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Advisor Marketing Made Simple
Advice Line: Referrals vs. Digital Marketing For Doubling AUM (Paul Sydlansky)
00:43:13
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- [00:00]
Kendra
Hey, it's Kendra and Taylor and we're here to make advisor marketing simple. All right, everyone, we're excited to have Paul on the show today and he's got some great questions he wants to ask. Paul, as we jump in here, could you share your name, your firm, your location, and that one big question that you want to dive in to with Taylor and I today?
- [00:22]
Paul Sidlansky
Sure, no problem. And thank you for having me, guys. So my name is Paul Sidlansky. I am the founder of Lake Road Advisors or an independent ria. We're based in upstate New York, but we are a virtual firm. So while we do have, I say, 40% of our clients locally in upstate New York, the rest are scattered out throughout the US and so my question for today is my firm is about 8 years old, we have about 95 to 100 clients matching about 75 million in AUM. And we've had just slow, consistent, steady growth through the eight years. And from a marketing perspective, I've tried a lot of different things. Kendra, you and I have worked together in the past as well and I want to really supercharge my growth and my goal for the firm is to really double in size within the next five years. So would love to know from your perspective what somebody at my size with my firm, it's myself and one other advisor, what we should be doing from a marketing perspective to kind of supercharge our growth, you know, for the next five years.
- [01:26]
Kendra
That's awesome. Could you give us a quick hit list of what marketing activities you're currently doing?
- [01:31]
Paul Sidlansky
Yes. So I've evolved throughout the years and obviously as an entrepreneur, starting on my own, started doing just everything and then I've been lucky enough to outsource some of the more day to day type operational stuff. But right now, overall what our marketing looks like is we are producing about two to three pieces of content a month. That's videos, blog posts. I also have a history of about 125, 130 other pieces that we are sending out via social, you know, we're putting out 4, 5, 6 pieces total a month. Top of that, we have tried webinars where we're trying to do a quarterly webinar and really haven't had much success with that. So we've stopped that. We have a few pieces, white papers on our website to capture emails. But yeah, it's really geared toward our website. We've made some changes on our website to really take people through the process of what it's like to work with Lakewood Advisors. So yeah, it's producing content, putting content out there. I would say most of it. It's kind of top of the funnel type stuff.
- [02:38]
Kendra
Love that. And right now of the marketing activities that you're doing, you know what is working best for you to find great clients.
- [02:46]
Paul Sidlansky
So it's split right now. It's so far this year we've been lucky enough to sign about 15 new clients halfway through the year. And those clients have been through referrals and then folks who just find us line. And the cool thing is I think over the years we've been able to refine our message and the folks who come to us are saying, hey, you spoke to me. I felt like you were talking to me. And just take a step back. Our niche as mid career professionals with young families, busy working parents who know that all the things in life insurance, taxes, investing, college planning is important. They just don't have the time and they don't know where to start and they're overwhelmed. And so the good news is is the message is resonating with our folks. And what I will say is our close rate has been really good this year. It's been about 60%. So were getting qualified leads. I just was hoping to get more.
- [03:40]
Taylor
Awesome.
- [03:41]
Kendra
And one thing I wanted to dive into that you said right now referrals are working well and online. Do you ask either, I don't see it on your call booking form how anyone heard about you or do you ask in the call that you have with them how they heard about you?
- [03:53]
Paul Sidlansky
Yeah, so one thing I've done, and I know some people aren't keyed on this, but we have a questionnaire form that we might make people fill out for that initial 15 minute call. And on that initial questionnaire it says how did you find us? And so I asked them, you know, was it Google was the family friend? Was it, you know, just searching on the website, whatever it may be? So we do try to capture that data.
- [04:15]
Kendra
Okay, awesome. The reason why I'm asking is I kind of see this two different paths. You've got referrals working and online. And when I look at the online channel, I really want to understand what channels are sending these qualified, you know, people to. You of those channels, what are they saying? Are they saying Google search, are they saying social, You've got a few different activities that you're doing. I'm trying to understand which ones are actually converting. Well for you right now on the.
- [04:35]
Paul Sidlansky
Digital front, yeah, and that's a great question. And I that's an area Where I need to better understand. And so when we talk about our distribution channels, we're using LinkedIn, we're using Facebook and YouTube for the videos. So that's one thing where I don't have a clear understanding of, you know, which is working, which isn't. It's usually just people say, oh, you know, I found you online, or you know, I googled you and you came up.
- [05:02]
Kendra
Okay, so I have one thought here, and then I want to jump over to Taylor and see what his thoughts are here. When I look at source tracking for advisors I work with, I would put on your front end form on the website because it's going to be more fresh when people are booking. And for you, hey, how did you hear about us? And you could put a dropdown of the obvious seven, seven to ten places. And then you could do this monthly or quarterly, just go through there and even pull out manually that data and put it in a spreadsheet and look at it. Because what I find to be really fascinating is often advisors have an idea of where converting qualified prospects are coming from, but when they see the data, it can be really surprising. You know, you might think they're coming from YouTube, but they're actually coming from your podcast or et cetera, or whatever. So I think really understanding that source data, in an ideal world, if you could break it down between where are prospects coming from and where are qualified prospects coming from? Because that can really shake the data up a lot. And you. And simply doing it once a quarter, if you add it to your call booking form, you'll have that data and you'll be good to go. So there's a couple of thoughts on that.
- [06:00]
Paul Sidlansky
That's great. Yep, that's an easy fix and makes a lot of sense.
- [06:03]
Kendra
Yeah, it'll give you a little bit more direction on where your digital marketing is actually working. So I'd love to pass over to Teal here and what's coming up for you as far as questions for Paul?
- [06:12]
Taylor
I think one of my big initial questions, Paul, is why do you want to double? You've got $700,000 of revenue at least this year. It sounds like you've got one associate, you're a virtual firm. I'm assuming you're highly profitable based on all that. Why do you want to double the size of the firm?
- [06:28]
Paul Sidlansky
I think it's just for me, the growth is going to be to increase income, increase my pretty profitable now, which is good. But increase that overall net profit level and then, you know, be able to achieve my own personal goals in terms of my family, kids, college, things like that. And so what I do know that I do not want to become a monster firm. I do not want thousand clients. I don't want to work at a, you know, obviously broker deal or anything like that. So for me, the way I've kind of mapped it out, be able to order for me to my financial goals and fulfill my plan, if I can get to that level of revenue and income, I should be able to do that, you know, in my time period.
- [07:10]
Taylor
Okay. I mean, this is not a practice management podcast. I don't want to go too far down that, that rabbit hole. But, you know, I've lived a version of the path that you're on. And I'm sure you already know this, but, you know, the more you grow, the more you have to hire, you know, the more tech and, you know, platforms and, you know, they just, everything becomes more expensive. Also, as I've grown, as I've hired, I now have a larger responsibility to continue to ensure that the firm grows, because those people working under me, they want to grow, and they can't grow unless I help the firm grow. So it just starts to introduce additional complexities that sometimes we don't think about and we're not proactive about. And so I think it is worth understanding and just thinking through, okay, I'm here, I want to be here. How many clients do I need to get there? And I think you're pretty clear on how many clients you need in order to reach this goal. But what is your staff going to look like? You know, who do you need to hire to help, you know, support the business through that growth? I just recall I was at a place at one point in my firm where I told my wife, like, I, there's no way I can take another client. Like, my head is spinning right now. I'm, you know, it's a disservice to existing clients. I can't onboard new clients. So we want to avoid being in situations like that. And at about $700,000 in revenue, there's probably not a lot more. You know, maybe you can get up to 900amillion as a solo. I know you have a person underneath you, and I'm not sure exactly what he or she does, but you'll likely have to hire at some point. Just keep that in mind as you go pedal to the metal on marketing.
- [08:38]
Paul Sidlansky
Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. And I've done a lot of thought about what I wanted to look like.
- [08:42]
Taylor
Right.
- [08:43]
Paul Sidlansky
And I know Angie Herbert Diamond Looked at that. And so I have right now, I associate Haley, She's a certified financial planner. She is starting to take clients on her own. And Absolutely. I think my point, we're about 100. We could probably get to 120, 130 before we have to bring in that third person. And yeah, definitely. All great points to consider because I know grass is not always greener. Right. What type of extra take home are you getting? And what's the trade off for the added responsibilities of now managing multiple people, multiple people's careers? So great points. So thank you.
- [09:21]
Taylor
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a part of your question here is like, you know, how am I going to achieve this growth? You know, relationships and client referrals have been really helpful in growing the business, but also a lot of this online stuff. You know, where should I put my time and attention? I'm curious, like, we've mostly talked about some of the digital things that are working, but talk to us about client referrals and, like, what the process looks like and maybe how much you enjoy, you know, pursuing relationships and drumming up client referrals compared to search engine optimization and LinkedIn and, you know, other digital type strategies.
- [09:54]
Paul Sidlansky
Yeah, no. So it's funny that you phrase it like that, how you enjoy it, quite frankly, when it comes to all of the online marketing, definitely get ahead of, you know, above my skis. And for me, that's why I want to be able to outsource and work with folks who can help me maximize. I know it's important, but this business is always, and I believe will always be about relationships. And so I've had the most success reaching out to current clients and saying, hey, we love working with you. As we look to grow our firm, the best clients, and this is the truth, come from our best clients. And so if there's anybody who you think that we could add value to that you think would benefit from knowing us, that's something that I'm trying to do more regularly. I probably at least do it once a year. But we want to be top of mind. We also send out a email once a year to say, hey, if you have a kid, a friend, a cousin, anybody that just wants to chat for 15 minutes, a half hour effort is, please, we're here. We want to be helpful to your friends and family. You know, we do that as a complimentary thing to be helpful. But for me, and this kind of goes to the marketing thing, I found the most success in the eight years in being the person who's there and that you're speaking to, you know, you're speaking their language when it's time for them, when they hit that inflection point in their life for their career, their family. I find chasing people and like, again, I've tried multiple things, whether that's buying leads, whether that's, you know, you name it. I find chasing never works. And again, maybe I'm just not good at it. But it just seems to me that the best strategy is being available, being that right person for that type of niche that you're trying to work with and just saying, hey, I'm not going to chase you, but when you're ready, you know who to call. You know, I'm going to be the best fit. So that's been our approach and that's been really successful just because I've been in businesses and, you know, I've never bought anything when anybody's cold called me on the phone. So that kind of laid back but honest approach to say, look, we're here and we want to be helpful, we want to grow. We'd love to work with your friends and family, if that's possible.
- [12:14]
Taylor
So first, I'd argue that everything works. Whether you're buying leads through smart asset, doing webinars, snail mailing, handwritten letters to your target audience, like, everything works. I think I know where things break down and the reason why things don't work. One, it may not feel authentic to you, right? Like, you buying leads doesn't really feel good and authentic to me. It doesn't mean it doesn't work, but it's just not authentic to me. Where things break down and where things go wrong is when I'm trying to do too much all at once. I'm not able to really put, you know, 120% into that webinar activity. So I'm sure, you know, webinars would work for you if you had the time to dedicate to it the right people in place. You know, the. Perhaps some of it is outsourced, but we're trying to do a number of different things and it makes it challenging. So I'll lead with that. I'll let you in on a little secret. I hate client referrals. I don't want client referrals. We don't ask clients for referrals. I am solely focused on educating my ideal client through my retirement podcast and our email marketing. That's it. When people consume my content and hear from me and learn from me, and I build trust with them and show my expertise when they ultimately respond to A call to action and reach out to our firm. They're in a different spot at that point than an existing client sends their sister or brother over to talk to us. That person knows nothing about us. We don't have a great process for communicating how we handle referrals from our clients. We're not able to communicate that to them. That person we now have to educate a lot about who we are, what we do, how we work, the types of people we help with, the pain points, we help solve for. They don't know anything about us. All they heard was an existing client said, we're great. So we're. There's an entirely different starting point with that referral that we just through experience have realized, like, it just doesn't really work well for us. That doesn't mean we're going to neglect that person. I always tell clients, if there's somebody in your life that has questions like reach out, I will personally carve out time to jump on a call with them. It's not a call to try and get them to become a client. It's just like, I'm happy to help. I'll be a resource. And 99% of the time, it's like, I provide them some resources, I answer some questions. I kind of go like, you know, I don't think, you know, we're the right firm to help you. We don't have the right expertise. Like, here's some people or resources to consider. So I don't want client referrals. I actively try to avoid client referrals. And I say that because if client referrals are really important to you and you like that side of marketing, I would really lean into that and I would go as far as creating a client referral process like pen to paper. Spend a significant amount of time building out what a great client referral process looks like. That way you can communicate with that process. Hey, when you send your brother or sister or whoever to our firm, here's what happens. Here's the step by step process we take them through. We'll communicate where we're at through the process, whatever it might be like, you can lay that out and all of a sudden, like, this client referral process starts to become really repeatable and systematized, and you'll start to see more success as a result. So, you know, this digital stuff I heard you say, you know, in over my head, maybe I can just outsource it. Like, I don't think you're going to have any. I think you're Going to waste time and money. If that's your headspace with digital marketing. If you're just like I'm in over my head, I don't know how to do it, I'm just going to pay someone else to do it. It's probably not going to be very successful. Digital marketing, content marketing works really well because it's authentic because people are hearing from me. My listeners know my kids names. They know that I'm married, they know that I live in San Diego. They know that I love carne asada burritos and love playing golf. Like they know all this stuff. If I outsource all this to an agency, like it's just not going to hit the same. So I would be careful outsourcing and just like I'll just let this little thing over here do its work. Like what I'm hearing is like I think you should put a lot of time and attention into relationships and client referrals and building up that process and like, like put all your time there.
- [16:11]
Paul Sidlansky
Yeah. And to clarify, I definitely, I'm at this point outsourcing like the operational side of it.
- [16:16]
Taylor
Right.
- [16:17]
Paul Sidlansky
The distribution, things like that. I've still kind of sung stuck true to the content production because I agree with you, it's like it's about me. It's about how I'm feeling about issues. It's about understanding me, knowing my family, things like that. So I agree with you on that. I do not want to ever send out canned content. I don't see any value.
- [16:37]
Kendra
Yeah. Something that I that I was thinking about there is, you know you mentioned once a year you send out an invite email. Do those tend to drive traction for you?
- [16:45]
Paul Sidlansky
The I'm sorry, which part of the email just like kind of the quarterly distribution or.
- [16:50]
Kendra
You mentioned once a year you reach out to your clients and send an email.
- [16:53]
Paul Sidlansky
Oh yes, yes. So that's one separate mail. That's the you know, 15 to 30 minutes to talk to friends and family. I usually get like two or three takers a year on it and if it doesn't directly lead to a new client, to me it builds goodwill and people are like the one thing that I will say that every is always a home run for a client is helping their kids or their family. Right. Even if it doesn't result in a direct referral, for me that's just kind of building street cred and further deepening the relationship. So I always see that as just additive. Even if it doesn't directly lead. But we usually get two or three takers a year out of, you know, however many clients we have at the time.
- [17:34]
Kendra
So I love that you're sending this email out. The way my brain works is how do we send that email and make it look totally different 12 different ways? So here's an example of how I might take that strategy. We can see, oh, we're getting a little bit of traction here. How can I level it up? So maybe what I would write is once a month, I would actually tell a story about how you helped a current client's kid. And I would make the first 70% of the email be 100% story. Share as much detail in depth as you can. And then at the end, just say, hey, by the way, we could do this for your kids too, if you'd like. Here's. Here's what that looks like. So the first 70 is just telling a story of something real relatable that you did. And that's always interesting to read. I think advisors are under leveraging this strategy of sharing what are you doing behind the scenes? Because for a lot of regular people outside of our industry, they hear the word financial advisor and they have no idea what that actually means. And to me, when I see advisors write about, hey, here's a question, or here's a thing I helped a client with. So cool. It's so fascinating. It's so interesting. Recently, I had a client talk about how they helped a client of theirs decide if they were going to rent or lease their next car. And the questions they gave their client, I was like, this is fascinating. Like, I'm forward this to a friend. That's the kind of stuff that I think is really interesting. And if you create that email, let's say you send it once a month. And it would just be, hey, once a month, I'm going to send an email to my current clients about something fascinating or interesting that I did behind the scenes to help, you know, one of our other clients. And then, by the way, at the end, we'll just throw in a quick little, hey, by the way, if you know someone who could use help like this or someone you care about, send them my way. I'd be happy to help. And then that allows you to take that one little strategy and turn it into a marketing activity that might feel more authentic to you. And then you can just be like, you could literally sit down and write 12 emails and automate that for the rest of the year. And now all of a sudden, you go from sending one email per year to invite someone to refer to you. And now you have 12 that are interesting and helpful. And it's. People don't feel like they're being sold to because they're being educated in that process. So that's one thing that came up for me.
- [19:37]
Taylor
Kendra, really quick, before you move on from that point, as I'm hearing you, I'm also thinking it likely makes sense, given Paul's growth goals. Like, he's got some lofty goals here and to really grow, I think it might be beneficial to separate. Hey, I'm happy to talk to your, you know, your family members if they have questions. Like, I'm happy to just be a resource from. I'm asking you for a referral. All the advisors who are really good at referral marketing, they have a referral process in place, a repeatable process, and they're extremely consistent. We all, like, harp on or make fun of the, you know, the insurance sales folks that like, pass the paper across the table and like, write down five names. But you know what? Like, that's their process and they're consistent. And because of that, they do have success with it. So you don't have to be that salesy with it. But whatever it is, like, once you have that process and you're confident in it, it allows you and you should be extremely consistent. It shouldn't be once a year. It should be every day or every week or every month, whatever, like cadence you decide on. But it should be directly contributing and helping you get towards that growth goal. I mean, you don't want a bunch of phone calls with, like, clients, kids who are never going to become clients. There's a space for that, create a process for that. But I think you might want to separate the two so that you're not having a bunch of phone calls with people who truly aren't. Like, you're doing a nice service, but, like, it's not helping you reach your growth goals.
- [20:56]
Kendra
I love that feedback. Paul, we've thrown a lot at you here. Any questions coming up for you that we can dive into or kind of a path we can go down to be more helpful for you?
- [21:05]
Paul Sidlansky
I think the only other thing. And again, Taylor, you had kind of alluded to a little bit more. Right. Everything does work probably to certain degrees, depending on what effort you put into it and what's maybe more appropriate for your business or your style? I think the only other thing is, you know, what do you do personally to track everything? And I find tying specific results back to specific campaigns can sometimes be difficult. Any type of tips or tricks to Say, hey, I know that this blog post worked because or obviously with email campaigns, if somebody comes right back to you or somebody says, hey, I heard your, your blog, I heard your podcast, and it was awesome. But just curious methods for somebody who maybe doesn't have a marketing firm to do it for them. Is it just a spreadsheet or anything else I should be thinking of?
- [21:58]
Taylor
So I wasn't going to say this, but I disagree a little bit what Kendra had said about collecting that data on like, how they they found you. Of course it's important data, but a couple of things there. One, I found that most people don't know exactly how they found us, can't seem to recall. So it's not always accurate data. I also find that just asking them the question during that introductory phone call helps to provide more context. Like, yeah, you know, I think I found you through a blog post. Wait, no, wait a second. I think it was a Kiplinger article. Yeah, it was. You know, and like, they'll start to like, share more rather than like check a box. So we've scrapped that from our form and Tyler, who takes our intro calls will just ask the question. And, you know, it's not really incredibly helpful to us because my second point here is I'm so clear about our marketing funnel that I don't really care how someone ultimately scheduled the phone call. Because I'll give you an example of our funnel. I've written a couple, but let's just say I've written one SEO optimized blog post that gets a lot of traffic from people who I know who are ideal clients. So I know that's working if they find us through a different post or whatnot, like, who cares? But I know that like, there's a few of these, like rock solid SEO optimized posts where most people are landing on. From there, I capture them with a lead magnet to move them to my email list. So a percentage of them are moving to my email list. Maybe some who end up on my email list go from the email to scheduling a phone call. I don't really care. But I'm getting them onto my email list. The first email they get is, hey, check out my retirement podcast. I know that the more people I get to my retirement, the more of the right people I get to my retirement podcast. I've got a great process to move them, a call to action to move those listeners to scheduling a phone call. So at the end of the day, what it looks like is most people, 99% of them on the intro call will say I listen to the podcast, but they might have found it through an SEO optimized blog post on Medicare IRMAA surcharges and then found the podcast and then listened to a hundred episodes and then responded to a call to action two years later. So, so I think I would start really simple and I'd probably pay more attention to better creating like if we're going to talk about referral marketing, like creating that referral marketing process and just like going to town there. And don't worry so much about this giant spreadsheet tracking every move and exactly how people are finding you. If you've got a great referral process and it's working, then like you should be pretty happy that that referral marketing process is working again. I'm not saying like don't collect data or track data, but in the beginning I can see it being a distraction.
- [24:30]
Kendra
Awesome. So I have thoughts. First, I love that Taylor disagrees with me. This is the magic of me and Taylor together because most advisors are not like Taylor. They don't have a clear understanding of their marketing activities and what the heck is working. So while I agree if you have it dialed in that well that's awesome because it leads to my next point which is when I look at the data that we track for our clients, a lot of times people want to get cray cray on the number of metrics and data. All of a sudden you got a part time job pulling numbers. Here's how I think about data. What numbers will I make a decision off of? And I'll link in our show notes a sample dashboard of how we do our metrics. And you can see it is, I wouldn't say it's barbaric, but it's, it's not like the most wildly like we have, you know, website traffic, you know, we have email subscribers, current list new, we have a couple platforms, we have some metrics on the sales side. It's not crazy, but I look at when you come to tracking metrics, what will I make a decision off of if I'm not going to make a decision using this metric? A lot of times I can retro go back to get the data, but I'd rather just have those core metrics. And so when we think about something like your client referral process, you know, and you dialed it in, what are three or four metrics? One is going to be something around consistency. How many people have I reached out to today or this week to just connect with? Hey, I saw this article you asked me about this. Here's something really interesting that could be a ping. You know, what are your like market, you know, I would consider that a marketing activity. And so coming up with three or four metrics, you know, how many conversations did I have this month through someone who met me through a client, you know, that kind of stuff. So I love that you're asking about metrics and I would look at before you get to the wall, you know, bonkers on pulling a bunch of data, I just dial in a couple simple metrics for that client referral process. And the other thing I thought about too is there's a really amazing book called Giftology that I would recommend you check out. Really simple book really quick. And it's, it's about the art and science as using gifts to cut through the noise, increase referrals and strengthen retention. I think a really under valued lever. I know that a lot of firms cannot hit their growth goals based off of just referrals, but I think a lot of firms are really chasing new clients when they could just surprise and delight the ones that already have and it would get you pretty darn far. So we often chase after new clients. And my philosophy, even in my own businesses, I find my next best client by taking phenomenal care of the clients I currently have, you know, and even one of my best clients now, I made them wait two weeks to talk to me because I was busy working on my current clients. And so I love this idea of pulling a few key metrics, really doubling down, building that process for your client referral process and see how far you can take that. And once you get that efficient and dialed in and consistent, then we can ask what's the next best strategy to tack on here that feels authentic and doable for Paul at scale.
- [27:31]
Paul Sidlansky
Great. Fantastic. Thank you, Kendra.
- [27:33]
Kendra
Yeah. Any questions coming up for you, Paul?
- [27:35]
Paul Sidlansky
No, I think you guys have hit them all. And again, I really like the idea of kind of doubling down on what's working and building out a process around that versus maybe taking some flyers on some random digital strategies that quite frankly, if I'm not into it, it's not going to work anyway. So I like that idea. Again, doubling down. And I do feel just from some of the things you've said, there's so many different things you can do in the referral space that I can be doing to help, you know, really improve on what we're doing.
- [28:06]
Kendra
And honestly, it's a lot of fun too. They're fun.
- [28:10]
Taylor
They are. They are the most popular referral marketing is the most popular marketing strategy and is the most successful when done right. So I would not discount it. And Paul, I would. And we said this to our prior callers today to become a student of referral marketing, like, consume everything you possibly can around referral marketing. Learn from other advisors. If you didn't attend the last Kitsa Summit in April, we had two phenomenal guest advisor guest presenters talk about the referral marketing process. And so I'll just become a student and learn from others and adapt it to us because referral marketing is great, but it is challenging too. I mean, you do have to spend time putting this process in place. One last thought here while it's on my mind is I think one of the biggest challenges of referral marketing is your existing clients. In a lot of situations, we're leaving it up to them to veto the prospect. You know, if you know of someone who's a good fit. Well, how do I know if they're a good fit? I don't know if they have a million dollars. I don't know if like Paul would take them on. I'm not going to. I like, I don't want to be involved in this. So, like, it is a challenging puzzle. Not challenging. It's a puzzle to solve. And I'm confident that if you put your time and attention and became a student of referral, like, you can easily solve that. But it's not as simple as, like, hey, send me some clients. Like, I think you're going to, I know you're going to have to get really clear on some of these things for your clients. So start to feel comfortable to want to send referrals in a, in a consistent manner.
- [29:26]
Kendra
Definitely, Paul. And I just, I just want to acknowledge you because I think I took a look at your website. We're going to link in the show notes. I really think you're doing a great job on your messaging. I'd also like to acknowledge the fact that being great at building relationships feels easy to you, but it's also very challenging for others. So don't overlook the fact that you have the skill that so many people wish they had. Building amazing relationships. That is just an absolute, just total talent in your pocket. And I think you may overlook that. And you're already rocking and rolling with that. So how do we take that? How do we amplify that? And that feels good and that's fun. And all of a sudden it becomes, how do I surprise and delight the people I already love to serve? That's a different Question a different energy about marketing. And the thing about marketing that's not talked about enough, a really important ingredient for great marketing is sustainability. And if you don't like it and if you don't dig it and doesn't feel aligned for you, you're like, oh, man, I got to run another LinkedIn post. Oh, man, I got to figure out how I'm going to write this SEO post. Right. Like, lean into what you love and see how far you can take that. You're already doing an amazing job. Let's see how far you can go.
- [30:36]
Paul Sidlansky
Awesome. Thank you both. I really appreciate your time and your insight.
- [30:40]
Taylor
Thanks, Paul. Really appreciate it.
- [30:42]
Paul Sidlansky
Take care.
- [30:43]
Kendra
Awesome. Thanks, Paul. We appreciate you. I love it. So here's a couple thoughts I have about a conversation with Paul. First is, I love what you said. Everything works. It's so easy to assume that something doesn't work. And for almost every platform I've seen, I know of an advisor who is, like, just rocking and crushing it. Right. But each platform takes a different finesse, a different strategy, a different approach. And so this idea that everything works and what feels like authentic to you.
- [31:20]
Taylor
Yeah.
- [31:21]
Kendra
Because marketing, great marketing doesn't happen overnight. We all know that. But we don't factor in sustainability into marketing plans. And that's something I think about when I work with clients, is, sure, you might want to do a YouTube channel, but do you actually like getting on video or do you like communicating with clients in that way, there might be a better path. You might be a better writer. Right. And so not pushing, you know, which leads me to my next point is a lot of times people often say, hey, what's working for other advisors? And it's kind of like saying, how much do other people have saved for retirement? It doesn't actually matter because it's not your retirement. It doesn't really matter in a lot of ways, what's working for other advisors. What's more important is what's working for you? Where could you get better? Where could you level up? And so those are a couple of things that come to mind. And one last thing I'm thinking of is when you are doing email marketing, if you are able to segment your list based off of clients and prospects, the way that you do, calls to action can drastically change and be much more aligned. So let me give you an example. So with Paul, he has this email that we're talking about writing once a month that just shares an interesting backstory on how he helped a client in his firm that week. Right. And so we do this for one of our clients. We have all their clients tagged in their system and I write a different call to action. So the first 70% of that email, 100% the same at the end. The call to action totally changes based off prospect or client. So a client would just be like, exactly. Told Paul is, hey, by the way, you know, we can help your kids or girlfriends or someone you love, et cetera. Right. And then that we actually write. I write the first. Typically the way I actually write it is I write it for prospects, then I duplicate it, change the call to action for clients. Because it's easier to write a prospect first and then clients. But yeah, and then for a prospect, it's just like, hey, is this you. Would you love help with this insert task? Right. And it's literally the same email. And all you need to do to be able to segment that, like, don't make it too complex. Just have a simple workflow that if a client, you add them to your list and you add a specific tag and then you just send to just that tag. It's very simple.
- [33:25]
Taylor
Yeah, I was going to make sure we highlighted that that you talked about like segmenting lists and tagging. People and advisors are like, I don't know how to do any of that. That's exactly what we do is just when a new client hires us, it's part of our workflow where our office manager goes into ConvertKit, our email marketing platform, and just tags that person as a client. So when we send an email to our email list, if we just wanted to go to prospects, then we just say exclude anyone with a client tag. That's simple. Now you can go to town with tags and segmenting and there's a case to be made there. But just as a starting point, I love this. Like, just add to your process to just exclude clients or tag clients so you can exclude them on certain, certain communications. Yeah, all really good stuff there. I, I really loved your actionable idea for taking that one email that you send once a year. He's probably hesitant to, to do it 12 times during the years. Like, I don't want to send the same, you know, ask 12 times per year. But a great example of how you can use a case study and kind of come at it from a different angle. So it sounds different, it's valuable, might resonate and hit a little bit different, but still have that same kind of call to action in the email. So that was a really great example. Yeah. And everything works. I, you know, I think you mentioned like be careful about paying attention to like what works for other advisors. I like to study what other advisors are doing more for inspiration to know, like you know, that person is having success with that thing. That's not what necessarily I want to pursue. I can take some pieces of what's working for them on Twitter or on their YouTube channel and identify how can I use that as inspiration and take what they're doing well and use it for my blog writing or for my podcast. So I like studying what other successful advisors are doing just for inspiration. And how can I kind of make that my own, not necessarily get distracted like, oh, this person's having success on Twitter. I better go start posting on Twitter. And maybe the last thing that comes to mind since we referenced client gifts, we could probably do a whole episode on client gifts because it's a great topic. Is. I'm not sure what he exactly meant. He mentioned sending T shirts. I think he mentioned hats as well. I don't know if there's a firm branded items, but I'd be very careful. Personally I want to be very careful about sending firm branded items to clients. I want to be a little bit more unique and thoughtful there when we're sending client gifts. So our process, we send a new client onboarding gift package to all new clients in our workflow. It's three months after they've been with our firm. So that initial onboarding process can be a little bit intense. Right. Transferring money, getting settled. So at that three month mark is kind of a pivotal time. We believe in that process. So we send in this, this beautiful package. Every client gets the same exact package. And it does have some firm branded items, custom yeti mugs, a cool unique little candle, some local coffee from San Diego, a little bit of sand from the beach, you know, like little, like, I don't know, little things like that. We put together a really nice package, same thing for everybody. And then throughout the year, Karen, our client service manager is fantastic about listening to clients and what they're up to and giving them a gift just period like randomly throughout the year. So she heard that a client was taking that like amazing trip to Africa to go on a safari. So she found this like really cool leather bound journal and was able to like customize it like with an Africa theme and paired that with some custom luggage tags for their trip and like sent that to them. So that's just one example of many of just like listening to what's happening in your clients lives and getting really clever and, and creative with those one off gifts. And that's going to make a bigger impact than like, hey, here's a defined financial shirt, you know, so a lot more to discuss there. But I like, I love the idea of giving client gifts. I think you can systematize it to a certain point. But also, you know, these one off random gifts. Oh, another one. If we hear that a client is sick or a spouse is sick, there's this great company out there that you can send a chicken noodle soup in this, like, beautiful package with like, this awesome, like, ladle and, you know, a nice handwritten card and it goes to them. And it's just this, you know, maybe not everybody likes chicken noodle soup. I don't know. But it's like a really cool thing that I've personally received before as well. So I love the topic. I go on forever, but hopefully that makes sense.
- [37:30]
Kendra
All I gotta say is that chicken noodle soup idea is no gangster. Yeah, Nobody's advisor is sending them chicken noodle soup unless they're your client. I love that. I think that's amazing. Two quick things to add to that and then we'll wrap up. First, I have a personal rule, and maybe you disagree with this. I do not want any of my clients to add their logo to the things we send clients because nobody really cares about you that much. And this might be something we talk about a little bit more in marketing, but what I do think is to make client gifts scalable. One thing that I've done is put together a list of client gifts. And for example, there's this water bottle that I love. It's a smart water bottle. And writing, like, clever, like, you ship this really cool water bottle to people. People asking about it all the time. Like, literally like twice a month, you're like, what is that?
- [38:13]
Taylor
Water bottle.
- [38:13]
Kendra
Whatever. So I'm like, this is cool. People love this. It's one of my favorite gifts to give. And so we, for a client, put together some gifting concepts and it was like, hey, welcome to working with firm name. We're excited to grow your wealth. We're looking forward to watering, you know, the seeds of your wealth or something. I'd have to go back and look at what our notes were. But it was. It was like, it was a fun kind of like, play on words. And then it was like, cool. You know, people like, if you give that to a client and then someone's like, hey, where'd you get that cool water bottle?
- [38:39]
Taylor
They're like, oh, by the way, my.
- [38:39]
Kendra
Financial advisor, you know, gave it to me. So I think we could do a whole episode on client gifts. I think there's some really cool stuff there. And then the last thing I just want to say is you make a good point. You know, I think there are some advisors around looking at what other advisors are doing, and I think it's helpful if it inspires you, but not if it intimidates you or makes you feel like you're not being successful enough. I see this happen every. Every once in a while I have conversation with advisors and like, oh, so and so is doing this thing and, like, so frustrating and blah, blah, blah. So I think looking at other advisors can be helpful as long as it's inspiring. And you can look at how do I maybe apply this little piece or look at why is that interesting? That's exceeding why. I think that's a really great time to look at it. But once you cross that line of, oh, man, like, they're getting webinars to work and why can't my webinar, like, you're in danger zone. So I think finding that good balance on looking at other advisors and using what's working for them or finding a way to apply a little bit of that to your firm is a great idea, as long as it kind of.
- [39:34]
Taylor
Fits within those bounds. Yeah. You know, one thing I meant to mention in one of our prior conversations today is that, you know, this fear of missing out is a very real thing. And when you see another advisor having success with one of these other channels, you know, you don't want to miss out on this thing. And so then you're tempted to, like, open up that, you know, that box and, like, start to go down that rabbit hole. One thing that's worked really, really well for me, and it's proved that I'm not really as interested as I thought about that thing. I've created this, what I call a just in time list. I think I got this from Pat Flynn, like, way back in the day. And it's basically like, oh, I read this really cool article about how to optimize a YouTube episode. And so instead of getting distracted and like going and starting a YouTube channel just because I was inspired by this article, I take that article about optimizing your YouTube video, and I just put it into my just in time list in the YouTube sub folder. Now, when and if I'm ever ready to go start a YouTube channel, I've got those resources there. So, like, it takes away that fomo. I've got a place for that thing. So I Don't feel like I'm, like, gonna never be able to find it ever again. And what's really interesting to me is I've got this giant just in time listed and all these folders, and, like, I never go in there. So it's like, you know, you. You set them there, you forget about them, and then you, like, realize a year later, like, I wasn't really that interested in starting a YouTube channel, but, like, if I ever am, like, I've got the stuff that's there. So it kind of proves that these things were distractions because a year later, I haven't even, like, gone into that folder and done anything with them.
- [40:59]
Kendra
I love that strategy because it allows you to scratch that itch. Like, ooh, I watched this video, but let me tuck it away in a place that makes sense for me to come back to later. And it doesn't mean that YouTube isn't a good option. It just means that YouTube isn't a good option now. So it's a no for now, but not forever. So you've got those resources should you need them or want them. So I love that. All right, we've discussed a lot here today. Hopefully everyone got some great stuff out of the conversation with Paul. We're going to link a whole bunch of stuff up in the show notes. It's going to be a long list today, but we want to remind you, if you are listening, that the only way podcasts really grow is if you send this to a friend or jump on your favorite platform and give us a quick, honest review. We're gonna read all of them. We love your feedback. We can't wait to hear from you and we'll talk to you soon. 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 you next.