To grow an advisory firm, seminars or workshops have proven to be a consistent way to get new clients. They allow you to easily target your ideal client base, plus networking opportunities abound. And they are the perfect place for honest conversations where rapport and trust begin to build as you demonstrate your know-how. But marketing one can be a big challenge. In order for seminars to work, somebody needs to show up.
On this Elementality, Abby talks with Colton Etherton of Out of the Office Planning about his first seminar experience. Find out what unseen issues arose, what he is doing to follow up, and how Colton used the Elements QR code to get attendees to sign up for a free follow-up assessment.
Podcast Transcript
Colton Etherton:
I could tell because as soon as they created that account through the invite link, I get emails that says, “Hey, you have a new prospect, Joe just created their account in Elements.” So now I could see they created their account, I can see when and within Elements, with it allowing us to track the source of that prospect, I know look going forward, and I’m looking at my prospects list, I can see where they came from. Like, “Hey, these people are from that workshop that we did.”
Jordan Haines:
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.
Abby Morton:
Welcome to the Elementality Podcast. I’m here today with Colton Etherton from Portland, Hi Colton, welcome to the show.
Colton Etherton:
Hey, Abby, how’s it going?
Abby Morton:
Pretty good. I’m so excited to have you on. I know we’ve had you on it in the past, but today we’re gonna talk about something completely different, but just for those who haven’t heard your past episode, give us a quick little two-minute synopsis, who you are and who do you serve as an advisor?
Colton Etherton:
Yeah, so my name is Colton Etherton. Like you said, I’m up here in Portland, Oregon, and I work with tattoo artist. I’ve been focused on that niche now for almost two years, a year and a half, and also recently joined the Elements team on our Advisor Success Team as well, So doing double dealing.
Abby Morton:
Yes, we loved having Colton. He’s providing a lot of value and we’re excited to have him here at Elements.
Colton Etherton:
Yeah, it’s been fun. It’s been really fun.
Abby Morton:
Good, we’re glad you’re liking it, so tell us more about who you serve and just like two minutes about that.
Colton Etherton:
Okay. Yeah, so I work with tattoo artists, they’re all self-employed, so with that comes a lot of planning around how to run their business, how to pay themselves, how to save for retirement, that whole… Taxes is a big piece, and none of them want to deal with that. They got into tattooing to draw pictures and put pictures on people, and so I came in to help with that side, so they can focus on the fun stuff that they actually enjoy doing.
Abby Morton:
Perfect. I love that. I feel like we as planners run into that a lot. I guess that’s why we have jobs as financial planners is ’cause people got into their professions to actually do the profession and not worry about the finance and paperwork side of things, right?
Colton Etherton:
Exactly, exactly.
Abby Morton:
Well, cool. So, I wanna transition a little bit into the topic I wanna talk about today. So these next several episodes we’re gonna be talking about how to power up any sort of marketing activities that any advisor might be doing in their business. There’s a number of different things that advisors do and I heard a unique thing that you did recently and so that’s why I wanted to have you on today to talk about what specifically you did, how it brought value to you. How did you use Elements to help that be more successful? And so today we’re talking to Colton about seminars specifically. Colton recently did a seminar and so I just wanted to have him on to talk to us about the nitty-gritty details about how he did that. So if you in your practice want to do that same thing, like you can get some ideas and thoughts here from Colton, from someone who’s actually done it. So let’s start with first question. Tell me about… Like how did this idea come together for you to do a seminar? Like, is that something you’ve always done or was this the first one you’ve done? Like, let’s talk kind of a little bit of the backstory.
Colton Etherton:
This is the first in-person one I’ve done.
Abby Morton:
Okay.
Colton Etherton:
So I did one online webinar, well two, I guess one on disability insurance for tattoo artists and then one on taxes. And this workshop, seminar, whatever you wanna call it, really came from the tax one. So it was a local shop owner that I’ve been in contact with and talked to a handful of times and we’ve tried to get it on the calendar for a while. And initially it was just gonna be the tax presentation that I have because I have that registered through the state of Oregon as a continuing education piece for tattoo artists here ’cause they’re required to have up to 10 hours every year of continuing ed and five of that can be business.
Abby Morton:
Interesting. Yeah, I didn’t even know that. That’s cool.
Colton Etherton:
I think we’re the only state… It’s weird as many tattoo artists as we have here and we’re regulated pretty differently compared to other states.
Abby Morton:
Okay. Cool.
Colton Etherton:
So I reach out to maybe [0:04:47.4] ____…
Abby Morton:
That’s some, that’s maybe something we think about too, of like in your specific niche as an advisor, if that profession has to get CE credit, see if you can provide that CE credit for them. I know we did that often at dentist advisors as well… And like people would just come in all the time ’cause it’s like they need an easy and free way to get their credit.
Colton Etherton:
Yeah, and that’s really where I got the idea, I think was from the Dentist Advisors website, and then talking to local artists, once I got started realizing they need CE, so I just reached out to the lady at the state that runs it, said, “Here’s who I am, here’s what I wanna do.” She sent me a form to fill out. And I got it approved.
Abby Morton:
Was it pretty hard, like that approval process or do you feel like it was maybe worth going down that path?
Colton Etherton:
It was really easy.
Abby Morton:
Oh good.
Colton Etherton:
So it’s interesting ’cause when I first reached out to her, she was like well, you know I approve like 99% of ’em. And a lot of ’em, you don’t even have to get pre-approval if it’s on the tattooing side of information. She’s like, “But because it’s business related, go ahead and just send me the information, fill out these forms. Kind of give me an idea of what you’re trying to teach people.
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Colton Etherton:
So I did that and within… I dunno it was a pretty short time period. She replied back. She’s like, you’re good to go. So, I have to renew it every year. But basically I had to give an outline of how long is it gonna be? What are we gonna cover, to really show, like if it’s an hour of CEO, like what are you talking about for that hour? So it was pretty easy.
Abby Morton:
And you said you did some online and some live, in terms of getting CE credit, could you offer either version?
Colton Etherton:
Yeah, so I have… Actually I have it in three ways, so I have… I did a Zoom webinar for the first time, the first time I ran it, and then I actually recorded it and put it as a course on my website, so people just pay for it and do it themselves, like a self-study, and then I have the in-person one, which is…
Abby Morton:
You did the live. Okay, Great. Three really good options.
Colton Etherton:
Yeah. All the same content. So, this more recent time, initially it was just gonna be taxes that we were gonna talk about and then talking to the owner. She asked if we wanted to make it any longer, cover anything else and I said, “Yeah, I’m game for whatever you wanna do. I can do a full finance conversation if you want, and just include the tax piece in there.” So, it actually ended up being two and a half hours long, something like that and I included everything. So, I actually incorporated Elements into my presentation and went through the four questions if you will, that we hop on. “Are you using your income wisely? Do you have the right mix of assets?” Those questions.
Abby Morton:
Great.
Colton Etherton:
And just plug the tax piece into that cash flow conversation about taxes.
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Colton Etherton:
So yeah, it went really well and I had images of Elements within the presentation to kind of explain what I was talking about, how people can track it. And introduced it at the beginning so it wasn’t just like, “What is this picture of an app you’re showing me?”
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Colton Etherton:
I was like, “Here’s what I use with clients, if you want to, I’ll give you a link to download it.” So, went through the whole presentation was awesome and then at the end I had an easy invite link with QR code on my phone. I just laid it on the table and had the artist scan it, create their account and then I can offer the assessments going from there.
Abby Morton:
Perfect, let me pause you there. So, for those of you who don’t know… Our listeners, what an easy invite link and where is he getting this QR code. So, the Elements product allows you to create these easy invite links that kind of tie back to your particular marketing objective. So, Colton created one for the seminar that he did, if you do dinners or if you have a podcast that you run in your practice, you could create different links that then helps you understand where that prospect is coming from. And so just within the Elements product, he went in and did that, and then… Like he said, put that QR code available.
Abby Morton:
And what that does is allows his prospects to easily scan the code and it sends them an invite to the Elements app and puts them through the onboarding process. It’s just an easier way for advisors to use the Element system and get kind of people in through the flow, so then you can quickly provide value. Okay, great, so just a little background for those that don’t know. So tell me… You had the QR code, people scanned it, yeah talk through what happened after that. Were you having to tell them to do it? Or were they pretty intrigued by what you had done already?
Colton Etherton:
Yeah, they were pretty intrigued already by what I had done. And so they had asked at the end… Before I could even get it out, they’d asked about the QR code or getting access to the app. Yeah, I just pulled it up on my phone, laid it in the middle of the table, the shop took their basement, basically they own a old renovated house here in town and the basement is for education stuff that they’re gonna be doing going forward. So, it’s kind of cool, big place for all this, I just laid my phone out on the table, they scanned it, created their account right there. And then they could add information in that moment or when they get home later they can then go through and add the information.
Abby Morton:
Okay. And what was the success rate like that after? How many people downloaded it? And how did you know that they had downloaded it?
Colton Etherton:
Yeah. So, everyone there downloaded it, they ended up only being five people, a few people were called out sick, which was a bummer, but still five people there, five artists, everyone downloaded it. And I could tell because as soon as they created that account through the invite link, I get an email that says, “Hey, you have a new prospect, Joe just created their account in Elements.” So, now I could see they created their account, I can see when, and within Elements with it allowing us to track the source of that prospect. I know… Look going forward and if I’m looking at my prospect list, I can see where they came from like, “Hey, these people from that workshop that we did.”
Abby Morton:
Yeah. Okay. Great. So, then what was the process that you saw that they downloaded it? A lot of advisors are saying, “Well, they download it, but they never do anything with it.” What was your experience in that instance?
Colton Etherton:
Yeah, that’s… I think it’s hit or miss, some people are gonna download it and maybe not get into it for, for a number of reasons. It could just be they decided they didn’t want to, it could be that they just get busy. I know a couple of them downloaded it or they download it when we were there, but then we got pizza delivered and so we were eating and talking and then we’re gonna sit there on their phone and write stuff in. And so I just followed up with people after the fact, shoot an email, if they hadn’t filled it in, if they did, I would just record a short assessment like I told them I would and send that video over to them. Yes, just making sure I follow up and the nice thing is I can… Within Elements, pull it up, check when they last logged in and if they actually added information, so it was easy.
Abby Morton:
Okay. So, how much time do you feel it took? You did the seminar and then all of the work kind of after the fact, how much time do you feel it took you to follow up and do your… Send the assessments to the people who wanted them? What would you put your time spent at?
Colton Etherton:
Do we wanna include creating the seminar? Or are we just talking once they…
Abby Morton:
Yeah, why not? Yeah, all in all, if someone wanted to do a seminar, how much time do they need to go into the whole idea thinking they’re gonna do?
Colton Etherton:
It took me a few hours to create the presentation and everything, but that was just probably me being picky and editing over and over and then deciding to extend it at a certain point, but… Yeah, a couple hours there. But as far as the follow-up process, the assessments, that was super fast and easy, ’cause I just have to follow up with the people that didn’t fill out their information fully, short email, a couple sentences, takes a few minutes. And the assessments themselves take a couple minutes to record and then send over, so less than an hour’s work to follow up with five prospects. So, pretty easy worth it in my mind.
Abby Morton:
Well, was it worth it? Did you get any prospects from that seminar? What happened next?
Colton Etherton:
Yeah, yeah. So, I think it was definitely worth it. Still talking to one or two of them right now and still talking to the shop owner, which is in my mind really key because they have eight artists I think at the shop, maybe a little less.
Abby Morton:
Okay. Yeah.
Colton Etherton:
And so we’ve talked about doing it again for people that weren’t able to make it ’cause there was supposed to be more people. So yeah, I think overall, definitely a win. And I actually [chuckle] took that whole presentation and turned it into another full course that I’m gonna be putting out soon too. So I’m kind of, double duty with that. So now I have a presentation for in-person seminars and can put it up on the website. Again, same thing…
Abby Morton:
Alright.
Colton Etherton:
Including Elements, having the link on there, so I can invest the time once basically and have it used multiple times.
Abby Morton:
Yeah. I think that’s a big thing that we as advisors need to remember to do is you do something once. Think about how you can optimize that one thing to use it in multiple different scenarios, right? And I feel like with the days today of like AI and ChatGPT I know we can even like, here’s this podcast that I recorded like, take the transcript from that podcast, like, hey, ChatGPT give me five social posts, right?
Colton Etherton:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
So you can even take your presentation and take the transcript from that and have it pull out social posts or a blog post. And you can use AI as a tool to help you be able to use that content in multiple different ways. So then your content even goes farther.
Colton Etherton:
Yeah. I was pulling from it last night to create email campaign that I’m doing this… Doing later today, so.
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Colton Etherton:
Yeah. Definitely can pull from it and use it and it’s nice. Kinda makes things more efficient for sure.
Abby Morton:
Yeah. I feel like we got like into the details. I wanted to just step back a little bit so you decided to be the seminar. Like how do you find people to invite? Tell us about the invite process. You said you had a couple people that you had invited that didn’t end up coming, what was your expectations in terms of how many people you’re talking to and that whole process?
Colton Etherton:
Yeah, that’s a good question. So honestly in this situation, I didn’t do any of the invites.
Abby Morton:
Okay.
Colton Etherton:
So, just in talking to the shop owner, she reached out and was like, “Hey, can we do this thing?” And then she asked, she’s like, “should we keep it just to our shop or should we expand it to other people we know at other shops in the area?” And asked my opinion on that and I was like, I’m open to however many you can fit in your spot.
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Colton Etherton:
So I think this first one went well, but going forward we didn’t have much of a… We didn’t even have a public post about it or anything. It was really just her and the other artist there getting word of mouth out to a couple people they know.
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Colton Etherton:
So, going forward, I definitely have some… I don’t wanna say advertising, but at least putting it out there ahead of time trying to invite more people. But I think this first one was good because it was a test run to see how the presentation would go with a smaller number.
Abby Morton:
Right. Totally.
Colton Etherton:
And I think it went really well and they wanna do this more often, so, next time definitely partner and make it more known that something’s going on.
Abby Morton:
Yeah. I love that. I did not think that was gonna be a response to the question of like, I really didn’t do any of the work. The shop owner did everything. I think that’s definitely something we can utilize is, if you work with business owners or people who already have a large network of people, how can you tap their network and put most of the work on them and like, be a collaborative effort. Like that shop owner provided the space that you were in. You weren’t in some stuffy hotel room. So I think that probably made it more inviting as well. And so I think that’s smart for advisors to think of ways that they can utilize their networks to help them create events like this and to bring content to their study clubs or their groups of people that they have. So that was… I think that’s really smart.
Colton Etherton:
Yeah. And honestly we almost cancelled it too the day of…
Abby Morton:
Oh really?
Colton Etherton:
Because we were supposed to have 10 or 12 people show up and she texted me that morning, she’s like, “Hey, we had some people that just couldn’t show up for whatever reason. But we have like two or three that are confirmed, we can reschedule or what do you wanna do? We wanna make sure it’s with your time too.” And I was like, “You know what? Like, yeah, I’ll still do it. Because if anything it’s practice for me and we can always do it again.” There ended up being more than that, so there was five or six people there, which was nice, but it’s like, hey, if anything, I’m gonna have a one-on-one session with somebody. If only one person…
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Colton Etherton:
Shows up. So that’s still good. Or more people end up showing up and it works out.
Abby Morton:
Yeah. I like that mentality.
Colton Etherton:
That’s interesting.
Abby Morton:
Yeah. That’s a really good mentality to have as well. I think we as human beings, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, like, why do we, as human beings always wanna jump to the extreme end of the hardest thing to execute as whatever project it might be of like, I wanna have a seminar for a hundred people and I want… So many people show up and they’ll be in this big ballroom and we’ll have food. And I feel like we try to overexaggerate and make everything a lot bigger than it needs to be. And I think sometimes, I know Carl Richard talks about this a lot is like, what’s the next baby step? Like, let’s just do a small little things. So I like your mentality of… Even if only one person showed up, I could have still had a good conversation with that one person…
Colton Etherton:
Yeah.
Abby Morton:
And really been able to do something great with it and move it forward rather than like, well no, the 10 people that was planning coming couldn’t come, so let’s just move it. I think that’s smart to just like, let’s start small and let’s get that down well, and then like, okay, how can we improve and make it better and make it better? But the more practice you get, the more you’re gonna learn. So every little baby step, I think helps you learn and grow and reiterate how to make it better each time.
Colton Etherton:
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Colton Etherton:
Like I said, it turned out really great. It was small, intimate, we were right there, they were asking more questions, maybe they wouldn’t have asked some of the questions if it was a fuller room.
Abby Morton:
Right. Totally.
Colton Etherton:
And they were a little more nervous to ask. I’d almost prefer to do a handful of smaller ones than a big hundred person one.
[laughter]
Abby Morton:
Yeah, yeah.
Colton Etherton:
And also get a little bit of stage fright. So I don’t wanna be like…
[laughter]
Colton Etherton:
Somewhere with a hundred people looking at me, like, gimme the five or six. That’s fine. But yeah it turned out way better than I honestly anticipate it even with the less people, so.
Abby Morton:
Right. Well it goes to show there’s a million ways to do it, like you mentioned, like you can do it online, you can do it live, you can have a small group, you can have a larger group. Like there’s just so many different ways to do it. And so don’t let all those questions and the confusion around the idea prevent you from doing it. Like just do the next little thing to get you moving forward.
Colton Etherton:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Abby Morton:
Well, great. I would like to have you leave us with any final thoughts about the seminar and then why don’t you tell everyone like where we can find you if we wanted to reach out and ask you more questions.
Colton Etherton:
Yeah. Man, final thoughts on the seminar?
Abby Morton:
If you were to give advice to one person about like how to do a seminar, like what advice would you give someone?
Colton Etherton:
I’d say try to make it as interactive as possible. What I mean? Asking questions about them and they’re kind of how they’re currently doing things. Don’t just have a bunch of slides with a bunch of texts that you’re just kind of spewing on everybody.
Abby Morton:
Yeah.
Colton Etherton:
Give examples of what you’re actually talking about. ‘Cause I would run through like an example slide to actually show that in a real life situation, I think helps people…
Abby Morton:
Yeah. Totally.
Colton Etherton:
Understand. And I guess don’t, don’t be too upset if it’s only one or two people I mean, that could be a good practice run and…
Abby Morton:
Totally.
Colton Etherton:
You never know where that could lead.
Abby Morton:
I think that’s great. So where can people find you?
Colton Etherton:
Twitter is a big one. So the tattoo advisor, the advisor part is shortened. I can’t remember exactly how it is, but Twitter doesn’t let me have the full tattoo artist advisor handle. You can just type my name in Colton Etherton and I’ll, I’ll pop pull up. Uh, Instagram, the tattoo artist advisor @thetattooartistadvisor, they let me have my full handle.
Abby Morton:
Sweet.
Colton Etherton:
Those are the two I’m more active on. Otherwise, I mean, you can go LinkedIn, but I’m not there too much [laughter] so might be crickets for a while. [laughter]
Abby Morton:
Alright. Okay. Well, awesome. Thank you so much for having you on. I appreciate your advice and we look forward to talking to you again soon.
Colton Etherton:
Thanks, Abby.
Abby Morton:
Next time on Elementality.
Broc Buckles:
Like most advisors write like they’re talking to other advisors. Like I look through people’s content all the time and I’m confused like I’m an advisor and I’m confused by their content. Means the average person is gonna be confused by your content. And when I think of like the number one quality of a good professional financial advisor, whatever, is that you’re a teacher, right? I have to be able to take this high level complexity and bring it down to something that you totally understand why it applies to you, why you need to take that step, whatever. And so I think you have to do that through your content. If somebody sees it, it’s unrelatable, they don’t understand it they’re going to then link those two together and say, I can never work with that person ’cause I’m never going to, I’m never gonna be able to understand what they’re talking about.
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.