115: Marcus Ranger | Top 50 Most Innovative Voices In Advisor Growth Series | Influential Advisor Media

What separates financial advisors who consistently grow from those who stay stuck? Marcus Ranger, who leads a business unit of more than 1,200 independent financial advisors, shares the marketing strategies, systems, and mindset shifts he sees driving advisor growth.

In this episode of The Influential Advisor Podcast and our Top 50 Most Innovative Voices in Advisor Growth series, Marcus joins Paul G. McManus to discuss why financial advisors are in the marketing business first—and how the best advisors build intentional systems for attracting ideal-fit clients, generating referrals, creating authority, and growing their practices.

You’ll learn why niching down can accelerate financial advisor growth without forcing you to turn away opportunities, how to build a client experience people naturally want to refer, and why giving clients valuable information to share may be more effective than simply asking for referrals.

Marcus also explains how financial advisors can:

• Build repeatable marketing systems instead of relying on random tactics
• Choose a niche and become the go-to advisor for a specific audience
• Use books, podcasts, video, and content to build authority
• Create a systematic approach to generating more client referrals
• Reward referral behavior in a meaningful and repeatable way
• Identify centers of influence beyond CPAs and attorneys
• Build a differentiated client experience
• Think like a media company in the age of Google, ChatGPT, and AI search
• Use client testimonials and social proof more effectively
• Build internal and external marketing strategies that work together
• Stop becoming the bottleneck in your own growth

One of Marcus’s most powerful ideas is that an advisor’s real product isn’t simply a portfolio or financial plan—it’s the client experience.

And when that experience is combined with a clear niche, strong positioning, valuable content, and an intentional marketing system, advisors can create a business that attracts more of the clients they most want to serve.

ABOUT MARCUS RANGER

Marcus Ranger is an experienced financial services executive, advisor, coach, and business leader who leads a business unit of more than 1,200 independent financial advisors across 10 western states.

After building a successful advisory practice, Marcus transitioned into executive leadership with a focus on helping financial advisors build stronger businesses, develop scalable systems, improve their marketing, and multiply their results.

Connect with Marcus Ranger on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-ranger-9050702/

ABOUT INFLUENTIAL ADVISOR MEDIA

The Influential Advisor Podcast, hosted by Paul G. McManus, features conversations with leading voices shaping the future of financial advisor growth, marketing, authority, media, and business development.

Subscribe for more strategies on financial advisor marketing, authority building, books, referrals, AI search visibility, advisor growth, and building a more influential advisory business.

https://podcast.influentialadvisor.com/
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Transcript

Marketing Lens And Series Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Advisors who think through a marketing lens first have an advantage. Because the one thing that can make the biggest difference to your future growth and profitability in any environment is marketing. I think it's the most important skill an independent advisor can have is understanding how to market. And the best in what we do, they understand that and they know they're in the marketing business first because every time anybody touches any part of your business, it's sending a marketing message. And that's either helping you or hurting you in terms of getting more business, getting referrals, getting more clients. And so the way you get that real lift is effective marketing. And when you think through that lens, your decisions change. People training financial advisors about a lot of things, but the one thing I truly believe can make the biggest difference is marketing. And when you think through that lens, you have an advantage.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Welcome back to the top 50 most innovative voices in advisor growth series. My name is Paul G. McManus, and I'm the host. In this episode, I'm joined by Marcus Ranger, someone with a rare vantage point on what actually drives advisor growth. Marcus currently leads a business unit of more than 1,200 independent advisors across 10 states, which means he gets to see up close what separates advisors that grow from those that stay stuck. In our conversation today, we talk about why niching down can be one of the fastest ways to accelerate growth. If you have not yet niched down, you absolutely want to watch this. And if you have niched down, we're going to share some amazing strategies about how to accelerate your growth even further. Before we jump in, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel or wherever you're hearing this podcast so you don't miss a new episode of the top 50 most innovative voices in advisor growth. And now here's my conversation with Marcus Ranger.

Marcus Ranger’s Path To Leadership

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Let's start with this. So I want to hear from you. So who is Marcus Ranger? So tell us just a little bit about your background, where you're at today, and leading to that something that you said is financial advisors are in the marketing business first, and then we'll pick it up from there. So tell us a bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

My e-true Hollywood story is this, Paul. I'm originally from Dallas, Texas. I went to the United States Air Force Academy for my undergraduate degree, got recruited to play football there, and I studied business. When you graduate from the academy, you're commissioned as an officer and you have a five-year commitment. If you're not a pilot, I wasn't a pilot. But I never planned on making a military career. So I started thinking about what I wanted to do after my commitment. And my father was my hero, and he was a defense attorney for the disenfranchise in the inner city of Dallas and made a tremendous impact, changed a lot of lives. It wasn't about money, it was about public service. And I thought I wanted to pursue a legal career and go to law school. And I remember a conversation, he said to me two things. He said, number one, Mark, there are too many attorneys in the world. We don't need any more attorneys. And number two, we need to know more about and understand more about the game of money and business. So that's what really set me on my path. And so I went and got my MBA and I did a double emphasis in entrepreneurship and finance. I launched a practice in West Los Angeles with American Express financial advisors at the time, now America Prize Financial, was one of the top new advisors, built a practice from scratch. I started doing some coaching and some managing and mentoring of other advisors. And then eventually I partnered up with another advisor and business partner who now is one of my best friends in the world to create a team practice. And then I started to realize, and that practice is still going on today, very successful, and I'm the successor of that business. But I started to realize that what I was energized by was something a little bit different. And I was energized by the aspect of building the financial advisory business, the entrepreneurship aspect, the CEO aspect, how to set up the systems to grow it, the client experience, building a team, marketing. That's really what I was energized by. So we made an agreement. He took over the practice. I decided to go into full-time executive leadership with the sole purpose of helping other financial advisors build financially advisory businesses and great businesses and multiplying their business results. So currently, I lead a business unit of 1,200 plus independent financial advisors across the 10 Western states. I have a leadership team of 25 plus people. And every day we are consulting and coaching private wealth advisors and business leaders to really think differently, multiply their results. And I also lead a national program of leadership development to help independent advisors and executives master leadership skills. So I've been an advisor. I study the game of what we do every single day. I ride shotgun with some of the best independent advisors in the industry. And I love the game of business and money, and I love what I do.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

That's fantastic. That's my mindset too. I love entrepreneurship and building, you know, more that visionary and how do we make this happen? But it's the growth side that gets me excited. One of the things I heard you say is that everything you do is marketing. And when you communicate this message to the 1200 plus advisors that you oversee, mentor, coach, et cetera, how do they see the world? Does that message do they like absolutely, or do you see resistance in terms of that belief?

Building A Real Business With Systems

SPEAKER_01 5:21

It starts even at a higher level and then down to the marketing piece, which I truly do believe in. And I'm happy that you that you caught that point. I think it starts broader with in working with so many independent advisors and advisors across my career and having been in the business, the biggest challenge that I see that advisors face is running their business like a true business. Because really, a true business is a set of repeatable processes that make money. But if everything and most of what you do as an advisor is dependent upon something that you have to do, then I argue do you really have a business or have you just created a bunch of jobs for yourself that don't meet the mandated value of your time? And if you're doing that, then you're not able to free yourself up to really focus on what you should be doing, which is the 20% of activities that are actually driving revenue and growing the business, of which marketing is one of those activities. So I think it actually starts there. And that lens definitely resonates with people because a lot of people are caught in that challenge. And then once you understand that, then it goes to yes, I absolutely believe that advisors who think through a marketing lens first have an advantage. Because the one thing that can make the biggest difference to your future growth and profitability in any environment is marketing. I think it's the most important skill an independent advisor can have is understanding how to market. And the best in what we do, they understand that and they know they're in the marketing business first. Because every time anybody touches any part of your business, it's sending a marketing message. And that's either helping you or hurting you in terms of getting more business, getting referrals, getting more clients. And so effective marketing to me tells you everything you need to know about how a business is growing organically because the way you're gonna add new assets outside of market lift and outside of buying a practice, yes, you're gonna get assets from your existing clients, but you also got a lot of money going out from your existing clients. So the way you get that real lift is effective marketing. And when you think through that lens, your decisions change. People training financial advisors about a lot of things, but the one thing I truly believe can make the biggest difference is marketing. And when you think through that lens, you have an advantage.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Marketing is a word that on the surface we all understand, but I think we might have different interpretations of what that actually looks like. For example, in my case, I think more in terms of authority marketing, what I mean by that is that everything that I do and everything for myself, for my own business, for the clients that I work with, is that I want to help elevate their positioning in the marketplace. And so whether they're looking to fill their own pipeline with people coming to them or they have a team and they're looking to leverage their experience, years, decades, et cetera, and leverage that to bring new business to their team. To me, today, the most effective thing you can do is increase more authority because then when you do that, all of your marketing actually gets becomes more effective, more efficient, et cetera. Right. And so there's lots of different ways to go about marketing. But just from that angle, how do you think about marketing? Do you have a definition of authority marketing or an angle or perspective on it?

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Yeah, so marketing definitely is one of the engines that flies the business plane. You got marketing and you got sales, but marketing is at the front of that to me. And it's all about how effective you are at influencing either internally people you already know who are familiar with what you do and being able to influence them to create an environment to generate more people to be introduced to what you do, or externally, meaning being able to effectively influence people who don't know you at all to be magnetically attracted to you in some way to find out more or nurture them and have an opportunity to engage with you in your business. But I do think, and you said the word influence and authority, I absolutely do think it's all about influence. If you can't influence, you can't lead and you can't market. And your positioning of that influence, I think is is is truly important because it's the perception of who you are definitely drives a lot of your ability to market. And that has to be intentional. It has to be positioned. And there are things that you can do, I truly believe, that can set you apart influentially to have a better marketing strategy than other people who don't really focus on.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

You have an interesting position because you oversee 1200 independent advisors, over 500 individual businesses that they're associated with. You have a unique vantage point, right? Because a lot of individual advisors, like most business owners, most people, they only see the world from their lens, right? But you have this macro view into the world. And so at a high level, what are some of the things that you see working or not working when it comes to that ability to build authority influence systems? What are some of those specifics that you're finding tend to work more than other things?

Authority Marketing Through Positioning

SPEAKER_01 10:13

What I would say is that I think at any given time, the biggest decisions where you will get the most leverage to build an effective business, attract clients, attract team members, attract the things you need to do to grow it from a CEO perspective are these elements in no particular order. But one is how you leverage and use systems in the business to be able to grow your business. I think systems is the is the biggest thing that can give you freedom. And you got to focus on being able to build those. Number two is leveraging of people in your team. So it's how you hire the right people and put them in the right seats so that they can drive the systems that are needed to run the business. And those two at a start are how you begin to build true leverage to scale and grow a business. So you set up systems to run the business, you hire people to run the systems. Then the third is the client experience. So this is looking at how you segment your clients to make sure your time and your team's time is focused on the right people at the right times. But then most importantly, understanding the best advisors, they know their real product is the client experience. It's not a portfolio, it's not a financial plan, it's not a mutual fund, it's not an annuity, it's not any of those things. It's the client experience. It's not what you do, it's how you do it. So that third decision to get the leverage is how you optimize and focus your energy on a premium differentiated client experience so that when someone's trying to understand why they should hire you versus anyone else in your category, you can clearly answer that question through the experience you provide. And then the last one is marketing. The best advisors, they focus and have a systematic, intentional, integrated approach to market their business so that they can have confidence in how they go about getting new clients and attracting people to their business and the way that they do it.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

Do you have any examples? You don't need to mention names or any specifics from there, but just in terms of that client experience, can you share an example story, paint a picture in terms of what success looks like?

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Well, it it varies significantly because every business, which is the great thing about our business, every business has their own unique proposition that they want to provide. And so I think it really starts with them identifying what that unique proposition is going to be, and then they can build out, you know, what makes the most sense based on the clients. What I can tell you is this, what it can revolve around most importantly, is targeting a niche market of people. So I see in creating the client experience, the advisors who are absolutely the best at it, they have made a decision that they are going to become the go-to advisor for a targeted specific market. One or two. But they've decided that. And then they begin to say, we're going to become the go-to market for this. What are the problems that we need to solve for this particular market? What is the message that we want to craft around delivering to that market of people so that they understand we're the go-to and we solve that problem? And then what is the experience and platform we're going to use to market to those people, but then also create an internal experience to make sure they get what they need. So I would say the number one thing, because a lot of different client experiences, you know, to be able to go through, but the number one thing I think that has driven it for the best people to create a great experience is when they really say, this is who we service, and they build an experience around that target

Niche Focus Without Fear

SPEAKER_01 13:45

market.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

I totally agree. And at the same time, I work with advisors every day, as do you. And that is one of the biggest mindset challenges that they seem to have. And I'll just say it from my point of view, and I'll let you elaborate, is that intellectually, you know, they might hear that, they might get it, they might say that's a good idea. But at the same time, they look around and say, Well, I don't want to give up all this opportunity. I mean, if I if I'm the guy for engineers, you know, what about all the non-engineers? And I've totally bought into this concept the past 10 years. I've built my business around this concept. So you're preaching to the choir here, but it's like pulling teeth in many cases, not all, but you know, to get them to actually commit to doing it.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

I know that exact response. And I get it all the time too. Here's how I think about it. The first thing is if you want to be serious about marketing, because that's the first lens. If marketing and getting new clients is a wildly important goal, what I would tell anyone is to say, if you want to accelerate your ability to attract the clients you want, number one way to do it is to focus in on a niche. So it's really starting there to make sure they're serious. But I think they're struggling with the problem. You said, Oh, I don't want to give up all this opportunity. Well, the second thing is that does not mean you will not take on clients who fall outside of that niche. If somebody comes to you with a million dollars and they don't fall in your niche of executives in the tech industry, you're still gonna take that person with a million dollars. It doesn't mean you won't do it. What it means is your marketing will be targeted to the executives in the tech industry. The third thing is what's fascinating is you will not only magnetically attract the people you're targeting, but you will also find in a very strange way, it will also attract people outside of their market who say, I know you're a great advisor. I know you really only focus on this niche, but would you be willing to consider me as well? And it's amazing how that still happens. It doesn't mean people are still not gonna come to you, it doesn't mean you're not gonna take them. What it means is you're targeting your marketing in a very specific way so that you can be more intentional about what you do, but also attract the clientele that you want.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

There's a couple of things that you said that I want to highlight is that the people outside of the target audience, you know, you still get the referrals. Like, I mean, I mean, this is my experience. I exclusively target financial advisors, and maybe 10% of our clients are referrals to other professionals, attorneys, someone that just came in, she's a nurse, you know, you know, all kinds of things that obviously can use our services, but are not the people that we spend our time trying to reach. And so totally agree there. What's your advice when it comes to how they pulled it off? And so I'm gonna give you a scenario. For example, when it comes to things such as their website, maybe things of that nature that a broader audience might end up coming to. Because another concern or fear is that what if my messaging is so targeted towards attorneys, as an example, and then the non-attorney comes to my website, but they decide not to reach out because my messaging is all towards attorneys.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

I think this is all surrounds around fear, which is one of the biggest stumbling blocks when people are trying to be effective at marketing, and it is fear. I would say that's actually what you're trying to do in some sense. What you're trying to do is speak to a very specific audience. And when you're speaking to them, it will filter out people who don't necessarily fit your target audience so that you don't waste a ton of time talking to people that you actually are not trying to service. Now, a fear is well, what if somebody comes in with $10 million and they see that I only work with attorneys? Well, if you're getting plenty of leads magnetically attracted to you who are attorneys and in your target market, who cares? So I think that's just fear. That's that's like you know, keeping the $50,000 client because you think they're gonna win the lottery. It's if you're targeting who you want and you have a very specific system to get them and you're getting the leads, you're nurturing them and converting the clients, you still will have some people who will come to you who have money outside of that, who want to work with you. And for the one or two who see that and make a different decision, that's actually what you're trying to create.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

And another thing that you had said is they'll come and say, I know that you work with attorneys, whatever the group is. Would you be willing to take me on? Right? I mean, what what a great position that is.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

That's that's the magnetic. Would you be willing to take my $10 million? That's right. And I tell you, the ones who that's they tell me those stories all the time. And of course they still take that money. Of course they still take that client and do planning for them. Of course. But to your point, it almost predisposes someone magnetically, and now they're begging you to work with them because they know you work with this niche, and that is a fascinating thing that I think people miss because of this fear of if I niche down when they're actually creating more problems by trying to serve everybody.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

We we share a common client, his name is Stanley, he is in California, his target audience's niche is tech executives, engineers, but essentially tech professionals. And he's just in the past year or so has raised his minimums to a million. And and he's he's just a perfect example of what you're describing is that if he gets a referral to someone who's not a tech professional and they meet his minimums, he'll still meet with them, he'll still take them on, but he's able to be that much more focused in terms of his intentional activity. For example, he wrote a book about financial planning geared towards tech professionals. He goes on podcasts, podcasts that serve tech professionals. I mean, because I think the main thing is that marketing done well is is the the prospect that you've never met before, they feel understood before you ever meet them. I mean, that's a magical thing. They show up to the meeting, you don't know them, but they know enough about you and they already feel understood. It's to me the the holy grail for what most people are trying to achieve.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

And it is one of the keys because you speaking their language into their message is part of what starts to attract them. And it's a few things that you said, even in Stan's example, and I love Stan, about what he's doing and also others who are effective at it.

Budgeting Content And Writing The Book

SPEAKER_01 19:51

One is having a system starts with having some standards and having an asset level minimum or a revenue minimum. So asset level minimum like a million dollars I'm only taking, or $500,000 or more I'm only taking, you decide, or revenue minimum, I'm only taking people who can generate $5,000 of revenue, and that could be a combination of managed money revenue and financial planning revenue. But establish that then raises the floor in terms of your scale of being able to grow because instead of 10 clients for $100,000 and getting a million, you're getting one client that's at a million. Now you have higher quality clients and can scale and grow faster with less of your time to focus on what you need to do to grow the business. Second is having a marketing budget. You have to invest in a marketing system in order to be able to do these things. Investment News did a study last year, uh, they do it every year, but the average independent advisor was spending about an all advisors act, he was spending about 3% of top line revenue and a marketing budget every single year. Many advisors don't even have a marketing budget. You need to have a marketing, the target should really be 5%. The best at it are doing 8 to 10%. Uh, I worked with a business out in Hawaii and they do $12 million in revenue, all organic. They haven't a lot of practice. They have a 5% marketing budget every year. So they're spending $600,000 in marketing. It's entirely an organic business. So you got to invest in it, and then you've got to have a written plan. I know Stan and others, they have a written documented strategy that they're integrating to be able to market so that they can follow some of the things that you talked about and make sure they're consistent and then build out these magnetically attractive things from a content perspective. So, for example, the written content, and that's gonna be your newsletters, your articles, your special reports, your white papers, your magazines. Now, you can do it broadly, but you can also, obviously, if you have a niche, you're gonna target certain things that are appropriate for your audience. Audio and video content. So that's videos you've recorded on your website. That's periodic educational webinars that people can come to that you promote, and other people can refer people to. That's appearing on other people's platforms, like I'm doing here with you, Paul, where you're able to come on podcast appearances, and podcasts are so prevalent today. It's an interesting thing. You go on a podcast. As an advisor, and particularly if it's in your niche, but even if it's not, and you could talk about a specialty, it almost creates like this celebrity factor that sets you apart and differentiates you, in particular if you have a niche market. And so that's an important thing. And then the pinnacle is a book, which you mentioned earlier that Stan has written and others do, and which you help people do. It is the number one piece of collateral that I think creates that instant authority and influence in your space that you talked about earlier. I mean, the word author is in the word authority. It's the biggest thing that you can do to influence people as a tool. So now you're not just a financial advisor, you're an author, you're a media personality, and a financial advisor. So think about it, Paul. You got a prospective client interviewing two advisors. They go to one who says they're they specialize in retirement. Then they go to the second one who say, yes, we specialize in retirement, but they also wrote the book on retirement. And they were on a podcast talking about retirement. Who are they going to choose? I mean, who are they going to be more inclined to be influenced by? And so it helps magnetically attract people in a really meaningful way and makes it easier for other people to refer people to information versus to the advisor that they now see and they can be predisposed in advance. I love that, I love that refer to information. Can you expand on that? What does that mean? So, what that means is I think clients are uncomfortable or have a hard time trying to refer to their financial advisor as the person or the provider of a service. Like go talk to my advisor. I think it is absolutely easier for clients or COIs to refer to information that an advisor has provided and give that to other people and then refer people to that information. It's much easier for a client or to do that, and it's much easier for an advisor to train a client to do that. But you have to have information tools in order to be able to do that. So if we took the pinnacle example of a book, if you have a book, instead of asking a client, hey, can you refer me to your people you know, you could say, love working with you. We absolutely get our best clients from existing clients like yourself. Here's two copies of my book. If any of this financial information or things come up, just give them a copy of my book and tell them that these are the people that we like and trust. Now, that example I just gave you is almost an exact script of a very successful financial advisor who uses that exact system to help clients refer people to information and then magnetically attract them back. So that's the example. I think it's easier. And you can have information in a lot of different ways. We use the book as an example, but it could be white paper, special reports, videos, webinars that you do. All of those are information, but I think it's easier for clients to do that and easier for you to coach clients to do that to help you get more referrals in that way.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

There's something that I want to attribute to you that I learned and I love is that I heard you in a presentation say that if they're referring you, you want to reward the activity because you'll get more of it. Can you expand on that? What does that mean?

Referral Engines Gifts And Who Not How

SPEAKER_00 25:03

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

That to me is one of the strategies, because there are a lot of strategies in creating an internal marketing plan to generate referrals. And what you're trying to do is create an environment and have a number of different things you're doing with your best clients to create an environment to generate more referrals from your best clients. And one of them is rewarding clients who refer. So if you get a referral from a client, not that person has become a client, but they give you a lead of someone that they know. It is absolutely critical that you recognize and reward promptly that behavior. And the reason for that is what you alluded to is you are trying to reward more of the behavior that you want, which is for your best clients to give you leads of people that are like them. And so the recognition needs to be in a high expression thank you. Because if you're just doing an email saying thank you or passing thank you in the next meeting, that's not enough. You're communicating to that person that their lead is not, or their referral, excuse me, or introduction is not really that important. It needs to be a high expression thank you, an overboard thank you, plus a gift, which is a reward, where you're rewarding them and saying, listen, this means a lot to me. I'm giving you a high expression thank you to tell you how much I'm gonna take care of anybody you refer, how much I appreciate the fact that you thought about me, and I wanted to give you this gift. Thank you for your trust and confidence. That needs to happen immediately for every single time somebody refers to you, not just when they become a client. So if someone gives you five leads, five high expression thank you, and five gifts, they're not gonna send the gifts back, but you're trying to reward more of the behavior that you want. That is one of many strategies you absolutely want to have embedded in your system.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

And this gets into what you've talked about in terms of a system, which is I've been guilty of this, and which I think a lot of people are, which is they they hear that, they think that's a really good idea. I should do that. And then they get busy, life happens, they don't do it. And in the presentation I heard you do, give you full credit, you were talking about this, and you you gave a resource in terms of, you know, here's an example of what you can do. And when I heard that, I'm like, that's fantastic because it solved the problem. Like my biggest problem is initially, it's like, okay, well, it's a good idea, I should do it. But then I think, well, what would they actually like? Well, I don't know. And it just goes downhill from there, right? But the company, and you can reference them or not if you want, that that you mentioned as an example. I looked into, I did, and it just became this turnkey thing that now I've turned it over to my assistant. The greatest thing, like for example, but if if I don't know better, I'll just start with chocolates, right? And it and they're branded, they have my logo, comes with a little letter, the whole thing's turnkey, you know. And I figure that, you know, most people like chocolates. And if they don't, maybe their their wife likes chocolate, right? Maybe their family likes chocolate. So it's just an easy entry point. Sure, share more about that. Because I mean, again, it goes to like, how do you turn good ideas into a system, which then drives the results that you want?

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Well, I I would say that first of all, I think it's demystifying what system means because people get that even complicated in their heads. All a system is, is a checklist. It's a process, it's it's a written-down checklist of here's what I do when this happens. That's all a system is. And so it's first demystifying and saying that's what it is and committing to be able to do it. Then the second thing is don't try to reinvent the wheel. Duplicate what already works or what other people are doing. So if you want a system and then you're writing down, okay, here's a system that I can use, find out what other people are doing in that system, and then duplicate the things and resources they're using to create that system, which is the example you're bringing up, Paul, about when I talked about it in that presentation. I was just delivering examples that I'd gotten from other advisors to duplicate the same thing. And then the third thing I would say is the advisor many times in having a system can be the bottleneck. And the tendency is okay, I have a system with checklist now, I have resources I can use to fulfill it. Then it becomes, well, how am I going to get this done? And that's the wrong question. It's not how are you gonna get it done? It's who's gonna do this for me. That should actually be the question. Because if the advisor becomes the bottleneck and tries to focus on the implementation, once you have the system and the resources and the approach, it it won't happen or they'll just give up. So I think it's also having someone outside of yourself on your team or outsourced or otherwise own the implementation of it. You own the driving, the plan, and the results of the system, but have someone on your team or otherwise own the execution of it so it becomes who's gonna help me get this done. There's a book Dan Sullivan wrote with Dr. Den Hardy. It's called Who Not How. And it talks about this concept. I absolutely believe as a third piece of making sure systems happen. The advisor can't become the bottleneck or the entrepreneur can't be the bottleneck.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

Yeah, totally agree. And and this was my own journey in the past month or two where I first heard the idea. You pointed out the resource, the initial one I did. I saw this is great, and immediately I, for the next one, I handed it to my executive assistant, and now she runs the system. And so now I just have to do a little text. I say, send the chocolates. And I got a great grip gift as a result of it. And I love it.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

I thought that was awesome. That was out there. So I do have a question though, because this is where I get stuck now. So I'm probably overthinking this. So maybe you can help coach me. Is how do you personalize it though? Because, you know, because that comes down to knowing the person, right? And I think that's where I got stuck in the past, which is, well, I don't know what to send them. I don't know what they want. Do you have any tips on that? I do.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

Well, first, first and foremost, sending something is better than nothing at all, even if you're sending the same gift to everybody. So that's but to your point, personalizing it does enhance the engagement or experience of a gift, or in this example we're talking about. And so one or two ways to do it is obviously if you if you work with people over a long period of time and have a client base, hopefully through your relationship management system, you've been keeping track of things that they have an affinity for. So you know clients who like wine, you know clients who like outdoor activity, you know clients who like fine dining. And then you can have the same gift, wine gift, same fine dining gift, same sports gift, but you're only sending it to sleeves of clients who fall, who have that affinity. Now it seems personalized, even though it's a similar gift, but you know they fall in the sleeve of people who like wine. The other way is if you just met them and you're trying to get to know them, on the internet and social media these days, I get so much information about people before I even meet them that I can easily identify something they have an affinity for and then use that to personalize.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

Yeah, totally agree. It goes back to your idea about intentionality, because it it's interesting. This brought up to me when I'm when I'm drawing a blank, it's because I didn't have a purpose behind maybe asking certain questions. But now that I'm thinking, okay, I need to know some something personal about people so I can send them potentially a gift down in the future, it makes it more enjoyable, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:48

It makes it more enjoyable, and on the flip side, think about how the other person feels. They they they are now having this embedded in their brain of this great experience that you've given them. And and and to your point, Paul, I mean, it needs to be something that is wow, it needs to be something that's impressive. When they get it, in the back of their brain, they're thinking, oh, if I refer somebody, then they'll get this too. You know, so exactly. It's like it creates that seed, it plants those seeds early on when you do those types of things.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

From my point of view, when it comes to marketing and it comes to creating influence, authority, whatever the word is, there are three different groups. There's the individual, meaning that you want to be able to create awareness, the visibility, the positioning in order to be able to attract individuals to you. Oftentimes it's done through referrals, is the is the most common way to do this. Everyone loves referrals because there's a transfer of trust. And then we've talked about some of the ways to help facilitate that. And of course, I think the only not downside, but the only limitation there is that you don't always control when people refer. And the person doesn't control because typically they'll want to make a referral when the topic comes up. It's like, hey, I'm having trouble with taxes. Oh, you should talk to my guy, right? The next level, from my point of view, is centers of influence. And so the beauty of a center of influence is the idea is that they serve the same people that you want to serve. Maybe commonly it's a CPA. And the idea is that if a financial advisor can work with the CPA, the CPA's clients can be referred back and they can have a win-win. And at the same time, everyone accepts that, but very few people execute on that well. Typically, what happens is that the advisor will try it, they'll send referrals to the CPAs, but it's oftentimes not reciprocated or at least not at the volume that they would like for. From your own experience and what you've observed, what are the best centers of influences for an advisor? And what are the strategies that actually work to influence them to consistently provide referrals?

Centers Of Influence Beyond CPAs

SPEAKER_01 33:43

I agree with you on the CPA and that front. It's hit and miss people who have sustained success when it comes to that. Unless they truly have a real integrated partnership with them, such as they're, you know, they're buying into the tax practice or they have a compensation split arrangement with somebody licensing the tax practice. Those types of things tend to entrench it a lot more versus just the normal COI deals. So when I think about COIs, and I know most advisors strictly go to the CPAs and the attorneys, I always think about it much, much more broadly than that. And I try to look at it as center of influences in the audiences that you are trying to go after and looking at it more that way. So if you're working with the oil industry, then you're trying to find the center of influences in the oil industry. And that center of influence could be one of the directors of HR at an oil company. That is a center of influence. Or it could be one of the primary executives who tout your ability to educate oil executives on how to manage their money. So I think sometimes we think about it too streamlined or siloed or too small around center of influences. But on the same token, here's the other thing. Even though you find someone who could be could be a good center of influence, you still need to think about them in the same way that you think about clients that you're trying to duplicate and get referrals from. Because I think one of the biggest reasons that clients don't refer is there's not sufficient enough motivation to do it. And it's the same thing with COIs. Paul, if you as a client or a customer, if you've had an experience that was just outstanding, you know, a product or a service provider, in some way creates a motivation in you to tell somebody else about it. If for nothing else, just to tell a good story. And so sometimes we have to look, and advisors have to look in the mirror and say, maybe what I'm providing is not motivation enough for people to refer. And with COIs or clients, I need to make sure I'm providing something that is motivating enough. And then once I am, making sure it's easy and show them how to refer. Because sometimes you might have people who are motivated, but they just don't even know how to refer to you. Back to some of the conversation we were having earlier. So it needs to be intentional, it needs to be prescribed in that same way. But you've got to be doing things that give people sufficient enough motivation to want to refer and then make it easy and show them how.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Yeah. So there's a couple of interesting threads here. If someone can, to your point, establish the right relationship, have the right incentives, then it can absolutely work. And I see plenty of people that do it and are successful. But then it brings back oftentimes the CPA doesn't have a specific target audience. It might be asset level things of that nature, but then it's they work with everybody, which is great. I mean, as we talked about, if it's a referral, it's a referral. You know, they can still refer. Attorneys, I can't think of a single advisor that said, Oh, this attorney sends me all kinds of business. I mean, it seemed, you know, CPAs are hard. Attorneys seem to be near impossible. But then to what you're saying, you know, think about more broadly. And I think part of that though, it goes back to, well, you have to have a target audience, right? And you use the example, oil executives, you know, because if you don't have a target audience, like, well, let me let me reach out to all executives in the world, but you're not relevant, right? I guess the question or the or the or the framing is just that you have to start with a target audience. You have to start with the niche before you can then be effective in some of these other strategies. Because if you don't have a target audience and niche, it's hard to go beyond just the CPA and the attorney mindset.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Well, I would I would also say this. I would say that absolutely you have to be able to do that. But even there's even I think another way to think differently about it is in your own circle of influence or or people that you meet, you might meet people or have in your circle of influence, people who are influential in another circle of people that you want to have access to. And I think that is a form of a center of influence. So it may not be a targeted niche, but if you meet or know people who you know are influential in this body of people that could be a good fit for you in terms of having the financial resources, I absolutely believe you should look at them as a center of influence and how you would engage in a strategy to help them become an advocate for you. And that's another way to be able to approach it, I think. And I've seen many advisors do that very successfully too.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

Do you have any examples of like categories or individual, you know, it was connector influential?

SPEAKER_01 38:02

Well, like, for example, I know an advisor who knew someone who was very influential in a fraternity. It was like a business fraternity, and the person wasn't even a client. But what he did was he started to curate specific things for that person and that person's business fraternity, which allowed him to, in very easy and meaningful ways, meet all the people that this person who was influential in that business fraternity, and he was able to get connected to them and then became the go-to guy for the business fraternity. Like it's just, you know. But he started with this one person he saw was very influential. I guess the second thing he did very powerful was he went offering value and offering to them. He wasn't asking them for anything, but he started to create things of value that were informational, that were educational, that were also entertaining. That's an important piece. Don't be boring in marketing. He did all of those things and then he became the go-to person without he wasn't even trying to target that business fraternity, but he knew this person was influential and approached it that way. Expand on that. Don't be boring. Financial advisors, the financial industry is a very pretentious industry. And a lot of times, ego and entitlement creeps in where you have advisors feel like, I'm too good to do this, or I'm too good to ask for referrals. I'm a financial advisor. I shouldn't be doing or sending things that are cool and fun. And so everything's become very business, very educational, very step one, step two, step three, versus in particular in marketing, saying, if I am going to send a gift, I can send a gift that's cool and fun. It is boring just to send a brochure to a prospective client or somebody who referred when you're sending them some information or something like that. That's boring. But it's much more interesting if I'm sending some Tiffany wine glasses, maybe some earbuds that are pretty cheap as a thank you or as an introduction to something that I'm doing at an event. It's much more fun and it's more interesting to be able to do that. To do an event that's a lifestyle event, not just coming in to give them tax ball education, but just strictly a lifestyle and entertainment event for people to come have fun and relax and be casual. So I think a lot of times we we overthink and try to be too serious when people would actually rather be entertained than educated. When you can do both, you're winning.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

Yeah. That that gets into mindset, right? So I alluded to this before, but the three audiences, from my point of view, that we're trying to influence. Number one is the individual, oftentimes happens through either marketing or through referrals. The second is the centers of influence that we talked about. The third, and I think this to me, in some ways, is the most exciting today, is what I'm gonna call AI search.

AI Search Media Mindset And Testimonials

SPEAKER_00 40:48

And so let me define that. SEO search engine optimization isn't new. It's been around since Google's been around. And a handful of advisors understand that and they understand that people are searching for information all the time. They go to Google, and if they have a question, different links come out. And so there's a whole marketing strategy around getting found on Google. And that's still relevant. But I think increasingly what's becoming even more relevant is that I don't know if it's most yet, but many people, probably majority, are now using AI tools such like ChatGPT, even Google search AI overviews. And the new game as I see it is how do you get found and ultimately referred and recommended by AI? How do you get it where when someone's having a conversation with ChatGPT and asking questions, as I think, I mean, this is what I do all the time. It's like I have questions. First thing I do, I go to ChatGPT, I say, I ask questions, and at some point I say, okay, I need professional help here. Who should I go to? And because I've had this long-form conversation with ChatGPT, and I, to a degree, trust it because it knows all of my context, it knows the questions. It's in some ways, it could be better than a human referral because the human referrer is limited to the three people that they know and they don't have all the context. And it says you should call so-and-so. I'm prone to call so-and-so. And so to me, this is is the new frontier is how do you get found, discovered, and recommended, referred by not just Google, but by AI tools, ChatGPT, et cetera. Because I think that is probably one, if not the most effective things that you can do from a marketing perspective and from a return on investments perspective, is to train the internet on who you are. Because I saw a statistic by wealth tender who does a business around this, is that 90% of people, even when they're referred to you, they're gonna go to Google, they're gonna go to AI, and they're gonna ask about you. And so the very first thing that you would be doing a great service to yourself and your business, whether it's a referral or a complete stranger, is to shape the narrative that the internet's saying about you. Is this something that that you've been thinking about or exploring?

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Not to the extent of the question, but it is an interesting question. And uh what I would say is first, I definitely am not an expert on AI to be able to speak to it intelligently. But what I would assume and assess is that with the data that AI is pulling and examples you brought up, I would assume that going back to the conversation we were having about content, the more opportunities that you have to have relevant content that is in the atmosphere, whether that's written content that you've done that is online or on your website or in various, if you have a niche community, things that have been published or produced there, your social media presence and the things that you do there, audio and video content like we talked about, if you've been on a podcast or even recorded your own videos that you have produced and and put out there, if you've done informational things either on your own platform or someone else's platform where you've presented and been able to put that out there. Obviously, if you have a book and that's gonna be in various locations and things you've done, it's almost like you want to think of yourself like a media company. And that goes back to the marketing lens and being in the marketing business first. If you started to think of yourself and your business as a media company, what would you want to ensure was perceived by you out there? And all of that is out there that you created as a story, I assume will be pulled by AI to then tell somebody who you are and why you should call.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

That's exactly right. And I love how you connected marketing to media because that's exactly my point of view is that today we should be thinking of ourselves more as a media company. In my mind, that's how you create influence with the three different constituencies, with the individual, when you're able to provide information to your clients to be referred to. I mean that's a form of media whether in whatever format it is, when a center of influence is checking you out, they're assessing, you know, the first thing I do is I go and say, okay, who is this person? I ask ChatGPT, what's this person? What should I know about them, right? We want to be able to have shortcuts, right? We want to be able to make quick decisions. And so the more that these thoughts are reinforced by individual CEOIs or online tools, AI as a shortcut for that, the more effective we're going to be going forward. And I think ultimately it comes to thinking of yourself more as being in the media business.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

That's right. And the other thing with that would be pulled that I didn't mention is client testimonials. Like that also to me I think would be big because not only would it if you have client testimonials that you have produced and make sure are promoted, then it would also be pulling that in addition to telling who you are in your story. It could then also tell what other people are saying about you because we live in that world when you're going anywhere, Airbnb or restaurant anywhere, the first thing you're doing is going to look at the ratings and and and the comments and testimonials. And so that I think is also one that is missed that should be controlled and promoted that is not and some of it is the awareness that you can do it. Because I know a lot of advisors don't even realize that you can collect and promote client testimonials when in the past you couldn't. But that rule has now changed and it's a highly effective way to win more business referrals, promotion be appropriately curated through AI or the internet. And it's powerful because in a marketing strategy testimonials create a lot of social proof a ton of social proof that you could not use before. One of my favorite business books Paul is Robert Cialdini's book Influence the Psychology of Persuasion. And one of the things he talks about is the three stages you try to take people through in order to move them to a yes or persuade them. The first is a positive association that's the first stage. The second is reducing anxiety and then the third is motivating to action and then he talks about his influencing principles and how they fit. Well once you've got a positive association and somebody's aware of you, you got to reduce anxiety and the way you do that is you do it through authority. So having content, having a book having various platforms where people can view you as an expert. The second way is social proof because people tend to look outside of themselves to make a decision. So using testimonials in addition to all the other things we talked about so people can curate who you are very powerful piece to help with that. And you want to have testimonials that have that before and after arc. So here's who I was before I worked with Paul and here's how I look financially after. And by the way there are there are guidelines and disclosures that you have to follow. So that's the other piece you just want to make you got it. The second thing is then having a system to collect you can probably Google if you're affiliating with a firm or if you're not you can you can find the resources there are a lot of resources that that are actually out there right now that will show you a system of questions to ask a client once you've got their consent that they do a testimonial that will lead them down a path of being able to tell a story. And you could probably AI it you know chat GBT it or co-pilot it and and and it will give you you know if you wanted to build a system to collect testimonials to be able to do that. Or if you're affiliated with a firm most of the time firms will have some system that you can follow they'll suggest to collect then the third piece is then how you use it because you can use it for marketing purposes you can distribute it emails, social media newsletters brochures websites of video testimonials you can have a client do a video testimonial that you can put on your website one unique way that I an advisor I work with and their team they use it they got some client testimonials from their clients and so when they get a referral and they set up the meeting for that person to come in before that person comes in they have a two-page sheet they send and it might be one page just on both sides. The first page just has the advisor's picture, their values and a little bit about them. And then on the second page on the back it has the client testimonials. And that's the very first thing this referral prospect sees before they even come in to see the advisor that they've built into their system to again establish social proof but also help predispose that client to want to work with them even before they've come in because they now they see all the great things these other clients that they work with have done for them. So that's a couple of examples and suggestions.

SPEAKER_00 49:00

Just open-ended is there anything that we haven't talked about that you would like to share that's important to you that advisors should know when it comes to any of the things we've talked about when it comes to marketing comes to mindset anything of that nature?

Internal Versus External Marketing Plan

SPEAKER_01 49:12

I would say that I think in building a marketing strategy, you want to have a documented plan. And I'm not saying you got to reinvent the wheel you can you can duplicate what other people are doing that works. But you do want to think about it in in two sleeves. There is external marketing and then there's internal marketing. The external marketing plan is when you have some system and plan to go out and generate leads of people who have no idea about your practice, don't know you at all, maybe they're in your targeted niche, but you're not doing it through any affiliation of someone who already knows you. You're trying to generate code leads of people that you introduce to your business and then nurture them over time in order to convert. That's an external marketing plan. Then you have an internal marketing plan which is where you are trying to duplicate your existing best clients and create in an environment to generate referrals from them. And I think you should start with the internal marketing plan. When I say start you should do both simultaneously but you already have an existing ready-made audience that you can use to build a marketing plan around if you don't already have it and then you build out all the different things that you might do like rewarding clients who refer, creating an an onboarding great wow experience for clients when they first come on board. So the first thing in their brains is oh if I refer somebody's going to get this too having a content and newsletter strategy so that clients they don't question value when they're in front of you. They question value in between meetings. So you need a content strategy in between meetings to ensure that the perceived value of who you are and what you do stays high in their brains and continues to remind them and motivate them to refer but increases the perceived value of the experience. Definitely using client testimonials like we talked about periodic unexpected gifts would be another thing you could have in an internal marketing plan. Private client events so how you can build private events you still can do masks bring a friend events. You want to do that because that creates social proof but how can you let's say with a center of influence of somebody you're trying to create as a center of influence or existing clients that you love to duplicate create some pre-curated events where you've said all right we'll have these five events where we have these locations and we can turn key them I'm going to send a letter or invite my best clients and go to them and say hey we want to host an event in your honor Paul and here are the five different types of events that you can choose from all you got to do is let us know what type of event you want to do and invite eight to ten of your friends, guests, colleagues or people you want to come and you set up private client but that's more curated private client dedicated to that person, that client or that COI. And it's no education it's just to come to have a good time and meet people in a fun way. I also think branding your offering as a last one or actually second to last a lot of advisors will say I do financial planning six key areas of planning you know we meet with you we do an analysis we come up with a strategy we implement that's what everybody's saying about planning. Instead of that what if you branded your offering and say Paul we have a proprietary trademark system at our firm called the financial freedom planning system. Here's what it looks like that enhances the perceived value of your marketing immediately because the only way they can get the financial freedom planning system is to work with you or to work with me. So that changes that and then the last thing is you need to constantly plant the seed with people because once you're doing a lot of things to create this environment to generate referrals you got to remind them that you're open for business. So you need a system daily and weekly when you're meeting with clients or anybody who interacts with clients to be able to remind people that we love working with you. If there's anybody like you who needs advice or could benefit from what we do, we are more than happy to help type statement that can be consistently made that you track that you have people involved and that you incentivize in your business so that while you're doing all these things, you have a way to make sure you keep it in front of people and plant the seed.

SPEAKER_00 53:07

I think those are all fantastic ideas. One thing I can imagine someone listening is how do they prioritize where to start?

SPEAKER_01 53:13

So I would say that the first place to start is you have to decide that target market client acquisition is a wildly important goal for you. The hardest one. Exactly none of the rest of the stuff matters Paul unless you do that. Because the best advisors at marketing and businesses and firms I've seen every year they have target market client acquisition and typically net flows, which is driven by that, as a wildly important goal that the entire team and everybody's rallying behind. So that has to be out in front. Then the second thing is being able to like I know we were talking about some ideas right now another thing is being able to adopt or duplicate because I know building it from scratch some people may feel like it's daunting. So you can either adopt and duplicate systems that already work and this is where as the CEO of a business you got to do some work do some strategic thinking to research what's working and how can I adopt it or use your strategic partner of AI. If you go in in AI and they can pull all the data from your business and you ask them to create a marketing plan targeted at a niche and what to do, it'll build it for you. You can do that too or adopt some of the things that are working third have someone outside of yourself own the implementation like we talked about. Because once you got a system and the system can be refined over time you own driving the results but you need somebody else to own the implementations of the things that need to be done in order to get it done then you got to track activity and results and you got to review it periodically I mean that's the execution plan to be able to get it done.

SPEAKER_00 54:41

This has been fantastic. I always enjoy having these conversations with people like yourself who have years of experience, have great ideas and just have that passion and drive to share these ideas. For someone listening to this where's the best place for them to follow you, learn more about you all those good things.

Where To Connect And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 55:01

Absolutely can find me on LinkedIn and it's MarcusRanger I also am on Instagram MarkMarc underscore ranger and you'll see the Rainmaker as a title there. So those are probably two ways most immediately to find me and I know a lot of people connect with me on LinkedIn. And I'd also just say that the magic of a lot of what we're talking about because I love the game of business and money and I'm and I'm happy to help the magic is trying to figure out how to simultaneously implement things at the same time I know some people would also say I'm gonna do this step then I'm gonna do this step then I'm gonna do this step this it'll take you 10 years to be able to you know try to do everything versus those who are really high achievers and have a lot of high productivity they figure out how to simultaneously get things working at the same time so they can figure out what works they can move things faster they can scale faster and create an environment and can get the results that they want. But those are the ways to find me LinkedIn Marcus Ranger uh Instagram mark underscore ranger and look forward to connecting with people fantastic I've enjoyed the conversation thank you for being a guest on today's show thank you Paul I thoroughly enjoyed it thank you so much