Episode 263 – Own Your Niche: Discover Your Advising Superpower with Trey Robinson

Episode Transcription

This is the Ultimate Advisor Podcast, the podcast for financial advisors who want to create a thriving, successful and scalable practice. Each week we’ll uncover the ways that you can improve your referrals your team, your marketing, and your business operations, helping you to level up your advising practice, bring in more assets and create the advising practice that you’ve dreamed of. You’ll be joined by our hosts Bryan Sweet, who is moving fast towards a billion dollars in assets under management, Brittany Anderson, the driving force for advisors looking to improve their operations and company culture, and Draye Redfern who can help you systematize and automate your practices marketing to effortlessly attract new clients. So what do you say? Let’s jump into another amazing episode of The Ultimate Advisor Podcast.

Brittany Anderson 1:07

Welcome back to The Ultimate advisor podcast Brittany Anderson here today with a super special guest who’s got a little bit of experience in the adviser world that you will hear about quickly. So to introduce our our person today, our area of focus, it is Trey Robinson. Trey was the head of marketing for over nine years at a startup by start up by Charles Schwab. He more than double the client acquisition within three years at USAA. He was also one of the main consultants at sotera and has designed and implemented growth programs for 1000s of financial advisors. You heard that right. We’re talking in the 1000s. Today, he has an agency where he focuses on growth, helping advisors to achieve their biggest goals and dreams. Trey, welcome to the show.

Trey Robinson 1:56

Thank you so much for having me.

Brittany 1:58

Absolutely. Well, I just gave the formal intro the formal bio. But can you talk a little bit about your journey kind of how you found your path in the adviser world? And really how you’re helping advisors grow today?

Trey 2:11

Yeah, I will be honest, I’m a little bit of a growth junkie, I really enjoy watching the top line move, I think it’s I was an athlete in high school. And I think for me, it’s kind of the best way to keep score or easiest way to keep score and in the growth world. Um, excuse me in the business world. So what I like to do is really sit down with an advisor and understand their story, and understand what makes them unique, and then bring 20 years of marketing experience. So how do we tell that story? Where is where can we really be unique in the customer journey? How can we help someone really experience the specialty than an advisor has to offer. And that’s just, you know, 20 years of being a big companies really weren’t running large marketing departments, you start to understand what levers work, what you can pull on what doesn’t work where you want to optimize. And so we love bringing that big company experience to every adviser of every size, and then helping them figure out what their formula is.

Brittany 3:08

So in in this kind of journey, where you’ve helped people, and you’ve really helped people drill in to call it their formula to use your words, where have you found most advisors getting stuck? Where did they get in their own way?

Trey 3:19

You know, honestly, I love supporting financial advisors, because financial advisors have a heart to help people and, and that’s awesome. And I have a heart to help people to, I think, where one of the biggest opportunities for financial advisors is they realize that they’re good at helping people and they’re good at customer service. And so they want to use that as their differentiator, our services the best, the honest answer is after talking to 1000, advisors, all you guys offer good service, so my neck might I think that’s where they get stuck. My question is okay, that’s awesome. I believe that because I know that that’s a really good financial advisors got a heart for service. But what else? What else makes you unique? And we ask questions like, Do you have a current profile you focus on? Are you good at people living in retirement nearing retirement? Do you love helping young family start out and save for college? Have you do you have a specialty in a pension fund? Where like Coca Cola executives, you know, the ins and outs of those programs, whether anybody and so helping them say, What do I layer on top of service, that maybe I’m really unique, and that can be what I’m really good at, or what I’m really passionate about, there’s multiple, multiple ways to get there. But to me, that’s the place that they get stuck is helping to find that next level of difference. At the agency, we only focus on financial services clients, and that’s because my partner and I’ve been there 20 years, and we know all the weird compliance rules, and we know all of the, you know, weird products, right? Like, who can talk about 1031 exchanges, or you know, or annuities, like, you know, you just learn those things. But when we sit down with a financial advisor, so yeah, this is where we specialize. They’re like, I’m so glad you speak my language. Right. And so we got to get the financial advisors to be unique in the same way that we’re unique. What’s that special language that only you speak.

Brittany 5:02

So, you know, I think this is so interesting Trey, because as we’ve you know, talked to and dealt with so many advisors over the years supported them, help them grow all those great things. We’ve definitely had some come through that struggle. And you said something interesting a bit ago, you were talking about, you know, let’s drill into who you serve who you’re best suited, that kind of thing, if somebody’s really struggling to get to the core of who their avatar is. And I’m going to say it, I’m gonna say it this way. It’s rare that we find an advisor that is like, well, I just take anyone and everyone, at least not the advisors that we typically attract, right? Like they’re not at that point, not quite at that point in their journey. They’re, they’re past that stage. But what does happen is they’ll identify multiple niches, they’re like, I actually help help business business owners, and I help women and I help retirees and oh, I actually help executives, and, you know, these are all people that are great. And it’s like, okay, well, but you can’t necessarily speak to all of them in the same tone at the same time. So if somebody’s struggling to narrow it down, what advice would you give? Well,

Trey 6:03

there’s a couple of exercises we take into I love the question, like, who’s your favorite client, like that to me? Or who or tell me your favorite avatar, but to your point, it’s, we get into I like this one, and I like this one, and I like this one, then then what we do is we say, Okay, let’s take your list of clients. And let’s start to let’s, you know, okay, let’s put the job ease by the women, let’s put the ease by the executives and let’s do a count. Right? Like, like, how many of those people do you really have, right? And so sometimes, the real math, the real work, is what helps you determine that the next thing that we start to talk about is okay, well, let’s look at the assets you have for the clients or what parts of their portfolios you’re helping serve. And so we can start to do small, medium large on the client list as well. And so I find it you start to really push in, lean into the data and push enough filters on a book, what you’ll see is you’ll see a segment start to bubble to the top, right, yes, I’ve got a big section of executives, but honestly, two thirds of my book are women, right? And two thirds of my book, are women in this age group or struggling with this need, right? And so I find that if we sharpen the pencil on the book, we can usually get to an answer that starts to like I said, bubble up above the others.

Brittany 7:23

Okay, so if we’ve we’ve dialed in the avatar, when you’re looking at ways to help advisors grow, what are some of the things that you’re seeing working right now? Like, what what’s kind of hot at the moment, let’s call it you

Trey 7:34

know, honestly, one of the big things that we’ve got to do is figure it first wing, I want to do is I want to figure out how what’s the advisor book already looked like. If we sit down with an advisor that’s close to a billion dollars in assets. That’s a different set of strategies than an advisor that’s more on the starting out face. And they’re, they’re at 100,000, excuse me, $100 million in assets, I like to use two totally different tactics. So where we start is, tell me about your practice today. Tell me about your staff. Tell me about your your current marketing spend. And so I can really build a customized solution for an advisor. On the higher end, if they’re not starting to spend money in media, if they’re not starting to do awareness tactics, we really want to layer those in. But we don’t want to layer those in for someone who’s like I said, at 100 million, because they’ve still got a lot of relationship tactics they can lean into. And so you know, every advisor says our growth through referrals of all awesome, obviously, we all do, what exactly are you doing, if you’re on the lower end, let’s formalize some referral programs. Let’s make them repeatable, let’s make it consistent. Let’s hone it in for you. We’re on the higher end, let’s layer in some media, let’s layer in some paid stuff. Because you’re big enough. Now you’ve probably run through your network, you’ve kept a lot of your referrals. And so we got to start adding, adding to that, so bear custom. But I gave you two examples of kind of ends of the spectrum, just so that you could you could get a feel for that.

Brittany 9:04

Yeah, no, I think that I think that’s so important is to delineate that each strategy, and that’s kind of what I was getting at is that each strategy for each firm is different. There’s commonalities, and there’s foundation, but there’s going to be differentiation across the board, because no two firms are exactly alike. And that’s what’s beautiful about our world is that there’s plenty pieces of the pie to go around. And there’s plenty clients, plenty of clients to serve. So I think that there’s an interesting point, we can push on here a little bit. And I know Trey, that you have had a lot of experience with startups, too. So you’ve had a really cool journey and and all of this experience across the board. So if you were talking to, let’s say a more well established company, somebody who’s been in the game for a while, what are some principles that they could adopt, call it from, like startup culture, to really make sure that they’ve got an engaged team, that they’re firing on all cylinders because there’s something exciting and energizing about that startup phase. is where it’s like all hands on deck, everybody’s in it together. And then that can kind of fade sometimes when you hit these different ceilings of complexity in the journey. So can you just talk about those principles that could be applied? Yeah.

Trey 10:12

So I was blessed enough, lucky enough to be at a startup, I joined at 25 that we sold to Schwab. And I had a dynamic leader, and he really was electric. And we, we love following him, but I learned a lot of really good leadership tactics from him. And I will tell you that one of the biggest things that I learned through that was he made it personal for me, what was my journey? What were my goals? And then how did they align with the firm’s goals? How do they align with the day to day tasks that I was involved in? And so I felt like, none of that was going to work. But I was also building my personal career. And so one of the first things that I will say is we think about startups, or we think about culture is how do we align all the individuals goals? With the corporate goals? And and sometimes that’s easy. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes it’s natural. Sometimes it’s not, it’s not. But I do believe that we can sit down with someone who has been there 20 years are some of the that’s been there, you know, for two months and start to say like, like, what do you think? What do you think things look like in five years? What what do things look like in 10 years, in your career, in your goals in your life? And then how does this firm help you to get to those places? And because I think that when there’s this sense of shared goal, you get, you get a lot of TierPoint engagement, a lot of people leaning in. And so that’s my first thing is how do we get goal alignment across every level of the firm? And I think that it takes some work, but I think you can do it in every job.

Brittany 11:48 

So how would you say, you know, when you’ve got that goal alignment, and you’ve got all hands on deck? What are some bits and pieces that you can share? As far as like the client experience journey? Like how do you take, you’ve got your growth goals, you’ve got your team aligned, you’ve got your culture built? Kind of what’s that next?

Trey 12:05

Well, so I think, so when we’ll go back to the conversation we were just having, when we sit down with an advisor, we say, Hey, who’s your ideal target? Who do you like to serve? Who do you want to be? Like, what’s your brand? Like? It’s, well, who’s your who’s your avatar, Who’s your ideal client, but also what’s your offering to them? Right. And so I love being really clear about how the firm is unique in the marketplace. And so to me, what we do is, once we’ve understood target and firm in the marketplace, and then then we go back into culture, and we can say, Guys, remember, this is who we’re trying to be as a firm, this is what makes us unique. These are the our mission and vision and values, these are our cultures and how we want to represent them in the world. And so let’s we’re clear who we are, we’re clear who we serve, we’re clear who how we want to show our values and mission vision, okay, then, how do we inject those in the touchpoints? That we talk to the clients? And so that’s like, How’s that different? When they walk in the front door? How is that different? In their emails? How is that different in their planning cycle? How do they see our culture when they land on the website, or, or, or visit our social media feeds? And so I think once you start with this basic of clarity, and then you say, Okay, how do we express that uniquely, in every place, that we touch a client, we have this wonderful client, and they’re very, they’re very giving, they have really low fees, they support their advisors by making sure that the advisors, you know, are treated well. They spent a lot of time in community events in town, serving the community. And so we want to make sure that that heart of giving, it comes through on their about us pages in their social media, right in in any place that in their bios, right, like, we want to pull that through. And so So that’s part of who they are, that’s part of their mission vision values is to get back. And so we make sure in their marketing, that it pulls through in their client experience that you feel like your clients feel that that you first. And so it’s just about pulling those through to the individual touch points.

Brittany 14:13

You know, I think that’s such a great, that’s such great advice, too, because the journey is everything. You know, I think about at the wealth planning firm that that I work at, we have a trademark process called the dream architect. And we have literally picked apart every single piece of the client journey, so that we have consistency. And I think that when people and I think about clients coming in, when they learned that they can trust what to expect. It really sets the stage for a great relationship in the long term. So I think that’s so important. And that’s so valuable. I think that anybody you know, I would argue that if you can create consistency in that initial journey, that’s a huge, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful thing and a beautiful thing to spend your time on, because it’s gonna make all the difference in the world and it’s going to help you stand out. You I think about long term too. And I’m gonna have you comment on this tray, we hear a lot of times in the adviser space that the reason people leave their advisor is because they’re like, I haven’t heard from them in two years, three years, five years, 10 years. Like, that’s crazy to me. So I think if you could just talk a little bit about, you know, that journey, how it carries forward, and maybe what you would recommend as far as that consistent, even touch point experience, right, so it was beyond the marketing. It’s the touch point.

Trey 15:29

Yeah, I? That’s a wonderful question. So I actually read a big market research study last month, it was either from FMG, or it’s just one of them a name that we would trust, right in this space. And it said that very few, if any clients ever feel like they’re talked to too much. And like that was like, like, you know, you always think, oh, I don’t want spam. I don’t want to bug them. Like literally, they basically almost 100% of them said, I’m never contacted too often. I think that’s a really interesting fact. And so, so if you think about your own life, right, you’re busy, you’re taking care of your kids, you’re going to job right, your email box fills up, you know, you got to mark some stuff is red, you don’t get to at all, it’s your personal stuff, right? Your social media feed things fly by you don’t see them. All right, we think, Oh, I made a post. So my client saw it, I sent an email. So they read it and all that, what’s what our email open rates, maybe 5%, right? Like with your wonderful, let’s call it 10. But it’s probably closer to two, right? And so that means of 100 emails to your clients saw it, maybe five, so to send an email every week or every two weeks, and then multiply it times those percentages. People aren’t seeing it. And so So my number one piece of advice is I think you I think it’s hard to over communicate like I really think you would, you would really have to break something to over communicate. The second thing I’ll say, is, we talk about customer experience. And, and and words like that, what does that really mean? What I would tell you to do is open up, get a piece of paper out and just write down. The first time I’ve talked to a client, I want to talk about this, then I want to send this email, then I want to do this, like what’s my happy path? What do I want my ideal client to see and feel and experience in the first year, in the first five years, right like it or quarterly, like you got to think about your practice, you know what dimension you should be thinking on, but just write down a series of bullets, like that’s a great place to start. That’s what I would call the happy path. It doesn’t have to be some big flowchart, we don’t have to go download Visio, let’s just literally make a list of things that we say this is what I how I want to touch my client, this how often this is what I want them to see. Right, this is how I want to personalize it. And then and then start to let’s figure out how to put it in action. So the two things I will say is write it down. But also don’t think you’re doing too much of it, because I think it’s pretty impossible.

Brittany 17:51

So I want to shift gears a little bit hBere, Trey. And I think it’s so important that anytime we have a guest on the show that our audience is able to kind of get a peek behind the curtain at who the person is. And you know, obviously, you’ve got a ton of business strategies and great insight for helping advisors to grow and to enhance their marketing and their messaging and their client experience all those great things. But I’d love to know, what is the time like what is a big obstacle that you hit in your life that you overcame? And what was the lesson on the other side of it.

Trey 18:24

So So I left Schwab, I was with this company called Cyber trader Schwab bought us it was a it was a trading brand. And and I was very early there. So when we decided to sunset the brand and roll it into Schwab’s trading offer it was I was like, Okay, maybe that’s my sign, I need to leave. And I went to USAA, because I wanted to learn how they were so unique and how they serve customers so well. But when I went, it was a big culture shift. And it was it was really hard. And I went from being this place that I had been around 10 years that I’d kind of grown up at that I knew everybody to this big behemoth of a place that was that was very, very, very different. Right? And, and I love USA and I don’t have anything negative say about USA. But for me, it was a large culture shift. And so that was an obstacle for me, how do I get comfortable in a new town in a new city with new bosses and new processes. And so what I really just decided that one, I was going to stay focused, I was going to try to stay positive, I was going to not not give up. Right? I was going to no matter how hard it got figured out what I was going to learn from that experience. And at the time, there was this country music song on on the radio by Rodney Atkins. If you if you’re going through hell just keep on going because the devil might not know you’re there. And that kind of became my mantra. Like it’s hard. But you know what, I’m just gonna keep going. I’m gonna keep working hard. I’m gonna push through the other side and ultimately, it was at USAA almost four years. I mean, like I became home it became there, but um, But three or four years after I left USAA, Schwab actually asked me to come back. And I was at Schwab twice. And when I went back the second time, I helped launch their intelligence portfolio, the robo offer, I was the Chief Marketing Officer for that offer. And I was at a much higher level. But it wasn’t hard. I knew how to handle political conversations, I knew how to interface with executives, I knew how to go talk to people and work through problems before it showed up in a meeting, I knew how to treat my team, because USAA is a great leadership team, leadership environment, coaching environment as well. And so I was a much better executive, the second time I was at Schwab, because of the pain and in learning I went through at USAA. And so that was kind of my big, one of my big two dues. My big aha is is this persistence, consistency, not giving up realizing that, that you’re in that place for a reason? I mean, God’s not afraid to waste pain, right? Like, if you’re going through something tough, you’re there for a reason, what can you learn out of it? How can it make you grow, and ultimately, it did make me a much better leader, because of because of the the struggle, the strength I had to put into, to figure it out.

Brittany 21:10

You know, I think there’s so much to be said and learned from those challenging experiences. And it’s interesting Trey, that you went the direction of, you know, the culture change. And for you, I mean, you’re saying it’s, it wasn’t good or bad, it was just different, like, it was just totally different than what I’m used to. So I want to I’m going to push on this for a minute. Here, too. We’re seeing shifts in the industry as well. So we’re seeing a lot of m&a activity, we’re seeing, you know, businesses be acquired businesses, merging businesses shifting and changing. And I think that what is going to be asked of the financial advisor world, in the next How many years is going to change, too, I think we’re gonna have to show up in even bigger ways, I think we’re going to have to provide even more services, we’re going to have to be even more differentiated, which is a lot of what you do at your agency. So I guess, when I think about it, my question is, is when you’re looking at the change in the future of the industry, if you could give an advisor one piece of advice, as they move forward, what would that piece of advice be? So

Trey 22:15

we’re playing with AI every day at the agency? We’re trying to say like, how do you use this thing? How does it how does how do we not use it? Right? Like, how do we save time and energy with it. And we’re at the very tip of that spear. I think what AI is going to bring us whether we’re serving customers, or we’re writing content, or we’re looking at big sets of data, it’s going to allow us to more customize the experience, it’s going to allow us to create a more one to one environment in marketing, we talked about segmentation. But like, can you get down to a segment of one, I think that the tools of AI over the next five years are really going to allow us to start to get much more customized in how we handle our clients, how we understand their needs, how the all the data that’s around them is synthesized down to some really good insights. And so what I would say is we’re looking at the sea of changes, we’re thinking about what’s coming ahead of us, I would say continue to lean into ways that you can more customize that client experience so that you can have more in depth, healthy one to one conversation with your clients. And don’t be afraid to embrace some of these tools that might help it drive some scale to do that, because I think customization is going to become easier and easier. And then technology is gonna move faster and faster. And I think those of us that are leaning in, to try to figure out how to use it to give a better client experience will ultimately be the benefit beneficiary of that technology.

Brittany 23:40

Yeah, you know, I get so excited when I think about the industry of the future, right, and the things that we’re going to be able to embrace and I know right now we have some limitations with compliance and all that great stuff with AI and how it’s used and where it’s used and all that good stuff. But I do think that there will be a point in the near future that the industry will embrace it, and that there will be obviously limitations on it because there has to be, but there’s going to be such a great shift and a movement. And I love the saying I heard this at a mastermind I was at where they were talking about AI and using it and the fear of losing jobs. And the comment that was made is you’re never going to lose your job to AI but you will if you don’t embrace it. Oh yeah, I think that’s an interesting way to look at it as it’s like dive in and create efficiencies and opportunities and what you do on the daily. So, Trey, before I ask my final question, if somebody wants to get a hold of you, they want to learn more about how you serve, how you can help how where should they go? Well,

Trey 24:34

the name firm name is story amplify. So it’s, you know, we’re decent marketers. So we own story amplify.com. So that’s the easiest and quickest way to find fun find us. You will you’ll love that the site was just redone in the last six months. It’s got amplifiers on it and dials and fun, unique art but ultimately what you’ll see is all the content is financial services focus. So go there, fill out the contact form, you can find me on LinkedIn Um, you can email me at Trey at story amplify, but the story amplify brand is our baby and you go to the site and hopefully find something interesting.

Brittany 25:07

Awesome. Well, Trey, my favorite question to ask at the end of these is what haven’t I asked you that I should have? Oh,

Trey 25:15

that’s a good question. You know, honestly, we talked about culture, we talked about client experience, we talked about the client journey. I run my life, we run our agency by an old, an old principle and an old saying, I am to be the best you have to be put yourself last right? To really, to really be great in this world, you have to serve others. And so I think as financial advisors, we but we believe that in our heart, a lot of us, I would say, we believe that at the agency, and I truly believe that as a leader, for me to be the best, I need to make sure that my people and my clients that they’re successful, right, and how can I interact with someone and make their journey a better journey? How can I act? How can I interact with my employees and make their their journey a better journey? How can we make sure our clients businesses are running better? And so so that’s the one piece of advice that I give anybody, especially and I think in our businesses, it makes a huge difference is, you know, how do we go through life? And how do we put other people ahead of ourselves? And if we do that, I think ultimately, it’s all going to work out right.

Brittany 26:25

Amen to that. Well, Trey, thank you for sharing your time. We know it’s the only commodity that you can’t make more of. So we really appreciate you coming on the show today.

Trey 26:34

Thanks for having me. It’s been awesome. 

Brittany 26:35

That wraps up today’s episode of The Ultimate advisor podcast. We will catch you right back here next time.