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Advisor Marketing Made Simple
Advice Line: When Your Marketing Targets Too Many Client Types (Eli Weissman)
00:45:01
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- [00:00]
Taylor Shulte
Hey everyone, really quick before we start today's show, if you're listening to this right now, you've likely listened to one of our advice line episodes where Kendra and I help real life advisors solve their biggest marketing challenges right here live on the show. It's like a free marketing consultation, but recorded so fellow advisors with similar challenges can learn alongside you. It doesn't matter if you have decades of experience or you're just getting started as an advisor. If you have a marketing challenge that's slowing you down, we would love to invite you to join us on a future advice line episode. To be considered, just head over to TaylorShulte.com apply and fill out the short form. That's TaylorShulte.com apply. We've also included a direct link to the form right there in the episode description in your podcast app. Do not miss this opportunity to get two experienced industry marketers in one place with one goal to provide honest feedback and actionable solutions so you can reach and help more of your ideal clients.
- [01:07]
Kendra
Hey, it's Kendra and Taylor and we're here to make advisor marketing simple. Today's guest is Eli from Advocate Wealth. He's been an advisor for 10 years and he just started his own IRA five months ago, focusing on registered lobbyists. Right now the revenue is $220,000 and they're striving to grow to $900,000 in the next five years. Let's explore what's working and what Taylor and I think could be improved. Welcome to the show. Today we're having a conversation with Eli. Eli, just to get us kicked off, can you share your name, your firm and your location with us?
- [01:49]
Eli Weissman
Yeah. Hi. Thanks so much for having me today. Really excited about the conversation. My name is Eli Weissman. I am and founder of Advocate wealth, Based in Washington, D.C. we specialize in serving lobbyists.
- [02:04]
Kendra
Awesome. And can you tell us the big question that you'd love to dive into with Taylor and I?
- [02:09]
Eli Weissman
Yeah, the.
- [02:10]
Kendra
I'm.
- [02:10]
Eli Weissman
I'm excited to have our conversation. Shay. I think the big hairy question I have is how do I split my time on LinkedIn? From a marketing perspective, LinkedIn's kind of really where I've planted my flag for all of my marketing efforts. But candidly, I'm finding it quite challenging to feed the insatiable beast from a content creation standpoint. Comment on other people's posts, build new connections, engage with existing connections through one one to one direct messages. Candidly, I could spend 100% of my time on LinkedIn all day. Every day and trying to be as efficient as I can, recognizing that, that there's no shortage of time that could be spent on marketing just on LinkedIn alone as one platform.
- [02:58]
Kendra
Definitely. And when you submitted to come on the show, I know your ideal client is a lobbyist, but can you tell our listeners who may not be familiar with that and just us a few details on who your ideal client is and then we'll get into some of the marketing channels too?
- [03:13]
Eli Weissman
Yeah, absolutely. So I have been in Washington D.C. for over 26 years at this point and I actually started working on Capitol Hill and then was a registered lobbyist for over, over 10 years. And so when I launched my, when I launched my firm just back in, back in June, I really wanted to lean into kind of my roots of, of lobbyists that work up on Capitol Hill, both at the state as well as federal level. And lobbyists, you know, they actually come in different shapes and sizes and flavors. Some are business owners, some are work for private businesses where they have equity compensation issues, some are just partners. So, you know, there is pretty big range of the financial challenges that they have. The one constant is taxes. They all want to pay less in taxes, which is a good thing because that's an area that I like helping them with. But the lobbyists as a whole, they're not really a homogeneous entity. But I do have a really good feel for the kind of work they do, the important work that they do in terms of petitioning our government and, and I used to be one, so I can really speak their language. And that has proven to be helpful in a lot of the conversations that I've had with, with folks that are interested in working with me.
- [04:34]
Kendra
That's great context. Could you share with us how your current clients are finding you? And of those current clients, are they all lobbyists or do you have some other mixes in there?
- [04:44]
Eli Weissman
Yeah, no, that's a great question. I would say when I, when I started as a solo about two and a half years ago, I started very small and with three clients, which was fantastic, barely enough to keep the lights on, but. And none of them were lobbyists. I've grown over the years and I would say at this point a little more than half of my clients are lobbyists. So it has, it has grown candidly. New clients are finding me through LinkedIn and I'm also doing a lot of direct one to one outreach, sales outreach. And so that's where I'm finding a lot of clients as well. I'd say probably it's about a 60, 40 split of direct outreach on my part versus incoming clients or incoming referrals from LinkedIn.
- [05:42]
Kendra
So 60% of those new clients are coming from sales outreach. 40%. And when you say sales outreach, what does sales outreach look like for you?
- [05:53]
Eli Weissman
Candidly, it depends on the month a little bit. It's not super consistent. Lots of direct, what I would consider sales, direct Messages on, on LinkedIn, phone calls, emails, networking events. I got a couple of recent clients from a webinar that I did with an association that I'm partnering with. So the sales is not super consistent in terms of the methods. Part of the challenge that I have, I'm always going in too many different directions. And one of the reasons why I wanted to chat with you guys is I wanted really kind of to refocus my efforts because I know LinkedIn does work. That's how a lot of my more recent clients have found me. But I also know that the marketing monster is an insatiable machine. And I'm trying to be as efficient as I can, particularly since I'm. I'm not a very good writer. Writing is hard for me. I did just hire a video someone to help me with short form videos. So I'm excited about that. The good news about LinkedIn for me with my target audience is they're easy to find, they're easy to look up and locate and my connection requests are more often than not accepted. So it's. So my target audience lives on LinkedIn. They're easy to find and I know how to, I know how to get in touch with them. So that's a super positive that I have going in my favor.
- [07:26]
Kendra
Yeah, I have a quick question there because you said something that, that kind of flagged for me, which is you don't really sound excited about LinkedIn. So I want to zoom up really quick. I want to set aside all marketing channels and I really want to understand how do you like to communicate with the people you love to serve? Is it writing? Is it speaking? Is it videos? Is it something like those webinars with, you know, the local association? Do you like the in person stuff? Like if you only had to choose one and you had to set everything else aside, what would you feel most excited to really invest and learn and master over the next 12 to 24 months to grow the firm?
- [08:01]
Eli Weissman
Probably webinars?
- [08:03]
Kendra
And are you talking about the webinars like you did with the particular association?
- [08:07]
Eli Weissman
Uh, yes, those. So that particular association I have is the National Institute Lobbying and Ethics. They're great organization And a lot of my target audience are members of that. But I am comfortable doing webinars, and there's certainly no shortage of topics. I do like engaging on LinkedIn, but to your point, if I could only pick one and do it consistently, I would say it would be ideal to do a webinar, you know, every month or two.
- [08:42]
Kendra
Okay, awesome. That's, that's super helpful. Taylor, do you have any questions that are kind of popping up for you?
- [08:48]
Taylor
Yeah, I just want to better understand your ideal client a little bit more here. Maybe paint us a picture of your perfect corporate lobbyist, registered lobbyist. Like, sure. What does their profile look like? Or, you know, what, what is their typical age, their typical income, typical investable assets? And then also I'd be curious to understand maybe the typical fee they would pay you for your services.
- [09:11]
Eli Weissman
Right, Great. Great question. Thank you for that, Taylor. So I would say the ideal lobbyist client that I would have would be a small business owner who is either on their own or has another partner or two. They are looking for guidance. You know, they're probably in their mid, mid to late 50s, making anywhere from 300,000 to a million dollars a year. Very, very high earners and candidly looking for comprehensive, everyone says comprehensive financial advice, but understanding how their business finances intersect with their personal finances. A typical fee, I have a bifurcated fee system where I charge on assets under management, but every single client that I work with pays a annual financial planning agreement. And for business owners, that would usually be in the range of anywhere from 9 to $12,000 a year plus any additional AUM that I'm, I'm, I'm managing.
- [10:20]
Taylor
Okay, that's awesome. And the, the pain points of this registered lobbyist small business owner, how much of the pain points are related to the business and managing the business and taxes in the business versus the personal side of things. Managing their personal taxes and optimizing their, their, their, the personal side of their balance sheet.
- [10:42]
Eli Weissman
It's. What's nice is it's usually a 50, 50 split, give or take, or 60, 40, 40, 60. Because a lot of these lobbyists that I'm working with, the business is intersecting with their personal lives in terms of either cash flow, taxes, or they're trying to figure out, well, how do we, how do I make sure that the business is supporting the lifestyle in a way that's not aggravating the taxes so that I can retire? So the beautiful thing for me is that I get to them work with their CPA on the business tax side as well as the personal tax side and try to make sure that the business issues are helping solve their personal issues and vice versa. But I'd say probably a lot of the business owners that I'm working with right now are trying to figure out how many more years they have to work in the business so that they can retire on their terms if they wanted to.
- [11:42]
Taylor
And sticking with this pretty clear, you know, ideal client here, small business owner, let's say on the higher end of the income that you stated, 300 to a million is a pretty big range. So let's say, I don't know, average around $700,000 in income. How many of those people in their 50s getting closer to retirement, how many of them are spending time on LinkedIn where you see them engaging on LinkedIn, not just accepting your, you know, your connection request, but you see these people actually engaging on LinkedIn like is that, is that typical? Do, do you see these types of people spending time on LinkedIn day to day?
- [12:18]
Eli Weissman
Yeah, I would say it's a great question. I would say some of them, not as many as other types of lobbyists that I also work with where corporate lobbyists that have private equity compensation, those types of lobbyists are more actively engaged on LinkedIn in terms of posts and engagement. The business owners will, candidly, they're not as good, good on LinkedIn in terms of marketing themselves. Corporate lobbyists that I work with tend to be a little more LinkedIn savvy. So I guess to your question, I don't, I don't have a great sense of if they're just not on LinkedIn or, well, they're on LinkedIn. I don't have a good sense of if they're not engaged in LinkedIn because they don't know how or they're just watching things in the background.
- [13:15]
Taylor
The reason I'm asking, I'm just kind of thinking out loud here. I don't, I don't work with business owners, but I am a business owner and as a business owner, like, sure, like I have a profile on LinkedIn and you know, I guess I spend some time there for other reasons. But a busy, successful business owner probably doesn't have the time to go and sit through an hour long webinar or spend time on LinkedIn engaging on posts and communicating like there it sounds like they're closer to the tail end of their career. Can I retire? Do I have the ability to retire? I've got some pain points in the business I'm still trying to work through. I feel like the marketing funnel for those busy, very successful business owner lobbyists is going to be different than that corporate lobbyist. So part of this might be deciding what path do I want to go down. Do I want to target these business owners or do I want to target these corporate registered lobbyists? I know might be a hard decision to make here in the moment, but I am thinking that those funnels might be a little bit different. I don't know enough about your niche, but the funnels and the way you approach those two people might be a little bit different. It doesn't mean you can't use LinkedIn just because they're not active, but it might be. Yeah, I need to get that connection request and then I need to have this, you know, this very particular specific direct message to get them to, to get them off of LinkedIn into this funnel over here where I can educate them and kind of move them further down the funnel versus I'm going to connect with this person on LinkedIn and nurture and educate and build trust and you know, spend time on LinkedIn together. You know, two different paths there. The one thing I do want to acknowledge is what I love is that your math is mathing here. You shared when you, when you scheduled this, that Your goal in five years is $900,000 of revenue and 65 clients, which brings you to about an average fee of $14,000 per client, which is right, you know, in line with what you shared in terms of, you know, planning fee plus some, some aum. So it sounds like you're, you know, really clearing on a good path there in terms of targeting the right people that can, that can pay your fee.
- [15:14]
Eli Weissman
Thank you. And what you've, Taylor, you have, not surprised, not surprisingly to me, hit the nail on the head is that the business owners and the equity compensation lobbyists, they're going to gravitate towards different types of content. And so what I have thought about is alternating my content and really, you know, having a specific webinar that's geared towards the corporate lobbyists that have, you know, where I'm talking about stock options and then have a separate webinar just on taxes, which would apply for business owners as well as the lobby, other types of lobbyists. But then have another webinar, specific pain points on the business owners themselves because they're not a homogeneous group. So I've been certainly thinking about splitting my content. I guess I'm just not comfortable at this stage only picking one because I'm not sure if that is niching down too Quickly. But I don't know what your thoughts might be on do. I just hope, you know, there's, there's certainly enough of, of enough of them. But I've then really narrowed, narrowed my odds significantly by cutting out, you know, another 40 or 50% of the lobbyists that I'm currently working with or, or hoping to work with.
- [16:47]
Taylor
Yeah, I mean, the challenge you're faced with is no different than, you know, me deciding if I want to serve both, you know, retirees and young professionals. They have different pain points. I, you know, I'm not, I'm not talking to my retired clients about disability insurance, but I'm talking about disability insurance to my young professionals. So, you know, it really is no difference here where, you know, if you start talking about private equity type stuff, your business owner, lobbyist doesn't sound like that's going to resonate with them. So you can have success doing that. I'm just telling you right now, it's going to create a lot of operational headaches. It's going to create a lot of extra work on your part. And unless you are really committed to working through those operational challenges and starting to segment your marketing and creating different funnels and different paths for different types of people, it's just going to end up being a lot and you're going to be pulling your hair out and probably not going to be having the success that you're looking for. On the flip side, I understand it's a little bit scary to alienate, you know, 50% of lobbyists out there, but it will make your marketing much, much easier. The only thing that I would be asking is if you, you know, chop off half the lobbyists, if you only focus on the corporate lobbyists, are there enough of them? Is it a large enough of a niche where, you know, you, you know, you don't, obviously you're not going to capture the entire, you know, segment there, but is there enough of them where, you know, you can get a small percentage of them and, you know, I mean, you're only looking for 65 clients, so I have to imagine even if you cut it in half, you could find 65 of these people. Maybe the question too is, you know, you mentioned, when I asked you your perfect ideal client, you mentioned the small business owner and you painted a pretty good profile about that person. And the average fee, the same kind of average fee and financial profile align with the corporate lobbyists as well. Are the planning fees lower? Are the, is the AUM lower? Is their income lower?
- [18:32]
Eli Weissman
Yeah, so they're so great question. So the planning fee for the corporate lobbyist would be lower. Their AUM would initially probably be lower as well, but their income is going to be significantly higher in terms of assets that they're willing to put put aside because they their equity compensation packages alone could easily be $500,000 a year just on the equity comp side. And many of those corporate lobbyists will have just come from working on Capitol Hill where they were making absolutely no money. And so having extra hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, that is not part of their normal lifestyle. They could really be putting aside significant money in a handful of years. But like you said, they have definitely different challenges than, than the small business owners who are, you know, a corporate lobbyist is not going to be remotely interested in a cash balance plan. They don't know what it is. It's not going to apply to them anyway.
- [19:47]
Taylor
Yeah, I mean, it's something for you to work out on your own. I just want to make sure if Your goal is 900,000 in revenue and 65 clients, can you get there with corporate lobbyists, if that's the path that you choose. Or maybe you have to accept that it's not going to be 65 clients, it's going to be 85 clients and $900,000 of revenue because the average fees are a little bit lower. I don't know. That's for you to kind of work out on, on the business side to determine, you know, is that a viable path? Is that a viable niche? I understand the fear of like choosing one of these things. Again, I do think you're faced with two options. Do I try to, you know, manage both these demographics and create this really robust segmented marketing strategy? To me that sounds a bit daunting. Or do I want to take the risk and go all in now before you take the risk, you can do some homework and some research and verify that niche before you go all in. The only other option I can think of here is you could attempt to kind of capture both of these target markets for a continued short period of time while you work through some of this stuff. So are there some pain points that do overlap where you can go to everybody, corporate and business owner lobbyists, and say, hey, like, you know, I'm hosting a webinar on this thing on this topic for lobbyists. And it does apply to both segments. And because you like webinars, maybe you do cast a little bit of a wider net while you try to sort through and narrow down. Maybe it's A question to you, like, are there some pain points that overlap?
- [21:09]
Eli Weissman
Yeah, I would, I. I would say the biggest overlap would, would be taxes and strategies that not only apply to one segment or the other segment, but there's certainly strategies that apply to both segments. And in past webinars, I've kind of split the baby where, you know, if I present five topics, one applies to one group, only one applies to the other group, and three apply to both.
- [21:34]
Taylor
So, yeah, I don't want to hog the microphone here. I'm going to turn it back over to Kendra. I know she's got some thoughts brewing over there, but if it were me, I think I would approach it. If I'm going to. If I'm going to host a webinar for both segments, I'm going to make sure whatever I'm talking about applies to everybody. You know, here are five things that every lobbyist needs to know. You know, here are five tax saving strategies that every lobbyist, no matter what, can take advantage of. Because it just gets too complicated for the audience to try to figure out, like, should I attend this thing if only two out of the five apply to me? If I do attend now, I'm trying to figure out, does that one apply to me or does that one apply to them? It just becomes really confusing. So I'm okay with experimenting with casting a little bit of a wider net here and just going to everybody. And we'll talk more in a little bit about kind of the tactical approach to webinars potentially, and LinkedIn and how this all might work together. But just skipping ahead a little bit and saying, yeah, I'm just gonna. I'm gonna commit to three or four webinars that are just that speak to all lobbyists. And again, one of them might be taxes. One might be like, you know, five retirement planning mistakes. Every lobbyist should know. Right? Like, you can keep it fairly broad. And in fact, whatever you talk about might apply to most demographics, but still, you're talking in lobbyist language. It's going to sound different than if I tried to attempt to do that. So, yeah, I wouldn't, like, split the topics in one single webinar.
- [22:51]
Eli Weissman
Okay, I appreciate that.
- [22:53]
Kendra
Yeah, one thing that's really interesting there. So, Eli, you said, you know, LinkedIn feels like kind of like a content monster. You know, you just got to keep feeding it. Right. And so I. The way that Taylor just framed that, I know it can feel really scary to choose, you know, the corporate or the business kind of lobbyist, but you're either going to have to make a choice and narrow on the avatar or you're going to have to make a choice and narrow on the pain points. Because what happens when you're trying to do both and multiple different pain points, it's going to feel like an endless content machine because you're covering so much. So I really liked how Taylor framed that. If you're not ready to choose one of those lobbyist, you know, segments, find the pain points that overlap and focus on those. Because I do know that marketing feels endless when there isn't focus. So we've got to find those ways that we can shave off the things that are not either applying to one avatar or the pain points that are not applying to one avatar. So there's two kind of paths, I think of choice there. And I just kind of wanted to point that out because I really thought that was a good way of laying it out. Taylor. And then after that, once you decide are we going to choose one or the other avatar or are we going to narrow our pain points? Then we start to look at how do we bring them into the business with a marketing funnel. So that's kind of like the first stage of this. And then we can choose the funnel and how we build awareness for how you help lobbyists. So I know that we both just threw a lot at you. You know, what kind of questions are coming up or is there anything that you want us to clarify on?
- [24:27]
Eli Weissman
Yeah, no, this is all very, really, really helpful. I think the thing that I have going for me is that being able to identify the lobbyists, where they work, who their clients are, find them on LinkedIn, that's kind of my secret weapon, which has made identifying the folks a lot easier for me. The thing that I want to. That Taylor mentioned that would love your thoughts. If I did go with segmenting and really focusing on the small business owner lobbyists, the idea if they're running a business and they're not regularly posting on LinkedIn, they may be on LinkedIn, but they're maybe not regularly posting. Kay, I believe you said it's probably going to be a heavy lift to get them to attend a webinar. So then that really kind of takes two legs out of the stool from a, from being able to, to nurture those relationships. If they're not going to be seeing the content that I am putting out on LinkedIn, they're less likely to participate in a webinar, I guess. I'm curious what both of you think would be a middle of the funnel once I've identified these particular types of lobbyists. How would I nurture those relationships if they're less likely to show up to a webinar and they're probably not reading my content on LinkedIn.
- [25:58]
Taylor
So I don't know, I don't know what these business owner lobbyists would want to consume or how they consume information and, you know, what they crave and what they have time for. So part of it is a learning exercise on your part and maybe it's grabbing five small business owner lobbyists, maybe their existing clients or just people in your network, and asking them, you know, how do they consume content? Right? Where do they consume content? You could even ask them, hey, if I hosted a quarterly webinar for small business owners just like you, and given an example, if I hosted a webinar on, you know, tax savings ideas for small business owner lobbyists, like, and it was an hour long, is that something that you would make time for? I think you'd very quickly hear, like, oh, no, I don't have time for that. Like, I'm busy, I'm in the trenches. Like, I don't have time to attend a webinar. Like, that sounds interesting. I don't have time for it. But I think it's a learning exercise on your part to determine, you know, how and where they consume information. Maybe it's not a webinar. Maybe a lot of these people are, you know, out and about, driving all day long. I don't really know. Like, are they listening to podcasts? You know, even an old school, traditional book, right? I know there's an advisor out there that specializes in working with a dentist, and he wrote a phenomenal book for dentists, and that's how, that's his middle of the funnel marketing activity to get in front of dentists and build trust and nurture. So I don't know, maybe it's like an old school book. You take all this knowledge and content and put it into a physical book and you hand that out to every small business owner lobbyist that you can find. So I, I don't, I don't really know what it is. It might also be, again, depending on the type of business owner and how they respond to these questions, it might just need to be a shorter, faster sales cycle. They may not have time to spend time in the middle of your funnel and getting to know you. They're just like, they might have so many pain points and struggles and they're busy. It might be. There's another advisor in Texas who works primarily with like high net worth busy business owners. And he the very first step is just like I want to get this person into my office, I know I can help them. Gets them into the office for like a one meeting kind of sales meeting. And he very quickly shows them on a piece of paper, on a whiteboard this the exact strategies that he can implement to help solve their pain points. So busy business owner doesn't have time for all this stuff but gets them into the office can, you know, show them exactly how he can help. Like yes, I want that done, you know, move forward. So it just might have to be a quicker sales process. So I just don't know enough about this niche to, you know, be able to give you that direction. But just some thoughts that come to mind.
- [28:25]
Kendra
And the good thing is that if you decide to, let's just say go after the, you know, kind of small business owner, it's going to narrow your focus and help inform your funnel more effectively. So you know, if you're top of funnel, the way that you find, connect and build awareness with lobbyists is LinkedIn. First, you know, we, we can start that part of the funnel. You can reach out, you can connect, you can start doing some of those sales activities that you're doing very kind of haphazardly, you can start doing them more consistently and you can start to measure that, you know, am I finding lobbyists? Are they interacting with my content? Are they interacting with my posts? And then once you've found a way to connect with them, let's just say in this example on LinkedIn now we need to find what's a way to move them to the middle of funnel where I build trust and if they are active enough, your LinkedIn content, which is specifically targeted to small, you know, business owner lobbyists, everything should be written for that ideal client. That could be one way to build trust with, you know, social or it could be an invite to a webinar. It could be some kind of opt in to your email list. We have to test those things. We don't quite know but we can narrow who we target and then start to test different strategies and giving that time, not just all these things at once, but maybe you start with connecting with them and then building social content and then starting to try and you know, invite them to a monthly webinar. That's here is one specific pain point that I know small lobbyists who are business owners, they deal with, you know, and then you just look for feedback with those different steps of the funnel. But now we're honed in, we're targeted and you can cut some of these other things, you know, kind of out of your process or if you're going to do them, they, they have to be kind of focused. So like the DM outreach, how many of those are you doing per day or per week consistently? What kind of results are we getting? And it's all targeting the same person. But all we're looking to do is help them find you with LinkedIn in this example and then trust you either through content or moving them off platform and then eventually hire you which is your sales process. So really it's kind of two decisions here which is how do you want to narrow in your marketing approach and then how will you build a simple funnel around that and test and week as you go.
- [30:33]
Taylor
Eli, do you pay for Sales Navigator?
- [30:35]
Eli Weissman
I do not.
- [30:36]
Taylor
Okay.
- [30:37]
Eli Weissman
I did for a short period of time but I didn't feel like I was utilizing it in a way that was helpful. And again I think the given the nature of how lobbyists work, at least at the federal level, they all have to register. So I it is with, with some, with some digging it's not impossible to to locate who they are.
- [31:00]
Taylor
Okay.
- [31:01]
Eli Weissman
Kendrick, may I ask a follow up question about the DMs?
- [31:04]
Kendra
Yeah.
- [31:05]
Eli Weissman
Could a strategy as part of middle of the funnel after I connect with the target lobbyists for sake of argument we'll say I'm narrowing the niche to the small business owners. A bit of a challenge I have had with the direct messages. Not only the consistency that's been one of the challenges but the but what I think you flagged was making sure that what I'm sharing on D on on LinkedIn direct messages doesn't come across as salesy and it's a value add and I am curious, certainly happy to, happy to test it. But I'm, I'm curious if the approach of sending what I consider to be helpful content, not sales or pushy content via direct messages is is the method going to potentially turn people off? Because getting a direct message if something helpful appears salesy, even if it's a helpful resource.
- [32:02]
Kendra
Well, I think what we're starting to weave into here and I'm really excited to talk about is some of that kind of internal dialogue that you mentioned in the form of just hey, the kind of head trash I have around posting consistently and things like that. What I know from working with our clients, we actually have a client right now. They target high earners in tech and we send I think it's 100 DMS a week for each of these advisors. They have two advisors. We send 20 a day. And I'll give you an example of what the outreach looks like. And I want you to, like, just hear this and pretend like you have some challenges around. Let's see here. Let me look at the copy. I have understanding your equity comp, including Your stock options, RSUs, and the overall financial planning. So let me pull one of these up here. All right, so we have an outreach that we do to PayPal employees. And it. And it reads like this. You know, hey, Eli, I've been chatting with colleagues at PayPal based in Austin, who need help understanding their equity comp, including stock options and RSUs and overall financial planning. If you need help in any of these areas, let me know. Either way, I would love to connect. And we have kind of a couple different outreaches that touch on three core big pain points for their ideal client. And right now we're sending these manually because there's a lot of tech. You know, it's against LinkedIn's terms of service to do any automation. Some people might do that. They might be comfortable with that. I'm not comfortable with that. But we send out a hundred of these a week, and we're scheduling, like, two prospect calls a month just with this very simple strategy. Like, and I think that this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to building a LinkedIn funnel. You know, if you were doing something like this, you know, it could be like, hey, you know, hey, Eli, I work with lobbyists who are here, you know, late in their career, they're struggling with high earning. And let's see, what were the other pain points that were done here? Taxes. You know, they're paying a. An avalanche of taxes. They have a lot of cash, and they want to understand how to keep more of their money at tax time. If you struggle with that, let me know. Either way, happy to connect. Now, you could dial in those pain points, because I feel like that's a little rough because I don't have the info on your avatar. But it's just like, hey, if you struggle with this, let me know. Either way, let's connect. And then that's just you. That's top of funnel, just you connecting with the right people. Then it's very important that the next step is your profile is actually optimized to talk to that person. So when they were to visit your profile, they'll see what are the core problems you solve for people just like them. And then if you're producing content that goes out to them. That could be a good start for your middle funnel, getting in front of them. You might also test inviting them to a monthly webinar. You might test trying to give them a Checklist for Here's 7 hidden ways that I help lobbyists proactively and legally lower their tax bill. Let me know if you want to check it out. Just send me your email. There's some guerrilla ways to go about it, but the good thing is, like, we're not trying to build a massive firm here. It's a pretty reasonable amount of clients over a reasonable amount of time. But like Taylor said, depending on who you target, completely changes the pain points, who we reach out to, how we write your profile, the content you're pushing out on your social posts, and the webinars that you potentially promote.
- [35:19]
Taylor
Eli, I've got an idea I want to share with you. Kind of piggybacks on Kendra's there. So I think there's version one here. Like, let's set aside. You have some decisions to make around the niche, and if you want to alienate, you know, half of the lobbyists, you can decide that on your own. I think there's two kind of approaches here. Kendra's approach is a very simple approach. The challenge, or maybe potential problem with that is it's not very predictable, right? Like, yes, you're sending out these DMs, you're, you know, being clear at that DM. You're telling them to reach out if they want to learn more. It's pretty passive. Like, you may get some calls, you may not get some calls scheduled. We want to get to something a little bit more predictable to know. Like, if I connect with this number of people and I send this number of dms and this number of people show up to my webinar, I know that this number of people will schedule calls and this number of people will become clients. Like, that's what we ultimately want to work towards. So I think Kendra's example there is a really, really, really great starting point to just get a little bit more intentional when you're reaching out to these people and sending that dm. To take it a step further, just knowing that you, you said you really don't like posting on LinkedIn and publishing content on LinkedIn. The great thing is, is that you know how to connect with the right people. You might want to use Sales Navigator to make it a little bit easier on yourself, but that's a decision for you to make. But you know how to connect with the right people. And you've got these short form videos that are going to be rolling out here soon. So you'll have, you know, ways to, you know, get some content and get in front of people. You mentioned that you like webinars. So the way I might stitch this together is 2025. I'm gonna schedule a webinar in maybe, maybe like let's call it late Q1 to give you some time here to get some things in, in order. But I'm gonna host a webinar for lobbyists, just lobbyists that meet some certain criteria. But I'm just not gonna. I'm not gonna alienate anybody. I'm just gonna like corporate, you know, a webinar for, for lobbyists. At the end of Q1, I'd create a very simple landing page using Zoom. I would add a question to the form when they register. Are you a corporate lobbyist or are you a small business owner lobbyist? So you collect that data when they register and sign up. So schedule this webinar, have just a simple zoom landing page. I'm going to add that question, which you can do with zoom webinar. Just add a question for them to answer. And then I'm just going to. All I'm going to be focused on is connecting with these people and inviting them to this webinar. Like, hey, you know, Mr. Smith, I specialize in working with people just like you. In fact, I'm hosting this webinar and you know, five tax saving strategies for lobbyists. However you want to frame that, but it's just a straight connection and ask to go and register for this amazing webinar that you put together your short form videos that you're going to be publishing and putting out there. You know, the call to action in those videos be like, hey, you know, we host quarterly webinars. The next one is then on this date go check it out. Or maybe it goes directly to a landing page. But that's kind of your top of funnel activities. The connecting with people, the DMs and the short form videos are going to lead to this webinar that you're going to have scheduled, you know, in the end of Q1. I think it'll be interesting to see, you know, how that funnel works and then what percentage of small business owners versus corporate lobbyists, you know, end up registering. And that might give you some data to determine do I want to narrow down from there?
- [38:29]
Eli Weissman
These are great ideas.
- [38:30]
Kendra
I love that. It's a great way to just level that Up, Taylor. And like you said, be even more predictable and repeatable. And again, if you find that, for example, you're not getting someone again, we could troubleshoot this. Because when you're consistent and intentional, then we just start to math the math. So if you set up the webinar and nobody signs up, well, all right, we're at that part. We, we might need to tweak the webinar. We might need to change the topic. If you set up the webinar and nobody shows up, then we need to work on our follow up to get them on the webinar. If we get them on the webinar and nobody schedules a call, then we need to work on your clothes and the content on the webinar. So you can take those different pieces of different steps. And I want you to know that it takes time to dial this in. So you might put your first webinar up and in four people register, you know, maybe do the next one and 10 people register. We can work through that process. Don't get discouraged. It just takes time. And because your audience is pretty, you know, niche in that way, you don't need 500 people on this webinar.
- [39:25]
Taylor
Right?
- [39:25]
Kendra
But then you can start to say, okay, if, you know, 10 people show up, I know on average five of them will set a call with me and of that two of them will become clients. And then you can start to back that math out. So that's a really good way to take something like connecting on LinkedIn with the goal of then inviting them to a webinar, which is kind of your zone of genius. You're leveraging the fact that you can find them easily and you love to speak and then bringing them into your sales process. So that's a, I love that approach, Taylor.
- [39:50]
Eli Weissman
It's really good, super helpful. And this may be more of a tactic than a, than a strategy per se, but does it matter the hosting platform, whether it's Zoom or, I mean, are people just more comfortable with Zoom so it makes sense to pay for that service or versus, you know, Vimeo is where my current videos are currently housed. I could certainly host the webinar on Vimeo. This, to me seems like it's probably a head trash question.
- [40:19]
Taylor
I think it's the path of least resistance. You know, if your whole life lives on Vimeo, and Vimeo makes it really easy to set up a webinar and it makes it easy for the user to register and join, that's fine. I don't think the name Vimeo really matters. But if you choose some weird hosting platform that is extremely like marketing focused and has all these like, you know, funnels and friction, all this stuff that makes it really challenging for the user, maybe not a great idea. So I would just like path of least resistance. If you pay for Zoom already. You have Zoom, you're comfortable with Zoom. It's pretty easy to whip up a, you know, a registration for a Zoom webinar. Again, if Vimeo does the same thing, I think it's fine. I wouldn't overthink it. I don't think you need to go like, adopt a new, you know, webinar platform and there's a bunch of webinar ninja and all these other, like, I don't think you need to go down that path right now. I think you should like prove, you know, give yourself a full year of webinars. Give yourself, you know, four quarters of webinars say, okay, like this is working now, how can I take it to the next level? Maybe there is a better webinar platform for me to take advantage of.
- [41:15]
Eli Weissman
Okay, okay, wonderful.
- [41:17]
Kendra
I know we've shared a lot here today, Eli. I love that you brought such a unique niche into this and we kind of talked about how do we further refine that to just lighten the load of the marketing activities and the content you're putting out. I'd love to hear from you. What might you do differently today going forward or testing your marketing after this conversation with us? What's your kind of big takeaway?
- [41:37]
Eli Weissman
Well, I think my big takeaway is both of you confirmed. What I have been nervous about a little bit is I do need to embrace going forward one layer deeper in my niche because there are different lobbyists that have different pain points and there's plenty of them. I don't need to be all things to all lobbyists and I have the skill set to be able to serve whoever I ultimately want to specialize in. I, I, I know I'm confident in my ability to serve them. And so while it's scary to isolate or alienate, it's more along the lines of, of the way I'm, the way I'm going to start trying to look at it is, okay, well, I'm not going to proactively alienate. I'm just going to really specialize my outreach to a specific group. If a corporate lobbyist that has RSUs wants to work with me and I'm in a position to where they would be a good fit, no problem. But I'm not going to try to spend all of my energy chasing, as Taylor said, you know, building three different marketing funnels that just, I'm one person. So that's, that's amazing advice. And even if it wasn't exactly where I thought this conversation was going to go, it's probably one of the biggest takeaways and most helpful thing I've, I've heard in a long time. So I'm grateful.
- [43:03]
Kendra
Yeah. And the reality is you are right now actively building three funnels. That might be why you feel just kind of burned out.
- [43:10]
Taylor
Right.
- [43:11]
Kendra
So we appreciate you coming on here today and being open, sharing the details of your avatar, helping you know, us workshop it live with you. You know, from what we discussed today, the next best steps for you to consider are, you know, will you sub niche down further into corporate or business lobbyists. And then once you make that decision, it's time to start building one intentional marketing funnel that could look like using something like LinkedIn. First connecting on LinkedIn very specifically with a hyper focused approach on the avatar you want to target. Then with the only goal of connecting and eventually getting them on a monthly webinar. Then from the webinar the goal is just to help them, you know, invite them to schedule a call. So you got your top of funnel with your connection on LinkedIn, your middle of funnel to build that trust on the webinars and your bottom of funnel will be your self process. So thank you so much for joining us, being open minded and bringing your question to the show today and we appreciate you coming on.
- [44:09]
Eli Weissman
Thank you so much. It's really was, this was a great experience and I'm grateful for both of you inviting me on the show and sharing your feedback and wisdom.
- [44:20]
Taylor
Thanks so much Eli.
- [44:22]
Eli Weissman
Thank you Taylor, great to great to see you again. Kendra, it was wonderful to meet you. Fantastic stuff guys, really, really fantastic stuff. So thank you so much.
- [44:30]
Taylor
Awesome.
- [44:31]
Eli Weissman
Take care.
- [44:32]
Kendra
Thank you and thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you again 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 you next week. Sa.