Between Now and Success

In a Nutshell: A "wow" customer service experience meets clients needs, engages customers on terms that gel with their lifestyle, and creates genuine human connection. Hitting those check marks is what separates Ritz-Carlton, Starbucks, Zappos, and the best financial advisory firms from the rest of the pack.

Guest: Joseph Michelli, a bestselling author, an international speaker, an organizational consultant, and one of the world's leading authorities on how to develop joyful and productive workplaces with a focus on the customer experience.

My Key Takeaway: To give your clients a "Ritz-Carlton" advisory experience they'll be sure to tell their friends about:

1. Don't strive for excellent customer service. Seek perfection. The companies that try to deliver better service tomorrow than they did today are the ones that build the priceless brand loyalty that sets them apart from their competition.

2. Focus your client experience around addressing "peaks and pains." Find small ways to celebrate big wins with clients that your planning helped them achieve. Use your financial expertise and your human empathy to mitigate painful moments -- like, say, a sudden market downturn after a global virus outbreak.

3. Make the most out of every face-to-face interaction you have with a client. Your most effective marketing doesn't happen in Facebook ads or on a billboard. It happens when a client is in your office getting five-star treatment from the moment they walk in the door. You won't have to ask your clients for referrals -- you'll be earning them.

Also Learn:

1. Why you wouldn't take a first date to McDonald's and what that says about good service vs. great hospitality.

2. How to integrate your tech stack with your advisory team to create elevated customer experiences on a consistent basis.

3. What Joseph Michelli learned about world-class customer service and team leadership from Howard Schultz, Airbnb, and Mercedes-Benz.

Guest: John Wernz, one of the top marketers on the planet. John was the Chief Marketing Officer of Wealth Enhancement Group (WEG) (listen to my podcast with WEG CEO Jeff Dekko) as that company grew rapidly through some sophisticated organic marketing programs. He’s currently Executive-in-Residence at Great Hill Partners, Executive Director and Board Member at Datalign Advisory, and Board Advisor at Testimonial IQ.

In a Nutshell: Before recording this episode, I prompted ChatGPT-4 to “Play the role of a financial advisor marketing expert. Lay out a detailed marketing strategy for a $5 million annual revenue RIA firm that wants to grow 20% per year.”

The results were ... pretty good!

But effective marketing requires more than blindly following a GPT-generated plan — you have to target, personalize, and differentiate your message to reach your intended audience and turn clicks into clients through both marketing AND sales.

On today’s show, John Wernz and I use the GPT-4 marketing plan as a springboard to discuss all aspects of the marketing process and identify actionable ways for you to improve every step of your marketing program.

Building one advisory firm with billions in AUM is hard enough. Joe Duran has done it twice, most recently selling United Capital to Goldman Sachs and becoming Head of Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management.

We had an insightful conversation about how he did it and what he sees for the future of financial advisors and for the advice they deliver.

If you’re not learning faster than the world is changing, then you are going to fall behind very quickly. And businesses that fall too far behind usually don’t get a second chance to catch up.

A big challenge for financial advisors is, how do you stay on top of everything that’s required to run a successful advisory business?

As Josh Brown put it at the recent Wealth/Stack Conference, “A good advisor is both coach and quarterback, on-demand psychologist and personal friend, historian and futurist.” That’s an awful lot of ground for us to cover in our personal and professional learning. Plus, we have to track technological advances that are impacting our industry, while also adapting to best practices that help our businesses stay ahead of the competition.

If you haven’t made a commitment to learning one of your top responsibilities as a CEO advisor, today’s episode will help you get with the program.

My guest today is financial planner, author, podcast host, and speaker Taylor Schulte. Taylor is the founder of Define Financial, a financial planning firm headquartered in San Diego, CA. He’s also the co-founder of Advisor Growth Community, a place for financial advisors to connect with and learn from each other, and the host of two excellent podcasts, Stay Wealthy and Experiments in Advisor Marketing.

Taylor and I talked about why all financial advisors need to be lifelong learners, our sources for learning, and we share a few marketing ideas too.

Mark Casady had a front row seat on the massive changes hitting our industry over the past 15 years of his tenure at LPL. Now that he's "retired," we discuss his career and the lessons he learned.

During his 30-plus years in financial services, Mark likes to think his job was to be a classic "change agent." As chairman of the board and CEO for LPL Financial, Mark led the company through its IPO and grew it into the fifth largest brokerage firm in the United States. Today, you might say Mark is "retired," but he prefers to think he's in the middle of "Life 2.0," which includes working as General Partner and Advisory Board Chairman for Vestigo Ventures, a fintech-focused venture capital firm.