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Jamie  

Y’all planning for this? Welcome back TPR Nation and this is Jamie Shilanski in an episode of Worlds to Conquer and today we are going to have a phenomenal conversation about not taking your foot off of the gas pedal. Because a lot of times people out there are like, well I just didn’t do it because X, Y and Z and what they don’t realize is that they didn’t take their foot off the gas pedal and go into cruise control. What they did was they slammed on the brakes, they absolutely slammed on the brakes. And if you stay with me if you listen to this podcast, I am going to share with you why it is so important that you cannot opt out of doing this and I’m also going to give you some of my time blocking hacks to make sure that I’m always staying ahead. I’m always ahead of the curve. So ahead of the curve. It’s almost a sphere. So let’s dive in and talk about it today. Now what I’m referencing here, and this is talking about our marketing and our content calendar, but one of the things that we do as a firm is in October of every year we do business planning goal setting. So we really set really clear objectives about what we want to achieve as a firm, what we want to do as independent financial advisors, our relationship managers and our operations team members. This ties into a lot of the professional development, the coaching the five year plan and all of those things. But when we set that out, that also means that that’s a lot of work. God bless that we live in a world of abundance, but that doesn’t mean that prospects are falling out of the sky like manna from the heavens and bang, you got to come in. There’s a lot of things that are out there competing for people’s attention today. I mean, I think they saw the average attention span individuals now is less than 30 seconds. All the social media, all of the devices, all of the media out there, and it radio and sound and TV and streaming, always always competing for our attention. To fill our heads with noise constantly. And so when it comes to marketing, we have to be hyper intentional and focused at what we are trying to achieve. So we did get lost in the masses. So at Shilanski and Associates our RIA up in Anchorage, Alaska, we have a very specific marketing channel that we run and is called planning your federal retirement which was one of our subsidiaries. It is our niche marketing in which we do financial planning for federal employees under the Federal Employee Retirement System. Now this started back in 2008. And then I got involved in 2010 when my brother as he was trying to kick this off and we started this and pacing amazing, a newsletter called first federal fat checks. And so we will go out there and we will do something incredibly candid which is just just this is going to blow you away. When I tell you where we get most of our inspiration from marketing. Get a pencil out get a pencil get a piece of paper because it’s gonna blow your mind. We ask the people we want to reach what they want information on. And then we do something incredible. We listen. And we write down their question verbatim and we don’t do is we don’t tell them oh, but what you really mean is x. We don’t tell somebody that says hey, I’ve got a lot of questions about Windfall Elimination provisions and go oh, well, really what you’re asking about is survival benefits. We don’t do that what we say is great, I would love to answer your question about Windfall Elimination provisions. And while we’re talking about that subject can I also mentioned some of the facts about survivor benefits that a lot of federal employees may not be aware of? Oh my gosh, so yeah, it’d be great because really, that’s what I’m trying to get down to in the heart. Awesome, fantastic. One of the great pieces of advice I got from a coach and this is called active listening. Oh man. Here’s here’s one for you try it. If you’re listening to this is Thursday. So Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Try to do this all weekend. When somebody says something to you repeat back to them exactly what they said. So you go home, your spouse says hey, you know I’m kind of frustrated because you know, the laundry is overwhelming and I’m the only one in the house and nobody else is helping me get this done. And so your natural response is okay, fine. I’ll do a little laundry. What do you need done? We tow it. Let me get it done. There’s a nail I’m a hammer. Let’s fix it. Instead, you say to your spouse, what I hear you saying to me is you feel like there’s a lot of laundry and you’re the only one that’s keeping everything running along and whatever they said verbatim, spit it right back to them what I heard you say was and repeat it. And all of a sudden this causes the person that speaking to stop and reflect on what they said. And they might come back with something like well, I know you’re busy at work and I’m just home with the kids all the time but I feel really exhausted because it takes so much energy to get this you know house in line and when you come home from work, you’re done for the working day, but I’m not I don’t get a break. Okay, what I hear you saying is you don’t get a break from your job as a stay at home spouse, and then you open up this dialog and it gives you an opportunity for them to really think about what they’re trying to express to you and then for you to hear it by pausing yourself and not just go if you’re anything like me going into into solution mode. Gosh knows my spouse and I wish it would have we’ve been together 20 years and I wish I would have known this on day one. And but we got a good system now we’ve really really dialed it in. It helps the kids are grown because God bless kids but they cause a lot of fighting in the household. Especially because one you know what do they always say ask mom then ask dad if you don’t get the right answer. And so we have a lot of that going on. But we’ve dialed that in with each other now. And when my spouse comes to me, I’m such a problem solver. I’m such a problem solver. Like I jump into problem solving mode. I love it. I’m happiest when there are fires to put out and I’ve got things to do. Right I’m like yeah, where do you need me I want to be a tool I want to be of service help me help you. And so when I jump into that mode, that’s not always what my spouse wants. They don’t want me to jump into boss mode. They don’t want me to problem solve, what they want is to be heard. And so I will often say solver spouse, they’ll come out. They’ll say hey, I’m really frustrated. This is what happened at work or here’s what happened on the river today. And they’re just so upset with it. And I’ll stop and I’ll say spouse or solve and then they get to tell me spouse and I’m like cool and all just listen. Now. I’m I’m always eager to jump in and solve things which is hard for me to go into just spouse mode. So I will try to make sure that all my electronics, if I’m on my iPad, I’ll close it push it away from me. If my phone is sitting there, I’ll turn it on silent. I will push these things away from me so that I can go into engaging listening mode. Now because I’m not always great at listening to the old story before jumping into solving mode, even when my spouse put me in spouse gear to just listen and commiserate with them. One little hack and certainly hasn’t helped my winter weight but I’ve just started taking a little bite of something. I’ll give myself a drink or I’ll get a little something to eat and I’ll remind myself to just be quiet and listen in those situations. And so if you’re anything like me, you to have to come up with some total hack. Maybe it’s not the best resource, but you can find something to make sure that you’re not going into solver mode when somebody’s asking you to be in spouse mode. So whatever little tricks and tips you have to be an active listener, I would love to hear them lifestyle@theperfectria.com. You can always tag us on LinkedIn. That’s where most of our social content hangs out at. But if you have a tip or trick to be a better active listener, I am all ears because I struggle with it so hard because I’m so excited to race to the end of the conversation to raise to the point of being able to solve something that I’m not always great at pumping those brakes and slowing down.  And so when we ask the prospect or clients the questions, we repeat it back and just like they said it now I’m repeating it back because I’m also capturing it for content. I want to know exactly what they’re asking me how they asked in their words. Why because that’s the question if they have other people are going to have it also. The important part about using their vocabulary and their words is that we are all guilty of using industry jargon. We are. We are all guilty of using it constantly because we’re in this is where we live. This is where we eat. This is where we breathe. And as that goes on, we get more and more disconnected from how consumers are hearing things. I say IRA, but do you know how many clients say IRA to me constantly. I say IRA because it’s an acronym for individual retirement arrangement. You know what clients call it my individual retirement account. So I’m always surrounded by those little nuances. And I want to make sure I’m communicating with the people that I’m trying to reach in the language they’re speaking. So when I repeat that question back to them, I’m having an opportunity to pump my brakes, slow down, listen, make sure I’m capturing it. And now I’m gonna go write content around that. Now if they’re using the term incorrectly, like most people, they say, Oh, I don’t have a Roth, but I do have this post tax retirement account. All right, strong probability it’s going to be a Roth but I don’t know that until I have a statement. And so if we start using those kind of languages, and we started saying, Great, can you tell me a little bit more about that? Let me see this. And then I’ll still use the terms they use my post tax account. And then I’ll start also inserting we call this a rod that was actually under Senator Roth. Maybe tell us something a little anecdotally. So that brings them into those terms and terminology and jargon. It is my responsibility as professional to speak their language. In fact, I just had this happen when I went to go pick up my truck I got to drive a Chevy Silverado, always have since I was 16. And one of the things I got a ton to cover for it because we’re just getting pounded with winter storms, the last couple of years. So I’ve never had one before, went and got one, I needed a pitch receiver and so I was talking to the guy and I said hey, do you guys sell any receivers? And he like looked at me and he said you need the whole receiver or and I was like, oh man total girl moment to do he then hit the part I slide in and out. Do you have the one with the three balls on it? So that way I can turn it in based on the trailer size. And and it was great. This is a wonderful shop here in Alaska. It’s called Matsu customs and they do a phenomenal job to actually I’ll share with you how I think they do a great job. So he looked at me you can see in his face he was like you’re not using the right words. But he was really great about he said, Great. Let me show you what we have. And then you can pull it toward what you need. And it was wonderful. It made me feel stupid, but I knew in that moment, I was like, Gosh, darn it, whatever. Just give me I just need the hitch for it. And he brought me over there and we picked it out. It was great. He showed me how to use it. But he didn’t talk down to me. He didn’t talk down. He didn’t use jargon, he said hey this is what some customers uses what they like they now make them keys customize your vehicle let’s look up your vehicle code for you blah blah blah. And he did a great job. Now why think his business does so wonderful and it’s him and his wife because I got my car from having the time to recover. And sitting on my dash is a custom printed down note card has a little beautiful paperclip and I can tell them there’s something wait it’s something inside. I opened it up and there’s a chocolate bar and there’s a little note that says you have a lot of choices about where to take your vehicle. Thank you for choosing our store and it was signed by the two owners the husband and wife of the shop. High touch raving fan stupid simple. What did that cost them two bucks. And now here I am talking about it and I’ll probably jump on Google and give a great shout out because I love that they had intentionality behind it. But he didn’t make me feel stupid for forgetting the words and not speaking the right language. Instead, he just guided me to where I needed to be to get done what I needed to get done in his shop. And a lot of times when we talk to professionals there’s such an alienation that we really get disconnected from them and think about it we don’t say heart doctor, do we don’t say Hey, I gotta go see my heart doctor. No, we say cardiologist. And so our vocabulary terms are even set up in a way to alienate us from those that we think would be smarter than us, more professional than us, for somebody who are seeking service because they have some type of expertise and in finance we do the same bloody to people we constantly talk about target indexes and all this other sort of jargon that doesn’t mean a gosh darn thing to them. So one of the things that we’re super passionate about at Shilanski and Associates our RIA up in Anchorage, Alaska is with demystifying a lot of that, like use your own vocabilary it’s mu responsability to figure out what you’re talking about and then lets use that vocabulary together or have a guided discovery about other terms so we both become educated in this process of building your financial plan.  So when it comes to marketing and our content, that’s how we’re getting it so when I talk to you about how we do our business planning and we set up in October and we’re forecasting our marketing calendar for the following year, it is because we have an entire 10 months because we’re doing this in October. So we have you know, nine and a half, maybe 10 months worth of information questions from people and those are you going to client meetings or writing down the questions what are they asked exactly how they asked it prior to the meeting? We’re asking people what are your questions, and then what we’ll do is we’ll repeat the question back to them I take down we use a remarkable we use inside of our client appointments we have homework sheets and these homework sheets capture for the financial advisor so we have every question that the client has asked or prospect has asked ahead of time and so the financial advisor goes through some coaching and training in our office and we do a lot of couching mentornship and training in our office for our financial advisors and our team members. Bu when we are doing this couching, when we’re doing this advising with individuals we’ll sit there and we’ll say okay, we’re going to repeat those questions that the client asked and make sure that we’re quiet afterwards. So we’ll say Hey, Mr. Mrs. Client you emailed in so got me these questions. Sarah was great. She organized them here from what I see here is you asking XY and Z and Nora repeated exam. What does that do? That opens up an opportunity for that to go? Oh, yeah, what I met was or Oh, yeah, actually, it was asking because my friend you know, etc. We Micah and I just had one: We got a client question. And it said can you remind me of the rules of spending down my accounts for to apply for my Medicaid, and we’re like, oh my goodness, what is happening in this client’s life that they need to go on Medicaid? And so it especially because the client was in their 50s. So when we got into the meeting, you know, Micah asked him says hey, so and so Client, Bob and Sue, so I see that you’ve asked me about spin down provisions for going on Medicaid. And they say, oh, yeah, here’s what we’re meeting I was meeting up with my brothers and sisters. My mom is 88 years old. We’re a little bit worried she’s gonna lose the house. Ah, okay. Now we have more context around that question. So by repeating the question back to them in their own words, we’re not jumping to conclusions, and then they have an opportunity to explain why they were asking that in the first place. Now you’re gathering more context. And it just like the laundry example I gave you, I’m the only one in the house that does laundry. I heard you say you’re the only one in the house that does laundry. Well, no, I know you’re at work. I know that. You know, it’s my job or responsibility to keep up with the house. I just feel really tired and I never get a break. Oh, great. Now I know, that this is not about laundry. Now I know that if I start picking up the laundry and doing it I haven’t solved the problem because the problem is exhaustion and feeling like they are too easy to be used by everyone in the house. Now I’ve identified what that is. When the client says I want to spend down with a five year look back on the spend down provision for Medicaid. They don’t have a life threatening illness in which they needed think about going on Medicaid. I know that this is about a complicated family issue, and there are multiple voices. So repeating that question back and then just listening to their answer will give you so much context. And when you’re designing your marketing plan out for the rest of the year – this is great because now you know now you can hear those little triggers and maybe you’re not using their question verbatim, but maybe you’re using their question and context. And now you can do little things. When people ask me what should I do in marketing, what’s working? Everything everything’s working, but you cannot take your foot off of the gas pedal! You cannot answer one question pat yourself on the back and say Gosh, darn I did a great job. And I got two prospects out of that. So I’m gonna stop because oftentimes what I see people do is they quit things that are working, and then are stupefied that they have zero results at the end of the day. You have to keep working the thing that’s working in our office, we just we map out that marketing calendar, everyone’s got to scheduling content, this is the part of the time blocking. So we will estimate how much time all of the marketing takes we will do a calendar in advance we have Surge several times a year so we know that during surge, we may or may not do content. Now I’ve got you know kind of hypocritical feelings on doing content during Surge so bear with me because life is all about you know, the hypocrisy is of seeing things two ways. So I think your content should be done ahead of time. I think if you’re going into surge your content your calendar should be mapped out. So for example, going into surge plus immediately after surge I’m gonna take my family to London. Alright, cool, then I know I’m gonna be out of the office for X amount of time. That means I need to have XYZ articles done and content ready and in the queue for the rest of my team. So I’m looking ahead knowing I’m going to be out of the office and knowing that I need to get that content done. Now, here’s the hypocritical part of it. A couple years ago, I was in office with Micah we’re all high fiving we’re having a great time meet with clients. It’s amazing. We’re getting our absolute best. We’re around our incredible a team of financial professionals, and we can’t help it we say my gosh, I got scales competing. It was so great. The client asked me about this and I didn’t know about that. And this is how I answered it. And I delivered so much value and we’re so high on that. That I’m like, Great pop and we’re recording studio, do a little video on it. Because if that client asked I bet 10 other people out there have that same question. And so that’s the hypocritical part that I want to be advanced in my calendar and I want to look ahead for all the content. But if you’re in a place in space, where you’re just jamming through things and client meetings are high, I mean, preparing for client meetings, not always a high. But being in those client meetings is an absolute high helping people changing lives, being the sounding board helping them make financial decisions. If you don’t get excited about that change professions, change professions. If you’re a financial advisor and you dread or hate going into those client meetings, that is palpable. People will feel it, they’ll see it, you need to go do something else. That’s just the reality of it. If you’re a team member and you’re like wow, I really like prepping for those appointments. I love doing the work afterwards. But I don’t want to be in a client meeting. Good. Then you know you’re in the right role. We’re not putting square pegs in round holes – good. That’s a good thing. That’s a positive thing. Knowing where we fit, how we contribute, and how we help others is an essential part of being a part of a team. So don’t be in the wrong position. And if you are if you get those prickly sensations, you got to have a real great mentor in your life to stand up and say  Hey, this is how I’m feeling. Is it head trash? Or am I really sitting in the wrong seat? And if you’re sitting in the wrong seat – tables instantly low – go find another chair. That doesn’t mean that you can’t sit down with the rest of everyone. Just move your seat to something else that fits right. There’s a world of unlimited possibilities as far as I’m concerned when it comes to that. So when it comes to our financial advisors looking ahead and mapping out that calendar and then we’re very specific about our time blocking and says hey, these are content days is when you should be jamming through things and guess what do we jam through things when we feel inspired? No, like just because I shared with you that we get excited and we do these things in surge doesn’t mean every single day, 365 days a year we feel inspired or want to do content. We don’t here’s the difference. We do it anyways. That is the difference between greatness and people aspiring to be great. People that just want to aspire to be great. Think about doing the work. The people that are great, do the work even on the days that they don’t feel like doing it. Because when you have the discipline and you have that routine and you have that consistency, that is what you need for effective marketing. So we started off surge and our marketing was going so great. It was going so phenomenal. And we did really really great the last seven months. Our relationship manager lead Victoria she’s in our office. She comes back she is hitting with excitment, she’s our office cheerleader next to me. I just got off the phone, and we’ve got a group of 400 prospects that want to come in and they want to teach, they want us to come to their city and teach a class, i’m so excited. And you know, going on I was like that is phenomenal. That’s so exciting. I’m so pumped about that. And I love that we get that opportunity to do that. And she says yeah, I just did my prospect count. And when she had done it, it was you know, the first part of March and she said we have seven paid prospect appointments. We have seven paid prospect appointments for people coming in to meet with one of our financial advisors. I’m so excited. That’s 14 people. If assuming everyone is married, their lives we get to impact and it’s not even March. She was beaming with excitement for that. And I was too now I get done high fiving her I go into my marketing director meeting and she says Jamie, we’re 30 days behind on content because the advisors haven’t done it and I said what do you mean they haven’t done it? Well, they took their foot off the gas pedal. They took a little bit off, they got a little bit behind because things come up because guess what, this is life and things come up. Especially when we’re going into surge and we’re trying to do client preparation everyone’s getting ready for it. Life is going to happen. Now here’s where they went wrong. They didn’t have anything to fall back on. One of them did. So he was saved from weekend worth of bounding out content. But this is the importance of having things like what we call in the can so I share with you that we have a marketing calendar, we all get our content done but then sometimes we’re just brimming with excitement and we want to share something especially during surge. So when we’re in surge, and we’re recording that extra content that’s going out in our can so either that’s gonna get used right away because maybe it’s date and time and in situations specific to what’s happening in the world. Or maybe it is getting put in the can for later and we just slide content back and forth. Gotta have something to pull from for when life comes up. And you don’t want to avoid you don’t want it. And so the reason why this is so important, and this is what people miss one we do what we say we’re going to do, it was on the marketing calendar, we said we’re going to get this content out. We said we’re gonna answer these people’s questions. We have an integrity, responsibility to do what you say you are going to do. So that’s rule number one second of all, guys, we live in a world of aggro algorithms. So if we stop producing content on our schedule consistently we don’t just get taken out for a day, we get knocked back to the starting line. This is not just taking your foot off of the gas and coasting for a little bit. When you can coast is when you have things in the can when you have an extra set of content locked and loaded go out. Sure take a break. I don’t care totally fine. We started going through this missing content when the advisor says hey, I’ve got 10 articles that never got published and they’re totally ready. Cool. I don’t expect you to work this weekend. You got it lined up in the can we’re good just slide those in and we’ll slide the calendar you know, to the right to the left as needed for the content. So that worked out really good but if you have nothing saved up or his backup: See ya Saturday, like let’s get this down, we have a responsibility to do what we say we are going to do for our clients. Then we have also competing with those algorithms to stay you know at the top of mind to stay present, just stay ready. We want to reach a lot of people and so we’re competing with other people who have a same or similar mission for them. And we need to be able to have our content surface where people can see it and we can change lives and really, really be impactful. That’s our goal. That’s how we do the marketing. So TPR Nation you know that everything we do at The Perfect RIA is because we are in the pursuit of perfection. That is what we are in pursuit of. We know we’re capable of it. We know we never want to stop learning and growing and we want to be better and better and better so that we can deliver massive value to our clients. We can spend more time outside the office with the people that we love, and we can be highly profitable in the process. We have a responsibility for profitability. We have a responsibility to ourselves, to our family, to our community, to our employees and our clients to be profitable. So as we do this, everything we do is about giving you action items that you can take right now. If you don’t already have your business planning and development scheduled for October. Schedule it! Most of the time we do a really great webinar for a bunch of financial advisors in October. Email us at will lifestyle@theperfectria.com. If they already have those dates, they’ll give them to you and if not, you can be on the waitlist to attend. But if you’re not sure if you’ve never done it, this is a great place to start. What I love about when advisors come together at The Perfect RIA we have a No BS policy if anyone’s full of BS, you don’t get to talk. But second of all, you can ask anything this is a really safe space. You know, we did a presentation one time and the guy said I don’t know EBITDA is, and we said great, its earnings before bla bla bla we spout it off for him. And he was like thank you so much. I’ve been sitting here wondering for some minutes. So this is a great place. Just ask the question if you don’t know something now, we don’t expect you to be omnipotent. Cool, let’s answer it move on. So this is great place to do business planning if you’ve never done it before, or maybe if you’re not sure not really disciplined about it, you get a great community to be involved with inside of that. So lifestyle@theperfectria.com and our team will put you on the waiting list or give you the date should we already have them. My second action item that you’re gonna get a marketing calendar for the year in advance, marketing calendar. Now, when I talk about doing it for the marketing calendar for an entire year, a lot of people get intimidated. Well, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time. Throw up a wall calendar. You got four sections every single quarter say great. If you’re doing marketing for the very first time. Let’s just say quarter one January through March you’re doing nothing but talking about taxes. You’re teaching about taxes, you’re talking about taxes every of January, February, March. Pick one thing, pick one thing to talk about so maybe in January where you live is blistering cold just like where I am, then you get to talk about how great the Augusta rule is because you get to rent your house out and you can do all of these different things. Maybe in February, you’re talking about estimated payments, did you make your correct estimated payments if you’re plus or minus 1000 cool you’re on track but if you’re more than that you’re not doing your tax calculations effectively. In March, maybe you’re talking about retirement funding, getting close to that deadline. What can you do? Is there anything in March that you can make? Are there any moves you can take in March that you really should’ve took in December 31 and why it’s so important to work for our financial planner who does tax planning in October November for this reason. So there you go. There’s the first quarter of the year as you go into April, May and June. What are you going to talk about while everyone’s gearing up for spring? Graduation and holidays? So people move in these sorts of patterns. So don’t overcomplicate this, throw the calendar up, choose for every quarter what you want to talk about four different subjects and then bring those subjects every month to talk about one thing. Jamie one thing for the entire month. A-ha, why because marketing works like this when you are sick of saying it. It is the first time somebody has actually heard it. And if you don’t think that’s true, you’ve never been around kids for more than three days. Because when you are about to lose your mind, because you have told them to do something 10,000 times and you blow up they look at you like crazy and say why do you just ask me and you’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve been asking you over and over again. Because information is only relevant to a person when they want to receive it. So when you say the same message over and over and over again, you don’t get to choose when it’s relevant to your audience. But if you do it consistently, the time relevancy will come around. It will be there and then they get to tune in and they get to hear Jamie what’s working  is it articles is it videos is it social media, seminars – everything you are willing to work – works. But don’t stop something and then be surprised when the results also stop in the months to come. When I tell people marketing is like a snowball the top of the mountain doesn’t start off fast. But when it picks up speed and traction, then it’s really really going but you got to stay on top of that when don’t count yourself out. Just because something works so successfully. You don’t think you need to do it again. And we do that all the time. And we catch ourselves and we’re like, oh my gosh, why did I stop doing that and right back to basics. So if we’re guilty of it, I know you probably are too. Don’t worry – This is a safe space to talk about it and that’s what The Perfect RIA is all about.  TPR Nation this is Jamie Shilanski in an episode Worlds to Conquer. Go find people who share your values change the world!