Financial Advisor Live Q & A

Mindi Godfrey (01:13):

(silence). Hey. You guys are both muted.

Suzanne Krasna (01:15):

Oh, okay. I’ll unmute.

Mindi Godfrey (01:17):

[inaudible 00:01:17].

Paul (01:19):

Oh, there we are.

Suzanne Krasna (01:20):

Paul, looking good with the hat. What is this? Is this a new style?

Paul (01:28):

Well, when I do my financial review meetings, I wear my suit jacket, and for all your benefits, I put the hat on when I’m in the car just so I look a little more professional.

Suzanne Krasna (01:41):

Oh, I see. Right. I think [inaudible 00:01:44].

Paul (01:45):

But I wear this around town too.

Suzanne Krasna (01:46):

Oh, okay. This is so that they don’t recognize you in your painting hat.

Paul (01:53):

Oh yeah, no. That’s a different business.

Suzanne Krasna (01:56):

Yes, exactly. So you wear different hats. I like that.

Paul (01:58):

Yeah, different hats for different businesses.

Suzanne Krasna (02:02):

Good. Hi there, Stephen.

STEPHEN OLIVER (02:05):

Hey, guys. I see we have some very substantive and important conversation that I came in and [crosstalk 00:02:12].

Suzanne Krasna (02:11):

Oh yes.

Mindi Godfrey (02:13):

Yes.

Paul (02:17):

Very deep. We’re very deep. So how were you travel, Stephen?

Suzanne Krasna (02:21):

Yeah.

STEPHEN OLIVER (02:21):

Where did I go?

Mindi Godfrey (02:24):

You were in Boston.

Paul (02:24):

[inaudible 00:02:24].

STEPHEN OLIVER (02:26):

Boston? Oh yes.

Paul (02:27):

You got burned or something or what?

Suzanne Krasna (02:29):

Where did you go?

STEPHEN OLIVER (02:32):

Well, let’s see. Last couple months, Boston, Tulsa, Orlando. So Boston. No, it was good. Purely-

Suzanne Krasna (02:43):

Was this business?

STEPHEN OLIVER (02:44):

No, it was purely recreational.

Suzanne Krasna (02:47):

How nice.

STEPHEN OLIVER (02:48):

Taking the kids, whale-watching tours, the freedom trail stuff, Salem witchcraft, Plymouth Rock, all that stuff.

Suzanne Krasna (03:01):

That’s great.

STEPHEN OLIVER (03:02):

One of the interesting takeaways is apparently nobody was particularly interested in Salem or the witch trials that happened in the late 1500s until it was featured on Bewitched, and suddenly it became a tourist Mecca.

Suzanne Krasna (03:18):

Oh, yes. Well…

STEPHEN OLIVER (03:20):

So all of the tourism surrounding the Salem witch trials happened following 1970s Bewitched. [inaudible 00:03:30] shot there.

Suzanne Krasna (03:30):

Right. Oh my God. That was one of my favorite shows.

STEPHEN OLIVER (03:35):

Yeah. I thought that was funny. I think of it as this historic event that everybody knew and had some interest in. It was because of the TV show.

Suzanne Krasna (03:46):

Oh my gosh. That’s great. Well, now they have a tourist income.

STEPHEN OLIVER (03:53):

Yes. They have a lot of tourist income, I must say. Tours and all museums and all kinds of crazy crap.

Suzanne Krasna (04:02):

That’s good. Well, we missed you.

STEPHEN OLIVER (04:07):

[inaudible 00:04:07]. Thank you. So you guys making some headway on rounding up clients and putting revenue on the books, I hope.

Suzanne Krasna (04:16):

Well, I’m busy collecting new money from existing clients, so that’s nice. And in a way, it’s more work, but it’s good. It’s all good. And then I did put together a preliminary list that I had sent you guys. I had sent and copied the three of you, and it was about 30 people. I went through my cards because you and I talked about that sometime ago. I went through just one pile, I have lots of piles of cards. I went through one pile and picked out the people that will probably remember me from three years ago. So this is like between 2017 and now. And they’re mostly just small business owners. They’re people that I met in business networking situations mostly, or they were in the same office building I was or something like that, but then what came to mind is I really need to decide what to say on my business card because I don’t have one.

Suzanne Krasna (05:35):

And then I was talking with Mindi yesterday about putting up a… What did we call it? A landing page, because if I’m going to get myself situated in LinkedIn, to start setting up the marketing that you guys help us with, that I need to do that. That has come to the top to be, I think, the first thing I need to do, is to have a place for people to go to see me or find me. But in the meantime, I am starting to do more networking and what have you. Yesterday in this office area, this suite that I’m in, there was a lady in our big conference room and in between clients. I knocked on the door and introduced myself and asked her what she did. And she’s an estate planning attorney, et cetera. I just finished doing my homework on her, because I always like to get to know the person if I didn’t really get to talk to them.

Suzanne Krasna (07:06):

So I always go on Google, I always go to their webpage to read up on them, as much as that there’s going to be there. And what I have done in the past and I’d like your feedback on what other things I could do instead is when I would meet somebody like that, I’d just say, “I’d like to get to know more about what you do,” et cetera, or, “We could share what we both do,” but I like to keep it on a you rather than a me. So I either recommend that we meet for coffee or a glass of wine or lunch kind of thing, but I do need to have something to not sound like all the other financial planners. I mean, something to get her attention because I don’t have a place where she could go to see who I am.

STEPHEN OLIVER (08:13):

Okay. There was a lot packed in there, right?

Suzanne Krasna (08:19):

So-

STEPHEN OLIVER (08:20):

I mean, clearly, you should have a LinkedIn profile, right? And have all that set up. You should have a Facebook business page and have that set up. Both are exceedingly easy to do. Once you have a personal profile on LinkedIn, setting up a business page is exceedingly easy to do. So you have a business page, a personal page on Facebook, but a business page on Facebook for your business, right? Now you have those three things, right? And do you have a website now for your business?

Suzanne Krasna (09:07):

I had turned it off. I think I could put it back on. I just have to take the LLC off a bit, because I decided it really doesn’t make sense for me to continue to be an LLC. And for the last 35, 40 years, I’ve called myself the Krasna Financial Group. I guess I’m going through, should I really continue that name or come up with another name of my business? So I need to talk with somebody to collaborate on what to call myself or what to call my business. And I do need help on putting together the material to go in LinkedIn and Facebook and all that good stuff. So if you guys could help me with that, that’d be great.

STEPHEN OLIVER (10:10):

Oh, sure. But as far as the name, I mean, is there any particular reason to change what you’ve been calling yourself?

Suzanne Krasna (10:20):

I guess from point of view that I don’t want to go back to doing whatever I did before. I really am an emotive reinventing myself. Whatever that means, I don’t know. But I want to feel like I’m freshened up, so to speak, that I don’t go… I want to implement new ways of doing things, new attitudes, new… What do you call it? Habits, because I have some bad habits I need to get rid of. And my communication skills with clients and people on the most part, I feel is really good. Yeah, my closing ratio in terms of clients is very good. It’s just a matter of talking to them or finding them.

STEPHEN OLIVER (11:24):

Okay. Well, let’s start with the name thing, right?

Suzanne Krasna (11:29):

Okay.

STEPHEN OLIVER (11:33):

To the greatest extent possible, probably it really doesn’t matter much, short of it being something that’s hard to memorize for somebody to remember, or being something where it’s Ajax Inc and when they google it, there’s 9,000 of them. Right? You met Brian, he showed up for one of our meetings, but I went through this laborious exercise with him and with Peter and a couple other guys about naming. And I kept saying, “Why don’t you just call it fricking [inaudible 00:12:10] Wealth Managers?” And they kept coming up with names that like 10,000 other people were using.

Suzanne Krasna (12:17):

Oh no.

STEPHEN OLIVER (12:18):

Okay. Well, yeah, but if they google you, you want them to find you not find four or five others. And they ended up with Axios Wealth Advisors or something like that, which fine, I don’t know what it means. I don’t care what it means. There’s some logic of what it means. And my only complaint was there’re still four of them, right, so they can be looking for you and find somebody else. So to some extent, I think it’s something we tend to put an awful lot of thinking and analysis and look for somebody who’s an expert to tell, and it doesn’t make all that much difference, right?

Suzanne Krasna (13:07):

I guess the energy that I present is more important than the name. I mean, I have renamed myself with FINRA on my RIA. So I used to be Krasna Financial Group, my registered investment advisory name, but I changed it this last year when I got rid of the broker dealer and just made it Suzanne Krasna. So-

Paul (13:35):

So I’ve got a quick idea for you, Suzanne, because what I hear, partly what you’re saying is that you’re thinking about a different name because you want a different way you do business, keep the same name, but do a tagline that’s unique to what you’re doing now.

Suzanne Krasna (13:57):

That’s good. Thank you. Yes, I do have a tagline that is longevity life planning. I don’t know if that’s exciting or not, but that has been a tagline for me for a couple of years, and it is in style or vogue or whatever, but the truth is I’ve always provided holistic financial planning, which has to do with people’s whole life. Everything in their life, all along the way. Do you have any ideas for taglines for me?

STEPHEN OLIVER (14:33):

Well, we’re running far a field now, right?

Suzanne Krasna (14:37):

Oh, okay.

STEPHEN OLIVER (14:37):

So you started with you were talking to somebody and are looking for a methodology to move them forward, right? And you said the problem was that you didn’t have a website or someplace to send them.

Suzanne Krasna (15:00):

Yes. And I don’t have a brochure or anything that… What I used to hand out years ago was just a biography I would send to people and maybe a list of what I did and that was it.

STEPHEN OLIVER (15:15):

Right. And you were trying to accomplish what?

Suzanne Krasna (15:21):

I want to establish a professional relationship with her. Yeah, I’d like to establish a relationship with her. She seems like a very bright lady. She was born and raised in France, so I’m already impressed, but I guess I just feel like I haven’t clarified really what I want to focus on moving forward. Do I want to just… everything from not doing wealth management, but just focusing on straight, just financial planning. Because being a one person shop, trying to do everything is not a good idea, which is what [inaudible 00:16:21] done.

STEPHEN OLIVER (16:22):

Well, let’s start back with the original premise. I meet somebody and I build a relationship at whatever level, right? And now there’s the follow on step. There’s a great book, by the way. It’s off topic, but it’s called the One-Minute Manager Meets a Monkey. It’s all about delegation.

Suzanne Krasna (16:46):

Oh, yeah.

STEPHEN OLIVER (16:47):

And the metaphor it uses is the subordinates walking up to a superior and they’ve got a task, which is the monkey on their shoulder. And so now when they’re talking to the superior, the monkey is straddling the two shoulders and whoever left with the monkey won, right? So the subordinate is trying to give the manager the monkey, and so the manager is carrying the monkey home in a briefcase over the weekend while the subordinates are playing off. It’s very funny the way they develop it. But to some extent, it’s a good way to think about, I think, an interaction, right? If they leave the conversation with a business card and a brochure with a admonition, I’ll be sure and give you a call. That’s a failed interaction, right?

STEPHEN OLIVER (17:36):

What I want with the interaction, just like the monkey, is I want to leave with all of their information and preferably with an appointment as a follow-up. Right? And it doesn’t matter whether it’s the networking event, like we talked about three or four weeks ago, or whether it’s a one-on-one interaction or whether it was a Facebook [inaudible 00:18:01], is I always want it to be where at the very least I’m leaving with all of their contact information so that I could mail to them, I can email to them, I can text them, I can call them, and preferably a concrete next step. Right?

Suzanne Krasna (18:19):

Yeah.

STEPHEN OLIVER (18:20):

So what most business owners do is they leave the interaction with here’s my business card, give me a holler if you need whatever.

Suzanne Krasna (18:27):

And then the reality, I had asked her for her card.

STEPHEN OLIVER (18:31):

Yeah. Right. And it’s nice to have business cards. What’s the value overall of a business card? It’s really a dime more than the paper was printed on. I mean, it’s not very useful or helpful, right? Other than maybe you’re at an event and you’re collecting everybody’s cards, but you’re collecting them not for the stack that you have, you’re collecting them to put them in a direct mail campaign to put somebody [inaudible 00:19:05] follow them up to have a next action step.

Suzanne Krasna (19:09):

Right.

STEPHEN OLIVER (19:10):

And so the ideal would be perhaps you end up with a short book or some other physical thing that they can leave with, but you also want the interaction to finish with, let me get your information. Let’s follow up on Tuesday. I’d be happy to meet at your office if you want or whatever it is, but you want the interaction to leave with a concrete action step, right?

Suzanne Krasna (19:44):

Okay. I didn’t have any concrete… Well, her client had gone down the hall to the ladies room, so it was really a very quick… I didn’t want to take up her time unnecessarily. I just wanted to say hi.

STEPHEN OLIVER (20:00):

Yeah. You’re hijacking somebody else’s client trying to pitch them your thing.

Suzanne Krasna (20:05):

No, I wasn’t.

STEPHEN OLIVER (20:07):

Well, that’s fine. I mean, I’m completely [inaudible 00:20:10], right? I mean, but that’s the situation.

Suzanne Krasna (20:13):

Well, she’s an attorney, but she can refer the clients to me. Thank you very much.

STEPHEN OLIVER (20:17):

No, I’m not saying you were stealing-

Suzanne Krasna (20:19):

I know.

STEPHEN OLIVER (20:21):

… [inaudible 00:20:21] comparable, but just psychologically, right? Is now if they leave and they have some interest in working with you, all human beings nowadays are going to google you, right?

Suzanne Krasna (20:39):

Yeah. Like I did her.

STEPHEN OLIVER (20:40):

Yeah. So now it’s important that one, that you’re not a ghost. Right? But two is that what they find is congruent with what they’re expecting, and that they find valuable and useful stuff. Right? And it’s fairly easy to be everywhere nowadays, right? So you can have your own little YouTube channel. You can have your business page and your personal page and LinkedIn. You can have your business page, personal page in Facebook, and there’s 9,000 other social networking platforms. You can have a little Twitter feed and you can have an Instagram and all of that kind of crap, right? But what’s ultimately would be important is to have a Google business page and to start getting your current clients to give you reviews on it, because the more five star reviews you have the better.

STEPHEN OLIVER (21:37):

And that’s been kind of verboten in the past with financial planning, but the rules are changing, but there’s no way that [inaudible 00:21:47] or any of those guys can control people go review you online, nor be upset about it. So you want to have it be when they go to look for you, which if they’re going to do business with you, they will, that you show up and you look credible on LinkedIn, and you show up and you look credible on Facebook, and you show up and you look credible on the Google business page at the very least. Right? And all of that is an hour or two of just making sure that stuff is set up appropriately.

Suzanne Krasna (22:28):

Well, oh, I’d like to say two things. First of all, I immediately thought, okay, I need to either email her today and say, “It was great meeting you, hope you had a great whatever with your client.” And then today I was planning on just sending her a thank you note. Thank you for whatever, and-

STEPHEN OLIVER (22:53):

Thank you for talking to me for two minutes [inaudible 00:22:56].

Suzanne Krasna (22:56):

Right. So then I don’t know what to put out there. Just say, “How about a meet for coffee or tea or lunch sometime in the near future?” I don’t know. I mean, that’s what I would ordinarily do. I’d like to get to know you better. How about getting together for lunch or coffee?

STEPHEN OLIVER (23:26):

Did she express interest in your services?

Suzanne Krasna (23:30):

No, because we had literally maybe three minutes.

STEPHEN OLIVER (23:34):

Okay. Well-

Suzanne Krasna (23:38):

So I’m going to come from a point of view that if we had more than three minutes to talk, I guess, I would like to think she would be interested in knowing more about what I do.

STEPHEN OLIVER (23:52):

Yeah. I mean, let’s assume. It’s better to assume the positive than the negative. It’s better to assume that they’re a prospective client and be proven wrong, than it is to assume they’re not and be proven right, right?

Suzanne Krasna (24:05):

Yeah.

STEPHEN OLIVER (24:06):

So I have these little cards and one of the things I did for Peter Harness is we got a picture of him mountain biking in the mountains, or… I forget what picture we ended up using. It was funny. He sent me one picture, I said, “I want the one that doesn’t look like you were embalmed 10 years ago, that’s on Northwest mutual site,” because they all have these stupid headshots and they look like they’re dead posing for the thing. And if you looked at a hundred of them, they all look alike, right?

STEPHEN OLIVER (24:40):

So he sent me one mountain biking and one doing something else, but there was one with his dog [inaudible 00:24:46] backyard and he wanted to use that when I said, “Well, if you could turn the dogs around,” because what we’ve got is Peter and two dogs butts in the picture. We were looking at the rear of the dogs. I said, “Turn them around so the dogs are looking at the camera. We’ll use the dog one.” This is the pulling the hair out picture.

Suzanne Krasna (25:12):

Oh my gosh.

STEPHEN OLIVER (25:14):

But something that’s kind of personalized that human that you can follow up on is always a good thing. And with anybody that’s cold contact and it doesn’t have to be buy them lunch, nowadays you can set a meeting by Zoom if you plan to, but hey, here’s what I do and I’d love to take 20 minutes and learn a little bit more about your situation and if there’s some opportunity for us to work together, great. If not, I can give you some thoughts and some ideas. In this particular case, since she’s a client of the attorney, I think I might have the attorney [inaudible 00:25:52].

Suzanne Krasna (25:51):

Oh, no. That’s who I was talking to, was the attorney.

STEPHEN OLIVER (25:56):

Okay.

Suzanne Krasna (25:57):

Yeah. I was talking to the attorney herself, because she was making… Well, there’s a glass wall to the conference room. So when you walk by, you see whoever’s in there. And I saw this woman in there, a very attractive black woman, by the way. And it looked like she was recording something in a book that was like a notary book. Okay? So I don’t know, it just came to my mind and I knocked on the door because her clients had gone to a ladies room or whatever.

STEPHEN OLIVER (26:35):

Oh, okay.

Suzanne Krasna (26:37):

Yeah. And so I said, “Are you a notary?” I mean, anything to get something started. She said, “No, I’m an attorney.” I said, “Well, I just saw the book that you’re filling out or something that looked like something [inaudible 00:26:54].”

STEPHEN OLIVER (26:54):

Okay. So that context made the whole story different.

Suzanne Krasna (26:58):

Yeah. So-

STEPHEN OLIVER (27:00):

Make the attorney to lunch and find out more about what she does.

Suzanne Krasna (27:07):

Exactly.

STEPHEN OLIVER (27:07):

And then figure out a good way to create a client feeder from that.

Suzanne Krasna (27:12):

Yeah. I mean, my-

STEPHEN OLIVER (27:16):

What kind of law does she practice?

Suzanne Krasna (27:18):

Estate, probate.

STEPHEN OLIVER (27:20):

Well, there you go.

Suzanne Krasna (27:21):

[inaudible 00:27:21], I mean, it’s like…

STEPHEN OLIVER (27:23):

Yeah. It’s a perfect fit. I mean, just sit down and figure out how to feed her traffic and have her feed you traffic. With deals like that, there’s always a number of ways to do it, right? And what anybody and everybody seems to revert to is how do I give them 20% of the deal, or what’s enough that I can give them, but relationship is much more important, right? And relationship in two ways, their relationship with their clients and them feeling like they did a good job for their clients. And certainly, did a job in such a way that nothing’s going to backlash at them. But number two is when you have those conversations, what almost always happens is they’re trying to figure out how you’re going to give them business, and you’re trying to figure out how they’re going to give you business. And I always try to start those conversations by giving them business and doing so much to help them that sooner or later, reciprocity kicks in and they want to help back in return. Right?

Suzanne Krasna (28:38):

Now, one of the things that I was thinking of that I have thought about doing in the past is to do a joint webinars, some kind of educational piece-

STEPHEN OLIVER (28:50):

Sure. Yeah.

Suzanne Krasna (28:51):

… or a blog or whatever you call that, where you’re interviewing somebody. So I was thinking maybe that would be a way to provide her an opportunity for us to work together on putting something like that on and putting it out there.

STEPHEN OLIVER (29:10):

You say, “Hey, one of the things I want to start doing is some webinars and some live Zoom meetings for clients, former clients, prospects, and I thought maybe we could do it together because, obviously, there’s a lot of topics in common here.” And them working with you is no skin off my nose, and them working with me is no skin off your nose.

Suzanne Krasna (29:31):

Oh yeah. It was natural fit.

STEPHEN OLIVER (29:33):

Yeah, it’s a natural fit. So why don’t we schedule something if you’re amenable to it and we can work together an outline, and then I can interview you or you can interview me back and forth. And we’ll just do something like that. And that’s a great way to introduce her clientele to you, and you to introduce your clientele to her. And it’s a great way for that reciprocity beast too.

Suzanne Krasna (29:59):

Well, for both of us to be able to reach out to all her connections that she has, I’m sure, between LinkedIn and everything, because it would be something that you wouldn’t maybe put on a public thing. I don’t know.

STEPHEN OLIVER (30:15):

Yeah.

Suzanne Krasna (30:16):

It would be a win-win for both of us to be able to put ourselves out there.

STEPHEN OLIVER (30:23):

You bet.

Suzanne Krasna (30:25):

[inaudible 00:30:25].

STEPHEN OLIVER (30:26):

And structurally, the way you do those types of things, I mean, outside of your own clientele, I mean, you can do it with your clientele as well, is create what’s called a landing page. So you create a registration page. Mindi, that’s a perfect one for just using Eventbrite. But you could use Eventbrite or you could use a lead pages, landing page or whatever, but you just have a place where people go and register. If you did it via Zoom, Zoom creates a page for you, so you can-

Suzanne Krasna (30:57):

Oh, I didn’t know that.

STEPHEN OLIVER (30:58):

Oh, yeah. As long as you have the webinar package, is it’ll create a webinar registration page. So people register, then it’ll send them a reminder. It’ll send them a link, it’ll give them access. When you do something like that, by the way, short of it being a thousand people, which you’re not going to get, but in small groups, I always prefer to be interactive like this because you’re much more likely to move them forward into action if you can say, “And welcome Mary, welcome Jim, great to have you here. And by the way, any questions you have, feel free to just jump in at any time,” right? You get an interactiveness going, and also let you move on to the next step more easily.

Suzanne Krasna (31:44):

So what I’m hearing you say is that maybe it’s better that we invite people that we know, be it clients, be it prospects, be it other professionals, or be it people that we are connected to rather than just the whole universe.

STEPHEN OLIVER (32:02):

Well, I mean, there’s levels, right? So one level is it’s easy for her, it’s easy for you to email, to mail, to call former clients, current clients, prospective clients, right?

Suzanne Krasna (32:18):

Got it.

STEPHEN OLIVER (32:18):

So that’s a database that’s easy to work. And then, again, you want to think about how the topic is phrased to make it somewhat sexy. It’s easy to promote those sayings via Facebook, LinkedIn, direct mail, et cetera, to broader list, right? So in this particular more or less what topic we’re talking about, it probably aims at 55 to 70, right? So you could easily target in a number of different ways, geographically, if you wanted to, but you could go after people that have a certain income level at a certain age level and target that. So yeah, you can bring cold traffic in as well. The lowest hanging fruit and the easiest way to work a relationship like that is start with why don’t we do something where we invite your clients, my clients, your former clients, my former clients, your prospective clients, my prospects, and we’ll do an interactive thing? And if that works out well, we can promote the recording to a broader list of people that we haven’t worked with and use it as a lead magnet and so forth. So that’s-

Suzanne Krasna (33:39):

Exactly.

STEPHEN OLIVER (33:39):

Yeah, that’s a fairly easy way to do that.

Suzanne Krasna (33:43):

Yeah. So to me, since I don’t have a ton of clients or a ton of prospects that I’ve been nurturing for the last 5, 10, 20 years, that was something that I’ve always felt was something that was substantial to bring to another professional that I am looking for them to be… What do you call it? A COI, whatever that is.

STEPHEN OLIVER (34:16):

Circle of Influence.

Suzanne Krasna (34:16):

What’s a COI?

STEPHEN OLIVER (34:17):

Circle of Influence.

Suzanne Krasna (34:19):

Yes. Thank you. To be able to talk about doing something that can help them and me, but really be able to partner up on doing things like that.

STEPHEN OLIVER (34:34):

Yeah. But again, if you lead the conversation always, in my view anyway, with what you can do for them, right?

Suzanne Krasna (34:48):

And that’s where I would be coming from. Yeah.

STEPHEN OLIVER (34:51):

Yeah. But again, it can be very fruitful. I mean, CPAs, estate planning attorneys and so forth can be very fruitful. Now, the vast majority of them suck at pitching their own thing, right? They don’t really have a good sales process in place. So if you then expected them to be good at referring people who are prepped to you, it’s a hopeless cause in most cases, because they’re not even good at selling their own stuff, much less your stuff. Right? Nor are they very incentivized for it. But there’s a number of ways to get it to work well, right? One way is what you’re talking about, is you do a meeting together, you give them the tools to promote it to their list, you promote it to their list of what’s in it for them, is they’re getting in front of your people for you as you’re getting in front of their people. Right?

STEPHEN OLIVER (35:54):

And they’re presenting it as a service to their current clients. Another way to go about that is to have pass along tools that they have utilization for, right? So again, it’s the value of a book, a report, the recording of this event. I mean, if you do this and you can burn it to DVD and they can have a DVD that they can hand out to people, they can have a CD, they can hand out to people. They can have the transcript as a report. So they could have a little package. I mean, you could do a nice little envelope. And by the way, here’s some really good, basic information on the planning process and so forth that they can hand to their clients. You see, all these things can be utilized in a variety of ways.

STEPHEN OLIVER (36:46):

And again, I mean, you get your feet wet with this one, heck you could do mailing to every estate planning attorney in California if you wanted, or whatever region you wanted to do, and essentially do the same thing with all the… To some extent, they’re going to work for you based upon you giving them help generating clients or based upon you giving them money. But really, the motivation is going to be they have somebody they trust that they can refer their clientele to that they’re not afraid is [inaudible 00:37:23] back on them.

Suzanne Krasna (37:25):

Right. The other thing is, now, what is the difference between that and a podcast? Because there’s an attorney in this area, she has become very famous in that. She started doing podcasts where she would interview different professionals. She’d interview CPA… I mean, all the obvious people, but other outside the box kind of people makes it more interesting.

STEPHEN OLIVER (37:57):

Sure.

Suzanne Krasna (37:57):

So what is the difference between that and a podcast?

STEPHEN OLIVER (38:01):

Well, I mean, the difference between doing a live meeting and a podcast, the podcast is on demand, right?

Suzanne Krasna (38:13):

Meaning?

STEPHEN OLIVER (38:14):

[inaudible 00:38:14].

Suzanne Krasna (38:16):

Oh, okay.

STEPHEN OLIVER (38:18):

The most direct way to explain this is you have a lot of different places that you can post content out on the internet, right? And a podcast is like a radio show, but it’s on demand. And in fact, some of the top podcast hosts are Spotify, which is known for on-demand music and iHeartRadio, which is known for on-demand radio shows and a lot of it is music, right? So if you produce like this Zoom video with somebody as a webinar or as a live Zoom meeting, the element of it that’s different is that it’s live, but then once you do it, you have the recording. Right? So you could do a live meeting and at the same time broadcast it live on YouTube or Facebook. But then you have a recording that then you can create a podcast, which you would want to create it like it was a regular program like she did, so you can then post it out to all the directory sites. Mindi, we just went through this exercise.

Mindi Godfrey (39:39):

Yes.

STEPHEN OLIVER (39:39):

The top ones are Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon-

Mindi Godfrey (39:46):

iHeartRadio.

STEPHEN OLIVER (39:47):

iHeartRadio, who else?

Mindi Godfrey (39:51):

Hang on. I have my tab open with all of them here. Let’s see. Apple. Let’s see. iHeart, Spotify, Castbox, Google, Amazon, and Stitcher.

STEPHEN OLIVER (40:12):

Yeah. But in search, Google’s the 800-pound gorilla. In podcasts, Apple’s 800-pound gorilla. Right? But once you have the content, it can become a YouTube channel. And the only difference really between a podcast and a YouTube channel is the hosting platform, right? Is most people will access YouTube to watch a video, where most people will access a podcast on Apple to listen to it as audio, right? But you can post video and audio of a podcast. Like Joe Rogan is number one podcast in the country, I believe, and he posts them all… Until recently, he did an exclusive with Spotify, but he posted on YouTube and it was on Spotify and it was everywhere else. And it’s up there as video for anybody who wants to watch it on video, and it’s up there as audio for anybody who wants to access it as audio, right?

STEPHEN OLIVER (41:21):

So what you’re talking about, though, is it’s a long-term process to build a following, and it’s something that you have to do an awful lot of promotion to get it. But if you will, hopefully, viral online way of building a relationship with an audience that might have some value with it, right? So what Paul has been doing with the contractors, it’s a real natural there, because he could build a podcast for contractors on developing their business and on creating a high net and a high net worth from their deal and it becomes a natural. And then it could be just him talking, or he can have guests, or any combination of the two.

Suzanne Krasna (42:22):

[inaudible 00:42:22].

STEPHEN OLIVER (42:23):

Yeah. But then what happens is when he’s interacting with the association, he can have the association promote the podcast. In the case of that example, I mean, I’m guessing, but I don’t think there’s a lot of general contractors who are intentionally searching Apple Podcast for business development content.

Suzanne Krasna (42:49):

Yeah.

Paul (42:49):

Sure.

STEPHEN OLIVER (42:50):

So it’s not like it’s going to be found organically, but you can promote it. And the nice thing about a podcast environment is that they start to feel like they have a relationship with you. It’s why whether it’s… What’s his name? Howard Stern [crosstalk 00:43:11] Limbaugh, right? Is they’ve always been the number one and number two radio personalities in the world, and people would listen to them for three hours. By the way, if you ever never seen the movie, what was it called? The Private Parts.

Suzanne Krasna (43:28):

[inaudible 00:43:28].

STEPHEN OLIVER (43:29):

The movie that was based on Stern’s book was hysterical, but there’s a great scene that I like in there. And they had picked him up from DC and he had gone to WMBC in New York, and everybody was pissed off that they had hired him. They hired him sight unseen, and his claim to fame beforehand was when Air Florida crashed into 14th Street Bridge. He had called Air Florida and asked how much a one-way ticket was from DC national to 14th Street Bridge. So they hired him and all of a sudden, he’s on the most prestigious radio station in the New York Metro market [inaudible 00:44:12] Howard.

Suzanne Krasna (44:13):

Wow.

STEPHEN OLIVER (44:14):

And they all hated him and they were trying to get him not to be Howard, but there’s this great line where the ratings have come in and it’s the program director going through with the station manager and so forth, Howard’s [inaudible 00:44:27], who is now the number one talk radio hosts in New York after they spent, I don’t know how much time, but trying to fix him. Right?

Suzanne Krasna (44:37):

Oh God, yes.

STEPHEN OLIVER (44:39):

And one of the lines is-

Suzanne Krasna (44:41):

[inaudible 00:44:41].

STEPHEN OLIVER (44:41):

Well, so when they were talking about how long people listen and what they respond on the thing, there’s this great line which is, well, people who like him, how long do they listen on average? There’s like an hour and a half. And okay, well, people who don’t like him, how long do they listen on average? Well, this is really an interesting study. They listen for an average of two and a half hours. And it was literally-

Suzanne Krasna (45:08):

[inaudible 00:45:08].

STEPHEN OLIVER (45:09):

Well, he had this audience that was literally waiting for the train wreck, waiting to see what he would say next, what’s going to come out of his mouth next, right? And Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern had a very different audience, but they had a huge audience for the same reason, right?

Suzanne Krasna (45:31):

Yeah.

STEPHEN OLIVER (45:31):

Is people built this relationship with them and had this expectation of who it was, because for years, I think until he died, Limbaugh had the number one radio audience in the world, and Stern was number two and dropped quite a bit when he went exclusively to Satellite Radio, by the way. But when he was on broadcast syndicated, he was number two to Limbaugh for years. But podcasts are like that, right? Is you can put your personality into it, it’s interesting, people will listen to it. If you get them to listen to it, they’ll listen to it and feel like they know you and have a relationship with you before they ever contact you. And so it’s very useful in that way.

Suzanne Krasna (46:26):

I mean, I guess my imagination is going wild. Hi, my imagination is going wild. Anyway, I always come up with these phrases and then afterwards I think, “You said that, Suzanne. How embarrassing.” Anyway, the other thing that I was thinking about doing is doing short videos about a very specific area of financial planning. So maybe talk about, as a financial planner, financial planning is this, this and this. And one of the parts that people do not think about is protecting their income. And so then I could do a short deal, without saying it, on disability insurance. And how-

STEPHEN OLIVER (47:18):

[inaudible 00:47:18] we talked to that was really good at that. He was in retirement area in Georgia, if I remember correctly. He always had the electronic whiteboard behind him and he had done a… Also, do you remember who I’m talking about, Mindi?

Mindi Godfrey (47:37):

Yeah.

Suzanne Krasna (47:42):

Now, that’d be kind of cool for me because I could draw pictures.

STEPHEN OLIVER (47:46):

There you go.

Mindi Godfrey (47:47):

I’m blanking on it.

STEPHEN OLIVER (47:51):

Yeah. It’ll come to me, but again, Suzanne, all of that is a strategy if you have a good… I have four dogs and like…

Suzanne Krasna (48:03):

Let me see your dogs.

STEPHEN OLIVER (48:06):

Well, let’s see. Cooper, come here.

Mindi Godfrey (48:12):

Oh, Coop.

STEPHEN OLIVER (48:15):

Come here. Stand up.

Suzanne Krasna (48:15):

Good to see your face.

STEPHEN OLIVER (48:21):

I’m not going to mess with the camera here. I’ve got the black Lab and the Golden Retriever, and-

Suzanne Krasna (48:28):

I see a tail.

STEPHEN OLIVER (48:29):

… we’re babysitting that one.

Suzanne Krasna (48:32):

[inaudible 00:48:32] furry face.

Mindi Godfrey (48:33):

Hey, Chase.

STEPHEN OLIVER (48:34):

Yeah.

Chase (48:34):

Hello.

Mindi Godfrey (48:36):

[inaudible 00:48:36] the cat.

Suzanne Krasna (48:37):

Oh my gosh.

STEPHEN OLIVER (48:39):

Yeah, the rat dog.

Mindi Godfrey (48:40):

I think that’s the fluffiest I’ve ever seen Lacy.

STEPHEN OLIVER (48:44):

Yeah. She needs to be groomed. So let’s put it that way.

Mindi Godfrey (48:47):

Yeah.

Suzanne Krasna (48:48):

Now, if I were at home doing this, my cats would be up on the desk lying in front of me or standing up in front of the camera stretching, so…

STEPHEN OLIVER (49:01):

But Suzanne, what you’re talking about there, all of that is great strategy if and only if you do the things to drive traffic and get people to watch it, right? Because really, what people want is they want somebody they identify with, that they like, that they relate to. And video ongoing on demand and live are all great platforms for people to feel like they have a relationship with you. Again, take Rush’s audience or Limbaugh’s audience, right? I mean, Limbaugh Rush was frat party, but their audience really connected with them. Right? I personally can’t stand Stern. I’m friends with Chuck Norris, and Chuck Norris is good friends with Stern. I bitched at Chuck about going on his show years ago and he goes, “Oh no, that’s just his persona and he’s really a great guy.” But there’s the persona that you’re interacting with when you went on the damn show. It’s out of sync with who you are and who you present to be.

Paul (50:14):

So I got a question.

STEPHEN OLIVER (50:15):

Go ahead.

Paul (50:17):

So are you good, Suzanne, for right now?

Suzanne Krasna (50:20):

For who?

Paul (50:21):

Are you good now for your questions, so we can [inaudible 00:50:26] to me a little bit?

Suzanne Krasna (50:28):

Oh, well, yeah.

STEPHEN OLIVER (50:28):

Yeah. Go ahead, Paul.

Suzanne Krasna (50:30):

I thought that this would be also of interest to you too, but yes, take the stage.

Paul (50:38):

[inaudible 00:50:38].

Suzanne Krasna (50:38):

Huh?

Paul (50:38):

Yeah. Definitely, I learned from every bit of coaching, everyone gets us stepped up. So-

STEPHEN OLIVER (50:48):

I’m here, I just didn’t want the background conversation [inaudible 00:50:51].

Paul (50:51):

Okay.

Suzanne Krasna (50:51):

Okay.

Paul (50:55):

So just to reiterate, Stephen, I hired my wife to be my ghost writer for the book, so we’ve met three times and we’re kind of moving along. Now, I heard a story over the weekend and I was thinking about putting it into my book. Part of what I’m coaching contractors on is the mindset-

STEPHEN OLIVER (51:14):

You bet.

Paul (51:15):

… of wealth. And I have one chapter, which is how a… And actually, I do this throughout the book, how a broke contractor thinks versus the millionaire contractor.

Suzanne Krasna (51:24):

Oh, rich man, poor man kind of concept.

Paul (51:27):

Yeah.

STEPHEN OLIVER (51:27):

[inaudible 00:51:27].

Paul (51:29):

[inaudible 00:51:29]. So we heard a story where one of the kids we ran into works at this bike shop that just opened right in the beginning of COVID. Now, they couldn’t get bike parts for any of the mid or lower end bikes, and the guy said, “We’re going to try and only sell high-end bikes.” So they started selling these $30,000 bikes, $1,000 bike shoes and within four or five months, they are netting, after covering all their expenses, 100,000 a month.

Suzanne Krasna (52:03):

Wow.

STEPHEN OLIVER (52:04):

Yeah.

Paul (52:04):

And this is a great story to put into my book of the mindset of… And again, this is the first book which will be for contractors, but the next one will be for entrepreneurs.

STEPHEN OLIVER (52:16):

Yeah. No, I think that’s exactly right. And what 99% of them would have been and just sitting there stewing in their own juices, and this guy decides it’s his opportunity to go upscale.

Suzanne Krasna (52:30):

Well, the thing too is that your contractors are entrepreneurs already, but they probably don’t have the mindset. They don’t look at what they do as being an entrepreneur.

Paul (52:44):

Well, I think the more successful ones do, Suzanne, but I think the broke ones don’t.

Suzanne Krasna (52:51):

Okay.

STEPHEN OLIVER (52:52):

Yeah. No, that’s exactly right. Well, it’s true. It’s the old 80-20 rule no matter what. If you look at most small businesses, they don’t view themselves as entrepreneurs, they just view themselves as… It’s kind of like having a job where they clock in at 9:00, clock out at 5:00, and then they figure out how to maximize it. Working in the franchise industry, people want to move from middle management in a corporate world to managing their own subway shop or their own hair salon or whatever it is, but really what they want to do is somebody to tell them what to do. And they want to more or less match the income they were making. So they’ll pay $150,000 to buy a job where they make essentially the same income, but they’re self-employed, which means they work then 60, 80 hours a week rather than 40 hours a week.

Paul (53:46):

Yeah.

STEPHEN OLIVER (53:47):

Yeah.

Paul (53:48):

So then the other thing that I’ve been doing, which Mindi and Greg knows, I’ve been really practicing the Giftology principles, and I track that with my different clients. So now I have six different clients and vendors that I’ve been giving gifts that they don’t expect, and people love these gifts.

STEPHEN OLIVER (54:05):

Oh yeah.

Paul (54:06):

Oh my goodness. And I get so much joy out of doing this too.

STEPHEN OLIVER (54:11):

Oh yeah, it’s so unexpected. Hey guys, I’m going to have to jump to another meeting here. So Suzanne, any of the stuff that you’re emailing, put in the Facebook group, get used to that. And I did about an hour conversation with Travis Lee this morning about what’s called 3D mail by using dimensional mail, which ties in perfectly to what you’re doing already, Paul. It’s not so much gifts, but it’s kitschy dimensional stuff to get their attention. But I-

Paul (54:45):

Are you going to post that in the Facebook group, that interview?

STEPHEN OLIVER (54:48):

Already did.

Mindi Godfrey (54:49):

Already there.

Suzanne Krasna (54:50):

Oh, good.

STEPHEN OLIVER (54:51):

Yeah. And that’s why I was saying that, is that’s in the Facebook group, be sure and pull that out and take a look at it. And Paul, we’ve kind of monopolized time on some of this other stuff, all of it valuable, but there’s a lot of good ideas there, Paul, for you to do for the contractors as long as there’s a mechanism for getting them to go pay attention to it.

Paul (55:13):

Yeah, no, good.

STEPHEN OLIVER (55:15):

Okay. I’ll talk to you guys in a bit.