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Announcer: 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 will 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 A.: Welcome to the Ultimate Advisor podcast. I am Brittany Anderson ...

Bryan Sweet: And I'm Bryan Sweet.

Draye Redfern: And I am Draye Redfern.

Brittany A.: So today we are so excited to dive into our very first podcast episode where we're going to talk about the why behind this. Why is it important to focus on being an ultimate advisor? Why are we delivering this message and these services to you? So that's what we're going to get in today is the why behind the message. All right, so we are going to pass it on over to Mr. Bryan Sweet to talk a little bit about his history and why we're here where we are.

Bryan Sweet: Thank you Brittany, I appreciate that. Yeah, this is an amazingly interesting topic and I've been in the business 40 years now and fortunate enough to attend lots of conferences and we actually even sponsor an invitation only. And one of the things that I continuously hear from people is, "How do you generate the level of business that you do?" And in addition, we've got four other companies that we run and at the same time I take 16 weeks off, and "How do you go about accomplishing all that without driving yourself crazy?" And I think it really boils down to a couple of really succinct things. One is having an integrator that helps you implement your vision of why and what you want to accomplish, and then automating as many things as you possibly can from processes and systems, but especially your technology and your marketing.

Bryan Sweet: My role, as I would think most ultimate advisers, is that of a visionary. You understand and you want the firm to grow into something, but your key may not be how do I do it? But you understand what it looks like. And so in my defined role, it's to create the vision for the company and then pass on those ideas through a filter, which is our implementer. And so I keep hearing this all the time, is, "I love what you do. I'd love to learn how you do it. I have no idea what's the first step or how do I get an implementer? How do I automate?" And consequently it's something that we wanted to share, and if we could give some value to others to help them overcome that hurdle, we really wanted to do that.

Brittany A.: You know, it's funny that you say that, Bryan. Bryan's talking about having five businesses essentially, right? And he touched on this a little bit, but he actually has an entire conference. And if you've ever been involved in the conference business or putting together any major production, you know there is a ton of work behind it. So under this one entity he's putting on this conference, it's an invitation only with the top most elite advisors from across the United States. He's running his advisory practice, plus involved in coaching businesses and giving value back to other people that are running a business, other entrepreneurs.

Brittany A.: If you're listening to this from the perspective of the entrepreneur or the business owner, you might be familiar with the whole shiny object syndrome. The shiny object syndrome is there's essentially never a bad idea that comes across your plate, right? You know that anything pops on your plate, anything pops in front of you, you are excited to dive in. Now, that can be a little dangerous at the same time. So part of what my role is within Sweet Financial Services, within Bryan's wealth planning company, is really being the integrator to his vision, right? And that's what we're trying to communicate in some of this messaging is making sure that you've got the right people in the right seats.

Brittany A.: I'm going to give an example too, to what Bryan talked about briefly is let's say you go to a conference, you go to this amazing conference, there's days packed with just value-add speakers and you have got 92 ideas that you're going to bring to your team that you want implemented yesterday. Okay? That's a problem. So what we're going to talk about in upcoming episodes is how you can take all of those ideas, put them through a filter, and then focus on the top priority items that are going to move your business further, fastest.

Brittany A.: They're going to help you get to these automations, these integrations that are going to help you take your business to the next level and be able to actually reap the reward of your hard work and your labor to be able to, like Bryan talked about, take 16 weeks off and not feel like your whole world is going to fall apart when it comes to your business endeavors. In the upcoming episodes we are going to talk about how you can engage your team, how do you develop that visionary and integrator relationship so that those great ideas can be brought to life, but that they're narrowed down and that you can focus on the highest priority. And a big part of this, is what Draye is going to touch on next, is making sure that you have a few key things set up within your business to allow that visionary and integrator relationship to grow and to thrive.

Brittany A.: So Draye, why don't you talk a little bit on those kind of three key areas to really hone in on how you can create those automations and efficiencies in your business?

Draye Redfern: Absolutely. Yeah, thanks Brittany. I think that there are so many facets that are overlooked in a business's marketing when they're really trying to take it to the next level. And most advisors have tried something, and maybe they tried it for like a month and they realize, "Oh, this doesn't work. And so in general this whole process doesn't work," and so they throw the whole thing out. When, in reality, there's one of a few things that probably happened or occurred here. The first one is that most people don't necessarily stick with it long enough to work through the kinks to actually realize that there's a great solution on the other side. But the other side of this is that there's usually three facets that I think every advising practice should have, and the first one is differentiation. And so this is so overused, it's been said a thousand times, but I think what we're going to go over over the next few weeks, we'll give a very different tweak to it because most businesses just try to create what I call an enhancement differentiator.

Draye Redfern: It's where John Doe is doing this and so Susie Q does that just a little bit more. But when you look at them on paper, they're practically identical. Whereas if you had a never seen before differentiator, much like what Sweet Financial has with their dream architects process, because you're not working with a financial advisor, you're working with a dream architect, it's a very different way of differentiating you from the competition.

Draye Redfern: The next thing that most advisors don't necessarily put enough emphasis on is automation. And there are so many components of your marketing, of your client engagement, that could really be automated with the right systems, processes and procedures in your business. And the third one that I talk a lot about is singular actions. Marketing and posting on all of social media three times a day on every single platform is exhausting. And many people may want to start down that path, but after the first week they get burnt out.

Draye Redfern: And so when it comes to marketing, if it's not going to be automated, I'm a huge proponent of creating things, amazing things like downloads, checklists, email sequences that can really engage with your prospect or your customers, but you can do them really well once, and then set it and forget it and move onto the next thing, so you're not constantly having to stay on the hamster wheel of generating new content for Facebook or Instagram, or whatever it may be that you want to post on. You can do something really great once and then constantly find new ways to repurpose it and then leverage that.

Brittany A.: You know, Draye, that that that brings up so many valid points, and the thing that I want to communicate and get across is that when you talk about differentiation, when you talk about automation, when you talk about really getting into what your target market is, what's important to understand is when all of these things start working together, that's when you get harmony in your office, right? And that's when you start seeing your business turn into that well-oiled machine. And part of what we're going to talk about in upcoming episodes is you as the business owner, you as the primary advisor, sometimes the frustration that you can get is that you have these great ideas that you can see the clear picture in your head, but you don't know how to get your team engaged in behind it.

Brittany A.: So just because you think it's a great idea, you may not be articulating in the right way to your team to get them behind it and move you towards these bigger levels at the pace that you would prefer. Right? So that is what we're going to talk about in the upcoming weeks. Bryan, is there anything that you want to add here that you want to make sure we're getting across as we kind of go into the next few weeks of content and what we're going to be delivering to our listeners?

Bryan Sweet: Yeah, I think one of the interesting things that, and one of the reasons we're doing this is there's all sorts of information out in the marketplace from magazines and consultants and whatnot. And I think the interesting thing about what you're going to hear in this podcast as these are things that we are actually doing in our business, we've tested them, they work, we're sharing them. So it's not like it's somebody talking about it. It's somebody that actually lives and breathes it on a daily basis, and consequently we're telling you what works, what didn't work.

Bryan Sweet: Sometimes the best thing is learning what not to do or doing the right thing. Either one of those can be helpful. What you're going to see over the next several weeks is we're going to just talk about some of the things that are actually working, not only in our office, but also in the industry. I think you'll find it very insightful, and a lot of the things that you're going to hear are things that you're struggling with, things that you're trying to figure out, "How do I do that?" Or, "Who do I go to to fix that?" And I think you'll get some great tidbits of wisdom as we share ideas in the podcast.

Draye Redfern: I'm looking forward to it. I think we've got a lot of really great ideas and concepts that are not going to be easily found elsewhere in the marketplace. And as Bryan said, this stuff isn't hyperbole, it's not theory, it's the stuff that's actually working really well from three very different individuals with three different backgrounds, and I'm really excited to see how all of these pieces really tie together to help you seriously level up your advising practice and really take it to the next level in this year and going forward. So we're looking forward to seeing all of you in the next episode of the Ultimate Advisor podcast.

Draye Redfern: Hey there, Draye Redfern here. And before you go we just wanted to say thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Ultimate Advisor podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, then please subscribe to the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or Spotify, and be sure to rate us five stars on iTunes. Because when you do, you'll be entered into a monthly drawing for our Ultimate Advisor Coaching Program, which is a $2,000 value. And if you would like to access more of the show notes, additional resources, and our free premium content, then please visit ultimateadvisorpodcast.com. We look forward to seeing you in the next episode of the Ultimate Advisor podcast. We'll see you there.