IAM2746 – Founder Helps Financial Advisors Get More Clients

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Transcription:

James Pollard 00:00
I would tell my younger business self to focus on productivity because 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 try 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 task that move the needle the most .

Gresham Harkless 01:11
Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I Am CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today . I have James Pollard of the advisorcoach.com James, it's awesome to have you on the show .

James Pollard 01:21
Hey, it's great to be here . I've read ceoblog nation.com for quite some time and I'm so happy to be on the podcast .

Gresham Harkless 01:28
Nice. I definitely appreciate that . Always love to have people that have contributed and been on CEO Blog Nation on the show . So what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about James so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's been doing . And 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 ?

James Pollard 02:06
I am definitely ready.

Gresham Harkless 02:07
Awesome . Let's do it . So to kick everything off, I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to get started with your business .

James Pollard 02:15
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 and went out to fill it . One of the unique things about financial advisors and 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 . Well, the turnover rate, I discovered, has been the same for the decades . So the finance or services industry, when it came to marketing and prospecting, was essentially doing the same broken approach again and again and again . I wondered to myself, if this turnover rate is so high and these young advisors and old advisors alike are struggling, there should be something different there . 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 when 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 will come to them, appointments would be being 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 . It totally blew the thing up .

Gresham Harkless 03:38
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 . A lot of times you see that there is some type of problem and there needs to be some type of solution made . And just like a true entrepreneur, instead of, like, sitting on the sidelines and saying, oh, somebody should create that, you decided to kind of do it yourself .

James Pollard 03:59
It sounds like, yeah, absolutely .

Gresham Harkless 04:01
Nice . And I know you touched on it a little bit . Can you take us through exactly, like, what you're doing with your clients ? How, how, how exactly they can work with you ? And a lot of what you're covering on your podcast .

James Pollard 04:10
Well, when you're speaking about seeing an opportunity in your marketplace and going after it, I noticed that a lot of people who work with financial advisors, and I love 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 would 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, it's 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 make and 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 the advisorcoach.com so unique for advisors .

Gresham Harkless 05:26
Nice . I definitely appreciate that . And I always feel like kind of that tiered approach that you kind of spoke to also speaks 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 sometimes people want to have the 1:1 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 off of where you are and also of course, based off .

James Pollard 05:55
What you want to achieve . 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 than 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, you know, if I explained it one on one to one advisor, that'd be 11 hours . And I do another advisor, there'd be another 11 hours and 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 . 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 in 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, like I said, like pouring gasoline on that buyer .

Gresham Harkless 07:14
Absolutely . And it's like 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, webinars, there's so many different ways to do that . So would you consider that to be what I call like your cedar sauce ? Do you think that's the thing that sets you apart and makes you unique ?

James Pollard 07:32
Well, yes, indeed I do . Another secret sauce that I offer and going back to the email marketing thing is that 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'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 08:20
Nice . I definitely appreciate that . And nobody definitely can argue with you based off of that . Definitely . Here on planet Earth, maybe people, Mars or Pluto or something might argue with you, but definitely not here on this Earth, as she said . And I think it speaks to a lot of times, we forget 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 08:51
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 job, 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, 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 or 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 this, the result is the same . So keep pushing until you get it .

Gresham Harkless 09:37
Absolutely, absolutely . And nobody definitely wants to be remembered for that at all . So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack . And this could be an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient ?

James Pollard 09:51
So the book that I like to recommend to everyone and you people have probably heard it a million times, it's Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill . Totally revolutionized my life for the better . I can't stress that enough . If you haven't read the book, go out get it . It's, I think it's like 99 cents on Amazon . It's free . I think it, if you, 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 . That 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 that most people don't is I religiously track my time . So I use toggl, the app . It's a productivity app, a time tracking app . T O G G L 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 toggle 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 the 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 11:08
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 can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self ?

James Pollard 11:18
I would tell my younger business self to focus on productivity, because 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 try 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 task that move the needle the most .

Gresham Harkless 12:00
I appreciate you for sharing that with us and I wanted to ask you now for my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO . And we're hoping to have different quote, unquote CEOs on this show . So, James, what does being a CEO mean to you ?

James Pollard 12:13
Influence . And you can use that influence however you want . And that's really the key because you have power . The you can set your sale however you want in life . You can influence your home life, your family life, your bank account, your health . 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 because recently in my own podcast I kind of opened up to some of the charity work that I do with this charities called First Book, which gives books to low income children and donorschoose.org and I'm kind of leaning more towards 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, if you don't want to have a percentage, go to DonorsChoose, you can tell them that and they won't get, they won't take any money . They'll just send it directly to the classroom . So I have been really private about that up until, I would say about a month ago when we recorded the podcast, the Financial Advisor Marketing podcast . And people have been writing me . They said, 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 . Influence where I'm using my brand . I don't think I'm like some celebrity or anything, and I'm certainly not . I'm known in the financial advisor space, yes . But I'm not like, I'm not like a celebrity by any stretch of the imagination, but I can use my little influence that I've 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 13:55
Nice . I definitely appreciate you for sharing that with us and definitely appreciate you even more for doing 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 don't see that . Even if there's 1, 2, 10, 100, 100,000 people that hear about this organization or about whatever it is that you're doing, whatever your cause might be, then you are making an impact and you are having influence . So I appreciate that definition . In that perspective .

James Pollard 14:33
You. You got it, my friend .

Gresham Harkless 14:34
Awesome, awesome, 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 hold of you . Subscribe to your podcast and find out all the awesome things you're doing .

James Pollard 14:48
So, listeners, listen up . I've tried my best to give you some amazing information today . I've given you my A level best . But I want you to promise me that you'll take this seriously . You won't be 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 talk 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@theadvisorcoach.com one more time . That's james@theadvisorcoach.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, share their story . Let me know how I can help . I am here for you . Awesome .

Gresham Harkless 15:35
Awesome awesome . Well thank you so much again James . We will have that information in that link in the 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 .