201: Is Buying Leads Worth It? How This Advisor Turns Paid Leads into Paychecks with Guest Philip Snyder

Buying leads. Okay, when I say that, what is your initial reaction? So if you're like me, you may be bristled a little bit at the thought of it or boughed when I said it. I definitely scoffed at the concept of buying leads. I thought it was a total scam. I was a complete skeptic. You know, by and large, I always thought, gosh, the way to get leads is to get referrals, right? Super warm leads, do a great job, get your clients to share you. And then I met Phil, right? So Phil and I have been working for, I don't know, together for two years now, probably. And it's been a really successful strategy for him. And I'm still, you know, I'm definitely still in the camp that referrals are still the best, easiest route of leads resistance, right, your clients have already built that invisible bridge for you. The no like and trust factor is way further down the line. The leads are much, much warmer. However, when Phil and I started working together, I was shocked at the quality of the leads that he was bringing in through purchasing them. And I just assumed, right, if you're buying leads that anybody you do get, it's going to be tire kickers, it's going to be total garbage. But Phil was really bringing in consistently million plus dollar clients. And out in the official advisor community all the time, at least once every few months, I see a post where somebody asks like, hey, I'm thinking about buying some leads, has anyone had any experience with this? And the comments are an absolute blood bath, right? So I try to pop in and comment about, you know, hey, I've actually seen advisors have success with this. And I thought, you know what, we just need to do an episode on this, right? It keeps coming up in the community, which to me means it's something that there's advisers out there at least thinking about or considering. And I would have absolutely been in the No Way Jose camp until I met Phil. So I'm not saying that this is the absolute best way to get leads, but it's definitely a way that totally works. And you can't just go and blind, right? You have to definitely build an intentional process around this and have the right level of expectations. But I thought this might make for a really good podcast. Like one of the things I really appreciate about Phil is he is very much willing to discuss the good, bad, and the ugly and give sort of a full circle perspective when it comes to buying leads. So I don't typically post a lot of really unpopular opinions or, you know, crazy concepts on here, but I thought this one would definitely be worth exploring. So regardless of which side of the fence you're on, I'd love for you to take a listen because I think even if you don't have an interest in buying leads, there's still insight to be gained from how important nurturing leads is how having a set process, so whether they're cold leads, mediocre, lukewarm leads or super hot leads, right? You need a system or a process in order to move clients through your prospect to client system, right? So let's dive into this conversation about buying leads. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Okay, before we dive into the full conversation with Phil, this is your last reminder from me about getting on the wait list for the group coaching program. Registration starts for waitlisters July 1st. I know I cannot believe that's literally next week and it's almost July. And you get a discount if you are on the list. So it pays to be in the know. 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And the business that you are running instead of it running you, you know what dream business I'm talking about, right? One where you are not sacrificing revenue or success for work life balance, right? I totally believe that you can achieve both. And if you're new to the efficient advisor, welcome, I'm Libby Griewee. I started built and sold by age 37, a 100% referral only planning practice that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year. I'm here to help walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same and to help you take immediate action on the most important strategies for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business. We are about to transform your practice together. So move over exhaustion and get out of the way and advisor ADHD is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love. So hopefully, maybe buying leads might be part of that business strategy. Let's dive into this conversation with my client, the illustrious Phil Snyder. All right, Phil, I'm ex-refired up for this conversation. So there have been so many posts out in the efficient advisor community about buying leads. And it's interesting because every time someone posts something like, hey, I'm thinking about buying leads or doing smart acid or something along those lines, there are so many comments. And not all of them are very few of them, I should say are positive. And what I think is so interesting is I see all of this stuff about buying leads and then there is just this barrage of negativity around it. And every time I see it, I think of you because you have been so successful with purchased leads. And I always like want to jump into the conversation and I do and I'll say, well, yeah, but they're still in business and there's still people do actually experience success with this. So when you agreed to be willing to share kind of what I have learned about purchasing leads through working with you, I think this is going to be a really good conversation. And maybe one of those episodes that's kind of like one of those unpopular opinion ones, but one that will really, I think kind of maybe change the conversation around purchasing leads. So thank you so much for doing this. - Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to be here and share best practices and give a fair and balanced perspective of online leads. - Yeah, I mean, it's not perfect, right? It's not perfect, but there are some upsides. So I'm looking forward to getting into that. So why don't you share with listeners? I obviously know you from working together in all the details, but why don't you share just kind of a brief background of where you are in the world, what you do and what your business looks like? - Yeah, absolutely. So I've been in the business about 20 years and established Snyder asset management in 2016. Shortly after, I got my CSA designation and the primary client who I work with are people who I describe as a millionaire next door. So those are people who were tarred for their money, they're not high net worth, but they have load in the seven figures of investable assets and they're transitioning or in retirement. And what I really like about online leads in terms of the smart asset program is that I can get in front of those types of people immediately versus if you create a podcast, you have to market your podcast to people and get them to listen and then perhaps get them to subscribe to your email monthly campaign, for example, and then schedule an appointment from there. It even after you go through that marketing funnel, it's very possible that that client who booked the meeting is not a good fit for you. So what I really like about the online leads and like you said, it's not perfect, that we'll get into the pros and cons, is the fact that you can get access to these people who are in transitioning usually into retirement. They're unhappy with their current advisor or there was a life event like they inherited money or lost the spouse. - Yeah, okay. Okay, so why don't we back up to the very beginning? So when you were thinking about buying leads, I guess what, A, what triggered it for you and be like, what kind of research did you do? Did you just jump in both fields first and say like, let's just give this a try? Did you look at a bunch of different options, interview people? I know you're a pretty thorough guy. Tell us a little bit about how you got started and then how you landed on eventually smart asset, which is who you're using. - Well, you know, let's just share that we are not sponsored. We are like smart asset, does not know we are doing this. I don't want anyone to be like, it's like a specific angle or anything like that. - Right, right, exactly. So that's a great question. I think when you started with this, you tried a lot of different things. You know, you just, you just, you do your best to try different avenues and see basically what's next. And I tried a lot of things. of different marketing strategies, just like a lot of advisors, when they just start trying to figure it out. So when I started my business, I had an idea that I could get to a certain point, but in terms of getting past that certain point, I really didn't have a strategy or know how I was going to go about doing that. So I just tried the Smart S/ER program, just to kind of give it a shot. I paid for leads that were in the $250K and $1,000 range back in 2019. I paid for 50 or 60 leads, and my experience was that people were willing to talk, but they weren't willing to sign up. I didn't really get a lot of traction, but I basically stopped paying for leads after the 50 or 60 leads. I was like, "This is a waste. I'm gonna try something else." And then I went back to call those leads about five or six months later, and one client should be ended up coming on board, and I said, "Oh my God, there could be something here." So after that, I basically just continued paying for leads, and since then I've had enough access to justify continuing the program. - Yeah, well, and I think something, when we started working together, and you were sharing, right, as we're kind of doing our own little day together, if you will, like you were sharing kind of where your business is coming from. I think what I was surprised about was not just the number of leads that you've had success and closing, but the quality of them, right? So like you said originally, you set the range from 250 to a million. Is that still where you're at, or am I remembering like it's a million plus now? - I jumped up to a million plus, 'cause my feeling was that it's going to be difficult to acquire any client. So if I'm going to spend the same amount of time acquiring clients, I much rather have the, you know, the $1.5 million versus the $400, $500,000 client. So yes, I definitely moved up to the million dollar plus. - Yeah, and so I remember just being like, wait, wait, hold on, back up. So you're finding million plus, right? Or like which is for a lot of advisors listening, like the gold standard, right? Like everyone wants that client that has a million dollars of investible assets. So I just want to pause and kind of highlight that those people are out there actually looking for advisors and they're doing it online, which I think is really kind of amazing. So will you kind of set expectations? So let's talk about what does getting kind of signed up, what does buying leads look like? How many do you really? 'Cause I think maybe this is where we could kind of go with some of this conversation is what turns people off from buying leads is it feels like a lot of spinning wheels, a lot of, it's not inexpensive. So what does that actually look like for you, like from a volume perspective? How much effort is it? And then what are we talking about from like a closing ratio standpoint? - Yeah, I think there's a lot of misconception out there in terms of, you know, people think that they pay for 100 leads that you're gonna have 100 people that wanna talk to you and 100 good conversations and you should close 20 to 30 on them. And then, you know, that unfortunately, that's just not how it works or at least that's not what my experience is and my experience is that you pay for 100, the majority of people are not going to answer the phone, you know, they're not gonna be interested. My goal at the end of the day is around the dozen good conversations. And we can go through my process in a little bit if you like, but if we can get around 12 good conversations and two to three clients come on board, that puts you at a two or three percent closing rate. I think closer to three, maybe push it up to four percent. That's the goal, but it's not a program, in my opinion, where you're going to be closing 10, 15% of the leads. - So it's probably a nice compliment to an advisor's marketing or prospecting process that they already have in place. Like, I wanna be kind of clear that it's just one of many levers that you can pull and it can be time intensive. So obviously something you and I have worked on together is building out a process around it. Like how do we actually system a tie or how do we create a process around those leads to hopefully reduce the amount of time and effort going into them while ideally increasing the amount of, you know, actually closed like the percentage of closing. So yeah, sure if you would, like, what did it look like when you were first doing it? And then how is that kind of modified or changed over the year that you've seen more success with? - Well, I think working with you, you've really helped me focus on processes and system, system-atizing my business. And that's obviously by doing that, that's allowing me to purchase more leads basically and get more efficient. So, you know, in terms of now, do you want me to kind of get into my process? - Yeah, well, what did it look like in the beginning? So like when you first signed up and you started getting leads like immediately from Smart Asset and they're sending you names, like how did you do it in the beginning and what didn't work? And then, yeah, then share your process that you do now that does work. - Yeah, so I think at the beginning, it was just more about getting clients, getting clients statements, which it's probably similar, that part's similar to now, getting their statements, running a portfolio analysis, doing a demo of e-money, giving some information. I mean, in terms of like my sales background and just like, that's kind of the same, the type of questions I add, what I try to do through a conversation, I won't really say that's changed, but I think where you've helped me is more along the lines of, after the conversation, what happens? How do, what's the system for kind of moving the client through that sales process? And that's where I'd say that you're approaching has really been a benefit to me because after that call, I have an email that goes out a template, basically that kind of talks about, well, it's such expectations what we're going to do the following meeting. It has an attachment, the top eight questions that I receive from prospective clients, you help me create that. And then obviously just the email recaps, which I've been huge, a recap goes out the following day. So I think that that's the main difference, getting the email recaps out, I think, are huge because they basically show the prospect, hey, like this person's really listening to me, person if I come aboard, it's really going to care about me. I'm not just going to be a small fish in a big pond because he's really dialed in on all the details of my situation. - Yeah, and so, okay, so when smartness, it gives you lead, how many advisors get that name and number? - As far as they know, three. - Three, okay. Okay, so part of the, maybe the, I don't want to say issue, that's not the right word, but part of the concern that fiveers have, okay, like, so I'm paying for this lead and so are two potentially two other advisors. How am I going to stand out from the other guys that are giving these people a call? So when you get a name and number of, okay, let's say of the hundred leads, how many of you actually get to get on the phone with you? - So the way that it works is smartness that purchased this technology program called DevSales. And what immediately happens is their information that smartness that is pushed into DevSales, and then I get a phone call and hopefully I'm available. So if I'm available, I'm able to pick up the phone. If I'm not available, a series of text message and emails are sent through DevSales that I can customize throughout, you know, the following hours, days and weeks. So that's basically the idea behind that. Yeah. - Okay, so literally your phone will ring and that client is right there. Like while they're in the mood and they've been on the website and they've been typing in all of the things, and it actually literally rings. And if not, then you have, and I remember we kind of spent some time building up like a nurture sequence of things that is happening to them. So what percentage of clients would you say, you get on the phone right away and then how many fall into your nurture sequence and then you connect with them later? - In terms of people who I get on the phone right away, wow, I think that could be, that could be around 10%, it's possible. And then the people who I get on the phone later could be another, it could be another 15%, maybe 20%. But I think, you know, at the end of the day, you have conversations with maybe a third of the people, a quarter of the people, but you know, in terms of really like that solid, like in depth conversation, where you're like, you connect with the client and this is like a potential good fit. I think that probably drops it down to around a dozen of 15 cops. - Yeah, okay, so one of the comments that I have seen in the official advisor community when people kind of start these threads about buying leads is that, oh, all of these people, they're just tire kickers, they're just DIYers that are just looking for kind of free advice and yada, yada, yada. What, like, has that been your experience to a certain degree and look, what red flags do you look for? Like, so is there something you've identified? Like, okay, in these conversations, here's how I separate the cream from the milk. - If somebody wants to talk to me, I'm gonna talk to them, you know, because most of the people, when they felt the survey, they really do have a million dollar plus of a million restable assets. So if they are just here for information, I'm happy just honestly to give it to them. I don't even try to figure that out. And I'm happy, I'm happy to do it. I just think that's the cost that you run in this type of program because you don't want to sell anybody short. You don't want to weed them out. Maybe they are just looking for information, but then they decide, hey, I really like this person. This person could really help me. So I would never want to kind of go in that route in terms of closing the door on somebody. - So, okay, so they, so whether you talk to them or not, they fall into this kind of nurture sequence. And then you're bringing them into your ecosystem. And they're at least now aware. How many, how many would you say of the leads that you get? Like how many like go right away? Like yep, Phil, want to jump into your process, do the planning, do the thing. How many people kind of like linger and just check you out? for a little bit and sort of maybe circle around later. Now I know you have a follow up process, right, that you built so it's not just them, being 100% left with their own devices. But like, would an advisor, like as far as setting expectations, would an advisor expect like most of that stuff to happen up front? Or is there kind of like a tail end, like six months later, people start kind of really resonating and reaching it back out? Yeah, that's a good question. But my average client will come aboard two to three months after we start the process. Really, I even after we start the process, after they fill up the smart asset lead sheet, when I get the lead. So I do set expectations that I expect the prospective clients to make a decision after we follow a three step process, which basically is a discovery phone call that's gonna take between 20 and 40 minutes. We're gonna have a second meeting, which is a portfolio analysis. And we have time, the financial plan demo, and the third meeting could be a continuation of the financial plan demo or an investment behavior assessment. I mean, at that point, I've taken basically between those three meetings and email recaps have taken about three hours out of my time. So I think it's fair for any advisor to say, hey, these are my expectations. At this point, you have the information to make a decision, what would you like to do? Would you like to move forward, or would you like not to move forward? I do think the worst thing that you can get yourself in, and it happens to me, I think it will happen to everybody, but you try to minimize it, it's chasing people around. That's not a good use of your time. You don't wanna, for weeks on end, try to track somebody down, and that's obviously not productive. So you do wanna set a good, good, good, good, a good, a good process, setting a follow-up calls. You wanna think about it, no problem. Let's schedule a call next week to regroup, and I can't answer any of your questions. - Yeah, and so at this point, I'm trying to think if I'm an advisor listening, at this point, you have not charged them any type of planning fee, you have just been very forthright. Here's the information, I'm giving you high level. You're not spending 30 hours preparing a really in-depth financial plan. How much time or energy would you say is invested in that three step process from your side? - I would say it's a lot. You can be efficient and use your great techniques, but it's going to be very, very time consuming, in my opinion. And like I said, it is going to take a few hours for each perspective client, and you speak to 12, that's 36 hours, and you very well may sign up two or three, or maybe zero. I mean, that happens to me as well. And we can get into the fact that you could paper 100 leads and not have a client come aboard, and how mentally straighting and frustrating that can be. And that's when it gets really hard, but it is a fairly time consuming endeavor. I'm not spending dozens of hours with perspective clients. I'm not going to create a plan for them until they come aboard, but I will show them a John and Jane Doe plan on any money or a guard real report on income lab, or maybe something on whole list of plan. I usually don't go that deep into the weeds, but John and Jane Doe most likely, the only personalized service that I would typically offer is a portfolio analysis. And then if we get to the investment behavior assessment through a company called Atlas Point, which basically tells me how they think it feel about money, highlights their pros, their weaknesses and strengths, really points out their biases. People love it, prospective clients really enjoy going through that, they take it spun. And that's, I guess, more customized. So just really the portfolio analysis in Atlas Point is more customized, yeah. - So overall, it's a pretty, like, I don't use the word generic, 'cause I feel like that makes it sound terrible, but it's a pretty like stand, that, hello, a standardize, that would probably be the better word. It's a pretty standardized process where most of it is templated, that leaves a little room for customization. So, okay, so what do you think is sort of the, the motive, like, so, right, so growing up in this industry, I would have always said, oh no, a million plus client, you're definitely gonna get them through a referral. They're not just gonna find you online and go to your website and be like, oh, this guy's really great, we should consider working with him. So obviously, that would, like, you have debunked that for me, right? In finding these really high net worth clients, I mean, we're saying starting at a million, right? What would you say is kind of the average investible asset that you're receiving from your leads? Yeah, I mean, I think you're gonna get some two, some three, even in the occasional four. So I think that the average, my experience has been good. If you pay for a million dollar plus leads, that they're true there were, that they have a million dollar plus. So if you go with the average, you're looking at a 1.5 to 1.7, I would say. Okay, and so what do you think motivates these people to use an advisor that they found, that they were referred to through smart asset? Yeah, it really comes, I would say my experience has come down to three things, 95% of the time. One is that there was a life event. A lot of times they've lost their spouse and their spouse handled the investments. The second time is they're unhappy with their advisor. What I found is that typically happens with a robot advisor or they're working with a retail branch, online, like a fidelity retail branch. And they really want more comprehensive services. They're not talking to their retail branch of advisor. Is a retail branch gonna really look at their tax services? Are they gonna refer them to a long-term care specialist if they need that? Are they really gonna go in that extra mile? And we all know that that's not the case. That's why independent advisors kind of exist, who they can fill that gap. And then the third thing is transitioning to retirement, basically. And they haven't really done any planning. They've done a great job saving the 401K. And they need an advisor to really get them through their retirement years. Yeah, okay. So you mentioned that you for like a hundred leads that you pay for, that you end up talking to maybe 10 to 15 of them and maybe closing two to three of them. So like how do you in your mind, right? Like so an advisor listening who's like, wow, that feels really low. Where I mean, that's just a maybe not, right? Like yeah, it feels really low. So how do you kind of view success for yourself or what's kind of the mental gymnastics that you do that you're like, okay, if I do this and I'm like, here's how I justify the effort and the cost. Like here's why I keep doing this because it's successful for me, but like, so how do you kind of define success? Cause I know in the couple of years that we've been working together, we've had moments, right? Where it's like, do I keep doing this? Do I not keep doing this? Like there's a lot of like emotional tie to a low close ratio. So talk to us through a little bit. Why you keep going and how you sort of use success with it? - Yeah, so I'm like, it is tough. And I think, you know, when we have those conversations, it's typically when the leads aren't closing and I, you know, very frustrated fights. Like I said, going through these three hour processes for each perspective, finding nobody coming aboard and that can be, it's not even the money in terms of the investment. It's more about just emotionally kind of draining, hearing know a lot and knowing that, you know, you could speak, you could help somebody. And they're not, you know, they just can't make a decision or maybe they're going with somebody else, whatever it may be. You know how it is. It was easy, everybody would do it. And you know, it's just part of, part of in my opinion, the way it kind of has to be. But the way that I view success is just if it's a profitable endeavor, you know, I mean, like last year, I'll be giving an example. Last year was not a good year, you know, close to, two people signed up at up 150. Most people would say, "Fill, that's really bad." But if you actually look at it, I paid around $40,000 for leads, two million and a 1.3 million came aboard. I charge a little over 1%, that's $35,000. So that cost me around 1.1, maybe a little more, times revenue. Now, if I go and I purchase those leads from another advisor, in my mind, $35,000, I'm paying three times revenue, I'm paying over $100,000 for those clients. So that's how I can kind of justify it from an investor perspective. But like I said, I think it is difficult when, you know, you are paying for dozens of leads and not, and I have the success, which is why it is important just to kind of stick with it and just refine your process, stick to your process and have confidence that, you know, it's gonna work at some point. - Yeah, I like how you kind of keep mentioning, like you really do need to build a process around it so that you can, you know, stand out from the competition and have like this set, like here's how I do it. So I don't get emotionally tied to all of this or I'm not constantly chasing 'cause there's nothing worse than being in that desperation chasing feeling. So, and I think it's really helpful for people to know too, 'cause I'm not sure, you know, what Smart Asset or another company would tell you coming into it as far as like, oh, it's super easy and people just like show up and you're just making money, like you're printing money in your back office or anything like that. I think it's really, really helpful for you to kind of share how it is a little exhausting. It is a little. To make that happen. money back and then some and I like how you framed it too in relationship to buying a business. Yes, yeah. Yeah, okay, so I love that. So okay, so if I am an advisor and I'm thinking about doing this, how long would you say I need to commit? Yeah, so I talked to actually another advisor a few weeks ago and said, oh, I tried to say that I pay for 60 leads and two people almost signed up and I just stopped and I said, well, you're going to have to pay for a lot more than 60 leads. You know, I mean, you can easily get several bad batches of leads. So, you know, for me, I was able to close one out of the 60 that I paid for, but I do think you need to pay for more than 60. I do think they, you know, for to give it a fair shot, you should really pay for 150, maybe a couple hundred and if the million dollar plus leads concern you because that those can be a little pricey, you can always drop down to 250 or they even have leads below 250k. I think they have a program that's 2550k to 250k. So you could always kind of experiment with with that bracket as well. Yeah, and I think it's interesting to kind of just talk about this because I I always just appreciate how transparent you are when we talk because like I always kind of joke like sometimes it just depends if like what is like the moon is in Jupiter or something because sometimes it feels like there's this huge low right where there's no action coming from it. And then all of a sudden the next time you're like, I don't know, I think I might stop. And then the next time I talk to you, you're like, oh no, I'm all in. I just got like three people and I close like these huge cases. And so I think it's it is kind of important to like, I don't know if it's cyclical or what or it's just like where you're at mentally or you're kind of in that in that headspace, but it is something that you have to give time and energy towards. It's not going to be like you said, if it were easy, everybody would be doing it. So it really does take intention. It does take building out a process. It does take being really thoughtful about how you approach that and and thinking through that these leads might need a slightly different process than a referral or a lead that you generate through a webinar or you know an in-person workshop or something like that. So it might need its own because there are people who are finding you online and are looking perhaps for a more tech-based solution or something along those lines. So anything else that you think would be an important lesson that you've learned that like for any advisor who would just want to even be exploring the pain lead world. Anything else that you think would be helpful for them to know. I think people just have to give it a shot and it's just about expectations. Like you said, this isn't a warm referral. You're not going to convert you know 20% of these leads. So it really comes out to expectations and then just creating a process and then just improve constantly improving on that process and evaluating and re-eating that process and that's something you know we've always talked about giving them you know the rate amount of information but not too much information. But that's I think it's not going to be for everybody's business because some people can acquire clients in other ways. Some people like them that work with accountants and attorneys. Some people have a great podcast or a great YouTube channel but this is just one way that you know if you want to get started I think it's one way to build a book of a business. You know if you're if you have a lean team you're probably not going to it is time consuming so you know you may not acquire you know dozens of clients a year but if you have a lean team you also don't have a lot of expenses and maybe acquiring a handful of clients is a million dollar plus clients is a good is a good option for you. Yeah well it's interesting I can remember like years and years and years ago so this is going to be like a random sidebar here but I remember reading this article and it was about like it was like you know I can't remember even what magazine is in but it was an advisor magazine and this was back when there were magazines so that's how long ago this it was okay so I said like a few years ago it's more like a decade plus ago but and I remember the picture of the article it was this guy and it's like really fancy suit in front of a Lamborghini and I was reading it and it was talking about like how when he was starting his business he would only bring on clients that had five million dollars or more. And I was like who does this guy think he is? No no no you need to like sell term insurance to all the people and baby policies and roll over 10,000 like nope absolutely not you need to do the work and hustle and all of the things right and by the end of this article I was like okay I've changed my mind on Lamborghini guy you know it was talking about how like he's like yeah well all of my friends were out there acquiring like 300 accounts that were all super small that equated to five million dollars and I just got one and I had one client to worry about like and it sounds like and he kind of even acknowledged like it sounds really like hoity-toity of me right to be like well no I only work because like I only needed one client I worked just as hard that whole year but then I only got one and I only had to manage that one versus the rest of them now have these 300 accounts that they have to somehow manage and deal with and all of the service and crap that comes along with that and then how do I deal with them in the future as I work up market and I was kind of like okay maybe Lamborghini guy is actually kind of onto something that you can actually hold a line and say I have this standard and that it's okay to only close a couple of those versus accepting a whole bunch of you know so like I kind of go back and forth on it right because there's a piece of me it's like that just seems like a lot to call or unrealistic or you know you have to do all that like grunt work stuff in order to be able to do it but you really you really actually don't right and I think it's from practitioner perspective if you can become an expert with high-nourished people in terms of a state planning tax planning but why not just market yourself as somebody who works with you know family and or ten million dollar plus clients sure you could you could absolutely do that obviously you know I'm a ball to more and I like working with people you know with more like low mid-7 figures I think there's more of those types of people out there who need help who've done a good job saving so that's kind of what I'm focused on but yeah I guess you could just kind of open a business and work with ten million dollar plus clients if you want to. Right we say that we're both like you can't see us but we're both laughing because it just feels like well that's ridiculous you can't just put your shingle out there and be like this is what I do but that same kind of concept with the leads right it feels like okay I'm closing this small percentage I have to imagine that this guy coming out me like I only work with five million plus clients I'm brand new to the business he probably had to talk to you and I was talking about how he hung out at the country clubs and how he spent all this money joining like six country clubs and doing his thing so he probably had to put a lot of work and effort into getting that first five million dollar client but then you know and as you've experienced right once you have those people and they're in your fold and your client experience is high and your customer service model is strong that you will start to replicate them and receive it's easier as you build up processes to support that ideal client avatar that you actually are shooting for so. Absolutely yeah I think you definitely get better from a practitioner standpoint because you're just getting better working with those clients and and you know you know what they're looking for you know what those clients need from a tech planning perspective and investment perspective and you just get you become a better practitioner and I'm sure that that flows into my sales process in terms of becoming coming off more confident yeah yeah I just remember reading that article being like who's this clown thank he is and I was like by the end I was like no I'm the clown well good well thank you so much for your time I'm definitely going to link the smart asset which is the company that you use and in fact really great success with I will definitely link that in the show notes and in all the other places wherever this ends up I'll let the people do their magic and make that link appear for them as you know of course I always like to ask people before they go what are so as a solo pernuer so especially for you like I just like to share it's you and your wife like you guys a small but mighty team and operating efficiently is obviously really really important so what are two things that you have sort of implemented inside of your business as a business owner that have really helped you guys be able to deliver at such a high level with minimal effort the meeting recap so I think I've been really important they do have to be customized but but that that has been very helpful in terms of just studying those out-of-clients after meetings and it's a great way just to stay organized because once you log that email in your CRM and you have your next meeting you can just reference those emails and those bullet points which has been fantastic and then I would say from macro perspective the surge meetings have been really helpful you know I know that the match that Matt Jarvis recommends but in terms of you know really systematres system ties in your calendar where you have you know search meetings semi-annually and then your own reviews that's six months and throughout the other six months of course you still speak against servicing appliance but that gives me the opportunity to pay for smart-ass that leads and try to grow my business a little more during those six months and nice thing about smart-asset is you can turn off leads you know during your search meeting period which is also a benefit yeah yeah so you're not having to try to have all those conversations and stuff while you're running five billion that that would be tough doing the search readings and getting the end bound full calls yeah that would be difficult thank you yeah right okay so I'm glad you called that out yeah that you can kind of wax and wane depending on what you've got going on in your world. So, awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. I know somebody listening to this will be this will be the thing that clicked for them or maybe, you know, changed their opinion when it comes to what buying leads looks like, right? Like maybe it's not such a scam or or all the negative energy around it could potentially just become, you know, coming from people who didn't give it enough time, didn't build out a process, didn't have really good parameters and didn't really, you know, truly give it a best effort or come in with realistic expectations. Maybe that's even where like closing one to two percent feels like a failure to somebody but reframing it as nope. This is way cheaper than buying a business or, you know, the money that I can make back on this is is tenfold if I do a great job surfacing this clients for the next decade or so. So, we're way more efficient than then as focusing on SEO or trying to create a YouTube channel, you know, experiment with a YouTube channel. It was fun. I learned a lot but I learned a lot. A lot of work. It's a lot of work. I think it's a long haul. So, our asset leads, you know, yes, you're not going to talk to the majority of people, but the ones that you do talk to you get it, you get in touch with them pretty quickly. So, that's nice. Awesome. I appreciate your generosity in sharing this and I'm always so grateful because I feel like when I talk to advisors that I coach, like I get so much good information and I hate asking like, hey, can you give more of your, can you just donate your time to helping other advisors? But this is one that just keeps crapping app and every time we talk I'm always like amazed at the results that you're getting from it. So, thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it. Yeah, happy to do it. Thanks for having me. Okay, I hope you found this conversation interesting, right? It's something for me as an advisor, you know, I ran my practice for over 16 years and it was just something that never really even crossed my mind. Like, I was always a little curious about it and I knew other advisors who were buying leads from maybe like the Dame Framese program and, you know, having kind of mixed results or whatever. And I thought it was really interesting because there aren't a lot of advisors who are sharing success story sides of this, right? Like I mentioned in the intro, right? We always kind of see the negative side and people are curious because it's out there, right? How are all of these companies existing and still in business and, you know, still offering these services if it didn't work, but at the same time we haven't heard a lot of success stories around it. So for me, the big takeaways are this, right? One, you have to come in it with the right expectations. You have to know that it is going to be a fair amount of effort and a fair amount of work with a much lower conversion ratio than maybe you are typically used to, right? So it's one of many levers in your marketing strategy. I wouldn't put all of my eggs in the lead buying basket. Like Phil mentioned, there are definitely times where all of a sudden he's closing tons and tons of leads and the leads are really, really high quality. And then there's other periods of time where it's like, so it cannot be the only lever that you're pulling. The second thing I heard in this, right, is you have to build a process around it. And that's really where Phil and I spent a lot of time working together was building out a special process for these types of leads. Like he mentioned in that episode, it has to be a little bit shorter, has to be a little bit more efficient, has to be kind of a dialed in more templated, not so customized process in order to win these clients quickly because he is in competition potentially with other advisors. And I think it's really interesting because Phil has shared, you know, we've worked on a lot of stuff where, okay, well, what do I do? Like let's go into it knowing that they're potentially interviewing other advisors and embrace that and actually address that, right? Like bring the elephant into the room. Let's build that into your process so we can talk about what makes you different and what they might experience it be experiencing with other advisors and maybe giving them some information of, hey, here's things you should be asking or things. You should be considering like we recognize like you're a smart person. You're going to do your homework and here's a way that you can address the other, you know, concerns that you might have around them interviewing other advisors. So you need to set expectations for yourself. You need to build a process and I like that Phil shared that he suggests paying for 150 leads and he threw out some pricing there and I know the million dollar leads are much, much more expensive than the $250,000 leads. So you'd probably need to do a little research and figure it out. But I think what's tough and maybe where the lead buying gets a bad rap. Phil and I kind of talked about this after we were done recording is that the advisors who have the time that are a little bit earlier in their careers and who am I joking like you never have the time, right? But earlier in their careers, that's a $40,000 in a year. That's a big ass. That's a big expense and advisors who are so far down the line where they're receiving tons of referrals and they don't, while they have the money to do it, they don't really have the need. So it's sort of a unique advisor that's somewhere in the middle and don't let that $40,000 a year number scare you because you can certainly go at whatever pace makes the most sense for you. So those would be some of the takeaways that I would have from this episode and I would love to know your thoughts. Good, bad, ugly. I want to hear everybody's experiences because this is just like I said, one of many that I wanted to share some perspective from an advisor who's had success in this category. So I'd love to hear from you more out in the efficient advisor community over on Facebook. And as you know, I hang out over on LinkedIn. Feel free to connect with me there, follow or DM me. And again, don't forget this is the last reminder for the systems to scale group coaching program, wait list offer that will come out on July 1st. So this is the last week you can get on the wait list and get the $500 discount. Thanks so much and I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week.