Read The Transcript Of The Episode:

Speaker 1:

This is the Ultimate Advisor Podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful, and scalable practice. Each week, we'll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals, your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets and create the advising practice that you've dreamed of. You'll be joined by your hosts, Bryan Sweet, who has more than half a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson the driving force for advisors looking to hire, improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practices' marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let's jump into another amazing episode of the Ultimate Adviser Podcast.
 

Brittany Anderson:

Hello and welcome back to your Ultimate Advisor Podcast. This is Brittany Anderson, and again, I have Bryan Sweet and Draye Redfern. And today we are going to focus on helping you get creative. We have talked for countless episodes about how differentiation in so many different regards is absolutely key to helping you stand out in a crowd. So we're getting down to business today. This is going to be good information, really quick and stuff that you are going to be able to implement. So I want you to start getting your mindset right, going into this episode, thinking how you can add the wow factor to your client base.

 All right, so something that we did recently that I thought this is, again, something you can absolutely take, borrow, beg, steal, whatever you want to call it and implement in your business right away. So at Sweet Financial, we have a group called Women Forward. It's essentially where we help educate and empower women in regard to life's biggest transitions so that they understand when they come across those times we're their go-to people. So we do events throughout the year. Well, faced with the COVID shutdown, we decided to do a virtual event and just a little way to get creative.

 So we did our presentation. We had people engaged. We always add an element of inspiration, future thinking of fun in there on top of some of the financial education. But at the end, we've had everybody flip on their cameras. So all of our attendees, all of our members, they flipped on their cameras. And we did a joint little cheers at the end. And you could literally feel the connection. You could feel the earning or yearning for that human touch, right? With all these women, everybody there with the same focus, the same value system, and they're there to learn and they're there to grow and they're there to support each other.

 So that little cheers at the end was absolutely the biggest value add. It sounds simple, but it was moving. I have goosebumps just talking about it again, because it was such a powerful experience and it was just different. It was different than what people are doing when they're just focused on let's just get financial education. Let's just do a little inspiration. It was actually saying, "Let's look each other in the eye. We can't be face to face, but let's look at each other in the eye and let's actually have that moment of connection." So those are ways that you can get creative.

 Bryan, you and Oliver on our team have been doing some really cool things with the town hall meetings we've been having a couple of times a month. So I'd love for you to share a little bit about that.

Bryan Sweet: 

Yeah. Before I do, I wanted to... You'd mentioned connection and what feeling you had with the smarter women event. And one of the things I heard recently was that relationships are the new currency. And so the more you can develop those relationships like you did on your virtual summit, just really adds a lot of value. So that's a little side note.

 But as you mentioned, we've been doing town hall meetings and they've been extremely helpful. And they were just to bring the latest information about what's going on with the markets and COVID. And we tried to always put a positive spin on it because the news was very negative all the time. And we got a great reception to update clients. We put a little COVID section on our website to have all the information. And what happened is for a while, the infection rate went down and the death rate went down. And so there wasn't really that much to report. Things vary and change from time to time as this keeps progressing.

 But one of the things that we've done is to add some differentiation. And if you've listened to these podcasts, we talk about that a lot is how do you differentiate yourself from the other advisors? Well, one of the things that we've done to differentiate the town hall meetings is that we're still doing them. We're still doing them every Wednesday like we've always done, but what we've done is twist them up a little bit. So occasionally we'll put in one on, let's talk about charitable planning strategies and we'll talk about if you're 55 to 62, what are the things that you need to be aware of as you get ready to get signed up for social security, the do's and don'ts. And there's all sorts of topics. We'll be doing a women's event.

 And it's just a way of, you got clients used to attending an educational summit. Now, it's just on something different other than COVID. So those have been a very good way. And you could bring in guest speakers to do things on legal issues and property and casualty and all sorts of items. And it's been a heck of a way to keep in front of clients without ever having to step foot out of the office. And also for your clients, they can sit in the comfort of their home, watch this on their computer without having to get out if the weather's bad or it's hot or it's cold, or they just don't feel like going anywhere. It increases the attendance greatly.

 The other thing that we've been doing that I absolutely love and want to do more and more is our other business unit or a specialty or niches business owners. And we call that smarter business. And in smarter business, one of the things that we've been trying to do is create focus groups where we bring in a group of six or eight business owners, and really start talking about what are their problems? What issues do they have? And actually have a little networking event where we can talk about it, provide resources.

 As I mentioned on a previous podcast, I think one of the things that we can bring to clients that's so helpful is the resources or the connections we've developed just by being in the business a long time. And we sometimes take for granted that, oh, everybody knows that technique, or everybody understands that marketing idea, or everybody knows this. Well, most business owners don't know a lot of those things. And when you get together with that group, their business is like their baby. And so anything that you can do to help make it more efficient, more profitable, run more smoothly, you really become a hero to them.

 So I would be very cognizant of just taking things you're already doing, and how do you just take a little spin on them to provide some extra help to clients or as we like to call it extra value. And one of the other things that I love to do is I'm a big podcast listener. I also obviously do this one, but I was just on a recent podcast with Steve Sanduski. For those of you that know him, he used to be a partner with Ron Carson. And he just had an interesting thing. I'll read a couple of tidbits that talks about differentiation. And he wrote, "Music producer, Rick Rubin said the best art divides the audience. And whatever you do to stand out or invert, you'll attract a group of super fans who love what you do or say. You'll also create a group of people who have no interest in what you're doing. And that's fine. The key is to get a reaction from people."

 So I'm talking about doing things differently that attract your ideal audience. And if you repeal a certain group of people along the way, that's okay, because they would have never been your clients anyway. So Draye, your thoughts?
 

Draye Redfern:

I love the polarity of that. So in anything and everything there is polarity. You could do it in reference to magnetic polarity. You could do it in reference or describe it in reference to male, female polarity. You could do it in reference to just about anything. But in this instance, business attract and repel. What Bryan just said, it was probably worth tens of thousands of dollars to you in your business if you actually implement it. But the problem is, is that most people want to be liked by everybody and thus they are liked or loved by nobody. And that's unfortunate, but we have this feeling of, we want to be liked, we want to be appreciated, we want to do all of these things, but we do that at the cost of having a particular subset of people fall in love with us, with our brand, with our company, with our team, with our people.

 And there's so much value in what Bryan just said. If I were to take a second, at least to get tactical off of that, I suppose, some of the things that you can do around that vein, not necessarily polarizing, but at least going a step in the right direction to be creative is to do things that other people are not doing. We've given you examples of this over the last three episodes in this series. One thing that we haven't talked of, given the situation that we're in, is actually just taking the time not to send an automated note, but an actual, like maybe it's an email, you want to have no contact, but maybe it's a handwritten note, just letting know someone that you're thinking about them, someone that you actually care about them. "Hey, I know that things are crazy right now. I know that you birthed a grandson a few months ago. How are things? Just checking in? How are things going?" You just want to touch base.

 It's little things like that that goes such a long way. Again, not polarizing, but it's a great way to deepen some of the avenues. And it just takes a second, not massive amounts of creativity there. But in the last episode, we also talked about what you can do with making some personal pages and things for individual prospects or clients. You can do that exact thing to people who attend your summits or your town halls, or maybe they're particular clients. Maybe someone has a wedding anniversary. You could film a video. Maybe it's a big one, like a 25 years, 50 year wedding anniversary. You could have everybody in the office say, "Hey Susan, Hey Bill, happy anniversary." And that video could either go via YouTube link or Vimeo. You could put it on a webpage. You could do something like that to create creative moments with no contact, given the world that we're at right now, that do go a long way. Again, that part's not polarizing, but that deepens the level in which you can communicate with people.

 To just circle back to the polarizing avenue. There's one thing that I would say, and I would maybe do a little bit of introspection. Brittany mentioned it last time about doing some journaling and realizing, maybe jotting down where your head is at with some of these things. There's the old saying, Jack of all trades, master of none. We don't want you to be the Jack of all trades, who is the everything financial advisor to all people. We want you to know who you are and know who you serve. One of the best ways to do that is to really think about who your avatar is, something we talk a lot about. And realize that it's okay to maybe talk more direct to that avatar. Maybe that avatar needs to be communicated to in a very emotionally safe environment. Like if they just lost their husband and you're talking to widows. Now that person's not going to want to be communicated to the same way that a business owner would be communicated to. Two very, very distinct ways in which the communication is different.

 That's why for the Sweet brand, they're not segmented into the same pool. They're completely different pools, different communications, different automations, different systems, different subsets of the team who actually help these individuals. And it's so, so different so that they can talk to this individual person, like them talking one to one, not one to many. And those sorts of things... Otherwise, if you're doing one to many, you're not going to be really adored by anybody and that's not the place to be in.

 So a couple things there that Bryan, again, I'm just circling back to what he said, just absolute so many nuggets there. But again, hopefully some of those tactical things that you can do just to make a difference or make someone smile. And right now a lot of people are feeling alone. A lot of people feel isolated and doing something that may take you three minutes could make somebody's week. And that could be how many numerous referrals to you over the next three, five, 10 years because you did something that most other people were not doing. So I encourage you be creative. Do some of those things that continue to position you as the ultimate advisor that you are. Follow Bryan's advice more than anything. And then I'm going to hand it off to you, Brittany, so you can tie this one off.
 

Brittany Anderson:

I think the most interesting polarity that we should really talk about is the polarity and the difference between Bryan and Brittany. We got to pick on him a little. No, I think this is such a valid topic and that was powerful, Bryan, what you shared. I mean, I had goosebumps just listening to it. And I want to give two quick examples of really what polarity, the definition of polarity, right?

 So at Sweet Financial, we have a huge, huge focus on helping people live their dreams. And it doesn't just have to be retirement dreams because we work with business owners and maybe they don't ever want to retire. So their dreams are going to be different. We do have retirees that we work with obviously, and we want to help them live their dreams. And a dream life for a widow, going to look a heck of a lot different than a couple planning for the future they've always planned for. So we understand that that dream focus and some of that kind of warm fuzzy stuff is not for everybody. There are some people out there that are like, "You guys are nuts. We don't want to talk about that. Just talk about our money. We don't want to talk about all the other stuff." And that's okay. And that doesn't make them bad. It just means that they're not the right fit for us and we're not the right fit for them.

 And same thing with Ultimate Advisor. Through our Mastermind Program, we actually tell people straight up before we even have the conversation about what the mastermind looks like, we have a deep dive into who they are as a person. And one of the first things we say off the bat is, "Are you a giver? What does giving mean to you? Talk to us about how you give back and how you can contribute." Because if we have somebody come in that's just take, take, take, that's not a good fit. So those are things that we understand. We're not going to be for everybody. Some people go into things, just wanting to get. Some people just go into things, just wanting to get down to the financials, the basics, the fundamentals. We want to talk about the bigger stuff.

 So those are two examples of what polarity means within our world and within our businesses. So before I give the key takeaway, Draye, Bryan, anything else across the board that you want to bring up? I'm getting radio silence. There's nothing.
 

Draye Redfern:

I thought you were going to just drop another nugget bomb there, Bryan, of amazing insights.
 

Bryan Sweet:

I apparently gave all I got right tonight.
 

Brittany Anderson:

So good. So good. So let's round out. The top takeaways I think from today is going to be, first of all, find your virtual creative. So we gave a few different examples of how you can virtually impact and reach your clients and have that connection. So again, it goes back to what's the value you add. Figure that out, decide that, and then act on it, right? Find some way that you can deliver an experience for your clients, even if it has to be virtually because of the world that we're in right now.

 The second is defining your polarity, deciding who you want to appeal to and who you do not want to appeal to, and then getting really comfortable with that and understanding that it's a good thing. It's a good thing that not everybody is going to like you and not everybody's going to love what you have to offer because the right people are going to be drawn to it. So that's drawing that line in the sand and being so comfortable and confident with what you offer that you're able to deliver that killer experience to the right people.

 And then finally, because Draye brought it up again and I know people hesitate and they get a little bit nervous about this, but it's the video, right? It's the creativity that you can do by shooting quick videos. And I just want you to get your feet wet with it. If you haven't done it already, if you haven't taken that leap to do quick video snippets to your clients or to your prospects, you absolutely need to. It is a great way to get creative. It's a great way to stand out and it's really quick and easy. I promise. Just give it a try. So, that rounds out today's episode of the Ultimate Advisor Podcast. We will see you back here next week.

 Hey, Brittany here. Before you go, we wanted to share with you that we are running another Ultimate Advisor Summit coming to you September 21st through the 25th for a mere $97. That's right. Five days of killer speakers, killer content that's going to help you to continue optimizing your practice during a really interesting year. So go ahead, hop on over to ultimateadvisorsummit.com and grab your seat today.