IAM432- Founder Helps Financial Advisors Get More Clients

James is the founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com and he is dedicated to helping financial advisors get more clients. He's best known for his email marketing program, “Appointments On Autopilot”, which shows financial advisors how to leverage email marketing to set appointments with prospects. James is also the host of the “Financial Advisor Marketing” podcast, which releases new episodes every Monday morning.

• CEO Hack: (1) Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill (2) Toggl for time tracking
• CEO Nugget: Focus on productivity – the task that moves the needle the most
• CEO Defined: Influence

Website: https://theadvisorcoach.com/

Additional helpful links

TheAdvisorCoach.com/Appointments
TheAdvisorCoach.com/Blog
Twitter.com/TheAdvisorCoach
LinkedIn.com/in/TheAdvisorCoach

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:29

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today, I've James Pollard of TheAdvisorCoach.com. James, it's awesome to have you on the show.

James Pollard 0:39

Yes great to be here. I've read through your Blognation.com for quite some time, and I'm so happy to be on the podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:46

Nice. I definitely appreciate that always love to have people who have contributed and been on the CEO blog nation on the show. So what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about James so you hear about all the awesome things that he's been doing. James is the founder of TheAdvisorCoach.com And he is dedicated to helping financial advisors get more clients. He's best known for his email marketing program appointments on autopilot, which shows financial advisors how to leverage email marketing to set appointments with prospects. James is also the host of the financial advisor marketing podcast, which releases new episodes every Monday morning. James, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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James Pollard 1:24

I am definitely ready.

Gresham Harkless 1:26

Awesome. Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I want to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What led you to get started with your business?

James Pollard 1:33

Well, my CEO story is not a sexy story. It's not some hero's journey, or whatever I just identified a need in the marketplace and went out to fill it. One of the unique things about financial advisors in their industry is that the turnover rate tends to be very high. And the turnover rate for those of you who don't know is just people who start off in the business, or start off in their career and then quit typically within three years.

And the reason they do that is because they're frustrated, they don't have a system that works, they can't figure it out. And I mean, there's a multitude of reasons why that happens. While the turnover rate I discovered has been the same for decades. So the financial services industry, when it came to marketing, and prospecting was essentially doing the same broken approach again and again.

And I wondered to myself, if this turnover rate is so high, and these young advisors and old advisors alike are struggling, then there should be something different, maybe they should try something that hasn't been done before. Maybe they need to take a new approach. And I came in originally started with outbound training, you know, cold call seminars, direct mail, and I still do that stuff.

But I realized that what financial advisors really needed was a system where clients would come to them appointments would be booked for them, essentially, like you said, on autopilot, and just went from there and financial advisors started using my stuff, got results, loved it, and I just took it from there totally blew the thing up.

Gresham Harkless 2:57

Nice. I definitely appreciate that. I think that a lot of times, to me, in my personal opinion, I should say the best products and services are those that kind of create a better mousetrap. And a lot of times you see that there's some type of problem. And there needs to be some type of solution made. And just like a true entrepreneur, instead of sitting on the sidelines and saying, oh, somebody should create that you decided to kind of do it yourself, It sounds like.

James Pollard 3:18

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 3:20

Nice. And I know you touched on it a little bit. Can you take us through exactly what you're doing with your clients how exactly they can work with you, and a lot of what you're covering on your podcast?

James Pollard 3:29

Well, when you're speaking about seeing an opportunity in the marketplace and going after it, I noticed that a lot of people who work with financial advisors, I've loved these people, they are genuine, they work hard they push themselves. One of the things I noticed was that there's like one level of service that will be offered meaning there may be an author who sells $10 books that can give you a little quick fix, there may be someone who has a $20,000 mastermind, but that's pretty much it.

The approach that I wanted to take was a tiered approach where yes, I have like $20 products where a new financial advisor can just drop the 20 bucks and get something to get their business going. But I also have some more elite programs that are more for financial advisors who are more serious and really want to grow and pour gasoline on the fire. A lot of this stuff is not just with me, but I try to teach financial advisors to be focused on the return on investment.

I try to do that in every area of my life, from health to wealth to happiness, I try to look at not only the investments that I'm making, where I spend my money, but where I spend my time to try to get that biggest return on investment that I can, and I can help financial advisors get that return on investment, whether it's 20 bucks, whether it's 200 bucks, whether it's $20,000 and I that's what makes TheAdvisorCoach.com so unique for advisors.

Gresham Harkless 4:44

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. And I always feel like kind of that tiered approach as you kind of spoke to also speak to and definitely correct me if I'm wrong at different times that a person might be in as far as their career and their life but also probably even different ways they might even learn as well too because I think a lot of times people want to have the one on one and want to be able to have that one on one kind of focus.

Whereas somebody else might want to have something where they just kind of do it whenever. So it kind of gives you those different options based on where you are. And also, of course, off based on what you want to achieve.

James Pollard 5:15

Correct. And what I found was that if you do like an online course, you can put your best stuff in that course, and someone can access it at a much more reasonable cost and your time one on one, I mean, it would take me 11 hours one on one to explain something that I could put into a course where and you know, if I explained it one on one to one advisor, that'd be 11 hours, and I'd do another advisor, there'd be another 11 hours of my time, I just don't have that much time, I can make a much bigger impact by leveraging the resources that we have available to us online.

And that's actually what I teach advisors to do, especially with email, because the leverage there is so powerful. And when I'm talking to you, I know that your audience is not just financial advisors, and I wouldn't expect it to be. But from business owner to business owner, if you start looking for areas where you can leverage your material, you can leverage your knowledge, you can leverage your content if you can do that, and you can put it on a massive scale.

I know some of you guys are doing it with webinars, you're doing email marketing ads, you want to replicate whatever you have as many times as possible, and you want to have a system that does that for you. And once you implement that system, your business can really take off. It's just, like I said, like pouring gasoline on that fire.

Gresham Harkless 6:33

Absolutely. And it's almost like how can I make myself omnipresent. How can I be in so many places at once. And a lot of times, that's a great way to do that. As you mentioned, email marketing, and webinars, there are so many different ways to do that. So would you consider that to be what I call like their secret sauce? Do you think that's the thing that sets you apart and makes you unique?

James Pollard 6:51

Well yes, indeed I do. Another secret sauce that I offer. And going back to the email marketing thing, I don't know anyone else on planet Earth. And I could be wrong, I know people probably going to write me. But as far as my research has taken me and the different things that I've done, I don't know anyone on the planet who has studied and tested email marketing in the financial services space I'm talking about with financial advisors.

Now I know there are people who have done e-commerce, people who have done webinars, different online marketing stuff. But in the financial services space, I don't know anyone who has tested and studied email marketing to the extent that I have. And so I know the subject lines that work. I know the approaches that work, that that's something that financial advisors, literally it's not just a fancy marketing slogan or anything, they literally cannot get that stuff anywhere else except for me.

Gresham Harkless 7:39

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. And no, nobody definitely can argue with you. Based on that, definitely here on planet Earth. Maybe people on Mars or Pluto or something might argue with you, but definitely not here, and I think it speaks, to a lot of times we forget, like, a lot of times, to be successful.

To reach that level of success, you have to put in the work and put in the time. And as you mentioned, you know, the actual studying of the email marketing of the actual skill to be done, it does take time in order to do that. So I appreciate you for putting that time in, and then also helping out so many people with that.

James Pollard 8:11

Yeah, it takes a lot of time. And I see not only financial advisors, but entrepreneurs as a whole, maybe someone wants to start a drop shipping business, maybe somebody wants to start an online business, or maybe even brick and mortar, it can't just be three months, you'll give it a try and then leave, it can't be six months, and then you quit and find something else, you really have to go all in.

And again, you have to have that return on investment mindset. Because here's the thing, a lot of people don't realize this, if you put in three months of blood, sweat, and tears, one year of blood, sweat, and tears, or whatever, and you don't get any results that you don't keep pushing until you get those results, you might as well have never started that endeavor to begin with, because the result is the same zero. So keep pushing until you get it.

Gresham Harkless 8:55

Absolutely. And nobody definitely wants to be remembered for that at all. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This could be an app or book or a habit that you have or what's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

James Pollard 9:13

So the book that I like to recommend to everyone and you the people who have probably heard it a million times, is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which totally revolutionized my life for the better I can't stress that enough. If you haven't read the book go out to get it I think it's like 99 cents on Amazon it's free. I think if you have some websites I don't know Libraries obviously you can get it but Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And quite honestly, anything by Napoleon Hill is going to be gold as far as a book or a resource like that.

That's what I can give you. One of the things that I do that makes me I wouldn't say unique, but it's something that I do the most people don't I religiously, track my time. So I use Toggl the app. It's a productivity app, a time-tracking app. And I track everything work-related that I do meaning creating content, talking with an advisor one-on-one, even talking with you right now I've got my Toggl going because I'm tracking my time and I want to take a look at what results I'm getting, what input did I put in to get those results.

And if I'm not getting the desired results, I can go back to my input and say, what do I need to change in my input, because I've got the numbers and everything right in front of me, I know what I've done, as far as work is concerned. So I can adjust as needed.

Gresham Harkless 10:27

Nice. And so now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you could happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

James Pollard 10:38

I would tell my younger business self to focus on productivity. And this is a nice little segue from what I just talked about with the time tracking, productivity is not having a million different checklists, and having a million different apps. At its core, many people forget this because they're so caught up in the technology that different businesses tried to sell as productivity-enhancing. Productivity at its core, is the output that you get from input.

So the name of the game is to get as much output as you possibly can from as little input as you possibly can. And the only way you can possibly do that is to focus on the tasks that move the needle, the most.

Gresham Harkless 11:20

I appreciate you, for sharing that with us. And I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is a definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So James, what does being a CEO mean to you?

James Pollard 11:33

Influence, and you can use that influence however you want. And that's really the key because you have power, you can set your sail however you want in life, you can influence your home life, your family life, your bank account, your help, being a CEO puts you in charge, you are in the driver's seat, you can influence yourself, your life, other people's lives however you want.

Now, you caught me at a great time. Recently in my own podcast, I kind of opened up to some of the charity work that I do with these charities called First Book, which gives books to low-income children, and Donorschoose.org. And I'm kind of leaning more toward Donorschoose.org.

Now because you can give money directly to classrooms. I mean, like really like directly to the teachers, they get the books to get the supplies for the kids, it goes directly to the classroom, no middleman, if you don't want to, if you don't want to have a percentage go to Donors Choose, you can tell them that and they won't get or they won't take any money, they'll just send it directly to the classroom.

So I had been really private about that up until I would say about a month ago, when we recorded the podcast, a financial advisor marketing podcast, and people have been writing me isn't like I had no idea. You know, that's so awesome, that's so cool. And people have been encouraging me to get that message out.

So that's a form of influence where I'm using my brand. I don't think I'm like some celebrity or anything, but I'm certainly not. I'm known in the financial advisor space. Yes, but I'm not like, not like a celebrity by any stretch of the imagination. But I can use the little influence that created to help children. And that's just one example. But you can do anything you want. CEO means you have influence. So use it wisely.

Gresham Harkless 13:15

Nice, I definitely appreciate you for sharing that with us. And definitely appreciate you even more for doing, you know all the awesome work that you're doing. Because I think a lot of times, we sometimes will forget that we do have influence. And it's all in how you use it. And we can use it to do some really remarkable things just as you've been able to do. And I think a lot of times, we sometimes don't look at it like that.

And you'll see that even if there's one to 100,000 people that hear about this organization or about whatever it is that you're doing whatever your cause might be, then you're you are making an impact and you are having influence. So I appreciate that definition in that perspective.

James Pollard 13:52

You got that my friend.

Gresham Harkless 13:54

Awesome. And James, I appreciate your time even more, what I wanted to do was pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you can let our readers and listeners know. And then of course how best they can get a whole view, subscribe to your podcast, and find out all of the awesome things you're doing.

James Pollard 14:08

So listeners, listen up, I've tried my best to give you some amazing information. Today I've given you my level best. But I want you to promise me that you'll take this seriously, you won't brush off this podcast, you won't put it down and wait for the next one. I want you to really think about the input versus output thing that I talked about. I really want you to think about what influence you're having on your own life and other people's lives. You really want to get serious about this stuff. Don't brush this off.

This could be the moment that changes everything for you. And if you want to get in touch with me, please feel free to send an email to James@advisorcoach.com. I can't promise I'll get back to every single email but I do read them all. So I appreciate anyone who wants to get in touch and share their story. Let me know how I can help. I am here for you.

Gresham Harkless 14:54

Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, James. We will have that information in that link and show notes so that everybody can follow up with you. But as James said, definitely now is the best time to get started on whatever it is that you want to have influence on. So James, appreciate you again hope you have a great rest of the day.

Outro 15:11

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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