Brad Johnson: Today, I’m going to share with you one of the most surprising things I’ve learned in my last 20 years in finance, and it has everything to do with attracting and working with the high net worth, we’re talking million-plus clientele. And surprisingly, it has nothing to do with what you say as an advisor, has nothing to do with the financial plans you build as an advisor, but this one thing makes all the difference in the world.
Welcome back to the Do Business, Do Life podcast. I’m Brad Johnson, and today, I’m giving you a behind-the-scenes look at our brand-new office space. And more importantly, I’m breaking down the lessons behind the intention and design and build out that every advisor can learn from building a space that matters, because the place you work isn’t just an office, it’s a living, breathing reflection of who you are, what you believe, and how you serve your clients. And over the years, I’ve seen that it is also one of the biggest factors that unlocks an advisor’s ability to close million-plus clients. And today, I am going to share three key lessons on how you can intentionally upgrade your office space and how doing so can transform not only the net worth you attract, but the culture you create.
So, I want to start with a story. This one’s real life. It happened over a decade ago and I was working with a firm on the West Coast and I actually had a chance to both visit their before office and their after office. And their before office, let’s call it Class C. You walked in, you had to climb some stairs, you looked down. The carpet was kind of 80s era. And you walked in. It was a nice space, but there wasn’t any wow factor. Fast forward, their A class, you walked in. It was a great entrance, fireplace in the lobby, everything, all the way through, first class.
And the old saying, don’t judge a book by its cover, unfortunately, humans do. That’s the psychology at work. And here’s what happened with this office. And I’ve seen this same lesson repeated over and over. Prior office, Class C, they were maybe working with $250,000, $500,000 of investible asset sort of clients. And what would happen oftentimes as those clients approach the million-dollar threshold, the extra comma in the account, they just couldn’t quite get them to convert. Fast forward, A class office, first class, you get what you pay for sort of mentality. These sort of psychological things are going through every prospect’s head. Buying decisions are happening as they walk through your office. And like that, as soon as they upgraded their office space, what do you know? The million-plus clientele started to say yes.
So, today, as we unpack these three lessons I want to share, I want to show you how these maybe afterthoughts when you design your office space, can actually turn into real life ROI. So, let’s get into it. So, lesson number one, celebrate the things that matter in both business and life for your clients and for your team. So, if you think about stepping into your office the first time, think about an interview for a prospective team member, think about an interview for a prospect that could become a client. I want you to start to imagine this as a tour. Think about the last time you went to Disney. There is a very intentional process, the lead up to the ride, the story starts to be told. Now, you’re on the ride. That’s the excitement of the whole experience, and even when you leave the ride, there’s now the gift shop. They have intentionally thought about this all the way through. Most advisors I’ve found don’t do the same with their office experience, but when you do, it can make all the difference in the world.
And so, going back to celebrating the things that matter, one of the things at Triad that is true to our core is the concept of doing business and doing life, both for our members, the advisors we serve, as well as for our team. And so, one of the early things we did, we really built this right into the walls. It was our originally what we called champagne moments, and these are something that you would celebrate, you would pop a bottle to celebrate a year from now. So, think of them like annual goals, but we wanted to infuse these into our office experience because this stuff mattered. We didn’t want to set the New Year’s resolution and then forget about it.
And so, originally, we would extract these from our members and then we wanted our team to see them every single day. And that’s both on the business front. What are the things that are going to help them level up there? And on the life front, what are the things that the business success leads to in life, the success over on that side? And so, we brought that into our office experience. In fact, we just renamed these, here’s a lesson. We have members that don’t drink. So, how inspiring is it if you have a champagne moment and you don’t drink alcohol? That doesn’t really align.
So, one of the recent things we’ve done, we actually renamed these, the Do Business, Do Life moments to better reflect our clientele, our members we serve. Same for our team. How does this translate back to office design? Our team members said, “Hey, we want those same things. Why don’t we do them too?” So, we now have a wall where our team members post their Do Business, Do Life moments, because guess what? As a company, that is one of the things we’re committed to is helping our team level up in both business and life. And how do we create an environment where that more easily happens?
One of my favorite quotes, it’s often referenced, it’s Maya Angelou, people will forget what you said, they’ll forget what you did, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. And if you take that concept and apply it to business, think about this as a financial advisor. What are the experiences that you’re actually delivering with your product, your financial plan? You are helping your clients live out the retirement of their dreams, right? Create those experiences, they actually have saved all those years for to create those trips that they scrimp and save for, to create those memories with people they love.
And so, now, if we take that back to your office experience, for us, our clients are the advisors we serve. And so, if we know what matters to them in business, what matters to them in life, think about as a new prospective advisor walks through our office, they know it matters to the level that we care, that we literally bolted it onto our walls and we refresh this every single year. So, we’re not just talking about it, we’re doing it. And so, now, if you apply that same lesson, apply it to your business. What sort of experience, as your prospective clients come through your office doors and start down your hallways, what are they absorbing? Are they things like, here’s what matters to us, our team? Do you have team pictures, real life, like, here’s us as humans, not just in stuffy business suits? Maybe you do a lot of things with your clients. A lot of our members do client experiences every year. Are there pictures? Is there a TV that’s flashing video or photos from all of your clients getting together, having fun, living their best retirement?
Or on the other side, are there industry awards? Is it, here’s salesman of the year 1, 2, 3, 4? I’ve seen offices that literally, you walk down their hallways, you sit in their conference room and there’s awards behind them saying, “I’m the world’s best salesman.” What does that tell your prospective clients about you? So, you have to be very careful, very intentional with the stories that are told when you don’t even open your mouth when it comes to office design because buying decisions are being made.
So, here’s my challenge to you on lesson number one. Secret shop your own office. I want you to walk into your lobby, actually start outside, start in the parking lot, open the front door. And I want you to take some notes. What are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are you smelling? And how does that make you feel if you were a prospective client? And I want you to intentionally design that and make sure that what your walls, what your office is saying about you, the unspoken is actually what you want and what’s going to serve you and your clients.
Okay, onto lesson two. Okay, lesson two, at Triad, we believe that language creates culture. And so, if you think about this, we just talked about how does your office experience speak to and impact prospective clients. Now, turn that same view internal. How does it speak to and serve your team? Because in order to serve your clients, it takes a team, right? So, that is the order that it has to flow. Serve your team, who in turn serves your clients. That is how you scale a business that’s bigger than you as a financial advisor.
So, now, we started to think through as we created this intentional experience. What are the mantras? What are the missions? What are the belief statements that we say on the daily? And now, how do we infuse that into the office experience? And think about it, conference rooms. How boring are those, right? Conference room A, B, C, or maybe it’s just some random street name. We said, well, let’s think through naming our conference rooms. And we thought about, what is one thing we talk about all the time? How do we help advisors go from building a business of success based on I, me versus a business of significance based on we and team? And so, we talk about it all the time. We’re not worrying about success. We’re building businesses of significance.
So, what is one of our conference room names? The Significance Suite. In fact, oftentimes when we bring members in, we call these team intensives because if you’re going to build a business that’s bigger than a founder, it involves the team. So, you bring the whole team in so they’re on the same page. Where do we host a lot of those? The Significance Suite. It just aligns with the mission that we’re on, that we’re trying to help the members that we can serve do it, right? We have The First Principles conference room. So, one of the things we talk about here is don’t just always do things the way they’ve always been done. That happens a ton in finance. Let’s break it down to the first principles thinking, and let’s build it in a way that actually creates member obsession building on our members’ behalf.
Speaking of member obsession, we have another thing in each of our conference rooms, we call it The Empty Chair. What does The Empty Chair represent? Well, one of the things that was really important to us when we founded Triad is we want to build on our members’ behalf. That takes humbleness, that takes listening. And we said, how do we make sure that this principle is woven into not just the first five team members, but the hundredth team member that’s joined Triad? Well, we have an empty chair. Literally, nobody’s allowed to sit in it in each of our conference rooms, and over it, it says The Empty Chair. And this is to represent our members.
We do this for two reasons. Reason number one, we want to always be proud of the conversations that we have in our conference rooms. And unfortunately, I’ve been in many conference rooms where a lot of trash is talked, even on the clients that help pay your bills. And we said we don’t want that to ever happen at Triad, so we need to just go ahead and pretend like there is a member in each one of our conference rooms. So, we are proud of the conversations that happen there. And number two, we want to build on our members’ behalf. So, I have literally been sitting in meetings at Triad. We will have team members point over to the empty chair and say, if this member was there, this is exactly what they would want.
So, now, if you think about the intention that you design your office space with, how does that apply to you as a financial advisor? What are the things that you can start to infuse into the build, so the mantras, the sayings, the things that matter, like do business, do life actually play out on the daily, and you have reminders infused into the office space to make sure you don’t forget them? I had a business coach tell me one time when you as a founder are tired of saying something, you’re 50% of the way there. So, what can help? Making sure your office is saying it for you.
So, let’s go through a few more examples. We have what we call Day One Cafe because we always want to make sure here at Triad, we’re thinking like it’s day one. Triad was created to help our members and our team level up in business and level up in life. And that mission is never over. It’s always day one. So, it’s literally right here. It’s Day One Cafe every day, not day two. Day two is where you start to die, a slow death.
How else do we pull that off? We have the wolf packed in. How was that created? One of our early members, Anthony, we had another member that had an issue and we called him after hours one night. In fact, I think he was at family dinner, and we said, “So sorry, Anthony, such and such advisor has an issue. They really need your help.” He said, “Stop right there. At Triad, we run as a pack.” And that soundbite right there became a mantra inside our community. In fact, that’s why oftentimes, you see a wolf on our DBDL gear because we took that and we made that what we’re about.
And we now have the wolf packed in. It’s one of our break areas where our team gets together because now, we can retell that story, and it is also something we’ve woven into our community where, hey, if you join Triad as a member, the expectation is we run as pack. That means it’s not just about I and me, it means it’s about us and how can you share something that helps another pack member, another Triad member get where they want to go faster. So, little things like that make all the difference in the world when you start to infuse this into your office and into your culture.
So, here’s the question for you. As a financial advisor, how can you take lesson number two speak things into existence that matter and apply that to your firm? What is your version of Do Business, Do Life? What matters to you? Why do you exist as a firm? What is it that you are trying to help your clients do? One of my favorite examples, real life Triad member here, they want to help their clients live every day like it’s a Saturday in retirement. So, they have that all over their space.
And what’s happened now, because they’ve been on this mission for a few years now, now, their prospects will literally walk into their office the first time and they’ll say, “Hey, one of the reasons I’m here, I want you to help me live every day like it’s a Saturday in retirement.” And so, as you start to take these mantras, these missions, these core values, and you not only say them maybe at a dinner seminar, maybe at an educational event, but now, when they walk in, the congruency is, oh, it wasn’t just a sales pitch, they actually live this. You’ll start to see the conversions happen and you’ll start to see people talk about it because it’s different than, hey, here at XYZ financial, we build great financial plans, or, oh, we pick up the phone, we have great service. Now, you can start to infuse this culture not only into your team, but also your clients, and that’s where you start to see the net worth go up.
Lesson number three, create a collision friendly environment. Collaboration is your friend. I once heard Tony Robbins say, motion creates emotion. And if you think about that when it comes to the concept of office design, one of the things we hear at Triad all the time is, I just feel this vibe when I walk through your office doors. We hear that from advisor firms that come in and see us. We hear this from insurance carriers that come in and see us. We hear it from wealth management partners, and these are people that visit office spaces all over the country, some of them all over the world.
And how we did this is we actually corrected something we didn’t get right in our first office, and we really inherited this office space that was very kind of siloed. You had lots of standalone office spaces and just simply the design of the office created disconnection. And so, as we started to think through our brand-new office build out, we said we want to create a collision friendly environment. And what we mean by that is we want ways where, organically, one of our team members goes to get coffee in the morning and somebody from the wealth team runs into somebody on the annuity desk. Somebody from the coaching team runs into somebody on the life division. And what you think about when you come to design, it’s actually called the technical term activity-based workspace, ABW. We built a hub and spoke model.
So, the hub is these centralized collision areas where the coffee machine is, where the kegerator is. Yes, we actually have a kegerator. We didn’t put it in, but we didn’t take it out. And all of that’s right here in the middle. There’s a lounge with the big TV, couches, stadium seating. We just did our company fantasy football draft there. So, it literally felt like we’re in one of our team members’ living rooms. And so, we’ve got all of these areas for kind of collaboration in the hub, whether you’re doing business or doing life. And then as you go out to the spokes, each of those spokes are separate divisions for the things like focus work. Hey, if you are building a financial plan, you can’t be getting interrupted. This stuff really matters, right? So, the deep work happens in each of the divisional areas, those spokes. And then the central hub is all of these collaborations, connections.
The other thing to think about, conference rooms, we have off of each of those spokes. So, now, you don’t have one division that has to walk clear across the other side of the office just to have a quick meeting. In many of these spaces as well, we’ll have little standup collaboration areas where there’s a little mini couch, maybe a portable marker board to be able to collaborate there on the fly if it’s something that doesn’t deserve its actual meeting. So, as we look at this, how does that now impact your team and those prospects walking through your front door?
So, like we said, what leads to making that jump from a 500k clientele to the million plus? It takes energy. It takes a vibe. It takes people that are excited about what they do on the daily. And so, now, if you think about the office design, how do you intentionally create that? And that was one of the things we really wanted to do to break down silos. As you all know, in this space, there’s way too many silos. I need to talk to this company for my insurance business. I talk to this company for my wealth business. These two businesses don’t even know each other exist. Well, we created the collaboration very similar to Do Business, Do Life. Now, our wealth team can talk with our insurance desk, can talk to our annuity desk, and now, there’s a central hub where all of that can come together as one. So, how do you want to create that collaboration, that integration in your space that not only helps you build better financial plans, but also comes with an energy, a boost for all of your team all day, every day? So, that’s our new space, affectionately known as the 805. It’s a building design, not only just to look good, but to inspire us to live out our values each and every day.
Okay, let’s recap the three lessons. Number one, celebrate the things that matter in both business and life. Number two, speak things into existence. And number three, create collisions that inspire both collaboration and energy. That’s every word on the wall. Every conference room you walk into and every picture you hang, ask yourself, what does this say to my clients? And what does this say to my team? Because it all brings your culture to life.
And with that, did I miss anything? If I did, if there’s something you’re personally doing in your office to better serve your clients, better serve your team, inspire them, please leave a comment below. I read all of them, and those are some of the things that inspire future episodes. Also, if there’s something that hit home, do me a favor, send this episode to a financial advisor friend that needs to see it because what this show is about is helping you, all of you out there in finance working so hard every day to serve your clients level up in both business and life. We’ll be back and we’ll see you on another episode.
