Stand Out from the Crowd

STEPHEN OLIVER (00:00):

So our topic next is… and this is Dan Kennedy’s comment about financial advisors, is they’re all like that Weeds song, Little Houses, right? Little houses all in a row, ticky, tacky, ticky, tacky, all the same. And I stole from Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss’ great book, 4-Hour Workweek, is they had this vision of the old, bald, fat guy in the red BMW and they didn’t want to be the old, bald, fat guy in the red BMW. But we pull that in our typical financial advisors, the guy sitting behind an oak desk in a JC Penny suit.

Greg Moody (00:41):

Right. We don’t want to look the same.

STEPHEN OLIVER (00:43):

With maybe a bookshelf behind him.

Greg Moody (00:44):

Right.

STEPHEN OLIVER (00:45):

And all the same and Michael [Kitces 00:00:49], he said, “It’s sad when your differentiator is people choose a financial advisor by zip code.” And I thought it was a great line of his is, “you want to be unique, you want to be different and you want to pick a niche.” And I know that it’s kind of trendy right now, but people miss the point, right? From a purely marketing person point of view, is I’m much better to decide that I’m going to do plastic surgeons, or I’m going to do procter and gamble employees, or I’m going to do Microsoft employees, or I’m going to do tech industry CEOs. Pick anything, right? I’m into Porsches, I’m going to do Porsche owners. But it’s much easier to market if you choose clearly, by occupation or by hobby, a group of people that you want to target. And then you can build affinity with them and you can, most importantly, is you can rifle shot your marketing, right? So you could build six different front end marketing projects, one targeted at different niches.

Greg Moody (02:02):

Well, yeah, we talked to a lot of people that we asked what they want to market, how they want to market, and they say they want to market to the whole world. We’ve talked about this a lot more in other segments, so we won’t spend time on it today. But that’s, again, the worst kind of idea you can have. But what we want to talk about is how you personally need to be different and not look like the guy in the JC Penny suit behind the desk or even… and that may not be your vision of yourself, but just because you have the letters behind your name and you’re a certified financial planner, or you have different criteria… it would be a lot like being an MD, there’s lots of MDs. And a lot of people choose their doctors because it’s who’s on their insurance or who’s the closest doctor, or maybe they get a referral. You don’t want to be that generic, you want to be different enough so that you can market and get the truck kind of target client that you want to have.

STEPHEN OLIVER (02:57):

Well, even using that example, is the more specialized somebody is and the rarer their skill set is, the more highly to compensated they are, right?

Greg Moody (03:09):

Yeah, that’s always true.

STEPHEN OLIVER (03:10):

So in part I could specialize by what type of problem I solve or… or and, I could use it either way. I could specialize by, I only work with people, or I primarily work with people in this particular profession, right? Or that work in this particular company or… and it doesn’t have to be only, but I can become the person that’s the go-to, that’s the specialist for that particular group, right? So if I lived in Seattle, it would be a natural to be the expert on Amazon’s retirement plan and planning, or the expert on Microsoft’s or I can go the other way and differentiate by who I am. But there’re all kinds of… and really, probably both, right?

Greg Moody (04:05):

Yeah. And imagine you went to somebody who did financial planning and you wanted to get some help for yourself, and you were an Amazon executive or an Amazon employee, and they said, “Oh yeah, I specialize in working with Amazon retirement plans.” You’d feel really comfortable, but imagine you went to somebody and they say, “Oh yeah, I can work with Amazon retirement plans. I work with all kinds of retirement plans.”

STEPHEN OLIVER (04:28):

I work with everybody.

Greg Moody (04:29):

You wouldn’t feel… you might feel okay about that, but I’m going to feel less comfortable about that guy, even if he says, “Oh, I’m an expert in all of them.” That doesn’t make me feel as comfortable. Via again, using the doctor example, if you said, “Well, I’ve got carpal tunnel problems.” Oh, I’m a surgeon in all kinds of different things, I can work on your carpal tunnel surgery. I have back problems. I’m a surgeon in all kinds of things, I can work on your back. You’d never go to that surgeon. See, it doesn’t make you feel comfortable. So when we think about specialization and building authority, and also building some uniqueness about yourself, those three things go together and it can make you very powerful and strong in building a much bigger market.

STEPHEN OLIVER (05:16):

Yeah. Well, we have a mutual friend, David Phelps, and he does finances for doctors and specifically for dentists. And he has a very clear avatar dentists that he’s targeting. And it’s those who want to not have to show up and be behind the chair every day, with a certain number of assets, right? And again, it’s not suggesting that you should chase dentists, but if you become the person who specializes for that particular group of people… I’ll use Dan Kennedy, as an example, again. One of his first big companies was they did practice management and they did it for chiropractors and dentists.

STEPHEN OLIVER (06:01):

So they had a complete marketing plan to get chiropractors in the door, they had a complete marketing plan to get dentists in the door. One aimed at dentists, one aimed at chiropractors, and then they put them in a room and there was doctors sitting next to chiropractors. And all of the content was the same, the presentation was the same, everything else was the same, they just said doctor. But they had completely separate marketing for each group in order to get them into the room, right? Because if I just said “anybody in the medical profession,” I’m going to have less impact than if I said, “chiropractor in-”

Greg Moody (06:34):

Right. And so to understand, this may actually just be a marketing strategy. There may not be much difference in how you actually work with them from an advice point of view, but there could be.

STEPHEN OLIVER (06:46):

Could be, yeah.

Greg Moody (06:47):

There could be, especially, like in the example of the dentists that want to be not in the chair or not working in the office…

STEPHEN OLIVER (06:55):

Well my joke is we have five or six friends who all do different versions of that. My joke is, is there anybody, really, who’s a dentist who wants to be a dentist?

Greg Moody (07:02):

Yeah, it sounds like they don’t, right?

STEPHEN OLIVER (07:04):

Well, one of them was selling a dental hygienist school to him. Another one was doing some other investment planning to get them out. David is doing real estate with them. It’s like… But…

Greg Moody (07:17):

And that would be one where you’re actually doing something different for that group, but it may or may not be that. The first part of this though is be the expert, so be the expert in the field that you want to be the expert in. And how do you do that? Well, so there’s a lot of ways that you do that. One is how your marketing looks. The other is build some authority in that area.

STEPHEN OLIVER (07:40):

Well, another example is we have two friends, one of them, his specialty is in showing people how to, basically, position their business to be sold and sell their business. And how to position the finances to do that effectively in the right tax situation. So for the other one, whose specialty is people who just sold their business, and teaching them how to hold onto the money and not spend it on a new Lamborghini and trophy bride, and one thing or another, right?

STEPHEN OLIVER (08:13):

But that’s a targetable audience, is a business owner at a certain revenue level, at a certain age level, that can be positioned to sell and then get into those people to manage their assets when they… and by the way, the second one is, it’s people who just sold a business at 20 million and up. So his average assets under management, that he’s inheriting at the point of sale, is in… Well, Peter just did a deal that was 22 million, well that was the same deal. Guy sold his business, the check came in, and now his new assets under management in one fell swoop. But it’s figuring out how to target… and by the way, both of them are, no matter what else they do, one’s the specialist in showing you how to position and sell your business and deal with the financial impact. The other one is a specialist in dealing with a financial windfall that you came up with and how to position yourself to be set for life with it.

Greg Moody (09:10):

Yeah and what this does is this expands your business, so don’t think of this when you specialize. This does narrow the type of client that you’re going to work with, but it can expand your business because now when you target your marketing, you’ll have more people pay attention to you. Again, the idea is if I know you’re the go-to guy for recently divorced women aged 45 to 55, that are trying to figure out how to rebuild their retirement plan, I’m going to pay attention to that marketing now, if I’m in that group. Or dentists, in this example-

STEPHEN OLIVER (09:52):

Or that you have a hundred dentists that you’re working with.

Greg Moody (09:54):

Exactly, we’re using that example. So there’s lots of different groups that you could potentially be targeting, but when they know that you’re the specialist in that group… and you could be a specialist in multiple groups. So if you want to keep expanding your business, you can be specialist in more than one group. In the example of doctors and chiropractors, that person was a specialist in two different groups. The marketing was different, the marketing was targeted to those two different groups, the actual work was the same. The work that they did in the workshop was the same and probably the work that they did per client was the same. But the focus was very specialized so that those people would respond because they felt like you were one of them, or at least you were paying attention to their group. So maybe we should talk about how to be an expert in those areas and lists some ideas.

STEPHEN OLIVER (10:47):

Yeah, absolutely. And another subtopic of this is just in the, be different, right? And it’s not about credentials, although that’s the base level, right? The base level is they expect you to be competent and they expect you to be well-educated and they expect you to be knowledgeable. And what so many people try to do is they try to market their credentials, rather than market their expertise in a given way or their uniqueness in a different way. And that’s a mistake. And again, it’s like the other businesses we’ve dealt with, nobody knows, nobody cares, right?

Greg Moody (11:30):

Right.

STEPHEN OLIVER (11:32):

If I went to the average person on the street and said, “What’s a CHC, PCFB, C… what’s a Series 7, what’s a…” They have no idea [crosstalk 00:11:41].

Greg Moody (11:41):

They don’t know any difference. They wouldn’t know what the better qualifications were or the lesser qualifications were, as long as they can take care of whatever they need to take care of.

STEPHEN OLIVER (11:48):

And that’s true whether they’re a minimum wage worker at Taco Bell, or whether they’re a CFO at a major company, for [inaudible 00:11:59]

Greg Moody (12:00):

Well, when I think everybody listing, or at least most people, most people don’t do research into the doctors that they… I had carpal tunnel surgery and I assumed the doctor was… I probably should have done some more research on which doctor I had to pick, but they assigned me the doctor for my [crosstalk 00:12:14].

STEPHEN OLIVER (12:13):

They all work fine now?

Greg Moody (12:14):

Yeah, they all work fine [crosstalk 00:12:15].

STEPHEN OLIVER (12:15):

Okay, good, that’s good.

Greg Moody (12:15):

It’s pretty good. That was a couple months ago, that’s why it’s in my mind. But it was the one that my orthopedic surgeon recommended for my carpal tunnel surgery, so I just went with that guy. He may have just known him from the golf course for all I know, now that I’m thinking about it. Probably should have done a little more research or could have done a little more research, but that was kind of how it worked. You don’t want to be just that, especially in this field, because that’s not how the… You’ll get some business that way, but you won’t get enough.

STEPHEN OLIVER (12:44):

Yeah. The other aspect of this, and this is where people cringe a little bit when I say it, but I think anyone that you remember that you find interesting is idiosyncratic, they’re unique, right? And oftentimes, especially with wealth managers, financial planners, it’s almost like you’re trying not to be. You want to be looking conservative and dress conservative and everything, and that’s fine.

Greg Moody (13:15):

Don’t piss anybody off.

STEPHEN OLIVER (13:16):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t be controversial. And on the controversial part is, you got to figure out who your avatar, who your ideal prospect is. And then if you’re going to be controversial in anything, be controversial in ways that they’re likely to agree with, that’s likely to repel people who aren’t in that category.

Greg Moody (13:40):

That’s a good point. I mean, if you’re going to be working with the group, that tends to be more liberal, it might be okay to then be talking about those kinds of subjects or more conservative talking about those kinds of subjects. That’d be perfectly okay. And yeah, I’m not telling you to be a jerk to people, but it’s okay to be controversial and have opinions about things. But be thinking about the group that you’re working with.

STEPHEN OLIVER (14:07):

I’ll give you an example is we’ve got… and again, I’ll get myself in trouble, but…

Greg Moody (14:13):

It’s okay to get in trouble, I guess [crosstalk 00:14:16].

STEPHEN OLIVER (14:15):

Whatever.

Greg Moody (14:16):

We’re going to be controversial some, in our talks now.

STEPHEN OLIVER (14:18):

We’re self-employed so…

Greg Moody (14:19):

Yeah, exactly.

STEPHEN OLIVER (14:20):

But I’ve gone through, I don’t know, 3,000, 4,000 LinkedIn profiles of financial advisors and one thing that’s common now in LinkedIn is they let you do the background. And so a whole bunch of them have the rainbow thing with the black lives matter [crosstalk 00:14:37], right?

Greg Moody (14:37):

Right.

STEPHEN OLIVER (14:37):

Well, if I’m targeting somebody in… let’s say I’m targeting San Francisco and I’m targeting professors at Berkeley. Well, great.

Greg Moody (14:48):

Perfect. That’s exactly right [crosstalk 00:14:50].

STEPHEN OLIVER (14:50):

Absolutely perfect, right? However, I’m from Tulsa. If I’m in Tulsa and I’m targeting 55 year old dentists, it’s not going to help you, right?

Greg Moody (14:58):

Right.

STEPHEN OLIVER (15:00):

And what I want to do is I want to choose that stuff based upon what is going to… in Tulsa, I would have wanted to be in the congregation of the First Baptist Church, and I would have wanted to have beliefs and- [crosstalk 00:15:18].

Greg Moody (15:18):

And that’s not saying you should not be, according to your values or live according to your values. [crosstalk 00:15:24].

STEPHEN OLIVER (15:23):

No, no, no. No, no.

Greg Moody (15:23):

Nobody’s saying that. Don’t join the church because you’re… If you’re a different religion, don’t join the other religion because it’s going to get you more business.

STEPHEN OLIVER (15:31):

Well, I mean, you know how my mouth is. If I went and targeted the professors at Berkeley, they would all be ready to hang me up on… burn me at the stake for [inaudible 00:15:41], right? So…

Greg Moody (15:44):

Be consistent, but also don’t be afraid. Don’t be fearful of being controversial and saying what you think. That’s going to make you happier anyway.

STEPHEN OLIVER (15:52):

Or better yet, figure out where you stand and go find an audience that’s going to be compatible, right?

Greg Moody (15:58):

Exactly.

STEPHEN OLIVER (16:00):

So that’s the way you’re congruent, right?

Greg Moody (16:04):

Absolutely.

STEPHEN OLIVER (16:05):

Again, I was using that as an example for a client the other day, as I was pulling up several profiles that look like this. But I also pulled up some that said they were targeting people that were incompatible with what they were doing. I sent you that one, about the…

Greg Moody (16:21):

Yeah, right, right, right.

STEPHEN OLIVER (16:22):

Right? If you’re going into the wrong person, at the wrong time, and what you are is incompatible with what they are… and I’m not talking about you’re black, white, red, whatever. But what your underlying value system is out of sync with what theirs are likely to be, then you’re not picking people that’s going to be a joy to your spirit. You’re not picking people who you’re surrounding yourself with that think more or less the way you do. You’re not surrounding yourself with people that you’re going to do the best service for, right?

STEPHEN OLIVER (16:53):

And by the way, if you go through your current client base and there’s people that you hate, well, they should be gone.

Greg Moody (16:57):

Right.

STEPHEN OLIVER (16:58):

And, doing it ethically, go find somebody that they will sync with well. Go find somebody that they will sync with well. And the first thing we do is, we create enough of a pipeline for people, that they don’t have to tolerate people that are different. There was that high profile LPL deal, an adviser got fired out of LPL because she had made a statement on a Skype call, I think. You and I talked about that, we looked at it pretty thoroughly, but my reaction, after it was all said and done, was if that individual advisor felt like she had clients that were going to be offended by somebody who was a different color than they were, or whatever it might be, she might’ve wanted to get better clients, right? Might’ve wanted to get different clients.

STEPHEN OLIVER (17:51):

And to me, it was symbolic of somebody who wasn’t particularly good at targeting a client base that she was going to feel comfortable with… You know, my other business, I fired a bunch of clients with problems like that, right? So you’ve got to target and be consistent with who you are and go find an audience that you’re going to click with. And the biggest mistake is not looking for an audience that you’re going to click with. And we had the conversation yesterday, several advisors, who’s closing ratio wasn’t very good, but they were talking with people who didn’t speak the same language, they weren’t even in the same universe, right? So you want to go… That’s part of being idiosyncratic, of being controversial, of finding a niche, is find people you’ll be able to speak their language.

Greg Moody (18:42):

Again, we’re not telling anybody if you somehow want to be with… like you said, marketing in Tulsa, and most people in Tulsa are part of the Baptist Church, but you’re not Baptist. We’re not telling you, you have to go join that church [crosstalk 00:18:57].

STEPHEN OLIVER (18:57):

Yeah, don’t convert.

Greg Moody (18:58):

We’re not telling you, you have to do something like that, but it’s okay to be controversial, it’s okay to be yourself. And be thinking about that when you pick the avatar or the persona or the demographics that you’re going to work with, because the demographics you’re going to work with should be a group of people that you like working with. And for most of you guys that we talk to, it’s so common. Well, who do you want to work with? Well, I want to work with 55 and up, people that are going to retire that have a lot of money. It’s a pretty broad group. I mean, it’s okay, sure. [crosstalk 00:19:37].

STEPHEN OLIVER (19:37):

Is it widows? Is a single women? Is it married couples? Is it divorcees? Is it a professional background? Is it managerial background? Are they dentists who want to get out from behind the [crosstalk 00:19:49]?

Greg Moody (19:49):

Is it ex-military people? Is it… yeah, exactly. I mean, if we can narrow that down and then figure out what those people like, what those people don’t like, what those people… The other thing about being idiosyncratic, that we want to get to too, before we run out of time, is, what we talked about in another session, about maybe you’re a fan of Star Trek, or maybe you’re in the Porsche club, or maybe you’re…

STEPHEN OLIVER (20:19):

A great example, remember Jerry Spence, very high profile [crosstalk 00:20:23]?

Greg Moody (20:23):

Oh yeah, yeah. The guy with the… he wore a…

STEPHEN OLIVER (20:26):

The suede jacket and the ponytail [crosstalk 00:20:29].

Greg Moody (20:28):

Looked like the cowboy jacket with the ruffles and stuff. Not just high profile, but very, very highly paid and one of the best lawyers ever, wrote a bunch of books, a really interesting guy. Just was himself and that wasn’t about any kind of club or anything he belonged to, but it made him interesting.

STEPHEN OLIVER (20:51):

Yeah.

Greg Moody (20:51):

And it’s okay to be interesting. I might not wear flip flops and no shirt and shorts to your meetings with people, or maybe you would [crosstalk 00:21:03].

STEPHEN OLIVER (21:03):

Well, unless-

Greg Moody (21:03):

It would depend, it would depend on if you’re in Malibu Beach.

STEPHEN OLIVER (21:07):

Yeah, that’s where I was going.

Greg Moody (21:08):

I mean, it depends on what you’re going to do. So it’s got to match. It’s got to match [crosstalk 00:21:12].

STEPHEN OLIVER (21:12):

Yeah, I wouldn’t if I was in Martha’s Vineyard.

Greg Moody (21:13):

I wouldn’t in Martha’s vineyard. I probably wouldn’t in Arizona, where I’m from, it’s probably not the right group. Or I also wouldn’t do that if on your website, it showed you one way and then it showed you another way. But you’ve got to make sure that being yourself also isn’t… we’re also not saying if you want to just have tattoos all over your face and you just want to be the way you want to be and screw everybody else, that’s not it either. What you want to do is figure out what we want to work with- [crosstalk 00:21:45].

STEPHEN OLIVER (21:44):

Well there’s an audience for that.

Greg Moody (21:47):

There’s an audience for that.

STEPHEN OLIVER (21:47):

There’s an audience for that, yeah, yeah.

Greg Moody (21:47):

Understand who you’re going to work with them. If you’re going to work with people that live on Venice Beach, then that might work for you. But you got to make sure these things match and then we build out your marketing around that. Again, not the JC Penny suit, in a desk, with a bookcase behind you.

STEPHEN OLIVER (22:06):

Like everybody else [crosstalk 00:22:07].

Greg Moody (22:07):

And you talk in a monotone and you say the same things that everybody has and say, “Well, you ought to save money and put money in an index fund and whatever. I mean, that’s pretty exciting. I mean, they can read that off of a…

STEPHEN OLIVER (22:21):

They can do a Google search.

Greg Moody (22:22):

Yeah, exactly. They could see that in the newspaper and do it themselves. Why should they use? So they can-

STEPHEN OLIVER (22:30):

Well two examples, right? Of the hundreds, if not thousands, of websites we’ve looked at the last few months, one of the ones we liked the best, or a couple of them, one was the University of Texas Longhorn guy, right?

Greg Moody (22:47):

Right.

STEPHEN OLIVER (22:48):

And he serves University of Texas alumni. And by the way, there’s a ton of…

Greg Moody (22:54):

Yeah, there’s a lot of them and a lot of them have money.

STEPHEN OLIVER (22:56):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the website is, go… I’m from Oklahoma, I don’t… but you know [crosstalk 00:23:03].

Greg Moody (23:02):

Yeah, the Longhorn symbol, whatever that is. It looks like horns [crosstalk 00:23:05].

STEPHEN OLIVER (23:04):

That [inaudible 00:23:05], I’m thinking.

Greg Moody (23:06):

No, I don’t know what it is. Anyway.

STEPHEN OLIVER (23:08):

Whatever it is. But the website had all the Longhorn stuff, that the color scheme was right, everything else. And he may have had several websites, but the one I looked at was for alumni of University of Texas, right? Another one, the guy’s into fly fishing. And so the banner is him fly fishing, and there’s a fly fishing blog, as well as something else. And by the way, there’s just a ton of those guys, if you’re in Montana or Wyoming or Colorado, wherever, that are into fly fishing, right? But all of a sudden, one, it makes him unique. And in the case of fly fishing, it doesn’t mean all of his clients are going to be into fly fishing, but it makes him unique. And if they are, oh my God, there’s an immediate affinity, right? There’s something more, beyond just, you know, saw my retirement. The University of Texas thing, obviously, is, you know, immediately… I mean, they can… I bet he has all… he should have. I would have the welcome package with the jersey and all the [kitchy 00:24:12] stuff with his logo on it, at the same time.

Greg Moody (24:14):

Yeah. There’s a difference between… like in the fly fishing case, I’m probably not going after specifically fly fishing, I might just be having that make… Bill or in the Jerry Spence example, where he just has an idiosyncratic look. That’s just making me have personality. In the case of the Texas Longhorn situation, I can definitely go after alumni and people that graduate with medical degrees, they have a big medical program there. I can go after lawyers, people that have graduated 20 years ago, I can target that particular audience. You’ve got to understand the differences between those things, but both of them work. And again, you’re just different. Allow yourself to be different and develop your personality in these kinds of cases.

STEPHEN OLIVER (25:00):

And they have a backstory. I mean, I think we’re all familiar with now, Marvel and DC, and an awful lot of these movies, Batman Begins, the Spider-Man movie… I mean, it’s about their origin story. But the more of an origin story you create for yourself and the more of a backstory you create for yourself… And if you think of iconic characters… think about James Bond. James Bond is associated with Omega and or Rolex Submariner, that was [crosstalk 00:25:31].

Greg Moody (25:31):

Aston Martin.

STEPHEN OLIVER (25:32):

Yeah Aston Martin. And you can go through different characters and what’s a consistent theme with them. What’s something that’s unique about them? I like Neil Peart, who sadly passed away recently, but it was the motorcycling thing, right? I read all of his books and they would do a tour and you would motorcycle from place to place and he wrote all these travel books. But he also had this car collection, a bunch of silver Aston Martin, and a silver Corvette and a silver or something else, the Silver Surfers. But it was just these unique, little things that you gravitate to, that make them stand out as a personality, as opposed to being like everybody else, right?

Greg Moody (26:18):

Yeah. So one of the messages here, one is, before we wrap up today, be an expert. So you want to be an expert and be specialized in certain areas. Don’t just try to be everything to everybody, because that means you’re nothing to nobody.

STEPHEN OLIVER (26:31):

And it could be specialized in a specific financial planning area, right?

Greg Moody (26:37):

Could be, for sure. We have a certified divorce planners or… How’s the whole designation go? It’s one of those.

STEPHEN OLIVER (26:48):

It’s alphabet soup, it all runs together. But it could also mean that you’re the person for plastic surgeons or you’re the person for Microsoft executives, or you’re the person for… You want to pick a big enough niche that’s worth messing with, right? It was like, we put together the person for martial arts schools, right? The argument is the unique needs and situations, and in their case, they’re never going to sell their business, they’re never going to have a [crosstalk 00:27:23] there. They’ve got to create wealth from their income stream. But you want to pick a group… which was the most unlikely one, right, it created a lot of business. But you want to create a group of people that you’re going to be the expert in what they are, right? Or you have such affinity for them, University of Texas, that you’re like one of them and they feel comfortable because they’re in your club and they’re in the club already and they want to affiliate with you.

Greg Moody (27:53):

So there’s specialization expertise and specialization affinity?

STEPHEN OLIVER (27:57):

Yeah. And being opinionated, assuming that you’ve chosen your avatar client, to be congruent with you. And having things that are unique and memorable, right? Having things about you that are different from everybody else, is… and it could be… if you’re into classic Corvettes, well, don’t have that just be your hidden hobby, put them on your website, have the club, market the Corvette club. Do-

Greg Moody (28:32):

Be at the Corvette shows [crosstalk 00:28:34].

STEPHEN OLIVER (28:34):

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Greg Moody (28:34):

… be somebody at it. And not just to go to the Corvette shows and try to walk up to people and, “Hey, I’m a financial planner” or whatever. Be actually active in the events and you can have events at the events, where you can talk to them about what you really do. And that’s what we help you with, is how to turn these into real productive things, not just make up something about you, but turn these into real productive events, but that’s a different [crosstalk 00:29:05].

STEPHEN OLIVER (29:04):

And if you’re doing meetings by Zoom, think of what your background is. Our Star Wars guy, first thing I said is, “Well, move your video meeting room into the room with all your Star Wars crap” right? And have that be everything they see is the Star Wars thing. And you’ll be unique, you’ll have… and by the way, there’s a lot of Star Wars fans and some of them are going to immediately affiliate with you because of that. Otherwise, you’re just unique, you have this expertise, but also you’re into this and…

Greg Moody (29:39):

Well, especially in today’s day and age, on Zoom, everybody’s background’s the same, everybody’s everything’s the same. So you want to have something that makes the difference.

STEPHEN OLIVER (29:47):

Especially if they’re using the stupid virtual backgrounds with no green screen and then [crosstalk 00:29:50].

Greg Moody (29:50):

Yeah their hands disappear.

STEPHEN OLIVER (29:51):

And it looks fake. So you’re trying to pitch somebody and how trustworthy you are with the video impression is, I have this completely fake thing and I couldn’t even spring for [crosstalk 00:30:01].

Greg Moody (30:01):

We’ve seen a lot of bad stuff in the backgrounds of people’s meetings, believe us.

STEPHEN OLIVER (30:05):

Yeah, the tropical island and the water [crosstalk 00:30:10].

Greg Moody (30:10):

Well, I’m saying not on their virtual backgrounds. We’ve seen a lot of scary things in people’s backgrounds. We’ve talked to enough people the last few months.

STEPHEN OLIVER (30:16):

Yeah, or their office. On that note, just as a reminder, pick a very specific group of people you’re going to target and preferably one where you can be the only, or a very small number of people, who specialize in that group of people. And look at what your existing hobbies, interests, connections, ties are, and be the person that wears that on their sleeve and be… and it doesn’t matter really how nerdy it is, if you’re into model trains, great. If you’re in Star Wars, great. If you’re a Trekkie, great. Whatever it might be, but wear that on your sleeve, right? And then be thinking about things that are Jerry Spence-ish. What’s unique about the way you dress? What’s unique about what you wear? What’s unique about what you drive? What’s unique about where you live? Like I live at the top of the mountain, at 8,000 foot of… We use that all the time. Pictures of the mountains and I’m sitting up in the mountains and [crosstalk 00:31:24].

Greg Moody (31:24):

Yeah just outside and have a background there.

STEPHEN OLIVER (31:26):

Yeah, here’s the herd of elk in the background. But whatever it is, and it almost doesn’t matter what it is, use it to your advantage. And use it for people to think of you, remember you, and be a unique person that they’re going to have a conversation about.

Greg Moody (31:40):

Yeah. That’s important.

STEPHEN OLIVER (31:43):

On that note, we should call it a day.

Greg Moody (31:45):

Yeah. Make sure you follow that [inaudible 00:31:47] and we’ll see you at the next thing that we work with you on.

STEPHEN OLIVER (31:50):

Yep. Thank you for watching.

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