What Might Advisors Learn About HNW Marketing From FaceBook’s IPO?
May 22, 2012 by Simon · Leave a Comment
These cut and paste points from Michael Hiltzik’s May 18, 2012 “Facebook’s Epic Fail – Maybe the dumb money wasn’t so dumb this time” article from the Los Angeles Times might help advisors learn something about using FaceBook to market to HNW clients.
- The stock market did turn out to be a voting machine on Facebook on Friday (to quote Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham), and the vote was thumbs-down on flapdoodle.
- One lesson is that when given enough information, investors can find their way through fogbanks of hype.
- It’s much more likely that the shares will be fully valued than that they’ll harbor hidden treasure. Facebook went public at $38 a share, and after a day of epically heavy trading, closed at $38.23, for a gain of 0.61%. Not quite the huge pop market mavens were predicting.
- The expected pattern is that public investors — “dumb money” in Wall Street regard — react more to hype than to fundamentals. That’s why savvy Wall Street traders take it as a bearish signal when small investors pile into a stock or the stock market.
- This time the expected frenzy didn’t materialize. What accounts for the disappointing showing? A few things come to mind. Among the downsides of becoming a public company is that your dirty laundry gets a public airing. In the run-up to the IPO, Facebook’s linens were out on the clothesline for all to see.
- There was broad coverage of the company’s slowing growth, and its difficulty in placing advertising on mobile devices, through which more than half its users access the website.
- It didn’t help that General Motors announced just days before the offering date that it was withdrawing all its paid advertising from Facebook out of doubts that the site is an effective advertising medium.
- Normally, these are signs that interest is lagging, but many on the street figured that the public excitement would prevail.
- The question in coming weeks may no longer be how high Facebook can soar, but how low can it go?
Does this mean that I am not a fan of FaceBook? No. It is great for staying in touch with friends.
I’m reminding all of us not to put all of our marketing eggs in one basket.
My Visual Loftier Goals
April 5, 2012 by Simon · Leave a Comment
I blogged my Loftier Goals on February 22, 2012 and as today is my birthday, I thought that I would repost my Loftier Goals along with some pictures to visualize and thereby magnify my goals.
We always hear that it is important to write down your goals.
Some believe that you should share your goals and some believe not … I am taking the approach of making a public commitment.
At the same time I’m publically asking for help with these long term loftier goals.
Here are my Loftier Goals along with our Vision, Mission and Purpose:
- Leading Advisor Inc. is an advising company that helps financial advisors and their teams to meet and exceed their business goals.
- Our vision is to help our clients and their teams feel fulfilled through the development, realization and enactment of their values, vision, mission, purpose and business plan.
- Our mission is to help clients and their teams to wholeheartedly engage in their business to identify, enjoy and profitably deliver their best talents for the benefits of their clients, teams and themselves.
- Our purpose is to seek wisdom, enhance understanding and provide encouragement through coaching, facilitating, speaking and writing.
- Create a more scalable coaching program using video assignments.
- Create a team that includes; management, coaches, sales, customer service and social media
- Republish 100,000 copies of Curing The Unmet Needs Disease
- Become a Non-Executive Director for HNW Financial Advisor /or AGA/MGA Firms
- Speak at 30 Financial Advisor Events per year for $5,000 each
- Produce 24 Corporate Clear Your Roadblocks and One Page Business Plan Webinars per year
- Produce 24 Corporate Clear Your Roadblocks and One Page Business Plan Workshops per year
- Visit with 30 HNW Financial Advisor clients per quarter
- Receive 6 Referrals per month
- Receive 12 prospects per month from our website
- Become endorsed by Financial Advisor Associations
- Increase income to $500,000 per year
In pursuit of our Loftier Goals I am pleased to announce that we have launched 11 new coaching web site pages with related videos and you can check the out here; http://www.leadingadvisor.com/
7 Tips To Handle Your Client Notes After Your Client Meetings
February 20, 2012 by Simon · Leave a Comment
The following post was on ForAdvisorsOnly the week of February 13th, 2012 and here is my reply.
ForAdvisorsOnly Post
We have tried several methods of recording the information discussed during client meetings without a lot of success. We have had a person sit in on the meeting a take dictation, make up notes directly afterwards and send them to the client for approval, record the meeting and then have it transcribed (takes hours). What does everyone else do? What has worked well?
Simon Reilly’s Reply
While I am not an advisor, I’m a coach who works with advisors.
1) Part of our offering is we include a recording of the coaching call using Audio Acrobat. We also send our clients a coaching call summary of the call by e-mail. The coaching call summary is dictated into Audio Acrobat.
2) One of our Virtual Assistants type sets the coaching call summary which is proofed and e-mailed to our clients along with practice management articles, assignments and systems.
3) Our practice management articles, assignments and systems are stored in DropBox.
4) Some of our clients use the Audio Note App to transcribe their client meeting notes.
5) Some of our clients use CopyTalk to transcribe their client meeting notes.
6) We have also used Dragon Dictation to dictate client notes.
7) Rather than Dragon Dictation, to delegate and to give the process a personal approach, I prefer creating a quick mind map summary of the coaching call notes and I’ll sometimes use the SimpleMind App. ( Check out the picture out at the bottom of this Blog. The SimpleMind App along with the iPad2 is the coolest piece of software to come along in years! ) Then I use Audio Acrobat to dictate the summary of the coaching and then have our Virtual assistant transcribe the notes. I’m looking at 5 – 10 minutes to complete the coaching call mind map / notes / Audio Acrobat and our Virtual Assistant is spending 12 – 15 minutes to type set the notes. This process guarantees clear communications with our clients and everyone is on the same page for the next meeting.
Here’s A Reason That It Is Cool To Be An Insurance Salesperson
August 29, 2011 by Simon · Leave a Comment
Laura and I watched the comedy movie ‘Cedar Rapids’ partly because it is about an insurance agent who is sent to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to represent his company at an annual insurance convention and that I was in Cedar Rapids speaking on behalf of NAIFA Iowa ( National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors ) during the NAIFA Iowa Sales Caravan in November of 2010.
Please note that while this movie is very charming and funny at times, it will be highly irreverent for some so I’m not giving it two thumbs up.
Even with what some could see as a sow’s ear, even a sow’s ear can have a silver lining and , ‘Cedar Rapids’ the movie provides an excellent example of a Parable which some might understand as a longer Elevator Speech.
Here is what I mean by a Parable.
They say that wisdom enters through the wound and the core of the passion to serve is based on life experience both positive and negative and the best advisors seem to have the deepest scars.
The life experience equipped them with the knowledge and the skills to pass onto other people to help them move forward.
This experience gives one something interesting to stand up and say rather than;
Hi, I’m Joe Advisor and I sell investment products and life insurance.
They use what has happened to them both personally and professionally, good and bad and use it as a catalyst to pass their experience and passion onto other people.
Here is the Parable from ‘Cedar Rapids’ …
Joan played by Anne Heche – “So how did you get involved in the insurance game?”
Tim played by Ed Helmes – “I lost my dad in a sawmill accident when I was 6 years old.”
Joan played by Anne Heche – “Oh my God!”
Tim played by Ed Helmes – “Yeah. But the insurance agent fought like a tiger with the sawmill to make sure that my Mom and I were taken care of, and we were, and I remember thinking that when I was a kid, this guy is a hero. I gotta say, I think that the insurance agents get a bum rap. Ya’ know like this river, The Cedar River flooded a couple of year ago, and flooded the whole city.”
Joan played by Anne Heche – “I can remember that massive disaster”.
Tim played by Ed Helmes – “Massive disaster that cost billions of dollars in damage and who do you think was in the trenches trying to get people’s lives back in order? It was the insurance agents. Not all, but a lot worked really hard to get people’s lives back on track.”
Joan played by Anne Heche – “Do you realize that you just made it sound cool to be an insurance salesman? You are a hero!”
A CE Accreditation Song
August 8, 2011 by Simon · Leave a Comment
I just did a search on my computer for documents that related to CE Credits and I ran across this A CE Accreditation Song blog that I never published that I wrote in frustration about the CE Accreditation process that I was literally bogged down in for a significant part of 2010.
This enormous amount of time invested in last year’s CE Credits also came to mind as I wrote this blog as a celebration about the great results that we are having this year as I was not bogged down trying to prove myself yet again – yes, I too continue to work on my unmet needs; Here’s Our List Of What We Have To Give Thanks For January – June 2011
CE Accreditation Song- is a complete rip off of Valdy’s hit Rock N Roll Song.
Hope Valdy is OK with this … perhaps I will seek amends from Valdy when we are over on Saltspring Island for a yoga retreat at the end of the month.
A CE Accreditation Song
I came into town as a financial advisor speaker of renown
A speaker of presentations about freedom and joy
A hall had been rented and I was presented
As the kind of a financial advisor speaker that all could enjoy
As I climbed up the stair to the stage that was there
It was obvious something was missing
I could tell by the vibe they wouldn’t be bribed
They weren’t in the mood to listen
They yelled out
Present a CE Accreditation presentation
Don’t present speaking about freedom and joy
Present a CE Accreditation presentation
Or don’t present me no speaking at all
Shelley Streit Of Guiding Light Financial Has Vision, Brand, Fee For Service & Is Making A Difference
July 20, 2011 by Simon · Leave a Comment
Here is a great example of an advisor that has created a vision, brand, charging a fee for service and who is making a difference at the same time.
From Advisor.ca Preserving your vision by Melissa Shin / March 01, 2011
Shelley Streit won’t deny who she is anymore.
The Stettler, Alberta advisor runs Guiding Light Financial, which started as a traditional investment practice in 2006 but then shifted its focus to debt and cash-flow management in late 2010.
Why the change? Early last year, Streit found herself deep in debt and disillusioned by the materialism of the financial services industry. “I was tired of playing pretend,” she says. “The Armani suits at meetings didn’t sit well with me.” Determined to change her ways, she looked for an advisor who could help her manage her cash flow, but never revealed her profession.
Streit says advisors weren’t interested in reducing her debt, and instead gave her trite advice: she needed to spend less than she made. “Oh really?” scoffs Streit. “People actually want to know how to fix their debt.”
Seeing the gap, she turned her practice’s focus to debt and cash-flow management last October, and took inspiration from personal finance maven Gail Vaz-Oxlade and fellow advisor Stephanie Holmes-Winton, who mentors her.
The outpouring of interest has been impressive: in a town of 5,000, 30 came to her debt- and cash-management seminar held at the local library in February.
“People are asking us for monthly [debt management] coaching, like a personal trainer,” says Streit.
She’s even seen the need for her services from her existing clients. Before the changeover, clients were investing but cashing out months later so they could spend.
“If those people choose to be my investment clients, I’m bulletproofing my practice because I’ve dealt with their behaviour.”
Her motivation? “Debt is a problem. It’s in our families, our neighbourhoods, and our backyards and it’s affecting everyone,” she says, citing the Vanier Institute of the Family’s finding that average family debt hit $100,000 in 2011. “If I can change the world one family at a time—that’s what I’m going to do.”
She’s not without critics. “Advisors say I’m doing charity work,” she says, even though Streit developed her own compensation model with permission from Manulife Securities. Others ask why she charges people with debt. “If I save you $70,000 and your family stays intact, is it worth it? My fee is less than a lawyer’s,” she jokes.
With her business’s quick expansion, Streit has to remind herself of her priorities.
“If I do everything, I’m not staying true to myself and my family.”
She’s learned to do the things she does well herself, and outsource the rest.
As for clients, Streit has an open-door policy, but is clear about the line they can’t cross.
“If you have another advisor and you want a debt management plan, we’ll take you. We sign a non-compete clause. I started this to help myself and other people,” she says. “But clients no longer get to work with me when they keep making excuses.”
Simon kept pushing me forward when at times it felt like the same old things, but I had things that I had to work through. When I hired Simon I thought that it would be all about business and I’m thankful to Simon that he didn’t run when it got personal. Some coaches would have run away and not held me accountable to what I needed to deal with to get me to the place to be the best that I can be. Simon didn’t offer me an agenda of who he wanted me to be and his coaching program provided me with the tools to clear my limiting beliefs which were rooted deep down in my unmet need of worthiness to become the unique financial advisor that I have evolved into being.
Shelley Streit
Financial Advisor
Guiding Light Financial
Stettler AB
http://www.guidinglightfinancial.ca/
Free One Page Business Plan Webinars September 9 & 28th – Register Now!
 |
Announcing Leading Advisor’s One Page Business Plan(TM) Free Webinars and the One Page Business Plan(TM) Webinars!“If you don’t get the words right, you might build the wrong business and may never get the numbers right.”
The dates for the One Page Business Plan(TM) Free Webinars are:
|
Who should attend?
- Do you have too many scattered ideas?
- Do you need to focus on a few?
- Do you need to jumpstart your business right now?
- Do you have no time or interest in writing a 50 page business plan?
- Do you need to determine if you’re focusing on the right things?
- Do you need an effective blueprint to keep yourself and team focused?
Then consider a fresh, simple approach to business planning that will enable you to focus on what is important…the One Page Business Plan(TM) – a powerful tool for building and managing a business. It’s short, it’s concise, and it delivers results quickly and effectively. There can be no question as to where your business is headed when it is in writing, especially when you have the key essentials about growing your business clearly specified on a single page.
Is this another ho-hum course on business planning like the ten others you have attended – no way! I know how to capture the essence of any business in just a few minutes using the innovative key word and short phrase techniques using the One Page Business Plan(TM).
To Register for the One Page Business Plan(TM) Free Webinars:
Call Laura at 250 248-6012 / 1 877 248-6012 or e-mail Laura at lreilly@leadingadvisor.com and you will receive your GoTo Meeting Webinar Link, Phone Number and Access Code.
- Friday, September 9th at 11:15am EDT
- Wednesday, September 28th at 12:30pm EDT
How Much Social Media Signal Am I Putting Out Versus Social Media Noise?
July 18, 2011 by Simon · 1 Comment
According to Wikipedia, Signal-to-noise ratio (often abbreviated SNR or S/N) is a measure used in science and engineering to quantify how much a signal has been corrupted by noise.
I started a Social Media Strategy & Management Webinar Program through Tina Forsyth & Lena West on June 21st and one of the topics was about making your Social Media about more signal than noise.
The reason that I took the program is there is so much Social Media noise out there with an expert under every rock that I had to get myself grounded to get rid of the noise.
I thought about how much signal ( content ) am I conveying versus how much ( filler ) noise am I putting out in my blog.
One June 24, 201, I went back 30 days and out of 27 blogs, I believe that 20 are signal and 7 are noise and out of the 7 that are noise, 4 are weekly Twitter mass updates, 2 are reposting speaking testimonials and 1 is a kind of a rant about the Vancouver Canucks.
Having said this, in my mind, 75% are signals.
Anyone care to comment on my hallucinations about my signal to noise ratio because I could be dead wrong … honestly not looking for recognition … I am operating in a vacuum and this is one of the reasons I am taking the program because I could be operating with a Social Media Hoover and I want to get a Social Media Dyson.
Signal Blogs Over The Past 30 Days
- Two Examples Of Job Descriptions For Financial Advisor Support Staff
- Neil Menzies Of Arbutus Financial Is Leading The Way With Technology
- How Do I Change My Client’s Perception That I Am Too Busy?
- Does Blogging Work To Increase Your Ranking On Google?
- Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us – “Flow Test”
- Plan • Practice • Profit – June 2011
- What Can You Learn From Sports Fans To Become A Fanatic About Your Business?
- Here Is A Unique Way To Spice Up Your LinkedIn Current Profile.
- 4 Tips To Manage Your Mind, Time, Client Boundaries and Travel
- Social Media Survey
- Tips To Speed Up Your Client Testimonial Process
- Are You Playing To Survive As A Financial Survivor Or To Thrive As A Financial Advisor?
- Rod Tyler Financial Advisor Coaching & One Page Business Plan Testimonial
- Thank You Laura Reilly
- Attend Fearless Referrals For Financial Advisers With Matt Anderson On BrightTALK
- How Do I Deal With A Lack Of Commitment From My Team Members?
- Is Your Elevator Speech Niche Specific?
- A Success Hiring Process Includes Eliminating Stepping Stones & Includes A List Of Things Done
- Visa Takes Small Business to New Heights
- Getting Couture In The Wilderness Using A Virtual Assistant
Noise Blogs Over The Past 30 Days
- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-06-19
- Clear Your Roadblocks Workshop Testimonials From Edward Jones, Vancouver Island Region Meeting, Victoria, BC – May 26, 2011
- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-06-12
- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-06-05
- Dear Vancouver Canucks
- Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-05-29
- IFB ( Independent Financial Brokers ) Sprint 2011 Toronto Summit Financial Advisor Speaking Testimonials
-
-
Dates for 2012 TBA - stay tuned!
-
Now Reading
Planned books:
- Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
- The Book Of Air And Shadows: A Novel by Michael Gruber
Current books:
-
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Recent books:
- The Brave: A Novel by Nicholas Evans
- The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
- The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
- Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Zafon
- The Outlander by Gil Adamson
