Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Erin Botsford, CFP® Creator of The Elite Advisor Success System™ Discussing The Proper Order of Business Building

Episode Date: July 12, 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-elite-advisor-success-system-discussing-the-proper-order-of-business-building

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 Aaron Botsford, who's the creator of the elite advisor success system and we'll be talking about the proper order of business. business building. Aaron, welcome back to the program. Thanks, Mike. It's great to be back. You know, when I hear the topic, the proper order of business building, that makes me think that sometimes people assume that they're building their business, but they're going in five different

directions all at once, kind of like the ready aim fire. People think that they're doing it the right way, but they're just firing all over the place without being prepared. So talk a little bit about the importance of having that business building process in the right. proper order. Yeah. Well, that's easy. But like you said, it gets, I don't see it happen, I'll say correctly, and using my term correctly, or efficiently. So to me, the proper order of building a business is first figure out, believe it or not, it's begin with the end in mind. Isn't that Stephen Covey? Isn't that his saying begin with the end of mind? And with the end in mind being, okay, what is the advisor, what do they want to have happen on the very last day they're

in business. Because what they want to have happen, do they want to sell their business to a third party? Do they want to leave the business to a son or daughter? What does that last day look like? Do they want to get a big check? That's what happened to me. I got a really big check on my last day of owning my financial services company. But the only reason I got a big check was I planned for it. And so, you know, the sad thing that advisors kind of don't, they don't think about early in their career. They don't think about that day very much. In fact, if the business depends on the advisor showing up every day, meeting with every client, it's going to have very little value in the marketplace. They'll get a very low multiple for their business. And I always say the case

and point, the day I sold my company, the buyer of my company bought another woman's company. She had about a same amount as AUM, assets under management as me, same size team, whatever, So I'm told, but she had two major things going against her. She won all of her clients expected to meet with her. And unfortunately, for her, she had a massive stroke. So, you know, I'm told that she received about 25 cents on the dollar compared to me. And really, when I think about it, she was about the same age as me and everything. It's like, oh, my gosh, that was so avoidable.

I mean, that was a terrible, terrible mistake. It was a business building mistake on her part. And so I think really beginning with the end in mind and thinking about what, and you know, sometimes Mike think about what happened in COVID and think we all think that we get to determine that date. We want to retire our separate company on our 71st birthday or whatever, right? But sometimes life throws little curves at us and we don't always get that choice. So to me, very early on, starting in 2000, that's when I had my aha moment.

And I'm like, okay, I have to protect the value of the business for my husband, for my son, for myself, I've got to build something that has entity value if I need to sell it tomorrow, you know? You know, and if you probably were to condense down all of the steps that it took for you to build it the right way to be ready for that sale, they weren't earth-shattering rocket science type things. They were a little tweak here and a little polish there, but it had plenty of runway many years ahead of time because if you wait too late and you think, I've got to do all these things,

It is way too late. And then it becomes insurmountable. So what were a couple of those things that you would recommend advisors start with when they're thinking about this? Well, you know, it's really interesting you say that because I would say, you know, we train financial advisors and the advisors who gravitate most quickly to our program are advisors who have that aha moment. They're probably five to 10 years away from, you know, from quote retiring.

And they're like, oh my gosh, I got to get this in order. And so to make sure everybody realizes it really should only take about three years to get yourself in position. You know, so some of the steps are really, you know, I go back to sort of the basics of 101. The number one thing you have to be able to do well is you have to be able to close prospects of any size in your first meeting. And the reason that's so important is that generates the revenue to take care of all the other things. need to happen in your business. So if you can't close a $10 million prospect the first time you meet with them, there's some training you could use. And because once you can do that, and I try and train my advisors to move up market and close higher and higher net worth people because,

one, they're just easier to deal with. They have more margin in their lives. And they can produce the revenue that allows you then. The next step is hire other people, leverage yourself by hiring other people to do the actual work of the business. In fact, it got to a point in three years, Mike, and again, I went from 2000, 2003. I was done by that time. I sold the philosophy of my firm. I did not sell Aaron Botsford.

And I positioned it with my prospects. I said, here, you got to understand I could, we call it disturb them. I could get them to say yes to working with my firm. I said, but you have to understand, nobody gets me. And I would tell them, this is why this should be so important to you, because you, Mr. Mrs. Prospect, now turning into clients, if you ever heard that I got hit by a Mack truck or a bus,

I don't want you to worry like, oh, my gosh, what happens to my money? So you're going to, if we decide to work together, you have to be willing to work with various members of my team because nobody gets me alone. And so just that positioning and the strength, of that positioning starts to set you up for, you know, for that final exit at one point. You know, it's really, it really has a good correlation to even in the business world, the franchise model, back when Ray Kroc started McDonald's, nobody got Ray Kroc.

He built a model, a methodology, a template, a blueprint, and then it just expanded from there. So I think that that becomes a bit, I think that advisors can logically agree with what you just said, but then I feel like there would be a pushback to go, yeah, I'm going to do this piece of it, but yeah, I'm going to jump in right here. So when you're working with your advisors, where's the typical point that they feel like they need to jump back in and then you're having to guide them to say, okay, but hold on, what if we step back a little bit? So where is that looking like in that process? Well, you know, that's interesting. You say that I just had an advisor and he was not used to charging financial planning fees, right? For one. And he decided to just jump off in one big

leap. So he started charging financial planning fees. So he was charging like $1,250, $2,500 fees. And his last one, he just told me, he quoted and got a $190,000 upfront financial planning fee. And I mean, that is just his confidence to be able to say those words out loud and have somebody take him seriously. And the guy goes, oh, yeah, okay, everybody needs to get paid. The guy was worth $25, $30 million. But so then his next challenge, he sent me a picture of his team, having his people, people that work for him in the meetings by themselves with his clients. And, you know, I could just visualize him just, you know, ringing his hands going,

oh my gosh, you know, don't screw it up. I mean, and that really is the hardest step. So I teach advisors a three-step process. And it makes it very easy to get yourself out of the room. And if you want to, Mike, I'll describe a little bit of that process. You think that would be helpful. Yeah, that'd be awesome. So in the first, okay, first of all, you've got to be able to create revenue,

so you've got to be really good at closing. That's just a given. And that you've got to be a master at closing prospects of any size. First time you meet with them, okay? And that should be the priority. Once you can do that, then you can have the money to hire people. So you hire somebody, you get them licensed. But while they're getting licensed, that very first year,

all they do, Mike, is they sit in on, every single meeting with you. Every point, every meeting, they type up the notes, they do the downloads, they do the paperwork, but they've listened because the big thing advisors worry about is, will the prospect or will the client come up with an objection that your staff cannot overcome? Okay, well, why put your staff person at risk? I mean, you don't want them, you want them to succeed. And so year one is all about learning.

And so after every meeting, the client goes, bye-bye, you wave by, by, you wave by, by. And so you ask your staff person, okay, tell me what just happened in that room. And you want them to be able to articulate back to you like, okay, well, when you recommended this, they said, well, what about that? And this is, and what did I say? So you want them to be listening for what is an objection, and then how you overcame that. So year one is all about learning. Year two is when the magic happens. So let's say it's January to January. January 1st of next year, the same thing happens. Your clients are used to having the staff person in.

And even in year one, you want to start referring to the staff person. You'll say, Blake, you know, I can't remember what we do. You suddenly start losing your memory. You're like, no, what do we do about this? And you start deferring your credibility over to your employee Blake or whatever. So there's still in the meeting. It's just that maybe the employee is. running it more so and you are there kind of as co-pilot.

Yeah. So in year two, okay, we run the first meeting in year two exactly as before. I'm running the meeting, Blake sitting in. The next quarter, the next meeting, we switch seats. Blake runs the meeting. I sit there quietly. And if, you know, if the client looks at me, I can just nod my head in agreement. And then the third meeting of that year, I am conveniently late.

And I never ever, I don't lie to anybody. I just say, so I will wait. I know, and think about this, these are existing clients. Yeah. Love my firm. They love me. They trust me to have hired good people. So when I come in, I'm conveniently late.

And I look for a sign. This is just brilliant. I have to tell you, I go out, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm late. And I'll go, what are you guys talking about? I look for a sign. And if my advisor takes this. pen and he puts it on the right hand side of his piece of paper. I look for the sign.

It sounds like everything's going great. You don't need to stay. So I'll be like, oh my gosh, you know, it's so good to see you. I'll look forward to see you next time and I'm out of the room. But if the advisor takes their pen and they put it across the top of their piece of paper, that means I could use a little help. Nice. So I'll look for the sign. I go, hey, so what are you guys talking about and I'll sit down and that gives my advisor the opportunity to say, well, we were talking about them investing some money in XYZ and they had some questions about that. And like, okay, really, what are the question? And then I'm able to overcome the objection and then that's it, right? So I never have to be in those meetings again. And so what I did in my firm,

I went through this exact process. So year one, which was really year two. So the first year of our transition, that was all the C clients. Okay. second year was all the B clients and finally all the A clients. And so by the end of, let's say, five or six years, whatever, three, four, five, six years, I wasn't meeting with any clients at all. That's so insightful because you're easing them in. You started with the C clients so that they can get their C legs, you know, the letter C and the S-E-A. In reality, because then they're practicing on the C clients.

And then on the B clients, they're a little bit better. by the time they get to the A client, you know and they know, the advisor knows that they have got it dialed in. So that is just spectacular. I love it. Well, I mean, and the reality, Mike, is that, you know, there's only, you know, 16 objections that exist in the universe, right? So we make it into, you know, like, oh, my gosh, what if they ask about this? Well, again, we have a finite number of questions that typically get asked in our business if you really boil it down. So, you know, it doesn't take a rocket science to figure out the answers.

And the nice thing is I teach my advisors also the ones that work for me was, you know what, you don't, you know, you don't have to be a genius. You can say, you know what, I haven't heard that question in a while. Let me get back to. So you don't have to know, you don't have to instantaneously know every answer to every question. So. Yep, exactly. And plus with them working so closely with you throughout those meetings, they're learning your mindset and methodology. So if one of those curveball questions comes, their mind immediately is going,

okay, well, Aaron has said this and another version of this question. So I'm going to now, and now they're just learning your nuances. So that's another huge takeaway. You know, we're talking about business building, you know, marketing, growing, closing clients. I think that one of the precursors to business building is prospecting. Why do you think advisors struggle with that so much? Is it like the mindset, the old school feeling of prospecting equals cold calling or door knocking, which I know does not, but I know that prospecting is an important piece. It really is, but I want to go back and reiterate something that I tell people, because, you know,

I created this online course and I've taught well over a thousand advisors, you know, how to build a business like I did. And I used to start off with prospecting. Like, you got to go find clients, okay? That was my first course after mindset. And then I realized, I would have these advisors coming in. And, yeah, Aaron, you know, I really want to, I really want to work with those 10, 20, $30 million clients. Like, where should I go to find those clients?

And I said to one guy one time, I said, well, if I put you in an entire room full of $20 million clients, would you have any idea what to say to them? And his answer was, no. So I reversed the process. And here's what I have found. This has been the coolest thing about this is that, you know, I teach them how to close prospect. I teach them how to close high-end prospect. And this is all sales skills. It's memorization, really.

And what's been so interesting, I have a saying, you know, like you know that saying, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Well, the really crazy part of my training is I've learned that when the advisor is ready, the high net worth prospects will appear. Yeah. Because Mike, I mean, you and I know, they're out there. And they need an advisor's help too. They're out there.

It's kind of that old, if I say, how many red cars did you notice on the freeway yesterday? You know, you wouldn't have any idea. But if I say to you, Mike, on your way down to Denver, count the number of red cars, you pay attention. Right. So advisors don't see high net worth client. It's like they have these blinders on because they would not know what to say to close these people if they got in front of them. So they pretend they don't exist. But now having turned over $1,000.

thousands of advisors. I'm like, these guys are moving up market, like immediately because they have the skill set to close these people. They know what to say. They know what their issues are. They know what their blind spots are. It is the most amazing thing. And then I always tell you only have to get one because birds of a feather flocked together. I mean, I have a beautiful neighborhood in Utah and probably everybody in my neighborhood is richer than I am kind of thing. And we all do things together. We go to dinner. We drink the same kind of wine. So you just have to get one. But it's literally impossible to get that one if you don't know what to say when you get in front of them.

So I don't worry. What has really been so, so fun and so interesting, I don't worry about my advisors finding those prospects when I know that they can close them because then they suddenly magically appear. It's crazy. And I'll bet you if you had a confidence meter, air quote, before their first high net worth client, conversation, it would be on the low side. And then when they learn what to say and then close that first one, wow, it just goes through the roof. And then they close their second one and third one. Now they're unstoppable because they're now more confident in their own skin and in their own messaging strategy. That is so great. I'll give you an example. I have one advisor. His name is

Dustin. He's allowed me to tell the story. So he'd been in the business like 15 years. He'd never he'd never gone, worked up market. Like he dealt with one to three million dollar clients. And he never charged a financial planning fee, not once, ever. And so he took my course. He said he was about five weeks into my course. And he had the opportunity to get in front of a $40 million business owner. And he goes, Aaron, I was shaking in my boots.

And he said, I listen to you. I caught my secret sauce. I listened. I binge watch the secret sauce over the weekend. He goes, I got in front of the guy. And Mike, it's as much as fake it to you make it. right? He said, I just went in there. I just, I listened, I memorized all your scripts. I just said what you told me to say. And then the guy goes, okay, what's it going to take to get this done? Which means the guy was asking, what's your financial planning fee going to be? And he said, I was channeling you in my head. I could hear your voice saying, Dustin, when that time comes, say the biggest number that can come out of your mouth. And so he said, my annual financial planning fee is $44,500. And the guy goes, done. And I tell my other students, and I had Dustin come on because I do a monthly call,

a live call with all my students, and I said, do you think Dustin will ever work for free again? Yeah. No. And do you think Dustin probably has a new marketplace with this one guy, you know, referring his friends? And the answer has been, it's been transformational in this guy's practice. So, you know, it is, it really is like in anything else. And I'm not afraid to say, I've faked it until I made it for a whole. a whole lot of years, you know? And, but it's kind of like going on stage, right? You're an actress.

You're on a stage. You have a part to play. You put your costume on. In our case, it's a business suit. You look professional. You fake it until you make it. And eventually, like you said, you make it and you got the confidence to really do it for real. Yep. You know it. I think that that is so huge in, and once they prove it to themselves, and it's not even faking it. It's just almost, it's not faking it to the prospect. it's faking it to yourself. You're faking out yourself that you have that confidence to ask for that because I think a lot of times people would have an issue with that phrase, fake it, team, make it, because you don't want to be inauthentic to your prospects and your clients and your strategic alliances. That's not what you're talking about, Aaron, you're talking about you might need to fake yourself out and go,

I am worth 44,500. And I can command that. And when you can fake yourself out, then you're competent to your prospect, your clients, and then it all starts coming together. You're exactly right. You know, that's, and like I said, I don't want to make it sound just like you're going to go in there and be disingenuous. You know, to me, you have to really care. Don't take somebody else's money unless you care about the outcome that they get, right? Now, I would love to have a magic wand and see what Dustin has he, and you don't need to answer this, but I'm just thinking out loud.

I'll bet you that he's gotten in front of another $40,000, $50 million, $60 million, dollar business owner and the planning fee was more than that because once his competence in his own self for the 44,500, you know, mounted, now the next time it's 45,000, 49,000, 55. And I think that you can start inching it up because not that you're taking advantage of people, but you're seeing the value of your advice and you're aligning the pricing based on that. Yeah. And for the most part, it really depends on the net worth of the person sitting in front of

you and especially a business owner, you are not credible. You cannot not charge a financial money fee for a business owner. Business owners are used to paying accountants and consultants. I mean, you come in there and you go, I'm going to do all this work for free. You're not credible. So it does have to be relative to their net worth. So this guy was 40 million. And my coaching, you know, 44, 5 was a perfect fee, you know, for that guy.

I mean, a $30 million guy, probably $34, $35,000 would be a good. fee for that guy. So it should be relative to what, you know, because you're also pointing out weak, what I teach them how to do is how to point out weaknesses in their current, and I call it the non-investment areas of life. What could come along? Here, they have amassed this fortune. What could come along and disrupt their plans that have a nice, wonderful, comfortable retirement or exit or whatever their goals are? And there are so many things. So I teach my advisors, there's 22 different, let's call it pitfalls, paths that they can go down. So when they need to know what these issues are, so they get in front of that 30 or $40 million prospect, they know what to say.

And there's always weaknesses in people's situation, especially a business owner. They're blowing and going, moving as fast as they can. They always take care of their own customers, but a lot of times they're not really good about taking care of their own situation. So they make very, very good clients because they're used to paying, for advice and they're typically got a lot of weaknesses. You know, Aaron, we've been talking about business building and we've talked about finding that ideal client and dialing in your messaging and prospecting. Well, other aspects of business building would include team development or operations.

And I love your pen analogy of starting to, you know, take the training wheels off the bike as your other advisors are learning your systems. What do you feel is probably one of the most important areas of, for moving the needle regarding business building? Well, again, leverage. You know, to me, I ended up, it was me and myself and I, and I shared one assistant with four other advisors, and she wasn't even licensed at the time.

So when I made this, I had this aha moment, and I decided I'm going for it. I'm going to build a business. I came back and I said to my branch manager, can I just pay for her all by myself? So I did. I got her licensed. Then I hired the next person.

And so really to really take off, you have to really have two people. So you and then you need a licensed person and then you can deal with like an unlicensed person, somebody to schedule appointments and that. And so then, again, if you're good at closing and you start moving up market, you're going to create the revenue to then hire a second licensed person. And the third, I ended up having two offices. I had 18 employees. I had seven conference rooms between the two offices, seven conference rooms that were consistently

filled with clients of my firm and I wasn't in any one of them. So leverage is so huge. And what's so interesting is the reason I got top dollar for my company, I had three offers and I was able to pick the offer I wanted. The buyer knew that all three buyers, but the one, you know, finally I sold to, he knew there was no risk to the business because no. No client was ever used to meeting with me. In fact, the funny story was I sold my firm in October 2017.

Four years later, my old firm came to me and said, hey, Aaron, we'd really like to throw a retirement party for you. And I had hundreds of clients come to my retirement. And they're like, oh, we're so glad you're finally retiring. They had no idea I was gone and hadn't stepped foot in the office in four years. Wow. Yep. That's when it's done right. Well, yeah.

And what's really nice is I have checked back with my old team. My old team, they are my advisors now. And they've not lost a single client. And so what a great thing for the buyer of my firm. And if you don't build something like that, what happens is you'll get a decent price and then it'll be reevaluated. a year later, they'll reprice it based on how many people left. And that's the right thing to do. But I never had a, you know, we didn't reprice it a year later or two years, anytime. I just got to get a big check and I walked away. And that's what I want for advisors. And, you know, I came from nothing and I built something.

And it's my mission to teach advisors and show them how to do this. Because if I can do it, oh my gosh, anybody could. But you've got to be intentional, right? And a lot, I was talking. talking to an advisor this morning and she's just all over the map and I'm like, you're taking a little bit of this and this person's advice and a little this and little of that. I'm like, you really start, you need to decide what you're, who's advice you want to follow and get on the path and move forward and don't deviate, right? So, you know, it's, I feel bad because I met this girl six years ago, but she's just all over the map. And she, so we're going to, we're going to fix that problem. She needs to kind of just get some discipline.

back in her life. So trust the process. I want a great outcome for her, too, you know. So. You know, Aaron, we've been talking about your elite advisor success system. And today was the proper order of business building. And it's not just you saying this is a great program. You were recently featured in Financial Advisor magazine on how much this is a benefiting advisor.

So we'll make sure to put that link in the show notes as well. But let's wrap up with what's the best way that an advisor can learn more about your lead advisor's success system and also reach out and connect with you. Yeah, sure. So they can find out, all they have to do is go to www. www. Aaron Botsford.com. It's E-R-I-N-B-O-T-S-F-R-D, Aaronbosford.com. We have a great website. They can learn all about our program. We've got a contact us button. And yeah, we would love to talk to, you know, advisors. And I know I can get them from, you know, my goal is always to have them 10 times their business in three years. That's my goal. And the cool thing is now I've done it hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times with different advisors.

So the path to success is there. It's written out. They just have to follow it and they will achieve whatever their dreams are. So I'd love to work with any advisor who's serious about taking their business to the next level. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for coming back on air. It was a real pleasure talking with you again today. Thank you, Mike.

You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders to learn more about the resources is mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes. Visit www. www. influential entrepreneursradio.com.