Business Innovators Radio - Interview w/ Daniel Collison w/ Advice2Advisors & Author of Building Bigger & Better Discussing Confident Business Structure

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

Daniel Collison has over 30 years in the financial services industry. Dan is the co-founder and Managing Partner in the financial education firm Advice2Advisors, which trains, mentors, and coaches financial advisors of all tenures.Dan is a CFP, TEP and taught Personal Financial Management, in the MBA Program at the Schulich School of Business since 1998, and is the author of The Financial Advisor’s Guide to Excellence and Building Bigger & Better: Growth Strategies of Top-Producing Financial Advisors.Dan regularly presents keynotes and trains advisors across North and South America.Learn More: https://advice2advisors.ca/Buy “Building Bigger & Better: Growth Strategies of Top-Producing Financial Advisors”https://www.amazon.ca/Building-Bigger-Better-Strategies-Top-Producing/dp/1039143652/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-w-daniel-collison-w-advice2advisors-author-of-building-bigger-better-discussing-confident-business-structure

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have back with us Daniel Collison with advice to advisors, and he's the author of Building, Bigger and Better Growth Strategies of Top Producing, financial advisors. We'll be talking today about competent business structure. Dan, welcome back to the program. Thanks very much, Mike. Great to be back. You are welcome. I know before we talked about the competent mindset, which is a wonderful starting point foundational piece for growing

your financial services firm, but now we want to dive into the correct and competent business structure. So what is that about? Where should we start? Where should an advisor start thinking about their business structure. Yeah, and to me, that business structure is so foundational from the business point of view in that, and I think I mentioned the last time we talked, that so many advisors get stuck and they don't feel that they continue to grow the business that sometimes they can't take on new clients because they just don't have the infrastructure. They don't have the back office.

They don't have the support to do so. So talking to top producers, what we think, found, and here's the thing about top producers, they do not try to make things more complex. In fact, everything they do is for simplicity. They look to make everything they do. All the processes that they use, that they create are for simplicity so that everything is easier to do. And what I've seen over the last few decades is this real growth towards holistic advice, you know, and as a certified financial planner myself, that's what I grew up. with but but now we have research showing that globally consumers want holistic advice and in fact

they want one specific advisor to be able to bring them everything and it doesn't mean that they don't expect you the one advisor to be able to do all things but you need to bring them the people that can do everything for them they don't want to be shopping it out themselves so the first aspect of the the confident business structure is what I call the personal CFO model or chief financial officer model. And this really, it mimics what some people are used to the concept of a family office. And family offices have been around for almost 400 years now by the ultra high net worth, you know, where they've got people that are working on every aspect of their finances,

you know, tax planning, investment planning, everything, right down to concierge services and such. Well, the personal CFO model takes a look at that and it really brings it down to what does the average, whoever your client might be, what does your average client need? And what we say is that if you treat your clients as though they were a business and what we call you Inc. You incorporated. And I borrow that term from finance professor Moschmolevsky writes about that in his book. are you a stock or a bond? He says, U-ink means you, the consumer, really need to treat yourself as a business financially because businesses are very effective. They're very efficient. So if we put our clients in the CEO position of U-NK, or if it's a couple of the co-CEO positions, we as the financial advisor then take that second spot below them as the personal chief financial

officer, and our job is twofold. number one it's to help them with their financial goals we help them qualify them that's the who what where when and why of their financial goals and then we help them quantify them which is the the time and money of their financial goals how much money do they need by what time to achieve whatever goal it is because once you have time and money mathematically you can figure out any financial goal so that's the first aspect of that personal cFO and the second aspect is acting as a conduit to other experts so that you can bring these experts in whenever your clients need them, either for information only or for services. So we look at really five specific experts that

any personal CFO needs in place starts with attorneys and lawyers, whether it's a family law expert and estate planning of business lawyer, whatever it is under the law side, have those attorneys and lawyers in place to help your clients and to help you, in fact. Second one is accounting. So have that CPA in place for tax, business consulting, again, whatever the specialized need under accounting would be. The third really comes to money management and most of the advisors we deal with are dealing with the assets. So they're licensed usually in that aspect. But they're, you know, the world of asset management is so big. advisor can do it themselves so having the experts to to support them where they need that as well

the fourth aspect is on risk management so having again some of these advisors or dual license might have insurance licenses where they can deal with the insurances that are necessary they might need a general insurance agent to bring bring up what they don't handle but there there are so many realms within the the risk management that they're going to need other experts and finally lenders, you know, bringing our clients together with the lenders when it's necessary in lenders that understand financial planning as it were, or at least how to meld with a financial advisor to benefit the client. So having these five primary experts in place really absolutely supports a financial advisor when they're taking that person's CFO model. And I got to tell you,

Mike, the first time I saw the rudimentary structure of this, it was an eye-opener for me, and it's got to be about 25 years ago. And as I built it out, I only became more and more confident. But this is one of those areas where you actually overnight can change your mindset on how you run your business. You know, if you were acting purely as a financial advisor and you want to help take your clients to where they want to go because they are demanding for that holistic advice, just, you know, draw out the personal see. It's in my book. It's on our website. You can find it anywhere that I've written. I've done a lot of writing on NASDAQ.com. I talk about the personal CFO and a number of articles there. But understanding the

model, you can virtually immediately the next day assume that position and then just start to collect the experts that you do not yet have in place. And we talk about how you find those experts, how how quickly you can get to them and have them support you. And the real thing here is the reason it gives you so much confidence as an advisor. And I go back, you mentioned in our first talk, Mike, that imposter syndrome. And again, most advisors have it in their early years. You know, they don't know enough and they feel like imposters. But it still holds true for a lot of advisors when it gets outside their realm of expertise.

but when you take on that personal CFO position, it's, you know, you ask me a question. I don't know the answer to Mike. My response to you as a potential client or existing client is, great question, Mike. Never heard that one before. I'll get the answer within 24, 36, 48 hours, whatever I'm going to give myself. And then I've got the experts supporting me. They could be internal to my firm. They could be external experts.

But I've got connections that will 100% of the time. get me the right knowledge, right information I need to pass on to my client. And that just gives me such, such absolute confidence. But importantly, and this is where it really, really starts to grow your business, it gives your clients absolute confidence in you so that they know they'll never ask you a question that they won't get an answer to. And that makes you so much more referable than the average is greater. ever gets to you. Wouldn't it also make you much more valuable to the client because they don't

view you as that singular piece of their financial puzzle, the financial planner, wealth manager piece of it. They view you as that trusted advisor that has everything, the whole 360 degree team. And now it's like, I don't think I can move on from this advisor because they've got my whole strategy in place in my the legal team and the tax team and the all of that. And so it it envelops all of the things that that client needs. It instills that confidence. It secures them as a client for you for longer because number one, you don't have to feel like I need to now be the expert in all of these things. You just bring in the experts. And I think that that takes a big load off of the back of the advisor as well. That's exactly what it does. Mikey, it is like, and a lot of advisors will

the analogy, I'm like your GP, your general practitioner, doctor. I'm connected to all the expert medical people that you'll ever need. You know, nobody wants to lose their GP. And just as you said, nobody wants to lose their personal CFO when they know that you can bring them absolutely everything. And again, that's what the research tells us year after year that consumers are looking from their financial advisor. They don't want to go and go through the whole quote-unquote interview process to bring on a financial

advisor, then a tax person. So if it's all in one place, you're doing them a service. So that personal CFO is that first element then in your competent business structure. What's next? And I think we touched on it in our first talk, Mike. The next element is the ideal client profile. And this one to me is so absolutely critical, yet it's the one that it's the one that advisors seem to have the biggest challenge with. It's focusing and marketing and prospecting only to one

type of client. And, you know, it's interesting because this is what I got very early in my career. It was in fact in my 10th month of the business. I met my first retiree. I did a lot of work for him, turned them into a client. And what I found was, first of all, I found the business very interesting dealing with a retiree. I had to know retirement planning, tax planning for retirees. And, ultimately estate planning, everything to do with retirees. The moment that I had solidified, Mr. Camper's as a client, I just said from then on, that's my ideal client without even knowing the term at that time. Yeah, but clone this guy. That's what it was. And it just became so much easier. And the reality is the moment I turned him into a client, I started telling anybody that asked me,

you know, when they'd say, what do you do, Dan? I'd say, I'm a retirement specialist. And they, well, what's that mean? And then I'd tell them. And people started referring, especially my peers, referring their parents or even grandparents to me. And then those people referred their peers to me so that I never, ever marketed or prospected to anyone but retirees. Doesn't mean that I didn't take some. I took on the occasional business owner who wasn't retiring yet, but I didn't market a prospect to anyone other than retirees. And that's what we see top producers do time and time again, and everything gets easier. You're offering business and you become that Ph.D. student, as it were, on that cohort,

that ideal client so that you know them very often better than they know themselves, as it were. And again, you become so much more referable. So rather than actually limiting your potential client base, you know, as long as you've got enough of these people in your geographic location, although geography is breaking down now with virtual consultations. But as long as there's enough of these people in place, you know, you'll never run out of potential clients and you will grow your business bigger, better, and easier when

you figure out who your ideal client is. And what I would add to that in, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but the more, just like you said, you get the PhD in that ideal profile. But that comes because you are focused so intently and so long on that specific target vertical that then you start layering in the personal CFO aspects that we just talked about. And it's, I would venture to say that anyone could use tax help. Anyone could use borrowing and lending help. But when you dial it into, hey, as a retiree, you know, you've got special tax needs

that are different than someone in their 20s, 30s or 40s. And you start taking that personal CFO and personalizing it to that ideal profile. And that ideal profile doesn't have to be a retiree. It could be business owners who are in whatever industry niche. But when you choose that ideal profile, you then become a confident expert and people then come to you because of what those referrals and introductions are doing for you. Absolutely true, Mike. And what's interesting is that, and I tell advisors this all the time,

I made more money of tax planning, retirement planning, and estate planning in comparison to selling the products that I sold the investment products, the insurance, and the debt products. Yes, that's what got me paid, but I was being referred over to my retirees because of my knowledge in these areas. And that knowledge came because I put the focus on my ideal client retirees. But as you said, business owners, I would then have the proper attorneys, proper lawyers, proper accountants for their needs. which aren't necessarily the same as the retirees or the young professionals or the C-suite managers. So your personal CFO model is going to be shaped by who your ideal client profile is. Yes. And, you know, I think another aspect of that is just being aware and noticing and listening and reiterating and improving your business.

Like we've mentioned in either this conversation or the previous one, just constantly and never ending improving. You never arrive. And when you can listen to that ideal profile, whatever the one you choose, and they start mentioning, oh, you know what, it'd be nice if. And you start hearing, oh, if you need that, I'm going to adjust or add or tweak or bring in another expert. And then if they liked this thing, so would my next client who fits that ideal profile. And you're constantly a never ending improving, which then solicit. your deliverables to that target audience, which then increases your own confidence and your own deliverable because they're raving about your services. So I think that is spectacular.

So element one, personal CFO, which leads to choosing your ideal profile. What's the next element in that business structure? The next one allows you to build your confidence in your business structure by creating a unique value proposition. And I borrow from Simon Sinek here. He wrote in his book on why about leadership. He created what he called the golden circle. And he talks about the why is the important thing. Followers want to know the why of the leader.

So he said there's the why, there's the how the what. Well, we've taken his golden circle and added the who. So in a unique value proposition, and it's interesting because we work with a lot of financial firm, so we're working with a lot of advisors, sometimes at once, and we ask them all the time, do you know about a unique value proposition? Almost every financial advisor has heard about it. Then we ask, do you have one? And most have tried to develop one, but I would say on average, about 95% have never developed it. And I think that's very unfortunate because your unique value proposition, or UVP, as we call it, becomes your marketing piece. And you don't need anything

more than that, you know, to spearhead your marketing, who it is, your ideal client, you know, why do you work with them? Well, all the pain points that either business owners have if they're your ideal client or the pain points of your retirees, whoever it is, what is their pain? How do you fix it? What are the processes you use to fix it? And then what do they get out of it, which is usually clarity and comfort and belief in the future. So that you know, unique value proposition, and this isn't something that takes you, you know, we have mock UVPs that we show advisors and we say, take that development. It usually takes less than two hours for an advisor to take the model we have and turn it into their own. It's that easy yet, as I say,

probably 95% of advisors don't have that UVP. Therefore, they don't have the confidence in exactly what their unique value proposition is. They don't know how to verbalize it, how to communicate it, which creates a lack of confidence. So when you have that UVP, you're who, why, how, and what, you internalize it. It makes you more confident. And then you just bring it into natural conversation. You don't use the age old elevator pitch. It's so easy to communicate your UVP when you know you're who, why, how, and what.

And again, it becomes the core of every bit of communication that you ultimately use to get yourself out to your marketplace, your ideal client profile. Yeah. Well, like you said, it takes about two hours to go through that. Obviously, we're not going to go through that now, but it makes me think of two things. And is this accurate? That UVP has to be so dialed in that people understand it right away. Like you mentioned the word clarity, it reminds me of a phrase. I've seen a lot in writings and I attribute it to Donald Miller who wrote about this in his book,

Building a Storybrand, when you confuse, you lose. So your unique value proposition cannot be all over the place and confusing. It needs to be boom. And it needs to be also secondarily. It needs to be focused on the right topic or the right person. Meaning, I always like to say this, hey, Dan, what's everyone's favorite radio station? And your mind starts thinking about your local radio stations and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. No, everyone's favorite radio station is WIIIFM.

What's in it for me. And so when you can dial in that unique value proposition clearly to your best ideal target audience profile and make sure that it is so clear that they just get it, that's how you deliver that value to them. I think that is so, so powerful. Yeah. So, Mike, it's exactly that. And in fact, you know, so say you were my client and my ideal client has business. business owners as you are. I'd be talking to you and I'd say something like, you know, Mike, the reason I work with business owners exclusively, you know, business owners like you, Mike,

so I've just told you that you are my ideal client, that you're the only type I work with, which again, makes me so much more referable because you know all kinds of other business owners. All business owners do. You know, if you were a retiring, that was my idea. You know, Mike, the reason I work with retirees like you. So it becomes, part of your regular lexicon, your way of communicating. And again, you become so much more referable when you're saying, I work with people like you. Here's why. Here's how and here's what you get. It just becomes part of your natural conversation. But then your clients are able to mimic it, not word for word, obviously. But like my clients used to refer me, you know, Dan is a retirement

specialist or you need to talk to Dan about your estate plan, right, to other retirees. So that's what helps significantly. Your clients can then refer you. They know who to refer you to and they'll want to because everybody wants to look good by passing on experts to their family, to their friends, to their colleagues. And once you've got that messaging dialed in and you know how to solve the problems for your ideal profile and you land them as a client because you now know what to say and who to say it to and they're referring you.

you need to make sure that that client comes on board and there's a seamless deliverable of business process. And I know you call it the fourth element is operational playbooks. So I think that becomes now, okay, now is game time. We've got to make sure that we are delivering to every single client, every single time, the same thing. And it's a stellar outstanding service. So talk about what operational playbooks is. Yeah. And we talk about client acquisition process.

You know, and the reality is it's virtually cyclical because, as you say, you onboard a new client, you need to immediately bring them into processes that really, I don't want to say force, but it almost forces them into start referring or introducing people to you immediately because they want to. So having operational playbooks does a couple things. It allows you to replicate absolutely everything you do and also monitor it and improve. prove it. When you create playbooks and when advisors hear this, you know, top producers do tend to be a type people and they don't want to sit down and create playbooks. But playbooks could be as simple as, you know, where the term came from, which is sports. You know, just a one page on, here's what we do when we on board. And it could be bullet points even. But there are things specifically you want. You and your team, if you've got a team which virtually all advisors at one point in time,

will have to have a team around them. The lone wolf advisor is dying quickly. So if you've got more than just yourself, you need to be able to communicate to your team members as well as to your clients and your prospective clients. And a playbook allows you to do that. So within that realm of playbooks, right off the bat, as you on board, you need a client's servicing plan, something you can let them know that they're going to receive. And I always say, it's got to be good enough that you're going to do it for every single one of your clients. So it's

going to be, you know, maybe I do a written financial plan for every client. I contact them or have face-to-face meetings with them once, twice, three times a year, whatever, whatever my minimum, this is my minimum that every client's getting, you know, and I'm going to make sure they get, you know, contacts once a month either email, video, whatever it is, phone. But that client servicing plan lays out what I will do for 100% of my clients. And we always get, well, what about the people you wouldn't do all this for? Well, then get rid of them lovingly. Move them on to another advisor that will take care of them at the right level. I want a servicing plan that's better than my competition, but it's easy enough for me and my team to run so that every client gets.

it. So that sets me up. So every client is going to be serviced to the point where I am that much more referable. But that leads right into my next playbook, which is the client segmentation plan, which so many advisors talk about, so few actually have a segmentation plan. And usually it's based on revenue and you'll break it into quartiles or quintiles. I'll have my ABCDE clients or some will say bronze, silver, gold, platinum. And the thing, once you have a client servicing plan, that's your lowest level plan that everybody gets. Again, it's got to be better than your competition,

which isn't difficult to find out. So I've got to have that in place. But then I can ramp up to every segment above. So if my bronze is getting my basic client servicing plan, my silver gets added benefits, Maybe it's one extra meeting, two extra meetings, you know, more information driven to them regularly. And then my gold is getting more than my silver. And then my platinum is getting, you know, maybe I take them out for dinner once, twice a year, you know, just a personal dinner.

If it's a couple, whatever it might be. But I can build out a client segmentation plan. And this is what we see with all of the advisors that we work with. They don't have client segmentation plans truly in place because they don't actually have. have a living, working client servicing plan that everybody understands. So if you've got those two plans in place, you know, taking care, servicing your clients, again, makes you that much more referable, but it also makes those clients stickier because they know they're getting value for money. And then finally, of the top three playbooks, we say first client servicing plan, second client segmentation

plan and then third a client communications plan make sure you've got some base level communication plan you know why are you putting out a communication what is it talking about how is it what is your medium to get it out to them and again this can be very simple a one pager but everybody on the team runs with the same type of communications so that we're not confusing our clients or our prospective clients everybody communicates the same way. You know, I think that something to enhance the very best marketing and promotion initiative in your firm is a job well done, where your clients know exactly what the next step is.

They know why we're doing it. They know what to expect. They know there's going to be whatever quarterly reviews and reviews. They just know that it's just like a process and they appreciate that, which then makes you more referable. So it's not like that's the only way you can market and promote your firm. But when you do, then your other marketing works better. And then you become more referable and you get the feedback from them as happy clients.

And then it bolsters your own confidence. And guess what? That goes right back. I can almost see in my mind's eye right now an arrow going from this element all the way back to the first one, which is confident mindset. You become more and more confident in your own business, firm, deliverables. And then it just starts feeding upon each other. I think that's such a powerful, powerful three-step process. that you got it is absolutely well dan i tell you this has just been so wonderful talking about

this concept um what's the best way someone can learn more and uh also reach out and connect with you and pick up a copy of your book yeah to to get a hold of us you can get us at advice to advisors that's number two advice number two advisors dot com on our website uh you can email me at daniel dot Collison at advice toadvisors.ca. Easy to get a hold of us. You can pick up my new book, building bigger and better through Amazon. So love to talk to advisors.

That's what we do. And there's a reason we love to talk to advisors because we learn from advisors. So love to hear from all advisors. Well, Dan, thank you so much for coming back on. Today's been a real pleasure talking with you. Likewise, Mike.

Thanks very much. You've been listening to influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com. Influentialentrepreneursradio.com.