Advice Line: How To Transform LinkedIn Success Into Quality Prospects (Andy Baxley)

Summary

Advisor Marketing Made Simple – Episode Summary

Episode: Advice Line: How To Transform LinkedIn Success Into Quality Prospects (Andy Baxley)
Release Date: March 5, 2025
Hosts: Taylor Schulte and Kendra Wright
Guest: Andy Baxley, Two Trails Financial Planning

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1. Introduction

In this episode of Advisor Marketing Made Simple, hosts Taylor Schulte and Kendra Wright welcome Andy Baxley from Two Trails Financial Planning. As a newly launched solo financial advisory firm based in Chicago, Andy seeks to optimize his LinkedIn marketing strategy to attract quality prospects and meet his ambitious growth goals.

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2. Andy's Background and Goals

Andy Baxley, with nine years of experience in financial advising, recently launched his solo firm, Two Trails Financial Planning, two months ago. Currently generating $150,000 in revenue, Andy aims to expand his client base to 40 clients and increase his annual revenue to $300,000 within the next five years.

Andy:

"[...] I have just launched my solo firm two months ago, and my current revenue is $150,000, aiming to grow to 40 clients and $300,000 in annual revenue in the next five years."
(00:00)

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3. Current LinkedIn Strategy

Andy emphasizes his strategic focus on LinkedIn as the primary platform for marketing. He believes in concentrating his efforts on one channel rather than spreading himself thin across multiple platforms.

Andy:

"I'm very bought into what you guys teach. Rather than trying to do a bunch of things sort of at like a mediocre level, focus on one thing and just do it really, really well."
(00:54)

Currently, Andy has set a goal of acquiring five clients through LinkedIn in his first year and has successfully secured three, exceeding his initial expectations.

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4. Target Audience and Pain Points

Andy’s ideal clients are dual-career couples in their 30s to 40s with young children, earning between $250,000 and $500,000 annually. He targets individuals who have managed to maximize their basic financial tools (like 401(k)s and HSAs) but seek clarity and strategic planning for future financial growth.

Andy:

"A lot of it just centers around a lack of clarity. They've done a lot of the basics really well... I need somebody to help me ideate around that and put some clear steps in place."
(05:03)

Key Pain Points Identified:

• Lack of Financial Clarity: Clients are unsure of the next steps after securing basic financial stability.
• High Income, Limited Time: Dual-career professionals often struggle to find time for in-depth financial planning.
• Desire for Expertise: These clients value expertise and seek assurance that their financial strategies are sound.

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5. Marketing Funnel Optimization

The discussion delves into optimizing Andy’s marketing funnel on LinkedIn, focusing on attracting ideal clients and converting engagement into quality prospects.

Kendra:

"You're telling us a little bit. I love just the early success you've had and the kind of KPIs you created for yourself at each stage of this. What start to think about building a marketing funnel around LinkedIn."
(05:03)

Key Strategies Discussed:

• Top of Funnel: Proactively connecting with ideal clients using LinkedIn Sales Navigator or hiring a virtual assistant to handle connection requests.
• Middle of Funnel: Continuing high-quality content creation tailored to resonate with the target demographic.
• Bottom of Funnel: Refining calls to action to guide prospects into scheduling consultations or accessing lead magnets.

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6. Budget and Resource Allocation

Andy currently operates on a minimal marketing budget, primarily utilizing Canva and Mailchimp subscriptions for content creation and email marketing. He expresses openness to investing more to enhance lead quality rather than volume.

Andy:

"If I were to spend money on marketing, it would be to try to increase the quality of those prospects."
(09:18)

Hosts' Recommendations:

• Investing in LinkedIn Sales Tools: Utilizing LinkedIn Sales Navigator to streamline connection with target clients.
• Hiring Support: Employing virtual assistants to manage outreach, allowing Andy to focus on content creation.

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7. Enhancing Content Strategy

Andy enjoys creating high-effort, valuable LinkedIn posts that often go viral, attracting engagement beyond his immediate network. Hosts discuss balancing content quality with posting frequency to maximize reach and impact.

Kendra:

"If it's something you enjoy and it feels challenging, it will stand out just by the simple merit that it is very different."
(29:04)

Taylor:

"You're starting with the longer, harder content first. What's really great about that is if you're spending four hours on this amazing LinkedIn post that is getting a lot of traction, it's really valuable."
(31:55)

Strategies Suggested:

• Repurposing Content: Breaking down high-effort posts into smaller, more frequent updates to maintain consistent engagement.
• Diversifying Formats: Incorporating articles, videos, and shorter posts to cater to different audience preferences.

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8. Building a More Predictable Funnel

To transition from sporadic client acquisitions to a steady pipeline, Andy needs to implement a more structured and predictable process.

Taylor:

"We are trying to avoid losing that control and knowing that if Andy connects with a hundred people per week... He’s going to end up with, I don't know, 10 introductory phone calls scheduled per month, and half those people are going to hire him."
(36:10)

Key Recommendations:

• Streamlining Calls to Action: Directing prospects to a well-crafted landing page rather than immediately to a Calendly link.
• Implementing Lead Magnets: Offering valuable resources (e.g., eBooks, checklists) to capture leads and nurture them through email sequences.
• Adding Qualification Steps: Incorporating forms that filter prospects based on criteria like income or financial needs to ensure quality leads.

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9. Actionable Takeaways

Andy’s Top Takeaways:

1. Invest in LinkedIn Marketing: Consider hiring a consultant or enrolling in a LinkedIn marketing course to enhance strategy.
   (43:34)
2. Refine Connection Strategy: Be more proactive in connecting with ideal clients outside the current network, potentially removing non-targeted connections.
   (22:46)
3. Optimize Call to Action: Redirect the bio link from Calendly to a more comprehensive landing page that offers multiple engagement options.
   (29:32)

Hosts' Final Advice:

• Focus on Quality Over Quantity: Ensure that connection requests and engagement activities are aligned with attracting the right clients.
• Repurpose Content Efficiently: Utilize high-quality posts as foundational content that can be broken down and reused across various formats and platforms.
• Implement a Structured Funnel: Develop clear pathways for prospects to move from LinkedIn engagement to becoming qualified leads and, ultimately, clients.

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10. Conclusion

Andy Baxley’s journey exemplifies the challenges and opportunities faced by new financial advisors leveraging LinkedIn for marketing. Through strategic content creation, targeted connection efforts, and funnel optimization, Andy is well on his way to transforming LinkedIn success into quality prospects. Hosts Kendra and Taylor provide insightful guidance, offering actionable strategies that can help Andy—and other advisors—achieve sustainable growth in their practices.

Andy’s Commitment:

"I think I have the scribblings of a madman in front of me here on a full page. [...] I'm open to spending some money on marketing [...] making sure that that link in my bio doesn't just go straight to Calendly."
(43:34)

Final Encouragement from Hosts:

Kendra:

"You're doing an amazing job on LinkedIn. [...] Stay focused on that platform and keep us updated on how it goes."
(45:31)

Taylor:

"What's really great about this is if you're spending four hours on this amazing LinkedIn post that is getting a lot of traction, it's really valuable."
(31:55)

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This episode offers valuable insights into refining LinkedIn marketing strategies for financial advisors, emphasizing the importance of targeted connections, high-quality content, and a structured marketing funnel to convert engagement into meaningful business growth.

Transcript

[Kendra]

Hey, it's Kendra and Taylor, and we're here to make advisor marketing simple. Today's guest is Andy from Two Trails Financial Planning. He launched his solo firm just two months ago, but he has nine years of experience as an advisor. His current revenue is $150,000, and he wants to grow to 40 clients and $300,000 in annual revenue in the next five years. Let's dive into his journey and and plans for growth. Welcome to the show. Today we're having a conversation with Andy. Andy, to kick us off here, can you share your name, your firm, and your location for our listeners?

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah. Hi. So happy to be here. So, my name is Andy Baxley and my firm is Two Trails Financial Planning, based in Chicago, but serving clients around the country.

[Kendra]

And what's that big question that you want to dive into today with Taylor and I?

[Andy Baxley]

Well, I'm brand new. I just launched a couple of months ago and have just recently opened my doors. And I'm trying to figure out how to get people to walk through those doors. And so I think my main question for you guys today is around how to optimize my strategy for LinkedIn. I'm very bought into what you guys teach. Rather than trying to do a bunch of things sort of at like a mediocre level, focus on one thing and just do it really, really well. And I want to start to define what that means for me and also start to think about some metrics for myself in terms of, like, what does success actually mean when it comes to my LinkedIn marketing?

[Kendra]

I love the intentionality and I love the kind of kickstart with focus because that is such a big challenge for so many advisors. I know that you have had some early LinkedIn success. I'd love to kind of understand what does your LinkedIn strategy currently look like and what has that success looked like thus far?

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, great question. So I, I was very intentional when I set out to start posting regularly on LinkedIn and I even did a post about this of sort of defining what success looked like to me. And honestly, I was just sort of like, grasping at thin air. Um, and so I wasn't really sure. I, I knew that I wanted to ideally get a few clients from it. So I set a goal of five in my first year. Um, I think I'm at three from LinkedIn so far, which is great, um, for the first couple months. And then I set some goals around, like, engagements as well as connections, followers. Um, and I also just set some, like, more fun goals around, like, how many friends I made on the platform. Cause that's sort of like a sub goal in addition to generating business. I, I want to get to know the advisor community as well. I don't know how wise it is to have those shared goals on the one platform, but that was sort of my naive approach going into it.

[Taylor]

Just want to jump in while we're on it here. I love the intentionality between. I want five clients from LinkedIn in my first year. You said you're at three. Andy, can you tell us about those three clients? Like what is their profile? Why did they hire you? What were their pain points? How old are they? How much money do they make?

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, they're, I'm really glad to say they really fit my ideal client profile, which is going to be somebody in their 30s or 40s. Typically a dual career couple with, with kids, often young kids making somewhere in the neighborhood of like 250 to 500. I really like working with clients who have enough resources that there's some really interesting decisions to make, but not so many resources that those decisions all of a sudden aren't really that interesting anymore because they don't really have to worry about trade offs that much. So yeah, my initial clients who I brought in from LinkedIn are just folks who saw the posts that I had created with that type of person in mind and it sparked some interest and they reached out.

[Taylor]

Okay, that's all I want to know. So they saw you on LinkedIn, they saw some posts that resonated with them and just to ensure I understand the funnel so far they went from LinkedIn, landed on your website and just scheduled a call with you, is that correct?

[Andy Baxley]

You got it? Yeah.

[Kendra]

All right, one follow up question on that. From a marketing funnel perspective for these new clients that just came in through LinkedIn, were these connections in your network that you knew warmly or was it other people that you were connecting with on the platform?

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, it was people. In fact, I think in all of the cases I hadn't even received connection requests from them. I hadn't even seen them like my stuff. The first time I saw their name was when they showed up on scheduling a discovery call. So yeah, nobody within my network directly.

[Kendra]

That's even better.

[Taylor]

Kendra loves the Lurkers.

[Kendra]

I love the lurkers. So you're telling us a little bit. I love just the early success you've had and the kind of KPIs you created for yourself at each stage of this. What start to think about building a marketing funnel around LinkedIn. You know, one of the questions you kind of had for us too that you mentioned when you applied for the show is figuring out where you need to be, if you need to be more specific with your niche. And so with the the avatar of 30 to 40 year olds, dual career couple, typically with young kids earning 250 to $500k, I just curious, like, what are maybe the top three pain points that that target avatar would struggle with?

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, so I've got a bit of informal data on this just for a bit of context. In my prior role I did a huge proportion of our intro calls and their system was they had like a 15 minute intro call. So I talked to a bunch of people and then qualify them for the next round. And so I talked to all kinds of people who weren't actually a good fit for the firm, but it gave me some really valuable knowledge into like why they weren't a good fit and also what they were looking for. And so I've had a lot of these conversations. And part of the reason I launched my firm is because I just realized there aren't that many firms. I mean there are certainly more than ever, but still not enough firms I think serving that demographic of folks who maybe don't have a ton of assets yet but have a really high income. And so what I've noticed with those folks is a lot of it just centers around a lack of clarity. Like they've done a lot of the basics really well. They're maxing out their 401ks and maybe they have an HSA and 529 and, and they've, you know, they've gotten to the age 40 and they look at like the next 25 years of their career and like, okay, well I got the basics down, but like, what else is possible? I need somebody to help me ideate around that and put some clear steps in place to, to achieve whatever goals that I set for myself. So. So that's enough. That's one for sure. Uh, I hear a lot and have heard a lot from folks like go getter type people who end up with that type of income. Really hate the feeling that there might be things falling through the cracks. I find. And so I hear a lot the phrase like, we don't know what we don't know. Right. And these are people who I think almost by definition, since they're reaching out, they really value expertise. And so they're reaching out really a lot of cases just for a check to make sure that what they've been doing is in fact, the right thing to be doing, and if not, how they should adjust.

[Kendra]

That's really helpful. Okay, so one other quick question. As far as LinkedIn goes, are you making any kind of proactive approach to connect with this ideal client as far as, like, any kind of connection requests or outreaches in that way on LinkedIn.

[Andy Baxley]

You know, I'm actually not, and I'm very open to doing that. One thing that's certainly true about me, and I imagine it's true for a lot of people, is I have a hard time getting myself to do things that I don't really enjoy doing. And so far at least, I've just really loved, like, the content creation process for LinkedIn. And so I really doubled down on spending my time there. I really don't love cold outreach. I did enough of that earlier in my career and I would love to not do it, but I totally get that it might be necessary. But so far I've really focused more on like, the quality of the content rather than a cold outreach strategy. Yeah.

[Kendra]

And that I think that's amazing because that quality of content is the middle of the funnel there. When I think about kind of top of funnel, I'm not talking so much like cold outreach where you're spamming people, but just targeting people that would fit that demographic and connecting with them on LinkedIn. Because at some point we want to get more people into the LinkedIn funnel. So that's kind of what I'm trying to understand. If there's any kind of top of funnel activity happening and then the bottom of funnel, are these people, you know, just organically going to the website and reaching out to you, or are you making some kind of call to action on LinkedIn?

[Andy Baxley]

I do put a call to action on, on most of my posts. I've kind of been experimenting. I wasn't sure if LinkedIn algorithms were like, penalizing that or not. So I've kind of been like, doing my best to ab. Ab test that. Um, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, actually. But I do put a call to action that basically just says, like, go to my website if you want to and. And schedule a call.

[Kendra]

Yeah. Awesome. Okay, Taylor, what's coming up for you around his approach to LinkedIn and the goals he has to drive more clients from LinkedIn.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah.

[Taylor]

So I acknowledge a couple things that you're doing really, really well. One, you know, you're really clear on who you're doing your best work for. I'm sure we can certainly refine that and get Even more clear. But you know, you have a good niche that you validated. You're on LinkedIn. You've had success attracting that niche to hire you. So things are starting to resonate here. One thing I'm curious about is your marketing budget. You know, you've built a beautiful website. A lot of the graphics you're putting together look fantastic. So you're spending some money on your business here. What does your annual marketing budget look like if you were gonna invest money in your business?

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, that's a really embarrassing question to answer. I mean, honestly, it's like whatever a canvas subscription costs, to be honest. Um, and I probably should spend more. I mean, obviously I, I paid a Triton Devore. He's wonderful at creating advisor websites and I paid him to do that. Um, but at this point, yeah, it's like mailchimp and Canva subscriptions. Basically, I create all of my visuals myself on, on Canva. Okay.

[Taylor]

Like, could you make a marketing budget or you're at a stage where like, I cannot spend more money on this business. I need to do all this stuff myself and get more clients before I can reinvest.

[Andy Baxley]

No, I totally could. I think if I were to spend money on marketing, I would want it to be not so much about increasing volume, but maybe increasing like quality of leads coming in. So in terms of, in terms of volume, I'm feeling really good about the flow of volume coming in. I've actually got more discovery calls than I, I've ever had at any point in my career. But I would say if I were to spend money on marketing, it would be to try to increase the, the quality of those prospects. I've. I offer two services. One is one I call Summit wealth, the other one is called Basecamp. And there's been a lot of interest in Basecamp, which is like a three month, like one time plan arrangement. And I really like doing it. But the volume of folks coming in for Summit wealth, which is a more ongoing arrangement, has been a little bit slower. So very open to spending some money on marketing. If I could increase the number of people flowing into that category. Okay.

[Taylor]

I mean, there's a, a lot to unpack there at the bottom of your funnel. And the process for people getting scheduled, you know, you're offering 60 minutes of your time for free. That's probably something to consider tweaking potentially. I'm not sure you're giving people two options. Do you want Basecamp or do you want this? So, you know, you could tighten things up if you want more I forget what you call it. Summit. Is that you call it Summit?

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, Summit and Basecamp. Yeah.

[Taylor]

Okay.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah.

[Taylor]

If you wanted more Summit type clients, well, going to have to create a better path to driving people towards the summit. Well, service model. But if we're going to give them two options and Basecamp seems like the path of least resistance and I only need to fork out, you know, a couple thousand dollars to start, it's not surprising that more people would, would choose that option. And again, just side note here, we're going to focus mostly on LinkedIn today, but if we have a healthy number of introductory phone calls getting scheduled, like more than we can handle and we're now focused on quality over quantity. Start to think about do like, should I be spending 60 minutes of my valuable time with every single person that schedules a phone call or should I shorten that up and spend 15 or 20 minutes to determine if there's truly a good fit and then start to spend more time with them from there? So there's probably some things to think about at the bottom of your funnel, but going back to LinkedIn or marketing and, you know, building up an audience of people that we do our best work for. You know, Kendra brought up a good point around how are you connecting with these mid career, you know, young, successful professionals on LinkedIn. I mean, I love that you're focused on producing high quality content that speaks to your target demographic. I love that that's where you're spending your time. You mentioned that you enjoy that part of it. That's fantastic. Like, that's awesome. You're not playing around with all these bells and whistles. Like you're focused on creating really, really good content. But we have to ensure that your ideal client is actually seeing this content too. This is not like YouTube where it's a pure discovery machine where you may not need many subscribers because people may be fed your videos through the algorithm. With LinkedIn, I believe you do need to make a bit of an effort to connect with people on LinkedIn so they are seeing your posts. So one it asks you about your marketing budget and one reason for that is you made a comment earlier. It's like, you know, I just like to create the content. I don't really want to be doing this other stuff, I. E. I don't really want to be spending my time connecting with people or sending cold DMs. You can spend a little bit of money. It's not a huge investment. One to sign up for LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which makes it really easy to connect with larger numbers of people. Kendra, I think knows the exact numbers. Is it a hundred per week? Kendra?

[Kendra]

Yeah, I think it's something like that.

[Taylor]

Yeah. So I don't know what LinkedIn sales navigator costs. I don't think it's a huge expense. But could you leverage something like that to make it easier to connect with 100 successful mid career professionals per week? Uh, if that's too much for you and it's not something that you want to commit to doing week after week after week, could you hire a VA to tackle that task for you so that you know that somebody in the background every single week is connecting with another 100 of your ideal clients, allowing you to just focus on creating really, really good content. Somebody else is getting you connected with more and more of those people. Kendra, I'm not sure if it was you, but I saw a LinkedIn post today or this week. Something around like if other financial advisors are liking your LinkedIn post, you're doing LinkedIn wrong. Was that, was that you?

[Kendra]

No, it wasn't me. But I talk about this often and I have to remind my clients who their clients are. And it's not other advisors. So with our industry, when you start doing marketing well, it really attracts other advisors, which is really exciting. I like to pay attention to what they're doing as well. But a lot of times they'll jump into the comments and that's really helpful. But we really want to make sure the people that are paying attention to your content, we're really going for dual career couples with that income range and that age range and those key problems that you talked about. So this is why when we're thinking about getting even More strategic on LinkedIn, this is leveling up LinkedIn. We need to make sure that we're getting those people to you. And the thing that's kind of interesting too, I think about ordinary people is sometimes they may not even be commenting. But we need to make sure we're putting the right people into the process here so they can see those posts and that information. You know, as advisors we're out there publishing content, but a lot of regular people, they do tend to be lurkers. And some of my clients have gotten clients off of LinkedIn based off of some of the posts that had the least engagement, but they were very targeted towards the problems that they solve. So Taylor's point about getting that kind of top of funnel for you on LinkedIn is going to be connecting with other people who, who meet that ideal client. And another thing that Kind of came up for me and this might be something for you to kind of marinate on a bit is, you know, you have this Summit package which is kind of a one time financial plan and people are buying that. Have you noticed any differences between those who buy kind of the one time planning package versus the ongoing package that you offer the Basecamp?

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, I would say so. And actually it's reversed. So it's, it's summit is the ongoing and then. And then Basecamp is the one time. Yeah, no worries. Yeah. I think the key differentiator has been level of expertise around personal finance and how comfortable they are managing things themselves. I've had a lot of interest expressed in Basecamp of people who are actually pretty sophisticated, but again acknowledge that they don't know what they don't know. Whereas folks who prefer to go the summit route oftentimes might be sophisticated, but more often than not they just really value delegation. Um, and say, hey, I'm happy to pay somebody to do this because I either don't have the desire or I don't have the time to do it myself.

[Kendra]

Okay, great. So here's a couple tweaks I would consider, one we talked about, which is connecting with that ideal avatar. But I would start to tune it in just a little bit and I would be thinking about who are those clients that are doing the ongoing planning with me and how could you tweak your content a little bit to actually appeal to them, you know, kind of long term. Because when you go and add these potential clients on LinkedIn, that's going to be your top of funnel. The one thing I want to say about that is I would not automate that somebody. Other people can feel differently about this, but it's against LinkedIn's terms of service to use automation tools. Some advisors feel comfortable with that. I don't personally feel comfortable with that. You have to find where your comfort level lies. But then as you get into what would be the middle of Funnel for your LinkedIn marketing funnel, that content you put out. If you're wanting to attract more of those ongoing clients, I would look at how can you slightly shift what you talk about to be a little bit more attractive to that kind of client.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, that's a really, that's a really good point. I'll have to think more about what that shift would look like. But yeah, it's a really fair point.

[Taylor]

Alternatively, another thought, we're throwing out a lot right here out of the gates, but. Cause we are thinking about, you know, the path that A user is taking Andy from finding you on LinkedIn to digesting your content to landing on your website and now making a buying decision decision. So that's how Kendra and I are thinking about this whole process, this whole funnel. And you know, you mentioned that you've got a lot more people signing up for Basecamp than the Summit wealth package. The ongoing planning. What if, because you enjoy the one time plans, what if just you require everybody to go through base camp first? Right? Like, I can't, I can't hike Mount Whitney without going to base camp first for a night in acclimating. So like, should everybody go to base camp first and get their one time plan and you add a bunch of value and then a certain percentage of them that want your Summit wealth, they want to go to summit with you, then they hire you. But because you enjoy doing the one time plans, maybe you make everybody go through that process, get that one time plan done first, and at the end you share more about going to the summit with Andy and here's what that entails. And a certain percentage of them will go there. So it may not be reshaping your content. You might still be targeting the same folks and that, you know, half the people that go through Basecamp end up hiring you for ongoing services.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, that's a really good point. And in fact, that is actually kind of how I have it set up. So my process for Summit does just sort of automatically begin with basecamp. And I designed it that way very intentionally because I've had this experience multiple times in my career where people think that they want one time help and then you really dive in and you give them their list of like ongoing things that they need to be thinking about and they're like, oh, actually, I just didn't really understand everything that doing this well entailed. And so, yeah, let me hire you. So I tried to have the two offerings be like Russian nesting dolls where one sort of like fits into the other. And for folks who just sign on directly with Summit, it's the, the folks who have that self awareness from the, from the onset that they're going to want that ongoing help. But the idea is that folks can, can onboard onto Summit straight out of Basecamp if they end up changing their mind.

[Taylor]

Yeah, I mean, again, I mean, you have some decisions to make here. I never love giving people multiple options because we end up either being disappointed with the options that they're choosing, or they're being paralyzed by these options and not taking action. I do love this idea of just Giving them one single option. You know, if step one is Basecamp, then that should be clearly outlined here, that Step one. If you want to work with me, Step one is Basecamp. And here's what Basecamp entails. After that, I'll share more about going to the summit with Andy and what that looks like. You could visually show that on your site, but you know, when I come to your process and pricing page, it's like, do you want this or do you want this? This thing offers you this and this thing offers you this. Now I got to figure out which one to choose. So just one thing to maybe start to think about there at the bottom of your funnel. Do I want to force everybody to go through Basecamp first before, you know, they sign up for Summit Wealth? And I think Dana Onspock at Sensible Money does a great job at this. She does a great job on her website outlining that every single new client is going to go through. I forget what the. She calls it the, the juicing program or something like that. It's the one time financial plan. First they pay seven or eight thousand dollars for it and then they can sign up for ongoing planning if they want. But it's very, very clear what the very first step is for every single person that's interested in working with her.

[Andy Baxley]

I think that's a really interesting idea for all the reasons you just said. But then also because I think we've all had this experience where we, we welcome a client on board and then you kind of realize a few months in that maybe it's not as ideal of a fit as you thought it was going to be. Maybe because they're just, it's really hard to get stuff from them or they cancel meetings all the time or whatever. So it's almost like a tryout period too, for, for both of us.

[Taylor]

And you're getting paid for that tryout period, right? Yeah. So, you know, we're not here to necessarily talk about, you know, your, your sales process or your service model, but given that all roads from LinkedIn are going to lead here and you made that comment about more people signing up for Basecamp and how do I get more people to sign up for Summit Wealth? I am inclined to say everybody starts at Basecamp and here's what that looks like. So some more things to think about there. So going back to LinkedIn here, you know, we talked about connecting with the right people on LinkedIn and maybe this is a hard thing for you to, to take action on. But if I was leveraging LinkedIn to grow my practice. If I was starting over, if I was starting my new practice and I was targeting high net worth or high, high income earning young professionals and I was going to use LinkedIn to do that, I would probably remove every single connection from LinkedIn and I would start over. I'd remove all my financial advisor friends, remove everybody, and I would start over and I would only be connecting with my ideal client, the people that I want to put this content in front of. You know, I'm looking at your most recent post here from yesterday about private school. Awesome post, like vulnerable. It's interesting, you wrote it really well. But you know how many financial advisors, friends of yours, colleagues of ours, commented and liked this post? I don't know the exact percentage, but the very first one I'm seeing is, is, is Brian who's a CFP. And so LinkedIn is saying, oh, there's all these financial planners liking this post. Financial planners must really like this post. Let's show this to more financial planners. Right, so that's what's happening here. And so you as the content creator, if you're going to use LinkedIn as your primary middle of the funnel marketing, actual top and middle of the funnel marketing activity, we might have to make some hard decisions. Say I'm not really using LinkedIn to connect with my colleagues and share with my colleagues all my cool content that I'm creating. You might have to be a little bit more intentional about who you're connecting with on LinkedIn so that the algorithm is feeding your content to the right people.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, that's fair. Would you literally, did I hear that correctly, that you would literally potentially just start over?

[Taylor]

I would literally delete every single connection. I don't know if LinkedIn allows you to do that if you start a new profile, but if I was truly committed to using LinkedIn to grow my practice, I would remove every single connection that I have right now. And in fact I did. I did it the op. I did it the opposite way when I decided, you know what, LinkedIn is not the platform that I want to use to grow my practice. I had connected with COIs on LinkedIn. Local COIs had connected with a number of clients. I actually removed all those connections. I removed all my client connections, I removed all my COI connections. I specifically use LinkedIn to connect with other advisors. So I kind of went the, the other way here and removed all those, those client coi, you know, business type connections and have been focused on connecting mostly with advisors on LinkedIn. So I don't know how that feels to you if you're like, yeah, but like, I like sharing this stuff with my colleagues and I like when, you know, Brian, my other buddies like my post. And that's fine. Like, it's a decision for you to make, but it's likely hindering your LinkedIn success if you're truly trying to use LinkedIn to grow your practice.

[Andy Baxley]

I think there's. It definitely does resonate. I mean, it's scary, but I have noticed, like, when I put out, I've had maybe like two or three posts. I don't know, it depends how you define viral. But I've had two or three posts go out that sort of reached like some level of virality. And I find that like, the first day it's all like financial people liking it, and then the next day I wake up and it's a bunch of like third connections. Not even second connections, but third connections. And so I think, like, if it reaches that sort of like critical mass, then it ends up going out to people who are not advisors. But I've totally noticed, like in the beginning it's like all financial people who engage with it. My one hesitation about stepping away from that is a couple of my clients so far at the new firm have come from referrals from fellow advisors who saw my stuff on LinkedIn. And so I think I didn't quite totally realize how potentially good of a source that would be. Just like folks who have $2 million asset minimums or whatever, right? And they're like, oh, this guy seems to know his stuff. I'll, I'll refer my clients kids to him or whatever. So that's my one point of hesitation around that. I would say, curious to get your thoughts on that.

[Taylor]

Well, my thought is, is banking on other advisors seeing my post and making a referral, is that a predictable sustainable marketing strategy?

[Andy Baxley]

Fair?

[Taylor]

It may happen from time to time, and when it does, it feels good. I've had advisors reach out to me, like, hey, my parents are retiring and I'd like to refer them to you. Like, that feels great. That was really nice of them to reach out to me. But I don't have a process in place to ensure that that happens week after week after week. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. So that's what comes to mind when you say that. Now if you're like, hey, I really want to network with other advisors and build a referral strategy so that they refer, you know, all the, all the retirement focused advisors like Taylor refer all the Young professionals. To me, I mean, that's an entirely different conversation.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

[Taylor]

And I'll also acknowledge here, I don't know enough about using LinkedIn to grow my practice. Maybe the algorithm is smarter than I think and maybe, sure, on day one all these finance people are liking your post, but then LinkedIn's smart enough to scrape the content and say, well, this content's not really for financial professionals, but financial professionals do seem to like it. But let's show this to this other segment of people and then it starts to blow up from there with those, you know, third, third party connections and more of your ideal client. I don't know. And so this comes back to, you know, if we're going to use LinkedIn to grow our practice, let's get obsessed and hyper focused on how to do that in the best way possible. And Kendra and I are giving you some higher level ideas here, but you know, you might want to go hire a LinkedIn marketing expert. One of our prior guests, we talked about going and paying for a LinkedIn marketing course and watching YouTube videos on how to use LinkedIn to, you know, you know, build your business. I mean, I would just obsess over every possible strategy and tactic around LinkedIn because you might find out that, yeah, it's actually not that big of a deal for financial advisors to like my post because in a roundabout way it actually does end up landing in my ideal clients, you know, lap and they end up, you know, reaching out and engaging with my content. I just don't know the answer to that.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, I think more, more research needed clearly there and it actually kind of dovetails nicely into another thing. I was really curious to get your guys thoughts on. It sort of seems to me like, at least from my initial observations here, I would claim no expertise here, but from my initial observations it seems like there are sort of like two different ways to be successful posting on LinkedIn. And the one I see most common is just lots and lots of posts. Like there are people out there who post multiple times a day, many who post like once a day. And then the other strategy, which feels like it's a lot less common and probably for good reason, is just really high effort posts instead of just volume. And so I'm trying to figure out which of those paths I should go down or if it should be a mix of both. I actually really enjoy making the really high effort posts and the ones that I've put out there, like the posts I've had that have gone viral have been Those high effort posts. And I. I think probably because people can tell, it just feels a little different than what they're used to seeing there, but they take time. Um, we're talking like, for my one on Monday, it was like multiple hours, probably like four hours to create that post. And so obviously I want to make sure there's ROI there as well. So we'd love to get any thoughts you guys have on that too.

[Kendra]

I think you said a couple things that really stood out to me. One is which I just enjoy it. Two, it's working. Three, it's different. I mean, I. I pay attention to your content on LinkedIn. I think that you're doing a phenomenal job. The you put out is really interesting. I also know from an algorithm standpoint, LinkedIn is unique, at least at this point in its journey, that it will resurface some of your older posts more organically than other platforms. So there's posts that. I kind of have a similar strategy to you. I don't post a lot on LinkedIn, but when I do, it usually takes me at least an hour to write one post. And I noticed that that gets continuous kind of organic reach in the platform. I think based off of the fact that it's working, you enjoy it, and it's standing out. I would go that route because it is hard. And I think, you know, Taylor and I talk about this occasionally on the podcast, that if. If it's feels hard, you might kind of be onto something there.

[Taylor]

We.

[Kendra]

We want you to make sure you're doing a platform that you enjoy, but if it's something you enjoy and it feels challenging, it will stand out just by the simple merit that it is very different. It does take time to craft those posts and make them interesting. And you do a really good job of adding in a nice visual that's also still on brand for your firm.

[Andy Baxley]

Thanks, Kendra. I appreciate that. And yeah, it's a good affirmation. It's felt like I was sort of barking up the right tree there just because I was having a lot of fun doing it and had some initial success. So, yeah, good to hear that. Affirmed.

[Taylor]

Yeah. I think what's really great about what you're doing is that you're. You are focused on doing the harder stuff first. You know, it's very easy to say, I'm just gonna throw up a random post every single day and see what happens. You're saying, like, no, I'm willing to spend, you know, two to four hours of my time to create a really valuable post. Most people don't. Don't say that. So I think it's great that you're, you're starting with the, the hard stuff first. What's, what's really great about that is you can spend that. I don't know if four hours is too much. That's for you to determine whether the ROI is there or not. Some people are really surprised to hear how much time I spend on every single podcast episode. It's a lot, but the ROI is, you know, the ROI makes sense. So that's for you to determine whether four hours is too much or maybe too little. But the really great thing about this is if you're spending four hours on this amazing LinkedIn post that is getting a lot of traction, it's really valuable. It becomes really easy then to chop that up into smaller posts and publish some posts more frequently. So, you know, you can leverage an AI tool to potentially do that. You can do it yourself. But I think most successful kind of social media marketers that I see, they sprinkle in different formats. It's not always one single thing. It's not always like, I always write super long Twitter threads, right. They're engaging on Twitter in a few different ways, and they're doing it really consistently. So it may not just be one of these things. It could be one of these things for a period of time. You don't all, you know, tomorrow you don't need to start repurposing into, you know, shorter, smaller posts. But as you start to get more comfortable and build out this great process for writing these longer, really valuable posts, you might say, okay, this is getting easier for me. I've got a good process in place. How can I maybe repurpose this content, start to post more frequently, and develop kind of a content schedule for that? So I don't think it has to be one or the other. I like that it's one right now. But you might start to think about, how can I repurpose some of this content to maybe add some more frequency to how I'm posting? I know on LinkedIn, some people will take it to another level and they'll write articles on LinkedIn. And I stumble across a lot of those articles, like really long form content on LinkedIn or short form video on LinkedIn. It's becoming more popular. So the fact that you're starting with the longer, harder content first starts to open up all these other doors for taking things to the next level when you're ready.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, that makes, that makes really good sense. I've I've rationalized the whole thing that way, saying like, I know the stuff that I'm creating can be repurposed. I hadn't really thought of it in the form of like breaking it down into smaller chunks, but that's really smart. But yeah, the thinking has been, okay, yes, I'm putting this time in now, but I can repurpose this in client newsletters, I can repurpose it in client meetings. If I create something that's really relevant to a particular potential client that I talk to in a discovery meeting, it's a really great follow up thing to send. So that's kind of how I'm rationalizing it is it'll be like a create once, use multiple times sort of thing. But I really like that idea of chopping it up into, into smaller bite sized pieces.

[Taylor]

I think to round out this conversation, I kind of summarize what this funnel is starting to look like to make sure we're hitting it from every angle here. So to go back a little bit ago, talking about the top of your LinkedIn funnel. So we need to connect with more of our ideal clients on LinkedIn. We need a process for connecting with those people. We can't just expect the algorithm to feed this content to them. The great thing about LinkedIn is you can send those, those connection requests and you can do up to a hundred of them per week. So some sort of process to connect with those people each and every week. I would try to utilize that maximum limit of 100. How you do that is up to you. I know Kendra mentioned the automation rules, but that doesn't, I don't think Kendra, that's preventing you from hiring somebody in the background, a real person, to, you know, use Sales Navigator to connect with them manually.

[Kendra]

That's how we do it. We, we do it manually. Some people are very comfortable with the automation route. You just have to decide what you're comfortable with. We just do it manually.

[Taylor]

Okay. So you know, if you did that every single week for an entire year, you know, you've got roughly, you know, 5,000. I guess not everybody's gonna say yes to your connection, but say you're gonna have thousands of new connections of, you know, high earning young professionals, mid career professionals, whatever you call them now connected to you on LinkedIn. So I would take advantage of that maximum limit of 100 per week and start to connect with more of those people. Then you're gonna be focused on kind of the middle of this LinkedIn funnel where you're publishing. I don't know if it's one time per week, Andy, or what your current cadence is, but you're going to be writing these really valuable posts that you spend a lot of time on to build trust and show your expertise with all these great new connections of yours. The last piece that we haven't really talked about is, okay, I've got a great audience. I'm building trust with people on LinkedIn. I'm getting engagement. People are commenting, people are sharing it. But how do I actually move these people into my ecosystem and start to get them to take action with my firm? Yes, a certain percentage of them will find you on their own. They'll find your website, they'll schedule a call. But again, that's not very predictable. We don't know when they're doing it, why they're doing it, how they're doing it. They're just somehow stumbling there and doing it. And we want a more predictable path for them to take. And so I'm looking at the most recent post and kind of your call to action is like, hey, if you're interested in working with us, we have these options. This base camp, it's 3,500. The summit wealth, it's $5,000. I'm giving these options. I got to choose which option. I'm not seeing the exact link to go to your website, but we might start to think about how can we get more clear with this call to action from time to time with this audience. And I think you can test this. Schedule a phone call like this immediately. Call to action. If you like this and you're interested in learning about, you know, how I work with people, click here to schedule a phone call versus hey, if this is you and you're having this problem, I created this, this checklist or this free guide or I have this ebook for you to download. And now they're in my email newsletter and I've got a sequence or a funnel to get them from my email newsletter to scheduling a phone call. So you can kind of test both of those things, but in one way, shape or form. We're going to want to get them off of LinkedIn and into our ecosystem from time to time. Otherwise, again, yeah, we're going to have these, these wins here and there. We're going to go through these seasons where people are scheduling phone calls, and then there's going to be seasons where nobody's scheduling phone calls and you have no control over that. We're trying to avoid losing that control and knowing that if Andy connects with a hundred people per week, and he puts out one valuable post every week. And in that post, there's a call to action to download a thing or schedule a phone call. And if he just keeps doing that over and over and over again, he's going to end up with, I don't know, 10 introductory phone calls scheduled per month, and half those people are going to hire him. Now you're on a real path for marketing success.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah.

[Kendra]

And you also point out something interesting with the call to action on the LinkedIn post. You know, LinkedIn, just like every social channel, doesn't want people to go off platform. So you may have to experiment. I like how you're saying, you know, to learn more, check out the link in my bio, because it is a call to action, but you aren't linking to the website. But you could test out also, I think what Taylor said, driving to a really kind of thoughtful lead magnet that your ideal client would be interested in not just calls, but also just moving them off the platform. I think that expanded call to action could be really helpful from a marketing perspective.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah. And I share some of the anxiety that Joe Marshall expressed in his episode with you guys of, you know, hey, if I'm like totally indexing on LinkedIn and something happens with the algorithm or my accounts gets hacked or whatever, right? Like, my one thing that I have is just no longer there. So getting folks onto a, like an email newsletter feels. Feels valuable in that way as well.

[Kendra]

And it really, it plugs into your current strategy. I think everybody has that risk. It's just not everybody realizes it. You know, like even YouTube podcasting, like every platform to a degree has that risk. Just very few really understand that. And so that element of plugging in a additional kind of call to action for people who may not be far enough down the sales process, but they could be curious or if you can touch on some of the core pain points that you know are already there. That's where I would look at the diversification. I wouldn't go to a different platform. I would diversify off of this platform. Because even if you went to another platform, you're still going to have the same thing there that you are building your business on borrowed land. So I think that plugs in really well.

[Taylor]

Here's something crazy. I, Andy, I didn't even see the check the link in my bio. And you want to know why? Because at the end of your really interesting, valuable post, you start to talk about, we're onboarding two to three new clients. So, like my eyes, when I'M reading this post full of all this text. The 2 to 3 those numbers jump out to me. So I see those two to three new clients and then directly below that I see $3,500 and $5,000 and then directly below that is your nice image that has more numbers and dollars. So like I completely missed that last sentence. It said to learn more and schedule a no obligation intro chat. Check out the link in my bio. I completely missed it. It. So this is where we run into trouble when we're, we're giving people too much or there's too many options. We're, we're taking on these clients. We have this option or we have this option and you can do this or you can do that. I just, you know, my brain just, I don't know what to do and I start to miss these things. So I would start to really fine tune if we're going to put out this massively valuable post. If you like this post, you want to learn more, check out the link in my bio and I might like put some emojis or something around that so it really stands out in my post. So like you see that I'm telling you to go to my bio otherwise it starts to get lost in the content. The second thing is because I didn't realize that. I didn't realize the link in your bio went straight to your calendly. So you're not even giving them a chance to go to your website to learn more about your service model, who you do your best work for, who Andy really is. You're sending them straight from LinkedIn, straight to your one hour complimentary meeting. So I would think about something in between those two things. Nate Hoskin does a great job of this. Every single call to action on his social media channels is go check out link in my bio. The link in the bio takes you to a landing page and on that landing page there's a number of different things for that potential client to do. Maybe they're ready to schedule an intro call. They're given some information and they can schedule that call. Maybe they're not ready. They can join his email list, they can download free guides, they can consume additional information, but one single landing page for them to go to from social media I think is just table stakes for social media marketing.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, that's fair. I hadn't thought about that. The jump I'm asking people to make, going from reading a post from somebody they've never met to giving them an hour of their time, that's a really? Fair point.

[Taylor]

Yeah. And the other end of that is more people might take you up on it than you want them to. Right? Yeah. You've got all these one hour phone calls scheduled because people are like, I get a free one hour with Andy the cfp. Like, I'll take him up on that. So you talk about quality over quantity. Well, if you're offering a free hour to all these strangers on LinkedIn, it's no surprise that you're starting to fill up. Cause it's too easy for them to schedule. We need a little bit more friction in there to ensure the right people are scheduling that we're presenting our calendar to the right people, not just to anyone and everyone who finds the link in my bio.

[Kendra]

Also something, Andy, you've crossed this threshold that some advisors get to where you're getting more interest than you need and not all those are fully qualified. So when you get to that point, sometimes that can be a good checkpoint to add a little bit more logic on the form like income or investment assets. You know, there's a couple different ways to do that, but a little bit more qualifying language to kind of filter out some of those people who wouldn't be a good fit for you.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, that's fair. And I know Calendly certainly allows for that.

[Taylor]

Yeah. And you, I call it adding friction to the process. And Kendra nailed it that, you know, the early stages, you might open your calendar to everybody and then as you start to have some success and you want to focus more on quality over quantity, you start to add some friction. So for me it was okay. I don't want to offer my calendar to just anybody. I'm going to build a landing page first for them to go and learn more about who I do my best work for and then put my calendar in front of them. And I'm like, well, I still need to add even more friction. So now I'm going to make them answer some questions so I can learn a little bit more about them first. And the more things I ask them to do, the fewer people, you know, are going to schedule. So I'm adding that friction to reduce the quantity. It was like, okay, they're going to the landing page, they're answering questions and they're scheduling a phone call and there's still too many of them. I'm going to add even more friction. And now I've got this, this giant form with conditional logic in it that's built out and we went from, you know, 150 intro calls down to 50 or 60 intro calls because of that form with conditional logic. So more success you start to have in attracting, you know, people to your firm or to your calendar. You gotta start to add more friction there to ensure you are focused on quality over quantity.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, I think there's a. There's an ego component to this in the first, like, two months of launching a firm. You know, the fear is like, you launch and it's just going to be crickets, you know, and so there's like an ego component to like, oh, people want to talk to me and I don't even care who it is. But yeah, I'm very quickly arriving at the place of, actually I do care who it is, and I want it to be the right people.

[Taylor]

Yeah, it's a good problem to have.

[Kendra]

And the interesting thing too is I know you didn't ask about the bottom of your funnel, but when we, let's say we carved out, you know, an extra five or ten hours per month that you're not getting on the phone with unqualified prospects, we can reinvest that either, you know, somewhere else in the, in the firm, or we could reinvest that at the top of the funnel or the middle of the funnel, or you could just keep a little bit of that time for yourself. You know, it doesn't have to all go back into marketing. So we see this with some advisors where it can feel really, really good to have just those prospect calls coming through. But I think you earn, you know, again, that. That right to create a little bit more friction just so you can get some of that time back. And it will help with the other areas of marketing in the funnel, which are also take time.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, totally. A fair point. Like, you say yes to one thing and by definition, you're saying no to other things and getting clear on what it is that I'm saying no to if I'm talking to anyone and everyone, definitely.

[Kendra]

So we throw in a lot of things your way today, Andy. You know, after this call, what do you think you might do differently or what are some of your bigger takeaways from today?

[Andy Baxley]

Well, I have the scribblings of a madman in front of me here on a full page. I think I. Yeah, I'll just name maybe three of my top ones here. One of them is thinking about maybe spending some money on really getting serious about LinkedIn, possibly in the form of a consultant or a course. That's not something I'd given much thought to, but I'm very open to it. Send. I don't know If I'm quite ready to delete all my Advisor friends from LinkedIn, it might take me a little while to get there. But certainly being more proactive about getting requests sent out to folks who are outside of the network and yeah, getting over whatever allergic reaction I have to sending cold connection requests to people because ultimately I have to get past that. There's just no way around that. I think you guys are absolutely right about that. And then one very obvious one that I'll work on soon is making sure that that link in my bio doesn't just go straight to calendly. That there's, there's a more of a smooth on ramp to getting to know me and committing some time.

[Taylor]

Yeah, I think a really easy action to take there Andy, because it might take you some time to think through this landing page that I want to create for social media. You might go check out Nate's and see how he did it and it just might take some time to build, build it the way you want to build it. I think an easy win is just send them to your homepage or send them to your services page. Just send them to an existing page on your site so at least they get a more information about you and your services and who you do your best work for and what your processes look like before, you know, getting on your calendar that by just like an easy tweak to make here. Now if you just want to keep loading up your calendar with more one hour meetings right now and just continue the momentum and you just don't really care that much right now about, about, you know, optimizing that, that that's fine. But if you want to start to slow things down a little bit and start to move towards quality over quantity, I think that's a really easy solution while you build a maybe a more focused land landing page.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Rather than trying to make it perfect, just get, get partway there and then perfect later.

[Kendra]

Well, Andy, you're doing a lot of things really well out of the gate. I feel like we had so many different things to talk about here, but I think you're doing an amazing job on LinkedIn. I'm really impressed with your website. There's always going to be things to improve, but I think you've really started with a good mindset which is here's who I serve and here's the channel that feels natural and organic to me. How do I go above and beyond to stand out in a way that feels authentic to me. And now with the you know, conversation we had today. Hopefully this gives you a few different ideas where you can optimize and take that LinkedIn funnel, formalize it a little bit more, especially at the top. And then, you know, you can decide which of those different, you know, strategy pieces or tactics feel authentic to you. Stay focused on that platform and keep us update and updated on how it goes.

[Andy Baxley]

Yeah, when you guys have the where are they now, like one year anniversary episode, I'll come back with some solid progress support for you.

[Kendra]

We would love that. And for everyone who's listening, thank you so much and we'll see you next week. 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 show notes. Thanks for listening and we'll see see you next week.