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Top Advisor Podcast
#107 – 3 Top Advisor Growth Strategies – Part 1 with Bill Cates, CSP, CPAE
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Foreign. Welcome. If you're a regular listener to Top Advisor Podcast, you know that most of the time, most of my shows are interviews with very successful advisors or other people in the financial services industry. Today's a little different. Today it's going to be a solo presentation by myself. We could say I'm interviewing myself if you want. What I want to focus on today is what advisors are doing right now to bring in clients. Real best practices, if you will. You know, through my podcast interviews, through the coaching of advisors, through other interviews I do to prepare for speeches and presentations, I've gleaned a lot of best practices. I can't cover all of them in one show, so I hope to have multiple shows where I'm covering a lot of best practices. Today I got a couple of big categories I think you'll find helpful. I like to deal at the level of principles, of strategies and tactics. So we're going to do all of that. We're going to give beliefs, we're going to give some overarching strategies. We're going to give you some very tactical things you can do and say. And for today's show, the two big ones I'm going to cover and then break down into smaller strategies and tactics. First of all is you got to be referable. Are you referable? Are you Remarkable, meaning worthy of remark. You know, it's actually interesting that the level of relationship you need to create to keep someone a client, which is important, obviously is not the same level as to get referrals and introductions. It's a higher level of engagement and trust. And the two main ingredients in becoming referable and building these relationships that can eventually turn into advocates in a lot of places and a lot of people, a lot of folks, is first of all, a value connection. Mostly the core work that you do in terms of the planning, in terms of asking great questions and teaching and responsive service and all that. But then there's also the personal connection. If we're not creating that personal connection, then it's an incomplete relationship and people will move, people will leave, and we definitely don't become referable. So we're going to touch on both of that today, and then I'm going to get into the topic that you're probably familiar with, and that's a target market. A lot of the top advisors I've interviewed for this podcast are folks that have a very clear target market. So you know about the strategy. The good news is that it's never too soon in one's career, never too late in one's career to get better at this, to implement the strategy and get better where the level you might be on right now. And the whole point of a target market is to kind of. Is to build a reputation and to create a situation where you don't have to have big lead programs that usually don't produce very good leads anyway. You don't have to do much push prospecting because as we know, reaching out to folks in a cold way, it's just. It's just really hard. It doesn't work very well. So we want to go from that to attraction marketing, Right? We want to create a reputation that attracts people to us. So we'll cover a little bit of that today. Now, before I dig into these very meaty topics, I want to tell you a quick story. I think you'll be able to relate. I hope you find it helpful. Napoleon Hill wrote a great book called Think and Grow Rich. Perhaps you've read it. He says, what the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve. Conceive goals, vision, what we're trying to accomplish. Usually we have a pretty good sense of that. Hopefully we have a good sense of that. But we rarely talk about the believe part. What we believe is possible, what we believe about ourselves, about our clients, about the industry, et cetera. And I found that most people most the time can't reach a level of success that exceeds their beliefs. There are exceptions from time to time, but generally our level of success are going to dictate our beliefs. Let me give you an example of one of the limiting beliefs I had many years ago. Before I was in this business, I owned a couple of book publishing companies. Eventually sold the companies, which I'll mention in a minute. But when I first got started, I wasn't having much success. So I hired this consultant. Gary came in. He says, all right, Bill, tell me what you're doing. Show me what you're doing. Now this before the Internet, right? So all my marking materials were paper. I had brochures, I had catalogs. I had all kinds of things that I'd send out. He says, look, Bill, these are very nice. They're well worded. You know, let's see why you're not having the success you want to have. Tell me what happens when you get in front of people and this before zoom, right? So, you know, essentially face to face or maybe on the phone. And so my response to him was like a deer in the headlights. He says, okay, you're not getting out there. You're not getting in front of people, you're not seeing how they're actually reacting and watching their body language and hearing their voice. He says, you're making a classic mistake. You're hiding behind the mail. Which was true. Just like some advisors these days. Hide behind LinkedIn, hide behind content marketing, hide behind email. I'm not saying those things can't play a role and be very important, but sometimes we know we're just doing that because we don't want to do what we know we need to do, which is get on the phone or get out in the community, et cetera. So my mistaken belief or limiting belief was that sales is creepy. I didn't want to get engaged in sales. I didn't like the idea of selling. I guess I got bad messages when I was growing up, and yet I knew that if I wanted to be successful, I had to find a way to embrace that, at least a little bit. So I loaded up my car with samples and I would go from store to store to store. Cold calling. I had a couple of cookbooks in my line. So I called on some kitchen stores. And I'll never forget, I was in front of a store in Bethany Beach, Delaware, Kitchen Cargo. And I was just doing this number on myself. And maybe you can relate. So it's 10 o', clock, I'm sitting behind the wheel of the car and I thinking, store just open, they're busy. Better wait 15 minutes later. Oh, now there's customers in. The store. Manager's probably still busy. Better wait 45 minutes later. 11 o'. Clock. I'm an hour into this. What's that growling sound? Who can sell on an empty stomach? Let's go get an early lunch, right? So I got some boardwalk fries and a lunch. I came back two hours. I'm immersed in what my first sales trainer affectionately referred to and coined the phrase wimp junction. And as soon as I say those words, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's that place where fear meets courage. We find it almost every day in our relationships with, with clients, with team members, with friends, family. And it's something we need to say or do where, you know, it feels a little uncomfortable. And sometimes we wimped out and sometimes we do what we need to do. And you wouldn't be where you are right now and having the level of success and being in this industry if you didn't act with courage more often than wimping out. But we all do. And here I was immersed in wimp junction, watching my business fail before my eyes and Then finally something happened, which it was a good thing. It was a little uncomfortable at the time, but I hope it happens to everybody from time to time. And essentially, as I got fed up, I just. I realized where I was right now in my beliefs and my fear, my lack of confidence just. It just had to change. So I summoned every ounce of courage I could, and I walked into the store, Kitchen Cargo, and I made a small sale, six copies of one of my seafood cookbooks, cleverly titled Hooked on Seafood. Six copies, not very big. Did bolster my courage a little bit, though. And they did start to order more of my books as time went on, which was cool. Now, let's fast forward about six months. I get a call from an executive with a canned tuna manufacturing company. It seems he had been in Bethany beach on vacation, walked into Kinchi Cargo, saw Hooked On Seafood, and got an idea. Mr. Cates would like to know what it'd take to purchase a large quantity of Hooked On Seafood. We want to give it away in grocery stores as a premium. We hope we can use it to sell more canned tuna and canned salmon. Would your author be open to adding some recipes involving canned tuna, canned salmon? I go, well, I don't know. But before I talk to her, how many books are we talking about? Right? So we negotiated, and I got the. The author to agree because we did the deal. And Bumblebee Tuna, the largest canned tuna manufacturing company in the world at the time, ordered 400,000 copies of Hooked on Seafood. And that changed my life. First of all, I was a sales rep, and I made a very nice commission. I was also the company owner and got all the rest. And I used that money and built the business and eventually sold both businesses in 1989 and 1990. And so I tell you the story, not to brag, but I tell you the story, because we all have these beliefs, these assumptions, and sometimes we're so close to them, we don't even know they're there. We need a friend or a colleague or someone to point them out to us. But if you want to change your results, sometimes the first place to go isn't a strategy, isn't a tactic, isn't a marketing plan. It's your beliefs. What do you believe about yourself, what's possible, the industry, clients, the work you do, etc. So, as I mentioned earlier, we're going to talk about principles, strategies, and tactics. And I found that when we understand the principles. So you'll see I hit that a lot. Usually you can kind of figure out the strategies and tactics, they flow naturally from there. So let me give you a sense. I teach what I call the three R's of relationship marketing. And why relationship marketing? Well, study after study after study, you look at Michael Kitces, you look at Oxley, you look at all the studies that people are doing out there, and it just continues to reinforce the same thing that the people you want to meet want to meet you through the principle of borrowed trust. They want to meet you through a recommendation, an introduction from someone else they do trust, or in some other social type of situation where trust is involved. So in Kitza's study, for instance, 45% of high net worth individuals meet their advisor through a recommendation from a friend, family member, colleagues. Another 20% meet their advisor from the recommendation, introduction from CPA, attorney, other trust advisors, center of influence. So that's 65% already. That's 2/3 of the people you want to meet. Then another 15 to 20% meet their advisor through some other social human to human setting, like a seminar, an educational seminar that you might do. That's still a viable path to success in this business when done right. Could be going out, networking in the community, as my friend, very successful advisor Al Fox says, playing in traffic, or it could be client events, client appreciation events, but it's still that human to human connection. So that's why I focus on really the analog part of our business is the relationship. And so the three Rs of relationship marketing, first is relevance. Your messaging, the message you bring to prospects, clients, to the market's got to be super relevant. If it's not relevant, you'll be ignored. The principle behind relevance is empathy, meaning people need to see themselves in your messaging. And when they can see themselves, when they can identify with some of the things you say, they're more likely to give you a little more of their attention and perhaps move forward. The second R is reputation. The, the principle behind that is social proof, which is hugely powerful, which is also an element of borrowed trust. Right? We're trusting what other people say in different ways. And so when you build a reputation and you've got that social proof that you're doing business with other people kind of like them, then they're more likely to move forward. And then referrals is the third is the third R. And that's, that's really borrowed trust and being super referable. Those are some of the principles there. And these talk to each other, right? These work together. So for instance, if you get introduced to someone in a good way, then the introduction and how you reach out to that new prospect is going to be immediately more relevant and more meaningful to them and they're more likely to pay attention to it. If you establish a reputation in a target market, how you talk about your value is going to be more relevant. Also in a target market, it's easier to get referrals. People are more likely to refer people like themselves to you because they see that you're working with people like them. So all of these fit together. And the coaching I do with advisors is we use these principles to really go from incremental growth, which everyone should be experiencing by just being good at what they do, from incremental growth to little more exponential growth. And it's not just a volume play, it's a quality play. But we're really multiplying our best clients kind of on the principal level. And really common denominators of people who are doing really well with referrals and introductions. One is they're super clear. They're super clear on who they want to attract. You've heard the words Persona, avatar, ideal client, right? Fit client, substitute whatever phrase or word there. Here's the principle. Vague intentions produce vague results. Clear intentions produce clear results. The more clear we are, where we're trying to go and who we're trying to work with and how they want to meet us, the more likely we're going to produce the results we want. Another common denominator is, especially if folks do well with referrals and introductions, is they're kind of on a mission. They invite advocacy, they believe their value is worth sharing, they know their work matters to people, and you probably believe that. But are you using it? Are you using it to encourage people to share your value? It's kind of a new way to look at the referral process, at least new for some folks. A lot of folks have been taught the old methodologies. Maybe you got taught this. I get paid in two ways. One of those ways is referrals or I'm trying to build my business, I can really use your help. Well, there's nothing wrong with asking for help, but you can see those are advisor centered methodologies. When we really need to be value centered, client centered, paying the value forward to others being on that mission. And then the third common denominator is they don't leave this to chance. They build a process, they build a culture. And through my podcast interviews and through more to come from this, I'm going to give you all the tools that you need to build that process. We could certainly do some coaching if you want to get it faster. It really boils down to building a culture of introductions. And the culture can live in a couple ways. Meaning sometimes I'll work with agencies, I'll work with FMOs, I work with broker dealers, I work with larger firms, larger RAs, whatever teams. And so there's building the culture there at the organizational level, and then there's also the individual advisor building a culture of referrals and introductions within their practice, within their book of business. But it's not left to chance. That's the main thing. Now, I wrote a book called the Language of Referrals. And in the language of referrals, we outline six strategies. First, strategy is our inner language, what is our beliefs, our self talk. Right. Second is the language of referability. So we have the strategy being referable and then the tactics, the language we actually use to accomplish that. The language of promoting or encouraging referrals or introductions, the language of asking for referrals or introductions, the language of dealing with the objections, the hesitancy sometimes people have. And then finally the language of actually getting introduced, which is key and critical. So you've heard me use the word referrals and introductions a little interchangeably. Here's an important point, because it's so hard to reach people these days. A client's willingness to refer, a willingness to recommend, well, that's nice, or providing word of mouth is nice. It usually doesn't produce a result because people put this work off for all kinds of reasons. So please, from now on, when you're with a prospect, a client, a center of influence, anyone who has the ability to connect you with someone else, please use the word introductions or connections or both. I always like to say, let's talk about a comfortable way for you to introduce me to George, or let's talk about how you connect me to Laura in a way that's going to feel comfortable for her and for everyone else. Right, so it's introductions is the word we're favoring. Now I'm about to get into some of the big strategies I've talked about. Hopefully you're already getting a little value from what I'm saying. But I just want to let you know these are all basic on or most everyone is based on either someone I'm coaching or an interview for Top Advisor podcast. And I'm going to give you the episode numbers of the interviews. Everyone, that was an interview. I'm going to give you that number. So if you like kind of the concept we talk about, then write it down and go back and listen to that, that episode. All right, so are you referable? Are you remarkable? Are you worthy of remarkable? A lot of things that go into this and in subsequent episodes, we're going to talk about a lot more things. But I got a few for you today. The first one is with Lester Matlock. Lester was one of my very first episodes. He was episode number three. I heard about what he was doing and I saw how successful he was and I just had to get him recorded. And so essentially his theme and how he interacts with his clients, he has some fun with this. And it's about the bucket list. What, what's important to them, what's on their bucket list. So here's how this came about. One of his bucket list items is he always wanted a 10 bar, what it would be like to be a bartender. So his wife said, well, why don't you host a client appreciation event and you can be the bartender and clients will give you a hard time and why don't you have them bring their bucket list item to the event and we can have some fun around that. And he said, oh, honey, you're brilliant. That's why I married you. Thank you. So to prepare for this, he had a client who actually owned a restaurant with a bar, and he worked in that bar for a couple, couple of nights to practice. And that's when he realized he didn't really ever want to be a bartender, but it gave him a little more confidence. And so at the event, everyone's giving a hard time, he's tending bars, bumbling through the drinks. But the key is that everyone else brought one of their bucket list items and it created huge conversation, it was a fun party. And he realized he was onto something. And now that's a theme of how he works with most of his clients. Not every client buys into it, but most do. And that's how he gets referrals because of this process. And so he finds out what's on their bucket list and he keeps it alive. It's not just one time conversation that too many advisors have around dreams and goals. He keeps us alive. And sometimes it's through recommending or introducing websites or resources. Sometimes he's just continually encouraging and making sure they don't forget about their bucket list item. And in a lot of cases, it's financial work or even making sure they're setting aside the money. Right. There's nothing worse than an unfunded dream or an unfunded bucket list item. And that's been extremely helpful. For him. I also had a, an interesting interview related to this. This is episode 47 with Nicole Middendorf and she calls it Live at Lists. Well, it's kind of the same thing, but she's having a little more fun. Bucket list, you know, before you die. Okay, Live at List. We're still living. I get, you know, you get the idea a little different energy, but still a lot of fun. And, and this is the theme of, of her relationships with her clients. And she's actually helping them achieve those goals and dreams in a lot of different ways. And she even creates Live at List excursions and vacations for her clients. They pay the way, but she organizes it just to help them, whether it's a, you know, cruise, a river cruise in Europe or whatever it may be. So bucket list limitless. Let's shift to Brian Sweet out of Minnesota. Episode number five, another one of my early ones. He has what he calls a 90 day dazzle. This is his onboarding process. Now in subsequent episodes, I'm going to go in deeper into onboarding and some of the elements of that. But one of the key elements for him is creating a vision board or a dream board for many of his clients. And, and not only does this build a great relationship on a value oriented way and a personal, personal relationship sort of way, it makes him extremely referable. People say he did this vision board thing. He got me thinking and visualizing. Now if you're not familiar with vision boards or dream boards, you can look it up on the Internet. I've done this in the past. Used to be way back when, when we had magazines, remember magazines as paper things where you flip the pages and we take scissors and we cut out pictures of what do we want to have and who we want to be and where do we want to go and Elmer's glue and put it on the board. Now it can all be done digitally, of course, but imagine if you did this with your clients where you really helped them bring their dreams, their bucket list, their limit list, their goals to life visually. Do you think that you would be able to bring more value and be a better advisor to them because you find out what they're trying to accomplish. Yes. Do you think it would actually create a deeper business friendship, if you will? Do you think this is starting to move into the level of creating leading advocates for you? Absolutely. So I love the, the vision board. That's Brian Sweet, Episode five. Camille Davis. I've interviewed, I did not interview for my podcast. This, this is a great strategy, by the way. It's particularly great for folks that are newer in this business, but it really works at all levels. So if you're not newer and you don't feel it applying to you, make sure you share it with anybody on your team. Might be newer. It's really, it's the whole family concept. It. Here's how she introduces it. And she does have a target market, by the way. She's based in New York City. She works with family owned business, family owned restaurants, a lot of family owned restaurants. And she tells her clients, this is how she frames it, that my responsibility is to them, to help them take care of their financial life and to help them take care of the people they love. So by discussing this extended family, whole family concept at the very beginning, she frames it at the beginning of the relationship. It's much easier to go in and get those introductions. Other members of the family. And you've probably witnessed this over your career where some families, they talk to each other and you work with one family member and the other one's kind of a slam dunk because of that, that easy, borrowed trust. Now other family members, they don't talk to each other, but a lot of times it does, right? And that's worked for her. And she's got a great phrase. I got to share this. You know, in the military, there's an expression you've probably heard, no soldier left behind, no marine left behind, no sailor left behind, no airman left behind. You know, pick your. Your branch of service. Hers is no family member left behind. And she shares that. And she lives that extremely successful very quickly, early in her career because of this. Couple more in this Randy Carver episode number 11. Now, Randy has a very large practice. He has a lot of advisors working with him. So different models fit different types of, you know, practice models. But what he does is he every month he has an educational event for his clients. These are not seminar marketing opportunities, although guests are invited. But these are educational events for clients. A lot of them are virtual. Some are in person. And then he also does appreciation events, monthly social events. Every month he does these. And so within the, within the first 90 days, within that onboarding time frame, all his new clients get invited to two or three opportunities for ongoing education. Value connection and some social Enter fun event, personal connection. And so he's making the value connections, the personal connections. He's organized around it. People feel it. People see that there's a plan, there's a method, and they love it. And he's doing very well in this business by anyone's standards. Last one I want to focus on in this particular topic is Joe Decent. And now, Joe recently retired. For a long time, he was based on Long Island. Then he kind of moved to Boca to transition into retirement. And one of his big strategies over the years was retirement parties. And so this is. This is what it would sound like. He would go to a client, he says, george, you know, you're retiring in three months or whatever time frame, and I want to throw a party. I want to help you celebrate. And George goes, well, that's very nice, Joe. You know, what do you mean? What do you have in mind? Says, well, I want you to give me a guest list. Now, he worked his way up to about 40 guests. He didn't start with 40 guests. And you want. No one wants to start with 40 guests. You want to start with a small group. But then it worked so well. He worked his way up, and he and his team did all the inviting. So everybody invited to this retirement event, and a lot were colleagues who worked with the client. Right. People in similar situations saw that the advisor was hosting this event, and that's. That's a big part of this. And so then what would happen at the event? Invariably, George would get in front of the room, grab the microphone if there was one, clink the glasses, put his arm around Joe and say, you know, I gotta tell you, I would not be retiring right now. And the way I'm retiring were it not for Joe. Not only has he been a great advisor for me, but as you can see by today, he's also become a great friend. And that's when Joe said, when it started, and people, he'd walk by the tables and people go, joe, come here. Got a card. I'd love to talk to you. My advisor, cheapskate, never do anything like this. And Joe said, Joe Decenta says he averaged seven new clients for every retirement party. Some a little more, some a little less, but the average was seven. So as you can see, there's a lot of different ways to become referable. More referable. Those are a few. Stay tuned for future podcasts. We'll cover more, I promise. I want to shift for a second. I want to pause for a quick word from the folks that make this show possible. You and I know that the way most people find their financial advisor is through human, human connections. I made that point. Referrals, events and hosting educational events, educational seminars for qualified prospects is a tried and true strategy. It's still producing great results for advisors who know how to make Them work properly. Seminar marketing works because it's an in person setting, right. It allows you to build that all important trust, rapport, credibility. And then one of the key ingredients in making the seminar marketing work is getting the right people, getting the right people to attend, which is pretty key. Well, this is where Nexrudo comes in. N E X R U T O Nexruto. Their, their expertise handles kind of the heavy lifting so you can focus on earning the business. They offer kind of soup the nuts and you pick what you need. But I'll tell you their biggest strength in a second. But that they can help you design a seminar if you need that. You may have your own content already. They can help you refine it, they can help you with presentation skills if you need that. They can even handle compliance approvals. But their big superpower is they create customized territories targeting your ideal clients. Right. So their specialty in all this is getting pre retires, specifically those with $1 million or more in investable assets into a room with you. They promote the event, they get bodies into the seats so you just show up, bring your value and spur attendees to action and set appointments. And because nextrudo guarantees exclusive marketing rights, you'll never have to worry about them reselling those leads that they generate to advisor down the street. They offer ongoing marketing support to help you create a true sales process to increase the chances of these prospect lists. Staying fresh, responsive, eager to meet with you. You'll work with the owner, Steve Abbott. Great guy, met him, broke bread with him, made sure that I want to promote a service to you guys that's credible. He provides great client support, loves the work he's doing, but no pressure. He just wants to make sure the model is a fit for you. It's got to be a good fit. So I've looked at their model, I've looked at a few others because I asked them who's your competition out there? And I did some comparison and, and they do some things that others don't. So just look, head over to nexrudo.com n e x r U T O and check them out. And here's what you want to do when you get there. You want to get your free market report. You want to, you want to find out this is free, no gimmicks. You'll immediately find out of, you know how many people of a million dollars or more who are close to retirement assets you get. Every. It's just, it's incredible and it's inspiring because you see that the opportunity that's right in front of you for, for the, the taking, so to speak. And then set up a complimentary session with Steve to make sure. So that's nextrudo.com it's also in the show notes. All right, so back to becoming more referable. Let me take a sip of water. Hold on. All right, so I don't have to tell you that a lot of clients come to us with self talk money beliefs. I call them money stories, broken money stories that are truly broken, right? They're, they're limiting, they're, they're based on mistaken assumptions, they're based on ignorance of how money really works. And the advisors who get good at talking with clients around their money stories, their beliefs, their self talk form a kind of relationship that not only creates clients for life, it creates advocates. If you want to create advocates for your business, one way to do that is get comfortable with and carve out a little time for some ongoing exploration and conversation around their money stories. I've conducted over a hundred interviews for folks money stories, and I've seen a lot. And you've seen it too. And the question is, are you leveraging this to bring more value and build a better connection? All right, so what are some of these broken money stories and beliefs? Well, scarcity is a big one. Scarcity mentality. All humans kind of suffer from that from one point or another because we're born into scarcity. Negative bias. Episode number 103 of Top Advisor podcast with Tessa Santorini. Pia, she's a neuroscientist, talks about how as part of our survival mechanism as humans from way back when, we had to have kind of that scarcity negativity bias. Now that helped us survive as humans. The, the challenge is it's, it holds us back if we, if we stay with it. And so our life's work is to move past that scarcity bias around time, around money, around you, you name it, right? So we see that a lot. And by the way, as you probably know, the scarcity, scarcity belief and feeling, it knows no economic, you know, restrictions. People with not much money have it. People with a lot of money have it. You know, you've got clients who have more money than they can spend in a lifetime and not spending anything. Scarcity bias. Shame. Shame's a big one. I didn't know shame was a big one for a long time until I interviewed Tammy Lally. Now that's episode 79, Tammy Lally. She has a podcast around. Not a podcast, sorry, a TED talk around money. Shame 2.3 million views. So there's gotta be something around that. And again, shame knows no economic, you know, boundaries. People with not much money have it. People a lot of money have it. You've probably seen it. People bring that to you and it keeps them from making the right decisions. So the more you can shed light on these things and have a good, empathetic, sometimes even fun conversation around this, the better advisor you become to them and the stronger relationship. All the fears, fear of missing out, fear of making the wrong decisions. Gosh, you know, when Covid hit and then the market crashed shortly after that, my brother in law called me. Name is George. I use the name George a lot in kind of homage to George because he passed not too long ago. And he says, bill, I'm going to cash, I'm going to cash. I go, no, George, please not go to cash, please. It will bounce back. It could take a month, it could take the year, but it's coming back. And I thought I had convinced them, but he went to cash anyway and never got back in the market for about five years before his death. My wife probably could inherited probably a couple more million than she did from him. Oh, well, in any event, you've seen that, right? Other beliefs. Here's one, here's a stereotype. Rich people are bad, they cheat, they're evil, they lie, they're grifters, you name it, right? And here's what we know about that belief. There's some kernel of truth. Most stereotypes have a kernel of truth. But what we know, in a book I wrote called the Hidden Heist, which I'm going to mention in a minute, my co author, Jeff west had a nice retort to that. It's some are, most aren't. So I was interviewing Mike from one of my My money interviews and I learned that Mike's mostly his father's mother a little bit mostly. His father had a very negative attitude towards people who were quote unquote wealthy, had a lot of money, thought they were all, you know, cheats, liars, you name it. And he grew up with that belief. And then he starts his business and, and it took him a while, but he finally kept realizing he was running. He kept running into that belief. It's like, how can I can't become someone I resent. I can't live into a belief that I believe is bad, right? Or I can't stay with a belief that is holding me back. So luckily he was able to overcome that. It's been very successful. Here's the bottom line through all this. It's empathy, right? It's appreciation for the other person's situation. You probably have some of your own stuff now you can decide whether you want to talk to clients about your own vulnerability and maybe your own mistaken beliefs. Maybe it's why you got in this business, because you had a mistaken belief and you got through it. So the point here is that if you can find a way to have these soft, authentic, empathetic conversations with prospects and clients, you're going to work with them on a level that they just don't get from other advisors and they're going to appreciate this and this is a tool to creating advocates for your business. Robert Sutherland is one of my coaching clients and even before we started working together, he had this belief and this is what he told me. He says, when I learn more about my client's self, talk around money, I find I'm in a better position to serve them in many ways. My clients have told me that their other advisors have never gotten to know them in this way and that these conversations give them a ton of peace of mind. So if you're inclined to spend a little time and energy and empathy with your clients around their broken money stories and helping them repair, and the good news is you can rewire the brain and give them more confidence and more peace of mind. Now I do have two tools for you. One is totally free. One of them is 1995. So the first one is my TedX talk. I did an 11 minute TedX talk to get it. Just go. Bill Kates, TedX.com www.billcatestedx.com and I think you'll find it enjoyable. I think you'll appreciate it. You'll definitely appreciate the concepts I teach and some advisors are starting to share that with their prospects and clients, even team members, by the way, because your team members may have mistaken beliefs, limiting beliefs that are holding them back and it could even be holding your practice back. And so they're using this as a soft way to get into this conversation. Have a look, have a listen, tell me what you think. Let's chat about it right now. The other tool is my book the Hidden Heist. And the Hidden Heist is. It's an interesting book. It's a little different from my other books because it's a parable, it's a story, and it's a story with lessons. Parables are stories with lessons, not a fable. Don't confuse it with a fable. Fable. Fables have animals, parables have people. If you ever wondered about that. Anyway, so what's happening is some advisors are reading as a wake up call. In fact, one of my coaching clients, when we were talking early on, he said he usually reads a book to put him to sleep. And his wife noticed that he was reading the hidden heist and it wasn't putting him to sleep. She actually commented that he was actually reading the book. But it's a wake up call for you. It could be a wake up call for your teammate members and it could definitely be a wake up call for many of your clients. So some advisors are using the hidden heist with their team members to examine the money stories, to get healthier money stories, to have more empathy towards the stories and the beliefs and the energy that clients bring. Right. That we think they don't have to have, but it's just part of who they are. And then a lot of advisors have started buying the hidden heist in quantities anywhere from 5 to 100. One gentleman just bought 100. The prospects, the clients sometimes are giving it. The clients to give to their adult children is kind of an added value gift. So, you know, go to thehiddenheist.com maybe get one for yourself. It's on audio, by the way, in audible. And because there's characters involved and there's a lot of suspense and energy and plot twists, we got a professional book actor to bring it to life. So if you like to listen to books, this is a good one to listen to and then see. All right, is this a message that I want to bring to my team? Is this a message I want to bring to some of my clients and expand the relationship in that way? So the hidden heist. Com. All right, let's talk about target marketing, right? Let's talk about building reputation. So speaking of, what are the benefits of a target market? Well, there's a lot I want to focus on. Three quick ones right here for the time we have together. First one is you become a better advisor when you have a clear target market and you're clear on who you serve and you know their benefits package, you know their cash flow, you know the nature of their industry and compensation and all that, you're a better advisor and you being, being bring better solutions and anticipate problems. Second of all, your messaging obviously is going to be more relevant. One of the ways this shows up is through the questions you ask you. When you have a clear target market, you, you're going to be able to ask questions that, that a generalist advisor doesn't even know to ask. And Clients see that, they feel that they know this guy, this gal gets me. And then it's easier to create a reputation, it's easier to generate referrals and introductions because people see that you're working with people like them, they talk to people. A good target market has a literal or a metaphorical water cooler, right, where they talk to each other, they have formal and informal ways of communicating with each other. And that reputation builds over time. So here are a few types of target markets and some very specific examples about what advisors are doing. So the first target market is employees in a company. Could be a mid sized large company. Probably should be big enough to, you know, to at least to make it worth your while. Don Hilario works with Google employees out on the west Coast. Don has, has learned that Google employees and Google has, they have their own lexicon for a lot of things that they call meetings and you name it. The fun one is they call each other, they call Google employees Googlers. Right? He works with Googlers. And I validated this because I had a Googler move in next door a couple years ago and very high level executive in the sales arena of Google. And so what happens is people come to him and they say, I know you work with people just like me, right? That identification, that credibility, that borrowed trust, it all is in there. Validation. So that's Don Hilary. Oh, by the way, that's episode number 23. Episode number 23. Episode number 27. Jeremy Keel. Number 27. His target market, Milwaukee, Harley Davidson. Now Jeremy discovered something that I've been coaching for years. Many advisor, I'm sorry, many clients like to have a tool, a simple tool, a soft way to introduce you to others. Some are willing to make a straight introduction, right. Heads up, you should know each other that I. Others like a little softer approach. It could be a blog article, it could be a little checklist that you create, survey checklists, a lot of different ways to do that. Jeremy wrote a blog post and it was on the benefits package of Harley Davidson and that thing like went viral. Over time his clients started sharing with more and more of their colleagues and he established a very strong relationship and rose to a very high level of success pretty quickly. Just because of the blog posts, right? Just because that he was focused on them and he demonstrated knowledge of them and that took off for him. Got a couple more, one more actually in the company side I mentioned earlier the difference between a category and a target market. So a category is people who want to retire in five to seven years. That's A pretty typical one, you hear right. That's a category, it's not a target market because there's no association of that. There's no formal, informal ways. Some of these people do know each other, people like them, but it's very limited. So when you marry that with a target market, which my next example has now, it's very powerful. Dennis o'. Keefe. Not a podcast interview, but one of my coaching clients works with Verizon employees and specifically with the blue collar millionaires within Verizon. The folks who've been there for a long time, they've saved well and they're five to seven years out of retirement. And he helps them navigate into a very comfortable retirement. So he's putting the two together. And he knows the world so well. You go to his website, he's got pictures of an old operator working the switchboard. He knows that the folks have been there for a long time. When it used to be Ma Bell and Bell Atlantic and all the different. They call themselves phone people. Now Verizon is no longer just a phone company, but at the time they call themselves phone people. So he's adopted a lexicon and they know, they see that he knows their world. And anytime there's a change in a benefits package, man, he gets a lot of activity to serve his current clients and then to get new clients at the same time. All right, so let's shift categories, and that's business owners within a specific industry. Poster child for this one in my mind is Todd McDonald. I've known Todd for a while. When I met Todd years ago, he told me a story. He said when he first got into this business, he talked to some other veteran advisors. He said, what would you do differently if you could rewind the clock? And they say, well, I wouldn't try to be all things, all people, or I'd have a clear target market. And he took that to heart. He did a little bit of light contracting work when he was in college. He repaved driveways, had a lawnmower, mowing company, landscaping. And so he started out with those kinds of lower level contractors. But he, but it evolved to the point where now, you ready? This is his target market, ready for this. And these are people with a lot of money, my friends, closely held, family owned heavy construction firms. His clients. And he has a national reputation. His clients build bridges, they build runways, they build roads, they build commercial buildings. If you go to his website on his homepage, it's a little video of him on it with a hard hat on A construction site with one of his clients in a hard hat. You look at every page on his website and anyone who's closely held, family owned, heavy construction firm says, all right, this guy gets us right? And, and all of his services are oriented. Strategic planning for generational businesses, succession continuity planning, qualified retirement planning. He's a member of some of the associations that these people are members of. He is totally in that world full and he's got homes in New York, near Albany and in Florida. He's got a boat in both locations. He's doing really well, my friends, and he's doing a lot of great work for folks. One other example I want to focus on Julia Carlson. Julia, one of my more recent podcast interviews, number 104. Now, she works with small business owners. It's not a specific category per se, but what she does is she brings in added value. So not only does she help them with their financial needs and the financial planning, etc. Investment saving, you name it, and risk management. She also helps them with exit planning. She helps them build a better business so the business is more saleable. She's added this layer of consulting onto this, which is she, she runs an eight figure practice, right? Forget seven figures, she's gone to the eight figures and she's done it by adding this extra layer of value onto small business owners. There's a couple examples. I got a million of them. I'll probably share more in future podcasts. All right, let's shift again, another type of target market. Medical professionals, doctors, nurses, hospital staff, other types of specialists, surgeons, you name it. Right? So let me give you a couple examples here. Johannes Harrison Episode 73 Episode 73 Johannes his market is emergency room physicians. In fact, he, he has programs that he calls financial literacy for residents and becoming Attending. Now, the phrase becoming attending, we don't really know what that means, do we? But his clients know exactly what that means, and that shows that he's of their world. He also belongs to some of the associations of emergency room physicians. He told me he wished he had done this 10 years ago when I interviewed him. He has a podcast and it's called Becoming and an Attending. It's kind of hard to say becoming an attending, but they get it. They know what that is. By the way, that's where podcasts tend to do best. If you're thinking about a podcast, having a very, very, very clear and fairly narrow target market is where they tend to do perform the best. Adam Schmala Optometrists now, when I interviewed Adam, he originally thought he identified what he called the four white coat professionals. Doctors, dentists, pharmacists and optometrists. And he was going to focus on all four of those and realized pretty quickly those are really four different target markets. And so he settled on optometrists. And if you go to his website, it's financial and retirement planning for optometric. Optometric, sorry, optometric practice owners manage cash flow, which is a huge thing that we could talk about. Another that a lot of advisors don't help their clients with very well. Unfortunately, cash flow reduce taxes and invest prudently right now. He told me when I interviewed him, this was years ago, a couple years ago he said, I wish I had done this five years ago. Right. I keep hearing that from folks who are doing well and I wish I had done this earlier. He also has a podcast, it's called 2020 Money the Business of Optometry. Right? Get it? Optometry 2020. All right, there you go. One more in this category and that's he's episode three, by the way. Adam Schmiel, Michael Budnick, episode 69 started out focusing on nurses, mostly nurses in hospitals, although not exclusively. He's written several books. He's got the 401k survival guide for Nurses. He's got the Prosperous Nurse. He's got Prescriptions for Prosperity and Financial Health. And what's happened here is because he was working with a lot of nurses in hospitals, the natural second market, if you will, the evolution market that came from that was hospital executives and that's his target market. He's doing very well written books and he's become the expert. So much easier to get referrals. So much easier to bring better value, create a reputation with a target market. Another viable target market. I don't have anyone I've interviewed on this one, but I've seen some evidence of it is, you know, colleges and universities, faculty and administrators can be a good one. Also affinity groups like Families with children with Special Needs. I've seen advisors do well there, philanthropists, which I'm going to talk about in a second. And then athletes, which in that market as you know, has expanded because of the nil. The name, image, likeness, compensation model for college athletes. A lot of people believe that's kind of ruined the sport and they have a good argument to make. We won't go there. But it's an opportunity certainly for them and for advisors to help these, these young men and women make better educated decisions around their money early in their life. So let's go back to philanthropy for a second because Jeff Chaddock episode 13 episode 13 Jeff Chaddock started out in the 403B market, right? And became more and more successful and started getting involved in philanthropy. And he helped renovate kind of an old museum and our historic home. Jeff Chaddock now has over 4.5 billion assets under management. He went from the 403B market to that and he says this is a quote from my interview with him. Philanthropy is in my DNA. I attract clients who share this trait and I help clients discover how they can become more involved through what I call philanthropic leadership. So he works with philanthropists or those who want to be philanthropists. If you want to bring in wealthy clients, you want to go where the money is. Philanthropy Episode 13 so you can see that many of these examples come from my other podcast interviews. I'll tell you a way to look for all the interviews very easily, very quickly. If you go to topadvisor episodes.com I'll put it in the show notes topadvisor episodes.com you'll see a list of all the episodes. Scroll through, see what what you like. I'm proud to say that we've reached we're now in the top 3% of all podcasts globally. That's because I hope I'm delivering great value. Reminder. Today's show sponsored by NextRuto. N E X R U T O they help advisors attract and engage qualified pre retires in their local market. Filling educational seminars with what they like to say. High intent prospects because they're getting close to retirement and they have the bucks right. They have a million or more to get your free local market report. This is free. It's very cool. The results. You'll see what the opportunity is in front of you. How many millionaire pre retirees are in your area? Just go to nextruto.com, n e x R-U-T o.com a small favor if you don't mind. If the platform you're listening to this podcast allows you to write a review, please. I love a five star review for this episode for the show in general, not all platforms have review opportunities, but if yours does, I love it. I'd be grateful. Don't forget to check out my newest book, The Hidden Heist. Thehiddenheist.com paperback, hardcover, Kindle, Audible, thehiddenheist.com and also we've got a great resources page. I call it a resources hub. It's a lot of free resources that you and your team team can dive into all around client engagement, client acquisition, marketing. Just go to referralcoach.com resources. That's referralcoach.com resources. And I like to say these are free to you, but I know you're going to find them quite valuable. This is Bill Cates reminding you that ideas do not make you more successful successful. It's only acting on those ideas that will bring you the success you desire. Thanks for stopping by today.