August 27, 2024 • 28 mins
You’ve heard the advice a hundred times before, but knowing what to do is not the same as knowing how to do it.
So, how can you effectively leverage niche marketing and personal branding to grow your financial services firm and establish credibility with clients?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to the top advisor marketing podcast brought
to you by Proudmouth.
I'm your host, Matt Halloran.
Being your own loud is not new to
marketing, but the mindset, strategies, and resources to
help you get there are evolving faster than
this industry is keeping up. It is time
to find a new perspective on what works,
why,
(00:21):
and how to move your business forward.
Listen as I interview guests to help you
learn from them how to be your own
Loud. Let's
get to the show.
Hello, and welcome to another top advisor marketing
podcast. I'm your host, Matt Halloran.
We talk about niche marketing
all the time on the show. And, you
(00:43):
know, it's 400 and, I don't know, 80
something episodes in or real close to that.
And if you haven't realized that you have
to do this in order to truly be
at the next level, I'm hoping my next
guest will be able to convince you of
the power of really focusing on your niche.
Now not just your niche as who your
(01:03):
ideal client is, but your niche and how
you position yourself from a marketing perspective. Billy,
welcome to the show. Thanks, Matt. Really glad
to be with you.
Man, when you came through the sales process,
and I remember looking at your website and
talking to you and your son and the
other people in your firm, I was like,
woah, man. I totally want this guy as
(01:25):
a client because
of just how clean everything is.
But it took you, 1, a while to
get there, and, 2, there's a backstory
on this specific niche. So I'm being vague
for a reason because I want you to
tell the stories. Billy, let's talk to our
audience about your journey on how you became
who you become at your financial services firm.
(01:47):
Yeah. I think I'll start with
me wanting to brand myself. I've always been
a natural business owner type personality.
I wanted to own my own business and
kinda control my own destiny.
Now I got into
financial services back in
late 1996.
Actually, it was 97, to be honest. I
retired from my career. My first career was
(02:08):
a press professional racehorse jockey. So I rode
horses for a living, fast ones.
Now that doesn't transition
cleanly
from a jockey into a financial advisor for
most people. They wouldn't connect those dots.
But for me, I had a background in
finance. I'd actually gone to school and earned
my degree in finance and economics while I
(02:29):
was riding and had a great career, to
be honest, as a jockey. But I knew
that wasn't going to be the end all
for me. I wanted to do this. I
I wanted to get into the financial services
business. I really enjoyed it. I love investing.
I love helping other people make money and
create wealth.
Fast forward, I got it. I got my
first job
with Paine Webber in Long Beach, California.
(02:51):
So I was working with in the brokerage
channel. A lot of people start their careers
out that way, and it was much different
then, of course. They did all of the
you received a phone and a computer
and a small cubicle. So I worked there
for a couple of years, moved back to
Utah, my home state,
stayed with Penn Weber, and then I moved
to Smith Barney. I thought there was more
opportunity there with what they were doing.
(03:13):
And ultimately,
going through the big recession in 08, I
realized, you know what? These firms,
they say a lot of things, but they
might not be able to do a lot
of things the way I would prefer to
do them. They got in a lot of
hot water, obviously, managing mismanaging their own money.
And I had a hard time telling clients,
I we're really good. You're gonna really do
(03:34):
well with this firm. And then have the
firm in the headlines with terrible results from
their own mismanagement
of of their own funds.
So I wanted to move into this independent
more independent channel, and I talked to a
bunch of firms. And I settled with Raymond
James, and the reason I did goes to
your question.
They offered the best marketing
(03:56):
of any company that I interviewed.
Their discussion with me about branding my firm
and making it unique to me and bringing
out the essence of who I was and
who I wanted to attract as clientele.
So it was like, hey, we're gonna help
you build your own website. We're gonna brand
you're gonna be
like, have your own feel.
And it was really the decision maker for
(04:18):
me. There's a lot of great firms I
could gun with, but Raymond James just they
had what I was looking for there from
the marketing standpoint.
Now keep going a little further, and I
decided to go fully independent here in in
2020,
of course, when everybody was kind of
coming to a screeching halt on a lot
of things and there was a lot of
free time. So we went to the RIA
(04:40):
channel
and created our own website
and a whole bunch of other things around
that. We've always done a lot of marketing.
I've always really thought that's how to stand
out and be unique and attract attention. And
so we've tried to be ahead of that.
A lot of social media posts were active
there.
I wrote my own, my first book in
(05:00):
2019.
So just before that, and it was published
called
Harnessing Your Wealth.
And I recall that you and your group
came to a conference in Salt Lake City.
Now I can't remember exactly what year it
was. 2022, maybe, something like that. And we
met you and you taught, you were telling
us about having your own podcast.
(05:21):
And of course, these types of things
speak to me because here's another opportunity to
reach an audience, to tell them what we
do and to help other people. I've always
been interested in helping
other people
accomplish things that
I've been able to figure out in my
life. And so we started the podcast, and
then I wrote my second book. And there's
(05:42):
just a lot going on, but I always
wanna keep driving. So I think branding and
continuing to tell people who you are and
what you do
never end.
Yeah.
So harnessing your wealth and you really leaning
into the fact that, you know, you were
a professional jockey
is really big. And I know that there
are a lot of our listeners right now
(06:04):
who are saying, you know, there are so
many
upper echelon, high performing
athletes
who become financial services professionals, and I know
you're probably have I we weren't planning on
me asking this question. But why do you
think that is? Why do you think there's
so many, like,
div one athletes or professional athletes like you
(06:24):
were or professional basketball players and football players
who become financial services professionals? Why do you
think that is? Is? I've heard that before,
and I think maybe
sometimes maybe it gets a bit of a
hype overblown
because there are
these folks who now become these niche
market experts, so to speak.
(06:45):
If you look at it on a relative
basis though, I think it's probably about in
line with every other industry.
And we have probably heard
a number of horror stories. I know I
have. I don't know about you, but horror
stories with
professional athletes, celebrities who've been duped, who've been
shamed, who've been scammed,
who've been taken advantage of. And in our
industry, as you're probably well aware, there are
(07:09):
a number of people who
take advantage and who are, who lack in
morals and ethics.
And so they see people who maybe don't
have a lot of understanding or knowledge and
kind of trust in what's going on and
just turn the reins and hand everything over
to somebody that they feel is going to
take care of them. And
one thing leads to another, and when people
(07:30):
get too much trust and they don't have
the ethics, bad things happen. Bad things can
happen. There's a lot of examples in throughout
history. We can go 100 of years into
this.
Sure. Great conversation, Sartre. I have a chapter
dedicated just to that in my book, back
to the Bernie Madoff days. And even here
recently when you have Shohei Ohtani, you know,
famous MLB
(07:51):
baseball player
who supposedly turned all his financial
matters over to his
friend and
translator
and see what he almost lost his entire
career over that deal. Yeah. Okay. So
how did you
Raymond James opened the door for you to
be able to market, and then you guys
(08:11):
became your own RIA. And let's talk about
what you're doing from a marketing perspective because
you're you guys this is a terrible analogy.
You're not a one trick pony here, dude.
You're really
firing on a lot of the marketing cylinders.
So let's talk about what you're actively doing,
and more importantly,
what are the results of the activity that
(08:31):
you have to help you grow your firm?
I had a friend who's a financial adviser
at Raymond James a few years ago when
we were still under their channel. So we
were
an independent financial
firm under their RIA,
And we'd go to these different conferences to
qualify for the different awards trips every year.
(08:53):
And I was writing a book. That was
my first book and I was telling him
about it.
And a few months later, it was published
and he was contacting me and said, how
are your sales?
And I said, they're okay. I'm not trying
to become a New York Times bestseller.
Really? Why would you do that? I don't
understand why you spend so much time to
write if you're not gonna make money.
And I said, you don't get it. I'm
(09:14):
making money indirectly,
not directly through the sales of the book.
I'm making money through credibility
that I'm receiving
by having
a book out, by becoming an author, by
becoming a so called expert.
And
it's different how people look at you and
perceive you once you have done something like
that. You write a book. You're on a
webs you're on a webcast. You're on the
(09:36):
news. I I
had a lot of opportunities come out from
that, just being on the news and having
people interview me.
And then, of course, you get some recognition
by telling people, hey. I'm an author. Now
I have this. And I received a whole
host of new opportunities, new clients,
and I think we linked about $20,000,000
(09:56):
in new assets just in that first 18
months from writing the book. So how do
they get paid? It wasn't from book sales
necessarily,
but it's from the credibility they received from
it. So do is doing a lot of
things like that. They don't sometimes come
super quick. It's not a
immediate gratification, if you will. There are going
(10:17):
to be months of delay.
And as you probably
would attest, even podcasting takes time. You have
to develop. You have to continue to grind.
You have to continue to reach an audience
and build an audience, and it's not an
instant thing.
You continue to lay the groundwork, but you
can't quit. I think if you start a
project,
(10:37):
you want to
do the best you can and keep finding
ways to improve. So we've hired a marketing
professional here. I have a marketing person that's
just dedicated to that, like, trying to improve
our website, trying to help us post social
media. So she's got campaigns going every week,
trying to help things like Google Ads. There's
that's a whole
(10:58):
interesting can of worms itself, figuring out, you
know, keywords and who's gonna call you for
what. Do you post do you pay for
certain ads and keywords and what works and
what doesn't work?
What's going on there? And I don't claim
to be an expert, but I want to
be involved and I wanna test things out
and I wanna look for opportunities.
(11:19):
The world has evolved and our business has
changed so much from when I started. Used
to be the big thing was
a throw event, throw dinners, go do this
and that, and try to get retirees
to show up and pay for their dinner.
And
you do a number of those and anymore,
I don't know what's changed in the psyche
of
(11:39):
people, but
most don't wanna do that. They don't wanna
step out of their
whatever they do in their world, their life.
They want to
get their information on their phone. They wanna
listen to podcasts. They want to hear things.
They wanna they want they don't wanna be
inconvenienced as much as let's say, that.
There's times when you might have an interesting
(12:00):
event that may be a little bit more
unique that you might be able to get
them to, but it's not what it used
to be.
It's interesting to see how the pendulum swings
on those sorts of marketing things. Right? There
there are times where people are just killing
it with dinner seminars, and then there's times
(12:21):
where people are killing it with the 3
part educational series at universities and buying leads
and
Google Ads and Facebook Ads and all of
that sort of stuff. And one of the
things that we have been very impressed with
your firm specifically
is your agility, and you're also willing to
not throw the baby out with the bathwater,
but to really stick with things long enough
(12:44):
to make sure that you're testing them and
seeing that they work. Billy, you know this
well. That's not normal, dude. Most entrepreneurs
are they don't they it's
just like your friend talking about the book.
Right? How did you and how have you
built that discipline within your firm to maintain
these big picture marketing strategies to make sure
(13:06):
that they are working in the way that
you guys want them to? Where did that
come from? It's a great question, and I
thought about that myself. I maybe go back
to my career as a jockey for a
minute.
You know, it there's you don't become a
jockey and a professional athlete
and achieve immediate success like you're the best
in the world. It takes so much time,
and you go through so much failure.
(13:30):
But the winners
fail to quit.
And the losers,
they quit immediately, and they never reached the
success that they could have achieved. So I
always had the mindset of get back in
the saddle. Get back in whatever. You get
thrown off, you lose the race,
things go bad horribly wrong.
But they're in again, in the mind of
(13:51):
somebody who wants to win,
there is no quit.
And so you just keep going and you
keep driving and things eventually start to come
together. It's amazing the miracle
of the universe, of what can work for
you. And even
when you least expect it, when things don't
look like they're even possible,
(14:11):
when
it just looks like it's not meant to
be, it's it comes together in unique ways.
And I can relate so many stories that
just
happened when I wasn't really expecting it. I
was believing. I continued to have faith in
the outcome, the end result that I wanted.
And I carried that mindset for the my
(14:33):
entire life
from riding racehorses to getting into this career.
I just I looked at it. There was
no failure. Failure is not an option. And
when I got into this career,
I had no clients, obviously, and they gave
me this short window of you need to
have $12,000,000
in assets.
If you don't have that within 18 months,
(14:54):
I'm sorry, but your job is terminated. $12,000,000
back when I started. That was a lot
of money. It's a lot of money. And
I'm figuring it out, and I'm bringing in
$5,000 accounts, IRAs, and open,
but that's not gonna get you there very
quickly. It just you keep going, but you
never stop. You never stop to think about,
can I do this or is am I
gonna fail? It wasn't an option.
(15:15):
And if it's never an option,
then it won't be. And you will find
that way that the outcome that you want
is there. You just have to select it.
You just have to get there, be present
enough to find it.
And that's why I say worry will kill
you. If if you start letting worry take
over, it'll kill your wealth
opportunities. It'll career kill your career. It'll kill
(15:36):
your health. And so many people and I've
had these experiences myself with
health outcomes because I worried about things
and excessively, and I didn't core understand the
correlation
between health
and the anxiety, the worry, the negative emotions,
but I do now. And there's a huge
section in my book talking about that too.
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Yeah. So we've got harnessing your wealth, and
then you have a second book. Right? You
(17:03):
didn't even say what that was. Yeah. It's
called from the starting gate, and that's the
one where I cover all three pillars of
a successful life. So I touch on the
wealth aspect again, but I also go deep
into the health
and finally into the manifesting of miracles
and how that all comes about and why
we're starting to see more and more in
(17:25):
that area of that niche of genre of
books and authors who talk about
the universal forces
and thinking your way into
the reality that you want.
And it is so fascinating to see it
because now science is starting to catch up.
It's so hard to bring it all together.
But
when you start to understand that there's frequency,
(17:46):
there's universal laws, there's frequency out there, and
if you can tap into it, we all
understand and believe in gravity.
We can't see it, but we damn sure
know it's there. And it's the same concept
with this whole
vibration of thoughts. Thought alone
is the most powerful force. It's far more
powerful than gravity. Thought alone can travel as
(18:07):
far as you want it to. So just
bringing those kind of conscious thoughts,
getting them so tight and deep into your
subconscious, that's where the miracles can begin to
happen.
I found that out. I learned through
many of my own difficulties, but there's so
much that is available to us if we
would just allow ourselves to tap into it.
(18:28):
How in
the world did you find the time?
Your books aren't small, dude. Like, these are
like books. How did you in, Billy, honest
I get asked this all the time. I
published 2 books. My third one's coming out
this fall. I know what it's like to
write what it's like to write in. Advisors
will ask me all the time, how do
you find time to do it? How do
(18:49):
you do it? You're not a professional writer.
Would you mind just giving us a like,
how did you execute these 2 books, man?
One of those things that just got it
into my mind. I wanted to write a
book, and this would be before I wrote
my first one.
But we can all have these thoughts and
then
never hear them out. Sure. I've I don't
know. Something in me has always said, I
(19:10):
am not a fan of the idea of
saying you're gonna do something and never do
it.
I kinda think, oh, that's a BS way
to live your life. Always talking about what
you're gonna do, but you always have an
excuse why you didn't do it. So when
I vocalize something, I'm going to verbalize something.
I'm gonna hold myself accountable.
And I said, I wanna write a book,
(19:31):
but I didn't know how to do it.
Well, this is what I'm talking about, have
manifesting all these things to start All of
a sudden unlocking doors.
I had no idea how to write a
book. I didn't even know where to start.
And guess what, Matt? I talk about writing
a book. I start thinking about writing a
book, and I go to a Rhema James
conference.
Guess what one of the sessions was on?
(19:53):
How to write a book.
And so here's these guys that started this
company called Scribe Media,
and they were experts in writing books. And
they had written a book called How to
Write Your Own Book.
It was phenomenal.
Now you tell me how this stuff all
comes together. Just at the time when I'm
starting to think about, and I really wanna
(20:14):
get focused on writing a book. So I
read their book,
and I just followed their procedure step by
step. It was just laid out. Here's what
you've got have to do. Get your outline,
develop your manuscript. You gotta have it organized,
but then there's all the technical aspects to
it.
How are you gonna polish it up? How
are you going to create a cover design?
(20:34):
Who's going to
edit everything for you? Copy edit it. And
then, of course, you have to have interior
and your exterior edits. Then you have to
have a publishing company. If you don't know
how to do that, well, here's how you
do it on Amazon, publish your own book.
But a lot of technicalities there, you would
never
understand.
Finding, creating an ISBN number and how to
(20:56):
get it listed, and all the technicalities from
the Amazon site, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
So that was a learning experience, and it's
not I wouldn't say it's easy. I talk
about it's difficult.
It is not an easy endeavor.
But the challenges
are things that I enjoy. I enjoy a
challenge, and I always want to say
that
I didn't back down from a challenge. I
(21:18):
looked I took it upon myself to finish
it. I've ran a 100 mile race, and
that was definitely not an easy experience
either.
So maybe it's just that I enjoy things
like that.
But going back to my earlier comments is
when you are ready and you verbalize and
you put that out there and you continue
(21:39):
to
focus on it,
the doors will open for you.
I always joke with I shouldn't say now
when I was a coach, when an adviser
would have an idea, one of the things
that I would say is, okay. You just
spoke that into existence. You need to buy
the URL.
They would come up with a great process
or a marketing idea or some of those
(22:00):
things and into or a catchphrase branded language,
and I'll be like, okay. Nope. Listen. You
can't wait. Now it's out there. And they
always laughed at that, and then some of
them wouldn't execute on that. And maybe 3,
4 days later, I tried to go by
the URL, and it's gone. Like, it just
sold them. I'm like, guys, you don't understand
how all of this works. And I don't
necessarily think that we can fully grasp on
(22:21):
how all of it works, but it is
there and it is a power and a
force that we have to pay attention to.
So you are a juggernaut when it comes
to making sure that you maintain that focus,
you manifest the things, and you get the
stuff done. What's next for you, man? What's
next for us is we really wanna become
a $1,000,000,000
company. That's our plan. I have several goals,
both both personal and professional, and we talk
(22:43):
about them as a staff. We have a
staff meeting every Monday,
and we continue to talk about it. I'm
a firm believer in what you put out
there and what you focus yourself and your
attention and your energy on
brings those things back to you. If you
focus on what you have, your positive
focus on the gratitudes,
more of the same comes. If you focus
on what you lack
(23:04):
and what you don't have and what you're
miserable about,
more of the same comes to you. So
you manifest whatever it is that you focus
on. And I wanna focus on what we
have, what we're grateful for, what we continue
to do and help people accomplish.
So our firm is really
growing. We're in good growth mode. We've hired
another young financial advisor to help build that.
(23:27):
We have a full staff now. I've just
expanded my office, did a big remodel,
which took a while. And
so we are at that point. I said,
build it and
let things develop and let them come. You
can't
be scared. I think fear kills a lot
of dreams.
Sure. So those are the things we wanna
do is continue to build the clientele.
(23:49):
We, we serve a lot of folks who
are in the high net worth industry who
are involved in horse racing. Of course, that's
a big part of my background.
So it was the instant niche for me.
It wasn't easy calling people up as a
jockey
and hoping that they would give you even
passing time of day. Most of them just
hung up on me. You're a jockey. What
(24:11):
do you know about doing this?
You continue to get a few breaks and
a few more, and then credibility builds
and referrals,
and you do the right thing and continue
to do the right thing. You don't take
shortcuts.
And from there, that's the kind of
that's the kind of business that I wanna
build. A lot of personal goals. I'm still
involved in horses, and I have my own
(24:32):
racehorses now. So it's a fun activity for
me and my family to do. I have
a ranch that away from the office that
I develop and raise young horses, and
so it's a it's full circle. I Yeah.
Grew up around horses. I
built my career, my notoriety,
and my name
with horses, and now I get to participate
(24:53):
in that business myself.
Yeah. I think it's fantastic, and I love
and I doing the right thing in in
all of those things are the foundational purpose
of the firm, and I think what a
lot of advisers think that they're already doing.
But one of the reasons you are so
successful
is because you have that branded language. You've
(25:13):
got all of the social proof surrounding to
support the branded language,
and you're very transparent in your journey and
why you created the brand in the way
that you did.
And when you build we've talked about this
on the show before, but when you build
such a strong brand foundation, which you have,
you can do whatever the heck you want
on top of it, right, because you have
(25:35):
such strong
pillars into the ground and the foundation and
the team that you're constantly reinforcing these messages.
And all of those things, you're ticking all
of the boxes, which is why I really
wanted to have you on the show.
I really wanted people to hear that, 1,
you gotta put the time in. Number 2,
you've gotta have the myopic focus.
Whatever brand you build, if it can be
(25:57):
built around your story about who you are
and what makes you tick, that's gonna resonate,
and then other people can pitch their wagon,
again,
to your story, which is what your other
advisers have done because, again, it's all about
making sure that you're really taking your wealth
to the next level, and then I think
that's what you guys do. Alright, Billy. If
(26:17):
anybody wants, 1, to order a copy of
either of your books or, 2, find out
more about your firm, where should they go?
Well, there's a couple of different websites. My
personal site for my books and kinda learn
about my books and how to order them
is billypetersonauthor.com.
And our website for our firm is petersonwealthservices.com.
(26:38):
You can also follow us on any social
media of your choice. We have
Instagram.
Of course, we have the LinkedIn. You have
X and Facebook, and we
share a lot of things and stories. We
have blog posts that we put videos on
all the time. And then, of course, we
have the Harnessing Your Wealth podcast,
which you and your team do a great
(26:59):
job to help us utilize and promote out
there to the world. So all of those
things are how you can connect with us.
And, please, I really want our listeners
to get done with the show today, jump
on their phone or their computer, and see
all of the things that your firm is
doing
(27:19):
and seeing all of the
consistency,
continuity,
and power that goes into having such a
clear and distinct brand message. So, Billy, man,
thank you for being a client. Thank you
very much for coming on the show and
sharing your wisdom with our audience. I really
appreciate it. Hey. Glad to be here, Matt.
You get a few more bobbleheads there on
that shelf. Alright?
(27:40):
Ah, hey. Listen. I have my own bobble
hub built in here, my friend. And, listen,
if you are all trying to figure out
what you can do to truly have a
brand foundation like what Billy's built, you can
do it in the PodRocket Influence Academy. We've
got unbelievable
resources for you, including all sorts of ask
an expert and office hours that we offer
our clients in the PodRocket Academy every single
(28:02):
solitary month.
34 plus courses, 8 hours of time to
be able to talk to me and my
team to make sure that you can find
out how you can brand yourself in the
way that you want to so that when
you have your long form content marketing strategy,
it's built on an amazing foundation. So for
Billy and all of us here at Proudmouth,
this is Matt Haller, and we'll see you
on the other side of the mic very
soon.
(28:23):
Thanks for listening to the Top Advisor Marketing
Podcast brought to you by Proudmouth.
If you wanna know more about how you
can be your own loud, visit us at
proudmouth.com
and sign up for the PodRocket Academy.
Through courses and office hours led by a
professional podcast producers and digital marketers, you will
learn everything you need to know to become
the trusted subject matter expert you were meant
(28:43):
to be.
Welcome to the top advisor marketing podcast brought
to you by Proudmouth.
I'm your host, Matt Halloran.
Being your own loud is not new to
marketing, but the mindset, strategies, and resources to
help you get there are evolving faster than
this industry is keeping up. It is time
to find a new perspective on what works,
why,
(00:21):
and how to move your business forward.
Listen as I interview guests to help you
learn from them how to be your own
Loud. Let's
get to the show.
Hello, and welcome to another top advisor marketing
podcast. I'm your host, Matt Halloran.
We talk about niche marketing
all the time on the show. And, you
(00:43):
know, it's 400 and, I don't know, 80
something episodes in or real close to that.
And if you haven't realized that you have
to do this in order to truly be
at the next level, I'm hoping my next
guest will be able to convince you of
the power of really focusing on your niche.
Now not just your niche as who your
(01:03):
ideal client is, but your niche and how
you position yourself from a marketing perspective. Billy,
welcome to the show. Thanks, Matt. Really glad
to be with you.
Man, when you came through the sales process,
and I remember looking at your website and
talking to you and your son and the
other people in your firm, I was like,
woah, man. I totally want this guy as
(01:25):
a client because
of just how clean everything is.
But it took you, 1, a while to
get there, and, 2, there's a backstory
on this specific niche. So I'm being vague
for a reason because I want you to
tell the stories. Billy, let's talk to our
audience about your journey on how you became
who you become at your financial services firm.
(01:47):
Yeah. I think I'll start with
me wanting to brand myself. I've always been
a natural business owner type personality.
I wanted to own my own business and
kinda control my own destiny.
Now I got into
financial services back in
late 1996.
Actually, it was 97, to be honest. I
retired from my career. My first career was
(02:08):
a press professional racehorse jockey. So I rode
horses for a living, fast ones.
Now that doesn't transition
cleanly
from a jockey into a financial advisor for
most people. They wouldn't connect those dots.
But for me, I had a background in
finance. I'd actually gone to school and earned
my degree in finance and economics while I
(02:29):
was riding and had a great career, to
be honest, as a jockey. But I knew
that wasn't going to be the end all
for me. I wanted to do this. I
I wanted to get into the financial services
business. I really enjoyed it. I love investing.
I love helping other people make money and
create wealth.
Fast forward, I got it. I got my
first job
with Paine Webber in Long Beach, California.
(02:51):
So I was working with in the brokerage
channel. A lot of people start their careers
out that way, and it was much different
then, of course. They did all of the
you received a phone and a computer
and a small cubicle. So I worked there
for a couple of years, moved back to
Utah, my home state,
stayed with Penn Weber, and then I moved
to Smith Barney. I thought there was more
opportunity there with what they were doing.
(03:13):
And ultimately,
going through the big recession in 08, I
realized, you know what? These firms,
they say a lot of things, but they
might not be able to do a lot
of things the way I would prefer to
do them. They got in a lot of
hot water, obviously, managing mismanaging their own money.
And I had a hard time telling clients,
I we're really good. You're gonna really do
(03:34):
well with this firm. And then have the
firm in the headlines with terrible results from
their own mismanagement
of of their own funds.
So I wanted to move into this independent
more independent channel, and I talked to a
bunch of firms. And I settled with Raymond
James, and the reason I did goes to
your question.
They offered the best marketing
(03:56):
of any company that I interviewed.
Their discussion with me about branding my firm
and making it unique to me and bringing
out the essence of who I was and
who I wanted to attract as clientele.
So it was like, hey, we're gonna help
you build your own website. We're gonna brand
you're gonna be
like, have your own feel.
And it was really the decision maker for
(04:18):
me. There's a lot of great firms I
could gun with, but Raymond James just they
had what I was looking for there from
the marketing standpoint.
Now keep going a little further, and I
decided to go fully independent here in in
2020,
of course, when everybody was kind of
coming to a screeching halt on a lot
of things and there was a lot of
free time. So we went to the RIA
(04:40):
channel
and created our own website
and a whole bunch of other things around
that. We've always done a lot of marketing.
I've always really thought that's how to stand
out and be unique and attract attention. And
so we've tried to be ahead of that.
A lot of social media posts were active
there.
I wrote my own, my first book in
(05:00):
2019.
So just before that, and it was published
called
Harnessing Your Wealth.
And I recall that you and your group
came to a conference in Salt Lake City.
Now I can't remember exactly what year it
was. 2022, maybe, something like that. And we
met you and you taught, you were telling
us about having your own podcast.
(05:21):
And of course, these types of things
speak to me because here's another opportunity to
reach an audience, to tell them what we
do and to help other people. I've always
been interested in helping
other people
accomplish things that
I've been able to figure out in my
life. And so we started the podcast, and
then I wrote my second book. And there's
(05:42):
just a lot going on, but I always
wanna keep driving. So I think branding and
continuing to tell people who you are and
what you do
never end.
Yeah.
So harnessing your wealth and you really leaning
into the fact that, you know, you were
a professional jockey
is really big. And I know that there
are a lot of our listeners right now
(06:04):
who are saying, you know, there are so
many
upper echelon, high performing
athletes
who become financial services professionals, and I know
you're probably have I we weren't planning on
me asking this question. But why do you
think that is? Why do you think there's
so many, like,
div one athletes or professional athletes like you
(06:24):
were or professional basketball players and football players
who become financial services professionals? Why do you
think that is? Is? I've heard that before,
and I think maybe
sometimes maybe it gets a bit of a
hype overblown
because there are
these folks who now become these niche
market experts, so to speak.
(06:45):
If you look at it on a relative
basis though, I think it's probably about in
line with every other industry.
And we have probably heard
a number of horror stories. I know I
have. I don't know about you, but horror
stories with
professional athletes, celebrities who've been duped, who've been
shamed, who've been scammed,
who've been taken advantage of. And in our
industry, as you're probably well aware, there are
(07:09):
a number of people who
take advantage and who are, who lack in
morals and ethics.
And so they see people who maybe don't
have a lot of understanding or knowledge and
kind of trust in what's going on and
just turn the reins and hand everything over
to somebody that they feel is going to
take care of them. And
one thing leads to another, and when people
(07:30):
get too much trust and they don't have
the ethics, bad things happen. Bad things can
happen. There's a lot of examples in throughout
history. We can go 100 of years into
this.
Sure. Great conversation, Sartre. I have a chapter
dedicated just to that in my book, back
to the Bernie Madoff days. And even here
recently when you have Shohei Ohtani, you know,
famous MLB
(07:51):
baseball player
who supposedly turned all his financial
matters over to his
friend and
translator
and see what he almost lost his entire
career over that deal. Yeah. Okay. So
how did you
Raymond James opened the door for you to
be able to market, and then you guys
(08:11):
became your own RIA. And let's talk about
what you're doing from a marketing perspective because
you're you guys this is a terrible analogy.
You're not a one trick pony here, dude.
You're really
firing on a lot of the marketing cylinders.
So let's talk about what you're actively doing,
and more importantly,
what are the results of the activity that
(08:31):
you have to help you grow your firm?
I had a friend who's a financial adviser
at Raymond James a few years ago when
we were still under their channel. So we
were
an independent financial
firm under their RIA,
And we'd go to these different conferences to
qualify for the different awards trips every year.
(08:53):
And I was writing a book. That was
my first book and I was telling him
about it.
And a few months later, it was published
and he was contacting me and said, how
are your sales?
And I said, they're okay. I'm not trying
to become a New York Times bestseller.
Really? Why would you do that? I don't
understand why you spend so much time to
write if you're not gonna make money.
And I said, you don't get it. I'm
(09:14):
making money indirectly,
not directly through the sales of the book.
I'm making money through credibility
that I'm receiving
by having
a book out, by becoming an author, by
becoming a so called expert.
And
it's different how people look at you and
perceive you once you have done something like
that. You write a book. You're on a
webs you're on a webcast. You're on the
(09:36):
news. I I
had a lot of opportunities come out from
that, just being on the news and having
people interview me.
And then, of course, you get some recognition
by telling people, hey. I'm an author. Now
I have this. And I received a whole
host of new opportunities, new clients,
and I think we linked about $20,000,000
(09:56):
in new assets just in that first 18
months from writing the book. So how do
they get paid? It wasn't from book sales
necessarily,
but it's from the credibility they received from
it. So do is doing a lot of
things like that. They don't sometimes come
super quick. It's not a
immediate gratification, if you will. There are going
(10:17):
to be months of delay.
And as you probably
would attest, even podcasting takes time. You have
to develop. You have to continue to grind.
You have to continue to reach an audience
and build an audience, and it's not an
instant thing.
You continue to lay the groundwork, but you
can't quit. I think if you start a
project,
(10:37):
you want to
do the best you can and keep finding
ways to improve. So we've hired a marketing
professional here. I have a marketing person that's
just dedicated to that, like, trying to improve
our website, trying to help us post social
media. So she's got campaigns going every week,
trying to help things like Google Ads. There's
that's a whole
(10:58):
interesting can of worms itself, figuring out, you
know, keywords and who's gonna call you for
what. Do you post do you pay for
certain ads and keywords and what works and
what doesn't work?
What's going on there? And I don't claim
to be an expert, but I want to
be involved and I wanna test things out
and I wanna look for opportunities.
(11:19):
The world has evolved and our business has
changed so much from when I started. Used
to be the big thing was
a throw event, throw dinners, go do this
and that, and try to get retirees
to show up and pay for their dinner.
And
you do a number of those and anymore,
I don't know what's changed in the psyche
of
(11:39):
people, but
most don't wanna do that. They don't wanna
step out of their
whatever they do in their world, their life.
They want to
get their information on their phone. They wanna
listen to podcasts. They want to hear things.
They wanna they want they don't wanna be
inconvenienced as much as let's say, that.
There's times when you might have an interesting
(12:00):
event that may be a little bit more
unique that you might be able to get
them to, but it's not what it used
to be.
It's interesting to see how the pendulum swings
on those sorts of marketing things. Right? There
there are times where people are just killing
it with dinner seminars, and then there's times
(12:21):
where people are killing it with the 3
part educational series at universities and buying leads
and
Google Ads and Facebook Ads and all of
that sort of stuff. And one of the
things that we have been very impressed with
your firm specifically
is your agility, and you're also willing to
not throw the baby out with the bathwater,
but to really stick with things long enough
(12:44):
to make sure that you're testing them and
seeing that they work. Billy, you know this
well. That's not normal, dude. Most entrepreneurs
are they don't they it's
just like your friend talking about the book.
Right? How did you and how have you
built that discipline within your firm to maintain
these big picture marketing strategies to make sure
(13:06):
that they are working in the way that
you guys want them to? Where did that
come from? It's a great question, and I
thought about that myself. I maybe go back
to my career as a jockey for a
minute.
You know, it there's you don't become a
jockey and a professional athlete
and achieve immediate success like you're the best
in the world. It takes so much time,
and you go through so much failure.
(13:30):
But the winners
fail to quit.
And the losers,
they quit immediately, and they never reached the
success that they could have achieved. So I
always had the mindset of get back in
the saddle. Get back in whatever. You get
thrown off, you lose the race,
things go bad horribly wrong.
But they're in again, in the mind of
(13:51):
somebody who wants to win,
there is no quit.
And so you just keep going and you
keep driving and things eventually start to come
together. It's amazing the miracle
of the universe, of what can work for
you. And even
when you least expect it, when things don't
look like they're even possible,
(14:11):
when
it just looks like it's not meant to
be, it's it comes together in unique ways.
And I can relate so many stories that
just
happened when I wasn't really expecting it. I
was believing. I continued to have faith in
the outcome, the end result that I wanted.
And I carried that mindset for the my
(14:33):
entire life
from riding racehorses to getting into this career.
I just I looked at it. There was
no failure. Failure is not an option. And
when I got into this career,
I had no clients, obviously, and they gave
me this short window of you need to
have $12,000,000
in assets.
If you don't have that within 18 months,
(14:54):
I'm sorry, but your job is terminated. $12,000,000
back when I started. That was a lot
of money. It's a lot of money. And
I'm figuring it out, and I'm bringing in
$5,000 accounts, IRAs, and open,
but that's not gonna get you there very
quickly. It just you keep going, but you
never stop. You never stop to think about,
can I do this or is am I
gonna fail? It wasn't an option.
(15:15):
And if it's never an option,
then it won't be. And you will find
that way that the outcome that you want
is there. You just have to select it.
You just have to get there, be present
enough to find it.
And that's why I say worry will kill
you. If if you start letting worry take
over, it'll kill your wealth
opportunities. It'll career kill your career. It'll kill
(15:36):
your health. And so many people and I've
had these experiences myself with
health outcomes because I worried about things
and excessively, and I didn't core understand the
correlation
between health
and the anxiety, the worry, the negative emotions,
but I do now. And there's a huge
section in my book talking about that too.
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Yeah. So we've got harnessing your wealth, and
then you have a second book. Right? You
(17:03):
didn't even say what that was. Yeah. It's
called from the starting gate, and that's the
one where I cover all three pillars of
a successful life. So I touch on the
wealth aspect again, but I also go deep
into the health
and finally into the manifesting of miracles
and how that all comes about and why
we're starting to see more and more in
(17:25):
that area of that niche of genre of
books and authors who talk about
the universal forces
and thinking your way into
the reality that you want.
And it is so fascinating to see it
because now science is starting to catch up.
It's so hard to bring it all together.
But
when you start to understand that there's frequency,
(17:46):
there's universal laws, there's frequency out there, and
if you can tap into it, we all
understand and believe in gravity.
We can't see it, but we damn sure
know it's there. And it's the same concept
with this whole
vibration of thoughts. Thought alone
is the most powerful force. It's far more
powerful than gravity. Thought alone can travel as
(18:07):
far as you want it to. So just
bringing those kind of conscious thoughts,
getting them so tight and deep into your
subconscious, that's where the miracles can begin to
happen.
I found that out. I learned through
many of my own difficulties, but there's so
much that is available to us if we
would just allow ourselves to tap into it.
(18:28):
How in
the world did you find the time?
Your books aren't small, dude. Like, these are
like books. How did you in, Billy, honest
I get asked this all the time. I
published 2 books. My third one's coming out
this fall. I know what it's like to
write what it's like to write in. Advisors
will ask me all the time, how do
you find time to do it? How do
(18:49):
you do it? You're not a professional writer.
Would you mind just giving us a like,
how did you execute these 2 books, man?
One of those things that just got it
into my mind. I wanted to write a
book, and this would be before I wrote
my first one.
But we can all have these thoughts and
then
never hear them out. Sure. I've I don't
know. Something in me has always said, I
(19:10):
am not a fan of the idea of
saying you're gonna do something and never do
it.
I kinda think, oh, that's a BS way
to live your life. Always talking about what
you're gonna do, but you always have an
excuse why you didn't do it. So when
I vocalize something, I'm going to verbalize something.
I'm gonna hold myself accountable.
And I said, I wanna write a book,
(19:31):
but I didn't know how to do it.
Well, this is what I'm talking about, have
manifesting all these things to start All of
a sudden unlocking doors.
I had no idea how to write a
book. I didn't even know where to start.
And guess what, Matt? I talk about writing
a book. I start thinking about writing a
book, and I go to a Rhema James
conference.
Guess what one of the sessions was on?
(19:53):
How to write a book.
And so here's these guys that started this
company called Scribe Media,
and they were experts in writing books. And
they had written a book called How to
Write Your Own Book.
It was phenomenal.
Now you tell me how this stuff all
comes together. Just at the time when I'm
starting to think about, and I really wanna
(20:14):
get focused on writing a book. So I
read their book,
and I just followed their procedure step by
step. It was just laid out. Here's what
you've got have to do. Get your outline,
develop your manuscript. You gotta have it organized,
but then there's all the technical aspects to
it.
How are you gonna polish it up? How
are you going to create a cover design?
(20:34):
Who's going to
edit everything for you? Copy edit it. And
then, of course, you have to have interior
and your exterior edits. Then you have to
have a publishing company. If you don't know
how to do that, well, here's how you
do it on Amazon, publish your own book.
But a lot of technicalities there, you would
never
understand.
Finding, creating an ISBN number and how to
(20:56):
get it listed, and all the technicalities from
the Amazon site, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
So that was a learning experience, and it's
not I wouldn't say it's easy. I talk
about it's difficult.
It is not an easy endeavor.
But the challenges
are things that I enjoy. I enjoy a
challenge, and I always want to say
that
I didn't back down from a challenge. I
(21:18):
looked I took it upon myself to finish
it. I've ran a 100 mile race, and
that was definitely not an easy experience
either.
So maybe it's just that I enjoy things
like that.
But going back to my earlier comments is
when you are ready and you verbalize and
you put that out there and you continue
(21:39):
to
focus on it,
the doors will open for you.
I always joke with I shouldn't say now
when I was a coach, when an adviser
would have an idea, one of the things
that I would say is, okay. You just
spoke that into existence. You need to buy
the URL.
They would come up with a great process
or a marketing idea or some of those
(22:00):
things and into or a catchphrase branded language,
and I'll be like, okay. Nope. Listen. You
can't wait. Now it's out there. And they
always laughed at that, and then some of
them wouldn't execute on that. And maybe 3,
4 days later, I tried to go by
the URL, and it's gone. Like, it just
sold them. I'm like, guys, you don't understand
how all of this works. And I don't
necessarily think that we can fully grasp on
(22:21):
how all of it works, but it is
there and it is a power and a
force that we have to pay attention to.
So you are a juggernaut when it comes
to making sure that you maintain that focus,
you manifest the things, and you get the
stuff done. What's next for you, man? What's
next for us is we really wanna become
a $1,000,000,000
company. That's our plan. I have several goals,
both both personal and professional, and we talk
(22:43):
about them as a staff. We have a
staff meeting every Monday,
and we continue to talk about it. I'm
a firm believer in what you put out
there and what you focus yourself and your
attention and your energy on
brings those things back to you. If you
focus on what you have, your positive
focus on the gratitudes,
more of the same comes. If you focus
on what you lack
(23:04):
and what you don't have and what you're
miserable about,
more of the same comes to you. So
you manifest whatever it is that you focus
on. And I wanna focus on what we
have, what we're grateful for, what we continue
to do and help people accomplish.
So our firm is really
growing. We're in good growth mode. We've hired
another young financial advisor to help build that.
(23:27):
We have a full staff now. I've just
expanded my office, did a big remodel,
which took a while. And
so we are at that point. I said,
build it and
let things develop and let them come. You
can't
be scared. I think fear kills a lot
of dreams.
Sure. So those are the things we wanna
do is continue to build the clientele.
(23:49):
We, we serve a lot of folks who
are in the high net worth industry who
are involved in horse racing. Of course, that's
a big part of my background.
So it was the instant niche for me.
It wasn't easy calling people up as a
jockey
and hoping that they would give you even
passing time of day. Most of them just
hung up on me. You're a jockey. What
(24:11):
do you know about doing this?
You continue to get a few breaks and
a few more, and then credibility builds
and referrals,
and you do the right thing and continue
to do the right thing. You don't take
shortcuts.
And from there, that's the kind of
that's the kind of business that I wanna
build. A lot of personal goals. I'm still
involved in horses, and I have my own
(24:32):
racehorses now. So it's a fun activity for
me and my family to do. I have
a ranch that away from the office that
I develop and raise young horses, and
so it's a it's full circle. I Yeah.
Grew up around horses. I
built my career, my notoriety,
and my name
with horses, and now I get to participate
(24:53):
in that business myself.
Yeah. I think it's fantastic, and I love
and I doing the right thing in in
all of those things are the foundational purpose
of the firm, and I think what a
lot of advisers think that they're already doing.
But one of the reasons you are so
successful
is because you have that branded language. You've
(25:13):
got all of the social proof surrounding to
support the branded language,
and you're very transparent in your journey and
why you created the brand in the way
that you did.
And when you build we've talked about this
on the show before, but when you build
such a strong brand foundation, which you have,
you can do whatever the heck you want
on top of it, right, because you have
(25:35):
such strong
pillars into the ground and the foundation and
the team that you're constantly reinforcing these messages.
And all of those things, you're ticking all
of the boxes, which is why I really
wanted to have you on the show.
I really wanted people to hear that, 1,
you gotta put the time in. Number 2,
you've gotta have the myopic focus.
Whatever brand you build, if it can be
(25:57):
built around your story about who you are
and what makes you tick, that's gonna resonate,
and then other people can pitch their wagon,
again,
to your story, which is what your other
advisers have done because, again, it's all about
making sure that you're really taking your wealth
to the next level, and then I think
that's what you guys do. Alright, Billy. If
(26:17):
anybody wants, 1, to order a copy of
either of your books or, 2, find out
more about your firm, where should they go?
Well, there's a couple of different websites. My
personal site for my books and kinda learn
about my books and how to order them
is billypetersonauthor.com.
And our website for our firm is petersonwealthservices.com.
(26:38):
You can also follow us on any social
media of your choice. We have
Instagram.
Of course, we have the LinkedIn. You have
X and Facebook, and we
share a lot of things and stories. We
have blog posts that we put videos on
all the time. And then, of course, we
have the Harnessing Your Wealth podcast,
which you and your team do a great
(26:59):
job to help us utilize and promote out
there to the world. So all of those
things are how you can connect with us.
And, please, I really want our listeners
to get done with the show today, jump
on their phone or their computer, and see
all of the things that your firm is
doing
(27:19):
and seeing all of the
consistency,
continuity,
and power that goes into having such a
clear and distinct brand message. So, Billy, man,
thank you for being a client. Thank you
very much for coming on the show and
sharing your wisdom with our audience. I really
appreciate it. Hey. Glad to be here, Matt.
You get a few more bobbleheads there on
that shelf. Alright?
(27:40):
Ah, hey. Listen. I have my own bobble
hub built in here, my friend. And, listen,
if you are all trying to figure out
what you can do to truly have a
brand foundation like what Billy's built, you can
do it in the PodRocket Influence Academy. We've
got unbelievable
resources for you, including all sorts of ask
an expert and office hours that we offer
our clients in the PodRocket Academy every single
(28:02):
solitary month.
34 plus courses, 8 hours of time to
be able to talk to me and my
team to make sure that you can find
out how you can brand yourself in the
way that you want to so that when
you have your long form content marketing strategy,
it's built on an amazing foundation. So for
Billy and all of us here at Proudmouth,
this is Matt Haller, and we'll see you
on the other side of the mic very
soon.
(28:23):
Thanks for listening to the Top Advisor Marketing
Podcast brought to you by Proudmouth.
If you wanna know more about how you
can be your own loud, visit us at
proudmouth.com
and sign up for the PodRocket Academy.
Through courses and office hours led by a
professional podcast producers and digital marketers, you will
learn everything you need to know to become
the trusted subject matter expert you were meant
(28:43):
to be.
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