The Complete Guide to Advisor Podcasting

This podcast is 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.

Should you start your own podcast? Hi everyone, I'm business coach Steve Sandusky for Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward Podcast. On today's show, we're going to do a podcast about podcasting. As you might imagine, I'm a huge fan of podcasting, and for many of you, hosting a podcast could be a key part of your business plan. To discuss this, I asked 3 of my podcasting colleagues to join me and share their insights. And between the 4 of us, we have done more than 1,000 podcast episodes. With me are Julie Littlechild. Julie is a recognized expert on the drivers and evolution of client experience, client engagement, and referral growth. And she previously co-hosted the podcast Becoming Referral Durable. Jeremy Kyle is an advisor and the founder of Kyle Financial Partners. He hosts the Retirement Revealed podcast. And Bill Keen. Bill is an advisor and the founder of Keen Wealth Advisors. His podcast is called Keen on Retirement. If you have ever wondered what it takes to start, host, and deliver a great podcast, this episode is for you. With that, let's get started with Julie Littlechild, Jeremy Kyle, and Bill Keane. Julie, I'd like to start with you, and I'd love for you to set the stage here in terms of where podcasting fits within the marketing plan. And then also, what are some considerations for an advisor in terms of whether or not they should start a podcast?

I'm actually so glad you're starting with that question because I think sometimes we jump to how do I do a podcast without thinking about that more strategic question. And look, I go back to first principles with this kind of thing. So what I mean by that in its simplest form is stepping back and understanding, you know, what's your core message, who you are, what you do, and for whom. Who are you trying to reach? What are their needs and challenges? What are their aspirations and goals? And only at that point do we start thinking about what's the best way to reach that audience through content. And then podcasting is one of those options, but the idea of jumping to that without having gone through that that first step, I think, is getting us into the danger zone.

Now, all four of us here today have podcasts or had podcasts, so I'm gonna— let's stick with you here, Julie. You started a podcast with Steve Wersheen, so tell me about that. Why did you and Steve start your podcast?

At some level, we wanted to give back, and I think that's a— I mean, I've noticed that everyone I talk to who does podcasts sort of genuinely seems to want to add some value back to the industry and is looking for ways to do that. And we wanted to share great insights from others, not just that we'd done, but from, from those around us. From a business perspective, you know, it was really about seeking out a more engaging way to connect with our audience. So whether that was existing clients and adding value, whether that was getting in front of prospective clients in a way that was helpful, we chose the podcast in particular as one of those methods that we used, really because it felt more like a conversation. And I have to shout out to Meg Carpenter because I want to share something that she said Frankly, after the fact, after we'd stopped doing her podcast, we will do one again. But she said, look, you just need to make sure you're not only talking to the industry, but you're in conversation with the industry. And that really kind of, to me, summarized what we were trying to do and why we did it.

So, Bill, you and I, I think, are old-timers here in terms of the podcast. And you started your podcast in 2015. So why did you start your podcast? And what is your podcast?

Our podcast is called Keen on Retirement, kind of a play on words there. My last name is Keen, and we coach folks and advise folks that are navigating up to and over into retirement at the firm here at Keen Wealth Advisors. And you and I got together, Steve, I've known you for many years, met probably 15 years ago, one of the Peak Advisor Alliance events, and you encouraged me to not be afraid to have a voice, to have an opinion, and to bring that opinion to the public, to the internet, to something that essentially lives forever out there, as long as we want to keep it out there, and to not be afraid to have a voice and have an opinion. And I had seen so many other advisors have radio shows. Some of the larger advisors in our industry had started with radio shows, and I wasn't interested in having to be down at the radio station at 7 a.m. every Saturday morning or to be committed to be somewhere at a certain time every week from a standard of living point. And we already were focused, Steve, on financial literacy and sharing that with the public through live events, educational events. You know, webinars weren't quite what they are today, of course, back then, 7 years ago now. But that podcast was something that was becoming popular, and I knew it would allow me to share my thinking and help our clients, prospects, and the general public to look behind the curtain in what we are thinking, what we are seeing, what our clients are asking us, and just be able to share that with folks in that medium. Now, we have over 165 episodes out now. You are my co-host. You've been personally on every single one of those shows, and your firm produces the show as well, the edits, the show notes, and so forth. But one other thing I might add is that Before COVID we were doing over 50 live events per year, educational events. We were already doing some webinars before COVID quite a few actually. And then the podcasting, which happens every other week, we've never missed an episode, which I think is important, the consistency. But I would say, I would contend that if you have an active calendar of being on your game, ready to present, being up in stride, it's easier to do that type of volume than it would be to try to struggle through and do one every quarter or four a year or two a year or one every so often. Being up in stride with this type of work keeps us sharp as well. That's a byproduct of doing this type of work. It keeps us remembering who and what we are and how we communicate that to folks.

Yeah, I think some really important points there in terms of the consistency, you know, showing up every day, doing the podcast, in this case every other week, and then on the Opposite weeks, there's a blog post that goes out. But then also, I like your point about how doing a podcast keeps you sharp, which means you gotta do some research. You gotta stay current with what's happening. You gotta come up with a topic that you think is gonna be of interest and of value to your audience. And so, it really forces you to continue to learn. And that's definitely one of the things that I love about podcasting as well. So, Jeremy, tell me about your show.

Yeah, I've gotta agree with the both of you guys there. So for Julie, you're talking about how you need to think about who you serve, who your target market is and things like that. I've got 3 words that I follow, which is brand, message, market. Brand is who you are and who you serve. Message is how do you speak to who you serve? And market is how do you find who you serve? And you've got to go through in that order. And so if you're just thinking, I'm going to throw a podcast or any marketing out there, without thinking of your branding or your messaging first. Julie's right on. You got to do that. But for Bill too, I've got to agree with the idea of being an educator. Some of my best growth as an advisor was when I was teaching college seniors at 8:00 AM on a Friday, college finance. And just having the, I guess, the improv. I should take an improv course maybe. That's what I'm telling myself right now. Just the improv of how do you explain something to a college senior at 8:00 AM on Friday when they're not quite getting it, and just that ability to educate and try to take a complex topic and get it through to the folks that, in their case, maybe didn't want to necessarily hear it at that point in time. But there's a lot of people that are out there wanting to be educated. And I just had that passion, love to do it, and just had too much content inside of me that I felt I needed to get out to the people I wanted to serve.

Well, speaking of improv, I'm going to plug a past episode here on Barron's Advisor, The Way Forward. We did a show with Kelly Leonard, who was one of the senior people at Second City out of Chicago. We had a great conversation about improv and just that whole process and how that works. So definitely encourage everyone listening to go check that out. But Jeremy, tell me, what is the— you talk about this brand message and market. So what is your market for your podcast and how true do you stay to that market?

Yeah, so similar to Bill, we focus on the retirement market, and we're helping people make decisions about their Social Security, Medicare, pension decisions, 401(k)s, things along those lines. And so we are, I'm going to say 99% true, because I'm sure there's maybe a little bit outside of that, but I'm always thinking of basically the 57-year-old couple that I'm talking to. And every episode and every way I'm trying to explain it, a topic or bringing a guest on, is how do we educate that 57-year-old couple as they're getting ready to make some life-altering decisions about retirement?

Okay, so I'd love for you— and this is for anybody— to compare and contrast what you were hoping to achieve with your podcast with the actual reality. Now that each of you have done, I think, over 100 episodes each, what were you thinking was going to happen, and what is the reality of what actually happened?

Yeah. For me, the expectation was that this would just be a great client generator. Everyone's going to hear how wonderfully smart I am and just call me up instantly. And of course it's not instant, obviously. It's been fun to track the progress. You should definitely track your progress and metrics and to see the upward curve to the right, which is great stuff. I know that that will happen at some point, that somebody will completely blindly, never heard us before, come across a podcast and then call us up and become a client, but in reality, it's more of a prospect on-boarder than a prospect generator. And so people reach out to us from other methods and they end up listening to our podcast because we send it to them and they get used to how we plan. They get used to figuring out what we focus on and they either come into our office more excited to work with us or they don't bother to work with us at all or don't even bother to come into the office because they have heard how we approach things and realize we're not approaching things the way they would want to do it. I also think it's more of like a force multiplier. So my salesperson does not need to be able to speak eloquently for 20 minutes on maxing out their pension or deciding their Social Security, because I've already done that in the podcast. They just need to talk to the prospective client and realize what they're interested in and say, "Great, I've got a podcast I'll send you. I've got a blog we'll send you out." And it's all stuff I've already done that my salesperson can do, my other advisor can do, my staff people, and then it's like a training ground for your new staff. You want to get into the Kyle Financial Partners way? Listen to Jeremy Kyle talk for 100 episodes about here's the way that we go about planning. So it's been a great thing for, I guess, prospect education, staff education, force multiplier. And I'll tell you, we just signed on a new advisor just yesterday and he said, One of his points was that he was impressed with our recruiting process, which is some other things as well too, including the right testing and things like that. But we sent them podcasts. You're interested, listen to me first and see if you're interested. And so other people might've listened and not been interested. He was very interested. And the podcast was a huge help towards getting him used to how we go about things here.

And our audience is different, right? So we're focused on financial advisors, which is a, you know, it's a B2B market. I think it is different and it did raise awareness. It created goodwill. We had clients who said, I look forward to it, I listen to it. So all of that good stuff. One of the things that was almost unintended, which I found interesting, and I'd be interested if you guys find this as well, is because they're hearing you and watching you sometimes, there's this different connection. I was about to do a presentation and it was really interesting. I was at the front of the room, I had my back to, and I was speaking to someone and somebody just behind said, I know you. And he had no idea who I was, but he said, oh, I listened. He heard my voice. He actually connected the dots. And I thought, wow, that's a whole different level of connection. But, you know, on the reality side, the one thing I would say, and maybe we'll get into this, is for us, the podcast did everything it was supposed to do. I don't think we did everything we were supposed to do in order to fully leverage it. So there was nothing bad about it. It just could have been even more, I suppose.

Yeah, I love your story about people hearing your voice. I had exactly the same thing happen multiple times. I'm sitting at a conference, I'm sitting at a table, I'm talking to someone, and then someone like 3 people away says, "You're Steve Sandusky. I know your voice. I listen to your podcast. You're in my ears." So I've had that happen multiple times. So yeah, that's a lot of fun when you hear that and you know you're starting to make a bit of an impact. So a lot of fun there. Bill, something you wanna add there?

You know, with where we are in the life cycle of our business, I feel like I'm in the second inning, even though I'm 53 and I'm 30 years into the industry, 8 years into the founding of the RIA. But every time I do anything that's public-facing, I still have that thought. Am I going to advance our cause or am I going to do damage to our cause? Every single time. When I started, I was really concerned about how I would be perceived. And Steve, you were one of the folks that had to deal with that. You might recall I don't want to say I made you because, you know, we live in a free country here, but I think we recorded my first episode— was it 3 or 4 or 5 times?

It was a lot.

I was going with 3, but he's saying 5 because I was such a— I wanted it to sound right. I wanted it to represent correctly. Now today, obviously, after 165 episodes or more in 7 years, we don't have to do that. I don't think we have to— had to recut one in many years, maybe just the first couple. But so I'm thinking about that and I didn't have a lot of expectation around it because I had a lot of nerves about how I would be perceived and having that voice that's out there forever that everyone can hear, not only our potential clients, but our clients would hear it. Also, other industry participants would hear it potentially if someone does a Google search. So, but one of the things that's happened around this, it's been way more than I thought it would be, is our clients tune into it. And as we grow these firms, so we have 12 advisors at our firm today, and as we grow these firms, in our industry, that one-to-many voice is really important in my opinion. Having a one-to-many voice, whether it's through webinars or specifically the podcast or other mediums, is really important. What we're finding is clients are tuning in way more than we thought. And sometimes it's around certain issues. Certainly it's around when there's turbulence in the marketplace or things going on. I was recently at a charitable golf tournament that we hosted on Monday. We do that each year. For childhood cancer. And I had multiple clients come up to me and say, hey, we were a little concerned about what we're seeing in the marketplace. But we listened to that last episode. And we're good. We're okay. That's a very powerful thing. All my advisors really appreciate it as well, because they're able to direct clients that have certain questions to specific podcast episodes. So as the CEO and founder of this firm, in my role as this, as we've grown into an enterprise, and one of those things is providing that thought leadership for my advisors to use and push out. The other thing that Jeremy touched on too was new employees, new team members. So, we're at a point now where we get incoming calls from folks that might have an interest in working here. One of the first things I look for— this is a secret if somebody hears this that's wanting to work at Keen— it might make sense to say that you've listened to 2 or 3 of the podcasts to see who and what we are and if they agree with what we're saying, if they can align with that. And one last thing, I've got a book out called Keen on Retirement: Engineering the Second Half of Life. Second edition coming out in October. So those— the brand, they correlate. So podcast is Keen on Retirement. The book is Keen on Retirement, also Engineering the Second Half of Life. And I've had people come across the book on Amazon and then see where we reference the podcast. They find the podcast. Now they're finding this from several different angles and they're able to plug into the book, to the podcast, to the webinars. Finally, I've also found that clients are proud of the content we're pushing out in most cases. And when they want to introduce us to a friend, they will direct the friend in a lot of cases into one of those mediums. They might call and say, hey, Bill, will you send a book to my friend Joe? He'd like to take a look. Also, I've sent him your podcast links and he'd like to sign up for the next webinar. That's a powerful way to allow folks that are considering working with a financial advisor to plug in very nonthreateningly and to understand who and what you are. Like Jeremy said, folks that don't agree, they'll never appear. The folks that do show up like they know you. And that's, I think, a very powerful thing.

Yeah. And what you're describing there, Bill, I think it's back to what Julie started out talking about, which is really podcasting is just like one part of the marketing mix. So you've got a podcast, Bill, you've got a book, Bill. Jeremy, you've got a podcast. Jeremy does digital marketing. Bill, you do digital marketing. So we've got all these different components that become part of a marketing plan. And I know both of you have very significant organic growth, and I was just looking at the most recent numbers here from the Schwab RIA benchmarking study, and I crunched some numbers that weren't directly listed in the survey, and it's pretty clear that the organic revenue growth of the average RIA firm is essentially zero, if not negative. And the only reason why the average RIA firm is growing is because the market's going up over time. And so it's things like the podcast, it's things like having a book, it's things like doing some digital marketing, it's things like really focusing on getting referrals from your clients. Of course, Julie, you're an expert in that area, and those are the things that are really going to help. So this is one piece of an overall marketing mix. I do want to touch for a second here on how do you start a podcast and how hard is it to start a podcast? Now, we could do a whole episode just on that. So basically what I would say is Google it, how to start a podcast. You're going to find lots of content out there on how to start. But the one thing that I do want to say is it's not as hard as you think to start a podcast. I've started 5 of them and have 5 shows. It's not that hard to start. But just some quick things to think about. One is have a planning process, meaning why am I doing it? Again, Julie started out talking about that. Why do you want to do a show? Who's your target audience? Who's the persona listener that you're looking for? Why would someone want to listen to your show versus somebody else's show? Second is what kind of format are you going to do? I think all of us have essentially had interview shows, which I think are very popular, very successful. So think about the format, interview show versus you as a solo versus mixing it up, doing some different things, answering listener questions and so on. How long is your podcast going to be? Something else to think about. A third piece would be sort of the recording and the gear that you're going to use. Again, not complicated. I'm using a Rode Podcaster. You know, very simple to get these things set up. So the technology, the equipment that you need is not sophisticated. The software that you need to do the recording, we're doing this over Zoom. Super easy. Everyone now is pretty comfortable with using Zoom. Another area is the editing and the production. I have an editor who I work with who does a phenomenal job of editing all the shows. So you can always outsource that. And then I think the fifth would be just publishing and promoting. So we need to have a podcast hosting service. I happen to use Libsyn, L-I-B-S-Y-N. And so that's where the podcast files are located. And then of course, we send out to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and SoundCloud and all the different players out there. So, so yeah, it's not that difficult. You can just Google it. And a lot of this work you can actually outsource. So I don't know if any of you have any anything else that you want to add on starting a podcast?

Yeah, I was surprised. I mean, we overcomplicated it to start. We booked the studio, we went, we had 5 guests lined up, you know, we have pictures of us sweltering in this little studio room for the, you know, and then at some point we said we could use Zoom, right? We tried a couple of different platforms that we found were buggy, uh, and just kept coming back to Zoom, and it, it seemed to work really well. I'm not quite the perfectionist that Bill is, you see. I I just go with it and whatever comes out comes out. But if you can have a conversation, you can just get comfortable with that. I will say that, you know, it was very formulaic to start and then it just became increasingly more comfortable to have a conversation. But you know what? We do this all day long. It's just turning a mic on.

You're not a podcast producer, you're a financial advisor and outsource this kind of stuff. I'm heading to FinCon pretty soon. There's, there's Facebook groups for FinCon that you can meet people that are outsourced producers and social media experts. Bill mentioned that Steve takes care a lot of his podcast for him. I happen to use ProudMouth. If you're ready to start a podcast and have a checkbook in hand, there's people that can make this happen for you just by outsourcing it. And I'd encourage you to outsource it. But then again, there's some other people out there like Taylor Schulte and Benjamin Brandt are well-known financial advisor podcasters. I believe, I could be wrong, but I believe they just record it on their iPhone, like while they're waiting for their kids' hockey practice to be done with. They can make it easy. And they're, they're one of the, you know, top 5, top 10 financial advisor podcasts that are out there.

Yeah. And that's a good point. And how formal versus informal should your podcast be? Now, I know in my shows, I've actually, I've done both, but most of my shows are edited and I'd say they're they're highly polished. I've also done episodes that are very informal. So I don't know if any of you have a take on formal versus informal, pros and cons of that.

We went very informal. We were able to edit. We almost never did. Maybe once or twice we thought, this is not going the way it should, and we need, we need some editing help. But I think the answer to that is also in who you are and how you hold yourself out. I mean, I have gone through quite a transition across many years of just being quite formal to just getting old and, you know, being who I am.

And getting better.

And just, I just can't fight the authenticity anymore. So if I suddenly showed up being incredibly formal, it wouldn't be authentic to me. And vice versa. If someone had a different personality and they were trying to put that on, it just wouldn't sound right. It's just gotta be who you are.

I think, Steve, you know, look behind our curtain, the show that you help us produce and that you're the co-host on every episode. We have a general format. We have an upfront bumper. We have a little bit of small talk upfront. A lot of times we'll have a this day in history, something that might relate to the topic we're going to go into as well. But when we do the shows, whether it's just you and I or you and I and my president of the firm, Matt Wilson, joins for a good amount of these, or another guest. It can be, I think, in my opinion, some of them can be a little more informal if it's just us, although we do have an outline that we follow. We try to stick to that outline, although I think one of the powerful things about podcasting is your folks are listening. It's very intimate. It's in their ear, and they want to feel like they're almost eavesdropping in a, in a healthy way on a conversation, on a legitimate, sincere conversation. So too scripted probably isn't the greatest, but just being who we are, I think, is very powerful. Now we have a guest on, like we've had Dr. Daniel Crosby on and we've had Mitch Anthony on. We had the former CEO of Burns McDonnell on, Greg Graves, Jeff Lanza, a former FBI special agent who specializes in cybersecurity. Those are maybe a little bit more, I guess, rigid, but really not really. We're trying to get those conversations to come out. And even though we have a guest on, we're sharing stories as well.

That balance is so important because even though I might have an informal approach to a conversation, we always start with a guideline. And in part that's for us, but for the guest. I mean, I do not want to be a guest on a podcast where it's just, hey, we'll just chat. If it's going to be relevant, give me a little time to at least think about what kind of value I can add, what kind of points I could make. Otherwise it can just be unfocused and that's— nobody wants that.

Yeah.

And to your point earlier, Julie, about being authentic to who you are. I think that is ultimately the key. So you've talked about how you've transformed over time from maybe being more formal to less formal. It's like, this is who you are today. Bill, I, like you say, I've known you for a long time. You're meticulous, you're precise, you're very focused on the details, and that's who you are. That's authentic to who you are. So your show and the way that you interact tends to be a little, probably a little bit more formal, and It's interesting because I tend to do a lot of research, particularly for these Barons episodes that I'm doing. I do a lot of research on the guest ahead of time. I put together a fairly detailed outline. I send that to the guest ahead of time. And it's interesting because sometimes the guests are like, oh, this is great. I'm so glad that you sent this because now I got an idea what we're going to talk about. Other guests will get on and they're like, oh, what outline? I don't look. I just want to be, you know, in the moment and just hit me with whatever you're going to hit me with. So It's interesting how some people really want to know in advance and other people are like, ah, just, you know, hit me with your best shot, as Pat Benatar would say.

What's nice about being a guest on podcasts is as long as it's talking about your field of expertise, you're able to be that authentic person. And sometimes I don't want to say shooting from the hip, but just sharing your— what the first thing that comes to mind can be very, very real to the listeners as long as you're operating in your field of expertise.

Yeah, right. When you think about the format for your show, do you want to do virtual recordings like we're doing here over Zoom? Do you want to do in-person? Do you want to do a mix of those? I think either one, of course, can work. And in terms of the equipment, just getting a little technical here, for recording an in-person show, it's not that bad. In fact, the two microphones that I use, they're called Shure microphones, S-H-U-R-E, and the model number is SM58. -LC. So they're about $100 apiece. Get a couple of cables that go with them, and then I have a handheld digital recorder called a Zoom H4n Pro. Costs about $250. I plug the digital recorder into an electrical outlet, I plug the two microphones, the cables, into the, the bottom of this digital recorder, and then me and my guests, we each have a microphone in front of us. I recorded this in the exhibit hall at a Barron's conference, and there was just this little bit of white noise in the background. And then the guests and myself, our voices came through loud and clear. I mean, it was just a perfect setting. And so I love doing the in-person podcast. Again, the equipment, not sophisticated, not expensive. So I just encourage people listening that if you think podcasting might be part of the mix is to give it a try. And you can start it, maybe you do 10 episodes, call that a season, see how you like it, and if you want to continue or not. So definitely encourage folks to give this a try. What are some of your thoughts here, Jeremy?

I think we all agree that you, you need a format, and that format is based on who it is you're trying to serve and a bit about who you are. And you should have an outline ahead of time, and yet keep it informal. You know, if, if there's a topic of inquiry, go with it. And if it's not going well, well, skip the next question. You got to kind of roll with the punches, I suppose. And I'll go on the opposite end. I've heard a few investment company podcasts. They're clearly being read straight from a compliance-approved script. And I'm just thinking, why bother? Don't even do it. It's a complete waste of time and money if that's the way it's going to go about it. You need to have an agenda that maybe holds you in the box that you've decided it should be, but go wherever the guest leads it or wherever the conversation needs to go.

Yeah. And I was just listening to a podcast this morning from Guy Raz. Some of you may have heard of him. He has actually several very, very popular podcasts. And on the show I was listening to this morning, he was being interviewed. Normally he's the interviewer. And he said that for one of his shows, he actually records for about 3 hours. So these are really detailed, in-depth conversations. But then he said, we edit them, and we get it down to about an hour and a half. So he cuts out like half of the conversation. And he says, I really want to be focused on delivering as much value as I possibly can to the listener. And while we may have spoken for 3 hours, I want to get to that meat, that heartfelt part that's an hour and a half. So again, all different kinds of ways to do this, and you can just figure out what's going to work best for you— formal, informal, edit, not edit.

If you want to get good at this, you have to approach it like you're a journalist. I mean, in a way, you are becoming some level of journalist. And there's a book that I read that really helped me out a lot. It's called Talk to Me: How to Ask Better Questions, Get Better Answers, and Interview Anyone Like a Pro. That's by Dean Nelson. And that was just a great book that I found, and I've read it a few times now.

Yeah, and totally true. And I've done— I was just looking at it this morning— 640 podcast episodes. Yeah, the first one I did goes back to October of 2014. So I've done a few of these, and hopefully it's a lot of experience as opposed to one episode repeated 640 times. So, but yeah, asking questions, just just getting into that conversation mode. It's a skill, and it's something that you really have to work at. That's one thing I love about it is you can always get better. It's like, I'll listen to an episode I did last week, I'm like, oh man, how did I miss this? Why did I not follow up on this comment that they made? Because there's always something that you can get better at. So let's talk about some topics here for a second. What have you found have been good topics? Do you think about current event topics that might have a shorter shelf life? Do you think about evergreen topics that could still be relevant a year, 2, 3 years from now? How do you think about picking topics for the show, Jeremy?

I've got a few ideas on this. And I think really the first way to go about it is where do you get your topics from? And if you're a financial advisor, listening to your clients and their questions is going to be the number one way you can get topics for your show, or just Keep a running list. I've got a running list on my phone. Anytime an idea pops in my head, I've got that running list of a topic to go through. But also too, read the trade publications. We mentioned journalists just a bit ago. Well, journalists are very keen on figuring out what the people want. And so if you are in my space, I'm looking at retirement space, people 57 to 67. So I'm reading Kiplinger, reading AARP, obviously Barron's, I read that as well. Although I'll tell you what's so great is I became part of the Investments and Wealth Institute, And they've got a great journal, an investment journal, a retirement journal, and I get my Barron's subscription by being a member of that institute. So the first thing I think of is where do you get your topics from? And so that's how I go about that. I've tried to be more evergreen, things that will stand the test of time. And yet at the same time, people are always asking me what's going on in the markets or what's going on in the news. So I think there needs to be more room, more room that I've allowed perhaps in my show to do things around current events. My best podcast ever is actually related to I bonds. Well, I bonds kind of became hot at the end of 2021 and they've continued through 2022. And so that's a topical topic and it's evergreen, I suppose. And just in my own kind of cadence, right now we're about 8 weeks ahead. And because of that, I haven't done anything about the market dropping. Or about inflation in '22. And that's probably a miss on my part that I should be building in some margin or perhaps even cutting in. You know, I did a cut-in as a special update with COVID and I did actually do just a 5-minute talk on I bonds, just threw it in as a special update when the rate was changing on there. That's probably something where I guess the answer's gonna be both.

[Speaker:MICHELLE] Yeah, you know, we do a lot of ongoing investor research, and so I'd agree. You know, you talk about what kind of topics. Well, in our research, we always, always ask investors not only what are they interested in learning about— we do ask that— but what are they concerned about. And to me, those are the most powerful topics, right? If you— if your clients can tell you in some robust format what their concerns are, that's your content calendar for, for the next 12 months. And I'm like you, I love evergreen because you can parse it out, you can use it in different ways, but it does depend on the cadence. Right? If you're, uh, if you're doing it every other week, you know, it's— you can't comment on something that happened 2 weeks ago if you're trying to be relevant. But I love this idea of just being flexible enough to perhaps throw something out that's, that's quick and dirty and it's going to get some interest.

Yeah, and I think it gets back to that idea that you can just mix things up. So you may have your standard evergreen content calendar, but then every so often throw something in that was just recorded yesterday. I know with my podcast Between Now and Success, for a while I was doing something that I called my Friday podcast. So I would do like a normal long-form episode every couple of weeks. And then on the opposite Fridays, I would record something typically like Thursday afternoon, maybe even Friday morning, which would be me riffing on some really current event topic for 10, 15 minutes, just turn the mic on, record it, and then pop it up up into the player there and, you know, did that for a while. Again, we talked earlier about keeps me sharp, keeps me focused. Like, what's happening? I gotta pay attention here. I gotta come up with some things to talk about here that are relevant to my audience. So I think you can mix up the format there. Let's talk about some of the marketing here. One of the things that I love about podcasting, among many, is that you can repurpose the content. So Julie, why don't we start with you? You do a lot of marketing. How do you think about podcast content and what are different ways that we can create it once, but then share it in multiple formats?

Oh yeah. And look, I don't think there's anything brilliant here, but just doing that is what, is what matters. You've got this base of content. So I love the idea of driving it down to some 1 or 2 minute audio clips, creating some quotes that you can share, writing a blog post on that same content or multiple blog posts, writing a LinkedIn article. You know, there's just, So much that you can do. And the beauty of it, just starting with that consistent theme, and then like, for my money, I'd prefer to take that and really use it, truly leverage it, rather than doing 5 or 6 different things. I think you just get so much greater value out of it.

The only thing I'll add to that, because that's just exactly what you should be doing for sure, is that with the podcast you generally have a summary and You could have that summary where it's just 2 paragraphs, but in general, we'll have it where it's more like a 600, 800-word blog post summary. So it's already turned into a blog naturally. But once a month, I look at my past podcasts, past blogs, kind of look through the metrics of the podcast with the metrics of the website. And I look to see what's performing well, like what are people clicking on? And then if people are clicking on that, then that means there's an appetite for it. And I'll take the time to expand that same blog into a longer form post. And so you should naturally be taking your podcast and not doing a 100-word summary, maybe like a 500-800-word summary. But then pay attention to what people are looking for because if they're looking for that information, you probably have a lot more things to say. Well, now's your chance. Go back and update that one particular one. And add in all the things you need to say about it.

We talked a little bit now about what types of episodes that we do, and I think Julie and Jeremy did a great job sharing kind of the different types of episodes. I know on our show, Steve, you and I, and in some cases Matt, will riff on current events, new legislation we're seeing. We just did that recently with this new bill that's been passed, but we'll also have listener questions about every third or fourth episode. We'll, we'll take listener questions. I think those are well received. People can relate. They think, "Whoa, I want to hear that. I want to hear what other folks are doing in their financial lives and hear how they answer those questions." But we also have guests. So, we talk a lot about engineering the second half of life and living a life of intentionality and of inspiration. So, how about we bring folks on that are doing that, that have retired, that are living a life of intention, that are just living life by design? And those have been very successful as well for folks to see behind the curtain there. We've also had— charities that we've supported, we've had representatives or founders of those charities on the podcast as well. And this speaks to how then it gets pushed out through other networks. So some of the charities that we've worked with, you might recall Brandon Mixon from the Veterans Community Project, Steve, they pushed that out through their systems as well, through all their channels as well. And, you know, we're still supporters of them. They were just in office yesterday talking about a project we're doing. Also, I mentioned earlier Greg Graves. He was the prior CEO of Burns McDonnell, had a 13-year run as CEO there, and really was a proponent of the ESOP plan, wrote a book called Create Amazing, all about Burns McDonnell's history and the ESOP plan there, which is one of the best in American history. And we had him on, on the program, and that was something that we were able to, you know, repurpose. And a lot of folks tuned in from that community And then speaking of marketing, now we've used Facebook, we use LinkedIn, we use retargeting, we even use a concept called geofencing across the country. And we're working with those strategies nationwide now in the markets that we want to appear. It can be really as strategic as you want to make it. For me, that came later after just seeding the program and feeling confident with what we were doing. But the sky's the limit with how you repurpose these things. And I don't want it to be lost on our listeners here today. That it's not just the next episode that's most important. I have folks call me and say, hey, I've listened to this episode you did on X, and I'm thinking, wait a second, that was 4 years ago. But folks find our work and go through and listen to all the episodes. It's a living, breathing diary out there. And I point that out as well to our listeners, clients, potential clients, general public, whoever might be tuning in. I say, go back and listen to what we were saying 7 years ago when we were— the country was going through whatever it was going going through. Go back and listen to what we were saying during COVID We don't go back and edit things. We leave it all out there. So it's an open book diary of what we were saying at that time, and that gives folks a lot of confidence and just kind of knowing who and what we were and how we handled certain situations and how we communicated.

I was so glad you brought up the network, by the way, because that is the single most effective way we've found of building a list over time, is, is other people. I mean, choose the right people first, but you can be intentional about that as well. But the other thing that we've done is ensured that in addition to being able to subscribe via the various feeds, we've always had some form of a lead magnet where people can drop their email address in, in order to be alerted. And, and of course that gives you an opportunity to build some funnels and do some, some ongoing education. So I mean, that email address is gold, obviously, in this case.

Yeah, I think it's so critical to really build up that email list, and that's something that I've worked on for years to cultivate because you own that. Versus if you're trying to build your business on Facebook or LinkedIn, that's not your platform, okay? Now, they can be great platforms, so certainly we want to use those, but we also want to really build up that email list. And just a quick thing here that I have found super effective when it comes to emailing. So every episode that we send out, ultimately there's an email that's going to go out to let people know about that. But something that I don't think a lot of people do, which I found to be super effective, is. So I have this thing called GTK, which stands for Good to Know. So I send that out about every couple weeks or so, and we get about a 33 to 35% open rate in that. But then what I do is 4 or 5 days after that goes out, I resend the email. I change the subject line, and I only send it to the people who didn't open it up the first time. And what happens is I get another 12 to 15% of people that open it the second time with the different subject line. So it's a way to, you know, get higher open rates, get more people to read your content because they may miss the first one. So just a little tip there that I found to be effective. All right, let's jump into a few of your favorite podcasts. So I'll go ahead and start while you guys might think about about what are some of your favorite, say, non-financial shows. So I've got a handful here that I'll just quickly run through. So one I really enjoy is called How Leaders Lead with David Novak. Now, some of you listening to this might know David Novak because I did a podcast with him. The reason why I did a podcast with him is because I was listening to his show, and he's such a great interviewer, and he's the former CEO of Yum Brands. And so that's a great show. He has amazing guests. A lot of them are CEOs, they're athletes, They're just really successful people. Another one that a lot of you may not have heard of, it's called Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett. And he gets some amazing guests as well. And one of the things that he does so well is he really makes an emotional connection with his guests. And a couple here from Guy Raz, I mentioned him earlier. He's got a show called How I Built This, where he talks to entrepreneurs. He has a second show called Wisdom from the Top where he interviews prominent CEOs. And Guy Raz is just a master at the interview process. So if you really wanna learn how to be a great interviewer, listen to those two shows with Guy Raz. And then a couple other ones here, Hidden Forces with Demetri Kofinas. Again, love the show, loved it so much I reached out to Demetri and he was a guest on an earlier episode here of the Barron's Podcast. A lot of his episodes recently are about investing and macro factors, what's going on in the economy. I really have enjoyed his earlier episodes, which was an eclectic mix of philosophy and religion and art and science. So some great shows there. And then a final one here, the Rich Roll Podcast. Rich, fascinating guy, another great interviewer, talks to a lot of adventure people and, really exploring the frontiers of success. And so he's got a great show as well. So let me stop there. I don't know if any of you have any other shows that you're particularly fond of.

Steve, I had Guy Raz's How I Built This also. And then I might add, I love listening to the TED Talk podcast as well. I just— there's so many different topics there that you can plug into.

Yeah, I'd say I listen to 90% advisor-focused shows. So obviously the podcast that Julia has done and Steve has done and Kit's podcast and so many of those. But I'm trying to delve into non-financial advisor shows. Two that came to mind are Deep Questions with Cal Newport and The Bible Project. Really both of them are long form, so they're well over an hour. Both are conversational. They're very educational. A key dynamic that people can take away when they do their own podcast is that it's kind of like this expert foil, almost like Abbott Costello, right? You've got just two people that are slightly different. So especially, you know, Cal Newport has his producer he's talking to and asking questions of, and with The Bible Project, you've got this very well-versed, well-knowledgeable, you know, Hebrew Bible scholar that is the expert. The other person is probably very expert-like as well too, but he takes more of a question approach, kind of in the mind of the listener, of saying, okay, here's a question I have, probably because the listener might have that type of questions. So that's just a great format, I think, is to have two people on, kind of this expert foil kind of dynamic.

It's changed now into different variants, but I've always loved anything Malcolm Gladwell does, so I tend to focus on that. But I do tend to listen to a lot of industry stuff and focus on that. So certainly, you know, with Kitzis, I like the long form. I like that he goes deeper. I like listening to Meg Carpenter and Candice Carlton because I think they're just, you know, stripping away some of that formality and trying to get real and trying to get to the heart of how people are feeling. Tina Powell, Suzanne Syracuse, Mauro Bruno. I mean, I guess it kind of highlights that there's a lot of podcasts now. There are. And that's a different question we should probably ask ourselves, but gosh, I feel like I just don't even have time to listen to half of them.

Yeah, and that is a key point. I know when I started my Between Now and Success back in 2014, It was focused on financial advisors, basically a practice management show, marketing show, and interviewing a lot of the top advisors. And if it wasn't the first, it certainly had to be one of the first podcasts for financial advisors. Today, there's a whole slew of those shows out there. But yeah, you got to pick your spots. You got to decide if you're going to start a podcast, what's going to make yours different? Why should someone listen to your podcast versus somebody else's podcast? How is it going to benefit your business? All those things that we talked about here a little earlier in the show. Well, folks, I could talk to you for hours and hours, and I know we got to wrap it up here. So let's just wrap with one final question here or a comment. I'd like each of you to just take a second here, take a minute, and if there's any final observation that you want to make or any final takeaway that you want to leave our listeners with as it relates to podcasting, I would say that to just do it, to step aside, let the fear go aside, and just do it.

Start to formulate who and what you are and what you believe and really do that if you need to, a belief journal, an exercise that I always recommend folks do that says, what do I believe about the things I'm going to be talking about? And really getting clarity on your values and your beliefs, because I think that's where it starts, because we want to be genuine in these types of things and just do it. It's like that Peter Thiel book, Zero to One, just take the first step.

Jeremy, any final thought from you? Yeah. I'd say that if you have something to share to someone, then podcasting is great. And some people just unfortunately don't have something to share. And some people unfortunately don't have a someone in mind. They're not niched down enough. You've got to think of the one person you're talking to. And I'll give you a tip there. Someone was telling me a few months back that I needed to be talking more directly to my podcast listeners. He said, "Put the word you in there more, talk to one person, think of one person." Well, a few days later, I was writing a blog article and was getting nowhere. Then for some reason, it struck me to write, "Dear Mom," at the beginning, and my mom's right in the middle of my demographic that I'm working for, and it just flowed. So when I had that personal connection, that's clearly a deeply personal connection, but when I had one person I was writing to, is a lot easier to write it out. It's a lot easier to speak to that one person than just to the world in general. And I'll also say that people naturally talk, they don't naturally write. And it is easier to take your spoken words and turn it into writing than the other way around. So I would say that podcasting has a natural advantage that will allow you to do the blogging and the social media that you can't quite do it the reverse way.

And I guess all I would add as a final word is sometimes it's helpful to flip the switch a little because I think we often start with What do I have to share? And that can be a daunting question because we have to get past like the why should I share it, why me, am I the person, and really just ask what do they need, what are the concerns, needs, and challenges of this audience, and how can I support them. And then it just becomes more natural.

It's what advisors do day in and day out, and I think that makes it easier.

Excellent.

All right, well, let's just quickly run through how can people get in touch with you if anyone wants to reach out with you. Julie, what's the best way for people to connect with you?

The website at absoluteengagement.com, that's where we publish all of our research on the blog. And so, it's the best place to reach out.

Okay.

Jeremy? Check out my podcast, Retirement Revealed, or go to the website retirement-revealed.com.

Excellent. Bill? My podcast, again, is Keen on Retirement, and the website is keenwealthadvisors.com. And of course, I'm out there on LinkedIn, Bill Keen, K-E-E-N. And also, I have a personal Facebook page that I do respond to folks. Of course, the company has a Facebook page.

Page as well. I've got one final question here before we wrap up, and this is a question that the previous guest came up with. That guest did not know who I was going to be asking this to, so I'm going to ask each of you this question. And that question is, if you could have any superpower, just one, what would it be and how would you use it?

I would have infinite patience, and I would use it to improve my parenting skills on a daily basis.

All right. Yeah, I'm thinking of Solomon back in the day, and he had close to infinite wisdom, so I'll take that and, and hopefully improve close to everything.

I would have unlimited faith and hope to, through my faith, uh, help other folks have confidence in their faith as well in, in all things. Excellent.

All right, well, I think that's a great way to wrap up today's episode. So I appreciate all three of you being on the show today, and we'll look forward to the next time we get a chance to Awesome. One of the things that stands out to me about today's show is how the benefits of podcasting go way beyond how many new clients you get from it. Podcasting makes you a better advisor. It increases financial literacy. It deepens your relationship with your clients and prospective clients, and it helps you meet new people with new ideas that you may not have been exposed to otherwise. We are still in the early innings of this form of media, and I encourage you to start your own podcast. All right, that's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your favorite social platforms. And for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast.

Take care and be safe. 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.