Speaker 1 0:08

This is the Ultimate Advisor Podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful and scalable practice. Each week we’ll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals, your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets and create the advising practice that you’ve dreamed of. You’ll be joined by our hosts Bryan Sweet, who is moving fast towards a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practices marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let’s jump in to another amazing episode of The Ultimate Advisor podcast.

Brittany Anderson 1:08

Hello, and welcome back to your Ultimate Advisor Podcast. This is Brittany Anderson and I again have with be Draye Redfern and Bryan Sweet. And today we are going to talk about something that I think will catch your fancy because a lot of you are all of you or most of you are financial advisors. And that’s allocating your resources. So a lot of times when we’re looking at building a business, and we’re looking at all of a sudden facing uncertainty or difficult times, people can can make some really sudden decisions based on emotion versus based on logic. So that’s what we’re going to try to help with today when we talk about resource allocation. So a lot of times when somebody or a business and a financial advisor world in particular, when we start feeling the pressure on our margins, when we start looking at Oh goodness, what’s the markets? What are the markets going to do, you know, how is this going to impact the business and the bottom line, we can start to cut spending. And the problem with that is that a lot of times people will cut spending in the wrong categories and in the things that can actually help them gain traction during uncertainty versus kind of catapult them backwards. So that’s the thing that we really want to touch on and drill into is that when you are in a period of maybe a difficult time of facing uncertainty, you can set yourself up to do more and not have to give away the farm. So when we look at let’s just take marketing, for example, because that’s such a big component of what we do, and ultimate advisor through our coaching through the mastermind. And through all the programs that we offer, we talk a lot about marketing, but we do it in a way that’s not like, hey, you know, give away your second born child in order to make this happen, we want you to have the resources to get ahead. So for example, and I think Draye will touch on this later, is Facebook has been a big one this year, because so many people pulled adspend out of Facebook because they got nervous. And this is across industries. I mean, this is not just our little world, our little bubble that we live in. This is across industries. So what happens there is when the demand is no longer there, people aren’t wanting this because they think they need to cut their spend, all of a sudden opportunity opens up. So now we have an opportunity to step into that and get a lower cost ad spend and create more value for people without having to write these huge checks without having to essentially give away the farm. So that’s the kind of thing that we’re going to talk about today is how you can compress your margins a little bit. And actually get yourself ahead during times when people are getting nervous and backing out. So Bryan, I would love for you to step in today and just talk about how, you know, your mindset has always been, you know, we’re going to lead with value. And we’re going to spend where we need to spend in order to get to where we need to get, even if it means our margins get a little tight for a short period of time. So I’d love for you to jump in and add some insight here.

Bryan Sweet 4:02

Now this has been a really interesting time because this is kind of, you know, put your money where your mouth is timeframe because obviously when the markets dropped 35% And we get paid at the end of quarters, we got a lot less revenue than we would have otherwise have received. And so you just really need to make a conscious effort to think really about expenses. And one of the things in talking to a lot of advisors with our Mastermind and just trying to help out any advisors we can. One of the first things that they seem to do when things aren’t going as well is they cut out marketing. And I would tell you that that’s probably the worst time to do that. And if anything, you want to spend as much and maybe even more, because what’s going to happen is if everybody else is cutting back on their marketing and your actual He’s spending more, there’s even a greater likelihood that you’re going to stand out during those times. So one of the things that we did is, I can’t say we doubled down. But we absolutely did lots of new things from television ads, to radio ads, newspaper marketing, we ramped up our reach on our Facebook ads, and those things, because of all the costs for these marketing things were less. And it’s four or five months later, since we’ve done that, and we’re starting to see the you know, outcome of that actually be very, very positive. And sometimes this stuff takes a really long time for it to kick in. But this has been a relatively short payback period. And people that we’ve been reaching out to that, you know, didn’t have time, or it wasn’t the right moment to get together, for whatever reason, they’ve gotten the right message from us. And now we’re starting to reach out. So be very, very conscious when we go through these unique periods to consciously not cut out the marketing. And if anything, maybe add more. And we we have a budget, which I would highly recommend, if you don’t, you should for all of your items, including marketing, and make sure you’re spending, I would say at least 5% of your gross revenue on marketing, and closer to seven or 10% was probably an ideal number, those get to be some bigger numbers when your revenue gets up there. But it’s really the thing that can consistently keep your message out in front of people. And what you want to do is keep that message there so that it helps differentiate you and makes you attractive to those people that you’re going to do the best work for. One other thing that I think is very interesting, is when we talk about allocating your resources, one of the things that I think is a little bit different, and we spend an awful lot of time on this one. So when I try to be a resource to a client, I look at it like, what is it that we know, or what are the connections that we have with people that we can share with our clients. And so if you’re very conscious during conversations, and clients come up with problems, you can easily be a resource and make them aware of different services, different vendors that you have used, or that you’re aware of that might help solve some of their problems. So don’t always think that everything that you do have to has to be financial business, if it can just be helpful to them. That’s been a really great resource. And one of the other things I think is being a resource is that whenever you’re with a client on the phone in person, one of the resources that costs nothing to deliver is your energy, and your attitude. And each of those is a decision. So if you go into those meetings with a decision that I’m going to have high energy, and I’m going to have a great attitude, all of that stuff is very catchy, and clients aren’t exposed to that as often as you’d like that probably be seen. And so those are just some maybe odd resources. But we’ve had really good luck just being aware of those. And really, always trying to have very high energy and attitude when we’re dealing with clients because they really do get drawn to that. And one of the other things that we do is a little gifting program, and we have one person in the office, that’s that’s one of her main jobs. And it adds such an immense value. She just has really free rein in what she does, but she comes up with these really creative things. And if anything, it’s not something that’s got our name listed on it, we’re sending them a, you know, knife set, it would actually have the client’s name on it. And then she does a very creative way of delivering it. And it’s just amazing the amount of thank yous and, gee, I can’t believe you thought of us on our birthday, or this special anniversary, or, for the most part, we do these at times when Nobody’s expecting them. So we don’t do any Christmas gifts. We would do it at another time when you know, it’s not really expected. And people look at that stuff is optional. And that’s going above and beyond. And then if you deliver all your financial advice in addition to that, it really is a very big value add. So Draye what about any trends as far as ad spend? And then, and things like that, that you might add that would be helpful. As far as allocating your resources.

Draye Redfern 10:06

I was just wanting you to talk for like another half an hour, Bryan, I was actually really enjoying that. On the very tactical side of things, there’s a variety of things that you can have as an option right now that didn’t necessarily exist six months ago, if you ever wanted to advertise online, now’s a great time to get started. Over the last two years, Facebook has increased their costs month after month, after month, after month after month, becoming you know, where a lot of people in the in the space that I operate in, cannot actually afford to make their conversions and make make the dollars work to where advertising kept making sense. And that all changed this year, which is great for us. So basically Facebook costs and dropped or the cost advertise dropped by as much as 40%, which is means that you can spend either 40% less, or you could budget the same amount, allocate the same amount of money, your dollars are gonna go 40% further than they did previously, it’s a great way to get started. And Facebook’s an easy platform to start advertising on. The other side of this is that Bernie mentioned TV a little bit ago. But we’ve got some people that are friends that connections that are really making some very interesting deals with TV and radio companies. One of the deals was that I don’t want to disclose the exact dollar levels just call it $5,000 $5,000. Got them, I believe it was X amount of spots on the the the this TV channel. And that TV channel basically said, this is what we’ll do. And this is you know, it’s great, it’s not enough, they got the price from 5000 to 2500. So they basically cut the price in half. And then they also got an additional $1,000 of additional compensation if they did not ROI 100% on it, meaning they spent $2,500 on these TV ads, if they did not make at least $2,500 back in business, that the TV station would comp them and additional $1,000 of spend that they would use for free to advertise on that platform. Really, really interesting and a really easy way to start taking your dollars and making them go further because the reality is exactly what Brian and Bernie both said is that when times get tight like this, one of the first things that goes is marketing. And if you cut your marketing, usually you Yeah, it’s like you turn the spigot off of the hose where no more leads start, you know coming in, and you may not see the ramifications of that immediately. Maybe it’s okay for a month, maybe it’s okay for two months. But you fast forward three months or six months or nine months or 12 months down the line. What sort of feeling would that be if you try to turn the leads back on the business, and nothing’s coming, because then you flip these leads back on, it’s not an immediate thing, usually. So it’s like starting, you know, it’s like the difference of starting a bicycle versus starting a dump truck. While that dump truck, once you have a business, critical mass, you’ve got these sorts of things, you cut that momentum off, you start pushing on that gas pedal, that thing can still run for a period of time. But starting that dump truck up again takes a lot of power takes a lot of force and it takes a lot of anything to even get it or see any positive movement on that. So that’s what’s happened though, is you see a lot of these big behemoths a lot of these big advertisers have been these 800 pound gorillas, they’re the dump trucks that have had all this momentum, they suck up all of this budget, when someone who’s smaller, they’re just getting started as like operating a bicycle doesn’t take a whole lot of movement, or, or or emphasis to get that thing moving and really make a big difference. And in this instance, I think you know, considering a lot of our podcast listeners as the bicycle, they’re not spending 5 million 10 million 100 million a year on Facebook ads, but you can make a big difference spending as little as like 300 to $500 a month sometimes. And you know, now’s an opportunity to do that, because it’s a 40% discount your dollars goes so much further. And the barrier to entry is so much lower. So those are a couple of examples that you know, if you’re going to negotiate something with TV or radio, you got a lot more negotiation power now than you did a few months ago and even have some sort of back end ROI guarantee. One of the easiest ways to find that and track that is to just buy a separate one 800 number or a separate use a separate email address for tracking purposes to see who ends up you know, replying to that email and you can see how many phone calls you get via some of these 800 numbers and tracking things so on and so forth. So you can see the exact effectiveness of what some of your advertising on radio and what end TV are. So there’s a couple of tactical things to do but you know really it makes it when it comes to allocating your resources having some tracking mechanisms like that go go a long way. But also if you are going to allocate any spend, now’s a great time to because you get you can build in a lot of additional VA benefits adhere to agreements. Brittany, anything else you want to add to that?

Brittany Anderson 15:04

Hey, Brittany here, stopping and pausing for a moment to talk about something that we’ve had so many of you inquire about and that is our Ultimate Advisor Mastermind. Now, I’m going to start by saying if you are not a growth minded individual, if you are not somebody who’s focused on taking your business to the next level, if you’re not focused on engaging your team, and helping them to help you, in turn, level up the business, the service model, how you provide that wow experience to clients. If those things are not your focus, just fast forward right now, because the ultimate advisor mastermind would not then be for you. However, if you are looking to take your business to the next level, if you want to experience exponential growth and feel supported along the way, if you want to start working smarter and not harder, if you want to help your team members to work within the God given talents that they were provided, and use those skill sets in a way they haven’t yet to help support you in your business, to help them realize their biggest goals, their biggest dreams. If you want creative approaches to marketing, I know that can be an intimidating word. But we’re not talking here about the fancy Facebook stuff, or you know, the latest and greatest, but rather looking at how you can market what you do, how you can express how you’re different, and how you can truly differentiate yourselves in a crowded market space. If those are problems you’re looking to solve, then you absolutely want to go check out ultimate advisor mastermind.com, to learn more about how we can help you on your path and journey to growth. Yeah, I think there’s just something to add there that and you bring up that point kind of drown that out, is you have to pay attention to what’s working, because what’s one of the biggest mistakes we make when we’re looking at allocating resources, we get so excited about an idea, we’re like, let’s just throw all of our spend on this, because this is for sure gonna hit. But if you fall in love with your own message and your prospect or your clients don’t, that’s a problem. So you need to make sure that you are looking at what people are actually engaging with. So there are ways through social media to see, you know, what are people actually clicking on? What are they engaging with? What do they like, same thing with your website. And if you’re directing them to different call to actions, you know, you have a checklist that you’re driving people to, you have a resource center, you have an e book, whatever the case is, you have to be looking at what’s actually working and what’s not. Because if you don’t, you’re going to spend a lot of money for very little result. So that’s something that you really need to pay attention to stop doing the stuff that’s not getting traction, and start doing more and more of what is actually working. And I think the bottom line here is that there are so many resources out there, there are so many ways that you can continue to serve your clients, that you can add additional value that you can reach prospects that you can engage your team. My goodness, when you look at allocating resources, you know, right now, there’s so many different things that you can do all virtually. So you don’t have to send people across the United States or across the world to get training right now geared towards strictly financial advisors to be able to help them to really ignite or reignite their business, during one of the probably scariest times that we faced mean, you can absolutely allocate that resource to be able to get traction to find out what are the hottest trends? What are some of the best speakers out there? And how can they add value to your business, which in turn helps you add value to your clients, to your prospects and to your team members. It’s a total win, there are just so many resources and ways that you can spend to enhance your business without giving away the farm, you just need to do your due diligence, you just need to pay attention to what’s available, what’s out there, and what’s going to help you escalate and get even further in your business. So something else that this is kind of a random one off, but I thought it would be a really good opportunity here. You know, when we’re talking about allocating resources, and Brian brought up some really great points about, you know, how you can do the little giftie things how you can, you know, gift and surprise people. So something that we hear and you know, right now, people are facing challenges that they maybe hadn’t before. Maybe there’s loved ones that have been lost, maybe there’s different transitions, they’re going through with a layoff from a job or whatever the case is. So there’s two points I want to make here. Number one, if somebody’s already down, and they come into your office, and you’re like, Yeah, you know, things are pretty rough, but we’re all hanging in there. Oh my gosh, puke because the people are gonna feed on that. And then what do you think that’s going to do for the quality of your appointment? What do you think that’s going to do for the quality of that interaction if you’re like, Well, we’re Getting by How are you, Harry, that’s terrible. You want to bring the energy Brian brought up such an amazing point about your energy and your attitude being two things you can control and how you need to show up as your best self, when you’re engaging with your clients. So you look at allocating resources, look at how you allocate your energy. So I think that’s something that’s really important to pay attention to. But then on top of that, when you’re facing hardships, and you’re looking at, well, how can I best allocate my resources to allow people to maybe lift them up during times of them being down, you know, something that we’ve been doing here within suite financial is, there’s something powerful to writing your thoughts down, there’s something powerful to writing your words down. So for a couple of different instances, it might have been a loss of somebody or a family member that’s sick, or whatever the case is, we’ve been gifting a journal with the person’s name actually put on the front of it is stamped in we’ve done a leather one we’ve done you know, other little little tidbits here and there, but giving a special message that’s custom to that person, saying, hey, you know, during a difficult time, write down the things that you’re grateful for, or write down the things that the happy memories you have with this person, or write down the things that you know, are keeping you moving and keeping you going every day. So it’s those little things, allocating resources to really be a wow impact for your clients and prospects, that’s going to make a difference. So before I round out what the key takeaways, Bryan, Draye, is there anything else that you want to add?

Bryan Sweet 21:29

The only thing I would say is, for anybody that has a broker dealer relationship, don’t forget to work with your wholesalers and, and people that you have contact with, because they can be very helpful with marketing ideas. And so they can maybe provide some marketing support that doesn’t really cost you anything, or they can get you access to speakers or information that you can share with clients. So if you haven’t been doing that, reach out to them and find out what they have available and find out what would work for you and make sure that you get that built into your marketing calendar.

Brittany Anderson 22:08

That is such such a great point, don’t forget about the resources you have access to. So to give you a few key takeaways from today’s podcast session, number one, look at your marketing budget, if you don’t have a budget, let’s work on setting one. So Brian gave a couple of different percentages that you could go off of, you know, around 6% is really what you should be if you want to get a little bit more aggressive, you could go seven to 10% of your budget, some people go as high as 15, it really depends on where you’re at within the company. And I understand if some of you are listening, that maybe aren’t quite to that seven figure mark, you might want to be a little bit more conservative, if you’re in you know that growth mode, or whatever the case may be. But the bottom line is, is regardless of what percentage you pick, just pick something, just pick something and go after it and make sure you’re allocating those funds. The second and I think probably the most important is to really do a quick self check on your attitude and your energy. I mean, I know that doesn’t necessarily have a tie in to the resources. But I think it’s one of the most important themes that comes out of anything we’ve talked about is if you can manage your attitude and your energy and go into something, understanding that the attitude and energy that you bring to any given situation is likely what you’re gonna get out of it. That’s a really different way, that’s a little bit of a different spin to put on things. So if you go into a meeting, and you’re like, well, it was kind of home hold drab, well, that was your fault. Because you were not bringing the energy that you wanted to come out of it. So I think you need to own it, own it and be accountable for it and know that you have an opportunity to change somebody’s day in a really positive way by how you choose to act. So I think that’s really, really important. And then finally, you need to do your homework as far as the resources that are out there and available to you, and the ways that you can spend so Draye gave some great examples about how you could spend with Facebook and how that’s been kind of at a discount lately, and probably will continue to be for a little while at least no guarantees there. But that’s what it’s looking like, also with your gifting strategies and understanding that you don’t have to spend a huge, exorbitant amount and we can’t spend that within our industry, we have certain limitations. You can do these little things that make a really darn big difference. If you just look at what’s out there. Just pay attention. Just look at your resources. And make sure that part of your resource allocation is really getting your team, the training, the experience, the knowledge, the exposure that they need to be able to deliver that killer experience to your clients and to future prospects. So that’s a huge, huge one for you. So that rounds out today’s episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast. We’re gonna see you next week as we continue the conversation on building your business during some challenging times.