Episode Transcription 

Eric Johnson  00:00

Hello and welcome to the dream architect life with Brian sweet from Sweet financial partners. Hey, if you are missing the fact that I didn’t say, Brittany, there’s a good reason we are live from EWAS Brian, how are you?

Bryan Sweet  00:10

I am fantastic today. I’m so excited to do this kind of impromptu.

Eric Johnson  00:15

Yeah, this is so exciting. I love first of all, EWAS right now is in Florida, which we both got out of cold weather to come here. So you plan this perfectly? It didn’t work out well. And then so the audience doesn’t know what he wants is. Can you explain that? Yeah,

Bryan Sweet  00:29

this is a conference that we started about four or five years ago, it stands for elite Wealth Advisors symposium. So I’ve got a partner, who from from his from Cleveland, and him and I, for years decided that maybe all the conferences that we weren’t, we were going to, didn’t have the material in the, you know, insight that we’d like. And so we finally decided that maybe we needed to create one. So it’s been a really amazing experience to help other financial advisors reach their potential.

Eric Johnson  01:00

Yeah, I’ll tell you, I, I ate lunch with a few advisors today that said, this, is there’s so much going on here. And I’ve been to a lot of conferences, and there’s usually conversation about, hey, you know, I really gained some knowledge from this person, or get some vibes from this person. But this is more like we’re drinking from a firehose, there’s so much we’re taking back to our office, a lot of people are glad they brought someone with them, so they can all compare notes when they get back. Yeah, it’s

Bryan Sweet  01:25

when we really encourage somebody to one of the advisors to bring their implementers as we call them, because we’ve found that when that happens, they get much more success and, and we go back, and we have all these brilliant ideas, and then the poor teams think, holy cow, you just got more for us to do and when implementers understand the why, and how they can help their clients, it really engages the team to do that, you know, more quickly and, and with some passion. So that’s been a really nice change that we’ve implemented so far in with he was.

Eric Johnson  02:01

alright, I’m going to just break this down from from my opinion, what I’ve seen with with EWAS, and your creation of EWAS very much goes hand in hand with the dream architect life. And people may be wondering how I draw that parallel, but you’re trying to improve all these advisors that are here, their lives, how they work with their clients. And that’s very similar to what you’re doing with the dream architect live by trying to improve your clients lives and just people in general, even people that aren’t your clients have access to this, you know, the the podcasts are free, obviously, and a lot of your material for free. Is that kind of where you believe this kind of fits in that these are these kind of go hand in hand in a way? 

Bryan Sweet  02:37

Yeah, I think you said it very well. I think what I have found in doing this 40 Some years, that when you deliver value and help clients live a better life. It’s so impactful, and really rewarding for us, especially when we see the results and somebody accomplishing one of their dreams. And what I found is just being around lots of industry professionals, you know, people were kind of stuck. And some of the people that I’ve known that wanted to get better. We had the capabilities and things that we’ve learned that they weren’t aware of, and we could share with them. And I had several people come up to me today and and it almost brought me tears about how things that we’ve done for them have been life changing. And we do another podcast for financial advisors. And a gentleman came up today and said he was going through cancer. And he listened to our podcast for the couple of years. And we’ve been doing that for a couple of years. And he said, that positivity and mindset that we talked about, on the dream architect life, but also on our visor podcast, really helped him overcome this cancer treatment. And I was totally unexpected and really make certainly made my day to day. But you know, we get that plus just, you know, the business creation and things where people can do more for their clients is really, really rewarding. And we’re very fortunate we get to go to lots of programs, Barron’s and Forbes. And, you know, fortunately, we’ve had lots of accolades over the years. And when you hear advisors who have been extremely successful, but want to get to the next level, tell you that this is the best conference that they’ve ever been to. It’s it’s really heartfelt.

Eric Johnson  04:31

Yeah, I had somebody yesterday actually come up to us and to Matt Nye, and speak to us a little bit about his first reaction was I don’t know how Brian does this. I don’t know why Brian does this. He appreciate it. But he’s like, this guy has so much going on. He does so much. I know he doesn’t make money on this. He’s just giving and so I agree with that, obviously, because I work with you and I know you very well. I don’t I don’t there’s no way to really echo that sentiment sentiment from somebody else but he was he He was you weren’t around, he wasn’t trying to suck up to you. He wasn’t trying to impress you with that knowledge. He just wanted to tell us how much he thought about you, which I think is great. And I know that you bring a lot to the audience here. I want to ask you how you choose who comes to the conference and presents?

Bryan Sweet  05:14

Now Great question. We’ve purposely have made it somewhat of a small conference. So we invite 100 advisors, and it is invitation only. And fortunately, between my partner and I, we’ve know a lot of individuals and, and we look for a certain mindset and a certain personality, because we purposely want to keep it small, keep it engaged, and have a spirit of giving. So not only do we have great speakers, but you can learn from the people sitting right next to you. Lots of things, and sometimes you’ll get better ideas from the person next to you than you might have gotten from any speaker. Yeah, so we keep it really small. And then just recently, we’ve added the ability to do this, bring your implementer because what I found is people over the years will have 2742 pages of notes, whatever it happens to be, and then they get home and they love all the ideas, and they don’t get any of them implemented. And for you to have an impact on your clients and make their lives better. Implementation is really the key. So we’re suggesting, as I mentioned earlier, you know, bring the key person that actually does the work in the office. And that will help with results. And so we’ve really had some amazing engagement. And we’ve actually increased the size of the conference for next year. Because more and more people were saying, I’m absolutely going to bring my implementer because that is really a brilliant idea.

Eric Johnson  06:42

All right, then I’m going to ask you this question too. And I think the way you’ve structured this is really, really well done. But I had somebody come up today, and he said, I was lucky to be here. And I was like, What are you talking about? He was I knew from a friend that was coming to this. And he said you need to go, you need to check it out. And he’s like, okay, he had to call your partner and see if there was a cancellation. And there was one cancellation, so he was able to slip in. So he was so thankful for that. I thought that was great human again, just out of the blue is kind of talking to us about it. Are there plans to increase the number are you going to keep it small,

Bryan Sweet  07:11

we’re going to keep it small. I think that’s part of the magic. And where you can have the most impact on the attendees is by keeping it small, so we’ll keep it at 100. And then ultimately, we’d love every advisor that we invite that actually comes to bring their implementer. So between that there could be 200 people. Yeah,

Eric Johnson  07:31

yeah, I think iron sharpening iron is kind of what you’re alluding to. And I believe that is one of the best things about conferences. But it’s really difficult to do iron sharpening iron if you don’t have good speakers. And I know that there’s been a tremendous lineup, can you share a couple of speakers that you’ve had this on at this EWAS specifically that maybe haven’t been to other ones before?

Bryan Sweet  07:50

Yeah, this, you know, we’re so fortunate in that I’m in a bunch of masterminds, the Strategic Coach Genius Network, and I get exposed to some of the most brilliant people and industry leaders in other industries. And a lot of the ideas in, you know, other industries can be applicable to the Financial Services. And so that allows us very much access to, you know, some amazing people that want to share. So for example, we had Shannon Waller, who was with Strategic Coach talking about a couple of books that were written, and we hadn’t handed out books, GAAP, and the gain and another book that they talked about was the you know, who versus how, and, as we talked in the podcast, your mindset and attitude are so important. And we started out the day to day with her just giving that message. And, and it was really a great way and you could just see people’s eyes light up. And then, you know, we have other individuals came in Andrea Slavia for example, with a firm called iron stone. And we’ll have people come in and like how do you create better team members? And how do you keep your team more engaged so that you can help your clients better? And so we’ll have all sorts of things like that. And that’s, I think, kind of the magic because every speaker does something that helps improve the advisors lives. And it’s just a matter of them picking, you know, what subject matter is most important to them, so they can go back and get it implemented. Yeah.

Eric Johnson  09:31

I want to wrap up with this question. This doesn’t need to be a long podcast by any means. You’re a busy man. We’re still in the middle of the conference. But I have heard from a lot of advisors, that they’re having difficulty filling positions within their organization, trouble hiring, and we hear that across the country right now because of different employment things. You’ve built an incredibly strong team and I’m sure that there’s people that like you alluded to that have spoken from stage about hiring. What’s your best advice for building a good team around you? As you go through this journey,

Bryan Sweet  10:01

yeah, I think you have to make it a little bit about each of the team members that you have and what’s important to them. And they’re obviously working for a reason. And they have their own dreams and their own aspirations. And so one of the things that we do is we make a conscious effort to understand what motivates each team member, what do they want to accomplish in their lives. And we have a dream board for each of the team members to be cognizant of things that are important in their lives. And we spend a lot of time helping them reach their goals and their dreams and their objectives. Because if they’re happy, and they’re living a fulfilled life, helping with clients do, it becomes easy, because one, they understand it, and two, they get the benefits. And three, they’re more willing to share. And I think that’s what makes our team so amazing. Is is they understand that. And they’ve seen the benefits of that, actually, in their own lives. Yeah,

Eric Johnson  11:03

I think Employer Support is is drastically missing from a lot of the corporations in the United States. And I love hearing from these type of business owners, right, they’re small, all of these are small business owners. And I think that they see the value in exactly what you said, rewarding team members, understanding their dreams, understanding their hopes, because we’re all human, we all have things that we really desire. And when you can find that out about a person, and you’re able to reward them or reinforce that dream, man, that’s very, very positive. Brian, thank you so much. Do you have any closing thoughts before we wrap this up?

Bryan Sweet  11:37

No, I just wanted to thank you for doing this, I think it’s just a great opportunity to share with the listening audience, a little bit about what makes us tick at Sweet financial partners, what’s important to us. So we do love to help. And we like to give in, I think that shows in our relationships with our clients, but also with just people in the industry. That’s kind of our nature. And, you know, we really thrive on that. So some of my happiest days are when advisors come up and say, you know, what you told me to do, or, or this idea you gave me help work as it is when clients, you know, are accomplishing their objective. So it’s just, I think the more you can expose yourself to these environments, it just creates the atmosphere of positivity and mindset that, you know, ideally, you want to have

Eric Johnson  12:28

24/7 Yeah, and maybe a little red bull to help that happen. For sure.

Bryan Sweet  12:32

Some days, you know, that gets to be a long day that might not have that hurt at all. Yes,

Eric Johnson  12:36

absolutely. Brian, again, thank you so much for joining me today. Being a great host, and I’m gonna let you get back to the conference. And I want to thank you the listening audience. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to the dream architect life podcast with Brian sweet. If you have not subscribed to the podcast yet, please click the Subscribe NOW button below. This way when the team comes out with a new podcast, it’ll show up directly on your listening device. Thank you for your time today. We thank you for watching this video or listening to this podcast whichever way you found it. And for everyone at Sweet financial partners. This is Eric Johnson reminding you to live your best day, every day, and we’ll see you next time.