The Practical Edge

My name is Eric Ryles. I'm Alan Gross. I run things over here at Judy Diamond. I lead the team at GSM Marketing. Really happy to be here. We want to welcome all of you to the third installment in our Practical Edge webinar series, where we hope to present ideas that you can use in your everyday workflow. Why are we here today? Eric, this is one of my favorite topics. Talk about our desire to make information actionable. And I hope that this session really meets the the the that bar today. I hope that all of you take away something you can use literally right away and improving how you think about it. You know, when we asked you to register for this, we asked you a couple of questions and this speaks to Eric, why are we here? This first one, we asked you, which of these best describes your LinkedIn profile? Well, most of you said, as we kind of expected, it reads like a history, it reads like a resume. That's most of you. A small number of you say at least read like a story, and I'm already applauding that because that's closer to the heart of where we're going on this path. But as I also asked you, how well does your profile present your personality? Oh, geez. This is how you answered us. Somewhat, a lot of you said, not at all, and that's not unusual. It's not unexpected, but honestly, it's not helping you. We all acknowledge how competitive the space is. We understand how difficult it is to stand out. We talked sometimes about the concept of personal brand, and I know that that can be fuzzy. From a marketing point of view, we often focus on corporate brand and corporate initiatives and product brands and service brands. And what does it mean for me to have a personal brand or for you to have a personal brand? Most of us have a very, I'll say limited understanding or comfort with what do we mean by that? What is my personal brand anyway? Well, it may be in the same fashion as we say, your company's brand is how others experience you as a company. It could be how folks experience you as an individual professional or as an individual person. That's your brand. It's your personality, it's what you're known for, it's what problems you solve, it's how you help, it's what you bring to the table. It's that notion. This is when someone wants to have a conversation on this topic, make sure we get that person involved. That's part of your brand. All of these things we know and we show up every day in some fashion that people who are able to experience us do so in a pretty organic way. But when we're talking about these things in a marketing context, we're talking about introducing ourselves to folks who don't know us. Eric, we all know, and we say this all the time, of course, you only get one chance to make a first impression, blah blah blah, except it's true. But you you can add blah blah blah at the end of anything, but it doesn't make it untrue. Well, it doesn't make it untrue. Right. And and LinkedIn is one of those opportunities to make a first impression. Now, we didn't put this up as a poll, but clearly if I said to you, hey, when was the last time I'm speaking to all of you that are with us today, when's the last time you've changed or looked at, even looked at little old changed your LinkedIn profile? I'm guessing a lot of you're gonna say, I don't really remember. Maybe the last time I I had an occasion to update To change jobs. Change a job or maybe or maybe not at all, you know, if that if that's the case. The the reality is there's an understandable reason why our our profiles really aren't exciting, while they aren't aren't from a communication perspective or marketing or promotional perspective, aren't really dynamic or helpful. It's because they all came from the same place and for the same reason. That is when we first got to LinkedIn once upon a time, How do you fill out your profile? Well, first of you look at other people who were already there and you copy it. And what did they do? They did the same thing. Right? They literally follow the pattern. They filled out all the boxes, and we did the same. Almost by definition, we looked the same, we put the same information in the same boxes, and most importantly, we did it the same way. That's what we can do here. We're not changing the format of LinkedIn. Although in this session, I hope we may illuminate a few opportunities that maybe because you did it so long ago, you may not recognize there are a few new places to add highlights that might be interesting that perhaps you're not using. I will raise my hand and tell you even in my own review recently, I realized I wasn't using all the opportunities. So I'm saying, do as I say or do as I do, not just do as I say. I'm trying to to walk that walk as well. Let me show you this. It's entirely fictional. This is not somebody any of us knows. This is literally just made up. But just read read it just for for a quick moment. Scan it because I you know, Eric, we'd say all the time, people don't read. They scan. True. If you just scan this, it'll it looks like this. Now this is a made up about section for a made up person. Doesn't it kinda read like people you actually do know or maybe like a lot of people you actually do know? I can think of no fewer than a dozen profiles that I've seen in prepping for this call and putting over. Yeah, this fully standard for our industry. Sure. What I'm here to tell you is, and I want you to hear this really clearly, it's not wrong. It's not wrong. It's just default. Meaning this is the way that it is for most of us. The fact that it's not wrong doesn't mean it's helping you. If your purpose is to stand out, if your purpose is to separate from the pack a little bit, if your purpose is to make strong first impressions, this isn't going to help or anything like it. I'm going to walk you through some examples of what that looks like what I mean by it as well as we do this. As we continue, I'll ask you this question. Again, no on screen poll, just ask yourself. Where do people check you out before they call you? They've been recommended, they've been referred. There's a couple of places. Your corporate website's one, and I think, you know, obviously, the dot dot dot is just a a not very much of a mystery here. It's LinkedIn. Very often before your website and even sometimes instead. Why? How many websites have you been to, Eric, where you go to the about page because you're looking for information about the company and in particular about the leadership team and you don't find it? You get information about our history and about our commitment to excellence and about our community, but in are the people. Where's our people? Yes. I I've I've seen it be just the mailing address or the or the support address. It's not it's not even telling the story there. We built about a 150 websites as as a team. We have not built thousands. That's on purpose. Consider us custom home builders in that fashion. We build them one at a time. We build them to establish a brand and a story and a purpose. Number one page visited on nearly every website, of course, is your homepage, which is why it has to be so incredibly clear and powerful. Yes, many are not, but that's not our topic for today. This one of the most visited pages as a second page that gets the most visits is your about page or about pages. Why? What do we say all the time? People buy people. They buy people they trust, they people people they understand, people that make them feel good about making the decisions that they need to make. And the about page is where we go naturally to say, well, who are these people? Who is behind this? Who are the leaders? Who are the founders? Who's running it? Who's my contact who reached out to me? I have someone's name. I have their title and credentials. I want to see who they are. On many sites, it might be a photograph and a title, or it may be photograph and a title and a bio, which is often written very much in a resume format. Or it's a photograph and a title and a connect with me on LinkedIn. Okay. But if what we're linking someone to is a less than robust version of who you are, you're not really helping yourself the way you want. If we acknowledge that prospects are doing their due diligence and a lot of them are doing it here, and I say so whether we intend for them to or that we prefer them to do. It's happening whether you expect them to do or not. If you'll accept that that's the case, and perhaps you'll raise your hand and say, I do the same thing when I'm checking people out, I want to know who they are. Fine. The observation that we make, and I think back to the poll that we put on screen there at our beginning is, what does it look like? A lot of you said, it looks like a resume. It's a history. It's a chronology of where you've been and what you've done. It tells me you have the chops, tells me you have experience. It doesn't tell me anything at all about why I want to get to know you or why I might have reason to suggest you might be a good fit for me. That's all about relationship gen and the things that we tell of a through line of discussions here is this is an opportunity to start that. The question then becomes, what do we do? Do we present a resume or do we present a story? That may seem radical or on some level, may just seem okay. I hear you, but I have no idea how to do that. I've talked to a lot of folks who say, I don't love my LinkedIn paste. It's not great, but I don't know what to do. I don't know how to change it. I'm not good at these things, I may I may say I'm not I may not be a great writer. Set all that aside. If that's in your head, set it aside for the moment. I would suggest to you this, a resume list what you've done, a story has the potential to invite somebody in, and it has the potential to be memorable. I can tell you I've seen thousands of LinkedIn profiles. How many of them I would regard as memorable? On one hand, maybe two, right? Maybe. Meaning, why would I remember those details of someone's past? Besides which, what am I looking for as a buyer? I'm not looking for a resume. I'm looking for comfort that someone has the potential to help me solve my problems, to reach my goals, to work through my challenges. The notion of being memorable, it's pretty desirable. We're not going to get there through a resume. Now that said, for most of us, right now, your LinkedIn profile is not an extension of you, but it can be. That's the first part of this conversation together because it's always why before how. Why does it matter? Where does it fit? What's opportunity? What's the cost doing it? What's the cost of not doing it? The cost of not doing it, not changing your profile is that it will remain the way that it is in the state that it is in a fairly undifferentiated fashion. Again, as I said upfront, it's not wrong. It's standard, but if your purpose is to not be seen as standard, not to be a me too, not to be conforming to the same box everybody else is, then there's an opportunity here. Can I ask a clarifying question real fast? By all means. When we're talking about a link, there are several parts of one's LinkedIn page, right? You go to look at someone's profile, you're going to see a couple of things. You're going to see their actual profile, you're going to see the free form paragraph they can write, you're going see their work experience, blah, blah, blah. You'll also see recent posts that they have themselves posted or things that they have shared. Are those spaces part of where you would advise telling the story of who you are, what you're choosing to share, what you're choosing to post, or really just talking about the profile profile, the what's in the box. I'm really glad you asked. By the way, if while we're going through this, and if you have questions that you'd like to ask that either apply to your profile or that apply to just how you think about this, please don't hesitate to put a question that question window. We're more than happy to speak to them. You make a really good point about sharing things you have authored or posted or shared. Foundationally, in this particular session as titled, Let's Fix Your LinkedIn Profile for Good, I'm focusing more rigidly on your profile page per se. Now, rationale certainly to be an author, whether that's short form or long form and opportunities to I don't love the notion of gaming the algorithm, but at least playing to what we think the algorithm is favoring and how to get shared more than less often in that regard. But I'd also say this, and I tell clients this all the time. If your purpose is to get attention, create traffic from that attention, and then direct it to where people have the potential to learn more and engage more. Let's make sure that where they're going to engage has potential. Meaning, you spend a lot of money on advertising, you bring someone to a website, which doesn't really answer their questions and doesn't really give them a pathway. You have the potential to chew up a lot of money and time that can't be productive, which means start by fixing the house, fix the website, fix your message, talk about the right things. Here, talking about yourself and establishing who you are and why you're here and what you're here to share, to me, is a predicate to what conversations do you weigh in on and what conversations do you post on and topics and such, which I think are wonderful, whether that's video or articles or infographics or other things or conversations and such. These are all interesting. And I and I perhaps you and I will dive into that in another session in in in earnest. Right? This one says, if you're gonna spend a kind of time getting attention and by the way, this assumes that your purpose is to get attention and to satisfy that due diligence box. It's not everybody's thing. So there's there's there's there's no absolute here. I'm offering a series of recommendations to those who say I would like I'm in a growth phase. Our purpose is to grow our brand and to grow our presence and to grow our stature. And we are looking for ways to separate from the pack. Our website is one way or the way we engage. Our model is one way. How we show up on this particular platform because it's the world's biggest B2B network matters in that fashion? Sure. What do you say we dive into a couple of examples? Yes. Now, I want to just mention to you, I have, I have blurred out most identifiers. My purpose here is not to to to really point at at my friends. And by the way, the ones you're going to see here are folks that are my connections. By the way, we're all public for the most part. I'm pretty sure that whether they would love or not love these examples, they are there for the world to see all day, every day anyway. But I'm also going to show you not just examples of things that you may say, Oh gosh, mine looks like this. I want to show you good examples as well in each of these. So I'm not going to talk about headshots. I'm not talking about the masthead here. Certainly, a professional headshot is absolutely important. If you're not sure your headshot is good, ask your friends. Literally ask people who you trust tell you, is this a good is this a professional shot? Does this work? Otherwise, at least own your choice. Okay? Let me show you a few examples from the first section that people see under your title. I shouldn't have skipped the title by the way because it's so important because it's an opportunity to tell people more than your title, but to say something there. This is the about section. Now, I'm gonna show you three, and and not all of them were advisers. That's not important. But I hope you can see something in them. This is a mini resume in a few dense four lines that very, very few people will read because there's no reason to read it. They can scroll down and see your experience section and it's the same information. In that fashion, it's not additive. Just tell them what they already know or to give them information that doesn't tell them what problems you solve or how you're helpful in that regard. That's one. Also dense industry. These are all from, broadly speaking, the ecosystem we all work in. Right? This is a leader, but you can see it has business, it has leadership roles, it has education. This is an opportunity to tell a story. This is where the story starts if you're going to tell one. Clearly, this is a before versus an after. I think this style of writing is fairly typical. It's written third person and it's written very dense and very formal and very much in a resume summary type of a way. Again, why do we write this way? Why do we write this way? Because we probably copied not just the template, but the way we saw other successful people do the same and we all wound up looking alike, but not in a very interesting way. Here's one more. This one doesn't actually speak about the person, even though this is someone's about not a company's, but it's actually speaking to what the company is, which seems like maybe a missed opportunity for sure to talk about who you are. That third paragraph is unfortunately just a mistake because it was clearly a block copied from something else and was never intended to be here. To ask how often have you looked at your stuff? Well, I know this person hasn't looked at it at all because you'd see that. Now, let me show you an example of what I believe is a hugely successful one, and it's vastly different than the three that you've seen so far. Right? It's this. And I didn't block out the name Cam Marston, that is whose whose, about section this is. If anything, this is kudos to Cam and and compliments to discuss I. Starts with I, first of all. This is who I am. This is what I do. This is how long I've been doing it. This is why. I'm clear. I'm a speaker. I'm an author, a podcaster. Some of the folks I've worked with, the topics I focus on, these what I speak on. At a glance, you have a pretty good idea. And he started a conversation insofar as and by the way, I I there's links below this, but I didn't include them. It's an opportunity to to get some insight into who is he? What is his philosophy? What does he think about? Where does he weigh in? Do we have some resonance? Do we have something in common? Do I have a place that I Does it help me understand why I would want to learn more about him? I think that about section is successful. Also recognize as I go back, these are pretty short. Of us see that the LinkedIn about sections like three lines and then dot dot dot. And you might think, well, doesn't that mean I have to put the most important stuff at the top? Okay. If you want to. But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't include more. And there's two reasons to consider this idea here. One, does it tell a story? Yes. It's also speaking to the LinkedIn algorithm. There's a lot more information here, a lot of more keywords. There's a lot more reality here. If you want to use the word authenticity, meaning you are an authentic real person, yeah, this is somebody talking about themselves in a way that the LinkedIn algorithm absolutely appreciates and appreciates in a fashion that you care about. He also uses the Oxford comma, which is important to everybody. That's another takeaway for the list. We're down to only a couple of minutes left. Can we see another example? You bet. This one happens to be mine. I'm not going to dwell on it. By the way, I would love to connect with any of you who would like some help on this. You'll see my profile. You'll notice paragraph three. Outside of marketing, I talk about my life passion with music. What does it have to do with how I can help you as a CMO level consultant or strategist? Maybe it doesn't, but it does inform how I see myself and how I see inspiration in the world for sure. And I think I'll tell you it's more memorable than my resume is to most people. It's a it's a conversation starter. That violin on the wall, has been many times, And that's all part of of, I think, how we get to that next place with people. There's a place on your on your on your profile called skills. If you're not using it, and many of you aren't, you may already know this, it's an opportunity to list at least five areas where you have focus. Spend a few minutes. It won't take you long. Add it. It's an important section. Now, experience is also a place to tell your story. This isn't an actual excerpt from somebody's profile that I know. It's literally just a listing of titles and dates. This is hardly more titles and dates. And by the way, this is not exactly unknown. Right? We've seen this before. Right? So I I wanna stop here at this this this one point, Eric, because it's important to remind folks that there are sections throughout this that maybe you mentioned where I published and what I've done. Certainly, you have it. But start with considering how do I tell a story here? How do I tell a story about myself that maybe somebody else will appreciate? That can be full sentences and that can be, it's not just what my role was, what did I do? And what I think is important about it. It might be stuff that you would say in conversation, consider how to put them here. Think about what's available to you that you're not using at all. Is it information that's featured? Is it services? Is it skills? Is it any of these that fit what you're doing? Whatever that is. But most importantly, I'd say this, a reminder, remember that while those boxes seem to be about you and your profile, if you think about how do I approach it, not from a perspective of what I want to say about myself, but what I want to say that would be interesting to you. I say, Well, it's not about me, it's about you. It's about them. What are you trying to get done? What do I need to say that that really matters? If we think about things to remember here, one, LinkedIn is often the first and sometimes the only pace that people will spend time to size you up and to decide whether to take a next step. Two, say clearly what you've got to share. Make it easier for people to understand what things you focus on, what topics you're most interested in, how you help, not just what your title might suggest to them, especially when titles aren't always so clear. Third, I hope you appreciate that in this moment, we really care that standing out is a real opportunity. If you did nothing, it'll continue to operate as it does, but in a very limited way. To take these steps is to do something to stand out. To the extent that the vast majority of your peer group doesn't, it's a pretty nice opportunity that has outsized potential. Any closing questions, Eric? Not a question, but one thing that I have learned from twenty something years of teaching people how to use Judy Diamond's software service platform. The time to strike people is right now. You've just had this great half hour session all about how to change your thing. Before you go into your next meeting, which is probably soon, if you can take five minutes right now while your interest level is at its maximum in terms of, oh, I should tweak my LinkedIn profile. Go do it now. Because you might not do it later. And even if you do do it later, you're going to think yourself, Oh wait, what did they say about XYZ? Strike while the iron and the intent is hot. Any change you make to your profile in the next twenty minutes is almost certainly going to be for the better. I know that's what I'm doing as soon as this call ends. I want to leave you with one more thought towards that. That is if you'd like a hand with yours, some of you may feel like you could take away something with this and just do your own thing. If so, great. I hope that you find value in this. If you'd like our professional help in doing so, we'll offer that too, and I'll show you how you can get it. One last thing I want to make sure we mentioned before you say goodbye is that our next session is a really interesting one that a lot of folks have had little experience with. We all hear so much about what AI is and where it's going, and there's so many facets to that conversation. AI is rewriting the rules of online search. Whether you call that organic search or SEO or paid search, all the things, AI as an ecosystem is changing it. We're going to talk about what that means, why it matters, and how you might want to be thinking actively and quickly about that change and how to take advantage of it. Excellent. Eric, as always, thank you. To all of you, thank you. Yes. Thanks everybody, and we'll see you on the next one.

Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Eric Ryles. I'm Alan Gross. I run things here at Judy Diamond Associates. And I lead the team at GSM Marketing. And we want to welcome you all to the second installment in our Practical Edge webinar series, where we hope to present ideas to you, the retirement community, that you can use in your everyday workflow. Alan, why are we here today? Eric, this is one of my favorite topics because it is core to my heart. It's part of my philosophy. It expresses how I see the world and it's a mirror to how I see what works and frankly often doesn't work in marketing. I expect that each of you joining us today have a sense this, and I'm going express to you why I have titled it the way that I have, why I regard it the way that I do. I don't think that you'll not understand the nod here this way. But I want to make sure that you're clear where this is going. This is not a knock on lead gen. This is really a discussion around why leading with what we think matters has more potential to help you be successful than you may be realizing. If there's the notion that says, hey, if there's one good takeaway here, if there's one really actionable idea that you can take with you and use now, then I hope you'll describe this as worth the price of admission because that's what each of these moments are in this series. These are not demos. They're conversations based upon what we've learned and what we hope can be helpful to you. When you registered for this moment together, we asked a few questions, one of which was just, hey, what's your role? Not surprising. Dominant response is from many of you as advisors and your marketing teams and executive leadership and others. We welcome you all because everybody has a role in this. If you think about what your brand is, your brand, as we like to express it sometimes, is not what we say it is. It's not the colors and logos and fonts and such. It's how others experience us. Well, frankly, in the house carries that opportunity and frankly, that's how the rest of the world sees us. You are as interesting as every single one of you may be, and that's part of where we're going with this. In addition to asking who's in the room, I asked you just this prelude question. Would you describe your approach to relationships as a personal strategy, a corporate strategy, an unintentional strategy, or maybe not really so much part of my strategy? The idea of the question was not to get into to to to the deep end of the pool, and I didn't give you any foundation or background as to why we were asking or or how you might interpret it, but thank you for playing along anyway. Clearly, three quarters of you regard relationships as a personal strategy. I assume that means, I hope that means a reflection of your personal brand. If so, great. And if it's a component of your corporate strategy, great. Question then is, are you living to it? That is you understand it, I think that's important. How you exercising it is why we're here. We'll talk in this session about three things. Well, why are we talking about relationship, Jen? What what about it, frankly, is so interesting that it would be resonant today? What does it mean to shift our thinking and our our activity in a way that's more aligned to it if it's not? And if it's appropriate, well, let's make sure we're leaving with some specific actions to take and not just say, hey, that was nice to talk about. Alan, can we can we start with a nice, concise definition? What is relationship gen? How does it differ from lead gen? The statement here, and you'll see a small trademark registration. We registered this ten years ago. Not to sell it, you'll find no products or services or consulting engagements that say buy this as a program. We did it just to protect the idea and then be able to talk about it freely the way we do. The distinction is this, lead gen is a representation of and a component of a particular process. We often see the funnel that so many of us know. It's the notion of identifying contacts, qualifying them, closing them. That close at the end is a transaction. It's where the meter goes to chain. There's nothing inherently wrong with it. It just doesn't happen to reflect the way most successful people I've ever met in this industry actually operate. What I'm talking about is this notion that says, if I ask, and I have hundreds of people, what's made you successful? I will tell you that somewhere between one percent and zero, and the one percent is just I'll I'll leave room for the possibility I've forgotten somebody who said something, but it's it's close to zero who said, we're just freaking awesome at lead gen. We're great at at at funnels and funnel management and these things. By the I'm not telling you you can't be successful with that. I'm just telling you my experience in this industry in particular for many years is that that's not the answer that I get. The answer is we really understand what it means to deliver on a quality of relationship. We say it, we talk about it, we live to it. It's part of our ethic, it's part of our personality, part of our promise. I say fantastic because we know and we said this in our last session and we'll probably continue to say it, Eric. There is some notion that this industry, and I hear advisors telling us all the time, we're fighting commoditization. That we have common services and we have common solutions and we have very much a common vocabulary. We look a lot alike to prospects. We sound alike. Our websites, you know, appear to be pretty similar. We're talking literally about fighting that idea. That's what this idea is about. Standing if you ask me, how do you help us stand apart from the pack? How do we differentiate? Well, I'm telling you, you have a meaningful opportunity. It's my assertion that you have a meaningful opportunity to do that if you focus not just your internal notion of this on relationships, but your external effort on it. It shouldn't actually be opportune. It shouldn't be possible. Everybody should be doing this. And if that was the case, it wouldn't be a differentiator at all. You would just be keeping up with the pack. The reality is, though, it's not the case. Let me explain. And and by the way, as I said, this is not an argument against lead gen. I'm not suggesting that you don't need to or shouldn't endeavor to source leads, source contacts, source opportunities that may become new clients for sure. I want you to hear it that way is that we're not talking about not exercising that idea. It's how you exercise it that I care about. RelationshipGen, and this, I hope will kinda put a bow on this, response back to Eric. That is relationshipGen is about aligning what you do in your in your marketing to how you deliver value and how others experience you. It's different than how we think about lead gen. Do you still have to do emails? Do you still need to do events? Do you still have to create content? Do you still have to do all the things that touch people? Yes. Yes. But what this has the potential to do is actually modestly to radically cause you to rethink, am I saying the right things in all of those moments? I still need to establish those moments to earn this opportunity. Am I saying the right things? The most the most obvious place for me to start describing what does it mean to be thinking about what is it we should be saying is to is to beg the question or the statement. It's really not about you. It's about them. We we will always talk about this. In the last session, the next session, probably every session, It's not about you. It's about them. Them being clients, them being prospects. Now that's that seems obvious, and I'm sure many of you are just nodding. Course, it's about them. That's why we're here. The challenges and the observation back to you is I can show you dozens or hundreds or thousands of websites in our industry that that don't express this. We're talking about ourselves. We're talking about our credentials. We're talking about experience. We're talking about the solutions we offer for individuals, for families, for companies, for others, the kinds of things that we can do for you. It's not talking in a way that expresses relationship value or why someone would be comfortable choosing you over somebody else. And it very often doesn't give them the information they need to know to create the clarity that leads to comfort, that leads to trust to take next steps. Owen, can I tell you how I have been thinking about relationships, Jim? Because obviously, I've known about the topic of today's session for a while now, and I've done some thinking about it. In the course of my professional career, I have been fortunate enough to have given a bunch of speeches in front of a bunch of different groups of people, including four zero one ks agents, advisors, insurance brokers. One of the things that I always asked during these sessions, which is either about how to use the five thousand five hundred or about what's going on in the industry. And one of the questions that always comes up is what's working for you, Mr. Or Mrs. Advisor, in terms of marketing, how are you getting clients right now? And it shouldn't come as any surprise to anybody that the number one answer every time is referrals. Referrals are how we get most of our biz always referrals, number one. And then number two can be any kind of lead list like a like a Judy diamond or one of our many competitors. And then it kind of goes down the line from there. But the idea of referrals being the most valuable is I think because in those conversations that you're having, the referral has already been made, you can be your most authentic self. You can present that value of the relationship to this new person because you've already been doused for a little bit, but you've gotten your foot in the door. And now when you're talking with them, you don't need to sell them on, Oh, well, let me tell you why we're so great. We have X actuaries and we have this Y program. We serve Z number of clients. You get to know the person. So it's kind of relationship gen to me is kind of like trying to do a referral based marketing, not actually having someone make the introduction. It's trying to capture all the strengths of referral without actually being referred. Does that make sense? Well, you saw a number of things that if I were to unpack at least a part of what you just said, obviously, you're right. And I think anybody would say that referrals would be the gold standard of anybody's idea of marketing. We our team has been been in this space for sixteen years. The vast majority of of clients we have ever had the pleasure of being able to serve came to us or was introduced to us by someone who trusted and had a good experience with us. That's profoundly valuable. When we talk about marketing, the overriding question I have is, are you getting what you want? That is, if you have a pipeline that continues to create enough opportunities to to sustain the growth that you want with the quality that you want, then I would tell you don't do anything else. And don't listen to anyone else selling you anything else. That is if you're stacked and say, hey. Yeah. We all we we're getting all we can handle. Great. That does by the way, there are some people I speak to who say, Listen, we're killing it. We're getting all we can handle. We're actually being selective of who we take on because we have to be at this point. Fantastic. If you're part of an enterprise that's growing or you have different needs and different concerns, then how you voice this, yeah, it does matter. And the choices you make and where to expend your energy and your money and time matters. So if we can help make this a little bit better, a little sharper, get you where you need to be a little faster with a little more confidence, that's incrementally positive. I hope if we can contribute to that idea, Eric, then we're serving the whole idea of why spending this time together. Thank you for those thoughts. You're absolutely on point. In fact, to the group, we're going to come back to this because while Eric has foreshadowed this notion of sourcing, we're gonna ask we're actually gonna poll you a little bit on that topic because I wanna get come back to that with a few more thoughts that I hope will help, clarify this further. So when we say it's about them, then it's reasonable to ask, well, what is it they want? And I say that not just to create a false, you know, kind of a starting point here. When we say, what do they want? That's a loaded question. We could spend thirty minutes with a title called what do they want? What do buyers really want? Only thirty? Only thirty? We could spend all day, and and and probably have room for tomorrow. What they want is complicated. What they want is not certainly singular. It's not homogenous, and it may not be what we're selling. Meaning, if I can offer you a financial plan, is that what you want? No. I want to have certainty in my future. That's what I want. Maybe what we're selling is a means to an ends or a vehicle to help you get where you're going, or the confidence of a guide who appreciates what you need and has your back. What they want is important. I'm not suggesting that you don't know these things certainly, or that you're not operating from a basis of excellence in doing so. What we keep suggesting here and what you've heard me say from the top is that in so many cases, what we hear advisory firms in particular talk about is on point in terms of this idea internally, but disconnected externally. That the website doesn't say this, collateral doesn't say this, pitch deck doesn't say this. We talk about relationships as foundationally important, but we're selling services and we're selling solutions over here in a way that frankly puts us back in the commodity box and it undersells the whole power of what we're trying to convey in relationship. A statement that I know that we've talked about previously and that I will reiterate because I have discovered it over and over and over. It continues to remind me how true it is. If you would do this with me, I'm not going to put this as a poll on screen, but I'll ask all of you. Finish this sentence, this next one, and I I know that you you you you will. When it comes to important financial decisions in particular, for fear of making a poor decision, most people will You know how to finish that sentence. Eric? Make no decision at all. Make no decision at all. That is the number one answer with a bullet. It's it's ninety percent plus. And the other ten percent is make no decision, but stated just slightly differently. As in we all get it. For fear of making a poor decision, most people will make no decision, even to their own detriment. And the fact they're making no decision doesn't mean they don't have a need. They do. Or that they don't want to solve the problem they have. They do. They're not ready. Now why they're not ready is is sometimes complicated. But the notion that they have to deal with and they have to get over their own fear of making a poor decision is is also complicated. There's risk. We have brand risk, reputation risk. We have operational risk. We have financial risk. Right? We have a number of different kinds of risks that matter in people's heads. These are legitimate risks. I'm putting my money on the line. I'm putting my brand on the line. I'm putting my reputation on the line and so on. There could be consequences financially for the decisions that I make for me and for others. So it's rational to to to contemplate them. How we get them over that hump to make a decision or the decision, by the way, is not necessary to buy. It could be even to invite a meeting to talk about it. It could be even just getting the first meeting. That's the it could be stopping at that step, and that's trust. Trust, I would argue with anyone, is not just they need to trust us. What I'm saying here is, I'm going back up for one, They need to trust themselves. They need to trust that they have the ability to make a confident decision. If they don't, they get stuck here. So we have a job of not just selling ourselves Yes, your credentials and your experience and your capacity speak to you have the chops to do this, but that may not be what they're looking for. It may not be enough to do. Here's an example of an idea. It has significant weight because it's a seven figure kind of a buy. Imagine you're you're responsible for making an investment recommendation on a new MRI for a practice. These are seven figure things. These are expensive. They're important technology, and there are many, many companies that make them. Well, imagine how you would respond to information that look like this, manufacturers' origins, their market share, their awards, their headcount, their headquarters, their patents, and so on, which by the way, you'll find information like this on every one of the MRI competitor sites. Compare that kind of messaging to reliability in terms of quality for patients and teams. The notion that you have a worry free solution and you have support where you need it, and that that we can help you create outcomes that expand your value and what you do. It's a difference between requisite information that maybe is well, I must say maybe is truthful, but doesn't help someone make a a confident decision versus understanding where they're coming from or, frankly, what asking the question, what are they buying? What do they need? What do they want? And how do you help them understand that you have a way of expressing it that perhaps your competitors don't? I can tell you in our space, you have a significant opportunity to sound different, to show up differently than an extraordinary percentage of qualified, capable firms who simply don't use this language. I think that's an important differentiator in terms of how you show up. Let's talk a little bit about leads because as I said, this is not an anti lead idea. Relationship gen is not anti lead gen. It's if we're going to address people, what is it we're saying? What are we asking? It poses a different question if my purpose is to think of it this way. So we've got a few polling questions, Eric. And if if we can just do them in sequence, and I realize where we are on time here, we'll just we'll we'll march through them. It won't take too much too much time. The first question asks, how do you source leads today? You know? And and and and if it all if this polling only offers you the choice of one, then then choose the one that that's most interesting in terms of how often you do. I have a different question, by the way, to follow, which is more effective, but which is the one that is the one that you do most? It looks like we've got a pretty even breakdown between cross selling referrals and other, a little bit less on hosting events. Okay. Very good. Let's move. And what I want to do is I asked you this question, but the next question I want to ask you is this one. We'll put this one up as a poll right now as well, which is we just asked you the question. Now I'm asking you about the same choices saying, okay, of them, which one is most effective? Because you may be trying several or you may have several of them in your mix. So as we discussed earlier, then, Eric, as you clearly alluded to, referrals is a gold standard. Certainly, we would expect that to be effective and an important understanding here. Thank you for that. All right. Yeah. So if anybody can't see the results, we have to hide the cameras we're being told by some people in the audience. That said, a real quickie breakdown. Sixty percent of you say referrals, number one, with cross selling about thirty percent and hosting live events, ten percent. Okay. The next one is the last one I'm going to ask you, which is what exactly is it that you think people are buying? Nearly two thirds of you said, what do they buy? You. Buy me. Right, they buy you. Followed by a retirement plan and consulting, not so much strategy and investment, and that could be in terms of how you present. The fact that the dominant answer is what do they buy is you. If that's what they're buying, could argue that's what you should be selling. That's if there's one sound bite for you guys to know what to take away from today's session, I think it's that one right there. Sounds so elementary. It may not even sound like, oh gosh, that was a light bulb. Thank you very much. I can tell you that when I was a neophy stockbroker a hundred and twelve years ago, seems, I was taught how to sell particular stocks, bonds, funds with research reports and papers and Q and A and how to overcome objections. It was to sell specific ideas. When I saw the most successful brokers on the perimeter of the office who weren't sitting at desks, they were actually standing with their headsets walking around back and forth against their windows talking to clients. If you listened in on them, you never heard them doing any of those things. It was quite clear that the relationship they had, and by the way, the word relationship was present there too, they had sold themselves. It was the first clue to me that clients didn't buy stocks, bonds, and funds. They buy brokers. They buy advisors. They buy people. They they can help them make those difficult decisions. Because once they get there, then they're in a place that they can get what they need. But the question follows then is, where do you differentiate best? Well, of the things we just talked about, you could argue that retirement plans are not well differentiated, 401ks or 401ks, within some range. Yes, there are some nuances in terms of whether we're talking plan design or optimization for owners or others. Yes, there are things to be talked about for tax strategy and whether they are qualified or non qual ideas, all true. But of all these things, only one of them represents an idea they can only get from you, and that's you. You are the unique opportunity. As a house, it's your house. It's what we sell here. It's who we are. There's a lot to be said for recognizing that people buy that idea. How often do you hear the notion people do business with people they like or they do people with people that make them feel good about these decisions? It is a people business. How many times have we said that? Nope. You cannot do that without recognizing there was a relationship component to that idea. I'm not suggesting that you don't understand this because I know you do. I'm inviting you to think about not just where you differentiate, but how you align your marketing to how you deliver value. Certainly lead gen, if it's a problem, it's this. It tends to be short term, it tends to be transactional in terms of our thinking, and it suggests that if we shift our thinking more to relationship gen, we get from this place, which is if you win one transaction, you get one win, to earn a relationship, you stand to win over and over. That a foundation for growth that's built in to what we're trying to get to. It's moving from a single event to long term value. Quickly, and with time being short, let's make this actionable. My recommendation to you is that, yes, of course, engage prospects on topics that speak to their success, not your services, not your features, and not the choices you can make, but what it is they actually want. The words about what you're trying to accomplish may be entirely secondary in terms of what you're selling. But here are the things to do. This is the takeaway from today's session. This is the action that I would invite you to take. If you want any help with it or if you'd like some feedback, even ask even if you'd like me to look at a website or or a piece of collateral that you have just just for independent eyes, just reach out. I'm happy to help. Assess the campaigns and content that you're running with. Identify and respect your differentiators. See how they're showing up or not. Think about what does it mean to create content that supports relationships by design, by intention, even using the words. What does it mean to personalize and customize content, which of course you know, and what is it to review and improve this? But the first one, number one here, assess what you've got. Look at your website if somebody else does. Most of us, we build we build things, we keep moving, and we don't often revisit them, as often as as perhaps we should. And we often don't look at them the way others do. That's the big opportunity on this one. Eric, final thoughts on this topic? I think we've only just begun to explore how important relationship gen is. We talked a lot last time about mirroring the kind of stuff, the energy that you get from the clients speaking in their language. And I think that I suspect that this will be a recurring theme for us as we explore the rest of our webinar series. The next of which I believe is three weeks from now. Obviously, like I say, I think we're on a two week cadence from here. I think it's at least a couple of weeks. It'll be on the website. Look for our invitation. This one absolutely speaks to how you tell your story. Let's fix your LinkedIn profile for good. Maybe that's a maybe that's a nod to wicked. Maybe it's something else for good. Was pulling up an alternate title to it, is don't post anything on LinkedIn, parentheses, until you fix your profile. Most of us have profiles that are literally not working for us, and we know what to do next. We know they're not great, we don't know what to do. In this session, I'm going make it super clear what to do next. You can join us for that two weeks from tomorrow. So Wednesday, September sixteenth, same back time, same back channel, two o'clock Eastern. We hope to see you guys there. Today's session, yes, was recorded. Thank you for the questions. And that recording should be posted by end of day tomorrow. On the landing page, there will be a post webinar email that goes out with a link to that session. And as always, thank you all for your time and attention today. Thank you even for staying with us five minutes late. I didn't see anybody leave. Fantastic. Thanks, everybody. I think that's a good sign right there. Take care, everybody. Have a good week. Bye bye.