Brad Johnson: All right. Let’s kick this thing off here. Last session. Looks like everybody’s full of energy still. So, there we go. We’ve got a little bit out there still. Well, Shawn and myself, we’re honored to be here at Future Proof. And I believe there is an opportunity for questions if we have a few at the end, the QR code at the top there. So, we’re happy to take some questions at the end if you all have some out there. And really our goal here today is to serve you all. And just a little bit of background on us. So, hopefully, we’ve been in this business and have some advice that we can share that can serve you all. But Shawn and I really started out in finance at a very young age, pretty much just out of college, mid-twenties in the epicenter of finance, Kansas.
You guys knew that, right? And so, we were both small-town Kansas kids and fell into a company where really quickly we were coaching independent financial advisors from all across the country. And I remember this guy was a little ahead of me and I left. I was kind of burned out of corporate America and he said, “Hey, come join me at this company.” And literally, day one, I was reading a brochure. Day two, I’m sitting back-to-back with this guy and it’s like, “Okay. Now, you make 100 cold calls a day.” And that was our entry into finance. And so, I know all of you, one of the things I fell in love with in this business is everybody that’s a financial advisor, in fact just in finance in general, tends to have a really cool origin story.
And really quickly, what we found out when you’re trying to convince, for example, advisors from Huntington Beach to fly into Kansas is that’s not an easy sale. And you have to figure out really quickly how to solve problems. And at the end of the day, that’s what you all do on the daily for your clients. And that’s what we had to do, except financial advisors were our clients. And so, we really quickly had to get good at understanding what are the problems, what’s holding you back, what are the glass ceilings, what are the things that just on the day-to-day are frustrating, that are keeping you from getting to that next level. And Shawn and I really shared a love for this business as well as just a student mentality.
And what was interesting about him, we were working like a couple of cubicles over from each other and I would walk by and I would see him just scribbling furiously on a notepad after he’d get off a phone call. And one day I was like, “Dude, what are you doing?” And he’s like, “I’m writing a book.” And keep in mind, we’re like 20 something, maybe low 30s at this point. I’m like, “A book? What qualified you to write a book?” But he was a student and I took a different path. I took the podcasting route. So, I started a podcast called The Elite Advisor Blueprint in a prior life, and since leaving to form Triad, now Do Business Do Life. And one of the things I hear a lot is, “What’s Do Business Do Life mean? What does DBDL mean?”
And really, I want to kick it to Shawn because there’s a really cool story where some of those lightbulb moments happen in your career if you’re open to seeing them. And one of the things we focused on really early was just how do we help some of the best independent financial advisors in the country grow and scale a business. And it tended to focus a ton around manufacturing appointments and bringing on clients in the most efficient way possible. And one of the things we started to learn is that’s not the full equation. In fact, once you reach a certain level of success, actually, this success can become your own worst enemy.
And we were working with firms that came on doing 3 million, 5 million a year of assets organically, and then quickly they’d reached 10, 20, 30, 50, 100. Some of the top firms we were coaching on a weekly basis were organically capturing $300 million to $400 million of assets a year, which is an insane level of what our industry defines as success. And then things started to break. And, Shawn, I’m going to kick it to you because I know we were talking about a story of a mutual friend, Anthony, that really taught us both a lesson. And I believe you shared it in your book, The Advisor Transformation, which, by the way, stick around till the end because Shawn is going to give a free audio copy to everybody, just as a thank you to being here.
But, Shawn, why don’t you kick it off the story about Anthony and what that taught you?
Shawn Sparks: Yeah. So, the first thing I want to say is you all in the audience deserve a lot of credit. The difference you make, I think sometimes maybe we don’t realize it, but the greatest source of stress for the majority of people is finances. Look at the studies. And the fact that you’re there to help minimize the stress, the anxiety, the worry, even the conflict within a house is a really honorable profession. So, I just want to say congrats to you all for making it your life’s mission to help people with that. Now, with us, I think sometimes you have to build a business the wrong way to have a passion to build it correctly. And with your career, it’s really easy to focus and really strive for this thing called success.
And it’s really easy to go down the path of trying to become something and fulfill your full potential. But it almost takes a sense of maturity to ask yourself, “Wait a second, is the path I’m on the path that I really want for my business and life?” And unfortunately for me, I saw people I loved, people who were my friends, people who I looked up to that were building businesses based on productivity, success, money just to wake up one day and say, “Oh, my goodness, what have I done? I built a monster. I’ve got a business to where it’s less fun. I’ve got a business to where I’m like, ‘My goodness, my time is being consumed.’ I’m not present at home. I’m not the best father I can be. I’m not the best spouse I can be.”
And what’s interesting is there’s the frog in boiling water analogy. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens over time. So, what you think about is if you’re not intentional with the true growth you want in business and life, it’s going to be really hard for you to ever reach it. And I saw my best friends reach hundreds of millions of dollars in new business, very valuable businesses. And what I realized was it didn’t better their life at all. It actually stole their life. A lot of times I say, “Man, there’s a war going on and it’s between your family and your business. And it’s time to call a cease-fire and bring those two together.” That is what I would say is interesting when you really — because I was there. You’re not present. You’re stressed. You’re carrying too much weight. Success causes this.
Because you have a demand on your time, guess what? Success causes higher and higher demand, which pulls you away from times you will never get back from those that you love. So, we said, “What if there was a way to build a business to where the more successful it became, the more freedom you had, the more growth you had, unlimited, not based on your time, your calendar, your bandwidth? The more fun it was because you actually had the freedom to choose what you did each day as opposed to your business choosing for you. And it’s a completely different way to grow.” Now, with my friend Brad here, we had one of our closest friends. I would put him almost in a best friend category, but we also worked together.
This young guy, we would all look at him and say, “Man,” you’d praise him, you’d clap for him. You’d say, “My goodness, this guy’s the man.” He’s built an incredible business. He was doing around 80 million a year in new assets. And you know how you walk across the stage and everybody applauds you? Nobody knows the real story. Nobody knows the sacrifice. Nobody knows how the family life is and how, man, you are so on a mission to produce that guess what happened? You forgot about the most important thing in your life. Ask the people who were having dinner without you. And he walked off stage. He had this stimulant like it felt good for a minute and he goes, “I can’t do this anymore.”
He goes, “I can’t do it anymore. I’m not doing another year of this. I have to change.” And that’s a good friend of ours that we made our life mission to say, “You know what? If we can teach people the skills on how to build a more mature business, that scales beyond a more successful business that’s really a prison for yourself and your team, if we can do that, that will fundamentally be a mission worth pursuing.” And we made it our life mission about four years ago to say that’s what we’re going to do. And I’ll tell you guys, real quick, like my definition of a business that deserves to exist is one that betters people’s lives. It’s not one that is just wildly productive. And you have to learn the hard way.
I wasn’t all, you know, I used to produce, you know, focus on the numbers. So, that’s what we said, “Is this the mission that we can get behind that’s fulfilling and meaningful and it’s not based on just success alone or money?”
Brad Johnson: Yeah. And I think what’s tough about when your business is money, I mean, finance, that’s what we deal with every day, sometimes you lose focus on what matters. And I know also our industry tends to reward the behavior of production. I don’t know how many little crystal awards I’ve seen as I’ve visited different financial advisors’ offices over the years of like top advisor awards from whatever organization they were with. And the story with Anthony like we saw him when he was 20, 30 million a year and then he went to 50, then he went to 80. And he was just being paraded across stages as the hero that everybody was supposed to admire and go follow his path.
And the back side of that story was he walked directly off the stage. He told me this, walked directly into the bathroom, looked himself in the mirror, splashed water on his face, and said, “I will never do that again.” And unfortunately, and as an entrepreneur, we all can fall into these seasons where you leave where you were, that organization, because you’re like, “I can do this better. I’m going to do this on my own terms.” And that’s what I love about independent financial advisors. At heart, you’re all entrepreneurs, right? And then you look up two, three years later like, “Dang, I left that prison and I just built a prison around myself. It was my own doing.”
And so, what I want to get to, I want to get to some actual actionable items. But has anybody ever felt that way like, I mean, if we can be a little bit honest where it’s like, “Man, I was killing it in business, but then I was sacrificing a lot of life”? We’ve got at least one honest person in the audience, so that’s good. All right, cool. We got a few of you. I know I’ve been there. I know Shawn’s been there. But I’m going to flip past a few slides here and I’m going to get to a framework. And Shawn covers this in his book in depth. And if you look there at the two in red, what I’ve seen over the years and, by the way, this is like an addictive drug to an entrepreneur. Marketing ideas, right? The shiny object.
So, Shawn and I, I don’t know how many different dinner seminars we reviewed. We helped people craft their message from stage, their educational events. We helped advisors all over the country create radio shows, TV shows. So, basically, we were deep in the trenches of direct response marketing to manufacture these appointments so that our clients, our advisors, could get appointments on the calendar so they could make sales, make appointments, bring on the right clients, right, so now the business flywheel could get going. And what was really cool is we’re pretty good at it. And we were in an organization where we were just helping these advisors double and then double again.
But then you start to see friends that in, by that definition, they’re killing it on all levels and they’re like, “Man, I don’t want to do that again next year. Man, I missed a lot of ballgames.” And so, Shawn and I also we had become parents at this point. We started to feel that ourselves. So, selfishly, we’re like, “We don’t want to do that either. That’s not a good tradeoff. You can’t buy back those ball games you missed with another $5 million of assets that you brought on.” So, Shawn, let’s maybe start to unpack this a little bit and wherever you want to dive in but there is a way to do it, done intentionally and done right, but it is typically a very different model than what you see in our space.
Shawn Sparks: So, we define it as significance, as you can see on the slide there. So, it’s don’t pursue success but pursue significance. Success is about me. Significance is about others. And when I think of this, I don’t look at – now, it’s a selfish desire I have that I want to build a business of significance, which is going to better people’s lives. And it’s the life I want. So, I want you to know with the word ‘significance,’ we’re thinking about your team, the type of team you’re bringing on, how they work together. We are thinking about your clients. We want to be significant. We want to better their lives as opposed to be successful and be the top on the leaderboard.
Now, the first thing is that journey towards significance is a path. It’s a road paved with adversity and challenges. I will tell you that as an entrepreneur, you’ve already signed up for infinite challenges. And every single day you’re overcoming those challenges. And I’ll tell you, as there’s a thrill, it’s also tough. What we’re doing with this path is saying, “I don’t want to just build a more productive business, a more successful one. I want to build a better business.” And ultimately, one day you wake up and your business is alive and running on its own, whether you’re there or not. And the team, everybody who’s a part of it, is granted fun, freedom, unlimited growth.
And we as we have had thousands upon thousands of experiences with advisors and what happened, and how did one advisor stay and burn out forever and really just have plateau and how do another one unlock unlimited growth? And we have found that there are five principles that are required for you to reach scale, more significance. Now, as a summary, we’ve got number one is vision, marketing and sales, operations and culture. Now, I’m not going to give you — it’s not just a soundbite. You actually have to put the hard work into building each of those components to work together to get you towards significance. And we’ll talk about that shortly. But I want you to know that we’ve been trained incorrectly.
Everybody here, as you started out in the business, you were trained that the more people you see, the more money you make. Marketing, sales, marketing, sales. There’s a reason it leads to a hamster wheel. And you can see that there. We found that to unlock scalability/significance is we’ve got to focus on the other three. So, you’re not going to get there by doing 2/5 of the equation. You want all five. And that’s what we’ll talk about today.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. A quote that always stuck with me: “It’s not a big enough dream if it doesn’t require a team.” That might be one you write down if you want to go on vacation and not have your revenue go on vacation with you. And in the world of finance, this isn’t — I’m just going to let you off the hook. It’s not your fault. When Shawn and I got into the business, it was all on us. We were cold-caller guy, process-the-business guy, when something goes wrong put-out-the-fire guy. And I’ve found that to be very common for all of you regardless of how you got in the business. And it’s very much a me/I game, survival of the fittest, get thrown in the deep end and you’re the one out of 50 that didn’t drown because that’s about the success ratio of most financial advisors out there.
And so, you’re almost trained to play this single player game. And then what happened to Anthony, he had maxed it out. I don’t know how many dinner events did he do that year. Like 100 and 150, maybe. I mean, it was insane. He was just manufacturing appointments, doing sales, and then he’s like, “I can’t do that anymore.” And that’s a very common theme that Shawn and I have seen over the years. And if you’ve ever played a video game and then you’re crushing that level and you’re like, “Well, I could do this in my sleep,” that’s where a lot of really successful independent founding financial advisors get to. And then when they try to unlock the next level, which is a multiplayer game, which isn’t just me/I, they’re like, “This is really hard. I have no clue what I’m doing. This sucks. I don’t want to have a team. This is really hard to lead people.”
And so, to shift that, you have to shift your thinking. And the cool thing is when you make that transition, now you’re actually building a team, empowering a team. Your business is actually not only just serving your clients, but now you’re serving families in your area that you’re employing. And it’s a really, really cool model once you start to unlock it. So, Shawn, maybe we start with vision, which I know can be one of those cliche things that you read in every business book about how important vision is. But let’s talk about the reality of advisors that have a vision and those that don’t. And what’s the difference?
Shawn Sparks: Yeah. So, everybody talks about all these things but it’s like go deep and what does it really mean? How’s it going to serve me? So, the vision is the lens in which you view the future of your business. And that encompasses everything. What do you want to become? What do you want to be known for? What are the steps internally we’re going to have to take to build an infrastructure that’s solid? What are the points of the future to where we’re going to have to make structural changes? Guys, I’m going to tell you really quick like between 10 to 13 employees, it’s a breaking point for most businesses because you have to change the way you work from when you were five. You literally have to create structure, communication lines, all of this. There’s a breaking point, which often leads to plateau, toxicity, cultural problems around 10 to 13. We felt that at about 12.
Brad Johnson: I was going to say we can speak to this because we’ve gone from zero to about 100 team members in four years. Trust me, there’s been a lot that’s broke, a lot. Ask our team. Some of them are sitting out there. They’re like, “Yeah, it hasn’t been just like smooth sailing the whole way.” But that’s where having a vision of where everybody collectively knows where they’re headed. If you don’t have that, no wonder your team is scattering and not on the same page.
Shawn Sparks: Well, 10 to 12 is the first breaking point. About 20 to 24 is number two, and then the next one is 50, and then it goes to 80. But here’s the point. We get stuck in comfortable trying to just do things the way we’ve always done it. But you’ve got to understand there’s a structural change that has to occur. All of this is part of your vision. And the big question is, if you hit your goal over the next 12 months, how’s the structure of your company up to change? Who’s your next three hires going to be? You have to know this stuff in advance as opposed to work from behind and say, “My goodness, this person’s calling uncle. They’ve got too much work on their plate.”
So, vision is the clarity at which you see the lens on how you’re going to grow your business and it encompasses much more than just a tagline or a simple brand language. Next thing is, this is a key, how many of you want a career that you and your team wakes up excited to go to? How many of you guys want that for yourself and for your team? You guys know the difference, and I know you do, the difference between going home and talking to your spouse or your kids and being stressed out and saying, “Man, you wouldn’t believe the day I had,” versus one where you’re saying, “My goodness, I can’t wait to tell you about the day I had.”
Remember this. This whole equation doesn’t work if vision isn’t right because, number one, you have to have a business that inspires you, that you’re excited for, and that vision needs to be shared with your team. If you can give your team the vision of a future that’s worth fighting for, that they’re excited to go to every day and where they go home to talk to their spouse about the difference they made and how excited they were to build, 90% of the friction, conflict, issues in your office will go away. It is the tailwind to significance and a lot of us don’t put enough time and effort in doing that. We wonder why we can’t bring on great talent or why we’ve got turnover or why there’s a cultural issue.
Visually, we’ve got to teach our team this is what it’s going to take for our vision to come true, and they will fight alongside of you. So, we’ve got to create an exciting path. That’s what people want more than benefits, time off. They want to be a part of something they’re excited about. That is all vision. And imagine now, here’s the thing. And I’m going to give you a little test. How many of you wake up excited to go to work? How many of you wake up and say, “My goodness, I can’t wait to progress this over the next three years to become that, to go to the next stage.” So, the first thing is, if you’re not excited, your team isn’t. They’re not either. If you are excited, we have to share that. Why is that? What is the difference to make and bring them into the room with you and say, “Here’s the next level”?
Because me and him, we had to completely change the way our company works at about 12 people. We had to change the reporting, the communication. If they don’t know where we’re going, all those decisions are met with questions. Why? Why do we have to change? What’s going on? So, you have to bring them in and say, “This is the next step of our growth because we all want this. This is what we’ve got to do.” And it’s met and embraced with enthusiasm. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, and I’m guilty of it, is we focus on arming ourselves with the tools and we don’t bring the team into the mix to where they’re a part of it. And the battle you guys are on, the battle we are on, it’s going to take a team to build the dream.
As Brad said, you’ve got to be intentional to bring them to the game with you, arm them with all those business lessons, everything that’s needed to fulfill the long-term mission that will give them the excitement, enthusiasm, and inspiration they want.
Brad Johnson: All right. I’m going to keep this thing rolling because we’ve got a few of these principles we haven’t gotten to. But if we think about vision, then the next thing we kind of– I’m going to take us into the world of culture. And here’s a way to maybe shift your thinking as an advisor. I think, to be a great advisor, think about how hard that is. Whether you’re going out to get your CFP or you’re jumping into all of these breakouts to learn advanced tax planning strategies, all of this stuff, there’s a lot of technical knowledge that’s required.
But as you transition from an advisor, that’s kind of a solo player game, and I heard a friend once say when he just, a really smart guy, he was a COO of a company, he said, “You know what I noticed about the world of finance and all the financial advisors out there? It’s really just a bunch of personalities.” And so, if a business is built on a personality which, by the way, great financial advisors, you all are fun to hang out with, you’re fun at dinner parties. You can make great conversation. That’s one of the skill sets I’ve seen from a lot of you out there.
The problem is your personality does not scale. If Steve Jobs built Apple on his personality, we all wouldn’t be carrying around iPhones anymore. I can tell you that, right? So, he built a business that was bigger than his personality. And to do that, as we kick into culture, you now have to have a vision that is compelling, that attracts talent just like a sports team.
We’re from Kansas. So, the Chiefs are kind of our team. They’ve done okay the last couple of years. They’re not going to win a lot of games without Patrick Mahomes. I don’t care how good Andy Reid is. And so, if your goal is to attract great talent on the team, you have to have a compelling vision, but now, the next step is how do I not only bring that team on, Shawn, but how do I keep them happy, keep them aligned? So, let’s talk about culture a bit.
Shawn Sparks: All right, so this is what I would say is, if the culture is right, success is inevitable. If the culture is wrong, you can kiss the dream goodbye. If you want to create an amazing business, you’ve got to create an environment at which people want to be a part of it. They want to be a part of it, better their life.
And I think sometimes culture and the world we’re in, it’s like a beer keg and a ping pong table. That is not culture. Culture is the way that they work together, the communication. You’ve got to manufacture a great culture, in my opinion. You can’t just be a fun, loving family. You’ve got to manufacture rules and boundaries and how we work together, which is going to allow us to fulfill a mission and a vision that we all choose to fulfill, we want to be a part of.
So, when it comes to, if you have an incredible vision, there’s one thing I want to just mention, the bigger the vision, the more amazing people you will attract. Nobody wants to be a part of a business that’s just routine. They want to be a part of a business that’s growing, that’s exciting.
Now, with culture, we’ve got to teach people the fundamentals of culture. For example, most people want comfort. I’ve got a story with my little daughter. She was three years old. She broke her arm. And the day she got the cast on, she told me, “I want my cast off. Take my cast off, Daddy.”
Three weeks later, I’m like, “Do you want your cast off?” “No. I don’t want my cast off. Keep it on.” Why is that? She was comfortable. She became complacent. She didn’t want the thing that would grow her, grow her arm, fixed her arm. She didn’t want to take it off three weeks later.
So, humans as a creature of habit want comfort. We’re looking for comfort. To grow, you have to choose to look for change. You have to choose to be the exception that says every time we change, we are growing. And I’m not saying change for nothing, but imagine arming your team when you say, “Hey, there’s a new reporting structure of our company. There’s new communication lines we have to do. There’s new processes we have to build.” They say, “Heck, yeah, let’s do that. I can’t wait because this is the next level that’s going to get us to year.”
So, we believe, by default, over time, a culture is going to be really bad. But if you make it a large, a first priority for your business to manufacture a culture of the values and traits, we are not the company that resists change. We are the one that eagerly wants to grow and knows change is a big part of that. All those little things that happen within a business, they go away, those problems.
So, if you have a great culture, it’ll be the most contagious thing in your business. You will not have to do Indeed ad ever again. Everybody will say, my goodness, that place you work. I want to be a part of that if you’re ever hiring. We’ve got a file cabinet of people who want to work for our company, and that’s not a testament to us. Here’s the key, it’s a testament to the people who are with us that shows to build an incredible culture.
A founder can’t do it. They inspire it and they lead it. They create the boundaries and values, but once the team realizes this is what I want and I will protect it with everything I’ve got, that’s the moment your culture comes alive. You guys got to remember, we’re here. Our team’s there. How do they treat each other? How resourceful are they? What is the attitude they’re having? All of that is done when Brad and Shawn aren’t here. That’s the test.
And we want them, we want to arm them with these are the keys to have an incredible culture. And it’s now their responsibility more than mine. I’m 1% of the equation. So, that’s where you fundamentally teach it and that’s when it’s like a wildfire. Everybody is protecting their culture like you are.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Here’s something I’ve seen flipped. I learned this from a business coach years back. You’ve heard, we’ve all heard the saying that the client or the customer is always right. I agree with a piece of that sometimes. But if you think about in order for you to deliver on your promises as an advisor, you have to have a team, right? I’m assuming, like you’re not filling out your own new business paperwork, not doing your own transfers. If you are, that’s another equation we need to fix.
But if you think about this, what if you treated your team like your most important client? That would be one I would write down. If you’re having a tough time scaling a business bigger than you, what if I treated my team like my most important client? Because for you to scale a business bigger than yourself, you’re going to have to have a team to do it.
And the equation, top-down goes, I’ve got to love on my team. I’ve got to have an amazing culture so they can then in turn love on my clients. And one of the things Shawn and I did semi by accident, this might be an idea for you, we hired a chief culture officer. A lot of businesses once they get to scale, it’s HR. It’s like the technical, legal, not so fun side of the business. Nobody wants to talk to HR, by the way, on your team.
But chief culture officer, that’s how do we love on, how do we empower the team, how do we celebrate the team. I literally had a text yesterday of three birthdays on the team, so I was reminded that, hey, don’t forget this person’s birthdays today. Show him some love. And Kenzie on our team is just an absolute rock star at that.
So, if you put a position on your team that it’s their job to love on the team, you’ll be amazed at how that attracts incredible talent because people want to work there, right? It’s not rocket science here. So, I see the time ticking down, Shawn. Let’s go to– you want to go to ops sales marketing? Which one of these do you want to hit next?
Shawn Sparks: Yeah, so vision and culture tends to be kind of like a side project. Guys, flip that. That’s the main project. You have an exciting vision. You attract great people. You build a culture they love to be a part of. They will build alongside of you, not behind you.
As an entrepreneur, we have to choose to change ourself. We have to say, “Wait a second, it’s not about me anymore. How do I not empower them by delegating, but instead empower them to work alongside of me, to build with me?” That’s what we want to develop. That’s the culture we want.
Now, those 2/5 of the equation is going to take you a long ways, but here’s what tends to happen in the business. You market really well, you sell really well. You market really well, you sell really well. Next step is we have to dial in operations to maximize our efficiency as a company.
And the operations with five people, just all everybody carrying the weight of everything, over time, your operations to scale, you earned the right to go from a lot of jack of all trades/generalists. You’ve got five people doing everything. Has experienced that before? I’ve been there. It’s like you honestly don’t even need a title. You’re all just the chief, everything officer. You’re just everybody does everything.
And a lot of times, the founder is the guy in charge. He’s just kind of throwing stuff and just trying to survive. You have to switch your operations to where it is maximizing productivity. You’re maximizing, instead of jack of all trades, generalists, specialists.
And that’s a gradual shift you’re going to be making to where anything you look at, if you move from a jack of all trades to a specialist who focuses every single day on being the best in the world at their role, the output and the difference you’re going to make is so much greater than by having somebody do it off the side of their desk. So, that’s the gradual change from five people all the way to 100 is how do I optimize by having specialists focus on what they love and what they’re good at and what the company needs them to do, as opposed to this everybody does everything situation.
So, you’ve got to be very intentional. What does your org chart need to look like over the next 12 months in order to increase efficiency where people are in the right seat doing the work they love, are the best in the world of what they do. And by the way, they’re not trying to do everything. How does that org chart need to evolve? This is now part of your operations. What does the client experience need to look like?
I’ll tell you, with operations, he talked about hiring quickly. But here’s the deal. What’s the process through which you hire great talent? Think about that because at less than 15 people, the co-founders of your company are 15 people, if you go to 100. I always think of that, I’m like, these guys are co-founders with us. They’re building the culture, they’re building operations there and all this.
So, what’s your process for hiring great people? We threw, Brad and I have swung the pendulum to where we throw away corporate ways of doing business. We have never used the questionnaire to interview somebody. Ever. We say, “No, no, no. Let’s get to know them, find out what they’re good at. Let’s have a process to really understand. Is this a culture fit? Do they have the skills that we need?”
By the way, a little tip for you. Always hire for the role you need. Who is the best and most equipped there? If you’re scaling, it’s really hard to rely on the vulnerability of some brand-new person who’s never done it. And I hope it works. So, you always want to find some way to minimize your risk. I’m not saying there’s no exceptions. It’ll minimize your risk if you hire people that you know incorporates the skill, already likes the role which you need, and having a clear job description on what that role is. A lot of people don’t. We leave that out. I’m guilty. I’ve done it.
But once they’re hired, here’s the important part. This goes back into operations. How do you onboard them? So, just because you hired somebody who’s exciting, like, let’s go, what is the process to onboard them, which I believe is the process to set that hire up for success? What is expected? What are the cultural values?
We have a culture meeting that’s an hour and a half with every team member that joins us. It’s 100% culture. Here’s the rules of the game. Here’s how we work. Every single one of them leaves excited. It’s like, my goodness, this is what it’s going to take. Nobody’s ever taught me this piece.
And now, they’ve got self-awareness and all the little things that occur that can really hurt a company. And we’ve also set an expectation that’s really clear. So, next thing, I’m going to give you an operation. Just a little tidbit. When you onboard a new client, what is the process? I’ll tell you, the 60 days after they become a client is the closest contrast that they have between what they had and what they have now. It is top of mind.
That 60-day period of time, when you onboard that client, is what we call a moment of power. You have an opportunity to blow their mind with a dialed-in onboarding process to where they literally become raving fans in 60 days. And they email you and say, “My goodness, I just wish we would have joined you sooner.”
So, when you bring on a new client, do not think, okay, they’re on. Now, let’s go. Think, my goodness, we’ve got 60 days to blow their mind. That represents a process in your operations of how do we create a client experience from day one within 60 days? That’s what we get. And there’s a lot of little steps in your process to do that, which one of them at the end is actually, how do you get referrals? How do you do it where it’s comfortable and easy? Imagine your referrals not being hit or miss. Imagine them being dialed in to where I know with every new client, one out of two of them give us a referral within 60 to 90 days, but we don’t call referrals, right?
So, these are all the operations pieces and process it’s going to take to scale. And I want your team sitting around the table together, high fiving, and say, let’s build a world-class company, so it’s all flowing. And then I would just say that. So, the point is it’s not marketing and sales only. You see all the little things we have to focus on building. And sometimes, the results with the vision and culture and operations, we don’t see the ROI on it. But what we’re going to do is we’re going to build a healthier business, which is going to allow us to have that business of significance.
Brad Johnson: So, when it comes to operations, as you start to scale, most advisors I’ve talked with over the years, they have some sort of a sales process, right? Here’s my first appointment. Here’s my fact find. Here’s my second appointment, kind of a before and after. Maybe you move assets there. But you’ve developed a process that’s duplicatable and repeatable.
All Shawn’s talking about is you need to not just apply that externally, you need to apply that internally. As you start to bring great talent in, now how do I arm them for success? Have a duplicatable process. We have about a four-step interview process of which Shawn and I are the last step on.
And then when they come on, now, they’re getting plugged into their teams to now empower them for success. And here’s what I’ll say because, by the way, we’ve screwed all this up. We’re not the guys up here that have it all figured out. Most of this is we screwed it up and we’re like, we don’t want to do that again.
And so, if you’re out there and you’re like, wow, I’ve definitely screwed this up, that’s okay. Congratulations. You’re normal. And I think though, if you look at your firm and you look objectively, we had Jocko, the Navy SEAL. He came out to one of our Triad experiences and he shared this concept, and it works in the military and it works in finance.
And he rolled out this new product. I don’t know if it’s out yet. It’s a mirror, just an old school, regular mirror that goes on the wall. Guess what it says at the bottom? Problem identified. Pretty good advice, right? So, if you’re the founder and you’re like, wow, everybody I hired quits. I remember, I was having a coaching conversation years back and this advisor, like we were having the same conversation for a year straight. He’s like, “Man, my team sucks. Man, they don’t do any work. Man, they’re not very good.” And I go, “Can I ask you a question? Who hired him?”
It’s a solid question to ask yourself as a founder. So, if you’re dealing with a lot of turnover, a bad culture, it probably means there’s some systems that need to be tightened up and you need to take that same external energy you put into building a business in your clients and apply it internally. That’s what I promise you. It’s going to unlock a ton of scale.
And then that same team that loves the experience, guess what? They all have great friends that probably also work in finance. I would guess, Shawn, you think probably, half of our current team has probably been a referral from another team member, right?
So, now, you’re recruiting, you’re not having to pay headhunters go out, waste a ton of money on Indeed. Like, literally, your team is manufacturing your A-plus talent. It’s a beautiful thing. We’re getting down to the last five here. By the way, reminder, if you all have a question, we’re happy to get into them. I think they’ll pop those up here in a second if you’ve submitted any.
Shawn, let’s just hit marketing and sales. Obviously, we’ve kind of saved what’s typically the lead story for kind of the end here, but any thoughts, quick thoughts on marketing and sales?
Shawn Sparks: I’ll just give you a rapid fire because we’ve got five minutes. So, the first key to scaling is taking “I” out of the equation and replacing it with “we.” Never sell yourself again. That is something we learned when we didn’t have a team. I had to sell what I had, which was me.
As you develop a team, you now saw we and us. What brings a client to use? What they’re going to expect from you? If you are selling yourself, then every client you bring on is going to expect you. So, we have to say, how can we sell our company and the resources and the people as opposed to myself? And here’s the trick. It’s better anyway. Your business owner/clients have teams as well. They understand one person can’t be all.
But what happens is when you first get in the business, it’s just you. And then we never realize, we’ve got to sell us. So, on the sales piece, the first thing is you’ve got to have a duplicatable sales process to where you sell the team, not yourself.
I’ve got a friend. He hired a kid. He had one year with a captive organization. He really didn’t like the business. He joined him. Within six months of working with him, he was, I don’t know, maybe like 27 years old, he was bringing in 30 million a year in new assets. How does a kid with a year and a half experience bring in 30 million a year of new assets his first year? He leveraged the value of the company with him, that works with him, and the experience of the company as opposed to himself. And he was the spokesperson/helper within those meetings that followed a very specific process. How do you open a meeting? What is the content we cover? How do we sell our values in what we do?
So, for you to scale your business, you have to throw away “I” and say, “This is the way I do it.” And you have to honestly create a road map or a curriculum to where somebody can follow. Here’s what you do, it’ll lead to success. Because the other problem is we have three advisors in office. Your client experience should be the same regardless of which person worked with them. Oftentimes, man, I’m the best. I’ve got a great closing rate. I’m really effective.
But my team is really struggling. If your sales ratio from a new client to conversion is more than 5% different from your other advisors in your office, it means you have a faulty sales process. If you have the same process, 90%, with everybody, you will have results that are very similar. So, you’ve got to have a duplicatable sales process in order to scale. Otherwise, you will always be required to do the sales meetings.
And that’s a lot more than just follow me around, watch what I’m doing. It’s literally, here’s how we open, here’s how we do this. And you’ve got to honestly think as a business owner in the sales process as opposed to a great connector. Next marketing, go ahead.
Brad Johnson: Hey, Shawn, we’re going to go to some questions. We had a few come in. By the way, I put Shawn’s book up back here. We didn’t want to just give you a book report up on stage. So, he goes super deep into all five of these principles in the book. So, I’m not just saying this because he’s my business partner. I read it and I was like, “Dang, bro, that’s a good book.”
So, it’s lessons over about two decades of coaching financial advisors, so I highly suggest. I promise you won’t be disappointed. Also, we’ll give, here, let’s just do this.
Shawn Sparks: As a gift, you get the audio for free.
Brad Johnson: There’s a free audio download if you scan that QR code. That’s the audio book. Okay, so let’s get to these questions. My team is going through big changes. A few key teammates have left. How do you manage turnover during a growth phase? And how do you retain the right team? Shawn, you want to take that first?
Shawn Sparks: Okay. So, here’s the first thing. So, you guys have probably seen this, but being aware of the problem you have today, awareness itself minimizes the pain. And I’ve seen people where it’s like, honestly, you can say like, okay, this is what I’m feeling, this is fear, this is this. By being able to label the storm that you’re going through allows you to remove yourself and make it less toxic.
So, the first thing with a team, if you’re going through change is you got to cover the why, the what, and then you’ve got to show them like, look, this is part of growth. This pain is growth. And we’ve got to reframe that and say every business that it ever has done something extraordinary has gone through adversity. And adversity creates what? Character. The greatest culture test for your team is, how do you guys do together when you’re struggling? That’s a culture test.
So, what I would do is I’d go three steps back and say, “Here’s what’s happening, here’s why it’s happening. This is a natural thing that happens with businesses as they’re scaling.” And the next thing is you do not focus on big picture next, you focus on little wins. Today, don’t worry about the storm. These are the three things we need to execute. Over the next week, here’s the progress. This storm is going to allow us to perform unlike ever before, but we’ve got to fight together and stay together.
And then the cultural meeting I described is no gossip, never talk about each other behind their back. Realize our differences are a strength. You don’t want clones. You want compliments. Once your team realizes that, they’ll stop nitpicking on someone else because the personality is different. You’ve got to embed this in the culture prior and then you can work through that storm.
Brad Johnson: All right, Shawn, we only were able to get to one. There’s a few more on here. Shawn, I’ll be over here side stage, and we’re happy to answer the other ones we didn’t get to. There’s a study. I think it’s a Harvard one. It talks about stages of team development, forming, storming, norming, performing. It doesn’t matter. Any team goes through it. So, when you change, when you grow, just normalize. There is going to be a storming phase and it’s how quickly you can get through that storm and have that conversation around there. So, that’s all the time we have. Thank you so much for being such an awesome audience.
Shawn Sparks: Hey, guys, real quick, build a career, like your life depends on it because I’ll tell you, what, your career is going to be your life if you don’t take control of it. And I want to encourage you guys, you guys are making a huge difference. You do an honorable work, but make sure as you’re blessing others that you’re blessing yourself and your team and building a business that gives you more growth, more freedom, more joy. Thanks for having us.
Brad Johnson: Appreciate you all. Thank you.
