It isn’t earth-shattering news that the purpose of all content marketing is to attract an audience. But by casting a wide net it’s easy to forget that the real goal is to attract the best potential clients, not just anyone who will pay attention. The messaging you send out will appeal to the people who respond to it. To engage with the type of prospects you want for clients, you need to address their unique needs. What are their pain points? What are the specific financial problems you solve?
On this Elementality, Reese welcomes Emlen Miles-Mattingly of Gen Next Wealth who talks about the difficulties he faced when reevaluating his business strategy, and how critical it is to be precise with your messaging so you attract the type of prospects you want as clients.
Podcast Transcript
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Definitely to anybody that’s thinking about starting a podcast. Like if you think about the podcast and you are really trying to make it to be like a marketing funnel, right. ‘Cause that’s what it is. It’s top of the funnel thing, middle of the funnel if you will. If you’re gonna make it that, then just be intentional with who you’re trying to connect with. And I think that if you have a narrowed focus on who you’re trying to like what problems are you answering for the people that are listening to your show, right? What are their pain points? Are you answering those pain points? What are the things that they find interesting? What are the things that they’re worried about? You know what I mean? And if you have those kind of things that you’re answering in the podcast it’s gonna lead people to become clients. But just being a generalist [laughter] about all things, isn’t gonna lead people to you the way that you would want them to from the time energy and effort that you’re using in your podcast.
Reese Harper:
Welcome to Elementality. Each episode we will explore the challenges and the opportunities faced by financial advisors and how advisors can use elements to grow their business and serve their clients better. We hope you enjoy this episode.
Reese Harper:
Welcome to another episode of Elementality, everybody. I’m your host Reese Harper. Here letting me come back. Abby told me that I could have a week to interview one of my favorite people. Emlen Mattingly is here with me today. We are not together but we are together on Zoom. And I don’t know Emlen if we should jump right into the coaching that you’ve been providing me with on motorcycles [laughter] But I figured that that may be a good starting point.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Absolutely. You know I love all things motorcycles. So, yeah. You had me there.
Reese Harper:
Man. You got me into like a deep research mode for the last few months. I’ve been testing a lot of things out. I still haven’t bought one. So but I’m really impressed with the length and duration of some of the trips you’ve taken. You became an inspiration for me when I found that out.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yeah, I love riding but unfortunately so next week I was supposed to be going to Florida. So I was gonna ride from California to Florida. So we have a ride called the 10 to the end and I was gonna ride that. But my transmission is not acting right so I’m not gonna be able to make make that ride unfortunately.
Reese Harper:
Oh no way. You fix your own stuff too?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll get in there and fix some of it. Well a couple of, I got some really good friends. Some brothers that I ride with that help me with a lot of the stuff so I know basics and then they’ll help me get…
Reese Harper:
Nice.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Like anything that I can’t fix. So yeah it’s fun though. Love it.
Reese Harper:
Well, Renaissance man for sure. And excited to learn more about that. But today since the audience is a bunch of wonderful financial advisors that are tuning in, I figured that we would start with talking just a little bit about your background so that people who haven’t got to know you yet get a chance to know you. And then we’ll get into a couple of interesting topics today. But how about you start by just like describing a little bit about your practice and who you serve and and kind of just describe the business a little bit.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Absolutely. So that’s gonna be a, so I’ll tell you what we used to do and what we’re doing now. So when we started, we started Gen X Wealth in 2017 after working at an insurance company, so I’d worked at an insurance shop for about five years and then decided to get into my own firm. But when we started Gen X Wealth it started as, we started Gen X Wealth and we started the podcast that I had Minority Money at the same time. So when I started my initial group that I was working with was minority families. And this just happened because I literally looked at my book when I was at the insurance company and I was like who am I, who do, who, what does my book look like? What do my clients look like?
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
And they all were minority families. And and I was like, hmm, this was by no, which was kind of interesting but it was by no fault of my own. Like I didn’t intentionally go out and do that. It just kind of happened that way when I looked. And so what we’re doing is we were doing financial planning, right? So the thing was we had two basic service offerings. We help people, individuals and couples with their financial planning. And then I had a handful, probably more than a handful but I had quite a few of retirement accounts, retirement clients. And so I kind of had the barbell thing where I had the younger clients. I was doing financial planning for, the older clients I was doing retirement planning for. And we did that for a long time. And what I wanted to share with you was what happened through the podcast.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
So I had my podcast and we would get clients in from that. Not at the rate that I would like to but we were getting one to two a month from the podcast. But it was such a broad audience, right? We were saying well, it’s Minority Money so we’re helping all minorities. It didn’t, you know, we didn’t have like a, there was no… I would get questions from people that had teenagers. I would get questions from people that you know, were just questions from all over the place. And I was, I mean it was like I was becoming all things to everybody but not really like showing technical expertise to get the clients that I really wanted, right? And so over the last few months we’ve been kind of transitioning and I think the last one that, the straw that kind of or the thing that kind of made me go here was I’ve been in business, you know I had have my firm for five years or seven years actually, six I got gotta be better at math, right? If I’m an advisor but…
Reese Harper:
Not either really. Financial advisors are notoriously bad with math. Just kidding. We all, we got all our stuff man.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Right? If it’s not in the program then I mean just regular math like it’s like wait hold on.
Reese Harper:
Yeah dude.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Just addition and subtraction I just can’t. But, so we… I was here in town where I live at. And like I was just doing some errands around. And I had several people come up to me while I was doing stuff and they’re like, so what do you do Emlen? Who do you work with? What do you do? And I’m like, “I’ve been doing this for I don’t know how many years now and you still don’t know who I work with?” That’s my fault. That’s my fault if you don’t know who I work with. And so I was like, okay so I need to get like a clear defined client. And I had to look at my clients and say okay, who do I genuinely have the most joy of working with? Now I love working with young people. That’s fun. I love seeing them grow. But there was something about working with the older retired clients that just, you know kind of in a way reminded me of my mom, reminded me of my grandparents, kind of like and it was like, it was always just…
Reese Harper:
Comfortable?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yes. Very comfortable, very like it just felt right. Like it felt good when I would talk to them. Not that it didn’t feel like that when I was talking to the other, the younger clients but the retirees understand that they have the a definite amount of time. A small amount of time and they need to make some decisions. And I like that aspect of working with them, that they needed to make a decision about what they needed to do right now.
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
And I was able to provide guidance for that. So we have changed, we’ve discontinued the Minority Money podcast. We’re starting a new podcast called Hello Retirement where we’re just gonna talk about retirement. And that’s who we’re working with now, clients that are 50 plus helping them prepare for and enjoy their retirement. So that’s that’s the…
Reese Harper:
That’s. Awesome. So talk to me about like how much do you think this sounds like a pretty thoughtful and difficult decision right? This is not a… This isn’t something you did overnight.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
No.
Reese Harper:
How much did the income that you can generate from both audiences like play into this? Is there, was revenue a big part of this as well?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Not necessarily. I think it was… Not as because you think of it this way and this is just numbers right? If I’m charging $9000 for a couple to do financial planning for them that’s equivalent to a million dollar client right? I mean it’s pretty close to having a million dollar client at 1%. So the revenue kinda was… It was kind of the similar. But the real thing was how much like the frequency in which I was trying, I had to communicate with clients when I’m working on a financial plan there’s a lot more communication. There’s a lot more things that we have to do. When I’m doing retirement, it’s not… They don’t expect to speak to me as much. Right?
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
So, it was easier for me and I got some other things going on too. We still have Onyx going on and BLX is going on and and just you know…
Reese Harper:
Yeah. People that don’t know that we’ll get to that a little bit as well. But you’re saying, so just so the audience knows Emlen also has an advisor community that he’s built called Onyx. And he’s got a few other things going on. But talk to me just real, just wrap up that thought on… It sounds like maybe there’s something about the way like yes the revenue might be the same but it was a little bit easier it seems like with the retirement group. Why would you say it’s a little bit easier? I heard urgency like they have some sort of like a defined need and sort of a concrete thing that they’re trying to work on. There’s a sense of urgency around it.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yes.
Reese Harper:
Right?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yes.
Reese Harper:
Maybe closure too. Closure around it a bit. Where the financial planning side it’s like an open… It’s almost like an… Whatever arrangement. It’s like there’s a very wide scope to it. A big scope right? That’s what I heard.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Exactly. And so narrowing the scope made me not have to speak to them as frequently as I was before. So, now we meet twice a month to, I mean twice a year to three times a year. And then as needed basis on that where we’ll have some carved out time when we’ll meet with during these months and during these months, not necessarily surge meetings but like that. I won’t call it a surge because it’s not a full surge type calendar. But it made the communication and the frequency of it gave me more availability in my schedule to do some of the other things that I also enjoy doing. So it was very thoughtful. Very… It was difficult, reason I’ll tell you this, I’m sitting here and we had built this thing with Minority Money and I recorded the last podcast. And I remember I went back and listened to the first podcast before I had… Before I ended it. And I went back and saw it was me introducing myself. And we only had three kids at the time. And like I’m going through this. And it it was like so I’m just speaking to how difficult it was to make that transition. I’ve branded, changing the complexion of wealth and everything…
Reese Harper:
Put a lot of money. You put a lot of money into Minority Money?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yes. [laughter] I did.
Reese Harper:
Yes.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
And that last episode I’m sitting there and I’m like this is the tagline was this is Minority Money, We’re changing the complexion of wealth. And I remember the last time I said it, it choked me up a little bit. I’m looking at… I’m recording a zoom so I’m looking at myself and I’m like “This is it. I’m I’m not gonna say this anymore. I’m moving on to something else.” And It was a surreal moment, I hadn’t realized how much we had created until I stopped creating and looked back. And and it’s so important for people to do that to look back to see how far you’ve come and see how much impact you’ve made. And and it was, I mean I was a little sad about it but I thought it was time and then I it took…
Reese Harper:
Dude. I’ve been, I’ve had that that moment and I, it’s a bittersweet moment though when it’s the right call to move on. But a lot of memories in what you’ve just finished it’s a that’s a really cool thing. And I think a good sign in business every once in a while we need to do that kind of a thing. You sunset one part of the career and move to another one. And I’m curious when you were doing Minority Money were there a lot of retirees like that were showing up? Was it 50/50? Was it like the minority of people happened to be of Minority Money the minority of the percentage happened to be retirees. How many retirees were showing up as a general ratio to the to the total number of prospects?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yeah, there was a small percentage that were coming in as retirees. I was getting more financial planning clients.
Reese Harper:
Interesting.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
But what I was getting is I was getting referrals from my retiree clients. So, it was a… So they weren’t coming from the show. I was getting referrals from other people that I was working with that were already retired. They were saying “Hey this is my guy. You need to come work with him.” And so that’s how I was meeting new people. They were just coming in from referrals. And I’ve always built a… I’ve had a that’s how I started my retirement practice when I was at the insurance company and I was like I would always say stuff and I think I said this when we were at the cabin I say if you’re sitting around the table with the family at thanksgiving because this is the place that I’d always say thanksgiving is all about the family or whatnot.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
And I said if you’re sitting there and everyone at the table doesn’t know about… Doesn’t know I’m your advisor then I didn’t do a good job. And I would say stuff like that like not knowing the seeds that I was planting but it kept bringing more people to me. Like, “Hey this is my nephew” or “Hey this is my sister or this is my aunt or this is my this and this is,” and so I would meet all kinds of family members through that. So a lot of my referrals in the retirement planning business came from the existing clients.
Reese Harper:
So the the retirees weren’t listening to a podcast. They were getting referred to you from your existing retirees?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Mhmm.
Reese Harper:
And then the, Minority Money Podcast was really, popular among that younger demographic. And so, but you had, did you have more referrals coming in from clients that were retirees than you had from Minority Money? Did it feel like that? Or was it still less people?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
It was less people coming in, but the quality of the people, right. You know, they’re coming in with half a million, they’re coming in with larger balances. But then the crazy thing on Minority Money started happening towards the end, which was kind of like, why am I gonna stop now? My younger clients started coming to me and having more assets. And so it was like, they were, you know, they might be in their 40s, but they were having, you know, come in with half a million dollars in assets. Maybe it’s some retirement accounts that we have to move around or whatnot, but they were coming in with more assets. So towards the tail end of the show, I started getting clients that were more sophisticated. We’ll say that. Like it wasn’t, it wasn’t, like as the topics change, and I think this is very important for people, if they’re thinking about having a podcast as you talk, the things you talk about will attract a certain type of person.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
If I’m talking about donor advised accounts, I’m gonna attract a different person if I’m talking about how to start a Roth IRA, those aren’t the two same people. Right? And so in the beginning, I did a lot of that kind of stuff. Let’s… You need to open up an IRA, this is what it is, this is how you can do it. And then as the conversations deepened we started talking about, like, I started think hearing more questions from people about Social security. And I used to do social security seminars, so I had all the, like that… I used to do that. So it wasn’t like, it was like almost like Minority Money when I started. It was stepping away from what I normally did to try to broaden the amount of people that I talked to and now it’s funny because when I said I was gonna stop doing Minority Money and do something more focused on just retirement, my wife says, that’s what I told you to do and I was like, she said that a couple of years ago and I was like…
[laughter]
Reese Harper:
Hey, every time you’re about to make a decision, someone will want to take credit for it. I’m just kidding.
[laughter]
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
So she says that and I’m like it’s funny, but it’s… But she was… But she did… She had brought it up.
Reese Harper:
She knew.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
She knew. She’s like, I’ve seen you do this before. I know this is what you enjoy doing.
Reese Harper:
Well, you do this, then you should say, ’cause what am I doing here? I’m like, just wanna ride my motorcycle.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Man. Exactly.
Reese Harper:
I’m sure there are people doing podcasts for retirees that are very successful, but I do think you kind of have to like rip the bandaid off and go there rather than, hope that throwing in a few episodes is going to get you there. Can you talk a little bit more about that? ‘Cause it seems like you had to at some point rip the content bandaid off and rebrand the podcast and totally go a different direction. Why not just start making the Minority Podcast… The Minority Money Podcast more about retirement? Like why not do that? You know.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
And it was a thought. That’s a great question. It was a thought and I thought like, we’ve built up this audience. We’ve been talking about all things, you know, family, fitness…
Reese Harper:
Money.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Money, education. I’ve been talking about all these different things and I’ve built this audience and that’s what the audience expects. I didn’t feel like it was fair to them for me to change what they were receiving from me because I needed to change. So I just left it there like…
Reese Harper:
Yeah dude, that’s totally true.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
And left it… So…
Reese Harper:
That’s totally true. Yeah. It’s like, leave it there ’cause that’s who showed up. That must have been a hard call, You know?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Oh, it’s been, I still agonize about it and I’ll say this to, you know, to definitely to anybody that’s thinking about starting a podcast. Like if you think about the podcast and you are really trying to make it to be like a marketing funnel, right? ‘Cause that’s what it is. It’s top of the funnel thing, middle of the funnel, if you will. If you’re gonna make it that, then just be intentional with who you are trying to… Who you’re trying to connect with. And I think that if you have a narrowed focus on who you’re trying to… Like what problems are you answering for the people that are listening to your show, right? What are their pain points? Are you answering those pain points? What are the things that they find interesting? What are the things that they’re worried about?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
You know what I mean? And if you have those kind of things that you’re answering in the podcast, it’s gonna lead people to become clients. But just being a generalist about all things isn’t gonna lead people to you the way that you would want them to from the time, energy, and effort that you’re using in your podcast. And so you’d be… It’d be great to take a step back and say, “Okay, now look, what are you gonna get outta this podcast? What are people… Why are people… Why would someone listen to this?” And if you can’t answer that, then maybe you need to rethink who your, you know, what your marketing strategy is. ‘Cause if you don’t know who should be listening or what you’re answering for these people, then they don’t know why they should be listening either and that’s…
Reese Harper:
That’s really good insight, man. Yeah, it’s really good insight. I’ve always been impressed with your curiosity. I think that’s why you’ve probably been super successful as an advisor and as a marketer with Onyx and BLX. Do you wanna just talk a little bit briefly so people know what those are?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So Onyx is the support platform for financial advisors. We help advisors start, scale and sustain their financial planning practices. The way we do that is we offer a tech stack with a monthly membership fee. So on the tech stack, you’re gonna get your financial planning software, you’re gonna get data archiving, you’re gonna get your compliance, you’re gonna get some other features that you need in terms of you need a custodian, right? [chuckle]
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
So there’s, if you need to get your firm registered, we do that. We take all the guesswork outta what technology you need to get started. Now you can add some stuff to it. We have some partnerships. We have a great partnership with Elements where you can get a percentage discount on your monthly subscription with Elements. But what we did is basically we, because of how difficult it was for both me and Desarte to get into the financial services industry, we didn’t want to have people to have those roadblocks. So we wanted to create something for people to get in…
Reese Harper:
It’s big friction. Big friction. I think it’s really hard to get, I feel like most people spend like a year just trying to get it off the ground. And that’ll be pretty fast.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Right? Because like, if you see that one… There’s some tech thing out there that has like all the different, like, there’s like hundreds of different tech for everything. Like, you think that there’s only a few, but there’s hundreds for everything, and it makes it very hard to understand what you actually need as an advisor. And I agonized over that for a while, when I was starting, I was like, okay, what, you know what? Even stuff that wasn’t that big of a deal, when I say, like, my scheduling, what am I gonna use? Am I gonna use Calendly? Am I gonna use ScheduleOnce? Am I gonna use Acuity? Am I gonna… And it’s like, I shouldn’t really agonize it, like, it shouldn’t be that hard. Like, I should just be able to pick something that’s gonna schedule appointments for people and move on. But it’s such a big deal.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
And then with BLX I’m not as involved as I used to be in BLX, but BLX is the BLatinX internship. What it is is an internship for Black and Latinx aspiring financial advisors. It’s crazy how much that thing has grown in the last… This is the third round, so it’s grown ridiculous. I think this year we have like 180 applicants.
Reese Harper:
Wow. That’s awesome.
0:21:28.9 Emlen: The first year, I wanna say we had 38 people go through, and I think 26 of the… I wanna say it was, these numbers might be a little off, but there’s like 38 people that went through the program in the first year. And you see the growth through the third year, but 26 of the people in our first go round got offered full-time jobs. The reason why the other people didn’t get offered jobs is because they all had to go back to school. So it wasn’t… What we found in that first year it wasn’t a talent issue. The people were giving us raving reviews on the talent that they were getting in their firms. Like they were getting immediate impact from the people that they were getting outta the BLX program.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Shout out to the team over at BLX for doing a hell of a job and growing you know, growing our interns and then some other people that helped us too. But it’s been awesome just to see, just to see that as, just to see the, to see how people have responded to having more diverse people in their workplace and how much it’s elevated their firms.
Reese Harper:
That’s awesome. Yeah. I wanna make sure people know about both organizations and I just think it’s been impressive to see what you’ve been able to do with all your… You’ve got a lot going on. You remind me of very successful people that get a lot on their plate and somehow manage to pull it all off. So keep it up. Back to the question that I was kind of interested in this marketing question of audience building. For me, that’s one of the most difficult things to get right over the course of your career. ‘Cause it has to be an audience that, like you noted with your connection with your mom and with people, and that you’ve had financial conversations with the past, that you had this connection with this demographic that just felt like the right fit for you.
Reese Harper:
So once you find that fit, then you have to say, okay, now that I’m finally there, but man, getting there sometimes requires you have the wrong customer for a while or the a customer that you thought might be the right one, then you have to switch. I think that like, getting to the right place with that audience is so hard. And I’m gonna put another layer on this now of audience. Even let’s say you find the right general audience, which I would say now you know, does… You know Emlen, that you’re gonna target retirees, but within retirees, if we just take one research group’s framing, like take Foresters, foresters is a research group that like breaks consumers apart and you say there’s delegators and there’s validators and there’s self-directed people. Let’s say in the retiree market, you’ve got people that are delegating this out. They just want to hire Emlen. You’ve got validators who want to talk to Emlen still like they do, but they’re not like wanting to like lose all the control and give up everything. They kind of want it to be more of like an A la carte relationship sort of.
Reese Harper:
Then you got people that are self-directed that just like, want information. Like they’re really not really looking to hire or give any money to Emlen, but they’re still a meaningful chunk of people. If we look at Forrester’s research, they would suggest that probably like 40%, we’ll call it, of people are those self-directed people. So four out of 10, three, maybe three out of 10 are wanting to validate, you know like, not really hire you to do it all, but like a little. And then two out of 10, maybe three out of 10 are delegators, and then there’s one person out of 10 that they call a disengaged person. It’s like someone that’s so private and so quiet. And so much of a, we’ll call it like a, just a really private, private person. Like, they’re not gonna hire anyone until they find the one person. And usually when they find someone, they’ll jump over and become a delegator, you know? It’s like, oh, I found them. Now I got my answers.
Reese Harper:
In your messaging, do you even think about the validator like person as like, I want to speak to them too, to get them to become a delegator with me. Do you think about that person or do you just go after the delegators and you’re like, trying to find the delegators and you just like, forget about everyone but those people? How are you approaching your marketing?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
I take people from collaboration to delegation. I want them to collaborate with me so they can delegate, right? And so there’s a third, I would say, that’s my method. I want to collaborate with you, and I build that relationship and we’re collaborating. ’cause I want to hear back and like it’s we’re bowling questions back and forth. And then it’s like, okay, now we understand what your philosophy is, what your values are, what your ideologies are about money. Okay, Emlen, go ahead, take care of them.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
That’s what I’m looking for. That’s who I work best with. I’ve had all of those clients that you described. It’s funny ’cause you’re saying ’em and I’m just going mentally through, Yep. That would, yep. That was, yep. That was… And where they came from too, ’cause I had one that came off of my podcast that was a retiree, which I don’t know how he snuck in, but he came in as a retiree, got into this thing, and he was like an engineer. So he was like really analytical. He didn’t really want me to do the investments. He just wanted to tell me it was, it was an, it was like a quite tough.
Reese Harper:
Real tough.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yeah. It was. I didn’t know what to do.
Reese Harper:
Would you describe him? See, usually this is what’s, I think a fun thing is this is the cutting edge of marketing and financial services for me is that, do we think that person is really a self-directed investor that was trying to validate with Emlen? Or is he a validator that you just weren’t connecting with? And he would’ve delegated eventually if he finds the right person, maybe he’ll delegate to, what do you think that example, give me that one example of that guy.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
With him, I don’t think he was gonna delegate. He just didn’t seem like that was…
Reese Harper:
And he was never gonna delegate?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
No, he was never gonna delegate. He just, he wanted to validate, he wanted to validate, and he doesn’t want…
Reese Harper:
Learn everything.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yeah. And then control. And that was like…
Reese Harper:
And eventually he wanted to do it on his own anyway?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yes. Yes. And I have a few of those. Like, and the funny thing is all of those… Now I’m like going like now, like this is the first, it is like the light bulb just went off. All of those clients came from my podcasts.
Reese Harper:
The self-directed investing.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
All the self-directed investors came from my podcast.
Reese Harper:
They do. Dude, this is the strategy I’m like interested in is I do think self-directeds, self-directeds and validators and delegators listen to podcasts. Like all three of those groups do. But it’s really hard to know who you’re talking to. It’s messy between the validator and… Validators are closer to becoming delegators than than they are to become self-directed. Like a true validator does not really wanna own the whole job on their own.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
No. Yeah.
Reese Harper:
But man, it’s messy to try to like sort out the messages that attract those separate groups of people. Because if you give out like a lot of free information on your podcast and like train and coach people, like if you think of it as like a teaching ground. You’ll gonna get a lot of self-directed investors showing up because they’re like, you know that I come here to learn everything that I need to learn.
Reese Harper:
It also is kind of a turnoff to the delegator. The delegator is not like wanting to get on there to learn a bunch about personal finance. They almost want to see how do you work Emlen? Like tell me what you’re like and what your process is like. And they’re like looking and once they find you, they stop researching. Like they’re done, they’ve made the decision.
Reese Harper:
So I just found it really challenging. And then in the middle, that validator, it’s like, well, how, what kind of content screens out the self-directed investor but picks up the validator who is convinced they’re never gonna delegate. But they might delegate if you can nurture ’em well enough. They come, they go from being a validator to a delegator through really good nurturing. You know, that’s like, that’s tough. That’s a really tough thing. So do you have any thoughts on how you steer clear of self-directed target the validators and the delegators and kind of like live in that, live there? Because I think you have to live there. Those are the people that want to talk to Emlen and the self-directed Yeah. They want to talk to you, but only to the extent they can get information from you because they’re gonna go back and do it all on their own.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that what the way that I would do that, or the way that I’m envisioning doing that is right, if you’re answering all of the questions, right? If you got the Hank Hanegraaff, [laughter] retirement answer thing for everything right? Then no one needs to come and say…
Reese Harper:
The what? Wait, the what? I don’t know.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
You don’t know a Hank Hanegraaff, the Bible Answer Man. That’s what he was, he is the Hank Hanegraaff, the Bible Answer, Man. He knew every answer to the bible, everything in the Bible.
Reese Harper:
There’s always one answer apparently right.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
To him. So that, yeah, but I don’t want to take that approach because if you do that then, then it’s like, I just want to, so I have to like go out and give you enough information so that you know what I’m talking about and what I’m gonna, where I’m gonna have the, where you will have a self-selection process is after I get you into my funnel. Right? First is top of the funnels awareness. You know who I am. Now I’m gonna put you in the funnel where you’re gonna hear my podcast more often, where you’re gonna get my newsletter so you can develop a relationship with me. Right. And then you will select where you want to go. If you have started working with me, then obviously you’re thinking I’m validating and I want to either delegate or, you know what I mean?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
That’s where I think the selection happens. I don’t think it’s gonna happen from them just hearing me. I think they’re gonna need to see more of what I’m doing and then continually giving them salt, if you will. And why am I saying salt? Because I want them to be thirsty for what I’m giving. So they have to come and get something answered for so general, general answers, to get specific answers for your question, we have to talk. General information specific and then case studies, right? This is how I worked with this person. This is an example of young newly retired couple 60 62 years old, Jim and Jill, or whatever. And this is what they have. And so now I can give an example ’cause like you said, I wanna know how you work, how it is, how is it to work with you, Emlen?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
So what we did is we identified these areas where they, you know what I mean? And that’s where I think that the people that, because at the end of the day, Reese, what we want to do is have people see themselves working with us, right?
Reese Harper:
Yeah. Totally man.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
And if they can’t see themselves working with us, then they’re never gonna work with us. So we have to paint the picture. And part of that is by giving some examples like, Hey, we helped this client with X, Y, and Z and this is the total picture of what they had going on. They had four or five different IRAs because they had worked over here or different things that they had going on and we needed to consolidate this. And then they had some questions about IRMA because they thought their income was gonna go up. So they’ve really been worried about… You know what I mean, like having those deep dive discussions. This is where I can talk about how I was an expert, right? Yeah. Because they can see it from the example of what I’ve done. Now. They’re like, okay, so I need to work with him and that’s all I need them to say. I just need them to, I need to work with him. He’s gonna help me because he understands what’s going on. And that’s what…
Reese Harper:
So I’m gonna talk to you about my experience in this area. ’cause I, this is where, to me, the big opportunity in financial services is. I think historically we’ve only created a business model that attracted the delegator, really? That pure delegator. And if you weren’t like ready to like, give up all your assets and turn everything over, like there’s no real engagement that you could like purchase. It’s like a tiptoe in purchase, you know. And not all the validators are gonna be good. I’m viewing this like in an order of like, who’s the best people to come across. Well, you’re never really gonna come, you’re not gonna find the disengaged person. Like they’re just like gonna show up randomly at a seminar or something. You’re not… That’ll be like the first human they’ve spoken with in 50 years. [laughter]
Reese Harper:
But let’s just say we got these three, three groups, the self-directed, you’re trying to actually, you can write content for them, but like, only a very, very small percentage of people that are self-directed are gonna convert and they’re gonna convert to become validators in my experience, not delegators. Like, they’re not gonna go from self-directed to a delegator. Most of the time they don’t, they, they, there’s exceptions, of course. There’s exceptions. But I would say that those people generally who could convert from what you thought were self-directed to a delegator, they’re probably validators that convert to becoming delegators more. And validators are people that really want, they want a human, they want to engage a person. They like the idea of the consistency of an Emlen, the consistency of a Reese, the personalization that a Reese or an Emlen can provide.
Reese Harper:
But in the past we’ve only really served the delegators. And so this validator kind of segment, it’s probably like 25 to 30% of the population according to Forrester. But it’s not actually really clear how to, like what engagement we need to have, what service we need to have for that consumer. And I’m curious if you have like a try it out kind of service at all. Do you have like something smaller than the whole enchilada? Are you thinking about doing that at all?
Reese Harper:
My own personal experience is I’ve been able to convert people from like cash pay arrangements to, AUM based large cases. If I like, let them engage without giving me all their money. Like I don’t really, I don’t require AUM to get started, but like AUM comes within three to six months usually if you’re really finding the validator to target, you know? If they really are the validator. Are you… Do you have a secondary service model right now? I don’t expect that you would. Most advisors don’t. It’s very rare. But right now, do you have one or do you have another, a secondary option?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
So what I’ve been doing is this like, ’cause it’s a great question, right? As I’m kind of going away from the financial planning as much as I used to, I’m using the finance, I’ve always used financial planning as a way for them to work with me before giving me everything.
Reese Harper:
Ah, nice.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
So there’s some small commitment from them, but that’s the way that I’ve gotten ’em in and I’ve gotten, I’ve been able to get a lot of assets like that. Just because now they’re like, Okay, so I can see how he’s working, we’re talking, we’re working through this, and they’re like, Oh yeah, by the way, we have all this money over here. Oh wow. Okay. I figured you did. But I wanted to earn the right to notice.
Reese Harper:
Nice. Nice.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
And so that’s what I’ve kind of done. And quite frankly what I’ve done now, what I’ve been using is Elements. So I just did this the other day. We’re at, I was at a little function and it was like a ribbon cutting or something, something, something here in town, locally here in town. So anyhow, I was there and someone was like, “Hey Emlen, what do you do?” And here we go, right? [laughter], like I said, so look, this is what we can do, I said…
Reese Harper:
I’m on a podcast called Minority Money. Oh wait, nevermind I changed it. Just kidding.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
So I’m like, here, this is what we’re gonna do. I said, let’s go ahead and have you do a free assessment. Pulled up the stuff on Elements and said, here you go. So now I have all of their information, they didn’t link everything. Which is okay and I like that they didn’t.
Reese Harper:
They got started?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yeah, they got started. So they didn’t link everything, but they put values in for everything.
Reese Harper:
Oh, nice.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Which is okay. I said, I could do… And quite frankly I didn’t know that they were gonna do that. I thought they would just link everything. ‘Cause they know who I am.
Reese Harper:
Oh, nice.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
But they didn’t link everything. And I was like, okay, so they put all the information, but now I can actually look and now we’re gonna have an assessment call. They went on vacation, but when they get back, that’s the lower like, let me show you value. Right? Because now I’m not gonna do it over a three, six, eight, 10 month period when we’re doing a full financial plan, I can say, okay, this is where you’re at. These are the things that we’re talking about. These are the things that I think are important and have a meaningful conversation there. And price is only the issue in the absence of value. And the other thing I’ll say there is people, once you’ve given them something of value, most people feel obligated to give something back to you.
Reese Harper:
Yeah. I like that, man. I think that’s really important. That’s what I would encourage people to think about is, how are you gonna demonstrate your value before they make the big commitment. I think as an industry, some advisors have gotten a little too high brow with their pay me and then I’ll show you value [laughter], it’s like, pay me first and then I’ll show value. But, it’s really scary. The client, the consumer, the prospect, they know there’s a pretty lifelong commitment if they were to ever give you their assets and turn everything over. I feel like we need like digital tools are available online for people to go and put their information in for free. There’s a lot of direct to consumer financial planning options that are willing to give you stuff for free.
Reese Harper:
So if as advisors we’re not willing to show a little value, demonstrate that value a little bit upfront, I think we will struggle with our conversion rates from the validator segment ’cause they want to see a little bit more than the delegator. The delegator is kind of ready to go. You can tell they’ll sign up before ever sharing anything almost. It’s like, I already know I want to sign up. What’s your option? That one, I’ll take it. And that’s when you know, it’s like a delegator that, you’re gonna have some other challenges with, which is they will rarely respond to anything. There’s challenges with both archetypes, but I think we really need to show value to that validator to get ’em to convert. Otherwise we run the risk of just… I think the market’s gonna continue become more like a validator as technology and AI continue to evolve.
Reese Harper:
So I think we have to have a solution for that group ’cause some people in my experience will spend three months or four months, or sometimes a year in more of an A La Carte relationship with an advisor and then convert to becoming a delegator. But they wanna see, they just wanna see you more. They wanna understand how you’re gonna add value. And the younger they get, I found that that’s more the case. It’s more the case with the younger demographic. What’s been your experience, I’m curious if that matches your experience?
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
I would say it’s similar, and the biggest thing that I’ve seen, this is why I use the word collaboration, right? That is the collaboration piece that you’re talking about before, from validator to delegator, is the collaboration that makes that happen. And how fast…
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
You can collaborate with them, ’cause they’re gonna come to you with questions. They’re gonna come to you with… Like, I’ll stop in the middle of a meeting and say, Okay, well, hold on. Is there, before we get started, what’s the burning question that you got? ‘Cause I know you scheduled this meeting, you just went onto my website, you scheduled the meeting. There was a reason you did that. What is that…
Reese Harper:
Yeah that’s great.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Burning thing that’s… What’d you wanna talk about?
Reese Harper:
And you wanna unlock that value the fastest, right? Just show them.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
That’s it. ‘Cause now it’s like, okay, so then you know, and then you’ll see this, this is what you’ll see. You see it on Zoom. Okay. Alright. Okay. So then they settle in, right? It’s a couple, they settle in, this is my favorite. When I ask that and they look over at each, they’re together sitting staring at each other on the screen, and they look at each other like, are we gonna ask them? ‘Cause I know that this is…
Reese Harper:
Are we gonna say that.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Are we gonna ask them?
Reese Harper:
We ask ’em. Yeah.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Can we ask ’em? Like, ’cause he asked us if we can ask. And so as soon as we say that we’re diving into collaboration, now they’re like, okay, so this is the problem. I say, okay, let’s go through that. They tell me the problem. I’m like, okay, so we’ll get to that. I don’t answer the question. I’m just like, we’ll get to that. Let me tell you how we work. We go through that and then I circle back and answer the question. Sometimes I’ll answer it immediately. Most of the time I try to, unless it’s like something I need to really answer right then. But that for me, and then the last thing that I did every time, and I still do it, is you don’t need to make a decision today. Matter of fact, I don’t want you to make a decision today on whether or not we’re gonna work together.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
So I want you to go home, I want you to think about this, I want to give it another week and we’ll schedule another meeting and then you can decide then asking that question and giving them time to think, makes them understand and allows them to see how it is to work with you. I’m not just gonna tell you, no, you can’t do this, or no you can’t. ‘Cause I’ve had a lot of people come in and say, Well, you’re gonna say this is a bad idea. I shouldn’t do this. I say, well, I don’t know. Let’s talk about the idea before they think I’m gonna shoot it down. I mean, every idea isn’t bad and sometimes you just need someone to bounce an idea off of. So go ahead, bounce it off me, that phrase, go ahead, bounce your idea off me. Tell me what it is. You have a professional here, what’s your question?
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
What’s the idea? What were you thinking? And then they get off and either I’m like, 75% of the answer they know but I gave them that 25% and the value of my 25% of their answer to get them to a 100 is huge.
Reese Harper:
I’ve just been surprised at how many people will convert to a traditional delegator model after seeing you in action for a while. But some people it takes a year and some people it’s a few months. But any comments on that before we wrap? I just, I really think this is an important topic.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
I think that [laughter], this goes back to how well your processes are. I think it goes back to how well you execute on what you say you’re gonna do for the people that you’re working with. And this is you. Like if you have a client, which I’ve had some clients where we’re doing financial planning and I see the assets and I never got them. That happened once. And I can look at the relationship and see what shortcomings I had in the reason why the client didn’t feel comfortable delegating to me. And the next two times after that, we brought in a million dollars from two planning clients that were younger than 50.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
So I think that the value in those conversations and doing what you say you’re going to do now, I know most advisors don’t have a problem doing that you know, sometimes you can overpromise and underdeliver. And I think for that in particular client, I had done that, and so typically what I try to do especially, and this is speaking what I did do, I won’t say try to do what I was doing when I was working with the financial planning clients is just continuing to answer and collaborate and be there for ’em and like, there’s a lot of financial trauma that people have from decisions that they made. This is just not people that aren’t making any money. This is like people that have made a lot of money and that have done, you know what I mean?
Reese Harper:
Big regrets.
0:45:42.9 Emlen: Right? And so you’re like every time I get in a call with someone, they’re telling me all the mistakes they made.
Reese Harper:
Yeah. That’s it. We all, everyone feels shame about their past and they’re worried and scared about their future. And so that’s the call I think to help people, help ’em feel good about their future and help ’em not feel any shame about their past. I mean, it’s a really hard thing to do. You’re doing a beautiful job, man, I love our conversations. You’re a fun person to talk to. I love the, I love what you bring to the industry. It makes me so happy to see more people of color in the industry. It makes me happy to see more minority financial advisors. I love seeing clients working with people that they, that share their values and history and sort of their shared cultural understandings. I mean, it’s just a… I really appreciate you leaning into a place in the industry that we need. We need you and we need your heart. You do an amazing job and I just, I think the world of you. So thanks for everything you’re doing, man. I’ll let you have the last word.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Oh man, I appreciate you. I appreciate you Reese. And I mean, especially being able to come out there when we did come out to Utah, first time to Utah and just being able just to share my thoughts, my experience and my vision, being able to share those things and being able to chat with you and Carl and Abby and everybody that was at the cabin that day. It just really, it was great. And it’s also good for me to be able to see people that are in the industry that want to see the same changes that I’m trying to create, right?
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
That we’re all trying to work towards, we’re all striving towards. And I think that this is the first of many conversations that we’ll be… I can’t wait for us to look back five years from now and some of the things that we have tried to change in the industry are beginning to show themselves.
Reese Harper:
Yeah.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
I think sometimes we’re doing some work over here in the corners and in the quiet and sometimes it can get a little bit tiresome, but just know that we’re fighting the good fight and there’s people that are joining us and there’s people that are gonna watch this, and there’s people that are gonna see other things that we’re working on and want to continue to get involved. So I just thank you once again for sharing your platform with us and some time and I look forward to what we continue to grow and create together.
Reese Harper:
All right, man. I’ll send you a text about that motorcycle.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Yeah, I’m ready.
Reese Harper:
I’ll get in touch.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
I’m gonna wait. I gotta go through Utah. When I was home.
Reese Harper:
I know.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
I was planning on stopping by and when I go.
Reese Harper:
Yes.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
So I was planning on stopping by.
Reese Harper:
All right, man. It’s great to be with you brother. We’ll talk to you soon.
Emlen Miles-Mattingly:
Alright, see you soon. Yeah.
Abby Morton:
Next time on Elementality.
Jake Larsen:
If you truly believe that what you’re offering them is going to bring some sort of value, just make sure they get to that point.
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Jake Larsen:
So if it, let’s use a scorecard example with elements Elements, right? If I’m trying to get people to, or prospects to fill out a scorecard, right? And I just post it on social media and say, Hey, if you want a free assessment, right? Or if you wanna get a financial check-in for free, fill this out.
Abby Morton:
Right.
Jake Larsen:
How many people are like, oh yeah, I’ve just been dying for a financial checkup, [laughter] Like I can’t go to work today without that.
Abby Morton:
Right.
Jake Larsen:
They’re like, no. Right. So what do you have to do so that they can see or feel a need or desire, a want to fill out that scorecard, right? A great example, an easy example might be, and you see this all the time, like a testimonial, something like, Hey, I, they tell their story. I was, I didn’t know where my money was. I didn’t know if I was making the right decisions. So I filled out this scorecard and in five minutes, Abby made me feel so much better, right?
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Jake Larsen:
Like, now they’re like, oh man, I want that.
Abby Morton:
To find out more about Elements, go to getelements.com/demo. Elementality’s Executive producers are Reese Harper and Carl Richards. Elementality is produced by Tad Henderson and directed by Abby Morton. Have a good one.