firm we were working through these platforms like Envestnet. So really what that business consisted of was we were developing portfolios and giving them to Envestnet. And Envestnet did all the work to do the trading and implement the portfolios. So there was no operational burden on us whatsoever, right? So it was like a piece of paper we'd send off to Envestnet and they would implement the portfolios. And then all the financial advisors who worked with Envestnet, which was thousands of financial advisors, could get access to our portfolios. So it was a pretty cool business model. But when you think about it, we weren't doing any more work for big accounts than we were for small accounts.

So the logic of the AUM-based fee in that environment just didn't make sense to me. And then the more I thought about it, given the technology we had in our industry today, we could manage portfolios—a hundred thousand dollar portfolio and a million dollar portfolio were basically the same thing. You know, the real custom work was being done by the advisors on the front line. They're kind of the battle weary troops out there, and we were sort of standing behind and just managing the portfolios. And so it really didn't matter to us if it was a hundred thousand dollar or a million dollar portfolio; the same amount of work was involved. So that logic took us to the flat fee. We said, well, let's try to find the flat fee that's both a good deal for clients and for the advisors but also makes economic sense for us.

Lauren (07:02):
Just from an economic planning side of things, is there anything in particular you had to do on the backend to tighten operations from a technology side or systems in place? Or how can you make sure that you can scale that model, right? How did that work? 

Scott (07:19):
So this was a very important part of the plan. This is why we couldn't do it from an existing firm, because the existing firms are all built around the AUM model and their distribution model and their technology and everything. So we really had to start from scratch. We had to make a very efficient platform from a technology point of view so we could create what was essentially an assembly line for the management of portfolios. We also had to change the distribution model where most TAMPs in those days, and probably still to this day, send wholesalers on an airplane out to meet one-on-one with financial advisors, which again to me seemed like kind of an old idea. And now after the pandemic, everybody can see the logic of it.

But this was pre-pandemic. And I thought, well, geez, we've got all these things like Zoom and GoTo and so forth. We could just talk to advisors from our office and we wouldn't have to incur all the expenses of airplanes and hotels, right? That overhead. And we'd be a lot more efficient because we could talk to more people and we wouldn't bother advisors by saying, well, could we get some time on your calendar three weeks from now? And let's go to lunch and all that. An advisor could just call up and say, hey, I want to talk to you, and we would be there and available to talk. So that whole distribution model just seemed to make a lot of sense but it also made us more efficient; it reduced the overhead associated with what we were doing.

And so just all along the way we also needed this very skilled team. We needed people who knew what they were doing and had been in this business before, and pretty much everybody on our team was a highly experienced person in this kind of a business. And so by just getting people who were very knowledgeable and very productive and very dedicated to what we were trying to do, and using the technology that was available, we were able to scale this business up at a cost that most existing firms to this day still couldn't do. And I think that's why we're still the only flat feet TAMP out in the marketplace—none of the big firms could really retool them themselves to do what we're doing that quickly.

Lauren (09:30):
So you got the right people in the right seats, and it also sounds like people who had the industry knowledge, expertise, so you could be smarter, faster, all of that. How about from the concept of this model to actually opening doors? What did it take to get to that point? Did you have to build out your own or adjust a pre-existing technology? What did that whole route look like?

Scott (09:56):
Yeah, so this was a really important part of it, and it's kind of come full circle. We can get back to that in a minute. But one of the things we wanted to do to keep our costs low was we wanted to find a technology infrastructure that would allow us to charge on a per account basis, not an AUM-based fee but some technology provider who would say, I'll give you the technology you need and we'll just charge you a fixed dollar fee because it had to fit within our flat fee, right? And so Orion was the solution we came up with. And I knew Eric Clark from climbing mountains and hiking and so forth, and he understood really right from the very beginning what we were trying to do.

And so they to this day have been our technology infrastructure and have allowed us to grow our business. We've more recently been purchased by a firm called GeoWealth and GeoWealth has its own technology platform. So in the not too distant future we'll be converting from Orion onto the GeoWealth platform, and that'll give us an added benefit. Now we'll have the technology in-house and we'll be able to make changes and customize it and so forth at a level you can't really do working with Orion. So Orion's been a great partner but it's time to sort of change the model again.

Lauren (11:18):
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean to take you to a certain milestone, right? And other opportunities. So just to back up, so you've had all this experience, you saw an opportunity, a gap in the market, got the right people in the right places, started to build out the infrastructure and technology. Once you got there, how did you start to market this? This is my marketing hat. I can't help but ask that. What did you do? Were you tapping in your current network? How did you get the word out? 

Scott (11:50):
This was the big challenge because we did something that I don't recommend to anybody else—we basically started an asset management firm with no assets under management and no track record. So whoever we talked to, no matter how much they like the flat fee, they said, whoa, that's great but how much do you guys have under management? Well, we had a little bit of our own money under management but it was not an impressive amount. So we were really selling the concept as opposed to the fact that we were some big firm with lots of clients and lots of assets under management. And so we appealed to the people who really cared about their clients.

You know, the people who really wanted to do something better for their clients, and also to advisors who had been doing the investment management stuff themselves but who were just really tired of doing it—they just didn't want to do all the back office work and all the work to research the building of portfolios. Or they realized at some point along the way they weren't really very good at it, you know? Or they wanted to focus on financial planning maybe instead. So there was this kind of movement within the advisor community of people who were looking for a better way to do this. And so then the challenge was just to get the word out and that involved a lot of writing.

A lot of those 160—it's actually now 170—papers and articles were designed to get the word out. And we talked to people we knew and wherever anybody would listen to our story. And then you start to pick up fans along the way, people who get what you're doing. The XY Planning Network was a great opportunity for us because a lot of those people talk to each other a lot. They have great communication among the group. And so we started there and built a lot of fans in that part of the world. And now probably 50 plus percent of our new business comes in from referrals. And so people like what we do. And as you said, we've won a lot of awards and that's helped raise our visibility.

I think we've been ranked as the number one TAMP four years in a row now in the Bob Joel Bruckenstein survey of advisors. That's not a pay to play thing or anything that's just advisors filling out their survey forms and four years in a row we've been ranked over one. So it's pretty exciting to see that. It's partially about the flat fee but a lot of it really is just the service level. As I said, the people at our firm are not only experienced but very dedicated to what they're doing. And we've kept it as a small group of people and almost all of them have been with us since the very beginning.

So it's more of a mission than a job. I think at this point, we have a very definite purpose in going out and trying to build a firm that would support advisors and give clients a good deal. We’re worried less about making a private equity firm rich because we didn't have a private equity firm behind us. We just wanted to go out there and do the best, build the best TAMP you could build. And that was the idea. 

Lauren (15:23):
Yeah. Seeing a gap in the market, putting the right people in the right places, it sounds like, and just taking good care of people and making sure everyone who crossed paths or happened to do business was well taken care of. So fast forward to today, now that you've sort of settled, the dust has settled, right? Everything you kind of alluded to in the beginning, the kind of target that was sort of attracted to this offering is there and as you've grown the business you've brought on new clientele. Do you find that this model will fit a particular size firm? Or is it more of a value alignment, or is a little bit of both that could be the right fit for this kind of model?

Scott (16:10):
Yeah, it's a little bit of both. So we don't have any advisory firms over 200 million in assets under management. And what we've found is that's kind of a pretty hard dividing line once firms get beyond that. Most of them have started to build out the infrastructure and hire the people. They have their own investment department. It's not a one- or two-person shop anymore. It's a bigger organization. And so for better or worse, they decide to do that on their own. What's changed though, the thing that's really interesting from when we started seven years ago, is we more recently started getting requests from people who said, love that flat fee, love the service model but I'd like to stay more involved in the actual portfolio management process.

So they wanted to be either totally in charge or they wanted to share that responsibility with us. So we didn't really have a business model that worked in that environment. And so this more recent transaction with GeoWealth has really been the answer to that for us because their business was built for advisors who wanted to manage their own portfolios. So they have the technology platform that's outstanding for advisors who want to do their own portfolio management, and  then they can offload the trading and the performance reporting and building and a lot of the back office work but they can stay involved in the portfolio management. So now we can serve those advisory firms that tend to be larger.

I think the GeoWealth market goes up to $4 or $5 billion firms that are looking for more of a technology solution than an investment management solution. So now together we've got this capability to supply the technology for somebody who wants us to  supply the back office service. And if somebody wants the asset management, we can supply that too. We have an outstanding investment committee we developed at first ASIN and the Geo people actually have some really talented investment people too. So now we have a much broader spectrum. It's kind of almost too good to be true the way it all unfolded, because it was probably two years ago we started getting these requests for customization in fairly large numbers.

And we took a number of those relationships on; if they were large enough, we would try to do them but we had bandwidth issues because we didn't own our own technology and we weren't really staffed for it. There were only so many of those we could do. And now with the GeoWealth platform, we can take on an infinite number of those, which the technology will accommodate. So a much broader spectrum of requests. 

Lauren (19:12):
Oh, that makes sense. So then you're able to then help those clients as they're growing, right? They're growing their firms, and then there's this layer on of the 2.0 as they're expanding.

Scott (19:22):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. 

Lauren (19:23):
Is there a minimum of assets for a firm that would be a fit that you've noticed?

Scott (19:29):
No. I think GeoWealth has minimums because in order to invest in setting up the technology, it really makes sense. But for us, we have advisors who are relatively experienced but they left a firm, let's say and they couldn't bring their assets with them. So they said, I've been in the business 10 years, I have great confidence I can shoot the lights out and get a new book of business and if you'll work with me we'll both be happy two or three years down the road. So we took those advisors on and sure enough, we've been happy with their growth. I think it's been important from our side to just be what we set out to be, which was an organization that was there to help the advisors and not try to draw artificial lines about who's going to be a really profitable client for us and kind of exclude everybody else. There was an attitude of just, we'll figure out how to make this work. Come on board and we'll take care of you. And oh by the way, tell your friends if you like how it feels and we'll just grow our business together. And that's really how we did it.

Lauren (20:51):
Yeah. That's sort of championing the group versus sort of exclusivity. And it sounds like the model is also fitting because there's a balance, right? If it's not the right fit, you want someone to be set up for the right fit, but if not, if the model allows for that and you can take good care of them, then that's a win-win. So sort of like you were saying, you realize that threshold but now you're seeing an opportunity to now serve sort of at that next threshold with this technology.

Scott (21:16):
Yeah, exactly. It's allowed us to expand what we're doing and that's exciting. Because we hated saying no to people. But if it wasn't the right fit, if we couldn't do the level of customization they were looking for or really give them the control over the investment management process they were looking for, we had to just say goodbye and now we don't have to anymore. So that's great.

Lauren (21:45):
So, to back up a little bit, if someone were to be watching this and hearing this, they might see a gap in the market, right? A gap for an opportunity to either start a business or to be able to better improve an internal processes or what have you. What are some of your lessons learned or takeaways that you would repeat or wouldn't repeat even before getting this going? You had a good pulse, right? But did you do a competitive analysis? Was it talking with people? Was it just listening to what people were saying? What advice would you give to someone who is thinking about potentially taking on a new venture or their own?

Scott (22:29):
Well, the process I went through, which I would highly recommend, was I talked to everybody I could talk to about the ideas. The flat fee was one of the ideas I talked about as well as a little bit about the distribution model. There were a number of ideas. We had some ideas about the importance of educating clients to be better investors. And we had a lot of ideas about how to manage portfolios better. So I talked to everybody I knew about those, especially people in our industry, people who were leaders of some of the larger TAMPs that were going to be competitors. They were all really very helpful. Alex Potts, who was at Lauren Ward, and Eric Clark obviously knew what we were up to and people like that were very supportive. They said, hey, what you're doing is really cool and I hope you don't take all our business. And that was probably validating. 

Scott (23:29):
There's plenty of room for everybody. But I talked to people who knew a lot from the TAMP world, and I talked to people who were in the advisor community. Would this make sense for you? And I talked to a lot of people I had worked with over the years and just really tried to test the idea. And I did that probably for eight or eight months or so. 

Lauren (23:54):
So it was getting the pulse of the market, a little bit of a market analysis.

Scott (23:57):
Yeah. As much as I could. Now you have to be careful when you do that because everybody you talk to is going to have a different opinion about things. So if you've got a great idea, don't be dissuaded just because some of the people you talk to don't see it maybe, or kind of see the world a different way, are kind of stuck in maybe in the old ways of doing things. But appreciate the fact that just because somebody hasn't thought of something yet doesn't mean it's not a good idea. We tend to be herd animals in a lot of ways, and we continue to do the things that have always been done. And so it takes a little bit of boldness to step out of that and say, no, I think I see a different, better way to do it.

I guess what I'm saying is believe in yourself, but also trust but verify. Go out there and let people bang on your idea; you know how our idea was going to unfold changed once we got out into the marketplace. The flat fee we came out with initially wasn't the flat fee we ended up with a year later. And it changed over time. As we got more information, we were able to modify what we were doing to adapt to what the market was telling us. And that was the most important thing. A lot of the firms I've been at in the past have really smart people who think they know the right answer to everything, or at least some things. And they just build the thing they like and they want. First Ascent has been a real eye opener for me in the sense of just saying you don't have to know everything yourself. If you go out into the market, the market will tell you very quickly what you have. And what you got wrong. And you should be ready to adapt to that. And that's what we did that worked for us. 

Lauren (26:01):
So smart. And such good insight. Just hearing your story and where you've taken it is impressive. And I think also just being able to feel the market and then you know where it's going, especially just being on the cutting edge of technology. There's a lot of that out there and it's changing very fast, right?

Scott (26:21):
Yeah, exactly. Well, that was the real evolution for us—we started out thinking we needed to outsource the technology to Orion. And that really worked for us. But things have come full circle and now we're seeing the benefits of being part of the GeoWealth organization, of having the technology in-house and being able to react to a broader set of requests from advisors. There are things we couldn't change about the technology and now we can change because it's under the same roof with us. And so it's just really worked out well for us.

Lauren (26:56):
Well, I know we're at the top of our time. I really appreciate you sharing. Are there any final thoughts you'd like to share or any words of wisdom?

Scott (27:08):
No, I would just encourage people who have ideas they believe in, ways they think they can make the world better. Maybe that's too big of a statement, but if you can find some way to do things in a different way that will improve the lot of the people you're serving, whether that's financial advisors or whoever it may be, don't just ignore it because it might be hard. It's gonna be really hard. However hard you think it's going to be, it's going to be way harder than that. But if you believe in something and you have the passion for it, just go for it. You know, failure has a bad name. Failure is just kind of a learning experience. It didn't quite go the way you wanted it. And so I think people who try things and get out there in the arena and try to make things happen, that's really very laudable and you should go for it.

Lauren (28:06):
Courageous. Absolutely. Well, appreciate your time. Thank you for sharing the journey and story to be able to get to this place. And then also thank you for sharing your knowledge about this model and practice management and all those sorts of things with this community. So it takes a village and I appreciate you taking the time. 

Scott (28:28):
It's been my pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.

Lauren (28:31):
Yes, absolutely. Okay. We look forward to following along, and we'll make sure in the writeup to include all the links and such as we've discussed.

Scott (28:39):
Great. Thanks a lot, Lauren.

Lauren (28:40):
Thank you.

<div class="post-body">As creative director, Ellie loves rolling up her sleeves to do deep dives into the marketing potential of financial services firms.

Defining and Redefining Finserv

With over a decade of design and art directing experience, Ellie brings balance supporting big brands such as Target and General Mills as well as mid-sized businesses through her work with traditional ad agencies. In her role as Out & About’s creative director, her passion lies in helping financial services firms build their brand equity in the marketplace. Unwilling to rest on dry, traditional marketing and branding tactics, Ellie believes in the unique potential for each of our clients to level up.

What You Can’t Tell Just From Looking at Her

Parents of two young children, Ellie and her husband dedicate themselves to finding cool and unique family experiences throughout Minneapolis. A Midwestern girl through and through, she looks forward to tending to her vegetable garden and their chickens with the kids during the summer. When the months grow cooler, Ellie proudly pulls out her power tools to tackle home improvement projects of every variety. </div>