Latest / The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners / 218: Ideas to Implement --Create a Laser-Focused Marketing Message that Speaks to Your ICA

Transcript

218: Ideas to Implement --Create a Laser-Focused Marketing Message that Speaks to Your ICA · The Efficient Advisor: Tactical Business Advice for Financial Planners

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey there, efficient advisors, welcome back.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: I am so excited to take this week's episode and distill it down into just a couple of bullet points that you can take action on immediately to make a big impact in your business, right?
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: I want to take what we learned on Tuesday and distill it down here on Thursday and implement the dang thing right.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: So I'm glad you're here.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I always want to have just a short sweep follow-up episode.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: That's just all about the ideas that you can actually implement.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I am your host of the Efficient Advisor, libby Grywe.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I built from scratch a 100% referral-only planning practice that I grew to seven figures as a solo advisor at a broker-dealer, all while working just three days a week and taking off 14 weeks a year, and I blame the whole thing on systems and processes.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Really, there were three things that I did in my business to go from working 80 hours a week down to just 24.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: And it was building a simple team with the right people and the right roles, with the right culture.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It was building simple systems and processes based on an experiential experience for our clients, like we based everything that we did around our ideal client avatar and building out the best possible client experience for them, and it was building in simple, time-saving techniques that we talk about here at the Efficient Advisor.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: So I'm here just to walk alongside you and to show you how to do exactly the same thing for yourself to take immediate action on the most important strategies and, every week, give you bite-size, easy to implement ideas for scaling, organizing and creating less stress and overwhelm in your business.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: We are about to transform your practice, so move over exhaustion and get out of the way.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Advisor ADD.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: It is time to take that one right next step to build a business and a life that you love.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: So this week's episode was a replay of an episode I mean gosh, it was like episode number 10.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: And I chose that for this week we were getting ready to.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: So this week, inside of our group coaching program, we're doing ideal client avatar work, and it's that work that everyone's like it's so stupid, I don't want to do it.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: And I always tell the group in the very first day like look, I will never, ever, ever ask you to do something that is a waste of your time, like that is not the spirit of the efficient advisor, right?
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I will never ask you to do anything fluffy or that just feels good.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: We do this ideal client avatar work in the very like.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: It's like the first part of the content of the course.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: So, like week two, we dive into this and we use it the whole program long.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: It is amazing how, when you get your ideal client avatar super dialed in, how you build all of your systems and processes to support that ideal client right, what did they need, what did they want?
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: How do they like to receive information?
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: It's all built around them.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: And it's amazing how at the end of the program, when I'm doing exit interviews, I often hear like I hated that at the beginning.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: I hated that foundational work that we did in that first month before we started building processes.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: But, dang, am I so glad that we did that.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: That was actually the most helpful ideal client avatar work I've ever done.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: I've tried to do that before and I've given you guys a modified version.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Right, the difference between obviously, in the group coaching we can go a whole lot deeper in this avatar work than we can here in the podcast, but I've got a free download for you that goes along with the episode.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: The episode kind of walks you right through the worksheet and you use this information to inform literally everything you do inside of your business.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: It's super cool.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: So the big gist of the episode this week is really understanding where your sweet spot is.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: So where Are the clients?
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Like, what type of planning do you love to do?
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Like what gives you joy and passion and you get excited over and have fun doing?
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: What type of planning is that?
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Who are the clients that you have done that type of planning for in the last you know, 12 to 36 months?
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Or like?
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: When you see these clients pop up on your schedule, you're like, yay, the Joneses are coming in.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, they're so fun.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: I just love working with them.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: I felt like a million dollars doing that plan for them.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I felt like I made a huge difference in their life.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Holy smokes, this is the type of work that I love and these are the people that I love doing it for.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: And then in the group coaching program, we start intersecting that with profitability, right, like so, what do we love to do?
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Who do we love to do, who do we love to do it for, and what are the qualitative and quantitative attributes of those people?
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: And then, where is our profitability?
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: So what do we like to do?
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Who do we like to do it for that we can monetize.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: And we look for where those overlap right and we start saying like, okay, well, who are these people?
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: And the worksheet I give you dives into not just understanding their quantitative right.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: We want to have a good idea of who is this person.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: So an ideal client avatar.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: You build an avatar and most of you are familiar I'm not talking the blue movie people, but this idea of an avatar where you build like a caricature or a embodiment of your clients.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Caricature or a embodiment of your clients.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: So you build out a character and you're basically like hey, my ideal client is Jim and Jan von Kleinstien.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: They're 52.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: He works for Procter Gamble, she works for General Electric, they have $1.2 million saved towards retirement, they have 10 years left before they retire, they have 2.5 children, they live in this area.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: I mean you get like all of the details down about who this person is and they're basically like a, like a conglomerate of these clients and you start using this as so like for my business here at the Efficient Advisor.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I have an ideal client avatar and her name is Katie and what I.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: So I have this and I literally have this printed out.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: I have a picture of what Katie looks like to me and I have her ideal client avatar story sitting next to her and I really and honestly like looking at this too.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: I'm like, well, when we do this round of group coaching, I'm going to update my avatar story too.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: But really, the idea is that Katie is in her late thirties.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: She gets up every morning to get her day going.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: It's spent rushing around right To get the kids ready, to get herself ready.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: She jumps into the car to drop off the big kids at school and maybe the little guy at daycare.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: She listens to her favorite podcast on the way to her office.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Obviously we know which one that is.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: She rolls into the office and the moment she walks to the door her day just starts immediately Meeting staff, questions, figuring out what's going on, uh, what can be put on off for tomorrow, what needs to get done today.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: She doesn't feel quite as prepared as she'd like to for her meetings, but it's good enough to get through and to just kick butt.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: She has so many things she'd love to do in her business, but there just never feels like there's enough time.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: I hope you can relate to this.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Katie schedules time to work on the business, but those slots quickly get swallowed by more pressing matters.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Her business has grown year over year and she needs new processes to keep up with her growing business.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: She attends company-sponsored events or RIA-sponsored events, but she's sick of the rah-rah presentations and she really just wants the stuff that she can implement and see results from quickly.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: She just doesn't need more on her to-do list.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: So at the end of the day she wraps up her work, she sighs because there were a few big things that she wanted to get done today that she didn't, and she thinks to herself how is this still an issue for me?
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Why can't?
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I seem to just get caught up.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: And when I start talking about this avatar inside of our group coaching program, what happens is everyone will start to comment right, we have like a community chat and people go oh my gosh, I am Katie.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: We have like a community chat and people go oh my gosh, I am Katie.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: And we're talking like 45 year old men, uh, 27 year old men, 62 year old women all going me.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: I'm Katie, I'm the one who feels like I should be further along than I am, or that the stuff that I'm getting tripped up on shouldn't be an issue for me anymore, and that's why I can't get caught up.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: And I love to share my own ideal client avatar story, because most of the listeners to this podcast you resonate with something in there.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: So that same idea and I build everything for Katie.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: So when I am creating a social media post, I am looking at it going does Katie care about this?
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: How does this help Katie?
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Does this entertain Katie?
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Does this make her laugh?
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Does it teach her something?
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Does she care or am I wasting Katie's time?
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Same thing when I'm building out a course or a podcast, or I mean cause I have recorded podcasts with guests that never made it to air, because I'm not going to waste Katie's time.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: She doesn't have time for fluff.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: She doesn't have time for bad guests that aren't prepared and aren't organized or just dumb information that they're sharing and there's been a few.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: We try to screen for that.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: We do pre-podcast interviews, but every now and then one sneaks through and you guys, even though I put all the time and effort into it to record it, I'm not going to share it because it doesn't move the needle forward for you.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: So I would rather skip a week of a podcast than give you something that wastes your time of a podcast, than give you something that wastes your time.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: So I love this idea of building out a story around your your ideal client avatar, and really understanding who they are, what they want, what their motivations are, what their fears are, how they make buying decisions.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: What has their previous experiences with advisors been like?
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: What are they afraid of?
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: What mistakes have maybe they made in the past that they need to forgive themselves for?
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Like all of this information, and we start speaking in our client's language.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: Right, we start repeating back to them and I get real deep into this in the episode but the phrases and idioms that they're using and I give a lot of examples.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: So go back and listen to.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Of course, I don't want to make these short and sweet episodes not short and sweet, but go back and listen to it because you'll start to gather and you'll hear kind of like how in my story, I'm capturing a lot of the things about Katie, like what her life looks like, what it feels like, and then building all of my processes around her, and that's really what you want to do, too for your clients.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: How can I eliminate?
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Why does this matter to Jim and Jan von Kleinstien.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Does this process help them?
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Is this step in my financial planning process?
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Does it matter or I need to up get their data from them?
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Is this how Jim and Jan von Kleinstien want to give me their data?
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Right, cause the way a millennial is going to give you data might look very different than if you're working with.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: You know, widows in their eighties, right, a female going through a divorce might be in a different emotional state than really wealthy clients who are trying to pass assets and mitigate taxes.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Right Like you're going to want to craft your language, your marketing message, your processes, the way that you do things, the way that you eliminate friction for your language, your marketing message, your processes, the way that you do things, the way that you eliminate friction for your clients.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: You're going to want to do that through using your ideal client avatar as the fundamental foundation for those decisions.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, I hope this episode was helpful.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Quick reminder that the Retirement Tax Services Summit is happening September 26th and 27th.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Yours truly will be there speaking.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: I would love, love, love for you to join us.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: It's a great conference put on by my friend, stephen Jarvis over at Retirement Tax Services.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: It's a great couple of days if you want to elevate your tax game.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: And we're going to do something special for my listeners.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: We're going to do a dinner on the 25th, I believe, and we're going to do something special for my listeners.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: We're going to do a dinner on the 25th, I believe, and we're going to find a location.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: And if you are a listener to the podcast and you're attending RTS, email me, let me know.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Or if you used my link to sign up, then I've already got you kind of in my ecosphere.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: They've sent everyone who used the link that I provided so that I could capture all of your names and you provided so that I could capture all of your names, and you're going to get a big old email from me and we're going to try to do something fun together and hang out live and in person.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Thanks guys, so much, and I hope you have an amazing rest of the week.