Featured Guest: We're excited to have Kirk Lowe, a renowned thought leader from Proud Mouth, join us. Kirk brings a wealth of knowledge in marketing for financial advisors and will share his insights on how to build lasting influence in this competitive field.
Key Discussion Points:
Building Influence: Learn from Kirk's extensive experience on effective strategies for financial advisors to establish and grow their influence.
Marketing Insights: Discover the latest trends and tactics in financial marketing that can set you apart.
Audience Q&A: Kirk will answer your questions about marketing as a Financial Advisor. Special Segment: Excell Represent Review
Matt and Jay will also provide a recap of the Carson Group's recent Excell Represent conference. Explore key takeaways, innovative ideas, and networking highlights from this influential event.
Transcript:
00:02
Welcome to Marketing Office Hours Live with Matt Halloran exclusively on Financial Advisor Television. My name is Jay Coulter. We have a great show for you today. If you are watching this while we're recording it live on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and you have a question for our guest, simply put it in the comment section, and we'll be able to pose it to our guests. And Matt, today's guest is your partner, Kirk Lowe. I love what you guys are going to talk about. You're going to go deep on how.
00:31
marketing solves problems. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, dude, he's he's just I'm so happy to be partnered with him. I've learned so much we are we are really the dynamic duo. He really is more Batman than I am. But it's absolutely fantastic. And I'm super happy he's gonna be on the show today. And because he's going to be here, I'm gonna try and solicit some free advice from him, try and break down along with you some ways to think about a new brand that we're launching next year.
00:58
And I've been through this exercise with Kirk in the past. It's incredibly powerful just to talk it through with a marketing mind like Kirk and yourself. But as always, let's start with our Twitter roundup. And Matt, I want you to lead, and I love the idea for this Twitter roundup, what you wanna do. Tell us, what are we walking through? Yeah, so here's the deal. A really amazing event happened last week-ish, which was something called Excel Represent. And there's so much to unpack.
01:27
with what happened at that event. I did not go this year. I just couldn't make it work with my schedule. So I Jay and I rarely have this happen. I total FOMO dude, like I was like, Oh, I love that person. And holy crap, that person won an award. But there's something about having an entire conference focused on the best of the best women in financial services, because there are some really big fundamental differences about what was done.
01:55
who won awards, but most importantly, how they all interacted with each other. So, yeah, so first off, there has been a huge push within financial services specifically, making sure that we're starting to highlight the majority of the population who doesn't happen to be in financial services. And you've got all of these absolutely fantastically powerful women who are making such huge strides within financial services. Now, we're gonna pause here for a second.
02:25
Somebody who, if you don't know, you need to put on your radar. Every financial advisor needs to know who Cheryl Hickerson is and what she is doing with females in finance. The fact that she finally got an industry recognition at this level, it really is just about freaking time. Females in Finance is an unbelievable organization that's trying to hire 100,000 women into financial services to make it more representative of the general population.
02:54
making huge progress, huge strides. And I'm just I'm so flippin proud of her. That was unbelievable. So Jay, how well do you know females in finance and in what Cheryl's doing over there? Only from the digital footprint that they have, which is everywhere. And they've done a great job getting that out there. Right? Yeah, they are they're everywhere. She is a prolific social media person. And then you have Diana cabrisas. Now listen.
03:20
Another person, if you're not focused, and if you don't know who she is, I don't know how that's possible. Just she won an unbelievable award there. And it's so well deserved. She, she she left snappy cracking a little while ago, hung her own jingle, which was a big risk for her as the first time she ever really started her own business. And then she just hit everything. The art really the entire social media landscape in financial services, not just social media, but the conference landscape by storm. So she
03:50
She has a very, very interesting position. So she's basically like a outsourced brand evangelist and she's partnered with some huge companies, most recently White Glove to really help get the word out about all of the benefits. And the fact that she won an award here, it's just phenomenal, dude. I was really happy for her. You know, Matt, she's actually now the face of advisor speed demos on financial advisor. Yay! So she's produced a couple of episodes so far. We have a couple more in the hopper, including wealth.com coming out here later this year.
04:21
Hannah Moore was there as well. Another, another up and coming person who just has just really solidified herself as somebody to watch within financial services. You know, these are people who are going to be running everything someday, dude. And I just I'm absolutely so so proud of Hannah too. So that that so who else we got we got Cheryl Nash now. Goodness gracious. This Cheryl has been around for a while.
04:49
she's really established herself not only as a thought leader, but as a go to person for mentoring leadership, understanding of really the inner workings of financial services. And her award was absolutely fantastic. Somebody who I actually haven't. So there's, I haven't had Hannah on the top advisor marketing podcast or Cheryl. So they be
05:11
not because of this. But this was just that gentle reminder of what the heck am I doing? Why am I not getting these two juggernaut people on the show, which is that they're already in the hopper for future episodes in 24. Yeah, and we need to give photo credits there in the post to Jess boss from Alpha Architect. She's does a great job and is a great giver to the advisor community. Allison was there as well. Alice to Cisco from asset map. She's someone who's
05:36
really, really done a good job forwarding the cause of using using visuals and financial planning. And of course, the whole asset map team, all they do is serve advisors. What an amazing organization, culturally, strategically, the fact that one of the things that I really like about Allison specifically, is if she doesn't know she says she doesn't know. But here's the best part, dude, she knows so much, man. And she knows so many people.
06:02
So if she can't answer the question for you, one of the things that I just think she has like this, this grace about her that she will say, look, hey, I can either make this phone call or I can make this introduction. She's a real connector and I'm very, very glad and quite honored to know Alison. Yeah. Then I'll throw up some pictures here that the Carson group posted with some of the winners, Diana and some of the other folks from the evening's event.
06:29
It looks like it was just a great, great. It was, but keep going, because you've got a slide in here. There's two in here that I really want to go ahead. OK, so Cheryl, finally winning award, which is absolutely fantastic. The award's really, really nice. Go to the next one, because there was another one here that you had up on. See, this is the sort of stuff, right? These are all women who are absolutely, unbelievably strong, powerful, but.
06:55
The most important thing, and if you go to the next one, I think this is the slide I was looking for. Look at who is sharing everybody else. So this is one of the big differences and the big feelings with Excel Represent specifically was, Jay, I don't know if you've ever seen this, but there's a really, really great Emmy Award just a couple of years ago. It was a best female comic performance, right? Comedic performance. And it was...
07:25
Tina Fey and.
07:30
get all of the people anyway. And so what they ended up doing was they ended up calling up her name is Leslie note from parks and rec but I'm just totally forgetting her name right now anyway. So so they're they're calling all of these women and instead you know what they do is they usually pan on the on each of the people. Well, they didn't do that they actually all got up on stage like it was a beauty contest. And and when and Melissa
07:59
congratulated her that sort of feeling of camaraderie instead of pitting everybody against each other, which is what is commonly done within financial services. There was a feeling of real unity here. There was a real feeling of really wanting to support the other women who are winning awards. And just that level of support I just it just warmed my heart. It made me really happy. So in again, Diana winning this
08:27
If there's anybody who is going to there's two people on this list who I feel if there's any two people who are truly going to change, not just the face of financial services, but this sort of male dominated, overtly testosterone based feeling that we still get pretty substantially in financial services, it's going to be Cheryl and Diane, or Diana, I just think those two are, they're just forces of nature. And I'm just so proud to know both of them. So yeah.
08:56
Thanks for thanks for that. I know if anybody's watching this, that might sound like an entirely shameless promotion for some of those people. But you know what, I'm not ashamed at all. They should be getting the recognition that they're getting, you know, they should be getting this level of attention because they are truly, truly wonderful human beings that not only are doing great work, but they're good people with good hearts and moving in the right direction. Yeah, that's right. Let's shift gears. Okay, your partner Kirk low on I'm gonna let you introduce him and then
09:25
I'm gonna step into the background and let you guys walk through how impactful marketing can be to help you in your business. Sweet, all right everybody. Well, here he is, the man, the myth, the legend, my business partner, Kirk Lowe. Listen, I've told this story hundreds and hundreds of times but I haven't told it here so I'm gonna do this very quickly. Many, many moons ago, Kirk and I were speaking at a conference together. He was running TactiBrand, marketing and branding company for financial advisors and I was running top advisor coaching. And we had met.
09:51
Uh, in Arizona at another conference, he was speaking and I was speaking and something just clicked and it kind of all started with us just wanting to, to do something together and now 7,000 episodes later, almost a hundred thousand social media posts, 1.5 million impressions from the content that Proud Mouth has created for our clients. You know, and, and Kirk and I have been doing this for what was seven years now. Right, dude. Did we go over the seven year market? Somewhere around there. It's just.
10:19
It's a magnificent blur. But thank you for being on the show. I greatly, greatly appreciate that. Jay and I have a lot of fun here and we definitely wanted to bring you in. So listen, the foundation of this conversation that I wanted to have with you, because we have these conversations all the time. So I kind of wanted to give the audience a little bit of an opportunity to see behind the scenes of your brain and how our brains work together. We had a great conversation a couple of weeks ago about problem solving, right? And so marketing really solves
10:48
problems for advisors, much like a CRM does a trading platform does, you know, a financial planning software, but for some reason, they don't look at it like that. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, it's not a perspective that's very common. But I think it's a really great one to have. And thanks for having me on the show, guys. So I guess really great story from before you and I met.
11:16
helping a money manager in New Jersey. And they asked me to come in and help them with their brand. And what they really wanted me to do was to solve the fact that the two owners, father and son, traveled 40 weeks of the year, putting on seminars for advisors who they were managing their clients' money for. So 40 weeks of the year is not ideal. And what ended up happening was I sat in the room and I said, Well, tell me
11:45
all the story. Like, tell me, what do you talk about when you go, you know, away and you talk to advisors? And they had a, they had a national sales team that wasn't very empowered. So that was a problem. They're kind of wondering, you know, why aren't they handling this? Anyway, so an hour and a half told me stories, 25 stories approximately. I said, Well, why don't we break it down to 5? What are the 5 most important stories? Took those 5 stories, got a agreement on them pretty quickly, which was really neat.
12:14
took those 5 stories, created animated video, like created a way to tell those stories without those 2 being in the room, gave those to the national sales team, inserted those into all the seminars, webinars, client meetings so they didn't have to be there anymore. They took time to go back and work on their business and grew from $800 million in assets to $3.6 billion in 18 months. And it's not like we did that, but we solved a problem in their business, several.
12:43
One of them was helping them have a much more robust brand. And the second one was freeing up time. And, and then the other one was empowering their sales team. And we created, so branding and influence, we changed the dynamic of delivery influence because it was now scaled, scalable, and that made a crazy impact on their business. It solved a problem and they never looked at it like a cost. They wanted to solve a problem. And I.
13:13
I know that advisors typically come with, you know, a couple different problems, right? Those problems are typically client retention issues, centers of influence relationships. They want more, you know, new ones and better ones. Better ones as in get more ideal clients. Get referrals! Or at least have them add value to your, your audience. And it's hard to get centers of influence relationships.
13:41
trusting financial advisors. We all know how hard that is.
13:47
We also know that there's a lot of financial advisors competing for their, to have relationships with them. And just a third, to keep it short, there are more, but it's just a pipeline of ideal prospects. So, you know, do you, you know, having a, nobody really has a system to move from skeptics to fa, to move people from skeptics to fans, or the right people. The right people. Yep.
14:12
Well, OK, so you talked you talked about scaling credibility, and I love your example because what you did was you helped them amplify their voice, put it into a package and allow it to be consumed by their ideal client prospect when it was convenient for them. Let's continue to talk about that. There are lots of different ways to continue to scale your influence. Why don't you give us a couple of examples of those, please? Yeah, well, what's really neat about scaling influences that in those three
14:42
Influence and branding can solve all three of those. In the case, the example I gave was more of a static content, static influence, because we just made it and we didn't add to it. Now that group produces a podcast and video and do all kinds of stuff now. But that's what we're really trying to do. Just think about how little time you have. For most,
15:11
people lack of expertise in the delivery and the branding of that content or your influence. But how important it is, because if you could be talking to people 24 seven, without you having to be there, that's an ideal thing, right? And we know that people work on their own more than ever.
15:38
people want to consume stuff when they want to consume it, how they want to consume it and where they want to consume it. You have really little control over that, or at least you should, well, the control you have is to be omnipresent. And then to give people a chance to consume content the way they want to consume it. And that solves the problem. That's a direct communication with either your clients, your centers of influence or your audience, your ideal audience.
16:07
And I don't know how do you, how do you not see that as a solution and want to put ample resources to it? Because it's everything. Moving forward, it's everything. It's not just maybe I should maybe I should do this or, you know, can I do this? It's, you know, how do I get started? And how much do I need to do? Well, hold on. So we had a
16:33
We had seen a couple of surveys that had come out recently. Do you remember what the statistic was on high growth firms and how much they spend on marketing?
16:43
No, are your high growth firms spend two to five times more or three to five times more? Yeah. So, so, so most advising firms spend me on the spot. I can't compute, but I wanted to say that because again, what we're talking about here is solving a problem. One of the biggest problems that advisors face that the best kept secret in their area, including to their existing clients.
17:08
that the only time that they really talk to their clients or the clients feel like there's communication is in those annual, semi annual or quarterly meetings, which you and I both know, and actually research really plays this out that that's not enough. But high growth firms, high client retention firms are spending
17:24
upwards of 14% of gross not net on marketing. Now, if you break down all of your expenses when it comes to you running your financial services firm, when I was a practice management consultant, like we would look at, you know, if you were like 60% profitable, that means there was 40% of what you did for your operating expenses, right? You were unbelievably exceptional, but it's usually about 40%. Right? And so
17:49
these high growth firms invest back into their businesses regularly in order to make it so that they're going to continue to grow, which solves those problems. Now I'm going to break those problems down again, really quick. Number one, scalable client communication to, you know, really solidifying your brand and your brand message within your existing clients and centers of influence. But but the other other people here are you know, those I can't stress enough the centers of influence, you know, deepening relationships and you were
18:16
You are soft stepping around what I'm a little bit usually a little bit more direct with. Listen, I don't care if my centers of influence are adding value because I can always find somebody to add value Kirk, you need to be reciprocal. If I'm going to do something nice for you, which is to go ahead and expose you to my audience, you need to do the same thing. But most importantly, what I really want to focus on in the last few minutes before we bring Jay back on, because I want everybody to know that Kirk is going to exercise muscles that he exercises all the time with Jake Holder here in a minute.
18:45
because Jay is going to be launching a new brand in the new year. So we're going to pick Kirk's brain on the brand that has already begun and talk about how we really think about branding. But before we get to that, I need to talk more about skeptics to fans. This is a huge foundational thing in our partnership, why we really built Proud Mouth the way that we did. Would you mind talking a little bit more about what moving people across what we refer to as the influence continuum from skeptics to fans means?
19:13
Yeah, this, this idea came from a story and we had had somebody who was thinking about, uh, Influence and podcast with us and they declined and they, before they declined, they asked us to join one of their webinars and they wanted us to see how, how good they're doing it. Yeah. And they ended up sticking with doing webinars. And I remember the first, I think it was 10 or 11 minutes in, all they did was talk about themselves. They, and they didn't.
19:44
Um, do anything. And I thought to myself, all these guys are doing is talking to skeptics. They feel such a desire and need to sell, sell, sell and position and try to achieve this really fast credibility. Credibility does not typically come fast. Unless you're like Michael Jordan and you walk into a room and you say, I, I, I want all these things. You know, if somebody didn't know who he is, that'd be, that'd be possible. But.
20:13
know, he could probably say something to build it pretty quick. But for, for the, for the average financial professional or professional services expert, that's not the case. It's going to take time to build. And you've got to figure out how you're going to showcase that. I like to say that a lot of experts, they need to market like an expert who's competing in the expertise economy. And we don't see that enough. You have to showcase your expertise. It's not hide it away.
20:43
And so what we mostly see, so when we thought about these people are talking to skeptics, that can't be a great place to be. What happens at the end of that webinar? If somebody raises their hand and says, Yeah, OK, I'll come meet with you guys. Then they're, you're in sales mode, sales mode, trying to build credibility as quick as you can. Honestly, that can't be a fun place. I don't know many advisors or any professionals, including us, that want to do that every day. In and out, saying the same thing.
21:11
Say it once on your podcast and let them experience that or do a webinar. Have that sit there, but be educational. So on the, the influence journey is that's what really evolved was they're talking to skeptics. They should be talking to fans. That's what, that's where we, that's what we focus on doing. So I guess I'm doing this the opposite way. So skeptics here, uh, fans. And there's a continuum there. And on the far left of that, there's stages of influence. First one is apprentice, then expert, then authority, then celebrity.
21:40
We find that most people that are in the business, their professional area, they're about, if they're in the 5-10-year range, or typically sometimes 5-20 years, they're in that expert stage. And just for clarity or perspective here, when you're in the apprentice stage, the first one, nobody's really paying attention to you. So nobody knows about you. That's not a good place to be.
22:07
But you got to earn your stripes, if you will, earn, you know, understand your business, get some opportunity to work with somebody, probably your family and friends. And the next one is expert stage. That's where people are starting to pay attention. They understand that you've, you're, you're smart, but they're just starting. It's, it's, it's not a bad place to be, but it really should be a stepping stone. It's meant to be a stepping stone for most people. Next one is authority. And this is where people are totally paying attention.
22:36
It's not en masse, but people are paying attention. And this is where most advisors or professional service people need to be, is they need to be in this place where people are paying attention to what you have to say. You're getting better at what you have to say, what you know, who your audience is and all that kind of stuff. That's a great place to be. Not a lot of financial advisors are consistently in the authority stage. They may be back and forth, but they're not there. And the last one is celebrity.
23:05
And that's when people are telling other people about you. That's when you have fans and that's where you ultimately want to get to. You don't need to get there to have a successful business, but you want to be pushing towards that and that's a big deal. You just said something, dude, we've never really distilled this. I'm super happy that this is being recorded and that Jay's going to be able to re reprogram this on financial advisor TV for a later, later date.
23:32
advisors have been competing in the sales economy for so long. And when you're competing in the sales economy, everybody's your competition. When you compete in the expertise economy, you have no competition or very little competition, because if you are unapologetically yourself and be your own loud, then you are in a category of one. Stop trying to compete in the sales economy when you're trying to sell on things, sell on fees or planning or investment management.
23:58
When you compete in the expertise economy, every single solitary thing changes. Um, it feels different. You're not exhausted. And most importantly, if you do skilled communication, then you're not going to be saying the same thing in every single solitary meeting, every single solitary. Think about what, um, Cheryl Nash and Diana Cabrises have both done. They're both created these incredible brands and you know exactly who they are. And they're not, they're not see, uh, swimming in the sea of sameness.
24:27
And they've done a great job. What's interesting is, you know, earlier, you guys talked about the, the significant groundswell of professional women making a big impact, a loud impact in financial services and how much they're lifting each other up. It's, it's not the first time. We've talked about it for years now. And it just keeps getting better. I remember going to Wealth Management Awards for the Wealthies a year and a half ago.
24:57
And I was blown away by just how amazingly supportive all women in financial were being to one another. And it was a great place. And, and, and, you know, to be fair, there's all, there are more and more men, you know, supporting it. And, you know, you have to pay attention to this stuff. If you pay attention to Top Advisor Marketing Podcast, we have a very, on purpose, diverse
25:27
guest list. And it's well earned. There's no, we're not just making stuff up, looking for particular people, but we're aware of it. And it makes a big difference. And so, you know, keep, keep that rolling. It doesn't take away anything else from any other group that you're doing. You've already got lots of support. So just keep doing it. I'm really impressed with it.
25:52
And it's a really good thing for financial services. And this is an example of Cheryl, Diana, Hannah, Cheryl Nash as well. I can't remember the fifth person you showed, but they have great brands. They get brandy and influence, don't they? Well, and we're going to go ahead and switch gears. Jay, come on back, brother. We're going to go ahead and start breaking down this new brand that you're going to launch here in the new year. Now, so I told everybody how
26:22
Kirk and I met you met Kirk way before I met Kirk. Would you mind giving that origin story? Because I like this. I got to tell you the last time Jay and I talked, we was at a it was in a courtyard at a conference and we were helping him and I was he said, you have any thoughts on on this brand and we had we had a wonderful hour hour and a half two hours hit me man. Oh man, we had a great day.
26:50
Here's my story. We knew each other from the podcast. We had swapped shows, you know, six years ago. And then we're at a conference in 2018. And you were kind enough to set in on the session where I was speaking. And afterwards, I say, Kirk, I really want your honest feedback. You said, you want the honest feedback? Because you just ripped everything I was doing apart. And I said, Hey, can I buy you dinner tonight? And help me think this through. And we sat there for two hours, I brought a notepad and I took pages of notes.
27:19
And I changed everything after that. And I've always been so grateful for the time that you gave me in doing that. And you really helped me think through what I was doing. I'll let you in a little secret. I thank you for that, by the way, I'm more than happy to help out is branding people who love branding. If you if you just get their grab their ear and you go grab a coffee with them, you'll get you'll get I hate to say free stuff.
27:48
I'll help out anybody who I know is a generous, good human. And I was just, I was just up North with my son and his billet family. Uh, he wants to start doing more landscaping from his normal job. And I spent probably three hours working on working on a brand for him. And he's like texting me as I'm going home, driving home.
28:10
you know, I pay you for it. I'm like, No, no, no, it's just an experiment. I'm just basically using all kinds of AI tools with my brain. It's like an experiment to see something that you know, I should be doing is, you know, making sure I I know what it's like, it feels like to start using AI to build a brand or website. So I got a brand, a website logo, and all the web, all the copy in less than four hours. Hey, it's just incredible. It's pretty good, too. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
28:38
Yeah, and he was like he's through the through the moon, right? I mean, hold on there. So AI is amazing, but garbage in garbage out, right? So that's what a lot of people don't really understand. It we're we're we're we need to get to Jay stuff here. But but I love it. We talked about this with Angel two shows ago, right? It's all about making sure that you're asking the AI to do the right things, using the right language and the right parameters. And that's where the expertise that you bring, Kirk, that's why you could execute that.
29:05
Dude, I'm telling the audience right now, they couldn't just go to GPT or whatever and have all of that stuff done. All right, Jay, let's go, let's go. Let's start bringing on your new brand. What are you doing? Hit it, hit it. All right, let me set the stage for it. So we have the RIA, and we have the consulting business. Resilient Advisor is the brand. I'm fortunate it's been established for a long time. Part of the things we do with the consulting business is historically has been some light recruiting or helping advisors move. And there's two components to that.
29:34
people hire us and they pay us to help them go fully independent. So we help them navigate the waters of dealing with compliance, custodians and tech stack. And then we've done some light recruiting where the firm where they land will pay us for that. And what we have found, we're getting people asking us to help them with that to navigate kind of the messy and murkiness of even working with recruiters. So here's how far I've gotten so far. I start with the story brand process. Are you familiar with story brand? Yes.
30:04
All right, just to get to the end with the character transformation, who's a financial advisor, who's probably stuck at a warehouse, they go from feeling trapped, overwhelmed by the idea of a move to independence and then uncertain to being free from bureaucracy, clear on their options and confident about the future. So give me a second. I gotta I gotta remember this feeling trapped. Overwhelmed by move. Uncertain. Okay, go ahead.
30:34
Okay, because I'm a marketing hack. And that's why it's the marketing office hours with Matt Halloran and not Jay Coulter. I start with a logo and aligned it with the same blue, black and white that I use for resilient advisor. Yep. And then I started playing with what because this will be YouTube and Twitter driven. What copy could look like here. That is an old profile picture. I'm going to have to get those redone for the start of the year. But I'm a visual person. So it helps me kind of think it through.
31:04
Now on the website, which is hung off I own advisor breakaway system, which is the brand.com, it hangs off of the resilient advisor website. And Kirk, this used to be called and you're gonna hate this, the independence incubator. And I understood what it meant, but nobody else did, which made it bad marketing. And that's why we switched to this. So the copy using the story brand framework, probably too wordy there at the top, a three step process, which is to
31:33
design your ideal firm aligned with your goals. Step two is the guided due diligence and planning process. And then step three is to execute the transition. And then some copy on what they probably feel like right now being tired of recruiters, custodians over promising, and figure out who you could trust to then the calls to action schedule a meeting, an infographic on how the whole process works that they can download. And then, you know, another call to action to schedule a meeting. So
32:03
I'll stop throwing up there and let you take me to the woodshed. Okay, I have to jump in here real quick. You don't look any different. You're a little bit grayer, dude. But oh my god, your fate you haven't had. I'm really jealous of how young you still look, dude. It's just cameras and lighting. You guys know that we've been in person. Yeah, no, you I noticed that too, Matt.
32:27
Alright, go back to the website real quick. I'm going to start before because I can already hear Kirk's gears grinding. Scroll up a little bit. So one of the things that you have is you have this process, this infographic here, right, which is very, very, very nice. But then if you scroll up, right, you've got this, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going right here. So this step one, step two, step three, you've got to show some graphic design love to that. One of the things that I learned from Kirk very early on.
32:53
is anything that's going to be on your website really needs to make sure that there is going to be it needs to be as visually appealing this this looks like you literally dragged and dropped it bro which which which you might have but if you can have that transition be a little bit more smooth and have this piece here be prettier or at least more engaging without it being on a white boxy thing that was the first thing that that I
33:19
Okay, Kirk, I want to ask you a couple of questions. Let's go back to slide number one, which is your story brand dashboard. So Kirk, when we work people through, so we have something called the brand basics worksheet, which is free in our Podrocket Academy. We ask these questions too. So are there any questions he's missing here, Kirk?
33:45
Well, the thing that this is tied back to what we're doing is how are you solving? So you're saying your system solves what's on the right there. Is that all in your website? I believe so in through the form of that infographic, which walks you through the multi-step process. Yeah. So I I'm just figuring out that you're resilient advisor. This is a, this is a branded.
34:14
the, I like to call it like a brand or packaged system that you're creating. I would, you looks, your logo looks more like a, just for about maybe a corporate brand. So I might focus more on something that speaks to, I mean, sometimes you get, when we're trying to come up with a brand, we come to these really complicated logo ideas that look like a something that looks like a system. And you've probably seen, you know, so many things that look like that. So
34:43
I might focus on something that for starters is all enclosed because as you saw with your website there, you've got a problem with having a graphic on top of a picture and on top of a solid color. So if you're going to, if you want to have the most, I feel like I'm all over the map here. I'll come back to it in a sec. But graphically, you got to have something that
35:11
is capable of working on a lot of different areas. And usually something that's solid, with the shape around it, gives you the best opportunity because then you avoid having it on different backgrounds. Now you can always have a bunch of different versions of it. But this one color blue without a background on it, so if it's a transparent PNG, and you can do, it looks like you've got that in Canva. So you can.
35:39
save it as a transparent PNG. So your three system, your steps, three steps, you could have done that too. But you won't be able to see those on that background. So you're going to have to figure out how to give them their own background. So almost like put them into like a rounded edge square, kind of like you would like see like a Twitter logo, or like a social media icon, because they know they're going to be used a lot of places. So they, they do that.
36:03
Is that like the proud mouth logo? Yeah, that was is that an enclosed logo? Yes, it has a it has a it has a white line around the seat on my over the shoulder thing. Matt's got the same one. So it'll show up if it's on a white background, then you might not see the white but you'll see the blue so it pops, right? I'm sorry, hold on. There's so much that was just said there that I don't want people to not
36:33
understand the level of depth and expertise on what Kirk just shared there. Just starting with this as, because a lot of people think that, you know, Jay, you started with Storybrand as the beginning of your brand, right? A lot of people think that a logo is where the brand begins, and it's part of the process. But if you don't think through the visual representation,
37:00
because Kirk tied this into the infographic and the website and all of those things. It's really important to understand that there is a level of expertise and understanding on the entire process that you can't just do things, which is what most people do, Jay, in isolation. Oh, well, I'm going to create my story here, and then I'm going to create a logo here, and then I'm going to do my website. And then everything seems piecemeal. In fact, Kirk started this off, and I was a little bit confused because I didn't realize that Advisor Breakaway
37:28
was a sub brand of resilient advisor. Because by the way, this could entirely be a standalone and you already own the URL. So yeah, so I just, I needed to break that down. Go back to the storyteller brand, story brand thing, if you wouldn't mind your little. So what to get, what is the overarching message there of those three? Free from the art, is it freedom, clarity or confidence? Yeah, I think it's confidence to break away to freedom.
37:58
Because in my experience, most advisors are really struggling with this idea of not only the work that goes into it, but they don't know what they don't know, so they get stuck with inertia. Yeah, I remember working with an up-and-coming broker dealer out of Fresno, California, years ago. I remember sitting in the boardroom with about eight different executives. And they were going on about all the things they do. And I was like, OK, sounds normal, normal, normal, normal. And all of a sudden they said,
38:26
One of the things that our clients really like though, is when we transition, I'm not going to give up the name, but when we transition them from one place to the other, when they come to us, we actually send a team in. We have an event over two days and we get all their paperwork done. We get 90% of the paperwork done in two days when their team goes there. We make a big event, we help pay for it. We have dinner, we make it fun for them. We have some speakers come, and then we have all these.
38:55
that, you know, our, our staff to sit around and on their laptops, and they just do the work right there. They just get it all done. It said, and it's, I was like, that's incredible. Like, I've never heard of anybody doing that. So we built their whole brand around that. And I, they had a young up and coming person who wanted to own that brand. So when we got him started, he got me out of there quick, so he could own it and, which is, which is fine. And
39:24
they ended up winning a bunch of awards. Like they built, they took everything that they had and they packaged it like that one example that we had because they realized we do a lot of things really good. They were really well run internally, but they were a secret. Nobody knew about them. So when they positioned all these things and they packaged them, it had a huge impact. And everything was all tied in graphically. They did an amazing job. This, the young guy was really great at tying in stuff visually.
39:51
He had a real knack for that. I think he had a graphic design background, but he had way more ambitions than that. So what I'm getting at is I might look for something that's a little more less systemy. The A doesn't mean anything to your audience. It means probably something to you, probably more than anything, it was probably something simple. I would look for something that's meaningful to them, that speaks to the most powerful thing you wanna do, and keep it as simple as possible.
40:17
the more iconic and the less detail there is and whatever that symbol represents it, the better. The other thing I do is I wouldn't downplay the word system and advisor break, breakaway system. There, there are all those words are just as important as the other. So I probably wouldn't break down when I first thought it, I thought it was your rebranding resilient advisor. And I would say take system out of it all together. But now I realized this is a system.
40:45
that Resilient, you know, the proprietary system that exists under the umbrella of Resilient Advisor. And Resilient Advisor is, you know, it's a great name. So I've always really liked that. So maybe just change that dynamic, find something that's, they don't have to understand, doesn't have to identify as emotionally engaging and right out of the gate with that. Probably confidence is the most, you know, because advisors, I get that. They need somebody in their corner.
41:15
saying, You can do this, it's not gonna destroy your world. Like that example I gave, if you, if you could transition 90% of your assets in one month, and you didn't have to do anything about it, and you made it like an event, and it was fun, and it looked like you're, you're really taking your business to the next level because that organized it was. That's a huge positive. That goes from being, I don't want to deal with this to, Oh, my gosh, why I actually want to do this.
41:43
One thing I left out is part of the lead magnet for this will be a either a masterclass or some type of micro course, where you don't even have to hire us. We'll teach you how to go do this on your own if you want to, which is part of the idea behind a system. Does that change any of your thinking around what you've said? So No, it's brilliant. I you know, it's really interesting about having been in marketing, finishing marketing this this long is that so many advisors really struggle with different tiers of offerings. It's just hire me.
42:12
pay me my fee. Maybe there's a couple of different levels of that sometimes, but how do they ever work with you on more of a trial basis? And that's essentially what you're doing. You're saying, Hey, come, come hang out with us. It's not much money, because I can scale, you know, me, you know, for one hour, talk to 20 of you, or 100, however many get coming. And it's a great way. And people can kind of test, test you out. People are very discerning. They don't want to
42:40
you know, lots of people have been burned. Right? Oh, yeah. And everybody's got a lot of baggage in their, in their outsource, outsourcing other experts' closet. We do. You know, we just hired a coding company that just killed us, like something we're building. It was a horrible experience. We did due diligence, really good due diligence and everything. And Matt and I have been weeping about this, especially me.
43:08
for a couple of months now, you know, we fixed it all and we're heading the right direction in a much better way. But I learned this from a friend, by the way, sometimes he said, when you when you waste money, he said, Don't think of it as wasting, because when you do, it's it you you learn so much that you're going to be so much better, you're going to save so much money in the future. He said, Accept and own it. And don't feel bad about it. Because it's just it was just
43:36
It's just what you had to pay for that lesson. Anyway. Yeah, so so let's let's talk about I want to help I I've been on like three tangents there. That's okay. No, no, we love your tangents. It's one of the reasons we wanted you on the show. So So here's the thing, right? Let's bring this all the way back to the idea of marketing and branding solves things for advisors, Jay, what we're talking about now is going to solve something for you. But most importantly,
44:04
It has to solve something for them. And I have to go back to what Kirk had said before. So Kirk gave his opinion on your story brand component. The number one thing, because you know that when I was a practice management consultant, mergers and acquisitions was something I did a lot of, right? It's fear, it's fear. They're terrified to make the jump and they call it a jump for a reason. Now you outlined the reasons.
44:30
right, where your system can actually solve it. But the biggest reason why people don't leave wirehouses specifically, is they're freaking terrified that their life is going to be entirely interrupted, they're going to lose all of their clients. And they're in and again, over promised and under deliver. I remember the first person I took through the transition. They were leaving a bank, and they went to LPL. I worked for Carson. So that made a lot of sense, right. But so they moved to LPL, right. And it took twice as long.
44:58
And now I'm not saying that was an LPL issue. There's always issues. But you know, the I probably shouldn't have said LPL. But anyway, they said, hey, it's only gonna take you three months, it took six months, you know, for them to get everything in place that they needed to. And so that's another one of the big fears. And I'm not saying that you want to use fear to sell this new thing. But you're solving the fear, right? That being scared, which is absolutely something that every advisor faces when they're going to leave. But
45:26
Oh my gosh, the amount of advisors who are going to be running away from wirehouses is humongous because of everything Kirk and I talked about earlier, which is the fact that marketing solves for so many advisors problems and they can't market the way that they want to because they're so pigeonholed and, you know, handcuffed by the overarching brand. Yeah. Well, Kirk, I really appreciate you taking time to walk through that. Dude, I got you a new logo here. You have one?
45:55
Yeah, I work fast.
46:00
Are you going to share your screen? I might. Give me a second. How much time we got? It'll take two seconds. I know. We've got time. Hey, actually, speaking of that, so Kirk's a Canadian. So he already had his Thanksgiving. Well, Kirk's working this logo up. Jay, what are you doing for Turkey Day, man? Oh, man. My wife is from Louisiana. She can cook like a champion. So we're heading down there with her family. We're going to have a pretty good Thanksgiving. How about yourself?
46:27
So we do it twice. So we have the family Thanksgiving and then we do friends giving. Now family Thanksgiving is fine, right? I mean, you get to see all your friends, but friends giving is the win. So we cook food, which I, by the way, I try to help as much as I possibly can without ruining things. My wife is also an unbelievable cook. It's just part of how she shows love. So the food tastes even better when she does it cause it's always infused with love. So, and we just have kind of an open.
46:57
right? So we have friends come over, we have games set up so that if people want to play board games, we're always playing like the Muppets Christmas Carol, It's a Wonderful Life, Elf, right? So we're already moving into the whole Christmas slash holiday movies, Miracle on 34th Street, you know, I mean, we've got these standard things. So I'm super excited about it. This is my absolute favorite time of year. There's like 47 different holidays just within these
47:26
you know, literally two months. And so, you know, I just wanted to tell everybody, you know, happy holidays, no matter what you practice what you believe where you live. This is the time to really be thankful and grateful for all of what you have, even if it isn't a lot, or even if it is so much, please take time to have a little show some some gratitude for where you are, and what you have. Okay, Kirk, did I stall long enough? Are you ready? Yeah, I was gonna try to
47:56
It would. Yeah, you can just click the present button. It would have been neat to see the process though Kirk, but I guess people have to. Well, it won't take you long to figure out. It's it's really simple, right? Share screen. OK, tips want me read through tips? No. Had all kinds of tips for me. Can you see now? It is up. So this is just, you know, a quick. Storyboard right, which is.
48:24
How do you showcase somebody feeling great about the confident and taking it? You know, so, and having a really, what's font is this? This is the, actually the proud mouth font.
48:37
Also, we're on a monster. Yeah, I love it. And so that's just a shield is security comfort, like, feels good pride feels good to feel confident. I'm going to do this. This is and then the other one was just, you know, just feel good about getting something done. I most people are going to know that they they needed to get I need to get this done. Like, how do I get how do we get that checkbox? And how do I, you know, feel good about it? Just just something like that.
49:07
I mean, this is, you know, I was working on it. Maybe I shouldn't be well. I'm on a podcast or it's impressive that you could do that. I'm curious, do you since this is a sub brand, it's not a business. Yeah. Should I use the resilient advisor colors, the blue, the blue? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I messed that part up. Okay. Yeah, for sure. You can add. You can add bright colors that
49:36
live and that like make it feel good to like sometimes people are trying to showcase something but their palette doesn't really support that vibe either. If that's the case with your palette, then just add a new color to it. Yeah, one color. That in fact, that could be a nice thing for people to experience. Oh, jeez got a new, you know, a new new colors like going and it's like, Hey, I've never seen you in red before. Looks really good on you. Okay. Man, I'm so grateful. Kirk. Massive. I appreciate it.
50:06
I appreciate you coming on and sharing your thoughts around how marketing can help solve problems. And listen, you're a layup guest for the show. Please come on anytime you would like we'd love to have you. Matt and I are looking like lumberjacks. Hey, this is the proud mouth brand. So they're making us showcase our Canadian. So I just had to show up with with our newest proud mouth embroidered shirt. I'm sure you'll see Matt in one of these upcoming event.
50:35
Ask him if he's got any maple syrup on him if you don't mind. Well, Kirk, enjoy the holiday season. We're going to wrap up the show here with Matt's final word. Matt, let you take it away. Yeah. So here's the deal, everybody. Marketing solves problems. And as you know, we took Jay through really Kirk took Jay through that exercise. There were some really cool things that.
51:03
came out. And if you just look at the storyboard brand logos that Kirk just built there, those logos elicit an emotional response. Your entire brand, all of your marketing should make people feel a specific way. And guess what? If you don't have that stuff written down in your brand manifesto, and really what your brand foundation is, guess what? You aren't going to be
51:31
very consistent. So it's very important for you to do that. And let's go all the way full circle to the top of the show. We talked about Excel Represent, the brand of Excel Represent, all of the women who we highlighted who won those awards. Their brands elicit an emotional response, but more important, an emotional solution. People make decisions based off emotion.
51:59
They don't make decisions based off of other things. Their initial response is going to be, how do they feel about the information that you're presenting? And this is why marketing solves problems. It solves problems because you know how you want your clients to feel after they work with you. So what does your brand do? Does your brand go ahead and elicit that emotional response? If it doesn't, go to ProudMouth.com or
52:27
Go to PodrocketAcademy.com, sign up, and you can get the brand basics worksheet for their shameless promotion. But listen, happy holidays to absolutely all of our watchers out there. We're so happy that it's the holiday season. You're gonna be seeing me sport this Santa hat pretty regularly. I actually wear this out in public, just so everybody knows, to try to bring a little bit of holiday cheer. So for Jay Kirk and I, we'll see you on the other side of the mic very soon.
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