Latest / Better Planner / #3 - Marketing
Transcript
- Taylor Stewart: Welcome back to another episode of the Better Planer podcast. As always, I've got Colin Page with me. Colin, how are you? I'm good. Yes, I'm Taylor. Colin: Good to have you. ⁓ man, things are good. ⁓ Just, you know, ferrying children around to various appointments, events, Taylor Stewart: No, it's a great job to be able to do that in. Colin: out it definitely yeah can't can't complain I mean finished with ⁓ surge meeting season and yeah get my get my days back pretty or you know time to work on other projects and tinker and then going to bike ride with the kids Taylor Stewart: Yeah. What's the number one thing you're gonna tinker with? Colin: ⁓ I'm knee deep in a zap right now on Zapier trying to ⁓ get it, know, when a Calendly meeting is booked, get it to create a record in, or sync up with a meeting record in Salesforce, you know, just, Taylor Stewart: Hmm, that's fun. Seems so simple, doesn't it? Yeah. Colin: You would think, yeah, it's all the edge cases that make me glad I'm not a developer and not having to think about all that stuff every day. Taylor Stewart: The edge cases are where all the, yeah, yeah. There's always edge cases you can't think of, totally. ⁓ Well, this is our third episode now. We kinda had a chain going here where we talked about, first one was getting clear on what you do for clients and then the prospecting process. I think kind of like, we're kind of almost working backwards. We started with the end of what you do for clients and then like what's the prospecting flow. I think we wanted to talk about marketing today. Like how do you actually then, find the clients to do that prospecting flow or onboarding flow and then actually work with them. So, neither of us are claimed to be expert marketers. There's some amazing marketing resources, but we've both somehow stumbled our way into finding people that work with us and very gratefully have a decent lead flow. And so, let's just talk about what we've done and what's worked and what didn't work and how you found what worked for you. And so, ⁓ I think another thing just off the top is we have just such different styles altogether and I think that's going to come out in like what we talk about here. But what would you say, tell me like your marketing journey of just how you got to where you are, what didn't work, what's working for you now. Colin: yeah, I mean, I came into this, you know, career changer, no real marketing experience period. ⁓ you know, barely had a LinkedIn profile, not a big social media user. ⁓ and so like, I mean, I didn't even know what a marketing funnel was. and, and it's also, you know, something I don't love. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Colin: I don't, I'm just not a, not a salesperson, a, not a active on social media, not a, just makes me feel, feel weird. I mean, it's just out of my comfort zone. Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. You're just a simple 75 year old man in a 40 year old body or however old you are. I believe you know, you're steady and stable, which I think is what attracts people to you. So yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Colin: Yeah, you're not lying. Yeah, ⁓ my wife would probably say the same thing. Although that was what attracted... ⁓ No, I I tried, I feel like I tried everything. I tried on a lot of hats. Early on it was Instagram when I was trying to figure out who I was. And I guess it started all with blog posts. That has been the one ⁓ through line through all of this is starting and keeping an active blog just on my website. ⁓ I started it back when I was going, say again? Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. that you wrote, that you wrote to. I think that's important, we'll talk about that. You've written, you write your posts. Yeah. Colin: I do write my posts, yeah. mean, originally I wrote every single word of it and sent it off to my dad to spell check it. yeah, I mean now... Taylor Stewart: You Well he's not very good either because everybody, you don't know, Colin will have a misspelling in anything that he publicizes. It is a rule and actually right before the call we were just laughing about he did a LinkedIn post and there was like the fourth word was misspelled and I love it and it's just, that's great. So sorry, go ahead. your blog post, go ahead. Colin: Hey. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's been the through line and I've tried to leverage those in different ways, whether it was like turning it into an Instagram post or posting them to Facebook or LinkedIn and ⁓ that's, know, sending it out in a newsletter. ⁓ So that's, mean, everything has come back to the blog and the actual like content or the articles I've ⁓ I I was saying that even when I started when I was doing the CFP ⁓ coursework and I just figured, you know, the best way to learn something is to try to teach it. so for each topic, ⁓ you know, try to write a post on it ⁓ in a format that would be digestible to the client and provide relevant examples and. get just get the reps in in terms of how to communicate you know what can be complex financial topics into a relatable you know 300 500 no more than a thousand word post. Taylor Stewart: Yeah, so it seems, because I've watched this, like I remember the Instagram days and that was just painful and all the formatting and the posting and everything, like, yeah. Yeah, it is. But blogs, it seems like, it's blogs. You've just written the original blog posts and it's a library of content and people, it's a proof, know, whatever, authority, whatever the word is there, like. Colin: ⁓ I'm terrible at Canva. It's just brutal. Taylor Stewart: People just read the blog posts and they connect with you. You're not a big video guy. I'm not sure I've ever really seen you record a video with you outside of these podcasts. Colin: No, I recorded like, I tried it and you know, and I hit the record button like 10 times and did 10 different drafts of it and I hated every single one of it. totally. Taylor Stewart: Yeah, you would just sit there and overthink the whole thing. Okay, so that's been helpful, but what about, ⁓ how do people find you to even know you have a blog? How about that? How do people find you? Colin: Yeah, so, you know, I'm... ⁓ When we were going through X, Y, and launching our firms, mean, the big push was to niche down and that that was how you made yourself visible was to get really clear on a specific subset of clients you wanted to work with ⁓ so that you could tailor your marketing to that. And I think that is all true. It's much easier to market when you have a specific... Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Colin: person in mind that you're trying to write to. And I didn't take that advice. I wanted to build kind of a locally ⁓ focused, maybe an old school style, advisory practice where 90 plus percent of my clients lived within a 30 mile radius and we'd meet in my office. so from the beginning, I knew that SEO would be important, search engine. Taylor Stewart: Hmm? Colin: optimization and that was, you know, I worked with, what is it, fee only network ⁓ and, you know, the guy there, what's his name? Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. think it's Alan's slider. Colin: Yeah, Alan, yeah, he came on and gave me some pointers about the website and how to make it show up on Google searches locally because a little guy like me is not going to show up high on Google rankings anywhere besides my local area. Taylor Stewart: Hmm? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Colin: And so, yeah, I think that is the number one window by which clients have found me ⁓ is just on Google and local clients Googling. ⁓ Taylor Stewart: ⁓ Google on you. Local clients Googling. Colin: And I think that's still the case, even though people are talking about, of search engine optimization, but AI optimization. ⁓ It's still local, ⁓ locally driven and directly through the website. It's like your storefront. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Mm. Totally. Tell me about your website. So you built it yourself, correct? Colin: Yeah, it's been, yeah, built it myself. It's been through many, many iterations. I mean, that's one thing I like. It's a blessing and a curse for having built it myself is it like in 10 seconds, I can change something. ⁓ But that also means like I'm constantly tweaking it over thinking it. And so it's been through a lot of iterations. Built it on Squarespace, still on Squarespace, you know, for somebody without a development. Taylor Stewart: What'd you build, you built it on Squarespace, is that right? Colin: web design background. It's got everything you need. Taylor Stewart: Is there anything messaging wise that you think has worked really well? Colin: that has worked really well. I mean, we could talk about the whole structure of your homepage, and I think that's been the biggest change over time. You wanna critique it? Yeah. Taylor Stewart: Here, since we are doing a video, I'm going to pull it up. So here, this is Colin's website, Oakley Wealth Services. A picture. I'm going to drop my opinion. I'm a huge fan of putting a picture of yourself, but this is actually relevant. This is actually where you live. One thing I love about you, I don't know if it's intentional or not, the picture behind you on your camera. Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: looks a lot like this. If you're not going to put yourself on there, think this is at least big. I grew up in Nebraska and I know an advisor who has the freaking sailboat photo on the ocean. I'm is insane. Stop it. ⁓ Colin: ⁓ yeah, yeah, Clients have noticed that too. Yeah, if I see another website, advisor website with sailboats, you know, and I like to sail, so it's relevant to me, but it's just an overused, I mean, this is my opinion, but just an overused trope. Yeah, I I didn't even, I learned that that's called a hero and a call to action. ⁓ Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay, so simple picture, make the most of your money. ⁓ So you got your statement? Hold on, I'm gonna just lay the land. So what we do, very clear on what we do, tax-efficient planning, investment management, who you serve, very clear. You're disqualifying people right off the bat. You're nice and say don't fit one of these. Colin: Yeah, that's been an unlock too with marketing. It's like, you're not just trying to like get people to reach out. You're trying to get the right people to reach out. ⁓ And so the faster you can, you can turn somebody away who's not going to be a good fit, like, and that's scary at first when you're starting out. ⁓ And I didn't do that. ⁓ And I got, you know, clients that weren't great fits. so yeah, putting it right up front, who do you work with? Super helpful. Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. ⁓ Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and then why we're different, you kind of, I mean, you lay out the things people want to know, you're answering all their questions in their mind, clear next steps. That's so good, holy crap. Okay, so simple, whatever, your hero's just relatable, like, if you're local, you hear that this isn't turning anybody off, ⁓ then that's fine. That's pretty standard intro, whatever. But then, very clearly what we do, who we serve, why we're different. it's clear on what you do. You've disqualified the people. people are funneling through this, right? Like, okay, am I one of these? I'll keep reading. And then why we're different, this is probably checking off a lot of their boxes. ⁓ And then very clear next steps. ⁓ that's great. And then if you're not sure yet, you can do this. That's great. Colin: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Taylor Stewart: And you know what's funny, your header's not even sticky, so I have to scroll back up to get to your blog. But if you wanted to, you go to your articles, and this is your article list. Colin: There's the blog, yeah. Yeah, I try to put now it's about one post a month. You know, at the beginning it was more often, but that's all I can manage right now. Taylor Stewart: This is so, and you got services and fees and you show them, okay, good, market language, we offer, what you get. Wow, that's a lot of text. ⁓ Colin: Yeah, that's one that could probably use some tightening up the services and fees portion. if somebody is engaged enough to their thinking about reaching out, those are all questions they're going to have. And I'd rather them answer themselves as opposed to... Taylor Stewart: Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah, as I people talk about lack of transparency with advisor compensation. You're almost overly transparent. But no, is okay. So they got their services and fees. This is why especially if you look back at your prospecting process, you're giving people so many chances to disqualify themselves. Are you in the right stage? Do hear what you do? How we work? How much it costs? Nobody's reaching out unless they're in. And then they can... Colin: Hahaha! Yeah. Taylor Stewart: And do you have more, want to know more? Browser most, man you've really, you've dialed this thing in, this is great. ⁓ That's good, but also I want to say something. This is simple in all the right ways. It's not over designed. You've got a picture, a simple hero. I love it. I think so many websites designers get in the way. They try to make it look better rather than just communicate. How many times I go to a really cool website that looks great and I have no clue what they do? Colin: Hmm. Yeah. Taylor Stewart: I have no clue. It's unbelievable. I think about this a lot. So this is awesome. And then you got yourself. Okay, so we can finally see who you are. You got Marie, who's a rock star, helps you out. Articles, and that's our podcast, which I'm going talk about our podcast in a little bit. And then your normal FAQs you can keep disqualifying people. God, that's good. Colin: Yes, Yeah, mean, it's all designed to get people to schedule an intro call. And that's kind of the goal that we all want is somebody who actually may take that step to reach out and give you a chance to learn about them when they're business. Hopefully they're qualified. Ben, you've weeded out the ones that aren't. But I think the other unlock that I had is that... ⁓ Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Colin: kind of that not ready yet option. So there's that call to action, schedule a call, but then there's kind of an easy off ramp. Like if someone's just browsing, they're not quite ready to make a phone call or get on a call with you, because that can be scary. That's putting yourself out there. That's opening yourself up to being sold. ⁓ Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hmm? Mm-hmm. Colin: And so I put together, ⁓ again, it goes back to the blog. I took some 10 foundational blog posts that I'd written and combined them into an ebook, 20, 30 pages, for giving me your email address and first name, you can download it. ⁓ That gets you on my newsletter list. gets you into a... Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then do they Colin: series of maybe four emails that get auto sent over the course of a month that help walk people through a longer journey to get to scheduling that intro call. Taylor Stewart: What do you use to send the, or manage the newsletter? Colin: ⁓ The newsletter, I send it out through MailChimp. Same with ⁓ the email drip ⁓ for somebody that signs up to the newsletter. They get one email a week for about four or five weeks. Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. So. Colin: And those emails are just all blog content. My greatest hits, not trying to sell anybody anything in those emails, it's just like, here's something interesting that's probably relevant to you if you're browsing a retirement financial planners website. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you got your website that we just walked through and then there's this kind of what they call lead magnet, like you're not sure of the top 10 myth or whatnot that they can download and they get something immediately. And then they get, there's two parts. There's kind of an email sequence, which is just blog posts. And then your newsletter, tell us about your newsletter. Colin: Mm-hmm. Yeah, newsletter, I send it out once a month ⁓ to all clients and all anybody that signed up for the list. It used to be really ⁓ over engineered. It looked like a newspaper, like the New York Times site where I had different blog posts. I had links to podcasts, episodes that we've done. ⁓ Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Colin: you know, short little intro, you know, paragraph things to that are upcoming in the calendar year, whether it's Medicare open enrollment or, you know, some kind of timely advice in the last like six months, I went back to basics. Now I just send a simple text newsletter once a month. ⁓ and I found that like the, the topics that get the most responses from clients, from prospects, from Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Colin: are the ones that are softer on the more behavioral or spiritual sides of managing money ⁓ and not the stuff that's technical. Here's how you do a backdoor Roth. Here's how you save on taxes and retirement. ⁓ So it's interesting that like, Taylor Stewart: Mm-hmm. Yep. Here's Colin: That's the stuff that actually gets traction and I've gotten way more engagement from putting out a single newsletter. Taylor Stewart: Look how simp this is this is this month's you just a while four hours ago. This is today's look That's so simple. Colin: It's simple, yeah. I think people are overwhelmed with marketing content. It's just so transparent. That was what changed it for me. like, hate getting those emails that are overly formatted and clearly marketing. And it's like, I wanna put out something that I would actually wanna read. ⁓ Taylor Stewart: That's great! Yeah. I think that's an insanely good filter across the board. For me, just write what's interesting to you, write and talk about what's interesting to you. You'll be passionate about it and that passion will connect and it will be interesting to the people who it needs to be. If you force yourself to try to write stuff for other people, unless you're really good writer, I think it's hard. ⁓ We've looked at your website, it's good, it's simple, it communicates just very little. Who we serve, what we do, who we serve, the next steps. ⁓ Then you got your lead gen, your lead magnet, which is repurposed blog posts. ⁓ And then you've got your blog posts, and you got your newsletter. Colin: That's it. Taylor Stewart: That's great. Now, I will say, caveat, like Colin is a very good writer. He is a very good writer. I've read a lot of your stuff. I've always jokingly said like, you're better writing than on video. as I had to drag you into the... Colin: As long as I have a spell checker. There's no spell check for video. Taylor Stewart: But like, but I think that's huge. If like you just got, drug you into this podcast world, but like your blog, like you literally just write blogs. Your marketing is writing blogs and you have a good, like a cleaned up distribution system, but it's not anything fancy. Like you write a blog post a month, it sends a newsletter. You probably had to do some setup to get the lead magnet to create the email list to send those four blog posts. But like really you're writing blog posts and now they're like plain text blog posts. And maybe you add an image for Squarespace. So that's your marketing for the month. Colin: That's it, yeah. I mean, I'll go take that newsletter and post it on Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever, but I don't know how many people actually engage with it there. No. Taylor Stewart: That's great. But even like, I would tell you, like not reliably, you don't do it like super consistent. You don't do any of the SEO or like the algorithm. optimization stuff. You post the link a lot of times like right in the post on like I'm telling people this to show that like it's simple. Like you just you're the reason it works is you have interesting and valuable things to say. That is like we all talk and I should also mention like you're not like you might have a I review it a little bit now but like a lot of this was done pre A.I. You built your website without A.I. ⁓ I think even that top 10 myths thing was probably pretty pre A.I. like like Colin: It's pretty low-fi. Totally, I mean I've refined it over time, yeah. Taylor Stewart: Yeah, you write an interesting thing, maybe ID8 and have it reviewed with AI, but you have interesting things to say and that's it. And you're not worried about all the polish and all that stuff that just gets in the way that we're not good at and that can take forever. It's just a really interesting blog post once a month. Now it takes time to get to that point, but that's it. So people out there feeling like they need to go do all these things and omni-channel blah, blah, blah, blah. No, you don't. You just got to something interesting to say. I love that. then people find, blogs from what I understand are very good for SEO too. People search for things. But primarily people Google you, find the website. We looked at the website. They got all the things. ⁓ What about our podcast, our client facing podcast? I want to talk about it for a second because I think we've both been a little surprised by the results of that, but the results not necessarily in the way you would think. How is the podcast, we have the Make the Most Super Money podcast for clients. How does that work in your marketing flow? Colin: Yeah, I I didn't have grand illusions of it being the next Joe Rogan or, you know, diary of a CEO, but yeah, it was a chance to... put myself out there, put ourselves out there and kind of see what's stuck. I it started with, I do have a passion for education and like I wanted a way to, you that was the same reason I started the blog is, you know, I can't work with everybody and not everybody's gonna be able to pay my fees or whatever. I just wanna put good information out there. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Colin: just as maybe it's an altruistic thing or just because I like teaching. So, I mean, that was why I said yes to you in the first place. I think what it's actually become is not so much a marketing channel, like a way for prospects to verify that like, you know what the hell you're talking about and hear your voice and understand how you think about things. And you can get some of that from the blog posts as well. ⁓ Taylor Stewart: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Colin: but it probably comes across even more so in the podcast format. Taylor Stewart: Yeah, I think a couple of really interesting things there is that you talk about for education. Looking at your post, there's not like ⁓ a, they don't lead to something at the end. image, like, go ahead. Yep. Colin: Yeah, and I tried that early on, like, and if this struck a nerve, know, this is, ⁓ reach out. And like, I don't know that I didn't collect great data or anything on that, but anecdotally that did nothing, you know? Taylor Stewart: Yeah. I think, but like the point is like you just, wasn't like, let me sit down and like create a marketing machine. like, let me write some interesting stuff that's interesting to me that would help teach other people. Colin: Hmm. Taylor Stewart: of it. Right. And I just think like it just works so well if you have something interesting to say. But I love it. ⁓ Good job. Good job. Yeah. The podcast. I would talk about the podcast because I'm a huge fan of it. And yeah the story on that was I like to talk. Colin likes to write. I was like I really want to do a podcast. I don't want to make it all just about me. Do this podcast. And I said let's just do five episodes. Colin: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Taylor Stewart: Let's just talk about what, let's commit to five episodes, talk about stuff that's interesting to us. If we hate it, we'll kill it. And that was it. That was like literally the only pressure. And our early ones weren't very good. And then we got a little bit better. I don't know. I still think we're not great at it, but like that was it. That was, there was no grand designs. I don't post super frequently with that one. We've kind of paused it off and on. neither, yeah, neither of us thought we were going to have a Joe Rogan podcast. We're not going to get a Spotify. There was no point of that. It was let's share some interesting stuff and Colin: You Taylor Stewart: A couple of benefits have come from that. For sure, the verification thing. Almost every prospect I get at Adderoke says, I'll listen to your first episode of your podcast. I'll listen to the first episode of your podcast. You connect with people. But also, with writing any content generation, like good content, you have to think very clearly for it to be of any value. And so for us, I think, ⁓ I remember those early episodes, we struggled so much of like, we thought it was clear and then we'd press record and be like, ⁓ I don't know what I'm gonna say. and it makes you better and it's kind of like a dry run. ⁓ just for some reference, like I think our typical episode over there with like no marketing does like 50 to 80 listens and then we don't push it at all. I mean, I know that's not great. We could do more, but I'm just telling people like it's basically an exercise. Like I handle all this, we hop into Riverside, we click record. We talk about something interesting. It edits most of it for us and it downloads. So like that's just another like Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: I'm a huge fan of podcasts and the world doesn't need another one obviously, but the right people want to listen to it. it's, if anything, it's beneficial for you, the advisor to like practice talking. so ⁓ I just think I'm a huge fan of that as well. And I think like, don't go into it with the expectation of like, we're going to have a huge following. You don't need to, you just need the right person to listen to the right episode one time. If you really think about it. Colin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Be clear about what you're going into it for. Like, are you going into it to find clients who fit your model or are you going into it to drive clicks, views? Cause those are very different objectives. ⁓ and, like one of them is a whole lot easier than the other. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Well, and I think also like there can be so much pressure like we have to post bi-weekly and all this stuff and like there's some good accountability, but like there's no rules to any of this. You can just like publish when it's interesting, like respectfully, like nobody's sitting around like, it's Tuesday morning. Where's my make the most of your money podcast episode? Like we don't, we don't, I know that just it's nice to be a little bit consistent. And I'm sure if you want to build an audience, you can be much more disciplined, but like you don't have to do any of this, but I just think it's a phenomenal marketing piece. All of this, this isn't news, but like a blog post can feed into a LinkedIn post, can become a podcast article, which can become video clips. But just start one of them and just having something interesting to say. think that's great. think website lessons, like just keep it simple. Don't overdesign it. Even though yours says, I don't know, it is fairly unique, I think, in just like how simple it lays things out. And you just kind of lean into like, this isn't a bunch of fluff. This is just... I'm just telling you what you want to know. You know, I'm not going to try to over engineer this with a bunch of images and graphics. just think, I just think that's great. I see people, especially with like all the AI websites, AI, they all look the same. I don't know, just AI is great like for that, just it doesn't. Colin: Hmm. Yeah, especially like AI LinkedIn posts, like you can spot them from a mile away, the emojis, the ⁓ dashes, whatever. like, I assume most people are like us and they gloss right over them. You know, it's just, ⁓ yeah. So I'd... Taylor Stewart: ⁓ yeah, that's Yeah. Yeah, you pick up. Colin: it comes back to what would I want to read and what would I be interested in and if I were in the market for a financial advisor, like what would speak to me? ⁓ Because those are, you I want to work with people that are smart, intelligent, you know, not just... Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Again, you said it's your storefront. Somebody's coming by. You got a service they have a need. You're trying to figure out if it's a match. Let them know what you offer. Don't let them walk by going, huh, I wonder what that place is. And it's exactly what they need because you wanted some fancy image or graphic. You know what I mean? Just like, yes. And then try to talk to them. What would they want to know? I guess we could talk about mine for a second. just. Colin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you built yours as well. mean, there's gonna be some overlap for sure. Because I think we've fed off each other. I think all my FAQs probably came from your website. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. ⁓ probably came from somebody else's. My website is also on Squarespace which is kind funny. ⁓ So this Make the Most of Your Money thing, obviously that's the name of our podcast, we both have it on the front of our websites. This is kind of two parts, it's not financial clarity or whatever. ⁓ It doesn't immediately tell you what it is but I hit it right here. ⁓ So like a marketer might say like you need to be a little more clear in the hero but like I'll get you on the next scroll. ⁓ I would tell you basically these two sections do the work for me. ⁓ Interesting hero. I am a massive fan of this video. I can't remember if I talked about it last time. I recorded this video. It's 68 seconds. I edited in Canva. This is three years ago. I recorded on an iPhone in my downstairs home office. That's it. Not overproduced. And I just spoke from the heart and this video. closes 100 % of people one way or the other. For the most part, and if they don't watch it, then it's like they generally connect pretty hard with these two sections. ⁓ This is mostly SEO stuff. You talked about Alan Slider at Feolene Network. This is basically the language that he recommended people use on their website, and gosh dang it. Yeah, so it's ... Colin: Hmm. Yeah, can you read it ⁓ for anybody that's... Taylor Stewart: Basically, Adaroque Wealth is a fee only financial planning and wealth management fiduciary located in McKinney, Texas where we meet with local clients face to face and meet virtually with clients from across the country. Not a natural thing that I would say, ⁓ a little out of place, but that hits a lot of buckets and I will tell you from experience, it works. Like the Google results don't track it. Like all of a sudden meetings started happening. Not, shouldn't say all of a sudden, like over time some meetings started happening. ⁓ Colin: Yeah, that's... Yeah. And you have to put yourself in Google's position. mean, like, what is Google? It's a bot that's scrolling your website text, trying to figure out what it is that you do so that it can serve you up to people who might be interested in you. And so like being very explicit in like, this is what I am, this is what I do. That like short one sentence says exactly, you know, what you are, who you work, where you are, who you work with. ⁓ Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Colin: and that you do it in person, which is great for driving local traffic. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Yeah, and that's another thing to say, even though we talk about across the country, I do have some national clients. Almost all my calls now are local people. They Google you locally. ⁓ I'm not going to show up on an advisor search in Virginia. ⁓ But yeah, so it's pretty basic there. And then I like to be very blunt with my services. So there's a flow. So we help you make the most of your money. What does that mean? ⁓ How do we do it? We give it what you want, which is some phrasing I've kind of dialed down, and build your service around this. It's very, it's simple. aren't even, look, it's not even good. It's a Squarespace crappy website that expands the other thing. But it's just laid out in the questions people ask. It's not over designed. Colin: Hahaha. Yeah, and you're coming down to it, but your services, love that transparency about like, is how we work with people and this is what we charge. ⁓ Taylor Stewart: Nah, ⁓ yeah, all about pricing. you can see, look at that, it's so bad that it shows everything. But it's all right there. ⁓ And then, okay, I'll show a picture of ourselves. This is something I want to talk about. ⁓ This has helped a ton. ⁓ WealthTender, Brian Thorpe, see him over there. They've done amazing work on being able to capture reviews. I do have some reviews. People started posting them on Google. Not every state can do this. I know this is all changing very rapidly. Texas is one that we have. This certainly doesn't hurt. Colin: Yeah, I'm jealous. Virginia's one that ⁓ doesn't allow for it. They didn't conform with the SEC guidelines around this. Taylor Stewart: Actually, it helps it helps a ton. I think that's changing though. was an interesting, I saw this post the other day that Virginia's starting to modernize on that. yeah, shout out to Wealth Tender. Certainly helps, a compliant way to show them. Obviously this is a huge help. This, I love this. This sounds like what you're looking for. A couple of other things I do, I have my services and pricing page kind of back to like this. Colin: ⁓ well, I... We can only hope. Taylor Stewart: just blunt say it how it is. So it's a little bit of an expanded version of the homepage. We build your service around what you want to cover, how long you want to support, whether you want guidance, implementation or both. And it's the same crappy collapsible section from Squarespace that I think you see the theme. It doesn't look terrible, but it's not great. But it just speaks, it's just we're answering, I think yours are probably even better, but people generally know what you do and they're ... Colin: Mm-hmm. Taylor Stewart: I don't disqualify the type of person as much. don't have so much of a retirement 10 years and out type of niche, but what I do do very intentionally is I want to disqualify certain mentality. So I'm wearing a t-shirt in this video completely on purpose. If a suit is necessary, you're out. I want you out right away. This video, yourself, raw, this was one shot. Colin: Hmm. Taylor Stewart: I did script it out a little bit before but like just be you. I am a massive fan of people showing themselves up front because really especially if you're a smaller solo operator, you're kind of the product in a way. They're buying the relationship with you and so let them see you. Let them hear you think. And so I tried a few blogs. Sorry, getting my things in the way. I tried it. I like the video stuff. Yeah, I haven't posted much in a while. Didn't hurt anything. Podcasts. So yeah, think the biggest thing I would say, both of our websites seem to work, right? Or they have for us. They're not over designed, they're very literal. The graphics are relevant if there are any. ⁓ And I love when people generally, when people schedule an intro call, they've got most of the information. There's not as much checking, it's kind of like a. Colin: Mm-hmm. Taylor Stewart: confirming you're real person. mean little bit of that, let's just have that initial talk. I think ⁓ being raw and authentic, probably the biggest thing is just your ability to attract is equal to your ability to repel. So you have to turn some people off if you wanna turn some people on. It's just you have to do it and don't be, almost lean into it. Like ooh, this is gonna disqualify some people. Good. You know, just good. Colin: Hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, I think we especially folks starting out, you know, from scratch, we spend so much effort on marketing because we don't have any clients yet. And how are you going to get clients? And that's a real like, that's a real fear. And you got all this time on your hands because because you don't have any clients that you're actually serving. I think. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Colin: you know, time is better spent. Like if you're going to be spending time on marketing, like spend time honing the message rather than the delivery vehicle. ⁓ Like I think there are so many different like apps and or services that will help you pump content out there or make posting on different social media sites efficient. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Colin: and scheduling it ahead of time. I, you know, on one end that's great and that's probably the kinds of tools that professionals use, but especially early on, like it's, it's, think your time is so much better spent crafting the message and how you're going to speak to that ideal client rather than focusing on the packaging. Taylor Stewart: You've got to have something interesting to say, otherwise none of it matters. And yeah, I completely agree. I think we all strive for like, ⁓ have my couple hours a week, I sit down and batch my content for the month. I mean, that's fine. And there's some great services. Sage is doing some cool stuff on the video, but you don't have to do any of that. It works, obviously, but there's also a simpler way of just build a simple website that... clearly answers what people wanna know and share some interesting thoughts, video, podcasts, blogs. Colin: Yeah. And if you're not the kind of person that's going to go and design your own Squarespace, that's fine. Like there are plenty of great designers out there that will help you make it look good, but they can't write the, I mean, they can try to write the content for you, but it's going to come across as, as, you know, generic because it wasn't you that wrote it. know, they, they, so the time that you spend, the more you can spend time on, Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Yeah. Colin: actually developing that message and the kind of points you want to get across. ⁓ That makes their job easier. It makes your content better. It makes everything flow way better than if you just outsourced that completely. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Yeah, I mean if you think about like useful and beautiful is like the like to like obviously useful and beautiful content website all that is great. Useful but ugly is way better than beautiful and worthless. I mean you could have a freaking HTML website up there that would probably work. mean like. Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: I was gonna say you don't have to have a website. know a handful of older advisors, but they just have a built-in like Advantage that you couldn't just recreate today, but yeah, it's some great website designers buddy Colton does great work at slices And yeah, there's some other ones be like yeah it you got to help Colton help you though if you don't have it what you want to say he can try to help you find out but you got to have you know, got to you got to something to say so That's good anything else on the marketing side again, we're not the experts on this but I think Colin: Yeah. Yeah. Taylor Stewart: We've both gotten a few results with just everything we've said. Just speak to the person. Don't be afraid to repel. Have something interesting to say. You said kind of like the spiritual stuff or like, you think about like, this is our make the most of your money framework, but there's like technical knowledge, behavioral implementation, and spiritual is it all working towards the life you want. Like probably the behavioral and spiritual stuff connects more than just a here's how Roth conversion works. Would you say that's fair? Yeah. Colin: 100%. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's in some, in some sense, it's good. I've used those more technical blog posts later. You know, when I have a client that's actually going to do a Roth conversion. ⁓ here, check out the blog post I wrote two years ago on. why Roth conversions work and why it might be a good fit for you. So it's still like evergreen content that I can go back to and send to people, but those, you know, I would get zero responses from that blog post or if I sent that out as a newsletter. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. I'll bet you that's a good one for people to just kind of be able to check. Like, okay, yeah, he showed his technical chops here. don't, you know, it's not bad to have a couple of those just to show that you can talk about it. Well, although I don't think writing about it anymore doesn't mean that you know anything. Sorry, go ahead. Colin: Sure, yeah, but like maybe one in three or one in four. And if you're gonna write about it, write about it in a way that ⁓ brings it home to people. Talk about a real client situation, change the names, or make up a client that's interesting, or tell personal stories around it. It's not just the dry, technical, here's what the text code says, here's how you do it. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Colin: That's just making it better writing. ⁓ Taylor Stewart: You also said evergreen though, not a lot of topical content. We're not talking about news, world events, things of that nature. I think you did something around elections, but it was probably just kind of like elections in general, not so much like that election. And so I think that's a huge advantage too, because then it's evergreen and it's also repurposable. Like, okay, I've had this conversation 10 times, let me codify it basically with a post or a video. And that's great. Colin: Yeah, I steer away from current events ⁓ intentionally and I don't send out, know, here's my thoughts on today's market. I know plenty of advisors that do and it can work. ⁓ I don't believe in my ability to predict what the markets are doing and there's so many other sources for people to get that content that they don't necessarily need it from me too. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. Yeah, I'm gonna show something. Time on the website here. I actually have a page on my web. I go into a little more detail on some of these other ones, but I talk about, this is my investing page. And I have our four core investment beliefs. Markets go up over the long run, up and down the short run. Where I was going with this is like, I try to be very upfront that I'm not that guy that thinks they know. Like, I don't know. ⁓ Colin: Yeah. Taylor Stewart: I think this is another one of like, people don't see this coming to me asking for market performance. So don't be afraid to show that. know, like if you, absolutely. Colin: Yeah, and in some sense it's like training the prospects and then even once they become clients that like, I'm not going to be the one reaching out to you with new tips on, you know, how we're going to redo your portfolio for the latest trends in the market. If you do that, great. If that's your core competency, if that's what, why people are attracted to you, ⁓ You know, I got other. Taylor Stewart: Yeah. But if you do that, then go for it. Yeah. Yeah. Colin: questions for you. ⁓ But yeah, that's the market we... Taylor Stewart: Yeah, yeah. Colin: operate in and that's actually what people think they want or think they need. think what you do such a good job of on the podcast and how you like clearly frame it for people is like, no, this is actually what you should care about. You may think you want advice on what's happening in AI stocks or what's the next six months in the S &P going to do, but what you actually need is like clarity. peace of mind. ⁓ You know, so there's some intentionality there too. Taylor Stewart: Yeah, think that's like kind of like a Cordora piece. Like if you look at the outputs of Cordora, it's very question based. Like where's my money going? How am I protected against major threats? that, use their language. Like the people aren't wanting an insurance review. like, am I protected? Like an investment allocation review. Am I taking the right amount of risk? Like answer their question. That's work. very well for me, I guess I would say. Just like using their terms of like, here's what we're actually here to answer. And it helps you too, because like, you can get lost with all the details. what's the core question we're trying to answer? What decision are we trying to make at the end of this? That's it. Colin: Yeah, yeah, it's cool that starts with marketing. ⁓ It starts developing that ⁓ in the client or in the prospect, developing that attitude or... ⁓ with the marketing. Obviously, I think with all of this coming back to what we said at the beginning is like really starting with how you serve your clients first and then working upstream to marketing. ⁓ There's no way you can figure out a marketing strategy that's going to be successful at like repelling clients who aren't going to be a good fit and attracting the ones that will if you haven't gotten clear on what it is that you actually do for your clients in the first place. So start Taylor Stewart: Yeah, yeah. Colin: Start with that, then work up to your prospecting process, then figure out marketing, which is the total opposite order of the way that people are starting their new firms. Think about things then, but I'm convicted that that's the right way to do it. Taylor Stewart: I love it man, good stuff, appreciate it as always. Anything else you want to say? Colin: You've exhausted my marketing knowledge. I have nothing else. Taylor Stewart: That's it. He's out of gas. That was painful for Colin. But thank you for your insights. It's always good to learn from you. Appreciate it and I will see you next time. Colin: See you next time.