Million Dollar Producer Show

028: Building a Seven-Figure Financial Practice with Tony Maree Torrey

October 10, 2023 Paul G. McManus
028: Building a Seven-Figure Financial Practice with Tony Maree Torrey
Million Dollar Producer Show
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Million Dollar Producer Show
028: Building a Seven-Figure Financial Practice with Tony Maree Torrey
Oct 10, 2023
Paul G. McManus

In today's episode, I’m joined by the success coach and bestselling author, Tony Maree Torrey. Tony Maree is known as LA's Foremost Success Coach for financial professionals and founding CEOs.

With over 20 years of experience and a unique approach that combines business coaching, insightful psychology, and sharp business strategies, she empowers her clients to make more with less effort, leading to personal and professional fulfillment. 

In this episode, Tony Maree delves into her bestselling book, "Your Million Dollar Accelerator: Six Proven Strategies to Grow a Seven-Figure Financial Practice," and shares valuable insights on how financial advisors can establish their expert status, attract their ideal clients, and accelerate their business growth. 

Get ready to be inspired and gain actionable advice from LA's foremost business success coach, Tony Maree Torrey.

LA's Foremost Success Coach

- Tony Maree's coaching career began in 2002, helping professionals and firms struggling with motivation, positioning, and scaling their businesses

- With experience in marketing to the affluent and advanced training in mindset, strategy, and coaching, Tony Maree's clients achieve fast results

- Recognized as LA's foremost success coach for financial professionals due to her work with high-level individuals and media exposure

"Your Million Dollar Accelerator"

- Tony Maree's bestselling book provides a roadmap for financial professionals to build a seven-figure practice

- The book focuses on attracting prospects, converting leads, and accelerating business growth

- Establishing expert status is crucial for financial advisors to stand out in a competitive industry

- Writing and publishing a book helps position advisors as trusted authorities and opens up new opportunities

Establishing Expert Status

- Authoring a book, speaking engagements, and leveraging referrals are effective methods to establish expert status

- Books serve as a sales letter to position advisors as experts and offer valuable information to readers

- The synergy between speaking, writing, and referrals accelerates business growth and builds trust with prospective clients

Putting Referrals on Steroids

- "Active advocates" are thrilled clients who actively promote financial professionals to their networks

- Unlike regular referrals, active advocates elevate their own status by introducing experts and positioning themselves as connectors

- Leveraging referrals and active advocates amplifies a financial professional's business growth and overall success


About Our Guest: Tony Maree Torrey
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonymaree/
Book Website: https://www.yourmilliondollaraccelerator.com/
Main Website: https://www.tonymaree.com/

About Your Host:  Paul G. McManus is an accomplished author and expert in helping financial professionals grow their businesses. With over eight years of experience working exclusively with financial professionals, Paul has helped his clients generate tens of millions of dollars in fees and commissions.

You can get a complimentary copy of Paul's book at: www.theshortbookformula.com


Claim your free audiobook copy at: www.theshortbookformula.com

Support the Show.

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

In today's episode, I’m joined by the success coach and bestselling author, Tony Maree Torrey. Tony Maree is known as LA's Foremost Success Coach for financial professionals and founding CEOs.

With over 20 years of experience and a unique approach that combines business coaching, insightful psychology, and sharp business strategies, she empowers her clients to make more with less effort, leading to personal and professional fulfillment. 

In this episode, Tony Maree delves into her bestselling book, "Your Million Dollar Accelerator: Six Proven Strategies to Grow a Seven-Figure Financial Practice," and shares valuable insights on how financial advisors can establish their expert status, attract their ideal clients, and accelerate their business growth. 

Get ready to be inspired and gain actionable advice from LA's foremost business success coach, Tony Maree Torrey.

LA's Foremost Success Coach

- Tony Maree's coaching career began in 2002, helping professionals and firms struggling with motivation, positioning, and scaling their businesses

- With experience in marketing to the affluent and advanced training in mindset, strategy, and coaching, Tony Maree's clients achieve fast results

- Recognized as LA's foremost success coach for financial professionals due to her work with high-level individuals and media exposure

"Your Million Dollar Accelerator"

- Tony Maree's bestselling book provides a roadmap for financial professionals to build a seven-figure practice

- The book focuses on attracting prospects, converting leads, and accelerating business growth

- Establishing expert status is crucial for financial advisors to stand out in a competitive industry

- Writing and publishing a book helps position advisors as trusted authorities and opens up new opportunities

Establishing Expert Status

- Authoring a book, speaking engagements, and leveraging referrals are effective methods to establish expert status

- Books serve as a sales letter to position advisors as experts and offer valuable information to readers

- The synergy between speaking, writing, and referrals accelerates business growth and builds trust with prospective clients

Putting Referrals on Steroids

- "Active advocates" are thrilled clients who actively promote financial professionals to their networks

- Unlike regular referrals, active advocates elevate their own status by introducing experts and positioning themselves as connectors

- Leveraging referrals and active advocates amplifies a financial professional's business growth and overall success


About Our Guest: Tony Maree Torrey
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonymaree/
Book Website: https://www.yourmilliondollaraccelerator.com/
Main Website: https://www.tonymaree.com/

About Your Host:  Paul G. McManus is an accomplished author and expert in helping financial professionals grow their businesses. With over eight years of experience working exclusively with financial professionals, Paul has helped his clients generate tens of millions of dollars in fees and commissions.

You can get a complimentary copy of Paul's book at: www.theshortbookformula.com


Claim your free audiobook copy at: www.theshortbookformula.com

Support the Show.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode of the Million Dollar Producer Show. I'm your host, paul G McManus. Today, I'm thrilled to have Tony Marie Torrey with us. Known as LA's foremost success coach for financial professionals and founding CEOs, tony Marie is also the author of the bestselling book your Million Dollar Accelerator six proven strategies to grow a seven-figure financial practice. With over 20 years of experience, tony Marie has guided a diverse clientele, including financial professionals, ceos, athletes and even celebrities, all committed to making a meaningful impact. Her unique approach combines business coaching, insightful psychology and sharp business strategies, empowering clients to make more with less effort. This method not only accelerates business growth for clients, but also leads to personal and professional fulfillment, helping them author bestselling books and build financial empires. In today's episode, we'll delve deeper into your Million Dollar Accelerator and explore the valuable insights she provides to financial advisors through her work. Welcome, tony Marie, to the show.

Speaker 2:

Hi Paul, I feel so fancy with that introduction.

Speaker 1:

I know I'm so happy to have you here and for our listening audience. Just for our audience to know, I've now known Tony Marie for close to 10 years, I believe.

Speaker 2:

I just can't believe it's been that long. We've definitely seen each other go through some really exponential growth spurts over that time and help support each other in doing so, so it's been a really rewarding relationship we've had so far.

Speaker 1:

Yes, absolutely, and I'm glad that we do any number of things together. We're colleagues, we collaborate, we do projects together, we mastermind together, so we know each other pretty well. So it's my pleasure to feature Tony Marie on today's show and really dive into her book and how she helps financial advisors grow that seven-figure practice. I guess, just starting out the conversation, tony Marie, la's foremost business success coach, tell us more what that's all about.

Speaker 2:

So I began my coaching career in 2002.

Speaker 2:

And some of the first things that I noticed was that there were a lot of professionals and firms struggling not just with motivation, which is where I started, but also with positioning themselves and scaling their businesses.

Speaker 2:

Given that my previous experience in the corporate world was with marketing to the affluent, plus the fact that I've invested more than $300,000 and counting in advanced trainings around mindset, strategy, coaching all those good things I just discovered that my clients needed help getting fast results. The truth is, I'm actually not a terribly patient person and speed of results is something that's really important to me. Eventually, people in the financial services industry started finding me. I had the privilege of working with some very high-level people that have communities and audiences of their own, helping them transition into billion-dollar practices, but also just helping people transition from six to seven figures, which is really more common. And so, between that, I think, and the fact that I have worked with some celebrities and some athletes and stuff, I live in Los Angeles. Even though I have a funny accent, I actually do live in the US, and I think that just led the media to recognize me as LA's foremost business success coach.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome and just for anyone that's curious, where's your accent from Australia and when did you come to the US?

Speaker 2:

31 years ago.

Speaker 1:

I need to comment on one of the things you said about being impatient and helping your clients get rapid results. I'm not only Tony Murray's colleague, I'm also a client and I have been multiple times over the past 10 years. Anytime I'm dealing with some challenge that I'm not able to work through my own, she's the person that I call typically to help me get through whatever roadblock I'm facing and not to get into too much detail, but I'd say about eight years ago or so, I was dealing with a business dispute, we'll call it, and this had me totally derailed. I was when did you start to think the same about me?

Speaker 1:

My personal thinking is I realized this was lifting to the outlier expression half of me as someone whom, recently, obsessing about it, I was extremely unhappy about it. It was impacting my day-to-day productivity and work and this was going on for, I want to say, six months to a year and I finally reached out to Tony Murray and I want to say, within two days of intense work with you, I went from completely stressed out over the course of a year almost to completely free of what was bothering me and able to move forward. And so when you say that you're impatient and you want to get results fast. You really mean it.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I do. It's like every quality has its light side and its dark side. I try to bring that quality to the light as much as possible.

Speaker 1:

Also just to point out to our audience. When she says that she's invested somewhere close to $300,000 in her own personal self-development and training on an array of advanced techniques and modalities that really do go deep, the best analogy I can use for her and I'm going to throw it out there, you may or may not like this, but I'm going to throw it out there for a listening audience is that if anyone watches the show billions is it called billions? It's been a while. Billions with a B. I think it's on Showtime and it's about essentially a hedge fund manager. I believe Bobby Axelrod, one of the key people as part of his team, is his internal coach, and I forget her name at the moment, maybe, but anyway, wendy Rhodes. There we go, and for anyone thinking you're trying to just put a concrete picture to this, tony Marie is essentially the Wendy Rhodes to Bobby Axelrod. Would that be a fair assessment?

Speaker 2:

I have definitely heard people make that correlation before. I think Wendy got a little lost in the weeds in further seasons, so I don't know that I want the complete correlation, but I do like to hope that I am as effective in what I do in supporting people get what? They want in the most ethical ways possible 100% underscore, ethical.

Speaker 1:

There we go. All right, tell us about your books. What is your book? When did you write it? When did you publish it? I'm going to throw out there that this was, in fact, an Amazon bestseller, and what's interesting is that a lot of people will try to game the system on Amazon and different things and claim bestseller status. You are a legitimate bestselling author because there was no funny business going on. You hit number one in a very legitimate way, so you have a number one bestselling book. So just take us back. Big overview. What's the book, what's it about? And we'll go in from there.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. I just have to say that it's only thanks to you, paul, that I even know that it's bestseller status, because Paul and I were actually on a Zoom call and, like he knew that I'd published the book In fact, I had COVID when I published the book. It was a bit grueling, trying to get everything done and sorted and not feeling well at the same time. And we were having a conversation and you looked it up on Amazon and you were the one that noticed that it had hit bestseller status. That was very exciting.

Speaker 2:

I was still just in recovery and not really paying attention, so that was great news given the suffering I went through to release the book and it's called your Million Dollar Accelerator and it's about helping financial professionals build a seven figure financial practice, and it's really based on six core principles that I'm sure that we'll dig into a little bit further in this interview. It's really about making sure that financial professionals know how to position themselves as an expert in order to open up new opportunities for themselves, for their practice. And then I mentioned there are six pillars. So it's not about just doing that, but it's about how then do you take that and leverage it?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so let's break this down one by one, In terms of establishing yourself or establishing your expert status. Why is that important?

Speaker 2:

As you and I both agree on the importance of establishing your expert status. If we look at it in the, if we put ourselves into the shoes of the typical financial professional, that is an industry that is a very it's a very high trust industry, oftentimes working with very high value clients who have people directing their marketing campaigns at them left and center. It's an extremely difficult industry to stand out in, and so one of the things that's truly important is making sure that you set yourself up as a trustworthy authority, a trustworthy expert, and that you hone your messaging to a specific group of people. People don't do business with generalists anymore. They do business with specialists.

Speaker 1:

In terms of how to establish your expert status. Is it books, Is it podcasts? Is it something else? What is your go-to recommendation for advisors who are looking to establish that expert status? I don't want to say quickly. I think it takes time overall, but what is your go-to move for them?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I have an illustration in my book that kind of indicates imagine three bubbles really, as you and I have talked about and where we're actively participating in these strategies right now as we speak. So I believe that authority is important, speaking in some way, shape or form is important, and then finding ways to maximize your existing network. The simple word is referrals. I think as we dive into some of the content in the book later on in this interview I'm going to teach you how to put referrals on steroids and so those kind of core things are really important aspects to building the trust and building the authority. And I think sometimes people worry, like I know.

Speaker 2:

I have a personal story where when I was a kid, I had a school teacher and this probably shows my age. This was back in Australia, as the wild south will call it. I had a school teacher who taped my mouth shut twice and set me in the corner at the front of the room, and very humiliating experience made speaking extremely nerve wracking for me, because that little girl, that part of me that associated it with humiliation, ran the show for a lot of years. It really wasn't until I finally recognized the importance of stopping hiding and being willing to be seen and heard, that I did the work that I needed to do for myself in order to get past that, and one of the things that I know and I recognize is that we don't have to be perfect at this.

Speaker 2:

I think that's one of the things that we all have a tendency to put upon ourselves. We want to be totally picture perfect and say all the right things and not trip over our words and all that stuff, but the fact of the matter is that it makes us more human and approachable.

Speaker 1:

I know. One of the things that you do in terms of helping financial advisors establish that expert status is you help them write and publish books, similar to what I do. How effective of method do you find it? How useful is it for an advisor to become a published author in your mind?

Speaker 2:

I consider this to be the cornerstone of an overall business building strategy. There's a number of reasons why we want to do that. We just talked about the trust mechanism. The kinds of books that you and I help our clients write are known as short helpful books, and we do that for a reason because everyone's busy, it's hard to get people's attention, and when you deliver a short helpful book either into someone's inbox an electronic version or we also deliver our books physically to people, when you make that kind of content available to them, when you make that kind of content available to them, it gives them the opportunity to essentially sit down with you one on one and start building a relationship. And the kinds of books that we help our clients write are essentially they're a sales letter in that they position you as an expert. They do offer helpful, useful information, so the reader really feels like they've learned and achieved something in the process. But they also serve to encourage the reader to take the next logical step in terms of reaching out to you to help solve their problems.

Speaker 2:

The fact of the matter is that when we have our first connections with prospective clients, not everyone's ready to buy in that particular given moment, whether they're first becoming aware of you in some way, shape or form, or whether you've gone as far as like having an appointment with someone. The timing isn't always right in people's lives or something comes up in between time and they get distracted. One of the things that's beautiful about a book is that people don't throw them away, and with the wonders of Amazon fulfillment these days, you can get a book in someone's hands for less than what I personally have paid for expensive business cards over the years. So it's such a win, and this is something that really genuinely wasn't possible in the past, but it is now.

Speaker 1:

Something you mentioned earlier that I want to touch upon is that you mentioned the combination of speaking, writing or authoring a book and referrals, and we'll deep dive in different ways in how it relates to your book, but one of the things I want to point out here is that what we're doing here is essentially, to me, the synergy between those three things at a very high level. In other words, you wrote a book and I invited you to speak on my podcast because, primarily, you wrote a book. Right, I could have had you on my podcast before. The impetus to invite you to do this is that you have something new to share and to teach, right? It's amazing the doors that open up when you start with a book, the speaking opportunities that come, whether it's in person, whether it's online, such as podcasts, webinars, etc. The synergy just starts really happening, much more so than if you were to only write a book or only speak.

Speaker 1:

And I would add to that the third element of it, which is the referral, is that, for example, this is my podcast I've invited you as a guest and we have hundreds of people, hundreds of financial advisors, that listen to this. A referral at scale. People are getting to know you, they're learning your expertise, how you might be able to help them, etc. And it's that synergy between those three things that I'm finding and have found over the years to be the most powerful. With that set up, if you will feel free to react to it or take that. And how does that go back to the core content of your book and the six different strategies that you outlay in your book?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, you're exactly right, and this is those principles in action that people are listening to right now. So really, the way I break it down in the book is I have three pillars, essentially that we want to build a business through. I consider this book to be essentially a business in a book. It really is the roadmap for the various steps that any financial professional to be honest with you other business owners as well, but specifically for financial professionals the steps that you can take to really build out a solid, reliable practice. Isn't that what we all want? So the principles are the first pillar is attract, the next one's convert and then the third one is accelerate, because of course, we absolutely want to bring the business in the door. Once that opportunity comes in the door, we want to be skillful in actually having our conversion rates increase. It's really interesting.

Speaker 2:

Most of the financial professionals I know they don't track their conversions. It's like I ask them if they know what their conversion rate is. Usually they pull it from the ceiling and it's an imagined one. And with the clients that I work with one-on-one, that hire me to coach them to build their businesses, when we start actually tracking that, it can be a bit of an eye opener and so there's a skill deficit there quite often, even with tenured financial professionals, I've noticed in the conversion phase of things. So the book spells out how to audition and I call it auditioning because I really want to make sure that people feel like you are in the decision making seat and it is not just you trying to please and attract prospects.

Speaker 2:

The whole idea of the attraction phase is to find your perfect future clients, become a trusted authority, and so by the time you are on phone calls with people, they are super keen to work with you and then you can decide whether they fit into your future client category or not. And we have clients come back to us and say, wow, I had this phone call with this prospect and they were saying words like if you're willing to work with me, we really hope you'll be willing to take us on Things like that. It's really turning the tables on the conversation. And then, of course, this high value one to many is a really excellent way and there's a bunch of different ways that you can make sure that your message, your news, is spread wide and far. Obviously, there's leveraging social media in skillful and efficient ways, so you don't spend a lot of your time doing it yourself, but we set things up.

Speaker 2:

One of the things that I love about doing a book becoming that trusted authority is that it does force you to sit down and think through what it is that you stand for, what the solutions are that you're providing people, and then that gives you all this fodder that you can use in all these different ways. If I hadn't written the book, the conversation that we would be having right now is very different, right? But because I've already done all the thought leadership on the book itself, we can talk about these specific strategies and use these particular terms, and then, of course, we want to accelerate all of that with a principle that I think we'll talk about a little bit more later how to put referrals on steroids and leveraging other people's networks, which is what we have an example of right now, today.

Speaker 1:

We do indeed. So we have attract, convert and accelerate. Just to go through this one more time, a couple of examples of attracting. What are some concrete examples of attracting?

Speaker 2:

Becoming a trusted authority. So I really genuinely believe that the book is one of the best ways you can attract prospective clients. As we mentioned before, gives you an opportunity to sit down with them, go in relationship with them for an extended period of time as they sit and read your book or as they listen to your audio book. We like to make an audio book available as well, just to keep things accessible to people. And then, of course, typically with our clients, what we do once the book is created is we build a system. So we leverage LinkedIn most often just because financial professionals it's really the best place for them to find their target market, to find their ideal clients and we build systems.

Speaker 2:

We leverage cloud-based technology that plays very well with LinkedIn. That cannot be spotted by the LinkedIn algorithms, so it's a safe way to semi-automate all these activities and interactions. Ways to grow the clients' audience on LinkedIn, set up their expert status. We usually do like a LinkedIn newsletter. We employ various different methodologies to make sure that their posts and their articles get a lot of eyeballs on them. There's a lot of moving parts, but the good news is that when you've done this originating thought leadership with the book, then it's possible for our teams to do that work on behalf of the advisor. That's one of the things. That's super important is freeing your time up to do what you're best at being the genius in your business and not spending a whole bunch of time spending your wheels going after business.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I find that it's a little bit almost delayed gratification. So a lot of advisors, when they first come to me and I'm guessing you, as is typically they want more leads, they want better leads, et cetera. If you look at what you've always done and you just repeat that, you're going to get the same results. So, to your point, the book it not only establishes the authority but it really becomes the blueprint of all the marketing that's going to follow from it. So you mentioned LinkedIn and the different ways you can use LinkedIn. If you have the book, guess what? We already have the content for blog posts, for newsletters, for emails, for all these different things and essentially what you have as a tractor run on.

Speaker 1:

I find so many times that people will come to me and say, hey, my FMO or my marketing organization want me to promote something this quarter. I got this really cool brochure. How do I get people interested in this thing and, quite frankly, other than your existing clientele? That's extremely difficult to have that short of timeframe and try to take someone to complete stranger or cold market and get them interested, attracted and then converted into some. I don't want to some uncommon maybe not uncommon, but something that takes a little bit of salesmanship, a little bit of education, but fundamentally it takes trust right, because people buy you as much as they buy the solution, and so it's critical to have a long-term plan that's thought out in advance and that you can create the right marketing and attraction funnels for it, and that I'd say the minimum is a year. You want to think in year blocks versus quarterly or shorter than that. I'd love to have you just react to that or expand upon that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely, and I just want to call out one of the things that our listeners might be wondering about is the fact that you don't have to do this on your own right. One of the things that you and I both do with our clients, when they do sign up to create a book in conjunction with us, is that we coach them. They go through coaching sessions to help tease out that information that's. It's already there. Your genius is already there. If you've been in business for any period of time, you actually do.

Speaker 2:

You know a lot, and the typical problems that we hear are one of two things. We either hear I don't know what to say, or we hear I have too much to say, and so, either way, people usually need support with that when you write your books. When I write my book, we supported each other with that because we, too, suffer from the same problems, right? So, getting to the point where you're motivated, where you've got someone accountable, someone that you're accountable to in order to get things done, then, once you've done that so yes, there's an initial effort involved, won't say that it's like super, super, duper easy, but it's not hard, and that's the thing Once that initial effort has happened, then everything else just flows smoothly. It accelerates from that point, and that's one of the reasons why I love that word. Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 1:

I like your point about either. Sometimes people have too little to say or too much to say, and I'm working with a client now who's extremely accomplished and in his case we started not with one book but with a package of five bucks, because there's any number of topics that he wants to get into, which is fantastic. He has that experience and those different ideas. I think overall, whether you start with one or you have a vision for multiple books, the idea is to get started, to not go alone and to get help by an experienced guide who can, I think one, give you fresh eyes. It reminds me of a client experience I had this year with someone I'll call him Jim and that was a real name, but he came to me. This was his third book, I believe. He wanted to essentially create a book that could help him target decision makers, that would make a decision on 401ks and things of that nature, and the first thing he brought me to brochure for he showed me the website. I just couldn't, because I'm not an advisor myself. I work with advisors but I'm not an advisor myself. I just kept saying, essentially, who cares? And that wasn't mean to be mean to him or critical to him. It was just as a reader If I'm not interested in this or it doesn't seem appealing, I'm never going to read the book.

Speaker 1:

So we had to go a little bit deep before we could move forward and I challenged him to do what I call insights and interview people. Interestingly, he would interview people at his company and it was the same thing. I'd listened to his recordings. It was so jargon filled that I listened to them speak about it and I came back and I said to him who cares? And so it took a bit of I would call it fresh eyes on my approach and just that outside perspective to really say, okay, why would they care and how can we make this compelling? Through that process, the book we ended up creating together, I think, was a home run. It was engaging, it was story driven, it answered any number of concerns, questions, and if I was that decision maker and I saw that book, I would read it, I would be impacted by it. I'd want to take action as a result of it.

Speaker 2:

I think you called out a really important point, which is you and I really for the most part even though I do occasionally work with a celebrity and things but really we're essentially saturated in this industry but we are not of this industry, which gives us a perspective that is different. Sometimes you can get so insular with what's going on that you can't really see the forest for the trees and a specialized kind of book Like you can't really go to your average editor who doesn't understand the direct response, marketing aspects of the book, doesn't understand how to take a prospect through a journey to draw, to have them draw a specific conclusion and take action. Really it's like a specialized art form actually, in order to be able to create something like this and then, of course, to create all the aspects that go beyond that as well 100%.

Speaker 1:

I want to move forward into. You had teased earlier and I didn't forget about referrals versus putting referrals on steroids, and so. I believe getting referrals is a very common practice that everyone is familiar with. From your perspective, how do you put referrals on steroids? What does that mean?

Speaker 2:

I actually love the term active advocates and I think this is the way and that's actually the terminology I use in the book. It's one of my favorite strategies in the book because it really does take referrals and put them on steroids and it leverages all the other things that have gone before this. So, essentially, what we want to do and this is great for people existing in business and it's great for people starting out in the financial profession as well, in particular, for those starting out, they don't always have a big book of business what they really want to do is, if they have a happy client, they really want to be able to leverage that happy client as much and as effectively as possible. An active advocate is someone who's thrilled with the services that you've provided them and they're impressed with your professionalism and expert status, and they know exactly who you serve and actively and easily promote you to their network. So the difference between this and a regular referral this is something that people don't always know or recognize, but it's a very important psychological fact, and that is is that if someone is referring to you, they are actually taking the risk of having their personal status either elevated or reduced within their own network and that's one of the reasons why people resist doing it. Also, they usually don't know what to say. They don't know how to explain the benefits of what it is that you're doing for people.

Speaker 2:

We have quite a number of clients who are insurance producers and it's just. People just aren't as much as we love them, and we know you and I know the benefit that they can have for people and their finances In the general population, people don't run around going God, this great insurance provider. Let me introduce you. It's not really a done thing, however, when we use all the pieces of the puzzle and put them together. In the book I outline how it is that you transition a referral into a warm introduction and how you teach your clients to do that. I know myself. I've had plenty of clients over the years before I learned to do this for myself and train my people where I told so and so about you and sent them your website link and of course I don't. I don't think I have once heard from anyone that has been introduced to me that way, just being sent to my website. I have a great website, by the way, with lots of amazing client testimonials and things like that.

Speaker 1:

I can vouch for that. You have one of the best websites there are, but, to your point, that's not the way to bring someone in.

Speaker 2:

It's not the most effective way, that is for sure. So you want to increase your chances of doing that. You need to train your clients that when they're happy, they can effectively introduce you to their network. And when you're a published author, for instance, that introduction will automatically elevate their status within their network, because who doesn't want to introduce someone to a published author or a recognized expert? All these pieces of the puzzle start working together. It's really a business building engine when you put all these pieces in place and you don't have to do it all at once. It can be like one step at a time. It doesn't have to be overwhelming Over the course of time. This is a really great way to create a business, and to create a business that allows you to enjoy your life as well, because I think that's a really important aspect of this. I think oftentimes people shy away from a lot of marketing activities because it's exhausting.

Speaker 1:

It reminds me of just a recent client that my team is working with. One of the questions that we asked him was do you have a website? Of course. Then do you have any kind of newsletter or email autoresponder? And the answer was I have mail champions. Do you use it? And the answer was no.

Speaker 1:

And I think that's pretty typical, because the concepts of online marketing and email campaigns and things of this nature these are common concepts that we all hear about. I would imagine that our listeners at any point have experimented with it, but a couple of challenges happen is that they're not expert online marketer, so either they get frustrated because of the technology or they start hiring assistants and maybe they don't know what they're doing and, fundamentally, they don't have content for it. So the reason I share is that when you work with someone like Tony Marie, what would take someone on their own years to accomplish, if ever, can be done really in six to 12 weeks. It's not for someone that does it day in, day out. These are things that can be accomplished much more quickly, much more effectively, so that you can have the systems in place to really scale and grow your business to that seven figures and beyond.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. I'd also say when you have a team of people behind you backing you up different personalities specializing in different aspects of the business, it's a great way to just have that mind trust, creating something for you that really is. I just keep on picturing the engine, because that's really what it is.

Speaker 1:

This has been great. In the time we have left, I want to ask a few more questions. One is what are some success stories? Who are some of the people you've been working with? Can you share some concrete results that you've helped a financial advisor achieve?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely One of the most rewarding stories I have is that of your namesake another, Paul.

Speaker 1:

I like him already.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. Despite being in business for 39 years, definitely being very well-established, very experienced, he came to me because he recognized that while he made decent money, he has revenue yo-yod back and forth from month to month he just didn't have that consistency and reliability of business. After applying the strategies in the book, he not only achieved consistent monthly goals but also saw a significant surge in income. These days he looks at $200,000, $300,000 a month. It's a lot more than where he was initially.

Speaker 2:

I helped him build out his team, helped him weed out some personalities that really just weren't a right fit. You know what? That's always a tough thing to do. It's very hard to do on your own. I can set an example of another client who I did the same thing with just helped him get rid of someone that wasn't a good fit and wasn't working well in employing that person for 10 years. Almost every time I talk with him he still goes oh my God, I just found one more thing that she did wrong, and things like that. But it's hard and difficult to do on your own. But there are great ways in which you can do that.

Speaker 2:

I helped Paul Finesz, his team and he increased his revenue. Last time we did a stat on it, it was by 54% has actually gone up a lot more than that, but the real gem of this is that he reduces hours by 33%. He spends time traveling and visiting all his beautiful grandchildren, a lot more time with his wife and, just generally, is a much happier camper, Rather than feeling burnt out. After 39 years of doing this business, he's excited to get to work every day. In his own words, that's very cool.

Speaker 1:

He has his own Wendy Rhodes. He does For someone listening to the podcast and is interested in getting either a paid copy or a complimentary copy of your book.

Speaker 2:

Of course, you can go to Amazon and just search for your million dollar accelerator by Tony Marie Torrey. Or, if you would like a complimentary copy of the audio book or a digital version of the book, you can just go to your milliondollarexceleratorcom, exchange your email address and we will send you a copy of that right on over. I love the combination of listening to the audio book and then we also provide what's known as a flip book version on the page, and the book takes about an hour and a half to listen to, and it's a great thing if you can also flip the pages at the same time. I included quite a number of illustrations in the book because I believe that most people are visual and it's a lot easier to include a visual illustration of the concepts that I'm talking about, and it just makes everything so much easier and more understandable.

Speaker 1:

And I'm going to encourage people to go to her website for a couple of reasons. One is that the audio book that she has I've listened to, actually several times. It's done very well. I believe it can be listened to in just over an hour. As you can hear, she has this lovely Australian voice. It's very captivating, and you actually start the book, you go through it and, before you know it, you've completed the book At the same time.

Speaker 1:

I want to encourage people to do that because, as part of the conversation we've been having, and one of the services that both Tony Marie and I help clients with is to help them write and publish a book. So, as you go through her process of creating a book, marketing a book and then coming on podcasts like this and talking about a book, imagine yourself, imagine your ability to go speak, whether it's in person, on webinars, on podcasts, etc. And how having a process like that can help you do a couple of things that Tony Marie talked about today, which is one is to attract the right people to you and then, ultimately, through that process, to convert the right people to you. So, with that being said, is there any final thoughts, questions or anything else that you'd like to share with our audience before we conclude today's podcast.

Speaker 2:

Well, I do want to add that there is an option, when you get the book, to download a workbook, and the reason why I created a workbook is because there is a big difference between intellectually understanding something and implementing it, putting it into action, and so I really want to be clear this is not. This book isn't fluff. This really is a roadmap, and I wanted to provide people with the opportunity to take what they're learning and actually decide how it is that they're going to implement that. So it is business in a book if you want to take action on it.

Speaker 1:

And my advice is to first get the audiobook, get inspired, and then put 15 minutes on Tony Marie's calendar, have her help you actually work through and execute on that workbook. Because, to your point, a workbook has the word work in it for a reason. The inspiration is an audiobook. The actual work that's going to help you grow your business is in the workbook and, at the end of the day, it's who's going to help you do it. Thank you, and thank you everyone today for listening to today's episode of the Million Dollar Producer Show.

Speaker 2:

And if you'd like to put 15 minutes on my calendar, you can go to your milliondollaracceleratorcom forward slash schedule.

Speaker 1:

Thank, you for being our guest today. You're very welcome.

Accelerating Financial Success
Writing, Speaking, and Referrals
Building a Business With a Book
Maximizing Referrals
Building Teams and Increasing Revenue