Ep 326: Finding Marketing Success By Building Spreadsheets To Track That Advisor Data With Erica Pauly

Welcome to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast where you go behind the scenes with financial planner, speaker and consultant Michael Kitces to hear stories of how leading financial advisors navigated the inevitable challenges that arise on the path to success and get insight from leading industry consultants about how to break through to the next level in your advisory business. And now, here's your host, Michael Kitces.

Welcome everyone. Welcome to the 326th episode of of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast. My guest on today's podcast is Erica Pauley. Erica is the founder and owner of Track that Advisor, a consulting and coaching firm based in Gilbert, Arizona that helps advisory firms track and then improve upon their marketing results. What's unique about Erica, though, is how she built a series of spreadsheet tools to measure the details of each step of her advisory firm's marketing funnel, from lead generation to each meeting, the sales process to client onboarding, getting initial revenue of the firm, and then turned it into a series of tools that any advisory firm can use to evaluate how their marketing is performing, where it needs to improve, and how they compare to the average advisory firm as a benchmark. In this episode, we talk in depth about how through a series of Google sheets, Erica helps advisory firms begin to track each of the steps in their marketing funnel, analyze how those steps are in turning a lead into a client, and then develop the strategies to help them improve those metrics. Why Erica focuses on five key marketing metrics, stick rate, close rate, average client size, pending days and cost per client to quickly gain an overall picture of an advisory firm or individual advisor's marketing process and then again compare those numbers to benchmarking data to see where improvements should be made first and why. Erica ultimately built an additional tool on top of her spreadsheets that she calls the Tracker Genie that helps advisory firms quickly spot gaps in their own data and fix them. Because in the end, it's not just about tracking the marketing data, but helping firms to actually do what it takes to input and maintain their data in the first place. We also talk about how while working in a marketing role in advisory firm, Erica began to track data on their individual advisors marketing efforts internally because she realized she didn't have the data to support her suggestions for the firm's strategic planning and decided to start measuring how the firm was performing so that she could validate her recommendations with actual evidence. How after moving to another state because of a job opportunity for her husband, Erica was contacted by her former firm that she had tracked data for to ask her to continue doing the work as a contractor and Made her realize that there's a real demand for this specific type of work and ultimately inspired her to found track that advisor as a business. And why Erica still deliberately chooses to use Google Sheets to track data instead of a standalone software application as it allows her to customize layouts for individual firms and makes it easier for support staff to navigate instead of asking them to learn yet another whole new software platform and be certain to listen. To the end Where Erica shares how as a self proclaimed introvert and people pleaser, she's learned to become more comfortable with having difficult conversations with advisors about their strategies and how they are or are not performing. Why Erica hasn't taken the role of CEO in her own firm and has instead given that role to one of her trusted employees because she recognized that her strengths lie in analyzing data and coaching others and she needed someone in the role that has the drive and ability to help the firm keep growing. And how Erica learned the hard way the importance of not only finding employees that are the right fit, but having detailed processes and workflows so that as the firm grows she can ensure that she's maintaining firm culture and business execution and ensure that the firm can continue to grow into her long term vision and beyond. And so with that introduction, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast with Erika Pauley. Welcome Erica Polly, to the Financial Advisor Success Podcast.

Thank you Michael. I'm so excited to be here.

I'm really excited about today's episode and getting to talk about, dare I say, nerd out for a bit on marketing data. Not just marketing strategies, but marketing data. Yeah, it's a funny thing. So we've done this research study on advisor marketing through Kitz's platform. We've been through two cycles of it. We'll be doing our, our third version of it next spring where you know, like we go to advisors and we ask her just, you know, some fairly straightforward information. It's like how many new clients did you get and how much revenue did it generate? And like what, what marketing channels were you engaged in to generate these clients? Like which clients came from which channels? And to me like just fairly straightforward data. So you can say like, well you know, I, I did this event and I got this many clients and then like I did this strategy, this like website thing and I got this many clients. And what we find every time we do the study is it is really hard for most advisors to answer. What candidly I don't feel like are terribly challenging questions around is how many clients did you get. And where did you get them from? Because most of us have no tracking for like, we know it's not even, we don't have any data. Like we don't have any tracking for it. We don't have any systems to keep track of where clients coming from and where is new business coming from. So, you know, nerds like me can then do marketing studies to report out what's working and even just for us internally so we can figure out what's working. So we know here's the thing to double down on and here's the thing to dial back on. And so I know you have spent many years now like literally building out like tools in the platform for advisors to, to track data about what's going on with their marketing. And so frankly, I'm just really excited to talk like nerdy talk about marketing data and all the opportunities that come when you actually start keeping track of what's actually working or not as you're trying to grow your advisory business.

And I'm excited too. I was telling my husband, I'm like, no one knows what I do. And I'm so excited that you get excited about these same things because people never remember what I do. They're always like, oh, how's your work? I'm like, it's fantastic. But I'm not going to go into it because it's real complex. But it's so fun being with a fellow data person. So yeah, let's start the conversation.

Well, let's start right there. So for an advisor audience that hopefully gets it a little bit more than our general social circles, like what do you do?

I know. I feel like it is my job to kind of rewrite the narrative of data analytics, data storytelling for financial advisors. So I own a company called Track that Advisor and what we're doing there is yes, we have a platform. We build trackers for advisors to track all their marketing stuff. So where's the lead coming from? What are we spending on it? What's happening in the sales cycle, the business that we write from it, so then they have a place for it. Then we're providing dashboards and pretty charts and reports, but then I'm also analyzing it for them. So it's kind of a three part system, right? Like we, we create the area to track it, we give them their reports and then I'm coming in on the backside and saying, all right, this is what they mean. And if you don't have one of those three steps, it's really, really hard to hit goals. And it's really hard to even know what your goals should be. And that is what we do at Track Advisor is really equipping them with the tools to track it, helping them see it visually and then explaining it to them so that they can pivot and move and shift and you know, make sure they're hitting goals or giving permission to change them.

So help us then get a little bit more granular of like, really like what are you, what are you measuring? What are you tracking? Like, how does this work?

We are tracking from the moment a lead sets an appointment, we are getting the high level numbers. Let's say you do a dinner seminar and we say, great, how many mailers did you send? You know, what is the number of people that registered or showed up at that level? I just want numbers. Once they set an appointment and they get on your calendar, we're actually following that lead and looking at historical data. What they do from day one, when is the appointment, did they keep it, did they set a second appointment or were they qualified? You know, looking at their qualified qualifier, qualified or not, and that depends on the office, some don't do that. Moving to a second, moving to a third, did they become a client? And then once they say yes and we do the apps, we're following the entire application process. So how long is it taking from the day that they said yes to actually submitting it? And that's on the insurance side, but also looking at managed money, how long is that taking? And then how long does the entire process from commitment of yes through getting it issued, paid, delivered and then what happens thereafter? So really looking at the marketing side of things, we don't dive too much into product specific stuff. But looking at from day one they say they're interested and what happened with them. And then all the reporting is looking at it by marketing funnel, if you're a multiple advisor office, we're looking at it by advisor. Right. What is the percentage of production this advisor is bringing in? What's their stick rate, their close rate, what are your ROIs? So we can dive really, really granular into all of that stuff once the tracking itself is coherent.

Basically when I'm, I'm struck as you're describing that just even the, I don't mean this as a negative way for advisors that are struggling with tracking even at this level. But like even the most basic data, like how many people contacted you last year of those, how many were actually qualified prospects? So we can get down to like how many people we talked to that really might have been good fit. And of the people you talked to that were qualified prospects, how many of them actually became clients? Right. Even if I. When I talk to a lot of advisors about what's your close rate? I hear a lot of like, like it's pretty good. It's about 50%. Like, well, like cool. Like above 50% could be like 55 or 75 or 95. Like, what does it actually come out to be? When you do the math, I'm like, oh, I've never done that math. I don't have that data. Yeah, I just sort of know. Like, I feel like more than half the people I talk to become clients. Like, so at some level that's cool. But I think as you highlight. Well, when you start trying to go, well, a. Just sometimes when we actually look at the data, we realize like, oh, maybe my close rate's actually not as good as I thought. Or Rockley, maybe my close rate is actually so high that I'm probably underpriced and need to raise my fees. Because you actually, like, if you close 95% of your prospects, you're doing something wrong. No joke. Like if you're closing 95% of your prospects, you are, you were not priced high enough. Like, there should be some type price tension. Some people should decide even that you're not worth it. If everybody thinks you're worth it, you're underpriced. So sometimes you can learn something from that data. But when you go one step deeper, like, hey, you've got three advisors in your office, do they all close similarly? Does one of them do better than others? Does one have a better follow through on prospects actually going to a second meeting in the first place? Do you know? And a lot of the time we don't. And so when you get down, like, okay, how consistently is this happening across your firm, across your different advisors, or how consistent is it across your marketing channels? Because often it's not right. Just some, some channels produce more volume of leads, but they might be lower quality leads, but maybe you get some really good ones, but you got to serve through more of the week to get more chapter to the wheat.

Yep.

If, like, if you don't keep some data on it, just getting to those core questions, like how many leads, how many were qualified and how many turn into clients and ideally, how much revenue do you actually get from them is really hard for most advisors to actually bring together.

Well, and that's why we exist. I mean, and people are like, I didn't know this was a thing. And I'm so sad for the financial advisory world. Right. I'm so sad that they don't have this as advisors. They need this to grow their practices and not necessarily grow them in regards to like new business and new money, but more of just hitting goals. Whether it's spending more time with family or whatever it is just to become more efficient. Um, but you're right, this is, most people have never heard of this and that's what makes me sad. But that's why we're here. That, that's what I want to put the message out to the world that it's, it's doable and, and you can do it.

It's one of those like I guess they'll saying in the, in the business world, like if you're, if you're not measuring it, you can't manage it. So if you, if you're not gathering some kind of data around how your marketing sales process is working, you, you can't possibly make improvements or even just figure out what to stop doing. That's not working because you, you don't, you don't really have good, good perspective. And, and you know, for multi advisor firms, the moment you got multiple advisors, you really don't necessarily know what's happening because you're not there firsthand. But I find even for advisors that you know, try, try to, I don't keep track of this mentally in their heads. Like try to, try to be self aware around it. I'm, I'm actually often very fascinated by what advisors think is going on and then what they find out when they actually sit down and look at some of the data and you just realize like your brain overweights the big client successes and the big losses that are heartbreaking and you lose most of the data in the middle. That's actually like the averaging and the volume. And so I find a lot of advisors just misjudge their own numbers because you know, we, we, we get so fixated on that one client that we thought we were going to get that we don't get that we fail to realize. Like actually if we're really high close rate, you're just really bothered about, about that one. Or like you got a couple of big clients, you're feeling really good and then you look back at the numbers like, wow, you're barely closing 20% of the people you're sitting across from. Like it's great that you got some big clients. Like you might have really big numbers if you could make some adjustments to your sales process because these Numbers aren't actually doing that, aren't going that well.

Right. And it also gives them a sense of peace when they go to these events with other advisors and everyone's throwing out numbers. I mean people throw out numbers all the time, like T shirts at a basketball game, like, this is my ROI and this is my close rate. And if you really know yours and you know why it is that way, there's such a sense of peace rather than that comparison game of like, well, why isn't mine 50%? But when you really start looking at it, you know why you know, or I mean you just have data to back up of that's really interesting that they're 50. Maybe we can be curious about that and ask about it and see if we're just looking at this number a different way. And it opens conversations too for these advisors who are competitive.

Not that anybody in our industry is right about the numbers or anything. It's like hypothetically, if you're just saying if they were, it might be cool to be able to compare numbers with others. So, so and take us a little bit further into just the, the metrics, the metrics that matter. Like what, what do you, what do you actually measure and report on and dashboard out? Because frankly you mentioned so many steps there of like, did they set the appointment, did they keep the appointment where they qualified? Did they come to the second appointment? Did they come to the third appointment? Do they become a client? Like how long did it take to do the process and move the dollars? And like just there's so many things there I can easily see someone getting into like drowning in data overwhelm in the other direction. So I'm sure you find in practice just some, some numbers and metrics matter more than others or become more of a focal point than others. So what, like what are the, what are the metrics that matter that you tend to, to focus on in this process?

Yeah, I have a top five because there are. And our dashboards give them probably, I don't know, 40 that they can look at. But the top five that, that are at least the biggest drivers of change or understanding of what's happening would be your stick rate, which the definition for me always with data definitions really matters. So stick rate is of the people who get on your calendar, how many actually keep that first appointment? So first appointments stick rate.

So the, I mean as envisioning in practice, that probably varies a lot by what your marketing channel is. Right. When I, when I get stuff from referrals, usually pretty darn high by the time they schedule something with me, it's going through. If I work with like some of the third party lead gen services, it can be really low because they're like shopping a whole bunch of advisors at once. If I'm doing like seminar marketing, at least going back to my roots, doing seminar marketing in my early days, like it's kind of, kind of in the middle. Like you, you ain't getting every appointment that gets set at the end of a set at the end of a dinner seminar. But you should get a certain percentage of them and you know, if more than half are peeling off your calendar like you got a problem and you, your follow up process or your appointment setting process or something else. So, so you get it like that. I feel like that's one that for advisors where almost everything is inbound and referral based, they're probably not used to measuring that because the stick rate's really, really high when it comes to a referral. But when you're doing more just I guess proactive route by marketing in general like it, it is actually a normal thing that not every prospect follows through even in the first meeting. Just that becomes part of your process and then a chance for process improvement of like hey, you're having a really high fall off. Like ever tried doing a reminder email before and see if they stick? Like there's things you can do to live stickrate once you understand you have a stick rate problem.

Exactly.

So then what's your Benchmark?

There is 70% and with benchmarking there's a lot of ways we come up with it. And I like to tell people it's a tool, not a rule. Like we don't tell you that you have to hit a 70%. There's a lot of reasons why you wouldn't. But do people do want a framework to work within sometimes. So yeah.

The very next question that always comes after you give me a score is like good score, you got a benchmark. Like I'm so glad you gave me a number to measure by now. Did I get a good number? Yes.

And for referrals it's going to be higher and digitally it's going to be lower and seminar is going to be right in the middle. So you hit it spot on. Then next is going to be close rate. So of the people who keep a first what percentage close and benchmark there's a 30 and everyone wants it to be 50 and everyone says it's 50. And I'm telling you I look at a lot of data and it's not 50. So I like to tell people that. And again, that's that whole giving you permission or proof of feeling okay that it's. If you're not hitting 50, that's okay. Maybe you do with referrals, right? For higher seminars tend to be a little bit lower.

Yeah, I mean, it just, I mean, I'm thinking back to like my old days of, of doing seminars. And like I'm fascinated because how all the numbers match. Like the, the, the, the thing we always talked about was 10, 5, 3, 1. 10 people in the room, 5 of them set an appointment, 3 of them keep the appointment, which means you're keeping about 60, 70% stick rate. One of the three who sets an appointment and who sets the meeting ends out actually becoming a client when 1 in 3 is a 30%. So I had always heard 10, 5, 3, 1. Sometimes you just got 10, 3, 1, 10 butts in seats. Three people who show up for an appointment, one of them who becomes a client. In the seminar marketing world, like it's the exact numbers you're talking about.

And that's funny because our conversion, our conversion benchmarks are 50%, which is, which follows exactly what you just said. So the 10, five.

Yeah.

And this is based off of tons of aggregate studies. But anyway, so.

But I do think it's an important thing that you highlight around even something like closerite. Again, a lot of advice I find like they, you know, it was like the close rates higher. It's like, well, I close like half the people I'm in front of. And then we sit down, look at some numbers. It's like, it kind of seems like it's lower than this. Like, well, well, yeah, but like this one didn't count because they had a weird circumstance. No, that counts. That's like part of the, part of the point. Like, you know, this client wasn't a good fit because they had a weird circumstance that's known as not a qualified prospect. You probably should have had a way to not meet with them in the first place. Like, that's actually a signal of a problem in your process. Like for a lot of, for, for some advisors, I find like their, their problem is not that they have a bad close rate because they're not good at selling. Their problem is they sit in front of a lot of people who are not a good fit. And so there's no reasonable chance to close them. And you might not have even wanted to close them in the first place. But if you, if you keep true to the metrics and you find out like, oh, I'm only closing 1 in 10 I sit in front of. Because half of them are a bad fit in the first. First place. Like, well, cool. That means you're actually closing one in five who are a good fit, which is a little bit better of a close rate. But that means you need to fix your, like your appointment process or your meeting process to screen out five bad prospects that you're seeing on an ongoing basis.

Exactly.

Which you don't get to until you measured the data in a consistent way. So you can go back and see like, oh, I have a bad close rate. And it's not because I'm bad closer. It's because I'm not sitting in front of the right people. Probably need to fix that.

Well, and that. So story time. We had an advisor and they had multiple advisors on their team. I'm doing a coaching call and we're looking and they're like, hey, this one guy just can't close. We're really struggling. I think we're going to, you know, give him the boot. And I'm like, well, let's look at the data before we make that call. And we looked at it and he did have a really low close rate, but it wasn't his close. He was actually, when we measured his the close, which is at the second appointment for them, he was the strongest closer of the whole team. He was such an intense guy that he was losing everybody after first and he wasn't converting them to a second appointment. So strongest closer of the team. It's simply just he wasn't building trust and he needed to ease up a little bit and he needed a little bit of training for him to just build relationship in the first meeting instead of being so gung ho. And that, that speaks to your point. Right. Like, he was actually the strongest closer, but his close rate was low because of a problem way earlier on in the sales cycle.

And interesting. So he was so two meeting process. Like for anybody that got to the second meeting where you're supposed to close them, he was the best at getting them closed. The problem is like just he was so intense, not a lot of people wanted to go the second meeting. So if you measure the whole funnel, like how many leads did we send him? How many did he get? The number was bad, but it's not because he doesn't get the clothes when the, when it's time to actually win the business. It's because he was so intense. He was freaking them out before they got too much. So that part of the process.

Exactly.

Okay, so.

And that speaks to your point. Right? Like, we just. We have to back up and really look at the whole thing to tell us more information.

So we have stick rate, close rate. So what's the third big metric?

Average case size. That is so telling of a lot of things. And they all link. So average case size, if you got people who are writing a million and above, their close rates can be a little bit lower because it just takes a long time, depending on how often we're looking at data, just from a time standpoint. But average case size is really telling. And then we're going to have higher close rates for people who are more transactional at that $100,000, $200,000 mark. So that's really important. It also tells you what advisors are good with, working with certain subgroups of people and looking at it by source. Right. So do seminars drive a certain demographic, a certain net worth? Are our referrals dragging our average case size down when we thought it would bring it up? You know, looking at it by source is really important too, for average case.

And. And so average case size in this context, just like the. The average size of the check that I'm getting is like the average size of the advisory account, if I'm the advisor. And the. I'm thinking back to, like, my early days of insurance. So, like, you know, average case size is like average target premium on a variable universal life policy. Like that. It's that kind of metric. Like the. The average. The average size of the client that you're getting.

Yes. So managed money and annuity put together.

And just curious, like, do you measure that in. I don't know that it matters, but do you measure that in assets? Do you measure that in just pure revenue?

Yeah, good question. We have the team track it as assets, and then on the back end, we're doing the revenue for the advisor.

Okay. Okay.

People get signing with money, so we try not to include too much revenue for the support team to see that.

So that just helps you, again, get really clear because this is another one. Like, I talk to a lot of advisors. My average client's over a million. It's like, well, tell me about your practice. I have 200 clients and $140 million under management. Doing the math, the average is 700. You're telling me your average client's over a million? But the math does not hold up. And granted, sometimes that's because my average new client really is over a million, but I've got some smaller ones. From the early days in the business where it was smaller. But again, to me, this is one where we can fool ourselves sometimes because I really remember the few big clients that I got and I don't then add up how many smaller clients and concessions and accommodations and other folks that I take in that still take up seats on the bus and, and, and room in the practice until you track all of it and then really sit down and look at the number and say like, oh, my average new client is actually not quite as big as I thought it was. Maybe that's why I'm not growing as quickly as I thought I was. Or maybe that's why I feel like I have no time because I'm adding a lot of clients that aren't actually a good fit.

Yep. And the other thing too is once you decide to go for higher average clients, case size clients, you don't need as many leads. So you can use that mathematically as well for planning and not be freaked out and say, okay, we're going to spend less this year, but really get that avatar person if you're looking for the higher net worth group. And it, it, you can use it to your advantage. So there's just a lot you can do with knowing that number.

So then what's the. So we've got stick rate, close rate, average case size. So what's the fourth?

Pending days. So pending days. Yes.

So what is pending days?

So pending days is going to be like days between appointments or the days it takes from something like getting submitted to issues on the insurance side. Okay, so days basically days.

So you know, day. And the idea here is basically like days from when a client signs until money, money moves or revenue gets going. Is that the essence of it here?

So that's one of them. The other ones are actually in the sales cycle. So how many days between the day they reach out interested in an appointment until when you book the appointment, as in they call on a Monday, they want appointment. If you can't get them in the calendar for 15 days, we got a problem.

Okay, so like how available is your calendar and how many days, how many days does it take to actually find a slot on your calendar? Because if it's too many, realistically, you're going to start losing prospects who ironically might have been very excited to work with you, move forward, but you lost them out of the game. Like, I would so love to work with you, grab a time on my calendar in three weeks and we'll get going. It's like, yeah, I was kind of Hoping to be through this in three weeks because I'm really terrified of getting a financial advisor and it's very stressful to me. And so I was ready to do it today.

Yes.

Like, not three weeks from now.

Yes, exactly, exactly. And, and then the rest of the rights, the rest of the sales cycle. So from the first appointment to the second appointment. And I think sometimes advisors feel great when their calendar is packed and they, and they've, some of them have even been taught, which drives me nuts, that to say, well, my calendar is really full. My first appointment isn't for three weeks. But that is such a disservice to these prospects who are excited and want to get in. And you've just built trust in a first meeting and they're ready and for then for your scheduler to come back in and say, well, he's so full, we don't have something for a month. You lose so much momentum, you know.

And yeah, there's, I feel like there's a thing that some of us get of, like I'm, I'm supposed to be hard to get. Like, it's an exclusivity thing. Like, I guess I will deign to consider taking your money three weeks from now. And like, to, to be fair, I, I do know a handful of advisors that have built their practices and their brand to a certain level. I think they can legitimately get away from that. Like, they can actually successfully play up. I really am that exclusive. And like, you're gonna, you're, you're gonna have to try to be my client. Most of us, I don't think can actually get away with that though. Like, if we, if we, if we try, like they're just going to go to someone who's easier to schedule.

Yeah. And again, back to that average case size, the higher net worth people will wait. We have a guy who does an average case size of a million or above, and his average days between appointments is like 25 days. Which our benchmark talking about benchmarks for days between appointments is 10 to 15 days and his is 25. It's way past what we recommend, but they're fine with it, you know, and again, we've got the data, so we know that it's not affecting his prospect story and what they're doing. That doesn't necessarily work out for everybody, like you said.

So it sounds like there are, I mean, just. Do you end up with a slew of pending days measures? Because just like, I mean, in theory you can measure days literally between every single step of the process is there, is there some roll up of these of like the primary ones to look at? Or is the point really you want to look at every single, every single step and layer?

No, really what we do look at for the days is just between first and second. That's the biggest one. And then from when the app is submitted on the insurance side and getting issued, and that should be 30. So those would be kind of the top two days. We do look at all of them because I'm a data person, but if you're going to try this out on your own and really start looking at those, just look at between the first and the second should be 10 to 15 days. And then between the app signed date should be within 30. Okay.

I know our, our audience skews a little bit more towards planning fees and investment accounts, but I guess your equivalent is, you know, from, from, from close to money. Money moves money in account. Right. Just how, how long does it take to, to get there? Or if you're planning only like days from when they say they want to be a client until you've actually delivered the plan and you're, you know, you're, you're, you're wrapping your process.

That's good. And again, once they get that number, let's say they have two or three that end up being a shorter time frame, you can be curious about that and you can say, well, why were those shorter? Once we start looking at the data and we have it, it's so cool because you can improve yourself. You don't need someone to tell you that you can see it.

And then what's the last measure that you like to look at as drivers for change?

So the last measure is cost per client or cost per lead? I prefer cost per client.

Okay, so that's essentially like my acquisition cost, just rolling all my marketing costs in. How much did I actually spend to get this client?

Yeah, and benchmark again, they're a tool, not a rule. But really what we say there should be over everything should be about $4,500 per client. It's going to be a lot less for digital. I mean, barely anything for referrals. But you get into tv, radio, all of that, those sorts of means, and they're pretty high. I mean, we're talking eight grand. You know, cost per client is not abnormal.

And just curious, do you just measure that looking at the hard dollar spend of their marketing strategy, the seminar mailer and the dinner and such, or are you trying to count some cost of their time and staff time and the time side of it.

That's such a good question. You actually came out with a report on this that I was looking at. When we were looking at roi, it was some ROI report that you had. It was talking about that, it talks about their time. So we do not include their time on that. We're just looking at hard costs. But I did love reading through that for you, by the way.

Yeah, well, I mean we've, we've looked at it and we've looked at it and measured in, in, in both ways as well. Because again I, I find it varies a little bit by the, frankly the advisors and the channel. Because there are strategies that are really time intensive. Right. You know, so biggest classic is like COI referrals. All like the networking meetings and the lunches and the social lunches. Like the things that we do to build up where I see advisors come out like I, yeah, like I, you were having great growth and I spent like 1% on marketing. It's almost nothing like cool. Tell me about your marketing process. And they start going into all the, the COI activities they do. And it's like, yeah, you know, my, my, my budget's like a couple hundred dollars a month to take these people out to lunch and do my, and do my stuff. Like it's a really low cost strategy. Like how do you value your time? Because I'm adding up all the things you're describing. Like you're spending like hours and hours every week with all these different networking meetings and things that you're, that you're going to. Which means over the span of the year you might be spending 2, 3, 400 hours on this. And I know what you bill. So like that's like $100,000 of marketing expenses. You're just doing with your time and pretending your time is worthless even though it's, it's not. But then on the other end I see the advisors that have, you know, much more spending oriented. Like I'm, I'm paying to make things show up in the extreme. Like people that just literally pay for third party lead gen and the leads just show up and you just respond to them where their time is really minimal. The dollar expense is a lot higher, but it's just because they're trading their time for dollars and it averages out remarkably similarly. Because when we measure that in the studies that we look at, we get these acquisition costs of at the low end, two or three thousand dollars per client. And just by the time you get to an experienced advisor who either has more Valuable time or is spending more money on marketing to make up for their time. I think the last version of the study that we did, the average client acquisition cost for an established advisor was four to $5,000. So I mean it like exact same number that, that you're at, which that is powerful. When you get back to well, what's your average case size? Like what's your average client size that you know, that's great math with million dollar clients. It's pretty good math with half million dollar clients. And like this is why most of us end up creating minimums with 200,000, $250,000 at some point. Because any lower than that, it takes more than two years on an advisory account to generate enough revenue to just make back the marketing costs, never mind the actual cost of service and all the work we do in the first year.

And for the most part, and I think most advisors will speak to this again, I'm not an advisor, so I don't know but I see it in the data. Those non qualified leads are the one or the ones that you let slip by because you liked them and they weren't really qualified or they were the referral that came in from your A client. They're the most work, you know. And it's interesting just to see that it doesn't pan out from a longevity standpoint with those leads and knowing that all goes back to the close rate and the qualified and all that. So it all kind of does this dance interesting.

And so you look at so stick rate when you're setting meetings, do they actually show up? Just sort of a good basic level of client quality close rate. If they actually came to a meeting, do they close? Average client size. So assets or revenue fees, however you measure it, like how much revenue you generate from each client that you work with pending days. So how much time does it take to get through each each step of your marketing and sales process? And then cost per client. When you add up all the marketing costs you had and divide by how many clients you actually got, like what, what is that? What does that come out to? And I guess obviously then you can go back and refer back really quickly. Like if your average cost per client is low, is higher than your average revenue per client, this is probably not going to work. Well, you kind of want revenue to be higher than cost. Read the business book somewhere to be fair. Like when we, when we run recurring revenue models like you do get some room of well I can have a client that doesn't generate all the revenue back in the first year. But if my average client stays 10, 20 plus years because I've got a high retention rate and a recurring revenue model like you can make it back in the long run, sometimes very profitably because for, for the recurring revenue models. But if your cost to get a client adds up to more than your revenue for each client, you probably have a growth problem.

Yes.

So then how does all this actually get tracked? How do you generate all this data to be able to track all this stuff? Where does it come from? Where's like, where's the data all come from?

These are from my, I had a client that was on a TV and he called him Excel sheets and he's like, Erica is going to be so mad that I called them Excel sheets. But they are, they come from. My incredibly smart team has helped me kind of bring us into the 21st century because my old sheets were real ugly, but they made them a little bit prettier now. And it's really just, it's Google sheet based and there's reasons for that. It's not because I'm lazy or cheap. We can go into those reasons later. But they really are just a very simple system. Like these advisory support staff don't want a complex, really hard software platform, whatever it is, to relearn because they've already had to do that multiple times. So it's a very simple sheet and we are doing a ton of work on the back end. So all they do is take a line, you fill out the lead's name and you track them through the process. You know, what's their name, what's their marketing funnel, what is the date of the appointment, did they keep it, did they set another one and then did they become a client? I mean, it's that simple.

So I'm just trying to literally envision spreadsheet form. So just like a whole bunch of rows, each row is one client or one lead hopefully becomes client. Each row is one lead and then just a whole bunch of columns of like, were they qualified? When was the first meeting, when was the second meeting? Did they become a client? How much did they bring over? Just all these different data points on one big old row. And then you can calculate all the metrics on the back end about.

All.

The key ratios that you were talking about.

Yeah, and we keep marketing and new business separate. So in most, in bigger offices you've got someone doing the marketing and they're helping, you know, set appointments and chase the lead. Once they become a client, it's off their plate. And they don't care. And so they pass the baton. And then we have a separate tracker for new business, and that is where it is stored and where it is tracked. And then we are auditing the data and we're scrubbing it. And that's truthfully, like, the key piece that most people miss. Most people are trying to track it. Or they have these Excel sheets, or they've got 700 Excel sheets, but there's no third eye on it to make sure it's right or that it's getting done, or it's Debbie over in the corner, and she's the only one that knows how to do it.

So. So help me understand more of just what you're doing, that I mean, just what does it mean of where we're scrubbing and cleaning the data?

The wizard on our team, his name is Christopher. His title is the Wizard. He's awesome. And he was able to kind of automate. We used to do this by hand, and we used to do it one on one. Like, literally go into every client's sheets and look and make sure they're filling out each place. And I said, there's got to be a better way. We have to automate this. So it's automated. And there's these scrub tabs that say, look, this isn't filled out. The sheets are smart. We have a product called the Tracker Genie in there. It turns green if you didn't fill it out. So an example would be Sally Smith. She set an appointment for February 16th. We log into the sheet, and today is February 17th. And you didn't tell our sheet if she kept the appointment or not. So that cell is now green, and your auditing sheets now have her name populated. That says, hey, something's not right. This didn't get filled out, and therefore your stick rate is off. And it tells them exactly who it is, what line it is, and how to fix it.

Okay, so then I guess in that vein, like, this is still. It is a manual process of just track each data point of the. Of the step. There's like, someone still got to mark each. Like, we did the meeting on this date.

Okay?

We did the meeting on this date. Okay? They said yes. Okay. Here's how much they brought over. Like that. That still all has to get manually punched in one. One lead at a time, one stage at a time.

For 75% of our clients. Yes. And this is where it's sad to me, because those same 75%, nearly all of them have a CRM. They have red, they Have Wealthbox, they have sales, they have these incredibly huge robust systems and they cannot extrapolate data. They can't get it out. They don't know where it lives. There's no process. It's not getting put in. Right. So we tell people we have integrations for all of them and we're smart enough, we've done this long enough that we can absolutely automatically pull data out of your system. But is it right? And all of those people say no. And that's what breaks my heart, is they're doing all this work and they're putting all this stuff in and they don't know how to put it pull it out and they know it's not accurate in there and so it's not even worth pulling it out. And so they are willing to do the work a second time to get it correct.

So basically, so like you, you could automate all this in CRM or like extracting it from CRM if only the advisors just entered the data properly and consistently in their CRM. But advisors are not only not entering it well in the CRM, they would actually rather do it in your sheet than the CRM, which I guess essentially says, hey, good news, at least your, your sheets are a lot easier to maintain than all the clicks you have to do to do this in the CRMs. I guess this they're concluding if I'm going to track this, it's easier to actually re. Enter the leads in your spreadsheet than it is to figure out how to use my CRM properly.

Right.

Sort of sad statement on CRM, but I feel like that's what I'm hearing here.

I know. And that's. It's terrible. And we have all these integrations. We do, we integrate with all. And we have, like I said, 25% of our clients have it together and organized enough to pull the data out so that we can scrub it and then I can do coaching on it. But again, that's this sad fact in our industry and sometimes, hopefully it's freeing for any advisor who's listening to where they feel like everyone else has it figured out. Kind of like that iceberg thing that we've talked about in the past that you talk about often.

Yeah.

Is they think that everyone has it together and everyone's. Everyone's Salesforce system works. And it doesn't. It doesn't. I mean, I work with 100 advisor practices and only maybe even less, maybe 10 to 15 of them are pulling it out. So there's your, there's your Freedom song people.

So but I guess worth noting on the other end as I, as I think I had heard you say, like the other reason you just, you keep in a spreadsheet in the first place is support staff don't want to like a big old complex system because as noted, it's not getting enter into CRMs. That may be a little too complex on this. But what that means on the flip side is like it's not necessarily the advisor punching in every data point. It may be, it may be a staff team member, it may be a administrative assistant or client service manager or CSA kind of role. It's not necessarily the advisor taking the time to do this right.

And we actually advise against it because they get restless and they get impatient and they think certain things are going on with leads when they're not. And we want the service team to take ownership of their role within the office and let them do their job. And so for, for a lot of offices, we actually don't even give editing permissions to the advisor. They only get view access.

Interesting. Because this. Help me understand. So because if the advisors have access like they start tinkering and messing with it or just because you're, you're trying to push it to support teams so like they've got ownership of hey, the, the box is green because you haven't entered a data point. Is the nice way to nudge them to say like, hey, why is the pending day so high? Have you reached out to schedule the follow up meeting?

It's both. Yes.

What are the advisor like? I'm just really curious like what do the advisors do to break it?

They don't break it. They get in there and they'll see the lead like oh no, I close them. I close them. So then they'll change it to yes. But they don't realize that the baton shifting between marketing and new business is, you know, marketing doesn't put yes until the app has been submitted or whatever understanding they have as a workflow. But the advisor gets in if I'm.

In a lot, like if I'm in a mid to large size firm that has sort of like specific workflow definitions about where clients are in a process. If you go and change the status of a client in the process when they didn't actually trigger that part of the workflow like you, you, you break the comp. Like you screw up the company's workflow spreadsheets, fine. You screw up the company's workflow because you, you, your spreadsheet says they're in a different stage than they're actually in.

Yep.

Okay. So, like, if I'm a solo, I'm probably okay, but if I'm in a. If I'm in a bigger firm and there are a lot of hands touching the sheet, like, please don't break company workflow.

Exactly. Yep. We're trying to have them stay in their own lane. Yeah.

And so you mentioned earlier, but now I am curious coming back, like, so why. Why Google Sheets?

Yes. Okay. So, man, I. I've done this a really long time. I've been in this industry 15 years, so. So a long time. And it started with Excel sheets, and then I started Track that Advisor, and it was still on Excel sheets, and that was crazy. And then we went to Google Sheets, which I liked. Then I spent a ton of money to build a platform, and I didn't like it. And it was because these offices need some sort of customization. Like, we can't standardize. We can standardize a certain amount of it, but we have to be able to customize a lot of it because it's just moving. It's this moving fluid. Like, data analytics isn't static. It doesn't just say the same. And I use this analogy a lot, like stars versus constellations. But there's 10,000 data points we could look at for offices, and certain ones matter at different times. And so I had built this database, and it wasn't super fluid, and we couldn't really change a lot. So I veered away from that, and now we're back to sheets. We have some pretty exciting things happening in 2023 for our clients. I don't want to spill the beans on them, but we're moving in a bit of a different direction this year, but we haven't really made that public. So sheets are the easiest.

They are within Google because it's a spreadsheet. So you want to rejigger it and calculate some new things and move a row or two around. It's a spreadsheet. So the glory of Excel or Google Sheets Spreadsheets, they are wonderfully malleable. Spoken like a data nerd, probably, but they're wonderful. They're wonderfully malleable, and people love them.

Because they don't realize really what they can do until you get experts like my team that is on them and can do anything on them. And they look like a database. You know, they look like an app.

So then how do you ultimately work with advisors? I mean, what is it. What does it cost to. To get her up and running and do this.

So it's a subscription based model and one the advisor has to want to track and convince their team that they want to do this. And then we charge an onboarding fee. It's $1,500 for an onboard. So what that is doing is we're creating all the trackers, we're creating all the sheets for you. We work with your team. Our CEO Molly is incredible and she gets it all built and ready to go, does a several hour onboard via Zoom, teaches the team how to do it, fills it in and then it's monthly. So it's $600 a month and it's just a subscription based model. They do sign an annual contract, but we found after doing this a long time, sometimes it's just not a fit. And I don't want to be locked in for a year with somebody whose team isn't putting the data in and we're doing all this work. Or an advisor comes to us and is like, says, you know, maybe this isn't what I thought it was. Or my team doesn't have a capacity. So we have a 90 day free look. So after 90 days we're all going to know if this is going to work or not. And so that has been really helpful for everybody to make sure that it's a win. And we want it to be a win. Our whole job is to be a resource. We don't want to be, you know, a weight on people's shoulders.

So I'm thinking practically just like $600 a month is not a trivial expense for firms even relative to what we spend for some of our other tech in our tech stack. So just as I sort of think about and interpret that like just I gotta be putting a pretty good amount of dollars towards marketing to be able to say if I spend $600 a month, I can, I can make this more efficient and you know, and, and, and get back $7,200 a year of ROI. Because my marketing's gonna run better if I can just problems in my marketing funnel that I will now be able to see because I'm tracking all of it and I have my stick rate, my close rate, my client acquisition costs and all the rest.

Yep. Yeah.

Now is that a pricing like per advisor, per firm? Like if I'm a firm with multiple advisors, am I like, do I have to pay multiple licenses to have multiple advisors? How does it work at that level?

Yeah, we get that question a lot. And no, it's just one simple. I just, I believe in like Simplicity. I don't want to overcomplicate things. So it is just one price point. Uh, we do have kind of a.

System which means just that that covers me for the firm. So like I, I might have one advisor or I have five advisor, I have 10 advisors. Like it's, it's the same. Just.

Yep.

I pay my onboarding fee and it's $600 a month.

Yep. We got offices who are doing you know, 10 million and then we've got one last year that's close to 400 million for the year of new business. And they paid the same fee. Yeah.

Okay. So I guess practically speaking like if I'm a solo, this may feel a little bit expensive to me unless I'm doing a lot of marketing. If I'm a big firm with 5, 10, 20 plus advisors like this amortizes out really quickly.

Right. This is a no brainer spread across.

A couple of heads. That math gets a really small per advisor. Like if any one advisor does anything slightly better. This, this math is going to be really easy for ROI for the firm.

Yep.

And so is that what you find in practice? Like is it, is it more common this gets adopted with multi advisor firms and platforms?

Yeah. And we started a company last year, sister company, myself and Molly, our CEO called Track that seminar and that is for the smaller offices who are just moving from like the referral existing client into dabbling into seminars because that's typically the first step once we start spending on marketing. And it only tracks seminars which is great and it's a fantastic solution for them and we knew we needed one because we'd have these offices that are sole producer and they look at me with deer in the headlights saying there's no way I'm spending that. And so track that seminar only Track seminars. It's awesome though because that's really where we start seeing that you can't keep the leads in your head and that's 250amonth. So it's, it's less than half the cost.

So get, get if that's what you're doing and just you want to start tracking, measuring there because as you know, like it's a, it's a good place to, to measure roi. I find just you know, thinking back to my, my day starting on the seminar marketing end, like it's a very repeatable process with very, very concrete steps of where people are through the, through the stage. So if you track the numbers consistently and you do the process repeatedly, it's very conducive to process improvement. Like our stick rates low, we put another reminder thing in place. Like our, our close rate's good, but our non qualified rate's too high. Okay, well, let's adjust the mailer a little bit to try to put different, different butts and seats that are a better fit. Just it, it's. I get it. Like it's. It that's a really marketing funnel that's really conducive to. Let's get some really good, concrete, consistent numbers in here and we'll find really quickly what, what levers to move to make the process work better.

Yep, it's very machine like. Totally.

So then what, what is your. What is your journey that you come to the world of? You make. Making. Making track that advisory. Like making. Making spreadsheets to measure marketing data.

Yeah, it's a crazy one. I, I'm not the entrepreneur spirit at all. And it's funny that I'm in the role that I am in. So I'm an English major from school and I studied rhetoric and composition. So Persuasion story. I know it's crazy how it all tied together here in the end, but.

It was just my liberal arts degree is just smiling.

Oh, look at us, man, we're these. Yes, I know. English turned data nerd. So. But it's worked out so well because I can communicate about the data. And so I went to college, studied English and worked for an advisor, did the marketing for them and they were wanting.

So you. So you landed in an advisory firm, like straight out of English major, college.

I dabbled at a publication for a while and realized really quickly that I did not want to be in that. And I sat there saying, oh my gosh, I just went to college and I don't think this is what I want to do.

Well, now we're really into the liberal arts education.

Yes, yes. So that was pretty scary. And someone had told me, hey, I know this advisor. They're looking for a marketing person. You know, you do English, maybe that'll be a fit. And I said, let me try it. I'll write copy all day.

I was just saying like, they, they need marketing words and you're good at words. So clearly this is a fit.

And then I entered into the financial world and I said, wow, I am not writing copy. There's so much other stuff that's happening. And it was great and I did love it. And the advisors had gone to an event and wanted to maybe take some of the marketing a different direction. And I didn't think it was a good idea, and I had zero data to back it up. And it was this light bulb moment for me saying. And they didn't make me feel that way. It was more of me saying, I don't know how to prove this to them. Right. They're the owners, and they're asking me, should we do this? Should we not? You're a marketing person. And I had zero response. And I felt like I was failing, but I was also doing their company books, and I said, I know I've got all the pieces to figure this out and give them an answer. And so behind closed doors, I started tracking everything. I was like the mad scientist in my office, and lo and behold, sat down six months later, showed them what was going on. And at that time, I didn't. I didn't understand, like, the data storytelling or the analytics. I just was able to present it to them and show them visually what was happening from an ROI standpoint. And that felt really good. And I loved it, and they loved it. And no one was doing this in the industry. And so I did it for quite a while. And my husband and I moved out of state, and I was devastated. I thought I would be at their practice my entire life and did not foresee this coming.

So you were. So you were still, like, doing this and just building it up in their advisory firm?

Yes.

For, like, how. So how long were you doing it? And, like, what was the nature of their advisory firm?

So they were. They were interns only when I started with them. And then they moved into the managed money towards the end of my time there. And so I was there five years, maybe. Yeah, I was there probably five years, maybe six. And we would meet. So I started doing this maybe my second year with them. So I did it for four or five years just for them, and we'd meet every six months. And I would put, this is so embarrassing. But I would print out on, like, 20 Excel sheets and tape them all together and put it on their boardroom table. And, you know, advisors, right? I mean, advisors are like. They looked at it and they're like, what are you presenting to us? This is so ugly.

Sounds glorious.

I know. It was.

I used to fill the whole boardroom table.

I did. And I folded it up all night so I had charts everywhere. But I. But they saw the value, and I felt seen. And I loved making sense of all of it. And it made sense to me. Like, I saw the numbers and could just read what was going on and was like, this is why it matters. And this is where we need to cut some spending, and this is where it's a good idea. And I felt so secure in telling them that that it lit just a fire under me. And so we started doing that every six months. And they'd roll their eyes and they didn't want to have the meeting, and I'd pull them in and pull out my 25 Excel sheets. But it started making traction and they would make decisions, and then it would pay off later. And we all saw it working and it was so fun, and I. And I fell in love with it. And then I moved, and I was so sad.

So moving was just like life, family, circumstances, job change, that kind of thing.

Yep. Yep. My husband. I was pregnant with our son, and my husband's company closed, and it was big surprise. And so he ended up finding a job in a different state. And so we moved. And I just, you know, obviously wanted to honor him in that and support him in that. And I was pregnant, so I didn't know what I was going to be doing with work. And so it was just weird. We kind of just closed that chapter. We moved out to Arizona and I had our son.

Where were you previously?

I was in Colorado. I was in northern Colorado in the Loveland area. Born and raised in Fort Collins and then moved out to Gilbert, Arizona. And we were here. Had. My son, wasn't working, didn't really know what I would be doing. And they called me. I was probably, I don't know, six to eight weeks maybe after I had my son. And they said, look, no one does the tracking. This is not a thing. We don't know how to do it. The new person doesn't get it. Can you. Can you just do that aspect for us?

So this was like the old. From calling you back. So how long had it been at that point that you're gone?

Three months maybe. Okay, not long.

Okay, so just long enough to, like, you left. They got a new person in. The new person's doing it and doesn't get it.

Yes. And they don't get it. You know, they're trying to. It's the blind leading the blind. You know, they were trying to help them, but they knew kind of what they needed. And light bulb went on. And I said, man, I should start something. I should start a company. And it was like an eye roll. I mean, it was not. Again, it's not my dream to own something. And I'm actually. I'm very introverted. I'm not salesy. And I'm just sitting here like, ugh. But I. It's a solution and it's a problem solver.

So I'm struck though. So you, it's not like they came back and asked you to help it and you just said, hey, okay, I'll work with you on a consulting basis to help you with this. From afar, from Arizona, it was, they want some help with this. And your first thought was like, well, I'm going to make it for you. I'm going to make it for a bunch of people and sell it to everyone. Is that how this played out?

I guess I think you're calling me out.

It is.

I don't know why my brain went there, but it did.

And it just was like, you might be under underselling your entrepreneur. I know, that's what I just hear, like, well, if I'm going to build it, I'm going to sell it to more people than just you. That's great.

I'm going to sell it to everybody. But I think it comes from the heart of wanting to help. And I saw how last they were without it just three months and it was again such a reminder of there's got to be a ton of people who are floating around blind and I hate that. I hate that for them. So, yes. So then track that advisor was formed. They became my first clients, which was super cool. And we've had such a great relationship from there on. And they've really helped birth a lot of this too. But it's been referral only. Like, I didn't want to come out swaying again. I just had a kid. I just had my first kid. We moved across the country.

When, when was this?

Just like what year this was 14, 15.

Okay.

So I started the idea, started noodling on it, put a ton of thought into it for an entire year before I really did anything. And then in 15, it actually was launched and became an actual company. And I knew I didn't want to grow fast, primarily because I was just terrified of being a business owner. And, and the advisory, I was gonna.

Say, yeah, like why, why? What was the fear of fast? So it's like, so what was terrifying about being a business owner?

Truthfully? Probably. Probably my, my clientele, they're advisors. They don't hold back their opinion and they will poke the bear of data. And my personality type is a yes person and the people pleaser. And so there was a lot I, I personally just had to overcome saying when I come at it with data, it's very black and white and I have to be able to have some hard conversations and do that with grace. But data can be hard and you have to tell people things they don't want to hear sometimes. So that I had to.

You just felt like you needed to build your own courage or confidence of like, I'm going to do this a few times with a few people and if it goes well then maybe I'll do it with a few more.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. And I didn't want. Yeah, I'm just kind of a slow and steady type of person and it fit. And we were growing our family too and family is really important to me and I didn't want to get lost in that. So it's been referral based and relatively slow growth all the way until 2021. And that was when we decided Molly. Molly's our CEO and she's like guns ablazing, man. She's like the front stage person. I'm a backstage data English major and Molly really helped change the game with that. And she was like, Erica, we need to be known. This is such an incredible asset for these advisors. And she was very much the one who really spoke into me and just said we've got to just go for it. So 2021 is really when we started putting ourselves out there.

So how big is the team at this point?

So there are five of us.

Okay.

A couple of other contractors that do other stuff, but five on staff. And I keep it very small and very automated and very efficient. I don't want a huge staff. And so my team is all A plus players. Like I you people know if you come to work here, it's, you're, it's going to be excellence and we require A plus. I don't require perfection, but I do require excellence. So Molly, Christopher, Colton and Jennifer are a players.

So, so I am intrigued that just you said Molly is your CEO. So for a lot of founders, like we name our, we name ourselves as the CEO, we make the firm as, as founders. So tell me about how that role came about.

Yeah, she was the first hire of the company and I also am a believer. Anyone that we hire starts at the same place. So I had always done the data scrubbing and the building of the sheets and all of that. So when I hired her, I'm like, that's what you're doing first. So anyone that comes in our team, that's actually where you begin. And also mainly because I want them to feel the pain of it. And later when they're making requests to people, they've been in their shoes. But anyway, that's kind of a sidebar. But, yeah, we just. We started growing a lot more, and I really realized that my gifts and my strengths are in the data and the teaching and the coaching side and not front and center stage. So I'm still the face of the company, and I'm still the founder and I'm still the owner, but she. She's a mover, and she's a shaker, and she has these big dreams, and I tend to be a little bit scared of change and scared of the what ifs, and she just kept pushing me, and I'm like, you know what? You. You really are that role, right? Like, we're very much a yin and yang, and she's the one who just kind of keeps the fire going and is like, well, what about this? And let's try this, and can we do this? And I'm always like, okay, let's try it.

I don't know.

So that's. That's how her role became, is she just. She brought this energy that I don't. I bring a different energy. I just. I need time and I need space and I need quiet. And so she very much filled the shoes of. Of all the other stuff that is required for us to keep this train moving.

And so what was that like, just naming someone else's CEO of the. I don't know, the baby. You. You made the other baby because you.

Yeah, I know, right? Honestly, it was really freeing. I was under such a weight, and I didn't like it. Like I say, I like. I don't love the entrepreneurs. Parts of it I do. Parts of it I do. And I'm learning to love them. But I had to realize exactly how I'm created and what I love to do. And what I love to do is not the CEO stuff. So for me, it was so freeing. She'd been with me long enough. I know her well enough. I trust her. And I'm also free to disagree, right? Like, we can have. We have conversations. It's very much a partnership. But I also knew we would not get to the levels we. I actually do want to get to. With me being in that chair. And we're doing it so she's doing something right.

So what's changed since she took on the role?

Our growth, I mean, we've just exploded in a great way. And I love the backstage part of operations and efficiency and automation. And so, you know, she's kind of. I kind of see her out there with this megaphone of like, this is track, that Advisor. We are TrackNet Advisor. And I'm kind of sitting in the back, like, sweet. Let's. Let's make this work from the. From backstage and the teaching and the coaching. She doesn't. She doesn't love looking at the data, and she rolls her eyes at me. I'm like, but what about this stat? And did you guys know this about our. Our clients? And she's like, cool. Erica, you. You go sit in your hole and do the stuff you're good at and that you like. And I love it. I'm free to do it.

We prefer data cave, not data hole.

Oh, I like data caves. Okay. Dating feels barrel.

Like, whole. Whole feels bad. Like, cave is just like. It's a place that you retreat to for safety.

Yes. There you go. A cave. So Molly lets me be in the cave. She's out and about in the world. And it was freeing. Yeah. To answer your question, it felt really good. And I feel like I'm in my. I'm in my sweet spot, and she's. She's in hers, and she picks up other stuff a lot of times, like if we need it. And that's so telling of just her work ethic. But she is very much a leader, and I appreciate that because I wanted to lead in a different way.

So what surprised you the most is you've built this business into serving the advisor community.

Probably how much I care about them and their success and them hitting their goals. It's kind of like the advisors who care about their clients. And I had actually heard one of your podcasts. I forgot who it was, but he was talking about how initially you do it to do it, but then you end up genuinely caring about these people. And that's the same. It's the same for me. I watch these advisors who are. Most of them are very different personality than me, and I watch them get smaller, so excited about new goals, and then we track it and it works. Or they pivot because something didn't work. And they astonish me. Like, the advisor breed is fascinating to watch, and they're so inspirational. And that surprised me. It has surprised me how much I look up to our clients, and I'm just so proud of them. Like, one, they're doing it, and they're having their teams track this data, which can be hard and it can feel overwhelming, but then they see the. The fruit of it, and then they make these changes, and then they have new goals, and then we're checking in on it, and I'm this cheerleader, and that's. I Didn't see those relationships coming. Right. So yeah, that's, that's been surprising for me.

So what was the low point for you?

Oh man. Of owning the whole company? Like this whole.

Yeah, this whole journey advisor building, data tracking journey.

Yeah, there's been a lot of them. But I think the two that come to mind were one kind of, kind of where the. We had the idea for Molly to become the CEO was the weight, the weight of expectation and getting these advisors excellent reporting, how we were doing it, how we had the business structured. There was a point where, and I had a 8 week old daughter at the time and I just hit this point where I'm like, I'm selling the company, I'm over it. I can't do this, I don't want it. I don't just take it. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs have been there. I just want to go be in a van down by the river. I don't want to do this. And a really good friend said, what do you love about it? Like, what do you love? And I listed off the things I loved and she said, then create that company and do that in the company. And I said, you're totally right. I have the power to do that. And so that's when this whole new awakening came for me to. I do exactly what I love. And I, and I, I mean there is stuff I don't like to do, but it's just part of it. But that was a low point, was just the pressure I put on myself to be perfect for everybody and to give them exactly, you know, all the things and to not let them down. And not that I felt like I was. It was just the constant pressure to do it and to keep performing at 100. So that was really, really hard. And then there've been other points throughout it where we feel you feel your capacity. Like the balloon is just so, so, so tight and you're not sure it could hold that much air. But then it ebbs and flows and our team is amazing and we all keep it in perspective, we all keep a good sense of humor, we all laugh. And when things are really busy and all of us feel like there's 500 things on our plate, every once in a while we'll just be like, take tomorrow off. I understand that business is important and it's really stressful, but mental health and emotional health and wellness in your family, if that's broken, it's going to come into work. And so when things get tight and when they get stressful and they do inevitably were really, really good about creating space. I don't know if that answers the low point but I think just you know any, any sort of when you feel like the balloon is about to pop is a hard spot to be in.

So what, what was call it causing the balloon poppy feeling just like big growth spurt or like big problem that hit or losing people like just what?

Yeah.

What got it out of whack?

Good question. It was kind of all the above. We had a big, we've had some big growth spurts. We were working on automations but they weren't there yet and so there was still a lot of manual stuff going on and we had. Wow. I counted it up for them. I think we had five people. We had one long term employee leave. That was really hard. But we still have a great relationship with her. She just went somewhere else and kind of had some other stuff she had to do professionally that she felt called to. So it was great. But it was so hard to have her leave. We hired someone, they didn't work out. We hired someone else for another position, they didn't work out. So training is hard when you hire stuff and they weren't a plus. So here we are with a lot more clients in the middle of creating automations and all of us are trying to train new people and they're like C players and not playing. We had someone quiet quit on us and it was really, really hard and everyone, I mean we'd all show up to meetings just tired and just saying okay, like just get done what you got to get done today. This will end. Like this will end. And it did and we're coming out of it and it's, it's. You learn, you learn a lot and you grow a lot closer as a team too when you have people who are in it with you.

So are there things you do differently now in the. I guess like the hiring training process to get better a player fits that get up to speed and don't quite quit on you.

Yeah, I went in and created a ton of workflows and process. You know my little internal brain created just a ton of workflows and processes that because our team in the past had worked together so long it was kind of one of those, we all understand it but it's not documented anywhere. And so I did, I spent the last like last quarter of last year. That's all I did was just processes and, and honing in our CRM and, and truthfully swallowing some of the pills that I tell people to do, you know, and. And it's always that. Always a bridesmaid, never bride or. I don't know the saying. I can't blanking on the saying.

But I always go with the toddlers, children having their shoes.

There you go. That they're much better. Yes. So that was my job. And that has helped a ton. And also from the hiring process, to not hire out of stress or fear and being okay with getting rid of somebody if they're not a good fit, like, you know. You know, pretty quick in if it feels rocky and they're not good to just say no and rip the band aid off. And I know everyone wouldn't agree with me there, but from my experience, we could. We can tell in the first three months if it's just not going to work. And. Yeah, you know, just, you know, I find.

I find it similar. Like, you know, people can have varying degrees of bumpy 3rd 1st 30 days because I think they're just trying to get oriented and figure out how it flows. And some people pick things up a little faster than others. But like, by. By two months in, they should be starting to get the gist. And so by three months in, either they're really getting it or like, clearly on the rise of getting it or they're not. And like, if they're really not getting it three months in, it really usually doesn't meaningfully correct itself later. Like just that it ends out being bumpy for a long time.

Yeah. And that's. I don't like having the hard conversations. So Molly has the hard conversations of. So she's helped, you know, she's. She's been one that's like, how are they doing? Are we. Are we in or not? And she has a hard.

That's a powerful thing when just you, you know, when you have someone else that can on the team who can do the hard conversation if it needs to happen. So you can. You can separate yourself of. I don't have to be the one that has to have the card conversation. I just need to be the one who makes the right call for the business about whether this is the right person is really freeing. If you're in the business owner position, you're not good at having those conversations. Just means you have to find someone who's good at those conversations and then.

Right. And I'm fascinated that there are people that are, you know, I mean, that we're all unique. And I'm so thankful that there are people that can because I get really awkward and squirmy and it doesn't come out right. So it. I'm so thankful for that too. Yeah.

So anything else like, you know, now that you wish you could go, go back and tell you from five, ten years ago, as you were just like starting into this advisor world and nerdy.

Data journey, I would go back and say keep being curious. And there really isn't a right way to do this because what I'm doing and what track that advisor is doing is so like we're on an island, man. Like, no one is doing this in the industry. And I was so concerned about getting it right and getting it perfect. And I think I would have come to a lot of the realizations I did. And really the bottom line is data and data storytelling and analytics. It's ever changing anyway. I mean, it's not gonna stay the same. And I wish I would have known that, you know, because I was so focused for a long time on just getting it perfect. It's not. And these advisor practices keep changing and they keep getting bigger and they keep moving over to the managed money side and the teams grow and then the goals aren't to produce more business, it's to produce less and have more time home. And, you know, there's all these things that just are ever changing and I didn't quite capture that and I wasn't quite okay with that, but now I am. I think I've just. But some things just come with time. You know, whether you tell somebody something a million times, you gotta just wear the shoes for a while, I guess.

So on the advisor end, like, what advice would you give younger, newer advisors, like, coming into the industry today and maybe like wanting to get this right, but not necessarily being ready to pay $600 a month for it. Where do they start if they're not quite at your level yet?

Honestly, just write down the leads that are coming in your office, write their names down on an Excel sheet, and put whatever notes you can on. You know, when did they set, did they keep it? Are they coming back in? And potentially their marketing funnel. I have a guy who heard me speak years ago and he's a sole practice, he's a smaller firm, and we've talked several times and he's like, I still remember you teaching us to do that. And I have my Excel sheet and I write it down and I do all this stuff and I love that for him. You know, he's not at a point where it makes sense to spend the money and that's fine. But I wish for any advisor to just start somewhere because they all feel like they don't know where to start or that it's going to take too much time. And I promise you it doesn't. It takes 20 minutes a day. So start and don't let it get too big without knowing it well.

And I'm struck like almost all the data points you talked about just pretty manageable for us. Like if you just start capturing like just how many leads did you get and how many had a first appointment, like cool. You can calculate a stick rate like the ones you met, how many clothes, like rate. You can calculate a close rate. Average client size is pretty straightforward cost per client. As long as you're somewhere capturing what time and dollars you're spending on marketing strategies, you can do it. I would think the like pending days process probably takes a little like you got to get clear on your process and the exact steps of the process so you can measure from each incremental step of the process. Like I can envision that that might be a, a little harder for some advisors to, to track if they're not necessarily as process oriented in the first place. But just names, meetings, closes, money and you get like the bulk of the statistics that you were, that you were talking about particularly because it's just you tracking yourself.

Mm yeah, you can get, you can get all of them and it's so freeing. And, and sometimes they want to just do numbers in their head of okay, I had five appointments last week and I think three of them kept and I would advise against that but put the actual names down because you forget. And that's circling back to what you were talking about earlier is certain people stick out in our head and the busier we get, we just forget those random one off leads. But that affects the data. So don't do it by just numbers. Put the names down the second they come into your office for a meeting. And that will at least be a visual reminder too to figure out what happened or to call them. Right. If they fell off the sales process and you're just looking at numbers, we're not going to remember to call Sally Smith.

So what comes next?

Continued growth and we are really a huge initiative this year is integrations and really helping people who have these big systems to get something that's automated. I hate that they have to fill things out twice. I hate it for their team and they always have. So that's honestly like our biggest directive this year is making it so we, they don't need to spend the time the double enter data and we've already got some really good plugins going, but we have a lot more coming and, and that's exciting for my, for my organized personality type heart for them to get it a little bit nicer. But that's it. I mean, continued growth. We want to be known. I want, again, my biggest goal is just to rewrite the narrative of data for these advisors, for them to understand that it's not hard to get. You don't need a 5000 data points to run a really good efficient practice. And if you know benchmarks and you know the KPIs to look for, you're also not going to feel as inferior as Joe Schmo who's at the event bragging about a 50% close rate. So I guess next is just continuing to bring mental freedom to these advisors so they know what's going on in their practice. They can adjust and pivot if they need to, but also just feeling sound and secure and what they're doing.

So as we wrap up, it's a podcast about success. And just one of the themes that always comes up is the the word success means very different things to different people. And so you're on this wonderful path of growing successful business, like focusing on marketing data for advisors to grow their successful businesses. So like business growth is going well. So how do you define success for yourself at this point?

For me, I deemed a while ago that the top things that I want to do every day would just be time with the Lord, running time with my family and work. That's it. Four things. I just very, very simplify my life. And if I can do all four of those things every day, that's success and not have to worry about the chaos and the busy and, you know, meeting with a bunch of people. I like to live a quiet life and I do a lot of things and I'm achieving a ton of things. But that doesn't have to be loud and it can leave a mark and it can be really powerful. But I want to live kind of this steady, you know, room for quiet, room for laughter time with my kids, enjoying my employees, loving my clients. Whether track that advisor becomes well known around the world or not, that to me is success and I'm living it right now. But I want to stay pretty honed in on that.

Very cool, very cool. I hope we get you some good opportunities, but not too many folks that.

We'Ll figure it out. We'll automate Michael.

There's just more automation. Growth is really just one giant automation opportunity at the end of the day.

It is. It is. I read Atomic Habits by James Clear. Have you heard of this book?

Yeah.

Okay. He has a quote, and it says, we do not rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems. And I said, oh, so yes, hey, we get more clients. That allows me to make more systems. I love it.

I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Erica, for joining us on the Financial Advisory Success podcast.

Thank you so much for asking me. It's been a pleasure being here.

Absolutely. Thank you.

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