Explosive YouTube Growth Strategy: How James Conole Added $120 Million in AUM From YouTube in Just 12 Months

[music] Imagine if your advisory practice generated nearly 700 leads in one year, all of whom have at least 500,000 of investable assets who have seen your fee schedule, who have positively indicated that they want professional help in managing those assets, who have told you their age range, their income range, their email address, their phone number, and you get all of that information directly from those prospects, answering those questions on your website before you ever spend a minute talking to them. And out of those, you generate more than 120 million of net new assets in 12 months. Now, that would be a pretty good problem to have, wouldn't it? And so how do you do that? What is the lead generation program that can generate that type of result? That's the topic of today's podcast with James Canole. James is a fabulously successful advisor who is using YouTube and to a lesser extent his podcast to generate all of those leads and generate those net new assets under management. It's really an incredible story of how he's had such fast growth in just the past two or three years. In the thoughtfulness of his strategy, the genuineness of his approach, his care for his clients, his care for his team members. It's really remarkable. And he's tied all of this into a brand that's connected to his website. So it's a really thoughtful process of taking someone who is a subscriber to his YouTube channel who watches his videos, who goes to his website, answers the questions, and it's really a great story. So I think you're really going to enjoy and appreciate what James has done here. And he is kind enough to take us behind the scenes on how he does it. So with that, let's dig in with James Canole. I'd love to hear about the origin story. How did you get started in the business? What were the first few years like? And we'll chat about how you have experienced the fast growth that you've had here in just the past few years. Awesome. The origin story, a lot of it maybe seems irrelevant, but now looking back was very relevant into my getting into this business, how we've grown the business, the mission of the business, but growing up, I was the oldest of four grew up here in San Diego. My dad was a pastor. My mom worked some very part time jobs just enough to supplement income a little bit. So income was pretty, pretty tight as kids. But when I was about eight or nine years old, he said, okay, it's just not sustainable to have a family of six Southern California, living on a faster salary of a small church. So he decided to make a change at that point. And he made a change in human business for himself and the first couple of years, first three years, maybe it was just nothing. Working 80, 90, 100 hours a week and just no income coming in. And as no income comes in, obviously what happens is debt starts to pile up and stress starts to pile up and the anxiety starts to pile up. And even as kids, you feel that even though you don't really know what's going on with parents financial situation. So did that. And I remember, I don't know exactly when, but sometime in my early teenage years, they were just trying so hard to find financial help of who can we find to help us with this. And they didn't have any assets. They have very low income. So there's a whole lot of people that are out there that could help them. But even as my dad's business did start to do well and he did start to get some income, those questions of how do we manage money? How do we pay off debt? How do we save for the future? Those types of questions start coming up. And really it wasn't until they found Dave Ramsey actually who is very popular or unpopular in the financial advisor community depending on who you ask. But they found Dave Ramsey and they read his book, the total money makeover I think and they went through his course, the financial peace university. And it was in those moments, not maybe those moments, but that time that all of a sudden they got things right with their money. When they got things right with their money, even as a kid, I could feel there's a tangible difference that you can feel here even just in family dynamics and stress levels and chaos levels. So you ask about origin story and I had no idea in that moment that I'd become a financial advisor in the future. But I do distinctly remember that played a huge role in my mind set around money, which is it's so much more than just what's your portfolio size, how much do you have in the bank. But it really does have real implications, emotional implications, even quality of life implications. And the other thing which we'll get to is even Dave Ramsey, I always thought, why is it that we're in San Diego? And this guy that's on the other side of the country that's never met with my parents personally, he's the one that allowed us to actually come to this sense of financial peace as he calls it or having a game plan around money. So we'll get this more later. But just about the power of leverage and the power of distributing your message over various types of medium, that also stuck with me. So that was my early teens, went to college, study business, stayed to get my MBA with a concentration in finance. And I was like numbers, but even in college, I didn't know I necessarily wanted to be a financial advisor. It seemed actually really stressful to me, managing people's money, choosing stocks. If you're watching ticker symbols and you're watching these green and red flashing lights, it just seemed really stressful. So it didn't actually seem like something I wanted to do, but I really liked numbers and math and problem solving. And it wasn't until I had an internship actually with an advisor in San Diego. He actually was part of the day Ramsey endorsed local provider network, which is how he even made the connection just because my parents had some experience there. Started there as an internship and I just loved it. Okay, this is someone that's actually helping people by using their money as a tool to accomplish retirement goals, college savings goals, home purchase goals, whatever it was. And that moment struck me, okay, yeah, this money thing can be used for so much good if done the right way. And so in college, after entering for that company, that was the company actually started with right out of business school, realizing that there's something really special to this industry when things are done well. And so got my start in the industry back in 2012, worked for that company for about six years and then started root financial 2017. So about six years ago from this recording here. So you mentioned Dave Ramsey. And there's a lot of tweets about Dave Ramsey. There's a video of him talking about 12% returns per year in the stock market, talking about 8% withdrawal rates from your retirement accounts for distributions and you'll be okay. So now that you've been an advisor for many years, you've seen how well Dave Ramsey's advice worked for your parents and it's worked well for a lot of people. No question about that. How do you think about the advice that he gives and where someone like him fits into the financial advice landscape? A ton of thoughts. We could probably spend the whole podcast talking about my thoughts. I'm an advisor. I can do math. So obviously I can see like what he a lot of what he's saying, I just I don't agree with. And it's not a personal opinion. It's just the numbers when played out objectively, just don't work. And so I fully recognize that and I'm not here to say I agree with every single thing Dave Ramsey's ever done. But I will say and I can't prove this, but the amount of lives changed by Dave Ramsey is significantly greater than the amount of lives changed by any single advisor. And I look at this and say, man, I'm not here to defend Dave Ramsey. I'm not Dave Ramsey. Apologist, I'm transparently I'm very grateful for him. I wouldn't be here in this industry if it wasn't for Dave Ramsey. I have no idea what my family situation would be. It wasn't for Dave Ramsey. So I think people see the negative without maybe also looking at the positive, but my challenge would be for as much as advisors like to complain about Dave Ramsey. Complaining does nothing. How do we get out there? And this is a part of even we'll talk about Steve. How do we get our message out there? What Dave Ramsey's done really well, better than any single advisor. Number one, he has a very clear concise message. I'd argue that's part of what gets him in trouble. He's too rigid about that. He's too rigid about the returns. He's talking to me. He's too rigid about okay, if something like not backing down from what that message is in providing for any nuance or any specific application. And what would you say are like one or two or three of those specific things that you think, yeah, these are, this is solid advice. It's simple. People can grab onto it and it's really helped a lot of people. One of his messages is just hope. Live like no one else so you can live like no one else. A lot of people he's talking to are struggling. And I think sometimes as advisors where we tend to be working with higher network people for the most part. And not to say high network people don't have struggles, they certainly do. But not in the same way that someone that can't meet their monthly bills is struggling. Someone that's debt is far greater than their annual income is struggling. Someone that is worried about their house being foreclosed upon is struggling. Like offering hope far more than what is the spread she'd say where the number say is one of the greatest things I would say to her Ramsey does for his segment of population that really benefits from his message. That's very clear. Number two, he has baby steps. What do you do? Baby step one, then baby step two, then baby step three as advisors too often we can be. Hey, what do I do? But depends. And by the way, it depends is the right answer. But how do you have some structure? People crave certainty. People crave the ability to put things into order and finances can be so chaotic that if you're not doing anything to help alleviate that since the chaos, you're doing people disservice. And we can say it depends on its nuances. And like I said, that is the right answer, but we also need to balance that with meeting people that haven't spent their entire careers. Don't have their CFP designation. Or whatever it is, meet them where they are and give them something simple. Dave Ramsey does that really. Well, and that's just a clear message. He gives people hope and he gives them a framework for getting there. That's the first thing it does really well. The second thing he does really well is leverage. Dave Ramsey's not meeting with people one-on-one. He's on the radio three hours a day. He has books that have been sold millions or tens of millions of times. He has his financial praise university course, which has been taken by, I don't know how many millions or tens of millions of people. So he has, he's a genius in this sense. He has taken that message. He's taken that baby step forming that sense of hope. Whatever you want to call it. He's taken it. He's packaged it and he's distributed it, which I think all of us can learn from. I mentioned my origin story. I thought why is it that this guy is in Tennessee when my parents are in San Diego, California? Why is he the one delivering the guidance that my family is looking for? Why isn't someone who's local? How many thousands of advisors are within a 50 mile radius? So my parents yet someone 2000 miles away doing it? So far as much and admittedly a lot of the criticism deserved like I said, like it's not the math just doesn't check out with a lot of the things he says. I will also say though the amount of lives changed. How do we look at that and say how can we as advisors do the same thing? How can we advisors? We as advisors package up our unique message to the world and distribute it to as many people as possible to help as many people as possible, which when we're doing things in traditional way, maybe we help 80, 100, 150 people, which is great. But if we really want to move the needle, what could we be doing differently? How can we be more like Dave Ramsey and in doing so help a ton of people? And so you mentioned that you went out on your own about six years ago. So that was roughly maybe 2017, 2018. And tell me a little bit about that transition. Did you essentially have to start from zero at that point? And how did you hit upon your marketing strategy that has enabled you to grow so fast here in just the past few years? I want you to be aware that rather than sharing all of my insights on a publicly available blog or podcast, I'm reserving some of my most provocative and insightful comments from my email letter called GTK. And that stands for good to know. And it comes out every couple weeks or so. Each letter covers a topic that I think is important and timely. And I also share a rotating cast of content that can include a few links to my favorite reads, my favorite podcast episodes and some tidbits from insider conversations that I'm having. And I share all of this for free to get access to the letter. Just go to Steve Sandesky dot com slash letter. That's STV, ESPN, d us k i dot com forward slash letter and pop your email address in there and then confirm it with the email that you're going to get right after that. And you're all set again, go to Steve Sandesky dot com slash letter to get access to GTK. And by the way, you can always reply to each email with questions or comments. They come to me and I respond. All right, back to the show. So long story, but I never intended to leave my prior for actually really liked it there, learned a ton from my previous boss there. He really helped me become the advisor. I am today. So it wasn't ever an intention to leave very long story would actually happen, but it was essentially encouraged more or less to say, hey, you should resign and leave the firm type of things was very abrupt. And that was that caught me off guard wasn't expecting that. But it was healthy in retrospect. It's at the time I was 27 and I've been doing this since college, which wasn't a huge amount of time. Five and a half six years. But I did have that moment of, do I really love doing this? Do I really want to spend the rest of my life doing this or do I just feel like I've been good at it because I'm good at math and I've been in this and it's just clipped. And so I think after doing some proverbial soul search, you know, I said, no, I really, in fact, after this experience, I'm even more convinced about how much I love this industry and how much I love getting to do this. So started my own firm three months after leaving. So you go through the compliance and registration and all that stuff. I didn't have a growth strategy at the beginning. My previous firm is part of the Dave Ramsey smart investor network. He's called endorse local provider networks. So again, that's that Dave Ramsey is my initial connection in just Hey, he helped my family who's the advisor that he recommends and I'm going to talk to him. So he did that. And I said that that's just a way of getting a lot of leads. A lot of people that have listened to Dave Ramsey and go to Dave Ramsey site and say, Hey, who do you recommend and he's got people who recommend and of course paid me part of that platform. And it works. It's huge amount of volume. And a lot of people may be not necessarily in a position to work with a financial advisor and the traditional methods. But I called Dave Ramsey's team and I said, Hey, I'd love to be part of the network. If there's a spot available, there was a spot available. And that I got really lucky of that happened a month or two after I started, which is all the sudden I had these leads coming in that I could call and reach out to and say, Hey, what are your goals? What are you looking to accomplish? Can I be your advisor? But that same thought that struck me as a kid, gosh, this guy's in Tennessee and everyone around the country is getting their guidance from him, not everyone, but a lot of people. I had the same thought as an advisor of cheese. If Dave Ramsey decided to open up his own RIA. I don't want to make this a day Ramsey show by the way, but I think there's a lot of learned from this experience, both whether good or bad. So he wanted to open his own RIA today. He'd have one of the largest firms in the country within two or three years, not because he's an incredible CFP, but because he has the platform. He has the reach. He's leveraged that message. And so always in the back of my head is almost, how do I become Dave Ramsey? Not to the scale that he's on, not to actually take the same business model, but all these people are coming to me because Dave Ramsey told them to. What if instead of paying Dave Ramsey for the right to have some of these people come to me? What if I just created that platform on my own and had a message, the resonated with people that attracted them to come to me in my firm. And so a couple years, and I think it was two years in. I was saying, okay, what do I do? People are starting to do a podcast things. It's all due to podcast thing was ready to go. I was going to do my own podcast. Like, how do I do this? Do I have guests on the show? Do I do it by myself? What's my show called? What's the I just there are some questions I still struggling with. At the same time, I was getting lunch with another CFP who lives in the same town as me. His name is Scott Frank and I was talking to him and saying, yeah, I'm thinking about doing a podcast. And he said, I'm thinking about doing a podcast. And we said, great. But I'm just do a podcast together and make it really easy. Whatever questions clients happen to be asking us. We will have an episode. We'll start with a question. And we'll just banter back and forth what Scott's perspective, what's James perspective. And it was actually really good because a lot of things we agreed upon and some things we we didn't fully agree upon. So it's some I see it this way, I see it that way. And people loved it. And we were getting a lot of people listening, a lot of people, many questions. And at some point say, this is really amazing. I want to create another podcast for my target market, which was retirees, which is the broadest target marketer, the broadest niche that you can have. But my podcast with Scott was more general, more generic. It's anything in everyone. People were submitting questions that were 70 years old and asking about RMDs and people were who are 25 years old and In the military and ask about TSP options were submitting questions. So it wasn't super defined as to who we were talking to. So I started one in 2020 that was all about retirement and specific retirement questions. And was doing that for some time in one of my friends. He said, why don't you just record yourself doing this and put it on YouTube. YouTube is where people are getting their information from. And I didn't really actually the times I like I trust he's much smarter than I am. He was a creative director for GoPro and marketing stuff and just really in tune with what people are looking for. So I trust you, but I don't actually I wouldn't have thought to do this if it was up to me. So I recorded a few podcasts and filmed myself doing it through it on YouTube and nothing happened. I spent a whole day editing each of those videos because I didn't have anyone doing the editing or doing the post production stuff and it was just honestly I hated it. It's like, well, I'm wasting my time. I'm putting it on YouTube and no one's listening. No one's watching it. I did that for five weeks in a row and finally just said I can't justify taking 20% of my work week to create a one video that gets three views. It's just this isn't a good recipe for success. So I continue with the podcast but stop doing YouTube. Seven months later, eight months later, somewhere around there, one of these videos that I created that had no views. All of a sudden I started getting emails to my inbox saying so and so commented on your video. So and so subscribed to your channel. I honestly forgot that I even had these days like what video are people commenting on. I remember, remember creating video. In this video that had no views, then all of a sudden had 300 views than 500 views than 1000 views than 5000 views. And it just it showed me or approved me. YouTube is constantly looking for people to push your content to they're constantly trying to find an audience that resonates with your message and once they find it. They're doing the work for me and they're taking this message and they're trying to find the people that can add value from it. So at that moment is like, okay, this is this needs to be part of the long term growth strategy. So After that said, I'm going to do this, but I'm not going to edit videos because it just takes too much time and I'm not good at it. Founding editor found someone to record and then just been doing weekly videos ever since and it's really been a big part of our growth strategy since then. And so did you drop the podcast then and say, hey, I'm just going to do videos from now on. Still doing the podcast too. So weekly podcast and then a weekly YouTube video. The podcast I was doing with Scott, we discontinued that earlier this year. At a time is two podcasts in one day. YouTube channel. Now it's one podcast, one YouTube video. Are we? And is the content different for the podcast and the YouTube videos? Or do you cross-purpose them in some respect? Or it's different, but it's cross-purpose. Sometimes I'll see what podcasts are performing really well and turn that into a video in vice versa. It's delivered slightly differently. We're on the podcast. I'm just reading, like I have very detailed notes or charts or graphs in front of me for specific example, some facts with YouTube. I'm looking at a camera. I can't be reading kind of line-by-line examples in some cases. So it's pretty similar, but it's a different medium. So slightly different delivery, I would say. Okay. So there are more and more financial advisors these days that are doing YouTube. And there's only a small number of financial advisors who are successful on YouTube. So like you mentioned, you started out and you were really not getting any views. And then somehow one of your videos got picked up by an algorithm or somebody tweeted it or what have you and all of the sudden you're getting thousands of views. And I'm going to take a look at your YouTube channel here. So I'm looking at one here. You published it four days ago. It's got 32,000 views. One published 11 days ago, 12,000 views. One two weeks ago, 17,000 views. You've got 56,700 subscribers to your YouTube channel. Those are huge numbers by any means. For a financial advisor, it's really it's off the charts. Was there some turning point, tipping point where all of a sudden it's like YouTube has discovered James Canole and we're going to really promote this guy or was it a little bit of a slow burn even though I think all of this has happened here like in the past couple years or so. It's all happened in the past couple years. If you look at those videos that you're seeing, I was expecting that okay, start building this audience and you'd expect that once you have a thousand subscribers or 10,000 subscribers or 100,000 subscribers, I naively thought okay, as you build it every single subscriber, watches every single video that you put out. So naturally your video views just start building over time into an extent that's true. But YouTube and its algorithm are so hyper focused on delivering value to your audience. But if there's a video that's even slightly off from what your audience wants, it's going to do horribly. And if there's a video that's spot on with what your audience wants, and this was true whether it was at 5,000 subscribers or 50,000 subscribers, it's going to go crazy. It's going to get a lot of views. So if you scroll down there a little bit, Steve, you'll see there's a video about how to help your kids invest. It's got 5 or 10% of the views that some others do. And I put that video out when I had a lot of subscribers, but almost none of them watched it. And because what happens is when you release a video, the way YouTube works is they're going to say, okay, let's start by pushing this video that James created to his existing subscribers. If there's a high click through rate or average view duration, that's signaling to YouTube, James's subscribers really like this video. So let's now push it out and almost think of like concentric rings. Like how do we continue to expand the net or the reach of how many people were pushing this video to? In every single time YouTube expands that, if people continue clicking and continue watching, it's a signal to the YouTube algorithm. People are really liking this and they're going to push it farther and farther. And so I think it helps to have a starting number of higher subscribers for that because there's more of a sample size for that initial push. YouTube knows who your audience is, but you can have, and I don't know how viral is defined. I'm just going to say viral in the sense that a video that has a number of views, it's an outlier from what your average views might be. I remember I think two months in to posting videos. I had one of those videos, maybe I had 2000 subscribers, but one of them went off and it led to two weeks of appointments being fully booked up. And I don't have any hardening subscribers at the time versus today, sometimes I'll post videos and no one watches them. So there's not like a perfect correlation between how many subscribers you have in that slow burn that you talked about of growing that, but it's part of it. And I wish I knew the YouTube algorithm inside and out so I could make exactly what it was looking for. But I think the best guidance is think of the algorithm as an audience. How do you deliver beneficial educational entertaining, like whatever your style is? How do you deliver really valuable information to your audience? If you can do that, the YouTube algorithm is going to reward you and take that message to more and more people. I'm going to ask you a bunch of granular questions here. So one simple one, what is the technology that you use to create these videos in terms of the microphone that you use, the camera that you use, how high quality does it need to be? Can we just simply use our iPhone connected to a mic? What are you using there? When I started, I used my iPhone connected to a $20 lapel mic from Amazon and we had a lot of success with that. In fact, if you look at some of the most popular finance YouTubers, they're not even financial advisors. They're people that have retired and they just walk around their house on their iPhone talking about the transition and what they learned. And hey, here's what was difficult and you're going to experience loneliness and you're going to experience a loss of per it's just people talking to a camera. Their thumbnails aren't super high quality, their videos aren't highly produced. So if all you have is an iPhone and lapel mic, you're going to be just fine. The only reason I'm not doing that anymore is because I stopped doing the recording of my own videos. There's a guy found literally on Craigslist to say, hey, come film these, I record five videos at a time. I just recorded my master bedroom or my bedroom, by the way. So it's not like a fancy recording studio. If you look at the background, at first it was an office backdrop, but it was just a little dark and a little sterile. And we're talking about with our web designer, like brand strategist, what should this look like? So I want a warmer backdrop, more inviting backdrop. So I'll just do this in my bedroom. And so he comes over and presses play on his camera, presses stop and the video is done and that's it. And I don't know what camera he uses or what microphone he uses. So I just a long-winded way of saying, if I was still doing it, I'd probably just use my iPhone, but I just pay him and he has a camera in a microphone that he uses, but I couldn't tell you what the models are. You have a very clear aesthetic, which I think is really beautiful. And the aesthetic of the YouTube videos carries over to the website. And so I really like how you have a cohesive brand and that messaging is getting out and there's consistency there. And so I think that's certainly one of the things, well, you've done a lot of things well here. That's certainly one of them is just having a brand and a consistency and an aesthetic that is certainly attracting a lot of people. And so tell me about the creation of the content in terms of how do you concept it from the initial idea of, hey, I'm thinking I want to do this topic to actually then do you create a script for these? Is it maybe some bullet points and then you speak off the cuff? Are you using some type of teleprompter as you're recording these? How does that work? I will fully script it out not because I actually read the script word for word when I'm recording, but that's just the way my mind processes things. I just do brain dump and I write it out to unpack my thoughts around something. So I'll fully script it out. And that's where I recommend people take the most amount of time is when you're on YouTube, it's not like just you're talking to people that know nothing about finance. And as soon as they see someone that looks nice and speaks well, they're going to say, oh, I'm going to trust this person with all my money. These are people are either slightly more educated or much more educated than general population about financial matters as a whole. So if you're just coming there to explain what a Roth IRA is or explain something incredibly basic that they could find on invest a PDF or anywhere else, you're not going to get any traction. It's people looking for a message, it just may be different or a way of seeing things that's a little bit different. So I do put a lot of time into the outline because I want it to be good. I want it to be not a waste of my audience this time or of my time, but just putting something that's not fully thought throughout there. But I'll fully script it out. And then when I'm doing the recording, all my iPad next to me that has the outline, I don't use the teleprompter. And I really strongly recommend it again. See when using the teleprompter, if people can tell it's scripted, they're going to tune out so fast. I'll go back to some of the most popular channels or just guys walking around their house with their iPhone, explaining how they enroll in Medicare or what the transit, it's really not highly produced. But people love that sense of connection. So don't do teleprompter. What I do is I just have my notes. I'll look at it and I'll do sections at a time. So say, okay, here's the intro. I'll deliver the intro. Then I'll stop. I don't look at my notes. So say, okay, here's what I'm talking about next. Look back at the camera. Deliver that section. Stop. And then I give it to the editor and the editor is using a software called Descript, which is I think maybe the most user-friendly, at least in terms of having some pretty cool capabilities. So if someone's trying to do on their own, I probably recommend Descript, although I personally am not super familiar with it. I've just heard great things. And that's it. So yeah, outline the video. I do that. I have someone else film it, but I'm obviously doing the talking. And then I send it to the editor who's doing the editing, creating the thumbnails, and then posting it to the channel. So you're recording five of these at a time and you publish it weekly. And roughly how long does it take you to create the script for each of those five videos? Probably about an hour and a half. It can be a process. And I tell anyone, let's do it. People see something they think, oh, I need to do that. YouTube's successful, or they're having success. I need to do it. I think long and hard before you want to, because it is a pretty serious time commitment. And you want to think through what are your goals with this channel, because I don't think everyone should do it. Is this a medium of marketing that I would enjoy doing? Because it's not, it's not only going to work, if you stay out of it and continue out of it. Yeah, probably about an hour and a half of, on average, to script one video. And do you have a template for the script? So some people when they're writing something like this, they might say, okay, we're going to start with a lead and it's going to be an attention grabbing sentence or maybe it's going to be a startling fact or maybe it's going to be like an aha. Oh, it's a contrary and take on something. And then we go into the proof point and then we have, here's what could happen if you don't do that or do you basically starting each one from scratch? I have an intro and then I have the message of the thing and then I call, have reminders of little things like, hey, if you're liking this video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe and whatever. But there's really not a template. And I think my mind just doesn't work necessarily that way. If that's how someone's, everyone's different in terms of how to the organizer thoughts, I don't love having that core template to just, I feel like I'm plugging stuff in as opposed to, what's the message I'm trying to get across, what are some helpful examples that I can use to support this message? Show a couple of examples where something might work really well and then not work. So I try to present it in a way that my audience can see themselves in the examples I'm providing. And I don't know, just provide some backdrop for that. Some perspective on that. Yeah, so like a comparing contrast. And I think you're hitting a key point there, which is anytime you're creating content, you want to make sure that the reader can see themselves in that and the more that they can feel like you're speaking directly to me, you're reading my mind. And I say this to advisors all the time, even when it comes to your website, that within the first few seconds of a prospect landing on your website, they need to answer a couple questions. One is, am I in the right place? And then second, is this firm speaking to me? They need to feel like you're a mind reader. Oh my gosh, how did they know this is what I was looking for? And I'd imagine that's one of the reasons why your videos are so successful is because you've dialed in on who your target audience is. You've identified that client persona and you've created content that is going to speak directly to what their challenges are, what their hopes are, what their aspirations are, what their frustrations are, and you're giving them that information in 10 to 20 minutes per video. Would that be fair to say? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think that's why you need to have a target audience that you're speaking to. Some people say you have to have a niche to succeed in this business. I think there's maybe some truth to that, but I would argue you don't have to have a niche to be successful advisor, but if you want to be on YouTube and have some success, I think it's really hard to do that without having a specific audience that you're speaking directly to because if I'm giving some advice to young people, some to old people, some to people, their tax, some to their business, it's just, you to be saying, who do we deliver this message to? Who's your, they just don't know. And if not enough people are finding value in it, it's just, I don't know everything about YouTube, but I want to pretend to know that. But in my experience, the more dialed in on who you're talking to, the easier you're making it for YouTube to be able to deliver that message to the right demographic. In one sentence, how would you describe the audience that you are targeting with your videos? People 55 and older with one to five million in assets look into it higher than the next handful of years. - Okay, you did that quickly. It's succinct, it's very clear. And with that description, there's an incredible amount of content that you could create that would be targeted to those people that would directly speak to them and they would raise her hand and say, yeah, this person gets me. - Yeah, exactly. Let's talk about artificial intelligence for a second here. We're gonna segue, and I'm gonna get back to some specific questions about the YouTube videos too, but as you're creating the content, does AI come into play here at all? Or are there any ways that you're using AI in the business today? - A little bit, not a ton. I will sometimes use it for titles. So when you're making YouTube videos, the title is one of the most important, the title of the thumbnail are crucial. Doesn't matter how good your video, if your title stinks and your thumbnail is just unclear as to what is this person gonna be talking about, it's gonna be difficult for that video to get much traction. So, Bard is Google's AI tool, like their chat G-P-T, and I don't know if there's any truth to this or not, but I'm saying, okay, I'll go to Bard and say, make this YouTube title better. Let Google tell me, what is YouTube, who's owned by Google, think would be a good title for this video. So that's an example of how I might use it. It's not creating the outline for me. I could tell it to do it, and I'll actually use it sometimes for inspiration of, hey, I wanna know five things people should consider before they retire. I'll ask chat G-P-T or I'll ask Bard. And I actually won't use that a whole lot, but sometimes I'll pull a nugget out of there, or I'll pull a, okay, that's an interesting framework or order of things that they're talking to. So I would say it supplements what we're doing, but it doesn't really, it's not the core of what we're doing yet. - Looking at the thumbnails, so you just mentioned the importance of the thumbnails and the titles. So you're very intentional in the thumbnails. You've got all the different images of you with different facial expressions, with you pointing in different directions, different hand gestures, and then you've got titles in some of the thumbnails and others, it looks like most of them have actually some words in it, maybe not a full title. Did you just figure that out on your own by looking at what other people are doing? Did you take any courses on how to succeed in YouTube videos, or how did you go from zero to 100, where you are today when it comes to figuring out the formula here? - Thank you for saying we're at 100. I feel like we got a long way to go. - Honestly, I think our channel's good. I don't think our channel's like an incredible channel. I think it's just we're operating in a landscape, financial advice, where there's just not a lot of people doing things like this. And so it's easier to stand out a little bit, I would say. When we started our editor was just doing it, but not even give any feedback or guidance, he's just, he made the thumbnail. As we've gone on, I've tried to get better and become more of a student of the game and try to learn more about YouTube and titles. And yeah, I've gone through courses now and followed certain people that know a lot about this. And there's still a ton to learn. So again, I don't want to make any of it sound like I've got YouTube figured out, 'cause I feel like I know 1% of it. And there's still so much to be learned. But now I do have some feedback. And so when our thumbnails being created, I'll go back and forth with our marketing team who's creating it about, they'll create something I might have feedback and just, it's not here's three rules to follow as much as, you're trying to tell a story with a thumbnail. You gotta realize that when people are scrolling YouTube, there's so many distractions on their phone, whether it's other videos, incoming calls, children crying, bills, there's just a lot going on. So what can you do in that thumbnail that would make someone want to take 10 minutes out of their day and they're very busy day and choose to spend it watching that video. And if you can try to tell a story with a thumbnail, what they can expect to get from that or invoke a feeling of FOMO, if I better watch this video or else or hope or whatever the emotion is, you're trying to instill something in them that makes something, this is a video I should click because it might have something for me. You mentioned the word story. You mentioned emotion, a feeling, which I love. And as you're creating the content, as you're putting the script together, how conscious are you of trying to tell a story in the 10 or 20 minutes that you're speaking versus just sharing information, versus creating FOMO, versus trying to have a strong call to action that's gonna make people want to click somewhere or reach out to you. So those are all elements that can be packaged in one way or another in a video. How do you think about those different elements? How do you think about the weights of those elements? - At the beginning, I didn't think of any of them because I was just, okay, I'll just do this and see how it goes. And it's, and I'd also encourage people at the beginning trying not to get overwhelmed with all the potential things you could think about. But as we continue to do, and I am real, that storytelling piece is so crucial. Not just for a good video, but for a video that YouTube's gonna want to continue pushing. And because if people getting grossed with your story, and it's not like story where you've got this hero's journey and all this, it's an eight minute video. Like it doesn't have to be this incredibly complex story. But when people can see themselves in it and follow the arc of, oh gosh, if I don't do this, there's trouble. And if I do this, here's what could happen. One, it's more valuable for the viewer, but two, that's signaling to YouTube. People are watching this video longer because they're staying through it longer. So we should push it to more people. So it's absolutely something that people should be thinking about when they create videos. It's not just recite information. Like I said, don't just be an investor, pdia and video format, but have some unique perspective, or have something different that you offer, which could be entertainment. It could be just a calming presence. It could be unique planning. Something different that they couldn't just find by going to Google, which in most cases, is just your own personality. People get to know you and then like your personality and the way you explain things in the stories a big part of that. Back in the early days of video, people would say, keep your video short. 90 seconds to maybe 180 seconds is about all you want to do because people have a short attention span. Yet I look at your videos and I look at a lot of the other people in other verticals, like I watch a lot of saline videos and these people that are saline around the world, and their live-a-board sailors, they're 10 to 20 minutes in length. And yours are in the 10 to 20 minute length that looks like most of them are as well. How do you think about the length of the videos and is that really the sweet spot for an advisor, at least at your case, 10 to 20 minutes? I could probably actually make mine a little shorter. I tend to be long-wended and over-explained things at times, which people in the comments are not shy to let me know that. My general approach is how can I make this as concise as possible, still delivering the value that I want to deliver, or still delivering the message that I want to deliver? And that just so happens to be in the 8 to 15 minute range, but I don't think there's anything necessarily magical about that, as much as if you only have a three-minute message, don't try to make it 10 minutes. It's just filler. People are going to tune out. But if you do have a 10-minute message, then explain it really well in 10 minutes. So it's 10 minutes full of jam-packed value. How close of attention do you pay to analytics? So we're talking about videos of 10 to 20 minutes or 8 to 15 minutes. Do you take a look at analytics that are going to show you what's the average length of time that viewers are watching your videos? Is there certain parts within your video where people tend to drop off? Do you pay close attention to those kinds of things? A little bit. Admittedly, I should do a lot more. Average view duration is an important one. How long are people watching your video for? The click-through rate, what percentage of the people that see your thumbnail are actually clicking on your video? The hard part about that is, like I was saying, Steve, of when you first post a video, go through your audience first. And if there's a high click-through rate or high average view duration or high signals to YouTube that people are watching, they'll continue to push that out to a broader and broader audience. What that means is sometimes your most popular videos have a lower average view duration because they've been pushed out to so many different audiences that you're getting a smaller and smaller percentage of each successive segment watching your video, which on average is dragging that down or on average is dragging down the click-through rate. So it's, I think, good to know, but the analytics can be confusing sometimes. The analytics I try to pay more attention to is what general topics are people liking? What general format of videos are people watching, which isn't an analytics, so much as just, I tell everyone, model what works. Like if you're trying to get started, see what's working. Don't go copy a video, don't go copy just things exactly. There's people that do that and that's just plagiarism, but it's just, go to my channel, go to other people's channels, go to people that have had success. Okay, are people liking stuff about investments or social security or, I don't know, the non-financial aspects of retirement and what to expect and then say, okay, how can I reverse engineer that and create a video about that same thing for my audience? So and also don't just look at financial channels. Financial industry is not super well known for being on the cutting edge of things on the marketing side. Go to other industries where it's table stakes to have a good YouTube channel or a good social media presence or a much better digital presence. What are they doing that's working? Look at their titles, look at their thumbnails and obviously it's not going to be the same thing, but health and fitness has a lot of similarities to good wealth management or good financial planning. What topics like it find a video that's done really well in a health and fitness page. How do they structure their title? It's not going to be the same thing, but if it was five ways to live longer. Okay, how do I do it? Five ways to retire earlier, just a basic thing. How do you reverse engineer that types of titles or the types of thumbnails or types of things that are having success, but do so in a way that's unique to the audience that you're looking to deliver it to? You know, give me a sense for the size of the practice today, the growth of the practice over the past couple of years and how much of that growth do you attribute to the work that you're doing here on YouTube? Almost all of it. 97% I'll say it's from YouTube and podcast of new clients coming in. We just hired our 11th team member today, actually, and today we're a little over 290 million in assets that we're managing for clients. A month ago, we were at 17 members and today we're at 11. So part of our challenge was there's capacity that you have as an advisor in terms of how many clients can one advisor work with. You could argue about what that number is, but there is a number. But even if that number, let's just say is 100, around number, I think it's higher, but let's say it's 100. If Steve's a new advisor, he can't onboard 100 clients in one single month. That'd be ridiculous. There's no chance you can do that. So 100 might be the capacity that you have total, but what's your capacity for how many new clients you can take on each month while still delivering high degrees of service to them, as well as your existing clients? And so we weren't really running into capacity issues from a standpoint of how many total clients can we work with. But we were running into capacity issues of so many people are reaching out that we haven't turned a lot of them away. We can only allow so many of them into the firm to go through our onboarding process, which is amazing. And it is a good problem to have. But you also, these people start to feel like they're almost a developer relationship with you. And they've loved your message and they resonated with it and the time is right and they just left their job, but they're ready to approach you. And then you have to say, I'm sorry, we're at capacity. It's a bummer. And there's a let down. And that was really difficult. One of the things I'll say the unintentional benefits of the YouTube channel and the podcast and even just the marketing we've done in general is other advisors have been following along. And when we posted a couple of job postings recently, we had so many incredible people, far smarter than me, that wanted to come join us at root. And when I started to realize this, oh my gosh, not only are we attracting really wonderful prospective clients to these channels, but it's now showing, I really don't think there's much of a talent shortage in this industry. I just don't think there's enough firms that are attractive for maybe younger advisors wanting to go work in. And so when you can demonstrate, hey, look at what we're doing. We are being on the cutting edge. We have an amazing team. Like one of the things I'm most excited about is how awesome the people and our team are. How smart they are, how driven they are, how caring they are, how enjoyable it is to be part of this team. So we went, sorry, this is a long-winded way of US simple metrics. We're at 11, but four new team members is the last month. We made the jump to try to get a sum of the growth that we're having so that we could take on more of the clients. But this year we'll probably add 120 or 130 million of net new assets on our management, which is amazing. And a lot of those are just wonderful people that have been following our journey on podcasts and YouTube. And when the time is right, they reach out and we get the privilege of being able to work with them. So as I was prepping for our conversation today, I took a look at your form ADV. And the most recent one that's out there, it showed your assets under management as of January of 2023. We're having our conversation today here in early November of 2023. Your ADV showed about 187 million of assets in January. And here we are less than a year later, 290 million. So you've gone up $100 million in about 10 or 11 months here. You just mentioned you're probably going to finish the year at perhaps 120, maybe 130 million in net new assets, which is phenomenal growth. And you said more than 90% of it is coming here from YouTube. Again, just incredible numbers. So how do you as the founder of the firm, the CEO of the firm, are you still working with personal clients? Are you focused like 80% of your time on the rain making and the outward facing work of leading the firm or how are you spending your time today with all of that fast growth and the fact that you've got this huge YouTube channel out there and podcast. Yeah, I still have clients. I still have a large number of clients that I'm personally working with. I'm not taking on a whole lot of new clients at this point. All new prospects are going to other advisors in the firm who are really amazing advisors. And so that's why I feel so confident not being the one taking them on is I can still know that the same exact experience that I would want. My client to have there having it. I think the work right now is yeah, marketing the firm, working with his existing clients. But also now more than ever is how do we build that firm that's the most attractive place to be for the most talented, kindest driven people in the industry to want to come join. That's my focus right now is how do we continue to build out that infrastructure and bring the right people on to make it just a really amazing place to work because if it's amazing place to work, everyone wins clients win. We have incredible team retention, incredible team dynamics, which I think we do have when we just continue to grow those over time and that covers so many of the normal challenges that face advisory firms. And roughly how many clients would you say that you are personally the lead advisor for? I have about 100 clients right now and I will be bringing on probably another advisor to share as lead on many of those clients at some point. So I'm still involved in the relationship, but it admittedly is getting harder and harder to be proactive with this. It's still doable now, but I see that's not sustainable forever. So I've already been in talks with people or an individual who I will come on board when the time is right to help make sure that as these things are happening, even my personal clients are still good in excellent service. You mentioned that you record five videos a day and you publish about once a week. So maybe once a month, if you are getting together and shooting all of these videos, roughly what percent of your time would you say is devoted to these business development activities, whether it's the YouTube stuff or any and the podcast stuff that's really external facing for trying to bring in new business any sense for what percentage that might be roughly caught two to two and a half hours per video. And maybe one to one and a half hours per pod one and a half hours per podcast so on a weekly basis if there's one podcast in one video call that four hours of time that's being spent doing that. I would like for it to be more it's just there's not much capacity to do more right now but the beautiful thing about YouTube is just infinitely scalable same with podcasts same with other channels and there's so much more that we have on a road map that we want to be able to do but one thing at a time. Right then how do you make the connection between I put this video out there and all of a sudden people start call me or reaching out to us what is the connection between the videos out there and then how do they reach out to you are you drive them to your website what's the connection from I saw your video and now I'm a client of yeah root financial what's that process that goes through there. Yeah that's an important question because one of the biggest challenges we face when we started having some success with YouTube is our website was fine was outdated and it was all about me because of the time I was the it hadn't been updated since I was. Kind of a solo shop so website was me and my spouse and about us and what we like to do and so people listen to the YouTube channel and it's okay cool and by the way I don't do any real hard call to actions because one of things YouTube rewards is people staying on the platform so I actually try to keep people on the platform at the end of a video instead of saying. Real hard push go work with me or that it's just hey if this was helpful here's another video that might be applicable so really try to get them into this loop of continuing to watch videos but I will have 10 second outro or so something along the lines of if you're looking to see how we can help you get the most of life with your money go to root financial partners calm. Then keep going by the way if you want more videos like this is still try to keep them on the platform and so everything just to redirect back to our website think our website URL is in the description of each video and. We did a major website overhaul about a year ago because people are seeing me on YouTube and then they're going to the website that was all about me and then we'd have a call on I would take the intercall and I would say awesome work side to work with you this advice is going to be the one taking you through the process. And it's like well wait a minute James know I want to work with you yeah exactly and not only that they didn't even know that there was other advisors it was a real confusing thing for a lot of prospects so we work to the awesome individual in john sienna in his team to recreate a website rebrand it with the goal of saying how do we elevate. The root brand is being what people are buying into Bradley johnson used to have the elite advisor group blueprint podcast now has to business to life he used to always talk about you need to name your process. And when I was a solo advice like why I get it but not really like my process is just me what who cares what it's called the root experience whatever I didn't see the value of it until we started saying okay as you're trying to grow and create content scale and bring on clients at scale and still deliver. Personal services you need to elevate the brand of the company and ideally name the process so it's a Steve you're getting this you're getting our Sequoia system so on brand with root you whether James takes you through it or Christa's or Carly does or JT does or whoever you're getting the Sequoia system and we've gone through a lot of work to outline exactly what each step is we put all over our website we put fees on our website we put the process in our website we put what you can expect on the website we put what you who. You'll be working with on the website all with the goal of trying to answer all the questions anyone might have before they reach out so by the time that they reach out it's really ideally one meeting of let me learn about you and some of the pain points that you have okay Steve here's our process for walking you through this and they've already gotten to know that process and it just makes it a much easier experience so if you start to have your new advisors are starting to have some success with YouTube and you don't want necessarily to be the one taking on all these clients or you're going to be able to get a job. You want to have a job on all these clients or you already kept it clients and you want team members to be doing it with you just start to think through how are you going to handle that transition because that was a pretty big challenge we faced a couple things there so one is you mentioned John CNN did your website I'm always looking for great website developers and you guys have put together a phenomenal website does he have a company does he take on other advisors that what new website the objective brand it's a reach out to all my think he's probably booked out for the next thousand years or so because he's so good and everyone wants to work with you. And everyone wants to work with him but yeah check out the objective brand and at a minimum get on his mailing list because he's really good he was early at all trist and helped create the altruist brand there he's got his own agency and does it and there's not a better brand guy or strategist in the industry. Yeah it looks great so we'll definitely give him a shout out so people reach out to you do you have any issues with people who have five thousand dollars that they want to invest with you. So if someone doesn't fit your ideal profile what do you do with someone like that who reaches out and how often does that happen. There's a questionnaire they go through before they actually book a call with us and one of the questions is asset level and in the early days maybe it's not as important get on the phone try to talk to people as much as possible because you're also giving you know your audience and what they reached out for and like you learn really valuable stuff but as lots and lots of people start coming in several a day you just can't have all those inter conversation so you need some type of a filtering tool and the things you need to filter for us at least was one asset level like we do things AUM base I don't know everyone does but however you provide services. Tell people what your minimum asset level is or what your cost is so they decay does that make sense and then to we also had to have a filtering tool so a question that essentially says we don't do hourly or project based fees here's our exact fee schedule please acknowledge that's what you're looking for okay with and some people say no which is great save them a call save us a call. But those that do they know how we charge we know what their asset levels are we know what their income is we know what they're looking for before the even schedule a call with someone on the team so I'm looking at the website you have a start here in your menu bar there and I click on that it says schedule a call complete the short form below to determine if we'd be a good fit to help you with your goals and then you have a video right next to that says what to expect so you're making it very clear like you say upfront and then when they fill out that form let's say they fill out the form and they say I've got $50,000 so do you tell them there we're not the fit but here's some other places where you may go or will you actually still have a call with them and and maybe refer them that way or how do you handle someone who it's clear this isn't someone that's really going to be a good fit for us. I created an online course months ago just thinking okay we got a large audience we can't work with everyone do they maybe want online course some did a lot didn't so I have it it really didn't do a ton but these are people that we want to build good will with they've been following us they've been supporting channel. So now what we do is a if they're under the minimum we say I'm sorry we couldn't work with you today we really are looking to even go back to my day ramsie story parents like one things I would love to be able to do is constantly drive that minimum down to be able to help more and more people and expand the services is just that's a very long term project to take on. But in the meantime if we can't work with them but they've expressed interest in it we say we're sorry we couldn't help you here's free access to retirement planning academy is just a way of saying thank you for supporting and for your interest and route so there then our mailing list and the received stuff from us and if things ever changed they can reach out again but we try to. Give them something just for their interest but we're not taking a call to answer your question directly I would imagine you're finding that there are people who have substantial wealth that are watching your YouTube videos and their finding you as their financial advisor through YouTube which I think a lot of folks probably would be a little skeptical that's the kind of person who's watching YouTube videos but I would imagine you've got lots of great examples of that very situation. Yeah last 12 months there's been six almost 700 people I think with assets of 500,000 or more that we're looking for ongoing AUM type advice that have reached out so you know every firm's got a different metric of what's qualified client is a million or more to million or more 250 or more we've gotten clients the million dollar range got clients in the 10 plus million dollar range from YouTube so it's absolutely channel that a lot of people watch. Some people know money watch it so it's people think of people with money aren't watching YouTube I think are maybe missing it much of a role do you think personality plays in having a successful YouTube channel so we've got Dave Ramsey obviously he's got a strong personality Susie orman Rick Edelman Ken Fisher we can just go down the line of some of these really successful financial advisory people have very strong personalities is that a prerequisite to being successful on something like YouTube in a media format like that or is it just more important to be genuine authentic and who you are like you and I we've essentially just met each other here I've watched some of your videos and it's real clear that you're very genuine you're very sincere you're not a raw raw Tony Robbins kind of guy you are who you are and you're being authentic to that personality it doesn't appear that you're playing a role or you're acting to try and meet some perceived persona that you think you're doing. your audience wants you to be. You're just being James Canole and it's really working well. So do you have any advice for people in terms of how should I be presenting myself in a medium like this? And let's go to the opposite. Let's go to Mr. Beast, probably the most successful person on YouTube. Crazy guy, but that's probably who he is too, right? That's probably that's just who he is as a human being and he's done some incredible great things as well and the impact that he's making as well. So any advice about how we present ourselves to the public in a media forum like video? I can't think of any other way. It's so cliche, but you have to be authentic. If you're trying to be someone else and presuming that you're doing YouTube, not just for viewers and subscribers, but because you want to get clients. And if you're trying to pretend to be someone else and someone loves that person you're pretending to be and then they become a client and they're client for the next 30 years, are you really going to pretend to be someone else for 30 more years? I can't think of a worse existence in this industry. And if you look at the Dave Ramsey's, the Suzy Orman's, there is an entertainment factor to that. Things that are said that are so either outrageous or rigid and part of that's on purpose. Like that is entertaining to people and people like that. I'm not a super entertaining guy like that. And so I'm not going to try to be where they say you either have to inspire, you have to entertain, you have to educate or you have to do some choose one of those. I'm very educational. Like maybe there's like more of a calming delivery experience. But yeah, if Steve's trying to be Mr. Beast on a podcast, like it's just one, you're not going to keep doing it because it's just exhausting and two. When people do become clients because they think you are Mr. Beast, they're going to be let down and not become clients for very long when you realize Steve's a great guy but he's not Mr. Beast. I'd be my YouTube and a t-shirt, for example. Like I'm in my bedroom wearing a t-shirt, usually wearing some gym shorts under it. And it's just part of that's was because I used to wear the whole shirt and tie thing, which whatever, I just, there's nothing I hate more than a tie. Because I just, I'm going to do this and if people don't like it, I'll get comments from people, pay your delivery and financial likes. You should be wearing a button up shirt. That's fine. There's plenty of other channels of people wearing button up shirts. This is how I take meetings. This is how I deliver stuff and I want you to be coming because of the guidance and the expertise and the education. And it's really a way of turning away people that wouldn't be a good fit for what you're offering. Yeah, you attract what you put out there and you're putting out, hey, this is James, I wear a t-shirt. This is how I work with people. And if your idea of a financial advisor is a wood paneled office with high ceilings on the 15th floor of a downtown high rise building, I'm not your guy. Go find that who that financial advisor is. So you're going to track the people who like what it is that you're putting out there and your point is so spot on as far as if you're trying to play a role and an actor, try keeping that up for 30 years. Yeah, yeah, you just can't do it. One other thing you're about compliance, how do you deal with the compliance issue? How does that work? Yeah, we work with synergy compliance consultants, Eric Muller, Scott Gill. I say, here's my channel. If you think there's anything that we shouldn't be doing, let us know. They've taken a look. They help us out way more than just that. I don't guarantee anything. I don't promise anything. Everything I say is hey, consider this or consider that or I'll be very clear. This is for educational purposes only. Not a broker dealer affiliated with one. So I don't have to necessarily get permission from someone. As long as I'm not saying anything misleading, like it's I really don't even think about compliance a whole lot because I'm not saying anything misleading or even making any specific recommendations or endorsements as much as I'm trying to take a topic that can be misunderstood and try to explain it from multiple different angles in a way that might be relatable to a whole bunch of different people that are watching. So I honestly don't think about compliance a whole lot. As you look out, 10 years from now, where would you like to see yourself? I have no idea in 10 years or even five years or even three years. The kind of guiding principles I always look at is I like growth. That's fun to me is growing something. Some people like tinkering on old cars and that's their thing. I like tinkering and growing the business. I just get a lot of joy and satisfaction out of it. But I don't want to just grow for growth sake if it's going to ultimately destroy things. So the kind of like the guardrails that I think of is the first non-negotiable is does every single client at root feel like they're one of a couple dozen people we work with because of how proactive we are because of the level of service they receive because of how responsive we are to their needs. Whether we have 100 or 1000 or 10,000 actual clients, they feel like they're one of a select few is one non-negotiable. The other non-negotiable is does every single team member that works here at root wake up on the balls of their feet as an expression I've heard before they're ready to go. They're so excited for the work that we get to do. They're so excited to be able to take this transformation that we provide for our clients and do it day in and day out because they're so enthused by the mission we have and by the work that we do and by the people that we get to do it with. So as long as clients always feel like they're one of a few and team members are always feeling like hey this is a place that I want to spend my entire career because I just love getting to do with who we get to do it with than I want to grow as much as possible because that growth is really how many more lives can we transform. My family's life has transformed and we found a simple day Ramsey book 25 years ago that said here's how you get your finances in order and when your finances in order how much more is possible when you're not living with that stress and that anxiety about how do we make ends meet. If we can take that simple message and build upon it and expand upon it and help people in more and more ways why would we not want to grow this thing as far as we could again assuming clients never experienced diminished service levels and team members never start to feel like hey this is unsustainable in the wheels are about to fall off. So who knows where that is I think it's going to be somewhere pretty special but we'll see James is there anything else that you want to mention here that we haven't touched on yet. Going back to YouTube which I know is a big part of what we talked about just I would encourage people why do you want to do it what are you hoping to get out of it because some people will talk to me and they've already gotten 90 clients they only want 100 and they don't want a team that's why would you invest all this time into something just for it can be wonderful but there's also challenges that come with it the challenge of people come for you how do you have them come for a team the challenge of eight you need to really build a team and I've loved that part actually because we have so many wonderful team members but we need career paths we need comp plans that are attractive you need to do all the things that go into that so really I would be careful what you wish for but really get really clear on what are you trying to build and what role does YouTube play in that because it could potentially make things harder than easier if you haven't really defined that real well and do start to have some success with it. Excellent I think we've talked about the different ways that people can connect with you obviously they can go to your YouTube channel they can go to rootfinancialpartners.com for the website linked in are you active there or Twitter or any other places I go on spurts of being active on LinkedIn and then I stop I'll try to be more active. I'm on LinkedIn. Yes James and all sounds great. All right James thanks for being on the show congratulations on the amazing success and what I love about it is you're doing it for the right reasons and you're doing it well and you're taking care of people and you're putting the clients first and foremost so I just love what you're doing there so congratulations. Awesome thanks for having me Steve. Enjoy it. Thank you for listening to between now and success. Hey if you want to continue to hear these great episodes on the podcast I'd really appreciate it if you could do a couple of things. First tell all your friends and colleagues that you think can really benefit from listening to this podcast let them know about the show. You can even help them subscribe to the podcast by pulling out their phone pulling up their podcast app searching for this podcast between now in success or you could just search on my last name Sandusky S-A-N-D-U-S-K-I and look for between now in success and click the subscribe button so that would be a big help number one. Number two is to go to iTunes and leave a review so you can actually give this a five star review if you think it's that good which I'd appreciate and you can also write a review of the show. That helps other people find the podcast and helps us continue to grow so I appreciate all your help in that area appreciate you being a listener and if there's anything that I can do to help you please let me know you can visit us at balayadvisor.com thanks and we'll talk to you on the next episode.