BLOG
Thoughts
&
Musings
The 52: Business Books to Read in 2023
The top 5 books out of 50 read.
Business Books to Read in 2023
This year, I read more than 50 nonfiction books, most of which fell into the categories of business and marketing. In celebration of the last business day of 2022, I thought I would share the ones that left a memorable impression.
The 6 Types of Working Genius by Patrick Lencioni (Amazon Rating 4.8 out of 5)
I’ve taken a lot of assessments in my career, and this book offers one of the simplest I’ve come across. It will help you quickly identify the strengths (geniuses) and weaknesses (frustrations) in yourself and your team. With this information, you can restructure your team so people do what they are best at, and you can hire for the areas where you have gaps.
Selling Is Hard. Buying Is Harder: How Buyer Enablement Drives Digital Sales and Shortens the Sales Cycle by Garin Hess (Amazon Rating 4.5 out of 5)
I stumbled upon this book as I was evaluating publishers for my upcoming book, and I’m so glad I found it. While written for companies that sell B2B services with complex sales cycles, the suggestions for improving a client’s buying experience are relevant to all service businesses. For example: Have different marketing materials for the different roles a prospect serves (e.g., one piece for the elder parent and one piece for the caregiver child). If you are an innovator by nature, this book will give you lots of ideas to implement in your practice in the new year.
Write Useful Books: A Modern Approach to Designing and Refining Recommendable Nonfiction by Rob Fitzpatrick and Adam Rosen (Amazon Rating 4.6 out of 5)
I read this book for guidance on how to make my upcoming book more helpful to advisors. If you plan on writing a book for marketing purposes, this is a must-read! And even if you aren’t, you’ll find lots of great tips on making the content you create more, well, useful.
The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks Than Others Do in 12 Months by Brian P. Moran (Amazon Rating 4.7 out of 5)
This book changed the way I think about developing marketing plans. Annual plans are out of date before you know it and rarely get implemented. If you follow the techniques in this book, 2023 will be your most productive and impactful year yet.
$100M Offers: How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No by Alex Hormozi (Amazon Rating 4.9 out of 5)
Read this book if you struggle with how to add more value to your clients and charge higher fees for your service. I especially recommend it to advisors with hourly, project, flat-fee, or subscription-based fee models. The author will provide scalable ways to increase your value and fees without increasing your workload. With nearly 10,000 Amazon ratings and an average rating of 4.9 stars, I’m not the only one who thinks this book is magic. In fact, I can’t wait to read it again in 2023.
Happy new year!
The 52: The Long-Term Consequences of ChatGPT
AI will require advisors to up their game.
The Long-Term Consequences of ChatGPT
Last week I presented the short-term opportunities I see for ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that solves problems to questions you pose.
While I believe early adopters of this technology will see tremendous benefit in the short term, I predict it will present negative marketing consequences in the long term for generalist advisors—even those who don’t use it.
The ease with which ChatGPT creates content means that there will be more of it. And everyone who uses the AI for content will be conveying the same information. The result? It will be even harder to get noticed through your content marketing.
Another issue is that if a prospect can get their question answered using ChatGPT, they won’t need to do a Google search. This means content on your website that once attracted prospective clients will no longer be as effective.
If ChatGPT or a similar technology becomes ubiquitous, you’ll have to create content that AI can’t easily do in mere seconds. So it will be even more critical to differentiate yourself by positioning yourself as an expert in a niche.
Marketing influencer Seth Godin summed up the impact of this technology in his blog, stating: “Technology begins by making old work easier, but then it requires that new work be better.”
The 52: The Short-Term Opportunities of ChatGPT
Early adopters of AI-generated content will benefit.
The Short-Term Opportunities of ChatGPT
If you follow the news closely, you’ve probably heard the buzz about ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that solves problems to questions you pose. If you aren’t familiar, read “Here’s What to Know About OpenAI’s ChatGPT—What It’s Disrupting and How to Use It.”
ChatGPT is exciting from a marketing perspective because it can create original content in a matter of minutes. For example, I asked it to “write a 750-word article on the taxation of RSUs,” and it produced a great article in less than two minutes.
From testing ChatGPT, I found the articles it wrote on general topics to be quite good. For advisors who use canned content, this technology may be an acceptable, if not superior, alternative.
I believe there is also a window of opportunity for early adopters of this technology. Advisors who use it can create large volumes of content quickly. That means more original content on their website, which can increase their search engine rankings. It can also mean there is more content for these advisors to share and get noticed on social media. This window of opportunity reminds me of the same windows I observed with advisors who were early adopters of social media, SEO, and Google reviews.
While I see great opportunity for advisors who adopt this technology in the short term, I predict there will be serious marketing consequences for all advisors in the long run whether they use the technology or not. I’ll discuss that next week.
The 52: Become a Guest on a Podcast
Get in front of a lot of people with minimal time spent.
Become a Guest on a Podcast
One way to get in front of a large number of people in your niche is to be a guest on a podcast. The time you invest into being a guest is minimal—usually just a few hours, including preparation, recording, and promotion. Yet it potentially gets you in front of hundreds or thousands of people in your niche.
To become a guest on a podcast, you can reach out directly to the host of shows you are already aware of and pitch them on the value you would bring to the show and its audience. You can also use podcast-matching services like PodMatch.com or PodcastGuests.com to find opportunities.
The 52: Don’t Hide Behind Development
Development should be a fraction of interaction.
Don’t Hide Behind Development
Marketing is about getting your name in front of your prospects. That can mean speaking to a group, networking, or actively participating on social media, just to name a few.
Yet so many advisors hide behind developing their marketing instead of interacting with their prospect community.
A common scenario would be spending your allocated marketing hours each week perfecting your website and obsessing over search engine optimization in the hopes that prospects will just find you. In this case, you would feel like you are spending a lot of time on marketing, but in fact, you aren’t moving the needle.
Instead, you would be better off having a mediocre website and spending your time actively getting in front of prospects, directing them to your website to schedule an appointment.
Ask yourself: Is your marketing time spent developing or interacting? While development is important, it should be a fraction of the time you spend interacting.
The 52: Be Consistent with Your Niche Message on Social Media
You need to hammer home one message.
Be Consistent with Your Niche Message on Social Media
When starting with a new niche, make sure you communicate a consistent message on your social media posts. Your goal is to be known as the go-to person in your niche, so every post needs to be clearly for them. If you start integrating non-niche content into your posts, you’ll fail to reinforce the positioning you are trying to establish.
For example, let’s say you are an individual advisor in a larger RIA, and you have decided to focus on the niche of employees with equity compensation in a specific industry. Every post should address the things that are top of mind for this niche (e.g., how your RSUs are taxed). Do not post other content your company is creating, such as economic outlooks or blogs on non-related topics like estate planning.
You need to be laser focused on communicating that you are an expert in one niche. Every time you post a non-niche topic, you are failing to differentiate yourself.
The 52: By the Time You Need Marketing, It’s Too Late
Like any investment, it takes time to see a return.
By the Time You Need Marketing, It’s Too Late
Marketing is an investment of time, money, and energy. And like any investment, it takes time to see a return.
When you get to a point when you need marketing to keep your business going, it’s too late to do much. Just like a prospect coming to you with $150,000 in assets who wants to retire this year, there just isn’t enough time for the investment to pay off.
If you need prospects immediately, focus on outbound sales. Pound the pavement, make calls, and hit up your referral partners.
If you want your business to easily generate prospects in the future, focus on marketing now. Establish your identity, build your reputation, and put systems in place to execute consistently.
The 52: Not Every Firm Should Niche
Sometimes not niching is the right decision.
Not Every Firm Should Niche
Through our work with financial advisors, we have discovered the easiest way to market is to specialize in a niche. However, not all firms should niche. Here are four situations where focusing on a broad market is the better choice:
Firms in small, close-knit communities with widespread name recognition
Firms where the owner is going to sell to an outside entity in the next five years
Firms that consistently generate enough referrals to achieve annual growth goals
Firms with outside investment that can spend significant money on national mass marketing campaigns
The 52: Sell Solutions, Outcomes, and Transformation, Not Products or Services
Prospects want outcomes, not services.
Sell Solutions, Outcomes, and Transformation, Not Products or Services
Many advisors focus on selling their services, such as investment management, financial planning, and retirement planning. But prospective clients aren’t looking to purchase a service—they want a solution to their problem, a specific outcome, or a transformation.
In your marketing, help your prospects visualize the transformation they will experience after working with you. For example, instead of promoting “retirement planning,” say: “Have a plan so you can stop being afraid of spending your hard-earned money and start enjoying the best years of your retirement.” The second message is not only more desirable to your prospect but something they’ll want to pay you to help them achieve.
The 52: Marketing Strategies for the Introverted Financial Advisor
Being an introvert doesn’t mean your marketing has to be less effective.
Marketing Strategies for the Introverted Financial Advisor
Introverted advisors don’t always see themselves as marketers because so many of the people held up as “good marketer” role models are extroverts. You know them. They constantly self-promote on social media and can be seen at every event, and you feel like they are literally everywhere.
If you are an introverted advisor, this type of marketing can be exhausting. But being an introvert doesn’t mean your marketing has to be less effective. Here are three strategies introverted advisors should follow to be successful marketers:
Strategy 1: Focus on a niche. When you take a rifle, not a shotgun, approach, you’ll find that your efforts spent interacting with people in the niche community will multiply much faster than if you target a broader market.
Strategy 2: Take advantage of content marketing. Content marketing allows your expertise and knowledge to shine, helping you overcome the extroverted characteristics usually associated with good sales and marketing people.
Strategy 3: Utilize digital channels. These channels allow you to network from the comfort of your home or office and give you the opportunity to think before you “speak.”
