Master Marketing With the Two-Toed Sloth Strategy With Kalli Fedusenko (Ep. 484)

Channel your inner two-toed sloth. Bet that’s the first time you’ve heard that advice. 

Episode Transcript

(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.
Marketing needs to be a slow game. And

(00:41):
our guest today, Kelly from Kelly Collective, when
we were doing our prerecord calls, she came
up with this wonderful analogy that we're gonna
use throughout the show, which is your marketing
should be like a 2 don't slot.
Because what I think a lot of you
don't understand is you expect that marketing is
an a plus b equals c equation. I
put money in. I'm gonna basically get money
out equal or 10 times greater than what

(01:01):
comes in. But it's not that simple, and
it's definitely not that fast. So, Kelly, welcome
to the show. Thank you. Thank you.
I'm happy to be here. I'm happy that
you're here. You and I talk often, actually,
just so the audience knows. So I have
a little bit of a bias towards you
as a human being and also for what
you do at Kalle Collective.
Would you mind just taking a minute or

(01:21):
2 and tell everybody a little bit about
how you decided to build the collective in
your background?
Absolutely.
Let's go back to I don't remember the
year. Early 2000,
mid 2000.
I see an ad in a newspaper,
and it says,
marketing for a financial advising firm. And I

(01:42):
was like,
I'm gonna apply.
So I did, and I got the job,
and then I started working internally
doing marketing for
independent financial firms.
Did that for about
just shy of no. Just over 5 years.
And then I was, like, you know what?
I think I can take this

(02:03):
larger scale and work with advisers everywhere. So
that led to creating
Cali Collective,
and that was
7 years ago now.
Oh.
Yeah. Pretty crazy.
Time flies.
Yeah. So
from a we incorporated in 2017.

(02:23):
And, yeah, it seemed well, I think it's
just a lot of us are still hanging
out with each other, that we all opened
our doors roughly at the same time and
have really found a wonderful
collective, for lack of a description, of like
minded marketing professionals that work with financial advisors.
Now we talk about the idea that marketing
should be like a 2 toed sloth. Where
do you wanna begin with this? Because

(02:44):
I think it's such a wonderful
visual.
It is. Okay. Let me give you a
little background, and then I'll tell you, like,
how I came up with this concept.
So the background is
growing up, my father owns an exotic
pet store. I don't know if he knew
this about me. I didn't know that. Holy
crap.

(03:05):
Yeah. He owned this pet store for, I
wanna say 25 years.
And
we and when I say exotic, I mean,
we had chinchillas,
ferrets,
crazy sorts of reptiles, like Nile monitors and
anything you think of. And then he got
a license
for a specific type of exotic

(03:26):
animal owner license,
and
he purchased 2 toed sloths.
Two toed sloths
and a Guti Pocka, and I do expect
you to look up these animals afterwards,
and prehensile
tail possums.
Yeah. So I am quite familiar with the

(03:47):
2 toad sloth, which should not be mixed
up with the 3 toad sloth.
Alright. Which is why my title is so
specific.
And fun facts,
I, being a college student, got my father
on Anderson Cooper's talk show.
Oh my. Brush those shoulders off. That's awesome.
Oh crap. And let me tell you how

(04:08):
I did it by channeling
my inner 2 toed sloth.
Yay.
I've got 3 ways that you can channel
the inner 2 toed sloth. Keep going, sister.
Yeah. This is awesome. The reason this came
up though, besides having this background, is that
I found that advisors,
not just advisors, any business owner really, they

(04:28):
get
overwhelmed when it comes to digital marketing.
Like, I've had people this year,
more so than in years past where we
meet, we're talking, and I talk about the
services that we offer.
Maybe they talk to a couple other firms,
and then they are just so overwhelmed. They're
like, we're not gonna make this decision. We're

(04:48):
gonna
look at this next quarter or in quarter
4.
And I'm like, what? We all know digital
marketing is
vital now to successful business.
So
what is it that's, like, stopping us
from acting? And that's where this, like, vision
of, oh, the 2 toed sloth. Let me

(05:09):
tell you the three ways, right? The first
thing is,
everybody thinks that a sloth
is lazy.
Good. Right? That's what you think. They're slow,
they're lazy, they don't do anything,
and that is the exact
opposite
of what's true about a sloth. They're actually
extremely
disciplined

(05:30):
and determined, right? They're not going to spend
their energy
on anything
except what gets them what they want.
Right? You don't see them fluttering about, you
don't see them cleaning themselves, you don't see
them building a nest, cause that doesn't get
them what they want, and that's the way
we should approach marketing.
Is this going to get me what I

(05:50):
want?
So if you think about somebody
who is on LinkedIn, maybe you're spending a
lot of time
building graphics, building content specifically for LinkedIn.
But what if the people you're trying to
reach
aren't on LinkedIn?
Right?
Why are you exerting that energy?

(06:12):
Instead, be like the 2 toed sloth and
just spend it where it counts.
So that's tip number 1. Alright. So let's
I'm gonna unpack that just this month here.
Absolutely. Because so many financial advisers I was
actually just on a sales call yesterday. Mhmm.
The adviser says, Matt, I am very active
on LinkedIn because, of course, as a salesperson,
I'm doing my due diligence. I was like,

(06:32):
you have a pretty healthy following. He's like,
they're all advisers. Yep. Like, oh, then what
are you doing there, man? So, Kelly, I
know this is part of your process, but
Yeah.
How do you help advisers
make that
digital presence decision so that they aren't being
as an efficient as efficient and disciplined as
the 2 dots lot? Yep. We go back
to 3 things.

(06:53):
Number 1, what is your goal?
Number 2, who is your audience?
And then number 3, what are the conversion
steps that your audience has to take to
get you to that goal? So if that
advisor is talking to me and we're gonna
talk about what is your goal.
Now maybe it makes sense for him to
be on LinkedIn if he wants to connect

(07:13):
with vendors and be speaking with vendors or
connecting with CPAs
and having some sort of shared referral partnership.
But if his goal is just purely I
wanna get in front of my target audience
and that audience is
pre retirees because that's what they all say,

(07:33):
then I'm gonna say LinkedIn doesn't fit. So
that's we always dig into those three aspects
to get them to focus where they need
to focus. Well, that's part of the whole
efficiency and discipline that I think a lot
of advisers are concerned about because they've been
using this law of large numbers philosophy because
that's really what they were trained on. I
gotta make 10,000 phone calls to get a

(07:55):
1,000 appoint all of that sort of stuff
to get 10 pieces of business.
And that's really not how
this game works because first off, the numbers
are actually much much larger and the amount
of touches are much greater. But we can
dive into that later if we have time.
Okay. Let's go to point number 2 with
the sloth. Absolutely. Okay. Point number 2 is
a sloth doesn't

(08:16):
care what you think about them. They are
who they are.
Here's another story for you. I'm working at
the pet shop. It's a Sunday because I
always get stuck with the Sundays, which you
work open to close, but it's like a
shorter open to close time frame.
I'm up at the register, and this young
girl comes up, and she's, like, really like
your baby sloth. It's so cute.

(08:37):
And, oh, thanks.
But in my head, I'm, like, it's not
a baby. It's a full adult. Just another
misinformed person.
And then I, like, happen to go back
there
to the back room where we keep them,
and I look over it, and I'm like,
holy shit.
That sloth had a baby.

(08:58):
Oh my gosh.
Not only so we had 3 two toed
sloths.
Not only did one of the sloths have
a baby on its belly,
but we thought that sloth was a male.
Oh my holy moly.
Did that sloth
care that I thought it was a boy?
No. It's a hell out of baby. The

(09:20):
point being, focus on what makes you. People
are going to have misconceptions. My mother-in-law still
doesn't know what I do. She thinks I'm
an adviser.
I'm not an adviser. I do marketing for
advisers.
And advisers are gonna have that same issue
when they're posting on social media or any

(09:40):
other
platform, right,
people are gonna come in with pre preconceived
notions, and you need to show them the
person behind the numbers. Matt, I'm sure you've
seen that
the personal content that gets the most reactions.
It's not the professional stuff. Now it's important
to have both because you have to show

(10:01):
your expertise,
but
people wanna know who the person is.
People wanna
know if that sloth is actually a female
and gonna have a baby.
It would have been really good for your
distributor to tell you that the sloth was
pregnant and a female, but, you know, there's
2 2 things about that. Number 1, I
just learned something new. So you know that

(10:22):
I'm not a spring chicken. I've been on
this planet for 50 years. Yeah. And I
kept hearing this word brat being used. And,
of course, my generation thinks that's a negative
term, but Gen z and younger millennials, no.
It's not. So I'm driving around with my
wife last night, and she's, like, super hip
on this stuff. And I was like, hey.
Can you explain to me what brat means?
And it basically means unapologetically

(10:43):
being yourself. Being in the world of marketing,
consistently talk about being authentic to yourself and
making sure that you're really leaning into what
makes you you. It's fascinating to me that
slang in Gen z is really supporting that.
Really, like, that's a huge identifier
that you're gonna be proud of who you
are and what you do and not really

(11:03):
worry so much about everybody else. That sure
wasn't how I grew up because I was
always worried about everybody else, and you weren't
supposed to be yourself Yep. Because that made
you an outcast, but it doesn't today.
So we have something called the 4 to
1 rule here in Proudmouth that we recommend,
which is for 4 pieces of professional content,
you're gonna have 1 piece of personal content,
which basically means that one day a week,

(11:24):
you should be sharing something a little bit
about yourself. Now I don't know if you
agree with that frequency. Yeah. If it's based
actually off behavioral psychology, that's the rule that
we use. Yeah. We are very similar. We
do 70:30.
Yep. So, yeah, the ratio is real close
there. Yeah. Yeah.
Alright. So that was step number 2. What
is step number 3 about the 3 toed
sloth? Yeah. 2 toed sloth. Woah. Wow. See?

(11:46):
I got I know that is terrible. Yeah.
Oh, I'm so embarrassed. Actually, I'm really not.
But that's awesome. Hey. I'm not as embarrassed
as you thinking that the sloth was a
male and it had a baby. Oh, but
that's okay. I'm sorry. I'm gonna I'm gonna
remember that forever, sister. That's just too much
fun. It was great. Yeah.
And number 3 is okay.
1, we're focusing our energy on what we
need to focus on.

(12:08):
2, we are being ourselves. We're showing our
true colors. Right? We are not doing canned
content.
So number 3 is
be prolific, just like that sloth. Because let
me tell you, that is not the only
baby that we found in the pet shop.
Oh. No, sir.
We had a grand total of 3 baby

(12:28):
sloths born in our pet shop.
Wow.
Yes.
So once you nail
focusing your energy, showing who you are, then
you're gonna do it over and repeat it.
Because Okay. Okay. You're also gonna know this.
How many people
out of your followers actually see your content
organically? It's, like, less than 5%.

(12:50):
Yeah. 3.85%.
We actually just we have a webinar coming
up this week, and that was the number
that LinkedIn specifically said, you're doing well if
you're at 3.85%
or 5 something like that. What is that's
nuts. I know.
So repeat it because they don't hear it.
I'm sure you hear this all the time
because the you and I both get a

(13:11):
substantial lot of resistance to that third two
toed sloth reference there, which is that we
call it rinse, lather, repeat. It's exactly the
same sort of thing. So the big issue
here is
I always say if you're posting too much,
they're just gonna scroll past you. Now there's
a big difference between
posting too much and emailing too much.

(13:33):
Do you wanna what what do you think
about that? Yeah. Yeah. I would agree with
that. I think it's also
quality
and quantity. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Like, when I'm
saying repeat it, I don't mean
repeat the same message.
Repackaging it, but you're keeping the core content.
You have the same point each time. Like,

(13:53):
I know when I think of Matt Halloran,
he does podcasts,
and he tells me to be myself. Those
two things. Are you saying that exact thing
in every post? No. But you're telling me
that in other words, and that's what advisors
should be doing as well. So how do
they come up with and I know this
is part of your system, so I'm just
teeing you up here. How do you help
them come up with appropriate high quality topics

(14:17):
that they feel and we obviously proud for
ProudMouth, but how do you feel that they're
gonna really love and be happy with what
they're creating? We create it for them. Yeah.
Yeah. Amen, sister. That's step number 1, and
you're always gonna love what I create for
you. Number 2 would be we're going back
to those three things. What's your goal? Who's
your audience? What are the steps

(14:37):
that your audience has to take to get
you to that goal? And then I'm going
to look at, okay, how are you an
expert in which ways?
What are your values? And then how can
we say that to your audience? So we
find key topics
that we go through every month. So we're
creating a content pitch for our clients.

(14:59):
We post about 8 to 10 times a
month with a blog or a video,
and then social media posts
and an email, and advertising because that's one
way to guarantee a larger percentage of your
audience is going to see it.
And we're going to pitch content based off
of audience
and what you're trying to achieve.

(15:21):
Following the big picture marketing philosophy
of
it's not an or, it's an and. So
you're creating
pretty much every media
of content that you can
so that you're attracting that ideal person. Is
that fair? Yes. Exactly. That's correct.

(15:42):
Now when you talk about the 3rd point
there, not the sloth's 3rd point, but your
3rd point Yeah. Which is the, like, the
buyer's journey. Can you elaborate on that a
little bit? Because I don't think we've had
a lot of people talk about that component
before. Yeah. Absolutely. So something we do when
we're bringing on a client
is we talk about the client journey, and

(16:03):
it's how does somebody hear about you right
now? Alright. Let's say somebody hears about you.
What happens if they're interested?
Then what happens if they schedule a call
with you? Because those three steps are really
vital in what you do in your marketing.
After they sign on as a client, that's
vital too, but it's a different kind of

(16:24):
focus. You're then focusing on the client
experience
and how you can make their experience with
your firm
better. Whereas in the beginning, we're trying to
attract
and capture those leads and keep them interested.
And that's where you're gonna see a lot
of email nurture sequences coming in,

(16:44):
which I think deserve a lot more focus
than they currently get in Yeah. The financial
industry.
I was just on so we do ask
an expert for our clients and for our
academy members. They can come twice a week
and hang out with Jessica or myself or
our team Yeah. And ask us questions. And
I was just on a a call with
a gentleman in Canada.
And, he's got all of these wonderful ideas

(17:06):
for all of these magnets. And then I
asked him that question, Cali. I said,
so they click on this and Then what
happens? And he's like, what do you mean
what happens? And I was like,
what do you mean what what happens?
He's well, then they're subscribed to my newsletter,
and I was like, that's it. Right. What
happens if they click on 4 things?

(17:28):
They should be categorized differently than somebody who
just downloaded something once and then you haven't
heard Yep. From them again. So it was
just wonderful
to see that epiphany on his face Yeah.
That he realized, oh my gosh. 1, he
was overwhelmed because he's crap. I have a
lot more work to do. But secondly,
having them understand
that it's great when they download that thing,
but that's permission. Is that true? What do

(17:49):
you think about that?
What do you mean that's permission? Like, permission
from them? Opting into you owning their contact
information in their own we call their own
audience. Right? Yes. That's a great point. We
just had a sales expert on our livestream,
and she's has talked about you want micro
commitments
leading up to

(18:11):
the sale.
That's in quotes in case that people are
listening, the sale.
And I think people
saying, yes, you can have my email, is
a micro commitment. Absolutely. And so what's the
next
micro commitment that you can get them to
take? Because you want to get them in
as she said, you wanna get them used
to saying yes to you. There's been some

(18:32):
really good studies on that. It and it
waxes in it way. At one point, it
was 5 yeses. We know that if they
say 5 times yes, that the probability of
them saying yes to a much larger thing
is exponentially greater.
Now because of all of the different things
that we do, it might not be such
an over yes. But in sales training, when
I was taking sales training,

(18:53):
we were doing trial closes all the time.
And that's still what we're doing. We're just
not doing it with what can I do
to get you in this car today sort
of philosophy, which is not anything that we
want? Right.
Yeah. Exactly.
And so I think focusing on
what does it look like for your prospects?
Because it's pretty rare that you're gonna have

(19:14):
somebody
who is a hot prospect who just happens
to randomly come across your content. Right?
Usually, you're only getting a hot prospect if
they have a need in that moment.
But what can you do to nurture the
lead who doesn't have a,

(19:34):
did I say need,
lead who doesn't have a need
at that exact moment? Yeah.
Yeah. And I think that's where it can
be challenging, creating those nurture sequences. Like you're
saying, how many lead magnets does that guy
have?
And to create a sequence for each one,
it's overwhelming. And that's Sure. So you gotta
go back to your sloth.

(19:56):
What really matters?
Just focus on one. Get one done. Get
the one that gets you the most profit.
Focus on that one,
and then you can go to the next
one. Well or to use the sloth analogy,
which is
fantastic and maybe a little tangential than where
we've been, but the sloth also doesn't do

(20:17):
things that aren't good for the sloth and
doesn't as you said right at the beginning
of the show, they don't get the sloth
what they want. Yeah. Why in the hell
are you as a financial adviser writing nurture
sequences? Yes. Doesn't that sound even how your
freaking brain works? Yes.
Exactly.
It it External.
Find someone to do it for you. Find
somebody to do it for you. That just

(20:38):
it just makes a lot more sense. Now,
obviously, you have to be a participant in
it because you have to be able to
glean their voice specifically.
Okay. You had said something too a little
earlier, and I want everybody to understand that
there is a time and a place for
you and your career for canned content. I'm
just gonna now there are people who are

(20:59):
getting very angry that I just said that,
but then there's a time where you need
to graduate
from canned content.
A lot of times that's when you become
your own RIA, right, when you have the
freedom and not the major compliance oversight to
only use preapproved content.
Because, Kelly, I can't tell you, on LinkedIn
specifically, I'm connected with a halfway decent amount
of people, and I'll scroll through my feed

(21:20):
and it will be the same article, the
same article. And you know what?
If you honestly think that your clients are
only following you on social, you're losing your
noggin. So let's talk about that very quickly.
Let's talk about
when you're going to make that switch
and then, again,
what does the adviser and I'm really gonna

(21:40):
pinpoint you here, so I'm sorry. We weren't
prepared for this, But, really, we wanna dive
into your brain here a little bit. When
you are helping them with those goals in
mind, right, that you talked about at the
beginning,
how much time
do you need
massaging the adviser's brain and getting the information
out so that you can write this custom

(22:01):
content as you do?
It's an evolving
process.
Right? So, initially,
I have somebody
fill out a
an intake form survey with a lot of
questions.
Then
me and my team look at this, and
we look for ways, oh, this could be
improved.
Let's talk about this. Oh, their audience is

(22:23):
pre retirees. That's way too big. How can
they narrow it? Then we're gonna get on
a call with that adviser. We're gonna go
over, you know, hey. Here's where we think
that things can be improved.
But then we're also gonna dig into those
questions, like the client process and
what happens here and what happens there and
what do you say?
That takes about an hour and a half,

(22:46):
but
we create a brand guide that then is
saying, this is your tone, this is your
voice, and we send it to them for
review.
And we go back and forth if they're
like, no. That doesn't fit us, or,
yeah, that's great. Could be either way, and
we're going to adjust it to fit
the way that they want to be presented.

(23:08):
However, doesn't mean we always get it a
100% right that 1st month as we're creating
content.
It's always evolving and
brands evolve.
So as one of the things that we
do in our process is as we're creating
content, it goes to the adviser
for brand review, and that's where they can

(23:29):
get in and be like, I would never
say this. What are you thinking?
Or this is great, but could you also
talk about this specific thing? And then we're
going to adjust it and make notes for
future reference.
Never say this word again in their content.
I think a lot of advisors, when they
think about outsourcing because we experience this all

(23:49):
the time with our clients, that they're just
outsourcing it and we're gonna hit a home
run every single solitary time.
And, first off, using a baseball analogy, which
everybody knows I'm wonderful at these sports analogies.
But you get into hall of fame or
whatever in baseball,
you hit, like, 400. Right? So in 60%
of the time, you suck, not being mean,
but but they do the 4 100 is

(24:11):
really high. Yeah. It is it does have
to be a collaborative effort, and your best
clients and our best clients are the ones
who want to continue to work together, who
want to continue to hone their message and
evolve their brand over time because people love
being on that journey with you. Your clients,
your prospects, your centers of influence
love seeing you grow, love hearing the stories,

(24:31):
love making it so that they feel like
they're listening to you when it's convenient for
them. And, man, if there was one light
switch that I could turn on in every
adviser's brain, it would be that. You and
Cali Collective does this, helps advisers be ever
present and omnipresent so that they can get
their message to their ideal client
when they're there in the media they
prefer. Alright, Kalli. I'm sure that there's people

(24:52):
who are gonna wanna reach out and get
to know you and find out more about
who you are and what you do, or
should we send them. Yes.
Kali, kalicollective.com
is the website. And if you want to
get some of our free resources,
kalicollective.com/getdashsavvy.

(25:12):
Savvy has 2 v's.
And I would also like to remind everybody
that if you'd follow Cali on social media,
she does AU, which is what? Ask
Ask Us Marketing. Ask Us Marketing. Terrible. I
know for some reason the u was alluding
me there. But ask us marketing, which is
a livestream.
You do it all the time. Every Monday.
Yeah. And you can scroll through and see

(25:33):
all of the different ones. You've interviewed some
pretty freaking cool people. Mhmm. And so please
make sure that you follow Cali Cali too.
So Yeah. Listen.
For everybody here, very quickly,
this is vitally important for you to understand
that you have to get your own personality
into your content, but you also need to
do it in an efficient manner to make
sure that you're really living up to the
standard of a 2 toed sloth. If it's

(25:55):
not gonna get you the desired outcome,
don't do it. Right? But you also need
to understand that when a sloth is moving
towards the desired outcome,
slow and steady wins the race. They're not
gonna be taking a lot of risks, and
more importantly, they're not gonna deviate from the
path that gets them there. Yep. And so
many of you would be the sloth who
would be trying to grab at every single

(26:17):
solitary fruit and not an insect instead of
knowing that there's the fruit that I want.
It's gonna take me 24 months to get
there. It's not how long it takes a
lot, but it's gonna take me 24 months
to get there, and I'm going to make
sure that with efficiency, effectiveness, and support that
I'm gonna do my best to get there.
So for Kelly and all of us here
at Prop Health, this is Matt Halloran. We'll
see you on the other side of the

(26:37):
mic very soon. Bye.
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 lab, visit us at
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learn everything you need to know to become

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the trusted subject matter expert you were meant
to be.