How Financial Advisers Are Booking 3 to 5 Client Appointments a Week on LinkedIn | Louis Adkins

Most financial advisers already know they should be more active on LinkedIn. What they don't know is why what they're doing isn't working.

Free LinkedIn Webinar - book here -  http://www.leadgenfs.co.uk/fpl    

It's not the content. It's not the consistency. It's who they're connected to, what they're saying in messages, and whether they've ever stopped to define exactly who they're trying to reach. Get those three things wrong and LinkedIn produces nothing. Get them right and, as Louis Adkins puts it, consistent inputs get consistent outputs.

In this episode of Financial Planner Life, Sam Oakes sits down with Louis Adkins, Founder of LeadGenFS, who started building his LinkedIn system at 19 during his second year of university. He was studying geography, had no marketing background, and no clients. His first break came through a friend's dad. By his third year he had a waiting list of 27 clients, built entirely from LinkedIn. He graduated and went straight into the business full time.

In the last 12 months alone, LeadGenFS has worked with over 100 financial advisers, helping them generate 3 to 5 qualified appointments a week from LinkedIn. One adviser added £12 million in AUM in 12 months. Another booked 47 calls in 90 days. A third sent 20 messages, went for a shower, came back seven minutes later and had an interested reply waiting.

Louis breaks down the full system in this episode. How to niche down so your message actually lands with the right people. Why automated outreach destroys trust and gets accounts banned. How to build content that speaks to clients rather than other advisers. How to generate ideas consistently from your own conversations. And how to use direct messages to convert your audience into booked appointments without opening with a pitch.

He also covers why referrals, as good as they are, will never give you control over your own growth, and what to build instead as your primary source of new clients.

The episode's key takeaways:

• Why referrals are a bonus, not a primary strategy, and what to build alongside them
• Why 95% of financial advisers' LinkedIn connections are other advisers, not potential clients
• Why automated outreach gets accounts banned and never builds the trust needed to convert
• How to niche down so your content and messages cut through to the right people
• Why asking for business in the first message is like proposing on a first date
• The three legs of the LinkedIn system: connecting, content, and direct messaging
• How to generate consistent content ideas from your own client conversations
• The three parts of every LinkedIn post: hook, value, and action
• The message priority ladder: who to contact first and in what order
• Why LinkedIn leads convert at around 30% versus 75% for referrals, and why that still makes LinkedIn the better primary source

If you are a financial adviser who wants to stop relying on referrals and start generating clients consistently, this is the episode to listen to.

Louis has also put together a free resource for Financial Planner Life listeners: five of the best performing post templates from LeadGenFS, available athttp://www.leadgenfs.co.uk/fpl 

Want to build your personal brand and generate better client leads on LinkedIn? Sam Oakes and Louis Adkins are hosting a free webinar. 

Register here 👉 https://038a8hn1lhs.typeform.com/to/NXlbUqAI 

Financial Planner Life is sponsored by Redmill Advance

Whether you're starting out, already qualified, or building a training academy, Redmill Advance delivers expert-led learning, exam support and CPD from Level 4 to Chartered.

✅ Trusted by top UK firms

👉 www.redmilladvance.com/fpl

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Reach out to sam@financialplannerlife.com in regards to sponsorship, partnerships, videography or podcast production. 

Want to appear on the Financial Planner Life podcast? Drop Sam a message.

Transcript

Welcome And The LinkedIn Promise

SPEAKER_01 0:03

And today on the Financial Planet Life podcast, we welcome Louis Atkins from Lead GenFS. You are going to love this episode if you want to learn what to do to generate quality leads week on week on LinkedIn. So stick around to the end as well, because we share what you need to do to sign up to a free webinar to get those insider secrets and booking those appointments. You're going to love this episode. So Louis, welcome to the Financial Planner Life. How are you? Yeah, I'm really good. Thank you for having me on. Looking forward to it. I was going to say introduce yourself for your t-shirt does it for us. So tell us a little bit about LeadGenFS and how you got into helping financial

Louis’ Origin Story And Early Clients

SPEAKER_01 0:45

planners absolutely smash it on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Yeah, so um I'm Louis. I'm 22. People might be looking why why I look why I look young. Um and LeadGenFS really, I started it when I was 19, um, in my second year of university. Because um Well, when I started it, I suppose I wasn't really too I was at uni and what degree I was doing, I was doing a geography degree, which is very unrelated to anything to do with financial planning or anything to do with marketing or anything like that. But I found that like it just didn't really grab me. I couldn't, I couldn't pull myself into it. And when I was younger, I'd always wanted to have my own business. I'd always wanted to, I was always starting things, little projects, things like that. And when I was at uni in my second year, I got the idea of starting a marketing business as something to do because I found it exciting. And it was great because I could just teach myself the skill of marketing and then sell my time to people. So that's how it started at university. And it was second year, 19, didn't have any network or anything like that. And um, first client I ever got working with um happened to be my best mate's dad, who was a bridging finance broker. And um, he said, Oh, I can see that you've started this business. Um, and I started originally with my best mate, and um he was like, I'd love to support you guys so you can you can um you can be I can be your first client sort of thing. And so what we did is for the next six months, we I just like geeked out basically on on digital marketing and just trying to like learn everything I can and then apply it to this bridging uh finance broker. And um, so we did that for a long time. It went like up and down, as I'm sure you can imagine, with your first ever client when you've not done anything before. But then from there, what happened is eventually like um my mate's dad ended up doing something else, and then my mate ended up not wanting not doing the business anymore, just didn't want to do it. He focused on his studies, which was probably a smart thing to do. And um it left me in my third year of uni, um, still really wanting to do it because I found it very exciting. I could see the potential of it. I didn't have any clients or anything like that. And that's where I was and I was like, okay, well, it's not gonna be much of a business if I carry on doing this for my friend's dad. I've got to find a way to get clients. And um originally it was just like an advertiser, like general marketing business. And so I thought these bridging finance brokers, these these brokers, these guys in financial services, like they're really quite behind in terms of like online marketing, and they're really not really tapping into it as much as they should be. Then hardly any of them are on social media, hardly any of them are using ads or anything like that. And I was like, and I've just learned so much about this, I should do it for more people like them. And I was like, so let's go out and get them. And then I had the problem, which I imagine a lot of people who've listening to this have experienced, which is it's now I've got this thing. How do I get people to get it? And so um that's when I started trying loads of different things. So I started doing, I started trying to post on YouTube, I started trying to post on Instagram, I started trying to post on LinkedIn, I started cold emailing, I started cold calling, which I was absolutely awful at and found miserable because uh I didn't I didn't like doing that. But I started all these things and uh I found it incredibly difficult. But then LinkedIn just sort of started to get traction a bit earlier, and I can go into it a bit later why it started to, but it just started to get a bit more traction. I remember I got my first ever message on LinkedIn and it was a guy saying, Oh, I've seen you on LinkedIn, it'd be great to have a chat. And I was like, Oh my god, like someone's actually someone's actually come to me to I was like, this is amazing. So then what I did is because LinkedIn worked first, I just shut everything else off and when I'm just gonna go full into LinkedIn. And so I started doing LinkedIn for myself to get clients for the business whilst I was in the third year of uni. And um, whilst I was in my third year, I managed to generate a waiting list of 27 clients, um, purely just from LinkedIn. I remember I'd like I remember I did this like couple posts on LinkedIn. I at one point I had like a hundred leads, and that's just me in my university room doing a dissertation on sustainable finance for my geography degree. But I was like, I had all these leads coming in. I was like, what am I doing? Um anyway, I took it, I did that uni, and then like I had to pause a lot because I had to write my dissertation, which is a weird thing to say to your clients when you're in university. I'm sorry, I can't deliver the work because I've got to write a dissertation. Um, but that's what happened. And then I graduated, was able to go into the business full time because I generated the waiting list. And then for the rest of the time, it was me doing LinkedIn for me and helping brokers with their marketing. But then slowly what started to happen is one day, basically, I got an advisor who financial advisor who

The Pivot To Advisors And Proof

SPEAKER_00 5:00

booked in with me. And he got on the call, and I could see something that was a little bit slightly not right. Because normally I worked with mortgage advisors, mortgage brokers, commercial finance brokers, never really done much with planners. And I could see something wasn't quite right when the when the planner joined the joined the call. I was like, Oh, what's this? And he was like, Lou, I'm I'm not interested in what you're doing with your marketing. And I was like, Okay, well, why have you booked on? He's like, I've just seen what you're doing on LinkedIn and I want to learn how you've done that. And I was like, Okay, and I was a bit like, oh, I'm I'm not too sure, sort of thing. I've never, but he was like really adamant for it. So I I said, right, okay, I'll show you what I do. And I just did like eight one-hour calls with them showing them, and like, yeah, in the first week, they did like four, four booked appointments, and then the second week after that, they got three booked appointments. The quality of the appointments was really, really good. I was like, this is absolutely insane. Um, so then what I did is because that was just doing so well for that person, he then got in touch with his friend who was a planner and his friend who was a planner, and the planners came on board. And then what I was doing there with the planners on LinkedIn was just getting them such good results, not just in terms of leads and not just in terms of quality of leads, but actually clients coming on board and things like that. And I was like, like, this is working so well, I've got to just do this for more people. So I stopped, I pivoted the business from the from the ads to showing people what I was doing on LinkedIn to fill my time. And it was great because I'd spent so long, I'd spent like two and a half years just doing LinkedIn for me. I had like the knowledge because I've been like in the trenches of doing LinkedIn, and then I was able to apply that. And then since then, it's been about just over maybe a year, and we've probably now done it for like over a hundred financial advisors in the last 12 months, just showing them exactly what I did at uni and helping them book like three to five appointments a week. And that's basically what Lead Gen Fest does.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Love it. Listen, I'm really proud of you and your journey and your story because when you um spoke about your very first client, I don't think maybe you might remember, but I spoke to you at that point. We had a conversation because I was really interested and intrigued by you as well because you were out there doing uh the whole LinkedIn thing and you were you were younger. And I was thinking, what is this guy up to? And I remember having a conversation with you, and I remember thinking at the time you're onto something really good here, and you had that kind of um that resilience and persistence. You you you you'd gone down a real rabbit hole of your learning all these books, and you were just really kind of filling your filling yourself up with knowledge. Uh and then I was in Dubai and I phoned you up in Dubai, didn't I? And I was trying to poach you to come and work for me. You know, you went through absolutely everything with me of what you were doing, and you'd kind of you articulated something to me that educated me, and that made me think this guy knows what he's talking about, right? That you understand the funnels and the systems and the process of the marketing and that everything is really process-driven. And if all things are in the right place, um you're gonna get results if you follow a blueprint. And I'm really pleased that you have created a blueprint that supports financial planners to generate uh leads on on LinkedIn because uh there is a huge amount of them out there that want that level of service, they just don't know how to do it. And I think the market has often been flooded with AI or outsourced um offshore individuals that are promising the earth and then setting up crappy AI type automation processes that are just peppering the inbox. Now we all know when we get those because they're just so obviously written, aren't they? And they just do your heading. And actually, there's a massive risk that, right? There's a risk

The Hidden Risk Of Automation

SPEAKER_01 8:10

that you can actually shut down your LinkedIn profile by allowing somebody to run autonomous um outreach for you. Yeah. Do you see that a lot?

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Yeah, one of the things that we do see, I do see a lot of advisors come to us who maybe they've they've they've tried LinkedIn before, and the way they've gone about trying it is they go, like kind of what you're explaining. They've either gone to an agency, you've gone, yeah, they promise in the world, and they'll go, yeah, well, think about like this. Like, all we're gonna do is we're gonna set up like these these automations, and then we're gonna send like um loads of messages. Like we're gonna send like hundreds and hundreds a day. And like if you think about the numbers, like all you have to do is send a hundred and you'll get like one or two, and then those clients, and then the problem with that though is what people miss out is there's there's there's two things really. Like the first thing is, yeah, LinkedIn really don't like you doing that. Uh, LinkedIn, you always have to think what's the goal of the platform. The goal of the platform is to make the user have the best possible experience. That does not align with LinkedIn's goal of having the best user experience. It completely taints it. So that's why they restrictive users or ban accounts if you do automate a lot of things. So that's why in what we do at Legion FS, we actually don't automate things. We look at we look at systemizing it, but not through automation, through like routines and inputs you can do on a daily basis, regardless of if you're full with clients or dead quiet, you can scale the inputs to scale the outputs, is what we say. But that's like the first thing. And I suppose if we're looking at like so, like when you're when you're automating it, the other thing that kind of it it shortcuts is yeah, like anybody can send automated messages, but but the problem is like people buy, like if you think about why a client chooses you as an advisor for the person that's listening, they normally buy into the you as the individual because they trust you as an individual. And when you send a big long-winded message which tries to sell them in the first thing, it doesn't build trust. I always say to the advisor we work with, it's kind of like if you ask somebody to marry you on a first date, right? There's no like you go and you don't go into a room and you say, Hey, would you, you know, like I think you're great, would you like to marry me? Like it's like, whoa, whoa, that's like a crazy commitment, right? I have no idea who you are. You could be some weird, like some weirdo. Um, it's the same thing. It's like, well, why do you do that in the inboxes? Why do you try and ask someone to marry you, i.e., would you like me to look after all of your life savings? Right. In the first message, when you've ever messaged anybody before, you you wouldn't do that. When you're in person, you obviously have a you take maybe the client, the client out for a couple of times, you get to know them, you get to know the family, you get to know it's like it's that that's why it doesn't work fundamentally. It's not because like just there's no there's well, what's the golden message? Because there's no trust. Um, and so what we work like that's why they don't work. It's number one, LinkedIn doesn't like it, but number one, there's no trust. Like you can't and you can't shortcut trust. Um, so a big focus for us is positioning the advisor as the go-to person for a target market, building as much trust as possible with them so that when they send a message, it's not who's this weirdo asking for my personal finances. It's oh, I've seen this guy's content, I think you're absolutely brilliant. Like, I've been meaning to message you like, thank you so much for the message. I'd love to work with you because I've seen what you've done for the other people, and you look absolutely great. And that's why it works.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Love it. Now you you've been very kind enough to come on today and actually talk about your process very openly so you can educate people and hopefully help them make uh a builder plan of how to use LinkedIn appropriately. Before we get into that, uh you've got LinkedIn lead generation through outbound, right? Yeah, and then we have traditional lead generation, which is often articulated through academies, uh even for people that have just started out in on their journey, and that's referrals. Now, referrals, when you speak to some financial advisors, they swear by that's the best thing in a slice of bread. But what they'll tell you is as well, is that they don't they don't come in very quickly, referrals like you know, that can take a long time. Now, when you're trying to put food on the table, provide you for your family, you need to get some you need to get some business in, right? You need some business on the board. Yeah. So

Why Referrals Stall Growth

SPEAKER_01 11:50

why do referrals fail then? Why why why why why is a certain generation of advisors or a certain type of advisor maybe leaning too heavily into referrals? And what does the uh LinkedIn strategy provide?

SPEAKER_00 12:03

I think the the biggest sort of failure of referrals, if you like, is that you just don't have control over them. So when an advisor comes to me and says, most advisors, whenever we speak to them, whenever I spoke to them, and I've probably spoken now in the last 12 months with like over 300, 400 different advisors, and all of them say, I get referrals, or every single one of them says that, and they say, and they're always the best clients. And it goes back to that trusting report, it's because the trust is there. And I agreed that referrals are a great source of good quality meetings. The problem is you just don't have control over them, which means when I'm quiet, I can't just say, Hey, refer me more. Like it's quite difficult to do that. And obviously, one person only knows so many people as well. And when you're starting, you don't have any people, or the people you know only know a certain limited amount of people. So it becomes very difficult for you to do it and actually be intentional about growing your book. You don't have control about growing your book. The way, the way I put it is I I say, you know, your clients or whoever it is out there is not sat there thinking, I really need to grow this advisor's book. Like only you are thinking, I need to grow my book. And so you need to have control over the fact that you should control like grow your book, which is not what you have with referrals. And like they are a great source, but I see you need to see them as a bonus, not as the primary source. And for the primary source, you need something that you can have full control over because then your book and your growth and your business and who you help is fully in your control. And so I think that's the big sort of reason. But I think the reason it's recommended is because most people just don't know, well, it's well, what's that primary source? And obviously, there's always, oh well, you could buy leads, but like the problem with buying leads again is it comes down to trust. People are filling in a form online and speaking to a advisor they've not bought any in any trust with. So when you get them on the phone, you can sometimes feel like you really have to like, you know, you have to like all them in, sort of thing, to try and get that lead to to progress because there's no trust there. So that's the problem with with like buying leads, for example. Networking, again, it's like, yeah, that's nice, but you're just like, again, you're relying on other people to grow the book for you, relying to go into a room with 50 or so people and speak to them about your advice when everybody else in that room is also wanting you to refer them business and you're relying on them to tell their friend to come and speak to you. That's a pretty scary way to grow a business, in my opinion. So then there's then you've got to look at other options. And what we have with LinkedIn is it's sort of, I say it's like if you had like referrals up here as quality, if you get a lead from LinkedIn, it's sort of like just underneath that in terms of trust and quality, because when you do LinkedIn the right way, you build a like you build a trusted audience of ideal clients, and then you through your content, everything, you nurture them, you educate them on their expertise, they feel like they know you. Then when they book in the appointment, it's again, it's not like a stranger who have just filled in a form online. It's no, I followed John Smith, the advisor on LinkedIn for six months. I've now booked in with him because I feel like he can really help me and my family achieve our financial goals. Sometimes it doesn't even take six months as well. I can talk about advisors who have got results within literally weeks of just starting doing it the right way. But um fundamentally that's why I I don't like it. Like I'm one of my one of my members, one of my team members, uh Connor is he's fantastic uh uh at LinkedIn. Um his partner is actually becoming a financial planner. And she's gone to various firms and uh you know said, like, oh, I'm really interested. Can what do you have to offer? That sort of thing. And I'm not gonna name names, but like one of the firms she went to, one of her they said, Do you have any questions? Like, are you worried about anything? She was like, Yeah, to be honest, like I'm really worried about how I'm gonna get my first couple of clients because I'm only 25. I don't really know how I'm gonna get these people. And um the the guy at this uh at this firm looked at her and said, Well, like, how many, how many friends and family like do you have? And he and she was like, What do you mean? And she's like, Well, how many friends and family do you have? Because you should you should ask all of them. And and she was she went back to Connor and she was like, you know, I'm 25 years old. I only have like my friends are not, they don't need financial advice. They're not they're not there yet. And the family members that I have, yeah, okay, maybe there's like four or five, but it's like that's not a strategy. She was like, what on earth am I gonna do? And now that's why we've built the GenFS, obviously, is to help advisors sort of in that situation. But, you know, that's the advice that's going around. And that's why I think so many advisors come to us because they're just stuck not being able

Sponsor Redmill Advance CPD Platform

SPEAKER_00 16:23

to grow.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Hi, sorry for interrupting this episode, but I just wanted to let you know that it's sponsored by Red Mill Advanced. They're the UK's leading provider of interactive e-learning courses, specifically for the financial advice sector. They're best in class e-learning, CPD courses and technical knowledge, leadership and management skills, business skills and compliance knowledge, while their exam support courses help your people pass their CII, CISI and LIBF exams first time. It's all delivered on a powerful learning platform that makes reporting CPD to the FDA seamless and gives leadership teams full knowledge and skills visibility across their entire organisation. That's why companies like St. James is placed, Quilter, PLT, Hascot Lloyd, Foster DeNovo and DeVere trust Redmill to keep their advisors and wider teams competent, compliant, and at the top of their game. So to book a free demo, get yourself to redmilladvance.com and they'll do the rest. Also, trying to um trying to win business through friends and family is sticky, man. That's a hard job, that is. Like, and it can also become quite uncomfortable down the line. It's a bit like working with friends and family. You can get uncomfortable when it goes down the line. So I think that's definitely well worth avoiding and I not avoiding, but there is opportunity there.

Fix Your Profile And Audience

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Because that's what you said earlier about buckets. You know, there are multiple buckets. You could do like paid for advertising, you could generate referrals. You could do uh direct marketing, networking. There's all these different different uh markets and different channels of generated clients. It's just not one thing that fixes it all, but what you hear the most is referrals. But yes, they do work, and it definitely works for a specific level of advisor who's in that further journey. And they they're bound to say referrals are the best. Of course they are, but those referrals come later on down the line. But I also do like what you say about using the LinkedIn strategy that you offer is that it's like almost like a guarantee. It's like a system that you put in place that as long as it's as long as it's being worked, will generate you clients. And you can kind of not so much automate it, but you can predict. Like you might predict once you have a really good paid-for advertising campaign, or you know, you're you know, you're on vouch for or whatever, and you know you've got so many leads, you can kind of go right over that 12-month period I have that many leads. So I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get that many next year. So there's a kind of predictableness about using LinkedIn. I just think what it is, it's an under it's a lack of understanding that in your pocket on your mobile phone is networking on steroids.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Yeah, I mean, I also like just just what you were saying about the like the the referrals and like they are the best leader, it just reminded me of an advisor I literally spoke to yesterday, and he came in and he was like, Louis, I think I have a sales problem. I was like, Oh, like what's the problem? Sort of thing. And he was like, Well, I'm getting these leads from LinkedIn, and like when I get and he was like, My referral leads, I close 75% of them, I'm great there. And I was like, Cool. And he was like, But these leads on LinkedIn, like I'm only converting like 30% of them. And I was like, What's the problem? And he was like, Well, shouldn't I be doing like 75% of them? And I was like, mate, if you're doing 75% conversion rate on LinkedIn, like I'd be asking you how you're doing that. Like, it's of course it's never gonna be your 75% conversion rate on referrals or anything like that, because you know, it's it they are the warmest of the warm, they found out about you, that's how it is. But the difference is the the leads you get from from LinkedIn, maybe you only convert one in three, but you can you can it's supply and demand, it's like you're saying before, it's you have control, you it's I always say in the community, it's consistent inputs get consistent outputs. So it's like with referrals, I don't have control, I don't have control of that source. Whereas on LinkedIn, maybe I only convert one in three, but I can choose whether I get three, five, ten, twenty appointments this month. And so I can always grow, basically.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

And also referrals will follow uh a strong LinkedIn strategy, right? Yeah, because if you are out there uh directly contacting uh your niche or your target market and connecting with them and building content around them, that's only ever going to start to be a referral mechanism for yourself. In fact, you're probably increasing your chances of generating those valuable referrals by being super duper niche and targeting specific individuals on LinkedIn, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:38

And well, also the the the thing that we do is uh your clients you get from LinkedIn will then give you referrals. So you have a way of generating clients that's in your control, and then you get like, let's say you get like five clients this month from LinkedIn, for example. Well then each of those five clients will are people who are referring you. So like, yeah, you're you have control of growing your book, but then you're also growing your referrals by proxy because you are you are, right? Um so yeah, like yeah, you're exactly right. And one of the first things we also do with all the advisors who join is we actually get them to go to all of their warm network on LinkedIn and start getting those people um to to inquire with them. Start, we set we call it our message blast campaign. We get them to do this message blast campaign, um, and we get it to send to all their warm networks. It's a certain type of message we get to send, and that's what gets people appointments really quickly. So, like just a couple of advisors joined us recently. One of them booked four appointments in his first ever week of doing the strategy. Uh, based off his conversion rate, that's one client already in his first week, which makes him very happy and very likely to stick with the rest of it doing it now because if he gets an appointment, he's gonna go, Oh, I should probably do more of this. Um, but then another advisor again, she did two appointments in her first week. And then someone who's literally just joined us, like his first week was probably a week ago. Um, he actually put in the community, he's like, What sort of I posted about it today actually at the time of writing, he's uh at the time. Of making this, he he posted um, what sort of voodoo magic are you guys using here? Like this, this this should be illegal. Because like he sent 20 messages, went for a shower, seven minutes later, he came back. Someone said, Oh, I've not worked the fan advisor before. I'd be interested to hear more. And like, all he did was send 20 messages because we used his warm network on LinkedIn. So you also can do it on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Buyer's list, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Yeah, I love it. Absolutely. Great stuff. Now, before we get into the actual method that you use and we talk through it, let's just talk a little bit about some of the things that advisors are doing wrong on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Oh I think one of the big ones that I see advisors doing wrong is they make LinkedIn about like advice, not about the clients. So it's all about them or advisors, not about clients. So I always I always post about this on LinkedIn, but like I think the the the actual thing I say is that big mistake I see most financial makers, most financial advisors make on LinkedIn is 95% of their LinkedIn is competitors, not clients. And what I mean by that is 95% of them are other financial advisors, not potential prospects. And there's an argument to say, oh, well, maybe that's a good thing. But if you want clients from LinkedIn, you should be connected with mostly clients. So the biggest problem I see is everything advisors do is typically all geared towards other financial advisors networking with other people or recruiters trying to say, Would you like a job when they don't want a job? or things like that. Um, and so what we do, the difference is is we take them from being mostly advisor-focused and making everything about the client. And that's just not like who are they connected with? That's also like their entire profile. That's also when they write content, it's not writing it with jargon or it's not using financial terms, it's writing it the way the client would say. So, for example, it's like, does a client want their pensions to be consolidated? Well, they probably wouldn't say that. So I'm never gonna get an advisor to say, Oh, here's how to consolidate your pensions or something like that, right? They're never because no one ever like a client doesn't come to you and say, I really, I really want to consolidate my pensions this week. It's like, no, they're saying like my pensions feel all over the place, or I can't keep track of my pensions. So we use that language. So that's that's what I mean. It's it's it's things like that.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

I don't know how many pensions I've got on, I don't know much I how much I need to actually retire on.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

I'm completely lost. So they're the questions you lead with.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what's going through someone's mind.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

Like I really would love to set up a pension. I'd really love to know how much money I'm gonna need, but I don't know how to say you're that person. And that's it, isn't it? Yeah, does you know does it keep you awake at night? Do you know, you know, all those things, all these things that kind of drive we all sit there and we all worry about money. That's one of the biggest things we worry about is you know, and security. And it's about crafting the question, isn't it? Specifically to the way somebody's thinking about the jargon that's been used. And that's been obviously a major issue within the financial services for years, it's cutting through the jargon.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

The best, the best quote, I can't remember who said it, so I don't want to misquote them, but like the copywriter says you have to enter the conversation that's already going on inside the customer's head. Yeah, that's the perfect way to say it. It's like that's what I mean. It's like if someone's saying, I'm worried, I don't know how much I have to have to retire, it's like you have to say that, because that's what they're saying in their head. Because that's what's gonna, that's what's gonna resonate with them, because that's fundamentally more what you want. You want on LinkedIn, you just want to, or any marketing, you just want to make the prospect feel seen, which is like, oh, that's me. Like that's that's like when he wrote when he wrote, I don't know how much I need to retire, that's me. Like that's exactly what I'm thinking right now. Like, if you can get someone saying that, they'll read the rest of the post, and that's normally what gets them booking in as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Um, you know, financial advisors connecting with financial advisors, it does kind of benefit me as a business. Yeah, um, it does. Uh, because you know, my name gets spread around different financial advisors, which is which is great stuff. Now, a lot of financial advisors might want to connect with me because I'm talking about the profession as a whole from a career perspective. Um, and the way that I would say to them is look, you don't have to connect with other financial planners to understand what's going on in financial planning. You need to connect with the one source of truth to me, financial planner life. And I'm connected to those financial planners and those that are in the profession. So if you're connecting with me, then you'll see the conversations that I'm having. And if you like that content, other financial planners will see that content. If you comment, other people will see that. So actually, indirectly, it becomes a kind of recruitment tool or a s a tool to be able, or a platform if you like, to be able to stand out within the profession amongst other financial planners. So if you do have that itch to scratch and you want to stand out, come on a platform like Financial Planner Life or comment on a post of mine or like a post of mine or get me to like or comment on a post of yours and work in partnership that way. So that's a great way to kind of think, oh god, yeah, but if I'm not connected with financial planners, how am I going to recruit? It's like, well, just connect with somebody who's got the audience already and work a partnership deal in respect of how you operate with those types of clients. For example, you, you're here today, you're on the podcast because I've got a network of financial planners, right? Yeah, exactly. Customers are financial planners. And that's the key thing as well. Be strategic about who you connect with. Because if there's if there's 20 people like me in the space of financial planning, right, and it's all about career development, et cetera, then go and connect with those people, build relationships with them, and you're going to be elevated into that network. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

I would also say as well that typically what I've found is that getting a following in your industry typically comes as a byproduct of doing well as well in the industry. It's like one of the clients who I know you've had, who we've worked with for a really long time, done amazingly well, and he's been on the podcast, is Lawrence, uh, Lawrence Behrman. I think he's added like 12, 30 million AUM in the last 12 months or something ridiculous. Uh he's yeah, he's amazingly good. Um, but one of the byproducts of him is like because he's doing really well, all the financial planners want to go and follow him because it's like, how is he doing it? Um so like it's also a byproduct as well. And then, but then also like as you as you first it's a if you solve the problems in order, it's well, in order for me to recruit people, I have to have clients first. So I'll go on LinkedIn, get clients, and then when it's time to recruit people, well, then I can make my network more financial advisor focused because then it actually makes more sense to do that because maybe now my bottleneck's not clients anymore. Maybe my bottleneck is how many advisors can I take on board to help the clients, and then you can get your advisors doing what you were doing on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Exactly. One of the biggest challenges of growing a business, and the biggest challenge to most financial planners out there is winning new clients. Yeah. So learn how to learn how to win new clients, pass that forward when you start to build your team. So you're not just hoping that somebody's going to go out and find out themselves how to do it. And you might then get quite strategic because if you've decided to like double down on a niche, for example, you then might strategically start to look at individuals that are out there who have a niche who might not operate within that niche in the way that I am. Therefore, I can bring them into my ecosystem, teach them that, put them on the training with you, for example, and off we go. We've got another niche, uh specific LinkedIn uh individual going out there and winning business. Uh Lawrence is a young financial planner, and I think he's bucking the trend when he's out there working with top legal professionals. So he's proving that you can bring AUM in 12 mil in the last like 12, 12 months. Yeah. He's proving that you can do that regardless of age. So when we say guys 150 under 25, or you know, I think it's about a thousand under 30, those individuals are out there winning business on platforms like LinkedIn, age doesn't become an issue at that point.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

Yeah. It's uh for me, I always say to the advisors that we have, like, I think it's it's it's not it's not about how old you are, it's just about like what results you get. So that that's how I that's how I look at it, which is like I think one of the reasons like I'm I'm 22, but like we've worked with a lot of advisors, they do really well from LinkedIn. So I think people don't really care like how old I am. I think they just think like he he knows what he's doing with LinkedIn. Um and I think that's the same thing with with like Lawrence in this example as with his lawyers. It's like they look at him and he's a younger guy, but then they might think, like, actually though, you know, from what he posts about, he really knows what he's talking about, and no one else is kind of advertising that they know what they're talking about because no one else is posting, everyone else is kind of relying on other people to grow and things like that. And it's like, well, well, Lawrence is like literally sharing what he's done with people and things like that and conversations he's having. And then it's like, well, I'm gonna work with the guy who looks the best, regardless of how old he is. And I think that's why he's doing well.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Love it. Before we get really tactical on LinkedIn

Niching Down Without Guesswork

SPEAKER_01 30:15

and we start to break down each intricate part of the journey of what you do teach people, are you able to just give us a quick overview from start to finish what the process is to be a success on LinkedIn?

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Yeah, I could talk about this forever. So um, I'll make it like pretty simple. So, like the first step we always do is we get people to niche down. Uh, and so like we get people to go after their target market. So essentially it's who is the the specific person you go after making your target market? And the reason we do that is because every other financial advisor on LinkedIn is all about well, if they're about clients, which most of them aren't, they're all about financial advisors. For the ones who are about clients are normally really broad. I help professionals. Well, that's not everyone. So um we get people to be really specific. So then the way I explain it to people is like if you imagine most advisors on LinkedIn, it's like they're on a they're in a room with like a million people and they're like trying to shout to get everyone's attention. Like the room's too full, everyone's talking, it's way too, it's way too loud. Um, what we do with LinkedIn is like rather than trying to make that person on a stage and like really plot them up and could become like the most important person in the room, which can be quite difficult at the start. Instead, we just make the room a million and we make it down into like a thousand people. And then like all of a sudden it's it's it's much easier to stand out in that in that room because there's way less people there. And then we get them on a then it's much easier to also get on a stage because it's it's less of a big room, right? Um, and so that's what we do there. We get them to niche down so they stand out from everybody else, and then like their message cuts through to everybody. Um once we've niche them down, then it's about, well, let's actually start getting the niche to find out about me. So that's where we do like the list and making sure that we're connecting with those people, and that's like adding them and making sure the profile, which we can go into in a bit, but like then making sure the profile is all geared towards that niche. So that's like the first thing, like it's niching and then making sure everything's set up to target that niche. Then we get them posting content because the content's sort of like your nurture tool. So that's what you're gonna use to not only does it build your audience one-to-many, because like you know, I like the other like to give you an example. I think like three days ago, I had a post that got seen by like 25,000 financial advisors. It's pretty hard for me to do that manually on LinkedIn. It takes quite a lot of time. So uh that's where content comes in. It builds one-to-many, but it also it shows your expertise. So, like one of the easiest, we've talked about trust a lot, one of the easiest ways to build trust is to just like show people. So it's like when because people want to know that you're good. So if you just show them results, that's how you build trust. So that's what we do with the content. And then we use messages on the back end to make sure that when we message, like that's what's gonna initiate the appointment being booked and things like that. Because a lot of the time you'll have people who lurk. I imagine there's people who watch this right now who maybe really like consuming, but maybe haven't like acted on anything. They're like, they're like, I'm a bit like that with certain things. I'm definitely a lurker with some with certain things and not with other things. That's what the messages are for. It's to recognize the people who are consuming your content, initiate a conversation to see if you can help them. It's not like being really salesy and doing anything like that. It's literally just like like you would approach somebody in person, seeing if there's an opportunity to help them. If there is, you then offer the appointment to help them. And then like that's kind of the the LinkedIn strategy.

SPEAKER_01 33:28

I love it. So we're gonna go into a little bit of detail on each of one as I've got a few questions on it. What I would just say is like um just before we start, what is the what's got the highest rate of success hosting and then in by an inbound message or a direct message?

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Depends. I would say like depends what you mean by uh success, because if it's like which ones get the most because the the two different this is why so I say like LinkedIn is like there's it's like there's three legs of a saw, which is like there's connecting, which is adding your audience and like make sure it's the right people. There's the content, which is like getting inbound inquiries, building trust, and then there's the messages, which is converting the audience, and that's also your messaging is a bit like a tap. It's like if I'm really quiet, I can turn the tap on, message a lot of people, fill up my diary. If I'm really busy, I just don't message people. Uh, but I always content to always build the trust. So I say it's like three legs of a store, because if you don't have one, the store falls over. So that's why I that's so that I'd say they're all equally important, but then in terms of like outcomes, they have different effects. So, like content, if you get an inbound lead, if you get someone like, well, we have lots of advisors who just book appointments just from posts. Like we had a guy who started with us recently in his first week, his post had a hundred thousand impressions in his first week, which is a hundred thousand impressions of people that like an impression is someone a view on my post. So a hundred thousand is a hundred thousand views on his posts from his audience. And I think he booked like five appointments just from people just seeing the content that's not messaging anybody. Those appointments will be like really warm and great quality because they've come to him. So content's very good at getting really warm appointments. Messages is really good at getting lots of appointments. Um that's how I'd separate the two in terms of outcomes, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Yeah, I absolutely love that. Perfect. All right, let's just get into this breakdown step by step bit, okay? Let's hit niching, okay? Just give us a bit of detail in the niching side then. So just get people to think. Because one thing you said a second ago was like you can have a thousand followers, right? Or a thousand connections. Someone might think, well, that's really low. Sam's got 50,000. But a thousand people that are specific to the niche that you're interested in. Well, sorry, the niche that you're talking to, that's mega. Yeah. That's like imagine walking into a room with a thousand people.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Literally, that's what I say to people. Like, think of a thousand people in a room.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

That's a lot of people. A lot of people. So just tell us a little bit about your insights into niching. What can we, what can, what can we give people today that's going to make them go away and actually implement some, take some action on niching down as a virtual planner?

SPEAKER_00 35:55

I think the biggest question I always get from advisors is I don't know what niche to pick. How do I pick a niche? What niche should I pick? And I think the reason people get stuck is because they approach it as like, what's the golden niche? Like, what is it for like what is that? And I the answer is like there's not actually a golden one. And what I always say to the advisors that I work with, and I do this one-to-one with them, is I always explain to them that that that like I say, you are your niche. And they go, Well, what do you mean by that? And I'm like, Well, what makes a niche for you will not make a niche good for somebody else. So, like, if we use me as an example, when I started, the reason my niche is financial services, shall we say, but now it's financial planners, is because that's my first client. So I had a result there that I could lean on. And then when I got on an appointment with another broker, it became very easy to go, oh, well, like you have a leads problem. Oh, well, so did this broker. And then now they don't have a leads problem. And it's very easy for them to go, oh, well, that's just like me. So I had proof there. Social proof. Yeah, social proof with that, with that niche. Like that's why it's me. And I also have the story there and everything. But then, like, if you look at, for example, like Lawrence again, it's like, well, why is his why is he why is he there? Why did we go down that route? First of all, they make really good clients for him. He also had some clients there. His fiance is also a lawyer. And like, so he just knows, he just knows them, he understands them, and he has a he has like an in and he can relate to them. And then, like, I've got another, another advisor who has done um, well, I think he's done like 8 million AUM in the last eight months. Um, when I last spoke to him, but when we started with him, he was more like focused on Amazon, people who just worked at Amazon, very, very narrow. And the reason that he was just at Amazon is because, well, he had quite a few Amazon clients and they were really good. And so he could then go, it's a very easy sell to say to somebody, sell. I don't like the word always, but like it's very easy to go, oh, you work at Amazon. That's like John, who's also Amazon. Oh, you know John. Oh, well, John, like he came to me, he really found it good. Like, oh, why don't why don't you just and then like, yeah, great, because you just so I always say to people, like, you are your niche. So the way that I think about it is first of all, you've got to make sure of like there's three things you've got to make sure of when we're doing it on LinkedIn. The first thing is, are they a good client? So, like that's step one. It's like, well, I don't want to be niched into like people who have like bankrupt businesses because that's not gonna be, you know, oh well, I don't know, but that like then they might not have the level of assets that I'm looking to go after, right? Or I don't want to go after like uni students like me when I was 19, would not have been a good, a good client for an advisor. Um, but that's the first step. And then there's so once you know that they're a good client, the second thing is then can I target them on LinkedIn? Which is just means if I search for them, can I find them? And the third thing is then, do I understand them? And there's two ways you can look at that is if you're experienced, it's look at your book and be like, who do I naturally like who do I have a lot of? Because you'll find that there are certain people that naturally gravitate towards you over time, maybe not intentionally. An advisor I worked with recently said that he works under an advisor who's been doing it for a long time. And most of this advisor's book was pilots, and he never actually went after pilots. He just found that he really resonated with them and they just understood him, but also they started referring more pilots. So it's like, well, you should probably niche into pilots. Um, so there's that you should look at your book. But then if you don't have a book, the way I do it is I look at past experiences. So another advisor who we started working with recently, he's kind of just started. Uh, we'll talk, maybe we can talk about him a bit later. But like he um he he went through some really difficult times anyway. But then he but he was or he did have an incredibly successful IT business and became very, very good in that IT business. And so, like when we just niched him into IT businesses, he already knows how these IT people work, he knows all the terms in the industry, he has some awards from that industry. So it's just very easy for him, even though he's not got any clients there, he is the proof. So, like that's why I say, so that's what you can do. If you're just starting, you can look at who are my previous people? Uh what previous experiences do I have? What past experiences, what past roles have I had? And then if it's not like, oh, well, I've only been a financial advisor, then it's like, well, what are people around you, what have they done? Um, or who, like if it's your wife or your husband, it's like, what, what, what do they have? Because then I I can always ask them a question. If I'm trying to write a LinkedIn post about the best financial advice for someone who's in oil and gas, and I'm like, oh, what's what's a problem? I can just go, excuse me, partner, what what do you struggle with when it comes to money? And then just write about that. Because so like you can start there, or you can look historically at your book and go, that that's how we do it, basically. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

Yeah, absolutely. And it's the same thing that's happened to me, really. I I ran a recruitment business for 16 years that was in financial planning. Yeah. So I developed a podcast about careers within financial planning. Yeah. And there we go, I know a bit about it. I always find recruitment consultants are such an untapped market to move them into financial planning. Because recruitment consultants, they will niche down on a specific type of role or a specific type of industry. And that's the whole purpose of recruitment, is to niche down. You don't have a recruiter trying to do absolutely everything because you won't have a bank of candidates that suit you know adopting that developer role. Yeah. So when you see people that move from recruitment into financial planning, they do exceptionally well one as well, because they know how to use LinkedIn. Yeah, they they know LinkedIn marketing, they know it works, but the recruiters live and live on LinkedIn. So that's one of the tick boxes there. But they do have a deep knowledge of the problems that they experience within their careers. And if you understand the problems they experience within their careers, you understand points in their career where they might have to seek financial advice. A bit like with the legal saying, you know, you're always working towards becoming a partner. But there's a whole kind of story that leads up to that and different stages of it. So if you can articulate that story and you can engage with it and you can bring it to life and understand the pain points that they're going through and articulate that, then people are gonna buy into that at whatever stage of the journey it actually is. So I think that you'll bang on there. And when I think about recruiters, God, you know, when I eventually get into my advice business and build an advice business, I'm gonna be turning to the recruitment industry and I'm gonna be looking, right, but can I give them financial advice? Can I go into directors? Because I know exactly what they're gonna what's going through there as business owners. But also as well, can I can I build a business around recruiters? Can I can I attract recruitment consultants into financial planning to to become financial planners because I think they're just absolutely bang on. Plus, I can be really nailed with I can really specifically go for somebody with a niche. So I can really understand it. And also what we know when you go when you're a recruiter and you're in that niche, you also know what the average earnings are. So you know that that person, if they make partner, is probably gonna be on 300 grand or 500 grand. You know, so you know, you know the problems, but you also know what might go on before they reach that point. So it's very, very interesting and knowledge of power and being able to articulate and share that you know what they know, and also that you know what they know, but you have a thousand people's opinions on that, yeah, then they're gonna listen to you.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

Well, and and also like it goes back to what we said before about you know, when we said like you've got to enter the conversation going on inside the customer's head, you've got to resonate with them. It makes it very easy to resonate with them when you're going, when you've got either people you've already worked with who you know what went resonated with them, or you were one. Like, I literally just got off a call, I think it was yesterday, with an advisor who we just started, helped him, I like I helped him niche. And he was always, he'd always said, I know I should be niching, but I've just never done it. And I think he was just scared to niche. Um, and so we like I looked at his and he said, Oh, I'm I'm so confused about what niche I could potentially pick. And I said, Okay, just give me an overview. And he was like, Well, I wonder if you can pick which niche if you know which niche we went for. He went, Well, um, before I was a financial advisor, I was in recruitment for 10 years. And I was like, Okay, and he was like, Yeah, and most of my network on LinkedIn then, this is all recruiters from when I was in recruitment. And like, I understand what all the recruiters, I suppose, like what levels of earnings they have to go for and like what job titles mean what. And they do make good clients. But yeah, I'm I'm not really too sure who I should go down. And I looked at him and I went, I think we're gonna be recruited.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

Yeah, yeah. They literally have to be told, and that's the beauty of joining a community, right? Is that they need to kind of have their idea validated, you know, and I think that's what the community actually does. Once you're on the section of community here, okay. Everyone's in your community, they're all in one place. Is it a sharing, caring type type place? Are you sort of sharing what works, what doesn't work, and and everything?

SPEAKER_00 44:07

Yeah. So what well, we in our

Content Ideas From Real Calls

SPEAKER_00 44:10

in our community, we technically have like two communities, but like they're they're all the the second people had to be in the first one anyway. So they're all like kind of linked. But um I think what is really I hear from a lot of advisors, like a big something that a lot of advisors really struggle with is they always say advising is quite a lonely profession sometimes, especially when you start off self-employed. And I know what that's like when I was at uni, right? When I was like 19 trying to start my business, all my friends are going out and having a great time, which is which is cool. And I decided to move into a flat that was I decided actually when I was uh when I was at uni to my friends went and lived in a house and I went and lived in halls on my own, so I could focus on the business. And um, yeah, like I so advising, I like it can be lonely starting a business, and it's the same with advising. So we have the community to bring everybody together and uh we share wins. So like when people post, they post their wins and everyone celebrates them and goes, Hey, that's great, like you've booked an appointment. And like, see, people might think, like, well, that's really weird. Like, what's it like? All the advisors are like encouraging people to take, well, isn't you taking clients from that person? But it's like there's more than enough clients to go around. Like, how many clients do you need? Like 100, 200, 300. It's like I think there's more than 300 people for everybody. And um, so yeah, we have this, we all share what works. We take in our community, we look at all the advisors and what posts they've been doing, what posts have done well, then we share it with the rest of the group.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

Love it.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

And things like that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

So let's just what I want to do is I don't want to give away too much because what we really want people to do is reach out to you. Okay. We want people to come into that community, we want them to come onto a webinar that we're gonna put on and to learn a little bit more. So we're not gonna share all the secrets today. I think it's too generous, Louie, if I'm completely honest with you. So, you know, a lot of people have wanted to come onto a webinar. They've they've pressed linked, you know, they typed in LinkedIn on the post that we put out, which has done exceptionally well. I think we've got about a hundred people so far that want to. I think you've done quite well off that post anyway. Starting up some new people. I think you've 10x your investment already before the podcast even starts.

SPEAKER_00 46:03

Yeah, that is right.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

By the time people listen to this, hopefully they're gonna be fired up to get into that webinar or even reach out to you directly and just get on with it because it's a tried and tested group. Before we do that, I just want to kind of touch on something which I know they're gonna want to know about content creation ideation. Yeah. Okay. And then the link between that and the messaging. So is there a kind of strategy that you use for content ideation? And then how do you bring messaging into that?

SPEAKER_00 46:26

Perfect. And this works quite well because we've just talked about niching. So I've done all that. Now it's like, well, let's do the content to get those people. So when it comes to content, first of all, it's like, well, what makes good content? And um there's two things you have to look for, which is one, does LinkedIn people always say, like, oh, I'm making this great content, it's just not going anywhere. If LinkedIn doesn't push it, nice possible way, it's not a good post. So like you have to listen to the algorithm, and then you also have to listen to what we call the human component, which is like you have to make good content for LinkedIn, but also good content that resonates with your audience. Because I could have a post that does like a million impressions, but if it doesn't resonate with my audience, like I'm not gonna get appointments from it. So that's the first thing. Now, when you understand that and it comes down to ideas, advisors always ask me, you know, it's so hard to come up with ideas, you can never say consistent. And I always say to them, you know, for the last like two years, I've posted every day about LinkedIn. There's only so much you can say about LinkedIn for financial advisors, but I've somehow managed to do it. And so there's a couple of strategies we use. First thing is you only want to write, this is just a meta strategy, I suppose, but you only want to write content from your experiences, ideally. You don't want to write generic pieces of information like how to use a pension because anybody can write that information. Only you can write things about stuff you've done. So that you want to write stuff from your experiences, which means like if you look at a lot of my posts, it's always got, I spoke to this advisor last Thursday, this thing happened because no one else can write it. So that's the first thing. When you understand that, the easiest way to get those ideas is I record all my calls with advisors and I go back and I watch them and I look at the things they've said. I upload it into, I can some, I sometimes upload it into AI to get it to pick out the the biggest pain points or things like that. I don't use AI to write the posts because again, that's not writing for your experiences because AI doesn't know what you did what you know. You have to, you have to write from your own experiences. But um what I do is I get AI or what sometimes it's just me because I've had the conversations, I remember them, and I get it to look at what questions did people ask me, what problems did they say they had, and what outcomes did they want to achieve. And I can write posts about all of those. So if it's questions, I can write posts to answer the questions. If it's problems, I can write posts about how to avoid the problems. And if it's outcomes, I can write posts about how to achieve the outcomes. And so that's what I do, and that's how I get my basic ideas. And then I do something called how-to flipping. So it's like if someone says, Oh, I want to get, you know, I want to retire with a million pounds, it's like, I'm not gonna say this, but it's like how to retire with a million pounds. Then like that's the idea. Now I'm not gonna, I might not be able to write that for compliance and things, but that's the idea of how it works. Um, and so that's how I get the ideas, and that gives you your base ideas. And then the way I can then turn one idea into thousands of ideas is by what I call like zooming in and zooming out. So I could write a post, for example, which is like five mistakes I see lawyers make with their pensions, as an example. Then I could make a post about each of the five mistakes, a separate post going deeper on each of the five mistakes. Then I could make the five mistakes not about pensions, but about um another another thing, ISIS. And then I could do a post about each of the five things for the ISIS. I could make it not five mistakes, I can make it five tips, I can make it five steps to do something with it. You see what I mean? So like I can I can take one idea and I can turn it into like a hundred ideas by like looking by zooming in on either focusing a little bit or zooming out and taking a step back from the whole thing. Um, so that's how we come up with ideas. But then really it's just about you can have a really good idea, but it's how you execute on it, which is how you write the content, which is how it's structured, which is like we they say there's three parts of a post hook, value, action. Um, so you want the hook, which is the first two lines, which is the main part of the post. You might as well spend all your time on the hook, which is the first two lines of the post. Then there's the value or the meet, which is like the main bit of the post, and there's the action, which is the add of the post, uh, which is go do this thing, or comment below, or like this post. Love it.

SPEAKER_01 50:17

And obviously in the community, you've got so many of those that are tried and tested that you can sort of share. Perfect. Now, what about that messaging? Let's finish on that. So, what's the best way to utilize messenger and messaging on LinkedIn to get the best results?

SPEAKER_00 50:28

Yeah, great question. So uh best way to get messages, I probably book. So I book right now around like three to five appointments a week on LinkedIn,

DMs That Build Trust

SPEAKER_00 50:35

about half of them come from messages. Um, I use something that I've called my like message priority ladder, which is a ladder of who to message in order of importance. And so it's warmness. So at the top, it's like inbound leads, and at the bottom, it's brand new connections. And so you want to like that's your range. When you start, it'll be new connections. So I'll just talk about that one uh for now. But the way that we get people to message people when they're just starting is the opening message we get people to send, you send them a connection request, they accept it, and then you send them something along the lines of, hey, person's first name, thanks for connecting with me. And then you spend time looking at the profile. That's why I can't automate it because we're trying to build trust, we're trying to show we're a real human. So I go, notice when I was checking out your profile that you've had this experience for X amount of time, and then I just really quickly link it to a case study. I know for another client in this niche, I know for another lawyer who's a uh who's been a who's just who's just recently made partner, they were struggling with this problem. So I helped them put a plan in place and now they have this outcome. Just curious if this is relevant or if you're just here to be connected, and that's it. That's like the opening message that we send to people. And it does really well because number one, it shows you looked at their profile. Number two, it relates it to someone who's very like them. So to try and make it resonate. Number two, number three, it has a case study, so it shows proof. And number four, it gives them a really easy out. It's like, if this is relevant, let me know. If it's not, and you just have to be connected, absolutely fine. It's not like, are you around Tuesday afternoon, two or three p.m.? Because I have some slots then. It's like, no, it's just like if it's relevant, let me know. If it's not, it's fine. And then that's the opening message that we typically send. So it requires them looking at the profile and things, but yeah, that's how it works.

SPEAKER_01 52:16

Amazing. Look, Louie, I've got to say, I'm massively proud of you. Seeing your journey on LinkedIn from the start to where you are today, what you've developed whilst you've been at university, and just the the sheer determination and grip to get to where you've got to. I know how hard it is to build your own business. I'm just so impressed at the age that you are that what you've generated. But also, stats don't lie, mate. You've create you've generated a serious income for financial planners that have used your services. And that's the biggest tell for me that people should be leaning into. If they want to dominate on LinkedIn, if they want to get a regular inbound bookings of good quality uh client leads, they need to be using LeadGenFS. They need to be leaning into your services. You should be proud of what you've built. I'm going to continue connecting with you. We've got this webinar coming up where you and I are going to share a little bit more about how to use LinkedIn. I'm going to come on and talk about content as well, what I do, the success that I've had, how I've used LinkedIn to my advantage. And I think from that, people are going to be absolutely supercharged to get on there and actually generate results. So, massive um congratulations on your journey so far. I just think you're going to be nailing it in the next few years, and people need to get on that slipstream. Because if they get on your slipstream, they're going to win. It's as simple as that. You reap what you sow. It's my new favorite phrase. You reap what you sow. You know, get in the group and start reaping and start sowing success like you.

SPEAKER_00 53:33

Yeah. Um, and I'll say one more thing that I did as well is I put something as like a thank you for having me on. I put something together for for everybody on the um the the financial uh who are listening. Because I know we said that in the community we have all the posts that we tried and tested. And I know that people will be hungry to start after this. So um what we did is I got my my team to look at the like the five best posts we've ever done, put them into a resource that people can just grab for free. Yep. So they just have to go to I think it's leadgenfs.co.uk

Free Post Templates And Webinar Plug

SPEAKER_00 54:01

forward slash FPL. Yep. And then they can download the five posts that I'll get them started. They've been proven to work for us, so they'll be proven to work for you too. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:09

QR code will be added to the video. Um, this is something that we're gonna do, so that'll be up there anyway. And also you can go to the notes section of the episode and you'll be able to click a link and get that. So, Louis, thank you so much. Looking forward to catching up with you again when we smash it on the webinar.

SPEAKER_00 54:22

Yeah, be sure. Thank you.