EP 65 | The Pillars of Relationship-Building with Luke Acree

Luke Acree  09:02

Yeah, we have over 120 people on the phone selling all day long.

 

David DeCelle  09:06

Which is bananas to me, and it must be a lot to, call it, organize and develop and get them to a point to where they're making good money themselves, and of course, are profitable to the company. So I know you run at least weekly meetings or Monday morning meetings, doing roleplay. I see all that stuff on social media. So help me understand some of the things that you needed to do to get to the point to where you could actually manage all these people. That way I can relate that back to advisors who are looking to grow as well.

 

Luke Acree  09:38

It's so funny, it's timely. I was on a phone call today with an another entrepreneur. He has a marketing company and he wanted to pick my brain about scaling his sales organization. And the question he asked me was, what's one of the number one things that you implemented that you really attribute to being success for you or driving the success? And I told him, I said, it's a tough question to sum up into one thing, but some of the things is like standards of accountability are most important for any sales team and any organization. Having the standard and setting what the goal is. So example would be my sales team; they have to be on the phone four hours a day or do 200 dials or close four new accounts. So one of those things has to happen. And in my early years, I didn't hold people — because I don't know if it's I bought the excuses, or if I wasn't sure myself, but I didn't hold to a standard. Like, no, no, no, this is the minimum KPIs that you must hit every single day. And what happens is when you enforce KPIs, when you have these key metrics that you're judging people to, and you have standards, it actually produces freedom. Maybe we'll talk about this with Extreme Ownership, right, from a principle standpoint, but it actually produces clarity and freedom for people. When you allow it to be from a system standpoint, kind of wishy washy, willy nilly, like I'm not positive, let's try something. All of a sudden, things just start crumbling versus sticking to the standard and holding people to that standard, even if you have to lose people. That was a huge lesson, a huge piece of driving results for us, as we scale. It’s just everything has to be a process. Everything has to be a system. And we have to know that math equation, because business is just math, in my opinion.

 

David DeCelle  11:20

I like that a lot. Where my mind goes when you're saying that is I help advisors and firms implement a particular process that I've learned that I suggest that they implement. Have you ever heard of traction and the EOS system?

 

11:33

Yeah, I think someone sent me a book. Is it the same thing where the book comes from? Or does it come out of that book?

 

David DeCelle  11:39

Yeah. So the book is called Traction; the company and the system is called EOS. And what I really like about it is, I feel like it's perhaps a little bit different from what you just said, but it rhymes, so to speak. So what I mean by that is, what they do is you figure out, hey, what's our 10 year vision, and what does that look like? What's our three year vision, and that three year vision needs to be in alignment with putting you on pace for that 10 year vision. And you do the same thing with a one year vision. And then ultimately, to get to that one year vision, what you do is you identify what they call quarterly rocks. So those quarterly rocks are things that you and the team is going to do to ultimately get you to that one year vision. And then what you do with those quarterly rocks after you divvy up who's responsible for it, and obviously, there'll be done by the end of the quarter, is you meet on a weekly basis, what they call level 10 meetings. And we actually have a whole blog on this. So if you want to learn more in a more digestible way, you can go to our website, ModelFA.com and check out that blog. I'd also highly suggest that you get the book as well. So with that being said, in those, what they call level 10 meetings, you're basically getting status updates on those quarterly rocks, and identifying what issues are getting in the way so that you can solve them on a weekly basis, as opposed to realizing at the end of the quarter that because something got in the way you weren't able to do it. So it just gives you a lot of, as you put it, accountability around certain actions that needs to happen to ultimately fulfill that vision from a business perspective, as well as on a personal basis, for the various stakeholders involved. So all that to say, I 100% agree with accountability, and I think it helps a lot with setting expectations. And to your point, I view accountability, even on the micro scale as the time I wake up and the routine that I have. And as you know, when you have that regimented routine, people think is rigid, but it actually does create that freedom and peace of mind.

 

Luke Acree  13:29

And all top producers want it. That's what I have found is that if you want an organization full of top producers, if you want your, even your administrative assistant to be a top producer, you want your sales employee to be a top producer, people who rebel against systems of accountability a lot of times — now, of course, there's leadership involved, and you got to help people grow — but a lot of times it's they're not a top producer. Because the Tom Brady's of the world, they want accountability. I mean, the man measures his water intake, his sleep, all that stuff, and you study any of the greats they want it. They want a coach, they want accountability, because they know it's an improvement of what they're trying to do. And one of the deaths of organizations, and this has been a struggle for our organization, as well as anybody's, is that you tend to hire people for technical skills, not people who have a buy into the vision at a fundamental level. And what I've been committed to doing is going, I do not want to hire an accountant, I want to hire somebody who wants to help people live a life of freedom, specifically entrepreneurs, because that's our vision — to empower people to live a life of freedom — and I want them to use their technical skill set of accounting to do that. Now that's a subtle difference but it's an everything difference, because if you fill your organization with technically skilled people, but they're not bought into the ultimate vision, your company is going to die. That's my belief is your company will die.

 

David DeCelle  14:43

Yeah, I agree. I think you hire for those sort of intangible qualities and you can teach everything else if they're willing to learn and, the philosophy, I heard this quote a while ago. I’m drawing a blank on who it was from, but be slow to hire, quick to fire. So take your time in making sure that you find the right person, and then if you realize that they're not the right person, cut bait right away. So before we get into the marketing and the relationship building components of the conversation, I don't want to make an assumption that people know who ReminderMedia is and what you guys actually do. So I know you work in a multitude of different verticals, but help me understand specifically with financial advisors. How does ReminderMedia support advisors?

 

Luke Acree  15:24

Yeah, great question. So if you are an advisor, that is trying to keep in touch with your clients, create an incredible client experience, which I know every advisor listening to this is. So you're trying to keep in touch in a way that's effective to create raving fans that refer you and give you repeat business. That's really where we step in. So most advisors, the pain point for them is they know they have to follow up. They know they have to keep in touch. The question is not should you, it's just how? How do you do it the most effectively? And what happens to most advisors is when you look at their marketing that they send, it's all transactional driven, or me driven, i.e., here's my product/services that I can offer you, here's what's happening in your portfolio, and it doesn't really help the relationship. And this is why you see these statistics, we don't have to bore people with them, but 70% of widows are moving their account within two to ten months after the husband passes away. Two percent of children keep their parents’ financial advisor. Why? Not because the advisor did a bad job at the transaction, it's the advisor did a bad job at the relationship driven touchpoints to help them build relationships with the spouse, with the kids. We provide high quality touch points that are automated, that are lifestyle, that are relationship driven. And we do that for advisors. And the result is better relationships with spouses, better relationships with the people who are going to inherit the money, and better referral generation, because we're going to help you connect those dots. And there's a myriad of ways we do it, like you mentioned, through social, digital, print, but that's really the concept there.

 

David DeCelle  16:54

I like that a lot. Because I think when advisors try to add value to the people that they serve, or that they're trying to serve, and they try to create content around doing just that, they lean more into content that's related to what they get paid to do. And on a Tuesday morning, people may not want to tune in to something that's talking about a Roth conversion, or something related to financial planning. And what you're saying is that you guys help with more of that lifestyle-oriented stuff, which I'm a big believer in, because if you can, hypothetically, let's say, there's a client or prospect who's considering working with two different advisors. And, one advisor is either only talking about financial planning stuff, or perhaps not talking about anything at all, because that's very likely, as well. And the other advisor has some value around financial planning, but then also speaks to the things that they're passionate about. It gives the client an opportunity to latch on to something outside of financial planning that they can relate to that advisor with, and they're more likely to then end up working with that advisor that they can actually relate to, because there's a trust and the credibility factor. But there's also a likability factor, as well, that can be accomplished through some of this more lifestyle-oriented content marketing.

 

Luke Acree  18:27

Yeah, and when pain points arise, like a pandemic, and the market, now the market’s been good, but the market like tanks, right, the thing that holds a client with you is the trust that you have with them, is the relationship that they have with you. And what people don't understand is that like, look, there are apps out there that I can invest my money on. There's so much content that's for free. So what you're really are, your name I,s you're an advisor; and to be an advisor, you got to get me to like you, to know you, to trust you, all those things that we all know. And we underestimate that most business is done because — I'll take my financial advisor, for example, how he wanted me over is his wife works with my wife as teachers. We started going out, having beers, talking, all that stuff, and we built a relationship. Which then, I built the trust enough to give him some of my assets to manage. And he's earned my business and I stay with him because of the trust I have at a fundamental level, not even, I don't even know his credentials, all his credentials. I'm looking at my portfolio, he can't bomb there. But the reality is, is that it's more based upon just the relationship I have with him.

 

David DeCelle  19:16

For sure. So I know that you have a handful of different ways in which you can help advisors and how you think about marketing. So there's a lot of people out there that say, hey, digital is the way to go. Digital is the way to go; attention is everything. And if they're on their phones all the time, get on their phones and provide value. Give them the opportunity to get to know you. I think oftentimes, too, where advisors dropped the ball is they'll give folks the opportunity to get to know them, but they won't interact or engage at all, and they're just like throwing stuff out there but they're not virtually shaking hands and having conversations and being supportive; and therefore people are not getting the opportunity to get to know each other, so it's a one sided type of relationship. So with that being said, I would imagine that the bulk of your revenue and the majority of what you help folks with is specifically print. And the magazine that you developed, that's a lifestyle oriented magazine that features the advisor on the magazine. And where my mind goes, it's like, I thought print was dead.

 

Luke Acree  20:15

Yes.

 

David DeCelle  20:16

And I thought that people don't really engage with that anymore. But obviously, that's not the case, considering that if it wasn't working, people would not continue to re-up on it. But I do know that you have some stats on this as well, because you guys do an excellent job with tracking these KPIs, not just from a sales standpoint for your company, but with the folks that you're serving as well. So do me a favor and defend the print strategy as it relates to marketing for those folks who may think that print is dead.

 

Luke Acree  20:47

Yeah. So I think it's great question. It's actually the number one question I tend to get from peers and businesses. How are you in the print, majority print, business when print is dying? And aren’t you worried that you'll be extinct in a couple of years? And we're actually seeing a rise in print. So if you think of marketing, the problem with marketing is marketers get ahold of something, and they destroy it because they overwhelm it. You see this in everything, look at email and people; the amount of emails people get. Look at social right now, it gets harder and harder to stand out, because there's so much noise. So as print has definitely gone down, it's actually opened it up to where it's more unique. I mean, think of a personal letter that you get. Everybody opens up personal letter, everybody opens up a FedEx package. Print, cheap print, done poorly is not a good concept. But high quality print is on the rise. So you mentioned one of our flagship products is a 48-page coffee table publication. Think of like an Architectural Digest, a Forbes magazine, super high quality. We brand the advisor on it; it's more for the enjoyment of the client that they're sending it to. We track the statistics on there, and we see an average shelf life of four weeks. So think about that in comparison to an email. Think about that in comparison to an Instagram post, a LinkedIn post. So we see an average shelf life of four weeks from a branding perspective; we see a read time on average of 44 minutes. Now, when people hear 44 minutes they don't think very much, but I always give the comparison, think Seinfeld on TV because I'm a Seinfeld fan. The average Seinfeld sitcom without commercials is 18 minutes long. So they're spending two Seinfeld's worth the time with your brand. All these things for any of the marketers listening, no, wow, man, that's a lot of shelf life and brand equity that you're building. But that's not really the reason why the print has worked insanely well for us, even though those things happen. It's worked insanely well because people perceive the magazine as a gift. They perceive it as something of quality, just like they perceive a personal handwritten note as something of high value, just like you received that FedEx package, and you open every single one. Because you perceive something of value. That's the key to marketing, whether you're doing social media marketing, email marketing, ads on the internet, print marketing, it's what's the impact? And that's a key word for people to understand that impact is usually driven by two things. It's driven by quality; so, the quality of the piece; and it's driven by personalization. And what we've capitalized with our print marketing is we're taking advantage of a way to give an impact to a consumer, to a client, that's actual physically in their hands. So it feels even different because there's the physical aspect of the marketing piece. And because it's such high quality, people perceive it as a gift, they don't throw it away, and it triggers what's called, kind of psychology, the norm of reciprocity. So when I give a gift to you, man, you're gonna want to reciprocate back to me. And so the magazine from a print standpoint has really done that. Now you can look on all the stats on like usps.com and stuff. Print is on the rise. So open rates for print, or people actually going to their mailbox is on the rise, people appreciating print, how long they hang on to it, all of that's on the rise. That I don't play into as much as a defensive print; I see that more as a every other marketing avenues getting so much noise, that print is opening up an opportunity to shine. But print that's done well, that's high quality, you can knock it out of the park. We see a 58% referral rate on average over the course of 12 months. So how is that determined? We have a media research firm, that's third party; they go and they survey the recipients of the magazine. So not the adviser that’s sending it but the actual recipients and they ask them the question, have you referred your business professional that sends you the magazine in the last 12 months? And 58% said yes, so that's actually up from three years ago where it was 38%. I don't sell the magazine on those statistics. What I do is I encourage advisors to go there is gold in your database right now. 58% are saying they're willing to refer you, they are referring you, are you capturing those referrals? You've got to go get them, and what the magazine allows you to do is it allows you a perfect opportunity to call your clients because you just sent them a gift and now you can have a conversation. Use that conversation then to turn it into the ability to see what's going on in their life, to see if there's a referral opportunity for you.

 

Patrick Brewer  25:05

Hey, Model FAs, I know you're enjoying this conversation. But I wanted to take a quick break to talk to you about the Model FA Accelerator. This is a unique collaboration between us and you, where we help you build a financial advising practice that you can be proud of. We focus on the foundational concepts around how to pick a niche or a specialization, how to price your services, how to construct an offer that people are going to buy, and then how to market it and sell it in a way that will get people to sign on the dotted line and become clients of your firm, all while giving you the information to scale, and set up workflows and operational processes that will allow you to reclaim your time and build a practice that doesn't run you. So if you'd like to hear more about that, go to www.ModelFA.com/accelerator or www.ModelFA.com. Hover over Work With Us and click on Accelerator. Hope to see you in the program.

 

David DeCelle  25:55

There's a lot there, I want to unpack some of this stuff. So I think that the magazine is not like an end all be all; I think marketing is a multifaceted approach, and that's a portion of marketing. I'll tie this together, hopefully nicely, in a moment, where you have print with the magazine, I feel like the only thing that does beyond just adding value because more of a lifestyle-oriented magazine, it’s read for enjoyment; but also suddenly edifies you as the advisor because your face is on a legit magazine. So I think it helps with credibility and elevates you, builds some additional clout. I think that when you do that in tandem with a social strategy, email strategy, and in person strategy, it's the idea that trust is not simply based on elapsed time, but trust is based on the accumulation of experiences that someone has with you. So for example, if you have 50 touch points with someone over a five year period, 10 touch points a year over five years, or you have 50 touch points with someone over a 12 month period, I go as far as to say that they're gonna feel the same way about you after that 50th touch point, whether that is after a year or after five years. And obviously the time is a lot different, but their experience is actually pretty much the same. So if you can consolidate these experiences, you speed up your sales cycle, you speed up your relationship building, and in turn, your business grows and you're able to help and serve more people. It's also interesting to me that, you bring up a good point, like how long do they spend on your piece of content on Instagram, or Facebook, or LinkedIn compared to, someone sent me a book, and you can't see it right now, but someone sent me a book that I read a while ago. And now it's in my stack of books right underneath my little bamboo plant right here, and I look at it every day. That same person that sent me a book sent me a hat. I wore hats while growing up, and I hadn't worn a hat since I graduated college. And now since you sent me that hat, I was like, oh, this kind of looks good on me. So now I've been wearing that hat every single day when I'm at the gym and out and about and things like that. So it's, to your point, gifts do go a long way. And this is something that is a gift that in turn also edifies you.

 

Luke Acree  28:13

Correct. It’s an impression piece. It makes you look more impressive. I'll tell you, I'll share with you the framework. I've been sharing this with people recently because we put it into kind of a digestible acronym called FIT. But over the 18 years of us being at marketing, working with over 100,000 businesses in that timeframe, we've learned that there's really three elements you have to have for your marketing in order for it to really be effective to produce referrals, repeat business, and new business. And we boiled it down, we didn't have it at first, but over time, we boiled it down into this acronym called FIT. And it's corny, but it's very rememberable; meaning like if your marketing is out of shape, if it's not producing the results that you want, you got to get in shape, you got to get it fit. So what does FIT stands for? It stands for Frequency, Impact, and Trust. And those are the three elements that must be in your marketing. We specifically chose frequency because it has two meanings, and it ties into what you just said. You need to be frequently in front of people; there's a couple rules out there that you can follow for a new prospect. There's this old rule of marketing called the rule of seven, and what it states is that you need to get your brand in front of that new client at least seven times in order for your brand even to become memorable. So when you meet a new prospect, when you're trying to develop a relationship, how do you touch them seven times within a short period of time, maybe over the course of seven weeks, in order to get your brand to be memorable? But then when you think of frequency, it's not just about how often you're in front of people, it's also the frequency of communication. And the example that's so obvious to us is the radio it maybe — David, you like country music or are you anti country?

 

David DeCelle  29:42

I like country during the summer when it makes sense, but now that I'm in Florida, yeah, I can listen to country all year.

 

Luke Acree  29:48

OK, so you got David liking country and maybe I like classical. It's different frequency channels, right? I gotta go find the frequency that I like of the music I like. Your clients are very similar. They don't want you to communicate to them on your frequency; they want you to communicate to them on their frequency. So you, from a marketing standpoint, need to try to be on as many frequencies as you can do well. So maybe you have video, maybe you have email marketing going, maybe you have print marketing going; all these different frequencies, you'll naturally see how your clients like to communicate. Maybe it's face to face; maybe some of your clients they love dealing with you face to face, and that's the frequency level that they tend to get attracted to and they tend to communicate. Then it plays into, hey, look, the reason why I listed three is because you can't just have one element and be successful. You can be frequent with junk and get the wrong outcome. So you got to be frequent, but with impact. Impact we talked about; it's quality, it's personalization, like Facebook and Google have really figured this out. So they use data to literally track everything you do; their tracking and they store it and then they serve up to you, what? Really relevant, personal advertising that creates impact because it gets your attention because it's very relevant to you. So you need to try to do that in your marketing. How do I become more personalized? How do I make sure I deliver something that my client actually wants to receive? We interviewed a guy on our podcast at SEI and I love the way he said it. He goes, most advisors market to their database based upon what they want to receive out of their database. Why not flip that on its head and go, let me market to my database based upon what my clients want to receive from me? So when you segment your list, instead of segmenting it based upon what you want, which is valuable, do also a segmentation based upon what you think your client wants. And that will just shift the dynamic of your marketing. And then trust, which is the last letter in the acronym, is the most important because you can be frequent with impact and become best friends, and never get that person to do business with you. So you need to turn them from not only a best friend, but someone who wants to do business, and that's where you have to brand yourself as the business of trust. I call it the Smee, the subject matter expert. So when it comes to marketing, I want to be known as the Smee, that there's no one who knows more about marketing, there's no better subject matter expert than Luke Acree. And if I need something in marketing, I'm going to go to Luke. You, as an advisor, whatever your specialty is, you need to be trying to figure out a way in your marketing to showcase that you're also the Smee of your specialty. And, really, this framework, this is why the magazine — we use it as an example — has worked so well. It's frequent, because it's a subscription, but it also can be done both digitally and in print. So you can send it through text, you can send it through email, you can put it on your social media, you can put it on people's coffee table, you can hand it out at seminars, when you're face to face or you're meeting a client for the first time. It allows you to do a bunch of different frequencies. It's impactful because, guess what, it's high quality, coffee table, but it's also personalized. You can write a letter to the people that you're sending it to. You could put a picture of them in their magazine. So a lot of creative ideas to make it impactful. But it also gives you the ability to build trust. So like on the back cover of the magazine, maybe you put an educational piece of content showcasing here's the top three things you need to know if you're looking to invest in XYZ, or here's a three piece of advice that you tend to give to people post pandemic that's happened. Whatever it is, you can build your credibility by featuring that on your magazine, and that's really why it's been successful. But think about your podcast right now, man. Your podcast is doing this framework. It’s frequent, because how often does this come out?

 

David DeCelle

Once a week.

 

Luke Acree

So once a week, you're frequently out. It's impactful, because you're bringing super high quality content, well, I hope — we'll judge after this episode. You're bringing super high quality content, great guest on that's really relevant to the audience, so it's very impactful to them. And then it builds trust — why? Because it positions you, David, as a credible authority when it comes to helping advisors grow their business, and they're gonna start seeing you more and more and more as an authority. So you're literally in practice in this podcast, which is just one medium of marketing, practicing the FIT framework.

 

David DeCelle  33:59

I like that a lot, and I feel like there's a lot of advisors out there whose marketing is out of shape, so to speak. And then you bring up an interesting point about rather than providing content or communication to get you the result that you the professional wants, it's more so giving folks what they want. And then an advisor may think to themselves, well, how the heck do I know what they want? So I think one idea that I have, I'd be curious to know if there's anything else on your end in regards to this, but when you're connected with your clients and prospects on the various social platforms, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Social media leaves clues if you're paying attention, so you know if their kid just graduated; you know if they just bought a house; you know if they just got a new dog; you know if someone just recently passed away in their family. There's so many different opportunities; you know when their birthday is, right? So there's so many different opportunities to be able to personalize a particular experience for these folks. Just the other day I called someone who is no longer a client, because I used to be an advisor and worked with him, and now I'm not, but we've remained friends. So I called him, it was his birthday, I called him at like 7:30 in the morning, and he's like, you know, you've called me every day, or excuse me, every year on my birthday, and you've been the first person to call me even when we aren't doing business together, like, I really appreciate our friendship. And I try and do that with everyone whose number I have. If not, I'll actually send a well thought out message on social media, as opposed to like HBD and take the lazy route. So I think that my point of bringing that up is if you are paying attention with your eyes and ears on the various social platforms, and if you're doing a great job when you're actually interacting with someone, utilizing your two ears and one mouth proportionately, then you can ask really great questions to uncover things that they're passionate about. And I think a great way to advance a relationship, and I want to pivot slightly to advancing relationships and overall relationship building, I think such an easy way to build a relationship is to add a PS to your email, that's something totally unrelated to the reason why you're emailing them in the first place, and very much related to what's going on in their life. Whether it's, you know they love to cook, so you share a recipe; or you know they're into a certain topic, so you send them a link to a book or a podcast. Really anything like that, that's lightweight, I think the PS section is so impactful if you're utilizing that correctly. I think too, we use a service called Loom, L-O-O-M, loom.com, and it's a super lightweight, easy way to do a personal video for someone. So imagine instead of just shooting them a long, drawn out email as a recap to your meeting, but instead you do a screen share with the plan. Maybe perhaps the spouse wasn't there, and you want to make sure that they're on the same page, and they have a voice as well. So you shoot a video screen share of the plan, you summarize the conversation in a three, four, or five minute video, that's a way better experience for relationship building than it is just attaching it and saying, hey, great meeting, here's the document that we went through, talk to you soon. It humanizes it a hell of a lot more. So with that being said, what are some relationship building principles, Luke, that you do, that you suggest that your team does? Because ultimately, people do business with folks who they know, like, and trust, and relationship building is how you actually get there.

 

Luke Acree  37:19

Yeah, no, I think man, the PS one I've never heard before. I thought that that was amazing, man, I'm gonna have to implement that. On your social media one, Facebook has the ability to build lists. So just a hack for you, when you get on your Facebook page, I think it's the left hand side, if you look at the menu, depending on what Facebook you're on. But if you look at the left hand side, there's this list feature, and you can put your friends into different lists. So you can literally find your clients and put them into client list, past client list, prospect list, and you can go to that list and very quickly see what's going on in their life. It allows you to engage with your different lists, so it's a hack —

 

David DeCelle

Yeah, mind is blown. I didn't know you could — now what what's the purpose of that list? Can you communicate directly with that list for stuff? How do you actually use that?

 

Luke Acree

The way I use it, I'm sure there's more features to it, the way I use it is based upon, I want to quickly be able to go see what's going on in the life of all my current clients or all my high valued clients. I want to see what's going on within the life of all my prospects, much like you said, vacation, birth, graduation, purchasing of a home, whatever they're doing, a lot of times they're posting about, and use that as a way to trigger conversation. Okay, that's a lot of how I use it.

 

David DeCelle  38:28

Well, that's a nice little trade. You take the PS thing that I mentioned, I'm going to take the Facebook thing that you just — my mind is blown, I had no idea you could do that. And I think oftentimes people struggle with, my feed is just filled with family members, sharing political stuff to dog and cat videos to recipes and the clients get drawn out. But if I'm hearing you correctly, not only can you segment the list of folks who you're connected to on that platform, but you can then filter to only see the things that they're posting about and doing.

 

Luke Acree  39:00

There you go. Groups are also powerful to do it, too. Start a Facebook group for like prospects, things like that. I wouldn't say prospects, I’d say clients, whatever your value can be. You can start a group and groups are another way to get involved in from a social standpoint. The framework I always use for client interaction, and the action item I would give to everybody, is look at your client database right now, each name. So maybe David and Luke are in your client list, and ask yourself, do you know the FORD methodology on David and Luke. FORD stands for family, occupation, recreation, and dreams. Do you know Luke is married to a wife named Megan, that they just said their first little girl Evelyn; that's what's going on in Luke's family. Do you know his occupation, that he works with ReminderMedia, what he's trying to accomplish here? Do you know his recreation, his dreams, that he's involved in his church, that he plays music? And do you know the dreams that he's trying to obtain? You as an advisor are such a component of helping someone achieve their dreams: where they want to live, what they want to do in retirement, all these things that you guys are specialists at, you help them with that. You might not know every one of the pillars on your clients, but your goal should be to. So in your conversations, what should you talk about? Find out what's going on in the family, find out what's happening at their work, find out what's happening in their recreational stuff, find out what's happening with their dreams. That gives you a framework to work inside that really can help then translate to your marketing, could translate to any of those things that you're trying to accomplish. Trying to think, like another hack that I've been giving people with social lately is, the hardest part about social is the algorithms don't favor your content anymore, especially on Instagram and Facebook, and especially if you have a business page. And so the key to influencing the algorithm but also using social to build relationships is social was made to be social. So you have to engage, and the idea here, try this the next time you post on Instagram, for all the people on Instagram. Next time you post, spend five minutes and go engage with other people's posts; on the story, swipe up, comment on their story, do those things. Don't just be a serial liker, where you’re just going like, like, like, like, like. That won't get you as much. Comment, try to use at least four words in your comment, not just awesome, emoji. Try to use four words because it influences the algorithm to really go, okay, David and Luke actually have a relationship. And now I'm more likely to see David's content the next time he posts if we're engaging. If you look at it, the algorithm in Instagram and stuff like that is looking to go, let me show David the people that he actually engages with. This is why you always see, tend to see, the same people if you're engaging with their stories, even though you might be friends with a thousand people on Instagram. It's because it wants to show your content and show you content that it thinks you want. And the same applies for that person. So try to use it to engage: comment, like, DM, personal message is awesome. So if you're on Facebook, and you find a piece of content, like a workout tip, so I know David's on 75 hard, if I find a workout tip, go and private message him on Facebook or Instagram that tip. That will help not only my relationship with David, because it's personal, but it'll help also the algorithm; now David will see more of my content.

 

David DeCelle  42:04

I love it. There's been a number of acronyms shared on this show. So moving forward, I'm going to coin them as this and I think you should coined it as this as Acree’s Acronyms.

 

Luke Acree

You know what I found over the years of just working with people, it's like, if you can boil it down into something memorable, they're way more likely to be able to take action on it. So try to.

 

David DeCelle

I agree, I think too, I mean, there's value in whatever your processes as a financial adviser, if you can break that down to an acronym and have it be like, as you shared, obviously different, but have it be the FIT process or the FIT methodology or something that people can speak to when you're not there as a differentiator, I think has a lot of legs behind it as well.

 

Luke Acree  42:48

The key is, though, ultimately with relationship building is you have to personally be invested in it, you can't automate yourself out of the relationship. And I think the struggle with marketers is, it's all about automation, right? You want to set up nurture campaigns, you want to make them as personal as possible, but you got to really realize that you have to have some investment into that relationship for it to really pay dividends; because people know mass blast, they know when things are automated. And so a simple hack, this Memorial Day, pull out your phone, do what David said. Shoot a personal video to all of your core clients of hey, just want to wish you a happy Memorial Day, whatever the weather is, whatever you know about them, put that in the video, and shoot that to them. Shoot that to your top five people. That little investment, using a holiday to do, it is, I mean will pay huge dividends for you.

 

David DeCelle  43:38

So before we switch over to one your most recent favorite books, which is one of mine, as well, I do also want to give not only you, but your team, a couple shout outs. So your content team, your podcast team, not only did I have an opportunity to meet them in person, but I get to see the content that they're creating on, quite frankly, an everyday basis. And I just think that they are frickin’ awesome dude. And you have an extremely solid team that is creative and consistent and engaging. And I think that's truly a blessing. And as a result of some of the stuff that they do, so one thing that ReminderMedia does, which I think is just frickin’ awesome is, every now and again, you'll post a screensaver on your Instagram story. And essentially you hold down the story so it gets rid of the stuff around it, the Send Message portion and who posted it, whatever, so it's just the picture; and then you just screenshot it and you put it on your phone. And what's cool is it's nothing advertising-like, it's just something that people can attach to. I forget when exactly it was posted, but there was one that was posted that just had a cool kind of marble background and it had a cursive “fearless” across the middle, and I was like oh, that really resonated with me. So I grabbed it, I screenshot it, I added it to my lock screen on my iPhone, and I want to say I've had that on my phone for over a year. So every single day, I would think about you for at least a micro moment, every time I opened up my phone, which I think is really cool. And then more recently, just the other day actually, you had another one put out that said “take action”. And I was like, you know what, it's probably time for me to change my background on my phone. So you guys have successfully been in front of me every single day, not just with your content, but even on my lock screen on my phone with the wallpapers that you put out there. So an idea that can be borrowed from folks who are listening to this, if you have a creative team, or you're creative yourself, or you can outsource this, create some wallpapers that people can use for their phone. Then there's just that subtle reminder on a daily basis, multiple times a day, every time they pick up their phone. So thanks for occupying my phone for a couple of years.

 

Luke Acree  45:50

Yeah, I mean, the team, I got to give all credit to the team. The team is unbelievable. And what I love about that, too, is that it's like, it's not a big thing, right? It's a small thing. It's not a game changer from the standpoint of oh my goodness, you're going to create a screensaver that's going to blow up your business and blow up your lead generation.

 

David DeCelle 

But it’s part of the multifaceted approach with everything else.

 

Luke Acree 

Exactly. It's a small step in the right direction, 1% better, and in the end, also, you get 100% better results.

 

David DeCelle  46:18

Love it. So pivot towards the book that you want to discuss. And for those of you who are listening, as a reminder, what we do with all of our guests is we try and figure out a book that's had a big impact on them for a couple reasons, a few reasons. One is that we want to be able to share a snippet of value from that book. Number two, I want to be able to promote learning in our industry outside of the financial planning walls that we find ourselves in often. And then third, selfishly, I want to build up my reading list. This one I happen to have already consumed, so maybe after the podcast, Luke, you can send me a few of your recent reads that you've had, and I'll check those out, too. But so the book is by Jocko, who is an insane human being in all good ways, and his book Extreme Ownership, which is a book that I read I want to say a year or two ago, and it just always stuck with me. I've always tried my best to refer it to people who I think could take more ownership with their current situation, but tell me why you pick that book.

 

Luke Acree  47:16

Um, it's so hard to choose a favorite book. I've read, obviously, a lot and some I think impact you at different times. I picked this one specifically is because we had Jocko come and speak to our company. And, that made me obviously read the book again, and just the idea that, one of the things that really stuck out to me is that there's no bad teams, there's only bad leaders. And even to hear that, as a leader is kind of like you, immediately my reaction is like, well, I've had some teams type idea. But the concept of you taking ownership all the way down to, not at just the macro, but the micro level of everything you do. It is your fault. And this principle of like checking your ego, and those who can control their ego can control their life, and the balance, the dichotomy there. Because I know he talks a lot about the dichotomy of leadership, and I talked about this to him before he was speaking to our company of like, it's so hard because you have to have an ego to be able to accomplish anything. You have to literally, for me to step out in faith, I have to be so confident in what I'm doing. But I have to balance that and get my ego in check, so it's like this natural, almost like pull and dichotomy that affects leaders all the time. It's just really resonating with me. And then the success of my whole organization to go from 55 million to 250 million is all about leadership. It's just, how do I produce leaders? How do I become a better leader myself? How do I understand what leadership is, deeper level? So I think that's why it's resonated with me a ton right now.

 

David DeCelle  48:46

Yeah, I like it a lot, too. And it's the idea, and Gary Vaynerchuk speaks to this too, where as a leader in the firm, regardless of what happens, it's all your fault. So you can't be passing the blame. You can't be sitting someone down being like, this is what you did wrong. Look yourself in the mirror first and say what could I have done better to help this person not make this mistake, as opposed to like pointing fingers. So definitely a highly referred book by me, probably with you as well, and has had a big impact. So I appreciate your sharing. So before we wrap up here and head into the after-hours portion, for those of our listeners who are interested in connecting with you, connecting with ReminderMedia, learning more about how you guys could perhaps serve them, they want to check out the podcast, there's so many different places that they can go to and all this stuff will be in the show notes too, of course, but I guess just verbally, where are some places that they can find you guys?

 

Luke Acree  49:38

Yeah, if you want to learn about the magazine and how we help financial advisors, you can go to www.ReminderMedia.com; so that's ReminderMedia.com. Would love to connect with all of you on social, whether you're on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. I'm probably the most active on Instagram, but @LukeAcree, you'll be able to find me, and that's Acree, A-C-R-E-E. So would love to connect with you there. That's where you can learn more about the podcast, learn more about what we're doing, I try to put out my own journey of trying to grow this organization and the advisors that I'm helping and different businesses there. So kind of the successes and failures that we're going through.

 

David DeCelle  50:15

Awesome. And I would second that, I would definitely connect with Luke on a personal basis. He practices what he preaches, puts out a lot of really good content, and there's a lot of nuggets that are shared not just on the longer length podcast, but in some of the micro bits of content as well. So highly recommend that. So with that being said, if you'd like to connect with me, and Model FA as well, if you're not already, Model FA is just modelfa.com. Feel free to go and check that site out. In the right hand portion of it, it says read, listen, and watch. It's our blog, our podcasts, and our video series; lots of good value in there spanning a multitude of different topics. So you can definitely get lost in the content, but would encourage you to go and consume that. And also if you want to connect with me personally, if you just type in David DeCelle, D-E-C-E-L-L-E, on Google, you'll get a link to all my socials there and happy to connect. Similar to Luke, most active on Instagram as well. And as always, two asks, if you found value in this episode, which I'm sure you did, go ahead and click the share button, share it with someone that you think would find it to be valuable as well. And if you would be so kind as to share with us a review on iTunes, that would be super helpful to increase visibility with the podcast and increase listenership; have a bigger impact on the community. And if you do, in fact, leave a review, once it actually gets posted, do me a favor and just screenshot that. Shoot me a text that also says Luke in it so I know which episode it is in reference to. And if you shoot me a text to 978-228-2338, you'll get an automatic reply that will have a link for you to enter in your first and last name. That way I know who it is. And then beyond that, it's actually me sending the text, it’s not an automated platform. And for doing so we have a specific referral methodology by our managing partner, Dan Allison, it's a comfortable way to earn referrals. And we have a couple of videos that can totally transform your business if you actually implement it. So as a thank you for leaving a review, we'll go ahead and give you access to that for free. So with that being said, Luke, I appreciate you joining today. It's always a pleasure, good to go from DMing and commenting back and forth to actually having a conversation like we do a handful of times a year. I'm glad we were actually able to document this conversation to provide some value for our listeners. So thank you very much for joining.

 

Luke Acree  52:37

Appreciate it.

 

David DeCelle  52:38

Awesome. Well, we're gonna head into the after-hours portion. So if you want to stick around and get to know us a little bit more, feel free. And we're gonna head over there right now.

 

 

 

After-Hours

 

 

David DeCelle

So I actually want to talk about some of your delivery today. So you seemed very succinct whenever I would ask a question, and either it's in your blood from your dad being a preacher, or you've just practiced a lot, but I guess what were your speaking skills like when you first started? So like, I've seen you in front of your room, talking to all the sales people, firing them up, and I'd be shocked if you came out of the womb like that. So I'd love to hear some embarrassing stories of the beginning stages of your speaking.

 

Luke Acree  53:25

Yeah, I mean, they're definitely embarrassing. You know what’s it's interesting. I mentioned the band, that I was in music. I think that originally started crafting my ability to probably speak in front of people. Just from the standpoint of when you're in a band, you obviously have to lead the audience and it taught me a really valuable lesson about a crowd is that you can tell people, you're up there on stage and you're playing and you're singing, you're like clap your hands, and no one claps. It tells you really quickly, okay, you can't ask just one time. No, no, I said clap your hands, keep clapping, and it taught me to do that. I remember a first time speaking like when we started doing quarterly meetings and my mouth got so dry. I couldn't even like say words, well, I don't — I don't know if you've ever experienced that, where my mouth got so dry from I guess nerves and everything like that. I literally could not pronounce the words properly. I had to get up, and I didn't have any water up on the area I was speaking and everything; we probably had, I don't know, 60, 70 employees at that time. But I remember being so embarrassed because these are the people I lead; I was getting nervous. But that's, you know what that taught me is that, I needed to run through at least in my head, what I was going to say, all the way through, instead of just relying on my knowledge. Because you forget; you get a fog when you get in front of people, and you can't for some reason. I don't know about you, but for me, I can't access all this stuff that I've read or that I should know. I do it every day but you can't access it. Really running it through my brain has helped me and then over time, it just becomes more, you become more comfortable. So like today, hopefully it's not too prepared because I always see a problem with speakers there too is that they become too prepared. So I got to watch myself there. But a lot of it is just like I've said it so many times now that it's like, because it's what I believe. And so I've said so many times that it just rolls off and comes out.

 

David DeCelle  55:21

And for those of you who are listening, and Luke, too, in a place in St. Petersburg, and we're doing this podcast virtually here. So when I moved to this building, they were doing a bunch of construction outside the building, and there was a bunch of noise. I'm like, well, this would have been nice to know about before I moved in, in a work from home type of position. And then that has since finished. And so I'll know if you, I've tried to keep myself on mute when you were talking compared to when I'm talking, because there's a unit that got sold a couple floors above me, and they're redoing the whole thing. And it's just like constant banging. So hopefully that hasn't been too much of a distraction. But one thing I wanted to bring up, if I'm not mistaken, Luke, you, by and large run ReminderMedia. Obviously, there's a number of leaders in the organization that help in running ReminderMedia. But if I remember correctly, seeing through social, you're not afraid to get on the phones and cold call like the rest of them still. So my question is, why do you do that?

 

Luke Acree  56:20

Great question. Yeah, I've always loved the thrill of cold calling, and the thrill of closing a deal. I've always enjoyed that, the rush it gives you when you get the deal. But I think it's super powerful for a leader to still get into the trench and help dig or show people how it's done. And you might not be the best anymore, I am by far not the best closer on the team anymore. We have some absolute rock stars that can close with the best of them. But I want people to know, hey, I'm willing to get out there because I believe in this so much. I don't mind pick up a phone and pitching somebody, it keeps me sharp, it also makes sure that I'm not delivering a message that's from an ivory tower, that's out of touch with what's happening now in the world. It's the reason I do webinars for clients. We actually do a welcome webinar every week, where I'm welcoming all the new clients to ReminderMedia, and I’m being able to talk to them and chat with them over the webinar and all this stuff because it keeps me in sync. And then the same with sales calls. It's like, I want to call people, I want to be on those webinars, so I can at least experience, hey, have I lost touch? Have I lost touch with what we're doing and what we're selling? So those are some of the reasons I do it. So I would encourage you, if you're in sales, as a sales leader, you need to sell something.

 

David DeCelle  57:31

You got to be willing to do what you ask other people to do. So it's the whole idea that you got to sweep the floors and run the ship and everything in between, if and when duty calls. And you're never too good for some of those things that, on paper, it may seem that you're above, but I think your team also probably really appreciates the fact that you're willing to get into the trenches with them as well.

 

Luke Acree  57:54

Yeah, it's so funny. When I go out on conferences, I'll go out with people, and I'll work the booth with the team. And it's awesome, because there's a healthy pressure because you're out there and you're just like, not only do I need to perform, but I need to perform in such a way that makes sure that the belief system of the people that are with me, they never, you know, they don't back down and they believe in it. And so it's always fun. I like going to conferences, I like making sure that I'm out there on the floor, signing up new clients, that type of idea.

 

David DeCelle  58:18

Love it. Well, Luke, I appreciate your time today. I appreciate the value provided. I appreciate our friendship. I appreciate the fact that you practice what you preach and you're out there every single day grinding, you're at the gym, you're at the office, and you're doing what needs to get done. You're taking Extreme Ownership. I think that our audience is going to get a lot of value from this episode and excited to see your success from afar. Hopefully see you again in person soon. So I appreciate you coming on the show, man.

 

Luke Acree  58:47

Thanks so much, brother. I appreciate the opportunity. It's always a pleasure.

 

David DeCelle  58:50

Awesome. Take care.