Daniel Crosby: Alright. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Standard Deviations Podcast, live from Future Proof. We are here for the second year in a row, but this year I’m joined by my good friend, Brad Johnson. Brad, good to be with you, man.
Brad Johnson: Excited to be here.
Daniel Crosby: Yes, sir. Absolutely. So, we are going to talk today about the psychology of the highest growth financial advisors, and I want to talk about the genesis of this conversation. Brad’s firm, Triad, is a client of ours at Orion, and I’ve had the good fortune of going to a number of their experiences this year. And while there, I had a great chance to talk to many of their advisors, and I heard very organically from many of them that they were 2Xing, 3Xing, and 4Xing their business in a relatively short amount of time. I was amazed by this, and so I wanted to dig into it a little bit. What I found that was so cool, though, was it wasn’t just a bag of tricks. It wasn’t all just tips and tactics. It seemed to me as a shrink that you were changing the person, that you were changing hearts and minds, and that was the thing that really interested me the most.
So, today we’re going to talk to Brad about that very thing. How do you change those hearts and minds and bring people around in a way that can transform both their life and their business? You ready?
Brad Johnson: Let’s do it.
Daniel Crosby: Okay. So, the first question for you, Brad, it all starts with mindset, right? Typical of a psychologist to say, but I do believe it all starts with mindset. What mindset differences do you notice between advisors who are barely getting by and the ones who are 2Xing to 4Xing their business?
Brad Johnson: We’re good to keep it real here, right?
Daniel Crosby: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: Okay.
Daniel Crosby: We can keep it real.
Brad Johnson: All right. So, real talk. I think when I look at our industry, and I’ve had the fortune in the last 20 years to have hundreds and hundreds of conversations with independent advisors all over the country, and I think our industry is the only one that, as a business, gives ourselves the excuse to not grow. We’ve all heard it, “I’m a lifestyle practice,” and I quite honestly feel like you’re just telling yourself a bit of a lie there. Because at what point would Apple say, “We’re good on iPhones this year. We’re going to go ahead and shut it down.” Maybe Tesla but, yeah, no more Model Ss. It just doesn’t happen. And so, I think part of it starts up here, and business is hard, being an entrepreneur is hard, and growing is hard. But if you don’t start with that mindset, you’re never going to get there.
And I remember, this was probably a decade ago. I was at an AngelList event out in Silicon Valley, and there was a startup founder. He was probably 24, 25 years old. He had scaled a business from nothing to $100 million in a handful of years, and he said, “The biggest thing that I’ve found is people want to be part of something that’s inspirational. They want to be part of a high-growth business.” And think about that. Who’s raising their hand to say, “Uh, sign me up for that lifestyle practice where my founder, my advisor, shows up a couple of days a week, golfs quite a bit. And that sounds good. That sounds like a good career track for me.” So, I think that’s where it starts kind of flipping that mindset to, “We’re here to grow. That’s what we’re about.”
And then some of the highest growth founders that I’ve ever met, they’ve really changed the mindset to, “We are always in the talent acquisition game.” You’ve got a Falcons hat on.
Daniel Crosby: I do.
Brad Johnson: I’m assuming the Falcons probably don’t show up one season, say, “Ah, we’re good on talent this year.”
Daniel Crosby: I don’t think we want to talk about the Falcons’ talent decision-making right now, but I get your point.
Brad Johnson: But, I mean, I think you have to look at this as more like a sports team. Great sports teams have to function on great talent acquisition, and you can only acquire great talent if you have an inspiring growth story to sell. That’s my take.
Daniel Crosby: I think that’s a great point. We’re very lucky to work in an industry where we get to do a lot of good. I mean, that’s kind of my whole message. We’re very, very blessed to work in an industry where our work does real good in real people’s lives, and that’s half of it. But people, especially young people, the next generation of advisors, they want to be part of a high-growth story, and maybe your lifestyle practice is very nice for you. But I hear a lot of people been moaning the lack of talent, hard to find a replacement, hard to find that next generation, and I think that may be an unintended consequence of it being so easy to be mediocre in this business. Nobody wants to join or be part of that. So, where are we moving them from? What’s the starting mindset? And then when you’re working with someone, you’re trying to move them from what point to what point in terms of their mindset?
Brad Johnson: Well, you’ve hit one thing that I think is really important. You have to believe in what you sell. And in financial services, you’re in the business of selling a belief that you can help clients get from point A to point B, whether that’s pre-retirement, to retirement, the accumulation years, whatever your practice serves. And if you truly believe in the product you sell, then why would you not want to help more people? It’s just a natural A-B scenario. So, I think it does start with belief in the founder, which then translates to the team. So, back to talent, do we want to get into kind of the culture aspect of this? Are we ready for that?
Daniel Crosby: Yeah. Let’s get into the culture aspect. So, one of the things that I’ve observed of your firm, the culture is singular. And I think a lot of times, culture is like babies. Everyone thinks their baby is beautiful. Everyone thinks their culture is special. And, to be honest, I think everyone really means well, but most cultures are very, very mediocre. And I think that a lot of us lie to ourselves about the quality and the uniqueness of our culture, and we do ourselves and we do next-gen advisors a disservice by not taking a harder look at ourselves. So, culture is one of these things that I think is hard for people to get their arms around. We know it’s important, we know we need a good culture, but it feels kind of hard to get our arms around. Can you help put some meat on the bones of culture? And what distinguishes that high-growth culture from that mediocre culture?
Brad Johnson: Yeah. So, I think you’ll be proud of me. I know you’re the one with the PhD up here, but I did a little research for this one. So, culture, I think it’s a word that gets thrown around a lot. It’s kind of one of those squishy foo-foo words, and a lot of people are like, “Yeah, yeah, I know I’m supposed to, but how do you do it?” And the truth is, you have a culture whether you decide to have a culture or not. The question is, do you have the intention to create the culture you want? And culture’s not just a founder looking down from the mountain and saying, “Here’s what we’re going to do here.” It’s actually created organically from everyone on the team.
And culture, there’s actually two root words. So, culture goes back to a Latin root word that stands for cultivation and growth. So, if you think like hold that in one hand, your left hand. Cult a root word, which some of us probably have some interesting takes on that one. But cult actually goes to another Latin root word that stands for worship, belief system, shared values. So, hold that in your other hand. So, we’ve got growth and cultivation over here, shared belief system over here. And to me, a great culture is the intersection of those two things. We want a way to nurture and grow our team. That’s why people show up to work with you or for you. And on the other side, you need a shared belief system that you’re all headed in the same direction, and you care.
And so, when you think about this, there are some ways you can create this intentionally. Good for a couple of examples? So, the first one is, what is the language that you create? So, let’s go back to cult. The good form of a cult, not a bad one. Okay. So, like maybe you’re an Apple fan, maybe you’re a CrossFitter. Those are different forms of cults that better your lives, hopefully. And so, if you think about that, you kind of have your own language. If you’re a CrossFitter, you definitely have your own language. Like you don’t go to a gym, you go to a box, right? And so, you start to create language intentionally because there’s a belonging there. You feel special. You’re in a club.
And so, what I would challenge you all with is, what is the language you intentionally create? Real-life story. So, this is, I’m going to call Future Proof an experience, not an event, and I’m going to take that from what we did at Triad. So, early on, we had an event team that would create these events where many advisors would show up, and we would try to make a better impact on both their business and life. Well, then we thought about it and we said “event.” I’ve gone to a lot of events over the last 20 years. I can tell you, I remember very few. All the hotels blend together. All of the sessions blend together. We’re definitely not on a beach looking at the ocean. And that’s an event to me.
An experience, that’s life-changing, that’s memorable. That’s maybe you get a little uncomfortable, do something you haven’t experienced before. And so, we were like, “Why do we have an event team? We need an experience team.” And what’s wild? Just by that changing of one word, here’s the impact that that’s created. Number one, the lady that runs that team comes to us. She’s like, “We shouldn’t be events@triadpartners.com. We need to be experiences.” And then people like yourself, we’ve been fortunate enough to have come out to our experiences, and we’ve found many of our business partners, our insurance partners, they’ll be like, “Oh, we love your event. I mean experience,” and you see it just hits different.
And then as we start to create our live experiences, we’re like, “Uh, no, cross these three off the list. That’s an event. That’s boring. That’s forgettable. We’ve got to do this. That’s going to pop, that’s going to…” Having Jason Khalipa run morning workouts, former CrossFit Games champion. That is an experience. And so, by changing that one word, it completely changes the intention behind so many decision points in the businesses you make. So, that might be a challenge to you all is what is the language you’re intentionally using or maybe even accidentally using, and how do we change that to actually create the business you want to be at and your team wants to be at? So, that’s my take there.
Daniel Crosby: I think you have to do the hard work, though, of letting the language change and lead the behavior. One of my favorite B-School examples, Enron, famously, when you drove up to Enron, they had these like stone tablets out in front of Enron with their four like loyalty, honesty, candor. You know, when you drive up to Enron headquarters, obviously, they weren’t living up to those things. You have to let the language drive that behavior. And I think many of our businesses, many of our firms, we’ve got this two-part definition of culture that’s growth on the one hand and values on the other.
I think two big problems we have. First of all, I think very rarely do we think about the growth half of that equation. I think almost always it’s an exercise in sort of thinking about values and colors and branding and sort of superficial things. Growth is nice. Like, it feels good to win. People want to be part of a winning team. That’s part of creating a winning culture. But on the value side, when we outline those things, if we are not living up to those things, not only is our culture not working, it’s actually actively corrosive. People are noticing the delta between who you espouse yourself to be and who you actually are in lived experience, and I think that is corrosive to culture.
So, I think it’s good to both remember that two-part equation but also remember this language should be pushing us on to bigger, better, harder things. And if it’s not, we’re going to be doing damage to our culture, I think, very actively.
Brad Johnson: A million percent on what you just said. Myself and my co-founder, we made a promise to each other. We will never put anything on our wall or down in writing for our team that we won’t live and be. So, a cool way to think about that is be your word. Like, that’s a great just way to be in life in general, also business. And so, what that takes is accountability both ways. That takes you being able to call your team out on it when they’re not being what they need to be to be part of your culture. It takes accountability, and it takes it the other way. If myself, as a founder, am not willing to be called out on that, then I shouldn’t put it up there either. And I think that’s where a lot of companies like, unfortunately, Enron, got themselves in trouble is they weren’t living it.
Daniel Crosby: Be your word. Okay. Last big question here. I’ve been on a little bit of a health journey for the last year and a half, and when people become aware of this, they don’t want to talk to me about behavioral finance anymore. They want to talk to me about weight loss or diet, and exercise. And when they ask me what I’ve done, they’re almost inevitably disappointed because, folks, I regret to inform you that eating less and moving more does actually cause you to lose weight. It is actually what you need to do. And people are almost universally in disbelief and disappointed by that answer.
And it reminds me of the knowing-doing gap in behavioral finance. We have all these great stats, my favorite of which is that nurses smoke cigarettes at nearly double the rate of the general population. Every single nurse you talk to knows that’s a bad choice. That’s not good for your health, but they have hard jobs. They have stressful lives. They have long hours. They don’t do it because they don’t know any better. They do it for other reasons. I’m of the belief that a lot of what advisors need to go from point A to point B, to go from moderate growth to kick it into the next gear, they already know to do.
And I think that sometimes the act of constantly trying to find that silver bullet or learn, learn, learn can actually become sort of a type of faux growth or an impediment to growth. How do you take people, kick them into gear, and help them implement the things that they know already work and get a little momentum behind that? What’s the psychology behind that?
Brad Johnson: So much we can cover here, but we have five minutes, so I’ll make it quick. I think our industry suffers a bit from, you’ve heard it before, shiny object syndrome, too much input, not enough output. Obviously, there’s a ton of input here. So, here’s a challenge to all of you. Take one thing from each session and say, “I commit to making this reality.” As an entrepreneur, as a CEO, you really have two roles that you can’t delegate or outsource is what’s the inspiring vision? And how do I just make sure that I’m living that, breathing that into my team? And so, keyword team. We, us. Not I, me. And I get it. Like, I started in this industry, a hundred cold calls a day. It was all on me. I know many of you have that same journey where it was like sink or swim, and you were the ones that figured out how to not drown.
And the problem is that success and what took you to there can actually be what holds you back from what’s next. So, the firms I’ve seen scale at the highest level. They think a lot less like a great financial advisor. They start to think a lot more like a business owner and like a CEO. And you all have seen, you’ve actually experienced this. Think about like the doctor that it’s a train wreck of a client experience. You’re waiting in the lobby for a half hour. It’s not a well-run business. That’s a lot of service-based businesses because it’s very much like a solo game when you start, and then if you want to scale, it has to become a multiplayer game.
So, back to how do you take the ideas and get them into execution, we have four stages of development we cover. We call the first one “advisor in charge.” That’s very much task-driven, surrounded by a bunch of generalists. “Hey, drive-bys is what we call them. Will you do that? Oh, shoot. That one’s full. Can you do that? Oh, I need another assistant. Let’s add another one.” Stage two is to start to think like a business owner, which now means we go from tasks to responsibilities. We go to structure, a marketing division before, a sales division during to convert prospects to clients, and ops to do the after, basically fulfill the promises. And so, now there’s structure. Now, we can start to empower people. It might be a director of marketing. It might be a head of sales. It might be a director of ops.
Now, the next stage is you get to a CEO, bigger team, more structure. Now, you might have, well, you basically transferred from responsibility to thinking. So, if you think about a CMO, different from a director of marketing, a CMO, they’re going to come to you with ideas. They’re going to say, “Hey, I know we’re running these public events. I know we’ve got this podcast that’s blowing up. Winning wealthy is left and right over here. But what if we added a YouTube channel? I’ve done some research. I’m thinking about that. And here’s kind of the strategy. What do you think? They’re bringing the ideas to you, rather than you having to be the one thinking of everything and holding it all together. So, I know we’re getting towards the end here, so that’s the quick take on that one.
Daniel Crosby: We’re going to let you be your word with the last minute, 30. I want you to leave these people with two action items, something a mindset shift, a question that they can consider, and a behavior that they can go home and do. Two things, no more, no less. Go.
Brad Johnson: Oh, we’re getting to the actual real execution here.
Daniel Crosby: Yeah, you’re going to be heard, my guy.
Brad Johnson: Hey, help me out. You all got to follow up on this and hit my boy, Crosby, up afterwards to be like, “I took so much and took action on this when I got home.” Okay. So, number one, I would ask yourself this question, back to creating an inspiring business that attracts and keeps great talent. Answer this question. Why do you exist as a firm? Answers not to come up with, “We have a great service model. We build financial plans,” and trust me, I’ve asked a lot of founders this and those are the sort of answers I get. And those are very commoditized answers where you look around here, everybody else is saying the same thing. So, it does take deep work. It does take thought, and here’s a quick hack to get there.
Think back to day one when you started your firm. That’s the most, you’re like, “I’m doing this different. I’m going to go do it this way.” Go back to the origin story. That’s typically where that seed is planted. Number two, back to culture and attracting and keeping great talent, create a bad words list. So, a few just to get the wheels turning. I already gave you one. We don’t do events. We do experiences at Triad. We don’t have employees. We have a team. Nobody’s super excited. I’m a great employee. We don’t have bosses. We have leaders. So, start to just think, what are the words? And by the way, we have a lot of unintentional words in our industry. Don’t just do status quo. Start to create the language that creates the culture you want.
Daniel Crosby: Let those words drive those behaviors. Thank you, everyone. This has been the Standard Deviations Podcast. A round of applause for Brad. Thanks, everyone.
Brad Johnson: Thanks, Daniel. Appreciate it.
