059: The Authority Advantage: Mike Saunders on Transforming Financial Advisors into Industry Thought Leaders

In this episode I welcome Mike Saunders, the author of Authority Positioning for Financial Professionals, to explore the concept of authority marketing and how it can significantly impact financial advisors' success.

Mike's Journey: From Financial Services to Authority Positioning

• Career Beginnings: Began his career in the financial services field, working for JP Morgan Chase in the mortgage banking industry. His path took a turn when he started providing lines of credit for financial advisors' clients, leading him to realize the importance of authority positioning.
• Transition to Marketing: After the economic crisis of 2007-2008, he pursued a MBA in Marketing and started his own firm, focusing on helping financial advisors grow their businesses through authority positioning rather than traditional marketing tactics.

Authority Positioning

• Understanding Authority Marketing: Mike explains that authority marketing isn't about replacing existing marketing strategies but enhancing them. By positioning oneself as a trusted expert, all other marketing efforts become more effective.
• Components of Authority Positioning: Mike describes the 'Authority Positioning Portfolio,' which includes various elements such as interviews, books, media features, and podcasts that collectively build a professional's credibility.
• Practical Applications: By creating content that educates prospects and existing clients, financial advisors can establish themselves as experts. Mike uses podcast interviews to delve into key educational points, which can then be leveraged in marketing campaigns.

Guest Podcasting and Media Features

• Importance of Guest Appearances: He highlights the value of being a guest on podcasts and media channels. These appearances elevate the professional's status and reach new audiences, reinforcing their authority.
• Strategic Alliances: Authority positioning is crucial in building relationships with centers of influence, such as CPAs and estate planning attorneys. Having a well-developed authority portfolio makes it easier to establish these valuable connections.

Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT)

• Pre-Framing Prospects: The concept of ZMOT emphasizes the importance of what potential clients find about a professional online before making contact. A strong online presence with authority positioning assets can significantly influence their decision.
• Leveraging Current Clients: Beyond attracting new clients, authority positioning helps maintain relationships with current clients, ensuring they stay loyal and continue to trust the advisor's expertise.

Taking Action

• Overcoming Imposter Syndrome: Mike encourages financial advisors to overcome self-doubt and take steps towards building their authority. With services designed to be easy and enjoyable, professionals can quickly see the benefits of authority positioning.

About our Guest: Mike Saunders, MBA Authority Marketing Strategist

You can learn more about his work at: https://mikesaunders360.com/

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.

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

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Million Dollar Producer Show. I'm your host, paul G McManus. Today I have a special guest, mike Sounders. Mike is the author of the book Authority Positioning for Financial Professionals. Welcome to the show, mike.

Speaker 2: 0:47

Thanks for having me Appreciate having you on the show and look forward to chatting with you.

Speaker 1: 0:51

Just so our audience knows, I was on Mike's show a couple of days ago and Mike has a great podcast called I believe it's Influential Entrepreneurs, and so if you haven't checked that out, you should. But what I'm really looking forward to about today's conversation is that I think we're similar in many ways. I think we both love and work in the concept of authority marketing. I think there's a lot of similarities. I think we also have our unique takes on it, and so I'm really interested to having this conversation and finding out from Mike his take on authority marketing and having our audience learn from him. With all that being said, let's just pivot for a second and find out for a second. Okay, who is Mike Sounders? How'd you get from where you started to where you are today as the authority positioning coach?

Speaker 2: 1:32

I started off in the financial services field, in the mortgage banking industry, and I worked for JP Morgan Chase for 12 years. I started by accident, by fluke. I had an Ameriprise advisor this was back in 1998 or 99 that contacted me and said, hey, I need a line of credit, home equity line of credit. I'm like, okay, did that? It was easy, fun started working with him. He started referring clients. I started going, hey, I think other advisors would need this. And within about six, eight, nine months I was cranking out just so many lines of credit for advisors clients because they realized we don't want to tap into their AUM. And I literally remember this one time where an advisor emails or calls and goes someone is contacting me for $190,000 to buy a RV. We don't want them taking it out of their AUM for a lot of reasons right, their back pocket, but also momentum and all of that. I started doing these HELOCs for advisors and developing the relationships. I was the number one producer in the nation. Two years in a row did $42 million in HELOCs in one year. I really started learning the industry, all of the things that advisors need. And when the whole industry crashed in 2007, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and still trailing past that. When the whole economic crisis happened, I went back and did my MBA in marketing, started my own marketing firm.

Speaker 2: 2:49

Because of my background working with advisors, it just felt you know what I specifically wanted to help advisors with growing their business, but not doing all the things that a typical marketing consultant would do. Cause, frankly, I made some mistakes when I started off, before I started zeroing in with financial services, and the mistakes were I was trying to be all things to all people. If you needed SEO, got it. Build a website, cool text message, marketing I'm on it and I became a commodity. And so when I started realizing this was about seven or eight years ago.

Speaker 2: 3:22

All of that I'm competing with people overseas in the Philippines that can charge pennies on the dollar. So how can I be that go-to expert? And I really started dialing in my services, focused on authority positioning and then started focusing on financial services, and it's just really a powerful approach, the way that I like to say it. What I do is not something where you stop everything else and do my thing, because when you're seen as that expert authority, it makes all your other marketing work better. Getting work better that's the foundation of where I have begun to really lay that foundation, because you can go in so many different directions when someone already is pre-framed to see you as a trusted, credible advisor.

Speaker 1: 4:01

Just the first question. So, if I understand you correctly, it was around 2008 or after that that you made the shift into what you do currently. What were your early influences when it came to authority marketing? I'm actually in the process of reading your book, and so I know some of the influences, but I'll ask the question anyways for myself. Dan Kennedy he's been a big influence. I love Robert Cialdini I've read his book multiple times and so tell us a little about.

Speaker 2: 4:26

I just start. I've always been one that I look for the gurus out there, whether it's Dan Kennedy or Tony Robbins, all the people Chet Holmes, the ultimate sales machine Robert Cialdini with influence, and now more recently the last few years, pre-suasion huge works. I love that and I think that being able to say we should never say we figured it all out, we should always be learning and one of Tony Robbins teachings and I constant never ending improvement. We need to be constantly doing that. So I'm always watching for these opportunities to learn from other people. As an example, when I do presentations, I'm always justifying points that I make because, let's put it this way, if you make a statement and someone calls you on it, you want to be able to go. I point to some studies from like in the fifties where they do studies on influence and authority and it really is powerful. It just puts us in the position of when we see people in authority like police officers, law enforcement, military. You have that little extra little there.

Speaker 2: 5:26

Secondly, there is a really obscure author from Canada in 1967, marshall McLuhan. He wrote a book called the Medium is the Message and I always hang on this and go. One of his key takeaways is where your content is seen, gives as much value, if not more value, than the actual content. So you might have the solution for the retirement solution.

Speaker 2: 5:45

Whatever that your secret sauce is, whatever the way you've arranged things in product offerings and whatever your blueprint is, you could put that in this 10 page PDF and take a deep breath and go this is it. This is my life's work. And when people read this they're going to fall at my feet and go you must help us. And they ignore it because it's a PDF. They ignore it when it goes on your website because it's a blog post. They ignore it on LinkedIn because it's LinkedIn. But, oh my word, when you're interviewed on a podcast, a TV show, and that's included in the book, they sit up and take notice. Well, it's the same stuff that you had on your website. It's the medium, it's the platform. So all of that ties into this mentality of authority positioning 100%.

Speaker 1: 6:24

Another thing that I wanted to unpack from what you said earlier was this is a point that I think it's subtle but it makes so much sense is that I'm going to probably butcher your words essentially, authority positioning. It makes everything that you do better, and so I think there may be a misunderstanding in terms of a lot of people come to me, and I'm sure they come to you and they're like I want more leads, I want more appointments, all these different things and their systems and ways to go about doing that. But the subtle difference in what you're describing is that when you take what you're currently doing, in whatever way you're doing it, and you insert authority positioning, all of your results get that much better and so, in other words, your ROI gets that much better. Can you give some concrete examples or stories about specifically what that means, because I think that's important for someone to really understand.

Speaker 2: 7:13

I mean, let's think of it like this what would happen if you were looking for let's just pick an immigration attorney and you had a cousin that needed an immigration attorney and you're doing a little bit of legwork and you found this one that still has an AOL email address and their website looks like a Craigslist website and you really wouldn't feel great about that. But if you went downtown to the local Chamber of Commerce meeting and you saw this immigration attorney and they're speaking and they're holding up their book, and they were just featured on a local news station and they were featured in the press and they said, hey, I don't give free consultations, but for $100, I'll sit down with you for 30 minutes and give you some good tips and then, if you would like to continue, all of a sudden now it changes. So what I'm saying is when you have and I've got a federal trademark on the phrase the authority positioning portfolio. So it's like a financial portfolio stocks, bonds, mutual funds, insurance, all of that annuities that's a portfolio. A web designer will have a portfolio. Here's my designs. A fashion designer here's my designs. A fashion designer here's my portfolio. An authority positioning portfolio is all the things that shines the spotlight on you that makes you look like that expert authority. Here's my interviews, my books, my mentions, my podcast. Now, all of a sudden, you're able to point people to that.

Speaker 2: 8:25

And the example that you asked, I would say is this using Robert Cialdini's pre-frame, let's say that someone has a meeting with you next week and they were referred, and so that's a good meeting and all, but they still don't really know you. So you're going to send an email to confirm the appointments. Hey, we're going to meet on zoom here's the link and it's a two o'clock on next Tuesday. Looking forward to talk to you. Ps, I was recently featured on this Fox TV interview. It's about three minutes long and it goes over my philosophy of business. You might want to take a quick peek at it and I look forward to talk to you then.

Speaker 2: 8:56

Now, all of a sudden, they could blow off that meeting and not show up. But they get this email and maybe the email has some nice branding as featured on ABC, cbs. And now, all of a sudden they're like all right, fox click or ABC click or CBS click, and they watch that Now click. Or ABC click or CBS click and they watch that. Now, it's not a four hour long webinar. They're not going to watch that three minutes or maybe even a 20 minute podcast interview. Oh, I'm going to listen to that. Now. They come to that meeting viewing you as the trusted advisor and, in essence, you're hoping that they're thinking I hope Paul can take me on as a client, versus he's a salesperson. I'm not going to give him much information, I'm just going to see what he's got to say.

Speaker 2: 9:34

So it's all in how you use these things, because once you have this authority positioning portfolio of all these assets built out, now what do you do with it? You don't just plop it on your. You do put it on your website, strategic places, but you've got to use it in all the touch points that you're communicating with your prospects and your clients. And I say this when you have an authority positioning portfolio, it's going to help you get new clients. Yes, but do not forget your current clients, because, as an advisor, when you brought on a client last week, last month, they came from another advisor. We want to keep your current clients with you. So when you are having these authority positioning assets created for you, yeah, use them for prospects to get new clients, but send them also to your current clients, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 10:20

I'm currently listening to your book, so I got some of these things top of mind. One of the things I heard you say in your book was and I think you referenced Chet Holmes, if I'm not butchering his name, but essentially that when you have that authority positioning, you're likely to get three times as many referrals, and we both know that referrals is one of the key drivers for any advisor in terms of new business.

Speaker 1: 10:42

And so just pause for a second and think about okay, if I could increase my referrals by three acts, what would that mean for my business?

Speaker 1: 10:52

To me everything's about sequencing right. Sometimes people try to go out and do something that could make sense, but maybe not in that order. You could spend a ton of money on, say, Facebook ads or whatever type of advertising and for the right business for the right person, depending on where they are, that could make sense. But I think for a lot of people these strategies that they hear about online and people talk about are probably not the best fit, because even if you spend all this money on advertising to drive results, if you're not positioned well or correctly, you're going to be spending your money on Facebook ads.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Now I think both of us do similar things and I think we probably maybe come at it from maybe a slightly different angle. So, in my case so, a complete believer in authority positioning, what I've learned over the years and what I've developed as my core service is helping financial advisors write and publish a book, because to me you and I talked about this the other day it's what's the first five letters of authority author and it can really become the core message and the basis for getting on those interviews, getting on those podcasts and everything else. From your perspective, what is the starting point when they come to you and they want to meaningfully increase their authority? What process or what do you recommend to them or how do you guide them through that process?

Speaker 2: 12:12

I would say that you have a spectacular service because you advisors come up with that book and then how to use it, and that's great.

Speaker 2: 12:19

I feel like if the first thing that someone were to go, I hear you help advisors with marketing and you use that B word book, they're like I can't even write an email or a blog post. What do you mean? And you're like I've got to figure it out and it'll be easy, but I even take a few steps before that, which is this, the concept of content marketing. I always relate it back to when I first heard about it, Marcus Sheridan, who now is an influence and a teacher in content marketing. But he would come up with content, articles and things on his website and he would have his prospects read these things Like literally, this was probably back before his first book, but he would have them read it on his website as an assignment to pre-frame their education. So what I do is I help advisors realize okay, we could do a nine hour long webinar and you could just probably speak without even breaking a sweat, but people aren't going to listen to that.

Speaker 2: 13:11

So what are the? Let's just pick three. What are the top three things that are really big needle movers for prospects to fully understand. Oh, if they understood whatever sequence of returns or RMD or whatever the case is, now they're going to make one. They're going to check that box off in their mind and go Ooh, Paul made some great points there. So I help them think through the buyer's journey. So every prospective client of a financial services professional has that buyer's journey of yeah, but I need to understand, I'm confused about it. Oh, everyone else says this. So what are those three things?

Speaker 2: 13:43

So, creating that teaching content think of it like this, because sometimes people go, oh, I just can't think of anything. Okay, so what are some frequently asked questions you get from prospects? Now let's think about the should ask questions, the essay cues what are the questions that should be asked? But they don't even think to ask them. Oh, that would be something like. So now we're getting somewhere. So I lead them through the process of helping them understand what are the teaching educational points that their prospects must understand.

Speaker 2: 14:14

And then my process is I go great, Now let's just take that first point and I'm going to interview you on my podcast, influential entrepreneurs, and it's going to be a 20 minute featured interview where we're going to talk about the pros and the cons and misconceptions and case studies and how you solve it without getting into the weeds, without mentioning products or services, and compliance issues and things. But now we've got these three powerful teaching elements, these podcasts, and then from there it just blossoms into oh, now you can do the marketing campaign and now you can email it to your clients. And oh, by the way, now it's not just these podcast interviews. I'm going to get you booked on a Fox TV and an ABC and all these networks where there's these little news anchors that are interviewing you. And now I'm teaching you how to use this entire authority position portfolio in your marketing.

Speaker 2: 15:01

But where I feel it starts is let's just create that breadcrumb trail. What is that first point that they need to understand? That's going to lead them the next step closer, the next step closer, and then that series of podcast interviews could lead into what you do for them, which is create that book.

Speaker 1: 15:18

The other thing that we do and I'd love to get your take on this and just how you're similar and maybe a little bit different, and you talked about this already a little bit bit is that our next step is that, once someone writes the book, a lot of people today, as podcasts are popular, and so there's the idea of hosting your own podcast. And then what our preferences are, what we teach people to do is like having your own podcast is great. First, start with guest podcasting, and I think some of the reasons you'll agree with is that when you're guest podcasting, you're no longer self-promoting, but now you're the guest expert. So, one, you increase your authority from that positioning. Two, you get to this audience that otherwise wouldn't know that you exist, etc. Between being on podcast as a guest versus being on these news channels NBC, abc, cbs, et cetera how do you value both of those? Are they synergistic? Is one better?

Speaker 2: 16:14

I will say that I'll answer it in two ways. A have you ever gotten emails where they're like Paul, you need to go Facebook live, YouTube live and do video and video. And we all get that and I feel like there's a place for that and I think that it's important. But I do feel like people shy away from it a little bit because I don't have the tech and I don't want to comb my hair and have the lighting. But then also there is something that you pick up on when you're being interviewed. So your point about being a podcast guest, when I say to people I'll get you on my show and these network shows, the mindset shift of being a subject matter expert and having questions asked of you is astronomical versus here's my microphone, here's my video and you should do this fixed index annuity because they know you're promoting you. But when you're being interviewed now they sit up and take notice and their sales resistance goes down because it's like, oh, I want to hear what Paul has to say. Oh, that's a good point.

Speaker 2: 17:11

So I will say it's that it's the teaching aspect being that subject matter expert, and if you can get on two dozen, nine dozen podcasts wonderful, Guess what you never stop. I've probably been interviewed over a hundred times. I've got 1200 episodes on my podcast. But the difference between podcasting and TV, I would say, is perception, because it's probably the difference between, oh, I've got that ebook on PDF and you can download it on my website, or I'm an Amazon bestselling author, so you would say to an advisor, having that book you could touch and feel and thud factor, and the audible book, huge difference between just having the same content on your website or a pdf. I would say it's also a step up when you go from being interviewed on other people's shows to having a. You're on abc oh, that's interesting, here's the video and of you being interviewed by a news anchor.

Speaker 1: 18:03

so it's all that elevated perception I just watched a webinar that you did. You showed a picture of someone Are they worth 500? Would you pay this person $500 an hour? And you showed a picture of them, just plain, and the answer was like no, of course not. And then suddenly you overlaid it with some media logos and asked the same question and the response was yeah, of course, I'm sure they're probably worth that.

Speaker 2: 18:25

And so just that. Yeah, that example came from Jeremiah DeMare, from Advisorist, and that came from his book Shift and so I referenced his blog post in there. So if you've not read that book Shift, it's excellent. But also in that same webinar, in most of the time I show this slide of this guy on a beach in a tank top, I say, would you trust this guy to take your business to seven figures? Because I took a screenshot from my Facebook and this was like I don't know four or five years ago. But literally here's this person. I could scale your business to seven figures and I'm going. You're a teenager in a tank top, unless you're teaching me how to scale my skateboard surf shop to seven figures. I even don't know that. I trust that, but it's all in that perception, cause I would never click on or schedule a call with that person looking like that.

Speaker 2: 19:11

It's those impressions. It's the AOL email address and guess what? I know that Gmail is wonderful and little side notes. A damaging confession. My email address is through Gmail, but I use G apps and I connect it to my website. So it's Mike at marketinghuddlecom. So you cannot give that impression of oh, my email address is a Gmail account or a Yahoo or an AOL, or here's my nasty looking website People really do take those things into consideration. And so when you've got this all together and it's like how many of your competitors have a book how many of your competitors have been interviewed on, featured in, you start separating yourself really quickly.

Speaker 1: 19:50

Yeah, and that's exactly how I typically frame it for someone that's considering a book, because usually people have imposter syndrome, just flat out. I think we all suffer from it to some degree, some more than others, and when people start thinking about writing a book, they're like what do I have that's unique, to say that's really different and new? And my response would be probably not a whole lot other than it's from your perspective. It's your experiences and it's getting people to relate to you as the subject matter expert. But, more importantly, really the competition it's not you versus everybody, everybody.

Speaker 1: 20:32

Most likely it's a prospect, with a current advisor looking to find a new advisor and they're doing their search, they're Googling, they're asking their friends and they might come up with three, four or five different candidates and they're doing their due diligence and what can you give them? And I think I'll use the word that you referenced as pre-frame it, so they're that much more inclined to work with you. So, whether it's the authority positioning portfolio that you've been talking about, whether it's a book as part of that, or whatever it is, the media those are the elements that are going to get people to choose you over the person who doesn't have it. So your real competition is probably three to five people. How can you position yourself ahead of them?

Speaker 2: 21:06

I'll take it one step further. And you and I do this probably every day and anyone listening to this will nod their head and go yep. Which is when you are seeing something out there or evaluating a restaurant or whatever. We go to Google and we don't put best financial advisor in blah blah town, because nobody does that. You ask all of your clients that came on board last month who did that. No one did, but you know what they did do.

Speaker 2: 21:32

When their friend at the gym or church or rotary refers you, they Google you first. When they see you're doing a webinar, they Google your name and your company. When you Google your name and your company, what do you see now? Hopefully you don't see anything negative or bad, but hopefully more than your website and your LinkedIn and a couple of directories, because that's boring. That's what any one of your competitors has. But when you can Google your name of company and see, oh, you were interviewed on, featured in. Oh, you've got a book. And oh, you were featured on Fox 47 and this media and a podcast, now they're doing their due diligence. Their mind checks off the box, okay, they're legit. Then, even before that call, they're listening to this and reading that and they come to that meeting reframed in the right frame, even if you didn't send it to them first, because Google now is using that Google digital positioning in your favor. But you've got to get that stuff out there.

Speaker 1: 22:26

I'll share a brief side story. I totally agree with that and I learned a brief lesson in personal branding. So if anyone listening to this Googles my name, Paul McManus, what's going to come up is that I'm an ax. I'm a bloodthirsty ax murderer out of Ireland. This is where I learned branding, which is by adding my middle initial, which is G, Paul G McManus. Suddenly your point, you'll find all those things.

Speaker 2: 22:51

Well, you, you win, because when you Google Mike Saunders, yeah, there's some sports figures, but there there is a Mike Saunders that's the lead singer of a punk band, which is not me, but you win for the murder murder so as soon as you put in Paul G McManus, you'll get all those things.

Speaker 1: 23:06

Okay, he was on this podcast, he was on this thing, he was on that and the other, and so I completely agree with that you talk about I think you call it the ZMOT. If I'm saying that correctly, what?

Speaker 2: 23:16

is zero moment of truth. So you can Google that and it's a book written by an ex Google employee and you can download it for free. It's a PDF book or you can buy it, I'm sure, on Amazon. But any teachers out there will recognize zero hour, like if school starts at 8 am, zero hour is seven. That's when you want to be there before the students are there.

Speaker 2: 23:38

The moment of truth typically is oh, you're selling me this thing. I bought it, do I like it? Does it work? Does it do what it says? But the zero moment of truth is what happens before. So all the things we've been talking about, oh, I'm Googling that person or I'm checking this out, I'm learning, I'm picking up on this versus this. And so the zero moment of truth is all the things that leads people up to you to maybe book that call, watch that webinar, interact with you. But if you're waiting on just the call to come in or just the meeting in person, you're missing out. If they're already looking at the zero moment of truth aspect and not seeing much.

Speaker 1: 24:18

I want to shift gears slightly I've heard you say this and I agree with this is that I think both of us get a lot of our business and we teach how to get their business from essentially a lot of referrals and centers of influence or strategic partners. I think we've talked a lot about how to pre-frame it so that a potential client comes in the door and all this pre-framing and authority positioning is happening. But can you maybe expand upon that? Both of us are business specialists, part of a group called the Elite Resource Team. That's where we met. It was a great group. It's run by Anton Anderson. It's a lot of financial advisors in there and essentially he teaches them how to build very profitable relationships with CPAs and so essentially these are centers of influences, these are strategic alliances.

Speaker 1: 25:00

Framing that from an authority positioning standpoint to build out those centers of influence, those strategic alliances, what value does authority positioning have when you're looking to do more of that?

Speaker 2: 25:12

That's huge. Because for me I want as many strategic alliances as possible, because in my opinion that's as beneficial as a good referral from a client, Because if it's a referral from a strategic alliance who already has the know, like and trust with their clients, now that's borrowed credibility, borrowed trust, and so that's wonderful. So here comes an advisor that goes oh, I want to develop more CPA relationships or estate planning attorneys who could refer over to the advisor. So how am I going to get this whole list of 1,000 CPAs or 1,000 estate planning attorneys to know that I exist, to set up that Zoom or coffee or whatever the case is? So I guess I'd better. What is the first thing? Let's do direct mail, let's do a bulk email, let's do LinkedIn message, whatever the case is.

Speaker 2: 25:58

Now you're just being like an annoying gnat and fly around their head like being a pest. So how can you separate yourself from all the other people that are knocking at their door, going pick me? If you are featured in, you see where I'm going. If you've got your book, if you've been interviewed on, if you're featured in and they Google you and they see now, all of a sudden, all those other people that are buzzing around trying to go hook me up. They're coming to you because they're like all right, I'm going to at least set up a call and see what you have to say, because you look legitimate. Russell Brunson is famous for saying one funnel away, You're one strategic alliance away to huge opportunities. Maybe you need three or four main strategic alliances to really take your career to the next level. You got to be efficient with that. So, man, having that authority position and that authority position portfolio and using those assets to drip on and open the door and break the ice with that strategic alliance prospect huge I'll build off of that.

Speaker 1: 26:56

Imagine if you have that CPA relationship and part of what you want to get them to do is to promote you internally to their book of business, internally to their book of business. Now imagine the difference between okay, this is John Smith, he's an advisor, we're working together and you should call them versus strategically providing that CPA with some of that authority positioning portfolio content and so now they're excited to say, hey, I'm working with, so and they've been featured on this.

Speaker 1: 27:24

Then the other day of a book about this, I'm so excited to be working with this person and to be able to extend this value to you. You can see right there the difference in what that's going to make you get someone from being reluctant and concerned and nervous to introduce you to their best, you throw a party and rejoice in the fact that I landed a CPA relationship or landed in state planning Yay, they high-fived.

Speaker 2: 27:45

And then now they start recommending you to their clients. But then you've got the nasty looking website, the AOL email account and nothing to talk about and it's like a wet blanket. But when all of that comes together, and maybe even you give a stack of your books to that CPA, to that estate planning attorney, and now they're handing it out, or whatever the case is, now all those pistons or cylinders are firing together and it just makes sense.

Speaker 1: 28:10

I know that you and I could probably go on and on about these topics, because I know that we're both passionate about it. Is there any question that I haven't asked that you think is important for this conversation, for someone that's just getting to know you through this podcast?

Speaker 2: 28:23

I would say that many times advisors think I just don't have the time or, like you already used imposter syndrome Nobody wants to trust me or I don't have anything to say, or it's just too complicated and I don't have the time to learn all this stuff. And I think the big thing is more than you think, even if you've been in the business for three or four years, because you know how to speak confidently and serve your clients and your prospects. So imposter syndrome out the window. What I do is completely done for you and it makes it easy and actually fun knowing that what we're talking about and I know, paul, you help people with the book writing process to make it easy and fun, and with me, with getting people on my show and booked on TV and pressing media online, I make it easy and fun. Well, if people like us are doing the work for you, with you and making it easy and fun, let's go.

Speaker 1: 29:14

There's nothing holding you back For someone listening and they want to know more about what you do, maybe reach out to you. Where's the best place for them to go to either get resources or to reach out to you directly? The?

Speaker 2: 29:23

best place is my website, which is Mike Saunders three 60.com. So S a U N D E R S Mike Saunders three 60.com. And then there you can read my articles on Forbes, you can look at my TV interviews, you can look at my podcast and I've interviewed Tom Hagen and just a whole bunch of people in the industry. And also on there's a tab there says book and you can get a free copy of my book. So just click on that and you can read my book and reach out and connect with me and schedule up a free consultation. We'll chat and see what authority positioning could do for you.

Speaker 1: 29:55

This conversation has been a lot of fun for me. I appreciate your time and someone's listening to this, and they've gotten this far. You have a lot of nuggets that you can take advantage of, and so I think the next step is to take action. Whether that's with Mike, whether that's with me, whether that's with someone else, the key thing is to take action and don't just to reiterate and you said it is that if I'm going to personally spend a dollar, a dime, on any marketing, the first thing I'm going to do before I spend money on anything else is authority marketing, because that's going to make anything else I spend money on that much more effective. And so maybe I want to do LinkedIn, maybe I want to do podcasts, maybe I want to do Facebook ads or whatever that thing, seminars, whatever that thing may be. For you, you're going to get a significantly higher return on investment if you first start by working on your authority positioning and then take those extra activities. So again, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 30:52

You're welcome, Paul. Thank you.