The Profitable Advisor Podcast

If you've listened to our show at all, you already know that podcasting is a very cost-effective strategy for nurturing your clients but today we want to tell you about a Certified Financial Planner that has built his business around a podcast.

Our guest today is Benjamin Brandt, who started the Retirement Starts Today Radio six years ago and has grown an incredible following through simple approach to marketing and promotion. If you have a podcast or have been considering starting a show (which we recommend), then this is an interview you don't want to miss.

Brandt's business was in dire shape back in 2015 when he shifted his focus to podcasting and now he has a beautiful work-life balance that can turn away clients that aren't the right fit. Today we'll learn about the strategies he's implemented, why he doesn't use call to actions, and how the idea of 'less is more' is very true for his show.

So as you go through the episode today, keep an ear out for some of these topics that we cover:

• Why he decided to start the podcast to help save his business.
• The approach he credits for having so much success with the show.
• Why he doesn't use any calls to action on the show.
• Strategies to drive organic growth
• The way he formats his show each episode and the reasons behind it.
• Why he keeps his shows to 20 minutes or less
• Getting clients into the funnel and then how he manages that flow.
• Why he doesn't do any promotion on the show and keeps everything simple.
• Breaking news on his future plans to work with advisors.

For more on this topic and other strategies to growing your business, join us over at RenegadeAdvisor.net.

What we discuss on the show:

1:53 – The reason for the podcast

4:46 – Why he's had success

5:58 – No calls to action

10:29 – Creating scarcity and friction

12:55 – How he promotes the show

17:07 – Format for his show

22:06 – The length of his show

24:39 – His audience

30:15 – Brilliance of simplicity

32:12 – Never promotes the show

33:46 – Surge of meetings

37:51 – Starting to work with advisors

If you're looking for a way to separate yourself from other advisors, tax planning just might be the answer.

Most people are focused on tax preparation each year but providing tax planning as part of an overall approach to serving clients, you'll be able to provide additional value to each person you work with. The holdup for people is not having a comprehensive understanding of tax code. But that's where a CPA comes in. The role an advisor plays works in conjunction with a CPA and together they can really benefit a client.

That's why we asked Steven Jarvis, CPA, MBA, to come on the podcast and share the way he helps bring tax professionals and financial advisors together to reduce one of the largest expenses in retirement, which is taxes.

He's an expert in working with advisors and showing them how to implement tax planning in your business and how explain how it can strengthen your relationship with clients.

Throughout the show, he'll walk you through the difficulties in tax planning, what kind of checklist you need, and how advisors will benefit from this service.

So as you go through the episode today, keep an ear out for some of these topics that we cover:

• Why tax planning frequently gets ignored by advisors.
• The steps you can take as an advisor in the tax planning area.
• What approach can you take if you feel like you don't have enough knowledge to take on taxes.
• Are you comfortable explaining the strong possibility of increased taxes in the future?
• Make sure your clients are bringing in a 1040 and what you should look for on it.
• The reason why CPAs are trusted much more than advisors and how you can overcome that frustration.
• The relationship between advisors and CPAs when it comes to tax planning.
• How Steven and his team at Retirement Tax Services helps advisors.

To get more info about Steven and to sign up for his webinar, visit his website at https://retirementtaxservices.com/welcome. And if you want the checklist of what to look for on tax forms, shoot them an email at [email protected].

For more on this topic and other strategies to growing your business, join us over at RenegadeAdvisor.net.

Here's the rundown for this episode:

1:38 – Why our guest today

2:11 – Tax planning gets ignored

4:58 – Steps advisors should take

7:20 – Advisors that feel like they don't know enough

10:49 – Understanding the future of taxes

16:38 – What to look for on a 1040

22:10 – Why advisors aren't trusted

25:56 – Qualified dividends

29:02 – Conflict between advisors and CPAs

31:38 – How Steven helps advisors with tax planning

34:35 – Webinar he offers

One of the positives that came out of the COVID pandemic was the increased comfort most people now feel on virtual calls and online video conferences. While we'll be able to transition away from doing as many of these as advisors, it's still a valuable tool that we now have at our disposal.

The Renegade Advisor program now offers up a webinar service for clients that helps you with content, design, and marketing. We're excited about this collaboration we're doing with Grace Fortune and want to share the ways you'll be able to use this product to nurture.

What do I mean by nurture? Marketers who understand direct marketing strategy, which is you first develop warm leads. You offer information that people will request from you. Once they've done that, you nurture them through a variety of strategies. The ultimate bottom of the funnel way to nurture is through some sort of presentation, which is where the webinar comes in.

So as you go through the episode today, keep an ear out for some of these topics that we cover:

• What Dan means when he says a good lead nurturer.
• What are the keys to making a webinar strategy work for your lead nurture.
• The most effective length on a presentation.
• Should you send your webinar to everyone on your list once it's finished?
• What she feels it the best way to promote your content to get as many people to sign up.
• Coming up with your client avatar
• Designing an effective webinar
• What all you get from a Renegade Advisor webinar

For more on this topic and other strategies to growing your business, join us over at RenegadeAdvisor.net.

Learn more about Grace: https://www.gracefortune.com/

What we discuss on this episode:

1:40 – Introducing our guest today

3:45 – Why this topic

7:14 – Keys to making webinars work

11:03 – Length of the presentation

11:23 – Sending the presentation out to everyone in your list

15:40 – How to properly promote your content

19:46 – How you define your target client

22:58 – Designing webinars

31:04 – What you get from the Renegade webinar

37:11 – How to learn more

Today we're excited to bring on a good friend and a successful business owner who's managed to merge different practices into one operation.

Trent Benedetti, CPA, CFP, IAR, owner of Benedetti Financial is our guest on this episode of the Profitable Advisor and he's a perfect example of how to provide multiple services for clients. He started with nothing and very quickly was able to wed tax planning and accounting with financial services and managing assets. It's a model that every accountant should consider adopting and we'll get into how he's been able to accomplish it.

We'll discuss some of the most important topics like marketing, referrals, client relationships, and overseeing two different businesses during the conversation, and Benedetti is someone that everyone can pick up a thing or two from.

So as you go through the episode today, keep an ear out for some of these topics that we cover:

• The story behind his decision to add the financial services to his accounting business.
• Why referrals won't necessarily slow down like some people fear.
• How to discuss strategies with clients and why the media's role isn't in your best interest
• Stock picking and market timing.
• Why it's so important to run multiple simulations and prepare clients for the range of returns.
• Targeting small family-owned businesses and how he markets to those through marketing.
• The changes he's made because of COVID and what he might continue using.
• How he's gone about balancing two different businesses.

For more on this topic and other strategies to growing your business, join us over at RenegadeAdvisor.net.

What we discuss on this episode:

1:35 – Welcome in Trent

3:00 – How long did it take to expand into financial services?

4:16 – Blending the two together

7:03 – Referrals

9:36 – Investment advice and strategy

19:30 – Stock picking vs active management

21:46 – Stress of a market-timing approach

23:58 – Story about a vendor meeting

27:22 – Running multiple simulations

33:00 – Targeting small family-owned businesses

35:08 – The burden of COVID on the business

39:49 – Balancing two companies

43:50 – Maximizing the value of your business

If you want a master class on marketing strategy, this might be the closest you'll get in a single podcast episode.

Today we're talking with Kia Arian, who we've worked with for a few years. She's a strategist and graphic designer to many of the biggest marketing names out there. She's also helped with Dan's upcoming book, Advisor VooDoo: Mastering the Dark Arts of Asset Management.

If you want a step-by-step strategy for marketing, this show will cover just about every aspect of the process in detail. By the time you get finished with the episode – and we think you might listen to it a few times – you will have a very good understanding of Kia's approach and why she's become so successful.

Also, make sure you check out this link to Kia's program and learn more about how it helps advisors build their business: www.TheMDDM-Advisors.com

So as you go through the episode today, keep an ear out for some of these topics that we cover:

• How she made the transition from print shop to strategist.
• The Fly in the Window story
• Why you shouldn't worry about a having a niche and that limiting your business.
• Learning certain principles and tactics allows you to apply that to any area.
• Her strategy to building and utilizing a Shock and Awe kit
• What are the things you need to have in the kit?
• The X-factor that will set you apart
• Details on the postcard strategy attornies use to get referrals

For more on this topic and other strategies to growing your business, join us over at RenegadeAdvisor.net.

What we discuss on this episode:

2:02 – Welcome in Kia

3:15 – Evolving into her current role as strategist

6:31 – Working with attornies

12:40 – Getting pigeonholed

16:04 – Building your reputation

18:27 – Utilizing Shock and Awe kits

24:09 – What needs to be in the kit

29:57 – Testimonials

35:42 – Making it memorable

37:47 – Packaging

41:28 – Tissue paper

48:17 – Postcard strategies to get referrals

53:28 – Consistency

55:14 – Getting referrals from attornies and CPAs

It's time to introduce you to Paul Durso. He's one of the original members of the Renegade Advisors program and has enjoyed a lot of success after stepping out on his own.

To understand Durso's process, you have to know his background. He left a successful practice in Michigan because the partnership wasn't working like he hoped and moved to North Carolina to begin his own business. There, he's grown to oversee many advisors and developed his own planning software that has helped fuel that growth.

Today we welcome Durso to the show to get a better understanding of his approach to planning. What you'll learn about in detail are his three pillars to the business: service, planning and education. When you do all three of these things very well, that's when you become their key person. They want to tell everyone about what they've learn and what they know because there is a sense of ownership. That's when the referrals start rolling in without you having to chase them.

His story is one of drive and a love of entrepreneurship and hopefully you can learn a lot from his business.

So as you go through the episode today, keep an ear out for some of these topics that we cover:

• What motivated him to move from Michigan to North Carolina
• Why he decided to start with college classes
• Why he doesn't currently take any more clients on personally
• Their move to a referral-only business
• A breakdown of his three pillars for service
• Why it's important to educate people as much as possible
• What led to him creating his own planning software
• Details on his planning made simple program
• The mastermind concept

Learn more about what Paul does and get a discount for being a listener by visiting: https://planningmadesimple.com/dancuprill

For more on this topic and other strategies to growing your business, join us over at RenegadeAdvisor.net.

What we discuss on this episode:

1:30 – Welcome in Paul

2:32 – Why he decided to move and how it got going so quickly

4:28 – The success of his first seminar

5:42 – Direct mail early on

7:50 – The strategies his advisors use

8:45 – First pillar is service

12:00 – A great client story

14:50 – Second pillar is planning

20:45 – Third pillar is execution

24:29 – Getting clients excited when markets go down

26:19 – Planning made simple program

29:35 – What Dan loves about this

32:13 – Mastermind concept

36:08 – How to learn more about Paul's process

When you think about the reasons you haven't been as successful as you want to be, how often do you look to someone or something else to blame? It's our natural inclination but what we've learned from mindset expert Nina Cooke is that we need to be examining ourselves.

On this episode of the podcast, we have a follow up conversation with Nina Cooke. She joined us a few episodes back to explain how she helps people develop the right mindset for success. Now we want to identify the reasons why people and businesses aren't having their desired success.

For Nina, it breaks down to three key reasons:

1. The stories we make up in our heads
2. We don't take responsibility for our lives.
3. We react automatically instead of responding purposefully.

We've partnered with Nina to create a program that we think will be the best one we've provided so we're excited about it. From this conversation and our previous one with Nina, you should have a pretty good idea of how much she understands mindset and what needs to be done to change it for the better.

So as you go through the episode today, keep an ear out for some of these topics that we cover:

• Dan's fascination with success and the people who achieve it
• What brought Dan to Nina Cooke
• Why we feel this is the most important program we're launching.
• Detail on each of the three reasons we fail to have success.
• The program we're rolling out

For more on this topic and other strategies to growing your business, join us over at RenegadeAdvisor.net.

What we discuss on this episode:

2:03 – Fascination with success

3:57 – 3 things that hold people back

5:13 – Take responsibility

6:11 – Reacting vs Responding

7:23 – Having a system

Every advisor wants to find ways to increase AUM and the best way to do that is by maximizing the clients you're already working with.

Few businesses do that better than the Duffy Law Office in Davenport, Iowa. Along with estate planning, attorneys Dennis Duffy and Ryan Denman also provide a variety of financial planning services for their clients as part of Abundance Financial. It was a logical expansion of the business and one they continue to fine tune over time.

On this episode of the Profitable Advisor, we're going to get into a very detailed conversation on their process for bringing clients from the law side to the financial side, how they nurture existing clients, and why they've been so successful with this strategy. There's a lot of great information in this conversation and we appreciate their time.

So as you go through the episode today, keep an ear out for some of these topics that we cover:

• The path from law to finance
• Why relationships and rapport are most important
• The process they use to bring awareness to the financial side of the business and the way they bring law clients over.
• The different styles that they use to work with clients
• Working with the entire family on planning
• How they nurture clients over time that haven't moved to the financial side
• How they've been able to build a tremendous business in a small market
• Dan's opinion on their business and whether they should make changes
• Creating a succession plan
• How to become more selective with clients and establishing a process for that.

For more on this topic and other strategies to growing your business, join us over at RenegadeAdvisor.net.

What we discuss on this episode:

1:34 – Background on the Dennis and the business

6:28 – How clients find the financial side of the business

10:56 – Ryan's process for bringing law clients over to finance

18:38 – How Dennis' approach is different from Ryan

23:12 – Dealing with the family

27:50 – Tough conversations with married couples

31:15 – Nurture systems

34:50 – Only taking clients who want full package

38:24 – Building a business in a small community

46:10 – Should they change the business model?

51:15 – Two issues to address

55:40 – Becoming more selective

Making the decision to leave a brokerage and start working on your own comes with a lot of risk but provides an opportunity to work for yourself. It's something many people think about but need the encouragement to take that leap.

On this episode, we'll continue our conversations with other financial advisors as we try to learn more about aspirations, frustrations, and strategies with their business.

Phil Telpner of Breakout Private Wealth is our guest today and he's someone Dan's been working with for six months now. We wanted to bring him on to talk about what it was like to work for one of the larger, national brokerages and why he wanted to break out on his own. If you're an advisor that aspires to have your own practice, we think you'll get a lot of encouragement from this interview.

So as you go through the episode today, keep an ear out for some of these topics that we cover:

• Why the philosophies of large brokerage didn't align with his own.
• Being a sales person vs an advisor.
• How difficult it was starting his own firm in the middle of the pandemic.
• Bringing clients over from the old firm and why he was selective in working who he works with at the new business.
• The type of target marketing he does and how that's different than his previous business.
• Ways to manage your time and how to schedule clients.
• What are you doing to keep from being invisible?

For more on this topic and other strategies to growing your business, join us over at RenegadeAdvisor.net.

What we discuss on this episode:

1:36 – Start of the interview

2:00 – Large brokerages

5:17 – Feeling like a sales person

7:55 – Starting his own firm

9:41 – Being selective with clients

12:36 – Making more money by leaving

16:44 – Target marketing

19:47 – Tactics Dan uses

26:55 – Lack of planning at large brokerage

28:52 – How target marketing sets you apart

32:50 – Time management

43:43 – The importance of standing out

A marketing expert that we've grown to know and appreciate is Mary Rose Maguire.

She's the mind behind The Maverick Advisor and helps financial advisors and consultants reach better clients and strengthen their business. She also wrote a great book called THE MAVERICK ADVISOR: The New Rules of Marketing for Financial Advisors and Consultants - Get Great Clients, More Respect, and the Fees You Deserve, which we recommend you pick up after listening to the show.

So we asked her to join the podcast to discuss these new rules of marketing and share a little of her wisdom. One of Dan's greatest frustrations in helping advisors is seeing the amount of money that is being wasted on bad marketing. This has been exacerbated during COVID as people panic and don't make great decisions.

The goal of this episode is to help you ditch the things that aren't working and focus on the tactics that are. Her principals are not exclusive to the financial services industry. She also brings a lot of great insights from outside of the industry, which is why they work.

We kick off the conversation talking about direct marketing. There's an general definition that exists but we would suggest that direct marketing is a system where you only market to people that have contacted you first. That means it comes after you create a lead magnet that generates that lead. This goes against the idea that you can assume everyone in a specific zip code is a potential client. We'll get into this in more detail on the show.

From there we move to one of her big passions, branding. This is a place where you can differentiate your business from others. What she's learned through studying and researching branding is that financial advisors can take a lot of approaches to branding without spending a lot of money on it. She'll share some of those.

A specific area of branding that advisors specifically struggle with is the Unique Selling Proposition or USP. This is the phrase or slogan that sets you apart. Domino's 'Pizza in 30 minutes or less' is a USP that became very well-known. What Maguire suggests for advisors is to sit down and figure out what you value. Determining that will help you create that USP and the service you're going to provide. This USP idea also ties into finding your niche.

Regardless of what you decide, consistency is key. From your brand to your voice to your messaging, the marketing you decide to do needs to be consistent.

The next part of our discussion today will be about email marketing. Full disclosure, Mary Rose writes many of the emails that go out from our business so you've likely already seen some of her work. She'll share a few of her strategies and techniques for crafting emails that actually get people to read them. A couple keys to remember are ask a question and tell a story. The question hooks them in and the story provides them with a personal touch.

The final topic we'll get her thoughts on is direct mail. It's a marketing technique that a lot of people are moving away from, but she's still a big proponent of this strategy.

So as you go through the episode today, keep an ear out for some of these topics that we cover:

• How Dan's relationship with Maguire began
• Her definition of direct marketing
• The importance of branding and strategies for that
• Coming up with a slogan for your business
• How an advisor uses their 'voice'
• The importance of email marketing and how to do it effectively
• Why you shouldn't abandon direct mail

We'd encourage you to get her book to learn more about her strategies. You can find it here: http://themaverickadvisor.com/

For more on this topic and other strategies to growing your business, join us over at RenegadeAdvisor.net.

Where to find the topics in this episode:

0:39 – Setting up today's conversation

1:57 – Interview begins

5:03 – What is 'direct marketing'?

9:33 – Small businesses shouldn't be spending a lot of money on branding

12:28 – Branding strategies

13:29 – The Unique Selling Proposition

18:42 – Finding your niche

21:57 – Using your voice

24:14 – Consistency is key

29:22 – Email Marketing

32:58 – How to write an engaging email

41:02 – How many emails should you send?

44:48 – Direct mail