Advice Line: Where To Focus Your Marketing When You Have Multiple Brands (Ed Vargo)

Summary

Advisor Marketing Made Simple

Episode: Advice Line: Where To Focus Your Marketing When You Have Multiple Brands (Ed Vargo)
Release Date: July 16, 2025
Hosts: Taylor Schulte and Kendra Wright
Guest: Ed Vargo from Burning River Advisory Group

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Introduction to the Guest and His Business

In this episode of Advisor Marketing Made Simple, hosts Kendra Wright and Taylor Schulte welcome Ed Vargo, the proprietor of Burning River Advisory Group. Ed's firm boasts 25 years in the business with an annual revenue of $1.5 million, aiming to grow to $2.5 million in the forthcoming years. Ed seeks guidance on optimizing his marketing strategies across multiple brands.

Ed's Opening Challenge:
"There's a ton of different marketing ideas out there and the problem I'm having is trying to figure out where do I want to put my ladder, you know, what wall should I put this ladder on?"
[00:32]

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Defining the Ideal Client

Kendra initiates the conversation by probing into Ed's ideal client profile to tailor effective marketing strategies.

Ed’s Ideal Client Profile:
Ed describes his ideal clients as single women or women-led households, particularly those experiencing significant life events such as divorce, widowhood, or nearing retirement. These clients typically have assets ranging from $500,000 to over a million dollars and seek comprehensive financial management.

"They really aren't that sophisticated. They want to do work and they're really trying to find a trusted advisor that they can believe in and partners out to."
[02:20]

Client Breakdown:
Approximately 20% of Ed's current clientele are widows and divorcees, predominantly aged 50 and above, all with retirement as a common concern.
"I would say widows and divorcees might be a quarter of our business."
[03:12]

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Current Marketing Efforts and Challenges

Ed elaborates on his firm’s current marketing landscape, highlighting reliance on referrals and Centers of Influence (COIs) like accountants and attorneys.

"We haven't done any active outbound marketing for a while now. We used to do all kinds of stuff, a lot about servicing the clients and making sure that we're taking care of them."
[03:38]

He also discusses Enlighten Her, a sister company focused on financial coaching and education for women, serving as a front-end for attracting potential clients.

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Balancing Multiple Brands: Burning River vs. Enlighten Her

The core of the discussion revolves around managing and marketing two distinct brands:

1. Burning River Advisory Group:
   More niche-focused, dealing directly with wealth management for women undergoing or post-divorce and widowhood.

2. Enlighten Her:
   An educational and coaching platform aimed at a broader audience, including young women starting their financial journeys.

Ed’s Conundrum:
"We have two competing ideas, and at the end of the day, that's what I have to rectify. You know, which pathway would we want to go down or, like, grow more slowly?"
[35:33]

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Strategizing Marketing Focus

Taylor's Insights:
Taylor suggests creating a clear funnel where Enlighten Her serves as an educational platform to build an audience, which then funnels interested prospects to Burning River for professional financial services.

"It's just more like if you need professional help, we can offer that. Click here to learn more."
[19:27]

Kendra's Recommendations:
Kendra emphasizes the importance of narrowing down the target audience to prevent dilution of marketing efforts. She advises focusing on either divorcees or widows within Enlighten Her to align with Burning River's clientele.

"If you really just feel strongly about helping younger women, then I think you could rethink your strategy for using Enlighten her. Maybe that's where this fits in. But if you want to kind of click them together, I would get a little bit clearer on which ICP we're going to target."
[28:58]

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Building and Leveraging the Audience

Strategies Proposed:

1. Guest Podcasting:
   Ed has been actively guesting on podcasts to increase visibility. Kendra and Taylor recommend enhancing this strategy by offering free resources (e.g., courses, ebooks) to capture leads and build an email list.

   "Leverage somebody else's platform like a podcast would be a very efficient, effective way to do that."
   — Kendra Wright
   [26:05]

2. Content Alignment:
   Align content offerings on Enlighten Her to resonate specifically with either divorcees or widows, ensuring that the educational content naturally funnels into Burning River’s services.

3. Email Marketing:
   Develop a nurturing email sequence to build trust and guide prospects from Enlighten Her into Burning River.

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Challenges and Considerations

Ed grapples with maintaining the balance between two brands, fearing that one might overshadow the other or that the broader marketing efforts might not effectively convert leads into clients.

"We piggyback on that a little bit. We get some exposure from that. I've done some guest podcasts. I've probably been on 20 podcasts over the past three months."
[06:28]

Kendra and Taylor caution against overly broad marketing (“big tent”) and stress the importance of a focused approach to ensure that marketing efforts translate into meaningful client engagements.

"Big tent marketing is really an attempt to appeal to a very broad audience where niche marketing is exactly the opposite."
— Kendra Wright
[32:14]

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Final Recommendations and Takeaways

Kendra and Taylor's Advice:

1. Focus and Alignment:
   Choose a specific segment within Enlighten Her that aligns closely with Burning River’s ideal clients to ensure marketing efforts are cohesive and effective.

2. Build a Clear Funnel:
   Use Enlighten Her as a top-of-funnel educational platform to attract and nurture leads, gradually guiding them towards Burning River for professional services.

3. Leverage Existing Strengths:
   Continue leveraging guest podcasting and writing, but with a more targeted approach to capture and convert qualified leads.

4. Evaluate and Iterate:
   Monitor the performance of different marketing channels and strategies, being prepared to iterate based on what generates the most qualified leads.

"It's absolutely necessary to have a decision to make. Do we want to just set our firm to the side and focus on monetizing this other platform that's totally disconnected?"
— Taylor Schulte
[17:49]

Key Takeaways for Listeners:

• Define and Narrow Your Target Audience:
  Focusing on a specific client segment ensures that marketing efforts are more effective and resonate deeply with potential clients.

• Integrate Marketing Channels:
  Utilize educational platforms to build an audience and create a seamless path for leads to transition into professional services.

• Maintain Brand Cohesion:
  Ensure that all marketing efforts across different brands align with the overall business objectives and client needs.

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Conclusion

Ed leaves the conversation with a clearer understanding of the need to focus his marketing efforts on a specific segment within his multiple brands. The hosts encourage him—and listeners in similar situations—to thoughtfully evaluate their marketing strategies to ensure alignment and effectiveness.

"We give me a lot to think about now. I'm going to mull it over and, and see where we land on this."
[35:33]

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For advisors grappling with similar challenges of managing multiple brands and targeting diverse client segments, this episode offers actionable insights into focusing marketing efforts, defining ideal client profiles, and creating effective funnels to drive business growth.

Transcript

[Kendra]

Hey, it's Kendra and Taylor and we're here to make Advisor Marketing simple. Today's guest is Ed from Burning River Advisory Group. His firm has been in business for 25 years. Their current revenue is 1.5 million and he's looking to grow to 2.5 million in the next few years. Welcome to Advisor Marketing Made Simple. Ed, what's that big question you want to jump into today with Taylor and I?

[Ed]

Well, there's a ton of different marketing ideas out there and the problem I'm having is trying to figure out where do I want to put my ladder, you know, what wall should I put this ladder on? And you know, I've been in the business for a while, so I have some, some knowledge behind me, some resources. We know our niche market, but still there's a plethora of options out there and quite frankly, I'm not exactly sure where to start. What I don't want to do is to put a bunch of time, money and effort behind something that really doesn't work. And put without having someone who can give me a referral. Right. Someone who's done or worked with these particular parties, I'm pretty much at a loss in terms of where to start.

[Kendra]

Before we jump into which activities could be an efficient use of your time, I'd love to first start with who is your ideal client? Tell me a little bit more about them and the big couple, big problems they're excited to pay you to help them solve.

[Ed]

Yeah. So our ideal client would be either a single woman or a woman led household. I guess if we're really going to go narrow, I would say single woman who's typically dealing with some sort of life event. Often our clients come to us either either have gone through divorce or going through divorce, they might be widowed or have a big milestone ahead of them like retirement. Lots of our clients who come to us are referrals though, and most of the clients we work with are women. So there's a nice synergy there. But the reality is we're looking for more food and let's say 500,000 to a million plus I guess would be the ideal. And again, what they're looking for is they're looking for someone to take all this work off their plate. We consider ourselves their personal cfo, but to be that hub of their financial life because they really don't want to engage with their money on a regular basis with them to spark, to make as good use of their dollars as possible. They really aren't that sophisticated. They want to do work and they're really trying to find a trusted advisor that they can believe in and partners out to.

[Kendra]

What are the couple? Big questions or big problems? You mentioned taking the finances off their plate. You know, when you think about kind of big problems, are there any specific questions you see happening over and over again in your ideal client?

[Ed]

I think there's a general Stern, but they don't have a plan of action really. They don't feel like they're in control. They're not quite sure if they're on track. Let's say for retirement might be a primary motivation, obviously for somebody who is pivoting into retirement or at that stage in life is a little different than let's say a woman who's just coming off of a divorce or lost her husband. And the last two, that's more driven by urgency and maybe a fear factor, and the former is driven more by potential and just making sure their depths aren't alone.

[Kendra]

When you look at your current client breakdown, could you give me a ballpark of, you know, what percentage are widows, divorcees, retirement, what does that look like?

[Ed]

I would say widows and divorcees might be a quarter of our business. And most of the clients we work with are skewed to the a little bit older, let's say 50 plus. Retirement is a concern for all of them. Regardless, I hope that answers your question.

[Kendra]

Okay. And for your current clients that you have, how are they finding you? You mentioned referrals. Any other marketing activities, COIs. How are they finding you?

[Ed]

Yeah, either referrals to a client or a few COIs. We have accountants and attorneys, insurance agent who will get business through them. We haven't done any active outbound marketing for a while now. We used to do all kinds of stuff, a lot about servicing the clients and making sure that we're taking care of them. We have more staff and so we're now in a position to re engage on the marketing side and really grow. We're bringing a new advisor coming in the fall.

[Kendra]

When we look at the ideal client that you want to attract through marketing efforts, is there one of these segments that feels more exciting for you to pursue than others?

[Ed]

I don't know per se. I think the biggest need is probably the those going through death or divorce. I think those areas, in many ways the most complicated is the divorce arena. It's complicated from a technical financial standpoint, but it's also complicated because of the emotions involved. And I don't think there's a lot of people playing in that sandbox. We can certainly understand why it's not an easy place to deploy, quite frankly, but it's very much needed.

[Kendra]

For those divorcees. Are you typically working with them before the divorce is final, like while they're in the divorce and then after as well, or what do they come to in that process?

[Ed]

The bit of both probably skews more to before or during divorce than after. In fact, we have a sister company who started called Enlighten her, which is more of financial coaching and education company. So Big ten and a lot of women find us through that and our marketing on that side tends to be a bit more on the front end of divorce. We position ourselves to be able to do the front end divorce work like CDFA work, because a lot of advisors, I mean they can find a ton of advisors who will work with them after divorce. That's a lot easier than helping a woman through divorce and understand the financial sentiment. Plus, it's from a business standpoint, those are really long lead times. I find most advisors don't want to wait that long.

[Kendra]

Okay, and when we think about the way that you enjoy educating potential prospects or people, is there a medium that you really gravitate towards? Do you like writing? Do you like video? Do you like building relationships with coi? If you only had to pick one, which one would you be most excited about?

[Ed]

It wouldn't be video. I'm just thinking out loud here. I don't do a lot of video. We have some COI relationships already. I don't know. I don't find those to be the most engaging or they don't excite me a whole lot. I do like to write. I think that's one thing I like to do, I think with a bit of a strength. I like public speaking. I don't mind getting up in front of an audience or I don't mind doing webinars and things of that nature. I would like to do a more in person, but a suitable substitute might be the webinar.

[Kendra]

Okay. And as far as marketing activities you're currently doing, what are you actively doing to drive awareness for the firm?

[Ed]

Like I said, we're not doing a whole lot right now. I have some resources that are there. Again, that's big ten digital marketing, not one on one financial advisor type marketing. We piggyback on that a little bit. We get some exposure from that. I've done some guest podcasts. I've probably been on 20 guests podcast over the past three months. That's all on the Enlighten her side. But there is definitely A spillover with Burning river, the wealth management business. I certainly talk about both to a certain extent.

[Taylor]

Okay.

[Kendra]

And for the podcast, you're just driving results to the. The other business.

[Ed]

Yes. And anything that comes there may eventually get to us anyway. If we get a lead that comes through the Enlighten her channel, it's still filtered by the same group. So oftentimes we've gotten leads for Burning river through Enlighten her, even though we don't really market Burning river through the Enlighten her channel.

[Kendra]

Can you give me, in a nutshell, two or three sentences about what Enlighten her is?

[Ed]

It's financial education and coaching for women. It's coaching, Right. So it's a short term, limited term model. The way we engage would be either one on one or through digital courses. We're building that side of it out. We have a divorce course that's out there. So it's really. We're trying to take all the knowledge that we have, or at least some of the knowledge that we have from wealth management, and push it out to the masses, particularly for women who are just starting out. So I'm the father of five young daughters between 19 and 26. So that demographic I think it's important to reach. If we can reach that group, then we have a chance to really build this women financial literacy arm. You think that's very important. And then for women starting over with the women who are coming up divorce or the death of their spouse, they don't either qualify or meet or want a one one deep dive relationship with a financial advisor. But one thumb support.

[Kendra]

When we look at the potential prospects from Enlighten her, how many qualified prospects are sent per month to the advisory firm from that other business?

[Ed]

We're just getting that started. So, like when I say just getting started, probably within the last two or three months, we really got that marketing up and running. That marketing listed like social media, the LinkedIn, Instagram, definitely email marketing. I list the small, these podcasts and we're starting to see some leads come in. Overall, I would say of those, I don't know, maybe two or three are coming in for the Burning river side. I had a conversation this morning that came from Enlighten her and they were qualified. Yeah. Qualified, yeah.

[Kendra]

Okay. And then for that other business, are you sharing marketing resources with the firm or is that a completely separate business with marketing efforts and everything that are just separate from the firm?

[Ed]

They could be coordinated. Yeah. So we're not doing any marketing for Bragg just yet. I'm going To. I'm going to start that. That's one of the reasons I'm here today. And I'm starting to kick the tires and all the different options. Clearly, one of the options will be to piggyback on what we're already doing right now.

[Kendra]

How much time are you spending per week on marketing overall, and how much do you have available? So, for example, I'm spending two hours a week. I could go up to five hours a week. What does that look like?

[Ed]

I mean, I think we could do combined, you know, three to five.

[Kendra]

Okay, awesome. Taylor, what's coming up for you?

[Taylor]

I've got a number of questions to make sure I understand everything here. Ed, I know this feels like an interrogation sometimes, but it's really helpful for us to understand everything that's going on. I guess my first question is, why this niche? Like, what. What made you land on. On serving this. This niche?

[Ed]

There's a little bit serendipity and a little bit personal story. So the serendipitous part is just the way we presented or I started presenting comprehensive financial planning resonated more with women. And when I first started marketing, you know, I first started out in the industry, you know, 20, 25 years ago, my wife was a nurse. And so I started with your natural market, right. Talking to people around you. There's probably a lot of women I was talking to, but the messaging was naturally resonating with women. And when we started to do a deeper dive, we made a shift in broker dealers. I just took a deep dive and said, well, who are we working with? And those. Probably 75% of our clients were women. And women in that household. That was somewhat serendipitous in the sense that it wasn't by design, but a byproduct of the way we presented financial planning to clients. Once we knew that to be the case, we said, all right, well, we're just going to put this out there and market to it, because clearly we're already there. But a part of that, too, is the. The personal story is that I have obviously five daughters. And so I'm. I'm naturally around women all the time, so to speak. But, you know, I look at my mother's case, and when I was younger, my parents got divorced. My mom had to give up custody of us4kids. And because my mom didn't have the financial understanding or literacy to. To know any better, and she was an immigrant from South Korea, didn't read right the language. So there was a lot of barriers there. But one was she didn't think she could care for us financially. And so that's not a nice story or a positive story, so to speak, because I looked at what she had to go through. And to have to give up custody of your children, I mean, the most precious things in the world to you because of economics or financials, that's a tragedy. Right. And so as we started working him at school space, I mean, that's. That's part of what drives me. Like, I know that I'm an advocate for the women that we work with, maybe particularly that's why we're in the divorce arena, because I had that personal experience and saw later in life how it affected my mother. And so in some way, I think it's my way of helping prevent that from happening again. And so there's a large advocacy mindset that goes with. Enlighten her. That goes with working with divorcees or those who are in the midst of the. Boris.

[Taylor]

Yeah, Very cool. Thank you for sharing all that. I'm sure that story certainly resonates with your clients and, you know, could potentially play into some of. Of your marketing. It's not like you just randomly said, I want to work with. With women going through these major life events. So I appreciate you sharing that. You've got a great practice right now. You shared with us about $1.5 million in annual recurring revenue. How many clients is that?

[Ed]

About 210. Okay.

[Taylor]

And then you said, out of the those 210, only about 20 are divorced or widowed. Is that correct?

[Kendra]

You said about 20%, I think, right?

[Ed]

Yeah, maybe 20%. That might be. That's just. Just a guess.

[Taylor]

Okay.

[Ed]

I would. That might even be a little bit on the iPhone.

[Taylor]

Out of those 200ish households, are they all women?

[Ed]

They're not all women. Most are.

[Taylor]

There's.

[Ed]

There's a lot of couple relationships, but that relationship is driven by the woman.

[Taylor]

The woman is taking the lead in the money conversations.

[Ed]

Yeah.

[Taylor]

Okay. I'm trying to figure out if it makes sense to put time, energy, resources into marketing Burning river or putting all your marketing dollars, time, resources into Enlighten her and using Enlighten her as this kind of separate advocacy, educational brand to stitch together a funnel that does drive potential prospects to Burning River. And again, like, not everybody. There'll be a certain segment of those followers, that audience that just consumes your educational content and participates in that community a certain way. But those that do need help, you know, have a path to take action with your firm. So I guess I'd like to hear from you. Like you had mentioned, we're not doing any marketing right now for Burning River. But you want to do marketing for Burning River. I guess the question is, is what? Why have you decided to separate these marketing channels?

[Ed]

So I, I definitely think that we're going to leverage Enlighten her or Burning Ever on some level. I think that's, that's not an if we will. On some level. Part of this is trying to having conversations like this. Do I. Do we lean more into Enlighten her and then have just a little another funnel per se that comes an offshoot of that existing marketing that now pivots to Burning river, or do I do something more direct with Burning River? Because we haven't done anything thus far. Now we have, I think, pretty good a good reputation in the local community or Burning River Impact. The marketing could simply be just market through your existing clients better. I don't know. It might be. We have these really good relationships. They're. They feel like more family than they do feel like clients. And I think clients if that'll resonate with them, that messaging. But we don't ask for referrals. We haven't really pushed on that too much. In fact, we might have pushed them away a little bit by doing just the opposite. But we're getting tight on staffing and such, so I'm open to different ideas. I feel like we're neglecting Burning river right now. We have the capacity to do something more directed with them. Plus, Burning river is the one that actually makes the money. So the Lightheart is just a startup. I mean, we really, we don't know where that's going to go per se. It could just exist. I mean, one of the thoughts is even if Enlightener isn't successful on its own, right. As an entity that can pay for itself, but if it could be the conduit that ultimately gets us enough Burning river clients. Yeah, that could work. And we can still feel good about the advocacy work that we're doing in that space that won't go away. And then I guess it kind of solves two problems.

[Taylor]

Yeah, I think, I think there is a decision to be made there. And obviously you're not going to make that decision today, but I think there's a decision to make there. To say enlighten her is our educational platform, our educational brand to reach our ideal audience. And then creating a funnel through that platform to help those that really want professional help take action with your firm, Burning River. It's really not a lot different than what I've done with my firm. Where defined financial. The corporate firm doesn't really engage in any marketing. Like we have visibility online. You know, we have visibility in the community. Obviously, clients are familiar with the firm and the firm website and resources. But from a. From a marketing standpoint, everything takes place on the stay wealthy platform, the educational platform that I own. That educational platform, the website, the podcast, the videos, they don't generate any money. I'm not trying to make money with the stay wealthy platform. I'm just trying to build an audience and educate my ideal client, knowing that I just need a tiny percentage of them to raise their hand and say, I want professional help. And I just need to be clear about how to take action and get that professional help from my firm. And so I've got this kind of, you know, path for them to take where they're consuming all this educational content on the stay Wealthy platform, whether it's through the emails, whether it's through blog posts, whether it's through the podcast or video. Now, it sounds like a lot, but I mean, everything is very coordinated and there's a path for them to take action. And when they do take action, or they want to hire me as a professional and it then funnels them over to the firm. So there's that path that you can take, or you can treat these as separate entities and just say, enlighten her as its own thing. We're doing workshops. It looks like you've got a course that you're offering. We want to monetize that platform differently. And we're going to separate these two things to grow the firm. We're going to market through the firm's brand and website and whatever else you might do there. So maybe just like gut feeling here, which direction do you think you might lean towards?

[Ed]

Well, I don't think it's necessary to market Burning river directly. And so it's almost. It almost be better, easier if we could just market through one channel. Because ultimately, I know, I mean, we don't do. We haven't done any marketing for Burning river and we're still getting qualified clients come to us. Right? Because they're going to get. Once we get them as a lead, we have a conversation and then we just direct them to the appropriate side, whether that's Burning river or through Enlightenment.

[Taylor]

So sorry, really, really quick. Just want to jump in so I don't lose my thought. It's not necessarily about marketing Burning river to enlighten her. It's more of just creating that path for those that are part of the Enlighten her community. That's just what I'm going to call it for now to just a path for them to take action if they want professional help. So, you know, having a way to systematically, you know, on an ongoing basis, provide that opportunity. Say like, hey, like, for example, again, I don't know much about this divorce course that you have on the Enlighten her website, but just hypothetically, they buy your course or maybe it's free. They go through the course and throughout the course there's opportunities for them to click and take action and learn more about more professional services to hire you to help them do the heavy lifting, to use your words, or maybe at the end of the course, congrats, you've completed the course, you've got everything you need to go and take action on your own. But if you're feeling overwhelmed, you want professional help. Like, click here to learn more about how you know our firm can help. So it's not necessarily about like integrating Burning Rivers, like branding and like directly putting it in their face in front of Enlightened her. It's just more like if you need professional help, we can offer that. Click here to learn more.

[Ed]

Yeah. Yep. No, I mean, I think that makes sense. I don't, I don't. We would have to directly market Burning river through Enlighten her. I think I get what you're saying. This market as you. We normally are. And then ultimately some people will make sense to pop over to the Burning Riverside when you can, you can decide that at the end we don't necessarily have to overtly do anything there. Yeah.

[Taylor]

Yeah. And I think, you know, I think there's, there's something there because we've had a couple conversations with people who target this niche and it is a. Well, I'll just say, you know, divorcees and widows, it is challenging because they don't know when these life events are going to occur and even when during the divorce process, they may not be ready to hire somebody professionally. And so it's helpful to build trust with these people and have a community of these people so that when something happens, they know who to reach out to at that time. So I do like the idea of like leveraging this educational platform to build this amazing audience to help as many people as possible. And again, you only need a tiny percentage of them to raise their hand and say, hey, I want to learn more about hiring you. I don't want to push you in that direction because if you want to treat these as two separate entities and monetize them differently, that's fine. But I do think it is an especially interesting angle given your, you know, your, your niche to kind of funnel them through the educational platform. I mean, people connect with these educational personal brands certainly more than a corporate brand. So that's working in your favor.

[Ed]

Yeah, I mean, I don't feel compelled to have to do something again, overtly burning. At the end of the day, I'd rather not, quite frankly, I'd rather not have to add another element that we run separately. If I can latch on or just think a little differently about what we're already doing. That to me, is the path of least resistance. And I do have a question on that. So in, in your case, you like it says you have divine defined financial. If I said that right, when you present yourself, let's just say something like you write on LinkedIn who decided to post on LinkedIn or present yourself to the world. How do you do that? Do you do that from a refined financial lens? Or do you present yourself as with Stay Wealthy or whatever, your marketing education?

[Taylor]

I present it as myself. I mean, if you want to use the LinkedIn example, it's just, it's myself as a professional and I specialize in helping people get through divorce or helping widows do X, Y and z. Just that's just me as a, as a person. And so on LinkedIn, I'm sharing posts, I'm educating. This is who I am. This is who I specialize in working with. Like, if you're interested in taking action and learning more, like, go here and, and when they go there, then it takes them to my firm website. So I'm not really marketing or operating under a specific brand. In some cases, I am, you know, on the Stay Wealthy blog or the Stay Wealthy Retirement podcast. The YouTube channel, I guess technically is under the Stay Wealthy brand. But mostly I'm operating as a person, as a professional, as an expert, and helping a certain type of person. If they want professional help, then I'm going to direct them to my firm. Hey. My team and I specialize in and working with people just like you. We offer a free analysis. Go here to learn more. And that's where they're eventually introduced to the firm. So make sure that we make good use of your time here. It sounds like you are attracted to this idea of building. Enlighten her, building that, that audience, that community, that educational platform, and then from there creating a way to funnel people who are interested into, you know, having conversations about maybe hiring you. So did you have questions about how do we get enlighten her in front of more people? Is that part of what you're looking for help with?

[Ed]

Well, at the end of the day we need to get in front of more people. Whether that's we're going to market under the enlighten her banner as an example, then that's the fundamental question. How do we. Because that's a little different. Obviously that's a lot different because that's a volume game where it's. Burning river is not. Burning river is clearly more niche down. We're not trying to generate a huge audience, grab a bunch of lead. So to that end. Yeah, from, from getting out into the community, getting you know, building our audience where I know you only need a small percentage but you still need a law of large number to work in your favor. So how do we build that audience in today's day and age which is fairly saturated or at least there's, there's. I'm not a saturated per se, but there's a lot of names and faces out there that we're competing with. Obviously anybody who says they're financial coach can just say it. They'll listen to some VA credentials behind them.

[Taylor]

Honestly, I might even think about toying with coach versus just community or educational platform. You know, you might have coaching services or products that fall in line with, with coaching. But the second you say coach, it just makes me start to feel like it's a, it's a corporate brand. Again, you're a corporate coaching program for people. It doesn't feel like this educational platform. So you might play around and maybe talk more internally about is this a coaching website and a coaching firm or are we an educational platform for divorcees? We want to get good information in their hands. Again, whether that's through courses, that's through ebooks, that's through some sort of online community. Again, you might have some services on the side, but just some food for thought there.

[Ed]

Okay. Yeah, I'm all that over the end of the day. I mean what we're just trying to do is we need to get visibility. We need, we don't. People don't know who we are. And when I have these conversations, I have one on one conversation. I've had a lot of these one on one conversations and it's always met with the same very positive energy. People love the idea. They think it's so needed on financial education side for women and they don't have the same, not surprisingly, they don't have the same affinity when I talk about Burning River. It's. It's different. They. In their mind, it feels very different, even though we're doing the same sorts of things. But one feels like advocacy and there's empowerment there. The other feels like, well, maybe corporate or certainly capitalistic, and it doesn't have the same resonance. So. But for people who don't know who we are at the end of the day. And so our job is to try and figure out how they drive awareness. How do we build the audience? How do we get the email addresses so we can market to and. Okay. To build influence. Yeah. So I'd love to hear any thoughts on that. How do we go about building this big tent? I think there was a big tent.

[Taylor]

Yeah. I've got. And I want to keep an eye on the clock here, make good use of the rest of our time together. I have. I do have an idea that I'll share with you, but I'll let Kendra jump in and see if there's anything else on her end.

[Kendra]

I have some other thoughts, but let's. I think I'd like to hear what you have there.

[Taylor]

Yeah. I think if we look at Enlighten her as an educational platform, and like you said, nobody really knows who we are, and we want people to learn who we are. You mentioned building an email list. I think just really simply just building a nice funnel for Enlighten Her. It could be. You mentioned going on podcasts, so it could be you build an amazing educational resource for Enlighten Her. I don't know if it's this course. It has to be free. So let's say that this course, you. You make it free, and you go on these podcasts where your ideal audience lives. Maybe you have to pay an agency to help get you on these podcasts. Maybe you have connections. I don't know. But every week, once a week, you guest on a different podcast to share your knowledge, to help just solve their pain points, however you want to approach that conversation. And you use that opportunity to say, hey, by the way, we've got a free course for everybody listening. Just like you. You're a divorcee. You're. You have these pain points. We have a free course. Just go here and get access to the free course. And by doing that, now you have their email address. They're on your email list. In addition to the course, you can start to build out, you know, an email newsletter, an email sequence to nurture those people and then kind of move them through the rest of the funnel from there. If it's not the course. If you don't want to give that away for free. Maybe it's an amazing ebook or maybe it's a video series, a three part video series to help people. But you need some way to get in front of your audience. So leveraging somebody else's platform like a podcast would be a very efficient, effective way to do that. It could be writing guest articles on a website that your ideal audience is reading, but somewhere to get in front of these people and then offer them something to get them into your ecosystem and then nurture them from there. And then again, a large subset of them might just consume your information, get free educational content. But we only need a tiny percentage to say this is all fantastic. I need somebody to do the heavy lifting and give them that opportunity to, to reach out.

[Kendra]

A couple things to think about here is you. You've already done 20 podcasts in the last three months, so that sounds like a medium that you're very comfortable with. And when it comes to building an, an audience, there's really two ways to do it. You build it or you borrow it. So you're either going to build this big audience through something like your own podcast, YouTube channel. There's, there's a bunch of different ways to build an audience or in this case you can borrow it, which is in this scenario, going on a podcast tour. So that's working well for you. Um, I would narrow in there if that's something you're excited about. Um, and then the one thing you're gonna have to add to that is for a divorcee and a widow is gonna look very different. So I would choose one of those. It looks like with the Enlighten her website, it's really focused in on like more the divorcee route. So I would narrow in on your ICP on who you're gonna target that funnel a little bit more there as well.

[Ed]

A lot of these podcasts have yet to come out yet, so being able to evaluate the efficacy of them, I guess we'll have to wait and see. Plus, I probably didn't do as good enough job of marketing specifically like promoting an offer. I mean we, we definitely have some and we've been creating a few things along the way. So I think we're in a better position now to. We have like a guide called Starting Out. This is for young professionals starting in their first job, like an example. And that's, that's an area where I think you're going to focus in on under the Enlighten her brand. We want to build some resources there. But the starting over would be more in the divorce or widow arena. The other women who are starting over and they have the same problems or some of the same issue that a woman who's just starting out, maybe for the first time, we're in a very different place in mind.

[Kendra]

I think you're going to bump into some challenges if you have the people starting and the people starting over. So with the Enlighten her brand, if there's a way to kind of align that brand, for example, the starting over feels very aligned to the firm with who you're targeting around potentially divorcees and widows. If you start to also go after that part of the market where it's someone starting the new job, that's a completely different targeting perspective and ideal client. So I don't think you're going to see the connection point. You need to from Enlighten her if you're also marketing to this younger audience of people starting out with their first role. So that's something I would just be aware of that. If you don't see the connection from going on these podcasts and getting them into your offer, that's. That might be a failure point. That's hard to see.

[Ed]

Yeah. Well, I mean, the problem with that is the push back a little bit. I mean, Enlighten her really is about big tent. It's not just about a small niche of women starting over or divorcing or non widows. That's more Burning River. Right. So that's much more narrow. Whereas Enlighten her is that big pen. In fact, if I had to choose one over the other for Enlighten Her, I would choose the starting out. That's where our, our advocacy really truly lies, is trying to educate young women to get them knowledgeable early because they're going to have the biggest impact. Right. If they start to develop, they raise their own families, they're going to be able to share that. Now, here's.

[Kendra]

Here's a question I have for you. If you grow Enlighten her and you don't get any new clients for the firm, is that going to be a problem?

[Ed]

Well, again, the idea behind enlightening her wasn't necessarily a feeder system for Burning River. Right. And so we have to rectify that. And this is what we have to think through. Because if Enlighten her can't stand on its own two feet, right? So if we can't, it can't make enough money to pay for itself, then that's not going to last forever. Right? We can only do that advocacy for so long. So it's a little bit to be determined, I suppose. And then the question is, do we have to choose one or the other? I agree with you. It is harder and maybe it is. I don't know if it's impossible, but it's much harder to work with such a broad audience. Right. We're talking starting out very different than a 50 year old woman who's starting over. At least their mindset is different, certainly where they're coming at it well.

[Kendra]

And big tent marketing is really an attempt to appeal to a very broad audience where niche marketing is exactly the opposite. We've had a few other guests with this very similar problem where they want to give advocacy and financial literacy to a prospect who's earlier in the journey who may not be a good fit for the firm. We have an episode with Thomas Cook and we came in there and helped him really narrow that in. I think if you're going to use enlighten her to potentially drive leads for the firm and to not have to do a bunch of additional work there, I would recommend potentially targeting divorcees or widows somehow under that, enlighten her brand so that it aligns. Because the problem you're going to bump into is if you go on podcasts, you're going to need some kind of offer to move them into your ecosystem. And it's going to, it's going to vary very, it's going to vary widely based off of who you're trying to target. And if you really just feel strongly about helping younger women, then I think, you know, you could rethink your strategy for using enlightened her. Maybe that's where this fits in. But if you want to kind of click them together, I would get a little bit clearer on which ICP we're going to target. And then it can be in alignment with enlightened her, but it's going to, it's going to need to kind of have a through line to who is also an ideal client for the firm. Now it's only going to be a few of small percentage of those, but it still needs to kind of connect. Does that make sense?

[Ed]

Yep.

[Taylor]

I know we have to wrap Kendra, but just one final thought here, Ed, because I know you have some decisions to make here. You know, this would be like, you know, I've got my retirement planning firm. We focus on high net worth retirees over age 50 who are the retired or close to it. Like if I have that firm and then I go start this platform that's focused on millennials just starting out in their careers. It would feel pretty disconnected. And now I have a decision to make. I might say, well, I want to get good information in these young millennials hands. Or I guess millennials are getting older now, so probably not an example. Gen Z, is that the next one? So then it's like, well, yeah, but I want to help these, these young people out, and I want to monetize that platform differently. Well, if I'm going to spend my time and attention trying to monetize this, this platform that's educating young professionals just starting out, it's going to take a lot of my time and attention away from building my firm. So now I have this decision to make. Do I want to just set my firm to the side and focus on monetizing this other platform that's totally disconnected? I could do that, but my firm's probably just not going to grow the way I want it to grow. So we either connect these two platforms so that they support each other and complement each other, or we treat them as two separate entities and just know that they're both either going to grow slowly or one of them is going to get all the attention and the other one isn't. And again, that's just a business decision to make. I know. It's just hard because, and like Kendra said, we've had these conversations a number of times, like, we are all helpers. We just want to help people. We want to get good information in their hands. And it just gets really challenging from an economics perspective, from a business perspective, we can't help everybody. And the truth is there's a lot of great people out there educating young folks that are just getting started. They've built platforms around it. Jeremy Schneider, you know, Ramit Sethi, like, a lot of these people, Dave Ramsey, Susie Orman, like, they're all out there educating the masses that we might not agree with everything they say, but, like, there are people out there. So I don't know. Just, there's some big, big decisions to, to certainly make here. And I hate to rush us, but we do need to, to jump.

[Ed]

No, I appreciate that. It is. We give me a lot to think about now. I'm going to mull it over and, and see where we land on this. I thought we were trending one way, we kind of trended back the other. But we'll see at the end because I. There's, there's a lot of validity, obviously, in what you're saying. And yeah, I just have some. Do Some soul search and try to figure it out, because we can't be all things that all people say.

[Kendra]

And I think that a couple things to take away from this conversation. First is when we think about where you should spend your marketing time. Let's lean into mediums you feel naturally interested in. So you mentioned writing and, you know, public speaking. First, I would narrow, you know, the approach to limiting your marketing to those mediums. You know, you mentioned guest podcasting. I think that's wonderful. You know, when we look at if we were going to rebuild this funnel for you, this is what it could look like. First, your top of funnel is podcast guesting. You're already doing that. Well, it's, you know, you're getting on those. That's working for you on those podcasts. The core goal, outside of delivering just genuine value that's helpful, is to offer some kind of, you know, maybe free course or ebook that would get them into your ecosystem. And then once they're on the email list, then you can over time build trust and invite them to a call. Now, a couple really important parts of this process for you to consider is when you think about this funnel, it would be very helpful if you go down a more narrow approach, either maybe the divorcee or the widow, and you can align that with the brand so that you can create an offer that would resonate because a divorcee, a widow, and retirement are gonna look very different. So I know we've thrown a lot your way here. Is there any, you know, questions you have to wrap up, or does that give you a couple ways to narrow your focus?

[Ed]

You know, I don't have any specific questions. I mean, it is a lot to think through and try to have to decide, really. We have two competing ideas, and at the end of the day, that's what I have to rectify. You know, which pathway would we want to go down or, like, grow more slowly? If you're not going down one path, you're going to obviously have to slow down on the others or come up with more resources.

[Kendra]

Definitely. So for all advisors listening, if you're struggling with targeting multiple client segments or wanting to help different prospects at different stages of growth and financial literacy, a couple really good episodes that we've done. We did one about targeting multiple client segments with Eli Weissman. I would check that out as well as a conversation we had with Thomas Cook that's very similar to this. And you can go a lot deeper on this topic of multiple client segments. How do we choose? How do we focus? What are the struggles between those issues, and I think it's going to give you some really great steps. So thank you so much for joining us today, Ed, we're really excited to hear how you narrow in going forward. And thanks so much for swinging open the doors of your firm and letting us take a look inside.

[Ed]

Sure Appreciate your time and having me on.

[Kendra]

Awesome. We'll see everyone 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.