Dialing in your 'Before Unit'

"Foreign."

Stuart: Welcome to another episode of the Bookmore Show. Stuart Bell here. And today you're not gonna be hearing from me. You're gonna be hearing from Dean Jackson and Jonathan Schultheiss. Now, you might remember Jonathan from a show that we did a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about his new books and the way that he's getting a lot of media attention, really orchestrating some TV appearances, opportunity that he's got to kind of lead people into his funnel. Well, earlier in the year, Dean and Jonathan had a conversation over on the More Cheese, Less Whiskers podcast. And this is a great episode to share with you because it really ties in the bigger picture of some of the pieces that Jonathan's doing outside of just of his book. Kind of picking the target market that he's going for, deciding on the assets, the things that they're going to be most interested in receiving to start that conversation, and then how the book and the other pieces fit together into the overall funnels and campaigns that he's setting up. So really great episode. You're going to get a lot from this. There's a lot of transferable ideas that you can take away. So I'll leave you to listen and then I'll check in with you after the show.

Guest: This call is being recorded.

Guest: Jonathan.

Guest: Yeah, there he is. Yeah. How you doing?

Guest: I'm good, sir. How are you?

Guest: I'm good. It's good to talk to you.

Guest: Yes, it's always fun. So tell me, where are you calling from today?

Guest: North Carolina.

Guest: Okay. Is it sunny and warm and wonderful?

Guest: Oh, man, it's a beautiful day. It's. I went out to lunch a minute ago. It was 66 degrees out there.

Guest: Perfect.

Guest: Yeah. Don't get much better than that. It's a little overcast, but it's great for February, you know.

Guest: Nice. Well, Jonathan, I'm super excited. We got the whole hour to just hatch some evil schemes here and I, like, see what we can do. So I think it'd be great if you kind of share the. The. Jonathan, how do we say your last name? Schultes.

Guest: Scholl. Tice.

Guest: Schultice. Okay, there we go. And tell what you're up to. I'm anxious to hear all about it.

Guest: Yeah. So my business is I'm a financial advisor in North Carolina. And it's interesting. My niche is institutional investing. And so I go after corporate 401k and pension plans.

Guest: Okay.

Guest: So it's kind of interesting that, you know, over the last probably two years, man, I've just consume Everything I can find from, from you and Joe Polish and anybody else that puts out, you know, marketing content that I'm just like a sponge, just soaking it up. And, you know, direct response marketing has been something that, you know, I'm trying more and more to learn about and implement into my practice that, you know, it's. I love your eight profit activators. And it's interesting actually went through this several times and I was inspired by the example you give in here about we shoot bottles.com, right?

Guest: Oh yeah, yeah.

Guest: And so, so check this out. I went out and I found the URL we fix 401ks calm.

Guest: Love it. That's cool.

Guest: I own it now and I'm building it out. So I'm putting, you know, my content on there and I've got, you know, the pop up forms and different things to get people to, you know, engage with my content. You know, I love the concept that Joe Polish had as far as the consumer guide. Actually wrote a consumer guide. Five mistakes when hiring a 401k advisor. And so I feel like over the last, I don't know, probably 12 or 18 months, I've just been building collateral, right? And so I've got that. I actually have a book that, that I've written and it was interesting. I'm sitting here and I'm going, you know what, I'm gonna write another book. And I'm listening to you speak on a podcast and you say something about 90 minute book. And I'm like, what in the. What is that? And I'm driving down the road and I'm like, I gotta remember that I jot it down.

Guest: And like, that sounds easy. Yeah.

Guest: I'm like, I gotta learn more about this. And so I looked into 90 minute book. And so right now you guys have helped me complete my second book.

Guest: Oh, that's awesome.

Guest: Which is pretty awesome. So right now the way my books are written is this kind of a series I've got. My first book is called Distracted the Secrets to Getting America's Retirement Plans Back on Track. And it's really written for the decision maker for hiring me. So the cfo, the HR manager, whoever, the person who makes the decisions for hiring me. That book is written for them. And it's, you know, it's more of an educational book. It talks about, you know, how to design 401k plans and so forth. And so what I wanted is I wanted my second book to be written for the participants. And so the individuals who are the employees who participate in the 401k plans. And so my second book is called Focused. So it's kind of a series. It's distracted and then there's focus. Right. And so Focused is called the Financial Freedom Formula. And so my whole goal is, is that I can have two books. One that says, hey, Mr. Business Owner or HR Manager, this book is for you, and this book is for your employees. And if you hire me to come in and fix your 401k, then, you know, your employees will get this book. And if they follow it, they can create financial freedom. And so the whole idea behind that is employees who are better educated about their personal finances are more productive and more profitable employees.

Guest: Okay, nice. So that's. Yeah, that's an interesting thing that you've got that you've discovered there. Do you have any kind of evidence for that?

Guest: Tons. So here's the interesting thing about this is I'm also in Strategic Coach, and we're in the part where we talk about the Dan Sullivan question, right? Where if you want to develop something, then you want to go to your top people who write you the largest check, and you need to say, hey, if I create this, would you buy it? And so I went back to my top five clients and I said, hey, if I built this, would you buy it? And they all said, oh, I love that. That's fantastic. But also read a white paper done by T. Rowe Price, one of the larger mutual fund companies out there. And the name of the white paper is where corporate profitability and 401k plan design cross. And so what they did is they studied 300 publicly traded companies so they could get their information of their profitability. And then they studied their 401ks, which is also public information, and they cross reference the data and they showed that companies that have more participation in their 401k have as much as 80% more profit than companies that don't. And so what I'm looking to do is I have the white papers, I have the studies, I've gone back to my clients and. And it's funny when I ask them the Dan Sullivan question, you know, and I say, you know, if we're sitting here a year from today, you know, what, looking back, what has the happened kind of thing, and the one thing that they all say is if my employees were better financially educated. And so that was the. The answer that every one of my clients gave me. And it's completely different than what the rest of my industry is saying. And it's funny, all of my competition is out there saying, Oh, I pick better investments. I do this, or I'm fiduciary, or all these other things where all of my clients, when I ask them what's the most important thing to them, not a single one of them said, pick better investments. Not a net. Not a single one of them said, be a better fiduciary. They all said, educate my employees better on their personal finances. So I feel like that with the evidence of that and the data that I have, that's what led to me writing the second book, Focused. And I'm also working on a product where I'm actually taking the concepts of that book and I'm shooting videos around those concepts. So when I go to an employer, I'll say, here's the book for your employees, and here's a video series that they can watch that reinforces the concepts of the book to better educate your employees. Because the purpose of that is that you can have 80% more profit. So it's really trying to drive that and have my message in the marketplace be different than what everybody else is saying, but to really say, hey, and here's the thing. If you're a business owner and you get something, you know, a marketing piece that says, hey, I'll pick better investments, or if you get a marketing piece that says your company could be 80% more profitable if your 401k had these things, come and watch this video on how to do it.

Guest: Yeah. Now, part of what you need to be able to do is then document that to show that that's true from one of your companies. So what you've got right now is a hypothesis.

Guest: I'm working on that, too.

Guest: Yeah. So you need a case study now.

Guest: That's where I'm at. So I have some clients who we've worked with for several years, and it's interesting. I've seen the company just grow like crazy. And. And we do a lot of work with the employees. We get them in the plan, we're getting them saving more in the plan. And I actually asked the CEO or the president of the company, I was like, hey, what do you think about us doing a video? Would you be open to doing a video with me talking about how your 401k has grown and the things that we've done and has it helped the company because profits are up and all these other things? And she was like, oh, yeah, I'd love to do that video. So I want to do that. So one of the things I got to be careful with in the financial services industry is Testimonials and endorsements are not allowed. However, case studies are completely acceptable as long as we're backed up by the numbers and the facts. And that's gonna be.

Guest: Yeah, that's what I mean. That's gonna be more valuable anyway.

Guest: Right, right.

Guest: Having the actual numbers and the facts. Because you can say, you know, pointing something in a white paper and say, you know, that they're, you know, third party facts. Kind of thing is theory. Yeah. Especially when it's, you know, all these things are sort of. Of dubious provenance in a way anyway. When you think that T. Rowe Price is, you know, a company that sells mutual funds that would definitely be in a position to benefit if more people were investing in mutual funds. Right.

Guest: So.

Guest: Right. So you can't. You kind of say that that's like a. People look at that with a sort of slanted thing, you know.

Guest: Sure.

Guest: So you've got to be able to kind of call out what the actual facts are, you know, and causation is not. Or correlation is not causation in a way. Right.

Guest: The white paper even says that. Yeah, yeah.

Guest: That you can't say. It just so happens that it's one of the things that, you know, because you could argue that more profitable companies have, you know, bigger.

Guest: Which came first? The chicken.

Guest: Yeah, right. Better organization. It's not that. Because they've got a 401k, they were 80% more profitable. So you gotta be really kind of careful in that and picking out what you actually, what you can do, you know, and what you can measure and where the company's real goals are. How, how are they linking that profitability gain? How are they kind of saying that that's. Where does that come from? Just from. From what, from employee retention? From.

Guest: No, so they measure profit per employee. And so because they're publicly traded companies, the, you know, all of their information and data is available. So they're able to look at what is the profit, how many employees do they have. And then every company that has a 401k program has to file what's called a 5500, which is kind of like a tax return for your 401k. Yep. And so all that information is public information as well.

Guest: Okay.

Guest: And so there is a company out there that does kind of statistical analysis of public 5000. Five hundreds.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: And it's a company called Brightscope. So they take the company information from Brightscope and then they take their profitability from their annual filings and so forth, and they cross reference the two and the Biggest thing that they show is in companies that have employees that participate at a higher rate in their 401k plan tend to be more profitable companies. And I want to go even deeper to say, well, obviously there's a lot of research that shows that when you have financial stress that you are a less productive employee. So there's a lot of data that represents that. And we know that people who tend to save more into their 401k tend to have less financial stress because the 401k becomes a safety net for them.

Guest: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of things in that that could go along with it. Right. That they, those companies could pay higher wages, that give people more room to have investment in a 401. 401k, for instance. Right. So there's a lot of like. So this brings up as many questions as it answers.

Guest: Totally. You could sit here and punch holes in it. But you know, the thing that I'm looking at is I'm looking at what's going to grab somebody's attention and drive them to my website.

Guest: Right.

Guest: And so, you know, one of the things I did is I kind of, I kind of laid out a whole marketing process and this is totally theory because I haven't, haven't started it yet, but.

Guest: Right.

Guest: You know, so my thought process is, like I said, it's public information of companies. 5000 500s. Right?

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: And so I can go on and I subscribe to a service that will give me a list of any kind of criteria I put in. Right. So what I look for is there again, using another strategic coach model called largest check, I go in and go, okay, what's my largest check? And how do I go after my next largest check? And so I've identified 500 opportunities within 100 mile radius of my office of companies that hit my target revenue, which is 35,000 a year in revenue. 35, 35 out. Well, the assets would be somewhere. Yeah. Somewhere between probably.

Guest: Oh, you're saying 30 million, you. Which would mean target revenue.

Guest: Which means revenue that I would receive would be about 30 to 35,000.

Guest: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Guest: So that in dollars of revenue to me.

Guest: Right, gotcha.

Guest: So that, so that's my target revenue range is about 35,000. So really I'm only looking to bring on about three to four clients a year.

Guest: Okay.

Guest: So it's, it's more of a, you know, not as a high volume, it's more of a low volume, big ticket type item.

Guest: Okay.

Guest: And here's the other thing too. When we talk about your profit activators. As far as the. If we look at my thing is, is during the sale and after the sale, I mean, I totally crush it. My client retention rate's probably 99%.

Guest: Right.

Guest: So I don't lose clients and I'm fantastic when I get in front of them. I'm just looking for how do I get in front of more. And because my lifetime value of a client to me, you know, $35,000 client, if I keep them for five years, you know, that's a, I don't, I mean, I keep them longer than that. But if we were just looking over a five year period, that's a pretty good revenue number that. Right, right.

Guest: Because you're getting 35,000 per year for every single year.

Guest: So it's a recurring revenue.

Guest: Yes.

Guest: So. So that's where I'm at now. And so my thought process is I've identified 500 of those. And so I have my current book. And so what I want to do with my current book is, is I'm writing a sales letter to go with that current book. And one of the cool things, I actually just got back on Monday. I got to, I got to give a speech on my new book at the NASDAQ up in, up in New York.

Guest: Right.

Guest: And one of the things I did while I was there at the NASDAQ speaking is I got my picture on the Jumbotron in Times Square. And so I had a professional photographer take my picture of me standing in front of the Jumbotron pointing to my book. That is my 90 minute book. So there you go, plugging for you, right? Pointing out my book. So I'm going to take that picture and part of that will come in some of my sales stuff as I send it out to people. The letter with some of those pictures on it that'll go out to some of the 500 that will basically come and have that headline that says, you know, could your company be 80% more profitable just by making some small changes to your 401k kind of thing, which is basically an attention grabber that, that says if you want to learn more and how we do it, come to, we fix 401ks and watch, you know, watch this no obligation video or, or whatever else. Right, Right. So my whole thought process is how do I take these people? Obviously I don't have emails, I have phone numbers, but I can only call so many of them, you know, But I want to be able to like you guys say, can and clone myself in a way that if I send out to the 500, let's say I send out 20 of them a week, right? And then those 20, I'm trying to really drive them to my website. So you get a nice package in the mail. It's a big padded envelope. And inside the padded envelope you open it up, there's a copy of my book distracted, and then there's a sales letter that says your company could be 80% more profitable. You know, blah, blah, blah, come find out how and then kind of have a little P.S. on there. I've enclosed a book that can help you start to, you know, create more profit in your 401k or whatever. So, so they've got the book, which we know, you know this people don't throw books away.

Guest: Right, right, exactly. That's the whole book.

Guest: You get a book from somebody and they probably are going to read it. It's probably going to sit on their bookshelf or on their desk. But the fact is, is my pictures on the back of that book, Right? So yes, you know, my pictures sitting on, on my prospects desk. And then the goal is, is for me to follow up with maybe even another postcard in there or a series of postcards, continuing to try to drive them to my website to watch my video.

Guest: Yes.

Guest: And then in my video, I've got to create my unique selling proposition that basically says, hey, here's some more information about how we think your company could be more profitable by making these changes. And we go a little bit deeper into the case study. And then what my goal would be is to say, hey, download that case study or download my consumer guide, or kind of similar to your scorecard is we have a quiz, right? So it's. Is your 401k broken? Take the quiz and you can take the quiz. And it asks you five questions. And based on those five questions, it tells you, is your 401k broken or not? And so I've got quizzes I built on my website. I've got, you know, the consumer guide that's available for download on my website. There's, you know, I'm gonna put the white paper from T Reprice on my website. So all these things are designed to, to get those people to come to my website, watch a video and engage with my content and download something.

Guest: Right. Now there's a couple of things to unpack here because you've got, and you've done the work now ahead of time to identify 500 visible prospects. We talk often about the difference between visible and invisible Prospects, and you're in a good situation in that you can point to who those prospects are. Now, what kind of company profile gets you to the $35,000 revenue for you? What, what is, what size of a company is that? How many employees, what kind of revenue are they doing?

Guest: Probably 250 plus employees.

Guest: Okay.

Guest: I don't know. As far as revenue, I would assume, you know, if you've got 250 employees, you had a pretty decent amount of revenue. But here's the thing though, sometimes you can have. It's going to be based on the size of the retirement plan. And retirement plans a lot of times are based on average account balance. So if you, if you have a plan that has great participation and you got $100,000 average account balance, then you're going to have less employees. But if you got a company that is, has less participation, you're going to have a smaller account balance. So the same plan that generates that kind of revenue, maybe a 800 employee company that has very little participation.

Guest: I got you. So it's not about the number of companies or participants. It's the value.

Guest: It's the value of the company's 401k program.

Guest: Okay. Now do these companies, any company that has a 401k that public information is available. So you could. Yes, in theory, you could get access to the plan in advance for those 500 companies.

Guest: Totally.

Guest: Have you done that to.

Guest: Yeah, I mean, I've identified, I have identified the 500.

Guest: I got you. Okay, so that's all.

Guest: Yeah. I have a spreadsheet with 500 companies within 100 mile radius of my office. I have it and I'm ready to pull the trigger on starting the process.

Guest: Sure. Yeah. Okay, so when we look at it, what would trigger somebody switching manager for their 401k? Are some of them managing it in house or are they almost always have a advisor?

Guest: Yeah. Fidelity did a study and I think the study is something like 80 or 90% of retirement plans out there use an advisor.

Guest: Okay.

Guest: And usually where they don't use an advisor is in the upper end of the market. So in my target revenue, I'm gonna say probably 95% of them, 90 to 95% are gonna have an advisor.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: And the other thing is too, is in that target range that I'm looking for is, it's in the target range where there's, there's still a lot of plans out there who use an advisor. But the advisor is not a focused 401k advisor.

Guest: Okay.

Guest: And in the industry what happens is you have a lot of guys who are really more not. They don't have a niche, they're more wealth management guys, but they just happen to know somebody at a company so they end up picking up the 401k program. Well, those guys don't do as good a job as I do because I only do 401ks. I don't do anything other than 401k programs. So when I get into a company and I show you what I do, what's interesting is I don't usually charge a whole lot more than what the other guy charges, but I deliver a lot more value.

Guest: What does value mean?

Guest: So value is the fact that we can be a fiduciary. Fiduciary means we can be the named investment fiduciary on the plan. So I can take the fiduciary responsibility of picking investments off of the company shoulders and we can be that. Then we have a process and a system for educating employees currently. And then I'm working on my new process, which will be with my videos in the book. And, you know, so there's a lot of things that we can do that we deliver, you know, additional value through educating your employees. We can take on different levels of responsibility and take that risk off the company of doing things. So where a lot of the guys who don't focus on it, yeah, they're not going to do those things.

Guest: Right.

Guest: Because they don't really have a process. And so what happens is a lot of Advisors look at 401k plans as, hey, I get to pick up some assets, million dollars of assets out there in this 401k program. I'm going to go get it. So that means my assets just want to buy $10 million. And it looks good on paper, but they don't really, they don't really know how to service a 401k program. They don't understand the laws that govern 401k programs, which is called ERISA. And so we, you know, we understand ERISA, we understand these things. So it's more of a. Where we're specialized in it, where other people are. And, you know, it's very rare that I'm going to get stumped by 401k question where if somebody only has one or two 401k programs, they're not going to understand and they're not going to be able to give the level of advice and expertise that we have.

Guest: Got you on this, this 5500 report or whatever it's called, is There, does it show the assets and then show the return on this as well. So it shows what they. How they managed it, what their annual return is.

Guest: Yep.

Guest: Okay, is any.

Guest: And we have services that will compare that.

Guest: Does anybody rank or compare them? Yes, there are rankings for 401k. Like publicly or is that okay? Because I'm curious that what I would be looking for is with these, these companies that you've done a great job in, you've got your value proposition kind of dialed in. Your during unit, like you said, is strong. You've been doing this, you specialize in it. I've got no doubt that if somebody with a 401k with the right amount of revenue came to you and or assets and said, we want you to help us, that you'd be able to help them. So we're kind of dialed in on the before unit here. And in profit activator one, you've got your ideal target audience. You found those 500 people. So profit activator two is really about how do we get those people, even though they're visible prospects, how do we get the interested ones? How do we get the ones who want to start a dialogue? How can we start this conversation with them? And so my first and always, my first approach is always to look for. What are they looking for right now? Information wise. Not. Not that they're evaluating to make a decision, you know, that they are entering the process. What, what triggers Somebody either seeking an advisor for the first time or switching advisors.

Guest: Yeah. You know, that's kind of interesting because unlike other benefits like your health insurance, that the premiums keep going up and it tends to be a big expense to the company, your 401k often is one of those benefits that if it's not broke, you don't fix.

Guest: Right. That's what I mean is like, what is.

Guest: Yeah, so that makes the sale a little bit harder.

Guest: Right.

Guest: The pain point. So, so what, what triggers? And so if I look back and go, okay, what have been the opportunities where we've picked up business is when somebody has realized that their advisor doesn't know what he's doing or he's given bad advice and it's caused them to have to make a correction on their 401k program. So there are pain points because it is governed by risa. And if you don't do things right, then there's corrections that you have to do. And so a lot of times, if

Guest: you were to think about those 500. Sorry for interrupting you, but if you were to hear those 500. If we were to look at the number one performing 401k and the number 500 performing 401k, that's all knowable. Right. What would be the difference, the gap between the number one and number 500, if we were to rank them?

Guest: So the. Probably the number 1 401k is going to have a lot more people participating. It's. It's going to have, you know, a good employee education program where somebody is.

Guest: I'm talking about just the returns.

Guest: So in just looking at the returns.

Guest: Yeah. If you. That's the data that you have available. Right.

Guest: Well, the data is more than just the returns.

Guest: Okay.

Guest: There's you. I can look and see. Okay. Last year, you know, what did this 401k return. But that's kind of not a good statistic because what if everybody were sitting in this, the guaranteed account doing 1%, then I go, this one only grew 1%. But then if you, like, peel back the layers of the onion, you go, oh, well, everybody was sitting in the guaranteed account. Nobody was invested in the market.

Guest: Right.

Guest: It's not going to have a good return anyway. So.

Guest: Right.

Guest: Some of the return stuff as far as investments, I think can be misleading. So that's where a lot of these other services they look at. Okay. What would the worst 401k look like out there? Right. The worst 401k out there would have compliance issues. And if you have a compliance issue, it's. It's on your 5500. So if they fail testing, it's on their 5500. So if, you know, different things would be on their 5500. So if there's late contributions or late filings or there's refunds, which means they failed testing, there's a lot of these things that you're going to find on probably the 500 number. 500 out of that list. So it's not always just tied to investment performance of the underlying investments. It's also how well the 401k program is running.

Guest: Mm. So I wonder what. Like, what I'm looking at is what would the person who within the company is the person responsible for this.

Guest: So a lot of times it falls under one or two people. It's either going to be the HR manager or it's going to be the chief financial officer, the cfo.

Guest: Right. What would you say is that

Guest: it's probably a little more often the VP of hr.

Guest: Okay.

Guest: So the interesting thing will be is. So, for instance, when I'm doing my searches of 5000. Five hundreds. The name that's on the 5500 is going to be the name of the person who signs it. Right. So but the person that signs it may not always be the day to day person, but they are the ultimate decision maker.

Guest: Right.

Guest: And so a lot of times if I say ultimate decision maker, that's probably more often the cfo. And so he's the ultimate decision maker. So he is the one that has the most liability and responsibility. But if, if he's a good CFO or she, then they're probably, you know, delegating that to the HR manager because it's a benefit and it falls under hr.

Guest: Right.

Guest: So that's typically how we find that. So who's gonna get my material is gonna be the person who signs it.

Stuart: Mm.

Guest: Because their name is.

Guest: They're ultimately the one. Yeah, that's.

Guest: They're ultimately the one.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: So what will probably happen is they'll ultimately be the one and they may end up passing it on to the day to day person. Maybe the day to day person engages with my stuff. I don't know.

Guest: Uh huh.

Guest: So, but

Guest: so the way, the reason I was asking about rankings or ratings is what I'm always looking for is where is the opportunity for some market data that would be appealing to somebody who is sort of entering the process of looking at their options. They're not actively kind of looking to switch with an urgency, but they are building awareness. They're going, you know what, this isn't really, I don't think we're in the optimal situation here. Or they're, they're looking around, they're open, you know, because you, if you, if you rank it, they're going to be people who are entrenched with their advisor there. There's no need. They're getting great returns, everybody's happy. They're, they're not looking to move at all. Right. Then on the other end there's going to be people who are like, would move in an instant, you know, if they had a chance. But the majority, where you're going to have the great inroads here is in the people who are just kind of starting the process of.

Guest: Right.

Guest: Of potentially moving, you know, or they're paying attention to it. They are not maybe thrilled with the way things are going.

Guest: And that's come up typically. Yeah, that's typically how it is where it's like, you know, we don't really see our advisor, we don't really get a lot of service. And so here's the Thing, I can come in and be your advisor and not have to change your plan. So let's say your plans with Fidelity, who's one of the largest records keepers. Right. I can come in and I can say, hey, listen, you don't need to leave Fidelity. You can sign this piece of paper and I can be your advisor and I can start delivering value for you without having to change your 401k to another provider. Because sometimes there's a pain point people don't want to leave.

Guest: Exactly.

Guest: But I can come in and say, hey, listen, here's the thing. You do realize you're not getting a lot of service from your current advisor. Here's some things that I do and we can make your plan better. And interestingly enough, I charge about the same thing that he charges. So there's no increased cost to add me. You just get more value.

Guest: Mm. Is there a record of who they are with? Like, is there a.

Guest: Their current advisor.

Guest: Yeah. On that.

Guest: Yeah, it's on the 5500. Anybody who receives compensation is on the 5500.

Guest: I gotcha. Okay.

Guest: So I can actually, there is one search theory that says you can. I can run a list of every company, 5,500 whose advisor is out of state.

Guest: Right.

Guest: Or that their administrator is out of state or whatever else. So that's one of the things that people look for.

Guest: Mm. Yeah. And so you start to look at where I was going with the yields or with the, you know, performance or whatever as an easy sort of surface level guidance of how they're doing. Is that something in the discussion of how's the 401k doing? The thing that would seemingly be the most easiest to point to would be the actual returns on. It would be one of the. In the conversation anyway, would the.

Guest: Not necessarily the returns, because for all of the stuff that we just talked about. But yeah, earlier when I said there's a company called Bright Scope, right. That looks at pub takes 5500 information, they come up with their own score. Their own score is based on are your fees high? So if you're paying too much, that's a major pain point for a lot of programs is that they're paying too much in fees. The second pain point would be that they have low participation, which means nobody's participating in the plan. And then there's one that measures everything on company generosity. And then there's another metric, but then Brightscope gives you a score of 1 to 100. So let's say your plan scores a 50, then it would say other plans in your industry, the average score is a 75. And it would say that if your plan went from a 50 to a 75, then that would equate, you know, $50,000 additional for every participant or something. So it actually gives it a measure of those things. And that's, that's probably a better measurement than just looking at investments because it's like we said, if you had a bunch of people who are getting ready to retire next year, they're all sitting in the guaranteed account. Well, your plan is not going to have a good return anyway.

Guest: Yes. Is that something that they would have knowledge of and access to, or would that be new information to them if you told them what they're. What they're bright?

Guest: It would most likely be new information, but it is publicly available to anybody. You can go to brightscope.com and pull up any 401k program that's out there, but most people don't know about it and don't go to it.

Guest: Okay. Because what I'm always looking for is market data that could get somebody to start a conversation, Right. I'm not trying to convince them to do anything else. It's like our. I talk a lot about our real estate program for getting listings where we're looking for people who are going to sell their house in the next six to 12 to 18 months. And I know that I'm not trying to just get my name out there, you know, and say, you know, call Dean and start packing that. That's like one level of it, right? Brand. You got to get your name out there. And that's where a lot of people take their advertising sophistication. You know, they start to think, well, we got to get our name out there, start, you know, doing our personal promotion stuff, branding, get us, get us out there, get top of mind awareness. Then the next level of that is to start isolating them and trying to convince them to do something, right? So it's like where I shine a light on you and say, find out how much your house is worth, you know, or thinking of selling your house. Find out how to sell your house in less than 90 days guaranteed. Or we're kind of making offers to them, right, to try and get them to respond. But that only gets you the people who are sort of. It's not as, as. Not as broad as getting the market data, which is a third level of sophistication, where it's like taking the light and instead of shining it on me or shining it on you, shining it over their shoulder and illuminating the information that would be valuable to them.

Guest: So got it. Thinking it through as you're talking.

Guest: So we do it on the real estate side and we offer the free February 2019 report on winter Haven lakefront house prices. Now, that is valuable to anybody who's thinking about selling their Winter Haven lakefront house. You know, so if you start. That's why I think about. We've done it with other financial advisors. Like in the UK we did February 2019 report on UK annuity yields. And that sounds like market data. Right. So that's where I was going. If I were thinking about saying to somebody offering the February or first quarter, you know, or 2018 report on whatever North Carolina 401k yields.

Guest: Here's the thing. So what if I were to take this where I talk about the white paper and I talk about how they measure the Brightscope score against public data on the plan. And so then what my call to action is come and get this free Brightscope report on your plan and see how you stack up to the T. Rowe Price white paper.

Guest: And I like that as a, as a next step. Right. What, what I would love to see is that if, if this would work too, because at some level, would you say in the mix of the decision would. I'm trying to really get a handle on whether the returns are of zero consequence or of some concern now.

Guest: There's still some value.

Guest: Okay. Yeah. And they would come up in the conversation of the CEO asking, how's our 401k doing with the first, you know, would the first few words out of their mouth be about, well, we've got, you know, this much participation and this much conversation with our advisor and this. Or would they say, you know, we did okay, we did 18% last year, or would that be in the conversation?

Guest: You know, it's probably not information that they would have right away. They could probably get it from their record keeper, but they'd have to do a lot of digging. So it's not like that's a statistic that anybody who manages a 4.1K could rattle off and go, hey, our plan did 19% last year.

Guest: They wouldn't. Huh. That's surprising.

Guest: Yeah. Now, you might know what your individual account did, but you wouldn't know what the total overall plan did. Because a lot of record keepers, they don't report that, like, right away. Now, sometimes they'll give you an annual report, and it'll be deep in the annual report and you could dig through and find it, but it's not usually information that's, you know, right off the top. Yeah, but if you bring it up to somebody, it is always of interest to them. But it's almost like how we punched holes in the first thing. It would be easy for an experienced advisor to punch holes and going, you know. Yeah, but look, look, because here's the thing. The company does not invest the 401k. The participants invest their own account.

Guest: Okay. That's. Okay. Got it. Now I understand. Okay. So I was. I've never had a job, so I don't know what. Like I've got my own ira, but I don't know. I didn't realize that individuals manage their own 401k. I was thinking that this was a kind of group retire, like a fund almost that everybody knows every individual person. Makes total sense then.

Guest: So, yeah, every individual person chooses their own investments.

Guest: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. So that's why they wouldn't care about that. Because it's not on them that the employees are saying. So it's not every company's running its own hedge fund kind of thing.

Guest: Correct.

Guest: And where you could have a competitive advantage by, you know, enticing people to come work for you with a fund, because our funds. Right, exactly.

Guest: You know what I mean? Right.

Guest: Okay. So that makes a lot of sense. That. That's why. That's.

Guest: I probably should have explained that more.

Guest: No, I totally. So now I get why they're not as concerned about individual returns and what the number. What would be the top metrics that they would be looking at to say whether it's doing well?

Guest: Probably one of the major pain points today would be that you're paying too much for your 401.

Guest: Okay.

Guest: That's probably the largest pain point right now considering that there's been a lot of lawsuits about fees. So.

Guest: And those fees are all available on the 5500.

Guest: Correct.

Guest: So maybe. Would that be interesting? Is that report on 401k management fees?

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: The survey of. Now we're on to something. That's where I'm going now is that this would be valuable information, the, you know, report on 401k management fees. If somebody thinks that they're paying too much in fees for not enough value kind of thing, That's a person you want to talk to, right?

Guest: Yeah, absolutely.

Guest: Okay, so now we're getting somewhere.

Guest: And that's where I come in and I say, for the same fee, if I can deliver all this additional value for the same fee, then that's where I get most of my business.

Guest: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay, so how could we provide. How could you, with this data, create a data report that is. That's valuable for them?

Guest: I have a service that I subscribe to that is a benchmarking service. So I can actually take your information that is not. I can't get the public information, but if you give me the actual information, then I can go out and benchmark your plan in the marketplace.

Guest: Right.

Guest: And I can tell you exactly where your fees compare. Now, here's the other thing, too. Part of the Brightscope report will tell you if your fees are high compared to the average.

Guest: Yes.

Guest: So then that's a simple thing. And it takes no work on my part. The other one is it actually takes some work on my part.

Guest: Right. That's okay. That. The work on your part. We want that to be the second step. Like, so what? There's no different than what we do with the real estate side. If we say I'm offering the January or February report on Winter Haven lakefront house prices, what I'm going to send to people is all of the data of all of the lakefront homes that were for sale and sold in the last 12 months. And then I know that that information is not going to be enough for that because it's just showing what all the lakefront houses are. And they're going to want to know, well, what is my house worth?

Guest: Yes.

Guest: So that gives me the entree to open up the conversation by offering them a pinpoint price analysis where we can show you exactly what your house would sell for compared to the other homes that are on the market right now. Right. And that's where I'm hoping is that you go with that. That's the idea that I was looking to kind of parallel for you, you know, that if you offered this report on 401k management fees or to give market data to people so they know, especially if they have an inkling that they're paying too much or they're curious that they're paying too much.

Guest: What do you. Or what do you think about this? There's. There's a book that we subscribe to is called the 401k book of averages. Right. So it's just a book of average fees. And what if the first step was get this, you know, what is the average $20 million plan? Pay for fees?

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: Get this free report that gives you the averages. Right.

Guest: And for North Carolina, or that, you

Guest: know, it wouldn't really be. It would just be averages across the nation. But. But it would be the average. And once I wet your appetite with the average, I go, hey, if you would like to benchmark your actual plan.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: Against the marketplace, then go to this step.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: And that's the report where I'm actually get involved and do the work. So, yeah, we could start with air, where it's like, hey, just get the averages and compare your own fees. But then when they look at it, then most of the time they're gonna be, you know, maybe a little bit higher than that, but then that's gonna engage them to go right into looking at the. The next thing. And.

Guest: Yes.

Guest: So. Yeah. Well, here's what I'm talking about. I have. When we talked earlier about case studies, I have several clients where we've benchmarked their plan consistently every three years. And every time we did it, we were able to save them somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000 in fees. So if. If I were to do a case study video of that and drive people to the website and they watch that case study video and they go, wait a second, our advisors not doing that. Let me get that report and let me have them do that.

Guest: Yeah. And it's just a matter of positioning. Right. Like, I would use all of that after they've raised their hand for the data report. So we're not. Part of the thing is that it's separating the compelling and the convincing. And so that kind of stuff where you're trying to win them over to a new thought, that's what the convincing is. Right. Like you're. And there's a place for it, but it's in profit activator 3, not in profit activator 2. Profit activator 2. We want to compel them to raise their hand with an intention of something. Right. So I'm not. It's like on the real estate side, I'm not convincing them to list their house with me in the postcard or in the initial things that I'm sending them. What I'm trying to do is just get people who are thinking about putting their house on the market or making a move. I'm just trying to get them to raise their hand like lakefront homeowners. This whole thing is very, very parallel to what we're talking about here. Because lakefront homeowners in Winter haven, there are 21 of them, just like you've identified 500 visible prospects for your thing. Now, some of these lakefront homeowners, 4%, some of them are going to change. We're going to move right. So 80 of the 2,000 are going to move over the next 12 months. And all I want to know is who are these 80 people? Right. I'm not trying to convince people to sell their house or to move their house or to list with me. I just want to know who they are. So if we could magically look at those 500 companies that you've identified and we could get the ones that are. If we could run them through some service and they would light up, that these 50 are going to change. Yeah. Or these 20 are going to change.

Guest: Keep in mind, I'm only looking at bringing on three or four. That's why three would be my goal. Yeah.

Guest: Yes. That's why we don't need to try and convince everybody. We just need to get.

Guest: Got to find them.

Guest: Right. And the ones that are open to change are the ones that are kind of paying attention. Right. Like if you think about it, that, that kind of data, if they're, if that, if that comes up in conversation, you know, when they're having, when they're talking with their executive team and they look at the 401k, it comes up on the review and the thing and they're like, man, it feels like we're paying a lot of fees for this 401k that, that conversation has maybe come up and they go, is that really how much? Well, I don't know. I mean that's what they charged us last year. Or you know, that they don't have any, they don't have any ammunition or

Guest: any kind of comparison provide on that data.

Guest: And you provide that market data gets you in front of people who are thinking that thought. So now you provide that information, but you also. Now we start the convincing.

Guest: Yeah, right. I'm with you. I like it. So that's just gonna be the next step. So my process is still the same. Yeah. I think I can even use the kind of both of those messages. Right. Like making it more profitable. And by the way, here's a free report on to know if your fees are too high because.

Guest: Exactly.

Guest: It could make your plan less profitable if you're paying too much fees.

Guest: Yes.

Guest: So then if they come to my website, that's just another tool that I have for them to raise their hand and engage with with.

Guest: That's exactly right. And now we're gonna, now we just wanna see who's willing to engage in the dialogue. Right. Because you're gonna send them the report, you're gonna send along with it a copy of your book and you're gonna offer the next step for people. Right. Which might be a custom benchmarking report.

Guest: The custom. Yeah, benchmarking. So what do you think? You still like the idea of me just, like, randomly sending the books to the 400 to get them to risk, to engage?

Guest: Yeah. I don't. I think I'd rather see you, like, get. I'd rather see you send a postcard to the 500 offering the data, the report, and respond and send your book and everything to the people who respond.

Guest: Hmm. Because here's the thing, though, I'm wondering, like, does my response rate go down if it's just a postcard versus a bull?

Guest: It doesn't matter. What we want is. Listen, you're looking.

Guest: You're only looking for the people who are interested anyway.

Guest: That's what I'm saying, is that not all 500 of them are candidates, and we want to find the ones who are already thinking those thoughts.

Guest: Yeah. I guess that part of me is like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: But then the other part of me, there's people who would probably change because they just haven't felt the pain yet.

Guest: Right.

Guest: How do I engage? How do I engage those people? Because to add me is a real simple piece of paper, and I value. So it's. It's almost like I get. There's people out there who are in the process of going, hey, we're not happy. We would be open, but we don't know anybody. And then they get my postcard. They engage. Right?

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: But then for every one of those, it's almost like you said, 4%. Right. This is probably 1 or 2% that are like that. But then that means that there's probably another 10% of people out there who are. You know, they don't really think about it, but if they got something in the mail and they happen to go, that's interesting. Let me see what this is about. Then. Then they might go, wait a second. What does our guy do? What is our fee? So.

Guest: Right.

Guest: I'm trying to think too. How do I engage that person? Because we do seminars here. We do other things here and webinars. And so I'm looking for people to jump into my sales process and become, you know, a prospect too. And I get it. I got to create prospects. And they may not buy today, they may not buy this year, they might buy next year. So.

Guest: Right.

Guest: That was my thought with sending the book, is that when you get a book, you don't throw it away, and you tend to engage more versus Just a postcard that, like my assistant, I even asked her about it, and she says she has. A lot of times when postcards come through here, they don't even get to your desk. I just throw them away.

Guest: Mm. Bold. Because. But here's the thing. That's a great, exact example of what I'm talking about that she's. If we look at it, you know, this post, this podcast, is called More Cheese, Less Whiskers, right? And the reason it's called that is because I've read about these studies about why they use mice in all these psychological studies, you know, motivational studies and stuff, and it's because they react very similarly to humans, right? Where our reaction and motivation stuff is there they say, like our brain, we basically have a mouse brain then layered on top with all this intelligence on top of it, right? But fundamentally, the thing that drives everything is that mouse brain. We're still driven by fear and pleasure, right? Pain and pleasure, motivation. And I started thinking about how, you know, the. The mice have a very simple life. The prime directives of a mouse are to get cheese and avoid cats. That's the whole thing, right? If you're a mouse, that's your. That's your game. Now, you don't have to convince a mouse to try some cheese. It's built in, right? We're seeking it all the time. They're seeking the cheese, and they will go right to it. But as soon as they sense any whiskers or anything that could be a cat, they run away, right? Because we are genetically wired to survive. And if we had to. If it was a 5050 decision, if we had to evaluate decisions and decide, should I run or should I stay, right? Do an evaluation like that, we would be extinct because we wouldn't, you know, we wouldn't react fast enough to get away from danger. So that's why the danger or pain is very instinctual. You know, if you touch your hand on a hot element on the stove, your hand moves it away faster than you can consciously think to do that. And that's happening at a mitochondrial level, right? Like you're. We're cellularly wired to protect ourselves like that. Now, when you take your business environment like this, and you take everybody wired like this, your receptionist who's looking at the postcards, looking at the mail, she's taking it on herself to protect you from cats, correct? She's looking at that postcard and what that postcard, if it is like any commercial postcard, has the intention of taking money from your business, right? As opposed to bringing money into your business. Let me ask you this, what's your receptionist name? Just her first name.

Guest: Mercedes.

Guest: Mercedes. So listen, if Mercedes got in the mail an envelope with a handwritten address on it and she opened it up, would she open all the mail first before deciding whether to give it to you? Or does she

Guest: sometimes not all she does.

Guest: If she got that and she opened it up and it was a personal note from someone who said, listen, I've got all this money that I need to get managed and my husband died and I don't know where to turn. I've got $10 million that I need to manage. Would you please call me and help me now? Do you think Mercedes would throw that out?

Guest: Not at all.

Guest: What would she do? She'd call excited, she'd bring it right in, put it on top of your desk. She probably wouldn't put it on top. She'd want to be the bearer of this good news because she's going to get the reflective glow of your happiness at receiving this message in the mail. Okay, so that type of thing, what, what we're saying about just market data or making it look important, making it look like news is something that would be valuable. If you have this postcard that comes that's offering this report that looks like market data, like it might be important for you, she's not going to throw that out versus it looking like somebody trying to convince you to do something.

Guest: Right.

Guest: So it is important that you have that. That's what you said. Exactly why it's important to, in the beginning have something that is valuable, you know, that gets in on that sort of front rather than a, is received as a sales type of message, you know,

Guest: for sure. Yeah, that makes sense.

Guest: And, but anyway, the bottom line is you've got 500 people, so it wouldn't matter. You could send, you could send a $10 package to all 500 of them. If you wanted to go that way, you still only got $5,000 in it.

Guest: But here's the thing though. I could send it. I mean, I think I could spend it, send it for less than $5.

Guest: Right.

Guest: That's the cost of the book and the postage.

Guest: That's what I mean.

Guest: Yeah, yeah, sure.

Guest: So you could, you can go either way like that. But I think that it would be an interesting, you know, first I think,

Guest: I think I'll try with both and just see where I'm getting response. Because my thought was send them the book and, and then followed by a series of postcards.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: So they're getting that. And so the download would be my second book. So it's the value of saying, hey, there's another book, and then there's. I wasn't thinking about, like, the reports like you're talking about. I think that's a fantastic idea. You know, here's the other reports and so that you can request as well.

Guest: Yes.

Guest: Yeah. This is fantastic.

Guest: Well, that's good. So what's your reflection here? What's your takeaway from what we have? We talked about a lot of stuff.

Guest: Yeah, we talked about a whole lot of stuff. And I think one of my biggest takeaways is how do I not really get away from my message that I've done the market research on, as far as talking about how to make plans more profitable, but also throw in the pain point, which is the fees, and throwing in a fee report. I wasn't even thinking about a fee report, which is fantastic. I have all that stuff. And that's another piece of collateral that I had that I really wasn't counting as a piece of collateral. So that's probably one of my biggest takeaways, is doing that. And then, you know, what I may do is I may try and do, you know, do 20 of them where I just send them the book and then do 20 of them and just send them a nice postcard and see, and I can track. I can track visitations to my website. Sure, right. So if I do that and I truly measure and I say, okay, which one's driving more traffic, then I'll have some good data that allows me to do more. And here's the thing. 1. I mean, I have these 500. They're going to continue to stay in the process where I continue dripping on them. Right. Of course. Those are the 555.

Guest: Yeah, those. That's like. I say those are the 500. Just like the 2100 people that own the lakefront homes in winter are this year, next year, the year after, always the 2100 lakefront homes.

Guest: Yeah, totally. So it's. It's just, how do I continue to try and perfect these things? And that's what I'm excited about is, you know, just trying different things and see what. What works, what happens. And, you know, it's not like I got to bring in, you know, 500 new clients this year. Right. Looking at bringing in three. So that's right. If I can go through this process and, you know, it generates one or two, I mean, that's fantastic.

Guest: Awesome.

Guest: So I really appreciate you going through and kind of giving me some ideas that I hadn't considered. This has been fantastic. I got my money's worth out of this call.

Guest: Hey, there you go. That's fantastic. Well, I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun and I think you're gonna, you know, I want to hear how it all works out because.

Guest: Absolutely.

Guest: A cool thing. So it would be a nice little case study to follow up on too.

Guest: For sure. For sure. Yeah. So I just, I get your emails and if I reply to that, does it come to you?

Guest: Yes, absolutely.

Guest: Okay. Yeah. So I may. Yeah, I'll just reply to some of your emails. I think I got one earlier today or something. But three a week.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: So I'll just, I'll try this and I may just shoot you. You might get an email from me is like, hey, Dan, I did it, man. This is fantastic.

Guest: I can't wait.

Guest: I'm going to keep the data and I'll share it with you. With you. More than that. Thank you so much, Dean. Yeah, man, I really appreciate it.

Guest: Okay, have a great day.

Guest: All right, you too. Bye.

Guest: Bye. Bye.

Stuart: And there we have it. What a great episode. I hope that you've got as much out of this as I did. Listen to it the first time through some of the ideas, the narrowing in on the target market, the thinking through the journey, not just from I've got these assets and it will appeal to a certain amount of the audience but, but more from thinking like a chess player. And what are the four or five moves that I know are going to happen in this conversation and how can I orchestrate those so that they happen in the best possible way? Always good to listen to two perspectives with a similar person. It gives a bit more depth to the depth of the conversation. So with that, I'll catch you in the next show. We've got some more great interviews coming up, some more conversations with Betsy and Dean. It's going to be exciting as we move into the fall. If you're ready to get started, then there's a couple of things you can do next. If you haven't already, Then check out bookblueprintscore.com to measure your book ideas against our book blueprint framework. See how you can maximize each step in the eight step process. And then once you're ready to get started, then head over to 90minutebooks.com forward slash, get started or follow the get started links at the top and that will show you how you can get us involved and we can get your book out there collecting leads. Okay. With that. Thanks, everyone, and I will speak to you in the next one.