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 practice's marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let's jump into another amazing episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast.
 

Brittany Anderson:

Welcome back to your Ultimate Advisor Podcast. This is Brittany Anderson. And once again, I've got with me and Draye Redfern and Bryan Sweet, and we are continuing on this short little journey we've been taking. It's a three week series on simple tips that you can implement into your practice when it comes to marketing. So if you caught the last two couple episodes, well, let me say this. If you didn't catch the last couple episodes, you absolutely need to. You need to go back. You need to listen to the last two weeks because it really brings us up to speed on what we're going to talk about today. And today's topic is all along the lines of your team. Again, you may be posing the question of, how does my team or what on earth does it have to do with a simple marketing tip? Well, once again, it has everything to do with it.

 So the emphasis here, and again, we've talked a lot about teams. That's kind of my personal mojo is the culture, the team build, all that good stuff, but it's a huge marketing point and it's actually a PR opportunity. So the side effect of this is before you start thinking about how you can market your team, how you can talk about the capabilities that you have added, it really helps you to do a check to see if you've hired the best of the best. Have you hired somebody that is even better than you at the given job description that you've laid out? Have you brought on people and talent that are just knocking it out of the park?

 Because if you've done this right, the next things that we're going to talk about should be really, really easy or really simple for you to implement. So it boils down to, and I've said this before, again, if you've subscribed to our podcast for a while now, you've heard me talk about the importance of team, the importance of building culture and not just the woo-woo warm fuzzy stuff, but really how that helps you build your business.

 If you have not been subscribed for very long, I highly recommend you go back and you listen to previous episodes, especially around the concept of team, because without your team, you're going to have a hard time having a business. So just to spin this back to marketing is that you have an opportunity through your team members to differentiate yourself, because what's the saying out there? Is that there's one thing or one being that nobody else can be and that's you as a human. So when you think about this for your team, the same thing rings true. What do you have? What do you truly have that no one else does? Because pretty much everybody across the board can say, "We deliver great service. We have an investment process. We have model portfolios. We take care of our clients. We put service first."

 Those are things that technically everybody can say. Now, not everybody delivers on it, which is why you need to listen to the last two episodes, but they can say that. But nobody else, not a single person can say they have you or your current team on staff. So whether it's your concierge service, your client service gal, your marketing guy, your amazing team of advisors, the list goes on. Those are all people that you have that is different than anybody else.

 So I want to bring up this concept called tagging. Tagging means talking about the good. So this is something that we learned. We've done some work with Chris Smith, the creator of Campfire Effect, and that's who brought this term to us and we've really latched onto it, not just because it's a cool term, but because it actually works. So we've mentioned this before, but in a slightly different context. So even if you've heard us talk about tagging in previous episodes, I really want you to pay attention to this.

 So Bryan, I'm actually going to let you take it from here on what we've been working on in the office and how we're really focused on tagging or talking about the good, with the amazing people, with the amazing team that we have at Sweet Financial. I'd love for you to share some of the things that we're doing.
 

Bryan Sweet:

Love to. I have found this to be one of the most amazing concepts. And as you alluded to earlier, it's amazing because it absolutely works incredibly well. And I get asked the question a lot, how do you do all the things you do, Bryan? You run a very successful wealth management firm. You've got four other businesses. You take 16 weeks off a year. How do you do all that? Do you not sleep? Well, that might be part of it, but no, it's really this tagging concept and I've taken it to hopefully another level. And it's really about talking about other members of your team and all of their capabilities. So if you're getting phone calls from clients on investment strategy, or you're getting phone calls about, "Hey, Bryan, I need to change a beneficiary." What you need to learn is you need to introduce your clients to the people that do those actual chores.

 And when you actually introduce that person to your client, say amazing, wonderful, and these will all be true things, but if they don't know all the great things that this person has done and is capable of doing, then they need to hear it so that in the future, they know you've basically given permission to that person to handle that scenario down the road. And I will tell you, if you do that in front of the team member, you are going to have one happy team member and they're going to remember that and feel very proud and accomplished by you saying that in front of others. And so it's been an amazing scenario and I literally do that for every duty or chore that I'm not uniquely qualified at or things that I know somebody else can do better or things that I don't do.

 So literally I have very few tasks. I do what I do very well and everything else is handled by a team member that I've pre-qualified and let the clients know that these are exceptional people who have exceptional talents, they'll handle it amazingly well. Matter of fact, they'll handle it much better than I do. And we do this all the time and we are constantly trying to promote the team instead of me, and presented as Sweet Financial versus Bryan Sweet. And if you can learn to do that and give other people credit when it's justifiably due in front of the client, that will pay big, big dividends.

 And the other thing is, though, is it won't work if you don't show confidence or trust in others. Your clients are always going to rely on you. And having done this literally for years and maybe have stepped it up since we've learned some new techniques from Chris, it's amazing that I rarely get a phone call, an email, a question from a client because they don't call me. They already know they're supposed to call anybody else in the office because they know that person's actually going to get it done more efficiently, faster, and do it better than I'm going to do it. Am I missing anything, Brittany? Anything you could add to that?
 

Brittany Anderson:

No. I think, Bryan, the whole concept of tagging is just so powerful. Again, if we spin this a little bit to the marketing aspect is what happens is you're basically marketing your people. So something that we've done too is in some of our external communications, because Bryan said he's not at the point in his career. He's not taking new clients anymore. He's servicing the heck out of the few that he sees, but that's just not where his energy best spent. He's the visionary for the firm. I mean, he's looking at ways that we can even better serve our clients, that we can reach greater markets, that we can really be creative, be innovative and stay at the top of our game that way. So something that we do is, if we have any sort of promotion going on, we have anything that we're trying to drive business, we'll actually use... We have a gal on our team.

 We'll use her face. We're touting her. We're talking about how she is so exceptional at X, Y, and Z in the company. And that's actually what we've done with some of our external marketing. We're getting ready to launch a webinar pretty soon here and that's all her. So again, without Bryan putting that stamp of approval behind it saying, "Here's why she's amazing and here's why you should listen to her." That credibility factor may not be there as quickly just because she's not the one that founded the business how many years ago and that's been the one that's been the face and the name and all of that good stuff. So this is, again, if you think about this and let's just actually take it a step further is if you think about what your vision is for the future as maybe a founder of the business, as a primary advisor, if you're looking to maybe we're a little less, maybe spend less time in the business.

 Maybe you want a succession plan that doesn't involve you working until you die or working yourself to death or seeing those 70, 80 hour weeks that you maybe saw when you first started in this business. If you're looking at that, this is a great opportunity for you to not only tell the fact that you have amazing team members, that you've got people supporting. And like Bryan said, I mean, our clients call and they talk to exactly who it is that's going to take care of their issue, that's going to solve their problem, that's going to serve them in the way that they need. And that's set up for purpose. Not only because we do have a team and we do have individuals here that can support people so they can get faster service, but also for the fact that it frees Bryan up to be able to do the things he wants to do, to be able to be the visionary, to be able to take time away.

 A huge component of what we teach in the mastermind and what we talk about in our accelerator program too, is that Bryan takes 16 weeks away from the business every year. And we're not just continuing on as good or whatever, just sitting stagnant. We're actually still growing and that's exciting. I mean, that's good stuff and that's what you want to aim for. So when we talk about talking up your team, when we talk about making sure that you use this as a marketing opportunity to actually promote the skills that are on your team, this is huge. This is multifaceted here. There's so many reasons that you should be doing this, not just because you want to market because you have great team members and you want to share their expertise and all that good stuff, but there is a longterm positive effect here that allows you to be freed up, that allows your team to actually do what the heck they're good at, what they're hired to do.

 Because again, I'm going to go on a little tangent here, but one of the biggest issues that happens when you have a primary advisor, you have the founder, you have the owner, is when you start crossing the line and dabbling back into the roles that you've hired other people to do. So it's basically allowing you to not only get the heck out of their way, but to also tout and talk about the amazing things that your people do, because that just makes you an even more rounded business. So Draye, before I take this and just start talking teams like crazy, I got to have you jump in.
 

Draye Redfern:

I love this. And there's a lot that I can say and weigh in on here. There's a couple points I want to make. For me inside of my company, it is the same as the Sweet Financial team. A week doesn't go by where I don't get complimented by someone on my team, because they do go above and beyond. They're willing to stay late. They have authority to go above and beyond with the clients, whether that's giving out a phone number or calling after hours, whatever the scenario is. But there's something really cool with the tagging concept that I want to bring up. Now, you tag a client, you hand it off to a fellow team member, but sometimes you have more confidence in them than they have in themselves. And that's just a human thing is that some people just really struggle with confidence.

 They may have the best work ethic and the best work product, and they take great care of the people around them and they do an amazing job and everything is wonderful, but they still don't necessarily feel confident in themselves. So tagging can do an amazing good to help increase some of those confidence levels. I'll share a brief story about this. I have had someone on my team for about two and a half years now or so. I won't share her name, but she has been with me for a while. She's a single mother with two kids. Absolutely one of the hardest workers you will ever meet. Nicest, absolute sweetheart, will bend over backwards for you, but has struggled with confidence because she's been a single mom and she's trying to work and trying to piece all of these things together and just trying to do her best.

 And it's a really tough scenario. And one of the things that... I've used the tagging concept for a while now is talking her up every single time that she's on a joint call or handing off tagging via email even on how amazing that it is to work with her and be around her, that the client is an amazing hands working with this particular person. Well, I do that because I want the people around me to recognize and feel appreciated and valued, but there are so many ancillary benefits that are really hard to quantify. And I'll tell you one of the things is that over the Christmas holiday, she said something like, "Basically working for you has been one of the biggest blessings of my entire life, because you have given me so much more confidence in myself than I ever realized that I had and I feel like I'm a part of something bigger. I feel like I'm a part of a family and I could not have had that without you."

 I melted. I'm getting choked up even just talking about it because there's so many things that you can do for your team. Not only just talk up your team and how great they're going to take care of with the people around them, but it takes five seconds of your time and your client feels like they're going to be taken care of and your team member... We don't always know what our team members and our employees and team are dealing with outside of work. And those little things, those little boosts can go the longest way to make someone's day, make someone's week, and give them the confidence they need to even step it up to the next level.

 So along that path, there's something that I wholeheartedly agree with and embody and all of these things. But to that effect, Brittany was mentioning Bryan taking 16 weeks off a year. I'd love to get to that point. My business is not quite there yet to where I can walk away from basically a third of the year. One day. But over a few weeks ago, I spent three weeks in Colorado and embodying all of the principles that we've talked about on the podcast isn't just something that's platitudes. We do it. Different stage of my career than what Bryan is at, but it's a really cool feeling that when you actually embody a lot of the things and when you have the team there and they have the confidence and all of these sorts of things, I walked away for basically three weeks and the business grew. I wasn't involved in any of it.

 The no front end sales calls, no back end client service, nothing. And it's a really cool experience to know and feel that when you make these things and you instill them in your practice, it's not always immediate. Anything worthwhile takes time, but when you have that team around you and you do build them up, they'll want to go to bat for you even when you're not around. It's so freaking fun and it's so cool, and it's just an amazing thing to be a part of to have just amazing people that you want to be around in or out of the office. So a couple of things there I guess Brittany to impact or maybe to loop back on, but that's my take on some of the team building side of things.
 

Brittany Anderson:

Yeah. Draye, well for one, I'm sitting here thinking and I know exactly who you're talking about on your team and she's absolutely amazing. So I love that you are that for her. Gosh, think about this for a second. If you're listening here as the primary, the key advisor, as the head honcho, the boss, whatever it is, think about what Draye just shared and really what that does for your team. So by you talking people up, by you doing the tagging method that Bryan elaborated on there too, by doing those things, you have no idea how you're impacting people's lives. So yes, it is a cool tip to be able to basically use the resources you already have, let's just call it, in your business to be able to do marketing and to talk people up and to share their expertise and all of that great stuff and it makes you look really good to your clients because they're seeing it's more than just you.

 They're seeing that you actually have a support system around that can serve them and do what needs to be done for them and all of that good stuff, but you just don't know the side effect. You don't know how you're impacting somebody's life by talking about them in such a positive way, by saying those things in front of them even, by building their confidence and really helping them soar and spread their wings. And you just don't know. And so I think that's so important to remember is that as you're doing this, as you're building up that team, as you're ensuring that people are being promoted for the good things that they do. It's really darn easy to catch somebody screwing up.

 It's really easy to be like, "You dropped the ball or you messed up on this one." But it's a little bit harder to be intentional with catching people doing things right and that's what this is all about. It's about focusing on what your people do right. It's about putting that out into the world and sharing with your clients, sharing with your prospects about all the great things that your team does and continues to do for people. So before I go into a couple of quick takeaways, Bryan, Draye, anything else at all that you want to add?
 

Bryan Sweet:

Brittany, I just wanted to make one quick comment and maybe simplify it by saying tagging costs no money and takes no time, but pays unlimited benefits. So why wouldn't you want to do it?
 

Brittany Anderson:

Yeah, that's so good. Taking just a couple minutes to talk people up is so good. So I think that's a good lead in into the first takeaway is before you can do this, before you can really use this tagging method, before you can start promoting your team in a way that helps you to grow your business, to grow your impact, you have to do a quick assessment of your team. Are you proud? Really, and this is a tough conversation to ask, especially if you're somebody who is a relationship person. Because chances are, if you're wired that way, this can be a tough gut check, but are you proud to promote them to the public? Can you honestly take a look at your team members and for each and every one, can you say, "Gosh, I would love to talk this person up, because they are amazing, because they are..." If you listened to last week, "They're totally in congruent with what they talk about, what they deliver. They're in complete congruency with what the company promises and what the company delivers, and I'm excited to be able to promote them."

 If you cannot answer yes for each and every team member, you have some really, really big decisions to make. And I completely understand that that is painful. I've heard it happen with all of the different... We do a lot of discovery calls, people checking in on our programs, talking about the mastermind and the accelerator and all of this good stuff that we help people with, but one of the biggest things I hear is that they have a team member that's been there for a lot of years. They know they've probably outgrown them. They know they maybe need to make some upgrades on the team, but they're really reluctant to do so because that person's helped them get to where they're at.

 And that's really tough and you have to handle that with care. So I'm going to do a total shameless plug here. If you found yourself with that, especially when it comes to team, because we have a lot of content and material in our 90 Day Sprint, in that accelerator program I've mentioned. We go deep on teams in our mastermind program as well. If you want to talk, I highly recommend you to book a discovery session. Book a quick call with us and we can talk through how we actually help people do all the things that we have talked about in the last three weeks. It makes a difference and we understand that some of this team stuff, some of the marketing things around team can be kind of tough to navigate, and you need a who in your corner. You need somebody that can help you navigate this with a totally unbiased perspective.

 So shameless plug, I highly recommend you book a discovery, call, you book a strategy session to see how we could potentially help you. And the other thing too is we try to save some of our very, very in-depth really cool tricks for our mastermind members, just because they're great. They're awesome. We all have the same objective. We have a really great time together. But one thing that I wanted to just give a little bit of highlight to is that there's things you can do with your bio's. So if you go to any financial advisor's website, you're going to see literally the same bio structure across the board. Okay, it's going to talk about your schooling. It's going to talk about maybe your journey a little bit to become a financial advisor, maybe a little bit about your process or what you do. And then it'll round out with a quick update on your family and that's it.

 And literally, if you go start searching, I guarantee that you will find that across the board because we all structure it the same. That's how we were taught to write bios. So what I would encourage you to do is to have your team actually write up something. What makes them different? What makes them special? Have them toot their own horn a little bit. Maybe tell a little bit of their story. I'm not going to give away the whole secret sauce behind it, but that's something to just look at. That's something to consider is, how can your team differentiate themselves through something that maybe has higher traffic, like your website, like your collaterals that you put out all of that good stuff? So I'm going to leave it at that because those are a couple things that you really need to do. So number one, quick assessment on your team.

 Are you proud to promote everybody? Do you feel like they're really difference makers? Are they movers and shakers? Are they people that you feel so excited to be able to promote, to be able to tag? And then the second thing is, is help them differentiate themselves on your site, on anything that people would look at that allows them to see the team that you have and how they make a difference for people and how they serve and what role they play in your company.

 So that rounds us out. This was week three of the three part series where we talked about really simple marketing tips for your business. We will catch you right back here as we dive into the next episode of your Ultimate Advisor Podcast.

 Hey there. Brittany Anderson here. If you are loving what you're hearing on our Ultimate Advisor Podcast, don't keep us a secret. Share us with other advisors that you think would benefit from the messages that you are hearing. The easiest way to do that is just simply send them to ultimateadvisorpodcast.com. And if you want to learn a few other ways that we could potentially serve you as an advisor, go check out ultimateadvisormastermind.com. As always, we are so happy to have you here with us as part of The Ultimate Advisor community, and we look forward to a continued relationship.