Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Erin Botsford, CFP® Creator of The Advisor Authority™ Discussing The Elite Mindset

Episode Date: June 22, 2023

Having spent 31 years in the financial services business and achieving at the highest levels (Barron’s Top 100 in all categories: Independent, Advisor, and Women), Erin sold her business in 2017 in a successful exit – a step most advisors would like to achieve at the end of their careers.Today, she delivers value to advisors and firms all over the country, speaking and teaching advisors how to quickly grow their businesses exponentially.She helps advisors understand and implement growth strategies, no matter where they are in their business journey. Erin believes in the power of modeling and allows advisors to simply copy her success blueprint.Erin is also the author of two books: “Seven Figure Firm – How to Build A Financial Services Business That Grows Itself” and “The Big Retirement Risk: Running out of Money Before You Run out of Time;” and the founder of the Elite Advisor Success System™.With over 30 years of field experience and an authentic personal story, she can relate to advisors at all levels. An international speaker, Erin shares her 30 years of wisdom at industry conferences worldwide.Learn More: https://erinbotsford.com/Read the featured article in Financial Advisor Magazine: https://www.fa-mag.com/news/advisors-are-getting-results-from-this-training-program-72959.htmlInfluential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-erin-botsford-cfp-creator-of-the-advisor-authority-discussing-the-elite-mindset

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 with us, Aaron Botsford, who's the creator of the advisor authority, and we'll be talking about the elite mindset. Aaron, welcome to the program. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me.

You are welcome. So I know that we want to talk about your program and the elite mindset because, boy, foundationally, if your mind is right, you can do so much more than if you have the wrong focus. But before we dive into that, give us a little bit of your story and your background and how you got into the industry. Well, sure. You know, I was raised in a very poor household. My dad died when I was 11, left my mom penniless.

So I had kind of a tough background and upbringing. my husband, I married an Air Force pilot, and we moved 17 times in the first 14 years we were married. And we finally ended up back in the United States in Panama City, Florida in 1989. So I went into a stock brokerage firm looking for a job as a secretary, and the guy behind the desk said, hey, I'm going to give you a shot to be a stockbroker. And I had no idea what that was. I didn't know the stock upon. I'd never heard of a mutual fund.

So that was my beginning. going from secretary to stockbroker. Ooh, I love alliteration. So that could be like part of your memoirs, going from secretary to stockbroker and beyond. Trust me, it is. Yeah, and there's a lot of depth that goes in between that. But then what you did from there is through your trials and tribulations

and learning and lessons and successes, you kind of cultivated your own way of doing things and then pulled out and extracted all of the, success principles, and now you work with advisors helping them to grow their firm. That's correct. Yeah. And truthfully, I struggled really badly for the first 10 years, and I was about ready to fail out of the business. And my branch manager said, why don't you, instead of fail out, why don't you get some business coaching? And something happened in the first three years of business coaching that forever changed my life. I was asked

to share results with somebody in my course and my class. And, you know, I said, I'm Aaron. I'm from Texas, you know, three years ago, I was doing around 300,000 in production. And this year, I'm on target to do somewhere between 400 and 450. And Mike, I was really happy with my progress. And until it was his turn. And then he said, hey, you know, he'd been in the business as long as me. He said, three years ago, I was doing 300,000 in production as well. And I thought to myself, well, look at that. We're just alike. And then he said, the words I'll never forget. He said, this year I'm on target to do three million in production. And I don't meet with all my clients. And, you know, his voice started trailing up. And I'm like, what? Did you say you went from

300,000, three million in three years? And he says, yep. And so, you know, it was time to go back to our seats. And I was setting there just dumbfounded. And fortunately, I said, hey, can I, can I spend the day with you? Actually, he invited me to come to spend the day with him and his team. And, you know, the rest, as they say, is history. I really learned a lot in that one day. But the biggest thing I learned was I was thinking incorrectly. So as you said, we want to talk about it. Success. really does begin in the mind. You know, it really is and it's and it's just so foundational to be able to see how you're, you know, if you ever listened to or attended a seminar from back when Zig Zigler was

doing his speaking. Oh, of course. Of course. So I remember him saying, sometimes you just need a checkup from the neck up. I don't remember that, but I'm sure he said it. So, yeah. So talk a little bit about that mindset. So we have to have our mindset dialed in the right way.

Well, that's a broad statement. What does it really mean to dial in your mindset correctly? Yeah, you know, well, you know, I really thought a lot about this on the plane ride home from my one day with this guy, Paul. First of all, what I realized was, oh, my gosh, was I thinking too small? I mean, I came from a background of really abject poverty. So the idea that I could ever be Uber successful was just, it was, beyond the realm of imagination. So thinking too small,

and I had to give myself permission, even with all my baggage and my background, my permission to be successful. And it's really something I tell my advisor, students now I wave a magic wand, and I wave it over them and said, you now have permission to be wildly successful. Because sometimes that's all you need to do

is give yourself permission, which is, I know, so basic, but there's a lot of truth to it. The second thing I realized that, was that, you know, I thought that I could go out and, you know, prospect for business. And if I had enough prospects, I mean, literally, Mike, I would take any prospect. If they could fog a mirror, they were probably, you know, qualified to be my prospect. I've never really sat down and figured out, what do I want my business to look like?

And maybe who is an ideal prospect for me? And I never, that was another thing. I'd never really gone there. It was kind of like I was out flounding around, like, you know, flip-flopping around. and I would take anything and meet with anybody. And there was just no rhyme or reason. And so finally, on the way home from his office, I wrote out my ideal, this is what my ideal prospect looks like.

I call them personas. And I end up having three different types of personas, a retirees, a senior level executives at Fortune 500 companies, and business owners. And every single activity that I did from that point forward, if I could not put it through, if I could not put it through the sieve of will my ideal prospects be at this event or will I run into them? There was no reason for me to do that activity. So it really eliminated so much of what I did

on a day-to-day basis because now I was super focused on what I wanted and the people I wanted to work with. So that was my second aha moment. And then the third one was, well, there's lots of them, but the other one was I was doing way too many functions of the business. And I thought that was normal. And so he had to say to me things like, okay, Erin, like, when was the last time you went to McDonald's and the franchise owner was in the back flipping burgers? Or how about when was the last time you saw the CEO of UPS deliver a package to your home? Hmm.

Well, the answer to both those was never. That's because real business owners, real business owners, real business. business people hire others to do the actual work of the business. And yet, you know, it's interesting now having trained well over a thousand advisors is advisors typically are like me and we tell ourselves a story. And we tell ourselves, we make up excuses why we can't be out when we are not prospecting or, and because truthfully, my prospecting involves the possibility of rejection. Yeah. And who wants to set themselves up for that?

So we tell ourselves an awful lot of stories. And when you get really real with what's going on in your head and you can eliminate, you know, those excuses, then you figure out as a business owner in our industry, there's really, there's only three, maybe four things that you should be doing on any given day. You know, prospecting for new business, closing prospects to become clients, being the creative leader of your team. and then taking time off. I mean, there's three or four things you should be doing, and you should create a path toward making sure that you hire people to do absolutely everything else in the business. And so I actually, I mean, I needed to see what it looked like in person.

I'm not a very creative person, but actually going to Paul's office, seeing what these other people did for him, made it a whole lot easier for me to envision in my head what my future successful business was going to look like. And I've heard this said maybe this is an exercise you're familiar with, but I've heard it said, figure out the last couple, three years of your income, average it together, come up with that number, and then figure out what you average on a weekly, monthly amount of work hours, and what is your hourly rate?

and I feel that once an advisor would come up with that number, that hourly rate, and then look back at what you've done over the last couple, three weeks. Like if you took an assessment and go, well, you know, I was doing this and this. Wow, I'm really doing a minimum wage job or a lower admin type job. But look at my hourly rate. The highest and best use of my time is not doing those things. It's doing the things you just mentioned, Aaron. Well, yeah, you know, there's Michael Gerber who wrote the EMeth Revisited, which is the book I bought at the airport on my day home coming home from Paul. You know, he says, if you want to make $300 an hour, you got to quit doing $30 an hour work.

And we, I know, like I said, having trained so many advisors, a lot of them are still doing a lot of $30 an hour work. And so it's really getting a vision for their future. The other thing, Mike, that we don't talk about enough in our industry is that is I always ask advisors, tell me, what happens on the last day you're in this business. Okay, tell me what happens because we're really good at planning for other people's exit, other people's retirements, but most of it are not really good at planning for our own. So I always say, get in your own head and really visualize what happens. Do you, does somebody write you a big check for your business? Do you pass off your business to your son or daughter? I mean, what happens on that last day? And the thing that a lot of advisors

don't realize is what happens on that last day is going to be totally dependent on what your business looks like on that last day. And I give them the case and point. So on the last day that I sold my company, another firm bought me out, paid all cash for my company. And the reason they felt good about doing that is they knew that not one client on the books ever expected to meet with me. On the same day, that buyer bought another woman's firm, and she had about the same amount as AUM as I did, I'm told. Unfortunately, for her, she ended up getting 25 cents on the dollar compared to me.

Why? Because all of her clients were used to and expected to meet with her. And unfortunately, for her, she had a massive stroke, and she had to sell. And so, you know, and the reason that she got 25 cents in the dollar was there was too much risk to the buyer that those clients who were dependent on her would go away. And that risk was priced into the equation. And so it's another thing, a mindset shift. I want advisors.

And typically they don't think about this until they're about 57 years old and they want to retire in three years. And then they realize, oh my gosh, my entire business is all about me. Yeah. You know, and they have to understand that is going to negatively impact the valuation on the day they want to, you know, retire. or sell their company. Yeah, that's huge. You know, and the shift, making the shift between those two examples you just gave,

which was your exit and that other person's exit. Well, the shift is not overnight. You can't just go, oh, okay, I'll just do this. It's gradual and you have to put certain things in place. And it's something that takes a little bit of doing because you're going to feel like, I've got to do all this myself. So I think having someone like yourself like, that external third party coach coming alongside to help you through that process is huge. You know, and I know that Financial Advisor magazine recently featured your program saying that advisors are getting so much out of your program to help them grow. What are some of the things that they're regarding the elite mindset,

share some specific techniques or strategies that your program offers advisors to make sure that they're cultivating that mindset and staying focused on their goals? Yeah, sure. So, yeah, what I'm known for is helping advisors learn the skills to move up market, work with higher and higher net worth clients because it's just easier business to do. And higher net worth clients, why is it easier? Because they have margin in their lives. You know, if the market goes down 20%, it's not that big of a deal.

If you're working with a $500,000 client and the market goes down 20%, they're all, you know, they're mad, you know, and they're worried. So the mindset is, what do I have to do to be able to prospect and close a $10, $20, $30 million prospect? And what's interesting, Mike, is I have so many advisors come to me and say, hey, Aaron, you know, I really want to learn how do I find those $20, $30 million prospects? And I'll say to them, okay, if I put you in an entire room full of $30 million prospects, would you have any idea what to say to them to close them? And the answer is usually no. So we actually reverse the process. Instead of trying to find those $30 million prospects, I'll say, okay, let me tell you what to say when you get in front of them.

And so what's interesting, again, it's a mindset shift. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I'm the teacher to a lot of advisors. But what's more interesting is that when the advisor is ready, the high net worth prospects will appear. They're out there. They're waiting for you. you've got blinders on you know you put blinders on your eyes and not you don't see them because you know you don't have the skill set to close them and so you just go la la la la la i don't see them i don't

see it they're out there and they're waiting for you so that's a complete huge shift in mindset the other thing advisors a lot of them don't want to they're not used to charging financial planning fees they've got just a mental block and i don't know why our profession is the one that has this mental block for charging financial planning fees. And I'm here to tell you, if you want to move up markets, if you want to work with higher and higher net worth prospects, you must charge financial planning fees. Otherwise, you're not credible. All of their other financial advice is their attorney, their CPA, every other professional, you know, charges for their advice, their expertise. Because when people pay, they pay attention. Yeah, they do. People value what they pay for. I'll give

case and point. And this is the power of my training. And I do brag on myself because now I've seen it manifested immediately in advisors. So I had this one advisor named Dustin and he allows me to tell this story. Been in the business 15 years. He had never charged a financial planning fee. Just never did it. So he was only five weeks into my course and my course only takes six months to get through. He had the opportunity to get in front of a $40 million prospect. So he said, Aaron, I just listen, I binge watch your secret sauce over the weekend. He gets in front of the guy on Monday and he uses the techniques I teach. And then the guy goes, oh my gosh, what's it going to take to solve these issues?

And he said, Aaron, I was channeling you in my head. And what I always say is when you get in front of a prospect of that size, you must have the, say, the largest number that you can spit out of your mouth. And so he said, well, my annual financial planning fee is $44,500. And the guy goes, done. And he had never charged anything. And now he just threw that out. And it's like, wow.

I know. And he was like, so he got on a call with my students. And, you know, I wanted him to tell the story because, you know, they're always motivated by other people's successes. And my question to the rest of my students was, do you think Dustin will ever work for free again? Right. Chances are not.

But that was a mindset shift for Dustin, right? Am I worth it? How much? money can I command. And again, he wasn't doing it for himself. He had to do it to be credible to the prospect in front of him. If he had said $2,500, the guy would have just laughed him out of the room. No, you can't do that. It has to be appropriate to the clients or the prospects in that word. So just little shifts like that, they can make a huge difference. Yeah. You know, you said when the students ready, the teacher will appear. We've heard that for many decades.

What I think, what I thought of when you said that is to attract those high net worth clients, you must become the advisor that they are attracted to and they resonate with. And how do you do that? You get educated. You know what to say, when to say it, how to say it. And you have the confidence built up in your own skills so that when you get in front of that $40 million net worth client that you can say $44,500. So talk a little bit about the confidence that your program.

stimulates and generates in advisors so that they then have that messaging really at their fingertips. Yeah, you know, what's really been fun is when I was in business for 31 years, Mike, I was just unconsciously competent. I didn't know why all these people said yes to me the very first time I met with them. I didn't know why it was. So when I decided I was getting ready, I sold my company. I was like, geez, it would be so such a shame for me. I made all the mistakes that you can make along the way.

Trust me, I did. And I tell the advisors all the mistakes, so they don't make them themselves. I said, I want to make sure that I can create something where advisors can just copy, just verbatim copy or I call it a modeling program. So my program is very, very prescriptive. It's memorization. And so they literally can download on a podcast. They can download my voice.

And on a long walk, a drive to a prospect, they can listen. Listen to my voice. And it really is this. Repeat after me. If you say this, the prospect will come back and ask you that. And then you say that. You go in for the kill kind of thing. It's very prescriptive in nature. And it works every single time. So talk about, you know, not wasting any more time and learning stuff. It's like, yeah, you can go out and try and continue to fail, trying to figure out, wonder, you know, why. I thought the media. reading went so well. And this is a key element. I'm going to make sure I at least leave the advisors with this, is that prospects don't buy you because you're smart. They don't buy you because of your information, your manager selection process. They don't buy you for any of those things. What you have to do is create scenarios in their head, things that either they have or haven't done, you know, in their overall financial planning. We start in the area of risk management. Okay. And like I said, I have 22 different conversations, 22 different places for advisors to go with these prospects

and the exact words to say. And at the end of the meeting, if a prospect doesn't say yes to you, it's because you have not pointed out to them the consequences of doing nothing, the consequences of inaction. And so whenever an advisor comes to me, he said, well, I thought the meeting was going perfectly and I thought we bonded well, that makes no difference whatsoever. What you have to do is point out inefficiencies, weaknesses in their current overall plan, not just the investments or the retirement plan, but I only do comprehensive planning. And I've got like 22 different places that I know I can point out potential flaws. And when they realize if they don't get this fixed, this could blow up their entire retirement plan.

And so it's them having a clear understanding of the consequences of an action that closes the deal. Well, I love how you said that you've got all the exact, you know, prompts and scripts and not that it's robotic, but success leads clues. And if you just trust the process, follow what has been proven out there. The advisor authority program will work. And so I think, Aaron, if someone is listening to this saying, you know what, I need to level up my mindset to be elite level and get in front of the right prospects. And if they want to learn a little bit more about the advisor authority, what's the best way they can do that and reach out and connect with you? Sure. My actual training program is called the Elite Advisor Success System. It takes literally six months to learn and be able to implement everything that I know did and, you know, had in my business.

And the way they can contact us is just go to www. www. Aaron Botsford.com. So it's just my name, Aaronbotsford.com. They can learn everything about our program. They can contact us, schedule some time with one of my team members to learn more, and then, you know, get on their success journey. And, you know, time is the enemy in this case. You want to get started today if you can. Exactly. Well, Aaron, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you.

Great to be with you, Mike. 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.