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 Advisor Podcast.
 

Brittany Anderson :

Welcome back to your Ultimate Advisor Podcast. This is Brittany Anderson. Once again, I have with me, Draye Redfern and Bryan Sweet. And we thought that, for the next few weeks, we could go back to the basics. And what we mean by that is we want to give you some simple, and I repeat simple, non-complicated marketing tips that you could implement immediately into your business, that is going to help you attract the right clients and repel the ones that maybe are not quite the right fit. So the first thing that we're going to dive into this week is focusing on the problem and not the solution.

 What happens so often in business, when you're looking at communicating your message out into the world, people focus too much on the solution, on their process, on what they can do, versus actually addressing the problem people are facing. So, this whole concept, it stems from a presentation that we had at one of our most recent mastermind sessions. We brought in one of the reps from Brand Builder; so Brand Builder's group highly recommend checking them out. They're absolutely amazing! But this gal came in and was talking about your personal brand and how really, you, as the primary advisor, you as the founder, you are the brand of your business, and you have to walk around with that thought in your head. What comes with that is you know, through experience, through years of dealing with clients through years of helping solve problems, you know what's keeping people up at night. You know some of the pining things that your clients have faced that you have helped solve.

 A lot of times what happens is, is when we get too focused on the end solution on our process, and even though we know that it solves people's problems, we're not going to get that connection with an individual until we're actually pushing on the pain point, until we're saying, "Hey, we understand that you have a concern that you maybe aren't going to have enough money in retirement. We understand that you're concerned about your legacy. We understand that you may not know what you don't know. So when it comes to investing, you need somebody in your corner who does know all of the things that you don't." So it's really important to stop touting your process so much, but rather talk about the problem that your process solves.

 It goes back to the adage... I've said this before, if you're one that's followed us through, through all of our episodes, I've talked about how Darren Hardy, founder of SUCCESS magazine, he uses the term "get in their bed to get in their head." And again, not to be completely provocative, but what that means is, is you need to understand what's keeping people up at night, and then what you can do is use those problems because they're real and they're true and they need to be solved. You can use that thought process in order to market your business, in order to attract the people whose problems you actually can solve versus bringing people in that maybe just aren't quite the right fit. So this is something that at Sweet Financial we've really been honing in on. We've really been honing in on our copy to push on some of the pain points more, not because we want to put doom and gloom out into the world, but to actually show people we are meeting them where they're at, and we understand their pain.

 So, at this point, Bryan, I'd love to bring you into the conversation because we have done a lot of work behind the scenes on creating our process for Dream Architect, creating that, but really trying to navigate and figure out how that solves people's problems and how we can market that. So, Bryan, I'd love for you to give a couple of comments and then we can keep this conversation going.
 

Bryan Sweet:

Great, Brittany. I look forward to it. The Dream Architect is really everything that we do. It's our financial planning process. It's really what we live and breathe at Sweet Financial. The reason we created it was really to solve problems for our clients and help get down to their core problem being maybe two primary things. One, will I have enough? And enough at retirement or enough for all the things you'd like to buy and dream about? But the other big thing about the Dream Architect is we have found that people never thought big enough as to what they can accomplish in their lives and in their retirement. So, it served as a platform for us to go deeper and build something that actually solves the problem. One of the things that we found is that by speaking on the problem, it creates all sorts of possibilities.

 Now, the possibilities are possibilities for the advisor to help the client and create lots of value, but also creates lots of opportunities for the client in that they recognize and now understand that things that they thought were once impossible, or had no idea how they could be solved, can now easily be accomplished by following a defined path. And so, it's been an amazing process. We've had the Dream Architect for literally years and years, but I think we finally figured out that this is the be-all end-all for everything that we do at the firm.

 The other great thing that it really helps you do is if you have a unique process that you've named, one, as we've said before, it's a big differentiator. There's no-one else in the country that has a Dream Architect platform because we've trademarked it and it's ours. So, if you have your own unique process that you've named, it could be your only process and the only way that they get it is by going with your firm. I don't know if you have anything to add to that, Brittany, but it's really been one of the keys to the success that we've had and it's been amazing, the additional buy-in we've gotten from clients and, therefore, amazing amount of new assets.
 

Brittany Anderson :

Yeah. So I definitely, I want to push on this a little bit. Because as Bryan's talking about the work that we've done on the Dream Architect and really having that be a vehicle that solves people's problems, so I want to give you an actual example of what I'm talking about: what it means to push on the problem versus the solution. For example, if we're sending out an email to our prospect list and what we're trying to communicate is that, "Hey, book a discovery call with us." That's usually the call to action at the very end, but instead of saying something in the beginning like, "We would like to introduce to you the Dream Architect concept, and here's the four steps, and here's what it does for you, and here's the change it'll make;" so instead of starting out with something like that, you're actually going to start out with something along the lines of...

 For example, the question that we hear over and over throughout the years, regardless of how much a person has saved, of how much wealth they've accumulated over the years is, "Will I have enough? Will I have enough to do all the things that I want to do in my retirement? Will I be able to actually help my family in the way that I want? Will I be able to leave the legacy that I want? Am I going to be able to fulfill my dreams, and my bucket list, and do the things that my spouse and I've talked about for so many years?" If these things, if these questions are keeping you up at night, then we have a solution for you.

 So then you might tie into the Dream Architect and that's where you introduce it, but you're going to circle back and push on that pain again. Because again, for us... And this isn't going to be the same for everybody. It's demographic because it depends on who you serve. For us, we hear that question all the time and it's mind-blowing because somebody can have millions of dollars saved and they still have that question! So obviously that's a problem; that's something that's keeping people up at night. So really honing in on that when you're communicating your messaging, when you're looking at crafting, if you have an email campaign, that we've talked about before, if you have anything on your website, if you have any sort of promotion, or even to an event.

 Rather than being like, "Come watch us because we're great and we're so smart and we know everything," and yes, I'm being a little facetious there, but we would never have an event that says, "Hey! Come learn how the Dream Architect changes your life." It's never going to happen. We're going to push on a pain point and say, "Hey, you know what? One of the biggest concerns people have in retirement is in regards to their tax savings, tax efficiencies. Nobody likes to pay Uncle Sam." Those kinds of things. So that's what's going to draw them in and then the solution will be there on the backend to help solve their problems.

 So I think sometimes this shifts the way that an advisor thinks and it shifts the way that you actually deliver to your clients. Because if you're truly focused on the problem and you want to know what the problem is, when you have a prospect in, you're going to do a heck of a lot more listening and a lot less talking if you're really focused on the problem. So if you're focused on the solution upfront and you're just all excited to present your beautiful slide show, and all of your wonderful things that your business and your process does, that's all fine and good, and I'm sure you have a wonderful process and you have a wonderful team, but that's not what needs to be on the front end. You need to give them a reason to come to you. You need to give them a reason to love your process and fall in love with it just as much as you are.

 So, Draye, at this point, I would love for you to talk about how this has actually been applied in a couple of different ways with the businesses that we're involved with, and how this is just such an interesting and really cool topic that people can implement into their business.
 

Draye Redfern:

Yeah. Thanks, Brittany. This is fun. It's done in a way that if you do it right, it doesn't feel sleazy, it doesn't feel like you're being marketed to, it doesn't feel like you're being sold. It just feels like a genuine conversation, like a person to person, an H to H interaction, and that really goes a long, long way. We've done this inside of Ultimate Advisor because we recognize that as this company, as a podcast, that many advisors are all feeling something similar. The pain point of where they're at, at least the demographic that we attract, are not most advisors who are starting out with their first five clients, they're usually been around for a little bit. and maybe they've plateaued. They're at a couple of $100,000 in revenue and maybe they've plateaued or maybe they've reached a couple million or maybe the seven figure mark, and they're just not seeing that geometric growth that they had previously experienced.

 So, all of that said, there's some ways to implement what Brittany just said. There's very tactical things you can do that we've done inside of Ultimate Advisor, Sweet Financial's done using the Dream Architect process. And that's basically this, if I could boil it down to anything, it would be this: are you selling a vitamin or a pain pill? Sit on that for a second. What is it that you're actually selling? Two different scenarios. The first one vitamins long-term longevity. You should be saving for retirement. Everybody knows this. Everybody knows they should probably be taking vitamins, but it doesn't mean they're necessarily doing. It's great for long-term longevity, but it is a absolute long game. You, with your marketing and your sales conversations, you want to catch them right where Brittany was talking about earlier, where the pain is and you want to push on that. That's the pain pill that we can provide immediate relief. And they may not even know that they have the pain, unless you use some of the questions that she mentioned, will you have enough? Will you have the legacy that you've desired?

 Now, those are questions that can spark answers that can allow you to provide actionable strategies or advice or solutions to provide immediate relief of that pain. That is a significantly easier way to get somebody to start working with you because that's like, "You know what? I've got this need. You've just pushed on the pain with this pain pill, but now you can give me to relieve that pain with an immediate solution," versus, "Let's help you save for retirement." Both; you need to be doing both. There's there there's advisors that should play at both camps. But it really is a great way to just at least take some of the marketing and what you're doing, a simple marketing tip, like we talked about with this whole series, take it and boil it down: pain pill or vitamin?

 Now, any healthy advising practice, you're going to do a bit of both. But the idea is to get these people in the door to have those conversations with you so that they can allow you to transform your life, or their life, in order to really help them achieve some of their goals, so they can have that legacy; they can have enough; all of those sorts of things. The way that you can do that? One of my early mentors called it the SSF method: the sidewalk, the slow lane, and the fast lane. You bring people in on the sidewalk, initial conversations, things that you're feeling out. As the conversation progresses, you're obviously in the slow lane of traffic, things are moving faster. And as you really go on, people are really interested in you, you're pushing on that pain even more, that's the fast lane.

 And so, those two metaphors with your marketing and boiling it down, that simple, is probably one of the easiest ways I could say that taking some of these simple things, but they can have an absolute profound effect. So I highly suggest that you implement a lot of what Brittany just said with the pain points and those sort of things. But maybe there's a few other things we want to flush out there, Brittany, regarding the pain points, if there's certain things or language that maybe they can push on?
 

Brittany Anderson :

I think one of the things that we hear often from advisors... This was a huge topic of conversation in actually the last couple of mastermind sessions that we've done, but marketing as a whole can be overwhelming and people can be frightened of marketing. It's new; it's different. And for a lot of advisors out there, a lot of successful advisors, they're like, "I've grown by referrals; it's been going fine. Why upset the apple cart?" And this is the way to look at it: if you have a solution to a really big problem, you are actually doing the world a disservice by not communicating it. So by not meeting people where they're at, and pushing on that pain point, and helping them actually feel like, "Hey, this wound could actually get a little bit bigger if you don't have somebody in your corner to help you solve it."

 So I think that's the mindset shift that we're really trying to encourage with advisors is set aside all the fancy marketing techniques, all the amazing tools and resources, all the great stuff that we've talked about over our podcast as a whole. But if you just get your mind around, "If I'm not communicating, if I'm not pushing on that pain, if I'm not meeting people where they're at, if I'm not getting in their bed to get in their head, if I'm not doing those things, I'm actually doing the people that are out there that don't have my service, that don't do business with us, I'm actually doing them a disservice. Because I know what we do is good and I know that we can help people." So I think just listening to this and talking about what Bryan talked about, listening to what Draye talked about, and really honing in on having that solid process in your business that you know poses solutions to those problems that you're going to emphasize, you need to be communicating it.

 The other thing too that I think is funny, we've talked about this at Sweet Financial and we're guilty of this, is that we actually don't push enough on the pain, even with our existing clients. So, when you look at how we help people, we take for granted that, "Hey, they've been with us for how long," and we just kind of do what we do. But we have not communicated how they can actually share this with other people, how they can get this problem, this pain point push, and then in turn the solution, to the people that they love and care about most.

 So we've been fortunate that we do get a lot of referrals and we have amazing clients who want to share us with others. But again, it's about being intentional. It's about being intentional with this and really showing people, "Hey, I understand your pain because I've helped a heck of a lot of people overcome that pain," so that's the purpose of what we're talking about today. So, before I give a few key takeaways, because I have one that I'm going to give as a challenge to all of our listeners, but before that, Bryan, Draye, is there anything else that either of you want to add?
 

Bryan Sweet:

Brittany, your comments made me think of something that when you discuss the problem and not the solution, one of the things that happens is they, they being the client, will start looking at you differently. Most people will come in with the solution first before they've done the diagnosis. It's like a doctor given a prescription and not really knowing what aches or what pains the person has. If you really think about it, what you want is deep relationships with clients that lasts a lot of years and you want to look at the lifetime value of a client. And if you can discuss the problem and let clients know that you are wanting to be their person that can help them get to the whatever level that they want to get at, or accomplish the goals that they've set for themselves, that's really a true differentiator. It really ties you to the client and makes you look very, very positive in their eyes.

 I think that gets overlooked sometimes in that we are sometimes told, or when we are getting trained early on, we're told to sell a product or a solution before we even actually know what the heck's wrong with somebody. So, I just thought that might be a good add-on to the end here.
 

Brittany Anderson :

No, I think that brings up a really interesting analogy. If you walked into your doctor's office and said, "Doc, I just haven't been feeling very good," and the doctor was like, "Well, I think you probably need chemotherapy or you need a major surgery," and you're like, "Whoa! I just told you I didn't feel very good. I didn't say that I knew exactly what my ailment was." It's kind of the same thing. If we jump to the conclusion that we know the problem. If we're distribution planners or that's what we do in our career, in our job, we're distribution planners and we're like, "Well, we know that you just want to have a retirement where you feel safe and secure with your finances and that's what you need," and they're like, "No. Actually, my biggest concern is how am I going to be tax efficient?" Or, "How am I going to leave money for my heirs?" Those plans all look a little bit different. So it really this is, it's don't assume. Don't assume, make sure you get to the core of it.

 That leads me to the top takeaways. The first one is you need to identify the problems your clients want or need solved. What are those problems? Because if you don't know, you can't do any of the stuff that we talked about today. So all of the communication on emails or reach outs, or marketing or invites to events, or whatever that is, none of that matters if you don't actually know some of the deepest and most frequently asked questions or problems that come up for your clients. And this is part one B, is I would challenge you to actually put together a focus group of some of your most ideal clients or prospects. Some people call it a client advisory council, but put together a group of, say, seven to ten individuals that you would absolutely trust their insight and their opinion, and actually have them talk about their problems.

 Now, the beauty of this, if you can actually mix clients and prospects together, what's going to happen naturally is your clients are going to talk about the great things you've done and how you have solved their problems. So it's indirect marketing there if you get some of your ideal prospects to commit to that too. I would challenge you, if you're listening, to put that down; put that down as one of your next quarterly initiatives. Have that something that you actually focused on doing because you will get a lot out of it and your clients and prospects they're... That's one thing we hear a lot. When we have meetings like that, the people that participated are like, "Gosh! I feel like I got just as much, if not more, than what I actually contributed or gave to this meeting." So, that's something that I definitely encourage you to do.

 The final thing is you don't look at the content and the copy that you're putting out. Are you focused enough on the problems and the pain, or is it just solution focused? Are you talking, in other words, too much about yourself or are you actually addressing and meeting people where they're at? I think it's important to put your eyes on what you're putting out into the world, how you're communicating, and really what that looks like to make sure that you are pushing moreso on the pain or the problem versus just touting the solution.

 That wraps up today's episode of the Ultimate Advisor Podcast. We're going to be right back here next week, continuing on with our few key tips to simple marketing tactics in your business. We'll catch you next week.

 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.