The Key to Market Influence with Evan Drury

Join our host Charlie Van Derven as he speaks with Evan Drury, a seasoned financial advisor, as he shares his valuable insights on the evolving landscape of the financial advisory industry and the role of content marketing in building meaningful client relationships.

Gain practical knowledge and expert advice from Evan's journey as he discusses topics such as personal branding, leveraging content for engagement, authenticity in storytelling, and the ethical aspects of content creation.

Explore the power of combining expertise and discover the strategies that can help you thrive as a financial advisor in today's digital age.

Evan Drury
LinkedIn
Website

Transcript

 00:00
Charlie Van Derven
Thank you for tuning into another episode of RIA Collective. I'm your host, Charlie Van Derven. I've got an interesting guest today. Evan Drury is my new best friend. He and I are going to talk a little bit about content marketing and the significance of content marketing, the opportunity within content marketing, and the significance of content marketing for growth of Evan's practice. But before we get into that, evan got started with Merrill Lynch on the op side of things, got licensed there and opted to go to a firm called US. Financial Services. He's based out of Caldwell, New Jersey. They're affiliated with Kestra as their broker dealer on the independent side of the industry, but he had choices and chose the independent side. I'm going to tap into Evan's brain, figure out what that's all about because I think it'll resonate with some of our listeners. 

 00:45
Charlie Van Derven
Evan Drury, my new best buddy. Thanks for joining me. I appreciate you taking time out to be a guest on RA Collective. 

 00:51
Evan Drury
Hey, happy to be here, Charlie. Thanks for having me. 

 00:54
Charlie Van Derven
So is it as cold in Caldwell, New Jersey, today as it is in Wisconsin? 

 00:58
Evan Drury
Well, I wouldn't say as cold, but in my office, I can't feel my hand, so it's pretty bad. 

 01:04
Charlie Van Derven
Awesome, man. So I'm, like, fished out of water. I'm back in where I grew up, which is cool in Green Bay, but of course, home is Florida, so it's 85 there and about 25 here. Anyway, I'll be back there soon. Evan, let me tap into your experience a little bit, right? I mean, we met. My team did a great job finding you. We got to know each other because of a connection on LinkedIn. What I'm looking for and what my team's looking for when they set up interviews for our show, of course, is typically some kind of captive background, but then an independent existence, whether that's independent broker dealer RAA. So you started off on the upside at Merrill Lynch. What was that environment like? And let's talk about that and bring us through to getting licensed there as well. 

 01:54
Evan Drury
Sure. So I actually was just doing anything I could to break into the field because I didn't realize or I didn't think I had a network in the financial space. So I was working as a bartender, and I actually made fake business cards that said financial professional on it. And I was working at a specific high class bar located near a whole lot of financial institutions. And so I would just work parties or nights, whatever it was, and I was just saying anything to get in the door, any advice, anything along those lines. And there are a couple positions that opened up, and I got my resume through to a hiring manager, thanks to a very nice person who just happened to give me their time one night at the bar. And I got in through ops. I didn't care. I just wanted to break into the industry. 

 02:44
Evan Drury
Awesome. 

 02:46
Charlie Van Derven
That's good advice right there, right? 

 02:48
Evan Drury
Yeah. So through Ops, I just took it as a learning experience. I just thought, I don't want to be in Ops. I really want to be a financial advisor, but I'm not really sure what that means. And when you're graduating college and then transitioning right into the financial advisor role, I didn't see it as most impactful for me to say, I just graduated college and now I'm the best person to solve your retirement needs. So I took Ops as a learning experience to just say, all right, let me get licensed. Let me expand my knowledge as much as possible and learn from all these advisors that I'm working around. Right. So what I tried to do is position myself as a problem solver so I would get to work on client cases. I would get to work with all these very experienced advisors. And then if I was the problem solver, my thought process was, well, if I'm going to solve all your problems, can you give me five minutes of your time to ask what made you successful, how'd you build your practice? 

 03:47
Evan Drury
And I got to, in four and a half years, interview 200 advisors, make great relationships. And I really knew these people and their practices fairly well throughout my time there. And I got a good handle on what builds a good business, what makes sense and what doesn't. 

 04:06
Charlie Van Derven
What I love and just kind of dovetailing off what you're talking about is not only I mean, walking out of college with your finance degree, getting a job as a financial advisor with zero experience, you're right. It's hard to convince somebody that you're the right person to handle their retirement planning. But now not only does Ops get you into the industry, gives you an opportunity to interview these advisors, it also creates credibility for you when it comes time to start creating those client relationships. 

 04:34
Evan Drury
Sure. Well, what's interesting, when you start interviewing people about their business, some people have a singular focus. They have options, or they just trade bonds, or they are just trading stocks for that matter. And I thought, well, that's great, but I think going forward, I'm going to need a lot more than just a singular focus if I really want to succeed, but also really provide the best value to people. So I wanted to take a little bit from every area and kind of combine it into this one big pie, one big picture for clients. So it certainly has helped. Yeah. 

 05:10
Charlie Van Derven
Very cool. It sounds like even as a bartender well, obviously it doesn't sound like obviously, even as a bartender, you're making fake financial professional business cards. What was it that attracted at that time you were attracted financial services? What was that? What was the draw? 

 05:27
Evan Drury
Oh. The draw was growing up, just learning about money issues or seeing my parents stressed about money in general and just realizing in my mind, you really need to have an understanding of money to create success and more success than, say, just getting a job and having a salary and then saving a little bit at a time. What does that really mean, and how can you maximize that? So, I didn't want to just take little steps as I went. I wanted to say, let's start off here with a good base, but really make exponential jumps, right. So, finance to me, it just seemed like having an understanding of money could not only benefit me but also benefit other people. So I could make money, make the most use of my money, and help other people do that same thing. So I could make money and help other people at the same time. 

 06:16
Evan Drury
It was a win in my mind. 

 06:17
Charlie Van Derven
I love it, man. So you get licensed with Merrill. You join a team there, right? Like, after you got licensed, you joined a team at Merrill. Is that the process of things? 

 06:28
Evan Drury
So, the approach I took was I got licensed, and I started to learn a lot more, develop my personal knowledge, and then interview teams that I could have joined. So there was a number of teams that I could have joined. I just happened to pick one that had two advisors and one junior advisor, and then I was joining on as the second junior advisor, so to speak. And I really could have gone a number of different ways, but I like the team. I like the people. I thought I could learn and really develop there. 

 07:03
Charlie Van Derven
But we're talking not too many years later, right? And now us. Financial Services. Right. Independent with Kestra. You had a crossroads there at some point. What was that pushed you towards an independent track versus staying within that captive environment at Merrill? 

 07:24
Evan Drury
Great question. So, through the interviewing process of 200 different people, I didn't hear a lot of financial planning being mixed in with the stock knowledge, the bond knowledge, whatever it was. And I actually met someone. It was a family friend, and I just had a conversation at a street fair. Go figure. And it really interested me what he was talking about. With financial planning, there just seems so much more you could add to this overall picture to help serve your clients and really make a deeper impact. And so I started the interview process again, and I just said, hey, can I buy you a drink sometime? Or can I take you out for a lunch just to learn more about what this is and pick your brain a little bit, for lack of a better term. And so, for two years, I actually would just meet up with one of the partners here, either for drinks or for lunch here or there. 

 08:24
Evan Drury
And eventually it came down to, is there an opening for me, or is there a possibility I could work with your firm or be a part of your firm, because I really wanted to add that financial planning knowledge to everything else that I had learned, and I thought that was the way of the future. And turns out were probably interviewing each other for those two years, and I didn't want to leave Merrill when I started meeting with him, but I was just interested in everything else out there that I didn't know about finance, financial planning, serving clients. So Merrill had a lot of great things. I had a lot of great lessons there, and certainly there are some planners there. But when I reviewed the team and just how the partners here were combining their unique knowledge because it wasn't just financial planning. It was experienced CPAs that became financial planners so I could learn from tax professionals in addition to people who had built a successful financial planning practice over 2030 years. 

 09:33
Evan Drury
It just seemed like, there's no way I can just stay where I'm at if I can grow so much more. And I've really benefited from making that change. 

 09:44
Charlie Van Derven
You said a mouthful. Right. And it's not the first time I've heard the story. Excuse me? It simply is outgrowing an environment that I don't mean to put words in your mouth, right. So stop me if need be, but it simply is outgrowing an environment where a captive environment like that you got quotas and you got product placement and things like that, where certainly you're somewhat in a box. Right? Sure. Really? I think a lot of people 5710 years into that environment have outgrown it. They're looking for something different, a different way to serve their clients. It sounds like that is very similar to your story. 

 10:29
Evan Drury
Well, absolutely. That's a huge part of it. And also, even if someone that's in a captive environment, let's say, that doesn't use proprietary products, I think they've gone mostly by the wayside these days. But even if you don't use them, being on the independent side and saying, I can get anything that I want that you need, so I'm not beholden to anyone, I think just having the ability to say that is so helpful when just speaking with a client, because it's about you. I will focus on you and get you what you need. 

 11:04
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah. It takes the bias out of it, right? 

 11:08
Evan Drury
Well, it takes a lot of it out, for sure. 

 11:11
Charlie Van Derven
Evan, one of the things that I was super impressed with before we had our initial call and get to know each other was your content marketing. Right. So I do a ton of work. I'm on LinkedIn every day or try to be on LinkedIn every day, and I'm posting three or four times a week and take a note of video. And it's all about growing a brand. Right. RA collective is fun. It's a good pet project. We're trying to help the industry move independent. My living comes out of social advisors right. So really growing a brand around that business and around the services that we provide there, you do content a little differently, right? I didn't see a lot of videos. I didn't even see a lot of images. But you create good content and you get good reach. And so that was one of the things that my team found your profile initially, but before we reached out and asked if you'd be on the show, that was one of the things that I was excited about right away, was like, this guy sees the opportunity. 

 12:12
Charlie Van Derven
That leveraging of LinkedIn. Are you leveraging other platforms as well? I'm pretty solely on LinkedIn. Of course, I got a presence on Facebook and Instagram and stuff, but I'm really focused on LinkedIn. How about you? 

 12:24
Evan Drury
I'd say for now, sustainability is a key. So leveraging one platform is all I really need to do for the time being. But future growth ideas would probably expand into, say, Twitter. And I saw someone on YouTube that's doing an excellent job. So there's so many ways to expand. But I think just like expanding your business, you have to do it right, build that base and build it wide so that you can build up far higher. But you have to be able to manage it and not burn out. 

 12:55
Charlie Van Derven
That's links hard, isn't it? It's a full time job just maintaining the content. Marketing across platforms is a full time job. 

 13:01
Evan Drury
Yeah. 

 13:03
Charlie Van Derven
So here's the stats. Evan, I don't know if maybe I told you this last time we spoke, there are, in North America 3 billion, approximately 3 billion content views every week on LinkedIn. Just Mexico, US. And Canada. Right. 2% of that network shares content consistently. So there's 3 billion views being shared by 2% of the network. About a third of the network resides in North America. You've seen other advisors. You saw advisors at Merrill doing it. It's canned, firm approved stuff that gets no visibility. So the content that you're sharing, like you did a post you tagged me thank you, man, I appreciate that. But that post you tagged me in yesterday or whatever it was, and this Will Grow, got 39 likes and 54 comments on it. Now I can't see the admin side, so I don't see how many people see it, but the interaction, like a guy like you is at the top 5%, maybe of content marketers. 

 14:04
Evan Drury
Thank you. 

 14:06
Charlie Van Derven
With that kind of interaction, right. Is that translating into clients in any way? Are you influencing your network in such a way that you're getting prospect conversations out of it? 

 14:20
Evan Drury
I'd say that it's starting conversations that could lead to clients or could lead to CPA relationships. And actually I'm scheduling a few conversations for after tax time speaking, which because CPAs, I don't want to bother them in the moment, but if they saw something or if they saw a number of posts and they say, I really like your stuff. We'd love to have a conversation, and I say, I'd love to have a conversation too, but let's wait until after tax time when you're not sleeping at your office or work until 12:00 at night. But you also get people that reach out that say, I've been following you forever, really love your stuff, really appreciate what you're doing. And I'd say, I've only been posting the way I'm posting for about six months now. So I think you have to have a long term view in posting. 

 15:07
Evan Drury
And content creation generation, much like stock market returns and how we tell investors to stay invested, stay the course, you have to stay in it for the long run to reach, to hit results. Right? So I would say I'm just starting to see those people reach out to me now. And it's something you don't realize, especially when you're getting started and you're getting very little engagement, you don't realize who's watching, how many people are coming back each day. But now I'm really starting to see that people are not only interacting with me every day in the comments, but there's people who have never interacted with me before that are now reaching out and saying, really love what you're doing, would love to know more. So it's starting, dude. 

 15:49
Charlie Van Derven
I will echo it and I'm going to put something else on top of that. But last month, I think we put eight people on our platform. Two of those were referrals, so six left over. Maybe all of them, I don't know, but I kind of spot check. I'll go back and see, all right, how do I know this person? How they come in? We got a good CRM that gives us a lot of that intelligence. I think the average person has connected me to me for more than two years before they become a client of ours. 

 16:20
Evan Drury
Wow. 

 16:21
Charlie Van Derven
And I get that comment all the time. Charlie been watching you for years. And finally, whatever they change firm or whatever the case may be, finally they are diving into what we do from a professional services perspective. But I get that comment all the time. Charlie, I've been watching for two years. I've been on ten of your webinars, whatever it is, right. That's influencer marketing, right? I mean, that's how it starts. So for those of you that are out there sharing FMG or broadridge content, that tens of thousands of other advisors are sharing our firm pre approved stuff, take a look at Evan Drewery, D-R-U-R-Y on LinkedIn because he tells a story, right? I mean, your content posts, Evan, are sharing insight and sharing a story versus some financial concept, right? Which, frankly, content marketing, I like to say, is not about the size of your brain, it's about your relatability. 

 17:17
Evan Drury
Great way to put it. Great way to put it. 

 17:19
Charlie Van Derven
Be relatable. That's the biggest advice there. So if you look at mine, some of it's goofy, like pictures of the mustache or something, right? I did a birthday post for one of the guys on our team two weeks ago, and it got an amazing amount of exposure. And I love that because now people who have been following me for years are seeing the people behind the operation. Simple things like that. Sorry, I was going to say, Evan, the only other thing that I do is daily. Doesn't happen every day. Try to make it happen every day, try to be consistent with it. But daily, I'm going out and I'm engaging with three people. It doesn't take more than five minutes, but I'm picking three people off the list of people I'm connected to and just dropping them a note. Maybe it's something in their profile. 

 18:14
Charlie Van Derven
Maybe I'm making a comment on a piece of content, trying to do something meaningful. But also, I want my brand to be present, right? So that's the only other thing that I'm doing other than posting content is just engaging every day with three people. 

 18:29
Evan Drury
Well, that's an important thing to consider, and I'll get to that in just a second. But just to go back to what you said a second ago, people don't know who you are, right? You can have all the certifications in the world if you're not posting or if you're not putting any sort of marketing out into the world. So also, when you're just posting the same stuff as everybody else, you just become another parrot, and that's not going to differentiate you from anyone else out there. So with all this content marketing and thinking about staying true to your brand and what you're doing, great thing you pointed out with your employee shout out is put yourself out there, too. Because people want to connect not only with brands, but with people who share their values, who are like them. They want to connect with a human, not a product, not a logo. 

 19:23
Evan Drury
So I think those posts get so much traction because they want to see family, kids, what you're interested in, and then maybe they connect. Oh, Evan likes golf. I like golf, too. Let me see a little bit more. Or Evan loves his family and talks about his family and relates it back to finance. That's interesting. I'd love to read more. I've seen the most engagement from mixing multiple categories. So family finance, say vacations, but also planning, right? So people want a little bit more than just the information. They want to be educated, they want something authentic, and they want a little entertainment, too. So they have to mix a couple of things, I think. 

 20:08
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, for sure. I think LinkedIn, we're really talking specifically about that platform. I think LinkedIn's got a big content marketing problem, right? Because there are, I guess, I don't know, 850,000,000 profiles, maybe 50% active, whatever that is. But for the most part, it's a whole bunch of either job seekers, right? Who put the resume up there once upon a time and maybe haven't even looked at it in five years, or the people who are active on it are people in a business development role, people who are seeking clients. And so you get a whole bunch of people, even if it is only 2% of the network, you get a whole bunch of people shouting sales messages at each other and tips for doing this and tips for doing that. And don't get me wrong, some of that stuff's appropriate, right. You got to reinforce your area of expertise. 

 20:56
Charlie Van Derven
But what people ignore is that others need to know you like you and trust you before they're going to do business with you, right? 

 21:02
Evan Drury
Absolutely. 

 21:03
Charlie Van Derven
Focus on the personal story more than you focus on the business story. They can get all the business they need from your profile or your website or whatever that is. Focus on the personal story. That's where you make human connection. 

 21:17
Evan Drury
And you said something a second ago with engagement that's so important, not only for just take it this way. If you're focused on salespeople, there's no reason you shouldn't be engaging with salespeople on their content on LinkedIn, because you'll get front of mind, front and center. Not only that, but people appreciate going back to your point on 2% are actually active on here. People appreciate when you take the time to value what they've done. And if you put out a response or a comment to their post that says more than good post and you actually put something thoughtful out there, you inject a little bit more of who you are into a conversation with someone who's in the field that you're trying to connect with. So not only are you looking and connecting with this specific person, but their entire audience and the most engaged part of their audience, which is probably in the same field. 

 22:05
Evan Drury
So if they're educating salespeople, then you have a ton of salespeople in the feed, and then you can become front of mind. Also, if you leave a good comment, you become top of the comment heap and then everyone starts to see you. So I would say that in addition to your comment strategy of focusing on three, if you have time to all the advisors out there, set aside time for 30 minutes of engagement. So however many you can get in, block out 30 minutes and engage for that amount of time with people that you would like to connect with and in an area where you'd like to be seen. And I think that in combination with posts that mix personal with professional is the best mix. 

 22:49
Charlie Van Derven
My two cent rocking. Dude, you got to figure it out. Listen, if this whole financial service thing doesn't work out, I got to roll for you at social event. 

 22:57
Evan Drury
Nice to know I have options. Thanks. 

 22:59
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah, you got options, man. No, stick with what you're doing. Evan. You do better in your independent space. You don't want to be an employee of mine. Not that I feel like I treat them well, but we'd have to do a survey, probably to find out. You've said a mouthful. The comments that you make are part of your content strategy, right? And I don't think that people really recognize that. So if you want to be seen, don't go in there and say, hey, great post, because that's also part of your content strategy, and that strategy sucks. Make sure that you're making meaningful comments when you're engaging with other people. 

 23:38
Evan Drury
Right. 

 23:38
Charlie Van Derven
Because that shows up, and that's all over the place. 

 23:41
Evan Drury
Just like bad marketing, too. If your marketing is terrible, your message is terrible. Just like your comments are unimportant, you're easily tuned out for the future, so you're making yourself more and more invisible the less effort and time you put into any sort of message. So that's a great point there on the great post aspect of the comment. 

 24:05
Charlie Van Derven
Strategy, you're a resource. Do you mind, Evan, if we've got some listeners who are? Maybe the story is resonating a little bit with them. Not only the US. Financial services move, but also there's a lot of content marketing experts in our industry. I'm one of those guys. I hate to call myself that, but you're doing it organically from the advisor side. If we've got listeners who have some questions about that or want to know more about US. Financial services, are you cool being a resource to them? 

 24:39
Evan Drury
Absolutely. Easiest way to get in touch is just connect with me on LinkedIn. Oh, here's another one. So when you're connecting with people on LinkedIn, if you want to connect with me, don't just hit the Connect button. And like anyone else, this applies to everyone on LinkedIn. Write a thoughtful message. Hey, really appreciated your video on Social advisors. I'd love to. Or RIA Connect would love to hear more, and I would love to pick your brain, something along those lines, simple, but that you paid attention to something someone was doing, and you're not just connecting for connecting sake. And also something big on LinkedIn is called pitch slapping, which is you connect and then instantly you say, buy my product, buy my service. Here's everything I do. I would say don't do that in the first one or two messages, especially, and then feel it out from there. 

 25:28
Evan Drury
But happy to connect with anyone that has questions. Sure. 

 25:31
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah. You make a great point, man. How often does that come through? Right? I can get you 20 or 30 appointments next week. Hey, Evan, I love your job history. I can get you 20 or 30 appointments next week. When I get that message, I go back and I look at who's looked at my profile, and it may be really kind of caddy of me and maybe a waste of my time, but I'll typically sense I'm like, oh, what about my job history, did you? Like, I didn't notice that you had checked out my profile. I'm all for LinkedIn hates, as I say it, but I'm all for automating as many processes in your business as you possibly can. But when you lie in the automated messaging, you've already destroyed the opportunity to create a relationship with somebody. So be authentic, like be genuine, right? 

 26:16
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah. So that's a really important point. If you're letting a computer do all your work for you and there's no authenticity there. And actually you're lying about visiting somebody's profile, there's no hope for a relationship after that. 

 26:30
Evan Drury
And here's how you turn that around too. So if you want to really connect with somebody, a lot of times if you just send a connection request, it might not be answered and you don't know why. So if someone's active on LinkedIn and they posted something before you hit Connect, go like the post and leave a thoughtful comment. Maybe do that twice, then hit Connect with a thoughtful message based one of the posts that you saw showing that you valued the work and you actually read through, so you know what you're talking about. You don't have to saying I value work history and you never visited the profile. 

 27:01
Charlie Van Derven
Dude, you're awesome. 

 27:03
Evan Drury
Thanks. 

 27:04
Charlie Van Derven
Evan, thank you so much for being a guest today. I really appreciate you taking the time, and I appreciate you lending yourself to our mission of helping captive advisors who maybe have outgrown their environment like you had. Just having the confidence to make a move to a more independent role, whether that's independent broker dealer RA, whatever that is. Just having the confidence to know lots of people have done it before you. There's great opportunity, even outside of the big brands like Marilyn Morgan and UBS and all the others. And I appreciate you being a resource man. 

 27:42
Evan Drury
Hey, well, I appreciate you having me on, and this was a lot of fun. 

 27:45
Charlie Van Derven
Yeah. Cool. Casual. Try to keep it casual. On behalf of myself and my guest today, evan Drury with US. Financial Services in Caldwell, New Jersey. Thank you for tuning into another episode of RA Collective. Now, as I tell you at the end of every episode, we don't do sponsorship right? Maybe one day we will. Maybe we'll worry about monetizing this thing one day, but we do want to reach as many people as possible. So if you know somebody that should listen to Evan's message or is thinking about going independent, please share the podcast with them. And of course, if you give us review and subscribe on your favorite listening platform, that helps us reach more people. So, Evan, once again, thanks for being here today. And on behalf of Evan Drury and myself, Charlie Van Derven, thanks for tuning into another episode of RIA Collective. 

 28:34
Charlie Van Derven
Right.