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>

‍We talked with Julie about:

• The importance of engaging clients on an ongoing basis, through all phases of life
• How the Absolute Engagement Engine brings technology and people together in a different way 
• How to capture people’s feelings and needs to deliver an experience that’s truly engaging

About Julie Littechild:
Julie Littlechild is a recognized expert on the evolution of the client experience and client engagement. As the founder and CEO of Absolute Engagement Engine, a groundbreaking platform that helps financial advisors build meaningful connections by engaging clients on a deeper level on an ongoing basis through all phases of life, she leads strategic vision and product roadmap. Julie launched the company after working with and studying financial advisors and their clients for several years—learning that to deliver a truly engaging experience, advisors need to capture their clients’ feelings and needs at every moment.

Featured Resources 

• Julie’s LinkedIn 
• Julie’s Twitter
• Julie’s Blog
• Julie’s Book
• Absolute Engagement Website

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:02):
Julie, welcome back.

Julie (00:03):
Thank you. So good to see you.

Lauren (00:05):
Good to see you. This isn't your first rodeo, so let’s just jump in.

Julie (00:09):
That's great.

Lauren (00:10):
I saw you had rolled out this new Absolute Engagement Engine and I couldn't help but say tell us more so I extended an invite to have you back. It's just been so fun to see the relationships you've been building and all the connections across the wealth management space, financial services space, etc. And so let's just start with this new platform. What was the catalyst for getting this going and why? What's the why?

Julie (00:40):
What's the why? You know, I think a lot of it goes back to just the kind of work we were doing, which I felt very good about. But the deeper we got into this idea of engagement and the need for advisors to engage, the more I realized we needed a different way to support advisors. So our focus had always been on doing the voice of the client surveys and these sort of broad engagements with advisors, which we continue to do for many large firms. But I was very kind of hyper aware that when you go out and do a survey at a point in time, you're missing a lot of the nuance around how clients are feeling, what they need in the moment, how those needs are changing, how couples are feeling. And I knew all of that was bound up in engagement. So that really led us to say, now how can we help advisors better and more effectively drive engagement.

Lauren (01:44):
Mm-hmm. So tell us more, what was the thinking to be able to get to this platform to be able to help hit on that business problem?

Julie (01:53):
Yeah, so to some extent it started with a question. We said what's really driving engagement? And that was sort of thinking that had evolved over time but we came down to this idea that to deliver an experience that's truly engaging rather than just being satisfying means we need to create an experience that reflects how people are feeling, what they're concerned about, what they need. And then as soon as we said that we went, okay, the problem is those things are very personal and they change over time, right? I don't know about you but how I feel right now, it's probably different from tomorrow. And in particular within couples, you know, their needs are obviously often different. And so we took this idea of capturing point in time, one to many feedback, right? And said, let's build a technology that allows advisors to capture one-to-one real-time input and trigger the right response in an automated way. And let's do that right across the journey from the point somebody's a prospect to a new client to an existing client. And so that's the tech piece, right? It’s being able to do that in an automated way.

Lauren (03:11):
Okay. So tell me, what channel is this coming through? How are folks engaging with this? Is this the prospecting journey that goes through a post-meeting email and they get a survey? What are the triggers?

Julie (03:27):
I can give you some examples. So at its core, this is a very flexible platform. So we have people engaging with it in different ways. There are different sort of use cases and features, right? But the simplest way to think about it is that we are capturing input at different stages of the journey. So just to give you an example, to bring that to life, if we're working with firms that are particularly focused on growth, what that would mean is as a prospect is coming in for that introductory meeting, as part of that process, they're now invited to share some input on not only what do they want to talk about but they're fed a series of questions that tease out how they're feeling about their financial future, what they're concerned about, what's on their mind, what they need to talk about. We're automatically capturing that from couples if it is a couple and bringing that together so not only does the prospect have a deeper understanding of themselves as they're coming in for that review meeting because we've sent an agenda to them but the advisor has too. But the advisor now has co-created the agenda they need to use for that meeting. So we kind of go from capturing that right input to here's the agenda to have a better conversation with that prospect. That idea kind of filters into all of the different use cases for the technology.

Lauren (04:55):
Okay. And just to clarify on the word prospects, are we talking about an individual or a family or are you also looking at potentially an M&A, a deal or even an advisor potentially joining another firm? Can it can be used in those applications as well?

Julie (05:10):
Well, technically it could but we've really built it for advisors and the prospects they're dealing with. So whether that is a lead who visits their site and has not yet made a connection, how can we engage that individual to the prospect who's coming in to meet with them, and then right through to being a client and how do we engage on an ongoing basis?

Lauren (05:34):
Okay. So then is the firm taking this platform and looking at their user journey, and are you working with them then to identify where these triggers would go? Or is it kind of built into the platform to suggest where the triggers would go? How would one go about identifying these touchpoints?

Julie (05:52):
Well, again, at the core it's very flexible. So technically a firm could create whatever workflows and polls and reports they want. However, that's hard work. So what we did was, we said where are those moments in the journey that would create the greatest opportunity for engagement? And we built those out. So we have recommended questions, reporting agendas. It can be completely configured for the client. It has to represent who they're dealing with, right? For our client in that case. But what we said was, look, those moments are really the ones I mentioned—once somebody's visiting that website or a social profile or maybe hearing about you from a referral source, when they're coming in for that meeting and onboarding, those were the points where we said let's build out those workflows. Let's create the polls and everything associated with it so it can be automated and easy for advisors to really implement.

Lauren (06:57):
Okay. Now, are you doing hand holding with to help them through that setup? Or are they really taking the platform and then kind of running with it independently?

Julie (07:08):
Yeah. We're big believers that people need guidance in this kind of thing. So as much as yes, they could do it themselves, we have quite an extensive onboarding process where we're digging deep to understand what are they really trying to accomplish so which of the features actually make sense for them. Might not be all of them, and or it might not be them now. Maybe they want to roll it out over time, and then we work with them to configure those initial polls and structure the reports and customize the communication. So once that's up and running, it's very easy to maintain. But we really felt people needed some guidance to get started.

Lauren (07:50):
And different targets, right? Which I'm sure would totally change the volume of surveying or how you would survey them or what have you. So it sounds like you've basically built the framework and you've built the structure so much so that it's not just a survey but it's an output for actions, for that advisor to also have a pulse on where they're at through the journey of the client or prospect, I should say, all the way to the client.

Julie (08:17):
Yeah. And it is funny because we battle terminology a lot because I think people get it in their head that a survey is this big thing we're asking clients to do. And look, I think those make sense to measure satisfaction or Net Promoter Score or to understand expectations and preferences. So our clients would continue to get that kind of data on an ongoing basis. The difference here is we're saying let's build input right into the process of delivering advice and meeting with clients and prospects. So it's not a big survey. It's two or three or four really clever questions that help us get into their hearts and minds.

Lauren (08:58):
Those questions are a secret sauce that's hard to be able to really narrow down, especially at that particular part of the journey. And also so that it's valuable, right? I sometimes see folks put together surveys and I'm like, oh my gosh, this would take like an hour to complete. Leave them there for 10 minutes to complete a survey. I'm sure you see drop off rates all the time. 

Julie (09:20):
Yeah, for large ones but the difference would be if you're thinking about these new features, you'd be spending two minutes answering a set of questions and we also recognize the clients aren't particularly good at articulating how they're feeling. I mean, human beings aren't. So yeah. We've really tried to curate questions that just quickly get to the heart of how are they feeling right now. Where are the differences between the couple? What kind of support do they need? It's still the advisor's job to dig into those things. Absolutely. So we can't do that for them. Absolutely. We can just make all of that really efficient. So when they start that meeting, they're starting ahead. They know exactly where they need to focus.

Lauren (10:08):
So out of curiosity,  you're creating all this data. You've got perhaps maybe a little bit more apples to apples just maybe you could I'm sure split by firm size or things like that. Is that kind of, I'll call it like big data things you're also being able to help then say, in comparison with maybe another RA or with a particular size of AUM to be able to help give like a baseline to those firms? Is that an additional piece to it? 

Julie (10:37):
Yeah, we've done that with our large scale survey and people do find it helpful. So absolutely. If you look across firms I think there are insights to be gleaned even within them. We work with often larger firms. I mean, we work with smaller ones and individuals as well but for the leadership teams of the larger firms, what they're able to see is not only what that trending data is and what do our clients need and how can we support them more effectively but they're also able to see from one advisor to the next. Maybe someone needs some skills development or maybe they would benefit from some support. So I think that kind of feedback for them is really invaluable as well.

Lauren (11:24):
Absolutely. To be able to better support your team. Maybe it's the close of the sale that someone's fantastic at, and for someone it also might just be that client relationship side, right? And satisfaction or to overgeneralize but it sure helps to have some gleaning insights there too.

Julie (11:39):
Absolutely.

Lauren (11:40):
Oh, so fascinating too. And also that it's so focused  just for advisors.

Julie (11:48):
As soon as we launched, we had people asking us for about different cases and so at some level it's at the firm or on behalf of the advisor. Technically when you're in a service business, this makes sense. But right now we're just laser-focused on our core audience.

Lauren (12:10):
So tell us a little bit more about the launch. How was it received? What did you all do leading up to it? How have you let people know? 

Julie (12:20):
What was really interesting for me personally in all of this is we weren't just launching a product, we were transforming how we did business and in some sense how we'd be perceived. And that was a big question mark for me. I'd built a lot of relationships being known as the person who does this research or the firm that does these surveys. And then we were a fintech because creating the technology made sense. It was in response to a need. So we put a lot of effort, the whole team, into the marketing and PR and launch and then post-launch as well and I've been just blown away. I was at a conference this week and the number of people who are just saying, I've seen what you've been doing, it's so exciting, they're supportive. How can I help? It's such an amazing industry for that kind of thing but we've been doing a lot and I think so far it's so good.

Lauren (13:35):
Has it been a service your current clients are wanting to add on? Or have you seen new people sort of come out of the woodwork? How has it been? 

Julie (13:44):
It’s about both actually. We started with our existing clients because we wanted to make sure they had the best solutions and for some of them, for many of our larger clients, we were doing an annual survey or a survey every other year. So the primary focus for them was, let's get you onto the engine so you're capturing that on an ongoing basis. So whether that is 25% of your clients a quarter or literally one-to-one on the anniversary date of a client relationship that it's triggering that, we wanted to make sure that kind of data was baked into their process and didn't become a big project they had to do. And then, as we were doing that, they were looking at some of these other features and how we're going to implement those across the firm. So yeah, the existing clients. But then because we've been doing so much promotion, obviously we've had some great feedback and we've got new clients joining as well.

Lauren (14:46):
That's fabulous. I feel like when it came out, I kept seeing oh, there's this media feature here and this is going on.

Julie (14:53):
I know. I'm sure.

Lauren (14:54):
People have been really curious to be able to hear more about it, this new way of approaching things. So now is it sort of you come in and this is what's provided, or is it sort of tiered—like tier one, tier two, tier three where if they want kind of a higher level or a certain number of surveys, if you will? How does that shake out?

Julie (15:12):
So right now, we've split the pricing initially into two tiers. One is for those clients who right now just want to focus on measuring the experience and optimizing service plans. So like I said, the Net Promoter, satisfaction, interest, all those things; there are some clients who that's all they're ready for now or they want that initial benchmark and they want to roll everything out. So we carved out a tier to say we can just do that. You don't have to buy the whole thing but then you can upgrade to everything. And when you get all of that, you get all of the features, as many surveys, as many clients, all of it that's not limited in any way. And we've been working very closely with our initial clients. I will say we have a guided upsell, if you will, a guided approach for those who want consultation. But the reality is for our initial clients, we're just working with them hand in hand. Right now, we're not going anywhere. They're probably sick of us calling them and making sure everything's going well; they're taken care of.

Lauren (16:19):
Oh, yeah.

Julie (16:20):
I want them to be set up so they're using the data well, they understand it, the advisors know how to use it, right? That's all we care about right now.

Lauren (16:31):
Well, it's critical, right? You get to a certain size and that data is telling you what's happening, right? And so you have an idea of where to shift or it's adding into the pool of how you're driving the firm or just key decision-making around culture and what's working and not. It’s so fabulous. I really appreciate you sharing more to be able to unpack this tool. We can see the power in it. And I can also especially see the power for this particular market because it's one with a long sales cycle, right? And then usually once you are closing a a client, you usually are with them for a long time, oftentimes for a lifetime, right? So that experience is gonna absolutely change based off of so many factors. So this is a nice pulse of that kind of evolution of time too. 

Julie (17:23):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Lauren (17:24):
Is there anything else you want to share that I haven't asked or that folks have asked as you've been rolling things out?

Julie (17:31):
You know, I think a lot of the conversations we've had have been around this idea that we're talking a lot about feelings and needs, you know, the softer side of of relationships. And it feels almost odd to be talking about technology in the same breath, and yet we talk to advisors who are incredibly good at making connections with people. I mean, that's why they got into this business. And I'm not trying to teach them anything about that. All we've been trying to do is say, can we make it more efficient for you so you can get to that point faster?  And that's where this marriage of technology and just the human side of advice I think is really starting to come together. And it's certainly not just us. There's a lot of really interesting technology out there right now, particularly in the advice engagement category, that's all about bringing tech and people together in a different way.  So I'm kind of excited about that and excited about the fact that people are open to not just thinking about basic service models but really going deeper. 

Lauren (18:46):
Yeah. Absolutely. There’s so much new technology that you can't keep up with it, everything that's been rolling out. So it's good to be part of that mix. But I think more importantly is adding to the outcome, to be able to drive business forward and for decision-making and to be able to offer support along the way. Like you said, it's one thing to take something off the shelf, it's another thing to really say, okay, this is where you are this point of time with your business and this is how this tool can support with that. And grow with you frankly, you know? Opening up to a new target market or a new service offering or what have you. And so it creates a lot of opportunities, it sounds like, for that to be nimble.

Julie (19:29):
It does. Yeah. And that's what I'm excited about. We've got some of our clients who are using some of the features and saying, well, how does this differ if it's a business owner versus someone who's a professional and thinking about retirement and how would that change the questions we ask. And whatnot. So to me, the really interesting part of this is we can go deeper and deeper to get to the heart of what's important.

Lauren (19:54):
All those conditional pieces.

Julie (19:56):
Exactly.

Lauren (19:57):
Ah, fantastic. Well, thank you again for your time. Congratulations on the launch. Thank you so much. I'm looking forward to following this new platform. I'd be especially excited if there's big data or reports that are shared that come out of it but just to hear more. So I appreciate all you do for the community and again, for you taking time to share a little bit more. Thanks.

Julie (20:14):
Thanks for having me. Of course.

A true people person, Maddie helps build client trust as a marketing account assistant through her solid project management skills and passion for the financial services industry.

A Leader in the Making

Maddie graduated from Lauren’s alma mater, Drake University, where she helped manage the third largest track and field event in the U.S.—the Drake Relays. Eventually moving on to the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines, she worked on social media campaigns, copywriting, and graphic design projects on top of streamlining communications with over 400 bank employees. Maddie is excited to be helping integrate Out & About into clients’ teams and work alongside our clients to implement projects. 

What You Can’t Tell Just From Looking at Her

Not to jinx her, but Maddie is proud of her green thumb and has successfully kept all her plants thriving for over a year! She loves saying yes to random good times with friends, including embracing new challenges and experiences. In fact, she recently signed up to play in a racquetball league!

‍

We talked with Mary about:

• How sometimes the greatest success comes from making mistakes and embracing the pivots 
• Giving yourself permission to be perfectly imperfect, normalizing challenges, and being okay with not being okay 
• How staying true to your authentic self may mean turning your back on the wrong opportunities while leading yourself to the right ones 
• How learning about those around you, being curious, and asking questions can help reframe how you’re going to show up and do the work

About Mary Grothe:
Mary Grothe lived every day aiming for perfection and quickly earned a reputation as a sales powerhouse. She scaled through being a number one sales representative and two-time business founder and CEO and is now an investor and chief revenue officer (CRO) at Payroll Network, Inc. (PIN), but her path has been anything but easy. Along her journey, she learned that finding true success required embracing vulnerability, normalizing challenges and mistakes, and allowing her authentic self to shine through. It wasn’t until she found her faith and gave herself permission to not have it all together every day that her entire world changed. Today, she shares her story to help others navigate their own journeys. Mary’s highly anticipated new book, “Destination; Remarkable.: Surviving the Dark Side of Success,” will hit shelves on September 19, 2023.

Featured Resources 

• Mary Grothe’s LinkedIn Profile
• Mary Grothe’s Instagram
• Mary Grothe’s Twitter
• Mary Grothe’s Website 
• Mental Health Awareness with Howard Brown and Mary Grothe 
• Pre-order now: Destination; Remarkable.: Surviving the Dark Side of Success by Mary Grothe

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:02):
Thank you for being here.

Mary (00:03):
You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.

Lauren (00:07):
As I was just saying, you are a powerhouse. Just getting ready for this call today, I learned you’ve scaled so many businesses and now you've got a big challenge in front of you coming on board. What was it? I think the number was something like triple in size in the next five years. They brought on such a dynamic leader with your background in starting companies, helping to grow companies, seeing the marketing, sales side, revenue growth, side modeling, all of that good stuff. So we'll get into a little bit of that but before we do, I'll let you do a little bit more of an introduction. You've got quite the story; the list goes on.

Mary (00:50):
Yes, I've had a pretty interesting life. So interesting that Forbes said they wanted to publish it, which I know we'll dig into today. So I won't have a super long intro here but I didn't have the best upbringing. And when I was 22 years old, I stumbled upon a professional career. I grew up in the performing arts. I thought I was going to be a professional dancer, and that was derailed. I got in a car accident when I was 18, and I entered into a really dark period of my life. So at 22, when I stumbled upon this opportunity to take an admin role with a payroll company, I didn't realize it was going to forever change my life. So I started in that role. I ended up transitioning into sales, becoming the number one rep against everyone's desire to see me succeed.

But I did it. And then I left after five years, took a VP of sales and marketing position with one of my clients, and that was a big title for a young lady but had tremendous success. We were able to quadruple the size of that company in seven months. It always sounds more impressive than it is. It was a small company but still, nonetheless, I fell in love with revenue scaling. So I started my first firm at age 28. I was a business strategist with a focus on go-to-market marketing and sales. And I helped startups and entrepreneurs build their business plan with the focus on how to have that rapid growth out of the gate. I did that for three years. Also dabbled in youth entrepreneurship education, made a lot of rookie mistakes as a first-time CEO and didn't know how to grow my own company through delegation and building a team.

I ended up becoming a starving entrepreneur. So I closed up that business, went back to the payroll company for three more years, sold millions, and ended up selling one of the top 10 largest deals in company history with my small business partner. I took that six-figure commission check, left, started my second company, and I ran that for five and a half years; we actually had some success with that. So we were a small team when we started but we were able to do about half million in our first year, tripled in size in our second year, third year did 2.2, that was COVID, and then in our fourth year, we took the company to 3.6 million, which was on the books but we were at a run rate of 5 million with 28 employees. So really in four years time, we scaled it from zero to 28 in 4 million in revenue.

That was exciting but then I entered into a really tough period in my life, got burnt out as the CEO and was starting to question what I was put on this planet for, what I wanted to do. I started this journey of figuring out what I wanted in the next chapter. And so very recently I made the leap. I resigned as CEO from my company and took a full-time position with one of our clients. The company is called House of Revenue, and we are a revenue scaling expert. So we would take what we call second-stage scale companies that are looking at growing and figuring out how to build real revenue engines where marketing, sales, customer success are all working together, and we'd go on fractionally, help them build that engine, and then help take them to market and help them grow their revenue.

Well, one of our clients was Payroll Network, and I'm from the payroll industry. So I fell in love and ended up working on contract as a chief revenue officer. AndI just knew this was my new home. So I ended up resigning and took a full-time position in the beginning of 2023 as chief revenue officer. And yes, I have said yes to a tripling in size goal. I've had the privilege of doing this with other companies, and I am so ready. I'm a few months into this job, and it is by far the greatest job I've ever had in my life, better than the one I created for myself, which is surprising because a lot of entrepreneurs and CEOs build their dream job. And I think it was that way for the first few years but it changed and I wasn't happy anymore. So now I found it, and I'm having the time of my life.

Lauren (04:47):
Oh my goodness. So quite the story. It’s  incredible to see the growth in what you've been able to do for so many companies. And also just to be able to have your pulse on the entrepreneurship side of things, right? I love that you started as an admin at a payroll company. So you've seen it from so many levels and now are seeing it from this perspective and that lens, I think adds such value. So, okay, we could get into all of that; I want to get into flavors of that too. But I want to swing back to the book. So why the book? I know you talked about having  this relationship with Forbes and you're going through that process but what kind of even sparked this idea? Was it them that approached you? I'd love to hear more about that.

Mary (05:36):
They did approach me. They approached me in May of last year and funny story. So in 2020 when COVID hit and everybody was forced to be at home, I had to reinvent some of the things we were doing inside of our business but I kind of got bored. I mean, I was working a hundred hours a week as a startup and scale up CEO. COVID changed that, which I'm grateful for, and I found some extra time on my hands. So in 2020, I actually partnered up with a very famous sales author who I'm not going to name here, and I wanted to write a book. So I started a manuscript working with him as my coach. And he is one of the best-selling authors in the sales category, and he's just so tremendous. But he wanted to take my story in a really interesting direction where I was coming across as this badass in sales.

I was kind of cutthroat; I used to be that way, and it's actually part of my story that I really had to heal from but I don't want to be that person. And I would never want to write a book about being a number one sales rep and modeling it in a way that I want other people to follow in my footsteps. I actually wasn't the nicest person in my 20s. I wasn't kind and caring the way I am now. I was very broken on the inside and finding ways to heal those wounds and holes through success and recognition and money, which is not healthy, FYI. And so this book, by the time he took it to his publisher and it was written, they read it, and then I had some personal things in there for my story that they wanted all stripped out.

They're like, we don't want to know anything about her upbringing. We don't want to know about this transition after the fact of her new perspective. We really just want to publish how to become a number one sales rep. I didn't feel right about it. And so I backed out of the deal and I said that's not the story I'm feeling led to tell. I think there's a lot of sales books out there on how to be a top rep. I need to write a different story about how that's not the answer in life. There's so much more. And that we were created for so much more rather than just titles and money and recognition and being number one. So I tabled it; it just sat collecting dust, for lack of a better term. And when Forbes reached out and they're like, hey, we've come across your profile.

We've been researching some of the stuff you've done, and we very much would like to take you down the process to vet your work and put you in front of the council, see if we can get approval to publish you. And I said, well, I actually have a manuscript. And they thought, oh, okay. Well that could speed up the process. Let's read it. So I sent it over. I had done a pretty extensive interview with them. And then they looked at the manuscript and they came back and they said, these two don't match up. We met you and we heard your story but then we read this book and it just didn't feel authentic. It felt like a how-to book. It felt like such a small portion. And I said I couldn't agree with you more.

They said, we want to publish your story, not how to be a number one rep. And that's when my heart exploded. And I thought, well, okay, a few things we need to make sure we're talking clearly here. I'm a very outspoken woman of faith, and I need to make sure my faith is spoken in truth and gets to be published because there is no book or story outside of who I am as a Christian woman. They're like, not a problem. And I said, the other thing is you're a business brand, so I'm just making sure we're all on the same page. Yes, I have scaled through being a number one rep and being a two-time founder and CEO and I'm also now an investor, now chief revenue officer. And I'm like yes, there are notes and undertones, themes of business but this really is my life story.

And they said, not a problem. This is the story we want to tell, because we need people to understand that it isn't just those front-facing items of being a top rep or being a CEO or scaling a company, that there's so much more behind that. And so, we entered into a contract for not one but two books. But the first one is my life story, everything we just talked about. The second one will come out down the road. It is more of a tactical revenue scaling playbook but I need some more time to write that.

Lauren (09:47):
Okay. So the first book, when should we expect it to come out then? 

Mary (09:50):
It's available September 19. And the pre-order link is available now. It's called “Destination; Remarkable.: Surviving the Dark Side of Success.”

Lauren (10:03):
We'll make sure to include a link too to all of that. So, okay. Just to circle back, so you basically scripted the first piece of it, your water under the bridge, which is so authentic, right? That's hard, that's hard. You listen to your authentic self but that's hard to do when you've already made that much progress and invested that much time. So, I mean, even just listening to some of your podcasts leading up to this, what you're putting out there is vulnerable. It's bold. It's probably scary. Where have you found the courage or what has led you to be able to put this out there? Is the intent to help others, kind of lift up others? One of the quotes I think you have on your website is just the idea of being significant. I'd love to hear more about what that means to you and how you bring that into the workplace, how you're bringing that into your book. 

Mary (10:54):
I was so scared for so many years of my career to ever admit that I made a mistake. I was a perfectionist, and I was just deathly scared that anyone would ever think I was anything less than perfect. My childhood and upbringing, I had an alcoholic mother, and the verbal and physical abuse was so difficult for me to grow up under and understand how to be as a human. I always felt I was never good enough and that everything was wrong. And so a lot of that carried into my desire to succeed because I was constantly just trying to prove to myself that I could be successful, that I could win. And I hid every vulnerability. I made sure nobody ever saw one ounce of weakness from me. I became a very strong, independent woman with a hardened heart. And at no cost would I ever let anybody know what was truly going on, because I never wanted to create doubt that I couldn't accomplish something or do something.

So that's a very sad way to get through life. But when I entered into my early 30s,  I became a Christian. When I was 29 years old I started a process of healing and started a whole new way of living, what they call a rebirth. And the first thing I had to do was heal all of those holes and wounds in my heart. And when I realized through that healing how broken I was, there were days I just couldn't believe I had lived my life the way I had lived it. And what I thought was, there are other people out there who are like me. And nobody ever showed me the way, nobody ever mentored me. Nobody ever showed me a different way of living. I had mentors, I had people who believed in me and developed me professionally, and they were amazing.

But I never had that person who just modeled for me the fact that it's okay to not be okay. And that it's okay to not have it together. Because the DNA, what was ingrained in me growing up, was that when I wasn't okay or when I did something wrong or something that wasn't perfect, there was a very massive negative repercussion. And so I built this fabric of my life that I could never make a mistake because I just did not want to deal with the wrath of the consequence of what it was to not be perfect. And so there was so much healing and acknowledging that I'm actually perfectly made as an imperfect woman and that's ok. And so all of a sudden, when I gave myself permission to not have to have it all together every single day, this whole new world opened up for me.

And I just felt like I grew so much stronger and I started to acknowledge I'm growing in comfort and telling my story. I have this new confidence and courage that I can share what has transpired, and that it might help open up that door or that conversation for the next person to look in the mirror and say, maybe it's okay if I'm also not 100 percent. And so what's interesting is when I started to do that, it really took some people by surprise in my network, because I had always been up to that point, this perfect polished, well spoken ninja when it came to anything. I have been on so many stages, podcast interviews, you name it, with flawless execution. So when they saw a different side of me, it was surprising for a lot of people. But then the best thing happened. I had message upon message upon message upon message of how encouraging and meaningful it was to prove that point. There is a podcast interview I did on a really well-known podcast in the revenue sales marketing space. And the guy, every May he reposts this interview. So it's a few years old, and he reposts this interview because it's mental health awareness month. And on this episode, I do not know why, I just felt so led and so compelled to just share.

Mary (15:00):
And when this episode circulates, the messages pouring into my LinkedIn DMs are the most heartwarming, affirming messages from men and women. It's very personal about becoming a mother and all that and the mental health challenges I had and being a working professional and holy smokes, those messages give me every ounce of courage, confidence, and fuel in the tank to continue to go down this path, even when it may be a little bit inconvenient for me as a professional. But Lauren, really the biggest thing is I've stopped caring what other people think because I'm right with the Lord, and I'm right in my heart, and I know the plans God has for me. And creating me wasn't a waste, and I'm not a mistake. And I am good enough, and I am perfect in his image. And he created me to go through the life that I did. And now I have the story to tell. And I believe that story is what is helping other people navigate their own journeys. And so I will forever stand proud on this podium and share this message as long as he has me on the podium.

Lauren (16:12):
So amazing. So I also feel like not only is it coming from a place of vulnerability but it's normalizing. And normalizing I think is just life, right? Different challenges people go through, all different variants, different shades of gray, if you will. And I think you're also bringing it in a way where you're putting yourself out there but as you alluded to earlier, you've people who encourage you, like business coaches and professional coaches, but you are not always talking about that, those under pieces, you know? And I feel like some of that shows up in weird ways you don't even realize. And so if you're getting to that core, and if you're at least putting yourself out there, it's helping to, I think, not just bring up the next generation but other people who are around you. So I'm excited for this book. And that you're willing to share. Because that's a scary thing to do,  especially in those worlds where it's so digital and it can catch fire in a different kind of way.

Mary (17:15):
Yes. And I've been so private about it, even in my marriage and with my new family and spoiler alert, I don't have a relationship with my birth family anymore but I got married into the most amazing, amazing family that ever existed. And my mother-in-law is like my mom now, and she has been for the last 10 years, and I love her so much, and she's so good to me. And I got through the final stages of proofreading and I have read this book cover to cover so many times, and they asked me to proofread one last time, and I said, I can't, I've read it so many times and I've lived it. So there's gonna be typos in there and I won't see them.

Lauren (17:51):
I hear you.

Mary (17:52):
Oh my gosh. I asked her if she would read it cover to cover, and I've been so private about the things in my life. And I told her, and I warned her, there was a disclaimer, take your time with this. But she said she couldn't put it down and she read it straight through pretty much. And then afterward, she just needed to sit in silence and digest and she couldn't even come up with the words of what to say to me afterward. And she finally got the words together and called me and she just could not believe what I have endured and what I have been through. And she cannot believe the output and the product of the woman I am today based on what I came from. And she was just so kind and loving in the words she shared and how grateful that she is that I'm in her family and I married her son.

And we created this amazing beautiful boy, my son. And we include her in everything we do. And that she's such an important part of my life. Usually mother-in-laws and daughter-in-laws just don't have that type of a bond and relationship. But she was definitely taken aback. And it was also very encouraging for her to tell me how moved she was, the fact she couldn't put it down. And she says, it's just so crazy. I've known you for the last 10 years, I've known you for at least almost 25% of this story. And there's so much I didn't know in the battles you were fighting and what you were dealing with. And anyway, I really do hope people understand in this book that it was very difficult to put pen to paper things my husband doesn't even know. Obviously my mother-in-law didn't even know. But I do feel very compelled that this is going to help people.

Lauren (19:30):

Yeah. I think we also show up every day, right? We get to work or go through whatever it is we're going through but we're not aware of everything that's happening, right? With others. And so I think it's also that reminder to be kind.

Be grateful, throw people a bone to help lift up each other, that kind of we concept. So many good things. So I know we're close at our time here but I feel like we can keep going and I would love to hear more. I know we'll be able to keep going as the book comes out. And like I said, we'll include links. Anything you want to share as you look ahead? You've had this journey, the book's getting ready to roll out, there's going to be another one that's going to be off the heels of that too, right? You're starting this new role. Anything kind of takeaways you think for folks, if they're either stepping into a new role or if they're kind of in that entrepreneur hat, if they're kind of struggling with things. You've seen it from so many angles. How do you approach each day or how do you feel like you can, how do I better that next step? I'd love just to hear, because you've got it from so many lenses. I’d love to hear how you approach your lens for growth, which is what you're doing, right? 

Mary (20:51):
Yes. It's interesting to go from being an individual sales producer to a leader to a CEO to an individual sales producer to a CEO and now in a leadership position again. And there are so many different lenses. And when you wear those distinct hats, the way you show up is very different in those roles. And so now that I'm coming off the heels of being a CEO and entrepreneur and stepping back into a leadership position as a chief revenue officer, the way I approached this was just getting the lay of the land and understanding the way everything worked. I think because I'm so fast paced and high urgency, and I'm a big problem solver, usually I could be described as a bull in a china shop. I just get it and go for it.

And I'm also a little bit of a maverick, and I haven't always been the easiest to get along with because I'm so fast paced and high urgency. So one of the first things I had to do, because I care so much about Payroll Network, which has recently been rebranded as PNI●HCM, and I'm so excited for this journey and I'm looking forward to it. This isn't going to be a quick stop for me. I want to be here. I want to be here for a big, big chapter of my life. And I had a decision to make when I first embarked on that. I know what I'm capable of. And I've had to be this lone wolf maverick for the last five and a half years as a CEO. And everything like the buck stopped with me. 

I made the decisions. I was five executives in one and did execution in client work. They call it the chief everything officer. I didn't have a lot of people I could rely on. I also didn't have people I really had in my circle I could evaluate decisions with because I was the tip of the spear. And walking into this scenario with an unbelievable team of accomplished, loving, caring, knowledgeable, brilliant executives, I had to reframe how I was going to show up and do work. Because that's a very different environment going from five executives in one to actually having five executives, actually seven. And so it was a whole shift for me to go into. I got the lay of the land, I learned who the people were. One of my favorite courses in college was about organizational behavior theory and management and understanding the inner workings of each person and how they fit into a larger puzzle.

And then deciding how you're going to show up and how you fill in on that, how you communicate, how you align with others so you can be woven into the fabric of that team and not be the disruptor or the the person who's kind of sitting out on the sidelines. And how do you truly, truly get integrated? So for me it was a lot of being curious and observing and asking questions and diving in a little bit here, and then pulling back a little bit, diving in, pulling back a little bit. There was a little bit of friction at first, how to figure people out and they needed to figure me out. But then I had a data set I could start to interpret and make decisions from on how I was going to fit into this leadership team and really be honored and valued in my role.

Because I've never had a chief revenue officer, it wasn't specific to me, but I really like what I can bring to the table or a CRO could bring to the table. And so doing that level of investigative work on the front end, I think was what was so transformative in building what the path was to go forward. And so because of that initial time, I guess an investment on the front end, now we are this one cohesive unit. We so genuinely care about each other. We know what our short campaigns are, and there's a lot of grace. There's no finger pointing. We're just able to identify like, hey, this isn't so-and-so's specialty. Maybe it's fallen on their plate in the past. Let's move that. Let's figure this out. So now we are able to take this goal of tripling in five years, and we're able to tackle it because we have alignment. That wouldn't have been possible if I just came in, like, I'm going to handle this and that, which I've been known to do in the past. So I think that's my biggest takeaway from being in transition, going into this new role. And hopefully that's helpful advice to people: winning together is a lot more fun. I've had to learn that.

Lauren (25:01):
Absolutely. No, that's so fair. And it's easier set than done too, right? And it also takes a certain volume of resources and the right players in the right seats, as you alluded to earlier. And clarification on strategy and all these kinds of things to be able to come together to do that. So it was so much easier said than done but it sounds like you're sinking into a great new home and I'm excited to see what's going to come out of all of it. And I think not just only for the organization and the growth goals and being able to shape it up but also just for your journey as you're going to be able to help share this and I think spread it to an even wider network too. 

Mary (25:39):
Thank you.

Lauren (25:40):
Thank you for your time and for sharing a little bit more, for giving us a little bit of a teaser for what's to come. And like I said, we'll link to the book and some of those resources and that podcast—I'd love to listen to that podcast you mentioned and go from there. So thank you again, Mary.

Mary (25:58):
Thank you for having me.

Lauren (25:59):
All right. We'll be in touch soon.

We talked with Andre about:

• Leveraging clients pain points to build trust and add value
• Filling in the gaps of clients' financial education to provide unique support
• The importance of a well-rounded financial team to rally around clients

About Andre K. Kwan:

On his journey through real estate and lending, Andre Kwan discovered an interest in advising athletes on how to build wealth and capitalize on financial growth opportunities. This led him to co-found Magna Carta Wealth, a financial advisory firm that educates athletes on legacy planning and maintaining financial security. 

Featured Resources 

• Andre’s LinkedIn Profile
• Magna Carta Wealth
• Andre and PrimeLending

Full Audio Transcript

Lauren (00:02):
All right, Andre, so let's do this. So for those listening, I don't even know how long we have known each other. A long time.

Andre Kwan (00:09):
Yeah. About 10 years or so from the University Club.

Lauren (00:11):
Oh, yeah, I think so. We first met at the University Club years ago, and I know you're on the board there and involved with a number of things but we're going back and forth and we're just always chatting. But you're totally in financial services where we are too. And so I'm excited to hear specifically today about one of the initiatives you're involved with around athletes. I'll let you go into it but before that, if you don't mind just sharing a little bit of your background and what you do on a day-to-day basis.

Andre (00:42):
Sure. My name is Andre Kwan. I'm a co-founder of Magna Carta Wealth. Before that, for the last 20 years, I've been specializing in real estate and finance as well as management. Then just through it all, seeing what was happening on the landscape. I went to Ohio State. I'm a big believer in sports and athletics and kind of the athlete's journey, and as things continue to progress, right? So you have these contracts that are starting to get upward of $500 million and that's great. But what happens to those brand new athletes who are undrafted free agents or just trying to make a roster or even other things we've branched out and seen. An example like women's sports, the disparity in pay and how do we help them as well?

Anyway, Magna Carta Wealth is a consulting firm that basically helps athletes build their financial super teams. What I mean by that, our core focus is trying to match athletes with several different categories. So financial planning, tax planning, real estate lending, and insurance are kind of our core principles of where we try to connect these athletes. And specifically because that's where we saw the biggest need. So when we first started out with Magna Carta Wealth, myself and my co-founder, Stuart Gill, he was an Olympic-level athlete who went on to become an executive for a company by the name of Exos. Exos is a national company and their claim of fame is they train the most NFL-level athletes. So think of college players or whatever else trying to make the NFL. 

They train anywhere between 100 to 150 student athletes and maybe about 70 to 80 or so get drafted into the NFL each year. So seeing that, we wanted to be able to create resources because we realized the age demographic for these kids is somewhere between 19 to 22 years old. And a majority of the issues typically happen because their lineage or their parents or their friends don't have that experience when it comes to how do you manage multi-million dollars, let alone just all the different components, whether it's an insurance claim or what's kind of famous for all these athletes now is that when we file taxes, whether it's federal, state, uh federal's easy, right? There's one or two forms you're going to fill out if you own a corporation or not, but on the state side, they can be filing up to 15, 20 returns a year. So that gets kind of out of hand fairly quickly. So that's why we kind of built this system in terms of how to help that. I want to see people, especially athletes, preserve their opportunity, right? How do you build wealth? Because that timeframe for an athlete is much, much different than for a regular professional. 

Lauren (03:28):
Okay. So to back up a bit. Talking about athletes here, did you all stumble onto this problem? Was it just from your conversations? What was from your co-founder's experience? I mean, were you seeing your friends who were having these issues? How did you go, okay, there's a real need here and we feel like we can help to solve it?

Andre (03:50):
Sure. Just because we're here in lovely San Diego, I did kind of back into it at first. So being in the real estate and lending industry, we were starting to see more and more athletes like skateboarders and X Games athletes trying to figure out how to buy homes. Their biggest issue when they're trying to use conventional financing is they don't have conventional type of income, right? They might be getting sponsorship deals from companies or skateboard companies. And it may only be, hey, we're gonna pay you for this year but usually for lending, for it to be considered stable income, they're supposed to have three years of income and have a good probability that the income is going to continue. So seeing that is like, okay, cool. We shouldn't eliminate this opportunity to help these specific kinds of clients. So what do we do about it? Part of it is aligning yourself with companies that offer unique programs as well as kind of see the vision, right? Like how do we help a skateboarder who’s on their second deal try to figure out how to buy the home they really want versus you don't qualify at all. So there's a fine line to it all.

Lauren (05:00):
Okay. So out of curiosity, because again, when you think athlete, how are you defining that? You mentioned Olympic-level skateboarders. I'm sure there are pro surfers in San Diego, right? There's NFL players. I mean, I myself am not a huge sports person, so I wonder how you guys are putting a fence around this to be able to define who you're working with? Or is this like a commonality between all athletes you're seeing?

Andre (05:29):
So our specialty and where we focused was mostly the NFL because of that Exos relationship. In addition to that, a lot of those things are kind of already built out, parameters such as there's 1,696 athletes who are in the league each year. And that number is turned over probably somewhere between 30 to 40% each year. We know the beginning contract for an NFL athlete is somewhere around the hundred thousand dollars range. So that's kind of the parameters we typically were working with. And then kind of being able to quickly match those clients with advisors who have specialties in that area. It’s a little bit tougher when it gets to, as an example, I have a really good friend who was a professional tennis player for many, many years but those earnings can go up and down. You see that versus NBA players, who are one of the most unique and one of the best. But the challenge was the quantity, right? There's only typically 12 to 15 players on a team, and the great thing about them, all their contracts are guaranteed, whereas in the NFL, not every contract is guaranteed; a pretty large percentage are unguaranteed or non-guaranteed, if you will.

Lauren (06:47):
And how are you finding these athletes? Because it's not an easy group I'm sure to tap into. Is it like you sort of able to get into work with one, do a great job, and go through word of mouth? Or how are you reaching these audiences?

Andre (07:02):
Yeah, great question. Word of mouth is obviously the easiest component. And then as you've worked with an athlete or the coach, they'll be like, hey, this is how I got it done so then they'll do it that way. And then on top of that too, my co-founder lives in LA and I forgot who said it, but you know every athlete wants to be an entertainer and every entertainer wants to be an athlete. So there's a cross-section in there in terms of what we were able to come up with. And on top of that, we try to make it very purposeful, right? We want to have our marketing speak directly to what those athletes are going through. Like what we just mentioned. How in the world if you've never filed a tax return or your parents have never filed 15 tax returns, are you going to be able to do that?

Having the steps to walk them through was kind of a big belief for us, right? Like understanding their challenges, listening to them. But more than anything, I think, Lauren, to answer your question, it's building trust, right? Most of these athletes don't have a support system that has come from that kind of financial literacy or background or lineage. So trying to build that trust is really where it all starts, right? We're happy to give away as many strategies or different experiences or results that we've come up with. And the thing is, in our field, in the majority of the fields I listed, you have to be licensed to be able to do it. So you could want to write your own mortgage, you could want to do your own financial plan, and you could try to do all those things but usually you have to work with licensed professionals. So a little bit of all those components.

Lauren (08:35):
To be able to get that advice as well. So then, with that being said, when you're working with athletes, is it usually when they're in the heat of their career or is it post-career? Where do you typically kind of support them in that journey?

Andre (08:51):
So typically we're trying to work on the front end as much as possible, right? What we've found is that the landscape continues to change. For example, one of the big rulings that has changed the entire sports world was the ruling for NIL, which is name, image, and likeness. Basically a couple years back, the NCAA started to allow these athletes to kind of generate compensation based on their name, image, and likeness, which was never, ever an opportunity before. As an example, you have these athletes who are signing up to schools who have never played a down at all making millions of dollars before they ever step on the field. So imagine when you were 17 or 18 years old, if you came up with a $500,000 contract with a car company to advertise their car.

What would you do? How would you spend that money? I'm sure I would've made a lot of mistakes had I got a $500,000 check when I was 17 or 18. And on top of that too, it's not really $500,000 after you take out all the taxes and everything else. I could have spent $500,000 and been in the hole. So just trying to learn these little things and then share, that's the best way we're able to approach this kind of challenge and solution.

Lauren (10:10):
Yeah. So interesting. And then to help them prepare for that, do you guys do educational workshops or is it one-on-one sessions, or how are you helping to kind of coach these athletes as they're getting ready for a post-athletic career?

Andre (10:26):
So we have done some in-person meetings. Typically when these athletes are training, we are trying to catch them as part of the training session. Obviously they're working on their physical component; as an NFL athlete you're working on how fast you can run, how much you can, bench press or squat or jump or whatever else. But as they were eating, we'd cater lunch and be like, hey, these are things to consider when you went to school at USC and all of a sudden you got drafted by Cleveland. Here's what you need to know going into that kind of opportunity as well as a new city and how do you kind of build from there.

Lauren (11:05):
And then you're able to support them, I'm sure. But I'm assuming you also have a pool of partners who specialize in working with athletes. Is that true? Or how do you make sure you're able to be that support system for them when they go, well, I need this and I've got someone you can refer them out to the appropriate person that gets them and where they're at.

Andre (11:25):
Yeah, that's correct. So usually what we think is Magna Carta is kind of like the quarterback, if you will, for the situation and we're trying to plug and play because a lot of these athletes are working with an agent, they might already have a financial advisor. They might already have one or two of the professions in there. We're trying to take an assessment to figure out who they have and what is missing, and then go about trying to connect them. Because some of the licensing is state-specific as an example, right? You might work with a real estate agent here in San Diego, unfortunately we don't have the Chargers here anymore, but let's just say you know somebody went to Boise State, they got drafted by the LA Chargers, and they have nobody they know in LA so how do we work with geographic-specific professionals to help them out?

Lauren (12:12):
 Yep. That makes sense. That are specific to their needs and where they're at. Okay. Out of curiosity, are there any athletes you feel are model examples for how to manage where they're at and their financial journey?

Andre (12:27):
What a great question. I think two that really just pop off our list, and because they're kind of different, but Rob Gronkowski as well as Marshawn Lynch. The reason why those two kind of jump off is because they were able to make their living strictly off endorsement deals, and they saved every penny of their NFL contracts. So because of that saving, and hopefully if they work with the right team, they're able to invest and have that money compounding year over year. And those guys played a significant amount of time. If they're doing the right moves and they're conservative, living off interest or some other things, they're set for life and more importantly, their families and legacies are set for life after that. 

Lauren (13:09):
Okay. Very good. Thank you for sharing this too. Well this is great. Anything else you want to add that you think would be helpful to share?

Andre (13:18):
Yeah, I think regardless if you're an athlete or not, we always are talking about how do you build the right team around you, right? Even when we're working with regular employees or founders of companies or self-employed people, they might have a great CPA but they don't have any financial plan. They might have a family member who’s a financial planner but they're doing their taxes wrong. They're going out and maybe buying a piece of real estate that is way over their head or they're just on a spending spree. So anyway, I say all that to say I believe in building a financial team that's well-rounded and communicating with each other because that's the biggest component, right? You could have five different professionals with five different kinds of plans and programs, and if they don't jive, something's got to give.

Going through an audit every single year, nobody likes the word audit or anything else, but it really helps if you're trying to get the best credit, the best loan programs, the best insurance rates—really having a sense of what's the income, what's the expenses, and organizing your financials, meaning what's in the bank, and on top of that too, the tax returns and everything else. I'll share a funny, funny story. Just a 10-second story. We're helping a coach who was buying a multimillion dollar home and his deposit, I want to say was $250,000. And typically when we do regular financing programs, you have to have the last two years’ tax returns filed and ready to go. Why this was crazy was because when he applied, he got his offer accepted, everybody's happy, then hey, let's go get your financials, let's get this all ready. He didn't file his last two years’ tax returns.

Lauren (15:05):
Oh my gosh.

Andre (15:07):
That deposit of $200,000-plus was on the line. So you never want to be in that situation. That's why it's super important to be able to have everything organized and have your team in kind of a flow status or flow state. For most people, their real estate and their loan is typically 99% of the time their largest financial asset as well as liability. So we just want to make sure you do those things right. You know, you only typically have one or two chances at this.

Lauren (15:38):
Yeah. That's so fair. That's right. Very good. Well, this is so helpful. I appreciate your insights. It's really fun to hear more about this venture you're involved with too. And then also just the athlete side of it too because everyone isn't working with that audience on a day-to-day. I know there's a number of companies that are investing in this audience. We work with a lot of clients where they've got a target market but it's not always as refined. And so to be able to hear more of who you're helping, how you're specifically helping them, how you're reaching them, and what those problems are, I think is really valuable. Again, especially since it's an audience that you're not going to run into every day. So it's fun to hear more about that for sure. Thank you again.

Andre (16:20):
Of course. This was fun, Lauren. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having us on and definitely you guys are doing great things for your company and the community as well too. So whatever we can do to support, please let us know. But thank you so much. This was enjoyable.

Lauren (16:32):
Thanks. We appreciate it.

Andre (16:34):
Okay. Thank you so much.

We talked with Preston about:

• The importance of mentorship and accepting we all need help
• Acknowledging each other's personhood and emotions about money
• Letting life lead your money and not the other way around

About Dr. Preston Cherry:

Injecting transformative energy into every action he can, Dr. Preston Cherry, founder of Concurrent Financial Planning, is a prolific speaker and assistant professor of finance at the University of Wisconsin. He helps leaders and advisors start building from the human side of relationships to better understand how money integrates into comprehensive planning. His Life Money Balance approach prioritizes financial wellness to create a transformative experience. 

Featured Resources 

• Dr. Preston Cherry’s LinkedIn Profile
• Dr. Preston Cherry’s Instagram
• Dr. Preston Cherry’s Twitter
• Dr. Preston Cherry’s Website
• Concurrent Financial Planning Website

Full Audio Transcript

Dr. Preston D. Cherry
Yep. All right.

Lauren Hong
All right. Let's do this. So good to see you, Dr. Cherry. Thank you for your time today.

Dr. Cherry 
Yes. Thank you, Lauren.

Lauren Hong
All right. Well, I'm excited to hear from you. I know we were just chatting before about all the busyness of life, and I’d kind of love to start there before we dive into the bio and all of that. We will include links to your bio below and any things we talk about here. I know you're involved in so many different initiatives, podcasts, and all kinds of things. So with the craziness of life, to get back to that point, how do you find the time? Because you're teaching, you're leading your own firm, you're giving back, and so much more. So how do you make it all happen and just do it like it's no big deal.

Dr. Cherry 
<laugh>, <laugh> Well first of all, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. I wouldn't advise doing so many things but that said, they're interlinked because they're all focused on financial wellness, well-being, life well-being, just advancing the human condition. Lauren, that's the common thread. And when through each one of these platforms, whether it be talking to advisors directly, students or clients, or just in general to corporate America, whatever stage, if I'm on stage then people are receiving a message and I want that message to be transformative. That's what it's all about, Lauren, so that's the common thread. I'm hoping that all the threads I'm doing can receive this energy and I can keep going. However, that said, <laugh>, that said sometimes it's not advisable.

Lauren Hong
No, it's fair. I know when you're passionate about something, it's easy to dive into it. And I think you've touched so many folks and their lives with your work, especially the next generation too. And I'd love just to hear why the next gen and when you were growing up, did you have similar mentors or leaders who kind of helped you lift you up to your career and where you are today?

Dr. Cherry 
Right. So mentorship is very important to me. I just made a post earlier, I think it was about three or four weeks ago. I said, rarely is someone self-made. And I know a lot of people like saying, hey, you know, I'm self-made. I worked hard, da da, da, da. And I'm like, somewhere along the line, an individual or a team of individuals helped you in some way—they invested in you, they supported you, they championed you in some sort of way. So somebody did that for me, Lauren, my mentor at Prairie View. As a matter of fact, I had two of them there. My parents. I kicked off the first episode of my podcast with my parents. They took two episodes.

I mean, you're talking about 45 years of marriage and having two adult children but they invested in us. So all that to say I've had several mentors and still have some to this day. They took the time to, to, to say, okay, we believe in you. And my thing is, I tell folks all the time, don't make fools out of the folks who bring you here. And life is not linear. So I've had some rough spots in my life for sure. That said, I kept going, not only just for my inner self but I didn't want to make fools out of the folks who got me here. So I want to pass that along. I am passionate about mentoring others, whether it be career changers, people in school, whatever it may be. I just want to believe in them as somebody believed in me.

Lauren Hong
I love that. So I love the piece too, that you talk about having to be able to give your time, right? And to be present, to be able to give back. For someone who is thinking about or wanting to be a mentor to help bring up that next gen, do you have any recommendations about how to foster that kind of relationship or ways you found to be really meaningful so that individual can get the most out of it? And you can get the most out of it too?

Dr. Cherry 
Yes. It’s to really be present and just to take a listen, be connective, be people. How do you do that? I mean, that's just very cliche. You can be connected by being vulnerable, sharing your story when it's time. We've all been in places where you hear a story, somebody tells a story, and it's like, what, that's me too. And then it's an opportunity, it's an environment, it's encouragement to say, okay, I want to tell my story too. Can I connect with you and can I trust you? And sometimes when you have somebody you connect with through vulnerability and courage, that encourages someone else to be vulnerable and courageous as well and take that first step of engagement. So that's really how you gain someone's trust and say, okay, let's swap stories here. Let me share mine. And then also, I had this saying, when you open up the heart, you open up the mind. And when you open up the heart, people are willing, more willing, to receive education, guidance, instruction. All of that. So that's how you lead with compassion.

Lauren Hong 
That's so fair. And then are the folks who you're mentoring and working with, are they mostly in the financial services or financial planning space? Who is in that circle? How have they found you or you found them?

Dr. Cherry
So I'm reached out to all the time. Obviously I'm in front of students on campus. And for professionals, I've done advisor coaching before and still do when people want to reach out. I have office hours. Matter of fact, I'm about to start posting those in a little while because I get so many emails and people in my DMs and everything, and they're saying, you know, Dr. Cherry, I need some time with you career wise, practice management for senior advisors, all of these things. So then when I'm on stage, I'm talking to people and they want to get five minutes or 10 minutes or schedule a meeting. So it can be students, advisors doing their practice, career changers. I mean, it could be a lot of things.

Lauren Hong
And then are there any kind of themes or trends you're hearing, conversations with, or issues you feel like you're addressing quite frequently? I'd love just to hear if there's anything since you've got the pulse, some questions that are happening within this industry. You know, if there's any kind of commonalities to bring up that next gen or help to shape the current leadership today.

Dr. Cherry 
Well, that's a good question. The big thing now is being more human. Being more people centered, taking account of emotions and people's what I call personhood, which is their values, experiences, attitudes, and belief systems. All with their emotions about money. Yep. Relationship with money. So being more human/people centered, whether you want to call it financial psychology, money psychology, mindset. There's a whole bunch of approaches you take for it. But when you talk about financial psychology in particular, you are talking about considering those additives, or what I explain, which is how do people feel? Because the how, with our relationship to money both past and present, is going to help unlock information we have inside of us that's going to influence the numbers side.

Because all of that information goes into the numbers. I posted earlier it was like, well, what does all that have to do with the money? People were like, when are you going to get to the money? Oh. I said, well, all of that; it has to do with everything, right? So that's the big thing I see now. But that said, it's like a Puff Daddy remix, right? <laugh> There's nothing new. There's always an original song. And yeah, some folks have been doing this a long time—partnering and elevating and empowering people to be more human. It's been done for a long time now. It's just all the rage.

Lauren Hong 
Yeah, I hear you. So there's a transaction of the business and the deliverables, if you will, or what have you, just the hard numbers, the science behind it, etc. But the human side can't be ignored. And that's obviously both if you're on the advisor side, but then of course more on the practice management side of training, growing employees, process management, etc. So I know you've got more of, we'll call it a holistic approach to finance. And I'd love to hear your philosophy or thinking around that, or what you feel makes your approach different? Because I know that word was kind of thrown out a lot. Holistic and wellness and all those kinds of things. What do you feel is your bend on it?

Dr. Cherry
Well, good, great question, Lauren. So first of all, planning is a process. And I guess a synonym to that would be journey—your walk, your pathway, however you want to say it. I want people to experience, or at least aspire. One of my favorite words is aspire. What do you aspire to? What's your aspiration? Let's discover that for a while. What does that look like to you? What are the things you don't want to do anymore so you can get to the things you do want to do? So let's be bold.

Lauren Hong 
Yeah.

Dr. Cherry
And also too, let's retire some things that are not working well, right? So not everything is trial all the time. When you talk about money, money could be happy or joyful I should say. Because you know, happiness is on a spectrum. But it could be joyful, it could be triumphant.

Lauren Hong 
Yeah.

Dr. Cherry 
So to answer your question succinctly, planning, like life, is a process. It is continual. You have life stages, life events. My mom and dad say all the time, you gotta roll and adapt, you know? You gotta roll and adapt. So when you say comprehensive,  it means across life stages, it means handling the ebbs and flows of life. And also how the numbers integrate, Lauren. So one decision's going to affect another. So you have risk management, all your insurances, your employee benefits, your stocks, your restricted stock units, your retirement, your cash management, tax, investments, estate. Okay. So you're going to an integration of those areas along with the other things I mentioned.

Lauren Hong 
Interesting. So I’m going to shift gears a little bit here. I know you've got what you call the Life Money Balance approach, right? And you've been involved in your leadership with the Center of Financial Wellness and at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay. I'd love just to hear a little bit more about how you came up with that Life Money Balance piece of it? And I'm sure that also impacts some of your leadership involvement with these different places as well.

Dr. Cherry
Yes. So thank you for asking this. Life Money Balance is kind of like a child of mine, really. <laugh> It  started through a transformational process. This is what I'd like to share for others; I want them to experience their own transformational journey. I've shared this a few times, so I'll be short with it. You know, life is grand most of the time. I was inputted with a lot of self-worth, self-confidence, self-value, all these things like access to education, and so on and so forth. But there was a period in life when it was not going very well. And so, it was a long season, as my mother puts it, and I had to figure out what I didn't want to do anymore so I could figure out what I wanted to do.

And that was aspiration. So it was a process, it was a process admitting where I am, acknowledging how I feel about it, and taking some action. I call out the awe moment. So it's more than taglines. All of these—the Life Money Balance, the transformation, the awe moment, the process, let your life lead your money not your money lead your life. That is Life Money Balance. So your money is working concurrently—the name of the firm—to create your life's design. All of that came from an internal feeling and transformation. I wanted to put it down on paper and put it into the firm. And I'm like, wow, if this feels this way, then by golly, I want to pass that on to some other folks so they can experience their own version.

Lauren Hong
Yeah. That's so fair. I feel like in life there's so many distractions, right? And what the world's telling us we should be, or other people or this or that in your own head. And so being able to sort of put that on paper so you can say, okay, this is my story arc, or this is where we're going. And then like you said, let that actually drive the money, the money kind of follows after it. Because like we were talking about when we started too, right? Passion. If you're passionate, it will just sort of come out, kind of oozes out, right? And then other things attract, like positivity attracts positivity often, and like things attract like things. So it's a good thing.

Dr. Cherry 
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lauren Hong
So one more question for you here. Because you've got a really unique vantage point, being at a firm with an education hat, speaking, podcast, all these sorts of things, are there any trends you are seeing or shifts in this industry? I know you talked earlier about the human side of it, right? And being able to talk through it. Do you see any other more service-based trends or practice management trends or even education trends, things that are happening with courses, new coursework that's happening? I'd love to hear about that.

Dr. Cherry  
Yes. I mean, so our profession, our industry, is capturing a lot of things, right? You can do financial services, right? But financial planning in and of itself, like financial coaching and even financial therapy, all of those aspects that you can use within the process as an advisor, giving advice, those are professions, particularly financial planning. Because financial planning is a profession that follows a process and so on and so forth. So you can break that down to personal finances too. And when you break it down to personal finances, you bring in elements like financial coaching and financial education and financial wellness. And when you bring all that in, then yes, our profession, how we help people attain financial wellness so they can have a better well-being, is changing. You're seeing interactive platforms like on social media, IG, Twitter, TikTok, all this stuff. Folks are utilizing those platforms to invite people and at scale to receive information.

It's incredible actually. And you're seeing financial planners as well with kind of like the old school or even newer school process. They're adapting their platforms to become more inviting and  the like, so the way we are connecting with the audience and inviting people in service models, all of that is changing rapidly, very rapidly.

Lauren Hong
Yeah. So much more accessible.

Dr. Cherry 
Mm-hmm.

Lauren Hong
Yeah. Very good. Well, this is so insightful. I appreciate you taking some time during your day and just sharing some insights about your philosophy and process and those you work with. And also thank you for your time to give back and uplift the next generation that’s excited about getting into this space and for them to hear your experience, but then also to serve those who are currently in this space and to hear from your vantage point as well. So any final thoughts?

Dr. Cherry 
Well, first of all, thank you for having me. The torch needs to continue to be passed. Younger folks have a whole bunch of energy to do their thing. And then people forget about Gen X, by the way. And I'm a Gen X myself. I'm like, why are you just skipping over folks? So my last piece of advice, Lauren, is for anyone listening to begin your journey. Even if you're an advisor and you want to do something different for your practice, just start, get your small wins. I know some of that may be cliche too, but I've had a little bit of trouble here lately with self-doubt. And I'm like, no, just take little bitty steps and get you some wins. Yeah. So that's for everybody. Start, be courageous, be vulnerable, and get you some wins.

Lauren Hong 
Absolutely. Yeah. I, I hear you. Because it's like, okay, you got that little win, then you just put yourself out there a little further. You got that little win, but then that little win turns into a little bigger win. And so it just snowballs. So yeah, that's good advice. We see that on this end too, because sometimes, you're working with folks and they go, I don't know if I really want to pick that target. I know I kind of should, but I might be excluding these people. Sometimes you have to just push or just sort of go in and lean into something, right? And it opens up other doors and opens up other doors. Leadership isn't easy, right?

Dr. Cherry 
No, it's sure not. <laugh>

Lauren Hong 
Goodness. Well, thank you again for your time. And like I shared earlier, we'll share links below and take it from there.

Dr. Cherry 
All right. Thank you for having me. It's been fun.

Lauren Hong 
Oh, absolutely. Have a good one. Thank you.