How to Stand Out in a Crowded Market using Vision, AI & Personal Connection (Ep. 30)

Welcome to Ideas by Mike, the podcast with Mike Milligan, where you will find one-of-a-kind financial planning advice for your one-of-a-kind life. With over 22 years of experience as a certified financial planner, Mike shares experiences and advice on crafting simple, easy-to-understand financial plans based on your values and priorities. He believes that taking a personalized approach is the best way to prepare for the future and give meaning to your finances. So follow along as Mike, and from time to time his guests, explore different strategies and tools that could help you secure your financial future in retirement. Now on to the show.

Hello and welcome to the Ideas by Mike podcast with your host, Mike Milligan. I'm Wendy McConnell.

Hey, Mike, are you keeping cool in this weather?

No, not at all. Let's not even, let's not even, let's not even start with jokes today, Wendy. This is, uh, it was 102 degrees yesterday here in Norfolk, but it was dry heat, is, or so my wife told me.

Oh, okay.

In the pool last night, it was 94 degrees at 9 o'clock at night. I mean, that is not fun at all. Uh, I love one-of-a-kind things. Weather, I don't like one-of-a-kind weather.

So, so, well, I'll have a talk with Mother Nature and then Thank you.

I appreciate that. So if anybody, if anybody's listening to this, if you could pray for 82 degrees, we would love that.

So, all right, it looks like it's on tap for next week, so we'll keep our fingers crossed. Okay.

Right, right. All right, absolutely. So I'm, you know, I'm excited on the Ideas by Mike podcast today, um, to welcome Jeremy Hauser. He's a great friend but a great business partner also. Just as a reminder, guys, uh, the Ideas by Mike podcast is a place where we, we believe your life is one of a kind. And your financial plan should be too. So, Jeremy is unique in the business in that he works at a marketing company inside the insurance business, but he does it different. He genuinely is unique and one of a kind because he saw kind of the old way of doing things and decided to bring a new way of thinking into it. He founded Advisor Mentorship Program and is a leader at Simplicity InsurMark. He's not just about building businesses though, Wendy. He's about building vision, purpose, and practices that stand out in a sea of sameness. So, if you've wondered how to create a business or a plan, or more importantly, how to create a vision, that's what we're going to talk about today. So, I'm excited to welcome Jeremy Hauser to the show.

Appreciate it, Mike. No, thanks for having me on. Looking forward to our conversation here today.

So, absolutely, Jeremy, you and I both started from scratch. We both have a couple similar backgrounds, right? We're both big in the baseball, right? We came from there. But I kind of developed my career and am now known as the one-of-a-kind financial plan guy. You're known as AMP, right? Advisor-Mentor Partnership. It started with a vision for me. I'm sure it started with a vision for you. It just wasn't a checklist. So, when was the moment you realized you had to build AMP? And was there a story or a frustration that lit your fire?

Yeah, it actually— I had a mentor and, um, it was actually the boss of our, our company in Shurmark, been around for 43 years. And they have this story about Steve Kearns, you know very well, and Becky Kearns sitting around the kitchen table and Thinking about, you know, what's going to end up bringing in the income to pay the next bill. So I didn't have a drastic meeting like that with my now wife. I was actually in the process of— we just got married. And the previous year, it was 2017. And uniquely, we were sitting there at the kitchen table and we kind of joked about it, but in a serious matter was like, you know what? I just We felt like there's a huge opportunity in the industry. She was literally transitioning into becoming a stay-at-home mom. We were, I think we were pregnant or no, we were in the process of, we were just purchasing our first home and we were going through the first 6 months of being married and thought to ourselves, you know, let's build something a little different. And I was sharing with her a little bit about the industry and opportunities that we have within not just the organization, but the industry itself. And I think really it came down to just wanting to stand out compared to not just my peers inside the company, but across the board, because there's always going to be competition. So really trying to separate yourself really came down to looking into who do you like to do business with and how do you attract those individuals and to get more from those relationships and enjoying the life lessons that you learn along the ways with dealing with people that you truly enjoy being around. So literally, the vision was very simple with our original advisor mentorship program, was all about getting like-minded advisors, financial professionals together to share best practices to help them build not only a community, because a lot of these entrepreneurs are on an island out there and they want to hear from other successful advisors to hear some of the ideas ideas that they can leverage across the country, but not just build a community to become better humans and personally build up, unlock their full potential as the strong personalities that they have themselves, but also building an opportunity to unlock their full potential of their business. And then that's where we really dug in. We doubled down, tripled down, quadrupled down over the last 8 years now of just advisors hearing from other successful advisors, building a community and seeing what others are doing and having the faith to take the leap, invest in their business, and things have been going really, really well. So it's not just selling product, it's not the best marketing opportunity that's out there to not just get in front of the next person, but really building a business is what we found was a huge unique gap that we wanted to fill because a lot of these entrepreneurial advisors came from wirehouses, they're now running a business, and quite frankly, they just didn't know all the things that they were going to have to endeavor on this journey. So that's why it's nice for other advisors to hear from successful advisors already of what they're doing so they can learn from those individuals. So that's where AMP started, and successfully it's been growing pretty well over the last 8, uh, yeah, actually 8 years now.

Jeremy, you and I are going to write a book together. I'm just, I'm telling you that right now.

Okay.

Right? Because, because, uh, in, in the One of a Kind Financial Plan book that comes out, I talk about that the key to retirement is building the vision for what retirement should look like. And I actually give a framework for how you build your retirement chi. Okay. So, chi means inner peace. It means the ability to be where you are and be present where you are. You know, it's a Far East philosophy, right? But I use retirement chi to define the vision for retirement. So, chi stands for my retirement chi, it stands for community. Health and impact. And what I just heard when you said that is I heard that you and I are going to write a book called Business Chi, because AMP, AMP, you said, is about building community of like-minded people.

Yep.

But what I also know about you is in your vision, you have a vision to help your clients, which are advisors, to focus on health, right? Right. So, I mean, I've seen the challenges that you've put out. But it ultimately is, is how can they be impacted? How can AMP impact them? How can they impact clients? So we're going to write a book called Business Chi. I just want to let you know that right now. So that's going to be 2026. Don't worry. We have plenty of time to put this down.

Okay.

But when I talk about vision as the form of chi, as the why it keeps people moving when they make this change from working to retirement, How do you help your clients get out of the weeds and focus on their bigger picture?

I mean, it's— I would say the main things that we— and it evolves over time. So although it started 8 years ago, lots happened in the world and a lot's happened in personally my life as well, of not just getting married but having children over the last 8 years. So literally One of the things that we have that I can always go back to when I'm talking to these successful entrepreneurs is we can only control what we can control. We all have 24 hours in the day, and it's all about creating standards. So, what are your standards as an individual, as an entrepreneur? So, I mean, do you get up early? What is early? I get that question all the time. And, I always say I challenge the individual to think to themselves, Where, okay, well, what is getting up early? Well, how about this? Just get up an hour earlier than you already do and try that for a month and let's see what happens. Getting, getting basically comfortable in your own skin of building out the standards of who you want to become, having them get a vision. I did a thing with a lot of not just my advisors, but also help coach some of the peers here, some of my colleagues within Simplicity and Suremark. And one of the challenges in December Was, I want you to tell me in 2027 what you want to be doing in 2027. Tell me what, what that looks like. So describe that to me. What's different in your life in 2027 going into 2025? So forget this year, forget next year, 2027, what's going to be different with you? And I had them write down or tell me one thing. So they all announced what that is. And the big moment was, okay, now what you wrote down, start working on that today and put yourself in that mindset. to start becoming that person and start striding to make those little bitty habits, little bitty changes to get to where you want to be in 2027. So, it all first starts with standards, individual first, building out the standards of who you want to be. And then, once you can really fine-tune and work on yourself, the vision of what you want to do with whatever the task at hand or the goal of your Your entrepreneurship business or wherever you're trying to, to grow, that's out there. But you gotta really focus on the inner work before you can actually help those that you truly wanna serve. Because at the end of the day, you're going to, you're gonna attract what you put out. That's literally, it's just like a magnet. So if you're not giving your all into yourself and creating a better version of yourself, you're not going to attract who you really want to attract to become. who you want to be with that vision that you might have. So a little deep, but that's probably where I would start out, is just about creating standards. And yeah, I've seen the— I've seen good results from people that start to build it out internally first before going out to the world and solving problems for other people.

That's wisdom that you just gave. I mean, that's really— and it's true not only for people building a business, it's people trying to transition into retirement, as people transitioning their careers, people that's even in crisis, right? If you don't have standards in a vision statement set, you're really just drifting in life, right? And if you— in order to live a one-of-a-kind life, you have to know what that life is. And the vision statement is what, what gets you there. So like, I think the first step in a vision statement— I think you do the same thing— is you tell people to write it down, right?

Oh, absolutely.

Do you have a story of someone's vision statement that you've seen that changed the game for their business and ultimately their life?

Oh, I mean, so I've seen a lot of not just advisors, advisors across the country that are changing their business and changing lives of others. The one that hits home is probably closer for me. It's actually the company that I'm a part of. Whenever we wrote down our vision statement, when we actually decided to become a business. This was about nearly 10 years ago. Our organization has been around for 40-plus years, actually going through the process, hiring a consultant to give us the land work of how to create a vision, a mission, and also get the right people on the bus. So, writing things down was very pivotal. And today, it's even easier than where it used to be because of the evolution of AI. And I'm I'm not a huge AI person, but I'm going to give some ideas throughout this podcast of what some advisors are doing and other entrepreneurs are doing to really help that process of getting it out of your head and putting it down on paper. One of the mentors that I have, he talks about turning it from vapor to paper. So everything is great, but you don't want your ideas to die in your head. You want it down on a sheet of paper. So Absolutely. The first thing you need to do is start writing it down, and you just need to start. Like, it's— that's the most important part, is starting and getting a framework. You could literally go into AI today and talk a little bit about your business. If you don't have any processes written down, just to get a starting point, you could go to perplexity.ai or ChatGPT or Gronk, wherever you go. Perplexity.ai is the one that I typically use more, but— That one, just write down literally, I'm an individual who I've had a business for the last 7 years. We have 3 employees. And based off of our business, people really come to us for the service, our pricing, but most importantly, the people that we have. What is a good vision for us as an organization to attract these type of individuals? And AI is going to spit you out within 2 minutes an at least starting point. And then from there, just edit from there. So that's something that we do with a lot of advisors nowadays that really struggle with the process of like, you know, what should my vision or what should my statement of purpose be, or what should my northern star be of our organization? AI can be a huge opportunity for those entrepreneurs just to start the process of getting something written down and then make edits from there. So yeah, I think that's a huge thing of what you just said is writing it down regardless of AI or anything else. You got to get it down on paper or it's just—

Yeah.

There's no intellectual property that's going to be— there's no value that's going to be built when it's just inside of your head at the moment.

Again, that's absolutely great. Perplexity is something that I use too, right? I actually pay for the pro version of it because I don't want it to think for me, but the time efficiency that it brings in my day is absolutely tremendous. I mean, I can answer questions for people and they're like, how did you know that? Right? Well, I got Perplexity looking through the Federal Employee Handbook in the 22,000 pages to give me the answer, right? I don't have to actually read the manual. I've got a tool that will do it for me. While we're still talking about vision, I'm going to make just an offer to anybody listening here. Jeremy gave a couple of AI tools that are there. Our book is still set to release here in August, The One of a Kind Financial Plan. But if you want the chapter on building a vision for your financial plan, I'll give that to you. So, if you go to ideasbymike.com and you just send us through the Contact Us side, I'll send you a link to chapter 10 of our book, which is building a vision for your financial plan. Jeremy, transition a little bit. Have you read the book Be Do Have? Have you ever read that book?

Be Do Have? Yeah, I actually— you know, you mentioned that earlier. No, I have not actually read that book.

Yeah, it's— there's—

Is it an Audible book? Because, you know, I'm a huge listener right now.

Yeah, you can listen to it, but one of the great things about that book is it has activities in it. So it's like, uh, you know, okay, I mean, it's hard to— it's hard to—

It's hard to run to that one.

Yeah, yeah, it's hard to— it's hard to, uh, it's hard to color in the coloring book by listening to it. So you may have to actually get the copy on this one, buddy.

But, uh, Who's the author of Action?

I'll just send it to you. Don't worry.

Okay.

One of the favorite exercises is, who do you want to be? What do you want to do? And what do you want to have? That's the whole premise is, who do you want to be? What do you want to do? Or yeah, what do you want to do and what do you want to have? I always say, start with be, right? And everything else will fall into place. So, how do you help your clients shift from just wanting more to actually becoming who they want to be?

Yeah, I think it goes back to the standards. I call it the man in the mirror, woman in the mirror moments of just putting yourself out there, wanting to become a more efficient individual. I think there's huge opportunity. I mean, we saw it in 2020 when a lot of things adjusted. I mean, you have an amazing organization that you've not only built, but literally you've, I would say, inspired several people that want to run a 100% virtual operation. So it is challenging to get people to buy into your own vision, but I think an organization like yourself and others, when they do write down that information in what their actual slogan is and get everybody and get the right people on the bus and they're saying the same thing and they really truly believe in it, the sky becomes the limit. But it doesn't happen once again until you start to create those habits, doing the little things first. So creating better standards of yourself, habits of what you're looking to accomplish as a CEO of an organization. So you are the one that The just, it's kind of like the quarterback. He always gets the praise, but he also takes the blame for the wins and losses. So it's a little challenging for, I'd say, an entrepreneur nowadays where there's just so many things out there. Social media, you can go out and you hear all everything seems to be perfect online for for other organizations. Usually it's very rare an organization will put the negative out there. Of what's going on within their entity. So it's tough to actually survive nowadays and keep employees engaged, but the companies that continue to have the same faces, the same individuals, not a high turnover, and then the opportunity of social media to really brand yourself as an organization and attract people, and they start seeing the same faces over and over as months go by and years go by, It starts to really build out what something our, I would say, our little country here of the United States has started to go away from, which is really more of the personal emotional connection that individuals are really seeking out nowadays. So I think, yeah, for what we're doing and what we're doing for advisors and trying to get them to work on themselves first and continuing to get them to where they want to— where they want to go, and leaning into our community of other advisors and having other people who have had success share how they got there and being willing to actually share that to the younger generation. I mean, that's strong. It's all about community, I would say.

Yeah, I agree. I, um, I'm gonna answer this question after you answer this one, okay? So I'm gonna give my answer to my question after you answer it. But anyone ready to break out of the sea of sameness, right? The sea where all the fish look the exact same. What's one question they should ask themselves today?

And so as the business owner or as just an individual?

Let's go as an individual.

More challenging. As an individual, I would say, why you? So regardless where you are, in your life. Why would— especially for those that are looking to get more, one of the questions is more towards business owners too, is instead of, you know, poor— it's not poor me, it's why not me? So just getting in that right mindset, in that right mind frame of wanting to become more. And it's almost just challenging yourself. You can be your best critic throughout the whole process of itself. And in reality, Who cares what other people think? You— I mean, people are so caught up in what the outside world is, is looking at them and how they view them. At the end of the day, a lot of people are just really caught up in what's going on in their own lives. And so once you start to really notice that and see that for what it is, you can start to really build on who you're wanting to become. And then it just starts by personal development, self-help. I'm huge in reading books nowadays, although I listen to them. Mike disagrees with it, but I do listen to a lot of Audible books, but there's nothing wrong with personal, personal growth. I would say that's probably the biggest thing is Why Not Me is something I would say for the individual. And then the business owner, it's, it's definitely got to be more along the lines of what sells for you when you're not there. I mean, if you're a business owner, you have got to start to become more efficient. You only have 24 hours in a day. What sells for me when I'm not there? There's an awesome, awesome article that Google and Forbes put together a little over a year and a half ago. It's called CAM, so Change Activation Model. And Google and Forbes actually put out the statistics of all the data they formed over the years. And these 3 numbers for the actual business owner that's listening to, to this is very important. They found that people to make change and actually buy from you Not just online, but in general, to build enough trust and credibility with an individual. They need at least 7 hours of content from that group or that entity, especially if they're buying online. They need 7 hours of content to form and build enough trust and credibility with that company. They need 11 touchpoints. So according to Google, it was 11 touchpoints in order to build enough trust credibility. Forbes actually had 27 touchpoints.

Wow.

And so nowadays, who knows what those numbers are? 'Cause it was a year and a half article. And then the last number was 4. So get your brand out there, make it important to be on at least 4 different formats so people can start to see you on not just social media. So your, your Twitter, your, uh, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever it might be, but also get yourself out there, do podcasts, do different type of, uh, whatever industry you're in, start to create more content. So people can get to know you without you physically having to be there and be present to sell yourself. Because people want to know in their own free time what you're doing, who you are. And the best way to do that is make sure you're doing more video or doing some other things to help sell for you when you're not there. It can't just be people. Leverage some technology too.

Right. So like, you answer that question with a lot of different ways to break out of the sea of sameness, there's one question I would tell everybody to ask themselves. Who's your competition?

Oh, yep.

It's that simple, right? Like, who's your competition, right? And, and what— and at the end of the day, what, what are you really competing against, right? Because, you know, we, we, we're in our society, we're so— we are so, uh, programmed, you know, Yankees versus Red Sox, Tar Heels versus Blue Devils, Cowboys versus Redskins or Commanders or Football Club, whatever they're called, or Eagles. Eagles, Wendy. The Eagles versus the world, right? But pretty much, we are so programmed to, in our everyday viewing, it's somebody versus somebody. In competition in business, whether it's you as an individual or you as a business, it's really you versus you. That's really, at the end of the day, what it is, right?

Right.

And it's building your team in a way that you have more avenues for growth, to be better this year than you were last year, and better 5 years in the future, better than you are today. And that's how you really break out of the sea of sameness. It's so important, right? We have some friendly— in the AMP group, right? We obviously have some friendly competitions that go in there because people say, I want to do what X did. In their production, right? And, and at the end of the day, it's, um, it's just you. It's you. It's— it should be, what did you do last year and what are you doing to get better this year? So, and that, and that's a vision, that, that, that, that's part of your vision casting. Yeah.

And I would just say, and, you know, as you go and embark on the journey, many people probably listen to you because you, you work with very successful individuals, so they're probably been on this journey for, for decades, or maybe just a couple years, or wherever they're at. And sometimes it's— it can get lonely too. So that is something that—

Yeah.

A lot of what you start to do is when you start building those standards and you start to see self-improvement with you, maybe some people that have been there for you for, for childhood and throughout the years and so forth, you know, they might start looking at you a little differently. But at the end of the day, You know where you're trying to go. Stay with it. It's all about building your own personal standard. Keep growing. And then pretty amazing once you start to, uh, get your mindset in the right framework here, become one of a kind, right?

That's exactly right. Hey, Jeremy, we're, we're at the end of the podcast today, but I want to go in overtime for like 2 minutes with you because, uh, because part of like building a one-of-a-kind financial plan for your one-of-a-kind life is having tools in place to do that, right? So like a financial planner has great tools, a builder, somebody who's building a custom house for somebody has amazing tools, right? But it's a lot of the same tools that everybody has. Like in your business, what are, what are tools you help either from a tech or a framework or even daily habits that you put in front of your clients to help them truly be one of a kind in what they do?

Yeah, I would, I would say going back to a thing that I referenced earlier would be CAM, the, the 7, 11, and 4. So what sells for you when you're not there? It's hard to be at 2 places at once if you're not doing video. I couldn't have enough praise over the years of people, and you're starting to see it too. You're seeing your social media feeds, a lot more video that's going on out there. YouTube TV, literally, as the industry continues to evolve, You're seeing less and less people tuning into TV, more and more people watching TV or clips on their phone. I couldn't say enough good things about leveraging video, especially as an entrepreneur in your practice. Put yourself out there. People are buying you. They want to know who you are, building trust and credibility. So, there's a couple of different phone items or phone apps that you can use. I know in our industry, there's Loom, there's Vidyard. There's a couple others that are out there, but our team uses Vidyard. And also, the importance of that is being able to record. So, when you're recording certain calls that you're doing with your advocates or your team members, and you want to make sure that other people within your organization can get those same nuggets, it's important to have those recordings there for them because you, as the entrepreneur, You don't have to necessarily be there to help them out, especially as you hire staff members. It's very important when you're recording certain things and you're sharing information amongst your, your staff team, let them listen to the information or leverage some of these AI tools that sync up to your Zoom, sync up to whatever actual tool you're using maybe for your video conferences. Even Google Meets has a great little AI tool that's built into it. So having those recaps in there, having video, let people listen to it on their own time and then schedule meetings around basically any Q&A from that instead of taking the 20 to 30 minutes to explain how the call went, have them listen to it, and then they're just asking you in a very 5, 5-minute quick little meeting of what they're trying to accomplish or any questions they have from, from what the discussion was. So I'd say video and then podcast for sure. Um, podcast is the best format, and in my opinion, I've seen advisors and also just other industries continue to grow because people want to hear short con— they want to hear short content. But eventually, when you build up the, I would say, trust equity of a company that you want to start to get to know a little bit better, they're going to tune into your long format. So you have to start to think long term, build out 25, 30, 40-minute podcast episodes so people can really get to hear you and the stories and what you're doing in your business. So those would be my 2 biggest takeaways.

That's awesome.

Absolutely.

Really, really powerful, Jeremy. This is, uh, I mean, like, uh, vision, right? The, the, the tool that we all really need to be better tomorrow than we, than we are today is really what we spoke about today. I mean, if you, if you hung on for the for the full time here. I do want to give you a chance to connect with Jeremy. So Jeremy, how do, how do people connect with you?

Yeah, they connect us on LinkedIn, uh, actually Jeremy Hauser on LinkedIn, and then also subscribe to our YouTube channel. They tell me we need to build that out, so we started to do YouTube about a year and a half ago. Uh, so Jeremy Hauser, amp, A-M-P, and then subscribe to us. And then, uh, tune into the podcast if you get a chance, Advisor Mentorship Podcast. And, uh, that is where we can be located.

Especially episode 18 and 63.

No, no, no, I have to correct you. 18 and 64.

Oh, 63.

63. Remember, we had Professor Jeremy Siegel on for 63, right? But he, he just generously said, you know what, I want Mike Milligan to follow that one up. So if you know who Professor Jeremy Siegel is, that's a pretty, pretty good listen. So, and I'm sure you can talk to Mike a little bit about some of the things that Jeremy shared on the podcast.

And so I have asked Jeremy to, uh, on his podcast to put me and Siegel on the same podcast because I would love to get in there and ask some questions to, to the professor about his views on home ownership and among other things. So it's really good. So, uh, Jeremy, uh, this has been awesome, man. You, you, you're, you're a one-of-a-kind business partner, right? I can't, I, I can't ask for somebody better to grow my business with. And, uh, and you help our team tremendously. Um, so thanks for sharing your story and your vision and your belief that one of a kind isn't just a slogan, it's really a way of life. And, uh, you and Christina and the team at Simplicity are living it, and we, we thank you for that.

Appreciate the time.

Absolutely. For those who wanted to, uh, to, to connect with us, uh, ideasbymike.com is the easiest way to find us, connect with us there. But we're also on all the socials too— LinkedIn, Mike Milligan, There's 2 of us out there. Make sure you find the one in Virginia. And then on Instagram, @ideasbymike. And like Jeremy said, also, we're building our YouTube, @ideasbymike at YouTube. So Jeremy, thanks for today and look forward to seeing you very soon.

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