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:

Welcome back to your Ultimate Advisor Podcast. This is Brittany Anderson, here with Bryan Sweet and Draye Redfern. And we are going to dive into how to make your business stand out. Now, the things that we're going to talk about, it's really a holistic approach at how to make your business stick out to your ideal prospect. And I have a feeling it's going to be a few things over the next handful of weeks that you maybe haven't thought about before or put enough energy into. So you're definitely going to want to tune in over the course of the next four weeks or so as we dive into how to make your business stand out.

 So the first topic, which of course I had to start with is on hiring only the best. To put it really, really simple. Your people make or break your business. Now, this is something that if you're listening in and you have a handful of employees, you have 10 employees, you have 20 employees, this is going to be great for you to really help hone and sharpen their skills. But also if you're at the point where you maybe only have one other person supporting you or two other people supporting you, you're going to be able to put these practices in place and adopt this mindset. It's going to give you an ultimate advantage as you continue to build your team.

 So, I will tell you that the number one comment we get at Sweet Financial when we ask our clients, because we do this on occasion when we ask how we're different how we stand out to them? I would bet you 9 times out of 10, it comes back in relation to the team, how the team actually treats them, and the service that they're delivered. And you would think that maybe it's, "Oh, the processing is quick" or, "Gosh, the responses are great." We hear all of that stuff. But what we hear more often than not is, "They're just amazing people. They treat us like family. We feel like we're walking in and we're hanging out with some of our best friends or our best family members." Those are the comments that we get and that's a really unique skill set.

 So when you look at having your business stand out ... Let's just kind of go to the opposite end of the spectrum for a minute. So, I can think of an example of a vendor that we had contracted with and I'm not going to name names because we'll just respect some privacy here, but there was one in particular vendor where we had called him, we had some questions on our contract and we were told that we were out of contract. No problem. Go ahead and cancel. No big deal. So, we had this conversation three to four different times with different service people just making sure everything was buttoned up. We go to cancel, a manager gets involved and says, "Wait a second, you were told the wrong thing. We actually don't really care what you were told you're under contract and we're not going to budge on this."

 You could tell that customer service was literally the lowest thing on the totem pole. You can actually feel that. You can feel that when you walk into a business and they don't really care about service, you're not going to get eye contact, you're not going to get that feeling that they even care that you're there. Same thing on the phone. We've talked about smiling when you answer the phone because people can actually feel a smile. You can feel the opposite end of the spectrum too.

 So, I just wanted to give that little example there because it is so important. If you really want to stand out in a positive way, your people are an opportunity for you to really shine and stand out in this industry. So, Bryan, we've implemented something at Sweet Financial, this whole concept of tagging, and I would love for you to jump in, because I know you've had a chance to do it and it's so powerful. It's so impactful. So I would love for you to give that example.
 

Bryan:

Yeah, this is an amazing concept and we got this idea from Chris Smith who has the "Campfire Effect." And Chris has been on our podcast and we use his services to develop all sorts of different processes and techniques as it relates to how to use the proper terms and wording when you're dealing with clients. But tagging is a really interesting concept, and literally, all it does is it allows you to say something very positive about somebody else in your office and setting them up to look really, really great. So, a couple of ways that we utilize it would be if you're introducing your client service person to a client or process, you would say something to the effect of, "Hey, I wanted to introduce you to Jessica. She is just amazing. She's got attention for detail, gets back to everybody in time. Every one of our clients thinks she's the greatest thing since sliced bread," et cetera, et cetera.

 So now when the client is meeting this person, they've already got this really great opinion and they're dealing with somebody that you've already said, you look up to, they do a great job and they don't have to worry about being given to somebody that may not do the things that they expect. And also if you have multiple advisors in the office and you're trying to maybe pass on a client that you don't want to work with yourself, tagging another rep by saying, "This is Amber and Amber does a great job. She's our CFP, she works extremely well with all of our financial planning software and she does all of my planning for me." It really is just a great way of setting things up. So clients don't feel like, "Oh, you're just trying to get rid of me and give me to somebody else." There's actually value add that they're not only getting to work with you, but they get somebody else over and above that.

 So it's really important to show that there's a difference in your team and each member of your team has a set of skills that you would use and inform the client or the prospect of that. And then I also want to just take off a little bit on what Brittany said earlier. From time to time, we like to check in with our clients and see how we're doing and level of communication and if we're dropping the ball in any particular place. And one of the questions we ask almost every time is, what are the things that you value most about Sweet Financial? And literally, as Brittany alluded to, 9 out of 10 times, it's something about one of the team members and how they go above and beyond and they get back to them and the time period that we've established that we would.

 And so, your team is so valuable and as Brittany is always alluding to, you want to be slow to hire and quick to fire. And this is just so important because if you get the right people behind you, that is such a huge key to success and, Draye, I think you've got some interesting things on utilizing creative bios for your staff that I think would be really fun for you to share.
 

Draye:

Yeah, this is fun. I think it's just a fun way to also get buy-in from individuals early on. So obviously we have the brackets that people would fit into. It's an admin position or it's a specialist role or it's ... In all the different roles we sort of have in the company. So that's super cool, but those are all very boring like Customer Service Representative, you sound like a robot or you sound like someone who has zero personality and nobody wants to talk to you. And that's what we try to stay away from. People fit in these little buckets as far as the roles in which they operate inside of the company, but we let them choose their title. And the number one rule is, it's got to fit what you do and it's got to be creative.

 And so we've got people on the team who are the organizers of random and erotic activity. There's someone who is the leader of light bulb moments. There's another person who's a marketing and positivity master. So things that they get behind and they like actually being a part of every time they send an email because it represents who they are, their personality and there's a few other things there also, but really it's something that they take ownership in. And it's just a fun way to really ... We do a brainstorming exercise in my office on their first or second day to figure this out. So it gives them something that is unique to them inside the organization from day one that obviously fits their role and what they do.

 And that's a fun way, like I said, to give them ownership, but we also give them a little bit additional leeway or additional options that if someone needs something, just like the Sweet team, they have full reign to basically go above and beyond. So if that means a phone call at eight or nine o'clock at night, or if that means that they're going to get an extra video center or tutorial center, someone needs something they're there and they're willing to step up and they have the free-reign and autonomy to do that. And that really goes a long way to circle back to what Bryan was saying earlier, and Brittany, to the customer service standpoint, is that really at the end of the day, the customer or the client, whatever you choose to name them is really the first and the foremost priority when it comes to the business because if you don't have them, the business isn't going to be around.

 In fact, I believe it was an old McDonald's quote or something like that on the cheque's when they used to pay their client or pay their employees, it says, "This cheque is brought to you by your clients or your customers," on every single cheque. Maybe they don't do that anymore, but it's a great way to really showcase that the clients are the number one responsibility. And so what can you do to consistently try and elevate that. Maybe do it with some fun and personality along the way. So maybe there's a couple of things they have ready to unpack or dive deeper on, but I'll hand it over to you.
 

Brittany:

I was thinking of something actually, as you were both talking. When you were looking at bringing on team members, when you're looking at adding to your team, when you're looking at how you can better serve your clients, a great mentality to have, when you walk into the hiring process is, how can I hire somebody that's actually better than me at this given task? How can I find somebody who has such a unique skill set that they are going to make me look bad, whatever it is I'm hiring for. And I think that helps you kind of reframe your mindset. So rather than trying to find somebody, a butt to fill a seat or somebody to just fill a role or fill a job or fill a hole in the company or whatever that is, you're actually looking for somebody that's going to help you up your game.

 And naturally what happens is when you constantly have that mindset, with every hire you bring on, you are consistently helping everybody else on your team to level up because they are seeing that person who came in, they've got that energy, they've got that fire, they've got that excitement on starting something new and that energy can be contagious for your team. So I think it's really important to keep that in mind as you're going into hiring. And we've talked about hiring on previous episodes. If you go back through the long list of episodes with Ultimate Advisor Podcast, you'll find multiple sessions where we talked about best hiring practices. So I really recommend that you go and do that.

 But the other thing that I wanted to comment on is that any time you are trying, again, this depends on the business that you're trying to build or the model you're trying to follow, but if you're trying to set up a company that doesn't rely solely on you as the primary, as the advisor, as the owner, and you want to have a collaborative team approach that your client appreciates and abides by, this is a great tip for you. So any time you're interacting. So, Bryan went through that whole tagging methodology, but I wanted to give a little bit more background on that. You want your client to feel like you're literally doing them a disservice if you didn't have that other person service them.

 And the thing to think about too, is that you're in meetings all day. You're busy, you've got clients, you've got team meetings. You've got whatever else going on. And you're trying to build the business. You're probably the Rainmaker. You've got all these roles and responsibilities. The bottom line is, is that when you are introducing a client or a prospect to a team member, that's actually going to serve them, I would flat out say that if you want exceptional service, this is your person. Because that's who's going to get back to them timely. That's who's going to have the time and the capacity to be able to do that and to make you look really, really darn good.

 So I think that's a huge opportunity for you to take advantage of and implement in your business immediately, even if you only have one other person, is talking them up. And one cool thing to do, which I think everybody should do at least once is to do it in front of that person. Make that team member feel like a million bucks. So the things that you recognize within them, say that in front of a client, say it in front of a prospect because all of a sudden their confidence is going to go through the roof and that's really powerful.

 And I wasn't going to bring this up, but actually I think I might share. So there was a story recently we've referenced before Darren Hardy's Darren daily. It's just a daily motivational video that he does. It's like three to five minutes long, but there was one recently where he talked about this young man who really struggled in school. He was pushing it and his mom was not happy. So he talks about how this kid said, "Okay, even though I'm not doing that great, I promise you, I'm going to take the SAT test." So he goes and takes it. And he gets a 1480, which, if you know anything about the SAT test, that's unheard of, that's a genius-level score. So he comes back, he shares this with his mom and he's so excited and it turns out he starts doing awesome in school because he's had this indirect confidence boost. His teachers are looking at him going, "Oh my goodness, we have this kid labeled completely wrong."

 So he goes through school, he excels, he actually starts hanging out with different people because he's like, "Hey, I'm a 1480 kid. I can't hang out with anybody that's not a 1480 type individual." He goes on to college, he gets this amazing job and in college, he actually finds out that the scoring was wrong, that they messed up and he got half of what was shown on that test. So he got like a 740 instead of that, 1480. But because in his mind he got that confidence boost, that's really what helped him Excel. And that's what helped him shape and become the person that he was.

 So I think the moral of the story is, if we walk around treating everybody like their a 1480, that's incredible. Think about what that's going to do for your team. Not everybody has that confidence boost at home. Not everybody has that within their friend group or whatever the thing is. If you can be that for your team members, man, you want to talk about differentiation and standing out for your business? That is golden. That is solid. So I think that's such a powerful story. That's the one that I would even encourage you to share with your clients, share it with your team, have them listen to this. I think that is incredible. And it's moving. And it's the same concept as walking around like everybody has a sign on their forehead that says, make me feel important.

 You do that for your team. They're going to turn around and they're going to do it for your clients. And that's where you start to make an impact. It's this waterfall effect in a really, really positive way. So, Bryan, Draye, that being said, is there anything else that you have to share?
 

Bryan:

Brittany, I'm so happy you expanded on that tagging and included saying it in front of the team member. It's amazing the effect. We've been doing this for maybe six months or a year or something like that. And it is so noticeable the effect on the team member when you do say that in front of people. I can literally tell you that I can look at each team member that we have and when I've said things like that in front of them, their level of performance has actually gone up to whatever I said and exceeded it. And until you said that, I truly didn't think about that, but it's absolutely amazing because if you think that, then they think that of themselves, and they're going to act and do the things that create whatever it is you're saying about them. And so, unbelievable effect. So, thank you for sharing that because that was one of the side benefits that I forgot to mention.
 

Draye:

The other thing that I think I want to throw in there is so much of the story that you just shared of Darren Hardy's is that that relates a lot to what we've talked about previously, previous podcast guests, previous mastermind, speaker Ben Hardy, Dr. Benjamin Hardy talks about in his book, "Personality isn't permanent." Great book. It just came out a few weeks ago or so and it talks a lot about how your personality is not finite. That if you look back to where you were 10 years ago, let's say, you'd probably say that you're a vastly different person. But if most people say, "Okay, well, what is your life going to look like 10 years from now?" They're going to say it's probably going to look pretty similar to how it is now. But the problem is people don't actually give enough credit. They don't put enough focus on their future self and creating their future self today in order to make that happen.

 That's sort of what that young gentleman did with the SAT scores, he created a future self, based off of a fallacy, but that fallacy created great things for him in the long run. So on that same note and same vein, Dr. Benjamin Hardy will be speaking at our upcoming summit here in a few weeks. So if you haven't already purchased your ticket to attend the summit, it's 97 bucks. What are you waiting for? Almost guaranteed to revolutionize your life and your practice. We really stand behind that because there's a lot of really great speakers and things we've got lined up for you. So what are you doing? Grab your ticket and come hang out with us for a week.
 

Brittany:

And if nothing else, if you don't learn anything, we're really fun. No, there'll be some awesome takeaways. There are some amazing speakers. We're not going to give away the farm right now, but yeah, it's going to be an absolutely killer week. So to round out today's podcast episode, I want to give you three big takeaways. And I think these are really simple things to implement, but really incredibly impactful.

 Number one, I think this is an obvious one at this point, but tag your team members. Make them seem like, and truly believe this, don't just say it just as wordsmithing or trying to make it up, but really believe in the fact that your team is incredible and tag them and talk about them and brag them up and show their skill set and where they're going to make an impact for your clients and your prospects. So, that is your first takeaway.

 The second is check in with your clients. This is a great opportunity for you to deepen the relationship by asking some of those simple questions that Bryan mentioned. Really get to the core of what is it that they appreciate? Because if you're trying to emphasize something that they don't really care about, well, you're probably doing it wrong. So, let's do it right. Let's appeal to what they want. It goes back to the old adage, I've said this before in previous episodes, but don't treat people the way you want to be treated, treat them the way they want to be treated. It applies here as well.

 And the final one is to make your team members feel like a 1480. I think this is so important. I think this is so impactful, but make them feel important and make it a genuine, intentional effort. You are going to notice a difference in the way that they serve your clients and that they show up every day in the business. So it's huge. It's impactful. And gosh, darn it. They are dedicating their life to helping you grow your business. They deserve it.

 So, that wraps up today's episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast. Don't miss us back here next week as we continue talking about how you can make your business stand out.

 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.

eat today.