Michele Welsh: How Advisors Can Leverage YouTube, Podcasts, and AI

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Welcome to Barron's The Way Forward. I'm Greg Bartalus, and my special guest is Michelle Welch, the CMO of Verdant Capital Advisors. Today she'll be discussing how wealth management marketers can up their game and gain an edge. Welcome to the podcast, Michelle.

Thanks, Greg. Thanks for having me.

My pleasure. Marketing is a huge, huge concern and of great interest to advisors. It just seems that more and more feel, correctly so, that they need to lean into that and get it right. And you're a great person to talk to, given what you do, and also given that you have a non-finance background, that you're not too close to the subject matter. You can relate to how people not in the industry might see it. So let's first talk a little bit about your background and what you do, and then we'll unpack the state of play today and, you know, offer some tips for people listening.

Yep, sure. So I work at Verdant Capital Advisors. So we're a $4 billion RIA headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, offices in Alexandria, Naples, and Boston. And one of the things— we work with high-net-worth executives, business owners, families, and people with really complicated financial matters. And they just, they want a partner to help them take care of that with them. One of the things that we focus on in my role is empathy. And that, I think, has translated throughout my career. And it just, it makes sense as sort of a tool in your tool belt to use when you're creating messaging for whether it's, you know, finance client or otherwise. So we use something called the Platinum Rule, and this is more about, like, what I do at Burdenson. I can go as far back into my background as you'd like, but what I'm looking at right now is, you know, how do we deploy that pathological empathy to create those more meaningful client experiences? And right now, I'm really focused on using AI as a strategy, not as chasing shiny new tools to use, but really as a firm strategy with analytics and automation and thoughtful data. And that helps us to create better connections with clients.

Interesting. So just on face value, AI and empathy may seem like opposites almost, right? Tell me, how does that mesh? How do you reconcile that?

You bring up an excellent point because it does not naturally go together as you would consider. But one of the things that I've learned about AI, and I'll try not to go too far into the rabbit hole with this, but AI will help you as an assistant the way you need helped. And if creating empathy or adding empathy to a conversation that you're having, you just need to tell it that that's what you want from it. And that's really how you can weave in empathy with any automation or AI tool that you're using, both to create content or messaging or even to correct or refine messaging and make it clearer or a little more empathetic.

And I think that empathy, it seems very important. I mean, a lot of people might be intimidated by working with financial companies. There's an element of trust. It's my money. They need to trust you and to show empathy, you're saying, I got it, I understand your situation. And then that kind of opens the door to hopefully a relationship.

Yep, that's exactly right. And it's sort of that financial hug that I call it. And there's a difference too, and I think it's an important one. And that's the difference between sympathy, I understand how you feel, and empathy, I feel how you feel. And the only way that you can do that is to really put yourself in the other person's shoes. And once you do that, when you say, I know you're upset about what's happening in the market today, and I know it's hard to look at, but let's look at the long term and let's look at how we have your portfolio structured. And hey, let me worry about those things for you. I think that at the end of the day, that financial hug is really what people are looking to hear.

Yeah, yeah. So, so let's talk about kind of the state of marketing today. So people such as yourself obviously are well tuned into that, but even for people in wealth management who don't work in marketing, they might have a sense generally, but can you just kind of say in broad broad strokes, what's fairly common, like what's the state of play today?

Sure, sure. Well, in broad strokes, it's the Wild West. So even the old traditional marketing strategies that worked 5 years ago, those are kind of thrown out the window. And the nice part about that, the state of marketing, is that it's made marketing so much more accessible. And that's really what, if I were to distill it down, is the access to the tools, the ability, the checks and balances, everything that you can do is now so much more accessible by way of software solutions, by way of AI solutions, and the availability of information for you to learn from others, like having a podcast. You know, you get to learn from someone else's experience or their journey, and you could apply it to your own.

Yeah, and not to mention the cost. I mean, so much of this is incredibly cheap, what you can do, in addition to what you can do.

You are not kidding. And I look at some of the photography that's created with AI, and we don't do a lot of that, but it's just interesting. I think back to when I would go on photo shoots with a photographer and the hairstylist and the makeup person, It would take all day to do one photo and the actors, and, you know, and that was a pretty big hit to your, to your budget. And now, you know, they have six fingers, but the other details when you do it with AI.

Exactly. So what I'm really curious about is actionable ideas and recommendations, because I think you have a lot of great tips to recommend. So let's, let's get the ball rolling on that.

Oh, sure. And I do have a lot of them. And I would say the easiest low-hanging fruit because I think I'm going to assume, and I think it's probably a safe assumption, that most people listening are using ChatGPT. It's sort of the tool of choice, but how they're not using it is as a custom GPT. And what I mean by that is if you're sitting in front of your computer right now and you're in ChatGPT, look at— look to the top left corner and it says custom GPT, create your own. And once you create your own, you can train that GPT in your own instance. So for us, for Verdance, we created a custom GPT and we trained it on the SEC advertising rule, on all of our pitch decks, on my tone of voice when I write, on our CIO's tone of voice when she writes. I wrote all of our podcast descriptions in there. So I gave it everything that I wanted it to know, including empathy statements, and I trained a custom GPT for Verdance. So we have this custom instance, which you can really do anything with. You can share it, you can use it on your own, You can clone it, so I have two instances. One is a custom GPT for Verdance, and the other one I just call friendly Verdance. And so that's when—

Like different personas.

Exactly, different personas, because sometimes you need to deliver a message that's just friendlier. It just has to be friendlier. So those are really the two main instances that we use.

And is that something that you, as you get new information that might help it, you feed into it to just keep it current and adding information if you don't get it?

Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I add in there all the time. I think there are so many red flag keywords that a user you see when you say that was written by ChatGPT. And I put the phrase, don't ever, ever, ever put in any of my results, I hope this email finds you well.

Circling back. Circling back.

Or the economic landscape or delve and delving. It's one of those things. So I have a list probably of about 100 words that I say, please don't ever use these.

Well, excellent. It helps. So you're a big believer in YouTube now. For marketing. Let's talk about that.

Yes, and YouTube, you know, fun fact, YouTube is now the second most popular search engine just behind Google. And people are consuming information in so many different ways now. And YouTube has all the dressings of something that's completely consumable and viral and will take up your time to do. And we've really embraced that. You know, while we still do more traditional marketing, you know, we consider it more omnichannel, and we try to meet people where they are. So not everyone wants to sit down and listen to a 40-minute market commentary. Some people do. Some people really enjoy that. Some people just want a 2-minute market commentary. Just, you know, break it down for me. Some people prefer to be on LinkedIn or Instagram, but YouTube, really, we can kind of do both. And it's such a wide audience. In fact, they're even— their platform for podcasting is somewhat new. So you can get a lot of bang for your buck by being present on YouTube. YouTube Shorts. YouTube Shorts. YouTube Shorts. It is a way to reach thousands and thousands of people.

So making this an actionable idea for advisors listening who maybe have not dipped a toe into this water, can you just give them a few tips to get the ball rolling?

Yes, absolutely. So we like to call this snackables. Figure out if you had to distill a conversation down into 2 minutes, what might that be? What do you want to give someone that's just a sampling of something that would make them want more, I wanna make them to listen in a little bit more. So being present on YouTube is number one. Giving them that shorter bite or snackable moment with you is another. And really just being consistent about it. And it doesn't have to be perfect. I think we started out, you know, it is the Wild West and people love authenticity. It doesn't have to be super polished, produced. If you're speaking from your heart and you're speaking about a topic that you are passionate about, you know a lot about, that will resonate with people.

Yeah. I mean, you see that all the time in social media. It's, you know, the quick inspired rant. It could be just someone with disheveled hair and feeling pissed off about something and it's like, it doesn't need— in fact, if it's hyper-polished and all, it can almost feel scripted and not be good depending on the context.

But yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's, you know, something that I think financial advisors have had a little bit of a hard time shedding in the past several years. It's just, you're very stodgy.

Well, it's something that's tricky for them because a lot of them are perfectionists they were grown up with this, the image of the invincible professional advisor is very like, you know, strict, not strict, but serious and buttoned up. And in reality, as you well know, in this day and age, showing vulnerability, being human, making some hopefully small mistakes, all of these things are not only not bad, but potentially good because we're all fallible. But it's very difficult behaviorally for some of them. And you can see them sometimes like in private discussions, they'll be wonderfully colorful and funny and candid. And then they get in front of a camera and they're like, petrified and robotic, and it's like, wait a minute, try to be who you were just before.

No, it's true, and I think the pressure is so much now because they sort of have to be all of the above. They have to be that strong pillar in the face of the storm. I got this, I have you, we understand this, but also, I want to relate to you as well. So there's the empathy, but there's, you know, thought leadership. So they really have a big job.

It is threading a needle, admittedly.

It is threading a needle. You're absolutely right.

Yeah, yeah. I am a big believer in that YouTube is underutilized because you could just Kick back on the couch, you're tired, you hold up your phone, I'm gonna watch a 3-minute video. It does not take much effort. You don't have to be able to even read. It's a little bit passive, but you get to see the person, you get to hear them, the facial expressions. You can get a sense, do I like this person? Do I trust this person? And all of those things you can't really get if you just read text on a screen.

But you're right, it's where entertainment meets education, and people are absorbing and digesting news in so many different ways today, and I think at the end of the day, you don't wanna put a lot of work into it. They just want to be entertained, and that's part of it. But think about from an advisor's perspective, how do you reach and have those thoughtful conversations with people? You know, we often talk about your brand, your logo that represents you when you're not around. The same thing with YouTube.

Well, you know, speaking of videos, what more and more advisors seem to be doing is they'll do maybe a 5-minute video during, let's say, a period of high volatility, a market meltdown, and they'll give their take. And then boom, send it to all their clients. And the beauty of it is the ROI for one, you're not making 30, 40 separate phone calls. You do one video and you offer that reassurance. It's just the ROI on that seems pretty good. And those people might forward it to friends and that might help you get new clients as well. So there are many ways you can incorporate video.

You're absolutely right. And you hear, I mean, it's the old adage of the advisor who is afraid during this time and hides under the desk because they don't wanna have the tough conversations with clients. And really just showing up and getting out in front of clients and just letting them know, again, that financial hug that says, we understand this. And here's a little bit behind the headline too, by the way, because, you know, we're primed to just skim the headlines. And so sometimes what an advisor can do is offer a look, a peek behind that headline.

Speaking of content, let's talk about content repurposing and some of your thoughts on that.

Yeah, that's one of my favorite topics. So we typically or historically have done a lot of long-form content, whether that's white papers or any kind of written report, videos. And now, you know, going back to the idea that people digest news in so many different ways, you have to give it to them in different types of deliverables. So what you can do is look at it as an investment. You invest in one longer piece, And then you divide it up into 10, 20 different smaller parts. We look at a lot of our content as a sentence, a paragraph, and a paper. And that you can do that visually as well. It's a post with maybe just a quote and a picture. It's a more thoughtful post on social media, or it's a full-out production and white paper and very thorough a lot of detailed research, but in order to reach the maximum number of people, you have to meet them where they are, you have to deliver it in a way that they're receptive to, and maybe they don't have time. We're all busy people, so you give them a little taste of something that they want to maybe come back and revisit later.

Is there generally a way that this is best approached? So, for example, might it be a longer-form video so you have a lot of visual, and you have a lot of ideas in it. And then from there, you could certainly chop it down to smaller videos, but you have a full transcript. And from that, you could borrow it, you know, so you get the visual, the audio, and the text.

And that, yeah, this is, this is tip number 2. The first one was the custom GPT. This is very good tip number 2. Um, there are AI tools that will chop the video for you and they're very, very intelligent. And I'm very picky about this, this kind of production. Um, what the, the tool that I use in particular is called Opus. Uspro.pro, I believe, um, and you upload your long-form video and then it gives you— you specify the duration, I'll say between 1 minute and 3 minutes, and it will deliver back to me in the time that I go grab a cup of coffee. I have now 20 different short videos. And here's the really nice part about that is it will do it, um, it'll give it a virality score, meaning how likely is this video to become viral. Does it have a compelling hook? Is it relevant? Is it interesting? And it will grade you on all the different criteria. So you can look through the videos that it creates for you, and it sort of gives you a good sense of, will this one do well or not? But you can do so many different things too. You mentioned transcripts. You take the transcript, and this is where you go back to ChatGPT. You can use it to accelerate your workflow by taking the transcript and creating a blog post or just a caption to use on social media.

Are there any other things related to content that you want to talk about? AI, et cetera? Do you think we've covered this mainly?

What do you think? Well, I think that there's— it's such a rabbit hole, right? There are just so many different tools that you can use now, not only from the content creation side or, you know, allowing yourself to be better innovators by feeding it your ideas and having it just exponentially be that force multiplier for your content delivery. But there's also the It can look at data in a very different way than you and I can. It can spot those non-obvious kind of data points and put those together for you. For instance, you know, if you were to give it a part of your CRM, of course you wouldn't share any private information, but it could sort of spider through your entire CRM and say, "Hey, Verdance, you are really good at business owners. You do this and you do that. Oh, by the way, here's some content ideas that you can use because these are some of the questions that your clients are asking." So it's really, it's such smart information. And such just great intelligence that you can gather by using those tools.

It's always interesting when you see some brand or person try to be something that they're clearly not, and the outside observer is like thinking, what are you doing? That's not at all who you are, and they're maybe not aware. Tell me a little about that, about being clear about who you are, realistic, and trying to then amplify or leverage that.

Yeah, yeah, and I think being clear and kind of leaning into who you are naturally, now whether that's the way you like to deliver information, it could be at a dinner It could be on a podcast, could be at a networking event, or it's the type of message that you'd like to deliver. Are you really good with doctors or lawyers, or do you have a particular COI group that you do exceptionally well with? So really, it's identifying, it's looking inward first, know thyself, and then trying to figure out a way to make that relatable to someone else. So I would say that's a great first step to be able to do that in terms of authenticity. And there's an interesting analogy too, Not my analogy, but it makes a lot of sense. So if you look at, if you have, let's say you have a son. Do you have kids, Greg?

Do you have a daughter?

Daughter. Okay. So let's say your daughter is excelling in math, but not doing very well in English. And you want to get her a tutor. Which subject do you get her a tutor in? You give her a tutor in math because she will accept, she will grow exponentially in math and incrementally in English. And that's— it's the same with your marketing. If you know who you are and you know the kind of message that resonates, lean into that because you're going to get exponentially better.

Do you think firms are generally sufficiently honest or self-aware enough for them to do it, or does it ever make sense to bring in a neutral, like a third-party consultant who can just kind of step in and be like, this is what we see? I mean, tell me about that.

I think that it's always good to have another set of eyes and ears on everything that you're doing, whether that you bring in a consultant or a trusted colleague, but someone who's really going to tell you the truth that can And, you know, for instance, I think, you know, I mentioned to you in conversation, Greg, that I didn't grow up in the finance world. So I had that very agnostic view of what we were doing. And I said, wait, wait, hold on, that's really interesting. What do you mean? We're talking about assets. We talk about assets all the time. Not in this way. This is really interesting. So you can, you know, you can look at it again using that empathetic point of view. You can figure out what's going to resonate with an audience.

Yeah. My opinion is that so many people in the wealth management or just the financial world underestimate what people outside the industry think. I think a lot of the distinctions are lost upon the general public. I think they just hear finance investing and there's kind of this general haze of numbers and something impenetrable and like, uh.

That voice from Charlie Brown, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.

Exactly, but people in industry like we, they know it so well and they're slicing and dicing it. And I honestly think that, yeah, having that outside perspective is probably quite important. Too many people are way too close to it to see what other— how others are seeing things.

Perspective. Perspective is everything.

So you studied industrial design and you invented, correct me if I'm wrong, something called the safety tat.

Yes, yes, in a previous life. So interestingly, so at The Ohio State University, their program is industrial design and it's really, it's a problem-solving degree. It's a Bachelor of Science and they just put problems in front of you and you have to solve them in any number of ways. For marketing and visual communication. That was our discipline within industrial design, and what that really did is it level set something in me that said, at every opportunity, there is a problem to be solved, and being able to define that and being able to solve it, that's really, you understand it, you've got the keys then. So I've used that throughout my career in helping other people build brands, and you were gonna, what were you gonna say, Greg?

Well, let's hear about the safety tag.

Oh, the safety tag, that's right. So, and interesting, you know, there's a long protracted story I'll start with this one. So I had been working as a marketer for years and had my own consultancy as well. My husband and I had twins and then a third one about 18 months later, and we decided to take them to an amusement park. And they were all under the age of 5 at the time, so we walked in, paid our hefty admission, and they just went in all different directions, and I panicked, and I said, "Let's leave," even though we paid our big admission. My husband said something about going to the car and getting duct tape to chain us all together, so I sort of took a breath and took a pen from my purse and just wrote my mobile number on each of their arms. And it was a ballpoint pen, so there's a water park and they sort of— I had to rewrite it several times during the day. But throughout the day, other parents approached us and said, "Is that your mobile number? I'm gonna do that with my kid too because we have gotten lost 3 times today." So on the way home, my husband is also— he's in marketing and design. And we just brainstormed the whole way home and just started talking. I had just finished a family vacation with my brother and his kids, and we said, "You know, the temporary tattoos were just a big thing on this vacation. What if we took the mobile number and put it on a tattoo?" So, voilà, SafetyTat was born, and, you know, it was just such a great run, and in fact, it's still in existence. My husband and my daughter now run the company, and so that's been great, and it's sort of— we've used that as kind of a bullseye that, you know, it started out with just sticky identification, and then it moved on to, you know, medical alerts, and allergy alerts, and QR codes,, and so there are so many different ways that you can use this kind of sticky identification.

Without going into too much detail, just what were just a couple of the quick steps you had? Conception, and then how did you make that a reality?

Just kind of— Yeah, the conception. So the easy part for me was the branding and what does it look like. So that was the easy part. Then the intellectual property part, that was the really tough part because that can get expensive. It's a lot of details, and also when you start to talk about having retailers and negotiating that and setting up your platform, the website and the e-commerce side of it. That's where it gets a little bit hairy, but certainly it was such an education. I looked at it as my master's degree in trying to upright a business. But it was just such a great, great experience. And yeah, it was a wonderful ride.

It's a tremendous idea. I mean, it's one of those ideas where you hear about it and you think, gee, why didn't someone do this before? I mean, people go to Disney or whatever and they lose track of their kids.— it's definitely more helpful than—

yeah, so kudos to you. And here was an interesting thing too. So, I knew that, you know, as a mom, I thought, "Oh, the amusement parks are gonna love this." I knew parents would love it because it provides peace of mind, but what I didn't realize that happened was just sort of a happy byproduct of it is kids became empowered. So, they said, "Huh, you know, thanks to you, my child didn't panic." They went up to someone and just showed them their safety tag and said, "Hey, call my mom or call my dad."—

that was a really nice— Right, to calm the kids as well, not just the parents. That's great, that's great. Yeah, exactly. Well, fascinating story, and we're almost out of time, but is there anything else important about marketing that you think we have—

you'd like to touch on? Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, you— right now you're in the middle of it by producing a podcast, and I cannot emphasize enough, you have— it's such a broad scale of, you know, the types of podcasts that you can do, and you don't even have to really call it a podcast. Sometimes you can get people to open up by having a conversation that they wouldn't otherwise. Like, if I were looking directly at a camera, it might be a deer in headlights. So I think doing podcasts right now, we spoke about it a little bit, but as a tool to reach your audience, to establish that thought leadership, and to really establish your differentiator, podcasts are the way to go. In fact, from a marketing perspective, you know, we at Verdance, we have 3 different podcasts now. You know, 2-minute market update, one that is geared toward business owners, and another one about private investment. Gregg, the business development opportunities that arise from this are incredible because you have an opportunity by having a thoughtful conversation. Something is going to resonate, especially with business owners. Wait, they're discussing a private equity deal right now. We're negotiating that right now. This is really helpful.

I have now something to take away, something tangible. Yes, and I totally agree, and I think let's just, I'm just gonna use back of the envelope math here, but let's say there's a 30-minute podcast. There are probably gonna be, with a good guest and host, at least 15, maybe 20 interesting points or things where you could maybe go, aha, or a light bulb might go off. Maybe not a huge bulb, but a little one, little mini epiphanies or things like that. But you're right, you don't have to nail every point, but even one or two will justify the listening and open new doors for business development.

Yeah, and it's such a small price too. It's not that you've invested thousands thousands of dollars. And I often look at it too, you know, that podcasts build the audience over time, the number of listens and likes and interactions. But if you get 5 of the right people listening to your podcasts, I think it's better than 500 of the wrong people listening to your podcast. So keep showing up, making sure you're giving that thought leadership and showcasing that, and it will naturally build over time. And I think advisors would be really pleased with the results.

Excellent. Well, that was all tremendous advice.

Um, really, really appreciate it. Excellent.

Thank you, Greg. Thank you. My guest was Michelle Welsh. For more podcasts and the latest wealth management news, visit barons.com/advisor. You can listen to this podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon as well. And be sure to check out The Way Forward: Next Generation, a new Barron's Advisor podcast that shines the spotlight on the emerging leaders who are shaping the future of financial advising.

For The Way Forward, I'm Greg Bartalis. This podcast was brought to you by Wells Fargo Advisors. Looking for a firm your clients can't outgrow? Wells Fargo Advisors offers financial advisors full balance sheet solutions with wealth planning, investment products, banking, and lending that meet the needs of affluent to ultra-high net worth clients. Build your practice your way and on your schedule with independent and employee model options designed to meet your needs today and tomorrow. Learn more at joinwfadvisors.com.