Million Dollar Producer Show
The Million Dollar Producer Show™ interviews highly successful financial professionals, thought leaders and organizations in the financial services and life insurance industries. This podcast is here to help answer the key question: “What are the insider secrets to stand out in a noisy marketplace and consistently attract and convert high value clients?” To get answers each week, subscribe to the Million Dollar Producer Show.
Million Dollar Producer Show
040: 10 Years of Transforming Advisor-CPA Relationships with Anton Anderson
In this episode, I welcome back Anton Anderson, CEO of Elite Resource Team, as my second repeat guest. He will share his unique approach to forming strategic partnerships with CPAs.
We explore the transformative power of collaboration in wealth management, highlighting Anton's transition from traditional financial advisory to founding the Elite Resource Team (ERT). As his company approaches its 10-year anniversary this April, we spotlight its role in fostering partnerships between advisors and CPAs for comprehensive client service.
Moreover, we discuss the impact of COVID-19 on virtual collaboration and offer a sneak peek at the upcoming Elite Growth Academy event. Anton also announces his forthcoming book on the subject.
Listen the first episode with Anton HERE
Anton's Background
- Early career at Smith Barney, transitioned to a smaller firm in San Diego focusing on comprehensive, holistic planning.
- Founded Elite Resource Team (ERT) in 2014 after a significant career moment involving a client's CPA.
The Evolution of ERT
- ERT's mission: Facilitate collaboration between wealth managers, insurance agents, CPAs, and attorneys to serve business owners and high-net-worth clients more effectively.
- Anton's shift from traditional practice to working exclusively with CPAs.
- The realization of the importance and impact of CPA partnerships in wealth management.
Growth, Evolution and the Future of ERT
- Early challenges and the grind of establishing a new business model.
- Significant growth from 2017 onwards, driven by effective marketing and clear targeting.
- Transition towards building a sustainable, system-driven business beyond just Anton and the initial team.
- ERT's 10-year anniversary event in San Diego, open to both clients and non-clients.
- Anton's vision for ERT and the industry: fostering deeper, more collaborative relationships for better client service.
The Impact of COVID-19
- COVID-19 as a catalyst for the widespread acceptance of virtual collaboration.
- The pandemic accelerated the adoption of ERT's model by breaking down geographical barriers between advisors and CPAs.
Anton's Upcoming Book
- The decision to write a book as a means to share the ERT model and philosophy more broadly.
- The book as a tool for advisors to establish credibility and foster relationships with CPAs.
About our Guest: Anton Anderson is the CEO of Elite Resource Team.
You can learn more about his work at:
https://elitert.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/antonjanderson/
https://www.antonjanderson.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.
Claim your free audiobook copy at: www.theshortbookformula.com
Welcome to the Million Dollar Producers Show. Brought to you by more clients, more fun. I'm your host, paul G McManus. This podcast is here to help you answer the key question what are the insider secrets to stand out in a noisy marketplace and consistently attract and convert high value clients? To get answers each week, subscribe to the Million Dollar Producers Show. Today, I'm honored to welcome Anton Anderson back to the show. Anton is the CEO of Elite Resource Team, which this year will be celebrating 10 years of helping advisors build profitable CPA relationships. We'll be talking about the lessons he has learned in building this multi-million dollar business, as well as his upcoming event in San Diego for advisors and his upcoming new book. Let's get to the show, welcome.
Speaker 2:Anton, it's good to see you again. Thank you very much for having me Looking forward to our conversation, as always, and I appreciate the chance to jump back on with you.
Speaker 1:I was just thinking about that. It's not often that I have people on Weiss on the podcast Freddie. When listening to this for the first time, there's a great episode and we'll link it to the show notes. But where we get in depth about certain topics, let's go ahead and dive into today's episode. I know we have a lot of things to talk about that are really exciting. First, give us a brief intro. Who are you and what is Elite Resource Team, or ERT?
Speaker 2:I am a Southern California boy, born and raised. I started working at Smith Barney while I was still in college and graduated with a degree in communication and emphasis in entrepreneurial studies from UC Santa Barbara. I decided that the Smith Barney Wirehouse environment wasn't the best fit for me. I joined a smaller firm back down in San Diego that I think was tinkering with becoming either like a multidisciplinary firm or a family office. We never used those terms back then, but when I look back on it, that's really what we were trying to do is come together, as I'll say, wealth managers, insurance agents, cpas, attorneys and service business owners and high net worth clients in a way that the traditional firms couldn't because of their lack of ability to do comprehensive, holistic planning. It was a great learning experience and I was just the traditional like right out of college, working long hours, not getting necessarily great pay, but getting great experience and grateful for it. In 2009, that firm shut its doors. I went out to try to grow a practice in more of the traditional way initially, which was the fish bowls, radio ads, some dinner seminars, lots of cold leads. One of the things that I learned at Smith Barney was Smith Barney has the oldest CPA Alliance program. Out of all the wire houses. That concept. If you wanted to be a big dog in the office, you needed to figure out how to work with the CPAs. That resonated with me, that stuck with me. I lacked the licensing, the confidence, the experience to do it while I was there, because I was just a college student cold calling out of the phone book. But it planted a seed.
Speaker 2:In 2009, when that other firm shut its doors, I went into more of traditional growing a practice. After maybe a year to two years had this one kind of that moment where everything just broke for me in the traditional way of growing a practice. It happened with a cold lead that I purchased. The guy was an engineer and needed so much help that I could offer. We met multiple times on the weekends in San Diego. Ultimately he decided to move forward, but then stopped me at the last moment and said I just need to run this by my CPA.
Speaker 2:It dawned on me that I was giving up complete control over where this thing went from there. It felt to use a football analogy I was the quarterback and I drove the ball down the field 99 yards and we're on the one yard line. Then, all of a sudden, I had to step out of the game and go and sit on the sideline and just see what happened. That felt awful. Unfortunately, what happened was it was stepping on the side of the field but not even being able to watch the game, just closing your eyes and having somebody tell you the results. That's really what it was when I looked back on it, because what happened was the client emailed me about four days after I provided him all the information.
Speaker 2:Of course, I said can you introduce me your CPA? I'll address his questions and the CPA can reach back out to you. And yeah, but none of it worked. He just said the CPA was too busy. Email the information. The CPA will look at it. Sent him the information and emailed me about four days later and just said my CPA decided he wasn't comfortable and I appreciate your time. I'll let you know if something changes down the road.
Speaker 1:That is a very vivid analogy and that's very painful. I can feel the pain that you must have faced. Not only you're at the 99 or the one yard line about where you need to make your touchdown, but now you're taken out of the game, and not only and they make you turn around.
Speaker 2:You can't even see what's happening. I have no idea. Oh my goodness that is painful. That is so painful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know, did they attempt to run and it was a fumble? And the CPA picked up the ball and ran with it and scored on it. I have no idea what happened. Just remember thinking there's no way. At this point in my career I was still, I was in my 20s I was like I'm not going to spend the remainder of my career building a business where I have no control. On the one yard line it just felt awful. That was the straw that broke the camel's back and basically the idea at that point which wasn't brilliant by any means I wasn't the first one to come up with it, but I thought I was at the moment which was I'm just going to go straight to the CPAs and I'm going to only work with the CPA, through the CPA and in conjunction with or collaboration with the CPA, and we will deliver better services to their clients together. That's what I ended up doing Now. I bounced around a lot from different training programs and I learned from some great mentors that had done more of that than me.
Speaker 2:After what was it? It was probably four or five years built a good practice and started getting some good results and having have a handful of good relationships. It was just evident to me that I think there was a bigger opportunity than just working with CPAs myself. There was a couple different companies and partnerships at the time. We really were looking at the big picture, thinking how do we bring this to market? What happened was I was, I think, sitting on my desk on a Tuesday afternoon in a advisor calls and he said I'm in Arizona, I heard about how you were building the CPA partnerships. I'd like to fly into San Diego and take you out to lunch and I'd pay you for an hour of your time. It was like, wow, interesting.
Speaker 2:Both parents elementary school or mom was in education as well. She's principal at elementary school for kids with special needs. Dad was an elementary school teacher and so this idea that somebody was going to pay me to educate them on something I was passionate about, which was growing a business through partnerships and collaboration I thought, wow, that's really neat, and if there was one person that was willing to do it, I wonder if there'd be others. And fast forward about three weeks there was two other folks that were willing to pay me for a little bit of my time to help explain what was going on with these CPA partnerships. That, basically, was what triggered me to say, ok, I'm ready to shift out of being a traditional advisor working with clients and building CPA partnerships myself, to start an company and seeing if we could actually launch something nationwide help advisors and CPAs build partnerships. And so that was the start of the resource team in, as I said, april of 2014.
Speaker 1:So this is now your second time on the podcast and we had an excellent discussion back in August of 2023, episode 21, where we really went into depth about why that's so powerful and how to do that from an individual advisor standpoint, building those relationships, and so if anyone's listened to this and they haven't listened to that episode I'd highly recommend going into it. In fact, it was our most popular episode of 2023. There's a reason why I invited you back, Anton.
Speaker 2:I did not know that. That's exciting. I appreciate it In today's episode.
Speaker 1:I don't want to go down that rabbit hole so much because we have that episode for people available, but now that people understand who you are and the beginning of Elite Resource Team, your company, now let's fast forward 10 years. And so now we're 10 years later. Your anniversary, your 10-year anniversary, is coming up, and so tell us, from today's perspective, maybe any of those milestones, or perhaps the vision for what you want to accomplish both this year and beyond. I'll let you dive in wherever you want.
Speaker 2:Sure. So the milestones I think we are slightly early, probably to the market Meaning. I remember early just having a really hard time explaining, both to advisors but certainly to CPAs, what we were trying to do. And so 2014 to 2017 was just grunt work, like it was a grind. I think we had one assistant through that time that joined and then we had to let go and pretty pitiful results just in terms of revenue or growth.
Speaker 2:In 2017, we started figuring out A how to tell the story better really. B getting more clear on who our avatar was. And then, c the big thing that changed was we figured out how to start marketing, aka telling the story to an audience that hadn't heard it before, using social media. And so in 2017, we started growing significantly. It hasn't stopped since.
Speaker 2:Again, it was a combination of the marketing and then figuring out from there once we started actually gaining traction and getting clients, how to run a company, and that's, I'd say, the two chapters over the last probably six years.
Speaker 2:So if we take the first three or four years of the company, it's just grunt work trying to figure it out, working hard, trying to make it something, and then, looking at the last six years, I would break it down probably into two chapters. One was finally figuring out marketing, telling the story and selling. Growing a good sales team, growing a good marketing team and just selling, getting to a few million dollars in revenue into the point where it's like we have something but it's not a real company. Now, and that's probably been the last two or three years, is that shift from less emphasis on the marketing, the sales, the transactions, more emphasis on building a real company. So we're shifting away from being plate spinning entrepreneurs that are always just flying by the seat of their pants to a career ladder, a company culture, a good team of, call it. We're probably just shy of 20 people and really figuring out what we want to be when we grow up.
Speaker 1:So I love the chapters that you're describing. Let's go back for a second into the marketing focus chapter, and you mentioned that. I believe at that point you went from the prior chapter, where you're just trying to figure things out, and then that second chapter you were able to build and grow significantly to I think I heard you say a couple million dollars, myself as an entrepreneur and any person listening to this is primarily independent financial advisors, entrepreneurs. We've talked many times offline and I'm always impressed by someone who breaks past that seven figure mark, especially in a we'll call it a training online business, so to speak. And what were some of the key things that allowed for that growth in that marketing phase? If you look back now, we're still one or two key things that you did that allowed for that growth. What were they?
Speaker 2:I think back to the definition of a system from somebody that I hired as a leadership mentor for a number of years, ray Kelly, and he says the definition of a system is removing discretion at the operating level. I think what helped us get from that we'll call it like a couple hundred thousand of revenue where you're just no real idea of where it's coming from it's just current work to our probably first one and a half to two million of revenue was figuring out a system for the marketing and the sales. And that was the point where it's still just a lot of work. But it's marketing, it's sales, it's product fit and once we got that system in place where we knew every single week we would have call it 40 to 60 new people to speak to about what we did and what we offered. Then we just started tracking the KPIs and the sales and knowing okay, if we get 40 to 60 appointments a week and we're going to close between 22 to 24% of those, we can start doing some math and knowing in order to get those 40 to 60 appointments a week, we're going to have to spend. Let's see, at the time when we were doing that, we were probably spending 80 to 90,000 a month on marketing and we could just look at the numbers and say we're going to end up spending a million to a million to a year on marketing but we're going to end up making two million and our sales team is commission only, and so it's a pretty easy kind of business to run.
Speaker 2:At that point the challenge was again when you find a good marketing funnel and a sales team and scripts that work in KPIs you can follow, the challenge really becomes how sustainable is that marketing channel? This I'm talking about right now is really more of the whole social media. Marketing was what we were doing Facebook, instagram and now we do some YouTube and some LinkedIn, but at the time it was primarily those two channels. And it reminds me of when dinner seminars were really hot for financial advisors. And all of a sudden you get an advisor that's doing a million a year, a million to a year, but they're spending four to 600,000 on marketing and on dinner seminars and such, and they're big producers for five years, maybe slightly longer, but what ends up happening is the industry gets flooded with people doing dinner seminars and then they have to start reinventing themselves. So it's no longer dinner seminars Now it's educational workshops at your local library or at your local university and what happens is you're just this hamster on a hamster wheel that's spinning and the industry or the outside viewers are like rewarding you because your business looks like it's doing well and compared to where you were a few years before that it is, but at the same time you're just running really fast and there's no easy exit to that hamster wheel.
Speaker 2:When you asked me to break down the chapter, the first few years so like 2017, probably to 2020 was that type of hamster wheel. We were growing, we were hiring, but we were also spending a lot on marketing, a lot on sales, in a non-sustainable way. Just because the platforms changed, it just got so expensive to keep trying to do the same thing.
Speaker 1:And open mother conversations we've had specifically around Facebook. You mentioned how much you're spending on multiple platforms, but Facebook being one of the key ones, and I know about this from my own experience because I've since 2015,. I've been using LinkedIn extensively and very dependent on the good wishes or the link. If they bless us, then everything's good, and if you decide to change the algorithm, suddenly it's do I have a real business here or do I need to reinvent myself? And so I can definitely get that Both the possibility and potential. I'm truly impressed by what you've accomplished and, just as a brief side story, back in 2015, when I started my business and I had a business partner then and we decided to get into some Facebook ads, and I think Facebook riches, or whatever you want to call it people aspire to it, but it's so hard, it's so freaking hard to make that profitable, where you know your metrics and if you spend a million dollars, you're going to make X amount of dollars, and so just that by itself is a serious accomplishment and I have great respect for your ability to have accomplished that.
Speaker 1:Now, what's interesting is that most people that would be the end of the story lived happily ever. After you've lived the dream you're off on some island, you're in San Diego, so maybe you're on, who knows? You're in Coronado or something drinking. Your Mai Tai Life is good, but the next chapter? So what was the transition from chapter two, which we'll call the marketing phase, to now chapter three, which you alluded to earlier, which is now? Is this a real company in the sense of team culture, et cetera?
Speaker 2:Team culture. Do we have something that has equity value? Is this something that completely depends on, like you said, being blessed by the Facebook gods or the LinkedIn God a real business that you can step away from for a week or two, go surf in Indonesia and the business is going to run almost as well as it would if not just as well as it would without you, and so that's really been probably the 2020 slash. 2021 emphasis is making that jump from entrepreneurs spinning a bunch of plates to, as one of my business partners, paul Landham, calls it, a properly run business where you actually have something that works, with or without you, and obviously that significantly increases equity value as well, and so that's probably. I think we're definitely in the right direction. We're maybe 90% of the way there.
Speaker 2:We've shifted massively away from all of our new clients coming from cold marketing sources.
Speaker 2:There's a lot now of organic marketing, there's a lot of client introductions that take place and overall, we shifted our mindset, which is ironic that it took us this long, because one of our major messages to advisors and accountants is less about new clients and more about going deep with current clients, and so, about a year and a half ago, we put limits in place in terms of how many new clients will work with and we shifted our focus from new clients to deeper relationships with better clients, helping them accomplish more success, and so that's made a big shift and helped us continue to grow top line revenue and profit as well and look, just like I said, more like a real company, where I don't have any necessarily like short term or even medium term aspirations at this point to have an exit, but it is looking more like a company that a larger firm would want to come in and acquire because of the systems and the relationships and the niche in the marketplace that we've carved out for ourselves.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. So that's or tell me a little bit from my outside vantage point, If I think of a training company or a company that serves advisors, that helps foster and facilitate these relationships between advisors and CPAs. I'm sure there's a couple more out there, but really your name stands out, your company stands out as one of the top ones specifically focused on advisors and helping them build these relationships. And 10 years in now we'll talk more about some of the stuff that's coming up this year. But how would you describe your positioning in the marketplace today vis-a-vis any competition and feel free to brag if you want and what's the vision for the future? What's the 10-year plan you mentioned? You're not looking to exit per se, but whether it's you or someone acquiring you, where would you like to be in 10 years, given what you've accomplished over the past 10 years?
Speaker 2:I appreciate that. I think it's still early and the company is still young. In many ways that's why it feels like the idea of an exit. It's too early, there's too much to do still and there's too much opportunity and there's too much growth potential for me, at least personally and where I'm at in my life. But in terms of the marketplace and competition and so forth, it's really interesting. When I first started working with CPAs, I joined winning with CPAs with Brandon Starski, I believe is his name. Dr Lynn Swartz had the pro-to-pro, tony Lombardi and Alex Sonkin had perfect client learned a lot from those guys. Dominic Molina, who I believe is still an operating certified tax coach. Andrew Argue had the Argue company or accountingtaxcom, and I think out of those five or six major players maybe two are still operating, or at least in the same context that they were maybe one or two, and so the landscape has shifted dramatically for us, I think, moving forward.
Speaker 2:The last part I should say about looking back on the last 10 years is ironically, in many ways what really helped accelerate our business, or at least the model, was COVID, which the whole concept of working virtually it was there but it was just we were like every conversation we were bumping into some hesitation around that. Every partnership, the CPAs were concerned with how close the advisor who were and how many days a week they'd be in their office, and there was just so much emphasis still on the physical relationship. Once COVID hit, people were just forced to realize we can do 99% of this virtually and so we quickly started seeing partnerships form. Where the advisor was in Indiana and the CPA was in California, the advisor is in Texas and the CPA is in New Jersey. There was really no limitation to the growth potential because of geography.
Speaker 2:And that's when it got really exciting for me, because we started seeing guys or gals that were in small towns in Minnesota that were forming partnerships, helping clients, doing levels of planning and growing businesses that were twice as big as the big shot guys that were used to seeing at the conferences banging their chests and getting the awards. Like we started seeing real businesses being developed by virtual partnerships that weren't limited by geography, weren't limited by age or fancy offices or overhead and just really focused on client value. That was an exciting shift for me and I think that has not slowed down, even though COVID has in many ways become less of a concern. The habits that people established are remaining. Now some have gone back to the office, but more and more are just saying, yeah, we could meet, and at some point maybe we should meet, but for the most part let's just have a Zoom meeting or let's use Teams, and so I think, going forward, the marketplace is so ready for the next level of collaboration between professionals.
Speaker 1:I can totally echo what you just said. From my own perspective, I started my business for clients more fun in 2016. It's funny, at that time I was focused on LinkedIn, lead generation and appointment setting as the primary thing that I did and just over and over as part of the process. What people come back and this is pre COVID is, wow, zoom is so cool. I got people and it wasn't what I was selling, but I got people to appreciate Zoom just as a tool before COVID.
Speaker 1:If only I knew that, when invested right, and just to echo what you said, is that COVID really changed people's habits. Right, because at first you had to how am I going to do client acquisition, how am I going to meet with people, et cetera and so it just forced people. But because it, I think, lasted what? Two, three years? For the most part, people's habits just changed and I think, while there's a place for in person to me I've been virtual since 2015 and the large part is just it's so freaking convenient I can bounce from meeting to meeting I can meet with, develop relationships with centers of influence that it would be difficult to do if I was only operating in my small geographic area, and so to me that's exciting to hear.
Speaker 1:What you said is that the CPA advisor, cpa relationships are not restricted to one's geography, but really you can develop these relationships with an advisor, can develop these relationships with the right CPA, a good fit CPA, potentially anywhere in the world. This is 10 years in. I know two things that I want to touch upon while I have you One the Elite Growth Academy, what that's all about, who it's for, what the benefits are. And then the second part is let's get into the book and why you decided to do that.
Speaker 2:So the first part, in terms of the Elite Growth Academy, a big premise of our model if you don't work with us right now or you haven't followed any of our material is we just truly believe that clients are better served when professionals come together and collaborate. At the heart of that team approach should be an advisor and accountant. We believe that those two professionals should form what's called a proactive planning team and they service their clients in a much more proactive and holistic manner. It's what the marketplace wants, meaning that the clients want. It rewards the professionals because they get to, I think, deliver more value to clients, less selling products. It's much less competition based and it's much more based on true relationships and results and outside of the advisor accountant partnership. This is, I think, where a lot of models in the past have gone wrong. One is they've been too focused on the idea of trading referrals like we trade baseball cards, as if a client is just a name and a phone number. I think a much better approach is to truly form a team and invite that client into your team experience. So the advisor and the accountants meet the clients together. They use their own individual expertise to bring ideas to the table, to collaborate, create better results by not just trading information or cooperating, but actually truly collaborating on their planning abilities, then the missing piece, once you go there, is that's great, but when you talk about the massive, the affluent business owner clients, the advisor represents one or two pieces of the pizza, the CPA represents one or two pieces of the pizza, but that leaves depending on how many slices are in your pizza. But let's say it's eight slices in your pizza in my analogy here, maybe you have four out of eight, but likely it's even less than that. And so I think what the missing piece has been is the ability to leverage other experts with other areas of expertise to service those same clients. And so this happens a little bit locally. It happens, of course, in a true family office structure where one very high net worth family hires attorneys and CPAs and wealth managers, insurance agents and different types of niche experts all to work for their family.
Speaker 2:Historically has not happened very well, I think, on a consistent basis, not a one-off basis where there's a big client event, we got to come together and work for this client. I'm truly talking about how a businesses run day-to-day the systems of the business, the operating systems, the ability for the advisor and the accountant to form this partnership and then leverage other experts, which, for lack of a different term, I would call a virtual family office, is, I think, the three moving pieces. I'd say a much more genuine and enjoyable client experience, a much more profitable and enjoyable way for professionals to grow their business and truly capture that win-win-win type of model. Now fast forward to our event. We've been doing this, I think, every year for probably the last eight years. The first one had seven people there right, it was us and a handful of advisors, a couple of CPAs, and we brought in probably six experts.
Speaker 2:Fast forward a number of years and what we do is the same basic premise, which is bring together in one room forward thinking CPAs and advisors that are in partnership with one another Sometimes there it's legal partnership, a lot of times it's just a strategic partnership and then allow them to learn from other experts in the marketplace that have different niche areas of expertise that we believe the CPA or the advisor shouldn't try to be doing on their own. Become the jack of all trades, master of none. That's an outdated business model, so much better would be you focus on what you enjoy, what you're really good at, then leverage a virtual family office and the experts in that virtual family office for everything else in between, and so we bring them together over a three day period, and this is like because of our audience at this point and how long we've been doing it. It's like the Michael Jordan of tax planning is there, the LeBron James of business advisory services, I mean the Steph Curry of legal services, and so it's just what I mean by that is, it's true, experts that are some of the best in the country or across North America really, that are all an expert in their area of expertise. It's what they go deep on. They don't try to do tax returns, they don't try to do wealth management, they don't do financial plans. They go deep on one specific area, and that's what these advisors and accountants that work with have the ability to, I think, tap into through our community is these other types of experts. So that's really a big part of the event is introducing them and allowing them to build relationships with and learn from these experts.
Speaker 2:And then the other second part is the community itself and the idea that in a virtual world which we just talked about, how much we've moved into a virtual world. The benefit of and the desire for community I don't think can be overstated at this point. I've been really happily surprised as we've developed scripts and email templates and training tools and videos and software and like everything that an advisor or a CPA would need to implement this. What really has kept people active with what we've built is the community. So it's like you can have all of the nuts and bolts, but it's really the community of other like-minded professionals all trying to change the industry in the same way, meaning lead it in a way that really rewards collaboration, rewards abundance thinking, rewards advanced and comprehensive planning for clients.
Speaker 2:So these individuals that are at the event are looking around the room going. I didn't know there were 200, 300 other people that thought like me or that wanted to build a business like this, where it's not necessarily just about more and more. It's about delivering better value, building a better business, doing a better job for clients, having a better work-life balance. So that's why I'm so passionate, obviously, about what we're building in the event itself. So it's June 12th, 13th, 14th in downtown San Diego. If somebody goes to our website, elitertcom, you would find more information on the homepage about the Elite Growth Academy. We've had a lot of people attend. That just said. I've been to 30 years of industry events and I've never attended something like this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I can attest to that because I attended one of your events in, I want to say, August, and that was my first time to attend.
Speaker 1:Very impressive, I think you had. At that time you had at least 100, if not more, advisors, multiple speakers, everything that you're describing, and it's interesting. Right, it's as much as I love Zoom, and the thought of having to go meet with someone in person is just like why those are the kinds of events that I make time for, I prioritize and I really enjoy because you do want to get together with like-minded people in an atmosphere where you can sit back, absorb information. And I think it's so important because it's convenient as video training, webinars, stuff like that can be to convey information. Nothing compares to being in a room surrounded by your peers and hearing real examples and stories of what other people are doing to be successful. Right, it's inspiring, it's motivating you create relationships and I highly recommend anyone that was attracted to the overall conversation that we're having to check it out. To be clear, this event in June is it for clients, non-clients, a combination?
Speaker 2:The one you referenced that you attended. I think there were 100 advisors and CPAs there, but that was only for clients and actually at, like, our top mastermind level, which is why it was capped at 100. This one because it's our 10-year anniversary. We're opening it up to everyone, so clients, non-clients, et cetera, and the ballroom holds 300 people. We'll have a good large, hopefully, audience there and really looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:Now me as well. I know I've taken at least two of those seats one for me and then my colleague Tony Murray. I'm seriously looking forward to it. It's a chance to get to San Diego and it's a chance to interact with just people who I admire and respect. In the time that we have left, I wanna shift gears over to the next part, which is your upcoming book. Tell us what made you decide that now is the time to write a book, what's it gonna be about, who's it for and what to accomplish as a result.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's been on the bucket list for me for a while, like probably it has for other individuals listening. And the reality is I did try to co-author a book once in the past and it was in my mid-20s, and it was a bad experience. It was just a lot of time. It was very little benefit that came from it and I had a box of books that sat in my closet for a year or two, and so I've always thought, if I was passionate about something and I had, I got to a point in my career and business where I felt like I had something of value that I could share, then I would enjoy doing a book again, but approaching it in a different way. And so when you and I met and I started learning about what you offered and I know John Cutten John's a very good mentor of mine, a business partner and a number of companies and a friend, and I know he hired you to help him write his book and I thought, yeah, this might be the time. This might be the point in which a book would be helpful, sharing a message to an audience that isn't going to necessarily engage with a YouTube video or a Facebook ad. That's why now is the time.
Speaker 2:I think the 10 year is perfect. I'm excited about it. My goal is to have it done by the June event so folks that attend can actually get a physical copy if that's of interest to them. And I think it's really just telling the story about why collaboration is so powerful, why it's so beneficial to the clients and the professionals. I think this structure that has taken 10 years since we launched and a number of years before we launched ERT to hone in of the team based model is really something special and even if somebody decides it's not for them, totally respect that. But what we've built is unique. It is something special when you can look at a business model and go it creates a win, win, win for the professionals and for the clients and everybody involved. So that's it's going to be the story of the team based model and basically I think helping people just analyze whether or not this is something that they want to learn about further and, if it is, hopefully it helps communicate the story enough in an attractive way where they can really decide, because we have all of us have an endless number of opportunities for our time, our energy, our money to really decide whether or not it's worth consistently committing to and, I think, one of the challenges that all of us as advisors faces.
Speaker 2:We are all about intensity, but in business you win with consistency. Intensity is when you learn about a new marketing or a new product or a new this or new that and you're intense about it for a month, for two months, for six months. But with the game of relationships and collaboration and leveraging a virtual family office, my suggestion would be unless somebody can commit to being consistent, then it's not a game they should play. They should play the traditional marketing game, the traditional hamster wheel Maybe I shouldn't say it in that way because the hamster wheel has a negative connotation, but they should stick with the traditional way of growing a practice If they actually can commit to something consistently. I've never seen anything that even I'll give you an analogy.
Speaker 1:I just thought of it, let's see if it stands up. It's like getting married versus being on dating apps. Right, one is intense, you get a lot of opportunities, it's a lot of coffee dates et cetera, but you tend to go through people pretty quickly, whereas the marriage it can last years, can be beautiful and it can truly, but it's hard. Can you read exactly?
Speaker 2:Yeah, would that be a fair analogy? I think there's a lot of yes. Ironically, I use the dating versus marriage analogy often and I think there's a lot of crossover there. At the end of the day, the similarities being, when you're working in a collaborative nature with other people, you have people. People have all types of wonderful things. They have strengths, weaknesses, triggers, past experiences, fears, there's egos. There's all of these things that you have to be able to lead the partnership through in order to get to the results that everybody's looking for.
Speaker 1:What I find interesting is that and just to expand upon the analogy for a second I think there's also like the grass is greener on the other side. Sometimes not me and not you, obviously if you're married you look out there and you're in San Diego on the beach. You're like, wow, you know why you're in the partnership, you know why you're in it for the long term and you're there for a reason. In the few minutes that I have left with you, I'd love to ask the question. So, since I spoke back in August at your last event and we'll be sponsoring and I'll be speaking at your upcoming event in June, for anyone listening to this, there'll be a chance to learn a lot from Antonin and the elite resource team. I'll also be there and talking about writing a book Just from your perspective, working with a handful of, I'll say, shared clients. I met them at elite resource team. They've been working with me. Pavan Khatini he just released his book and we got him the best seller.
Speaker 2:Yeah that was exciting.
Speaker 1:Amazon best seller status, which is pretty cool. Just in maybe a minute or two. From your perspective, what is the value for an advisor to write a book, especially just thinking about collaboration and positioning and that long term approach to building their business?
Speaker 2:Okay, so it goes back to your question about the last 10 years and the next 10 years. It's really I think we are in a place right now I said before I think we were early to the marketplace. I think in the last few years our timing has been good and when I say are selective as a community, so if you're an advisor or you're a CPA right now, I think that the timing is really actually quite perfect to be leading this conversation with your clients about more proactive and holistic planning and partnership planning and team based collaboration, and I think we've got probably another call it I don't know two to three, maybe up to a five year window where we're still ahead of that curve, but it's appropriately ahead. And I think by writing a book, what you're doing is you are really solidifying your role as a thought leader in this new shift. Now you wait three to five years. It's not like the model isn't going to have value or it wouldn't be valuable to write a book then or anything. It's just that the train has already at least one or two trains have left the station. There's more behind it, right, and this is just the beginning, but right now you still get an oversized reward for being early to the marketplace with a disruptive idea that's a good way to say it.
Speaker 2:So Pavan becoming a number one bestseller off of the book he wrote. I don't think in five years if he wrote that same book or somebody else doing it would be. I think at that point it will be. Hopefully the individuals that have been working with us have established the partnerships and the client relationships and built the businesses. Then it's really about maintaining because right now the window is open and it's perfect. It's early to the marketplace. It would be like coming up with a Lyft or an Uber in 2024. Compared to coming up with Lyft or Uber when they were first launching. There's too early to the market. Then there's a perfect window. Then it's saturated. I would say the benefit again of writing the book is you're solidifying yourself as a thought leader in a new concept that's attractive and getting a lot of attention.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll share one idea and I'll be talking about this more at the end. A book to me is like the Swiss Army Knife. It has so many fantastic applications and especially in the context of what you do and the advisors that you work with. The book can be written. It's targeting the end users, say the business owner or whomever would benefit directly from the services. It can also be written strategically in collaboration with the CPA or multiple CPAs. What I mean by that is that when you write the book it's your message, you're on the cover, your name.
Speaker 1:But if you have some existing CPA relationships, getting a forward, for example, from the CPA and printing out a special edition that they can then send out to all of their clients and really be the tool, the catalyst for the introduction to make that seamless introduction, is just a super powerful way, I think, to better engage your existing CPA relationships and their clients. At the same time, imagine you're going out to market and you want to differentiate yourself. Why should a CPA partner with you versus someone else? By having that book they really have an opportunity to.
Speaker 1:I didn't get it. If they're curious, interested CPAs, I think, are analytical and somewhat skeptical by nature If they have the book in advance and they say, wow, this is a really cool model and I get what you're trying to do. I think those CPAs that are on the fence, so to speak, are going to be that much more willing and excited to partner with you. So I think it really stands out as a differentiator for the advisor building and growing the CPA relationships. Any final thoughts or comments before we wrap up today's episode?
Speaker 2:I think, to your point. What people will follow you if they believe that you're doing something for the right reason and also they believe you're competent, right? You don't want to follow a leader that you feel like has no idea where they're going, just committed to this path last week and may or may not still be on this path with you in two weeks from now. The book is important. Making a decision and sticking with it is important because, whether it is your clients and leading them through more of a proactive planning process, leveraging a virtual family office, or it's an accountant and leading your partnership through, that, people will follow. But you need to go down that path yourself first and you need to really believe in what you're doing.
Speaker 1:I find that the process of writing the book. It clarifies your messaging. The outcome is the book, but what I find when I work with people is that they get that much more clear on their marketing, their strategy and how they really want to approach it. It reminds me of something that you said earlier about intensity versus consistency. I think a book it's really about consistency, right, where do I want to be, not just today and next month, but where do I want to be a year from now, three years from now, five years from now? What am I trying to grow my personal brand into my company? By extension, a book is really in a short-term value. There's plenty of ways to get an immediate return on investment, but really it's more of a vision thing about where you want to be next year, three years, five years from now and how it can help you get there. Anyways, I appreciate your time. This has been fantastic. Congratulations on being a two-time person.
Speaker 2:I hope this one brings value and your audience enjoys. I look forward to seeing you in June, if not sooner.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100% All right. Thanks so much for your time today. I appreciate it. Thank you, Thanks. Sbfjb and KСпK.