This is the first episode of a new Office Hours series on FinancialAdvisor.TV featuring Matt Halloran of Proud Mouth and Jay Coulter.
In a digital era the magic truly happens at the intersection of traditional marketing and digital marketing. And what if we told you that a space has been carved out, specifically to deep-dive into this intriguing crossroads? Welcome to the inaugural episode of "Marketing Office Hours" on FinancialAdvisor.TV!
Bringing together the marketing genius of Matt Halloran from Proud Mouth and Jay Coulter, "Marketing Office Hours" promises to be more than just another show. This LIVE series aims to unravel the marketing strategies that power the financial world, offering unique insights, actionable advice, and a fresh perspective for financial advisors looking to elevate their marketing game.
Whether you're an expert looking to hone your marketing techniques, a newcomer aiming to understand the synergy of finance and marketing, or someone merely curious about the behind-the-scenes of financial brand-building, this series is your gateway. So, grab your notebooks and gear up for a masterclass in financial marketing, one episode at a time.
Office Hours are hosted by Jay Coulter and recorded LIVE on all FinancialAdvisor.TV social media properties.
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Transcript:
00:02
Welcome to the first episode of Marketing Office Hours Live with Matt Halloran. My name is Jay Coulter. This show is exclusively on Financial Advisor Television, and we record it live. Matt, appreciate you coming on. Appreciate you being the lead for Marketing Office Hours. I'm so happy to be here, dude. Thank you very much for having me. Well, I tell you, this is going to be fun, just so.
00:27
anybody watching on what here's the context for this, Matt and I have been talking monthly for a couple of years now. And we're just connecting on best practices, what's working in the marketplace, what isn't talking about people behind their back, you know, things you do in a monthly check in with folks. And it just occurred to us that if we had recorded all those sessions, they make for great podcasts. So instead of doing that, we're going to live stream it. So if you're watching this live on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube or Facebook, and you want to ask us a question,
00:56
just go into the comment section, typing your question, and we'll pose it. Now, this is our first episode. We're not gonna have any guests, but in the future, we're gonna bring you some of the best in-class marketers out there from our industry and outside of our industry, just to show you best practices that can help you grow your business. Also gonna, we also wanna have a little bit of fun as we do this. So first, we're gonna start with a session we're gonna call the Twitter Roundup.
01:22
gone around Twitter looking at some of the best marketers out there looking for things that we could kind of discuss. The first thing we need to talk about though. There's been this phenomenon that's really taken the music industry by storm. A guy named Oliver Anthony has published a song. It's gone. He doesn't have a record deal. And he has 10s 20s. So many views. We don't know what to do. And the real question is, who has a better beard? Matt Halloran, or Oliver Anthony? Matt?
01:52
Ooh. Yeah, his beer games on point, dude. My beard, just so you know, was almost that color when I was quite younger. But my mind's better. I just I have more character in my beard. This is really monochromatic where mine has like little highlights in it. But yeah, yeah, I I'm going to vote mine. I normally wouldn't do that, but I have a little bit of feelings about this guy. So I'm going to vote for me on that one. OK. Yeah.
02:21
Yeah, he's got a great beard. There's also an age difference, Matt. You and I are a little bit older. Just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, he can sing, dude. I'll tell you that. I mean, his voice is pretty crazy. So yeah, it is. All right. So does a beard make for a better marketer? I think it makes you you I think it allows you if it's part of your overall image, you know, I think that's something that we really have to pay very close attention to.
02:48
is your physical representation of your brand, whether that's Jay, you as the resilient advisor, or me being here from Proud Mouth, you need to understand that your physical appearance needs to have a level of consistency, whether it's great hair like you've got or a beard like I've got, if it's your makeup, your glasses, Kim Skirmer, who's a friend of mine, she always is changing up her glasses, right? It's just, you need to do those things to flesh out your brand. I think that,
03:18
I went in a very different direction, Jake, as you know, in financial services, everybody so damn button down and so conservative and clean shaven. I just wanted to go in a different direction. Well, Allison Friedle is voting for Matt Halloran, as does Nikki Clark. All right, thanks, guys. So we're gonna go we'll put together a full Twitter poll on that when we get the clip. Let's move on to our next topic. Emily Bender, a great marketer in the industry. She recently put out a tweet asking
03:48
were stating that threads is dead, saw it coming. So she posted this, oh, maybe a couple weeks ago now. And I said they lost 80% of their daily active users. I saw something today, it might even be as much as 85%. Now, what's your take on threads? Is it dead? I Yes, I don't think that I think it's so difficult nowadays to break into a new social media platform. Even if you have such a substantially existing client base like like threads did through Facebook.
04:18
Um, and Instagram, right. And so.
04:22
I don't know, there's so many people there, by the way, you know, Mastodon and there's like five or six other Twitter alternatives, they're actually growing pretty well. They didn't have that meteoric rise, but this happens a lot, Jay. So you're gonna have a whole bunch of early adopters, which by the way, they inflated the heck out of their numbers, dude, because it was automatic. The minute you clicked, you were gonna be, so I mean, you know, some of this stuff is just, it was so inflated at the beginning. I think that was the stock market play, to be honest.
04:52
for evaluation or showing success. I think it peaked, I think it's gonna value, but I do think that people are seriously looking for Twitter alternatives, especially with some of the moves that Twitter or, what do we call it now? Do we just call it X dude or I don't know. There's some tweets, right? So I don't know, are they Xs? Do we put out Xs now? Anyway, you know what?
05:17
I am, I'm generally a huge early adopter, Jay, when it comes to social media. Um, I didn't even get on threats. Uh, I looked at it. I have a whole bunch of friends who are commenting on the user interface was pretty cool and all of this sort of stuff. Uh, but I have a feeling it will, it will bounce and it'll start coming back. But, um, I don't think it's a Twitter's just too big. Yeah. I jumped on the first night. Uh,
05:46
I thought, man, this is incredible. It's so quiet. I'm only seeing posts from people that I follow. It seemed great. Got on again about 24 hours later and didn't really have that same feeling got on again about 24 hours after that and realized that I mean, I've 30,000 people on Twitter and there were like 500 on threads. I was like, you know, do I really want to spend time? What do I do take a whatever I put on Twitter and then go put it on threads? It just seemed duplicative. So I thought I'd wait this out.
06:14
And now I just haven't found anybody building big platforms on there yet. Oh, and if anybody could figure out how to do it, it's freaking Emily. She is so good at tech. She's like, man, I look up to her. She is so freaking smart. She is so ahead of the curve on a lot of stuff too, where I think five years from now, we're gonna be looking at what Emily's doing today and going, oh my God, I should have jumped on back then. I know, I know, she's very, very forward thinking.
06:39
We have a comment from Nikki Clark who says, Ilan has said they're called exes, but exes saying they are posts. So who knows? Matt, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't come back and say, you know what, we're just kidding. We're going back to the Twitter. Cause they've been tweets. I mean, the brand destruction that they went through by changing this to ex has been astronomical. They didn't even tell us about it, dude. I mean, it was just like, we woke up one day and here's the funny thing on my phone.
07:08
it different sorts of sometimes it was Twitter and sometimes I don't know. I that just it. Well, you know that I'm a big brand guy. I mean, I've been studying with my business partner. I've been studying my business partner, you know, for like 10 years and he hit it. Oh, my god. Yeah, that was just that was just a train wreck, dude. So yeah, lots of people have been destroying the brands here recently, haven't they? Yes, yes. They need marketing office hours with Matt Halloran. That's what they need.
07:37
All right, next post from our Twitter roundup comes from Samantha Russell. If you're not following Samantha, and you are on Twitter, I cannot recommend her enough as well as on LinkedIn. Her posts have depth to them. They're not sales pitches, they're actionable ideas pinned at the top of her profile today is six things that you should do with your advisory firm's website before you're in Matt, I thought it'd be helpful if we just walk through this for viewers. So the first get Google reviews.
08:06
to the degree you're allowed to do that from a compliance perspective. Matt, how important is that? It's huge. And I'm really hoping that FINRA actually pulls their head out of their butts and realize that this is just the way things are now. Yeah, it's vitally important. But your website does in FMG or 20 over 10 will actually make sure that you're set up to have your Google reviews be there. That's part of one of their packages.
08:34
But yeah, I think it's I think it's vital. And I think this what's going to happen, Jay, and you, you and I've talked about this for years. Our IAs are just exploding in size right now, because advisors are just leaving the ridiculous compliance oversight that really doesn't protect them from a broker dealer. Yeah, so when in my consulting business, when I work with an advisor who's looking to break away, number one is better economics.
08:59
And number two is not that they don't want to be compliant, but they would like to have the shackles taken off so they can do more as it relates to marketing. Alright, so number two on Samantha's list here is do you stories to make your point? Matt Halloran is like she had a conversation with you about that. What do advisors need to think about? Yeah, so we call we have something called the perfect podcast formula, which is really the perfect media presentation formula, which is storytelling, education, entertainment, call to action. And this is exactly what
09:28
Samantha is talking about here. People see themselves in stories, Jay, you know, 10,000 years ago, we were all huddled around a fire, you know, sharing pieces of burnt meat telling stories. This is part of how we learn and how we feel part of a community. And you've got to have it on your website. Yeah, yep. Number three, add case studies to your website. What are your thoughts?
09:52
Yeah, you know, again, this is compliance can get really grumpy about this if there's too much client information. But no, this is vital. Again, your marketing material should be telling people who you work with, why you work with them, what to expect. Most importantly, that they're already somebody that you work with. People want to do business with people they like, know and trust. Case studies, stories. These are, in fact, a case study is just a story, just a little bit more organized.
10:19
Yeah, so there's an advisor out in California named Taylor Schulte. A lot of folks may know him from the advisor growth community. And I've told Taylor I do this when the advisor asked me what their website should look like, I point to his all the time because he's really in tune with what's working now. And it changes a lot. And I noticed recently at the very top of his website, the case study, targeted to his ideal client market is just brilliant.
10:43
All right, number four from Samantha Russell's list on what you should do before the end of the year with your website and SEO. Make it easy to understand how and what you charge. Now, I have seen this before and this particular graphic from Canopy Wealth, just brilliant. You know,
11:03
I think one of the reasons why we aren't a trusted industry, Jay, is because we've never been transparent with how we charge or what the internal fees are on the products and services that we offer. I think that there's a huge level of transparency that's needed. And it's just good marketing. Good marketing sets clear expectations. This sets really clear expectations. You're not going to be in your third meeting with a client and waiting to close and having them see your fee structure in bulk.
11:30
because you weren't transparent with your with your with your pricing. Yeah, well, this is really involved. I actually haven't seen this. Yeah, I've taught advisors for years that if you cannot articulate how much you charge in two sentences, you've already lost them. All right. Number five from this list. Add client testimonials, compliance flags are going off as advisors are reading this. How do you get past this as an advisor, man?
11:58
You leave, right? You become your own RIA, dude. I know that sounds rough. Listen, disclosures and disclaimers can really make a huge, huge difference, right? And we actually have to have those with testimonials, even if you're SEC registered, right? And so you just have to know how to play the game. There are companies out there that are trying to get ahead of this from a compliance standpoint with broker dealers, but this is why the broker dealer model's gonna be gone soon. Just gonna be gone.
12:27
All right. And number six, make short 30 seconds to two minute videos of you talking through financial problem solving and in here, she's got a image of Dave Zoller, who's just one of the best in the business at it. Matt, I mean, we're talking both our books here, but come on now. Yeah, so so here's the deal, though, bro. I mean, that look at that's 10 minutes, right? So video should be sub five. That's just research plays this out. Now, he probably already has a huge fan base.
12:57
Right? So he's already gonna have a whole bunch of people who are following him, who are gonna want longer form content. But the reason why video content is so powerful, and if you wanna watch great videos, look at Sam's stuff. Oh my God. They're putting out videos all the time that are so, so, so good from a marketing perspective. And you know, you and I both have some really good friends who work in the video world, who can really help people create much, much better video. It's gotta be short. It's gotta be sweet. It's gotta be to the point. And it's gotta have one message.
13:25
Don't do a five things that you need to know, do a one thing that you need to do and do a five part series. Video is king, man, it really is. We know it in the podcasting world, we actually do video for our clients now because you have to have video. Dude, that's why you and I are doing this. Yeah, that's right, that's right. All right, next.
13:49
In a segment, I'm going to call SEC versus the marketers. We have had our first action from the SEC against a firm, the firm is Titan, Global Capital Management, great article from Think Advisor. This particular article is for Melanie Waddell. And in there, they talk about the challenges that they had with this first interaction. Now, these people weren't just skirting up to the edge. It seems like Titan was going way over. But should this be
14:18
warning to advisors. Listen, there is one way to handle compliance. And it's super, super easy. Stop saying stupid stuff. You know what you're allowed to say, stop saying the things that you're not allowed to say. They knew they were doing something wrong. They were inflating numbers. There's no way around that, Jay. Yeah, yeah. And so the challenge I have with this ruling is there is still some ambiguity to it. I always found it very frustrating when I would
14:47
you know, see illustrations from insurance companies that were just way out of line, or even worse, these hedge funds or backtested strategies that were in the SMA space, you can find examples anywhere. But they were intentionally being misleading. Well, what about the advisors running ETF portfolios that are only showing performance based upon ETFs that actually traded and are rebalanced on a monthly quarterly or annual basis, all rules based. Now, there's ways around them for to be able to show that.
15:16
but the fact that they've got to deal with the same set of rules as people who are being intentionally deceptive really does create problems in the marketplace. It's that whole lowest common denominator, brother. This is what has driven both of us crazy about compliance since I met you 10 years ago, right? It's it's there. They are not allowing the good people to do the good work, which actually is creating a huge
15:37
problem in our country that people aren't getting the right information because everybody's afraid to have real conversations surrounding things like performance, like rates of return, like long term stuff. But but here's the thing that just makes me giggle about all of this. The SEC is entirely fine with Monte Carlo simulations, which is a gas. It's a gas. I'm sorry, dude. I just it's it's it's an it's a gambling reference. I'm like, what the hell? But I'm sorry,
16:06
look, if you cross the line, your hand should get slapped. But I think that there are so many more good agents, good advisors out there who doing good stuff, and I really wish they would just let them say what they need to do to help educate the public. Yep. Monte Carlo is a French word for I'm about to make some stuff up. That's fantastic. All right. Next tweet is from Julie little child. Now, I had an opportunity to be on a panel with her.
16:36
and the Think Advisor team, Janet Laveau, for an eMoney webcast this week. I just wanted to take that opportunity to work that into this conversation to name drop. Did you like how I did that, Matt? And she's she was just interviewed for the top advisor marketing podcast too. Julie's coming out her episodes coming out really soon. She's one of my favorite people. I have never met anybody who is so smart, so analytical, and at the same time has such an amazing ability.
17:03
to communicate these insanely complex things and just make it so approachable. She is one of my favorite people in the industry. Yeah, agreed. The feeling is mutual there. I took notes. I was one of the panelists and I was taking notes and I wanna share some notes I took on her ideas from that panel. But if you're watching or listening, make sure you subscribe to her newsletter. It just crossed the 100th edition.
17:28
they're always a pain in the neck to write if you ever written a newsletter, hers are full of just great ideas for financial advisors, you will be a better advisor. Here are four things that her data driven research have found that clients wish they were getting from their advisors. Oh, so clients wish they were getting from their advisors. They wish they were getting more self confidence about their investment plan and their financial plan. Clients are not sharing their biggest concerns with their advisor.
17:55
clients don't feel their advisors are helping them think through their goals. And this blows me away, this is still a case. A lot of them don't feel like they're engaging couples, they're picking one person in the relationship to manage with and not the other. So I butchered her research, I'm sure. But those four things that I took away from what she said, they actually make for really easy conversations with clients. Here's how it goes. Hey, listen, I saw some industry research late recently, and you know, I want to make sure
18:25
that I'm helping you think through your goals. Really would like to make sure that we're addressing your biggest concerns. You know, really like to make sure you have confidence in your plan, just asking the questions, right, Matt? So most people don't listen to listen, they listen to respond. Right? And the recipient of that absence of true listening feels it, right? And most advisors don't listen, all they do. I had an advisor many years ago.
18:54
and he was so proud that his client meetings lasted three hours for an annual review. And I looked at him and I said, how much time of that are you talking? And he was so proud of himself, he's like over half.
19:07
It's like, oh my God, are you freaking kidding me? I know, right? I don't know. But the way that you just teed that up for advisors, Jay, is exactly the sort of way that they need to show the openness and willing to it. They could even take it one step farther. Hey, Jay, you and your wife have been clients of ours for a really, really long time. And listen, I tried to do...
19:30
a really good job of making sure that I'm listening. But a research report just came out that there are four things that we're really failing at. And I wanna make sure that I'm not failing you in these situations. Dude, their guard's gonna go down, their relationship with you is gonna entirely change. If you just take that humble approach, you're not saying that you're miss, investing their money. You're just saying that you wanna be better and do better. By the way, people really like that. And then they're gonna be more open and they're gonna be more receptive to your thought leadership. Yep, that's right.
20:00
All right, the next tweet came from integrated partners, longtime friends of both of us. And it led to an article over on advisor perspectives from Paul sagney, the CEO, and then here, he talks about revolutionizing the center of influence relationship and co i marketing that Matt so many people struggle with integrated partners, hands down, probably some of the best in the business at it. What do you think advisors need to think about as it relates to center of influence marketing?
20:30
I'm gonna just first off take a moment to just seeing the praises of integrated partners and Paul and really the whole team at integrated partners. Listen, they figured something out that for some reason, most other RIAs and really any sort of financial organization hasn't figured out, which is you're stronger together than you are separate. And so this whole idea of integrating a CPA into your practice and a state planning attorney into your practice, a life insurance person into your practice, it just makes a lot more sense.
21:00
We know this. In fact, Jay, you and I've talked about this for years. We grew our whole business with a center of influence strategy, right? One of our top clients who's done over 100 podcasts with us, his entire practice is based off of CPA relationships. He doesn't do any other marketing. He doesn't do webinars or seminars. He just calls up his CPAs and says, hey, you know what, hey, and he does like kind of what the dual little child did. Hey, did you know that a lot of your clients are really concerned about this? And like, oh my God, well, you're my guy who helps with that.
21:30
So this is the sort of stuff, Paul's agony, by the way, happens to be a magnificent leader in our industry and is a great person for you to follow because not only does he have great marketing ideas but he also has great like productivity, work-life balance, just overall leadership stuff that Paul does. He's truly exceptional. I remember hearing him speak at the first integrated partners conference that I did right before COVID.
21:54
And I'm sitting in the back of the room with Matt Ackerman, who's been a long time friend of mine, who's now at integrated partners. And I looked at him and I was like, who's this guy? And Matt's like smiling from ear to ear. He's like, yeah, dude, he's the real deal. So I think centers of influence marketing is vitally important. It's a great way for you to create media. It's a great way for you to write blogs, shoot video, do podcasts, do joint events. Stop trying to do it on your own.
22:22
you get these people in your corner. It's printing money. Yeah, yep. I knew you'd be passionate about that one. Oh, man, I love that so much. I in and I think their business model is brilliant. They have like the best one of the best case design. back office things that I've ever seen for regular humans or high net worth humans. Yeah, they got a lot of great stuff and integrated. Yep. Yep. And Rob Sanders, one of the best and explain the value proposition of different firms. I love that guy. I've spent a lot of
22:52
Spend a lot of time with Rob every time I'm at the conference. He's just just genuinely good, dude. Yep. All right. So Matt did not know we were going to do that Twitter roundup when we started this. I threw it on him last minute.
23:03
What'd you think? I think we'd do that once a week or once a show and kind of people gotta be careful what they tweet cause it might make it on marketing office hours. Well, here's the funny thing is I'm really glad that you went positive with this Jay, and I know you well, and I know that you would do that. There's some really stupid stuff that's gone out on Twitter. In fact, even from some of the advisors who I follow who are saying things that I'm just like, dude, you really shouldn't be talking about this on Twitter. One of my favorite things is how much people share. And I think that there are some people, especially,
23:32
because I follow mostly advisors who are just, they're just tweeting too much, right? And you can actually, if you look at their numbers, when somebody overly over tweets, you know, Twitter's just not gonna go ahead and put it in front of your audience. Yeah, so I think we should do a Twitter roundup often. Hell, I think we should do a LinkedIn roundup every once in a while too, because.
23:55
man, there's some people who are posting stuff on LinkedIn that would that everybody should know about. And if we can use this to amplify their voices, Jay, then I think that would make both of us happy. Boy, what a great transition. And you didn't even know the topics for today. Here's our first non Twitter topic is LinkedIn dead. So let me set the stage. Let me set the stage for this. All right. So I have found my LinkedIn engagement plummeting. So I pay for sales navigator, I live stream on their platform. Hello, LinkedIn, we're doing it right now.
24:25
I run ad campaigns, I get advisors on their clients on their try to drive engagement. I've done short form posts, long form posts, uploaded videos, every single thing they ask, I used to have anywhere between five and 15,000 views for a post and now I have 300 400. So what's your take? And I've brought this up to other marketers. And it's binary. People say, Yeah, LinkedIn's dying. We're not allocating time there. And I've had other folks say, that's my number one driver. What's your take?
24:57
I think they need to stop screwing with the freaking algorithm. That's what I think. I know what they're trying to do is because they're trying to drive more people to pay the money and I get it. It's a business. I understand. We do not advertise on LinkedIn. We have gotten zero return on investment on spending really copious amounts of money to try to boost posts or get more people involved in our posting.
25:22
But what I have seen in one of the things, and in fact, Nikki was on here earlier, is it's all about the timing of engagement. So that's how you solve this, is you actually have to have your friends and everybody start commenting on stuff really quickly, anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes after the post has been made. You know, the other thing that's really crazy about their algorithm, and then I'll answer your question a little bit more clearly, is like in my timeline, I'll have something that somebody posted a week ago.
25:50
showing up like number one on my timeline. And then I look at who it was and I look at their analytics and there's no reason for it to be there. So I think they have some algorithmic issues on the back. The other thing that's about that, that is really frustrating people with LinkedIn is LinkedIn sales navigator, where I probably get every day, four to six unsolicited messages from people trying to sell me stuff on LinkedIn, right? I have no relationship with you in any way she perform.
26:20
I don't, you're an Apple podcast promoter, really? Like, so you did a stupid Google search on LinkedIn, found out I have a podcast and you're gonna try to pitch me your wares, which by the way, none of that stuff works anyway, and it's all scam, but whatever. So I think that there are some bad players on LinkedIn. I think the amount of salespeople are getting more and more salesy on LinkedIn. And I think that what really grew LinkedIn,
26:47
was it was the place for businesses to communicate and learn from each other. And I would love for them to get back to that model, but full transparency, that's where we get the majority of our business. That's where we do the majority of our stuff. But my post views have gone down a lot too. So I've got about 14,000 connections on LinkedIn. I have more followers. I don't really follow that number. And I was getting, you know, probably, well, not anywhere near what you were, cause you, I mean, you really.
27:16
you were killing it on LinkedIn for a long time. But yeah, I mean, I'll max out at three to 5000. Most of the time I'm getting three to 500. Okay, so it sounds like we're we're in the same boat. Something else that has fallen off for the past couple of years now are my connections. So doing going through the same processes that I had for the previous eight, 10 years, however long I've been on it, my connections were growing because I pitch nothing on LinkedIn, like, and I don't go into messages and pitch anything.
27:45
But we're picking up 1000 2000 followers, financial advisors a year, and we've been flat for three years. What have you experienced? Yeah, so so we're probably we're probably getting
28:02
Now we're a little bit more, we're not pitching anything like you're not pitching anything. But so like for instance, we just did a webinar with FMG with 608 people registered for the webinar. We sent connection requests to the people who I wasn't connected with. And we'll probably get maybe 50% of those. So we're probably getting probably 200 ish connections a month on LinkedIn still. I don't actually know how that's possible, but
28:31
I mean, Jay, you and I've talked to these numbers and I know that the numbers are kind of all over the place, but there's 400,000 licensed people in the United States, probably 200,000 of them are who you and I would even think about working with because the other people are captive, they're with larger wire houses or whatever, right? And then you kind of weed that down. So out of those 200,000, there's probably 20,000, 30,000 who were your ideal clients and my ideal clients.
29:00
that's the number I'm shooting for. Because I know that they're there. Because I my ideal client is somebody who actually is engaged on social media. And who actually is always willing to learn. So yeah, we're trying we're trying to drive for it. I don't know, man. It's a little crazy. Yeah. So then, you know what, why don't we try and bring on a LinkedIn expert for one of our first show guests kind of talk through some of these ideas and see how we can help advisors and help ourselves at the same time.
29:28
Yeah, who do you have in your in your kitty for that? I don't we're gonna have to dig around. If anybody has any ideas, please shoot me a DM on your social media platform. Yeah. Do you have any thoughts? A couple of people. I mean,
29:45
I have a couple of people. I think the first person that really comes to mind, who I would be a great guest, is Charlie, which I know that you know, Charlie Vanderfin. He's actually a person who I go to to ask LinkedIn questions. But other than that, yeah, I know a couple of people, but we would need to do some more vetting.
30:08
You are her LinkedIn expert. Ah, that's funny. Well, I did literally write the book on it, but I mean, things really have changed. Listen, here, there's three things about LinkedIn that are vitally important. Number one, you have to unapologetically be yourself, right, that's it. People wanna connect with you even on LinkedIn. Number two, stop sharing other people's stuff without comments. This drives me crazy. You know, Jay, you write something great and one of your advisors goes ahead and post it, but they don't post any comments about it or their thoughts on your article.
30:37
And number three, you have to just stop using this pre-approved, you know, really can bland blanched, you know, crap that's out there. So Allison and the people. So Allison is the person who manages all of our client success coordinators here at Proud Mouth. And she'll send me messages on LinkedIn and say, look, I got the exact three, exact three same emails from three clients. And I'm like, oh, my God, guys, how do you why?
31:05
you know, that's hurting you, right? That doesn't help you that hurts you. So I'm sorry, I went tangential there, brother. Sorry about that. Listen, to put a bow on that, I do a lot of work with warehouse advisors who are leaving. So I've got a lot of warehouse connections. And it's the same for everybody from whatever the warehouse is. All right. We beat that horse. All right. We got three more topics here for this office hours. Again, if you're watching, you have questions.
31:33
Please send it over in the comments section. Matt, what is your opinion on YouTube for financial advisors? Oh, I don't think I have an opinion about it. I think we have facts, brother. I mean, this shouldn't even be a discussion, in my opinion. YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. It's also the second largest podcast player, just so you know. It's Spotify, then YouTube, then Apple, right? So more people listen to podcasts on their second screen at work.
32:02
than they do on Apple podcasts. So you have to be there. If you're not, there's no such thing as ors anymore, right? It's not this or this or this, like I'm gonna blog or I'm gonna do video or I'm gonna do podcasts or I'm gonna do social or I'm gonna tweet. No, it is an and, you have to do them all. It is the reality of the world that we live in today. But don't do a crappy job. Jay, you and I have had wonderfully heated joking,
32:32
Pony fingers at people who put out crap content, right? Listen, don't half ass it. You gotta whole ass the entire thing. And you have to whole ass your marketing nowadays. If not, you're gonna stay being the best kept secret in your area. Make sure your lighting is good. Make sure your microphone is good. Make sure your background is good. Make sure that you've practiced. This is a show and Jay, this is what just drives me crazy. Advisors think they can just show up and wing it. No, no.
33:02
It's a show. People look at it as a show. And if you don't have broadcast level quality, they're not going to consume your content. And again, it's going to end up hurting you in the long run. What do you think about YouTube, dude? Oh, like you have a bias. That was quite a setup question. But what I have found though, is most advisors, the imposter syndrome starts raging when you go from doing even an audio only podcast to doing a YouTube channel. And I think part of the reason is you see what's in the marketplace. So you go look at the folks at Ritholz.
33:31
and all the great content they put out there, they've got a team that helps them do that. Plus, they're naturally good on on camera. And then look at all of the podcast platforms out there that have 10 videos on it, because somebody started and then just like with podcasting, then they end up stopping. And I think mapping out a good strategy and plan having the confidence to be in front of the camera. Maybe go take one of Katie Braden's courses on producing video for financial advisors to get your confidence level up and execute.
34:01
I don't listen to a lot of podcasts for advisors. But I, Brad Johnson over at Triad Partners sent over one that he did with Dave Zoller after a conversation we had on this very topic. And I suggest anybody who's thinking about using YouTube as a financial advisor, go listen to this. Dave Zoller is getting 40 leads a month from his YouTube platform, and it didn't happen overnight. And he walks you through how he did it. So like you
34:28
Matt, it's an absolute must for anybody who does wanna grow their business digitally. I wanna add just an exclamation point to this too, which is advisors seem to think that they are able to market like it's the 1900s and still be successful. That is not the case anymore. It's not dialing for dollars, it's not the cold calling, it's not who are your five closest work associates.
34:54
that stuff doesn't work anymore. In fact, it really turns people off. Now, Zoller is a great example of people who are buying from him, he's not selling. And the other thing that he's done, and I love how you said it, it took him time. Great marketing is 24 to 48 months, and you have to be willing to spend 10% of gross, not net, on your marketing for 24 to 48 months. When you look at people,
35:23
like integrated, you look at people like the guy that you talked about earlier, who's on Twitter, who you refer to his website, what's his name again? Oh, Taylor Schulte. Taylor, Taylor spends a lot of money on marketing, and he spends a lot of consistent money on marketing. And he has been ramping it up over time. And now he's freaking famous. He's like one of the most influential people in financial services, because he had a long game and alarm long vision.
35:52
This is not the way it used to be where you drop $10,000 and you're gonna go ahead and make $100,000. It's not this game that we live in anymore. You gotta drop $10,000 repeatedly for four years, right? In order for you to build a business. And Jay, you know, we're not, that's not what this is about necessarily, this is more about marketing. But what we're finding is the older advisors who only wanted to run a practice, they're dying.
36:18
More people who are coming into financial services now realize that they want to run it like a business and potentially a business that's going to have, you know, impact after they're not there anymore, you know, so that their business actually has some sort of long-term legacy. You look at Fishers, you look at Edelman's, you look at...
36:38
Wealth Enhancement Group. You look at all of these companies, they had a 24 to 48 month marketing plan and they stuck to it and look where they are now and think about where you are right now. I'm not saying you wanna be the next Ken Fisher, most of us don't, or the next Rick Edelman, and maybe some people do, but the idea here is you have to put the time in. You have to put the time in and you have to be patient and consistent because it is a momentum game. It's not an A plus B equals C equation.
37:07
think we have our number one clip from this show already print that one team that was excellent. Excellent. I love the passion. Let's talk about the easy button. Oh, God. You know,
37:24
I'm a business, you're a business owner, I'm a business owner, right? I've started multiple businesses, some succeeded, some failed, some didn't, meh, right?
37:32
This isn't easy. And especially in the world of marketing, stop thinking that it's easy. It was never easy before. It's harkening back to these good old days, sort of, and people just, they have no clue. Okay, Jay, so when you were an advisor, right, when you went into your first firm, right, how did they tell you to market? I was given a phone book and told to make 500 cold calls a day. 500 a day, right, because it was the rule of 10s.
38:00
10,000 dials, get you 100 appointments, potentially we get you 10 clients. It's not how it works anymore. That's even illegal. You can't even do that, right? That just blows me away. So here's the deal, it's work, right? One of my favorite things to do, so we do webinars all the time here now. And I have this slide on this latest webinar that we're doing, which is the 10 things that you have to do to have a podcast that actually converts. And one of the slides is a woman named Candice Parker. Now, I don't know if you, do you know who Candice Parker is?
38:30
basketball player. Yeah, the basketball player right where everything she's one of the greatest basketball players of our time, right. And I love highlighting her for a lot of reasons. One, I'm a huge basketball fan, went men's and women's basketball. I love basketball. But the other reason is, is so she's been playing since she was like four, right? Before the game, where is she Jay? Before the game for the basketball baskets on the basket. How many baskets has she shot? She's got hundreds of baskets, right? She knows the play. She stretches out, she warms up.
38:57
And advisors just think that they can phone this stuff in. No, no, you can't. When is the last time you practiced a client meeting? When is the last time that you practiced passing on bad news to a client? When is the last time you practiced a performance review? When's the last time you practiced financial planning? When's, and so marketing's no different. Marketing's no different.
39:22
There's no easy button. It's a show. You gotta put your A game on. You gotta get ready. You gotta be prepared and you gotta know your plays. That's where really good marketing is. And so I was watching this wonderful YouTube video and this guy was like, well, there's three things that people always want. Fast, cheap and easy, right? But you can only pick two. So if you want fast, it isn't gonna be cheap or it's not gonna be easy, right? And so that's the sort of stuff that we deal with all the time, right? You want fast marketing, it's gonna cost you $100,000. Just telling you right now.
39:51
Right. You better be prepared. Actually, it's going to be more than that because you're probably going to need a new website. You're going to need all of that stuff. You have to redo all of your material. Probably need a new brand. You're looking at one hundred thousand two hundred thousand dollars. Right. If it's easy. Right. Well, then you need to hire trusted people in order to execute the back end of the marketing. Right. And so fast, easy and cheap. Well, screw you. Right. If you want cheap, then then you're going to hire a college kid. We just got this today. I'm going to hire a local kid to run my podcast.
40:21
Okay, so what happens when he doesn't do the compliance back end of this graph?
40:29
What happens when your audio quality is so bad that nobody really listens, right? What happens when you, I don't know, he doesn't syndicate it to the platforms that you're allowed to syndicate it to because they don't understand that stuff. All you have to do is click the wrong button on your syndication platform, Jay, and you can get fined. You can get in a lot of trouble with your broker dealers, right, or with the SEC for that matter. This is referred to stuff that just blows me off.
41:00
Yep. Yep. Never has been anything easy about marketing never will be. What who made them think it was easy? Yep. Let's wrap up on lead generation. And so I, I feel feeling this is gonna be a topic every single show that we do. Yeah. Yeah. And when you think about lead generation, and the advisor community, Matt, what are you thinking?
41:26
Well, I think they think it's a freaking easy button, right? But you know what they're doing is they're paying for things. First off that they don't own the audience. Kirk and I talk a lot about this idea of owning your audience, right? So just so you know, the 14,000 people that I have on LinkedIn, I don't own that audience. LinkedIn owns that audience. Unless I have a way to get those people off LinkedIn into my CRM, I don't own that audience at all, right?
41:51
It's the same thing. In fact, I was just talking to a lead gen company today, which is why I brought this up to you on the pre-call, right? So they're competitors with the big one out there, right? So the big one out there, you spend $300, you know, and you get a lead, right? Here's the deal. Three, at least three other advisors get that lead, right? Yep. And if you don't actually have the social proof needed so that once they get off that,
42:18
really irritating phone call that you're doing because they got a lead and they're hot and ready to go, they're going to Google you. And if you don't have a great website, if you don't have videos, if you don't have podcasts, if you don't have great social media presence, you, you're not going to win that lead. Right. And so I'm, I'm arguing with this guy this morning and I'm saying, I don't understand. You know, everybody is like at this end game and they don't realize that the end game is only easy when everything else is built.
42:47
And so I'm walking him through this and he's just sitting there saying, oh my God, that is so freaking true that, you know what? That's what you have to do is, and on top of that, here's the thing. You can't niche out with lead generation. You can't. Hey, I only wanna talk to people who work in the medical device industry as salespeople. They're not gonna be able to be that specific. You're gonna get phone calls, you're gonna get doctors and.
43:16
nurses and all of the, because they can't get that specific. They don't want to get that specific because they don't want to sell you the lead, Jay. They want to sell three people the leads because they make three times as much money on that. And then you're all fighting like we used to in the 1900s on who's going to go ahead and win the business. Oh my God. Stop selling to people, everybody. Stop it. People want to buy from you. Build a relationship with them when it's convenient for them.
43:46
Gee, that's how I freaking met you, dude. Like, you know, we had met in person and then I started following you and I felt like I got to know you from all the content that you created. Then we started having our monthly phone calls. I mean, this is the way, as the Mandalorian would say, right? That's just the way that it is now. Stop fighting it. This is the way you have to market. Now, here's the deal. Lead generation can be a wonderful component of your business building practice when you have all of the other stuff set in place.
44:16
You gotta have a good brand. You have a kick-ass website that's responsive, that's action-oriented. With all the things that we talked about earlier, you also need to make sure that you have really, really great social proof, which means your social media content is in the social media platform that those ideal clients go to. You have to make sure that you're at their conferences. There's all sorts of different things that you need to do. And then if you want the icing on the cake for that 300 bucks a lead.
44:42
then you can spend the money, but you got to spend all of that money on the front end. You know, you've been doing this for a long time. What do you what do you think about lead generation? So when an advisor reaches out around marketing or business development, I explained a simple framework that I developed to make these conversations easy. There's marketing, there's sales, and then there's client service as sales. And usually I asked the advisor or firm, Hey, can you tell me when you're talking to your ninth, 13th and 21st largest client again?
45:12
you get that deer in the headlight looks they don't know they're not even taking care of their existing clients. And the data shows us from Charles Schwab every single year, 70% or more of the new business that you on board over the next 12 months will come from referrals or introductions. So after all that is buttoned up, generally, that starts to generate some leads for you. And then you can go and fine tune those other systems and a sales system through a funnel on a website and experience, and then a marketing system.
45:40
that you're attracting people mad is what you teach. Shoot, I learned it from you. You're attracting people to you instead of buying leads. I just don't I don't get it. Yeah. Yeah. So referrals, which by the way, we don't have time to get into this. So we might want to punt this to the next one. But you really, really, really have to again, have all of that social proof. Because it doesn't, nobody calls anybody like they used to. Right? I mean, Jay,
46:08
I have referred business to you. All right, now you probably don't know this because I don't usually remember after I get off the phone, but it was actually just very recently. It was actually on Friday. And so I'm talking to this guy and he's like, he's having some issues with stuff that I know that you can help with. And I was like, look, this guy, like I really trust this guy. I want you to go ahead. And now I've had a relationship with this advisor for about six years, right? What is the first thing that you think he did? Google.
46:34
He went to your website. Oh, it's a resilient advisor. Oh my God. On the phone with me, the guy's clicking to see who you are. And I'm like, okay, see? He's like, oh, oh, okay. I was like, yeah, now go to LinkedIn, right? So this is the sort of stuff that I think people really need to understand that it's not an or. It all has to be part of an integrated marketing plan in order for, in client service, by the way, is a huge part of the integrated marketing plan. In fact,
47:00
in our in our Podrocket Academy, we have an entire section or courses on how to provide better service to your clients, because we know that they're going to refer more to it's by by Bill Gates, right? And so it was the referral coach, right? And so anyway, listen, dude, here's the deal. I love you. You know that. Thank you very much for letting me just kind of go off on these topics. You know, I'm very, very passionate about this stuff. But it's not just passion for the sake of passion. This is all passion based off research.
47:29
Right? So my partner is so freaking brilliant when it comes to research. He's always sending me new stuff. By the way, if people don't follow Kirk Lowe, please follow Kirk. He's truly one of the best minds in our industry. He's showing me research all the time that is reinforcing these things that we're talking about. And so this isn't just because I'm trying to make more money as a marketing, cause I provide services to financial advisors. Yeah, I'm running a business, but I fundamentally want to change the way advisors look at marketing.
47:58
and having a medium like this really helps. So thanks, brother. I appreciate it. Awesome. I'm glad we're doing it. Glad we finally got it off the ground. To learn more about Proud Mouth and the services they provide, visit Proud Mouth.com. Matt, we did so much name dropping here the follow up to this. And we need to get Bill Cates on as one of the subject matter experts for one of our upcoming shows because he's an absolute pro. So thank you for coming on. This will replay again in two weeks and we'll see you guys next time.