Advice Line: How To Create A Sustainable Marketing Funnel For New Firms (Mark Rosinski)

Summary

Advisor Marketing Made Simple: Episode Summary

Episode: Advice Line: How To Create A Sustainable Marketing Funnel For New Firms (Mark Rosinski)
Release Date: May 21, 2025
Hosts: Taylor Schulte and Kendra Wright
Guest: Mark Rosinski, Founder of Dunes Financial

---

1. Introduction

In this episode of Advisor Marketing Made Simple, hosts Taylor Schulte and Kendra Wright welcome Mark Rosinski, the founder of Dunes Financial, a newly established financial planning firm based in Valparaiso, Indiana. With only six weeks in operation and an initial revenue of $8,000, Mark aims to scale his business to $500,000 in five years by serving 50 clients.

---

2. Mark's Background and Business Goals

Mark shares his journey and objectives, highlighting his passion for working with retirees and his expertise as a CPA.

Mark Rosinski [00:34]: "I've always enjoyed working with retirees the most. The technical expertise they need and the behavioral aspects of transitioning from a career to retirement really resonate with me."

He outlines his services, primarily ongoing financial planning and one-time financial plans, catering to clients with investable assets ranging from $500,000 to $3 million.

---

3. Current Marketing Efforts and Early Success

Mark discusses his diverse marketing strategies deployed in the initial weeks, including:

• Online Platforms: Google, FlatFeeAdvisors website
• Social Media: LinkedIn and Facebook
• Community Engagement: Chamber of Commerce events
• Content Creation: Blogs and podcast appearances

Despite these varied efforts, Mark has successfully attracted eight leads, with four converting into clients within the first six weeks.

Mark Rosinski [08:28]: "More than half of those folks found me through FlatFeeAdvisors.org, indicating a strong market for my flat fee services."

---

4. Challenges in Creating a Sustainable Marketing Funnel

Mark expresses concerns about the sustainability and predictability of his current marketing mix. He acknowledges the risk of relying on multiple channels that may not consistently generate leads.

Taylor [05:54]: "It feels like you're doing all these things and nothing is predictable and sustainable."

Mark is contemplating whether to continue experimenting with diverse marketing tactics or to streamline his efforts for better consistency.

---

5. Advice from Hosts: Focusing on Niche and Optimizing Funnels

Taylor and Kendra provide strategic insights to help Mark create a more sustainable marketing funnel:

• Niche Down: Focus on targeting employees of specific large corporations, such as BP, where Mark has existing knowledge and connections.

  Taylor [20:05]: "Your service model doesn't need to change. You're just speaking to a tighter niche."

• SEO Optimization: Develop SEO-optimized blog posts tailored to BP employees to increase visibility and attract targeted leads.

  Kendra [23:49]: "Conduct an SEO audit to identify keywords with significant search volume and low competition specific to your target audience."

• Lead Magnets and Email Sequences: Create valuable content like white papers and nurture email sequences to engage leads effectively.

• Automation: Implement CRM systems and automation tools to streamline client onboarding and follow-up processes.

  Taylor [36:36]: "How can I automate the step of the process without ruining the experience?"

• Cut Non-Performing Activities: Reduce time spent on less effective marketing channels, such as Chamber of Commerce meetings, to focus resources on high-impact strategies.

---

6. Actionable Steps for Mark

Based on the discussion, the hosts outline a clear action plan for Mark:

1. Audit Current Marketing Efforts: Identify which activities are driving leads and revenue.

   Mark Rosinski [41:57]: "I'm going to audit everything I've done in the last six weeks since I started the firm."

2. Focus on a Specific Niche: Concentrate marketing efforts on BP employees, leveraging existing relationships and tailored content.

   Taylor [21:34]: "Your marketing funnel could focus on BP employees by creating SEO-optimized blog posts and lead magnets."

3. Implement SEO Strategies: Hire an SEO consultant to identify relevant keywords and optimize content for better search engine ranking.

   Kendra [32:44]: "Look for an SEO audit consultant like Brent Carnduff at @advisorrankingsio."

4. Automate Client Interactions: Use tools like Zapier or CRM systems to automate emails and scheduling, enhancing the client experience without manual effort.

   Taylor [36:36]: "How can I streamline some of this stuff to create a better experience?"

5. Set Evaluation Timelines: Plan to assess the effectiveness of the BP-targeted funnel after three to six months to decide on further pivoting or scaling.

---

7. Conclusion

Mark Rosinski leaves the conversation with a clear roadmap to refine his marketing strategy, focusing on niche targeting, SEO optimization, and automation to build a sustainable marketing funnel. The hosts encourage Mark to implement these strategies diligently and monitor their effectiveness over the next few months.

Kendra [42:46]: "We're hoping that this conversation will get you headed in the right direction in a way that in a year, two years from now, you're going to look back and say, wow, I built a practice that not only serves people I love to serve but also serves my lifestyle and the kind of firm I want to build."

Mark expresses his commitment to auditing his current efforts and adopting the recommended strategies to achieve his growth goals.

Mark Rosinski [43:27]: "I'm going to audit everything I've done... shift it to this BP optimized blog post and start generating some folks through that. Also, systematize the CRM and automate the process."

The episode wraps up with the hosts expressing excitement about Mark's potential and encouraging listeners to implement similar strategies for their own firms.

---

Key Takeaways:

• Niche Targeting: Focusing on a specific segment can enhance marketing effectiveness and lead quality.
• SEO and Content Marketing: Optimized content tailored to the target audience can drive significant traffic and conversions.
• Automation: Streamlining processes through automation tools can improve client experience and operational efficiency.
• Sustainable Marketing Strategies: Prioritizing consistent and predictable marketing channels over scattered efforts leads to long-term success.

---

Resources Mentioned:

• SEO Consultant: Brent Carnduff (@advisorrankingsio)
• Automation Tools: Zapier, CRM systems
• Website Platforms: Webflow

For further details and resources shared in this episode, listeners are encouraged to check the show notes.

Transcript

[Kendra]

Hey, it's Kendra and Taylor and we're here to make Advisor Marketing simple. Today's guest is Mark from Dunes Financial. At the time of this recording, his firm was only six weeks old. The current revenue is $8,000, and he wants to grow to $500,000 in the next five years, serving 50 clients. Now, here's what's unique about this conversation. Mark has seen some impressive traction quickly, but you'll be surprised to hear conversation goes and our feedback. Welcome to Advisor Marketing Made Simple. We have a conversation with our friend Mark today to kick us off. Can you just share your name, your firm and your location with us?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah. Hey, Taylor and Kentra, thanks so much. My name is Mark Rosinski. I'm the founder and financial planner at Dunes Financial, and I'm based out of Valparaiso, Indiana. I work with clients locally, in person and virtually across the country.

[Kendra]

What's the big question you want to dive into with us today?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, so my firm has only been open for business for about six weeks, and coming into this conversation, I was more so interested in talking about how I could potentially niche beyond just retirees, which is where my company is focused, to the three or four larger corporations local to me and how I might do that best. But in the last four weeks, I've had just some success around people finding me online, whether that's Google, Napa or a flat fee advisor website that I'm on. So now I'm sort of thinking, you know, if I put the niche aside for a second, how best can I create an awesome experience for those online leads to drive conversion? You know, if they've never talked to me, never found me, just found me online, how best can I do that?

[Kendra]

I'm really excited to hear you surface the conversation about the niche and choosing that because based off the very little info you filled out to come on the show, that was going to be kind of a starting point. Before we jump into that, one thing I do want to say is you've done a really nice job with the website. I think we'll definitely dive into that niche piece, but just out of the gate, you know, really quickly, like, I'm already really impressed. So just some kudos there with kicking off the firm because I know a lot of advisors struggle to really put a nice website together. I really do want to talk a little bit more about the avatar, though. You know, when you applied, you mentioned some potential niches, you know, retirement planning versus maybe leaning into one of the larger health core company or healthcare companies in your area. How did you kind of approach choosing your ideal client? How you put the website together? Kind of give us a little bit of background there.

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah. So in, in regards to choosing my ideal client, it's, it's something I have thought about for the last two plus years as I've worked at a generalist RA firm before starting my own firm. I always enjoyed working with retirees the most. So just that technical expertise that retirees tend to need as well as the behavioral side, I just love that behavioral side of the identity change from a career to now a retiree, whatever that means to them. Right. Can mean so many things. And so if I was ever going to start a firm, it was always going to be retiree focused. And just over the last several years, um, I have been very interested in charging them on a flat fee basis, setting up a retirement guardrails process and really trying to as a CPA myself, provide really tax efficient investment management financial planning. So that's kind of how it all came together. Okay.

[Kendra]

And with the clients and prospects you're attracting already early out of the gate, they all fall into kind of that generalist financial planning kind of bucket.

[Mark Rosinski]

A hundred percent. Yeah. So my services are either ongoing or I do provide one time plans. And so of the eight folks that have reached out to me online, I would say half have been looking for ongoing and really falling into that early 60s, between 1 to 3 million dollars of investable assets. The other four or so have fallen into the early 50s. Not really looking for ongoing yet, looking for a, a one time plan, like a second opinion service.

[Kendra]

Okay. And when it comes to kind of your Runway here, what happens? You know, you mentioned on your form like there is a Runway that you're looking at here. Can you tell us a little bit more about that and like what happens if you don't hit that Runway 100%.

[Mark Rosinski]

Great question, super important question. So if I were to have zero revenue from today, I could go another 16 months. And with the business still existing now, I already do have three clients, so you know, that's already something that's building. I have another few scheduled intro calls. Obviously I'm hoping for more consistency, but I guess in my head if I have just a slow run rate of new clients, then it's fair to say I have maybe three years to execute this. But you know, you never know. Like maybe all these online deeds shut off and hey, we're on that 16 month time frame and we have to pivot and figure it out.

[Kendra]

And when we start to look ahead a Little bit. You know, if you had to choose one medium, we start thinking about your channels and your options here. Would you choose something like writing video? Do you love relationship building? You know, to grow that firm? If you had to choose one of those kind of mediums, what resonates most with you?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, blogs and LinkedIn have resonated the most with me so far. They what I've enjoyed the most. Now, I will say I've been surprised. In the six weeks that the firm has launched, I've been. It's been so easy to avoid blogs and just focus on LinkedIn. But I would say I do enjoy the process of writing more than anything else.

[Kendra]

And right now, what kind of marketing activities are you actively doing?

[Mark Rosinski]

Everything. So Chamber of commerce, events, blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, social media, DMS, been on a podcast, been on one YouTube channel, one or two other little things. So just kind of spraying at this moment in time.

[Kendra]

Hey, I get it. When you're early, you got time or money. And it makes total sense with the LinkedIn approach. What are you actually doing on LinkedIn?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yep, just trying to do two to three posts a week. I found that most of my posts have 300 to 3,000 impressions. I randomly had one pop off with about 30,000 impressions, but that's it. And so just retirement content.

[Kendra]

Are you targeting and connecting with any of your ideal clients on there?

[Mark Rosinski]

I had one individual reach out that saw that post that had 30,000 impressions, but I know, Taylor, you've talked about this before. I think I've done a core job of who I've selected as connections on LinkedIn, because I do have about 65% of those impressions. Always being financial advisors.

[Kendra]

Definitely. Taylor, what's coming up for you?

[Taylor]

I. I wouldn't mind just backing up a little bit. I mean, there's so much to talk about here. But I just want to highlight. I kind of want to reiterate what you reiterated, Kendra, which is like, your website is awesome. And so I definitely want to talk more about you starting this firm, maybe the investment you made into this website and who helped you design this website. And then I'm going to throw a third question in there, which is I think any advisor starting their own firm, six weeks into starting their own firm have eight leads coming in. I think you said four of them have become clients. Like, that's pretty amazing. It's like, what. What has. What have you done to start this firm to have that sort of success within the first six weeks?

[Mark Rosinski]

Well, I guess if I could say it, Taylor, I mean, just Having a conversation with you many years ago, planting the seeds of like thoughts about starting the firm and things like that.

[Taylor]

But see, I knew you were going to say that. That's why I asked the question.

[Mark Rosinski]

Exactly. No, but I have, I've probably reached out to 50 advisors over the last two years just to hear different models, hear different niches, just a lot of things. So try to be prepared for the decision. But I honestly didn't decide to start my firm until mid January this year. And then since I decided that, it's been, you know, oh, like, just, let's go as hard as possible. So Trey and Devor with creating attention, made my website, in terms of initial capital into the business. I think I'm like 12 or 4, 15 grand in so far. And sorry, what was the other question?

[Taylor]

What has led to the success that you've had just in the first six weeks for you to say, you know, people have found me online, through Google, through LinkedIn. I've had eight, you know, high quality leads and a handful of them have closed. Like, how did that even happen? I mean, that's a short period of time.

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, it's a good question. I, I honestly think part of it is the flat fee niche. I. Because I'd say more than half of those folks that found [e-mail] so I think there is a market of retirees looking for that service in that way. I do think, because I do have the metrics on that website, they provide it to us if we're a member. And I think people are clicking on me a little bit more maybe because I have a cpa. Okay. And that's what they're looking for. I don't know. I. I mean, I can't tell you for sure.

[Taylor]

Sure. And to be clear, you do not do taxes for clients or you do.

[Mark Rosinski]

I just do forward looking tax planning. I do not do tax prep. Okay. Okay.

[Taylor]

And then I wanted to ask a clarifying question. Well, maybe I'll back up. Trayton, I know, is a phenomenal website designer. I know he's a great copywriter as well. But you have to be a part of this process. And I just want to hit on this because starting your own firm and building a website and writing the copy and having success with the first six weeks is, is not an easy feat. So you've definitely invested not just, you know, some money, but also your own time. I just want to highlight what this process looks like when you worked with Trayton to, to build this website. I'm sure you didn't just say like, go build me a great website for retirees. Like, how involved were you in this process and maybe how long did it take to get everything the way you wanted it to look and read here on the site?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, I think I engaged Tron like two days after I decided I was going to start the firm. So it's been about a three month process. He we used webflow so I had access to the site as well as the same time he did. So as soon as he had like the draft built, like the kind of the foundation, I had access to change copy. So I would say almost daily for about four weeks I was reading my copy, adjusting my copy, looking at other websites, just deciding how am I going to build this site to make my online presences like what I want it to be, what I think people are looking for.

[Taylor]

Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I love to hear that. You've probably heard me say something similar, just like, yes, I've already reviewed this page and read and improve the copy, but it doesn't mean I I'm never going to touch it again. And I'll often read through pages on our site over and over and over again and try to find ways to improve that copy, improve the design, move different elements around. So it's nice to hear that you invested real time into that process. You had said something earlier that you wanted to explore creating a better experience for people that find you online. Can you share more about what that means?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. So right now if a client finds me online, I just have my tidy cal, which is, you know, like calendly link out there. And right now I'm just getting an email like, hey, this person in Oregon just booked a meeting with you. And so my process right now is to as soon as I can shoot them an email just saying, hey, thank you for scheduling a meeting with my firm. I do ask them to provide a little bit about themselves in the Tidy Cal. You know, I have like four or five questions just to qualify and understand. And so I'll always throw like a personal touch in there of I see you're looking for X, I have expertise in Y. You look like folks I've worked with and had success with before. So that's kind of the initial. And then once we have the conversation, I try to follow that up with a summary type of conversation or email about, hey, this is what we talked about. These are the values you told me were important. Here's how I can help just to try to make that a better experience rather Than just calendar meeting, have the meeting and then see what happens next.

[Taylor]

Got it. Okay. And the goal there is if I have people, total strangers, reaching out to me, I want to put my best foot forward and don't want to miss out on these opportunities. So let's create the best possible experience to have the highest possible conversions.

[Mark Rosinski]

Correct. Yeah, yeah. So even thinking through what else could I send them on the front end, Other things I might point to, you know, just trying to think through that process more.

[Taylor]

Okay. Definitely want to circle back to some stuff there. Maybe just one more question. You know You've got a 16 month Runway on your services page here. You're offering two different services. One is a one time financial plan for $4,000 and the other is full service planning and investments. Seven or $8,000, depending on if they're an individual or a couple. You had shared in the notes that Your goal in five years is $500,000 of revenue. So 50 clients at a $10,000 average fee. What if you end up with 50 clients paying you one time fees? Like, and maybe a better question is like the people you're attracting right now, how many of them are opting for these one time financial plans? And how certain are you that that is a good viable business model? If you want to get to 50 recurring clients paying you $10,000 per year, might this start to feel a little bit transactional? And 16 months from now, like you have some revenue, but you got to go find more revenue and keep chasing more revenue because there are these one time financial plans a hundred percent.

[Mark Rosinski]

The goal of the one time plan is simply to bring in revenue at the beginning and then as the ongoing clients kind of fill up, once I get to my sustainable number, meaning I'm sustaining the business, sustaining my household lifestyle, then I will shut off one time plans.

[Taylor]

Okay. So for right now, it's just I need some revenue, so I'm willing to offer this service.

[Mark Rosinski]

Correct. Okay. Okay. And I know, and maybe that changes. Maybe I end up loving it. But no, my intention right now is to do it for a means to an end. Okay. Okay.

[Kendra]

Do you have a number on what that sustainable number is? Like a break point where you're like, this is where I would turn off.

[Mark Rosinski]

One time plans between 18 and 20 clients.

[Taylor]

Okay. So I know you have a handful of questions in here. One of them was, I've got some, you know, big companies around me. Should I maybe niche down a little bit more and focus my marketing on some of these big local companies? Or, you know, I've got some things that are working right now. Should I focus more on creating a better experience for the people that are reaching out to me? So I want to make good use of your time here. What is most important to you? Like what, what do you want to brainstorm and workshop with us today?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, I feel like we, it would be make more sense to talk about what's working rather than what could potentially work because of the Runway consideration as well as just, hey, leads are coming in. Like, let's optimize for that. So, yeah, it would be awesome to hear more about how you maybe in your business and Kendra, how you think about it from a marketing perspective. How do I make folks who are finding me that have never talked to me before or just read something online, how do I make an awesome initial experience as before they even get to the first meeting or what else I could provide them?

[Taylor]

Yeah, I mean, the first thing that it comes up when you, when you say that is nothing feels predictable and sustainable at the moment. I mean, you acknowledge I'm just kind of doing a bunch of things and some people have showed up and this is where we can get in a little bit of trouble, where we're doing all these different things. We're, we're posting on Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram and we're joining some, you know, guest interviews on a podcast or YouTube channel. And like, some things are trickling in and then it becomes hard to cut those things out. Cause it's like, well, I don't want to get rid of LinkedIn because that one time somebody reached out to me or, you know, I'm not going to turn down this interview opportunity because last time I did an interview, I got like this one great prospect out of it. And so all of a sudden we're doing all these things and nothing is predictable and sustainable. And so I want to be careful focusing too much on creating this amazing experience because maybe you have eight great prospects now, but next month or next quarter, you have no prospects at all. Have this great experience that you spent time building, but now nobody is knocking on the door. I, I, I still think it's worth focusing on, you know, our top and middle of the funnel and making sure that we're doing the right things. It's, you know, we're being consistent, we're reaching the right people and, and maybe, maybe you are doing that. We seem to kind of what is truly working. You mentioned LinkedIn. Some posts have, have gone kind of semi viral. You mentioned the, the, the floor website and people reaching out to you through there. So maybe you are doing a couple things that are consistent and predictable and you can expect this sort of lead flow continuing. But I want to make sure that we kind of focus in on our marketing activities before we get too lost in the. Creating a great experience.

[Mark Rosinski]

For sure. Yeah, a hundred percent. I think about that all the time of this, these, all these online leads that are never talked to me before could just go away one day because of an algorithm change or a website shutting down. So. Absolutely, I agree. Okay.

[Kendra]

Yeah. The thing that immediately came up for me is when we think about building something predictable and sustainable first, your avatar is a big component of this because if you do go general and wide, when we start to look at targeting something with, you know, SEO optimized blog posts or something like LinkedIn, you start to bump into some challenges further down your process. So if it's just general financial planning that can, that can work. It's just going to be more challenging. So when I start thinking about something like LinkedIn, you know, a big part of that, where we start to grow this more predictably, is starting to target people by a job title or something like that, so that we can get more of those people into your funnel. So that's where when we're looking at something like the local healthcare system or something like that, when we start to build out that avatar, that could become a very big kind of switch point here. And I absolutely understand when you first launch something, hey, we need to get people through the door and I need to keep the lights on. But I do think there's an element of like, will we continue to just go down this general path or at some point does it make sense for us to start to work in a niche so that long term we can build a predictable path more effectively using digital marketing?

[Taylor]

Mark, if you had to guess, maybe you're tracking it. You could give me an accurate number. How many hours per week are you spending on marketing activities right now? And how much more time do you have in your week to spend on marketing?

[Mark Rosinski]

Darn. I wish I could answer that with data, but I would say generally I feel like I'm spending 50% of my week on marketing right now. And just because I have had leads, I've had at least one initial conversation a week. I have onboarded a few clients, maybe 50% doing, you know, business operation, technical work.

[Taylor]

I guess I'm thinking more about the actual, like not so much introductory phone calls or going through sales process or onboarding new clients. But you mentioned LinkedIn posts reaching out to cois dming some people. You mentioned joining a YouTube channel for an interview. Like just those basic activities about how much time are you spending?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, sorry, no, I was saying 50% is, I would say true marketing. The other 50% is like everything else.

[Taylor]

Okay. Do you feel like you have capacity to do more marketing at the moment?

[Mark Rosinski]

I would say no.

[Taylor]

Okay. Is there something that's part of that 50% that you could potentially stop doing or cut out?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, and that's what I've considered. If I was going to try to build a firm more locally, then maybe the online stuff can kind of take a step back. But if I kind of decide to be more generalist and building it more online, then it's like the in person stuff can, can fall back. So I, I understand that's more of like a practice management question, like what do you really want to do? I'd say I'm, I'm struggling with that.

[Taylor]

Decision is a decision that you'll certainly have to think through and, and make on your own. Do I want to go hyper local or do I want to cast a wider net and go kind of national? But I'm also thinking too, like when you say local, I, I think you're thinking of these concentration of companies that you mentioned. Bp, US Steel, like some large healthcare companies. But I mean, these companies have employees all over the country, correct?

[Mark Rosinski]

Absolutely. 100%.

[Taylor]

So while you have a large concentration of them in Indiana near you, it doesn't necessarily pigeonhole you into only working with those in Indiana.

[Mark Rosinski]

You're right. Yeah.

[Taylor]

I guess what, where, where my mind is going is like you're having some success, which is awesome, and you're doing a bunch of different things. I think it's great to experiment in the beginning, but I am searching for something that's a little bit more sustainable here. And I really am attracted to this idea of marketing directly to specific companies. You know, it can still be retirement planning, guardrails planning, tax planning. Right. For those that are in retirement or nearing retirement. But it's just one layer further. You work at one of these companies or you work at this company, you're still providing the same service. You just have some knowledge around their benefits and you know, their retirement options and things like that. So your service model doesn't necessarily need to change. You're kind of going just one layer deeper in your niche. And I, I think it would be interesting to experiment with and explore. Now I, you mentioned, I think four different companies in the notes. I wouldn't suggest trying to go attack all four of these companies. But it would be interesting if there's something you could maybe just push aside for the moment that you're, you know, you're doing. You're kind of just like throwing spaghetti at the wall. It may or may not be working. Can you, can you cut that out and maybe try to attack one of these companies through some marketing efforts to try and build some traction there? Because it does start to feel a little bit more sustainable if you're like, you know, twice a month I host a retirement webinar for employees or executives at BP and you're starting to do this and get traction and now the funnel's starting to feel a little bit more predictable, if that makes sense.

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, exactly. And you pick the company that I would say I have the most in depth knowledge on their benefits as well as just having worked with some folks at BP in the past in my prior firm. So that would be the company I would focus on at first.

[Taylor]

Okay.

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah.

[Taylor]

Because I think it does get interesting. Not, not that you couldn't have success just casting a wider net and being a flat fee retirement planner and, you know, continue to do what you're doing. It, it might, it might work just fine and you'll kind of find your lane as you continue to experiment more. But just because you brought it up. I am, and I've been thinking about it more and more. Just I feel like the retirement planning market is getting more and more saturated and I'm like, how can we go one layer deeper without disrupting our whole service model and all the systems and processes we built? We can provide the same service, but just our marketing and our language is speaking to a little bit tighter of a niche. So I am attracted to that idea. And if you had time and capacity and, and you're willing to kind of experiment a little bit more, I think it would be interesting.

[Kendra]

I also think, you know, if we're looking at some things like going one layer deeper, a really simple way you could test that there's two paths. One, you could rework some of your LinkedIn profile to speak to that BP market. Use some of the language you've already written on the website and some of the problems you solve, but tailor it specifically to that, you know, BP avatar. And in addition, if you, if you do take that approach with something like LinkedIn, you can then start reaching out through Sales Navigator in a very predictable way and connecting with people at BP who would be in roles and titles that would be qualified for help from a financial Advisor. So this is kind of like layer one of just like a testing of going deeper on that. And then on the website, if at some point you're starting to find some traction with that, you could actually create, you know, for your, you have a dropdown in your navigation that says who we serve. You could essentially take your current page, which speaks to pre retirees and you, and that just, you know, pre retirees, who we serve and there's a dropdown for pre retirees and then, you know, BP executives becomes a second dropdown. So then you can start to kind of build up that niche, you know, to create a more predictable process using the medium that you tend to gravitate towards, which is writing.

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, I think what I'm, what I'm hearing the most is that while obviously it's exciting to have some initial like leads coming in, what I've been thinking as well is we need to find a way, or I need to find a way to make this more trackable, more sustainable. And so even if I were to take a step back from some things and rework my LinkedIn, rework my blog posts on my website and try to just for a period of time, maybe go all in on BP and see what happens. Yeah.

[Kendra]

And I don't, I actually don't even think you need to rework a bunch of stuff. Two things. One, it's not just a sustainability. I think the competitiveness is where we're thinking about long term. How do we make it easier for someone who is your ideal client at BP to find you online? Because right now, to some degree, you're going to start competing against other advisors who have this niche. Now you do have that flat fee approach which is really competitive and super helpful, which is probably one of the edges that the levers that you've been able to pull. And we can continue to keep pulling that lever, but if we start to think about how do we use marketing in a sustainable way, we kind of want to target them more, more specifically. And that BP approach, because you're local, you know, you can go one, through LinkedIn and two, I've seen plenty of advisors write circulated content for those local companies and be very successful at that. And you're like Taylor said, it's not going to change your model, but thinking about that from the jump is going to be really helpful.

[Mark Rosinski]

And Kendra, just to clarify, when you say like local circulated content, are you specifically saying, like local newspapers? Local.

[Kendra]

Sorry.

[Taylor]

Yeah.

[Kendra]

So I think, you know, as Taylor mentioned, like local could be, you know, those BP executives that are local, but if you have, you know, if that brand's national, obviously like that search traffic can work for national as well. Okay, I think I, I think I misled how I spoke there. So thanks for that.

[Mark Rosinski]

That follow up.

[Taylor]

There's so many different ways you can go about targeting these companies. I don't want to throw too much at you. I mean, there's a lot of great ideas. I'm happy to brainstorm with you. You know, I always think about just who, not how, who is doing something similar and you know, how can we learn from them and kind of shortcut our path to success here. I've talked about them before, but there are two firms in the Pacific Northwest. One is Avier Wealth Advisors and the other is Cordon wealth wealth and they focus on the tech industry. Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Nike. And if you go to their websites, you'll see kind of how they've positioned themselves. Now they've gone a little bit more all in on the tech sector and those handful of tech companies. But you can take a similar approach especially. I'm more familiar with Isaac at Cordon wealth. And given that you enjoy writing at the moment, maybe in the future you'll get into video or podcasting. But Isaac's firm has done a lot of writing for some of these specific companies like Intel. And so again, as a way to experiment without taking too much risk and spending too much time, you could consider doing a little bit of SEO research and finding a topic for BP employees that's fitting for your, you know who you're looking for and start to experiment with writing some BP SEO optimized blog posts to try and attract some of these people. Now again, there's other ways you can go about reaching employees at this company and testing some things out. Um, I mentioned it recently, but David Sandu is an advisor who's going to be presenting at the Kitsa Summit. He hosts weekly webinars for employees in the defense and aerospace industry. He connects with them on LinkedIn through LinkedIn Sales Navigator. He hosts these weekly webinars. So he connects, invites them to the weekly webinars and then he has a, a process for converting them from there. So you know, webinars would be another interesting way to go about it as well. YouTube podcast. There's a strategy for each of these different channels, but given that you are attracted to writing some low hanging fruit.

[Mark Rosinski]

There to do a little bit of.

[Taylor]

Research and like, is there a way to reach some of these employees through your favorite medium at the moment? Yeah, I'm also thinking about too that Your current pricing is 7, $8,000 per year and I know that you want that to be higher. Your goal is 50 clients at 10 plus thousand dollars per year. And you start to creep up as, as your fees start to creep up, you might have to get more niche down. You know, the, the broad retiree audience back a little bit more as your fees get higher. But if you are the BP retirement planning expert, you might be able to command a higher fee.

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, really good point.

[Kendra]

So we've thrown a lot your way already. What kind of questions are kind of popping up for you?

[Mark Rosinski]

Good question. Yeah, it's a lot to think through. Especially I've dabbled with throwing like one BP post on LinkedIn. I, I think how might you best recommend like just going about focusing or even consistency like only BP from here on LinkedIn or sprinkle in other stuff. Like I guess I'm just trying to decide how much do I dive in versus sprinkling it in versus like more consistently moving into it. You know what I mean?

[Taylor]

I would think about this in terms of a funnel. So you've got like some spaghetti at the wall stuff that is bringing in some leads, got the flat fee network website that's bringing in some leads and LinkedIn posts bring in some leads. So kind like let those activities continue. And that's what I was searching for. Is there something you can just kind of cut out that you're doing without jeopardizing some of the success you're having to make room for? Let's call it this BP experiment funnel. And if so I would think about this in terms of a funnels like how can I create a funnel for BP employees to kind of test out. And my idea would be something simple. Like a simple idea would be I'm going to write an SEO optimized blog post. And nothing with LinkedIn, just an SEO optimized blog post. I've done some research. I know that there's, there's traffic to this keyword or some of these keywords and again you can look at Cordon well's website to get some ideas there. I'm going to write this SEO optimized blog post for BP employees simultaneously I'm going to build a lead magnet for them. So I'm going to write a short two to three page white paper for, you know, five important things that BP employees need to do to prepare for retirement. So I've attracted them through this SEO optimized blog post. I use a pop up or something to then grab them and pull them onto my email list. I write a short little email sequence to kind of nurture them a little bit, and then I invite them to what you call your free retirement chat. So I'm just going to build this little funnel and certainly going to take some time, but I'm going to build this funnel and start to test it out. And I'm going to get some BP employees kind of going through my funnel, hopefully have a few introductory phone calls and start to feel this out and determine is this a viable number niche or not. And if you start to get some traction, then you can pour some gas on that thing. And, you know, if you start to really master BP employees and you consider adding maybe a second company to the list. Now again, there are. You could do that through webinars. I've thought about. You could create a, like a mini podcast. Like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna record 10 episodes for BP employees who are nearing retirement, and I'm just gonna create those 10 episodes and that. That's it. So anybody at BP who's preparing for retirement, I'm gonna try to get this 10 PO thing in their hands. You could do it through YouTube as well. Avier Wealth Advisors has done a lot of that on YouTube, so you can get some ideas there. So I don't want you to get distracted with all these things. We have to pick one. But I would think about this in terms of a top of funnel, middle of funnel, and then how do I get them onto my calendar?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, no, that's. That clarity really helps, especially the kind of top to bottom of what the funnel looks like and how you might execute it. Super helpful.

[Kendra]

Another way to think about kind of a focusing filter based off what you shared with us. We often talk about what is the authentic, you know, kind of marketing channel and the medium that you enjoy. And when you said blogs and LinkedIn to me, it was like very clear that for now, if we're going to set some things aside, the channel, the medium is going to work for you as writing. So, you know, LinkedIn and blog posts, you know, can you kind of, you know, just set everything else to the side for now and just focus on, you know, the blogs, like Taylor said with that funnel. And then maybe you could also experiment with some LinkedIn things if you get some traction for there. So I think about that from the medium standpoint is another way to focus. And then on the SEO front, you know, depending on what your budget might look like, you can hire an SEO consultant to Just look up those keywords and specifically you're going to be looking at. And they'll know this. But just so you know, you're going to be looking at the traffic, like, how many people are searching for this topic for BP employees and the difficulty, like, could I rank for this? So you could just pay someone to do a quick SEO audit, give them this ideal client, and they can pull together some of these topics that you could write about and you'll know, hey, this, you know, keyword or search term has 200 or 500 people searching for it every month and the competition is not very high. So because I have a new website, I could actually rank for that. So there's a couple of, like, nuances there. And you can get some support on the SEO front by potentially hiring a consultant.

[Mark Rosinski]

And Kendra, would it be fair to say I could go to Google, I could type in like, SEO audit consultant and find these people. Is that fair?

[Kendra]

Yes, you definitely can, for sure. And there's some great people in our industry. I really like Brent Carnduff over at God, I'm like blanking on his firm name just because I know him. He's excellent. Highly recommend him. That's a great resource to start. I'm sure there's a few others, but that's who I usually recommend.

[Mark Rosinski]

Okay, great.

[Taylor]

Yeah, Brent's a sharp guy. Is@advisorrankingsio.

[Mark Rosinski]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Taylor]

Fun little fact. You actually connect with Brent last week or the week before, and I'm going to be doing some SEO experiments with him that we'll certainly be documenting. So, yeah, he'd be a good guy to reach out too. And then, Mark, there's another agency that I've been working with for the last six or eight months or so. Very reasonably priced. They've done good work, so you can consider them as well, and I can share their information offline. So again, I don't want you to get too distracted with all these different things. If you like this idea of this, you know, this, this BP kind of SEO funnel, then definitely go down that path. You know, you can also leverage LinkedIn, you know, every week, connect with BP executives that meet certain criteria. Connect with them, shoot them a dm. Hey, I specialize in working with people just like you. I wrote this amazing white paper or recorded this amazing video series. Like, please go check it out. You know, you could use LinkedIn as a funnel as well. I guess whenever I'm testing something, I don't want to disrupt too many things. I want to, like, rework my whole LinkedIn profile and like, remove all these advisor connections and change everything on my website. How can we, how can we test out this funnel to see if this is potentially a viable niche without disrupting some of the success we're already having?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, no, this is perfect. I think just getting even though BP is local, they have a national presence. So, like, one of the first things I would get rid of is just the chamber of Commerce meetings that honestly, I'm not getting much value out of. And, and some other little things that I'm doing. So just, I, I think the experiments, the, the last question I would have on this experiment per se would be three months, six months. Like, at what point would you suggest considering pivoting? If I get to a point where, hey, it's. And, and maybe that's too far a question of like, yeah, you're probably pivoting along the way, but you know, how long should I consider?

[Taylor]

Yeah, it is a good question because SEO can certainly take some time, especially since you have a new website now. It sounds like you already are getting some traffic to the site, which is, which is good. Indicates to Google like, you're a real person, a real business. People are actually showing up to the site. So that can certainly benefit you. But yeah, SEO could take some time and you can ask these consultants what the expectation would be. I'd probably say, because we want to measure, like, are people even showing up and reading this post, like, the right people? And that probably take six months. It could happen sooner if you have the right people in your corner. But, you know, could take six months to prove. Okay, there's traffic showing up to this awesome blog post that I wrote. And, you know, X percentage of that traffic is converting onto my email list and going through this, you know, nurture sequence that I built. And hey, I had one phone call. Like, I think six to nine months, you should be able to see, is this viable? Should I spend more time and money on it?

[Mark Rosinski]

Okay, yeah, I'm, I'm all in. I think it would be fair for me to say if the flat fee advisor thing keeps driving folks, great, I'll, I'll gladly take it. Other than just a few other folks, like, in my natural network that I'm asking for help, like, that's what I did, like, for a long time. I was just asking about vocabulary for a few weeks of what does this sound like on the website, et cetera. I think I'll keep doing that. And then everything else, I'll just shift in and focus on this BP experiment.

[Taylor]

The last thing I want to mention, just because you brought it up earlier, was, you know, creating this great experience. How can I create a better experience for people showing up? The one thing that I heard when you were telling me about what you're doing is it sounds like there's some manual effort here. When somebody schedules a call, you're manually emailing them after that call is scheduled.

[Mark Rosinski]

Is that correct? Yes, correct.

[Taylor]

And I've shared before, like, one of my biggest mistakes when I started my firm was not systematizing things. I didn't have a CRM for a really long time. You know, when you only have five households or 10 or, you know, even 20 or 30 households, I can remember everything. I don't need. I don't need, you know, tools and technology to help support me or even workflows for that matter. But I think I'm always jealous of people starting from scratch because you do have the ability to build those systems and processes immediately. So I would think about how can we better automate and systematize some of those things without ruining the experience? And I've shared a lot of what we do here at our firm and you mentioned using TinyCal. Whether you use TinyCal or Tidy, TidyCal or Acuity or Calendly, there should be some automations and if not, you can leverage Zapier. But I would start to think about how can I, how can I streamline some of this stuff to create a better experience? Because if you're just manually doing it, as soon as things really start to work, Mark, and you've got 10 clients, 20 clients, and these marketing efforts are working, it's going to be too much for you to handle doing all this manually. So I think that's where my mind went when you started talking is like, how can we automate and streamline and be more efficient with this process while making it better at the same time?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, absolutely. It's a great suggestion. I was going to say, any other than Zappy or any other consultants in the industry that you would give a shout out to about or like even a firm doing something really well that maybe has shared what they're doing other than yours? I've of course read your stuff.

[Taylor]

Yeah, I'm not sure how much they do in the kind of client experience onboarding, but I know there's a company called Sphinx Automation that helps with a lot of different automations and using Zapier to, to create more efficiencies in the practice. So I'm not sure how much they're involved in like the sales process type stuff. But they're one company that comes to mind. But I also just like, put yourself in their shoes. Just, you know, I want to create a really good. And I think you're already thinking that way. You're just doing it manually. Like someone schedules a call and then I go to like write them this manual email. Well, how can I maybe automate that step of the process without ruining the experience? And I mean, we, we don't send manual emails. Everything is automated through Acuity Scheduling. So as soon as they schedule, they get a very intentional automated email from Acuity Scheduling that looks like any other email I would send. And it doesn't feel out of place. I don't think it ruins the experience. One thing that we do, and you wouldn't really have this ability yet, although you could probably hire a service to do it, is when somebody schedules an introductory phone call during normal business hours, our office manager will pick up the phone immediately and call and introduce herself. Thank them for schedul phone call. You know, we're, you know, Tyler is a partner here. He's really looking forward to talking to you two weeks from now. You know, I know you shared some information when you scheduled, but is there anything else you want to share? So she kind of like builds rapport as quickly as possible with that person. And that's something that we've added to our process a number of years ago. That works really well, I think, to, to create that good experience immediately out of the gate. So you might not be able to add that step, but kind of thinking through that, that vein of this total stranger just reached out to me. How can I build rapport really quickly, add value to them and, you know, put myself in the best possible position when I do have that introductory phone call?

[Mark Rosinski]

Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

[Kendra]

All right, Mark, you've had some early success. You're already doing some really remarkable work just as far as how you've put the website together, where your head's at, the energy and effort that you're putting into the practice. I'm really excited to see where this goes next for you. Here's what we've built for you today. So going forward, your marketing funnel, if you choose SEO, could look like this. Your top of funnel would be an SEO optimized blog post that's targeted towards BP employees. The middle of Funnel, the action you want them to take from that post is going to be a lead magnet targeted very clearly to that same audience. And you're going to get them on your email list. And build a simple follow up email process. And then your bottom of funnel is just going to be inviting those people to your sales process probably through email marketing or email automations as you start to build that up. Now, if you do tend to go down the LinkedIn route, we have another episode you could look at for a resource. We had a conversation, andy Baxley on LinkedIn, so we talk a little bit about LinkedIn funnels there if you want to take a look at that. But then as far as going forward, some other action items we jotted down for you. First, cut the marketing activities that really aren't aligned with the conversation today. Just to give yourself a little bit more of your time and energy back. Like you mentioned the Chamber of Commerce, you could potentially also look at, you know, LinkedIn, maybe the podcast or the YouTube appearances, go a layer deeper with your avatar. So retirement for BP employees. And then also potentially looking at hiring a LinkedIn consultant to help you draft and create some content that not only is getting search volume but that you could potentially rank for. And then as Taylor mentioned, you know, long term thinking a little bit at your systems, your processes and then also coming up with that hard, you know, shut off point where you'll remove the one time plans just so you can make sure that you're building the practice with the right amount of clients and the right amount of revenue. So based on the conversation we've had here today, you know what stands out to you the most? You know, what was your biggest takeaway or what might you do differently going forward?

[Mark Rosinski]

Can I just like record what you just said and just repeat it back to you? That's incredible. Yeah, I mean I wrote down all those notes and those steps as well. Kendra. So I think the big takeaway is I'm going to audit everything I've done in the last six weeks since I started the firm. Think critically about what's really driving revenue or, you know, driving leads, what's not and everything that doesn't make sense. We're going to shift it to this, you know, BP optimized blog post and try to start generating some folks to the business through that. And then great thoughts on systematizing in the CRM or you know, what that looks like when someone does reach out for a conversation. How do I take myself out of that a little bit and add a little automation to the process.

[Kendra]

And it can feel like, you know, you're new to this. But I think we have so many conversations with advisors who have to like back up the train and like rebuild some of these things when they're further down the track so you're not behind. You're just really trying to build this in an intentional, sustainable way. So we're hoping that this conversation will get you headed in the right direction in a way that in, you know, a year, two years from now, you're going to look back and say, wow, I built a practice that not only serves people I love to serve, but it also serves my lifestyle and the kind of firm I want to build. So thank you so much for joining us today, Mark. We've had a wonderful conversation. We are excited to hear how it goes and please keep us updated.

[Mark Rosinski]

We'll do. Thank you.

[Taylor]

Thanks Mark.

[Kendra]

We hope you enjoyed today's episode. To get the resources shared or sign up to join us as a guest on one of our advice line episodes, check out the links in the the show notes. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.