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FPL Top Tips - Financial Planning Gurus on Content Creation, Marketing & Personal Brand · Financial Planner Life Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone, it's Elena here from the Financial Planet Life Podcast.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this week we bring you a special feature episode all about personal branding, content creation, and marketing.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: In this jam-packed episode, we bring back some previous guests who are gurus in the financial planning space, and they bring you lots of tips and tricks on how to accelerate your business and your personal brand.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_03: And someone goes, Sam, I know who you are.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: Nine times out of ten, I'm getting that.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's cool, isn't it?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: I get I get inbound business now.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, that's what Tom mentioned about legal in general doing the work with them.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: If I didn't create that podcast, if I didn't put that marketing out, if I didn't repurpose it and then have a social strategy attached to it, I don't know whether or not they would have ever reached out to me.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I absolutely I've got my own story on that.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're absolutely right.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm a you know, we're a tinpot little practice, really, very ordinary IFA practice, all the way down in Penzance.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Another 10 miles, you fall off the country, right?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: And Cornwall's very long and narrow.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we're right at the end of it.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: It takes ages to get anywhere.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Six hours on a train for me to get to London.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, nobody knew who I was.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I joined Twitter in 2008.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was, I think I was in the first million people that joined Twitter, and a bunch of us in financial services also joined Twitter about the same time, Rich Allenman.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: And among those was Nick Kann, who then was the chief executive of the Institute of Financial Planning, as it was then.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember going to my first IFP conference, and I'm naturally an introvert, and so I was just like, but I thought I must put myself out of my comfort zone, and I introduced myself to Nick.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Hi Nick, I'm Pete.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a financial planner from Penzance.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Really excited to be here.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: We chatted for about 90 seconds, I moved on.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: He who he definitely forgot who I was, right?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: By the next year's conference, we'd been corresponding on Twitter a lot, and he hails me across the room, Pete, great to see you, bud.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: How you doing?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we, you know, we sort of had drinks together and all that sort of stuff.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: And he kind of put me on the map as a person in the industry.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And for an introvert, that was actually incredibly helpful because then people, you're the video guy, right?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: You're the podcast guy.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how's that going?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: And people, you know, make it easy because they would approach me and they'd know who I was.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And like you say, then stuff comes out of it.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've written a book, writing another one, you know, publishing deal, I've done work for providers, done video work for them, uh, you know, affiliate links with Life Search, you know, sort of sending business their way to do protection business, all this stuff.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Meaningful money has become a business in itself, which you know, from starting on a you know, in a field in Como with a hundred-pound flip video camera, it's become a bit of a beast.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it it does that for you.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: It it people know who you are, it helps you build a business, it takes time.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, it's helped me more than anything to distill my thinking on a range of subjects because if you're gonna put content out week after week after week, you kind of refine what you do.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's like any advisor worth their salt will eventually come up with ways of explaining certain things that really hit home with most clients.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's just little sort of statements or comments that we might say, ways of explaining things.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And doing a podcast, doing a YouTube channel does that as well.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so you just learn, it helps you distill your thinking, which makes you, I think, a better thinker.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's what I've really enjoyed getting out of it.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_03: Right, brilliant.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: Listen, you alluded to the fact that you absolutely love marketing, right?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: You as well, like media, marketing, um, presenting, all those typical types of things.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: Now, Nicola, you've got your YouTube channel, podcasting, you're always on podcast, you're on Mind Today, right?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: You're always presenting, you're always out there doing it.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: Just tell us a little bit about why you feel like you have to do that.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: Is it personal brand?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: Is it to drive the brand awareness of your company?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: And what is typically like the return on investment on something like that for you?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so I feel that we need to do it because for all the reasons you've just mentioned, Sam, I think it's great for brand awareness, but it's more so about when we look at our target market, you know, we're targeting certainly a lot of the online stuff.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_05: So the YouTube channel is mainly geared towards um attracting mortgage clients.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_05: Now, a first-time buyer, first-time buyers are our you know, target market.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_05: What's the typical age of a first-time buyer is 25 to 35.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_05: We know this.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_05: Where are most 25 to 35 year olds?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_05: They are online, they are Googling things.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_05: What they're not doing is looking through, you know, that that's how they find their information.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_05: They're on Instagram, they're on YouTube, they're the main platforms.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_05: So if I know that, why wouldn't I be on those platforms?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_05: Is the point.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so that's a large part of it.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_05: It's where our target market is, but I also do thoroughly enjoy it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: Good, you enjoy doing it.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_03: So for you, it ticks that again, that intrinsic box about A, being innovative, enjoying going back to that sort of degree that you did, that that desire when you were younger to also get into presenting, media, et cetera.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm I'm the same, you know.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_03: When I got into doing this sort of thing, I I found myself, I found it really nerve-wracking.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_03: I found it quite difficult to do.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_03: And the thing that I had to do really was just to keep on going.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_03: So every week I set you, I was consistent with my podcast every week.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I started just by doing one thing, which is the podcast every week.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: And if you look back over my podcast, you can see the evolution about how better and better and better it's got to the point now where I'm sat in a studio, you know, doing the podcasts.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_03: So, like, um, I think like when someone looks on the outside at someone like me or you, right, they'll say, Wow, they've got it all together.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: Why should I even bother starting?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's like too competitive.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_03: What would be your tip for just saying that if someone's listening to this right now, they want to do some personal brand stuff, they want to get on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, they want to be that person.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think your tip would be to them just to get started?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_05: It would be to just start, just do it.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_05: Exactly what you said, Sam.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_05: I still do have access.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_05: It's not visible on my YouTube channel anymore because I don't, I don't like it.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_05: I hate it actually.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_05: My very first video.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_05: But if I was to go back and watch it, I remember it very clearly.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I'm sat there looking really scared, like you can just barely hear me.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, hi, I'm Nikolai.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_05: Do you know what I mean?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_05: It's just not the person that I am today.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_05: And that video was only four years ago, it wasn't that long ago.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_05: So, again, it's a case of you have to accept that the first time you do it, it's not going to be perfect.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_05: You know, the first time you saw a mortgage client, you were not perfect.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_05: Nothing, you're not going to just wake up out of bed one day and be the finished article.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_05: That's just not how life works.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: Where I'm seeing financial planning firms that are now investing heavily in their branding, they're investing heavily in their marketing.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: And this is where I see a huge opportunity.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: You look at the likes of the financial coaches that are out there, building followings, building influence, right?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: If I was a financial planner and I had a financial planning firm, I would be aiming to build within the rules of financial promotions, I would be aiming to build that following, that influence.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: You know, working with top-level influencers to use my product to say how fantastic their financial well-being is, because New World Group technology has made it so easy for me to reach out and get questions answered.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: And that's the space I believe that as a financial planner, if they want to be the best in the future, need to get into the ability to A, give advice like you guys are doing, you're creating a simplified subscription process that's accessible to the wider audience, not a super duper niche.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_03: That will still be there and people will still be able to do the super duper niche stuff because not everybody wants to go down an AI route or whatever, you know, they they won't want to do it.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: But having that connection to those individuals that are influential and can be advocates of your product, which is uh good financial planning, yeah, financial plans, I think that's the future as well.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it's an area that firms should invest in heavily, is a brand and is the positioning of that brand within the right culture, subcultures of individuals.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the things you said there is consistency with things.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_03: So if you took five accountants every single day and reached out to five different accountants in a personalized message every single day, right?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's 25 a week, that's a hundred a month.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: Now, do you reach out to a hundred accountants a month?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_03: Have you got time to reach out to five a day?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_03: Right, there you go.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_03: There's your bit there's that's the bit that people lack is that you think if I don't get an instant response straight away, therefore it's not worth my time.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_03: You have to build the habit of outreach.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same as content creation.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I I wish I did it sooner.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it and it and you know what's funny about this is it's the kind of thing that a lot of people know, but we still don't do it.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like I know it.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: I because last year I said, wow, I wish I'd really been focusing on more accountants.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: You get to the end of the year and I still hadn't messaged any accountants about it.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: We I I I spoke to a few because they came up through Clinton.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: But this year, that is gonna be a focus on it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_03: Keep it simple.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's why, because it's a because the idea you have in your head of what you're gonna do is so overwhelming, you don't do it.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: The only way you build a habit is to make it simple.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to go running every day, you go to bed with your shorts on and your vest on and you put your shoes by the side of the bed.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_03: And you don't go to the rhythm.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you don't go to the gym to run on a r on a running machine, you put your shoes on, you walk out the door and you run.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's exactly the same with content creation.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: We can overcomplicate something that need not be overcomplicated.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: You just have to do it and get going and start it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_03: And as you've read with atomic habits, for example, is like one of my f favorite ever books, you know.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, life is a series of habits to make it bloody easy and also start stacking them.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're doing things with accountants where you're sending them, where you're adding them to your LinkedIn, well, then you send a message.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_03: Right, okay, well, then you might add them to an email database.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_03: So you send them an email.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, and then you might record a personalized video and send it in a message to them.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know what I mean?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: You just keep doing address.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: They know people podcast is a great one because I've got like 7,000 listeners listening to me every single every single month, right?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: In a room and I've never met 'em.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean like when we first spoke, I uh you kind of feel like I've we've had a few chats in the past.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: We haven't.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: You're like, oh no, yeah, honest, Sam.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've I've I've spoken to him for hours.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: I've sat and listened for hours, but you kind of feel like you've had that.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what I love about podcasts.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: I quite often just chuck one on you.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: Feel like you're just sat in the room with whoever's on that podcast having that conversation.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: You're a part of it.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: And it's and it's raw, and it's raw and it's honest.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: I I'm not a big fan of the podcast where they just fire questions and that's it.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a I'm a long I'm a long-form content person, and not everybody is.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: Some people just want to go on there, 25 minutes, job done.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: But I tend to like to build a relationship with somebody and I think that shines through.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: And you're either a listener who enjoys that or you're not, you go and get your content somewhere else, you know?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: I do also think with the with like you said about um the kind of consistency and simplifying this stuff, I also think um that it's about not trying to do too much.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: And and actually what I mean by that is I remember in my early years of advising, it was like, right, you need to have you need to have 10 meetings a week.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: When you have no network, it's very hard to get 10 meetings a week.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: And you get to the point where you're like, well, I'm not gonna be able to get 10, so what's the point?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas actually, I then changed it, and I don't know what year this would have been, but I actually then just completely flipped it and was like, no, I want three meetings a week.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's all I want.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Three a week.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: And you're like, I must be able to get three a week.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: And you get two in, and then you're like, shit, I don't even know who else to call, but you will find one, you can get to three, and then you suddenly go, Oh wow, yeah, I've actually had three meetings every single week, I've had three, and then you go, well, let's let you let's make it four.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: One thing is not to kind of if you're starting out in this, don't think you're just gonna fill your diary and be back to back.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, look, if I can just get one person every week that I sit down and have a coffee with, that's what I build from.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: And then I get two the following week.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it's probably the same thing with like the content.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like I need to do a podcast every day.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I can't do it, so I'm not gonna do a podcast.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, well, okay, do one a quarter.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the that's another thing.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: I and I say this to people that uh kind of starting out in their early years, is like, look, make a number that you know you're gonna hit because you need some confidence.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it's got it does have to stretch you a bit, but you do know need to know that it's something you can get to.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's crazy when so and and people like when I was struggling, people were like, Well, look, fill your diary up, you're not seeing enough people, have more meetings.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, Where from?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what do you like what do you want me to do?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: Just suddenly like walk into a coffee shop and sit on someone's table and class out as a meeting.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's about doing the numbers that you can do and building from that.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where then the consistency comes from.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: I want to finish on something, and it's something that you came up with then in the whole conversation that I I I I really want to just explore a little bit further, and that's the niche, niching as a power planner.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um never come across that, uh, I'll be honest.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't realise a power planner's niched.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: So for me, that's a really interesting subject.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Can you just A just give us a couple of areas that you've seen power planners niching in specifically?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_03: And do you think niching is the future of power planning to build upon, say, your personal brand and establish yourself as a bit of a leader out there?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: So a bit of a marketing personal brand tool as well.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I do.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um, like there's there's so many people that are training to be power planners now, or there's so many people that are setting up their own businesses and become as you know, a freelance power planner.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_04: So I think an advisor looks at you, they just we just all look the same.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we've had this for years.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, you're just a power planner.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_04: Well, no, ePower plans not just a power planner.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_04: We do everything.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_04: We do everything.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_04: We do admin, we do power planning, we do reg data returns, we do marketing, we do design, we do compliance, we we do everything.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_04: You don't need to have staff with us, absolutely everything.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we've got subscription services to run uh client servicing throughout the whole year that you know, and it it covers everything.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_04: So when you're looking, when you're an advisor and you're looking at the market, you just think, yeah, yeah, they're just a they're a parapanner.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: But if you start to niche, and again, it doesn't mean only do this area, it just means be more technical in this certain niche.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_04: Say, for example, financial abuse.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_04: So if you are, if you have got your ducks in a row about financial abuse, you've done extensive um training, education around financial abuse, and you know you are the financial abuse go-to paraplanner in the industry.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_04: Any advisor that needs help with financial abuse isn't going to go to any paraplanner.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_04: They are going to seek out someone who knows what they're talking about.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_04: Same with um, let me I'm trying to think of another example now, but even in like investments, some we've all got an idea of investments.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_04: We all know we've got all got knowledge.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_04: And if you've got something a little bit weird, you can research it, yes.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_04: But if you've got that real deep um knowledge and understanding of multiple investments and to a different level, you know, some para planners will understand beta, alpha of shares and everything, but other para planners will understand a stock and or an investment fund, but not so much what this means or the beta means or the alpha means so much.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_04: I can write a report on it, but I don't really understand that that well.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_04: But there are going to be people that absolutely understand that it's in their mind, that's what they love, they love that part of their role.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_04: And again, if you're advertising as being the technical go-to for that area, and the advisor's looking and they go, Oh, I need that, they're going to come to that parapanner for that for that area.