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hey everybody welcome to advisor talk with frank larosa i am your host frank larosa and today we are going to talk about growing your business um it's that easy um i am joined today uh by jeremiah demare uh he's the ceo of advisorist and we are going to talk all things uh marketing and growing and branding and things like seo and optimization and many many things that most advisors don't have any clue what it all means and today we're going to talk a little bit about it and how advisorist is sort of changing the world uh for those of you that don't know they're the fastest e-learning platform for financial advisors and insurance producers so um we got a lot of great things we're going to talk about so we're going to jump right into it and i'm going to welcome jeremiah to the show how you doing jeremiah doing great frank thanks so much it's an honor to be here no it's my it's my pleasure you know i think that um a lot of advisors that's the whole thing about what how what's what's 2021 gonna be like or what's the next year going to be like and everyone says well i want to grow my business by x and you go okay how and they they don't really well referrals oh okay how you know and you just go down this rabbit hole of not really understanding so um you know this was a sort of a timely uh conversation and we could talk a little bit about the conference that uh that you're hosting which i'm gonna be speaker at which would be awesome but before we get into that maybe just give my listeners a little bit of a background on where you come from and and then sort of get into exactly how advisors started and and what your goals are there sure so if i was to give a title to the book of where i came from it'd probably be keep making mistakes i was uh you might hear a little bit of an accent because i was originally born and raised in montreal and i came to chicago at 21 years old and ended up in a a small startup of six people that was completely self-funded we had no idea what we were doing and we ended up stumbling into the insurance industry and trying to figure out a way that we could help agents uh and advisors generate leads and back in those days the only browsers were netscape google had just come out uh you know ask jeeves was still a thing and you could i clicks on yahoo for 10 cents right like we're talking like way back in the day yeah um there was no facebook no linkedin no twitter uh no like youtube was really really early so we had to get super creative in the ways we were generating leads because we you know we weren't funded we were just kind of bootstrapping it so fast forward seven years later through making tons of mistakes and everything from like putting ads in trucker bathrooms to fax blasts we figured out everything that doesn't work right and um you know because we had such an amazing team we're able to get to about quarter million consumer inquiries every single month is where we hit and that company ended up getting sold for uh to a private equity group for well over a billion dollars then i you know went into a um i was asked to go help run marketing for an insurance crm solution and we were able to cut the marketing by a million and increase revenue by 26 million in nine months using the same digital marketing principles and then that was kind of the genesis for me frank about realizing hey you know like we're able to help small and large companies succeed why don't we go straight to the agents and the advisors and give them the tools that i discovered and only give them the best stuff that works and none of the stuff that might seem like is really popular because a lot of you know blogs are talking about it or a lot of experts talk about it but really doesn't have a lot of uh results in the real world so no truck no truck stop signs yeah no we're not doing that anymore and no facts for sure so what we decided to do is create a company whose sole purpose in life is to solve the number one issue advisors have and that is getting qualified appointments onto their calendar we live eat and breathe that every single day our team is based in several different countries we're entirely virtual and we have some amazing a players on our team some are advisors themselves that became coaches to teach advisors the success they had like we got one advisor who just came on as a coach using one of the techniques on linkedin which i'm happy to actually share with everybody on your show today just give it away but he from uh from october 2020 was one of his worst years ever in fact his family office almost closed because they because of covid they didn't know how to do they were doing seminars before and they had to stop and they didn't know how to do webinars and so they used a linkedin approach that we taught them and within three months frank they were they went from almost zero to in closing to 450 000 in commissions using a simple technique that they were able to do in about an hour a day and so what we're passionate about is is all killer no filler content right so i'm sure you know you or your listeners have gone to events or listened and you know people talk high strategy big ethereal concepts ivory tower but at the end of the day i think most advisors just want to know what should i do today what's my game plan what should i try for the next 30 days and be consistent with and that's what we do at advisors we've helped over a hundred thousand advisors in 51 countries generate 300 million in commissions and fees and just on one platform alone linkedin we've helped advisors set up 10 000 virtual meetings and we stopped counting after 10 thousand but i think it's up to fourteen thousand now but that's what we love to do we love to help advisors yeah that would be uh that's a great exercise for for an advisor to go through um you know a lot of firms out there um only when they talk about social media they're only really referring to linkedin like you know wire house firms for instance merrill and morgan stanley limit and limit would be a soft way of putting don't allow anything on any other platform other than linkedin so like what are you gonna do you need to figure out how to get get to that audience um so that's so that's very in that's very interesting so the educational part of advisorist um you you take them through um basically all of these tactics and then is it a coaching program are you saying a coach so so maybe just um tell me a little bit about how it actually works so they hire a coach they get their coach they work with them on their brand and then they execute on those things does the advisor have to do that or is it your team that they're hiring that goes and does that for them great question so i'll simplify it there's three ways people engage with us i'm asking these questions because right now i'm going i could use that that would be awesome absolutely we'll be we'd love to help you frank so there's three ways that we engage number one is do it yourself so we have a on-demand learning experience think master class for the advisor right so master class is a great platform you learn from celebrities in advisorist it's masterclass but you learn from people in the trenches that are actually succeeding and disciplines of sales marketing branding and strategy niche development all the things that move the needle we are very focused on moving the needle for advisors like if you come in and you learn something we want you to apply it and be able to create a win in less than 30 days most of the times less than seven days so we don't have a lot of fluff in our platform so number one is do it yourself you can access our advisors max membership that's a monthly program and number two would be done with you so this is for advisors who are ready for the next step where they tap into a group coaching environment where they learn and grow following us proven framework around various disciplines for example one of our core programs is called the shift linkedin accelerator there you're part of a group of people who are smashing it on linkedin and creating records and we do everything from niche development your personal brand getting you on the media and helping you generate that constant flow of appointments while giving you 100 days back a year we have another program that was modeled after these two advisors that were totally ramen eating broke at 31 and 32 years old respectively it's a married couple they discovered a way to turn youtube into a constant source of traffic but pre-qualified appointments where they're getting 50 appointments a month on their calendar and doing 50k a month in in just commissions on a budget of 500 a month no ad spend no assistance no days in front of the computer and they really just work uh they only create videos once a month and we teach how to that we have other programs coming down their own related to cryptocurrencies and how to put make that part of your practice and wealth management but that's done with you and then the last one is boutique level done for you so once in a while if somebody we feel is truly self-disciplined and is serious about growth we will entertain an application from them to do services but we do that on a very select basis and they must graduate different levels before we'll even agree to do that awesome that would be um i'd love to i'd love to see that so let's talk about uh your your uh your your free giveaway so i heard free and uh i didn't forget about that let's do that guys well let's give an example of this so this linkedin strategy and this would be great because um you know it would be great for my for my listeners that are you know it's like getting something for you know they didn't expect it and now they're gonna get something that's gonna really be uh value-added for for being part of this uh this community of listeners that we have so let's i'm dying to hear this this uh this idea let's dive into it so there's a couple of things i want to talk about compliance first and um i think that's the number one barrier that i want to help your listeners lower right now is to keep an open mind here's the thing the reason why most compliance department do blanket you know you can't do this is obviously they're scared that you're going to make promissory statements about market returns or you make promissory statements about wealth protection and we know we don't we don't ever teach any of that so right off the bat you're fine the second area that's a big no-no is talking about products where you know you're not supposed to mention the name of products or even make a recommendation of a product boom don't worry about that because we don't teach that at all in fact those techniques do not even work so we don't teach them at all the third thing that people don't want uh carriers bds don't want is they don't want you posting content that hasn't been approved and i got to tell you that's one of the big lies frank of linkedin is that by posting relevant content in quotation mark and air quotes right yeah that you're gonna get leads and that doesn't work that way there's this whole ethereal ivory tower crew that just talks about you know um uh exposure and engagement and all this so i'll tell you a story right there's this guy on linkedin he's a financial advisor and he posts almost every single day he has engaging videos he has funny stories he has like the nice videos where you know he had the emojis and it's like quick cuts and it's very engaging right not boring stuff and he gets anywhere from 50 to 150 likes every post and he gets at least 60 comments which is awesome and it's super rare in the financial and insurance space to see that so for us we're on the bleeding edge we don't think we know everything but we study everything so we reach out to somebody like that and i personally reached out to him i said man you are really doing well how's it working out for you man all these posts i see you must be like killing it he's like to be honest i haven't gotten any business and that was six months frank of effort like this guy's editing his videos this guy's doing all this work to get exposure so what he's doing is collecting internet points that are not leading to results on his calendar right so so right there those are the three areas that bds have a problem with and what i'm happy to say is because of lockdown and the pandemic a lot of them are opening their doors now being like okay we're going to allow a lot of other things now so facebook's opened up twitter's opened up emails opened up so let's so we got that out of the way right so hopefully most of your listeners now have an open mind and by the way we've worked with practically every single bd and carrier out there the only one that this does not work with is primerica they simply do they're run by attorneys now they don't let anybody do anything on linkedin unless it's run by an attorney so if if you're with prime america this is not for you yeah but for every everybody else we've gone through every single compliance department and here's the thing is that if you approach people just like a human being in a coffee shop and you don't vomit product or benefits or returns you're going to be fine like you're going to be fine and that's really just what compliance departments don't want to see okay let's move on from compliance let's jump into the tactic the um the best strategy that's winning right now is step one choose a niche to target choose a niche to target now number one a niche is not 55 and over with half a million of assets under management that is not a niche right and we know that that's what everybody says to wish list that's a wish list yeah a niche is a tribe a niche is somebody who has a defined set of criteria that you can speak to and really once you find your niche you can sell in spite of yourself because you can speak the language that they speak like frank you're very talented business professional and i'm sure you could take your talents to any vertical but when you have a show that's called advisor talk and you talk about things like ria's and fees and points and broker dealers all of a sudden your listeners are like this guy knows my this guy knows my world this is my guy right you've niched yourself in the financial services and insurance space so the same way you've done that frank very successfully i might add you want to look at what niches exist out there now there's the top three that are really performing well in linkedin are anybody that's in the c suite so ceo cmo cto cio people with deceased titles number two is small business owners with employees over 50 and number three would be hr professionals hr professionals are kind of like a honey pot because they hold the keys to entire companies and one technique that some students of ours are doing is connecting intentionally with hr professionals and then offering to do complementary virtual financial wellness workshops to all their employees because there's a ream of data out there any of you involved in anything related to 401ks there's some amazing studies out there that show how it's well over 40 of an employee's time is spent thinking about their own financial health which means that they take time away from the employer and simply offering this financial education is a way to show the employer that um they care about their employees it helps with retention and it gives you a source of never-ending leads we had one guy do this he reached out to the ceo of a company he got him on a 15-minute call just to network and share ideas and that led to him doing a webinar to his 300 employees of whom he converted he didn't disclose the amount but he converted so many that it's going to be about a 200 000 payday commissions not premium not assets but commissions and fees over to him and he's doing everything from rollovers annuities life insurance for every single one of those employees and basically he got that for free so that's one technique reach out to hr professionals offer to do these complimentary workshops but here's the secret is do it at scale don't just send out one or two a day be disciplined do like 20 a day 20 new connections and once they agree to connect with you you send out a very thoughtful message and the first call to action should only be 15 minutes long like hey would you be open and and here's another one would you be open to 12 minute chat i'd love to learn about what your company's doing see if there's ways we can network with each other we actually have a program we're rolling out i think it might be a good fit like something really low-key micro-commitment now if you're going after the business owner so that's the second category we talked about if you're going after the business owner you want to approach it like a power networker and i think there's probably every single one of your listeners would love to be seen as an authority in the business community in which they operate yeah 90 yep nobody wants to be seen as just another advisor nobody wants to be seen as that person begging for leads nobody wants to be seen as that person just uh grinding it out you know the cold calling mentality so what you have to do is you elevate your perspective that you're not just an advisor you're a power connector in your local community robert kiyosaki said a great quote i out that always stuck with me who wrote rich dad poor dad he says um poor people work for a living rich people build networks and and that always stuck with me and if you think frank like you know the all the best deals that maybe you and i have ever done didn't they come from like a powerful network yeah like being able to put like you and i were connected through a network right the advisor hub network and that's how we got connected with each other so building a network like that is like creating an asset in your business and for your own life that nobody can ever take away from you right if this is just chapter one of your life or chapter 71 i don't know which chapter this career has fallen in your life but having a powerful network is like an enduring asset that you own and nobody can take away it's your relationships it's your credibility so once advisors kind of like get that and they get out of the mindset i didn't get somebody with half a million of assets on my calendar today you know the world opens up and really it comes from a place of abundance and gratitude now i don't know about you frank but i'm somebody i practice daily gratitude i write down everyday things i'm grateful for and it allows me to show up and be okay to give away things that most people charge for because i know that the more that i give away the more that's going to come back that's not the reason i do it but i know it just weirdly happens that way right right so if an advisor comes to a conversation and approaches a business owner so here's a great line that's working right now and it's perfect for the beginning of the year right so frank let's say i connect with you right within two days i want to fire a message over to you and i want to say something like hey frank it's so good to connect the other day i'm working on a new year's resolution to be a better connector in my local business community would you be up for a 12-minute virtual coffee so we can just learn about each other's businesses and see how we can help each other that's it yeah you see how how innocent that is yep well i think that a lot of a lot of advisors make the mistake of um you know they have they're asking for essentially they're asking clients to give them money right so they're asking someone to get do something for them give me give me give me this approach which is really the approach of every anybody that's really really really successful you find out that the minute they they went from from things being about them to how can they help others right that's when their businesses took off when they changed that mindset to let me let me be the one that that goes out and helps people i don't know what i'm going to get in return but all i know is if i help people the sort of your point the more people you help the higher the probability you're going to get something positive back it's a it's just sort of the law of the universe that i i firmly believe in as well in abundance and all that so that's that's a great idea and that's to your and that's to your credit frank thank you for sharing you know the other the other thing um so just to finish i want to close the loop for all your listeners right for for that when you show up on the call the way that the call goes is very structured it's uh hey look you know i'm really grateful you spent a few minutes with me by the way i always try to do it on on a video because you actually like 93 of human communication is tonality and physiology so you really want to be seen on camera connecting with people it's infinitely more effective than a phone so just want to give you that recommendation we have a whole training on how to have effective zoom meetings as well that members can take advantage of as well on our website check our blog post guys we've got tons of like scripts and stuff you can even go and just swipe copy paste and use lots and lots of free resources there so once you get on the uh the meeting with somebody make it about them so frank if if you were the business owner and i was the advisor i'd say frank thanks so much i'm really grateful you took a few minutes i know we're both really busy i just like to dive in is that okay with you yeah sounds great awesome okay well hey man i see behind here you got like a little looks like a little bulldog on your desk what's that all about you love bulldogs right yes i do like by the way that is my favorite dog as well i don't have one but i love bulldogs um and so i'd find something interesting about you try to make a personal connection i'd say that's great so i noticed on your linkedin profile that you're the ceo of advisor talk what made you start that right like not what do you do but what made you start it and then what's your passion right another question is you know what's your real passion here and then here's my third one which is really the one where i want to get to is what's a great prospect for you because i'm doing five of these calls a day and i bet you there's going to be somebody i'm going to talk to or have talked to that i could connect you with um and that's and that's really the format and then at the end of course frank after i spent all this time focusing on you at the very you know towards the end naturally what's the business owner going to ask me yeah right how can i help you hey man what what are you doing jeremiah right like what how can i help you what's a good lead for you say well what i do is and then you got to have a lay down you in unique sales proposition that makes that person want to lean in like what i do is i help successful business owners that have accumulated over half a million dollars in their retirement to structure it in such a way using an obscure 1941 irs tax law that very few people know to avoid paying taxes ever again in retirement and then i just shut up and then if there is an interest you're going to say well how is that well i really didn't want to get into that in this call frank because i really just wanted to be about networking but if you're interested in that we can set up another call and i can be happy to show you how to do that so we've got an advisor who's doing that now and in fact his whole program is laid out in one of our pro coaching programs he's doing three calls a day and with business owners and of those on average one to two is booking into a step two call uh just using that approach but you gotta have the unique sales proposition and you have the structure and you're really coming from a place of networking he's up uh half a million dollars a year since he implemented that strategy that's awesome yeah that's awesome um so so i hope everybody was taking notes i know i was i was taking notes so uh it'll be great and you can always go back and listen to the this call or or watch it on youtube but it'd be great um so the last thing as we as we get towards the towards the end of the call tell me a little about this um you know sort of how we came came uh together uh this event that you're holding um this sort of this virtual conference it seems i'm excited to be part of it but tell the listeners what it's really all about so that they can make sure they can get in on it and not miss out on the on the unbelievable content that i you know that i've i've learned that's going to be on there so what what's this all about yeah thanks so you know the the it's called virtual fa summit virtualfa summit.com is the domain so if you guys are on your phones or your on your tablet right now hop over to virtualfa summit.com if we haven't started the summit yet you can still grab a ticket absolutely free now here's the reason why it's free it's a it's a give back between advisorist and broadridge advisor solutions so many of you are familiar with broadridge they power 40 000 advisor websites they have incredible data it was kind of funny frank because at the beginning of the pandemic uh literally two weeks after lockdown was announced nationally i called my buddy kevin darlington who's the general manager of broadridge and i said kevin are our clients are in the dark right now and i've been beating the drum of digital marketing and virtual sales for years i published a book on it called shift uh which became a number one bestseller and it was all about digital marketing but i published it like four years ago you can get it on amazon and i said kevin this is the time that this industry is being forced to go into everything that shift taught but being forced to do it like the industry is usually like five years behind everyone else right yeah everyone's been doing virtual meetings for years so i said now is the time we got to do something to help advisors what should we do i said why don't we do a summit we bring together all the advisors who are just smashing records right now and and that the lockdown does not affect and let's bring in some thought leaders who are sharing the big strategies and will put them together into a power pack day where you're going to get some insight but also tactical how-tos and we did that first summit and we were we thought a thousand people would show up frank we said if we get a thousand advisors that would be amazing frank we were so humbled that one hundred and ten advisors showed up to learn from each other and we did this as a give back as a result we took um any revenue that was generated from different you know ads and sponsors or whatever and we donated it we were able to uh feed 50 000 meals to families that were affected by the pandemic that's one of my personal values is to be a force for good in the world it's the number one value of advisor is to be a force for good and so some of the people that you're going to be learning from like i'm literally on the page i'm just going to read a few things uh you'll learn from benjamin brant who has one of the top 10 podcasts in the world around retirement planning and he's going to break down how he's bringing in 60 million dollars of aum a year while taking 212 days off with a unique system you're going to hear from jason smith from c2p how his advisors are getting seven figure clients in silicon valley even though they're in the heart of the midwest you're going to learn from that couple the brits carmen and darius and how they get 56 appointments a month from a free three-step youtube funnel we're going to learn from chris who 5xed his business simply using linkedin and by the way guys i don't want you to think this is a big old bait and switch where we have people who show up and it's all a big ad we don't do any of that there's no selling during the day we've told everybody you're not to sell anything you have to bring the goods and teach us things we can use right away but we also understand frank that when with a lot of abundance comes other set of problems so we also look at the advisor as a whole we're going to have experts on how to nail your morning routine so you actually have a successful day you're going to learn sales objection techniques because when you get people on the line you're going to get some objections how do you overcome that we're also going to have an expert on the myers-briggs 16 personalities because if you don't know how to build or manage a virtual team and manage all these distinct personalities it's hard enough in person let it own virtually yeah then you're just going to frustrate yourself so our mission is to double the business of ten thousand advisors and give them a hundred days back a year and we've structured everything that day it's the biggest value event of the year we um we're so grateful that you're a part of it and if people want to get a ticket for a limited time it's free you just go to virtual fa summit uh dot com and you know what's the date it's uh wednesday february the 10th 2021 and look if you if you listen to this and you're like listen to this on february 11th and like we already had the summit there's a good chance we're going to have some recordings there so you're always welcome to go to virtualfa summit.com and look at some of the recordings or opt-in or maybe you can you know get the recordings after but it's almost like a twenty thousand dollar mastermind that's going to be given that day i mean you're gonna be speaking michael kitesys which everybody you know follows and i think i'm a huge fan of him we've got bill cates who's a follow hall of fame speaker creating on how to create a radically relevant uh business we've got ed slott um you know industry legend we got tom hegna we've got the number one guy at facebook who's going to tell us how consumers are engaging with financial conversations on the facebook platform we've got mike foy from jd power and associates so i mean in addition to frontline examples you're going to get the big strategies so you know what to do in 2021 it works wow this is a perfect this is a a perfect time for that because i think a lot of advisors right now are really trying to figure out what their strategy is going forward because to your point you know uh before the pandemic i mean advisors weren't even really allowed to even use youtube and not youtube but um zoom calls and meet with clients and and it's basically forced the hands of these firms to allow them to do that um so it's been but it's been a struggle to figure out okay so now i'm allowed to use zoom now what like how do i you know how do i turn this into into revenue and grow my business so this is uh this was awesome this is a perfect i think it's a perfect time to do this i commend you for it um as you're reading through the list and going oh i'm going to be i'll be listening to that i'll be listening to that i'll be listening to that um in addition to me speaking but there's some those are some great areas and i agree i think that a lot of people tend to forget they talk about the advisors growth of their business but what they don't realize is there's some personal things that you have to include in that in order for an advisor to grow their business right so the morning routine is is is uh is one that i i candidly struggle with um all the time um i have a i have a morning routine but it can be more efficient than it is and so uh to allow me to be more productive but those are things that just aren't talked about in the in the business and so i'm glad somebody's doing it uh which is awesome um but jeremiah listen that was that was awesome i think that was a lot of information uh my listeners i hope you all took a lot of notes uh because that was some real real practical tactical information that you can use to uh to make some money and grow your business so um i know i got a lot out of this call just just on that linkedin strategy was awesome um but you're my i'm looking forward to uh the event speaking at the event and uh really just giving back right giving back some of the things that i know and helping your listeners and your participants and um but this is awesome i appreciate you spending the time telling us about advisorist in the event and uh again everybody you need to make sure that you you get your ticket go to uh virtualfasummit.com it's february 10th uh we look forward to seeing everybody there jeremy have a great day make it successful thank you frank thanks a lot thanks for watching advisor talk with frank larosa if you enjoyed this video make sure to check out some of our other episodes don't forget to like share and subscribe to our channel and we will see you back here next week you