Sara Grillo

I have to admit, I didn’t know much about transgender people before making this podcast. But I’m glad I took the time to learn, because it has opened up a whole new perspective for me about how to treat people who assume a different gender identity than the one they were assigned at birth. In …

Tips for building a trans-friendly financial advisor practice Read More »

The post Tips for building a trans-friendly financial advisor practice appeared first on Sara Grillo.

This pod-blog is about how to get a killer financial advisor value proposition. I’m going to give you three examples of the value proposition a financial advisor could use, but first I’m going to talk about where you are probably messing it up. For those of you who are new to my blog/podcast, my name …

3 killer examples of a financial advisor value proposition Read More »

The post 3 killer examples of a financial advisor value proposition appeared first on Sara Grillo.

In this first episode of “Does my Marketing STINK?”, we’ll interview Chase Dapello of Westlake Private Wealth Management and answer the question of whether or not his marketing stinks.

If you’d like to be a guest on “Does my marketing STINK” and have you or your company’s marketing analyzed for free, send me a note below.

FIND OUT IF YOUR MARKETING STINKS

For those of you who are new to my blog, my name is Sara. I am a CFA® charterholder and financial advisor marketing consultant. I have a newsletter in which I talk about financial advisor lead generation topics which is best described as “fun and irreverent.”

And now – onto the show!

“They’re not going to like me if I go out there and say I’m a financial advisor for dentists.”

If they like you and you have the skills they need, they will actually hire you no matter what your niche is.

If you are going to niche, you should go gung ho. That is the only way to do it. Otherwise you are going to exclude the people who don’t fit into that niche, but you wont have the magnetism to attract the people who do fall into it. If you are going to niche, then burrow yourself so far down into that niche that you are at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. Where the earthquakes come from. So far down that you don’t even care, that it doesn’t even cross your mind that you might be losing business. That is the only way I have seen niches really work. See Avier Advisors for an example. They know Microsoft benefits as well as if not better than the HR people who work at the company.

Or you can specialize. Devin Carroll is a social security specialist. Andy Panko started a taxes in retirement Facebook group.

“It’s been difficult to leverage existing clients. I’ve been doing dinners, lunches and seminars for clients and encouraging them to bring people they know along and they can learn for free. It’s been difficult to get traction on it.”

When you go through your client base and your immediate circle and hit the point of not having anyone else to go to, that is when you really have to get creative. These events where you ask clients to bring friends are awkward and everyone is worried about not being able to meet your expectations for becoming their client. This is a hard, hard, hard way to go because clients are going to guard their relationship with their friends, and their friends are going to be guarded. It’s a masked sales call.

We have to get what I call “the second wave.” How can I use my relationship with this client to open doors for me that might not directly lead to another person on the other side of the door, but will create a land of opportunity for me?

I’d suggest trying to build a community with these folks that would be more natural and focus on needs or interests they might have. If you work with film script writers, for example, find a way to help them with the inconsistencies of income they tend to face. I would get to know these writers and interview them. Instead of coming to them with a sales pitch, come to them as an advocate.

Take a longer term view. Incubate and advocate. Write up the interviews. “How did you get your first writing job? “Are you part of the writer’s guild? What are the benefits of that?” “What website has been most helpful for you getting gigs?” If you could be the conduit, be the person the writers come to for these answers, it takes away the cudgel of stiff-faced dinner seminars. Show them you will walk alongside them. It should be more like this. They may be focused on the three steps ahead of them, but you are focused on the broader view including 30 years from now when you are going to retire, and that is because I talk to script writers all day and for that reason I can see a broader picture that you can not.

“Oh well that’s too much work and I have a quota.”

If you need leads right away, you are simply going to just have to cold call and get rejected or buy leads (insert link). People are going to see that you are not into developing a relationship with them unless you sincerely can keep the long term in mind a build something – a system, a community. If you can not do that, just resort to transactional marketing means and that is going to be a hard way to go.

Not enough in the pipeline

Marketing and blogs are nice, but you need a list. And if there aren’t enough people on the list, you need to get out there and knock on doors. Yeah I know. People hate it when I say that.

If you cold call a business, don’t treat the receptionist like they work for you. They are...

So where’s the spot bitcoin ETF and what’s up with these crypto ETFs in general? Will the SPY lose its crown this year? Are semi-transparent ETFs are raw deal? This episode we’re going to be talking about 2023 ETF trends and I thrilled to have some of industry’s most knowledgeable people here to rap about it all: Nate Geraci, host of ETF Prime podcast and President of the ETF Store, and Phil Bak, founder of Armada ETFs.

I wanted to have this talk because a lot of advisors just look at ETFs as well, kinda just there. There’s a lot under the surface though and that is what we are going to talk about today so let’s get onto the show!

We’ll discuss:

• Will the SPY become dethroned?
• What exactly is a spot bitcoin ETF and how is it different from a futures bitcoin ETF?
• Do ESG funds suck? (YES!!!)
• What’s up with these semi-transparent ETFs?
• Small ETFs – worth it or too much of a risk?

For those of you who are new to my blog, my name is Sara. I am a CFA® charterholder and financial advisor marketing consultant. I have a newsletter in which I talk about financial advisor lead generation topics which is best described as “fun and irreverent.”

I am an irreverent and fun marketing consultant for financial advisors.

Are we in a market regime shift?

ETFS can be thought of as a wrapper around an investment strategy. There are so many that when you talk about ETFs you are really talking about what is happening with the economy on a macro level. But in 2022, stocks and bonds went down together and displayed high correlation, suggesting a failure of modern portfolio theory.

In 2023, we are coming out of a market regime we have been in since the recession. You could put your money in to US equities, large cap market cap weighted, and that is where the bulk of market flows have gone. Investors may have to think harder about how they are allocated. Alternative asset classes, physical gold, different realms of fixed income, ETFs that use options strategies for downside protection, and other innovative ETFs may become more popular.

It may be time to rethink fundamental portfolio construction...

Semi-transparent ETFs

Geraci is not bullish at all on semi-transparent ETFs. He feels the daily, full transparency of the ETF wrapper is a huge benefit to investors. Active managers though are worried about having their “secret sauce” made public. Geraci feels those concerns are overstated. Active managers have been evidenced to generate outperformance in an ETF wrapper. There is absolutely the opportunity for front running and slippage but Geraci doesn’t think it matters.

Bak says that before Cathie Wood, there was the belief that you couldn’t really succeed as an active manager using ETFs because of front running; but she disproved all of that.

Quick take: what is a bid-ask spread for an ETF?

The way an ETF trades, there is a value based intrinsically on the underlying assets. If we believe it is worth $25, there may be a bid (amount the buyer is willing to pay) of $24.98, and an offer(ask price) of $25.03 from the seller. There is a spread that is the hedging cost of the market maker. Investors can play the spread any number of ways, but that is basically what keeps the ETF in line with its value.

Transparency for the industry has been a good thing because it has kept ETFs trading in line.

Low-cost ETFs steal the show!

SPY turned 30 this year. It may be overtaken by IVV which trails it by about $70BB in AUM. If you look at flows over the last few years, money is coming out of SPY and into VOO and IVV and Geraci believes it is due to the expense ratios being lower.

SPY, at the time of recording this podcast, was at $369 billion. VOO is at $271, VTI is at $274, and IVV is at $300. Bak believes that if the market is down and there is an opportunity to tax loss harvest, there may be an exodus from SPY.

But if there is a Fed pivot leading to market rally, Bak says, the greatest beneficiary will be small caps. SPY’s crown may be taken by VTI in that case.

Will 2023 be the year for physical gold ETFs?

Geraci is puzzled by the fact that in 2022, every single asset class other than commodities went down, and gold was only down by 2% yet there were not major inflows. There were a laundry list of crypto scams in 2022. Bitcoin was referred to as “digital gold”. Geraci posits that some investors may go for actual gold instead of digital gold in search of an uncorrelated asset if a weaker dollar and inflationary concerns persist.

Iran and Russia are working together to create a Stablecoin backed by physical gold. According to Bak, assets don’t care about the ethics of their investors. If...

1 million children in Afghanistan starving at risk of dying if we do not help. Please do not ignore that this is happening. Please respond. I want to communicate this with absolute clarity. 9 million people facing starvation in Afghanistan, including 1 million children. Temperatures reach as low as 14 degrees Fahrenheit in Kabul and …

Please respond: there are the 1MM children in Afghanistan starving at risk of death Read More »

The post Please respond: there are the 1MM children in Afghanistan starving at risk of death appeared first on Sara Grillo.