RPF0153-Michael

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00:00:06.400 | Family fun, giveaways, and exciting Kings hockey awaits.

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00:00:15.040 | Today I'm thrilled to share with you some thoughts about career development.

00:00:18.560 | Most importantly, I'd like you to have a real live case study of how applying some of the simple steps that we've talked about on this show

00:00:28.640 | of Brian Tracy's the thousand percent formula can lead, even if by accident, to your increasing your income by a thousand percent every ten years.

00:00:40.960 | [Music]

00:00:56.960 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast.

00:00:59.280 | My name is Joshua Sheets and today is Tuesday, February 17, 2015.

00:01:05.600 | Today I bring you an interview with financial planner extraordinaire Michael Kitsis, one of the more well-known writers in the financial planning space.

00:01:15.520 | He writes at kitsis.com.

00:01:17.200 | This is a repeat appearance for him on the Radical Personal Finance Podcast and today we're going to talk about his career.

00:01:22.560 | [Music]

00:01:29.600 | I had the opportunity to interview Michael when I was out in Dallas last week at the T3 Technology Tools for Today conference for financial advisors.

00:01:37.600 | I jumped on a plane real quick and shot out there and one of the things that I was able to do was to do a bunch of really great interviews.

00:01:44.160 | Most of them are very focused on the financial advisor space and you'll hear that in this interview.

00:01:49.440 | This interview essentially follows two parts.

00:01:52.080 | The first part is a discussion of Michael's career and especially as it relates to conferences.

00:01:58.800 | I thought this was such a timely topic in light of yesterday's show and in light of some things that I've been wanting to bring you here on the show,

00:02:05.360 | of just talking about the importance of conferences as they might be for your career.

00:02:09.680 | I thought it was a useful story of how careers can develop, even if by accident.

00:02:16.640 | Now, one of the cool things, if you know something can develop by accident, what about developing it on purpose?

00:02:23.200 | That's what we can choose to do.

00:02:25.840 | I want you to listen to Michael's story.

00:02:27.200 | That's the first part of the interview.

00:02:28.480 | The second part of the interview talks a little bit about marketing for financial advisors.

00:02:32.480 | If you're not interested at all in marketing or interested in the financial advisory space, feel free to skip the second half of the interview.

00:02:38.160 | But if you ever have thought about being involved in any kind of business, you might want to know some of the information in that marketing space.

00:02:47.440 | Especially if you're a financial advisor, you might want to know about that.

00:02:52.240 | This is Michael's second appearance on the Radical Personal Finance podcast.

00:02:56.480 | If you're interested in listening to his previous interview on the show, that was episode 92, which we titled, "The Business of Financial Advice.

00:03:04.640 | Opening the Curtain on the History, the Present State, and the Future of Financial Advice."

00:03:09.360 | You can find that at radicalpersonalfinance.com/92.

00:03:13.440 | And now, as we go to the interview, I just want to say thank you to the patrons of the show.

00:03:16.960 | Thanks to the patrons of the show, I'm able to present this to you commercial-free.

00:03:21.920 | Thank you, ladies and gentlemen who support the show.

00:03:24.960 | Here's Michael.

00:03:26.000 | So, Michael, welcome back to the show.

00:03:28.960 | I'm glad to have you here.

00:03:29.920 | Thank you.

00:03:30.560 | Welcome to be back.

00:03:31.360 | Welcome to be back.

00:03:32.000 | Good to be back.

00:03:32.800 | It's been a long three days.

00:03:35.120 | Yeah.

00:03:35.680 | So, for those who are catching up with us, it's day three of a conference.

00:03:38.640 | You can tell by the fact that my words do not sequence properly anymore.

00:03:42.400 | But yes, here we are.

00:03:44.080 | And these things are hard work.

00:03:45.360 | What time do you start?

00:03:46.400 | Early in the morning and it goes till midnight, right?

00:03:48.560 | Yeah.

00:03:49.120 | Also, this conference is kind by some because at least the sessions don't really get started until eight.

00:03:54.480 | Right.

00:03:54.980 | But yeah, then sessions go until four or five in the afternoon.

00:04:00.000 | And then you do evening gatherings and you're being social and you're networking.

00:04:03.920 | You're connecting with people.

00:04:05.440 | Yeah, I probably got to sleep after midnight last night.

00:04:08.800 | And yeah.

00:04:09.440 | So, it's a work.

00:04:10.720 | It's not a vacation.

00:04:11.520 | It's definitely work.

00:04:12.400 | Yeah, it's definitely work.

00:04:13.280 | It's not vacation.

00:04:14.000 | Like, and I, you know, we'll probably talk about this later.

00:04:16.560 | But it drives me nuts watching people who go to conferences.

00:04:22.240 | And it's like, "Hey, what did you think of the sessions?"

00:04:23.920 | "Oh, I didn't see them because like I went up and I played golf for three hours because

00:04:27.440 | there's a cool golf course nearby."

00:04:29.120 | Like, "All right, like power to you for loving your golf and hitting the back nine for a

00:04:33.520 | couple hours."

00:04:34.160 | But like, you're here at a conference.

00:04:36.080 | You will not have a better opportunity to meet and connect with a whole bunch of people

00:04:39.040 | that can improve your business and career.

00:04:40.960 | And like, you're hitting the links for a couple hours because there's a neat course nearby

00:04:44.560 | you haven't played.

00:04:45.520 | And well, like certainly in our advisor world, like we, a lot of golf lovers.

00:04:49.440 | Absolutely.

00:04:49.840 | Popular thing here.

00:04:50.800 | So, that's a perfect place to start.

00:04:52.160 | When you started your career in the financial advisor space, you were pretty green, right?

00:04:56.480 | You would...

00:04:56.880 | Oh, yeah.

00:04:57.200 | Like, I came straight out of college.

00:05:01.360 | Like, graduated Saturday above Memorial Day weekend, packed my stuff on Sunday, drove

00:05:07.680 | home on Memorial Day Monday, Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. showed up at the office for my first

00:05:12.800 | job in the financial services industry.

00:05:14.560 | So, I could not have packed it closer.

00:05:17.760 | At what point in time did you start going to conferences?

00:05:22.240 | First four years in before I ever went to my first conference, my first event of any

00:05:29.200 | sort.

00:05:29.600 | And was really ignorant of the opportunity, the value, the possibilities.

00:05:35.360 | I'll give them full credit.

00:05:36.880 | I went to my first conference because the firm I was working for said, "You're going

00:05:41.680 | to go to a conference this year.

00:05:42.880 | So, let us know which one you want to go to and that's the one you'll go to."

00:05:45.680 | And I'd pick something that sounded interesting in our industry.

00:05:49.040 | So, like, I didn't send myself.

00:05:52.320 | I didn't pay my way.

00:05:53.600 | They paid for me to go.

00:05:54.800 | Even though it was available for me, they basically had to, like, give me a kick to

00:06:00.000 | tell me, like, "So, you're going to go to something this year.

00:06:02.560 | Just let us know what it is."

00:06:03.840 | So, I was completely ignorant to the possibilities, what was out there, much less the value

00:06:10.320 | proposition of going and doing something like that.

00:06:12.400 | And for your first one, did you just show up, you know, maybe sit in the back with a

00:06:15.280 | notebook type of thing or were you very active and engaged and making full use of the time?

00:06:19.360 | So, it's kind of a weird blend.

00:06:21.200 | So, yeah, like, I was certainly there as a bit of a wallflower.

00:06:25.200 | And frankly, like, I'm actually very much an introvert by nature.

00:06:28.880 | So, like, I love the blogging world because I could sit in my computer on my four walls.

00:06:32.480 | And like, even, so even conferences for me, like, as an introvert, like, I enjoy coming

00:06:40.320 | here, I do enjoy connections, but I'm much more small intimate groups than large groups.

00:06:45.840 | Like, conferences are actually very draining for me.

00:06:48.800 | So, like, you know, I get to the end of the day at the conference and I need to go upstairs

00:06:52.640 | and just, like, decompress in my room for an hour and, like, get my head sorted back

00:06:56.320 | together before I can even relax and go to sleep.

00:06:58.240 | So, yeah, so going to my first conference in particular being some combination of introverted

00:07:02.720 | and shy and just young, young dude.

00:07:06.080 | I mean, I was 24, 25 in an industry where even then the average age was probably 50.

00:07:12.800 | Now we're, like, mid-50s.

00:07:14.000 | Right.

00:07:14.240 | So, yeah, like, I was, you know, a wallflower, newbie, young dude.

00:07:20.960 | I looked it, it showed.

00:07:22.960 | Now, the weird thing that came from that is the first conference I went to, I end, you

00:07:31.680 | know, you go to a conference, you end up making connections with people like you, like, the

00:07:35.840 | sort of what we seek out.

00:07:37.280 | So, finding people like me was really easy.

00:07:39.600 | There were four of us at the conference under the age of 40.

00:07:42.480 | It was probably, well, how old I had been, like, 26 or something, 25 or 26 at the time.

00:07:48.400 | So, there were four of us under 40.

00:07:49.840 | So, it was not easy, it was not hard to find the other three and form a connection with

00:07:56.080 | them.

00:07:56.480 | And so, we made a connection.

00:08:00.960 | We sort of said, like, hey, this is actually supposed to be an advanced planners conference,

00:08:04.720 | like, future of the profession.

00:08:06.080 | There literally is no one here who will be in the profession in the future because 99%

00:08:09.840 | of the people are over the age of 40 and they're only going to be here so long.

00:08:12.720 | Like, we should make a group for people like us to try to draw other people out for this.

00:08:18.160 | And so, literally, like, my first conference out of the gate, we founded a group called

00:08:24.880 | NextGen for next generation of financial planners.

00:08:27.680 | That was a little over 10 years ago.

00:08:30.640 | There are now 2,000 members in NextGen.

00:08:33.120 | It's a massive, like, growing movement thing across financial planning around the country.

00:08:36.800 | And it was just like, yeah, I showed up at a conference and there were three other people

00:08:40.720 | like me.

00:08:41.120 | So, we said, hey, we should hang out.

00:08:42.640 | Next thing you know, this thing got created.

00:08:44.400 | So, and just like that itself was very impactful on my career overall.

00:08:52.080 | It plugged me into a world of working with next generation financial planners, being

00:08:56.000 | a next generation financial planner.

00:08:58.880 | I've founded two or three different businesses off of serving that group now of my peers.

00:09:03.520 | Like, just that one moment, literally, from the first conference has been massively formative

00:09:09.680 | on my entire career.

00:09:10.800 | And in addition to those businesses now, you're a sought after speaker, making substantial

00:09:15.760 | speaking fees and you speak at 50, 60 conferences a year?

00:09:19.360 | I've done almost 70 for the year, for the past two years.

00:09:23.120 | I'm trying to, my goal this year is basically to cut it back to 50.

00:09:28.320 | And I keep raising speaking fees and people keep saying yes.

00:09:31.360 | So, like, nice business problem to have.

00:09:33.200 | But I'm still doing even more travel than I want to do because it just, it works well.

00:09:40.320 | There's a lot of value to it.

00:09:41.280 | There's a lot of value for people that come to conferences.

00:09:43.120 | They want content.

00:09:44.000 | It's been a pretty amazing ride for a couple of years now.

00:09:47.760 | Was that an intentional career path that you sat down and planned it out or it just kind

00:09:51.920 | of happened into it?

00:09:53.120 | It definitely happened into it.

00:09:54.720 | There was no plan for it.

00:09:57.760 | I, and like, frankly, I mean, just as an introvert by nature, like I did not relish getting up

00:10:05.440 | in front of large crowds.

00:10:06.720 | I did not feel like, hey, I've got a great idea for a career.

00:10:08.960 | Let's be like an introverted person who likes to stand in front of hundreds of people at

00:10:11.920 | a time.

00:10:12.320 | In fact, ironically, like I was actually a theater minor in college because I was a set

00:10:21.280 | design and lighting design geek because I was terrified of being on stage.

00:10:25.200 | So like I truly never, never went up in front of people, even as a theater major, never

00:10:30.160 | went up in front of people or a theater minor.

00:10:32.000 | For me, like it basically evolved from a teaching education perspective.

00:10:39.440 | So being more introverted, you know, what did I like doing?

00:10:43.920 | I like spending time with textbooks.

00:10:45.360 | So I got started in my career and I started accumulating knowledge and education.

00:10:50.400 | Basically, I started accumulating degrees and designations.

00:10:52.960 | And so in the span of the first four or five years of my career, while working full time,

00:10:58.800 | I basically just left myself continuously enrolled part time in school on doing little

00:11:05.040 | classes evenings and weekends.

00:11:06.240 | But you do that for years continuously and all of a sudden, like degrees and designations

00:11:10.000 | start popping out.

00:11:10.640 | So I got my certified financial platter marks.

00:11:12.560 | I got a master's degree in financial planning and added a bunch more thereafter and became

00:11:18.000 | a technical expert.

00:11:20.800 | So my career began to shape in the direction of I'm going to be a technical dude.

00:11:26.880 | I'm going to be the knowledge dude in the firm.

00:11:31.360 | And this was kind of early mid 2000s.

00:11:34.320 | So that was actually a new phenomenon emerging that there was even a career track for just

00:11:38.320 | being a good technical expert and not going out there to be a salesperson.

00:11:41.440 | I didn't want to be a salesperson.

00:11:42.560 | I didn't want to be a prospecting person, meeting strangers and going out and doing

00:11:48.800 | that with kind of my whole introvert thing that was terrifying to me.

00:11:52.160 | I technically started doing that in the first job.

00:11:54.720 | It was horrible.

00:11:55.440 | I lasted barely a year.

00:11:56.720 | I was getting nothing done.

00:11:58.400 | So I was going down this whole road of, all right, if I want to make it in this industry,

00:12:03.120 | I've just got to be technically sharp.

00:12:05.440 | I've got to be able to contribute something with my knowledge because I sure as heck can't

00:12:08.240 | contribute anything by going out there and getting business and getting clients.

00:12:11.360 | And so I got technically competent enough that eventually I started getting involved

00:12:17.360 | in some local study groups and at some point in like 2004 maybe, you know, someone said,

00:12:25.280 | "Hey, a lot more of my clients are getting hit by the alternative minimum taxes.

00:12:28.720 | Anybody know much about this?"

00:12:29.920 | I was like, "Well, actually, I've done some stuff with this.

00:12:32.480 | I'm working on a master screen taxation."

00:12:34.240 | I was, I had moved on to it at that point.

00:12:36.400 | So like, I'll talk about that.

00:12:39.040 | So I went home, made a little like PowerPoint presentation, went in, taught my peers.

00:12:44.400 | It was basically like my first public speaking event in front of, I think there were six

00:12:49.200 | other people in the room.

00:12:50.240 | I mean, it's like my little study group, peer group.

00:12:53.040 | But it went well and I kind of liked it.

00:12:55.760 | I was like, you know, all right, in general, I'm basically terrified to be in front of

00:13:00.400 | audiences and people.

00:13:01.520 | But you know, when I'm just talking about something that I really, really know well,

00:13:05.120 | like it just, it wasn't a big deal.

00:13:07.360 | I'm fine.

00:13:07.760 | Like as long as I, as long as it's something I've got technical mastery on, not a big deal.

00:13:12.480 | I actually was sort of surprised to find I felt quite comfortable.

00:13:15.280 | So I'm like, I'm going to try this a little bit more.

00:13:17.520 | So I did it for my local study group and then like I did it for a local chapter meeting.

00:13:22.080 | So then there were 30 or 40 people in the room and it turned out a lot of them thought

00:13:25.360 | I did a pretty good job because I clearly knew my stuff technically.

00:13:29.040 | I kind of liked explaining things.

00:13:30.720 | And so it just grew from there.

00:13:33.200 | So I did that and then someone referred me to another chapter and then I did a few chapters

00:13:37.760 | and then I actually managed to slip into a breakout session on a national conference.

00:13:42.560 | You know, they did a call for speakers.

00:13:43.920 | I'm like, I got this technical session on AMT and Lord knows nobody else wanted to talk

00:13:48.240 | about something that esoteric.

00:13:49.600 | So they were like, oh my gosh, there's one person actually put their name in for this

00:13:53.200 | topic.

00:13:53.520 | We should grab them.

00:13:54.320 | Yeah.

00:13:54.820 | The one guy who actually cares about AMT planning.

00:13:57.600 | Yes.

00:13:58.080 | So like, and like, and that became sort of my first little niche within a niche topic

00:14:04.320 | area.

00:14:04.560 | I started doing all these sessions on the alternative minimum tax.

00:14:07.760 | And so, you know, I did like a handful of these and then the next year, you know, a

00:14:13.280 | few people suggest me to some other people and I did a few more.

00:14:16.400 | And then like by the third year I got a couple more requests and, and, you know, basically

00:14:23.040 | all of these were just like, yes, if you fly me to your, you know, wherever it is, then

00:14:26.640 | I'll show up and speak.

00:14:27.840 | And so then like, I think it was literally not until about the third year of this and

00:14:32.880 | I'd probably done 15 or 20 or something over the span of, of two and a half years.

00:14:37.360 | And I was like, you know what, if I really like want to make this into something, I should

00:14:41.440 | charge money for it.

00:14:42.880 | And it was terrifying.

00:14:46.160 | Like the first time I did it, like my voice was catching.

00:14:50.640 | It was like, and you know, I also charge a hundred dollars to be on site for the, for

00:14:55.360 | the event.

00:14:55.840 | I remember like the first one I did, it was like, I said, it's my travel expenses plus

00:15:00.640 | a hundred bucks.

00:15:02.320 | And like, they, they didn't even think twice about it.

00:15:04.400 | Probably not the least of which I wasn't even thinking about like the hotel room they have

00:15:07.600 | to put me in probably cost more than a hundred bucks.

00:15:09.680 | Like they're, they're going to drop three to $500 on a plane ticket just to get me there.

00:15:13.360 | It's like the last hundred bucks is nothing.

00:15:15.200 | Right.

00:15:15.700 | But like, I was so terrified to ask and, but I did.

00:15:20.560 | And so I charged a hundred bucks and then like people kept asking me, like, I'm going

00:15:25.360 | to ask 250 and see if they still say yes.

00:15:27.920 | And they did.

00:15:29.840 | And I'm like, it's still like, I wasn't even thinking about it.

00:15:31.920 | I'm like, cause you haven't even gotten your plane ticket yet.

00:15:34.160 | Like the small dollars compared to what they were already budgeting just for me to travel

00:15:38.400 | to get there.

00:15:39.360 | But they kept saying yes.

00:15:40.480 | And, and so like this entire speaking career that I built has really been nothing more

00:15:45.280 | than, um, you know, find something I can learn about and be really expert about, share it

00:15:50.240 | with my, uh, share it with my peers.

00:15:52.800 | I know my peers cause I know my audience cause they are my peers.

00:15:55.360 | So I just, that's all I talked to.

00:15:56.800 | I talked to financial advisors cause I'm a financial advisor and I know what they're

00:16:00.240 | thinking cause it's what I'm thinking.

00:16:01.680 | Uh, and the more that requests came in every time a whole bunch of questions came in, I'm

00:16:07.280 | like, well, apparently people still like what I'm doing.

00:16:09.280 | So I'm going to ask for a little bit more and you know, eight, 10 years later worth

00:16:13.840 | of doing it now it's like, like, holy crap.

00:16:16.480 | I actually, like I can really live off of just being a speaker.

00:16:19.680 | Right.

00:16:20.320 | And you know, and, and take care of my family and do good things.

00:16:23.280 | And then there's like even time left on the side to be involved in other businesses as

00:16:27.040 | well.

00:16:27.360 | And, and all this other stuff that's, uh, that's grown from it.

00:16:30.800 | But like all of it, um, basically tracks back to like showing at a, showing up at a

00:16:37.520 | conference and being in, so really two things, showing up at a conference and being involved

00:16:41.760 | and joining a professional membership association.

00:16:45.120 | Cause that was how I actually found the study group and the first chapter meeting and the

00:16:49.600 | things that kicked off the, uh, the speaking on that end.

00:16:52.800 | And, and again, like I give full credit to my, uh, to my firm and the, and the, and the

00:17:00.480 | partners there while I'm a partner now, but I, I came in as a staff member then, uh, you

00:17:06.640 | know, they sent me to the first conference.

00:17:08.560 | They put me in the membership association, sent me off for the first chapter meeting.

00:17:12.880 | Like I was just not aware, not cognizant, nothing on my radar screen of like how meaningful

00:17:18.400 | it is to be engaged with the community.

00:17:21.440 | Right.

00:17:22.080 | Of, you know, what you do or what you're involved with, what your career is, what your

00:17:25.040 | vocation is.

00:17:25.840 | And it like, it's just so powerful.

00:17:27.600 | Uh, I was clueless.

00:17:29.280 | Like I just, I just had no idea until they said you're doing it and they wrote the check

00:17:33.360 | and I just had to show up, which they basically told me I had to show up.

00:17:36.640 | And then I started doing things like, oh, okay.

00:17:38.560 | Like this is kind of cool.

00:17:40.080 | I'm making connections to people.

00:17:41.760 | Okay.

00:17:43.760 | I'm like, I'm starting to like this.

00:17:44.960 | And today I would guess, I mean, you're certainly one of the, you are one of the

00:17:50.320 | leaders of the industry.

00:17:51.680 | You are one of the more well-connected and influential leaders of the industry.

00:17:55.440 | And it happened because of exposure, education, consistency, marketing.

00:18:00.320 | I mean, you don't hurt for business opportunities, right?

00:18:03.200 | No, no.

00:18:03.760 | And, uh, I mean, like I, so I forget who it is.

00:18:07.440 | Whoever had the famous quote of like, you know, the, the overwhelming majority of success

00:18:11.600 | is just bothering to show up.

00:18:13.040 | Like, yeah, a whole, whole lot of my success, like it's because I showed up and I kept

00:18:18.880 | showing up places and I showed up places and I met people and I talked to people and if

00:18:24.080 | I could be helpful, I was helpful to them.

00:18:25.920 | And then at some point down the road, karma came back.

00:18:28.560 | And if you're show up enough and help enough people, like there's a lot of karmic balance

00:18:33.520 | that seems to build in your favor.

00:18:34.960 | And like, not that I'm like literally spiritual in this direction, but, but like, just there,

00:18:39.200 | there really is an effect.

00:18:40.240 | And it's actually well studied in the world of, um, of, of influence and persuasion that,

00:18:45.760 | you know, just like as human beings, part of how we're hardwired around, you know, basically

00:18:50.960 | being able to like exist and function in the herd.

00:18:53.520 | So our, our, our brains just are kind of hardwired around, um, these effects of reciprocity.

00:18:59.280 | Someone does something good for us.

00:19:00.400 | We want to do something in return.

00:19:02.000 | Like we, we feel like we have this ingrained debt to them that must be righted in the cosmic

00:19:07.120 | world.

00:19:07.920 | Um, and, and now I'm like, I'm going to sell Machiavellian to say this, but, but like, so

00:19:14.240 | what that means is if you just try to go out there and try to be as helpful to as many

00:19:17.520 | people as possible, you end up with this giant number of people that all feel that they owe

00:19:22.480 | a debt for you and just want to help you in any way that they can in return.

00:19:25.680 | And if you, you know, seed that much goodwill out there, a lot of good things just start

00:19:30.800 | coming back to you.

00:19:31.520 | And I, I like definitely feel like a huge portion of how I've been able to grow and

00:19:37.040 | succeed in building, uh, businesses and a career is, is, is just driven off of that.

00:19:42.320 | The number of people that I have just helped for no reason than they contact me and asked

00:19:47.600 | a question and I felt like I had something that I could contribute to them.

00:19:50.800 | And then years later, you know, something good happens.

00:19:55.440 | So I, you know, worked with someone, helped them out early in their career.

00:19:58.800 | They had a great thing going, you know, give them a little nudge along the way.

00:20:02.080 | And then like, Oh, five years later, they're in charge of an entire national conference

00:20:05.920 | team.

00:20:06.480 | Right.

00:20:06.880 | And they're like, Hey, I remember you helped me that time.

00:20:09.680 | Well, you know, we need a keynote speaker now and I've always remembered you.

00:20:12.880 | I'm like, okay, so I spent like 10 minutes on the phone once for you helping out a business

00:20:17.200 | problem and you're going to give me a national conference keynote session with a five year

00:20:22.080 | delay lag on it.

00:20:23.360 | So like just those sorts of things and like, yeah, a whole bunch of stuff that I do never

00:20:27.600 | comes back and you know, nothing ever happens, but just you, you, you seed the world with

00:20:31.440 | a lot of goodwill and goodwill just starts to come back.

00:20:34.000 | I've been on exactly the other opposite side of that.

00:20:36.160 | And you know, I've sent you a couple of desperate emails when I didn't know who to ask and I

00:20:41.360 | just said, I got to talk to somebody.

00:20:42.960 | And we've had some phone calls at points of desperation and you just took a few minutes

00:20:47.600 | and it was incredibly helpful.

00:20:49.040 | And it certainly does.

00:20:50.080 | I have, I owe you a debt of gratitude for that.

00:20:53.200 | And you never know where the future goes.

00:20:55.040 | And it's true.

00:20:56.160 | Yeah.

00:20:56.400 | And again, like I mean, I feel like I've, maybe I'm self-conscious about it.

00:21:00.960 | Like I feel like I've made this Machiavellian thing of like, you go out there and get as

00:21:04.160 | many people indebted to you as possible, and then you can call in all of your debts and

00:21:07.600 | be rich.

00:21:08.100 | Like, it's nothing like that.

00:21:10.880 | And I'm, I'm not that well coordinated.

00:21:12.720 | But like, it's just recognizing that that reality of, of you know, there's both sort

00:21:20.880 | of a, just, it's nice to do good in the world and pay it forward and things like that.

00:21:25.360 | But just recognize like there really is sort of a human psychology around it that when,

00:21:29.680 | when, when you help people, they want to help you.

00:21:32.080 | And that does, that can do some very good things for you in the long run.

00:21:36.800 | When did you start writing and publishing your writing?

00:21:39.360 | At what stage in your career?

00:21:40.480 | So it was a little bit late, it was a little bit later than all of the, the conference

00:21:47.840 | and speaking stuff went underway.

00:21:48.880 | So I showed up on my first conference and speaking gig about four years into my career.

00:21:56.640 | Probably started doing a little bit of writing about five to six years into my career.

00:22:00.480 | So I'll admit, like, I always had a little bit of a writing bent.

00:22:03.520 | I, you know, I, I graduated from college 15 years ago, 2000.

00:22:09.360 | So like right, right at the market peak and, and the high end of the tech bubble and sort

00:22:15.360 | of, you know, upward rise of, of the internet.

00:22:17.760 | And so I'd gotten very active on like, message forums and, and writing and forums and just

00:22:24.480 | engaging there.

00:22:25.360 | And, you know, lucky me, I, two parents who were computer scientists.

00:22:28.640 | So I learned to type very young, like, you know, maybe speak and teach us typing, right?

00:22:32.320 | My 10 finger typing skill.

00:22:34.160 | So I type very, very quickly, which, which makes it easier to do a lot of writing.

00:22:38.320 | So like, I, I suppose in retrospect, like I was already exercising a little bit of my

00:22:43.120 | writing skill, learning it as a skill, just on things like message forums, you know, getting

00:22:49.040 | involved with like, you know, there was a message forum back then called financialplanning.com.

00:22:52.880 | The site's actually still there.

00:22:53.920 | It's a magazine, but the message forums aren't as active as they used to be.

00:22:57.680 | But yes, I start showing up there and like answering people's questions and just, you

00:23:02.160 | know, typing, interacting with people, but, you know, doing it in reasonable prose and

00:23:06.240 | typing and writing style.

00:23:07.920 | And the first article I ever did was actually an article called the other side of financial

00:23:16.240 | planning.

00:23:18.000 | And it was a discussion of how I was kind of going down this new career track that not

00:23:23.040 | very many people were doing at the time where I wanted to basically be a technical geek

00:23:27.040 | working in a firm and not just going out there and getting clients, which was sort of the

00:23:30.960 | industry standard of what everybody did.

00:23:32.720 | And so the editor of one of the trade publications heard about my story through the association,

00:23:43.200 | found me online through my writing in the message forums, saw that like I actually could

00:23:48.560 | write in complete sentences with proper punctuation and grammar and such, and got in touch with

00:23:52.800 | me and said, like, I've heard you have an interesting story.

00:23:55.920 | It looks like you can actually write.

00:23:58.480 | Would you be interested in basically writing an article just about your story, your experience,

00:24:03.600 | the path you've been on, what you've done?

00:24:05.840 | And I was like, oh, cool.

00:24:07.120 | Like a magazine wants me to write an article about like the things I've been doing.

00:24:10.640 | Okay, cool.

00:24:12.560 | We'll try it out.

00:24:13.200 | And so that became the first article that I wrote.

00:24:16.960 | And I liked it.

00:24:19.280 | Like it was neat.

00:24:21.040 | I sort of enjoyed writing.

00:24:22.160 | I felt like I had something to share.

00:24:23.520 | I got a couple of emails in response.

00:24:26.640 | People were like, that was a neat story.

00:24:28.160 | I was like, all right, this is kind of cool.

00:24:29.360 | You write something, you get it out there and people respond to you.

00:24:31.680 | And like I kind of like this engagement.

00:24:33.440 | And so it just started building from there.

00:24:36.240 | So then I now had a relationship with an editor.

00:24:39.680 | So I would contact him from time to time like, hey, I'm working on something about this.

00:24:43.520 | Would you be interested in an article on it?

00:24:46.080 | And because I was sort of blending this with my presentation, so I was doing lots of like

00:24:51.520 | technical geeky style things.

00:24:53.040 | Not a lot of other people actually like to do fairly technical writing.

00:24:56.560 | So the editor virtually always said yes.

00:24:58.160 | So I suddenly had this like contout to publish.

00:25:00.960 | So I started publishing there.

00:25:02.320 | Then I started sending things to a couple of other places.

00:25:06.720 | And after about three or four years of that, I was actually getting so into writing that

00:25:11.600 | I was getting frustrated because now suddenly I felt like I had so much to say and so many

00:25:16.720 | things to say and share.

00:25:17.840 | I kept smacking into column length limitations in trade publications.

00:25:24.240 | You know, the standard columns would be like 1,500 words, even like a journal article would

00:25:28.320 | be 5,000 words.

00:25:29.600 | And like if I did some really in-depth research thing, I'm like, if it takes me longer than

00:25:33.520 | that to write it, I want the room to write it.

00:25:35.360 | Right.

00:25:35.860 | And so I got so frustrated with content length limits of basically physical print magazines

00:25:42.720 | because that's how most of this was distributed then.

00:25:44.720 | I decided I would just make my own electronic newsletter.

00:25:48.080 | And then if I wanted to write some insane like 20-page treatise on something, I could

00:25:53.520 | write it.

00:25:53.840 | And if there were a couple other human beings out there who liked some insane 20-page treatise,

00:25:57.680 | they could pay me a couple of bucks for it.

00:25:59.040 | And that would be cool.

00:26:02.240 | And so I launched a newsletter service that I'm still running seven years later in early

00:26:08.720 | 2008.

00:26:09.440 | Where basically it said, hey, if you're like one of the one or two percent of advisors

00:26:16.480 | that just really likes actual deep technical stuff, like you're tired of the fluff and

00:26:20.960 | you want something deep, I'm your guy.

00:26:23.040 | I'm actually going to write that.

00:26:24.160 | And a couple of people started showing up and they actually wanted to pay me to write

00:26:29.440 | it.

00:26:29.600 | So I started getting subscribers and that began this sort of writing business.

00:26:37.040 | Now the way that end evolved.

00:26:40.320 | So I started writing this newsletter on basically really dense technical topics.

00:26:44.560 | They were eligible for continuing education credits for financial planners.

00:26:48.000 | Now our CFP board organization that oversees the continuing education only allows you to

00:26:56.480 | get continuing education credit for like actual technical topics.

00:26:59.520 | So if you want to write about the business of practice planning, that's off limits.

00:27:02.960 | You have to actually write about like the subject matter expertise areas, taxes, retirement

00:27:07.040 | insurance, system planning, things like that.

00:27:08.640 | But I sort of felt like I had a couple of things to say from time to time about the

00:27:13.760 | business of financial planning as well as I was getting more immersed in that side of

00:27:17.200 | things.

00:27:18.000 | So I decided like, hey, I'm going to make a blog and try this out.

00:27:23.120 | Like I've heard of blogs.

00:27:24.160 | Other people do blogs.

00:27:25.200 | Like our industry had no blogs, like nothing.

00:27:27.760 | It's like, I'm going to try this out.

00:27:31.440 | And so I sort of had this vision in my head, like the newsletter would be the technical

00:27:35.920 | topics and then I would use the blog to sort of voice my own like practice management industry

00:27:41.440 | comments of just stuff that I wanted to put out there, right?

00:27:43.520 | Because that's what you do on a blog.

00:27:44.400 | You just sort of like say things that are on your mind.

00:27:46.000 | So hey, let's try this out.

00:27:47.200 | So I launched that sort of in tandem with the newsletter in 2008.

00:27:54.800 | So the newsletter got some really good early traction.

00:27:57.200 | I was lucky in part I got some really nice support from a guy who'd actually been writing

00:28:03.120 | a newsletter business in the industry for many, many years named Bob Veras.

00:28:06.880 | Writes a very well-known practice management newsletter in the industry.

00:28:10.400 | And he was really supportive of telling me like, you should go do this.

00:28:14.720 | And he said, you know what, if you do it, I'll send a thing out to my, you know, I've

00:28:19.600 | seen your writing.

00:28:20.160 | I know you do good stuff for advisors who want it.

00:28:22.000 | I will send something out to my subscribers, my mailing list that just says, hey, folks,

00:28:26.560 | if you like this, you should check it out.

00:28:28.000 | And so he did.

00:28:29.680 | I got like a really nice initial subscriber bump basically at launch from his support.

00:28:34.000 | So, you know, so that got started.

00:28:39.920 | So the newsletter was off to a great start.

00:28:41.680 | And then I was doing the blogging thing on the side and the blogging was basically going

00:28:45.440 | nowhere.

00:28:45.940 | Like I wasn't getting comments.

00:28:48.800 | I didn't really feel like I was getting any interaction of feedback.

00:28:51.760 | So I'm like, I should install Google Analytics and like figure out what's going on.

00:28:55.120 | So I went and installed Google Analytics.

00:28:57.040 | And now I had like definitive proof that basically no one was coming to read my blog.

00:29:01.920 | So like it wasn't just that it felt like I was releasing content to an echo chamber.

00:29:06.000 | I pretty much had proof that no one was coming to read my blog.

00:29:09.920 | So I actually shut it down.

00:29:12.880 | Like I let it go completely after, you know, six to nine months and basically stopped posting.

00:29:17.600 | I would do like one article every three months because something struck me and I wanted to rant.

00:29:21.200 | But I basically stopped.

00:29:22.320 | And I stopped for almost two years until like the middle of 2010 and watching what frankly

00:29:30.320 | was not new at all, but like the rise of social media.

00:29:33.440 | So really, really watching.

00:29:34.880 | So at that point, LinkedIn was gaining momentum.

00:29:37.120 | Facebook was really gaining momentum.

00:29:38.640 | This Twitter thing had been around for a year or two and was starting to happen more.

00:29:42.080 | And so, you know, another friend of the industry, another person I met through conferences and

00:29:47.760 | associations and all the rest named Bill Winterberg.

00:29:51.120 | So he does technology consulting for advisors in the industry.

00:29:54.880 | Said, you know, Mike, you got to look at this Twitter thing.

00:29:58.000 | Like I think you'd really like it.

00:29:59.120 | You'd really be into it.

00:30:00.080 | I'm like, all right, what the hell?

00:30:00.960 | I'll try out Twitter.

00:30:02.560 | So I joined Twitter and I just started watching a little of what's going on on Twitter and was

00:30:07.840 | like, oh, I kind of see like people do a little chit chat and discussion, but then also just like

00:30:13.360 | they read things and they share them out there.

00:30:15.920 | And I had one of those like eureka moments, light bulb goes off above head, sorts of things.

00:30:22.800 | I was like, okay, wait, I get it now.

00:30:25.760 | You create the content on your site and then you can share and distribute it out through

00:30:31.360 | social media and other people will share it on social media and then it gets shared and

00:30:35.120 | gets out there.

00:30:35.600 | So like my mystery had always been, right, I know how to create content.

00:30:39.360 | Like I've been writing and speaking and doing this stuff for a while now and getting practiced

00:30:42.720 | at it.

00:30:44.160 | But I have no idea how you get it out there.

00:30:46.640 | And so watching social media taking off, it's like, oh, I get it.

00:30:51.200 | You write it, you share it on social media, but other people share it on social media

00:30:54.000 | and then it begins to grow.

00:30:55.120 | And so I kind of re-immersed back in the blog and did that and like, damn, it just started

00:31:00.480 | working.

00:31:01.440 | And like now the Google Analytics said actually people are showing up and every month more

00:31:05.920 | people show up than the people in the prior month and off it went.

00:31:10.000 | And so now four or five years later doing that, it's like basically, I guess, four and

00:31:14.480 | a half years or so since I sort of reinvested into that launch.

00:31:17.920 | All of a sudden now I have, I guess, basically the leading blog site around the industry.

00:31:25.040 | I've kind of come into my own little niche here and just the amount of business opportunities

00:31:30.080 | and things that have spawned off of that are like just blow me away.

00:31:34.240 | Just all the opportunities and things that come in by just making a presence for yourself

00:31:39.280 | and getting it out there and letting people find their way to you.

00:31:41.360 | How much time do you spend reading every week and in the past how much?

00:31:47.440 | And that can be technical reading or just personal reading?

00:31:49.680 | Oh, man.

00:31:51.700 | I spend a good amount of time reading every week, many, many hours worth between just

00:31:59.760 | industry and trade publications and like really keeping up on the beat of everything that's

00:32:03.280 | happening in our world.

00:32:07.280 | Somewhere around book reading as well, I've actually been trying to pair my articles,

00:32:13.120 | websites, blogs, trade publication reading down a tiny bit and dial up just the book

00:32:17.440 | reading a little bit more because if you're going to search the web for content, you pretty

00:32:22.480 | much never reach the bottom of that web.

00:32:24.000 | Absolutely.

00:32:24.500 | So that becomes tough.

00:32:27.360 | But I mean hours a week.

00:32:30.640 | In fact, I got to the point where I realized I spent so many hours every week reading all

00:32:35.840 | these articles and stuff and there's a bunch of junky stuff and then every now and then

00:32:40.480 | it's like, "Wow, this article had a great idea or a great insight."

00:32:43.600 | Then one of the things I ended up launching on the blog was like, "I'm just going to

00:32:47.040 | make the summary of the half dozen or a dozen best articles I read that week, write a little

00:32:51.520 | summary of them and send them out to my readers."

00:32:53.680 | And that's actually become one of my most popular anchor posts to the blog.

00:32:58.000 | Every Friday I post weekend reading for financial planners.

00:33:00.720 | Here's the dozen best articles about our world of financial planning that I read this

00:33:05.120 | week.

00:33:07.120 | And just leveraging like, "Hey, I do all this reading already.

00:33:10.240 | I can be an effective filter for other people who have even less time than I do to read."

00:33:15.360 | But yeah, if you're not in a continuous learning mode, change passes you by pretty

00:33:21.760 | quickly.

00:33:22.240 | So I've led you into a trap here.

00:33:23.520 | Have you ever heard Brian Tracy's little speech on the 1000% formula of increasing

00:33:30.240 | your income by 1000% over 10 years?

00:33:32.160 | I don't think I have.

00:33:33.280 | So in summary, what he says is that you can increase your income by 1000% every 10 years

00:33:38.240 | by increasing your effectiveness and skill by one tenth of one percent each day.

00:33:43.600 | So you make a tiny incremental improvement each day and it compounds over the course

00:33:47.760 | of 10 years to be about 1000%.

00:33:49.760 | Because you're 10 times more effective, then now you're going to have an increase in your

00:33:54.000 | income of probably around 10 times.

00:33:56.720 | And he gives a number of steps to it that were super helpful to me.

00:33:59.520 | It changed my life when I heard it as a teenager.

00:34:01.440 | Step one was reading every day, 30 to 60 minutes.

00:34:03.920 | You read about 50 books a year.

00:34:05.200 | You read 500 books in your field over 10 years.

00:34:07.200 | You're a world-class expert.

00:34:08.720 | Step two was going to at least four conferences a year.

00:34:11.440 | By going to conferences, you become a world-class expert because you hear what's going on at

00:34:15.200 | those conferences.

00:34:16.000 | Step three, and he had other steps, I've added to that writing and disseminating information,

00:34:21.920 | learning to speak and speaking at conferences and just basically building your knowledge

00:34:26.240 | and your impact.

00:34:27.200 | And over time, that happens.

00:34:29.600 | So I've tried to do it intentionally, although it fits and starts.

00:34:33.360 | But I'm curious, would you guess if you look back 10 or so years ago, would you guess that

00:34:37.040 | your income is a higher multiple than what it was 10 or so years ago?

00:34:41.840 | Actually, if I really try to project back and do the math of about where I was, that

00:34:47.760 | 10x multiple is actually probably really close to dead on of how much income in businesses

00:34:56.480 | has grown for me.

00:34:57.440 | And that's particularly stunning for me.

00:34:59.680 | Again, my career track of what had taken me up to that point almost exactly 10 years ago

00:35:05.280 | was I basically had done a very purposeful effort of making sure that I was never actually

00:35:10.400 | in a position where I had to prospect, find business or sell anything because I was terrified

00:35:15.120 | of prospecting.

00:35:15.840 | You and me both.

00:35:16.560 | And so now, when I look at it, it was sort of like wearing my business hat, a huge portion

00:35:23.600 | of what I do to make income is basically come down to creating businesses where I see need

00:35:29.840 | in our industry, which I see a lot of because, as you said, I read a huge amount of stuff

00:35:35.040 | and I go to a zillion conferences.

00:35:36.320 | So I see need and opportunity all over the place.

00:35:38.240 | And then using my platform to help drive business to those businesses of just people that read

00:35:45.200 | my stuff because it's helpful, I hope.

00:35:46.880 | And hey, if you think this is helpful, I have some other businesses that can help you solve

00:35:51.440 | other problems.

00:35:52.160 | And I just hope you'll check them out.

00:35:54.000 | And large numbers become amazing things.

00:35:57.520 | Like I need one hundredth of one percent of all the people who come to my site to do business

00:36:01.600 | with me every month.

00:36:02.400 | And I'm making more money than I ever dreamed of.

00:36:04.800 | So yeah, I would definitely fully validate that.

00:36:11.120 | And particularly, those underpinnings of reading actively, going out to conferences, I'd probably

00:36:20.080 | blend that a little bit to say going out to conferences and or being involved in a membership

00:36:26.640 | association, like whatever the group is for your industry.

00:36:29.120 | For me, it was very much a blend of both that created some of the meaningful impact.

00:36:34.160 | But yeah, that's what drives to craft expertise in your industry, in your space, in your niche,

00:36:43.120 | in whatever it is that you do.

00:36:45.280 | And because so few people do that, it's kind of amazing, sort of like the rarefied error

00:36:53.200 | that you can move up to just by persistently trying to read and take in information and

00:36:58.320 | then share it back out to people.

00:36:59.760 | And it feels so slow in the beginning, but over time it gains momentum and it gains momentum.

00:37:04.400 | And my guess is I would we'll see it.

00:37:06.640 | We'll check back in 10 years, but there's no reason why it can't increase by another

00:37:09.760 | 10x in the next 10 years.

00:37:11.840 | Yeah, I was very lucky coming into it that I got to do a lot of that building process

00:37:21.760 | from a stable base, which was having an ongoing job at an advisory firm.

00:37:28.320 | So I guess the blend, having a stable base, being a little bit of a workaholic.

00:37:33.200 | So I put in my time at the firm.

00:37:36.960 | I put in more than my time at the firm.

00:37:39.520 | I was the first one in and the last one to leave most days.

00:37:42.400 | And then I went home and read and studied and analyzed and educated myself,

00:37:47.360 | got my degrees and designations and such.

00:37:51.360 | But what that meant, the fact that I was doing my work and my time on top of that meant when

00:37:58.400 | the time came for things like going to my firm and saying, "Hey, I got an invitation

00:38:05.120 | for this speaking engagement."

00:38:07.600 | We were doing financial planning for consumers.

00:38:09.840 | I was going to speak at an industry event.

00:38:11.520 | So no one was under any illusions that I was going to go to this event and bring clients

00:38:15.520 | home.

00:38:16.160 | This was not business development for the firm.

00:38:18.240 | The firm was not making money off the fact that I was going to go vanish and go to a

00:38:21.840 | speaking engagement.

00:38:23.040 | They're like, "You know what?

00:38:23.840 | You work your ass off around here.

00:38:26.000 | We can't even make you take all your vacation days.

00:38:28.400 | It probably would be healthy for you if you would just not come into the office for a

00:38:31.840 | day or two.

00:38:32.720 | So go for it.

00:38:33.440 | Knock yourself out."

00:38:35.920 | So the firm was very supportive of me letting me go out and starting to do my speaking and

00:38:40.880 | my other stuff because I was putting in my time.

00:38:43.680 | I was putting my dues with the firm as well.

00:38:45.600 | So I created the opportunity for myself to have the flexibility.

00:38:48.640 | And then the flexibility gave me what at the end of the day was like, I mean, it was a

00:38:53.120 | really slow build.

00:38:54.400 | It was probably two years before I've ever charged anything.

00:38:57.040 | And even when I started charging things, I was charging $100 and $250 for what was basically

00:39:02.160 | a day and a half of travel.

00:39:04.320 | You're not going to build a giant career off of $100 a day and eight hours of travel.

00:39:09.120 | But having that base of both job and frankly salary and doing all of this in addition to

00:39:18.560 | it for a period of time, it gave me the base that I could ease into this slowly and take

00:39:24.480 | the time that it takes to really build an expertise, a niche, a presence, all those

00:39:29.920 | words that we throw around, which I can vouch really actually have impact after a while.

00:39:34.800 | Right.

00:39:35.440 | But it is.

00:39:36.960 | It's a slow building process.

00:39:38.080 | It takes a while to get there.

00:39:40.640 | And I was fortunate that I had a way to kind of bridge that gap from when you're trying

00:39:45.680 | to get started from scratch, from nothing until you get to that point where it's at

00:39:49.360 | least a livable wage, a livable dollar amount for me.

00:39:53.200 | And I guess basically if I look back at that, the livable gap for me was three and a half

00:40:01.440 | years or so from when I first did the first conference speaking engagement, which was

00:40:10.080 | free, but the first conference speaking engagement, the first article until I was like, "I've

00:40:14.640 | got this newsletter service and I've got this speaking thing.

00:40:16.720 | And if I actually mix all that together, I could live off of this money."

00:40:20.080 | Right.

00:40:20.880 | I could, like, I don't even have to do the full-time job anymore.

00:40:24.240 | I could go change things.

00:40:26.160 | And I did.

00:40:26.800 | And that was what kind of started down the next freeing path.

00:40:30.240 | But it was three and a half years.

00:40:32.640 | And actually having launched several different niche businesses in our industry now, I've

00:40:37.360 | been fascinated by this phenomenon that almost all of them find an inflection point in the

00:40:44.400 | third year.

00:40:45.120 | Wow.

00:40:45.680 | Like just the first year you work your ass off.

00:40:48.800 | We're not on television, right?

00:40:51.600 | I can say ass.

00:40:52.320 | You work your ass off for the first year for basically like nothing.

00:40:58.480 | Like nothing's coming in.

00:40:59.680 | You're just building, like you're making connections.

00:41:01.280 | You're meeting people.

00:41:02.160 | They don't know who the hell you are, what you do, why they would trust you, anything.

00:41:05.040 | Then you do it the second year.

00:41:09.040 | So like year one, you get like this tiny handful of clients or engagements or events or

00:41:14.880 | serve people who buy your service, whatever it is that you're offering.

00:41:17.440 | And then year two basically feels not very different from year one.

00:41:24.160 | Like you're continuing to grind.

00:41:26.000 | A slightly smaller handful of people come in because now you get a few people who buy

00:41:30.400 | your service and a few people who kind of kicked your tire last year but didn't really

00:41:34.080 | do anything.

00:41:34.720 | Like, well, you're still around.

00:41:36.400 | It's been another year.

00:41:37.200 | I guess maybe you're legit now.

00:41:38.640 | All right.

00:41:38.880 | Well, like we'll try something.

00:41:42.560 | And then all of a sudden year three, like this transition moment, it's like year one,

00:41:47.360 | they just get to know you.

00:41:48.640 | Year two, they begin to like you.

00:41:51.200 | Year three, they actually trust you.

00:41:53.600 | And when you get through no like and trust and the trust part picks up, all of a sudden

00:41:58.960 | business just starts flowing in.

00:42:00.800 | And so it'd be like year one, you're doing all this grinding.

00:42:03.280 | Year two, you're doing all this grinding and getting maybe a little bit of spillover

00:42:06.000 | effect from year one.

00:42:07.120 | And then suddenly year three, it's like all these people who've been talking to for two

00:42:10.960 | years show up, a whole bunch of new people you see have actually heard of you and are

00:42:14.880 | like, "Oh, yeah, you're legit.

00:42:15.840 | I've heard of you.

00:42:16.400 | You've been around for a couple of years and they want to do business with you very

00:42:18.800 | quickly."

00:42:19.680 | And then all of those people in that pipeline start referring you because now like you're

00:42:23.520 | the guy or the girl, you're the go-to person.

00:42:25.520 | You've been doing this for years.

00:42:26.880 | People know who you are.

00:42:27.760 | And they start referring business in and it just starts exponentially jumping.

00:42:33.680 | And so, you know, like people think of building businesses of like, you know, my growth patterns

00:42:38.080 | can be one, two, three, four.

00:42:39.360 | Like I keep building one layer every year and I find like just one niche business after

00:42:44.400 | another.

00:42:44.900 | They almost all follow what's basically a one, two, five, ten pattern.

00:42:49.920 | - Interesting.

00:42:51.360 | - So, you know, year one, you just do X.

00:42:55.520 | Year two, you basically just do 2X, much of which is last year's X plus just a little

00:42:59.440 | bit that you add on.

00:43:00.560 | But then suddenly in year three, you don't just go one, two, three.

00:43:03.120 | You go like one, two, five.

00:43:04.320 | - Right.

00:43:05.040 | - And then all of a sudden the five doubles to ten because now the thing's getting momentum.

00:43:08.400 | And then now it's just a question of how big is this thing going to start growing and where

00:43:13.600 | is it going to land and can you execute on that well?

00:43:15.520 | - It's fascinating because when I started as a financial advisor, it was exactly that.

00:43:19.520 | I did not have fun until my third year.

00:43:21.440 | And then after my third year, it was like something changed.

00:43:24.320 | And all of a sudden it was people actually said, "Oh, Josh was going to do this for a

00:43:27.920 | while.

00:43:28.160 | He might actually know what he's talking about."

00:43:30.080 | And the fourth year was a radically different experience than the second year.

00:43:33.920 | And now with new business, with radical personal finance, I'm grinding it out for year one.

00:43:38.160 | But we'll see.

00:43:39.440 | I'll report back.

00:43:40.400 | - And I think it's just, I mean, having been through so many of these now, even having

00:43:47.360 | been through them and knowing what the pattern is, it still feels kind of despairing sometimes

00:43:51.760 | in year one for how slow it's growing.

00:43:53.440 | And it still feels despairing in year two for like, "God, I've been working like a year

00:43:58.720 | and a half."

00:43:59.360 | You're halfway through year two of trying to do something like this.

00:44:03.680 | Like a year and a half, like I've been working really hard a really long time and I really

00:44:09.840 | don't feel like there's a lot of momentum yet.

00:44:11.920 | Like this kind of sucks.

00:44:13.440 | - Right.

00:44:13.920 | - Like it's really a grind just like mentally to get yourself into year three.

00:44:20.240 | - Right.

00:44:20.720 | - But you get there and stuff starts showing up.

00:44:24.160 | And now like having a bunch of these that I've been doing even more years, like, and

00:44:29.120 | that like the exponential growth rate doesn't stop after year four either.

00:44:32.400 | Like I can say, having been on the other end of a bunch of these like, and the damn thing

00:44:35.520 | just keeps going.

00:44:36.400 | - It's awesome.

00:44:36.880 | - And you get to your like Brian Tracy thousand percent numbers.

00:44:40.320 | - Right.

00:44:40.400 | - It's amazing.

00:44:42.080 | You know, all those, basically it's compounding effects, right?

00:44:45.600 | - Right.

00:44:45.600 | - It's like, you know, finance world, we love to talk about compound interest, but like

00:44:48.800 | the compounding effects happen in most businesses of that nature.

00:44:52.400 | - And the thing I think we should teach people, so we always use the example to teach compound

00:44:56.640 | interest of the magic penny.

00:44:57.840 | And that's nice.

00:44:58.480 | You do it for 31 days, the double penny is 10 million bucks.

00:45:01.120 | - Yeah.

00:45:01.120 | - It's a massive number.

00:45:02.160 | But what I started teaching clients, I said, go back and look when you're five days in

00:45:06.320 | and when you're 10 days in and this magic penny, you have a grand total of 72 cents.

00:45:10.640 | - Yeah.

00:45:10.960 | - And as most people, they quit or they spend the money or they quit or they spend the money.

00:45:15.280 | And the point is go back and look at how slow it is for the first 15, 20, 25 days.

00:45:21.040 | It's in those last five days that in that example where it makes up the difference.

00:45:26.080 | And that's what you're expressing.

00:45:27.120 | - Yeah, I like that.

00:45:28.560 | That's actually a really good analogy of a way to frame it up.

00:45:31.920 | Like it's so true.

00:45:32.880 | I mean, the challenge of trying to sort of compound your growth, getting something started

00:45:37.840 | for yourself.

00:45:38.320 | I mean, whatever it is, it's your career trajectory.

00:45:41.520 | It's building a business.

00:45:42.560 | It's building some brand platform, writing, blogging, speaking, podcast, like whatever

00:45:46.880 | it is, whatever your endeavor is.

00:45:48.160 | It gets so true that I'm a math geek.

00:45:53.040 | So like I always have to think of it in math terms.

00:45:54.720 | But like when you start compounding growth rates on a really small number.

00:45:58.000 | - Right.

00:45:58.320 | - The growth of a really small number is still a really small number.

00:46:00.880 | - Yeah.

00:46:01.120 | - And it takes a while before the compounding gets to the point where it starts adding up

00:46:06.400 | to material dollars.

00:46:07.680 | But the back end of compounding growth is just extraordinary growth numbers that come on

00:46:12.240 | extraordinary growth numbers.

00:46:13.200 | Like, holy crap.

00:46:13.760 | - It's amazing.

00:46:14.080 | - Where did all this come from?

00:46:15.520 | How did all this happen?

00:46:17.040 | And like truly, I mean, there's the old saying of like, what got you here won't get you there,

00:46:22.640 | which won't move you forward from here.

00:46:27.040 | Which I've certainly like found, lived, experienced.

00:46:29.680 | Like truly, and I really don't mean this in some like self-aggrandizing manner at all,

00:46:35.360 | but like my greatest challenge right now that I've really been struggling with over the

00:46:39.680 | past year and I'm considering to struggle with this year.

00:46:41.920 | Now my problem is that the growth has created so much opportunity.

00:46:47.680 | It's very difficult to choose amongst the opportunities.

00:46:51.200 | And like it just, it leads me to struggle with all sorts of decisions that I never thought

00:46:56.480 | about before of like, I have to care more about how I spend my time because otherwise,

00:47:03.760 | like there are literally a never ending stream of emails of people who contact me, of people

00:47:08.000 | who want help.

00:47:08.880 | And like, it feels bad in many ways.

00:47:11.120 | Like I have to carve up like who I'm going to help and who I'm not.

00:47:14.720 | But like, I can just only help so many people.

00:47:17.920 | And you know, it's led me in the direction now of like trying to create more in different

00:47:22.080 | businesses because I'm so at a personal capacity constraint that I need to create things where

00:47:28.800 | I can shepherd people to a place where they can get the help because I can't do the help.

00:47:32.880 | And I'm even already hitting the next level of it, which is, and I can only manage so

00:47:36.400 | many businesses doing this.

00:47:38.240 | So I need business partners.

00:47:39.360 | I need other people that can drive these businesses so that I can make sure people get to a place

00:47:43.120 | where they get helped and then basically get the hell out of the way.

00:47:45.440 | And like having been a very hands-on person around all the work that I've done for years,

00:47:50.720 | I, you know, to accept over the past year that in virtually everything that we do for

00:47:55.040 | all of our different clients and businesses now, I am the bottleneck in all processes.

00:48:00.880 | I am the one that...

00:48:03.120 | And the problem is you know that, you know, you're supposed to get yourself out.

00:48:05.840 | It's so challenging.

00:48:06.960 | It is so challenging.

00:48:07.760 | So like, I'm, you know, I'm learning the skill of getting the hell out of my own way now.

00:48:11.520 | But like, particularly, I've been someone that's, that was so hands-on everything.

00:48:15.520 | I mean, I'm not very much like roll up my sleeves and dive into my things.

00:48:18.480 | That's how I build all these businesses and kind of this platform for myself that,

00:48:23.760 | you know, just being ready to get out of my own way when it used to like, I mean, literally,

00:48:28.320 | like I go back years ago, like I made a lot of the early point steps in my career because

00:48:34.080 | I was the guy that got this stuff done.

00:48:35.840 | Whenever, when other people would let things fall through the cracks, I was the get stuff done guy.

00:48:41.200 | And now I'm the one that hinders the get stuff done guy.

00:48:45.920 | So like, just even having that whole realization like, oh, now I understand why a lot of our

00:48:51.360 | partners would dump the things on me the way that they did and why all these problems would

00:48:55.200 | crop up the way that they did.

00:48:56.320 | Now I'm on the other side of that, that like productivity line of what it's like building

00:49:02.320 | businesses and like, okay, I'm understanding now why things flow down the way that they

00:49:06.480 | do because when businesses really start gaining momentum for growth, like just the sheer like

00:49:11.920 | capacity limits you hit on your own personal bandwidth and what you can do, like become

00:49:16.400 | very, very noticeable very quickly.

00:49:18.160 | So are you addressing that?

00:49:19.200 | Are you changing your learning and shifting from focusing on technical financial planning

00:49:22.720 | to learning some new management skills?

00:49:24.320 | Or how are you addressing that problem?

00:49:26.000 | Yeah, so it's shifting a few ways.

00:49:28.080 | I'm trying to be a little bit more selective about my time.

00:49:32.400 | And I know, I mean, I've always viewed it this way to some extent, like really starting

00:49:36.880 | to view my time as a resource that is a precious thing to allocate that I really have to

00:49:41.760 | sometimes make hard decisions about allocating.

00:49:44.800 | It's certainly been a driver of reinvesting into my businesses as businesses into people.

00:49:51.920 | So I've been hiring much more of a support and infrastructure around myself of, I started

00:49:59.040 | with a virtual assistant, I started like 10 hours a month or something a few years ago.

00:50:07.040 | And then I started figuring out how to delegate stuff to her.

00:50:10.240 | And I was like, all right, well, this is kind of working.

00:50:12.000 | I'm going to try you five hours a week.

00:50:14.000 | And I was just so used to being hands on everything.

00:50:16.160 | Like, what the heck would I give someone else to do for five hours a week?

00:50:18.720 | I do everything myself.

00:50:19.680 | It's got to be right done my way to be done right.

00:50:24.080 | And frankly, I think the breakthrough even for me on that end is you start viewing time

00:50:28.880 | as this precious resource, you just start converting like the value of your time into

00:50:34.000 | some dollar amounts.

00:50:34.880 | Like if I want to grow myself and my business and do like a Brian Tracy 1000% thing, if

00:50:39.920 | that's your goal, so the rough math, divide what you make in a year by 2000, that's roughly

00:50:46.240 | your hourly rate of what you do for the year.

00:50:49.280 | So 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year of working, you're at about 2000 hours.

00:50:54.000 | So you take what you make for the year divided by 2000, you've got some estimate around your

00:50:57.520 | rate.

00:50:57.920 | So I went through a process of doing that about a year and a half ago.

00:51:01.200 | And then basically said, okay, look, anything, I can hire people for a lower number than

00:51:07.680 | this because my time, you know, value of my time was elevating as the business was going

00:51:12.000 | up.

00:51:12.240 | So hire someone at a lower rate, anything I can find that that person can do, I instantly

00:51:20.240 | make more money in my business by letting it go and letting the other person do it so

00:51:23.920 | that I can spend my time on higher value tasks.

00:51:26.080 | And kind of the secondary breakthrough that came through to me mentally is, you know what,

00:51:30.320 | as you grow your career and your time and your business enough, you get to the point

00:51:35.680 | where like, you know what, even if they don't do it as well as you, I'm like, I'm making

00:51:40.560 | air quotes as though, okay, I mean, when I said not doing as well, for those of you who

00:51:43.920 | are listening, I'm making air quotes right now.

00:51:45.840 | So like, for those of you who don't do as well as you can, because you know, only you

00:51:49.600 | can do everything that you need done perfectly right.

00:51:51.840 | You know, even if they, someone else has to do it and it takes them twice as long, there's

00:51:58.160 | actually enough gap in how you value your time.

00:52:00.160 | That's okay.

00:52:02.320 | And that was sort of the let go moment for me was I had this realization like, you know

00:52:06.880 | what, if I give this prototype to someone else and it takes them twice as long to do

00:52:11.200 | it as it would have taken me to just do it myself, I'm actually still more successful

00:52:16.240 | with that.

00:52:16.880 | And you know what, eventually they do enough times that they learn how to do it, right?

00:52:19.680 | Like we, I think it's certainly me, like I get stuck and like the first time they do

00:52:24.480 | this, they're not going to be nearly as good as me.

00:52:25.920 | So I should just do it.

00:52:27.120 | It's like, you know what, it takes them twice as long, still more successful for me.

00:52:30.480 | And eventually they'll be efficient at it as well.

00:52:32.400 | Like I learned, there was a point where I didn't know what I was doing and I figured

00:52:35.280 | it out and got better.

00:52:36.080 | So they will too.

00:52:36.800 | And so as that's grown, like that's really been, so I've taken a lot of focus around

00:52:43.280 | that over the past year or two of, you know, hire people, I pay them well.

00:52:49.840 | Like I try to make sure that the people that are supporting me are paid well, but still

00:52:54.400 | recognize like if I'm going to keep growing the way that I want to be growing, I need

00:52:57.760 | to set a certain price point on my time and anything where I can pay someone less than

00:53:01.840 | that to support me, I need to let go of that and send it down to them.

00:53:05.680 | So I've been doing a lot of that to try to build out my time and have hired a number

00:53:10.960 | of outsourcing partners and virtual assistant folk for various pieces of what I do.

00:53:16.880 | So some web design, some editing work, some basically like a personal assistant style

00:53:22.640 | person.

00:53:24.560 | So a piece of it has been that just letting go of things and sort of do the whole, you

00:53:28.560 | know, make sure you're spending as much time as possible on your highest, best uses, not

00:53:32.000 | all of which are dollars.

00:53:33.040 | So like that might be getting paid for writing or speaking something, or that might be reading

00:53:37.120 | for which I don't literally get paid, but that's what fuels the whole engine, the knowledge,

00:53:41.360 | the continuous learning and let go as much as possible.

00:53:44.880 | So like that, that's been the starting point that's been helping a little, I'm finding

00:53:48.560 | I'm still like business and opportunities and things are growing faster than that.

00:53:52.880 | And so, you know, now I'm even going through the second round of, you know, I've got some

00:53:57.920 | businesses and things that I do that I feel very personally attached to because I've helped

00:54:02.160 | to build them, but you know, I can only build and be involved in so many things.

00:54:05.760 | Maybe some of these things I just have to let go of entire change, entire business lines

00:54:10.080 | and recognize, you know, maybe this is something my partner can just run with on their own,

00:54:15.360 | or maybe this is a service that I do that, you know, is good dollars for what it is,

00:54:21.680 | but I can't get to the next level by continuing to do it because it's just not going to grow

00:54:25.840 | or scale or build in the way that the other things are.

00:54:28.880 | And again, I found like I can kind of convert this to a, all right, what's really the value

00:54:33.520 | of my time by continuing to do this.

00:54:36.000 | If that number isn't good, then either I need to figure out how can I make the value higher?

00:54:40.320 | How can I, you know, delegate it or shift it to someone else?

00:54:44.080 | And if I can't figure out how to do either of those two things, maybe it's something

00:54:46.880 | that I just need to let go.

00:54:48.080 | Right.

00:54:49.360 | And I suck at letting go.

00:54:50.480 | So this will be my challenge over the next six months is figuring out how to let go of

00:54:56.720 | a thing or two.

00:54:57.360 | You and me both.

00:54:58.320 | I'd like to wrap up by talking for a couple of minutes about financial advisor marketing.

00:55:02.640 | In my years as a financial advisor, I've often heard experienced, successful

00:55:10.640 | financial advisors say, "Marketing doesn't work.

00:55:15.120 | Only prospecting works."

00:55:18.000 | And I'm interested in your take on that comment.

00:55:22.240 | And I'm interested in trends that you see in the industry as comparing marketing and

00:55:26.640 | prospecting.

00:55:27.440 | Oh, man.

00:55:28.240 | Marketing doesn't work.

00:55:29.200 | Only prospecting works.

00:55:30.240 | So, and just as a corollary to that, because I'm going to bash in a moment, so I need to

00:55:36.720 | set it up as a framing point.

00:55:38.400 | So the other version that we hear is like, "Marketing doesn't work.

00:55:41.360 | I just get all my business from referrals."

00:55:42.880 | Sort of the similar version of it.

00:55:47.760 | So like, you know, and financial advisor in my world, I love financial advisors.

00:55:53.680 | I love my peers.

00:55:54.640 | But...

00:55:56.240 | We suck at marketing.

00:56:02.400 | We are terrible marketers.

00:56:04.960 | I know an extraordinary number of very, very successful financial advisors.

00:56:09.440 | And like, I'm sorry, but they succeeded despite themselves.

00:56:17.520 | Not because of themselves and their great ability to build businesses and market and

00:56:20.880 | the rest.

00:56:21.440 | They succeeded by an unbelievable amount of perseverance and grit and chutzpah and all

00:56:26.720 | that stuff that they basically drove through the sheer failings that they were doing along

00:56:31.280 | the way and managed to attract enough people that they got to a viable business.

00:56:34.560 | Their, what should have been a three-year building cycle was a seven-year building

00:56:37.600 | cycle.

00:56:37.920 | But hey, they got to it.

00:56:38.880 | It's great on the back end.

00:56:39.840 | And the compounding still works later, even if you compound more slowly early on.

00:56:44.960 | It's like, there's just an extraordinary number of people to me that like, they got

00:56:48.880 | there in spite of themselves and marketing, not because marketing does or does not work.

00:56:54.800 | And I find like we, I think certainly in our advisory world, we put ourselves in this

00:57:01.680 | trap.

00:57:02.400 | Marketing work, marketing doesn't work.

00:57:04.080 | Therefore, I won't spend anything on marketing.

00:57:06.160 | And at the end of the year, when I don't get any clients off of the almost nothing I

00:57:09.440 | spent on marketing, it's definitive proof that marketing doesn't work.

00:57:12.560 | So like there's this, we do all these studies in the industry of like, where do advisors

00:57:17.520 | get clients and pick your survey, but like 80% of advisors drive the majority of their

00:57:23.280 | new business off of getting referrals.

00:57:25.040 | I'm like, okay, but if you also look at the industry and benchmarking studies, the average

00:57:29.280 | advisor spends less than 2% of their revenues on marketing.

00:57:32.400 | So if you basically, and if you drill down to that, most of that revenue is like, I did

00:57:36.960 | an appreciation event for my clients, which is basically another opportunity to get referrals

00:57:40.160 | off of them.

00:57:40.720 | So like, if the only money you ever spend on marketing is a combination of nothing or

00:57:46.560 | events specifically designed just to drive referrals, and then you say the dominating

00:57:50.640 | portion of all new business comes off of referrals, it may actually simply be because you've

00:57:54.880 | been so horrifically bad at ever executing any form of marketing.

00:57:58.000 | Like referrals is not a best practice because marketing doesn't work.

00:58:01.680 | Referrals is all you have left when you do no marketing.

00:58:04.320 | Right.

00:58:04.640 | Right.

00:58:06.400 | Like, and I think, I think that's very much the trap that we've gotten into certainly

00:58:10.480 | for the huge majority of our industry.

00:58:13.120 | You know, referrals are the referrals are the result of what happens when you don't

00:58:18.080 | have a marketing process, not proof that marketing is, doesn't work for our industry.

00:58:23.440 | Now, that being said, marketing is hard.

00:58:27.200 | Marketing takes sustained effort.

00:58:29.280 | Marketing takes a targeted focus.

00:58:30.880 | We're, we're really not execute.

00:58:32.560 | We're not well educated and trained about how to execute marketing effectively in the

00:58:36.560 | first place.

00:58:37.760 | I think that actually the biggest challenge for advisors, not with saying how much I just

00:58:41.680 | like ranted about the fact that we don't spend anything on marketing and do anything

00:58:44.960 | on marketing.

00:58:45.840 | Frankly, most advisors, they did start spending money on marketing, it wouldn't work.

00:58:49.120 | And the reason it wouldn't work is so many advisors, the end of the day are basically

00:58:53.920 | generalists.

00:58:54.400 | I do anything for everyone who comes in my door who can afford to pay my fees or willing

00:58:58.240 | to pay my fees.

00:58:58.960 | Like you can't, you can't market that.

00:59:02.960 | Like, what are you going to do?

00:59:04.000 | Hey, if you can fog mirrors and have money, I can work with you.

00:59:08.080 | Like nobody resonates with that marketing, right?

00:59:10.880 | Right.

00:59:11.200 | Like, oh, I fog a mirror and have money.

00:59:12.960 | I should work with this guy.

00:59:13.840 | That'd be brilliant.

00:59:14.640 | He has years of experience.

00:59:15.760 | So like until advisors get more targeted in who they try to serve, I don't know that

00:59:23.600 | they can necessarily be effective in marketing anyways.

00:59:25.920 | Cause when you're a generalist, basically you're going to compete against other generalist

00:59:29.120 | marketing, which basically means you're going to compete with either large national

00:59:32.720 | brands that actually can spend, you know, extraordinary seven, eight, nine figure dollar

00:59:38.560 | amounts on marketing, you know, national insurance companies, wire houses, major financial

00:59:43.680 | services firms.

00:59:44.480 | And you're going to compete against, uh, basically consumer publications who say, oh,

00:59:49.360 | and if you don't want one of those large national brands, we'll show you how to do it

00:59:52.160 | yourself.

00:59:52.640 | So, you know, money magazine and Kipler magazine and Yahoo finance and CNN and all that.

00:59:56.640 | So between massive publications that try to give people information about how to do it

01:00:00.560 | themselves and massive financial services companies that do general broad-based marketing.

01:00:04.880 | Yeah.

01:00:05.760 | Like you basically have no chance to stand out as an affidavitual advisor doing marketing

01:00:09.520 | by just trying to be a generalist and spending money on marketing.

01:00:12.720 | Right.

01:00:12.960 | So, so then you get back to what really is a crossroads of two choices.

01:00:18.240 | Either you can just not do marketing and try to succeed by the sheer perseverance of finding

01:00:22.080 | how many hands you can shake and prospecting until you get enough clients, which frankly

01:00:26.640 | is what most people have done historically.

01:00:28.880 | Or you acknowledge that if you really want to be successful, you actually have to have

01:00:33.840 | some kind of specialization, some kind of niche, some sort of target market where you

01:00:37.040 | can actually try to communicate with a group in a much more targeted manner, reach them

01:00:41.600 | effectively and actually have a differentiated message.

01:00:45.200 | And I think that's where we're starting to see certainly the advisory world going forward

01:00:50.720 | now.

01:00:50.960 | It's still slow, but I think there's this growing recognition of like being a general,

01:00:55.680 | being an undifferentiated generalist is really becoming a problem.

01:00:58.480 | You got to find some way to specialize, niche, be different.

01:01:01.680 | And frankly, the problem I see for a lot of people, even in trying to do that transition,

01:01:06.160 | going back all the way to what we were talking about earlier, if you're going to go down

01:01:09.680 | that road, we're right back into the three years it takes to be known, liked and trusted.

01:01:13.760 | And that's a really long time.

01:01:14.880 | And especially if you get like the quick hits off of not that they're that quick, like the

01:01:21.040 | quick hits off of prospecting.

01:01:22.400 | So you're like, "Hey, I can do all this niche thing and feel like I'm going nowhere for

01:01:26.560 | three years, or I can go work my ass off in prospect, but at least I found a client or

01:01:30.320 | two."

01:01:30.560 | We get addicted to the faster feedback of what still is rather ineffective prospecting,

01:01:37.200 | but we get addicted to the feedback of the prospecting that we don't want to do the slow

01:01:40.720 | build, even though the slow build is the one that has the big payoff on the back end.

01:01:44.960 | So people that I see build their business off prospecting, it's a one, two, three, four

01:01:49.120 | growth rate.

01:01:49.680 | When I see people that build it off niches and specialization, it's a one, two, five,

01:01:53.920 | 10 growth rate.

01:01:55.040 | And so it doesn't feel like it's doing any better to do the niche thing.

01:01:58.720 | In fact, frankly, it might even be slightly slower on the front end.

01:02:02.640 | The payoff is much bigger on the back end, but it's hard to remove ourselves from the

01:02:06.240 | addiction of like, "I just feel like I've got control.

01:02:08.720 | If I go out there, beat the streets, I know I'm doing some activity, I'm prospecting,

01:02:11.920 | and then I got a client, so here's proof that it worked."

01:02:14.160 | Right.

01:02:14.400 | Right.

01:02:14.560 | Do you see in here in 2015, what do you see as some effective ideas that people can implement

01:02:23.200 | to how to just get started with a marketing plan for themselves or their firm?

01:02:28.000 | I mean, to me, for advisors or really anybody who wants to do anything in building a business,

01:02:40.160 | particularly like a service business, a personal brand style business for yourself, you got

01:02:43.840 | to decide who you're going to work with and who you're not going to work with.

01:02:46.560 | Right.

01:02:46.720 | Until there's a strategy about who you want to reach, your marketing dollars, efforts,

01:02:52.480 | time, all the rest of that just aren't going to do anything.

01:02:54.400 | Because if you don't know who you're going to reach, you're not going to do something

01:02:56.160 | that moves you in the direction of reaching them, so you're not making progress.

01:03:00.000 | I mean, it really starts with that end, which means...and most advisors don't want to do

01:03:06.240 | that and don't want to go there.

01:03:07.760 | And again, this is even really specific to advisors.

01:03:10.720 | I see this across clients we have in the industry.

01:03:13.760 | I see this across small businesses.

01:03:16.800 | It's a mentality shift around just recognizing that while it feels good to be able to do

01:03:26.080 | business with absolutely anybody you meet, I'm a generalist, I can work with anyone,

01:03:29.440 | therefore I can do business with anyone that I meet.

01:03:31.520 | The people you meet don't really want to do business with you because it doesn't feel

01:03:36.320 | like you're someone who's specialized in solving their problems and issues.

01:03:40.320 | And when you take a narrower focus, yes, strictly speaking, you will turn away a lot of people

01:03:46.080 | who don't fit your niche, but you will be able to do business and be much more likely

01:03:51.200 | to do business with everybody you find that does hit your niche.

01:03:54.240 | And so, to put it in sort of our industry terms, you can go out there and meet 10 people

01:04:03.360 | and have a 10% close rate and get one client, or you can go out there and meet a bunch of

01:04:09.760 | people and have a 10% close rate and get one client.

01:04:12.320 | And you can go out there with a focused niche where you can only work with 20% of the people,

01:04:16.000 | but you close them all.

01:04:17.120 | And so, you only meet two people, but you close them both.

01:04:19.920 | And so, it feels scary because you went from 10 prospects to two, but you went from one

01:04:25.280 | client to two.

01:04:27.040 | So, you're going to have fewer prospects, but you actually double your growth rate.

01:04:30.560 | And it's that phenomenon of the virtue of the niche and the focus and the specialization

01:04:37.440 | that you have, and you're going to drastically reduce the number of prospects that you have,

01:04:43.200 | but you will drastically increase the number of clients that you have because, in essence,

01:04:47.280 | if you go into the math to it, your close rates go up dramatically more than your prospecting

01:04:51.440 | rate goes down, and you end out ahead.

01:04:54.480 | And I can speak to it having done a whole bunch of niche businesses over the years.

01:04:58.720 | It's really true.

01:05:01.280 | You close people so much more when they feel like you're special to them and unique to

01:05:07.360 | you.

01:05:08.360 | And you get way more business.

01:05:09.360 | And frankly, you get way more business for less work because you don't have to spend

01:05:12.320 | as much time on the nine prospects that don't do business with you.

01:05:18.320 | I spend a whole lot of time on people who do business with me and remarkably little

01:05:22.520 | time on people who don't.

01:05:23.840 | Because if you're not into my thing, by the time you read my blog and my website and all

01:05:27.440 | the other stuff that I do, I view those as screening tools.

01:05:31.040 | Self-pruning.

01:05:32.040 | If you're looking self-slept, self-not-to-be-a-client.

01:05:34.040 | I'm going to make my stuff as dense as possible for you because if you don't like that, you

01:05:38.680 | won't like me.

01:05:39.680 | But if you keep reading that and you like that, then you're going to love the rest of

01:05:42.680 | the stuff that I provide.

01:05:45.200 | And I really view much of my website and my tools like they're not magnets to bring people

01:05:51.320 | in per se.

01:05:54.240 | They're like pruning opportunities to screen people out.

01:05:57.960 | So the only people who really come all the way through the pipeline are people who really

01:06:01.840 | feel a connection to me and want to do business with me, in which case I would love to do

01:06:05.240 | business with them in any way that I can.

01:06:07.040 | Are advisors waking up to this change?

01:06:11.080 | I'm not sure that they are.

01:06:12.840 | I think advisors are waking up to the fact that the generalist thing, I can work with

01:06:19.600 | anyone and do anything so I've got to cast my net as wide as possible.

01:06:23.040 | I think they're waking up to the fact that that's a problem.

01:06:26.900 | They're seeing more people.

01:06:27.900 | They're not necessarily getting more business.

01:06:29.560 | I know lots and lots of advisors that'll say, "I work so much harder than I used to even

01:06:33.880 | to try to get clients, find clients, prospect, find a way to prospect for them.

01:06:38.040 | No more do not call lists.

01:06:39.400 | Everybody's more closed off."

01:06:41.480 | All the challenges, prospecting's clearly gotten harder than it used to be and getting

01:06:44.460 | results from it is harder than it used to be.

01:06:47.720 | So I think there's this growing recognition that the way we've done things is not as effective

01:06:52.480 | as it used to be.

01:06:53.820 | And I hear that everywhere.

01:06:54.820 | "I used to seminar market.

01:06:56.080 | It doesn't work as well anymore.

01:06:57.080 | I used to cold call.

01:06:58.080 | It doesn't work.

01:06:59.080 | I don't know how people have built their business off cold calling.

01:07:00.640 | It doesn't work as well anymore."

01:07:02.280 | There's all these things that we know used to work that didn't really work anymore, all

01:07:05.960 | of which I think are expressions of this problem of the denser and the more crowded the marketplace

01:07:10.880 | gets, the less it works to just be a generalist.

01:07:13.120 | You'll get prospects but they won't be clients and it's hard to even get good prospects.

01:07:18.240 | But I'm not sure.

01:07:19.520 | I don't think very many advisors at all have really gotten to what you have to do with

01:07:24.600 | the next step, which really I think is kind of a leap of faith.

01:07:29.720 | It's one I've done.

01:07:30.720 | I can vouch that it works, but really kind of this leap of faith of if you take a greater

01:07:35.800 | focus and you accept that you're going to have far fewer prospects, you can do business

01:07:40.920 | with so many more of them that you still end up with more business in the end.

01:07:45.520 | And it's that transition I don't think we've gotten there yet.

01:07:48.240 | And the reality is no advisor can serve 5,000 clients.

01:07:52.600 | You can serve 150, 150 somewhere.

01:07:56.600 | If that, I mean, that's always to me been one of the comic things about how many advisors

01:08:02.120 | fear casting a narrower target net of like, but if I narrow it down, will I be able to

01:08:07.920 | get enough people to work with?

01:08:09.800 | You can't work with them all.

01:08:11.600 | You can't work with the close.

01:08:12.600 | I mean, I know a huge number of advisors that have fantastic careers and make as much money

01:08:18.040 | as they need to support themselves, their family, their kids, their retirement, everything

01:08:20.920 | else with like 50 to 100 of their top quality clients.

01:08:24.560 | That's all they don't even need more than that.

01:08:26.880 | Right.

01:08:27.880 | Like you're like there's 300 plus million people in this country and you only need 50

01:08:34.800 | of them to have a good business and you're worried about being too narrow?

01:08:38.040 | Like seriously?

01:08:39.040 | I mean, I like I met a guy out there.

01:08:44.120 | He specializes with bass fishermen because you know, all fishermen would be too broad.

01:08:50.680 | Okay.

01:08:51.680 | Bass fishermen.

01:08:54.840 | He grew up on a lake.

01:08:55.840 | He used to be involved in bass fishing tournaments when he was young.

01:08:58.400 | He got involved in that community.

01:09:00.320 | I had no idea, but apparently bass fishing has like million dollar prize purses.

01:09:04.160 | Like they're big tournaments in bass fishing.

01:09:07.120 | And when people win prizes in tournaments, he's the guy.

01:09:10.280 | Right.

01:09:11.280 | He's the guy.

01:09:12.280 | He's the guy that everybody calls.

01:09:13.280 | He's the guy everybody knows in that community.

01:09:15.000 | And so, you know, he's like 30 something years old and manages something like a hundred million

01:09:18.700 | dollars and 90% of his clients are bass fishermen.

01:09:22.880 | It's amazing.

01:09:24.320 | So like, I'm like, you know, if you can build a wonderfully successful practice with bass

01:09:28.200 | fishermen, I'm sorry, but like, you know, good luck coming up with a narrower niche

01:09:32.140 | than that.

01:09:33.140 | That that wouldn't work.

01:09:34.240 | Right.

01:09:35.240 | Like it's it's because we need so few people.

01:09:38.200 | You know, like if I was trying to build a business and I'm some large national firm

01:09:41.960 | and like I need something that gets at least 10,000 new clients a year or a hundred thousand

01:09:46.280 | or millions if I'm a tech company, right, like the whole all the equation, the math

01:09:51.160 | changes and everything looks different.

01:09:52.700 | You have to tackle in a different way.

01:09:54.400 | But in a world where like I just need 50 to 100 top quality clients to have an amazing

01:09:59.940 | life and business and career, you like you can't go to too narrow.

01:10:05.320 | Right.

01:10:06.320 | Right.

01:10:07.320 | Like you don't even have to say you're in the I mean, I know people who have made niche

01:10:09.620 | businesses like I just work with expatriates who are being repositioned from the US to

01:10:14.480 | a particular country in Germany, in Europe or something.

01:10:18.720 | And like that's their niche, just cross national expatriates between the US and Germany.

01:10:24.280 | And you know, there may not be a ton of them, but there are a few.

01:10:27.560 | They do tend to be in rather high paying positions.

01:10:30.000 | They're often executives at companies.

01:10:31.580 | They have very unique specialized problems.

01:10:33.380 | How do you navigate like German tax law and US tax law?

01:10:38.320 | Amazing niche.

01:10:39.320 | And like, I mean, I know one guy that does this like he hardly sees any of his clients.

01:10:44.200 | They're a quarter of the way around the world.

01:10:46.680 | So like you need 50 to 100 people, not even just out of the 300 million Americans, you

01:10:50.760 | need 50 to 100 people out of the what are we at like 7 billion on the planet?

01:10:55.280 | Exactly.

01:10:56.280 | And that's the shift that just it seems people don't see.

01:10:59.840 | Yes, in the old days when you only could maybe work in your geographic area face to face,

01:11:04.880 | how would you find 50 people that were bass fishermen in one town?

01:11:08.380 | There's one guy and he's the one who doesn't win the tournament.

01:11:11.280 | But in a world where you can instantly connect with anyone across the world, it's game changing.

01:11:17.600 | Yeah.

01:11:18.600 | And to me, like the, you know, I guess like it's come at the right time for us, you know,

01:11:23.560 | the good fortune of the world and how it evolves.

01:11:28.040 | Like to me, the the rise of the Internet and just sort of everything around how we can

01:11:33.280 | find and connect with people online and just find information and find service providers

01:11:36.840 | and find experts and all these different things.

01:11:39.640 | You know, the Internet is the enabler for niche and specialization of work for advisors

01:11:45.240 | or really any industry or business going forward that like that's what makes it feasible to

01:11:51.840 | find the 50 human beings on the planet that fit your target clientele.

01:11:56.740 | And you can actually get all 50 of them.

01:11:59.440 | In a way that you just couldn't before when you had you had to do it one to one face to

01:12:03.880 | face prospecting because there was no other way that people were going to find you.

01:12:07.160 | Right.

01:12:08.160 | Well, Michael, thank you for making the time and thank you for all you do for the advisor

01:12:11.280 | community.

01:12:12.280 | My pleasure.

01:12:13.280 | One young advisor to someone who's living a few more years down.

01:12:15.400 | I've really benefited from your work and I know you work a lot and I thank you for it

01:12:19.200 | because it's been very helpful to me.

01:12:21.080 | Happy to help.

01:12:22.080 | Hope it's food for thought.

01:12:23.080 | Now, here's the takeaway that I'd like you to take from this interview.

01:12:27.720 | What do you need to be doing to set up the circumstances so that your career can be advanced

01:12:33.240 | in ways similar to Michael's?

01:12:36.780 | Because what he did, maybe by accident, maybe not, who knows if that was almost a false

01:12:41.600 | humility.

01:12:42.600 | What happens is in our society, if, for example, if I came on here and said, "Every action

01:12:47.180 | that I've taken over the course of the last decade of my life was very carefully calculated

01:12:51.640 | to provide the maximum effect," that would sound a little bit strange to you.

01:12:59.760 | So it would sound a little bit scheming to many people.

01:13:02.800 | So often we don't do that.

01:13:04.120 | And by the way, I'm not accusing Michael or anybody of shading the truth.

01:13:08.000 | We just have a more positive memory of ourselves usually in our past successives and we try

01:13:14.960 | to downplay them.

01:13:16.240 | So I did well in school, but it came easy for me instead of saying, "Yeah, I worked

01:13:21.000 | these 18 hours to study for every test," or whatever the example is in your situation.

01:13:25.060 | So I'm sure that it was probably a little bit accidental, but I'm also sure that it

01:13:29.200 | was probably also just that Michael has put in a lot of hours of hard work.

01:13:35.080 | So the key is the things that have been effective for him, can you take some lessons from those

01:13:40.160 | and apply them to your life?

01:13:43.460 | Can you apply some of his work ethic to your own situation?

01:13:47.680 | Maybe make some time to go and learn who the leaders are in your industry and attend those

01:13:52.000 | conferences and develop a subject matter expertise in a specific area that's useful in your world

01:13:59.160 | and then share that with others.

01:14:01.800 | You might share it in the form of written content in blogs or writing on industry magazines.

01:14:06.720 | You need to develop your writing skills, so it might be good to start with a blog.

01:14:09.640 | You don't have to get permission there and that's what might get you broader distribution

01:14:13.520 | down the road.

01:14:14.680 | You might want to develop it with podcasting or with speaking or with a YouTube channel

01:14:18.920 | or with whatever other new technology comes down the pike.

01:14:25.200 | Whatever you choose, though, just know that you don't have to sit around and wait for

01:14:28.360 | things to happen by accident.

01:14:30.440 | You can put the work in that makes it more likely that you'll be able to achieve the

01:14:34.720 | results that you're looking for.

01:14:38.080 | Other thing I would just say, notice of Michael's story.

01:14:40.160 | I'll tell him and I will tell you about him and you would find this if you study his work.

01:14:45.960 | Michael is one of the most diligent, hardest working people I know of.

01:14:49.820 | He is consistent, he is prolific, he works hard.

01:14:55.420 | To me that's comforting because I'm not sure that I can ever be really confident in talent.

01:15:00.920 | Some people seem to have a built in talent.

01:15:04.880 | Some people seem to have innate ability.

01:15:07.040 | But personally for me, I've never really been all that confident in my built in talent or

01:15:11.560 | in my innate ability.

01:15:13.160 | I've always taken comfort from watching how hard some other people work and recognize

01:15:17.000 | that though I might not have natural skill, though I might not have natural ability, I

01:15:22.240 | can choose to work as hard as I am able to work.

01:15:26.260 | And then in time I might get some results.

01:15:28.680 | I don't have to compare my results to someone else after all.

01:15:31.640 | Somebody else might have had a 10 year head start on me.

01:15:34.920 | Michael is certainly more influential in the financial advisor space than I am, but that's

01:15:39.040 | okay.

01:15:40.040 | He's been working at it for 15 years and I don't need to worry about that.

01:15:43.760 | I can only just focus on controlling the things that I can control and ignore those things

01:15:48.360 | that I can't control.

01:15:50.880 | But I can choose how hard I work.

01:15:52.600 | I can choose to show up.

01:15:54.280 | I can choose to be consistent.

01:15:56.240 | I can choose to work hard to create interesting thoughts and useful information to share with

01:16:00.680 | other people.

01:16:01.680 | And then I can just simply do my bit.

01:16:04.920 | And then I can just simply choose to apply that over enough time for hopefully for me

01:16:11.000 | to get results.

01:16:13.840 | That's it.

01:16:14.840 | That's the primary things I wanted to share with you today.

01:16:15.840 | I hope that you enjoyed this interview.

01:16:17.720 | I hope it was helpful to you.

01:16:19.200 | I certainly enjoyed having a chance to talk with Michael and I encourage you to check

01:16:21.960 | out the body of his work at Kitsis.com.

01:16:23.640 | If you have a chance to see him speak or read any of his books or read any of his work,

01:16:27.320 | I would encourage you to check it out.

01:16:28.600 | For those of you who are interested in the very technical side of financial planning,

01:16:31.760 | it's the best online resource that I know of to help you answer some of your more technical

01:16:36.680 | questions.

01:16:37.960 | If all you did was read through the archives of his blog, you would really have an excellent

01:16:44.040 | foundation for your knowledge.

01:16:46.840 | Thank you to those of you who are patrons of the show.

01:16:49.080 | The Patreon campaign is going well as of today as I record this, February 17, 2015.

01:16:56.080 | We currently have 37 patrons total of the show and $378 per month of monthly pledges.

01:17:02.020 | Our first goal is $2,000 per month and when we get to $2,000 a month, we will replace

01:17:06.920 | the intro music.

01:17:08.760 | Yes, that intro music.

01:17:11.040 | Although this is kind of the outro music.

01:17:12.280 | I might just replace the intro music and keep this as the outro music because I like to

01:17:15.680 | get dancing in the middle of the day whenever I do this and music is generally good for

01:17:19.240 | that.

01:17:20.240 | But that's our initial goal.

01:17:21.240 | We're almost 25% of the way there.

01:17:22.240 | I'd say we're about 20% of the way there.

01:17:24.120 | So if you want to get there quickly, basically, let's see.

01:17:29.200 | If one third of the audience contributed a buck a month, we would be at $2,000 a month.

01:17:35.160 | So you can do the math from there.

01:17:36.160 | But if every member of the audience contributed, well, my math is messed up.

01:17:41.280 | If you contributed a couple bucks a month or three bucks a month, we'd be done and we'd

01:17:44.360 | be at $6,000 a month.

01:17:47.160 | It's kind of sad when a financial advisor can't do live math.

01:17:52.400 | Thank you also to those of you who have been leaving reviews on the new apps.

01:17:54.920 | If you'd like to listen to the show on your smartphone, just go to the App Store and download

01:17:58.920 | it.

01:17:59.920 | You can find it in the iTunes App Store, in the Android Google Play App Store, Windows

01:18:04.000 | Media App Store and also in the Amazon App Store as well.

01:18:08.880 | Thank you for leaving reviews on that app.

01:18:10.160 | I appreciate that.

01:18:11.840 | Thank you for spreading the word about the show.

01:18:13.080 | If you find the content to be helpful, I just appreciate that so much.

01:18:15.920 | I know many of you will suggest the content in a forum or suggest it in an email to a

01:18:20.400 | friend and that type of information is so helpful.

01:18:22.960 | Those are the referrals that really matter.

01:18:24.320 | Tell a friend.

01:18:25.320 | Just tell them, "Check the App Store," and they can learn how to get rich and stay rich

01:18:29.800 | and how to do it in an efficient way.

01:18:31.520 | That's it.

01:18:32.520 | I'm out.

01:18:33.520 | Thank you for listening to today's show.

01:18:38.840 | If you'd like to contact me personally, my email address is Joshua@RadicalPersonalFinance.com.

01:18:46.120 | You can also connect with the show on Twitter @RadicalPF and at Facebook.com/RadicalPersonalFinance.

01:18:53.500 | This show is intended to provide entertainment, education and financial enlightenment, but

01:19:00.360 | your situation is unique and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything

01:19:06.640 | about you.

01:19:08.120 | Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you find to be caring, competent and trustworthy

01:19:16.720 | and consult them because they are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your

01:19:23.400 | specific goals and provide specific answers to your questions.

01:19:28.960 | I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person

01:19:34.120 | and I make mistakes.

01:19:35.880 | If you spot a mistake in something I've said, please help me by coming to the show page

01:19:40.320 | and commenting so we can all learn together.

01:19:43.720 | Until tomorrow, thanks for being here.

RPF0153-Michael_Kitces