Jordan explores why financial professionals need to intentionally position themselves to avoid being mentally categorized alongside other financial specialists. Learn how to differentiate yourself through clear contrasts and category ownership, transforming from a commodity into a true decision-making partner who delivers cohesive, designed experiences for clients.

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Transcript

Jordan Haines:

Welcome friends to another episode of Elementality. My name is Jordan Haines, financial vital specialist and financial advisor here at Element, your host for today’s show. I wanna talk to you about naming things about labels. I’ve been thinking a lot about this for, I mean, honestly, most of my life, as many of you are well aware, I like to name things.

I think it’s important. And in fact, if you go back, ah, this would’ve been episode probably 2 0 6. I’ll go find that and make sure that I’m right on that. But it’s where we went through customer perceived value, specifically when we talked about, um, problem diagnosis. And one of the most important things that we can do in that problem diagnosis is name something.

We can name what they’re feeling right now for, so for example, one of the things that I often name is random acts of finance. When people feel chaotic, when they feel like they’re just reacting to things, I’ve labeled that random acts of finance, and I tell my prospects what that is. I tell my clients what that thing is, and what that does psychologically to them is it normalizes it.

It makes it feel like it’s a real thing. Something that can be treated, something that can be worked on. I feel the same way around how we label and name ourselves. As financial advisors, and that’s what I wanna talk to you all about today. I have struggled for a long time. I’ve been in this industry about a decade, which I know for many of you that’s not very long, but I.

I’m often asked what I do for a living. So we moved here to Boise, Idaho, on the outskirts of Boise, Idaho about three years ago. And I have met a lot of people while I’ve lived here, and very often people ask what I do for work. And I’ll be honest, I’ve really struggled to define what that is in a really short way.

And the reason I’ve struggled with this, and I’m sure many of you can relate, is financial advisor. Comes with a lot of baggage. Financial planner comes with a lot of baggage. Um, consultant comes with a lot of baggage. All of these things have some preconceived notion for who we are. The minute I use that word to describe who I am, these clients, these people that I’m talking to will bucket me or package me with some experience that they’ve had in their life that they’ll anchor to.

Financial advisor is so broad. So when I say financial advisor, they might think about the investment guy that their dad worked with when they were younger. They might think about the person who sold them insurance right after they graduated. Um, for me personally, for a lot of the prospects I work with who are business owners, when I say financial advisor, if they’ve never really had a.

Uh, comprehensive financial planner before, which I’ll talk about here in a second. Um, they most often will bucket me and categorize me with a retirement plan advisor, right? So someone that just manages their 401k, that’s been their experience. So when they hear financial advisor, that’s what they think about.

So the, these are all just examples of why I’ve really struggled. I. To label what it is that I do or what it is that we do here at Dentist Advisors. I’m gonna call the, the name of this thing positioning. Most companies, most larger companies are going to position themselves as a kind of a marketing exercise.

They are going to position themselves in the marketplace. What that means is basically they are, um, showing people where they fit. Into their lives, right? Where do we fit relative to other people? I think that’s the clear distinction. It’s not necessarily just defining what we do. It’s positioning ourselves relative to others, because we’re not going to dismiss people’s preconceived notions about what we are or what we do.

We need them to stay where they’re at, and we need to help them draw lines to what we do as a financial advisor. So let me tell you where this matters. In fact, if I were to go back and, and redo that series, that four part series, I would’ve had a fifth. Uh, the fifth p the fifth, um, component of client perceived value is positioning.

I. It’s where we fit in the minds of the consumers. Let me tell you what I have done lately that has been incredibly impactful for all of the conversations I’ve had, whether it’s more top of funnel, if I’m at an event or a dinner or something like that, when I’m talking to people, I can position myself really accurately there.

And also when I’m on a prospecting or first time consultation call, I can position myself and I do that pretty quickly. So let me go through my process really briefly, and I’ll describe how I position myself. And many of you might relate to this because I think we’re all very similar. So, as many of you know, I always start with just trying to understand what’s top of mind with people.

The, the purpose there is understand symptoms, then diagnose problems, and then attach a name to that problem. Um, the, the most common things that I’m finding for people, I label them as, you’re either going through financial puberty right now. Um, you have random acts of finance and you have decision to overload, and I’ll define what those are and I’ll make sure that we understand.

And after, you know, five, 10 minutes of just understanding that, I will immediately then lead into a conversation around us. I, I will ask them, okay, well, what do you wanna make sure we talk about today? And most often people say, I wanna understand what you do. Tell me more about that. So before I actually jump into what I do.

I will describe to them the solution that they’re looking for. Again, this is agnostic of me. This is not explaining them what I do, this is just explaining, Hey look, this is your problem. This is the solution you’re looking for. Now, when I describe what that treatment is, I have a little slide, uh, slide deck, and maybe I’ll see if I can share this here on our website.

The slide deck I use is labeled at the top. It says the treatment, your treatment is personal guidance, connecting all the areas of money. I have a little icon of a person in the middle, and then I have all of these different areas. You can take all the areas, um, that we address here in elements. Um, and I draw a line connecting each one of those areas to that person.

So for example, I have like liquidity and savings insurance, your practice, your business, retirement accounts, investments, real estate, so on and so forth. All of that connecting to the individual. And so it’s really clear in the minds of the person I’m talking to, that what they’re actually looking for is not a specialist.

They’re looking for someone to connect all someone or something to connect all the areas of their financial life, basically to satisfy what they actually want. That’s what they’re looking for. They’re looking for holistic. Personal guidance now here is where they can go for help. And this is where I position myself relative to other people.

And I think it matters that you are comparing here. I try to, and I’ve tried different variations of this and all of them have actually worked really well. Um, I have found the magic number to be three, so me compared to two other types of people. Um, and that, that has been really helpful. Let me run through what I talk about right now.

So I have another slide and at the title I say where to get help. Essentially, this is where you are going to go to. This is where I do the positioning, and I have three options here. The first says, do it yourself. And what I say here is, it’s good for dentists because I work with dentists who have the time, the interest, and the ability to research, build, and execute their own financial plan.

So I’m not discounting it. In fact, I’m saying this is actually a really good option if you have the time, the interest, and the ability. And in fact, at dentist advisors, we have a lot of content. Or you might have a content provider that you trust that you send people to. I have a little diagram or image at the top where it shows the dentist and an arrow leading to their element scorecard, basically, that says, look, here are all of the areas of finance.

You can do this yourself, certainly, and you just need to know where to trust. But let me tell you how you will opt into that. You need to have the time, the interest, and the ability I. Okay, that’s pretty obvious. The next option that I give for them is I label it financial specialist, and what I write here is that it’s good for dentists who want help with a single area of finance, including investments, insurance, taxes, et cetera.

I. And in this one I have an image of the dentist along with a financial professional and a straight line arrow drawn to one specific icon, which right now I have like taxes or insurance or something like that. And what I’m trying to do is, is help them understand that many financial advisors are really just financial specialists that do one thing really well.

And so this is where I talk about, this is kind of where I position myself. I tell them, look, financial advisors come in one of two forms. You have a comprehensive or holistic financial consultant. Which I’ll talk about in a second. Or you have a financial specialist. The difficulty with. Where you’re at right now is you are left trying to decide who is what.

Because in both situations, many are both calling themselves financial advisors. So how would I define what these are? And what I often use is the analogy of being a building contractor versus being a construction specialist. So I’ll often say in the, if you wanna build a home, you will hire a general contractor.

That general contractor is gonna find specialists that do a specific job really well. For example, my brother is a plumber. He’s really good at plumbing. He spends his entire day around other construction professionals, so he knows a lot about these other professionals and he has a working knowledge of what these other professionals will do.

But at the end of the day, he’s a plumber and he gets paid to do plumbing. He. What’s confusing though is that I can go to my brother and I can ask him questions about framing and drywall and windows and all sorts of things, and he will have opinions, and he’ll actually have probably a better working knowledge of that thing than I will.

The problem is, if I conflate what he does as a plumber or a specialist with a general contractor, well then I’m gonna be struggling because I’m not going to be solving for that original problem I need, which is I need someone to help me build an entire home, not just work on my plumbing. Right. So that’s a, a good way of how I’ve described the difference between a financial specialist and then the third option that I have listed on the slide, a holistic advisor, and that’s where I have written down.

This is great for dentists who want strategic guidance on all the areas of their financial life and help coordinating. With other needed financial specialists. So essentially what I’ve done is I’ve differentiated myself, I’ve, I’ve positioned myself against other financial advisors, and I’ll give examples.

An accountant or a CPA, someone who prepares your taxes is a financial specialist. They might have ideas or thoughts around your holistic financial life, but that’s not their focus. Their focus is your taxes. An insurance agent might be a financial specialist, and they might have a lot of opinions and ideas and a good working knowledge of other areas of financial life, but at the end of the day.

They’re an insurance agent. I’ll say an investment advisor might have a lot of working knowledge of how to build wealth and think about building for retirement, things like that. But at the end of the day, they are really just focused on your investment performance, what you are looking for as a holistic financial consultant, and that’s how we define ourselves here at Dentist Advisors.

We are holistic consultants that help navigate all the areas of your financial life. And then find the right needed financial specialists or find the areas that you need to do yourself, and we are going to help build the life that makes the most sense for you. Just the same way a general contractor is going to help you build your dream home.

The reason I think this matters now, I, I have dismissed this a lot in the past and I’ve already talked a lot about why I think this matters. But I think this matters because clients need to have some sort of an understanding of who we are. In fact, when I do this, this is where so many questions come into play.

We, we actually did, um, I was out in Virginia last week. We were doing a workshop. I was with our, uh, managing partner, Matt MoCo, and we were doing a workshop with a group of about 30 or 40 dentists. Um, and we started by talking about these three options. You can do it yourself. You can hire a financial specialist or you can work with a holistic financial advisor or a financial planner, whatever you want to use.

And let me define what these are, and this is where people started asking us questions about payments and fee structures. And, oh, you know, I was talking to this guy and tell me how you would bucket them. It gave me the opportunity to kind of zoom out and say, Hey, look, I’m gonna teach you a little bit about our industry.

I’m gonna help you understand where we fit and how we fit relative to your experience with other financial professionals in the past, and that essentially clears up space now for me to now offer a solution because again, I’ve identified what their problem is. I’ve shown them what they’re actually looking for, and I’ve shown them the P type of people that can give them what they’re looking for.

Now I can show them my unique service. This needs to be done because. I can go. If I have a car problem and I go to someone and they say, Hey, look, I have a service for you. I can fix your car problems, but then I find out after the fact that they’re actually just a bicycle manufacturer or something like that.

Well, yeah, maybe they’re really smart with cars and they know my engine in and out. They might know the make and model of my car really well. They know what to do immediately. I’m questioning, are you actually an expert in this thing? Can you actually solve my problem? So it needs to be really clear in my mind, their position in the marketplace.

So there you have it, folks. Um, I think this is a really valuable part of a sales process and frankly, just any sort of introductory process. If your clients can position you in their minds, you’ll have a better chance of, uh, cutting through all the noise to actually present a solution that makes sense if you don’t do this, I have found personally, if I don’t do this early and often.

Then it’s really hard for me to present a solution that makes sense to these, uh, prospects, these clients, you can name yourself, whatever you want. For me, what’s worked for us is a holistic financial consultant. I don’t even use the word advisor. And the reason that works is because in the minds of the consumers that I work with, they’ve hired consultants for their practice and they know what a consultant does, and so I can then draw on that anchoring and say, that’s what we are.

Name yourself, whatever you want. Right. I think, um, I was listening to Matt Jarvis’s book, uh, a couple months ago, and he goes through his prospecting or his networking, um, experience, and when he tells people what he does, he says, I’m a consultant or a personal consultant. And that works really well to open the door to then define what that means, right?

So whatever that works for you. I think that’s great, but position yourself in the minds of your consumer. Have two to three options that you can compare yourself against so that they can get really clear and don’t rule out, don’t dismiss those other areas. Those are all appropriate. Just have a really clear playbook.

Know what the formula is, when does it make the most sense? To work with someone like you, and that’s gonna clear the way for you to then present your service and have a really awesome conversation. With that, everyone, let me 📍 know if you have any questions. You can find me on LinkedIn, Jordan Haynes, H-A-I-N-E-S, or you can email us here at Elements at podcast@gielements.com without everyone.

We’ll see you next week.