Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
The way advisors are getting compensated is changing and this creates opportunities to expand your firm. To make more money in 2019, that means – you guessed it – leveraging technology to the max.
Train other advisors
If you’re a successful advisor, have you ever thought that advisors who are starting out would love to hear from you? There’s a scarcity of mentors in this space.
From a younger advisor’s perspective (Gen X and Y), there’s expensive sales training that may or may not be relevant to what they want to sell, and there are wirehouse training programs. That’s it. There’s no real standout they can use.
When I was an advisor, I had nobody to look up to who I felt was doing things in a way I would want to replicate. Given the demographics of Gen Y, young advisors are going to need this guidance in the future.
Create a program, market it online, hold in-person workshops or even get paid for hourly consulting. Gen X and Y advisors are great with social media – reach them that way.
They’re waiting for your inspiration, advisors!
E-commercialize your website
One of my prior New Year’s resolutions was to make better use of technology. In doing so I found several aspects of my scheduling and accounting systems that could be streamlined. In addition I looked at my website and made a list of all the ways that I could use it better to bring people closer to my business – and keep them coming back.
One of my ideas was a membership portal, where I post videos three times a month about how to get leads from social media. I decided to do something I’ve never done before and charge people a fee to subscribe. I had to upgrade my website – which was in the works for a while anyways – to include a mechanism for allowing people to pay through my site (a.k.a. “e-commerce”).
And now that it’s caught on, my mind is running wild with ways I can offer creative and fun products that serve advisors like nobody before. I’m looking into creating a fashion line for advisors and also a suite of motivational products such as a wristbands, dry cleaning cover bags, monthly inspirational schedulers, and (my personal favorite) a t-shirt with my signature sayings such as “don’t be a #financialcliché” or “do it creatively, or don’t do it at all.”
A website is a lucrative thing when it is more than a business card.
Get paid for your content
I’ve been fortunate to grow my YouTube channel over the years to where I have about 5,000 subscribers and several videos with over a thousand views. Here’s the magic– the more views you get, the higher you come up in YouTube search and the more you get recommended as a suggested video by YouTube itself. It has gotten to the point where my videos grow in views by being on the suggested list without me having to post them anywhere.
I’ve heard of advisors doing well with podcasts that are sponsored. Often this means getting 10,000 downloads per episode.
You can also get paid for content through your blog or by blogging for someone else – I know someone who gets paid to blog for Forbes.
This is not something that happens overnight. There was a time when I was making three YouTube videos a day – that was how much push it took. This will take a lot of time, but as I said, my most popular videos are making me advertising dollars every single day, without me having to do a single thing.
Paid speaking
Speaking is something that I haven’t seen many advisors do with regularity, and I wish they would. Or better said, I wish they could get to the point where their message was something it was easy to get people to pay to hear.
You may have to start with a few nonpaid engagements until you get your speaker reel and a list of topics you can discuss. Speaking can be very scalable. The more popular speakers make $10,000 per gig for an hour talk.
You can also get paid for giving webinars and workshops, too, which is an option I would like to see more advisors do. As I said, if somebody has to pay – even a small fee – they’re going to take you more seriously.
Millennials are great at this
I’ve seen some millennial advisors having a feast at getting paid in all sorts of ways. So find one and pick his/her brain about it!
By the way, if you’re looking to recruit millennial or Gen X talent to your firm, consider changing your compensation structure so that they can get paid in ways other than fees for AUM or commissions for trades.
To nurture next-gen clients and create an environment where they can be served by their peers, you’ve got to understand how people in those age groups communicate, live and buy things. Maintain a compliance policy loose enough to allow for Gen Y and X advisors to get paid in the ways described above. Or, allow them to get paid flat fees. Look at it from their standpoint – if they’ve got a client with $200,000, how easy it is going to be to convince that client to give up $2,000 of their money for financial advice? Not quite as easy a selling them a $30 monthly membership that includes a webinar, conference call and two exclusive blog articles.
Sara’s upshot
What does it mean to be an advisor in 2019? There’s more ways to get advice into people’s hands than ever before – mostly involving technology – and to get paid for it. With the movement to flat-fee and fee-only RIA firms, advisor businesses are adapting with increasing degrees of flexibility. But of course for now you have to get compliance approval; most likely some of these activities will take the form of some kind of “outside business activity” – but don’t quote me on that!
How can you make this happen for your practice in 2019? I’m offering step-by-step guidance about how to master the world of online communication in my membership, which you can learn about here.
Sara Grillo, CFA, is a top financial writer with a focus on marketing and branding for investment management, financial planning, and RIA firms. Prior to launching her own firm, she was a financial advisor and worked at Lehman Brothers. Sara graduated from Harvard with a degree in English literature and has an MBA from NYU Stern in quantitative finance.
Read more articles by Sara Grillo
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
