#76 Tim Slatter – Transcript

Louis van der Merwe
Welcome to another episode of Ensombl advice South Africa. Today in the studio I have with me Tim Slatter. Tim is a communications expert has been communicating the value of financial planners communicating well to their clients. And we haven’t been listening to them. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Tim Slatter
Thanks for having me, Louis.

Louis van der Merwe
This is such a wonderful topic, because we see tons and tons of research around, the most important thing advisors can do is to constantly communicate with the client to their clients holding their hands during tough times. Good, we suck at it. What’s, what’s the deal? Why? Why are we so bad? Is it just is it advisors specifically? Was it people in general, like what’s the what’s the stumbling blocks?

Tim Slatter
I think you’ve it’s a multifaceted, complicated journey for most. And it’s because communication sits right at the heart of all relationships, right? And relationships themselves are tricky. Life is tricky, the way we feeling the way we thinking changes almost constantly. And you throw into that mix, a digital avatar space where we are no longer, you know, either online or offline. I think for most of us, the reality is, we’re pretty much connected to online all the time, regardless, whether we’re getting a ping from our cell phone, we’re jumping on to check emails, whatever the case may be. And we’re not always in a great state of mind, we might be frustrated, we might be tired, we might be overwhelmed. And then we see a pile of emails to respond to, or we see some interaction on a social media platform, or we have a whole lot of unread WhatsApp messages. And all of these become the way that people perceive and engage with us online. And so it’s not just about having a social media presence, which I think is maybe where, from my experience, the stumbling blocks start is people think, well, if I’m going to start communicating with clients, I need a Facebook page, or I need a LinkedIn profile. And they perceive it to be easy, and affordable and cheap. Because you know, you don’t have to pay for those things are friends, we off. We are the products at the end of the day, as we know when it comes to social media products. And the minute they dive in, they realize, oh, it’s not actually as quick as I thought it was going to be. There’s so many more questions I’ve got to answer here. It’s not as straightforward. And they put it off. And then they consider working with a professional and they think no, it’s going to cost too much money. And so they kind of get into this perhaps a really unhealthy cycle of not accessing and not engaging online, as authentically and as freely as they would if if they ran into plants or a prospect at a coffee shop. And I always say to to financial advisors that in person in the real world, they’re generally very conversational, very personable, can pick up on the kind of people who they climbed, saw who they want to work with. But the minute they step into the digital realm, that seems to be veiled and unaccessible and tricky to, to know what you what they need to do what the next steps look like. So years ago, and I’m talking about 2016, just after we started niching into this industry, I spoke at a conference for some financial advisors. And the whole point of it was to saying your online strategy needs to start offline. Because guys are jumping online without thinking through what I want to achieve here, what I need to speak to what is my message. And that’s where they then feel like it’s overwhelming. It’s too much time. The it’s too expensive. People are throwing all these acronyms and all this jargon at me, and I don’t have half the stuff I’m supposed to have. I don’t have half the tools I’m supposed to have. And in our brains in like anything, we over compensate and make it way more complicated than it needs to be.

Louis van der Merwe
This is I mean, it’s such an important point you mentioning right off the bat. It’s about relationships. And for me, relationships are around managing expectations, right? Absolutely thing, those expectations of how are we going to communicate? What’s the frequency? What is the quality of the communication? Have you seen anyone do this really well, where they take clients through discussions of setting those ground rules? Or do we just, you know, flow into it and say, well, we’ll adjust to whatever your preferences are right? Do you prefer email or cell phone or should we have a call?

Tim Slatter
Yeah. So that’s a great question. And and I think it’s communication is two way. So healthy communication is a dialogue, not a monologue. And one of the huge hurdles that we have, especially in South Africa, I think some of the first world countries have done a little bit more legwork. In this area is that we actually have a very immature and young internet culture, online digital branding culture. And so not only do financial advisors not necessarily know what their strategy for engaging is, generally your clients haven’t established their boundaries haven’t established what they want. So if you go and say to people, how do you want to hear from me? What does it look like? They’re probably not even ready to answer their question and don’t know what it could look like. That being said, it’s a great survey to do with your clients to find out how regularly they want to hear from you. And what kind of platforms would make sense for them? That again, as I said, right at the start, it’s quite a complex journey. So it’s not just about how often you’re speaking and what platforms you’re using, you’ve got to know what your message is. And I always refer to the five W’s and the H, the who, what, when, where, why, and how. And I put them into two categories of three. So you’ve got your, the how, the when, and the where, which is typically where a lot of guys jump into this strategy? Because they’re like, Well, you know, like I said, earlier, we’ll make a Facebook page, we’ll start a newsletter, we’ll start a podcast. And we’ll do a weekly sin through WhatsApp, with all these great intentions, but they haven’t done the who, the why, and the what. And that, for me is far more important to saying, Who am I speaking to? What do I want to say to them? And why am I saying that, and it’s also not linear, it’s cyclical. So who I’m speaking to you will influence what I say and why I said, and why I want to say this message will influence who I’m going to target as my audience, and again, my message etc. And it goes round and round. And so for me, when you when you want to look at your strategy, and if you listening to this and you’re feeling frustrated, or you feel like you jumped in too quickly, those are the first three things you should just quickly jot down and start thinking about is what is my ideal target audience look like? And we could talk a little bit about authenticity and how that plays into that message. Why do I actually want to stick to them online? Because although I said we are separate, will no longer separate from our digital avatars anymore. Online may not be the right strategy for you. And you don’t have to go online because everyone else is online. So I’m pretty sure as you think about it, you will come to the conclusion that yes, you do need to be online. But at least then you know that you want to be online, because it makes sense to you and your message and your audience. And then as you’re working with that, you think well what do I have to say and you know, guys, like, I think was your 100 worst days and with the Gallop strengths, and his whole journey that he helps guys go on, is about understanding what your value proposition looks like from a strengths perspective. And that is very important in your communication strategy. Knowing who you are and how you add value, not just create value, because you can create a whole lot of value, but it’s not adding to anyone else’s life, then they’re not going to jump on board and see it as as a very adding exercise. But when you you’ve got this journey of knowing who you are and articulating how you add value to not the products you sell, not the services you give, but the way you change people’s lives makes a huge difference in how you’re going to communicate that online. And so when you jump back into that side of the strategy, and then you explore down the line, well, then will we use a newsletter? Will it go out monthly? Will we use WhatsApp, you can now when you ask your clients in that survey, you can say we have a mentor newsletter. And you can even filter down and say in this newsletter, we cover topics like school fees, how we save money in the changing environment, how we invest when things are uncertain. And let your clients know that it’s life centric stuff, not just market a product centric topics. You could say we also have weekly WhatsApp, and then you can say it’s a short, quick, whatever, rather than just giving them this open ended hardware engage. Because a lot of clients assume well, if I’m going to hear from my financial advisor, it’s going to be to to get me to my RA, or it’s going to be to increase this or you know, buy a new product. And you don’t want them to have this perception that when they engage with you, it’s going to be a transaction. You want them to have this perception that when they engage with you, it’s actually going to be a conversation, not a transaction. And I find that is very helpful for a lot of advisors who are trying to rethink their strategy and their their online engagements.

Louis van der Merwe
That’s so helpful. I mean, I’ve heard of it being referred as the fall whiskies and a Heineken search, just kind of thinking, thinking about those, those questions. And at the same time, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk has a famous book called jab, jab hook. So with that, it talks about you You can give me some something for free, something that, you know, my I might value. But at some point, it’s okay to pitch for some business. I want to talk a little bit about that piece like when is it okay to, to have a bit more of a sales or transactional piece within your communication? Is that never is that like 5% of the time? How do you start unpacking that piece? Or, you know, am I am I tackling this on the wrong end saying that is the tactic? And start with your your biggest strategy first?

Tim Slatter
Yeah, absolutely. So, I’ve always been a believer that, you know, when we do things for the right reason, everything else will follow. So, you know, when you follow the vision, pro vision comes after that, and it’s, it’s all about, you know, you have a lot of kind of people talking about a new culture, that we’re moving into a new state of awareness where people are going a lot deeper into the meaning and the emotion behind why we do what we do. You know, it’s a big part of financial transitions, planning as well, and realizing and acknowledging the people behind the money. And, you know, I believe that if you are because I didn’t think you can separate life from money and money from life, I really believe the culture and the world in which we live, the two are linked inextricably. If you want to go for a walk on the beach, in the forest, do something and you think is free, you’ve actually bought that time, haven’t you, you’ve had to earn enough money for you not to be sitting at home working and doing that if you want to get out to dinner, if you want to get an Uber, if you want to drive your own car, all of that has required a foreign financial transaction. And so for me, it’s not necessarily about not pitching the product or the service you’re doing. But it’s about connecting with the people at a life level where it’s an obvious next step, I realize you’re a financial planner, and this is what I need to do in my life. Next, this is what’s just happened to us. It’s been a retrenchment, there’s been an illness, what do we do, and then you would straightaway jump in? Well, we need to assess your medical cover when we need to look at what investments we can cash in to do this or etc. And that’s where your skills just jump in. And if you’ve established yourself as someone that your clients can trust, they’re not going to be looking for key words of the fiduciary nature, you know, that they’re not looking necessarily for offshore investments, or for immigration tactics and stuff like that they thinking Henyk, I need to go be with my parents in Perth, what do we do, and then you can talk them through that journey, and then you would bring in the financial products, and the planning side of it. But that being said, as long as you’ve got a bias in your communication, so a four to one or a six to one of points, where four to six points of communication are lifestyle oriented. And then you’ve got one that is specifically speaking about something that’s going on the market. So something that’s going on as products, you’re gonna create this because it’s it’s a perception thing, this is all about public relations, actually. It’s not a marketing exercise, it’s PR. And as long as that perception there is that I’m here to help you. I’m here to listen, I’m here to understand, then you’ve you’ve got them hooked, right? Because then they know, okay, you’ve got my best interests at heart. If you say we need to buy or sell or move or whatever, we’re going to take it under consideration. But the minute I feel like the bias is to make a sale, then I’m going to be hesitant when you give me advice. Does that answer your question?

Louis van der Merwe
In that, that relationship and that transaction? I mean, you work predominantly with financial planners, and you just mentioned in our life, you can’t decouple money? How did you end up deciding, hey, this is the market I’m going to work with because a lot of financial planners struggle to find the the niche or the in like an American term, the niche like this, who it is that you’re going to be doing? And then does that mean you don’t do this work for anyone else? Talk me through how you ended up here.

Tim Slatter
Cool. So in 2011, I started an online reputation management business. And our goal was just to help small businesses communicate more authentically online, I was coming out of a position as a pastor in a church. And so I was already involved in a community where there were a lot of small business owners, and I got to see the life side of them. I’m not reading the business side of them. And the more I got to know the businesses and seeing how they were showing up online, I saw there was this disengagement and knowing the people and saying, Guys, we can rewrite this for you. We can explain this better. Like there’s there’s some different words we can play around with. And you yourself will feel more engaged with your online brand. I always feel like if you like your online brand, you’re going to share it more right? I spoken to so many advisors who start the conversation with like they say Tim don’t go to our website. because it’s nothing are what we are doesn’t look like us, it doesn’t sound like us, we need to fix it right. But if if your website looks and feels like your message and who you are, you’re going to share it more. And you’re going to use it in meetings with clients, whether they’re virtual meetings, video meetings, or whether they’re in real life meetings. And so, building a brand that helps small businesses engage with their customers, their clients, was really a passion of mine and authentic journey for me. And after about four or five years of doing that, we built a base of about half our clients at that point where financial advisors and it just kind of organic agree that that’s who we were working with,

Louis van der Merwe
how did that happen? Sorry to interrupt you, but like, how did you end up getting home from your time? So financial advisors?

Tim Slatter
They just so I’m trying to thank you. So Terrence Tobin, as I’m sure you know, Terrence, he was one of the

Louis van der Merwe
previous guests, one of the first episodes. That’s right,

Tim Slatter
yeah. So he was an early clients. And he had already started his own websites and newsletter and was just struggling to run it. And I was doing lrm for one of his mates, Sheldon, and Sheldon kind of headsets turns our you should meet him, he can help you do what you’re doing. And then through my existing financial advisor, I started working with his team, because he saw I was doing websites and blogs and newsletters, and he was like saying to his guys, hey, we’ve got to use term because our stuff sucks, like, we’ve got to get it next level, you know, we can be doing a lot more. And then through them, you know, they’d come out of a previous business of being a Liberty franchise, so they had some other tired Liberty agents. And I mean, that’s a whole niche network in themselves, you work with one liberty guy in your name kind of goes around, and everyone starts to engage. So it was really it was it was word of mouth. And, and I think I enjoyed it. And so you know, where your your energy and your intentions go, you know, that’s where things start to flow. So I was attracted to financial advisor, I was attracted to the conversation of making it more life centric, I didn’t know lifestyle, financial planning was a thing back then. All I centered financial planning or any of that, I was ready, just, you know, I thought advisors needed blogs, and RAs and investing tips and stuff like that. And that’s where we started. And after a few months, of creating a content model that was scalable, that could allow them to focus on one on one engagement with clients. So taking, you know, the bulk communication, responsibility and arduous task of trying to stay in touch with 200 clients, or 100 clients or 300 clients every month, we created solutions. And our there could deal with five or six guys who actually were ready to do something, and needed them. And then in 2016, we said we just going to work with financial advisors, because there’s so much that’s huge. It’s like, I just realized, there’s a massive pool and opportunity here. And it was the kind of work I really enjoy doing. It was the content I enjoyed creating. So I jumped headfirst in in 2016. We created what is known as contatto. And contatto is really just Italian for in touch in communication. It’s gonna come and look, I’m not Italian, everyone always asks me Are you Italian? And no, I’m not. And and the whole goal was to create a turnkey solution where if you don’t have a website, we’ll hook you up. If you don’t have blogs, we’ll hook you up. If you don’t have a newsletter, we’ll hook you up. And that forms the base for any social media engagements. And, and that’s how we started working with financial advisors.

Louis van der Merwe
It’s wonderful to hear how your journey is very similar to how we often your businesses grow financial planning, businesses grow, right word of mouth, I don’t need to do much marketing, my clients are all being referred. I don’t have to worry about these marketing tactics or strategies. And, and it sounds like your approach has been similar. How was the communication strategies helped you in building this business that financial planners listening today could say, Aha, okay, you know, I realized that word of mouth is still probably the number one source of new business. But how can I combine that with these communication strategies? So

Tim Slatter
I’ve, I’ve I like to work in threes, right? So I’ve always got these little weird three things, which I should probably think of a better word for that in itself. But let’s let’s go that for now. So there’s the three C’s that I always like to talk about, which is content, community and connection, which is the same way around us talking about your what your why and your who And so when you’re building a business, not just financial planning, we’re not just a communication strategy, you need people that are going to pay you for what you’re doing. You need a community. And I always think about that movie, I think it’s called iRobot, where the dad said to his son see a need for the need. And I always say to my own kids, you know, you don’t have to think, well, I’m going to be a doctor one day, or I’m going to be a financial advisor, I’m going to be a lawyer, whatever it you know, you try and frame these, these lofty goals for your kids and the opposite right

Louis van der Merwe
advisor.

Tim Slatter
Absolutely, I think, I think financial planners and advisors though, one of the most needed professions, you know, in the world, because so many of us just need that sounding board, we need someone, because that’s what I’ve had. I mean, my financial advisor is like a big brother to me. And I posted on LinkedIn the other day that I love my financial advisor, and I genuinely do, you know, I wish I could see him more. And it’s because he’s become so integrated in my life, and my family and I become integrated in his and it’s more than just the planning side, as you know, you get that. And so when you building a business, and you see a need that, that starts to become your wants, and a bit of your why. Because, you know, if I see that there’s a need for people to build houses in my road, I’m not going to jump in there, because I have no interest in building houses. But if I see a need for how that housing development is communicated, and how it’s helping uplift, and whatever, and provide job opportunities, I might jump into the communication that and say, guys, hey, we can help you get this online, we can engage more with your target audiences and get your message out there. So you can have more people engaging with what you’re doing. So you know, your content, your community and your connection are all crucial. And so often, small businesses don’t think intentionally about that they kind of just as it lands, and they let their deal with it. And then they move on to the next thing, and they don’t really strategically craft a journey of who am I speaking to? What do they need? How am I going to tell them how I add value to them. And so what I did in my own business was I saw a need for small businesses to engage and shop authentically online. And that’s, that’s been at the core of what I’ve do from 2011. And if you’ve followed any of my content, the word authenticity comes up quite a lot. And I keep coming back to there because I too, get distracted by the pictures and the videos and how many hits we’re getting? And are we posting frequently enough and the tools can sometimes overshadow the heart behind why we’re doing what we’re doing. And so we got to keep coming back to why do we want to engage? What is that connection? What does it look like? What content is helping me articulate? And who are the people receiving that message? Financial Advisors often say to me, I’ve tried LinkedIn, it doesn’t work. salga cool. Who are you connected to on LinkedIn? How many your clients are just financial planners? So I said, Well, if your financial advisor connected to 300, financial advisors on LinkedIn, you’re not gonna get any business out of that. You know, you’ll learn a lot and you’ll have a wonderful community of guys who can support you and answer questions for you, and maybe give you a job opportunities. But you’re not going to connect finance because you’re not speaking to any prospects. And so, you know, that’s a easy way for guys, they are sheesh community, it’s so important. I always say if you walk into Cape Town station, and you garments promenade there with your business cards as a financial advisor, how much business are you going to get? You know? And I mean, come on this, there’s hundreds of people there, surely, you’re going to get one client, you know, and it’s very easy for buyers to go, nah, that’s the wrong place the wrong people. And now you just apply that to online. So where do you think professional people might be professional people who you’d like to work with who you have a connection to? So whether you’re married to one of them, whether you grew up with one of them, whether you used to be one of them? What does that community look like? And then you’ll be able to see are those the types of professionals that I want to engage with, and you’ll realize that of all the social media platforms, LinkedIn generally is the easiest place to target specific professions, specific people geographically and engage with them. Whereas Facebook and other platforms, it’s very difficult to be specifically targeted to those types of people. It’s easy to find people you went to school with, if you know them by name, it’s easy to find people you studied with worked with. But building a new list of prospects is really tricky. And then once you’ve connected with those people, what do you send them? How do you engage? What does that communication journey look like? So what I do my own business i You know, I started a business, I was creating authentic ways for people to engage and they’re typically look like a website’s regular blogs and newsletter. And then I could start to target I say, financial advisors. I’d love to work with you. I can help you engage with your clients by creating website newsletters. blogs, exactly what I did for my own business and how I grew my own demographic. I am a huge advocate of LinkedIn, as you’ll know, because LinkedIn helped me build my business. And it wasn’t just LinkedIn. I’ve spoken at many events, whether they’ve been webinars, conferences, little chapters of independent brokers, you know, there’s these, these small chapters of 15, to 30. Brokers all over the country, and they are normally geographically centered. And it’s a wonderful way to have some FaceTime with people. And a lot of my clients came from speaking at those events. But those event opportunities typically came from being present online and Guy seeing our Tim’s got this consistent message. He’s consistently saying this, he’s still helping these guys, maybe we need to start listening, maybe we need to invite him. And some of that took three, four or five years. So it took 123 months. So it’s a combination of creating content that your clients can engage with, but also that they can share. Because that then, you know, I always say it’s advisors, you want your clients to talk about you behind your back, then she, because when that happens, and when it’s good stuff, you’re gonna get more clients out of it. But if they don’t hear from you often, and they don’t really have stuff to talk about you, it’s gonna be very difficult. But if you’re sharing blogs that are last are centric that they can share with inside of their networks and social communities. It builds the advocacy around your personal brand. And if the bouncer saying, oh, you know, I’ve worked with Louis for a couple of months, and he’s really helped me simplify my financial plan or understand the transition of my dad passing and what we need to do, you know, you, I’ll send you a message you guys can connect, you can engage, and all of a sudden, you haven’t had to cold call their clients, you haven’t had to nurture that relationship. Someone else has started to build the journey of getting to know like, and trust you on your behalf. And a guarantee when you’re referred to someone because you’re saying just now advisors go, I get word of mouth referrals. 10 years ago, people got a referral, and they would find you. Now they get a referral, and they’re going to Google you. And if you don’t come up with something current, it’s immediately going to put a little black smudge against who you are. They’re like, is this person still legit? Do they still, you know, stop vending machines? Or no, then our financial plans? What are they? Yeah, no, you know, because most people are thinking in their 40s, who have become ideal clients for financial advisors have been burned by a couple of advisors in the early years, and are aware of the sales tactics don’t want to be sold to don’t want to be told what to do with their money. They want to come with their agenda, and they need someone who’s going to give them a brand new experience, not going to ask the same questions I’ve asked before, not gonna offer them the same experience have been offered before. And all of that can be built and prefaced and supported by your online brand.

Louis van der Merwe
It sounds like a lot of this is really managing the expectations of what this communication strategy can do. Right? It’s Oh, you know, we expect sales to run through the door, or we fixate on this vanity metrics, hey, we had 1000 downloads or which doesn’t really mean anything, what’s it? What’s a more valuable way of measuring the success? And what would you put in place to say, Cool, these are realistic outcomes? If you do it right. And, you know, what would be the warning signs that would show you how you are on the right path?

Tim Slatter
Yeah, yeah. So return on investment, or ROI for PR has always been a tricky one. You know, marketing is, is a lot easier to do ROI, because you can put 1020 30,000 into a campaign, and then measure how many people responded and what business that’s translated or converted into. Because marketing is generally campaign driven, whereas PR is lifetime. It’s there the whole time, you’ve got to consistently keep building and I always use the analogy of a bakery. Partly because I love coffee and confectionaries. Italian, ya know, and I often say to my wife, like, all you need is pasta, Pomodoro and red wine, and we’re good to go. So, you know, I love hanging out in coffee shops, I love the vibe, the energy, everything about it. But if I walk into a coffee shop, and the floors are sticky, and the coffee is bitter, and the confectionery is stale, and old, and there’s a fly buzzing around, I’m not going to buy there and I’m never ever going to go back again. You know, but if I walk in there and the windows are clean, and the layout is Kevin Schultz and it’s it’s got good flow and can smell those beans have been freshly brewed, and I can taste the coffee and it’s the right almond milk and it’s the right almond croissants and you know, that all those flavors and things and I can’t wait to come back. You know, that’s kind of what your online brand is like for you advise your clients. If they go to your website and uh Same stuff that we’ve seen if they get a newsletter, that’s the same subject line. If it’s the same three articles in the last two newsletter you send out, if you’re always banging on about the same, you know, Ukraine Russia war, or China’s done this, or Trump stemness, or Rama pauses done this, or Eskom loadshedding, blah, blah, blah, vague, it’s going to start to feel stale. But when it’s always fresh, and it’s consistently thinking out the box, or meeting your clients, you don’t even have to be ridiculously clever. You’ve just like I said earlier, you just got to be authentic. Because if you’re not, if you’re trying to be something you’re not, you’re never going to stain it, right. But if you’re just being who you are, you’re going to track your people. And, and they’re going to stick around with you for whatever your quirks are, who aren’t. And so, inside of measuring the effectiveness of a campaign, you’ve, you’ve got it, I say every practice is different. So some guys don’t ever really hear back from clients through the emails, but they’re getting clients every month saying, oh, we need to do this, we need to do that client. So they maybe haven’t heard from for two years, three years. And all of a sudden, you know, all of a sudden, I say in inverted commas, they, they hear from them. Yeah, but it’s actually because your client keeps getting in a manner from you. And like every month, like I need to do about this, or, you know, we’re having a baby, we need to remember to do this. And then they forget, because that happens. And then six months later, they’re like, oh, let’s move. And it’s not this random event anymore. It’s, it’s something that because you’ve been consistent, you have been top of mind for long enough, then are ready to engage. And so for some advisors, they’ll get responses to emails, and people will be very complimentary, like, Oh, thank you, we loved your newsletter, we love what you said, or is so good to hear from you. For other people, it will be we’d love to book an appointment. I’d like to introduce you to my fiancee, when can we need to can we get her on to my financial plan was ever black. For other advisors, it’ll be reactions and comments on their social media, because that’s where they’re doing well at the moment. For other guys, that might just be increased engagement in WhatsApp, and realizing I’m getting lots more people starting to ask me to do this and engage with me through WhatsApp. And it’s you, you’ve got to set expectations that are based on your original strategic contents. And my kind of feeling on that is to engage more deeply with your clients. And so it’s, it’s, you know, it’s the old quality over quantity. I don’t have to get 100 new clients by the end of the year. But if I’ve been able to sustain and build my business by five 10%, that’s pretty good odds, especially in the current climate

Louis van der Merwe
interview analogy of this coffee shop just reminds me of that golden thread and how important it is to kind of tie it back to the physical experience. Right, someone actually coming to your office, someone experiencing it. I know you primarily focus on the online presence. But how do you connect those two? Like, is it doesn’t make sense to have someone allocated in your business to take responsibility of that? Because I think a lot of financial planners wouldn’t, you know, they get too busy to think about oh, like this golden thread flowing through? Yeah, yeah,

Tim Slatter
absolutely. So, you know, often this is where coaches can be very helpful. Because it’s, it’s a second pair of eyes on your business, that’s objective that sees the things that you don’t see anymore, because they’ve been in front of you for so long, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be because I know a lot of guys are one man shows. It doesn’t have to be someone you employ, if you don’t have the resources to do that. But having someone who’s able to look at your business and go, you know, this is the way you typically email a client and start the journey. And then they arrived at office. And there’s, there’s an incongruence. See here. You can, why don’t you tell tell your clients about the in, in house coffee shop you’ve got or tell them that they can choose what soft drink they want. Or if you’re going to come to their house that you’re going to bring a housewarming gift or something like that. Where that you know, you can start to have surveys and things that are built into your communication journey that say, when we come and visit what would what can we bring you, you know, do you like red wine? Do you prefer a bottle of fancy sparkling water? Can we bring you flowers, you know, those types of things? If you’d like to get out somewhere, do you want to go to a coffee shop? Do you want to come to our offices? Where would you feel more comfortable? You know, and you might even you know, I’ve seen some some great ideas online for advisor office setups, where you know, they’ve got creative tools in the room. They might have guitars they might have drawing and painting and you might say just come in for a creative half hour and we can chat about financial plan. Adding in draw a picture together, or do some adult coloring in books, you know, and guys might think, sheesh, I just needed that half an hour of downtime to relax, to recenter myself to breathe. Before we even start talking about financial planning, because if you’re talking to your clients from a stress perspective, they’re not going to make good decisions. And if you’re overwhelming them with the content you’re creating, again, you’re also going to stress them out. So depending on how creative you are, and the ideas you’ve got for your physical environment, absolutely, you should have that flowing through. So if you’ve got a fancy office, that’s really cutting age, and it’s crisp, and you’ve got all your Apple computers lined up, then that’s the kind of look and feel you’re going to want the online communication. But if you always visit your clients in their lounge at six o’clock in the evening, and you take pizzas through for the whole family and treat them, then that’s the kind of a look in the field that you’re going to want to create online.

Louis van der Merwe
Tim, when you mentioned the guitars that are standing in the in the boardroom, I spotted on LinkedIn. He called himself the Eddie Van Halen of financial planners, right. What he does on LinkedIn is he covers some of the Van Halen songs and he plays guitar in his boat. There’s a gentleman in probably late 50s, early 60s. And he’s built his brand around the fact that he truly enjoys playing electric guitar, and it’s so memorable. You know, Seth Godin tells us about being remarkable and something that people want to remarket. He never talks about what’s going on the markets. It never talks about anything for planning, but out of the 1000s of financial planners that I can picture. I know this guy.

Tim Slatter
Yeah, absolutely. Donald Miller calls at the stickability factor. And it’s what sticks out what stays in people’s memories around who you are. And if you bring that through. And so from a PR perspective, we call it uniformity of branding. And you know, some people fixate on fonts and colors and pictures, which is part of it. But ultimately, what those are trying to do is trying to communicate, what does it look and feel like if I had to meet you in person, if I had to sit with you for an hour, what energy am I going to feel like when I leave, you know, because we are all different. And I love the Enneagram. And I think you and I may have spoken about the Enneagram, once before, but there are people you know who show up as being thinkers for the next thing. And you know, they’ve always got a project on the go, and they’ve got a great idea. There are people who show up as peacemakers, and they’re always just trying to keep everyone in the room healthy and happy. You’ve got people who are really good at sticking to the rules and sticking to the structures and making sure everything’s staying on board the way it should. You’ve got people who just like to observe and listen and see what’s going on in the room. And all of us will either be energized by that, or overwhelmed by that. And again, it comes back to authenticity. It’s It’s knowing who you are. And you know, that’s why I love some of the work that you hadn’t worst season does, because it helps you dive deeper into that. But if you’re building an online brand, and you are communicating regularly with your clients, that information should be articulated through what you’re saying regularly, whether it’s, you know, playing an Eddie Van Halen song in your boardroom, or whether it’s taking baked goods through because you love baking, or whether it’s yeah, whatever your thing is, you’re going to find out that people are attracted to that.

Louis van der Merwe
Think it’s just that showing up authentically, you know, that you that you mentioned where we are trained and so almost ingrained that we have to adapt ourselves. There’s a famous book called The Sales dogs, and it’s like, okay, how do you? How do you change the way you approach someone based on their preferences, but what we’re talking about today is, hey, showing up the way that you normally would not not necessarily hiding behind that, because that’s something someone can connect to. And I’m imagining that’s the third leg of your of your three legged stool, that connection piece.

Tim Slatter
Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I was never a financial adviser myself. But I’ve I’ve sat in enough meetings to know that they are traditional sales approaches that say to fresh, young new advisors in this industry, saying any one of two legs in a wallet is a potential client. And that is not true. That is really damaging and unhealthy. And that’s where you you then try and show up for that person. You try and show up for someone else because you are becoming a comedian. But when you realize that there’s a small group of people who are really going to connect with you and your money, philosophy and need your help, to help them manage their money to manage their lives, and those the people you want to connect with. So when you have those types of expectations and understood Adding, if we come back to what you said earlier about expectations of our online brand, then you realize I don’t need 7000 followers on LinkedIn. I don’t need 6000 followers on Instagram, I only need about 150 to 500 people who are on the same journey as me who get what I want to do. Because then you’re going to love showing up in those spaces. And when you love showing up in those spaces, you’re going to be consistent, and people are going to enjoy what you have to say. And then your message is not just again, it’s not about products and markets. It’s about the latest camera lens. It’s about the latest photography technique. It’s about the latest electric guitar, or have you tried these strings? Or, you know, have you written this bike? Have you done that trail? You know, you got kids, have you tried this YouTube channel for your kids? Have you tried this weekend activity for them. And all of a sudden you connect with their community. And that’s almost where you know, mommy bloggers, and that whole industry, they understand that they are very community driven. And I think when when financial advisors realize that the online communication is community driven, they’ll find it a lot easier to engage in a constructive and a consistent way

Louis van der Merwe
to make comes back for me to, you shouldn’t just be segmenting on age and gender, you should be figuring out what’s important to your clients, and making sure that those things align with you, I’ve had an interesting experience with a few clients where they’ve said to me, in our next meeting, I don’t want to only meet with you please bring your daughter along, I want to meet her. And I want to. And for me, these are people that are in very different life stages that when I am they’re very different age, they have different things going on, but family is important to them. And kind of that, to me in today’s conversation, that becomes clear that we can communicate that and we can celebrate. And we don’t only have to shy away and say oh, that’s not professional, we can’t do that, you know, so thank you I’m connecting.

Tim Slatter
Absolutely, you know, when you when you’re willing to. And another word that’s that’s quite helpful in this conversation is vulnerability, which obviously Brene Brown has helped us understand at a much deeper professional level, no vulnerability often was not the thing to bring into professional conversation. But we realized that we’re going to be authentic, we’re going to have to be a little bit vulnerable as well. And you might find that going to cake cafe with your daughter, and taking a client and their daughter is a wonderful way to spend the morning, hang out with your kids, hang out with clients, get some financial planning done, have a good brekkie do something creative, and not. And for me when we were when I was studying for public relations management, I remember very clearly as learning about culture, and the example that was given was Western versus Eastern. And Western culture was very structured, and you’ve got your hour now for business, and it’s business. And then after that, we’ll do two hours of pleasure or a dinner or a golf game or whatever it looks like. But that didn’t really mix. Whereas in the eastern approach, and the culture was more of, we’re just going to be in this place. And we’ll cover various topics, my family will be present, we might talk about business, we might have a meal together. And it was less structured. And I was always really kind of attracted to that sense of flow and organic engagement. And and that’s what we always try to bring through in the communication strategies that we’re crafting for financial advisors, the blogs that we writing, we try to find these connections between if I start talking about what school I choose for my kids, I can then start to think about well, what are the school fees going to be? What are the extramural opportunities? How do those add to the holistic fulfillment of my child? How’s it gonna affect my family? When my kid comes home from school? How much is it going to cost me every month? What’s the end goal going to be? What opportunities will they have after we’ve been through this experience? That’s a much more holistic way of looking at it, then saying, you know, you shouldn’t be paying more than 6000 Rand a month for school fees, or you shouldn’t be paying less than 6000 Rand a month for school fees. And some people go, Wow, 6000 That’s a heck of a lot of money. How are we going to ever afford that? And then you can open up the conversation of how they can do that. And is it even something they want to afford? Because they don’t actually have to do that there are some other options as well, that can cost them next to nothing. And you know, COVID and lockdown and the explosion of online engagement has made so many other ways to engage available to us so many ways for advisors to engage with their clients, but also to add value to their clients and how they live their lives and run their businesses.

Louis van der Merwe
Tim, thank you for lifting the hood on communication strategies and why it should doesn’t have to be so scary why it doesn’t have to be perfect before you get started? And please, can you share your preferred contact method for people that want to reach out to you to maybe have an additional conversation or take this a little bit further?

Tim Slatter
Absolutely. I’d love to connect over LinkedIn that’s become kind of the cornerstone of mine brand space where people can engage because you can go and have a look at the kind of content we’ve created. You can book an intro meeting straight through my LinkedIn profile as well. And we can take it from there.

Louis van der Merwe
Brilliant. Thank you so much, Tim, and all the best.

Tim Slatter
Thanks, Louis. It’s been great to chat with you today. All the best.