Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business. Do Life. Have Duncan MacPherson here with us today. Welcome to the show, Duncan.
Duncan MacPherson: Brad, thanks a lot. Hey, you’re doing a great job in the industry, stirring it up and providing great value. So, glad we’re here together.
Brad Johnson: I’m just trying to catch up to you, my man. You paved the way. So, here I am. As I was diving in doing some research on some of the books you put out for advisors out there, kind of the history behind Pareto Systems, which is your coaching company. Does it serve only the financial services industry, or do you serve any other verticals as well?
Duncan MacPherson: Primarily financial services. We have drifted into other fee-for-service spaces, legal, insurance, accounting, but candidly, my favorite is the financial advisor because now they’re the most entrepreneurial, and I just love the space.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. It’s interesting you say that because a lot of people are like, “The podcast, what’s it about? Do Business Do Life?” And I’m like, “Well, it’s really to serve independent financial advisors out there. But what I love about it is an independent financial advisor is just, they’re just an entrepreneur that happens to be a financial advisor.” So, what’s cool is the freedom and flexibility it allows for the bill. There are unlimited ways to do it. So many different ways to do it successfully, and it really gives a ton of agency to that entrepreneur to build it in a way that blesses their life. As we say around here, it doesn’t become their life. And I know a lot of your coaching aligns very much so with that philosophy.
So, as we dive in, I was looking through some of the concepts and philosophies you’ve written and coached on, but I love this one, and maybe we just unpack it a bit. You say attract, don’t chase. And philosophically easy to say, sometimes hard to do in our space. And I think especially with how most advisors get into the business, typically, they’re taught to chase, and they’re taught to kind of almost like sell this product the company tells you to sell. And then once they hit a certain level of success, and they want to build something bigger than just somebody else’s product, sometimes some of those old habits are hard to break. So, what are your thoughts around that concept? What advice would you give advisors out there if they’re struggling with that?
Duncan MacPherson: Well, first of all, and I’m glad you started there because this is one of the reasons why I love this space so much is because the moment the enlightened advisor shifted from transactional to directional planning advisory, it meant they had to stop pitching and start positioning. Okay? So, back in the day, when the fixation was products, pricing, and performance, advisors were asking a client to buy something. They were pitching. And I noticed that, again, the really enlightened advisor was positioning everything. They weren’t asking a client to buy something. They were asking them to buy into something. So, instead of products, pricing, and performance, it became a long-term directional relationship with our people, our practice, and our process.
So, our people, yes, have technical ability. We care, we’re good at what we do, but we also want to create a client experience that gives you a sense of belonging and consistency, and then a process, buying into a process. This is where, as a fee-for-service professional, somebody who thinks for a living, they’re taking the abstract, commoditized, transactional nature of their space and making it more conceptual and making it more proprietary. So, in other words, I’m not asking you to buy this product. I’m not a broker of the product. I’m asking you to buy into our proprietary process that’s fluid and dynamic, puts every piece of the puzzle together as your life unfolds.
Those advisors that went down that path that put so much distance between themselves and the pack, they’re more referable, they have total client engagement, and back to your brand, the business serves their life, not the other way around. So, seeing that manifest over the years has been incredibly gratifying. And at the end of the day, the enterprise value just goes through the roof. So, good on you. Great start. I love that.
Brad Johnson: When did you start coaching in financial services? How long ago, Duncan? What year?
Duncan MacPherson: I started actually ’94, but it was almost a sideline. Because I had a marketing company, I was doing some other things, and some of my clients in that business were financial advisors. And I realized this is a very fascinating space. And the people I was working with, high quality. You think of the law of environment, Brad, you’re a product of your environment. You’re around the right people. They bring something out in you. So, between ‘94 and probably ‘96, I was sort of one foot on the boat, one foot on the dock. But then it just got to the point where the phone started ringing. And then ‘97 I had a breakthrough in the US, and then just unfolded from there. So, it’s going on 30 years.
Brad Johnson: So, I ask that because I mean, I’ve seen a massive shift since I started in this industry in 2007. So, you were just about a decade in front of me. And I remember back, you know, I love how you kind of broke that down, the people, the practice, the process, and going from pitching, which was very much, I mean, it was very prevalent. I look at 2007, so almost 20 years ago now, my job was literally to train people how to pitch the product that our company was offering. We were wholesaling different types of annuities, life insurance, eventually, asset management. It all converged and came together.
But I remember just like this shift, and I can’t say exactly what year, but it was almost like a tidal wave that was slowly like hitting the shore and then the waves got bigger and bigger and bigger to where as I started to see the financial services practices that started to really grow and scale and outpace the competition or their peers, that was a very common theme. They were all positioning a process. They weren’t selling a product and saying, “Here, buy this. Everybody else is buying this.” And it created this open architecture of freedom. Like, if I just try to put myself in the prospect’s shoes, and if I walk onto a used car lot, nobody, I don’t know that I’ve ever talked to anybody that says, “Hey, I really feel like being sold today. Like, just going on the car lot. Hope they sell me something good.”
Instead, you walk on a car lot, and you’re like, “Hey, I’m trying to find this vehicle that checks these boxes.” Maybe it’s gas mileage, maybe you’ve got a family, how many people it’s going to fit. Maybe you live on a dirt road like I used to in Kansas, and it needs to be able to get down a muddy dirt road. And it’s like, “What fits these needs?” And then ideally, a salesperson is saying, “Hey, what about how do these options look?” and you’re selecting something. And I just saw that same framework play out in finance, where the very best advisors were building a plan that was kind of custom fit to the prospect to address their needs, their concerns, their wants in retirement.
But I don’t know, like I can’t nail exactly when that shifted. So, going back, you had a 10-year head start on me. Did you see that same thing playing out? Was it different in Canada than the US? I know you were working with advisors all over the place, but when did that shift really start to happen or speed up?
Duncan MacPherson: Excellent question, and I think it really was born out of the fact that I had this fascination with many of the immutable laws and principles that affect us all in business and in life. And they’re immutable. You have to respect them. They will serve you or hurt you if you do or don’t respect them. One of them, of course, was the law of attraction, which to some people sounds a little cosmic, but I break it down to even referrals. Like back in the day, I said to advisors, I said, “In a perfect world, you’re found. You don’t go out and find new clients. You are found because you’re being introduced. 100% of your new clients should be introduced to you.” That’s nirvana. That’s the perfect business, okay, for so many reasons.
So, then I took that with the law of attraction, and I just got to the point of advocacy, converting clients into advocates. Because advisors, Brad, they were coming to me saying, “How do I get more referrals?” And I would say to them, “Well, are you referable? Let’s start there. Are you referable?” Now, of course, everybody, what do you think they said every time I’d ask them, are you referable?
Brad Johnson: Oh, they’re, “Absolutely.”
Duncan MacPherson: I mean, some were offended I’d even ask them the question. I said, “Well, okay, if you are referable, then why don’t you get referrals?” Number one response, “Because I don’t ask for them.” And that’s in the era where a lot of these referral coaches were telling advisors, “You want more referrals? You got to ask for them.” And I’m like, “Okay. You can’t ask for referrals because it makes you look needy.” The marketplace is not moved by your need. It’s moved by your value. So, don’t ask for referrals. Don’t go there. Talk about the concept of an introduction but position it. Don’t pitch it as a favor you’re asking of the client. Position it as a service you’re providing for a client.
Because if you think about the alignment of interests, advocacy, if I’m your client, I’m not going to refer someone to you because I’m trying to help you grow your business. I need to be at a point where I literally feel I’m doing a friend a disservice if I don’t introduce them to you. Because it’s not just that I’m an advocate for you, I’m an advocate for the friend, and I know how introducing my friend to you will ultimately come back to reflect on me. So, that’s the framework and the philosophy. So, long story short, we would ask advisors, bring up the concept of an introduction, position it as a service you’re providing. Use social proof to drive it and fuel it. And be at peace with the outcomes. Detach yourself from an expectation. You’re not a hunter-gatherer. You don’t eat what you kill. Just cause and effect. Put it out there and let it get traction.
The best advisors, they don’t ask for referrals. They talk about it, but they position it properly. It sits well with the clients. They keep imprinting and reminding in trigger moments of recognition and awareness for the concept. This, of course, transcends into other influencers, strategic partners, accountants, attorneys, and other fee-for-service professionals that interact with high-value clients as well. So, again, I’m rambling, but that is the core to the law of attraction as it relates to introductions, positioning that as part of your process.
Brad Johnson: I want to simplify what I think I just heard, which is have a product that people want and find highly valuable, like back to the planning they do, and not some product you sling at them. I just look at how has this played out in my life. A lot of people have one of these days, iPhone. Well, how did that become a thing? Because the product was so good, it’s like I had a flip phone back in the day. You remember the Motorola Razrs? That just ended all of that because the product was so far ahead, the value that the product could provide was massively different than what was currently in the marketplace. And I look like, if I kind of deconstruct the lesson you just shared there, the advisors that are the most referable have a very dialed-in proprietary process that they don’t just put on their website and sell. They actually deliver on.
And when that client says, yes, it’s not the end of the process. It’s actually the beginning. And I think that’s where a lot of advisors mess it up. It’s like, “Oh, close the deal? Next.” Where the prospect is, “Our relationship just started.” Now, how does it go from here? And those that actually deliver have some sort of ongoing client experience. I look at it like, why do people join country clubs? Because they’re a fun place to be a part of. There’s value there for the golfers, the food that they can take their family, and the experience, and it feels like something special. It’s like, how do you create that in financial services? And I found the very best firms that scale the highest and have a high percentage of their revenue driven by referrals, they kind of almost create it like a country club a little bit.
Like, not everybody gets in, but the people that do, they love on, and they take care of. So, you’ve got a lot of stories. You’ve got a lot of different firms you’ve coached over the years. Do you have some examples of, like, here are some themes I’ve seen from some of our most referable clients in the past?
Duncan MacPherson: Okay. Well, you covered a lot of ground there. The country club analogy is excellent because ultimately, if you look at Maslow’s hierarchy of core human needs, right in the center is belonging. I belong to something. Financial advisor needs to create an environment of belonging where a client feels like they belong to something. It’s safe harbor. I’m liberated to live my life. I don’t have to micromanage or worry. It’s not promissory on performance. I just know as a client you’ve got this. I don’t worry about it. And this impacts how I articulate your value when you’re not even in the room when I’m talking to a friend about you. And I’m going to come to that in a second.
But I want to pounce on your iPhone analogy. Okay? So, if you think of the alignment of interest, there’s caveat emptor, caveat venditor. Buyer beware, vendor beware. Okay? Make sure it’s a good fit. This is not transactional. This is a long-term relationship, okay? Alignment of interest. If the premise is that your value’s bought, not sold, then you have to sort of reverse engineer. It’s interesting, a lot of advisors talk about what they do. No. You got to talk about what it does and how that aligns with what somebody wants and what they’re lacking, what their unmet needs are. So, what do I mean by that?
We come back to the iPhone. Actually, let’s go back even further. Let’s go back to the iPod. So, you get the Motorola Razr, then things started getting very fascinating in technology. Do you remember when Steve Jobs walked on the stage with the iPod? He eliminated all complexity because all he said was, “A thousand songs in your pocket.” He didn’t even talk about what it is. He talked about what it does, and instantly, I want that. I don’t even know what it is, but I want it. The really enlightened advisor removes all complexity. The client understands. They’ve internalized the value to the point where they can socialize it. And I’ll give you an example.
So, I know an advisor. He got a pretty substantial referral from a great client, and this is after a reframing exercise. So, the advisor had basically reintroduced himself to this client, because that client was substantial, but had never made referrals, never made introductions. Then he got an introduction. After he got the introduction, the advisor called up the advocate, right, the goose that laid a golden egg, and said, “Thank you,” and then asked him a question. “What did you say? How did you describe me?” The advisor was blown away because the client, the advocate, was granular. He described the episode with the friend, “Well, we had a barbecue, and my friend went off on a rant about his advisor, and I just said to him, I said, ‘Look, I’ve never felt better about the track I’m on.’”
And he just explained the people, the practice, and the process because of the reframing, the reintroduction, the rejuvenation of the appreciation. My point, Brad, is the advisor said to me, he goes, “If I would’ve asked him a year ago, how do you describe me, it would’ve been superlatives. ‘Ah, you’re a good guy. I trust you. You know what you’re doing. You’re smart,’ you know, platitudes and sort of the obvious.” When a client actually understands, when you’ve demystified, when you’ve removed the complexity to the point where they can actually get granular on what’s proprietary to you, what makes you referable, your persuasive impact goes through the roof because of the alignment of interest.
Brad Johnson: How important is it to name and trademark your planning process or that thing that you’re actually packaging for them to get them where they want to go in retirement or even the accumulation years, depending on your focus from a clientele standpoint? How important is that piece of it in that process of simplifying how they describe it?
Duncan MacPherson: I would say it’s very important, although we have many of our coaching clients that don’t do it, and they’re colossal for other reasons. So, it’s not sort of non-optional, but for the right team who caters to a specific addressable audience to create professional contrast and improve engagement and referability, it’s been profound. So, if you think about the progression, advisors start with knowledge as a knowledge-for-profit professional, right? They think for a living, then they go into expertise. They join the expertise economy because of the depth and breadth of solutions they provide. I want them to go all the way through the progression, all the way to intellectual property.
I want them to engineer an enterprise that is full of proprietary solutions that clients and strategic partners understand. So, to your point, branding the process. Every advisor we coach, they’ve already branded their people. The clients know the people. They branded the practice. They give them the practice, a name, an identity, and I say, “Okay, keep going. Give it a brand within that brand. Brand the process.” It’s like the Intel Inside sticker on a computer. Okay? So, if you want a client to buy into something, what are they buying into? They’re buying into this fluid and dynamic proprietary process that puts every piece of the financial puzzle together for the client as their life unfolds and their needs evolve.
The client doesn’t need to know all of the 85 different things you could do for them. They just need to know one thing. These are the puzzle pieces. This is the process. I’ll give you an analogy. The advisors who have done this properly, they never have a client who calls up and says, “Hey, I just bought long-term care from somebody else because I didn’t know you did that.” Those clients, the enlightened client calls up the advisors and says, “Hey, long-term care, is that part of the process?” Because with the process, you can future pace directionally where the relationship’s going.
It’s where the advisor can say, “Look, there are parts of our process that aren’t relevant to you yet, but as your life unfolds and your needs evolve and become more complex, we’ll get so far out in front of that. Predictably, we’ll make sure that as your life progresses, you’ll always have the complete picture. We’ll put the pieces of the puzzle together. Nothing falls through the cracks.” It’s no longer promissory on a performance of a product. It’s this is what it means to be our client.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. I think we could spend the whole rest of this conversation on this if we wanted to, because a financial plan is very complicated. That’s part of what makes this hard to do as an advisor is how do you simplify something that includes income planning, investments, tax planning, healthcare, legacy, estate, all of that, and quite honestly, done right, it’s probably at least a 12-month process to kind of check all of those boxes. So, you mentioned something, you said branding the people, branding the practice, branding the process. Before we get to process, is there a certain way you think about branding the people? Or is that just, “Here’s the firm, here’s the name over the door, and here’s the amazing team I have that supports the mission we’re on”? Like, how do you start to think about branding the people or the practice before you even get to the process?
Duncan MacPherson: Well, if you look at that, you zoom out further, and you look at the entire thing panoramically. The whole premise is to de-commoditize your value so the clients focus on what you’re worth, not what you cost. Because the compression of cost with now AI, of course, and everything else, it’s going to become so intense. But that can, again, serve you or hurt you. If the premise is to de-commoditize the value with the people, the key is to not focus solely on technical ability. Focus on qualities and skills and intentions, yes, but bedside manner, sense of purpose, what makes the people interesting? The fact that they love what they do, “I don’t have to do this. I get to do this,” like there’s a passion. That’s all engineered through branding, the people.
Branding the practice is, “Hey. Yeah, we’re needs-based professionals. When you have a need, we’ll respond to the need,” but we also bookend that with being goals-based and having a client experience that’s predictive into the future. So, it’s not like we’re not just good people who try hard. We’ve got this thing, we’ve got this client experience that we built out, and it’s completely transparent and client-facing. It’s like you’re a new client. This is what you can expect from us in the next 12 months, even if it’s a basic 12-4-2. Here are the 12 things, the 12 touches throughout the year. These are your days where we will call you, meet with you. And of course, that supplements all the reactive stuff based on critical life events that occur, as your life progresses. So, all of these can be branded, have an identity, a personality, and clients just feel better about it. Like, you’ve got this.
Brad Johnson: If you had to guess, Duncan, how many different financial services firms have you coached over the years? Just throw a random number out if you were to guess.
Duncan MacPherson: Well…
Brad Johnson: You or your business, I should say.
Duncan MacPherson: Yeah. I should know this, but I don’t, frankly. I mean, I know right now we have 210 engagements currently with teams going through our progression of growing, teaming, scaling, or exiting, like that’s the progression. So, some of our clients like it’s a retainer. We have clients that stay with us for years because they’re working right through this. So, again, Brad, currently north of 200 teams currently engaged. We have enterprise relationships too, but over the years, I mean, it’s thousands.
Brad Johnson: So, you’ve seen thousands of these, for lack of a better term, stories play out, different financial services practices. What are the common themes? I mean, let’s just stick on referrals for a while because we’ve kind of danced all around the topic, like have your people, your practice, your process messaged and branded in a way that it’s simple to communicate just in everyday language at the barbecue or wherever your clients might run into their friends. So, let’s say they’ve done that work and now, are there other frameworks once that work has done to start to amplify, such as, “Hey, consistently getting my clients together, client appreciation events, referral events?” Obviously, we don’t call them referral events because we don’t want it to seem desperate.
But, what sort of things and frameworks, if you’re an advisor out there, listening, or watching in right now, would you say, “Hey, once you’ve kind of at least done the work to where here is what they do and why they’re different and why I work with them,” that now can create more of those conversations organically?
Duncan MacPherson: Okay. So, first of all, backing up on the word desperate, like I know what you mean there. I’m like a broken record with advisors. I say, “Don’t look needy. Don’t bring your needs to your clients. It’s just not attractive.” And again, it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear. When an advisor’s meeting with a client and they say things like, I’m trying to grow my business. I get paid in three ways, and who else do you know? And all that other stuff. A client will be very polite when they’re in front of you. But then I’m thinking, “Okay, what are they thinking as they walk out the door, and now they’re in their car driving home? How did that hit them? How did that resonate with them?”
I think it hurts you more than it helps you. That’s what I say to advisors. So, don’t look needy, don’t bring your needs to your clients, bring your value, and drive it with professional scarcity. Like, I don’t need a referral. I love what I do. We only accept new clients that are introduced to us. Position it properly based on purpose. Get the client more fixated on the why, and the how will pretty much take care of itself. Okay. So, that’s my premise there. But back to your question about, and what I think I heard there is like what separates the best from the rest, and how do people create professional contrast and differentiate. The best advisors in our space, Brad, and you know this, we don’t want it more than they do. They are so self-motivated. The clay is soft.
They understand I’ve got to work on my business. I can’t be complacent. Plateau avoidance is engineered. It doesn’t just happen. And there’s a great book. I know you’ve heard of it. It’s called The Founder’s Mentality. And it’s all around as you grow as an entrepreneur, minimizing, eliminating, mitigating complexity. And as you grow, there are two addressable audiences. There’s the team. Like, don’t leave your team to their own devices. Don’t just throw bodies at the org chart like clarity, roles, responsibilities, who does what and when. Complete transparency, complete clarity. Rule of three. Everything’s documented. Everything’s intellectual property. Nothing just sits in our heads. If it’s in our heads, it’s a skill. If it’s documented now, it’s an IP. It’s a proprietary process.
And then for clients, just keep removing complexity, especially as the clients grow and as the business grows, just tamp down complexity. So, I’m not even sure if I answered your question, but that’s what separates the best from the rest.
Brad Johnson: I think all of that is great advice. Let’s say they’ve gotten to that point, and now let’s say, “Hey, my business, I feel like I’ve developed the iPhone of planning processes. I feel like it’s named, trademarked, simplified as much as possible, or clients seem to enjoy the process. Now, what are the frameworks that might organically create more opportunity for referrals? I mean, the common ones I’ve heard are just, okay, hey, we do some sort of a quarterly client event that we also open up where their friends can come in with them, and it’s not a sales pitch or a seminar. It’s literally fun. So, people want to show up. We’re celebrating, we’re helping them get the most out of their retirement.
And so, it’s like a fun party we put on. And oftentimes, where I hear the disconnect is now, how do we transition to get them into the office, right? So, where does that step take place so I’m not just hosting a bunch of expensive parties for my clients and their friends? So, I’m just curious. Maybe you’ve seen some that work. Maybe you haven’t, but I know that’s a common theme I hear a lot out there.
Duncan MacPherson: Well, first of all, and client events are a perfect example of just really understanding cause and effect, activity that creates productivity. But detaching from expectations like immersing yourself in the pureness of the activity. Client events are powerful just for countering the law of familiarity. Relationships drift. The law of familiarity says, “As a relationship matures, the drift occurs where people start to take things for granted, value gets a little bit trivialized.” Now, the relationship’s at risk. The client event’s a midcourse correction to counter loyalty fatigue and rejuvenate, “Oh yeah, like my appreciation for your value.”
So, I’m telling our clients all the time, don’t think about events opportunistically like in and of themselves to competitor-proof relationships and get out in front of evolving needs. They are sound. Now, how do you convert that? I mean, that’s messaging, that’s positioning. Ultimately, we want to make sure that the client experience around strategy and tactical meetings, they’re already scheduled. It’s no different than a dentist. Like they’ll schedule your meetings. They don’t wait for you to schedule your cleaning. They schedule it for you. Advisors doing that now, too. And there’s a sort of a bridge, like this is the event, and we can get into this in more detail at our next meeting.
If you want to discuss it sooner… We can definitely have a conversation on the phone, a Zoom meeting, or we can supplement the process with an additional meeting. So, it’s never perceived as something opportunistic. It’s all part of the process. Everything’s part of the process. I want advisors to be like a broken record. Just don’t go more than three minutes in a conversation with anybody without referring to the thing. Okay? The process.
Now, of course, regarding advocacy and introductions, I also want advisors to keep triggering moments of recognition for the concept of introductions. In a client meeting, in a strategy and tactical meeting, in virtually every form of communication you have with a client, especially one that you’re trying to replicate, just bring it up. Just bring up the fact that, hey, with everything that’s going on in the world right now, I know it’s a little bit confusing and noisy, I just want to remind you that a value-added service we have that a lot of our clients find to be of value, especially now, is that I make myself available to be a sounding board for friends and family members and my clients. And they don’t need to become a client to take advantage of this service.
If they’re important to you, they’re important to us. If they want to become a client, that’s a separate conversation. We can follow their lead, but I just want to remind you that this is something we do because we love what we do and we want to bring value to our clients and the people they care about. That’s positioning. So, I’m triggering a moment of recognition for the concept of an introduction without coming off as being needy.
Brad Johnson: I love the verbiage there. So, the positioning is almost a value add to the client of, hey, there’s people that you care about in your life. Just so you know as a client here, not only are we here to serve you, obviously, help you navigate your path with this proprietary process, fill in blank, fill in name, but also one of the other things I want to remind you is we’re a sounding board for others in your circle that might need help there navigating all the craziness of the world and all of the mixed messages, so just know that’s there if you ever need it or if they ever need it. So, it’s almost like an extension of the service to them also expands to their inner circle.
Duncan MacPherson: Absolutely. And it just reminds everybody about the power of incrementalism, the imprinting. Like, there’s an old philosophy. It says water dripping on a stone will eventually leave a mark, but it takes time. If you keep bringing up the concept subtly, professionally, without an expectation of an outcome, just a reminder, there’s a natural stage of readiness. I mean, Brad, if I’m your client, you’re my advisor, you don’t know when I’m going to have a conversation with a good friend. It’s inevitable I will. The likelihood that we’re going to talk about money, at some point, I might not talk about how much money I have or how much money he or she has.
But if a friend asks me about alternative investments or precious metals or crypto or the markets or risk management, you want it to be a knee-jerk reaction. The moment my friend gives me permission to go there because they say, hey, are you doing anything with precious metals? Or if a friend comes to me and says, my buddy brought me this alternative investment to buy into this retirement, lifestyle, living opportunity, like, what do you think? You want me to say, I’ll tell you something, people come to me with ideas all the time. The first thing I do is I talk to my advisor.
And if you want, if you haven’t talked to your advisor, if you’re not happy with your advisor, I can make an introduction because as a value-added service, he’ll make himself available and you don’t need to become a client. See, that is so persuasive professional scarcity. When you, as an advisor, tell me that if I introduce someone to you, they don’t need to become a client, that resonates with me in a specific way because I know there’s some authenticity to the positioning. When I tell a friend, hey, you can talk to my advisor and you don’t need to become a client to talk to him, I have removed friction. I have amplified predisposition. The likelihood that you’re going to want to meet my advisor has just gone up dramatically.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. One of the things, like just sales training 101, which I think sometimes sales gets vilified, the way we look at sales, it’s a transfer of belief. So, if I believe my product can serve you, it’s actually on me that if I don’t communicate that, it’s like, you better believe in the product you sell, or why are you in business in the first place, right? So, we look at that as a transfer of belief, but basically, what you’re talking about there is dropping the guard or removing the hurdles that are in the way that start that conversation.
And I’ve seen a lot of advisors over the years accidentally create friction there where it’s like, hey, invite them to a seminar. Well, maybe, but I think the human psychology of a seminar is this is a sales presentation, right? So, unless they’re ready because they’re getting ready to retire in two weeks, there’s probably some resistance to that, where if it is, hey, my advisor, it’s the holidays, they do a pie giveaway or a holiday party or a wine tasting in your neck of the woods because you’ve got, as you described, Lake Tahoe and Napa combined. Not jealous at all on this side.
But it’s like, what are those friction points that just a normal human would resist, remove them and then message them in a way where, hey, here to serve you. Here to serve your inner circle. If they ever need that, here’s all you need to do, right? When you really simplify it, it’s not that complicated. But I think oftentimes, advisors kind of get in their own way a little bit accidentally there because they’re trying to drive the ROI-producing activities. They’re looking at it through a different lens.
Duncan MacPherson: Well, and that’s the actual premise is the lens. I mean, so many advisors work so hard on their perception, how they’re perceived. I want them to actually focus as much on perspective. Look at your value through the client’s lens. First of all, a sophisticated client can see through tactics, client events, bring a friend, all that. They’re pretty sharp.
Brad Johnson: I mean, a lot of them, probably your higher net worth clients are probably business owners themselves. So, therefore, they’ve probably done some things like that in their own business, like, oh, I’ve seen this one before, if you just really break it down.
Duncan MacPherson: Yeah. It is so much more powerful. Like my favorite restaurants, Brad, are an open kitchen. They’re so proud of what they do. This is us. Everything’s out in the open. The best advisors, the most attractive advisors are so transparent. And again, cause and effect, they’re at peace with the productivity that comes from activity. And they don’t press. They don’t lean. They lean with respect. Like, they’re, yes, okay, this is an event to strengthen relationships, to deepen engagement, convert clients to advocates. Yes, it is. But there’s no expectation that needs to happen for us to feel that this was a success. The Japanese have a word, a premise that’s called omotenashi. Omotenashi is bringing value without any expectation of recognition, of reciprocity or reward. It’s just the right thing to do.
Brad Johnson: Let’s dive in there. So, before we hit record, we talked a lot. We’re like, hey, it all starts up your mindset. And where I’ve seen, I mean, most advisors, I remember when I was younger and I heard like, oh, here’s a mindset thing you need to work on. And it sounds a little like the universe speaking to you, like woo-woo, for lack of a better term. But the older I’ve gotten, the more I realize mindset is everything because a great idea can immediately be turned into, oh, that’s not an option. I’ve already tried that with a negative mindset, right? And I promise I’ve seen that in the years of coaching where you’re like, that’s weird. This works in every market I’ve ever coached, but for some reason, it doesn’t work in your market, sir. That’s weird.
So, if we think about mindset, one of the things I see is these aspirations, I love your framework of growth, teaming, scaling, exiting. I’m assuming that’s progressive, right? So, let’s say they’re in the solo player game, which is where most advisors start, and then they hit a level of complexity where they need help or they only have so many hours in the day, and now the rules change a bit when you get into, depending on others, the team and starting to scale past that. What are the common mindset things that get in the way where they almost, I see this a lot when things get tough, unfortunately, as people revert back to the old habits that got them there, but they’re not going to get them where they want to go? What sort of things would you be sharing with advisors if they kind of hit these little sticking points along the way and try to go back to what worked before, but that’s not getting them to the vision of where they want to go?
Duncan MacPherson: Yeah, great question. First of all, coming back to the progression of growing team, scaling, exiting, we say to advisors, I mean, it’s one of the fundamental habits, right, of begin with the end in mind. Every business is built to be sold. Every investment of effort you make working on your business is this phenomenal form of for savings. You’re slamming money in the proverbial bank in terms of enterprise value. So, true north, where’s this going? Your exit strategy is 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. Just know through incrementalism, it’s compounding for savings. You’re plowing it into your enterprise value. So, that’s a mindset.
Another aspect of the mindset is the difference between working in the business and on the business. When you’re growing, you’re often transacting, you’re trading time for money, okay? You’re trying to pump this up. You have to get to a point where you make this shift from, okay, it’s no longer a book of business, it’s an actual business. Now, you got to work on the business. This is where advisors, Brad, start to realize that, man, like practice management and relationship management are just as important as asset management.
Asset management’s becoming more and more commoditized. Now, you throw– remember when we’re ‘07, we’re talking ’08 and on, we’re talking, we’re starting to think about robo and some of these automated elements. AI, it’s a whole new conversation on commoditization and fee compression. So, the advisors that go from $500 million in AUM to a billion, nowhere in that transition did they get better at their technical ability. They were always good here. They got better at practice management, bandwidth, capacity, consistency, all of that. And they got better at relationship management.
The high tech never came at the expense of the high touch. That was also sacred. Okay? Relationship management. So, the whole premise is, the mindset is, okay, I am not going to achieve professional contrast solely on technical ability. I’m going to do it on things I can control, things that are mine as a fee-for-service professional. I’m going to build this out. And as I scale, the moment an advisor says, okay, my organic business is a proof of concept, I can now go B2C to B2B. That IP, that playbook, I can put it in somebody else’s hands. Having a mindset that says that’s an asset, which means I can go buy a business, I can buy a partial business, I can go attract an advisor to adopt and draft in behind my process, now you have predictable scale. Without it, without dilution, becomes powerful.
And you look at the multiples, the valuations on fee-for-service businesses today, the value of the business is not impacted on technical ability. It’s valued on IP and other KPIs, sticking this to clients, patterns of referability, depth of relationships, and all of these documented procedures. So, I think this next five years, Brad, and I’m sure you’re there too, is it’s going to be the most exciting time to be a financial advisor. Probably the most exciting time to be alive. But they need the mindset.
This is our bull market right now. Okay? Right now. And law of attraction, manifestation, you know that old saying, right? You’ll see it when you believe it. If you believe it, if you believe you’re worthy, if you believe the opportunity’s there, you focus on that and you build it out, you put in the work, working on the business, so many good things are going to come out of that.
Brad Johnson: What was the phrase you said where it was, take the information out of your brain and put it down on a piece of paper? You had a nice little phrase there.
Duncan MacPherson: Vapor to paper.
Brad Johnson: What was it?
Duncan MacPherson: Well, what I say in our coaching, in our books is go from vapor to paper. If what you know about your business is in your head, it’s a skill. It’s not an intellectual property.
Brad Johnson: Yes.
Duncan MacPherson: It’s not transferable. With the same level of scale and consistency, it will dilute. So, the moment they take it from a skill to an intellectual property by documenting, standardizing it, organizing it, professionalizing it. Now it’s an IP. Now it’s intellectual property you can put in somebody else’s hands. And again, for the advisors who work with complex business owners who are either approaching or just experienced a liquidity event, their appreciation for process is sky high. So, when a client realizes, man, you’re not just an advisor, you actually run a business like a business, you’ve adopted best practices, I can relay that to people like me with persuasive impact as a business owner because I’ve been through that myself.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. The analogy that comes to mind for me, with everything you just shared there is, think less like you’re running a hamburger stand, think more like you’re running a franchise, because I mean, we’ve been to, I don’t know, up in your neck of the woods. Maybe it’s poutine stands, I don’t know. But hamburger stands there. There’s one on every street corner in America, and most of them just kind of blend into the next, it’s the same ingredients, a lot like financial services, but those that have truly scaled have been a franchise model where everything is documented. It is their IP. There is a distinct brand, a Big Mac versus a hamburger.
And what’s really cool is those same lessons that you were just sharing, they apply to not just financial services, they apply to every business, done well. And that has created scale and has built a business bigger than just the original founder. Do you have any other thoughts just on maybe some similarities there between like a franchise model and a financial services firm that’s built to scale?
Duncan MacPherson: Well, first of all, I mean, if you’re going to bring up poutine…
Brad Johnson: Sorry. Hey, I’m talking to a Canadian. I got to make the crossover there.
Duncan MacPherson: I remember exactly where I was the first time I had poutine, and this is like 35 years ago. It was just on the border between Ontario and Quebec, a little food truck. And I pulled up and I said to myself, this is proof that God loves us right here.
Brad Johnson: Cheese, gravy, and fries, I mean, how can you screw that up?
Duncan MacPherson: I mean, and that’s back in the day when it was, I think it was cooked and the fries were in maybe beef tallow or peanut oil or something because it was just magic. Okay? So, anyway, so I’ll park that.
Brad Johnson: So, for you young advisors that don’t know what we’re talking about, next trip to Canada, you’ve got one thing you need to order. And take it from Duncan and I, you will appreciate it.
Duncan MacPherson: It’s magic. Okay, so I remember also, I was in Vancouver Island. This is back in the early 90s and I was on business in Vancouver Island, buzzing around in a rental car, and I had a book on tape, and the book on tape, like a cassette, was the E-Myth by Michael Gerber. Essential reading. So simple, but he used the analogy of the difference between a baker and somebody running a successful bakery. One had technical ability transacting. They walk in, they punch the clock, they expend effort, they walk out, they leave. Next day, they’re starting over. Fair enough. Trading time for money is like pumping up a leaky tire, right? Like putting sand in a shopping cart, it still creates an income, but it’s limiting.
Bakery, now, okay, it’s beyond technical ability. I need to know how to make the croissant or whatever, but I got to run a business. And if I get that really built out, somebody might come along and say, I don’t want to reinvent your wheel. Can I have your way? Yeah, here’s my way, here’s our playbook, here’s our procedure, man. Just add water. Just do this. This is how you run the business. This is how you hire. This is how you market your business. I’m franchise ready now.
Now, of course, there are perils to centralization and franchising of course because it can lose part of the soul. Dilution, now it becomes more commoditized and there’s all kinds of elements there. But I like it when a financial advisor can become franchise ready because now, they’re moving up to the C-suite. Now they’re the CEO. Now they can oversee others, adopting and deploying their intellectual property. And of course, the monetization opportunities are incredible and the accretive build-out of enterprise value.
The multiples on an organic business versus a B2B scalable business where the process has been stress tested as a proof of concept, those multiples go through the roof. It’s work. There’s hassle factor, of course, but you do it not just for what it gets you, you do it for what it makes of you in your pursuit of self-actualization and that best version of yourself, just taking this thing as far as you can without it having collateral, unintended consequences to your personal life, right? That’s, again, nirvana.
Brad Johnson: What is the hardest part you’ve seen? Like, if you said, hey, here’s the themes that I’ve seen over the last 30-ish years that get in the way of a great financial advisor, a great baker in your analogy, as opposed to a great CEO and someone that’s running the bakery? Like, what things get in the way of those that, hey, they figured it out, so cool, they were able to make that jump? Oh, they didn’t figure it out. They were kind of stuck in trading time for money their entire career.
Duncan MacPherson: Again, another great question, and I don’t oversimplify it, but deep personalizing, like it’s not the Brad show. Like making yourself obsolete, getting to a point where your business can run like a Swiss watch without you being there and without it depending on you and being at peace that you know, this isn’t a monument I’m building to myself, like depersonalize it. And it is funny, like I’ve said to, I don’t know how many advisors over the years, I say, want you to take a six months sabbatical in 18 months. I want you to be able to go to the south of France and learn how to speak or whatever they’ve told me is important to them that they’ve been putting off. I want you to be able to go and do something for six months, be in touch but out of reach, and just prove to yourself that your business does not require your presence to be productive. That is one of the most powerful KPIs.
And a lot of people, it’s a limiting belief, like they can’t even get their head around that concept. But those who have done it, the liberation and order and the balance that they achieve in their life, and it’s like again, you have the sand in the shopping cart or the sand in the hourglass, like just life goes by so fast. You just get to slow it down a little bit and savor your winds. It’s pretty powerful and it’s engineered.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, so let’s play that out. I couldn’t agree more. Most entrepreneurs, I mean, the origin story of their business was to do it on their terms, to build a business that created that freedom. But oftentimes, they look back and it’s actually a prison around themselves they built accidentally. And so, if we look at kind of that jump from one-man/one-woman show to team, business owner, CEO, if you were to say there’s a sliding scale, like a teeter-totter, right, and let’s say on one side, there’s just the straight up, getting the systems out of the brain onto a piece of paper so it’s true IP, which I’ve found like with the right teammate next to you, that’s not that hard. Like just find some high attention to detail. Even with AI, a lot of it can be spoken into frameworks these days. So, that’s on one side.
On the other side is exactly what you just said, which is it’s always been the Brad show. It’s always been about me. I’ve been required. So, ego, maybe we just simplified that, my own personal ego and it has to have my name, my stamp on it, whatever, versus the lack of systems. What’s the balancing act? Which one of those two you typically see get in the way more?
Duncan MacPherson: Well, first of all, so I will never trivialize success breakthroughs, build-outs, all of that. It’s meaningful, but I’ve seen firsthand, I’ve been around long enough that there’s a certain element of anticlimax. I know advisors who have died at their desk, and there’s so many things that they never got to. Hindsight is powerful. So, I’m not downplaying what it means to self-actualize professionally, but balance, that’s number one. That’s number one.
Number two is just the team. There’s a learned helplessness that develops. If everything has to go through you and you need to be there, you’re unintentionally suppressing self-actualization of the team. And then you have clients, if their dependency is on you and you get a little further down the track and maybe they’re starting to notice that you’re slowing down, and in their inside voice, they’re imagining, okay, so what does it look like for us if you’re not here? I’m not going to refer a friend to you if I’m having that inside conversation, that inner dialogue with myself.
The more an advisor can get the client to focus on the other people and the practice and the process, not just me as the primary person, now it’s generational. Now, there’s a long tail of the viability. There’s so much that comes out of that. But again, I get it because many advisors, like it’s alchemy, they built it out of nothing. They overcame adversity, so many speed bumps, and they delayed gratification. So, I get it. There’s almost like an addiction to I– my identity’s tied to the success of this. I think it’s freeing. I think it’s liberating when somebody can depersonalize the business and just look at this more panoramically.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, it’s for founders. I’ve seen that same thing. It’s this identity of they are the business, which in reality, they are not. They’re a human that created a business, but that’s really hard. It’s like giving your child up for adoption. It’s the best analogy. I think a lot of founders feel where, wait, this isn’t just my baby anymore. It’s like our baby, right? It’s like the teams. But the cool thing is, to your point, if every referral to Triad was Brad personally coaching every single one, at some point you only have so many hours, and then it’s like, wait, if I refer somebody, that person actually cut into my hour of coaching or my annual review or my ability to get a return email and phone call from that individual.
But if it’s based on team, now you can actually elevate the service and it’s better service because it’s a team-based approach, which just makes sense, but it is interesting, the psychology that plays into all of the build, if you are actually building it where you want to go. Start with the end in mind, I love that. Covey’s 7 Habits, that one holds true.
Duncan MacPherson: Well, I’ll tell you, Brad, when we do strategic planning with leadership of a substantial team and we start to do some scenario planning around what it means to be the ambassador of the business, yeah, face of the business, but you get sort of out of the technical and more into the strategic, the shaping of the business, work on yourself personally and professionally, like all these other things. Advisors, some of them, they just need to give themselves permission and come to terms with the fact that you’ve earned the right, you’re worthy.
And the other side of it is, it’s limiting if you don’t do this because you are on a collision course of the plateau. To your point, you’re just going to max out. There’s 24 hours in the day. So, if you’re content with just this, then keep doing what you’re doing. If you’ve got aspirations for something more significant, what are the blind spots? What are the unmet needs? What are the untapped opportunities? What are the overlooked vulnerabilities? Let’s strategically drill down into that, and then just imagine what your life looks like in 18 months when you’re the ambassador. You’re still involved, but it’s not dependent on you. That’s a powerful place to get to.
Brad Johnson: Well said. Well, that’s a perfect tee up to my final question here, Duncan, and I’ve really, really enjoyed this. I see a lot of common themes and your belief system when it comes to coaching. Definitely Triad’s very aligned with Do Business. Do Life. So, as you know, this is the Do Business. Do Life show, and we really talk about the integration of those two versus the tug of war that unfortunately happens to every entrepreneur at certain seasons. And so, I’m just curious as to your definition, Duncan, what does Do Business. Do Life mean to you, or how would you describe that?
Duncan MacPherson: I think it is hand and glove. Purpose and process. Purpose is why. Why do you do this? Why are you a financial advisor? Business is process. Okay? Like, how? How do you do this? I was taught a long time ago, Brad, that when the why is clear, the how becomes a completely different conversation. It’s got more longevity, more meaning, more scale. It’s clearly not one or the other. It’s this harmonic hand and glove dynamic.
And I wish I had a buck for every time I’ve said this. The business is supposed to serve your life, not the other way around. The best way to take impeccable care of your business, your team, and your clients is to take impeccable care of yourself. I know you’re a big fan of Strategic Coach, and Dan would talk about blocking out time to work on yourself, work out, meditate, travel, just detach. She’d come back fresh and energetic. I mean, the synchronicity there is powerful. So, I love your identity. I love the brand. I think it’s a perfect beacon. It’s true north.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, it’s one of the reasons Triad exists was we were seeing a lot of what you were talking about out in the financial services space where there was a lot of big bank accounts at the sacrifice of a lot of other things that money could not buy back. And so, we just thought that that was pretty lousy deal, that a lot of advisors were cutting themselves when they zoom out and they had regret from missing the stuff that mattered. So, we’re on a mission to change that. And I know a lot of the work you do is on a mission to change that as well.
So, Duncan, it’s been awesome to have this conversation. Have heard of your name and of your coaching platform. Nice to finally get a chance to connect over a conversation, so I really appreciate it.
Duncan MacPherson: Likewise, Brad. You’ve got a great reputation. People speak so highly of you, and I can see firsthand now that your philosophy is solid, but you also understand the importance of consistency and process. So, keep going.
Brad Johnson: All right. Till we get to do this in person. I vote in your backyard, not mine because you have wine, mountains, and lakes, and we’ve got like cattle and pastures here in Kansas. So, we’ll go with your spot next time we meet up.
Duncan MacPherson: I’m all for it.
Brad Johnson: All right, my man. Till next time.
