054: Phillip Stutts on How Financial Advisors Can Tap in to the Power of Facebook Marketing & Leverage Political Marketing to Win on a Shoestring Budget

[INTRODUCTION]

 

Welcome to this episode of the Elite Advisor Blueprint Podcast with your host, Brad Johnson. Brad’s the VP of Advisor Development and Advisors Excel, the largest independent insurance brokerage company in the US. He’s also a regular contributor to Investment News, the Wall Street Journal, and other industry publications.

 

[00:00:27] Brad: Welcome to the Elite Advisor Blueprint, the podcast for world-class financial advisors. I’m Brad Johnson, VP of Advisor Development at Advisors Excel and it’s my goal to distill the best ideas and advice from top thought leaders and apply it to the world of independent financial advice. In today’s conversation, I’m humbled to be speaking with Phillip Stutts. Phillip is the founder and CEO of Go Big Media and Win BIG Media, two award-winning disruptive agencies that use political digital strategies to get major results for clients in and out of politics, including financial advisors. Phillip is also the author of Fire Them Now, a new book that identifies the lies marketing agencies use to try to get and keep clients. Phillip and I originally connected through my friend and co-founder of Advisors Excel, Cody Foster. As we dug in, it was also cool to hear how Phillip actually took inspiration from Advisors Excel as he defined his own company’s culture and we dive into that during this conversation.

 

We also get into his book, which is full of powerful real-life stories from his political career including the campaign he helped run to get George W. Bush elected. He speaks to how to get an advantage even when your competition has more recognition and the ability to outspend you. Our conversation today digs deep into what financial advisors can learn from politics, how to build the best possible version of your company, and how Phillip’s fight with an incurable disease has changed his life for the better. Here are a few highlights of what we get into. We begin by talking about how a lesson from Advisors Excel’s company culture help Phillip define his own and also what makes culture so important and why failing to focus on it holds so many businesses back. Next, we dive into how the digital world has killed ROI on traditional marketing spends and how this helps Phillip create a new kind of digital marketing agency, Win BIG Media. Phillip then shares stories from his time working on multiple presidential campaigns and the secret behind how politicians connect with the public.

 

[00:02:23] Brad: We dive into how this applies to financial advisors and when they should crank up their celebrity status, but also why they have to be able to turn it down to truly connect with their audience at live events. We then get into the unique ways that political strategies apply to financial services when it comes to digital media, marketing, and strategy, as well as the 3Rs that service Phillip’s foundation for successfully marketing anything, especially on a budget. From there, Phillip tells us about his personal experience with a rare autoimmune disease that rarely affects younger people, but how it completely transformed his mindset and why it led him to always making sure he has a plan B. This naturally leads us into a conversation about many of the coming transformations that will disrupt long-established industries all over the world and why today’s financial services industry looks a whole lot more like Blockbuster than it does Netflix. Finally, Phillip tells the story of an incident that happened running his business that ultimately helped him understand how to be a better boss.

 

Okay. Before we dive into the conversation, I worked with Phillip to set up two big gives for all of you Blueprint listeners. First off, you can download Phillip’s free report, the three secrets you need to know before you hire or fire a marketing company. It’s right at the top of the show notes at BradleyJohnson.com/54. That’s 54. Secondly, Phillip and his team have offered to do a five-minute marketing audit as well, where they can take a look at your website and give you some candid real-world feedback. Details to make that happen are directly on the landing page where you’ll find the download to Phillip’s free report so go there to take the next step. As always, all the additional books mentioned, people discussed as well as a full transcript of the show can be found out on the show notes as well. So that’s it. As always, thanks for listening and without further delay my conversation with Phillip Stutts.

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

[00:04:19] Brad: Welcome to this episode of the Elite Advisor Blueprint. I have a special guest, Phillip Stutts, here with me today. Welcome to the show, Phillip

 

[00:04:27] Phillip: Brad, I’m honored to be here. Great podcast. This is going to be a lot of fun.

 

[00:04:31] Brad: Thanks, man. It’s funny, the more of these podcasts I do, the smaller the world gets, and just digging into your book, we have a lot of mutual friends in common. I know you’ve already kind of connected with Cody over here at Advisors Excel. So, it’s like we’re already somehow mutual friends without even knowing it

 

[00:04:47] Phillip: It is and I’ll say this. Cody three years ago, I emailed him because I was fascinated by the culture at Advisors Excel and he has kind of guided and mentored and help me define and kind of formulate how we run our culture in our companies and that culture just won an award for best company culture in all of politics and so just the connection is pretty strong because Cody’s been a very big influence on me.

 

[00:05:15] Brad: Wow. Well, yeah, something that’s been a big part. Growing up in this company really as the 12th employee, now we’re at 530, it’s just kind of ingrained and you don’t even realize it when you go outside and look at other companies, a lot of companies just don’t have that at their core, so that’s cool to hear. Well, technically, I guess your official title you’re the founder and CEO of Go Big Media and also Win BIG Media so two different media companies and then also the recent author of your latest book, Fire Them Now. So, a lot going on there. So, for the audience here, obviously, we’re talking with financial advisors but those that aren’t may be familiar with your background, you want to share high-level what your background is, what each of those companies do? And then we’ll just dive into the conversation.

 

[00:05:57] Phillip: I love it. Let’s go. So, in 1996 I left college and I went to the University of Alabama. From Alabama moved to San Diego, California and worked for Bob Dole’s presidential campaign at the…

 

[00:06:14] Brad: That’s still Kansas, man.

 

[00:06:16] Phillip: At the Republican convention.

 

[00:06:17] Brad: There we go.

 

[00:06:19] Phillip: And I fell in love with politics. In fact, I just knew at that point that there was nothing I really wanted to do other than something I was passionate about and I was passionate about politics and college football but there’s no way I was making it in college football as you can see in this video. So, I decided that was what I was going to do and I moved to Washington DC. I proceeded to work on about seven other presidential campaigns. Three of them won and then created my market. And throughout those years since 1996, over 20 years, I’ve always been a part of some political marketing arms. And I started an agency in 2015 because I just saw the digital world kind of taking over everything and we created a digital marketing agency in politics called Go Big Media. We’ve doubled every single year we’ve been in business.

 

This is the fourth year and we’re about to double again and along the way, I had a friend of mine that approached me like two years ago and he is one of a very, very, very large landowner in Hawaii and he said he’s developing all these properties to sell and they were getting nowhere on their marketing and he said, this guy loves politics. He’s fascinated by politics and he said, “You think what you guys do in politics would work for my business?” and I went, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And so, we went out and he had spent I think $50,000 on a marketing campaign and admitted him one lead to buy a property into this development he created. And so, he ended up saying, “Look, I want to test this,” and I said, “Absolutely. Let’s test it.” He gave us $5,000 and we ended up getting over 700 leads for him through $5,000 of marketing and all we did was apply political principles into the business. And I went, “Ooh, there’s something here,” and I didn’t think I got to write a book.

 

[00:08:13] Phillip: But I ended up going around and talking to over 100 CEOs and they all came back with this crazy notion that they used to market their businesses a certain way and they would have all the success like they go on TV ads and print ads or a line of newspaper ad and they would have this huge, huge return on investment. And then the digital world came into play and all of a sudden that ROI shrunk significantly, even though they’re spending the same amount of money so this massive frustration in the marketplace. And so, we said, “Ooh, we should probably go out and create a corporate marketing agency that applies these political principles.” So, we created Win BIG Media so there would be some separation because not everybody thinks in the same way. And political politics is so polarizing these days, we don’t want to make businesses to be uncomfortable.

 

So, we just kind of separated everything so we have two agencies now. The corporate agency, we worked from mom-and-pop store shops to three Fortune 200 companies and we continue just to see the principles that we apply in politics on the marketing front at extraordinary results on the business side. And so then after a while I was like, “You know, I think this is a book,” and our mutual friend, Tucker Max, and I sat down and he’s like, “You got to write this story and tell the story,” and so I did and that is what led to the book called Fire Them Now.

 

[00:09:34] Brad: And here it is, right here.

 

[00:09:35] Phillip: Right. And which is basically identifying the lies in marketing marketplace that agencies are using to try to get clients and the premise of the whole book is in politics and every marketing campaign I’ve ever run, I have to think of my client first in everything I do. And in business marketing, what I found was that marketers were getting paid and winning before the client won and I just said, “Well, that doesn’t seem right and we do this really differently in marketing and politics.” And by the way, I just want to be very clear to your listeners. Listen, we can talk policy or Trump or Javanka or Obama. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how we market in politics, which I think is so unique and different and I just wanted to tell that story and so I wrote a book and now I’m here.

 

[00:10:26] Brad: It’s a great book. I actually wrapped it up this morning and so we’re definitely going to dive in on that today. And as we were talking even before we went live here, you formed the second media agency for businesses and corporations. What’s so interesting, the more I dug into your book I’m like so much of how you position a politician to win is how you would position a financial advisor to win in their market so we’re going to unpack that.

 

[00:10:51] Phillip: Totally.

 

[00:10:52] Brad: Before you do, first off, you hit Bob Dole who is like a childhood hero. I mean, I grew up about an hour-and-a-half, two hours east of their small town in Minneapolis, Kansas so I played baseball tournaments in Russell, Kansas so Bob Dole’s home city. I guess you wouldn’t even really call it a city. So, 20 years in politics and before we get into all this fun marketing stuff, you have to have one or two just like really fun stories. They’re like, hey, this was just something looking back in that 20 years of dealing with a lot of very significant figures, former US presidents, which is a fun story to open the conversation with just the thought…

 

[00:11:31] Phillip: Yeah. Okay. I’ll tell you a good one and, literally, I was just racking my brains. I’ve got a good number I’ve done about. I’ll tell you one. It doesn’t have a significantly great ending, but it’s pretty interesting. So, in 2000 I’m working on the Bush campaign. I’m out in Los Angeles. We got a big fundraiser at the Century Plaza Hotel, which is this big fancy hotel and the like and there was a death row inmate in Texas that there was a lot of protest going on that he was mentally ill and he shouldn’t be executed and it was literally coming down to execution day. And everywhere that government Governor Bush at the time was going there would be protesters that would storm the stage and storm events and doing all these things and it was just like crazy like it was totally insane and he was getting very frustrated that this was dominating the news cycle and he couldn’t get his message out.

 

And he was going to make a decision eventually on this because the execution date was coming and he eventually decided to let the execution happen, but that process was planned. So, the governor at the time sat down our team and said, “At this event at the Century Plaza tonight there better not be any protesters in this thing and I don’t want to see anything.” And remember, this is pre-9/11 so the kind of security that we have now is totally different back then. And so, we’re like, “Sure. Sure. Sure.” So, we set up a stage, we set up in the open. We have everybody out there checking everybody out. And then a strange woman came to this event and it was a fundraiser and she wrote a check on the spot. I now look back and that I realized it was a fake check and a bounced check. And she had a dress on. I was like, “All right. What is this woman doing? I mean she can’t do anything.” And Governor Bush it sounds like, “Literally, your job is on the line. There better not be any protests,” because they let the press into these fundraisers.

 

[00:13:30] Phillip: And so, sure enough he gets on stage and he starts telling the donors what he stands for and what he’s going to do and all of a sudden this woman stands up, starts screaming about this inmate and starts charging the stage and the secret service tackle her and all the cameras from all CNN at the time and Fox, they all focused straight on this woman and it’s going to now be the lead story and I’m thinking, “Oh my God. I’m totally going to get fired.” And after it was over, the finance director and myself were going to brief Governor Bush and we were getting in the elevator with him and, I mean, I have never been so nervous in my life. And we get on the elevator and the elevator gets stuck with the governor and us on it and I’ve never been so nervous in my life. And he looked and he smiled and said, “All right. You tried everything you could.” But it was like I’m sitting there, this the future president and I just thought I was going to lose my job in that moment, but I didn’t. He ended up giving me grace and that’s one of those things I’ll always remember of how kind he was in a moment that could’ve gone really, really poorly.

 

[00:14:37] Brad: Yeah. That’s a good story. I’ve actually told a George W. Bush story a few times. He spoke at one of our events. It’s been a few years back. We did one in DC and it was obvious after he was done being president and we did a private meet and greet and one of my good friends that works here at the office he’s like all sweaty palm like people just get nervous around people that have been presidents and so he’s getting ready to shake his hand and so he puts his hand out, and he’s like, “Nice to meet you, Mr. President,” and George W. like looks at him like tilt his head to the side like punches him in the shoulder and he’s like, “What’s up, chief?” and like in that story he told me is like, immediately, he just took all the tension and apprehension out of the room and just like you’re talking with another dude and I have to think like that experience in the elevator and that’s just who he was and that’s part of what made him a great president is he could connect with people on their level. Did you see that play out a lot?

 

[00:15:36] Phillip: Totally saw it play out over and over again what I would see. One quick other story was that I went over to the White House. It was the first three weeks of the administration. I went over to the White House and it was in the West Wing in the Roosevelt room and a meeting with education leaders and then we were going to jump in the motorcade of the of the president and go visit a school at Maryland. And we did it and we went out and, by the way, this is the coolest thing I ever did in my life. I’m in the West Wing meeting and then I’m in the motorcade. I just thought I was really badass I guess at the time. And I’m calling my mom and I’m like, “Hey, mom. I’m in the motorcade,” and she’s like, “Oh my God, that’s incredible.” And I call my brother, “I’m in the motorcade.” “That’s incredible.” And I called my best friend and I said, “I’m in the motorcade,” and he goes, “So?” And I go, “Well, that’s why you’re my best friend.” He doesn’t care but we went to the school and just seeing the president we had these children in the way he could light them up and relate to them on that level and really impact their lives. It was amazing and I saw that throughout his presidency.

 

[00:16:38] Brad: Big lesson there. One thing we see with a lot of our advisors they do public speaking and there’s obviously somebody that markets people for living like yourself gets this is there definitely is a benefit to cranking up the kind of celebrity status, whether you’re in politics, whether you’re in financial services. But I think sometimes there are certain advisors we’ve got guys on radio, have guys on TV where if you crank it up too high, it’s almost like everybody’s stiff around you and actually scared to like connect with you and share their true thoughts. And one of the things we do a lot of coaching with is it’s great to crank the celebrity status up to get them to the event but once you get to the event, be a real human being. And, actually, we tell that George W. Bush story a bit as a way that’s a good representation of someone that’s been in the highest office, one the highest offices in the world and exactly how he related to real human beings on a daily basis. So, that’s cool to hear those.

 

All right. Let’s dive in here so I’m going to have a bunch of upset financial advisors if we don’t actually get into all the cool marketing stuff.

 

[00:17:45] Phillip: Let’s do it.

 

[00:17:46] Brad: All right. So, let’s just go ahead and let’s dive into you make the comparison at the beginning of the book of politics is very similar to business and let’s just have an open dialogue there and then let’s kind of riff on how actually how you’ve helped these unknown politicians on a shoestring budget, which financial advisors if there’s one thing they’re going to love you for if you say, “Here’s how to spend less money and be in front of people,” that’s going to resonate with them. So, how does politics apply to financial services if you’re trying to use digital media or other ways to grow your audience?

 

[00:18:23] Phillip: Yeah. This is a very important question and I think for your listeners, I really want them to pay attention. I am not here to tell you to run a Facebook campaign and I’m not here to say you need to get on digital and all that stuff. It is not the tip of the spear. What you need to have is a strategy and in politics, the strategy that we employ to market our own business, not our politicians, just our own business is almost exactly the way that you have to do it in the financial advisory sector and it is relational, it is reputational, and it is referral so those are the 3Rs. And if you can use that as the tip of the spear to market what you’re doing, it’s about relationships, it’s about your referrals, and it is about your reputation. And in politics, I cannot market my company on an advertising campaign. I’ve never received, I’ve never picked up one political clan in 22 years that I ran an ad for. It didn’t happen. It wouldn’t work.

 

Everything I do, all of my marketing is based on those 3Rs and if you think about it, that’s almost exactly the same thing as what a financial advisor would be, right? Now, do we use that? I use that as that is where we start from whenever we’re looking at how we market our business in politics, and then we build on that. And that’s why when you say the budgets aren’t as big is true because you’re not out there spending a ton of money to, you’re building something and you’re building it slowly and properly. I’ll give you a good metaphor. It’s kind of like in most politicians minus Trump start from that they run for a smaller office. Just like some financial advisors start from nothing, they started zero and they have to build something and over time it eventually grows. So, a politician could start running for office as a mayor or a dogcatcher or a city auditor and then they go, “Ooh, I’m going to run for higher office,” and they build their network, they build their reputation, they build their systems from that and they continue to grow.

 

[00:20:28] Phillip: And like when we sit down with financial advisement companies, these are the same things we talk about. And so, on the book, I’ll now talk about how we do it for politicians, but in the book when a political candidate decides to run for office, they have no money. It’s not like 9 out of 10 of them are not these self-funded multimillionaires going to drop $1 million or $2 million in to raise. They’re literally like a businessman who set it up with some regulation and they said, “They want to change the system.” And so, they started zero and they got to figure out how to raise money, raise capital, and they’ve got to start from zero and they hire us and we always look at this in a way, I’m going to use a buzzword, a generic stereotypical buzzer, but a fiduciary duty.

 

So, we have a fiduciary duty to look it up and I’ll just say let’s help you out of the gate when there is no money. Everything we do is about done. It is about testing messages at a low cost, not a big cost, and what we find in a lot of marketing companies in the corporate side is they’ll say, “Let’s just s**t right out the chute. Let’s spend $50,000 to $100,000 on your marketing campaign and let’s figure out what works,” and then after they spent all this money they go, “All right. Now, we know it works so let’s spend another $50,000, $100,000 on your marketing campaign.” And in politics, we just don’t know that. That’s just not how it works for us. What works is our candidate has $10,000 or $5,000 total and we have to figure out how to test messages and we try to find alignment with the voter and the politician. That is our whole focus. And so, just like you’re trying to find alignment with the way you communicate to a potential investor, right? And so, we’re trying to fund that on and so we have to do research first and understand our marketplace.

 

[00:22:21] Phillip: And then we test all these different messages, where, and find alignment and then we launch a campaign, a marketing campaign once the candidate actually has money. But we put all these things in place to make sure they succeed first. And once they succeed, then we can spend more money because we know what works and that’s sort of the process that we go through.

 

[00:22:40] Brad: So, it was interesting in your book because we’ve seen a big revolution this year. I mean, if I’m going to title one year of the year of kind of a digital revolution in financial services, it’s been 2018 so far. But going back to your background, it’s so interesting how our financial services background really mirrors a lot of what you all done because it’s been very direct mail-based over the last 10, 20 years for us.

 

[00:23:03] Phillip: Sure.

 

[00:23:05] Brad: Very traditional media, you know, radio ads, radio shows, TV, and what I took out of your book that’s perfect for our industry is you were talking about all the split testing your firm does when it goes to digital or Facebook ads and how literally for a handful of dollars you can say, “Hey, here’s this ad with this background and connect with us or apply here and test all the different buttons,” and I think that’s one thing that financial advisors are just starting to open their eyes to. Because in the past, it was like you’re saying, spend $10,000, $15,000 on a direct mail campaign, cross your fingers, I hope people show up at my event. And now with digital $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 very quickly you can start to split test, look at multiple ROIs, and say, “Okay. We’re reallocating funds over here.” So, you’ve seen that on the political side play out. How’s that been a game changer? What impact have you seen in the political industry? Because my guess is it applies to financial services.

 

[00:24:03] Phillip: Sure. So, you know, here’s the thing. Sure, the testing part is incredibly important, but there’s a step before that and marketing agencies forget the step because the step doesn’t make them money. And so, if your listeners out there they’re interested, here’s the step before that must happen. Who’s the audience you’re going to test? What does the data say? What does that person that you’re going to market to, what do they care about? What do they like? And so, that marketing agency has to turn that over to a data agency and that doesn’t make them money so they usually go, “Oh, no, no, no, we’ll just figure it out. We’ll just run some A/B testing.”

 

[00:24:42] Brad: We’ll just do the same campaign over the last five…

 

[00:24:43] Phillip: Right. And you need to know your audience like it’s just crazy like we would never ever, ever run an ad in politics that we did not do a poll on and when I say a poll, that doesn’t mean do you like this candidate or not like this candidate. Nine out of ten polls in politics you never even understand or see. You will never, never, ever see it. It’s not on news. It is a candidate that runs issue-based polling that understands what all the constituents in his district, his or her district, think of a particular issue that he or she may want to speak about. And so, we run multiple research report. We figure out what the voters care about. We take what the politician cares about and the voters care about, and we align those things together. So, if a politician is like, “I’m really, really, really supportive of the Paris Climate Accords and we run a poll and we find out that the voters aren’t, it’s not that I’m going to tell that candidate, “You’re not allowed to talk about this.” It’s, “Let’s focus on the things where you have alignment.”

 

I’m not trying to create deception. I’m trying to find alignment between the voter and the politician, just like the financial advisor is trying but they’re not going to be selling a certain type of product to a client that is not interested. That would be idiotic. Let’s find out what they care about, what they’re invested in before you run those ads and that’s where I come from in that picture.

 

[00:26:05] Brad: Let’s make a parallel there because the more I dig into your book, the more it parallels our industry so closely. So, you see the shift in politics right to left and it’s typically like how did the last candidate in office do and what was the public support for them and you see the swinging right and left in politics and how you have to navigate that. In financial services, what navigates a lot of that for us is the financial market’s in a bull run or a bear run. Because when it’s in a bear run, people don’t want to hear about how amazing the stock market return potential is. They want to hear about safety and how do I…

 

[00:26:42] Phillip: Even though that’s the greatest opportunity.

 

[00:26:44] Brad: Yes. It’s counterintuitive to what they should think but going back to knowing, it’s not what you know. It’s what your clients thinking or your prospects thinking, right?

 

[00:26:53] Phillip: That’s right.

 

[00:26:54] Brad: And so, I see it’s really interesting as you talk about, well, let’s run these poles and figure out where their interests lie. It’s a lot like, well, when you’re in a bear market, don’t talk about how amazing the upside potential of the stock market is and when you’re in a bull market, don’t talk about how much people need safety because it’s just not going to resonate with them even though that they very much should be.

 

[00:27:15] Phillip: Right. That you need to know and figure out what that is and what those people care about beforehand. We’ve done some work with some financial advisors. I’ll give you an example of something we’ve done. I’ll give you two things, and these are concrete ideas that people can take with them. And so, one is that they have a lot of potential clients coming in the door. They were doing a lot of pitches and so we said, “Oh, here’s an interesting take because you got to be a little careful on Facebook ads or whatever in the financial industry.” We decided that we would find out where all these potential clients work. You look in today as an advertiser. I mean, I can go and find out let’s say X businessman works in a building or his company is in that building and I can run ads on that building and nowhere else. So, it’s called geo-fencing. I can literally put a fence around the building where this person works. And we started running ads saying that we’re hiring ads for the financial advisory firm.

 

Now, that may sound weird but here’s the deal. All it is, is that status role. He pitched this client and all of a sudden, the client goes back to work and he’s seeing these ads and it’s from the company that just pitched him and these guys are hiring. So, something must be going right over there. You’re not saying, “Hey, I know you can’t talk about your success but you can talk about how successful you are by saying, ‘We’re hiring right now.’” And we were able to do that all around a particular city for this financial advisor and he was able to convert on that. And another way we did this was using, again, everything goes back to reputation, relationships, and referrals, and another we had the financial advisor started doing speaking series for his clients and so he would bring clients into dinner then he’d bring some like me or someone else and I would talk about the midterm elections and how it would affect the markets and then how they could so they could feel that the client felt that they were getting inside information.

 

[00:29:17] Phillip: They felt important. They’re being taken out to a nice dinner. They got to meet someone that comes from the world of politics, and that was unique and different, and relevant to them and all the sudden, that financial advisor who may not have converted all those people but some of them are clients, some of them are prospects, but they’re on a pedestal. They didn’t make the marketing. This is all marketing by the way. They didn’t make the marketing about themselves. See what I’m saying? They weren’t out there sending in a LinkedIn message saying, “Hey, thanks for connecting. Why don’t you hire me?” is we get all the time, right? They made it about the person speaking. They made it about the potential client or the client. And so, they made them feel special and good. They made them feel relevant and significant, and all of those things encouraged all those people at the table to invest more.

 

[00:30:04] Brad: Yeah. We’ve seen guys do the second one quite a bit. The first one is completely outside the box.

 

[00:30:09] Phillip: Well, there you go but like we do this in politics. So, we have let’s say there’s a tax issue going on and a particular company comes to us and says this tax issue affects us and affects our employees. We will run in what’s called an advocacy campaign. We all run ads around the US capital that targets those politicians about that particular issue, asking them to support it. And, look, I don’t care if you like lobbyists or don’t like lobbyists but everybody, for me, it’s all about target and it’s all about darts in a dartboard. I’m trying to throw as many darts into the bullseye as possible. So, my marketing efforts, they go straight to the source. They’re looking at these ads on the computer for let’s say a tax issue and then a lobbyist comes in and says, “Hey, I want to talk to you about this tax issue,” and then inevitably every politician and every staffer in these offices says, “Yeah, yeah, we’ve seen the ads.” Like it’s putting darts in the dartboard into the bullseye and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish.

 

[00:31:08] Brad: It’s like the principle when you buy a new car. All of a sudden you start noticing all those cars around you driving on the highway, right? So, you’re basically putting it right there, the front of their windshield so they can see it and so it’s just more top-of-mind awareness.

 

[00:31:22] Phillip: Totally. Yeah.

 

[00:31:24] Brad: So, let’s dive into I can’t get off this conversation without diving into Chapter 6 which I love because it’s so counterintuitive to all of the advice you typically hear. And so, Chapter 6 the title of it is go negative. It’s the opposite of take the high road.

 

[00:31:42] Phillip:  Totally.

 

[00:31:43] Brad: I’m not going to steal your thunder. Just let’s dive in and why did you give that advice?

 

[00:31:47] Phillip: Brad, have you seen a negative political ad in your life?

 

[00:31:52] Brad: No, never.

 

[00:31:56] Phillip: Okay. So, you’ve seen millions of them, right? Do you typically like them?

 

[00:32:02] Brad: You know what, it depends how well done they are. If it’s just blatant trashing then, you know, it’s not…

 

[00:32:09] Phillip: Yeah. Most people would answer no and I would tell you I don’t care because it works. That’s why we do them. We wouldn’t run negative ads in politics if it didn’t work. It absolutely works. It’s why we do it, right? What I am encouraged businesses to do is to think of ways not to club someone over the head like we do in political advertisement and negative advertisement but to figure out a way to draw comparisons against their competition, especially if they’re not number one in the marketplace. Let’s say you’re an underdog and I would imagine most financial advisors are not number one in their marketplace and if you’re an underdog in the marketplace, there is an opportunity to punch up in a way that offends no one, absolutely no one, makes you into the hero and you end up reaping all the rewards and I always say that you put together this strategy, you implement it successfully. In politics, when we run a negative ad, our opponents the timeline to respond back to us typically run between five and days and 14 days.

 

If they’ve gone 14 days, they’re pretty dead because that is a long like time to define the narrative, but 5 to 14 days in corporate, in the corporate world, it typically takes a company that has had a negative campaign run against him or comparative advertising campaign, it usually takes them 6 to 12 months and that 6 to 12 months the amount of market share you can gain is exponential. Now, you’re going to say, “How are we supposed to this within the financial advisor world?” It’s happened. It happened over the last four years in an unbelievable manner. Tony Robbins, who as you know, wrote a book called MONEY Master the Game and he savaged every financial advisor out there and told everybody to go to the fiduciary standard. And then I interviewed Peter Mallouk in the book who is the founder of Creative Planning and the person that Tony made a business partnership with.

 

[00:34:11] Phillip: And before that, you know, he started his company. He had about 100 million in investments and today it’s over 35 billion, all because they have this standard that they can go and knock everybody out and they ran basically a negative campaign like a negative ad campaign. No one was offended except the financial advisor world and why? Because they’re talking about putting the interest of the public ahead of themselves and that resonated and that expanded creative planning’s business portfolio, I mean, by a massive amount. We’ve also seen this. If you’re older, you can remember the Coke-Pepsi wars in the 80s. There was the Pepsi challenge. It was done where the people were drinking Pepsi and saying they chose it over Coke. Coke so overreacted to that moment that they created a new Coke which almost bankrupts the whole company so they didn’t know how to handle the strategy that was right against them.

 

The greatest example of this all time is Apple, is the Mac versus PC ad campaign that was run about 10 years ago. But today there is negative ad strategy campaigns going on all over the place, I mean, Wendy’s is doing this to McDonald’s now and Wendy’s about two years ago had about 750,000 Twitter followers. Now, it’s like close to 3 million and they are savaging McDonald’s on a daily basis. So, they’re savaging IHOP or now IHOB because they put out a tweet recently that said, somebody said, “Are you worried about IHOP changing their name to the International House of Burgers?” and they said, “Look, if you can’t get pancakes right, we’re not worried about you,” and that was their response on social media. No one’s offended by that but it totally defines the International House of Burgers now is some lower run thing that couldn’t even do pancakes right.

 

[00:36:06] Phillip: And the other one is really going on right now huge is T-Mobile versus Verizon and AT&T. The T-Mobile CEO, John Legere, is just going after AT&T and Verizon, and he’s doing it because they’re an underdog in the marketplace. He’s doing it because Verizon has horrible customer service so he’s attacking one of their vulnerabilities all the time in social media and then they’re promoting it, spending money on it. And what he’s doing is he’s creating a narrative that says, “If I want good customer service and I want to have a cell phone carrier that actually cares about what I think, I’m going to T-Mobile,” and he’s creating that narrative and he’s doing a really good job with it.

 

[00:36:45] Brad: As I read that chapter, I was like, “Wow.” I mean, I never thought of it that way, the way you framed it up with the go negative but, I mean, the Mac-PC it’s perfect because nobody like got upset at Mac because they did it in a tactful kind of a fun way, but it still has the same result, massively increase sales. I think you say in your book that Apple was the cool kids at the lunch table. You wanted to sit at their table, right? And…

 

[00:37:10] Phillip: What was… Yeah, go ahead.

 

[00:37:11] Brad: In financial services, our advisors do have a little bit of that underdog because they’re independent, they’re small business. Their boutique typically high in wealth management firms and they can kind of do the negative spin on we’re not the big shiny marble floor firm with eight levels of people in suits and ties that honestly who do they answer to. They answer to shareholders. Guess who we answer to.

 

[00:37:39] Phillip: Yeah. If you want that, go to it.

 

[00:37:43] Brad: Yeah. If you want your advisors to answer to shareholders and company profits and sell the most profitable products for the company, that’s great, but that’s not. So, it’s interesting how you can do a lot of that in our industry. Any thoughts from your side? If you’re a financial advisor out there, here’s the way I might approach that conversation or that marketing?

 

[00:38:02] Phillip: No, I think you nailed it. That’s when we asked it. I would have to dig it. You have to be careful with it, right? Some people can overplay their hand. In fact, I’ll tell you someone who’s overplaying their hand right now. American Airlines’ CEO is going a negative on Southwest and, in the meantime, he’s also making comments about how his customers deserve. If they’re going to pay a cheap flight, they deserve to be cramped and uncomfortable and he’s like, “Southwest, so what if you get to sit where you want to sit. Who cares?” Like he’s punching down. Not punching up. And I think you got to be really careful when you do that and so I would tell any financial advisor like you have to think there’s a strategy but you have to think that in creative language, you know how to do this in politics because I’ve been doing it for over 20 years. Trust me on this. I love taking a baseball bat and hitting someone over the head with it on a political ad. That’s just fine. But in business, you have to be more adept to what market says and you cannot offend anyone in the marketplace.

 

And so, well, you said it really well, Brad, I think it’s one of those things where you can subtly do it, mom and pop like relationship. I’m here for you. I’m your friend I’m on the phone. I can call you anytime, doing the little things and talking about how you do the little things to make sure they win before you do is what the baby wants. And again, I keep going back to this. If you’re a fiduciary, you have the greatest trick in your bag which is, “Look, you make money. I’m still making the same fees every time like it’s all about transparency for me and I’m an open book. You’re not going to see anything in here that’s hidden and for me, that’s the greatest argument you can make.

 

[00:39:47] Brad: So, there’s another example in that chapter that I like that I think still applies to our business. There is the political candidate that your firm represented that had like a shoestring budget. I think he was number six of six in his marketplace and you painted a really – you had not very much time, not very much money, and you had five other candidates that were above them and you painted them all into like one box. That strategy, that was what.

 

[00:40:13] Phillip: Well, that’s the thing like if you’re an independent financial advisor like this applies. So, yeah, we’re running a congressional race with a no-name candidate against five other candidates who all had name ID. People knew what they were. They had been in the community or they had run for office or they held office and they’re running for higher office and we had to think of creative ways to get our candidate out there and so we just decided, he was a self-funder by the way. So, I talk in the book about how you slow roll these things but this guy had a little bit of money so I said, “Well, you got the money. Let’s go make a splash,” because knowing those who you are, you can lose. And by the time the other candidates start spending money, your message is going to go drown out. So, let’s go put our money into a time period that no one else is talking. Then, instead of picking off one candidate at a time, that would be too expensive, and it would bring the negative perception of that particular candidate, it would bring that up to a higher level. So, I said, “Well, why don’t we just make it one versus two?”

 

So, we just lump all five together calling them gang of five, found one issue that they were all bad on, and we started running campaign ads on radio and TV and all over digital media. In the digital side, we were able to target only voters. So, if you are a registered voter in this particular congressional district, you never saw or have to. It was 100% efficiency. We just started doing the gang of five, the gang of five. Every ad is the gang of five. And no one took a poll in the race except us and we looked and the numbers kept coming up and we’re like, “Ooh, this is working,” but no one was countering us. They all laughed this guy off because he was this no-name guy.  What does he know? They literally laughed us off the stage at debates and they called us names and they said we were fools. And then one of them decided to run a poll about four weeks before the election and found out we were winning the whole thing. And so, that was my point was that you always got to figure out creative ways in order to group the bigger, if you’re the underdog in the market, to group those 10 people together and make yourself stand out.

 

[00:42:18] Brad: Which apply so much to financial services, the independent guy against all the big Wall Street firms, big banks out there that oftentimes they run into.

 

[00:42:28] Phillip: I mean, look at what happened in 2008. I would use that against if I was an independent financial advisor. You can use all of the stories in 2008. We haven’t had a correction in a long time. A correction will come at some point. “Who do you want at that point in time when there is a correction, who do you want in your corner? Do you want the people that may go bankrupt, that won’t return your phone call? Or do you want a financial advisor that’s in your corner that’s going to find you opportunity.” It’s all how you sell it.

 

[00:42:58] Brad: So, we’re actually going to backtrack in the book now so I’m just mounting all over the place. I know a guy that’s been on these many interviews as you can roll with it.

 

[00:43:06] Phillip: Sound good.

 

[00:43:06] Brad: You had a personal experience with the super rare disease that actually I won’t say it’s what kicked you off into what you did, but it mirrors the whole traditional to digital marketing and you kind of make a comparison in the book. Can you share that and a little bit of personal experience that you went through and kind of how that changed some mindset stuff for you?

 

[00:43:26] Phillip: Yeah. I mean, I was diagnosed with a rare esophageal disease in 2012. It is incurable. Basically, the muscles and the nerves in my esophagus don’t work. They’re dead. They’ll never work the rest of my life and it’s probably developed from an autoimmune disease which means that some of the foods I eat are unhealthy and then maybe I think they’re healthy. And for the first four to five years of that disease, I had three major surgeries on my esophagus, three minor procedures. The three major surgeries, two of them failed. The last one, they literally sliced me five different ways into my stomach that hold my esophagus straight. They cut 25% of my stomach out. They wrapped it around my esophagus. They stapled it all together and one day that stapling will come undone and when it does, I may be able to do the surgery one more time, but probably not. And if it’s not, then they will remove my esophagus and they told me I’ll be on a feeding tube the rest of my life.

 

I’m 44 right now. I was diagnosed six years ago so I was 38. The people that get this disease are typically in their 60s, 70s, and 80s so it’s really rare that I have it. And so, for the first five years of the disease, I literally put my head in the sand. I didn’t want to face a massive disruption that was coming into my life and I didn’t want to, I just did what the doctor said. They said, “Here’s some medicine.” The medicine they gave me has long-term dementia effects but they said in the short run, it will help me. They said, “Look, you’re going to have your esophagus removed. That’s just life. Get over it.” They didn’t say about being healthy or how about changing your diet, how about doing all these things that preserve your esophagus or whatever it is like they didn’t do this and I’m being treated at the Mayo Clinic. This is not a local hospital. This is the Mayo Clinic.

 

[00:45:24] Phillip: I say this is that when I met with them two years ago that basically the guy patted me on the back and said, “Your disease is what it is. Take your medicine and we’ll see in six months,” and I said no more at that moment. I just got fed up and I started trying to research. I mean, I had spent five years, I have not even researched the dang disease. And so, I started researching the disease and I got my health in order. Within a few months, I eliminated…

 

[00:45:53] Brad:  I’m just curious. Why was that?

 

[00:45:57] Phillip: Why was what?

 

[00:45:58] Brad: Why had you not researched? Was it just because you’re running to fear?

 

[00:46:02] Phillip: Fear. I was overcome by fear and within six months I eliminated all my medications. I didn’t have to take them anymore and I went to, about six months after, I was in that doctor’s office and I got my diet in order. I went to the Abundance 360 conference by Peter Diamandis in Los Angeles. And he gets on stage, Brad, and he says, “I want everybody to pull out their notebooks and I want you to write down a moonshot, something people say is impossible and I want you to write down how you’re going to make it possible.” And at this conference, thinking I’m going to grow my marketing company and it hits me right there and I wrote down in that notebook, “I will find a cure to this disease in five years.” This is in January 2017. I had no idea how. No clue. I was a fool. And so, then he says, “Write down three things you’ll do immediately and because you need to get some momentum behind it.”

 

And so, in that moment, I really decided I had to change and I had to figure this thing out and I wrote an article. I was able through some contacts to get it placed in Inc Magazine and basically, it was the most, I laid it all out there because I had to be accountable. If I was going to make this moonshot, first, I had to do is be accountable for myself. And through this crazy route since that article came out, I am about to start a one-man clinical trial, the first one ever, it’s not even been done on animals but they literally would extract stem cells out of my calf. They will culture and grow them and then they will insert them into my esophagus to try to regenerate muscles and nerves. There is no hope of either success or failure. They don’t know, have any idea. But the fact is that I just decided I was going to disrupt. I was going to be the disruptor or I was going to be disrupted.

 

[00:47:59] Phillip: And part of the reason I wrote the book, I think really the big motivation on the book was I kept seeing business owners that have their head in the sand like I had my head in the sand. They know the world has changed. They know that we are in the most disruptive time in human history, Brad. I mean, people just don’t realize this. I mean, go out to Silicon Valley. Every industry including the financial services industry is being disrupted. It will all change in the next 10 years and if you’re not innovating and you’re not understanding that and you’re not planning for it, you will be gone and you’ll be dead in your business. I promise you that. And what I kept saying was business owners that kept saying this and going, “I know I have to change, but I’m afraid, and I have fear,” and the same way that I saw this in my own disease and something has got to buck them out of that and I thought, “Well, I understand that. I empathize with that position because I did it with my own health for so long. And the moment I decided to change, I have an opportunity now.” And by the way, if that opportunity fails, if the clinical trial fails then I’m going to plan B.

 

I have a plan B. It’s 3D printing appendages so like one day I know that they literally will 3D print an esophagus. I can have it remove them and I’ll just replace it and it’ll work again, and that’s my plan B. And so, if plan B is in effect, I have to keep this esophagus for as long as I can and I need to have a good diet, and I need to be careful but my point is, is that I did something about it after five years of complete and utter fear. And I really wanted to write the book to help business owners understand that they’ve got to take their head out of the sand to win at the game of marketing and win at the game became because the world is being disrupted right now like we’ve never seen it. I mean, I can throw some things at you that would scare the hell out of everybody on this podcast.

 

[00:49:45] Brad: Hey, throw them out there, man.

 

[00:49:46] Phillip: All right. So, like we talk about, I’ll tell you about autonomous cars. It’s not about autonomous cars. We know that’s coming. My five-year-old daughter will never drive a car 100%. It is the fact that when we have autonomous cars then we have a 99% safety rate on those cars, what is going to happen to the car insurance industry? What is going to happen to governments that can’t collect parking tickets and speeding tickets anymore? What is going to happen to lawyers who sue for accidents? What is going to happen to organ donors or people that are on organ donor lists when there are no more accidents, car accidents? We have 35,000 deaths of car accidents in 2015 the last time the statistics were out. Most of those people donated organs and saved lives. What happens to people on the organ donor list? Are they going to die? Is there another plan out there? When we look at the agriculture industry, 19% of greenhouse gases right now, 19% come from land animals. So, Silicon Valley is disrupting that.

 

If they’re taking the cells of cows for instance and they’re 3D printing steaks, I mean, you can look at this on YouTube like literally their restaurants they can 3D print a steak that tastes exactly like the steak. It is a steak. It comes from the cells of cows and it’s being 3D printed right now. So, what happens when we lose 19% of land animals or let’s say 15%? I don’t think we’ll lose everything. We cut greenhouse gases. Great. But what happens to farmers? What happens to that farmland? What happens to grocery stores? What happens to the food chain? I don’t know. There are so many crazy things. The real estate market is being totally disrupted right now because people are saying, “Hold on, I’m going to pay a real estate agent 6% or 3% here, 3% there, and it’s going to take me six weeks to get a loan? I have a friend of mine, one of the PayPal founders, that is literally cutting that down to five days right now with the hopes that it will be cut down to a couple of hours to get approval for a loan and you paid a flat fee instead of a percentage commission.

 

[00:51:50] Phillip: I’ve just given you three. There are thousands upon thousands of these that are going to happen in the next 10 to 15 years. As a financial advisor, you know that they are disrupted. They’re using data models and saying don’t trust a human being, trust the data, trust the robots. They’re going to be able to look at the data that don’t worry about the people. We’re going to have a better investment system. I don’t know if that model works or not but I’m telling you that it’s going to be pushed a lot heavily over the next couple of years.

 

[00:52:19] Brad: I think you have a great example in your book. You unpack the story of Blockbuster and Netflix.

 

[00:52:26] Phillip: Sure.

 

[00:52:26] Brad: And today’s financial services world is Blockbuster. It’s brick-and-mortar. It showed up at my office on the corner and it’s interesting. I was just having a conversation with James Clear who was on the last episode and he just talked about technology and disruption, but at any friction point in your process, technologies making it where now you can just remove it and the person that removes it first gets market share and you look at the friction in financial services, paperwork, driving across town in really horrible traffic to come see the office and I think the Netflix model eventually will come to financial services. It’ll be conversations like this. Like, right now, Phillip, you and I are having a conversation. You’re drinking either tea or coffee and I feel like we’re sitting right across the table from each other. Why are financial advisors not here yet?

 

[00:53:18] Phillip: Sure. I totally agree and you have to look at that and then you have to look at how you’re marketing and go, “Am I selling myself as being part of this disruption or am I sitting back and being disrupted?” and that is the question that a financial advisor has to ask themselves right now.

 

[00:53:34] Brad: Yeah. Are there any lessons which side note, it was cool to read the Blockbuster Netflix story in your book, have you by chance caught the Business Wars, the whole season on Blockbusters?

 

[00:53:46] Phillip: So, I had to go meet with some clients in New Orleans so I live five hours from New Orleans and I listened to that on Monday. How crazy is that?

 

[00:53:55] Brad: Well, it’s such a well-done season.

 

[00:53:58] Phillip: It is incredible. Now, I’m about to start the PayPal versus eBay.

 

[00:54:04] Brad: Yeah. I haven’t done that one lately. You know what makes it really good? You know the part in the Blockbuster versus Netflix where it was the Reid Hoffman (Reed Hastings) going to knock on the door of it was the CEO Blockbuster.

 

[00:54:16] Phillip: Yeah. I talked about in the book.

 

[00:54:18] Brad: Yeah. But basically, they did it so well they had like rain in the background and like thunder.

 

[00:54:24] Phillip: The fire was crackling.

 

[00:54:25] Brad: I’m like this is like I feel like I’m in the room with them so it’s really well done. I’m going to have to start out.

 

[00:54:30] Phillip: Yeah. Go and take your listeners. Go and listen to it. It’s like eight episodes at 30 minutes each and it is utterly fascinating. From what I – you know this. You probably felt the same thing. You listened to this particular podcast and I think that is, again, you’re one of the million people doing podcasts right now, Brad. That is an outlier podcast right there.

 

[00:54:51] Brad: It is.

 

[00:54:52] Phillip: And that is what is going to shoot to the top. So, if you’re thinking about even if you’re trying to book them an influencer in the financial industry, a financial advisor industry like you got to figure out how you’re relevant and unique in the marketplace and that’s how your company’s marketing should be as well.

 

[00:55:09] Brad: Yeah. So, let’s speak to that. It’s a really, really good point. In fact, I’ve experienced some of that with my own podcast. I was given very good advice very early on. Obviously, I’ve basically grown up in financial services and this was originally an experiment. It was how do I put out awesome content that can serve my clients but guess what, financial advisors don’t just sit down at a set time. They’re busy, especially the really successful ones, and they have appointments. So, the podcast was a way to translate that to them to where they could consume the content on their own time, but the best advice I got was don’t make it generic. Go straight at your niche. Don’t do just one of 7 million entrepreneurial podcasts out there.

 

[00:55:50] Phillip: I think I’m one of them.

 

[00:55:53] Brad: Yeah. But you’re on a really big entrepreneurial podcast so at least you’re at the top tier but that was really good advice because now, I mean, even today as much as podcast has grown over the last two-and-a-half years I’ve done this, you type in financial advisor and my top five, top six out there. So, going to all of the marketing experience you have, obviously, you’re kind of developing these niches in politics. But if we took that financial services, what are some maybe strategies you could say, “If I’m just a financial advisor, one of thousands out there,” how would I start to define my niche and attack my niche from a marketing perspective?

 

[00:56:29] Phillip: I go back to the 3Rs. I think that’s where you start. You got to figure out your marketing from a referral reputation standpoint and a relationship standpoint, and then I would build it out from there. Look, Cody Foster taught me, I think you guys call it the PPI program. You still have it?

 

[00:56:50] Brad: We do.

 

[00:56:50] Phillip: All right. So, what is PPI stand for? I forgot.

 

[00:56:54] Brad: Powerful Personalized Impact.

 

[00:56:56] Phillip: Right. So, at my company, we totally stole this and it’s the Big Personal Impact and what we ended up doing and this sounds like it’s not a digital marketing strategy. It’s not. It’s about how to grow your business and it is a marketing strategy so we took that because we’re Go Big Media and Win BIG Media. So, we’re Big Personal Impact called BPI program and what we ended up doing was we find out things about every one of the employees at my companies, if they do something above and beyond, we don’t reward them in a generic fashion. We find something that’s meaningful to them and we deliver on it. We find out what they care about and we deliver on the things that they care about and we really created sort of an employee wheel. So, we understand important people in their lives, important dates in their lives, things that drive them, motivate them, and it’s not to like try to hit data on them.

 

It’s to try to serve them in a way that they go, “My God, these people really care about us,” because we do this while we do it and that’s why Cody when he gave me sort of a plan of this, I thought I get this. This is how I’m wired. I want to deliver these things to the people that work for me. And then we said, “Let’s take it a step further. Let’s figure the same strategy that we employ or we get to our employees and let’s do it with our clients.” So, this is how it applies to what you’re asking. We now have a BPI program for our clients. We figure out let’s say on a political campaign or corporate campaign, the three to five people we deal with. It could be the marketing director, it could be the CEO, it could be whoever, and then we do the same thing. We create sort of this wheel and it’s like, “What do they care about? What are the important dates in their lives? Who are the important people in their lives? When they have a baby?” And I know this sound like one example is a client had a baby and we sent them a monogrammed blanket. We could send them flowers like everybody does. We sent them a monogrammed blanket.

 

[00:58:57] Phillip: I did send flowers. One of my employees his grandparents were sick and in the hospital and we sent them a $500 bouquet of flowers, the grandparents, but on the card, we wrote on the card, “Hope you get better. This is from this employee’s firm. We just want you to know that this employee,” we put the name obviously, “but it means the world to us. You should be so proud of all of the things he’s doing to help your country and help other people and he’s a good person,” and that employee came to us crying because it meant so much that we bragged him to his grandparents. If you as a financial advisor understood the lives of your clients like that, you would be unstoppable and I will tell you this is not, I’m not trying to blow smoke up anybody’s behind but, Brad, that came from Cody and we took it and said, “How can we deliver that at a level that no one’s ever seen before?”

 

And it’s why the company that I have we doubled every single year we’ve been in business because that is the culture that we have. And now for the book, we kind of decided how do we employ the same strategy to people that aren’t even our clients? And so, we developed that. It was not – I’m not getting into that because it’s self-serving.

 

[01:00:14] Brad: Uh-oh. This is the secret black belt ninja stuff that went public?

 

[01:00:18] Phillip: No. I mean, I just don’t want to be like I want to serve but that is we try to provide even I cannot tell you, we probably spent 500 hours at our company on people that never hired us in order to help them and guide them and help them do process. It’s really what the book’s about and so for us, it’s sort of this three-part effect. It’s employees team, it’s the employee team, it’s the client team, it’s the people that are out there that we just want to help, and that is a great way to live life I think. I feel fulfilled. I feel purpose-driven but it is the greatest marketing strategy I’ve ever employed in anything I’ve ever done as well.

 

[01:00:59] Brad: Cool. Thanks for sharing that. One thing that I found and we’ve done versions of that in Advisors Excel for a long time and I find it makes like it’s cool that you started with your employees first so they could feel what it felt like and then you branched out outside to your potential clients or existing clients. I find that it makes your whole staff super active listeners because if you’re on the phone and we did this with one of my clients and it depends on what city you’re on if you can pull this off, but the assistant called in and you could tell she had a head cold like she was all stuffed up and everything. And so, Sean on my team like mentioned it and I’m like we’re sending her a chicken noodle soup. So, we found a food delivery service and literally at lunch, like knocked on her office door and hand-delivered one chicken noodle soup. $5 plus probably a $5 delivery fee.

 

But I mean we could’ve sent her like 10 times more expensive gift and it wouldn’t have the impact. It was like, “We heard that you’re suffering. We empathize with that. Here, hope you feel better,” with a little note from the team and it’s amazing when you’ve trained your staff and you have a culture like that.

 

[01:02:11] Phillip: Totally agree.

 

[01:02:12] Brad: Oh my gosh, it doesn’t cost very much money and it’s so much impact. So, any other like cool stories or fun stories either staff or clients where you pull that off with?

 

[01:02:22] Phillip: I’m trying to think what else we’ve done. Man, we’ve done a lot. Here’s one. It’s good. Again, this is all tactical, but I think people can probably apply this. So, at the end of the year, if you’re sending out a generic card to clients, you’re doing it totally wrong and it’s a two-parter. One is something we didn’t want to do something another company did. So, the one we did was at the end of each year for Christmas presents, we go to every single client and we find, again, those first three to five impactful people with that client that we work with and we go to them and we go, you know, let’s just say they’re in Omaha, Nebraska, and we said, “You know what, I have a friend named Tony. He’s going to be in Omaha in the next couple days. What’s your favorite restaurant? I want to send them there,” and they give us their favorite restaurant and we call the restaurant and we get a $250 gift card and we have the gift card mailed to our office and then we handwrite a thank you note for allowing us to work with them and how much they mean to us and then we send them a gift card of their favorite restaurant.

 

It’s a little hack that we do but every single Christmas the comments are like, “That’s the greatest present I’ve ever gotten,” like it is just a home run every single time. The other one and this is, again, it goes back to the thank you note, but it’s a strategy. There’s a clothing designer named Billy Reed and he’s out of New York and he’s a small but well-known clothing attire. He makes men’s clothes and women’s clothes and my wife loves his clothes. Loves them. And he’s got brick-and-mortar stores in New Orleans and New York and LA and DC. It’s just all over the place. And so, any time we’re in any of these cities where there’s a Billy Reed store, you better believe we’re going over there to check it out, check out some stuff. So, she got a gift card for Christmas for my mom and she bought a bunch of clothes with the gift card.

 

[01:04:20] Phillip: And when they sent the clothing, there was a handwritten note in the box that said like, “It meant so much to us that you bought all these clothes.” I mean, it was like $500 worth of clothes. They won’t make it those that much and we know women’s clothing is not cheap.

 

[01:04:37] Brad: It’s like two pieces.

 

[01:04:38] Phillip: Right. But she loved it more. Anyway, but it was this handwritten note about how much it meant to them that she spent, that she bought these clothes and how they were made and all this stuff and she literally looked at him and said, “I’ll be a customer for life now,” and I think from the financial services industry, people just want to trust. They want to trust their money to say, “It’s going to grow,” and part of that is figuring out ways in your marketing that builds trust and build status and build relationships and reputation, and the ability to refer other people because they trust you so much that these people are going to refer these people. And so, my thing is this, try to be personal, try to understand how they feel, not how you feel, and have a strategy. As difficult as this may be to literally have a personal connection with every one of your clients or for your team to have personal connections with every one of your clients and have that as the tip of the spear for your marketing campaign. And then use the digital mechanisms as a branding mech, you know, as a way to brand and reinforce your message. That’s what it’s really all about.

 

[01:05:52] Brad: Well, what I like about you took the BPI idea. You just even said right there, you had a wheel with different questions on it so you systematize that for your office so this isn’t always Phillip like taken down notes on clients. It’s your whole staff because you created a fairly simplistic system where they could run with it.

 

[01:06:11] Phillip: Right. The hardest thing we ever had to do, Brad, was we hired a culture director at our office. When I hire that person, I knew how important it was because I knew this BPI program is important, but it’s hard to hire someone that’s not going to be bringing in business and financial advisors probably get those like, “Hold on. We have six people in here. All of them are trying to bring in clients and now I’m going to spend a significant amount of my budget to hire a culture director?” It’s the greatest hire ever we’ve made. That our culture director is the heart of our company and it’s just so important. I just wish people understood how much that impacts people’s lives and how because of that, people want to buy, people want to stay with you, and it’s just the smartest strategy you can employ. Those types of things.

 

[01:06:59] Brad: My guess is if you rewind and look at however much that cost your company, I’m guessing the ROI is there today. Would you say that’s fair?

 

[01:07:07] Phillip: It was there on day 2 actually, but I believe in that. I think you got to believe that have leadership that believes in what they’re doing. This is not a transactional thing and the leadership is like, “Yeah. Let’s just do that. That’ll bring us in business,” like you’re doing it wrong.

 

[01:07:23] Brad: Well, my friend. Are we ready to wrap here and maybe throw a couple philosophical questions at you and let you get on the rest of your Friday?

 

[01:07:30] Phillip: I’m in. Let’s roll.

 

[01:07:31] Brad: All right. Cool. I got to switch it up with you. You’re good on your feet so we got to throw some good ones at you. Let’s go with if you could go back, so you’re straight out of college, you got into the political side for the most part?

 

[01:07:44] Phillip: I did.

 

[01:07:45] Brad: So, that was you said ’96?

 

[01:07:47] Phillip: Yeah.

 

[01:07:48] Brad: Okay. So, you’re 18 or 19 so out of college so young 20s, right?

 

[01:07:52] Phillip: All right. So, your young 20 self just graduated from Alabama and you’re like, “Phillip, hey, here’s the deal. Here’s 44-year-old Phillip. Here’s a little bit of advice that’s going to save you some trouble or get you where you want to go faster,” what would you tell yourself?

 

[01:08:07] Phillip: Be vulnerable, practice empathy, and listen.

 

[01:08:10] Brad: That’s simple, dude. It’s so good.

 

[01:08:13] Phillip: Yup. It took me until 40 years old and having a rare disease to learn all of those things and if you gave me the opportunity back, if I could go back to 2012 and getting the opportunity to not have an incurable disease, I would still take the disease every time because it changed my life. It made me – I was heading – I’ll be vulnerable right here. I was heading for a divorce probably, I was a crappy dad, and I was a terrible business leader and the disease changed my life. It saved my life in a way and now I learned presence too. I think that’s probably another one I’d say, presence, because we live in a digital age where phones are in front of their face and I’m a digital marketer but I put my phone down and I give presence in.

 

I’m grateful for the team around me, my wife, my little girl, my family that were there to kick me around when I was acting poorly. I wasn’t like cheating or anything. I was just crappy. I was selfish and all of those things that I just said or things that I lacked for a long time, and they all held me back. All of them held me back and I wasn’t a very happier purpose-driven person at that time. So, those are the most important.

 

[01:09:37] Brad: What was it about the disease? Was it just, “Wow. I’m not invincible anymore?” What was it about the disease that just like flipped that switch for you?

 

[01:09:47] Phillip: I guess you realize your mortality. At the time I was 38. I’m 44 now. I feel like you’re on a roller coaster in your life and the first half of your life you’re going up the hill and all of a sudden, you hit the top and then you start going down and I think I probably hit that a little earlier. Listen, this sounds, I hope this doesn’t come out sexist. I just know this with a lot of men in my career but there were a lot of men that I’ve been around that in their late 30s or late 40s they come to this, “Oh my God, is this all there is? like I’m stuck like I am not growing anymore, like there’s not this massive potential. I have what I have. This is it,” and the disease hit me in the face probably sooner and it made me realize that I wanted more and that I had stalled in growth of my life whether it be in my marriage, my fatherhood, or my business, I had stalled. I literally stalled, and I wasn’t happy and the disease said, “Well, you may not have much time,” so why don’t you live to the fullest?”

 

And that sort of reverse engineered everything I’ve done and I had to rewire my brain to be a different person and that’s hard work and it really sucked at times and it never stops. I still have frustrating moments even this week, but I’m always trying to grow a little bit more and be better at what I’m doing, whether it’s dad, whether it’s husband, or whether it’s with work, or whether it’s with my disease like I just had to figure out that growth was the number one attribute that drove my life and if I wasn’t growing, I wasn’t going to be happy and once I applied that, everything in my life had changed.

 

[01:11:23] Brad: Well, and I’ll tell you what’s pretty inspiring from my side is seeing the fact that just going back to you said, “Hey, I’m going to give it my all and try and beat this incurable disease. And guess what? I’ll be everybody else’s guinea pig.”

 

[01:11:36] Phillip: Yeah.

 

[01:11:37] Brad: That takes a lot of courage to do that. So, that’s inspiring, man.

 

[01:11:41] Phillip: Oh, thank you.

 

[01:11:42] Brad: So, dude, you’re going to like make me like tear up and lose it on this thing. I’d better be careful. I’ve got to be careful about the questions I ask here.

 

[01:11:50] Phillip: I know.

 

[01:11:51] Brad: But we’re talking about how that changed your outlook on the future so I think this is a natural next question. What is something you would like to be considered absurd 25 years from now? Or put differently, you look back 25 years and say, “That was silly they used to do that.” But 25 years you look back necessarily…

 

[01:12:09] Phillip: I mean, we talked about it already. It’s easy. It’s driving a car. We will be looked as barbarians 100 years from now for driving cars and putting all our lives in jeopardy. When literally there are no more traffic accidents. There will be no more stop signs in 10 years. There will be no more traffic lights in 10 years because these cars will sense each other from miles away and will slow down. They’ll speed up based on the cars that are coming. We’ll just move fluidly. There will be no more stop lights, no more stop signs, and we will be looked at as barbarians forever driving the car that we could literally steer into another car and have an accident.

 

[01:12:45] Brad: Yeah. Which is great for our kids.

 

[01:12:47] Phillip: Yeah. It’s totally great.

 

[01:12:48] Brad: I definitely want them to live in that world, that’s for sure. All right. I don’t want to take your whole Friday afternoon. I know we’re right here at the end so we’ll close with this last question. What is the one piece of advice you could give the audience here today that’s led to your success to this point?

 

[01:13:03] Phillip: I probably could go back to the previous question, but I really think when I practiced empathy and I put myself in other people’s shoes whether it was an employee’s shoes instead of, you know, let me take a step back on that one. I grew up in the business world being dictated to and told and being put in a box and told I couldn’t do something, I could do something, and I was micromanaged, and I hated it and this is why I’m an entrepreneur because I just couldn’t take the fact that these people are trying to tell me how to do something that I knew I could do better. And then I started a company and I had all these employees and I started and I modeled the exact same thing here because it’s all I knew and I was a really, really crappy boss and that did not change until, I mean, gradually it’s changed.

 

They’re not overnight but about a year-and-a-half, two years ago, I had two of my culture director came to me and said, by the way, I’m the owner of the company and they said, “Two employees came and said that you were mean to them,” and I said, “Well, what do you mean?” and they said, “Well, they made this big mistake on a project and you were mean to them and they’re reporting you to me.” Oh my God, this is the employees. They’re millennials.

 

[01:14:19] Brad: Okay. So, basically, your culture director’s kind of that’s also playing HR as well. They’re reporting you to HR, essentially?

 

[01:14:25] Phillip: Yeah, because I barked at them over a mistake they made and they’re millennials and my first instinct, Brad, was I wanted to just tear through like I was like, “Oh, it’s game on,” and then I realized I took a step back and said, “Hold on. Why did they feel that way? What’s going on?” and what I realized was that I was modeling the behaviors that I hated and that allowed me to work at a level that wasn’t very efficient. When I was a young pup in this business and people were jerks to me, I didn’t want to work for that person. Did they get the best out of me or did they get the worst out of me? I’d say it’s sometimes most time they probably got the worst out of me. And so, I said, “I am the problem. This millennial that everybody bags on all the time actually is right. I’m the wrong one.” And so, I took each one out to coffee and I just said, “Tell me how you feel,” and they laid it out.

 

And I said, “You’re right,” and I had the choice of either and this is one of the things we’ve done in our cultures, we manage to the person. I do not manage. They don’t abide by my edict. I managed to them. Everybody likes to be managed differently. Everybody can be more successful in different ways. Some people are motivated by money. Some people I can bark at and they’re never offended. Some people I bark at, and they literally will stop working for a week because it’s too much stress on them. It is my responsibility as a leader of the company to understand each one of those employees and get the best of them and if they ever want to leave my company, that’s my responsibility and they always, anybody can leave this company that I run. If they have free reign, I’ll never be mad at them, ever, ever, because if I’m not leading the right way then they have every right to go somewhere else.

 

[01:16:17] Phillip: And so, for me, to go back to that is try to understand who the people working for you are and let’s say you believe that if you managed the way they like to be managed, you could get an 80% efficiency right out of them instead of a 50%. Isn’t that better for your business? Isn’t that just better as a human being? So, I would say try to understand how other people feel. When I understood that, when that clicked for me, Brad, it also clicked for me that my marketing campaigns are about the customer, not the client. So, I care about what the client, the customer feels about that product or service. Just like with the politician, I care about what the voters think and then I help that politician and that was a significant, significant change for me that I had to learn the hard way. I feel like I always learn the hard way, but it definitely helped grow and make it more successful and build stronger relationships with the people I care about.

 

[01:17:15] Brad: That’s such good advice for this audience because it’s tough to run a small business. I mean, that’s the bottom line. You’re pulling a lot of different directions and one thing that I take from that, one of my favorite quotes is between stimulus and response space and in that space lies all your opportunity and growth. And the self-awareness that took, which probably the younger Phillip didn’t have, that would’ve just barged straight into their office or where they were sitting, you like sat back for a second like look outside yourself and you’re like, “Hm, maybe I should approach this differently.” So, that’s really cool to hear and very much needed in our industry. One quick question. How do you, you say you managed the employee, do you have like a way that you figure out how they need to be managed or certain questions they asked them to do that?

 

[01:18:04] Phillip: Yeah. I mean, we spend a lot of time understanding that we ask him, “How are you motivated? Are you motivated by money?” Some of them, we have culture and we have perks. Those are two different things to those listening out there like perks are totally different but we offer a lot of good perks and one of them is I think it’s two weeks a year they can work anywhere in the world they want in addition to their vacation. We have employees, that that’s a big deal. They want to go sit on a beach with their laptops and work and as long as they get their job done, that’s fine. Why do I care? Like that motivates them. That’s how they want to work. We have employees that say, “Look, our office is a big open space. It’s 3,200 square feet of open space,” and they go, “I love it, but there are times that I need to think and be quiet. I like to work from home two days a week.” Fine by me. Does the job get done? It does then why would I deny that to somebody? So, we ask them, how do you want to be managed? What is going to break the best out of you? And then we try to deliver on that.

 

[01:19:02] Brad: That’s great. Phillip, well, thank you. This has been awesome, man. I mean, this our first like extended conversation, but I feel like we’re like old friends at this point.

 

[01:19:11] Phillip: Yeah, man. I’d love to catch up some other time.

 

[01:19:14] Brad: Hey, well, everybody’s always wondering where Topeka, Kansas so you roll through, you let me know. We’ll post you at my house. The door is open.

 

[01:19:21] Phillip: Well, that’s good. Bring some of your clients over. We’ll talk about the midterm elections.

 

[01:19:26] Brad: Okay. Sounds good. All right. Phillip, I appreciate it. Awesome content. The advisors out there are going to love this, and grow from it, and get better so thank you so much. And until next time.

 

[CLOSING]

 

[01:19:42] Brad: Thanks for checking out the latest show. On to this week’s featured reviews. This week’s first review comes to us from user Mysocialis who says, “Five stars. Best holistic podcast out there. Actionable information in every episode pertaining to all areas of your life. The wide variety of guests helps advisors not only improve their business but improve their lives, their family’s life, and their clients’ lives. If you want to grow not only as an advisor but as a person, listen to every episode like I have.” Wow. Thanks for sharing those kind words and if there’s one thing that’s become very clear to me over the last decade of conversation with advisors regardless of where they’re from or how much revenue they drive it’s that if all the focus is on the business and the money and the bank account, you’ll never be truly happy or fulfilled. And it’s building a great team and great systems that allow your business to truly serve you and in turn your clients the highest level. That’s what it’s all about and if I can be a small part of helping the industry have better balance, less divorces, more family dinners, that’s something I can definitely get behind. So, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and the review. More great guests on the way.

 

The next review comes to us from user Wanda_B who says, “Five stars. Full of valuable and practical tips to help you thrive as an advisor. In listening to just one episode, I became a raving fan. Brad has fantastic guests that deliver insight to help you thrive in your life and career. So much goodness. I am excited to go back to listen to past conversations. I recommend listening here and watching on YouTube to gain the unfair advantage of what I call ‘behind closed door mentorship.’” Thanks for your thoughts, Wanda, and the review. Even better, thank you for checking out the website and sharing your story so we could connect in person. You’re truly inspiring. I hope the transition from 25 years of serving our country in the military into the next phase of your life as a financial advisor is treating you well. I love the energy you shared during our conversation and I can tell that’s going to translate incredibly well into our space as well so thanks for listening in.

 

[01:21:43] Brad: Next up is Kyle Greenwell who says, “Five stars. Highly recommend. Brad brings industry thought leaders to the table and allows fellow advisors to gain access on best practices on better serving clients. One of the best podcasts he’s done in my opinion was his conversation he had with Daniel Crosby surrounding behavioral finance, which is often overlooked by clients and advisors alike.” Thanks for listening in, Kyle, and for the five-star review. I have some good news for you as I already have another episode in the works with Daniel who absolutely rocked out as you said on his last episode so we’ll get that one out soon. Stay tuned. And I appreciate the kind words and more great thought leaders are on the way. I promise.

 

As the last featured review for the week, it comes to us KDamronAZ who says, “Great podcasts for advisors. Five stars. My favorite episodes so far are the interviews with Hal Elrod and Jim Sheils. I have used some of what Hal discussed to create my own routine in the morning and that has allowed me to up my game and work with greater focus and energy throughout the day. The idea Jim proposed on having quarterly meetings with your kids is awesome. I had been looking for a way to build deeper connections with my three kids when I heard this episode and this has been a great solution. I am actually heading out tonight with my 6-year-old. We’re bowling and Chinese food.” Thanks for the review, KDamronAZ. This may be one of my favorite reviews for the show ever. Financial services can be so much more than simply a job. It’s one of the few professions that truly allows you to design your business to fit your lifestyle and I love that you’ve incorporated ideas from two of my favorite guests to not only design your morning routine but also structure your calendar to prioritize time with your kids. Make sure to check out Jim Sheils recently rereleased book on the Family Board Meeting. It has updated stories in there. He also rolled out a new program around 18 Summers which speaks to the number of summers you have before your children leave the house so definitely worth being intentional about making sure you make the most of them.

 

[01:23:44] Brad: Thanks again for listening in and taking the time to share your big ones from the show. I just had my board meeting with my oldest last Sunday so it was a lot of food, some local Kansas City barbecue, and then we actually checked out some free range VR. So, for those of you in the Kansas City area, there’s a new spot that you need to check out if you’re ever there. Really cool experience. So, that is it as we wrap this show. Thanks again for those of you who have taken the time to write a quick review. I love reading each and every one of them and for those of you that have interest in diving deeper or figuring out how you may be able to have our team help you implement many of the ideas shared on the show, my day job happens to be consulting financial advisors from all over the US on how to grow their business and design a practice that serves them versus them serving it. And, yes, it is actually possible to grow your business and work less. This is a model we’ve replicated over and over in markets all over the country.

 

So, if you like to apply to see if it makes sense for us to have a one-on-one conversation on how to overcome what may be getting in your way, you can do that at BradleyJohnson.com/Apply. It takes about five minutes to fill up the application so we can understand what your business looks like, what challenges you may be facing, and how myself and my team may be able to help. Taking the first step is as simple as applying at BradleyJohnson.com/Apply. So, that’s all for this week. Thanks for listening in and I will catch you on the next show.

 

[01:42:27] Brad: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Advisor Blueprint. For access to show notes, transcripts, and exclusive content from our show’s guests, visit BradleyJohnson.com. And before you go, I’ve got a quick favor to ask. If you’re liking the podcast, you can help support the show by leaving your rating and review on iTunes. Not only do we read every single comment, but this will help the show rank and get discovered by new listeners. It really does help. Thanks again for joining and be sure to tune in next week for another episode.

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The information and opinions contained herein are provided by third parties and have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed by Advisors Excel. The guest speaker is not affiliated with or sponsored by Advisors Excel. For financial professional use only. Not to be used with the general public or in a sales situation.