Saying Goodbye: What 60 Episodes Taught Us About Marketing

Hey, it's Kendra and Taylor and we're here to make advisor marketing simple. Welcome to advisor marketing made simple. Today we have a big update to share. This is going to be the last episode of the show. Taylor, why don't you give everyone a little bit of an update? Yeah, it's, uh, no, not not the news, not our favorite news to be sharing, but, um, you know, without a lot of fun with this show. I guess for just a little bit of context, um, when we started this show together, uh, I brought this idea to Kendra. Kendra, you know, asked some really great questions that beginning before committing to doing it. And one of the things that she asked me that, um, that I'll always remember, we'll talk a little bit more about it later with some of our takeaways was, you know, how many episodes do you want to commit to here? Because, you know, we both have, have busy lives and enjoy different creative projects. And, um, you know, she probably knows that I get distracted from time to time. So, like, you know, really, like, how many, how many episodes are we going to commit to doing here? And since we didn't really know what the show is going to look like and how it's going to be received, we said, we will commit to 52 episodes. We'll commit to an entire year, you know, one episode per week of doing this show. And at that point, we will, you know, reevaluate and determine where we want to take things from here. And I just thought it was a really great question to ask. It sounds like a, a no brainer, but again, we'll talk more about, you know, I think this is where a lot of us can be challenged with starting new things is not being realistic about, you know, what it might involve and what the future, what our future plans might, you know, do to, to our plans. So, Kendra, when you first asked me that question, we both said we will commit to 52 episodes. I just thought it was just so thoughtful and intentional. And we have stayed true to that commitment. And I've produced 52 episodes and, you know, in reality here, just things have changed. Our priorities have shifted. And for me, primarily, my firm really needs me more than ever these days. We're growing a lot. And my role has changed significantly in my firm in ways that I couldn't quite imagine and it requires a lot more of my time and attention. And I'm just trying to be more intentional about where I'm spending my time. And so, yeah, I guess just in short, just, you know, priorities for both of us. I'll speak for myself, but I've shifted and it's really hard to stop doing something that we love so much. I have so much fun doing this show with you, Kendra. I've learned so much and I've loved meeting so many advisors and these conversations are really energizing for me. But again, like we have to take a hard look at our activities and things that we're doing and ensuring that it is the highest and best use of our time. And, yeah, things, you know, certainly just changed quickly in our lives and unpredictable ways sometimes. And when, you know, Kendra, I brought this show to you, this idea to you and we talked about it. Like, I couldn't have predicted where I was going to be a year from them. And so, yeah, again, not easy news to share, but we have some really, really great things to share today. Some common threads and themes that we've pulled out of all these episodes that we've done, all these advisors that we've spoken to, some great learning lessons to share as well. But maybe before we get there, Kendra, you know, what else do you want to share about kind of the conclusion of this show? Yeah, I think for both of us, it was a really hard decision to make. I don't think either of us saw ourselves here a year in, particularly because the show has been so well received. And we've had so many advisors give us amazing feedback. And yeah, I mean, my, you know, we keyed this decision as a mutual agreement. And from, from my side, really, really similar to yours actually is that my business has grown a lot. My clients have grown a lot. And what they need for me has evolved. I work with a lot of really innovative firms. They're doing really good work and they just need more for me. And also, you know, I look at, you know, just like you do, like my team and my clients, like there's a lot of me that they need. And it's really important to bring my A game to that. And so just a lot has evolved over the last year for myself, just in my business alone. And then also some other creative projects that I'm really, really excited about. I've been working on a book for about three, three or four months. Really made a lot of progress there primarily just because there's so many advisors I want to help. And I'm not going to be able to help them all individually. And so just want to put something together for them in that regard. And I always ask myself like, what is that next big thing that I'm doing that will make myself proud? And for whatever reason, I have no idea why I need to, I feel the compelled to even write a book. It sounds like the worst idea on earth. You know, I don't know when I'm going to have time to do that. But for some reason, I just feel pooled to do it. And so in the same way that, you know, you were kind of looking at your priorities. I was looking at mine. And I'm really excited about the body of work that we created here. And I hope with some of the things we share today, I think if I sure are going to get some really, really amazing takeaways. And I think, you know, really, it's a very similar reason for both of us. And we're excited for what we've built and, you know, what's kind of coming next for both of us. Yeah. And to tease a little bit of what we're going to share later, Kendra, tracked every single bit of time that we have spent on this show. And the numbers are astonishing. So for those who think that, you know, all we do is just, you know, turn on a microphone and hit record. That is not the reality of hosting and publishing a podcast for, you know, 52 straight weeks. So we'll certainly share a little bit or Kendra. We'll certainly share a little bit of the behind the scenes. What really goes into producing a show like this? Because it really is a big part of making this decision to say, look, look at the time that we're spending. And is this the highest investment use of our time at the moment? Have our priorities shifted? You're sure we'd be doing something different with that time. So just teasing that a little bit. But Kendra, excited for your book, you're upcoming book that you've officially announced here on the show. Before we get to some of the, the kind of key takeaways and common threads and themes and things we want to, you know, leave our listeners with. I know you've got some great updates to share on some prior guests of joining us on the show that had some tremendous success since our conversation. Yeah. So behind the scenes, I regularly have a lot of conversations with advisors, some of which that have come on the show, others in our industry. To me, the craft of advisor marketing is my obsession. So I really try to stay in touch and kind of tuned into what's happening. And along the way, I've stayed in touch with a few of our guests. So so the first one I want to give you guys a quick update on is Thomas Cook. He came on around episode 23. His episode was called How to focus, how to focus marketing when you're split between two niches. Now, this was in February of this year. And really the big question that Thomas wanted us to help him answer was where should I focus my marketing efforts to grow my firm more effectively. Now, for those of you who may not have listened this episode, I'm going to give you a couple of just kind of high level bullet points on what his issues were, our recommendations, and then we're going to share some of his results. So for Thomas, when he came on the show Taylor, I don't know if you remember that episode, but he was really just number one doing too many activities. He was doing pickle ball events in his community. He was doing some talks at his local library. And he had a YouTube channel that actually gotten some pretty good traction. Now, right away, Taylor and I zoned in on a big issue, which is that for his YouTube channel, where she'd already gotten some considerable traction, he had two different ideal client types. So he was targeting young professionals with just general financial education in then the retirement niche. And Taylor, there was a moment actually and Thomas's episode, I don't know if you remember this, but you were pushing him and you said, you know, how long do you have before you need this marketing to work? Like, what is, you know, if you don't grow in two years, what happens? And I will never forget this moment because you kept pushing him, you kept pushing him and you just wanted to find that urgency. And I remember when he said, if I don't grow this business within two years, I will have to sell my house. Do you remember that moment when he said that? I like literally my jaw hit the floor. I couldn't, I mean, it was like, it was such a vulnerable moment because I think sometimes when we think about marketing, we forget that it really truly impacts the people we care about. It's not just our family, but our teams, you know, the people that are surrounded by that, if you don't stay in business, you don't have the ability to help people. And so I just remember that moment really vividly when you, when you asked him that, and he said, he had to sell his house. Do you remember that? Yeah, I do. I mean, it is a question, I probably asked more than than once on the show. And by the way, I did not physically push Thomas over and over and over again. Okay. I'm sorry, you're really, you're really, you're really curious in like what the tradeoffs were. I think you really just wanted to find like how important this was to him. Well, yeah, I just think that it's really important to be honest with ourselves, especially in the early days of growing our business. You know, two years might sound like a long time or three. I got three years to grow my business. And you wake up at three years and you have not achieved what you need to achieve. And you're making some really hard decisions. And I guess for it's worth it. This actually goes back a long time, maybe like 10, 15 years ago, really short, sorry, we'll move on. But in an advisor friend of mine, I was more of a mentor to him, I guess, at that time. And his business was not growing like it should be. And his wife ended up leaving him as a result because he was spending all the time and money on his business and it didn't achieve what it was supposed to achieve. Now, I'm sure there's other things going on. But like, there's just like forever inked in my mind that like, this is not a joke. This is, this is a business. Our business feeds our family. And so I think we should have to be really honest with ourselves about our goals and being really clear with them. Because it does impact and influence a lot of these marketing decisions. Whether it might be to just stop doing something or get more focused on one thing that's working like in Thomas's case. And one of my favorite things about Thomas as an advisor is I think he has the heart that so many advisors do which he has the heart of the helper and so many advisors come on the show and they want to help everyone and we totally get you know this is our industry is a helping profession but we had to get really clear and we had to help him really stabilize his business first so here's a couple of recommendations that we gave Thomas back in February we said number one you have to stop creating content for two different types of clients at that point his most profitable client was his pre retardary market and we also said go all in on YouTube he was doing some really good work there and just pause everything else just you know set it to the side let's get really serious about YouTube and number three really we just have focused on stabilizing your business income first later you can come back and you can revisit some of these really important impact goals that you have now the results I actually had a conversation with Thomas a few weeks ago at xypn and I walked up to him and I said hey Thomas how's it going how's your marketing and he said actually it's insane you won't believe what happened so since we had a conversation with him he did go all in on youtube he hired a coach before his videos were getting about 150 to maybe 2000 views but he was driving no new clients so last month he told me he closed 10 new clients and he got 60 prospects from one video that blew up now his average videos are getting around you know 500 to 1000 views like baseline some of them yes some outlier videos getting 100,000 150,000 views it's kind of nutty to see some of the visibility that he's getting on youtube so really it was just a couple small lovers that we helped him see and pull that made massive impact for his business also a couple of things that he shared with me too just because I think it's really easy to share all the the pros and the exciting things now he's all focused on improving the back end of the business improving his qualification process some of the back end systems and also I recommended for him he actually needs to start a wait list because he has swapped so if you're an advisor who's marketing is starting to work start a wait list so that you can serve the new clients coming on board in an incredible fashion and you can start laying up clients a little further out so that was something I think might help him kind of smooth out this you know big bump of new clients but it was just really incredible to hear and on top of that I got to meet his family and his kids they were just ridiculously cute and it was just like really cool moment for me personally just because I was like these the people that he would have to like move out of his house you know like I just had this moment right I remember him on the show and I was like oh his family so sweet and so kind and just like it's a really cool like full circle moment does to see that happen I think like when you say all that out loud it sounds so simple like you know Thomas came on the show he had some challenges we told him what to zone in on and like he went and did it and he had success with it but I can't tell you how difficult it is to refocus to again set things to the side that you've been doing and take action and do something really challenging and difficult and own it and be consistent with it to be able to read those benefits like that is really really challenging I talked to a lot of advisors try to help a lot of advisors with their marketing and I rarely rarely see people take action like Thomas did so I just want to want to make sure to emphasize and congratulate Thomas for not only again coming to the show and being vulnerable but walking away with tangible action items and following through on them and now seeing those results because taking action is easy doing hard stuff taking action is not easy doing hard stuff is really challenging and so just well done all around and it's funny one last thing here and I'll show the next case study that we have which is when we were actually working on titling the show one of the title options was advisor marketing made easy and I scratched that from the list because I realized that even if we make it simple it will it will not be easy and so a lot of times you know you hear advisors say oh you know that's so simple and then in my head the next thing I always want to say is like that doesn't mean it's easy so I've always kind of I've always kind of considered that with the show title is yes we make it simple but that doesn't mean it's easy so let's talk about our next advisor guest that I want to give you an update on this is actually Joe Marshall now Joe came on the show on episode 10 and Taylor what advisors may not know listing is at this point there was no name for the show so Joe didn't even quite know what he was signing up for at this point he was like one of the OG guests and his show episode is called how to turn LinkedIn's success into client growth now his ideal client is tech professionals employed at the time at ProCore which is a popular tech company in his area in California and really he had one big question for us which is what else should I be doing to grow you know beyond LinkedIn to grow my firm so his issues when we took a look we you know swung open the doors of this firm number one if he felt that his entire strategy was tied up in LinkedIn and that felt a little bit risky he was getting some good inbound leaves like 10 to 15 per month but they were not qualified and then also like most of us he had the desire to do too much so he was doing a little bit of SEO a little bit of webinars and you know just a few other platforms now when I often joke when an advisor tells me this I know what they're going to tell me next which is it's not working very well and so Joe was kind of in that realm now we get Joe a couple of different recommendations number one we said double down on LinkedIn focus where he was already winning obsess over mastering that platform and improve his content quality number two he needed to really optimize his LinkedIn assets so his profile so his banner his featured section his about section all those different pieces he really needed to make sure that was all rowing the same directions speaking to his ideal client things like that and then third because he was speaking to unqualified clients we said you need to refine your call booking process using conditional logic that way you can screen out unqualified prospects and save himself some time so we had a couple good recommendations for Joe before he took some of these action items he was posting about three to five times a week he was getting about a thousand to 2500 impressions his prospects are very mixed and then his close rate was about 20% on his calls now last week I had an in-depth conversation with Joe to find out where he's at now and here's what he shared number one he doubled down on LinkedIn I see a theme between Joe and Thomas he doubled down in the last you know 12 months he was on the show last October so he's been rocking and rolling over our LinkedIn he opened up his ideal client just a little bit to tech professionals we can always talk a little more about that and he also bought a school course called becoming unforgettable writing story driven content that converts on LinkedIn it's like $50 a month out of doing that he then the biggest two levers he pulled was he optimized and improved his profile so everything I just mentioned around his banner image his headline all those pieces and then number two he started improving the structure of his posts now for anybody listening if you heard the conversation we had recently with Eric Rodriguez about fixing his YouTube channel we talked a lot about content packaging we talked about this on YouTube but I think it is really happens across all these platforms so for LinkedIn you have to really have a good hook you have to use good specificity and really story driven content so the outcome is his impressions are much much higher some of his case studies are hitting like 350 thousand views it's pretty nutty and he's booked out for a month now with prospect calls and because his form he can see like their income their assets they're very very qualified and his close rate is up to 50 to 75% on these calls and then in addition to that he's now growing about 40 email subscribers per month through LinkedIn where is he for like virtually nothing it's it's pretty impressive again like it all sounds so simple but it would have been so easy and probably a lot more fun for Joe to ignore us and go and like start an Instagram channel and start messing around with Instagram or go film some TikTok videos or just try something different like he had this itch to just do something else to do something more he thought more was better and we're like dude there's this thing right in front of you that that could be working a lot better if you gave it the time and attention that it needs so again instead of getting distracted by these shiny objects and you know chasing these other ideas like he took guard vice and he actually doubled triple down on LinkedIn you know invested real money and real time into improving his profile and improving how he approached LinkedIn and he's having awesome success the other thing that jumps out to me too is you know niches always come up in our conversation with advisors and it really really challenging for advisors to own a hyper specific niche and Joe was trying to do that but kind of that challenge of maybe to to niche down and the same thing that he's doing for pro core employees he could probably do the same thing for employees of five other tech companies so broadening that niche a little bit certainly doesn't you know prevent him from attracting pro core employees and has opened the door to other great high quality prospects so I think there's a great case study I'm just broadening slightly with your niche in order to attract more more people that you can help to your firm yeah and Taylor I don't know what data you've seen on this I did some recent research about what is a viable audience size for niche and the data that I saw was that it's around 10,000 people and if you're conservative out of 10,000 people you know you close a small percentage of that, say a hundred coins. So when I talked to Joe, he said like that pro core niche was around 2000, so it was just like a little bit too small. And so again, he said he can still work with that pro core. But I think that data, those numbers are just kind of helpful to keep in mind. You need to write size and niche and make sure there's enough people. I think most of the time, advisors aren't going deep enough. But occasionally they can get a little too narrow and that's something to just kind of keep in mind. A couple of just speed bugs along the way, Joe told me that, you know, because I don't want to just share the awesome, I want to share the challenging as well. He said he still spends a little too much time occasionally with some unqualified prospects and he still needs to create that form logic. Come on, Joe. Come on, man. And also, he said he's been testing and improving his sales process too. So once he got that top of funnel, that visibility and the trust in the middle of funnel really working well, he really started working on his sales process too. So he walked me through his sales process and there was something I actually really liked that he showed me. He said he simplified how he explains what he finds to kind of building the financial plan. And there was something he said that I really liked in the financial plan process when he's showing it to the client. He'll say, here's what we see. And then he gives them the examples. And then the follow up is, this is what it means for you and showing like how that applies. And he said it kind of baffled him because he felt like he was just like oversimplifying. And he said, when he explains it, you know, here's what we see about your, you know, Roth conversions. And here's what it means in relation to your plan or goals. He's like something about that click. So I really like that example of how he's kind of improving his sales process as he goes along as well. Yeah. Very, very cool. Ken, I appreciate you touching base with these advisors and collecting these updates from them. I think it's really cool to see the evolution. And I'm sure there's a lot of other advisors who have been on the show at the bad equals success to these two advisors. So nothing against you guys, but really great to see the success that the Joe and Thomas have had. Very cool. Yeah. And so, you know, what I think I'd love to talk about a little bit next Taylor is, you know, we've had conversations with most 60 advisors. You know, what are some of the common threads, common themes that you've seen come up along the way? Yeah. There's certainly been a lot. But yeah, I'm reflecting back on the 60ish episodes that we've, we've published. There's kind of three things that jumped out to me and just, I guess, three things that I'm reminding myself of, three things that I think are really important to keep in mind is, you know, we all plow forward with our marketing. The first is that owning and clearly articulating who our ideal client is as an advisor in less than 10 seconds is extremely challenging. And if you can nail this down, if you can spend some time in the early years, early months, early days of your market, if you can nail this down, everything becomes so much easier. So many challenges that we have in marketing as advisors is often a result of, we don't know exactly who we're targeting or we're targeting too many people with all sorts of different challenges and pain points. So just one of the common threads and themes. And again, like I'm including myself and you guys, it's just really challenging to own and clearly articulate who our ideal client is in less than 10 seconds. So just a common threat or even just a key takeaway to take note of is if you are struggling with your marketing, maybe go back to who might train to reach and one of those, you know, three to five pain points that I can help them solve. The second and Kendra, I'm kind of stealing this from you because you really hit on this in a lot of our episodes and that is better words, beat better visuals. Almost every time we were talking to an advisor and you or I brought up something about their website, their next response was like, oh, yeah, I know I need to rebrand my side or refresh my side or get my designer to, you know, do that differently. Or I need to, you know, redo my logo, do a full rebrand like whenever we talk about the website, it always goes towards improving the visuals and you're always like, no, no, no. No, we're just talking about the copy here, like the website looks great, even if it doesn't look great, a compelling story, clear value proposition that the right words, the right copy will outperform any amazing, beautiful, glassy redesign every single time. Your words are what ultimately move people to take action, not your color palette. So better words, beat better visuals with the other common thread or theme that I've seen and talking a lot of these different advisors, especially as it relates to, you know, to their websites. And then lastly, when your niche is clear, you know exactly who you're going after, you know the pain points that you can help them solve, but marketing still is not working. It's usually what I would call a funnel imbalance. We've talked a lot about marketing funnels on this show. It's really cool at future proof talking different advisors, them coming up to me and asking me them their questions and referencing in the different areas of the funnel as part of their questions. So it does seem like this, this marketing funnel concept is really resonated with a lot of you, which is cool to see, but marketing is not working. And you know exactly who you're going after, it's very clear. It's likely because of a funnel imbalance. So, so for example, a top of funnel imbalance might be that you have an excellent blog or podcast or newsletter, those would be middle of the funnel marketing activity. So you might have an awesome blog that you write every single week. It's excellent. It's solving your ideal client's pain points, but people don't know that it exists. So you have an awareness problem, create middle of the funnel activity, but no top of funnel activity. People don't know about this amazing thing that you're producing, or it might be the middle of the funnel that's the problem, right? You're highly visible, but you have no way of nurturing and building trust on your terms, which is important, right? Not another platform's term, not LinkedIn or the podcast apps or YouTube, but your terms building trust and nurturing people on your terms. So no, maybe you're you're getting traffic or followers through a top of funnel activity. Maybe it's SEO, maybe it's a paid ad campaign, but you're not nurturing them with consistent valuable content that encourages them to take action and I fall in victim to this as well when I went really deep down the SEO rabbit hole and thousands of people are showing up to my website, but it wasn't resulting in new clients because there was nothing for them to do. There's no action for them to take. There was no middle of the funnel activity to move them to to nurture them. And then lastly, bottom of the funnel, maybe you've built awareness. Maybe you have a way to nurture them and build trust over time, but you don't have that clear next step. Maybe a week called action or unclear service models or an unclear process that causes them to drop off right when interest speaks. Something that I've shared on the show a number of times over the years is that, you know, my podcast, my retirement podcast grew significantly at a great audience. Top of funnel was working, middle of the funnel was working, it was nurturing, but nobody was reaching out. And that's because nobody knew what the heck I did. I had listeners that had no idea that I was a financial advisor or they knew I was an advisor, but they thought, gosh, I must be so busy because I have this podcast that seems to be working pretty well. I must be so busy that I don't have time to take on new clients. So I didn't have a great call to action to be crystal clear with my audience that, hey, I'm a financial advisor. Here's who I work with. We're taking on new clients right now. We have capacity. If you're interested, go here to take action. And as soon as I did that, that's when things really started to work. So if your niche is clear and your marketing still is not working, it's likely because of a funnel imbalance. Yeah, one of the things that's so nutty to me, and I've seen this come up with my own clients, is people don't know that you're accepting new clients. It kind of like, imagine like the mind blown emoji. That's how I feel when I see this over and over again. And one thing I'm actually testing with one of our clients is in their call booking form. Because I've heard this in multiple ways through multiple clients, I actually put accepting new clients as their button copy with like a little green emoji at the top in their navigation, and I'm tracking to see if it gets more clicks. Because I was like, hey, people might not actually realize that you're taking on your clients. I'm not sure if this is the same site that you're talking about. This is your client or not. But I had flagged a website recently that above the menu, there's what I call like a smart bar. And the smart bar above the menu said something like this, like we are currently taking on new clients, like click here to learn more about our process. And I was like, what a cool idea. Like it just lives up there on every place at the website and it's just crystal clear. Like we're accepting new clients. Like go here to learn about our process. We try to get so clever with like our hero image and like heading and sub heading and called action buttons. And so like, no, we're taking on new clients. Go here to learn more. I thought it was really clever. They actually had like a pretty significant prospect come through their contact form. I was like, hey, are you accepting new clients? I'm like, what? So just I've seen that come up in a few different ways. So kind of something to think about. And then one of the thing that came up for me, Taylor, as you were kind of going through a few, you're, you know, common themes and threads is the thing that I always save out copy is that great copy can save bad design, but great design cannot save bad copy. Like if you had to give me one of these to work with, I'll take great copy all the time. I've done some miraculous work, which is changing the copy. I've had beautiful websites that do not convert. Like I get brought in. I'm like, this website, what's amazing? But the copy just doesn't hit. So go to Rhino there, love those takeaways. So a couple of things that I've seen from my side, number one, you can serve multiple client types, but to build a converting funnel, you have to market to one. Each audience, you know, really needs its own path to your front door. And I think Thomas Cook is a really great example of that to completely different client types and really he needed to address them independently to see success in this funnel. And what a lot of advisors don't realize is that who you're choosing to market to really impacts everything, it impacts everything. for example, how you optimize your profiles. If you're, you know, if you've got a LinkedIn profile, you're working there. If you have a podcast, how you name your podcast, we thought advisors come on the show, and their niche was the same as yours, Taylor, and there was no word for retirement in their podcasts. It wasn't clear at all. Also targeting, depending on which platform you're using, if using paid ads, or if you're, you know, sending connection requests on LinkedIn. For example, you need to know who you're trying to find. Also your content strategy and your website copy. So I really feel like if you do not have what I like to call ideal client clarity, everything breaks. Literally, I mean, everything breaks. And so to me, what I like to say here is, hey, you can serve multiple people. You can build your business however you want. But if you want to build a working marketing funnel, this is a fundamental and actually a client who has two ideal clients. And the way that we talk about this is they market two tech professionals. They also happen to serve pre-retires. So that's kind of how we balance that. And they do still get, you know, a good chunk of pre-retires, but we are actively marketing to tech executives. And, you know, we've talked about a few different times on the show. Like, there are ways to balance that on your homepage, here are the people we serve best, things like that. But this is a big one that I think has come up from me. It's just you can serve multiple kinds of people. You can build your business any way you want. But if you want to build a funnel and you want it to convert, here's how we build it. We market to one. Really like that. Really like ideal client clarity. Sounds like a great chapter for your new book, finding your ideal client clarity. Your ICC. Yeah. The opposite of that is a ideal client confusion. We've seen it come up all the time on the show. So I've found about four things that break every funnel. And that's the first one. So ideal client clarity has to be in place. Like, I think this one matters more than any of them. They're all important. But as you've seen Taylor, everything breaks down. So making sure that you know exactly who you're talking to. Second thing that I've seen, as we've talked to, you know, 60 advisors of the last year, advisors often have a lot of marketing activities. But very few true marketing funnels. And let me explain kind of what I mean by that. So a lot of advisors are doing multiple things. They might be posting on social media. They could be writing blog posts, maybe some email marketing. But I've noticed that they don't really have a strategy that connects all these activities together. And I think, you know, Joe Marshall is a really good example of this. You know, he had kind of a smattering of a few different activities. LinkedIn was getting a little bit of traction. And it was only once you really, you know, decided to double down instead of dabble when you started to get that traction. He set all his pieces aside. And he really thought about how do these activities connect together? So for Joe's funnel, here's what his funnel looked like. For his top of funnel, just, you know, getting that visibility, he would send, you know, he sends now 100 to 150 connection requests. He doesn't actually say anything in his connection request. What I thought was kind of interesting. He was like, I just add my ideal client. I let my profile do its work. And then his profile is heavily optimized for the core financial concerns of tech professionals and high stress roles. So he's, that's how he's getting in front of people. That's his visibility. As we like to say, like, top of funnel is just how do people find out that you exist, right? And then for him, his middle of funnel is just building trust through consistent, well-packaged content. The key there that I want to underline is well-packaged content. If you are posting content on any platform and it's not performing, I can tell you it's basically because of one or two things. One, you don't know who you're talking to. And number two, you're not packaging in a way that helps it perform on that platform because these different platforms that actually want to put good content in front of the right people. Their, you know, their business model is ads for most of these platforms that are free. So the longer they keep people there, the more money they make. So they're happy to put your work in front of good people if you package it well. And then for Joe, his bond, the funnel is just his sales process. Pretty simple, right? And the thing that I kind of really thought about with this is, you know, visibility is going to open the door, but trust is what walks people through it. And if the door for advisors is booking a call in your calendar. So a lot of advisors, they might have this disability, but they could be lacking trust. Or they're putting out great content, but they're not getting it in from the right people. So really just thinking about, if you have all these different activities happening, but you're not seeing results, you're probably falling into this challenge, which is you have a lot of marketing activities, but no true marketing funnels. Early love, the simplicity of Joe's top of funnel there. Like it makes so much sense that he just sends a connection request and doesn't include anything in it. You know, compare that to the connection request for some clever message, which is like, I'm a financial advisor and specialized in working with people just like you, like, would love to connect. You know, so different. And so, you know, in this kind of spammy world of LinkedIn, just a simple, just like, I want to connect with you. I just work better than some clever, you know, DM message, connect, trying to connect. Oh, I got some extra fun info on this too, by the way, when I was having a conversation with Joe, he was getting ready to release a post. There was a case study on some financial planning he did for a sales force employee. He did this gangster post. He knew it was coming out. He literally went on LinkedIn a couple hours before he published it and found like, you know, 50 to 100 sales force people and sent them a connection request. Just blank, right? Then he posted this like gangster sales force post. He said he posted it and two hours later, he already had two calls scheduled. So I thought that was kind of cool. Like, hey, I mean, I know you all want to make things, you know, super complicated and feels like it's more valuable when it is, but he's not even sending anything in his connection request. I also saw some data recently that said, if you are sending some kind of message in your connection request, this is like the market army. What is a good connection request acceptance rate? And I found that it was around 25%. So then you can also test. You could split test your connection message to see if you could improve it. So Joe could get that baseline and then maybe could test with an outreach message that makes sense, right? Federalist thought was kind of interesting. Like he writes this amazing sales force post and then, you know, methodically connects with these people and then, you know, two hours later, he had two prospect calls. I was like, that's just cool. I love that. That's so fun. Yeah. Well, it is, it's the benefit of just focusing on one thing, right? If he was trying to optimize LinkedIn while also trying to optimize Twitter and Facebook and host his podcast. Like, it's just, it's a lot, right? But because he's just focused on LinkedIn, he can obsess over every little thing. He can get really tactical and connect with all these sales force employees just before he drops this awesome post. That's a case study for sales force employees. So, yeah, it's just, I think, a testament to what happens when you are able to just focus on one or maybe even two marketing activities and not get distracted with all these other things. I love it. Yeah. I totally agree. Definitely don't dabble, double down. That's my takeaway. So, Taylor, what do you think? You know, you and I have built this podcast. I think in a couple of funky ways, you know, what do you think advisors could learn from our approach so far with this show? Yeah. I think there's a lot. I think just to start, I'll go back to kind of what I said in the opening, which is that just I really appreciate it. Like, I am certainly one to experiment with things and try things out for a little bit. See how I feel and decide if I continue with it or not. You know, I had a podcast before this called Experiments in Advisory Marketing, where I literally did just that. And so, I just really appreciated just in the beginning, you're kind of like, hey, what are we going to commit to here? Really appreciated that. And so, I do think it's a lesson that we can all learn from that. I think it's important to commit to a concrete, measurable goal, not an open-ended experiment. I think most of us, you know, start a new marketing initiative with this vague plan, like, you know, I think I'm going to start a podcast. I'll see how it goes, right? You know, I bought a microphone. I might produce, you know, a few episodes and I just, I'll see how it goes. And I think that mindset almost always leads to inconsistency, lack of accountability. And, you know, ultimately burn out once that initial excitement fades. I was actually just talking to Josh in my office who recently started a YouTube channel. And he is two or three months in now. And he's like, he just got out of that honeymoon phase where like, it's now, it now feels like like real work. It's no longer fun to stay up till midnight on Saturday, like building out his website and his funnel. Like, now's real work. He actually has to do this. And so, just like that excitement starts to fade. And if you don't have that real accountability built in, you might reach that level of burnout and, you know, not follow through. So, instead of just, I'll see how it goes, commit to something hyper-specific that's measurable with that defined finish line or that line where you might just kind of reevaluate where you're at and determine, you know, how do you want to go forward. So, you know, maybe there's something like we committed to. I'm going to do 52 podcast episodes and then I'm going to reevaluate or I'm going to write 100 blog posts or I'm going to post on social media every single day for 365 days. I think that sort of approach kind of transforms your mindset from experimenting to executing and following through and getting something a real chance before you get distracted and try something else. You know, I think a clear time bound goal just helped to create that accountability and structure. I think it gives you momentum. It helps to build consistency. And it also gives you real data to evaluate the progress and results. You know, Kendra, if we did 10 of these episodes and looked back, I mean, this podcast would look like a total failure. Like, we would have been able to draw any real conclusions about the success of this show. But by doing the 60 episodes or so, like we can look back and we can see that real trajectory, we can draw real conclusions from the actual long term data producing this show. So maybe to wrap up the objective. is not just instant perfection, it's just committing long enough to get good at something and see if something truly works and if you really, truly enjoy doing it. And I think it can help, you know, separate to use your work from earlier, separate from those dabblers that are out there, Kendra. I think you'll learn faster, you'll improve faster, and you'll see those compounding results that only consistency can really produce. So I think it's a great lesson to take from, you know, our show and our experience here is to commit to that concrete measurable goal. Not just, you know, go buy a microphone and I'll see what happens. I don't know if you remember this moment. I'll never forget it. There was a point, probably about third, the way through, when you're recording the marketing funnels episode, and we recorded it once, we weren't happy with how it turned out. We recorded it twice, and I forgot to hit record. And I literally, I was, I was having like the worst week of my life. Like my house, they got struck by lightning, my boyfriend had been up all night vomiting. The house still smelled like vomit and kebabs. And I will never forget missing hitting the record button. And I just broke down an ugly cry. And then we laughed and we said, well, as marketing hasn't made you cry. Are you even marketing yet? And the reason why that's so, it's just so applicable is like, there are so many moments where I'm sure you were having a hard week. I was having a hard week. And if we had not committed to a clear goal, one of us would have found, like it's so easy to do that. So I love your example of really coming up with a concrete measurable goal. Because man, when you're, when you're out of the honeymoon phase, that's when you were really getting started. Yeah. I'm glad you shared that experience publicly. Yeah, it's funny now to look back at it in the moment. It was not, I mean, we found the humor in it, but it was a tough day. It was not a good day. We have had the benefit of doing this together and holding each other accountable. So I think it's just worth saying, if you're doing something by yourself, you're starting a marketing activity, a podcast, wherever it might be by yourself, I think you do need to find somebody to hold you accountable. I've used my wife before to hold me accountable to something. I'll assign some sort of reward or punishment to it, but like I need something or someone to hold me accountable to these things. So, you know, don't just write down a goal on a piece of paper and think you're an older self to it. I'd really try to find that accountability partner. Absolutely. And, you know, when I think about what advisors couldn't learn from our approach, you know, the first thing that really came up to me is similar to yours, but a little bit different, which is I think it's really important to do the hard stuff to start and the sexy stuff later. And this is actually something I learned from Taylor, because when we first, you know, we're having this conversation about the show, we were really excited. One of my first questions is like, oh, what do you think we should name it? And I will never forget, you said, let's not worry about a name. Let's go press record and do the hard work first. And, you know, the thing that's kind of interesting about marketing is I think that there are two big hurdles that are not talked about enough. And the first one is starting, pressing publish for the first time, whether it's a podcast or a YouTube video or a social post is really vulnerable. And then the second one is actually staying consistent. What I see happen in marketing, and maybe this is because I'm a little bit more like empathetic and feeling driven, is that marketing is really vulnerable and scary and you definitely want to barf. Like, it makes me really nervous at different points for different reasons. And I think what happens is to avoid that discomfort. And I don't even know if we do this consciously. Maybe it isn't even conscious is that we really try to start with the fun stuff. Like, let me get some new gear or let me choose the podcast neighbor. Let me design the show art. And instead, I think you should do the opposite, which is what Taylor, you inspired us to do. So we recorded 10 episodes as a show. There was no name. We did not practice. We did not script. I had no idea what Taylor was going to say until this day, I like to say it's marketing improv live because I have no idea really what you're going to say. And we never built a website. We've had really great response. Michael Kiss has actually ended up giving us a top podcast award six months in, which is really incredible. And so I think what advisors can learn from this is you know, start with the hard stuff and then use the fun stuff as a reward once you reach those key milestones. Yeah, that's so hard to do in the moment. And I'm so glad that we took that approach because it is really, really easy to get distracted. And like you said, it gave us things to look forward to. We got to work on the fun stuff, right? As we're continuing with the hard stuff. So I'm really glad that you brought that to the surface. And look, that stems from me making giant mistakes in the early days of marketing my firm and doing all that fun stuff and not getting any results and realizing it's because I'm not doing the hard work, right? I'm just having fun, you know, coming up with different designs. And for me, it was like spending money on stupid things thinking that that money was going to solve on my marketing problems. But it wasn't until I really sat down and got honest with myself that I really need to get outside my comfort zone and do the hard things if I want this thing to work. Yeah. And I don't know this helpful for other advisors, but when I was thinking about writing a book, I realized that it was really intimidating to me. And I had to think about who would I do this for? Because doing it for me wasn't enough. And so I found an advisor who just means the world to me. And I think really needs this book. And I just think about him. Like, this is the advisor money for. So find the things that you can leverage. Like, know your own personality. Like, I know I will do more for others than I will do for myself. And so that's kind of one way, like trick myself into doing things. The second thing that I was thinking about Taylor when considering, you know, what advisors could learn from us is expect it to be 10 times harder than you think it will be. And this is why I think focusing on a single channel or what I like to call channel focus is really critical because there's so much work to do, right? So I pulled some stats on the show. And it was pretty astounding. Maybe before you share these numbers, we'll just tell listeners right now, just like hit the pause button here. Kendra's about to tell you how many hours her team spent on this, just this podcast in the past 12 months. So just think about that. And guess, how many hours you think that her team spent on this podcast last year? Because I think the number blew me away. And I think it'll surprise you as well. Definitely. I mean, honestly, surprised me as well. I pulled the numbers for the entire team. And we spent 593 hours on this podcast in the last year. Now, what you might find really interesting about that is 70 hours were Taylor and I hot on the mic like actually recording just 70 hours. I had 55 hours prepping to record because I'm a crazy person. And I just have to think through things. Taylor is so much better on the fly than I am. And then also it spent 15 hours processing email for the show, which Taylor, I don't know if you knew that or not. And we are actually very efficient emails. And so really out of almost 600 hours across my team, you know, only 70 hours were recording. There were so many other things behind the scenes, you know, managing the podcast, writing the copy, editing the audio. Not to mention just the off hours, you think about, you know, things you're working on. And so a lot of times when I hear advisors say, oh, I'm just repurposing this content. I'm like, you know, if that works for you great, but I see the numbers and the labor. And it takes a lot of time to do one thing. Well, it's almost impossible to do many things. Well, and so this was just kind of interesting for me to see. And, you know, I think behind the scene, it takes just so much more to bring these things to life and to do them well. And put those hours into perspective, I shared with Kendra via email and she shared this with me. There's just over 2,000 working hours in a calendar year. Now granted, there's other team members involved here. It's not just me and Kendra. But it's only just over 2,000 working hours per calendar year. So you're talking about, you know, 30% of a calendar year being spent all these different things, just really insane. And Kendra, you mentioned 15 hours spent on just just emails to me. I thought it's worth sharing because they shared this with somebody recently. Kendra has a great, a great little tip to our call it or a great trick with emails that in an email that's kind of an FYI email that doesn't deserve a response or doesn't need a response. At the end, she just writes in all caps, nrn, which stands for no reply needed. And like, I don't know how many hours that's probably saved you, right? And I think it's just like a clever little thing to include, you know, if you're with your team or with people close to you, like they know that if you put nrn at the end of an email, you don't need to respond to it. And it saves a lot of time. So I think something clever that I picked up during our time together here. And yeah, you mentioned the off hours time thinking about it. I think it's such an important thing. I mean, I'm just thinking about you sharing that story about that, that day where you didn't hit record and your interiors and, you know, how that affected the rest of your day, right? Let's imagine that that recording went perfectly. We said our goodbyes and you had a, you know, a fully productive afternoon of more work versus, I don't know, you probably weren't in the greatest headspace who were really upset with yourself, probably beating yourself up, probably eating too many gummy bears that I think I had door dashed to you as a result. And how many hours of work did you maybe lose just because like, you know, the brain energy it took away from you and you're beating yourself up over it. So there's just all these, all this other time that projects like these take up that we just don't really, you know, account for some time. So, yeah, while these numbers are certainly shocking and, you know, surprised me. I'm glad you tracked the hours. I'm glad it's something that we can share with everybody because yeah, from the outside looking in, these things always seem easy. Like Kendra and Taylor, they just, you know, grab a microphone, hit record and invite some advisor friends on the show. It's just not that simple. No, it's definitely not. And I hope that it shows advisors listening that this is a journey. And there are some speed bumps along the way, you know, even when, you know, I've been fortunate because I'm riding kind of side side with you and you've done this before and so there's a lot of shortcuts. I feel like we got to take. But yeah, it's still difficult. There's still a lot more to this than just hitting record. Yeah. Well, we already talked about one of the other kind of things that I think people could learn from our approach. So I won't really go into great detail here, but I just jotted down that more is not better, better is better. Where I always think I'll just do more, more, more. The better is better. I think Joe Marshall had great example of that. Like, you know, he was about to go and do more other things and we convinced him just to do a better job of the thing that is already working. So you don't need to do everything to have success with your marketing. I think just tripling down on those things that are working and just spending time mastering that one thing or what I like to think about mastery is one single marketing funnel, right? And staying focused on that and we've talked about this a lot in the show that once you have one awesome marketing funnel that's working, you can decide to pour gas on that funnel and take it to the next level or build a second marketing funnel. So more is not better, better is better, and maybe just kind of final thoughts to round this out that, you know, create something that you enjoy, but is also truly useful for your audience. It solves your pain points and it's not going to be perfect out of the gate. So perfect is the enemy of good iterate and make it better over time. It's not going to be perfect immediately. You don't need to be everywhere. You don't need to attract everyone. Just build something that's worth coming back to. Search yourself in the user shoes, think about the websites that you visit every day or the email newsletters that you read every day or the podcast you listen to, like, why are you attracted? Why do you keep going back to those things? And then lastly, just value, focus and consistency compounds way faster than any, you know, clever marketing tactic that might be out there. These things do take time. Good marketing does take time. So it does require time and consistency, but if you just focus on making something really, really awesome, something that's authentic to you, you're staying focused on it. You're adding value to your ideal clients and you stay consistent like that will compound and two or three years from now, you'll look back that I'm so glad that I started. Yeah, I often like to say focus is the ultimate competitive advantage because it's just so counterintuitive. It's so hard, right? So can try to bring us home here, just maybe share some personal reflections, just kind of personally what you learned from doing this together. Yeah, there's, there's this quote that I heard that I'm not sure who it's from, but the quote is strategy is what you say no to. And I know that coming to this decision for both of us was really, really hard. And I know that when I'm truly prioritizing, it hurts. Like it hurts to step away from something. It's also really challenging to step away from something that you do well. You know, we've had such good response to the show. And I think that neither of us really thought we would be here a year ago when we kicked this off. You know, I've had some conversations about that and I think it really surprised us both, but I keep coming back to this thought that, you know, strategy is what you say no to. And not too long ago in my marketing strategies, I started including whatever called as non-goals, which is here are the things we are intentionally not doing. And I even do it myself, like non-personal, non-goals. And so that's kind of what I feel is I reflect back on, you know, what I've learned is that, yeah, strategy is what you say no to. And then the other thing is that, you know, for me, there was this part of me that, you know, when we first kicked off the show, like there was definitely some imposter syndrome that came up for me. And there was parts of me that wondered and worried, you know, what would other people say or what, you know, would they think I was smart or, you know, all these silly things you think about in your head? And I realized that the biggest critic actually wasn't other people. It was myself. And so, you know, right before or after you publish, you know, your marketing content, you may fear what others think, but often I found myself it was really myself that was the biggest bully. And I think putting yourself out there professionally is going to force you to grow in remarkable ways. And I did not expect that. And so I had to kind of process my own things around, you know, just my own self-confidence and self-worth. And I did not expect that on the marketing journey. But I feel like it brings up so much of your own personal stuff. And so yeah, I realized that was my biggest critic and then I had to like really face that and work through that. And it was really helpful for me in, you know, this avenue within expanded out professionally for me in a lot of other ways. And I did not see that coming. So that was kind of cool. Yeah. And you know, one of the awesome things that I witnessed kind of going on this journey with you to that point of you being your biggest critic, you know, not only did you continue to show up day after day, week after week and face this really challenging thing, this thing that you're being yourself up over and criticize yourself over. But like I experienced a lot of you constantly trying to improve and get better, you know, listening to episodes as they're coming out, kind of taking notes, you know, things that you think that you can personally improve on. It's going back and forth, sharing ideas with each other, things that we think we can improve on. So like, it wasn't just doing the hard thing and showing up, but it was like also trying to improve along the way, and I just thought it was really, really cool to see. I think just to wrap up on my end, you know, we already touched on things being much harder and more complex than we want to believe. It's often referred to as the illusion of simplicity, just from the outside looking in, things just look really simple and we forget or don't put enough weight on the hundreds of hidden steps that are required to build something and to build it right. They'll script you the editing, researching, optimizing, you know, refining your messaging and persisting through really difficult times and slow growth or forgetting to hit record on an episode like, it's really, really challenging. Things are a lot more complex, which leads back to like, this is why we want to focus on one single thing. So we try to do five different things and do them all really well. We're going to fall flat on our face. So I just continue to remind myself that just things are a lot more complex than we often want to believe. And then second, just, you know, some ideas, some projects, some partnerships are meant to serve a certain season of growth, a certain season of your audience or your business. And when that purpose is fulfilled or, you know, maybe priorities change, but like when that purpose is fulfilled, I think it's okay to say, you know, moving on from this kind of to your point, Kendra, moving on is this progress. It's not a failure. We didn't fail here and it does tie back to setting very concrete measurable goals in the beginning. I think if we didn't do that and, you know, we're through episode 30 or 40 and we pull the plug. I think it does feel like a failure, but I think we feel very fulfilled through this and, you know, a tough decision to make, but it does feel like progress. It gives us more space and capacity to continue feeling our own creative journeys and focusing on things that are really important to us. So I think it's okay to say, you know, some things are meant to serve a certain season of growth. Maybe the last thing I'll say, something that I learned, Kendra, is that you are an extremely awesome person. I am incredibly grateful to call you a friend. You worked so hard, you know, on this podcast, keeping us organized. You know, you did so much behind the scenes that I'm so grateful for, helped me accountable every step of the way and so I just want to give you just a big, huge shout out and to say thank you very, very much. You taught me so much through all this and I'm just really, really grateful for you. So thank you. Yeah, definitely. And I think, you know, what's been so interesting about working with you behind the scenes, what I learned from you ironically is that good is not good enough. You pushed so many times, you know, I bring an idea to you and you would say, it's not quite there yet. And sometimes I would get so frustrated. And then later I realized, you know what? He was totally right. And so I really loved how you pushed even something as simple as the show intro. You were like, this thing needs to be snappy, it needs to be tight. We cannot waste people's time and one advisor remarked that they would count the number of seconds from the play to the impact, the value. And I think it was like seven seconds. And what's funny is we cut that to the bone to get it as tight as possible. And I think that's your influence, you know, just how do you want to, you know, how, how do you want to respect people's time and what is the minimum amount of words that we can say to bring the most amount of value in the shortest amount of time? Like that's something I learned from you. You're really good at it. I know you've worked on that. That's not a skill that comes natural. And I still feel like I have a lot of ways to go there, but I think I've gotten a better. And you just taught me like, push it further. Make it better. Make it tighter. Make it more valuable and more concise. And so that's been a really cool thing to learn behind the scenes from you. Let's improve me. That's for sure. Well, I really appreciate that. And to everybody who's been on this journey with us, everybody who's listening now and made it through the end of this, this long episode that we're, we're publishing. Thank you all for your ongoing support for sticking with us through all of this. Thank you for engaging with the show, for sharing it on social media, for all your wonderful comments. For coming up to us at XYPN or future proof and introducing yourself just, you know, it's been a really, really rewarding experience. So thank you very, very much. If you want to stay connected to me, I think LinkedIn's probably the best place to do that. I'll share a link to my LinkedIn if we're not already connected there. And then also the AGC community, if you're looking for a community of advisors, we're getting close to 200 advisors there on the community. I host marketing office hours every single month in a very similar format that we do on the show. Advisors coming in, asking their questions, troubleshooting, trying to help them out. So maybe more in an intimate setting for those office hours. So if you're interested, go to advisorygc.com to learn more. Kendra, have it yourself. We're going to people stay connected with you. Yeah, definitely. So same for me, jump over LinkedIn, easy to find their Kendra and then write with with a W, I've got great hair, and a pink little profile icon photo. And then also, if you jump over my profile, you can go to the top of it, and there is a spot where you can sign up for my advisor newsletter. That's where I'm playing this and out updates, probably some chapter outline previews, some early content, and I'm already writing for the blog. You've probably heard a little bit of some of the language I've used here to explain some of it. And just, you know, want to reiterate, you know, same thing that you shared Taylor, is like, thank you so much for just trusting us with your time and your attention, and special extra thanks to the advisors who swung open the doors of their firm. Let us look inside, let us give feedback. I know it's a really vulnerable experience. And also just thanks for everyone who's been an advocate for the show. I mean, it's been a really amazing journey. And I think there's so much good content in the backlog. It's a great body of work to learn from. And so many times, we often want to ask, what's changing in marketing? What's new? But we often forget to remember what's not changing. There's a lot of really good marketing fundamentals we cover in the show, which is, you know, who's your ideal client? Who are we talking to? How do you want to reach them? You know, how do you want to build trust with them? I mean, how do you want to let them evaluate you in your self-process, right? So the marketing funnel, there's a lot of fundamentals there that will never go out of style, regardless of how the algorithms and the platforms change. So thank you to all the advisors who have come on the show, who have listened to the show, and who have come up to say hi in real life, or through social media channels. We appreciate you. Yes, we are part of the show, but the show doesn't exist without you. So thanks for listening, and don't forget, keep your marketing simple. - Thank you, everybody, really appreciate it. (upbeat music)