Ep 44: Ignore Marketing Data at Your Own Peril Featuring Samantha Russell (Ep 44)

Episode 44 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). (41:47)

Episode 44 of Rethink Financial Advice, co-hosted by Derek Notman, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Couplr AI) and H. Adam Holt, CFP® (Founder & CEO, Asset-Map). Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or Acast.

Episode Summary

Samantha Russell joins Adam Holt and Derek Notman with a pointed inversion: advisors run their client work on data and then run their own practices on habit. The data she brings concerns the next generation of clients. Russell cites Fidelity research finding that the thing most millennial and Gen Z inheritors least want to inherit is their parents’ advisor, particularly where no relationship exists, and that 85% of Gen Y and Z want behavioral coaching rather than someone who allocates assets and checks boxes. Her larger claim is that advice and investment management have become effectively fungible, that consumers cannot tell one firm’s technology from another’s, and that claiming a fiduciary standard stopped functioning as a differentiator some time ago. The hosts connect this to a run of recent guests arguing the same thing from different directions.

What this episode covers

• Why advisors apply data rigorously to clients and rarely to their own practice
• Fidelity’s finding on what inheritors least want to inherit
• The share of younger clients who want behavioral coaching rather than allocation
• Why claiming a fiduciary standard no longer differentiates anyone
• What happens to positioning when advice, technology, and management all look alike

Full Transcript

Machine-generated transcript of this episode.

Welcome to Rethink, the financial advisor podcast. My name is Adam Holt. And this is Derek Notman. We are your hosts, both veteran advisors and FinTech CEOs who challenge the status quo, question everything, and have fun doing it. Hear honest commentary on the challenges facing advisors today. And be part of a community where we can all rethink the profession. Now on to our episode. Adam, are advisors ignoring data to their own demise? Wow. What kind of data are you talking about? Well, let me give you some context first. Advisors use all types of data to support their planning, investment, insurance, you name it, solutions, right? When they’re presenting to clients.

So one could argue that advisors are data dependent. Okay. Okay. But are they ignoring data when it comes to their own practice and future profits, revenue, growth, staying relevant? Are they ignoring outside data sources that are telling them, hey, X is gonna happen or X is happening, but they’re not listening? You think that just advisors are doing what they’ve always done and they’re getting what they’ve always gotten and it’s been enough. And so you’re saying maybe that trends are indicating that maybe advisors should be focusing on something different than they are, right? Yeah. And I wouldn’t say like a light switch, like, all right, turn off everything else you’re doing right now and just do this other thing.

But as advisors, when we work with our clients, we help them focus on the here and now. And we even talked about this in Catherine Morgan’s interview about helping advisors be more present with their clients and enjoying life and happiness today. But we also are looking into the future and we’re using data to help them do X, Y, Zed. So shouldn’t they do the same thing with their own practice? I think they should. The question is, are advisors actually listening for data to validate that they’re doing the things that their customers really want and marketing as such? Because you and I both know anecdotally, we have had how many conversations on this podcast with people that are telling us that the world is changing.

But that doesn’t always make it real for an advisor who’s busy running their practice as an entrepreneur, scrambling to keep everything going and still maybe have a work-life balance. So I feel like there’s data you have that nobody else has. What are you alluding to? I have very special data. I’ll sell it to you. Oh, no kidding. Will you anonymize your data before selling it? I might. We’ll see, it depends on what you’re willing to pay me. See, isn’t it? It’s all about price. No, but in all seriousness, there is a lot of data out there, studies, surveys, and some of it pretty recent that I think we probably can do a better job listening to, and you’re right, when you’re an entrepreneur advisor, we should make up a new word for that, by the way, advisorpreneurs, I don’t know, something like that.

That’s a total tangent. We can come back to that. Entreprene-visor? Entreprene-visor, that’s it, done. We’re taking some other rules right off the tongue. Business owner? I don’t know. When you are in the day-to-day trenches, it is sometimes hard to focus on the big picture, especially if you’re early on as an advisor, you’re barely making ends meet month to month, but I would argue the most successful ones are probably paying a little bit more attention to what’s going on with this data, and it’s not any special data I have, and in fact, our guest today is gonna even reference some really great sources that we can get into, but there is a ton of data out there, and yeah, it’s like drinking from a fire hose, but let’s help people today at least turn down the strength of their fire hose a little bit and get a couple of good pieces that they can pay attention to.

Well, as you could probably imagine, this conversation here, this rant between Derek and I really was inspired by a conversation with Samantha Russell, and if you don’t know Sam Russell from social media, then you’re somehow in the dark because she is an absolute powerhouse on, gosh, every feed that we follow, she is really well-known for doing these very natural, in her car, in her hallway, with her kid on her arm, videos that really just deliver so much value. So why don’t you introduce us to Samantha Russell, Derek, and let’s get into this awesome conversation. It’s funny, I’ve known of her and communicated with her for years, but I only finally met her in person just last fall.

Funny how that works, but I mean, we all know that’s, heck, that’s how you and I met. So Samantha and her husband actually started a digital marketing company to help advisors in particular. And they did this a number of years ago, and it originally was called 20 Over 10, and they had so much success helping advisors that FMG actually ended up buying them a couple years ago. Really, really cool how that all transpired. And she’s now the chief evangelists or position at FMG where she’s just out there preaching from the mountaintops on how to help advisors market themselves in all different ways of doing so.

Strong following, great content creator was Investment News 40 Under 40 in 2020, has been named by Think Advisor. com. So just really ingrained in the advisor space from a marketing perspective, and she brought up some really interesting points for us in our conversation with her when we asked her to come on here. Awesome, all right, let’s hear from Samantha. So given your unique perspective in history, what’s your opinion of the space? I think right now in 2023, we’re at this pivotal moment where consumers see not just investment management, but also financial planning to a large extent as really being fungible, interchangeable, not different. And in fact, a Bank of New York, Mellon Pushing study not that long ago found that 60% of investors feel that they can’t tell the difference between advisors out there.

They all make the same promises and they all look the same to them. And so we’re at this kind of pivotal moment right now where there’s a real opportunity for advisors to differentiate, but the way they’re differentiating is very different than what it used to be in the past. Being fiduciary is no longer a differentiator. Having the best technology is not a differentiator. And it really comes down to these other elements that do take a lot of time and they do take a lot of effort and there’s just no one easy button, but those are the firms that are really well positioned. I like to say the future of wealth management looks more like Canyon Ranch than a bank branch.

Well, explain what that means though. Help our listeners understand. If you think of Canyon Ranch, it’s a place you go to get healthy, get your mind, your body all in alignment, right? If you’ve never heard of it before, you go there, you stay. It’s like a wellness holistic retreat. And if you look at the data of what consumers expect from their advisor, there was a really great study published from the Spectrum Group in 2021 where they looked at the gap between what consumers expect service wise from their advisor versus what they actually receive. And the list is crazy long of where these gaps are. So yes, most people are getting investment management and financial planning, that’s table stakes.

But then the number of people who expect tax planning help with any kind of a state transfer or wealth transfer advice while they’re still alive, working with their, being the conduit with their CPA, with their attorneys, also just even help with real estate transactions. The list is getting longer and longer as what people expect to get from their advisor. And that’s very different, I think, than the way advisors are marketing themselves. So advisors that hear that, what do you think the missing opportunity is that they’re just not addressing? I’m a marketer by trade. So my big thing is before you ever take a look at what marketing tactic is gonna work best, I always tell people to take a step back and look at what about my business is marketable in the first place.

So you don’t have to go and add this whole suite of services to your menu of options, but look at what truly is something that you are offering either currently, whether it’s a part of your client experience or a service that you render, that is really marketable, highly sought after by consumers. And then make that something you hang your hat on and that you’re marketing in your communications, because those are the things that will differentiate you. And those are the things that are gonna get people talking. So again, not what marketing tactic is gonna work, but what about your business makes you marketable in the first place.

I find that really interesting. I think like a lot of advisors, I was guilty early on of just had this laundry list. I do rollovers, I do this, I do this, I do this, and I end up with like this long list of stuff that I’m trying to differentiate on and it doesn’t differentiate at all. So to dig into that a little bit more about what is marketable about their business, what is an action step or two an advisor can take to say, yes, this is what makes me marketable. And then they can go do all the other things. Yeah, I think the first thing is knowing what consumers are looking for.

So I can give you the links to some really great research that has come out recently of what people are looking for, but Edelman Financial Engines, they had this Everyday Wealth in America survey. They looked at, they surveyed over 2000 Americans purposely over sampled so that over a thousand of the respondents were considered affluent. So they had assets of at least 500,000 or more to invest. And they asked them, if you do not currently work with an advisor, what would be the most appealing thing for you to get help with? And the number one thing for wealthy folks was tax guidance or tax planning advice, right?

The second most popular was retirement income planning. The third was social security or Medicare advice. And then the fourth was creating a financial plan. So those top three answers that I mentioned, there’s one way to kind of know, okay, here’s what consumers are looking for. Here’s what we can highlight. But then there’s another study that was really interesting that Fidelity just put out that is kind of looking at next gen wealth. And this comes from the Fidelity Investments 2022 Investor Insights Study is what it called. But this just blew my mind. So they found that households in which the next generation is also engaged, not just the parents, they had 160% of revenues and 270% of the profits of households without family engagement.

And they also found that for the average advisory firm, 57% of existing client assets are expected to pass to the next gen by 2045. Yet advisors have reached out to only 13% of the client’s children. So I think looking at both what people currently want, but also then where the future is going and what future generations want is really one of the best ways to think about what you wanna target for your own firm. That’s really interesting. Thinking about succession, we’ve talked about it plenty of times and it’s silly how much we talk about the wealth transfer and generation. The one thing most millennials and Gen Zs don’t want to inherit is their parents’ advisor, especially if there’s no relationship.

And yet clearly we know this is coming. So I really appreciate you saying that. And that same fidelity study, thinking about what does this next gen want if they don’t want their parents’ advisor, why don’t they want their parents’ advisor? That’s the question we should be asking. And the fidelity study found that 85% of Gen Y and Z want behavioral coaching from their advisor. They don’t want somebody who just invests their assets or checks some boxes. Okay, we’re doing this, this and this with your plan. They’re really looking more for the behavioral coaching side. And so that’s, again, going back to that, the future of wealth management looks more like Canyon Ranch than a bank branch.

It’s this embodiment of health and wealth and behavioral psychology kind of all coming together. And the firms that are adopting more of that approach are really, really well positioned. And it gives you so much more that’s engaging content to share, like on social media, when you’re talking about the why behind behaviors, that’s much more interesting and consumable content for people than just stats and facts about, here’s what to do to grow your investments. That’s really great. I mean, is there anything else you think that needs to be heard or debated by the community? I think one of the things that is still a debate, which I think is sort of crazy, I don’t care at all how you charge for your services, but anytime that I really focus in on fee transparency, I’m a huge believer that you should put your fees on your website.

You should make it easy for people to compare your service with other services. You should get Google reviews and put them on your website as well. People argue with me on this, especially the fee side. They say, well, I can’t articulate the value of the fee just on my website. And so I don’t wanna put it there. I wanna have the conversation first. You do not realize how much business you are missing, how many conversations you’re not even getting to have because you haven’t put your fee on your website in the first place. That’s a great point. Have you seen successfully what advisors should put?

I mean, do you think they should put their AUM cost or their flat fee or the expected cost? I mean, what’s an appropriate number to start with there? Yeah, I mean, obviously it depends on who your target audience is, how they can conceive with the numbers, but I have some great examples. I’ll share a blog post of great examples of advisory firm fees, pages on their sites and what they look like because you can do it a million different ways. And it might be just that you put sort of starting numbers because you don’t wanna get into all the nitty gritty. I think the main point is just that you’re showing that you’re giving people a starting point for them to conceive what it would cost to work with you.

And what do we assume if we don’t see a number on there? Do we assume it’s more expensive or less expensive? We always assume it’s more. And sometimes we might be disqualifying ourselves from even working with someone. In fact, one of those same studies I mentioned before from Edelman Financial Engines, one of the number one reasons, so they said a third of the people they survey do not currently work with an advisor. One of the top four reasons why was cause they thought they didn’t have enough assets. You know, there’s just this misconception for a lot of people that advisors would love to work with who maybe they have their wealth currently tied up in a 401k, but they’re getting ready to make that transition, what have you, that there’s nobody out there to work with them and service them.

So putting your fees on your website, I put my stake in the ground on that one and you’ll notice a huge difference from a marketing standpoint in that it really helps people self-qualify themselves before they have that conversation with you. Love it. We’ll debate that one. I like that one. I agree with you. I think it should be on there. I wonder why it’s not up there. Is it because people think that they’re just commoditizing themselves by saying, here’s my price, here’s what I’m worth? I wonder if that’s what’s happening or we’re just not used to that. Yeah, I can send you one of my social media posts where people are debating it.

Someone said, I’m not gonna compete on price. You know, he was just like, somebody wants the cheapest price advisor, they’re not, shouldn’t come to me. And I find that hilarious because for instance, my husband and I just got some work done in our home and we got prices from four contractors. We almost immediately threw out the lowest price as being, this is too cheap. It’s too good to be true. It’s significantly cheaper than the others. So we’re not gonna go with this person. I don’t think consumers are dumb when it comes to price. You know, price barometer of value and many other things, but they’re not gonna say, oh, if I’m shopping for the cheapest price, I want this person.

Maybe some people do, but it’s a lot of people that don’t. Right, I think that’s also true. But I think if I saw the most expensive one, I would be looking for reasons why to justify that price because clearly they believe, they know something I don’t know, which is, why is that Mercedes that much better? Is it really safer? Is it really, is that this experience gonna just change my life? Maybe, so I can’t ignore it even though it is the most expensive. That’s interesting. And just on that note on price, cause I mentioned Google reviews, you know, I think one of the other things that is really gonna change the game in the next five years is that you start to look around.

You know, if you Google financial advisor in Naples or financial advisor Austin, you’ll start to see that the advisory firms that are coming up at the top of the list there have Google reviews cause Google prioritizes firms that have them in local results over firms that don’t. And what do we do? Like if you were wondering that, why is this Mercedes more or why is this pair of jeans more, whatever, you would go online and read reviews from other people who purchased it to see if they felt the price was justified. Totally. The same thing is going to happen in our industry. Consumers are now starting to leave reviews for advisors and people want to hear from other people who’ve objectively used the service, not just their best friend, right?

Like that they were referred to. So this is a huge, huge game changer, big time. I wonder if part of it’s also a holdover. I know from my early days, we were told to kind of sidestep the question. Oh, I get paid by the company. You don’t have to pay in. You pay me by giving me a referral. Yeah, referral. You know, that was part of the sales talk. And those that are now able to have websites or go independent even, are really worried about putting in their price. Just because it wasn’t taught. It wasn’t something you were supposed to talk about. Oh, just don’t worry about that.

Just sign here, you know? That’s a great point. And I think if everybody was doing it and so consumers checked out four different people and everyone said the same thing, then they kind of accept it. But now, if you talk to three or four different firms and they all have a different answer for that, that’s when you start to see things shift. I thought it was really intriguing the fact that you said, or that the survey said that the fourth item that customers felt they weren’t getting was financial planning. The first was tax. Then there was retirement income distribution. And then number three was social security Medicare.

And then financial planning. And those are episodic pains, right? I’m dealing with taxes every year. I’m getting crushed. I feel that that’s current. But financial planning sometimes feels like it’s so big and nobody knows what it really means. I think you hit the nail on the head. And a lot of times, when we think of tax tenants, we think of a different service, a CPA. We think of retirement income planning. Oh, that’s someone who sells an annuity, maybe. It’s security Medicare. Well, I don’t get paid on that. So I’m- Don’t do it. Yeah, it’s part of a larger plan, but I’m not selling supplemental coverage.

To your point, what are the things that get people in the door? And the first point is the acute pain. It is not the larger picture, right? When you go to the doctor, it’s because of an acute problem you’re having in that moment. How many people do you know actually go to the doctor once a year for a wellness checkup versus how many people just go when they’re actually sick, right? The second is way, way, way more common because that’s just how we’re all wired. We put things out of our mind until they’re front and center and we have to deal with them. And I think we live it.

So we’re like, oh, we want to create these big financial plans. It’s overarching. And really the way people are being sold or like the way being marketed to that works and what they pay attention to is messages on these acute details. I agree with that. I was curious what your opinion is on chat GPT these days. Yeah, open AI in general, whether it’s chat GPT or any of them, I think the biggest shift that people are not paying enough attention to is the way it’s gonna change SEO. So you’re gonna be able to go to Google or chat GPT or anywhere else and ask a question and it just gives you one answer.

That’s why I believe Google took so long to come out with theirs, right? Because how does this affect Google ads revenue business? They can’t sell ads if nobody’s clicking on ads because there’s not a search engine results page. So this is really gonna change SEO and I think it’s just gonna double down on the fact that social podcasts, YouTube are gonna become even more important for getting found. Well, there you have it, Derek. From the mastermind herself, some really interesting stuff. What were your takeaways? Well, a lot of nuggets in there and I know we bounced around a little bit with that conversation to our listeners, but really there was so much gold in there that you just, we couldn’t cut it out, man.

It was great. Couldn’t do it. I did have some thoughts and things I think advisors should think about and that is that she mentioned we are at this pivotal moment and it’s funny, we’ve had other folks on the show that have said the same thing about this time we find ourselves in and that it’s interesting that she was saying that advice in investment management is fungible now and that it’s really hard for consumers to differentiate one advisor from another, which I would totally agree with. You can’t just say you’re a fiduciary or whatever anymore. That’s not a differentiator anymore. It used to be, but not anymore.

Yeah, the fact she said even technology is all looking the same with everybody. I mean, everybody’s got the same stuff. Right. How is that a differentiator? Before, if you had tech stack XYZ and no one else did or very few did, oh man, awesome differentiator. Totally. Now it’s table stakes. Now you better have that tech just to stay in the game. So the importance of the tech hasn’t changed at all but because more people have adopted it, now you have to figure out other ways to differentiate yourself. So don’t get rid of your tech. You better have your tech. You better have all these planning things but that’s not gonna be what you can hang your hat on anymore.

And to that point, she asks a good question, Adam. What about your business is marketable? She asked advisors to take a step back and think about that. Is it an experience? Is it a particular service or a niche? Something that you can hang your hat on and then once you figure that thing out, then you can execute a variety of different marketing tactics to tell that story. That’s how you’re gonna differentiate yourself. So I thought that was a really good point and tip for advisors listening is to definitely do that. I’ve even talked about that a ton in connector. Take a step back. Why you?

What’s different about you? If you can’t figure that out and just say, well, I’m a CFP fiduciary. I have this tech stack and I do Roth conversions. Great. So does everybody else. Not that that’s not important but that’s not your differentiator anymore. I love that she wants fees listed. I have been talking about that for years and have been very transparent with my own. Get it on there. You don’t go to the best buy to buy a TV and don’t consider the price. You want the price there. You got to know what the price is. And I like how she connected it back to that study which we’ll put in the show notes about how one of the main reasons people don’t use advisors is because they don’t have their fees listed.

So people are making these assumptions. Oh, I can’t afford it. It’s gonna be too expensive or I don’t have enough money. It’s such an easy thing for advisors to fix. Although Adam and then I’ll let you tell us your stuff. I know that from my broker dealer days I couldn’t list a whole lot of fees of my comp. So that was a challenge. You can overcome it but you have to be a little bit more crafty in that and try to be as transparent as possible. Hey, I get paid on commission. You want to know the commission? Ask me. There are ways to do that but it is more challenging when you’re limited on what you can sell, how you can sell it and so forth.

So anyways, I could go on and on. I love this stuff. This was a great conversation. And I just thought about that but I think before we had fee only or fee for asset management and pretty much everybody started charging 1%. I really think that was heralded by when Merrill Lynch went this direction many years ago. They did like a all trading commissions was gonna be 1%. They kind of set the standard. Everybody just started filing. Once it was public, what it costs to manage assets there was a huge push for consistency. Right now, everybody just needed to match the price almost in a collusion environment.

It was just a game theory decision. Everybody was just, let’s make everybody the same on price. We’ll differentiate on value service delivery execution and brands. And I think that worked for the industry but before that time, there was, I think an attempt to hide compensation as much as possible because then you could, you started on misvaluing the deliverable. And I think today it’s really interesting how she mentions the reviews and fee transparency. I totally agree with her. I think the confused mind does not buy. And when somebody has actually got acute pain or passive pain or saying, okay, honey we should probably do some planning and they can’t actually see what it’s gonna cost.

It’s almost like we’re asking people to become more financially well and literate. But the thing that I’m gonna teach you about I’m gonna hide from you in the beginning. Isn’t that weird? And then if you end up buying from you most likely they’re gonna have buyer’s remorse and call you the next morning to cancel it. Yeah, I mean, I get the whole argument, right? If the consumer doesn’t know what the value proposition is price is always gonna look expensive, no matter what. Wait a minute, why it’s money that I wasn’t planning on spending now I gotta spend it on this idea and I don’t know what I’m gonna get out of it.

But what’s interesting about it is that her comments about what the survey specifically the Edmund one is that what people wanted especially in the high net worth for which they’re willing to pay for advisors aren’t delivering, right? They wanted tax guidance, social security optimization income distribution planning. Oh, and then by the way, financial planning. I thought that was hilarious. We’re all delivering financial planning but although at the same time probably be most financial planners on this podcast know that financial planning includes all those things we just don’t call them out as primary. Isn’t that funny? That’s a really good point. We do all those things.

We just don’t actually list them. It’s like part of the ingredients to the financial plan, right? Does that mean that there’s a disconnect between what the consumers think financial planning is and those episodic pains? Totally. It totally does it. Consumers don’t think in advisor terms in our lingo and all that the consumer is thinking, how am I gonna pay my debt off? How am I gonna save for retirement? How am I gonna buy the retirement house? How am I gonna pay for kids college, whatever. They’re not thinking about the financial plan or the tax thing. So we gotta get those terms back into their minds, right?

Maybe if you list what financial planning does on your website and all the things that that entails and the price, maybe they’ll finally understand what that value proposition is. Or at least get closer. I hesitate on that though, Adam. I don’t wanna kill them with data either. I mean, even this is all about data. Part of our job as advisors is to take the complex and make it simple. And that starts before they ever become a client. Yeah, it’s true. The things I picked up, I loved what you picked up because my notes also said exactly the same things. When she said that- That’s because you cut and paste them.

Well, I copy your notes and then that’s right. I just reiterate, Chad GBT wrote all my notes and I’m just showing up to read them. Not really, that’s not true at all. You put my notes into Chad GDP and then spin them back out as your own. That’s only to make them understandable because your notes are useless, okay? Touche, touche. Touche, thank you. We can keep going, by the way, if you want. Keep sparring. Don’t encourage us. Yeah, those people that can’t say anything, they don’t have voice transparency. You know what I wrote down when she mentioned the whole Canyon Ranch thing? So I said, wouldn’t it be interesting if somebody positioned as I’m the Canyon Ranch of financial wellness, right?

To try to create analogies for consumers to understand what value proposition they really provide, right? We go above and beyond in our service. It’d be really interesting for someone on this podcast to actually do that kind of branding. But that resonates. People get it very quickly and it, boom, now you don’t have to spend a year educating them. Just get it. That’s very true. The last thing I picked up was this. In the Fidelity Investor Insights survey, she talked about next generation penetration into the client base and how, when they had worked with multiple generations, they were much more profitable. But I thought about why does the next generation want behavioral coaching?

And I think, this is my speculation, it’s that the next generation wants to know how to become wealthy. They want the formula. They want to become financially well. So they’re willing to ask for coaching and mentoring today so that they can accelerate their own learning curve. And if their advisor’s not gonna provide it, then they’ll go find it from another resource. Google it. They definitely will. I definitely see this. Millennials and ex-gen tend to want to say, tell me the formula so that I can replicate the same outcome faster. Okay, we understand that. And we want you to basically turn it into a snippet for us and that’s what I’m willing to pay for in my financial advice.

You can actually coach me and mentor me. I know I’m gonna accelerate. I’ll win on the backside. But if I get no guidance, no coaching, I’m just gonna flounder along and maybe I’ll make it. I really think that the current generation that’s generating money or has wealth really thinks this way. They’re very coachable. From trusted sources that list prices on their website. That’s right, that’s right. We want to know you on the same team, right? You are right. And if you can show that you can help them do that, what you just said, then they’re a paying customer and you will get the next generation of wealth.

Because what I’ve also heard, Adam, and I don’t know if you’ve heard this over at your firm, a number of clients, even really wealthy ones, almost they’re even starting to tell me, Derek, we want to spend less time thinking about how to create the wealth or manage the wealth or preserve the wealth because we actually want to do the thing that’s after that is to enjoy our life. To do the things that the wealth is going to help us do. So we need your help more as an advisor. I don’t know if you’re hearing that but I’ve been hearing that more than once. Derek, I just realized something.

So as we just had Catherine Morgan on our podcast, she talked about financial wellbeing. Daniel Crosby talked about behavioral finance. Even David Carr talked about how he’s institutionalizing holistic wealth planning. These are not traditional topics in financial guidance, let alone investment management, which Sam just said was becoming ubiquitous. People can’t even tell what’s the difference anymore. Recently, we’ve been having a lot of conversations on this more almost therapeutic approach to financial coaching. And we do know a lot of people are rolling their eyes. I think financial advisors do feel they have a level of intimacy with their clients because we’re dealing with emotional context. We were never really taught to deal with those emotional discussions but we know we’ve been having them and generally advisors tend to be more empathetic despite being technically proficient at math.

We generally connect with people, generally, okay? That being said, we’re now seeing this very concerted effort. And I just got back from the shift conference which was all about human advice delivery. And this was incredible how many PhDs were in the room talking about how we need to focus on behavior. And I just realized why. The current generation of Gen X and Gen Y, as I said, are very interested in learning from the failures of the generation before them. And ultimately it comes down to their successes. The baby boomer success came down to the behaviors that they elicited during that whole time that got them to create some level of financial wellness.

Usually it was saving. Usually it was frugality. Usually it was not over buying. And I think the next generation X, this is my big postulation here, the X generation that has the money and will probably inherit the boomer’s money and the greatest generation’s money, is asking how do I avoid the failures of those who you just learned from? And they’re coachable and they care about more than just the dollar. They wanna have work-life balance and they wanna have meaning and they wanna make a difference and they realize that that’s what money ultimately means. It’s freedom and not just financial freedom. So I think that this whole movement towards delivering more guidance and coaching on behavior and actions you can take is almost generational and it’s gonna happen.

And the advisors that are fighting it and saying, no, clients are gonna come to me because I can project a retirement, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, that’s gonna be your last client is the current client. All right, you’re not gonna keep the money. Yeah, that’s done. I believe you’re right. And what’s interesting is that if you’re an advisor listening to this and you embrace it and you do it now, that’ll be part of your differentiator that we talked about earlier. Yeah. But it won’t be that way for long. So think about that. So here we’re queuing you all up listening in right now. Here is where the puck is headed, go over there.

I love it, Adam, this was a great conversation. Absolutely. So Adam, great conversation with Sam and somewhat actually related is that we have this community question I wanna go over today. It just actually came in from an advisor. And it’s funny, this is an advisor that is in a cohort for Connector that I’m running in South Africa right now. And they even said to me, cause we’re running these weekly or bi-weekly meetings. They came in and they said, Derek, I’ve been what you call a creeper and I still am. But just for you that don’t know, creepers are the ones on social media that only look, they don’t create content, they don’t engage, they definitely don’t differentiate.

And so they were asking me like, what is the best way to start posting content, whether it’s on LinkedIn, et cetera. Cause they’re saying, hey, I’ve been a creeper for a long time. How do I join this conversation, this digital conversation without being cheesy? And it’s funny because I’m actually teaching my wife kind of how to do the same thing for some stuff that she’s working on. Wait, you mean your wife is a creeper and cheesy? I sure hope she listens to this. This is the last episode we’re ever gonna do. I’m gonna be doing it by myself. But I understand you’re saying, so this person and your wife wants to come into this.

Do they think that everybody else knows that they’re a creeper? Well, this is what’s weird. So if you go to a networking event, a conference, your birthday party, which I was just at, whatever, if you are that weird person that’s in the corner having a drink by the fake plant, and you’re not talking to anybody, you’re just standing there and everyone’s like, who is that person? It’s weird. It’s just weird. So that’s what the creeper does. And it’s even more weird when that creeper comes into two or three other people talking. And you ask them a question and as a creeper, you just give them the thumbs up.

You don’t do that in real life. Wait, that’s what I do. You don’t do that? You don’t stand by the plant and just give thumbs up and sip your drink and be like, just listen to everyone’s conversation? Unless I’m feeling really anti-social, no, I do not do that. That’s funny. See, I thought the whole point of the social media was to invite everyone to be part of the conversation without care of whether they communicate often or not. Isn’t that the point though? Well, it’s a platform to do that, but if you’re going to get anything out of it, if you want to grow your personal brand, if you want to bring clients in and start that awareness and differentiation, you have to actually be part of the conversation.

Yeah, that’s true. Otherwise it’s weird. So when you’re on there, create content that opens up the door to letting people get to know you. And the best place I suggest advisors start is tell stories, things that you’ve learned. And do a blend between personal, but also clients. Like, hey, I just helped the client do this or this just happened to a client or this just happened to me in my life. And you’re now letting people get to know you. You know, I was just on the WealthStack podcast yesterday, it’s not live yet, but what’s her name? Shannon that runs it? Yeah, that’s it, Shannon Ross.

She said, she’s Derek, I’ve never talked to you. I’ve never met you in person, yet I feel like I know you. And she rattled off things. She’s like, we’re both dog people with rescue dogs. We both like Ford Mustangs. We both travel. We’re both Delta flyers. All of these things that she was able to gather about me, yet we’d never talk. So if you do a good job creating content, that’s the type of stuff that can happen. And when the client is having that acute pain that Sam mentioned, they’re gonna be like, oh man, I know Adam. At least I feel like I know him.

It seems like he can help me. I’m gonna go talk to him. Yeah, that’s a really interesting thing. So maybe the social posting and the persona development on social media has been the replacement of the review system that has not even been allowed for SEC marketing rules for many years. It is a way for someone to get a glimpse into your authentic self, if you’re authentic. Cause we know a lot of people will answer this question by just saying, hey, call up one of the MarTech companies and let them post for you. And who cares what they’re posting? They’re just getting your content out there.

We do know, as we’ve talked about many times and you do a great job of this, being authentic in social media really, really serves your overall brand, makes you memorable, makes you stand out. It shows that you have a position, that you have a spine, that you’re willing to go out there and be vulnerable. And I think that that’s really attractive to many people who are not necessarily in that level of confidence. But I think that’s it. The answer to your friend who’s asked you this question, I think is just start, right? I do know that if you don’t know why you’re doing it, it’s destined to fail anyway, because we have seen plenty of advisors decide to go into social media and not commit to it.

And so they don’t really get anywhere. It just becomes work. And I know that there are some people who do just the thumbs up and they get nothing out of it because that doesn’t mean anything. Exactly. And I think commenting and reposting and actually putting an opinion on there is where you get your real leverage. And certainly we know the algorithm picks that up. So with that, Derek, I think it’s a great question. I hope people take it to heart. There was so much stuff in here. Thank you, Sam Russell. You just are a real superstar. We’re so proud to call you our friend and to have you on this podcast to just drop all kinds of knowledge.

As Derek said, we’ll have those links in the show notes if we can even fit them in. Some great surveys to reference and some blogs on how to differentiate that Samantha made available. Awesome. Well, it was good talking to you. Hopefully we record again, depending on what my wife says. Yeah, hopefully the show will allow you to do this. We gotta at least get to 50. Maybe I can band-aid this along to 50. We’re going to a hundred, man. A hundred? There’s no way we’re gonna let Kitsis just get to a hundred by himself. We gotta catch up. Seriously. So for all those listening that still like what we have to say, please subscribe to the podcast.

Please leave a review. Leave questions if you want us to cover anything. We are here for you. We are an extension for you. We wanna give you the mentorship that you’re looking for. Share it with another advisor and connect with us on LinkedIn, please. That’s it. Home run, my friend. Have a good one. I’ll see you on the next one. Cheers, brother. Thank you for listening to Rethink, the financial advisor podcast with Holt and Notman. Be sure to subscribe now and join the ongoing conversation. The information covered and posted represents the views and opinions of the guest and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of AssetMap or Connector.

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