October 22, 2024 • 31 mins
Anyone can talk. But how good of a communicator are you?
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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 am your host, Matt Halloran. Now
I met our guest today, Joe, who's now
officially the chief of communications at Intentionally
(00:43):
many years ago in a past life that
I had that up until recently he was
still living in that life, which was working
for Carson. And then I both started at
a place called Peak, then it became Carson
Consulting, and then all sorts of other Carson
y things happened. But I have known this
man for quite a while. He happens to
be somebody who I have an enormous amount
of respect for because not only do I
think he's unbelievably intelligent,
(01:05):
but his focus being on communications,
something that I hold very dear personally. So,
Joe, welcome to the show, my friend. Hey.
I'm glad to be here. Like you said,
it's a long time coming, I think, for
both of us. And when you throw out
the name peak, a lot of memories come
to
a lot of memories flood the brain. That's
for sure. Listen, Dan. Here's the thing, though.
(01:25):
When you started to peak, it was a
really cool building that you started in. When
I started peak, we're in the basement of
Ron's Financial Services Bank. And I remember walking
in there the 1st day and thinking to
myself, is this is this real? And then,
of course, everybody comes out of their office,
and, hey, they're all dressed really nicely. Hey,
we're getting a new building and all of
that. But, yeah, that was I'm a big
gett. A little bit nervous there, dude. I'm
(01:45):
a big gettings.
Okay. So, you're officially now the chief of
communications at Intentionally,
and communications has been a huge component of
what you've done in financial services.
Would you mind describing and defining what that
means and really what your expertise is?
Yeah. So communications
means a lot of different things to a
(02:06):
lot of people. Right? It's a broad term
used to describe any number of definitions depending
on where you're at and who you're working
for.
The way that I like to see the
communications work that I've done is
all
around the fact that the message matters.
And that sounds very obvious to say, but
I think I see so few companies, so
(02:28):
few individuals
even, who take the time
to craft an intentional message, and that could
be interpersonal communication. That could go all the
way up to how a company communicates with
its various audiences. And so for my career,
from the humble beginnings of peak back in
the day all the way to helping Carson
grow to where it is and now being
(02:50):
unintentionally.
The way I like to look at communications
is how
the perception of your brand is being conveyed
to various audiences, whether that's your clients,
your employees,
your internal stakeholders, partners, all the way to
the general public.
And that art and science of how you
craft a message to resonate with someone
(03:13):
is what I'm all about. It's always been
the most fascinating part
of how I've enjoyed doing the work is
taking
very complex,
either concepts
or ideas and figuring out how to distill
them down in a way so that an
audience can very clearly and simply understand what's
being conveyed.
(03:34):
So this is the foundation
of what we refer to as influence. Right?
So when you have your messaging and your
brand and everything dialed in, then you have
the opportunity to start becoming more influential. Is
that a fair statement? That is a fair
statement. Yeah.
Financial advisers in general are not always known
as the greatest communicators. Right? A lot of
it is I'm talking at you, I am
(03:54):
showing you my expertise and my skill, pie
charts, bar graphs.
How do we help advisors understand
that the soft skills are a kabillion times
more important than the analytical skills? Like, you
and I have talked about this before that
most advisors are focusing on the head of
the client or the mind of the client
where they really need to focus a lot
(04:15):
more on the heart of the client. And
you have experience here. Let's talk about that.
Yeah. I saw a huge opportunity just like
you did where
as I grew up in this industry,
I saw
plenty of advisers
looking to
differentiate themselves and get an edge on the
market with either separating themselves from the pack
(04:35):
in terms of their expertise
and especially in financial services. What I noticed
early on, I think you and I have
had those conversations
many years ago where we would almost try
the industry would try to browbeat
their clients into
not only convincing that those clients and prospects
of just how qualified they are or how
much experience, expertise, maybe even professional certifications they
(04:59):
had, and they would use language
that they thought
would put them in a better position and
build trust, and instead it eroded that trust.
And the more that I saw
the process of how advisors could come back
to themselves,
think about how they were building a business
and a brand around why they became advisors,
(05:22):
oftentimes there was a very relatable experience. There
was oftentimes a very relatable way in which
they
earned a lot of that business early on.
And for some reason or another, they get
distracted along the way
and they try to get into something more
produced,
and it finds itself not connecting with clients
or prospects in the way that you would
(05:44):
expect. And so for me, what I saw
right out of the gate was
this whole idea that the lucrative skill of
the future is soft skills.
And you're seeing this with the next generation,
but you also saw it many years ago
when I first got out of the business.
The more that you had this ability to
connect with a person in a room or
through an engagement, whether that was through a
(06:05):
digital channel or in person,
the better chance you had at earning that
business.
And so few advisors spent time honing that
skill.
And that's where I learned a lot from
my time at Carson Group because we spent
a little time on really honing in that
message and thinking about
where is there a need in this world,
(06:26):
who is it we best serve, and then
how are we gonna
provide ourselves and show up as the guide
in their lives, not the hero. Again, we
try to remove that ego.
Oftentimes when
the very instinct inside of us says
we should be promoting and amplifying
the value we bring to the world, and
that's very true.
(06:47):
But it only matters because there is a
need to begin with or there is a
feeling or an emotion
that needs to be addressed in someone's life.
And as it relates to financial planning, as
it relates to investment management or even wealth
management overall,
that feeling
for so many people can be
confusion. It can be fear, scarcity.
(07:10):
And so you start
the my whole process was figuring out how
to start
with those emotions, with those feelings, naming them
or labeling them, and then working backwards to
say, how do we show up in someone's
life based on the messaging that we put
out there as a brand with some of
the thought leadership we develop,
how do we show up in a place
(07:32):
of value when that person, individual, family, company
comes in and says, we feel a certain
way, we have a certain need,
and I'm in a vulnerable place in that
moment to say, can I connect with
a company or an individual that can solve
that need for me? And the reason that
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so many people move to make a decision
with someone else when they're working with them
is because they feel that personal connection. And
so I saw this
this very apparent trend of
the world needing more connection because
everything had gotten so
disconnected, cold, corporate in many ways, but also
(08:13):
there there was too much happening
in this conversation of trying to earn business
that we tried to distill down into a
science. And while there is a science to
it, there's also so much room here where
people
need to do business with people. People need
to feel like they are connected to people.
And that's where communications
(08:33):
as a, as an art form, as a
practice, as a profession,
I looked around the industry and I didn't
see anyone
putting that sort of focus into what is
it we're saying here and how is that
resonating
with people that we're doing business with every
day. And are we listening? And I know
you talk a lot about this, but are
(08:53):
we actually listening
to what they're telling us in return? And
how does that change the way
we adapt that message, adapt our value proposition,
and then go back, reintroduce ourselves to a
market in a more compelling way. I was
just talking to an adviser friend of mine,
and he has this really large opportunity, and
he's presenting in front of this large group.
(09:14):
And he said to me,
Matt, I need to be able to hit
this audience
with same feeling that Steve Jobs brought the
iPhone.
And, Joe, this is all communicated. This is
your expertise. Right? It's how am I gonna
hit you in the heartstrings and make you
feel that connection so that you understand
how I'm going to feel working with you.
(09:36):
And, man, you and I have talked about
this. I know that you have done this
with hundreds and hundreds of advisors
really helping them hone that message. But you
said something that I have to just focus
on just for a second here.
What I have learned and what I discuss
in my new book is really this idea
of being intentional.
And now you're working for intentionally now, which
(09:56):
I think is hysterical because I know that
you've used this word before you ever started
working with Kelly and the whole team there
at Intentionally, but would you mind taking a
moment and really talking about what you mean
by
by communicating with intention, listening with intention,
and really what that can do for advisors?
Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Intention, you have
me pegged right there because the word intention
(10:19):
and intuition even are words that have stuck
with me for as long as I can
remember. It's the reason I wanted to study
this in college. It brought me out of
college into a workforce in
2,006,
2007 where the markets were
bad and the world was trying to figure
out exact especially as a young person trying
to find their way into the workforce,
(10:41):
I was looking for a place where I
could
show bring a lot of this perspective to
the table and help companies connect with their
clients, connect with their prospects. I think the
whole idea of intentional communication, it's actually one
of the things that Kelly and I were
joking about when we were talking about working
together.
And
you couldn't have named
(11:03):
a marketing firm, like, a growth engine consultancy
a better name than intentionally
because
there is so much race to the finish
line, especially in our industry. We wanna get
it right. We wanna get it right quickly.
And we think there are shortcuts
to growing the business,
to finding a way to get more clients,
(11:23):
to scaling our growth. And while all of
those things are important,
the foundational piece that's oftentimes forgotten because it's
invisible oftentimes is if you don't have a
good sense of who you are
and what you stand for and what you
believe, you and I are both followers of
people like Simon Sinek who talked about this
for decades, but
(11:44):
I saw so much race to the finish
line without that thoughtful, intentional approach. When I'm
talking about intentionality with messaging and with communication,
it's
1,
do you know what it is you're trying
to bring to the world,
and then do you know who you should
be bringing it to? Who does who is
(12:04):
it that needs your services?
Who is it that needs your advice? Who
is it that needs your value proposition in
that moment in time? And if you can
clarify that niche
and you have a very strong sense of
who you are and how you deliver that
value to the world, that need that you're
trying to address,
then you automatically
(12:26):
the world opens up to you in terms
of knowing exactly who you should be in
front of and who needs
what it is you're providing each and every
day. Once you know who you are, what
you believe,
and what you stand for, and you know
the value you're bringing to the table,
and you know exactly who you are best
meant for with target audience,
(12:47):
then it comes down to that. Then when
you start talking about marketing, amplification,
how do we intentionally look at what channels
we're using, what formats are we using? There
are some advisors who come across well on
video, you know this. Other advisors who don't,
maybe they're they prefer other formats of communication
and they come across in a more credible
(13:09):
way depending on the format they're using. So
that's where the spider web grows very quickly.
Once you have that sense of being
and that sense of purpose and mission and
you know exactly who that target audience is
and who your ideal client
really how they think, how they feel,
how they
operate within their daily
(13:30):
family units, how they operate at work and
at home,
what they fear, what they're looking forward to.
If you can get those 3 things right,
then you have the foundation through which all
of those other marketing decisions happen, which is
how do we reach these people and what's
our strategy in order to put this message
out in the world.
(13:51):
But too often, advisors go straight to the
marketing
amplification step. They wanna be seen in publications.
They wanna be quoted. They want to be
credible.
They want clients knocking down their door. They
want leads. Kelly and I talk about this
all the time.
And we're even exploring the idea of putting
a book together where it's
(14:13):
leads is not what advisors really want
because you could put a number of leads
in front of an advisor, in front of
a firm, and you find out very quickly
some of them are qualified, some of them
aren't. Maybe you decide you're better suited for
one client over another, and what you really
need is a way to qualify these people
and to have more authentic conversations to identify
(14:35):
who you can work with. So for me,
without that thoughtful, intentional approach to finding yourself
as a business and as an
individual, that marketing strategy only goes so far.
It's interesting when you say that because when
Kirk and I rebranded from Top Advisor Marketing
to Proudmouth when we were sitting with our
(14:57):
branding agency,
One of the first things that they had
said was asking those questions. Right? Who are
you? What are you solving? Who do you
work for? Why would they care? What some
problems
are you actually solving for them?
And we really distilled it down to a
very simple statement for us, which is we
help advisors stop being the best kept secret
in their area. Because that's what most advice
(15:19):
that's an amplification thing that you keep talking
about is they're just so tired of sitting
in their office and people not knowing how
smart and good they are at what they
do. And then the second part of that
question is who do you do it for,
which is we work with independent financial advisors.
That's what we work with. I don't work
with wirehouses. I don't work with banks. I
don't work with captive
advisors because they can't just do what our
(15:41):
system.
The other thing that you said there that
I absolutely love, it's really like a gut
check. And when we first started working together
at peak, we were running something called the
True Wealth Institute, which was a communications 3
day training program that we did for advisors
to help them learn how to ask
the right questions and then deal with the
answers.
(16:02):
Something I've heard you say and I've noticed
that you've you talk about this on social
and I've heard you talk about this in
the past is the importance of advisors being
able to listen. And I'm gonna challenge you
on something, my friend.
Most advisers don't wanna ask questions that they're
afraid to hear the answers.
How can you help them
get more at ease with the power of
(16:23):
listening so that they can find out really
truly what their clients want. Yeah. I think
you have to
as an adviser, you have to have this
authentic desire
to want to understand people. So something that
I truly believe as a communications professional,
and
it serves me well throughout my professional career
but also my personal life, is if you
(16:44):
don't have this desire
to understand
other people as well as this desire to
want to feel understood, I think that's what
drives marketing. It's what drives branding.
It's what drives business in so many different
ways is this desire and this need to
feel understood.
Advisors have to understand if they're building a
(17:05):
business that's addressing a need for a certain
target audience and that they're serving a certain
client segment very well,
they should be naturally passionate about empathizing
with that group of people and
wanting to understand them to an nth degree
because the more you can empathize,
listen,
(17:26):
and understand
what's happening in someone's life, the better you
are able to show up for them when
it is
time for them to engage with you and
capitalize
on everything that you bring to the table
for expertise. So I think listening is important.
It's important though that advisors understand this needs
to come from a very genuine place
(17:48):
of wanting
to help people,
wanting to understand them. I think once you
get past this whole idea of active listening,
I was on a call with Affirm
last week and they were
talking about what would 2025
look like if we were to work with
your team and build this marketing strategy. And
we got into this whole idea, you're very
(18:09):
familiar with this from your coaching days,
of setting up an advisory council. And they
were shocked
by the simple
idea of
spending the last quarter of the year
thinking about how do we get in front
of, let's say, 20 of our top clients.
Maybe there's 2 different groups of those clients.
(18:29):
You could have business owners on one side.
You could have
female entrepreneurs on another.
And
sitting them down for a half a day,
talking to them about what it is they
feel that they're getting the most value from,
what's happening in their lives so you can
know how to show up to them. And
then you use so much of that feedback
in conversation with them to build your marketing
(18:52):
strategy for the rest of the year. Because
if you understand your top 20%,
you're going to
naturally bake in
the type of thought leadership, the type of
advice
that your target audience wants. And that's really
the essence of any good marketing strategy is
understanding that need. So to understand the need,
you gotta listen. You have to have this
(19:13):
desire to want to understand someone else.
And then think about how you empathize with
that person and their situation and how you
would want someone to show up for you.
That's really where we try to start with
our clients in order to help them get
to a place
of building some of this messaging.
And once you build messaging from this very
(19:35):
authentic
core
place of what it is you believe and
how you think you should show up for
someone based on their actual needs and what
they're coming to the table with,
you have a mark you naturally have a
marketing strategy that is going to
align with your business goals. The advisory board,
absolutely one of the smartest things that you
(19:57):
can do, period.
Especially when you're trying to figure out a
niche too. Go to your best clients and
ask them the questions. One of the things
that I don't know if
Carson still does this, but this is something
we refer to all the time here at
ProudMouth as Julie Littlechild. And so Julie's program,
the absolute engagement program, because she start because
of this third party system that she's built
(20:19):
with all of these back end data analytics,
she sauces out a lot of this stuff
too because we know that a lot of
advisors are terrified. In fact, Joe, when I
was a consultant, I used to run advisory
councils. People used to fly me in and
I would run the 3, 4 hour event
because they didn't wanna be in the room.
And, in fact, that was part of the
model, actually, because they were more honest and
open, which was great. But you do have
(20:40):
to ask. You have to be intentional, and
you have to be focused.
Now when it comes to your role now,
alright,
you're known in the industry, dude, and I
think you've done an amazing job of your
own personal brand and really the fact that
you had been out there and in front
of so many advisers at the when you
were with Carson.
But now you're at a different organization doing
(21:02):
different things. If somebody wants
to fundamentally
change the way that they're communicating
with their ideal clients and prospects,
where do they even begin? And do they
begin with somebody like you? Do they begin
with the intentionally team?
What is step 1? Because I don't want
(21:24):
people to leave and say, wow. That was
philosophically great, but I need, like, meat. So
tell them where they need to start. Yeah.
In so many ways, and this is a
very tangible way where I try to start
the conversation
with firms that are interested in working with
us, especially when it comes to communications and
marketing,
is understanding if they have a good sense
(21:44):
of themselves. So something we
did at Carson, and I've known several firms
who built this out, is just having core
values,
whether that's 3 to 5, maybe 3 to
6 core values. You don't want too many.
You don't want too few because
everything
around those core values, if you truly share
those core beliefs,
those core behaviors
(22:06):
with everyone on your team and everybody rallies
around, this is who we are, this is
how we define who we are,
and then we make decisions for the business
and for our clients based on these core
values,
everything else starts to flow out from there.
And so oftentimes when
I'm trying to have these introductory conversations
and we get into these huge brainstorms
(22:29):
about
how to position a certain company in a
certain marketplace,
What is it they're having success with? Because
they're all oftentimes more than one avenue they
could take and more than one decision they
could make.
I always start with, do you have a
good sense of who you are? And the
way I try to suss that out is
through,
(22:49):
do you currently have
a set of core values that
are visible within the company
that you feel the executive leadership team or
the advisor or the leadership team is operating
under? And then how do you work backwards
from saying, if these are the things we
believe in how we want to show up
to the world,
(23:10):
now we have some sense of ourselves and
we can start building from there. And so
even before
we take people into
drawing up a marketing strategy and talking to
them about website rebuilds and
rebrands,
new taglines
or new positioning, or now our business looked
like this 10 years ago and we need
to evolve it into something more today,
(23:33):
I oftentimes go back to what has changed
internally and
intrinsically for all of you along this journey?
Is it the same? Is it not from
what it was before? And then do you
have
something you can point to in a very
tangible
manner
that tells not only you, but everyone else
(23:53):
within the firm who you are? And to
me, it oftentimes starts with core values.
I think the other side of this is
understanding,
and I took actually a firm through this
just a few weeks ago
is saying,
do you understand your audience enough to know
how they feel right now? So for example,
you could take
this whole idea of the fact that clients
(24:15):
may feel confused or fearful about money. What
sort of emotions are tied to money in
your ideal clients' lives?
If they have that emotion
at this turning point in their life,
how is it you are going to then
provide a solution
to that natural emotion that they're feeling?
And oftentimes those emotions, like we've talked about
(24:38):
earlier in this conversation, those emotions and then
how that advisor firm addresses those emotions with
their value proposition,
there is core values
somewhere underneath that conversation.
And so if I can get underneath that,
we can get core values developed,
And this is something that I would tell
anybody who's listening to say,
(24:59):
you've got what, 2 months left this year,
we're heading into the end of 2024.
There probably isn't a better time for you
to meet with your leadership team to do
some executive planning.
Make that exercise
of reexamining
yourselves
a part of any sort of strategic planning
that you do. I think a lot of
advisers think
(25:21):
that they know,
but they don't. Like, one of the things
that I hear all the time is they're
confused.
They're worried.
They're uncertain.
But there are also subsets
of ideal clients who are
excited,
they're happy,
they're proud of themselves. When I was a
therapist, one of the things that we used
(25:42):
to hand people, and I would hand it
to everybody, it didn't matter if you were
a little kid or somebody older, is an
actual emotions chart that had a 100 different
emotions and people would look at it and
they would say, oh, my God, Joe. I
didn't know there were this many emotions. Like,
no, you do. It's just you didn't have
the vocabulary
in order to make it so that you
really were communicating effectively. And I think that's
(26:04):
why the values exercise is so vitally important.
And on that strong foundation that's really built
off of who you are as a human,
then we can start answering those questions. But
I love the fact that you're focused more
on how they feel
Because if you can show them that you're
gonna make them feel the way they want
to, go back to the early iPhone things,
man. Yeah. If you think about how Apple
(26:26):
rolled out the m p 3 player versus
the I instead what they and I don't
know. You probably know the story because you
do as much reading as I do, but
most people don't realize they're in like, o
six, o seven, o eight, right before they
came out with the iPad.
What they originally went to the market with
was talking about the amount of storage in
(26:47):
terms of, like, gigabytes or megabytes, actually, it
was at the time,
and
all of these technical
based features that sounded like engineers had built
it, which they did. And so they sent
that language to their marketing team. The marketing
team for Apple just regurgitated that and put
it out in the market and it didn't
(27:07):
resonate. Actually the early sales for the iPad
were terrible
And what they had to do was twist
that narrative into saying, what if you could
carry the soundtrack of your life with you?
You can store a 1,000 songs in your
pocket. 1, that speaks to the size of
the iPad, it's small.
2, it speaks to just how much storage
there is to the common person without going
(27:29):
into, like, how much is a megabyte again
and how many songs can I get with
4 megabytes?
And just that simple rephrasing and reframing,
what value they were bringing to the market
had all the difference in the world to
that growth trajectory for the iPad. And then
eventually, like you said, in 08, the iPhone.
And that's exactly what advisors need to do
(27:49):
is they need to look at what they're
saying now and make that change because so
many advisors
are saying so many things that are so
fiercely technical
to try to make themselves sound smart
when, in fact, what they need to do
is they need to make people feel better.
Okay, Joe. I'm sure that there's gonna be
people who want to reach out to you,
find out more about what you're doing at
(28:09):
Intentionally. Where should they go, and who should
reach out to you?
Yeah. Absolutely. So I think the best thing
to do is to check out Intentionally's website
because we do offer a wide range of
things. The whole vision behind the firm is
that
messaging and comms leads to marketing. Marketing leads
to the client experience
and the technology that's used in order to
(28:29):
scale your business. So we see ourselves as
a growth engine firm,
and they can check us out at intention.lyonline.
The other thing that we're gonna be doing
here over the next month, and, Matt, I
actually have the opportunity to talk to you
or at least tease it right now, is
we're coming out, everything that we've talked about
here today, I haven't seen done
(28:51):
within the industry, but I also haven't seen
done especially on the M and A side
of the industry when you have a firm
that is going through a merger or acquisition
and there are these clashing
missions of what needs to be accomplished. Maybe
there's a little bit of a new mix
of culture that's coming in with different core
values.
All of those things we tend to glance
(29:13):
over in the middle of making a deal
and ensuring that we're hitting the company's growth
goals. Something that I learned well at Carson
was figuring out how we can navigate that
change management
internally
and externally with clients and prospects.
And so we're taking that formula
and we're rolling out a communications
(29:33):
offering
at intentionally
specifically for m and a, but also just
to roll through how to tell your story,
get your story straight if you're somebody who
just needs that help. And we'll have a
webinar on that November 13th
at 3 PM. And the press release will
come out for kind of this offering, and
we'll have a lot more to say about
(29:54):
it over the coming months. But
so much of what we're trying to build
right now is ensuring that firms have this
foundational
identity built
before they decide to go to market with
anything. Now are they gonna be able to
get a replay? So if somebody listens to
this a year from now. Okay. Good. Yeah.
And they just go to the website to
find that, yes, or your YouTube page? Yes.
(30:14):
Exactly. We'll have we I will be doing
a number of different episodes on YouTube called
message matters. We've already started with our first
couple episodes here.
Yeah. And it's message does matter, but there's
also so many matters behind the message.
And so we're really gonna spend some time
over the next months years talking about why
(30:35):
this matters from an interpersonal communication standpoint, active
listening, all the way through to how a
business adopts this attitude
and puts a meaningful message out to the
marketplace. So they can follow us on YouTube
with the message matters series.
They can also find a replay once we
have this webinar, which will be on our
website as well.
Alright, brother. I'm super happy. Congratulations on all
(30:57):
of your success. And listen, everybody, you needed
to be checking out what Intentional He's doing.
Kelly and the team speak at conferences all
over the place. And if you see them
on the dais, make sure you register
to go listen to them speak because there
really isn't anybody like them. Communications is the
foundation of everything.
And when you have the opportunity to know
what to say, how to say, and especially
to hit people, not just in their logical
(31:19):
mind, but in their emotional mind, everything can
fundamentally change for you. So for Joe and
all of us here at Proudmouth, this is
Matt Hallard, and we'll see you on the
other side of the mic very soon. 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.
(31:40):
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
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 am your host, Matt Halloran. Now
I met our guest today, Joe, who's now
officially the chief of communications at Intentionally
(00:43):
many years ago in a past life that
I had that up until recently he was
still living in that life, which was working
for Carson. And then I both started at
a place called Peak, then it became Carson
Consulting, and then all sorts of other Carson
y things happened. But I have known this
man for quite a while. He happens to
be somebody who I have an enormous amount
of respect for because not only do I
think he's unbelievably intelligent,
(01:05):
but his focus being on communications,
something that I hold very dear personally. So,
Joe, welcome to the show, my friend. Hey.
I'm glad to be here. Like you said,
it's a long time coming, I think, for
both of us. And when you throw out
the name peak, a lot of memories come
to
a lot of memories flood the brain. That's
for sure. Listen, Dan. Here's the thing, though.
(01:25):
When you started to peak, it was a
really cool building that you started in. When
I started peak, we're in the basement of
Ron's Financial Services Bank. And I remember walking
in there the 1st day and thinking to
myself, is this is this real? And then,
of course, everybody comes out of their office,
and, hey, they're all dressed really nicely. Hey,
we're getting a new building and all of
that. But, yeah, that was I'm a big
gett. A little bit nervous there, dude. I'm
(01:45):
a big gettings.
Okay. So, you're officially now the chief of
communications at Intentionally,
and communications has been a huge component of
what you've done in financial services.
Would you mind describing and defining what that
means and really what your expertise is?
Yeah. So communications
means a lot of different things to a
(02:06):
lot of people. Right? It's a broad term
used to describe any number of definitions depending
on where you're at and who you're working
for.
The way that I like to see the
communications work that I've done is
all
around the fact that the message matters.
And that sounds very obvious to say, but
I think I see so few companies, so
(02:28):
few individuals
even, who take the time
to craft an intentional message, and that could
be interpersonal communication. That could go all the
way up to how a company communicates with
its various audiences. And so for my career,
from the humble beginnings of peak back in
the day all the way to helping Carson
grow to where it is and now being
(02:50):
unintentionally.
The way I like to look at communications
is how
the perception of your brand is being conveyed
to various audiences, whether that's your clients,
your employees,
your internal stakeholders, partners, all the way to
the general public.
And that art and science of how you
craft a message to resonate with someone
(03:13):
is what I'm all about. It's always been
the most fascinating part
of how I've enjoyed doing the work is
taking
very complex,
either concepts
or ideas and figuring out how to distill
them down in a way so that an
audience can very clearly and simply understand what's
being conveyed.
(03:34):
So this is the foundation
of what we refer to as influence. Right?
So when you have your messaging and your
brand and everything dialed in, then you have
the opportunity to start becoming more influential. Is
that a fair statement? That is a fair
statement. Yeah.
Financial advisers in general are not always known
as the greatest communicators. Right? A lot of
it is I'm talking at you, I am
(03:54):
showing you my expertise and my skill, pie
charts, bar graphs.
How do we help advisors understand
that the soft skills are a kabillion times
more important than the analytical skills? Like, you
and I have talked about this before that
most advisors are focusing on the head of
the client or the mind of the client
where they really need to focus a lot
(04:15):
more on the heart of the client. And
you have experience here. Let's talk about that.
Yeah. I saw a huge opportunity just like
you did where
as I grew up in this industry,
I saw
plenty of advisers
looking to
differentiate themselves and get an edge on the
market with either separating themselves from the pack
(04:35):
in terms of their expertise
and especially in financial services. What I noticed
early on, I think you and I have
had those conversations
many years ago where we would almost try
the industry would try to browbeat
their clients into
not only convincing that those clients and prospects
of just how qualified they are or how
much experience, expertise, maybe even professional certifications they
(04:59):
had, and they would use language
that they thought
would put them in a better position and
build trust, and instead it eroded that trust.
And the more that I saw
the process of how advisors could come back
to themselves,
think about how they were building a business
and a brand around why they became advisors,
(05:22):
oftentimes there was a very relatable experience. There
was oftentimes a very relatable way in which
they
earned a lot of that business early on.
And for some reason or another, they get
distracted along the way
and they try to get into something more
produced,
and it finds itself not connecting with clients
or prospects in the way that you would
(05:44):
expect. And so for me, what I saw
right out of the gate was
this whole idea that the lucrative skill of
the future is soft skills.
And you're seeing this with the next generation,
but you also saw it many years ago
when I first got out of the business.
The more that you had this ability to
connect with a person in a room or
through an engagement, whether that was through a
(06:05):
digital channel or in person,
the better chance you had at earning that
business.
And so few advisors spent time honing that
skill.
And that's where I learned a lot from
my time at Carson Group because we spent
a little time on really honing in that
message and thinking about
where is there a need in this world,
(06:26):
who is it we best serve, and then
how are we gonna
provide ourselves and show up as the guide
in their lives, not the hero. Again, we
try to remove that ego.
Oftentimes when
the very instinct inside of us says
we should be promoting and amplifying
the value we bring to the world, and
that's very true.
(06:47):
But it only matters because there is a
need to begin with or there is a
feeling or an emotion
that needs to be addressed in someone's life.
And as it relates to financial planning, as
it relates to investment management or even wealth
management overall,
that feeling
for so many people can be
confusion. It can be fear, scarcity.
(07:10):
And so you start
the my whole process was figuring out how
to start
with those emotions, with those feelings, naming them
or labeling them, and then working backwards to
say, how do we show up in someone's
life based on the messaging that we put
out there as a brand with some of
the thought leadership we develop,
how do we show up in a place
(07:32):
of value when that person, individual, family, company
comes in and says, we feel a certain
way, we have a certain need,
and I'm in a vulnerable place in that
moment to say, can I connect with
a company or an individual that can solve
that need for me? And the reason that
(07:52):
so many people move to make a decision
with someone else when they're working with them
is because they feel that personal connection. And
so I saw this
this very apparent trend of
the world needing more connection because
everything had gotten so
disconnected, cold, corporate in many ways, but also
(08:13):
there there was too much happening
in this conversation of trying to earn business
that we tried to distill down into a
science. And while there is a science to
it, there's also so much room here where
people
need to do business with people. People need
to feel like they are connected to people.
And that's where communications
(08:33):
as a, as an art form, as a
practice, as a profession,
I looked around the industry and I didn't
see anyone
putting that sort of focus into what is
it we're saying here and how is that
resonating
with people that we're doing business with every
day. And are we listening? And I know
you talk a lot about this, but are
(08:53):
we actually listening
to what they're telling us in return? And
how does that change the way
we adapt that message, adapt our value proposition,
and then go back, reintroduce ourselves to a
market in a more compelling way. I was
just talking to an adviser friend of mine,
and he has this really large opportunity, and
he's presenting in front of this large group.
(09:14):
And he said to me,
Matt, I need to be able to hit
this audience
with same feeling that Steve Jobs brought the
iPhone.
And, Joe, this is all communicated. This is
your expertise. Right? It's how am I gonna
hit you in the heartstrings and make you
feel that connection so that you understand
how I'm going to feel working with you.
(09:36):
And, man, you and I have talked about
this. I know that you have done this
with hundreds and hundreds of advisors
really helping them hone that message. But you
said something that I have to just focus
on just for a second here.
What I have learned and what I discuss
in my new book is really this idea
of being intentional.
And now you're working for intentionally now, which
(09:56):
I think is hysterical because I know that
you've used this word before you ever started
working with Kelly and the whole team there
at Intentionally, but would you mind taking a
moment and really talking about what you mean
by
by communicating with intention, listening with intention,
and really what that can do for advisors?
Yeah. I love that. Yeah. Intention, you have
me pegged right there because the word intention
(10:19):
and intuition even are words that have stuck
with me for as long as I can
remember. It's the reason I wanted to study
this in college. It brought me out of
college into a workforce in
2,006,
2007 where the markets were
bad and the world was trying to figure
out exact especially as a young person trying
to find their way into the workforce,
(10:41):
I was looking for a place where I
could
show bring a lot of this perspective to
the table and help companies connect with their
clients, connect with their prospects. I think the
whole idea of intentional communication, it's actually one
of the things that Kelly and I were
joking about when we were talking about working
together.
And
you couldn't have named
(11:03):
a marketing firm, like, a growth engine consultancy
a better name than intentionally
because
there is so much race to the finish
line, especially in our industry. We wanna get
it right. We wanna get it right quickly.
And we think there are shortcuts
to growing the business,
to finding a way to get more clients,
(11:23):
to scaling our growth. And while all of
those things are important,
the foundational piece that's oftentimes forgotten because it's
invisible oftentimes is if you don't have a
good sense of who you are
and what you stand for and what you
believe, you and I are both followers of
people like Simon Sinek who talked about this
for decades, but
(11:44):
I saw so much race to the finish
line without that thoughtful, intentional approach. When I'm
talking about intentionality with messaging and with communication,
it's
1,
do you know what it is you're trying
to bring to the world,
and then do you know who you should
be bringing it to? Who does who is
(12:04):
it that needs your services?
Who is it that needs your advice? Who
is it that needs your value proposition in
that moment in time? And if you can
clarify that niche
and you have a very strong sense of
who you are and how you deliver that
value to the world, that need that you're
trying to address,
then you automatically
(12:26):
the world opens up to you in terms
of knowing exactly who you should be in
front of and who needs
what it is you're providing each and every
day. Once you know who you are, what
you believe,
and what you stand for, and you know
the value you're bringing to the table,
and you know exactly who you are best
meant for with target audience,
(12:47):
then it comes down to that. Then when
you start talking about marketing, amplification,
how do we intentionally look at what channels
we're using, what formats are we using? There
are some advisors who come across well on
video, you know this. Other advisors who don't,
maybe they're they prefer other formats of communication
and they come across in a more credible
(13:09):
way depending on the format they're using. So
that's where the spider web grows very quickly.
Once you have that sense of being
and that sense of purpose and mission and
you know exactly who that target audience is
and who your ideal client
really how they think, how they feel,
how they
operate within their daily
(13:30):
family units, how they operate at work and
at home,
what they fear, what they're looking forward to.
If you can get those 3 things right,
then you have the foundation through which all
of those other marketing decisions happen, which is
how do we reach these people and what's
our strategy in order to put this message
out in the world.
(13:51):
But too often, advisors go straight to the
marketing
amplification step. They wanna be seen in publications.
They wanna be quoted. They want to be
credible.
They want clients knocking down their door. They
want leads. Kelly and I talk about this
all the time.
And we're even exploring the idea of putting
a book together where it's
(14:13):
leads is not what advisors really want
because you could put a number of leads
in front of an advisor, in front of
a firm, and you find out very quickly
some of them are qualified, some of them
aren't. Maybe you decide you're better suited for
one client over another, and what you really
need is a way to qualify these people
and to have more authentic conversations to identify
(14:35):
who you can work with. So for me,
without that thoughtful, intentional approach to finding yourself
as a business and as an
individual, that marketing strategy only goes so far.
It's interesting when you say that because when
Kirk and I rebranded from Top Advisor Marketing
to Proudmouth when we were sitting with our
(14:57):
branding agency,
One of the first things that they had
said was asking those questions. Right? Who are
you? What are you solving? Who do you
work for? Why would they care? What some
problems
are you actually solving for them?
And we really distilled it down to a
very simple statement for us, which is we
help advisors stop being the best kept secret
in their area. Because that's what most advice
(15:19):
that's an amplification thing that you keep talking
about is they're just so tired of sitting
in their office and people not knowing how
smart and good they are at what they
do. And then the second part of that
question is who do you do it for,
which is we work with independent financial advisors.
That's what we work with. I don't work
with wirehouses. I don't work with banks. I
don't work with captive
advisors because they can't just do what our
(15:41):
system.
The other thing that you said there that
I absolutely love, it's really like a gut
check. And when we first started working together
at peak, we were running something called the
True Wealth Institute, which was a communications 3
day training program that we did for advisors
to help them learn how to ask
the right questions and then deal with the
answers.
(16:02):
Something I've heard you say and I've noticed
that you've you talk about this on social
and I've heard you talk about this in
the past is the importance of advisors being
able to listen. And I'm gonna challenge you
on something, my friend.
Most advisers don't wanna ask questions that they're
afraid to hear the answers.
How can you help them
get more at ease with the power of
(16:23):
listening so that they can find out really
truly what their clients want. Yeah. I think
you have to
as an adviser, you have to have this
authentic desire
to want to understand people. So something that
I truly believe as a communications professional,
and
it serves me well throughout my professional career
but also my personal life, is if you
(16:44):
don't have this desire
to understand
other people as well as this desire to
want to feel understood, I think that's what
drives marketing. It's what drives branding.
It's what drives business in so many different
ways is this desire and this need to
feel understood.
Advisors have to understand if they're building a
(17:05):
business that's addressing a need for a certain
target audience and that they're serving a certain
client segment very well,
they should be naturally passionate about empathizing
with that group of people and
wanting to understand them to an nth degree
because the more you can empathize,
listen,
(17:26):
and understand
what's happening in someone's life, the better you
are able to show up for them when
it is
time for them to engage with you and
capitalize
on everything that you bring to the table
for expertise. So I think listening is important.
It's important though that advisors understand this needs
to come from a very genuine place
(17:48):
of wanting
to help people,
wanting to understand them. I think once you
get past this whole idea of active listening,
I was on a call with Affirm
last week and they were
talking about what would 2025
look like if we were to work with
your team and build this marketing strategy. And
we got into this whole idea, you're very
(18:09):
familiar with this from your coaching days,
of setting up an advisory council. And they
were shocked
by the simple
idea of
spending the last quarter of the year
thinking about how do we get in front
of, let's say, 20 of our top clients.
Maybe there's 2 different groups of those clients.
(18:29):
You could have business owners on one side.
You could have
female entrepreneurs on another.
And
sitting them down for a half a day,
talking to them about what it is they
feel that they're getting the most value from,
what's happening in their lives so you can
know how to show up to them. And
then you use so much of that feedback
in conversation with them to build your marketing
(18:52):
strategy for the rest of the year. Because
if you understand your top 20%,
you're going to
naturally bake in
the type of thought leadership, the type of
advice
that your target audience wants. And that's really
the essence of any good marketing strategy is
understanding that need. So to understand the need,
you gotta listen. You have to have this
(19:13):
desire to want to understand someone else.
And then think about how you empathize with
that person and their situation and how you
would want someone to show up for you.
That's really where we try to start with
our clients in order to help them get
to a place
of building some of this messaging.
And once you build messaging from this very
(19:35):
authentic
core
place of what it is you believe and
how you think you should show up for
someone based on their actual needs and what
they're coming to the table with,
you have a mark you naturally have a
marketing strategy that is going to
align with your business goals. The advisory board,
absolutely one of the smartest things that you
(19:57):
can do, period.
Especially when you're trying to figure out a
niche too. Go to your best clients and
ask them the questions. One of the things
that I don't know if
Carson still does this, but this is something
we refer to all the time here at
ProudMouth as Julie Littlechild. And so Julie's program,
the absolute engagement program, because she start because
of this third party system that she's built
(20:19):
with all of these back end data analytics,
she sauces out a lot of this stuff
too because we know that a lot of
advisors are terrified. In fact, Joe, when I
was a consultant, I used to run advisory
councils. People used to fly me in and
I would run the 3, 4 hour event
because they didn't wanna be in the room.
And, in fact, that was part of the
model, actually, because they were more honest and
open, which was great. But you do have
(20:40):
to ask. You have to be intentional, and
you have to be focused.
Now when it comes to your role now,
alright,
you're known in the industry, dude, and I
think you've done an amazing job of your
own personal brand and really the fact that
you had been out there and in front
of so many advisers at the when you
were with Carson.
But now you're at a different organization doing
(21:02):
different things. If somebody wants
to fundamentally
change the way that they're communicating
with their ideal clients and prospects,
where do they even begin? And do they
begin with somebody like you? Do they begin
with the intentionally team?
What is step 1? Because I don't want
(21:24):
people to leave and say, wow. That was
philosophically great, but I need, like, meat. So
tell them where they need to start. Yeah.
In so many ways, and this is a
very tangible way where I try to start
the conversation
with firms that are interested in working with
us, especially when it comes to communications and
marketing,
is understanding if they have a good sense
(21:44):
of themselves. So something we
did at Carson, and I've known several firms
who built this out, is just having core
values,
whether that's 3 to 5, maybe 3 to
6 core values. You don't want too many.
You don't want too few because
everything
around those core values, if you truly share
those core beliefs,
those core behaviors
(22:06):
with everyone on your team and everybody rallies
around, this is who we are, this is
how we define who we are,
and then we make decisions for the business
and for our clients based on these core
values,
everything else starts to flow out from there.
And so oftentimes when
I'm trying to have these introductory conversations
and we get into these huge brainstorms
(22:29):
about
how to position a certain company in a
certain marketplace,
What is it they're having success with? Because
they're all oftentimes more than one avenue they
could take and more than one decision they
could make.
I always start with, do you have a
good sense of who you are? And the
way I try to suss that out is
through,
(22:49):
do you currently have
a set of core values that
are visible within the company
that you feel the executive leadership team or
the advisor or the leadership team is operating
under? And then how do you work backwards
from saying, if these are the things we
believe in how we want to show up
to the world,
(23:10):
now we have some sense of ourselves and
we can start building from there. And so
even before
we take people into
drawing up a marketing strategy and talking to
them about website rebuilds and
rebrands,
new taglines
or new positioning, or now our business looked
like this 10 years ago and we need
to evolve it into something more today,
(23:33):
I oftentimes go back to what has changed
internally and
intrinsically for all of you along this journey?
Is it the same? Is it not from
what it was before? And then do you
have
something you can point to in a very
tangible
manner
that tells not only you, but everyone else
(23:53):
within the firm who you are? And to
me, it oftentimes starts with core values.
I think the other side of this is
understanding,
and I took actually a firm through this
just a few weeks ago
is saying,
do you understand your audience enough to know
how they feel right now? So for example,
you could take
this whole idea of the fact that clients
(24:15):
may feel confused or fearful about money. What
sort of emotions are tied to money in
your ideal clients' lives?
If they have that emotion
at this turning point in their life,
how is it you are going to then
provide a solution
to that natural emotion that they're feeling?
And oftentimes those emotions, like we've talked about
(24:38):
earlier in this conversation, those emotions and then
how that advisor firm addresses those emotions with
their value proposition,
there is core values
somewhere underneath that conversation.
And so if I can get underneath that,
we can get core values developed,
And this is something that I would tell
anybody who's listening to say,
(24:59):
you've got what, 2 months left this year,
we're heading into the end of 2024.
There probably isn't a better time for you
to meet with your leadership team to do
some executive planning.
Make that exercise
of reexamining
yourselves
a part of any sort of strategic planning
that you do. I think a lot of
advisers think
(25:21):
that they know,
but they don't. Like, one of the things
that I hear all the time is they're
confused.
They're worried.
They're uncertain.
But there are also subsets
of ideal clients who are
excited,
they're happy,
they're proud of themselves. When I was a
therapist, one of the things that we used
(25:42):
to hand people, and I would hand it
to everybody, it didn't matter if you were
a little kid or somebody older, is an
actual emotions chart that had a 100 different
emotions and people would look at it and
they would say, oh, my God, Joe. I
didn't know there were this many emotions. Like,
no, you do. It's just you didn't have
the vocabulary
in order to make it so that you
really were communicating effectively. And I think that's
(26:04):
why the values exercise is so vitally important.
And on that strong foundation that's really built
off of who you are as a human,
then we can start answering those questions. But
I love the fact that you're focused more
on how they feel
Because if you can show them that you're
gonna make them feel the way they want
to, go back to the early iPhone things,
man. Yeah. If you think about how Apple
(26:26):
rolled out the m p 3 player versus
the I instead what they and I don't
know. You probably know the story because you
do as much reading as I do, but
most people don't realize they're in like, o
six, o seven, o eight, right before they
came out with the iPad.
What they originally went to the market with
was talking about the amount of storage in
(26:47):
terms of, like, gigabytes or megabytes, actually, it
was at the time,
and
all of these technical
based features that sounded like engineers had built
it, which they did. And so they sent
that language to their marketing team. The marketing
team for Apple just regurgitated that and put
it out in the market and it didn't
(27:07):
resonate. Actually the early sales for the iPad
were terrible
And what they had to do was twist
that narrative into saying, what if you could
carry the soundtrack of your life with you?
You can store a 1,000 songs in your
pocket. 1, that speaks to the size of
the iPad, it's small.
2, it speaks to just how much storage
there is to the common person without going
(27:29):
into, like, how much is a megabyte again
and how many songs can I get with
4 megabytes?
And just that simple rephrasing and reframing,
what value they were bringing to the market
had all the difference in the world to
that growth trajectory for the iPad. And then
eventually, like you said, in 08, the iPhone.
And that's exactly what advisors need to do
(27:49):
is they need to look at what they're
saying now and make that change because so
many advisors
are saying so many things that are so
fiercely technical
to try to make themselves sound smart
when, in fact, what they need to do
is they need to make people feel better.
Okay, Joe. I'm sure that there's gonna be
people who want to reach out to you,
find out more about what you're doing at
(28:09):
Intentionally. Where should they go, and who should
reach out to you?
Yeah. Absolutely. So I think the best thing
to do is to check out Intentionally's website
because we do offer a wide range of
things. The whole vision behind the firm is
that
messaging and comms leads to marketing. Marketing leads
to the client experience
and the technology that's used in order to
(28:29):
scale your business. So we see ourselves as
a growth engine firm,
and they can check us out at intention.lyonline.
The other thing that we're gonna be doing
here over the next month, and, Matt, I
actually have the opportunity to talk to you
or at least tease it right now, is
we're coming out, everything that we've talked about
here today, I haven't seen done
(28:51):
within the industry, but I also haven't seen
done especially on the M and A side
of the industry when you have a firm
that is going through a merger or acquisition
and there are these clashing
missions of what needs to be accomplished. Maybe
there's a little bit of a new mix
of culture that's coming in with different core
values.
All of those things we tend to glance
(29:13):
over in the middle of making a deal
and ensuring that we're hitting the company's growth
goals. Something that I learned well at Carson
was figuring out how we can navigate that
change management
internally
and externally with clients and prospects.
And so we're taking that formula
and we're rolling out a communications
(29:33):
offering
at intentionally
specifically for m and a, but also just
to roll through how to tell your story,
get your story straight if you're somebody who
just needs that help. And we'll have a
webinar on that November 13th
at 3 PM. And the press release will
come out for kind of this offering, and
we'll have a lot more to say about
(29:54):
it over the coming months. But
so much of what we're trying to build
right now is ensuring that firms have this
foundational
identity built
before they decide to go to market with
anything. Now are they gonna be able to
get a replay? So if somebody listens to
this a year from now. Okay. Good. Yeah.
And they just go to the website to
find that, yes, or your YouTube page? Yes.
(30:14):
Exactly. We'll have we I will be doing
a number of different episodes on YouTube called
message matters. We've already started with our first
couple episodes here.
Yeah. And it's message does matter, but there's
also so many matters behind the message.
And so we're really gonna spend some time
over the next months years talking about why
(30:35):
this matters from an interpersonal communication standpoint, active
listening, all the way through to how a
business adopts this attitude
and puts a meaningful message out to the
marketplace. So they can follow us on YouTube
with the message matters series.
They can also find a replay once we
have this webinar, which will be on our
website as well.
Alright, brother. I'm super happy. Congratulations on all
(30:57):
of your success. And listen, everybody, you needed
to be checking out what Intentional He's doing.
Kelly and the team speak at conferences all
over the place. And if you see them
on the dais, make sure you register
to go listen to them speak because there
really isn't anybody like them. Communications is the
foundation of everything.
And when you have the opportunity to know
what to say, how to say, and especially
to hit people, not just in their logical
(31:19):
mind, but in their emotional mind, everything can
fundamentally change for you. So for Joe and
all of us here at Proudmouth, this is
Matt Hallard, and we'll see you on the
other side of the mic very soon. 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.
(31:40):
Through courses and office hours led by a
professional podcast producers and digital marketers, you will
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the trusted subject matter expert you were meant
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