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Steve Wershing:
Welcome to another episode of Becoming Referable, the podcast that helps you be the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Steve Wershing, and on this week’s show, I have the opportunity to interview my cohost, Julie Littlechild. Known as the creator of the Client Audit and for her research on client engagement, Julie has a new book out, Absolute Engagement. It turns out that to get clients better engaged, you need to be engaged yourself, and in Absolute Engagement, she discusses how to be happier, more satisfied, and by doing that be in the top 15% of financial advisors. We’ll talk about the power of big goals. We’ll talk about the importance of audacity and helping you think differently and creatively. We’ll learn the difference between satisfaction and loyalty and what that means in terms of referrals. We’ll talk about the power of having the right clients, doing the right work, and having the right role. It’s a great conversation with some fundamental understandings about how to be in the top 15% of advisors. I hope you’ll enjoy it. Now, on with the show.

Well, Julie, it’s a special treat to talk with you, my cohost, on the show today. I’m especially excited about talking with you because you have a new book out, The Pursuit of Absolute Engagement, Intentionally Design a Business that Supports the Life You Really Want to Live. Congratulations.

Julie Littlechild:
Thank you so much. Honestly, since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to do this. So, I am just a little kid at Christmas excited.

Steve Wershing:
As a kid, you said you wanted to come out with a book about intentionally designing a business that supports the life you really want to live. You were precocious.

Julie Littlechild:
I was just slightly ahead of my time.

Steve Wershing:
I suppose so. I was like that kid on the commercial. I forget who it was, but I want to claw my way up to middle management.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. That was Monster.

Steve Wershing:
That was me as a kid. So, welcome now, to the ranks of published authors. How was the experience for you?

Julie Littlechild:
There was a lot of learning, I tell you that. I always think that writing is my home, my place that I can—it’s not easy for me, but I get into a bit of a flow. I loved the fact that I could go a little broader with the messages that I was trying to send out. I really enjoyed the writing process. Then, of course, I started to learn about all the details of actually getting published and printed and all of that, and there’s a lot to learn, but I feel so much smarter now.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. It’s one of those where it sounds really appealing and it sounds like a fun project, and then, just like anything else, you get involved in it. Oh, there’s these 700,000 details that I didn’t know about. Let’s get into the content of the book. Now, I know that some people could be a little bit confused about what the book is about because you’re known for writing about client engagement, and this is actually something beyond that, isn’t it?

Julie Littlechild:
It is. I would say it’s built off the foundation of client engagement. It’s not a complete change, but really for so many years, just as you say, I spent all of my time researching and talking about client engagement. I would have probably told you that if anybody asked me, what’s the secret to success? I would have focused on client engagement. I still think, as important as it is, really what happened in my own journey and the research I was doing and the people that I was speaking with in the industry is that I pulled the camera back, if you will, and looked at a broader perspective on success. I began to realize that it wasn’t just client engagement, but it was client engagement in the context of deeper personal engagement and of course it related to team engagement. The most successful people that I saw, and I define success in a certain way, but the successful people that I saw really had this alignment between personal, client and team engagement. They were all connected. Those things together, to me, that’s absolute engagement.

Steve Wershing:
So, tell me a little bit about the experience of discovering that. You were interviewing advisors as a follow up to some of the research you had done about client engagement. What kinds of things did you start hearing in those interviews that gave you the idea that there was something more going on?

Julie Littlechild:
It was what I heard and what I observed, in a way, and sometimes it’s the things that weren’t stated. I kept looking at people that I just considered incredibly successful and I saw that it wasn’t just that the business was growing. It wasn’t just that they were doing well financially, but there seemed to be almost a lightness or a joy in the way that they were going about their business. They almost made it look easy. The business itself was going from success to success, but there was just something very different in the way they talked about it, in the way they built the business, in the way they were living their lives. They were doing some extraordinary things outside of business. Then, at the same time, I was going through my own personal journey where I began to think about what kind of business I wanted, and all of these things just seemed to come together to say there’s something more here. There’s something more about success than just saying, here’s the three tactics you can apply in your business and what people are really experiencing. Being a researcher, I wanted to understanding it, so I went and did the quantitative research afterward.

Steve Wershing:
Interesting. Can you tell us a little bit more about that journey that you were going through? I know most of our listeners are entrepreneurs as well, so I suspect that your journey would be relevant to them. What was going on with you when you were going through these interviews that clued you in that there may be something more for you and for everybody in this?

Julie Littlechild:
I think I got old. I think that’s the problem.

Steve Wershing:
You’re not allowed to say that, because you’re still a lot younger than me.

Julie Littlechild:
Well, I had built a business. Like a lot of folks, I had sold the business and I had sold it for quite personal reasons. My son was born and I decided I wanted a different sort of lifestyle. At any rate, I went through that process. I went out on my own again after that was all finished, and I just got right to work. What kind of products can I get out there? I found myself going through almost the same process in a different way. There’s a concept in the book that I talk about called the crystallization of discontent. It’s a concept that I really love. A guy named Baumeister coined this term. I got to this point where I realized that I was on a path that was okay, and it might lead to some decent financial success, but that there was something missing. It was a moment, and I do remember a moment where I really asked myself what it is that I wanted to do.

It sounds almost trite to say that, but I did. I sat back and I looked forward. I joke about age, but there’s an element of that. I began to say, what do I want to do with this next phase? If I could create it instead of just reacting all the time, if I could get that whiteboard and really map out what I want it to look like, and if I had the courage to make those changes, what would I do? Over time, I wouldn’t say it was immediate, but it became very clear for me that it was about speaking and training and writing. Those were the components of the business that I loved. So, I made a decision to change my business at that point.

Steve Wershing:
Interesting. We’ll get to what absolute engagement is in just a minute, but do you think that, if an advisor were to pursue this and do this process of discovery, how big a change do you think would be involved in the business? In their business, in their individual business.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. I think it depends on where they’re at, of course. I have talked to advisors who made a complete change. I mention a guy named Jason Butler in the book who was a partner in a successful firm in the UK. He went through his own journey of self-discovery, and he sold his share in the business. He didn’t leave the industry. He just wanted to do slightly different things within the industry. That was a huge change. That was a complete change. I talk about Rita Robbins, who’s an advisor and good friend. She didn’t change her business. She’s running a very successful business, but she invested in a lavender farm and started to look at some outside interests that she could really be more creative in. Then, I talked to most advisors who just need to tweak things. That might be working with a different target audience. It might be taking on a different role on the team. There are so many things that could contribute to that, but I see this more likely as a tweak to an existing business model rather than a wholesale change in your life. Unless you actually have always dreamt of becoming a yoga instructor, and this is the opportunity, there’s a pretty good chance you’re just going to tweak what you’re doing.

Steve Wershing:
Okay. Define for us what absolute engagement is.

Julie Littlechild:
There’s a couple ways to look at it. I call the book the Pursuit of Absolute Engagement because I do see it as something that is ongoing. The book, however, is centered around a group of advisors we call the absolutely engaged, and this really emerged from the research. The definition of this, the thing that these advisors were doing differently was really around building a business around what they were personally passionate about. They said they worked with exactly the right clients and they built a business around that. They did exactly the work they wanted to be doing, and they built a business around that. And they played the role that they wanted and should play on the team. What we found is that this group of just 15% of advisors who were doing those three things differently, there was incredible impact. From a data perspective, we isolated the people who said they were living their ideal in those three areas; client, work, and role.

Then, we began to look at the impact. What we saw was, in some ways, I expected and some ways really surprised me. They were generating more revenue. They were more focused on the right activities. They worked fewer hours. They took more time off, but the thing that really struck me is, they also reported better health. They reported higher energy, lower stress. The only thing that was different about them was the way that they structured their business, around the right clients, the right work, the right role. I thought that was pretty amazing that those three things could create such significant impact in our lives. Not just our businesses. These are the absolutely engaged. The definition is that they’re doing those three things. However, what we then began to look at is the way in which they approach their businesses more broadly, and we could identify some additional trends there.

Steve Wershing:
For those of us who look at CEOs and look at leaders, it’s interesting, but not terribly surprising that when you find the right work and you find it more rewarding personally, that you do make more money, have more success, have less stress. I don’t personally find that terribly shocking, but a lot of people who are down in it might feel that way, right?

Julie Littlechild:
Well, I think you’re exactly right. I don’t think that viscerally, if we said that, anybody would find it that surprising. The difference is, how do you do it? Once you’ve figured out what that passion is, the big difference with these people is that they actually took action. I think that’s the fundamental difference.

Steve Wershing:
Right. Now, what you’re talking about the right clients, I think everybody would understand that that’s going to be unique to each firm. When you talk about doing the right work and the right role and the right team, those are not necessarily the same from firm to firm, right?

Julie Littlechild:
Absolutely, and I don’t think the right clients are. So, this is about the kind of work or the kind of clients you’re passionate about, that you care about, that inspire you, that are also financially rewarding. It’s really about getting very specific on what those things are.

Steve Wershing:
Let’s break it down. I know that you have three principles to move towards absolute engagement and five steps. Do you want to tell us briefly what the three principles are? And let’s start taking a look at what the individual steps are.

Julie Littlechild:
Sure. So, the three principles are these. The first is that personal vision drives business vision. Rather than the other way around, we begin with a personal vision for your future and then translate that into a business vision. That’s the first principle. The second is that the client and team experience are then tailored to support that. Rather than looking at those things in isolation, they’re influenced by that personal and business vision in a very meaningful way. Then, the third principle really acknowledges that you’re human, which might be a shock, I realize.

Steve Wershing:
It may not be universally true.

Julie Littlechild:
I don’t want to say. It really just is, look, if you’re going to build a business around this personal vision, if you’re going to have the courage to take action on this, you’ve also got to give yourself space to breathe. You’ve got to give yourself room to be creative. You’ve just got to acknowledge that side of your life and how connected that is with your ability to succeed. Those are the three principles.

Steve Wershing:
Let’s talk about the personal vision for a minute. This is, I think, where it starts getting challenging. It’s conceptually easy, but when you talk with advisors who have developed a personal vision or as you have developed your own, can you give us some ideas of what they sound like? Or what they look like? Or what goes into a personal vision?

Julie Littlechild:
The reality is, that could be a much bigger definition than I include in the book as well. So, personal vision, if we really looked at it in its entirety, would involve what you’re trying to accomplish in the world, a lot of different sorts of things. What I try to do is drive it down to the components of personal vision that are directly related to how you structure the business. That is where clients, work, and role come in. So, the personal vision is about a deep understanding of the clients that energize and inspire you, a deep understanding of the kind of work that you love to do, and a deep understanding of the role that you really should be playing on the team. That becomes the personal vision and awareness of those three things.

Steve Wershing:
Okay. Now, with those three principles in mind, what are the five steps that you need to go through to work toward absolute engagement?

Julie Littlechild:
What we did is break this down into the five steps. It just struck me. I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about this, but one of the things—sorry to digress for moment—but that I mentioned in the book and discovered in writing the book is this concept of ikigai. It’s a Japanese term. I read this research and it was based around Okinawa. It’s one of those communities where they have the highest percentage of 100-year-old-plus, a blue zone. They don’t have a word for retirement. Ikigai is that which you wake up for. This notion of life and work integration, this notion of getting a handle on what you love to do, that for me was just an interesting way of thinking about personal vision, because it’s all about what you get up to do in the morning. What gets you bouncing out of bed? Again, I digress. That is the first step, which is awareness.

The five steps are really these. It’s awareness, audacity, action, accountability, and renewal. We wanted to find a way to dig in and say, all right. This concept of absolute engagement sounds good. The research suggests there’s all sorts of positive outcomes if I can do it. So, how do I actually go about it? Awareness is the first step, and that’s really about that personal vision piece. It also struck me as, the more I talk to people about these steps and the more I listen really carefully to what they’re telling me is that we all fall down at different stages. Some things are just harder. Some people grapple with the very first step. With some, it’s the last step. We all have different barriers that get in the way at different times. That’s why I think it’s so important to break it down into these five steps so that we can be aware of what our challenges are.

Steve Wershing:
Early in the process, you talk about having goals and how that can lead to change. Can you talk to us a little bit about how to put those goals together or what kinds of goals you’re talking about?

Julie Littlechild:
What I’ve suggested is, that really starts with the first step, which is awareness. I almost try to separate the specific goals from the first step, because so often what we do, I think, is we go right from, here’s what I’d like to do. Therefore, I’m going to build a business around this. We can actually talk ourselves out of things before we even get a chance to bring it to life. Awareness as the first step, for me, is just without editing yourself, without questioning yourself, and without trying to say, this is what it means for the business, just get real on the clients that you’d love to work with and the work that you’d love to do and the role that you should be playing. Talk yourself through that process. I’ve got some exercises in the book. Just allow yourself to think. I say in the book that this is where possibility lives, because it’s really about understanding what kind of insights you can learn about yourself that will inform that business vision. It’s a bit of navel gazing, in a way, but that’s, I think, the first step.

Steve Wershing:
Let’s talk about the power of having something big, because I’ve met this with advisors before. I’ve been in client advisory boards where the advisory board evaluated the advisor’s plan, and the plan was, we want to increase our business by 15% next year. Now, this particular board was populated by a whole bunch of corporate executives. So, at least one of them looked at it and said, if I look at the trend, 15% is the trend line. It sounds like it’s not much of a goal, because if you did nothing, you’d continue on that thing. Can you talk to us a little bit about the power of having a big goal and what that can do for you?

Julie Littlechild:
Absolutely. In terms of the five steps, first of all, that to me is the step two. That is saying, now that I have a sense of what I’m passionate about, how do I translate that into a goal? That’s where I think that concept—the research that really underlies a lot of this is from Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, and they wrote one piece called New Directions and Goal Setting that was the fundamental piece there. What they found is essentially this. As long as you’re committed to a goal, as long as you have the ability to attain, there’s no substantial barriers in your way, that there’s a positive relationship between the difficulty of a goal and your ability to succeed. Essentially, the bigger the goal, the more likely you are to succeed than setting small goals. That’s part one, I think, of what we saw. The other thing is this. If your goal is to grow by 10 or 15%, the things that you have to do are different than if you set a goal to grow by 500% over a period of time. Or to work with a different client base. Or have a different business.

So, quite literally, if you don’t set that goal up, because it will influence how you act, you’re never going to get there. You just won’t do the right things because the requirements of getting to 10 to 15% are different. There’s an advisor in Australia, Jonathan Hoyle, and I talk about him in the book. To me, he was a great example, because what he said is, they got together as a group and they set these massive, audacious goals for their future, and what that meant is, they had to hire different people. They had to look at different office space. They had to think very differently about the business and that never would have happened with a small goal or an incremental goal.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. I may get this wrong, but I think it’s Peter Diamandis who is in Silicon Valley, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. When he talks to people who are coming to him for venture funding, he’s known for asking questions like, here are our 10-year goals, and he would ask something like, okay, great. How would you accomplish them in the next six months? I think this is what you’re getting at, is that if an incremental change just means little tweaks to the system, you are not going to start creatively thinking unless you start thinking massive. Unless you start thinking, the way we do it can’t work.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Wershing:
So, now I have to think of something new and without that, you’re not thinking of something new. It’s a little like Larry Page from Google, I think, says, if you set a ridiculously high goal and pursue it, it’s almost impossible to fail, because even if you miss the goal by 50% or 70%, you’ve still achieved something big.

Julie Littlechild:
Absolutely, yeah. That’s the kinds of goals that we’re talking about here, which is really, they’re quite fundamental, if you think about it. There’s no way you’re going to stumble across a change in target market or a change in the work you do or your offer or your role. You won’t drift toward that. You’ve got to make some substantive change.

Steve Wershing:
Right, or think about having so many clients that you can’t possibly do it yourself anymore. Or having so much work that you can’t possibly just have a couple of generalists on your staff, or that you can do it with the same technology. Whatever it is, unless you really think dramatically different, you cannot have any kind of a breakthrough there.

Julie Littlechild:
Absolutely, and it’s a wonderful freeing visioning exercise to just think about what that might be.

Steve Wershing:
And talking about visioning, you mentioned in the book Simon Sinek, who I love and who wrote the book Start with Why, and has probably the second or third most viewed Ted talk of all time. He talks about getting to that vision and getting to what’s behind the vision. Can you talk a little bit about that aspect of it?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. I believe that a lot of us set goals that just sound right and that we’re supposed to set, especially when you’ve been in the business a long time. That’s where goals like I want to grow by 10% come. It just sounds logical. But if you really dig in and understand what it is that truly inspires you, it will often set you in a different direction. Again, if we think about in the context of what we talk in the book about which clients truly inspire you, there’s a reason for that. There’s a reason and a why behind why someone wants to work with business owners or why someone wants to do a certain type of work and doesn’t really care who their target market it. If you really peel back the onion, there’s an important why there. There’s something that is inspiring. If we can figure that out and then build the business around that, you can just imagine how much it takes off, the kind of momentum that you create.

Steve Wershing:
Right. I think that Sinek’s message is so applicable in our space. What he says is, people don’t do business because of what you do. They do business with you because of why you do it. I think that’s such an important part of your book, is because 100 years ago, when I started in this business one of the things I learned in sales class was that sales is really nothing more than the transfer of enthusiasm. Sorry for all of you NAPFA members who just recoiled when I said the word sales, but if you seriously want to attract clients and referrals, then you really have to have that passion for what you do. Helping people quantify their goals and getting on a systematic path to achieve them so you can achieve peace of mind does not convey any passion at all, that you really have to get down underneath that and into something deeper, right?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, and the problem is, the way it’s structured, you may not be feeling it and you may not be articulating it because it’s not there, and that’s a provocative thing to do, to really examine why. One of the really simple tests I talk about in the book, which is around target market, I call the authenticity test. This is as basic as you get, but I find it really helpful. That is just this. Imagine that you’ve got a whiteboard in front of you and it just says, at, insert name of firm here, at my firm, we work with clients who…and just describe who it is you work with. The second part of that sentence is, the reason we work with, insert clients here, is because…so, at my firm we work with first-generation business owners. The reason we work with first-generation business owners is because…if you can say that sentence and say it out loud and have it sound engaging and something that you truly care about, then you’re on the right track. If it sounds like, at my firm we work with pre-retirees who have between $250,000 and $500,000 in investable assets, it’s hard to get excited about that. That may be part of your definition of the clients you work with, but it’s not an authentic why. Once you’ve got that as you say, it’s an amazing thing, but it also allows you to communicate in a completely different way.

Steve Wershing:
True, and it’s not a why at all. I think this is an important point to bring out, that if you describe your ideal client partly in terms of how much they have to invest, that’s not a target market. That’s a qualification criteria. That’s an acceptance criteria. That’s not a description of the client. There’s nothing meaningful you can say if all you know is their investable assets. Like you said, you can’t really be passionate about that.

Julie Littlechild:
And sometimes, I think you need to—I suggest that people take that whiteboard they had in their mind and then make it a welcome sign on your door. Imagine that that was the only thing somebody could read about you, and I’m the prospect. Do I bound through that door going, this is going to be epic? This dude works with pre-retirees with $500,000, and this is amazing. I can’t believe he understands me so well.

Steve Wershing:
You work with people who has $2 to $5 million? You’re exactly the person I was looking for.

Julie Littlechild:
Exactly. We’ve got to flip it around. It’s your why, but that why has to be compelling to others. If it’s not, then we’ve got a disconnect.

Steve Wershing:
In terms of developing that vision and getting in that direction, can you talk to me a little bit about taking risks and going out on a limb for part of this?

Julie Littlechild:
Well, I think the entire process speaks to a bit of personal risk and a bit of professional risk. I can tell you this. The biggest obstacle that I run into, the biggest challenge for people is often not the business risk. It’s the personal. It’s opening our minds to possibility. It’s about having the courage to say, all right, now that I know what I really love and what I really want, am I going to have the courage to actually now define my business that way? Or am I going to listen to the voices in my head that tell me that’s selfish to think of myself? What about the family? Am I going to see a dent in income? I’m responsible for everyone and everything in this world. Maybe that’s just me.

When you say the word risk, the first thing that comes to my mind is just what feels like a personal risk, because you’ve got to be open, a little vulnerable, and really authentic about what you want if you’re going to make this work. Now, at the end, assuming we can get through that challenge, there’s some professional risk, as it were. There’s a process that we need to go through here. If I decide I’m going to change my target audience, probably I don’t do that tomorrow. Probably I do some analysis to figure out what impact this is going to have, maybe I just start accepting new clients who meet the criteria. Maybe over time I start transferring clients who don’t. There are ways to mitigate that risk, and I think that’s just execution. I think the bigger question is the personal risk.

Steve Wershing:
But, I think that we should think hard about that, because what I’ve seen sometimes is advisors who say, I really want to work with, and then describe an ideal client because they have this really mixed-up client base with all different kinds of people in it, and say, I’ll just gradually work toward that. On some level, that’s really just a recipe for not taking action on it, that they never actually get there. It’s like the people who say, I want to start in the business part-time. Anybody who says that to me is basically immediately off the radar, because you know that they’re not going to do it.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, and I think there’s two reasons to say it’s going to be gradual, and one is valid and one is not. If it’s, this is just a way for me to delay the inevitable, then I think you’re exactly right. You’ve got to make a bold choice and decision. The decision, I think, needs to be bold. The execution does depend to some extent on circumstance. I’m not saying delay, but for example, if we had someone who had five kids at home all in private school and legitimately felt that if they did a change tomorrow, it would create disruption in the family versus perhaps doing it over a 12-month period, then I can buy that. There are real reasons that we have to do things at a different pace, with the caveat that if the decision has been made, there’s a clear timeline, there’s a clear process in place. Otherwise, I think you are exactly right. We just don’t do anything.

Steve Wershing:
I think it’s really important as part of that to, even if you’re not going to make the change tomorrow, that you need to pick a date, that you need to put a stake in the ground to say, one year from today, two years from today, whatever it is, we will only be accepting clients like this. Or, we will aim all of our marketing material toward this. Or, we will reorient our website toward this, because again, you get into the gradual thing, and you end up not getting anywhere.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. That requires that you reconnect with that why pretty regularly. We’re never going to make any of these changes if we don’t believe that it’s going to have some significant impact. That’s why I did the research around the book first, is to say, look, I could talk all I want about having a vision and telling you my story and it all sounds nice. But at the end of the day, we have to know this is going to have a substantive impact. Otherwise, it scares us. So, that’s again, where that research came in was saying, look. We’ve got this group of people. They’ve made these changes in different ways, but they’ve made these changes and look at them now. The businesses are bigger. They feel better. They feel more energized.

Steve Wershing:
Well, we’re running a little bit tight on time, but there was at least one thing I wanted to make sure that we talked about, just because it is your background and where you come from. I also think it’s a really important message, and that’s about the difference between—we talk about involving clients in this and what being absolutely engaged will mean to your clients as well as to you and your business. Part of that is the difference between satisfaction and loyalty. Can you talk a little bit about what you’ve unearthed there?

Julie Littlechild:
Absolutely. I believe one of the ways we move from satisfaction to deeper engagement actually starts with defining that target client, because it’s very difficult to define an engaging experience for a hundred different types of people. You end up going to the lowest common denominator. That’s what we’ve been doing, largely. How often do I meet? Do I run a couple of educational things each year? You do the right things, but they’re not personalized. They’re not tailored to that target audience. So, a lot of what we talk about in the book is, all right. Now that I’ve got that vision, how do I bend the client experience around that? I do believe very strongly that it starts with involving the client, as you said.

We need to leave assumption at the door and go to clients and not just ask, how are we doing? I think that’s important as a benchmark, but get them talking about what great looks like. Get them talking about what an extraordinary experience would feel like. Involve them in defining that so that you can sit down and craft a client journey that truly reflects what they consider to be extraordinary. It’s gathering feedback, but in particular it’s gathering a different type of feedback, input into what this client experience should really look like. That to me is the starting point on the client experience side.

Steve Wershing:
I think that gets right to the core of the podcast. If you want to become referable, you need to have that passion behind what you’re doing, because that will drive that loyalty. That will generate some of that passion within the clients. Creating a client experience that reflects that passion is fundamentally different than just trying to do something that’s “white glove service” or something like that. Can you tell me a little bit more about how that passion translates into a totally different kind of client experience?

Julie Littlechild:
Now, what you have the ability to do is tailor that client journey in a way that’s specific to the needs and wants and interests of that group. Instead of just saying, I can work with business owners, what you’re doing is building every piece of the business to support business owners, or whatever the target is. Now, what you can do is create communications that are specifically tailored. You can hire a team that shares that passion. You can run events that are exactly right for these kinds of people. What you begin to do is create a client experience that truly is an experience. It’s something unique. It’s something that reflects who I am as your client and what’s important to me.

I believe that these are the things that then lead us to refer, either to invite other people in, or to create an experience that is so compelling and so engaging and has the opportunity to involve other people that I do naturally refer more often. Of course, it becomes much easier to refer not just naturally, but if you’re targeting business owners and you’re running events that are specifically targeted to business owners just to give a simple example, it’s very easy to see why it would be easy to get these people to invite their business owner friends along, because it’s so specifically tailored, if that makes sense.

Steve Wershing:
You talk about actually creating a map for the journey through that experience, right?

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. When we’re doing client experience work, we like to walk through a few steps. One is involving the clients to define great and to define extraordinary. First, we’ve got to lay a foundation, but beyond that, creating a client journey map really says, what would extraordinary look like at each phase of the relationship? From before you meet the client through the initial contact, through on boarding, through the reviews and education and appreciation. Really looking at the experience through the eyes of the client at each stage. The other piece of a journey map is that it looks at different types of communication. For example, if we took initial contact, if I call your office and I get this wonderful, warm person on the other end of the phone who says, we just can’t wait to see you, and we’ve worked with people just like you. How do you like your coffee? Or whatever it is that that person does, I might feel incredible. If I go on the website and I fill in a form and it says, thanks for your note. We’ll be in touch in 48 hours, I have a completely different initial contact experience. We’re looking for consistency as well across the different points of contact. Those two things combined create a journey map. It’s a great exercise.

Steve Wershing:
You reminded me of the importance of this. I remember talking a long time ago, actually I think you were there, when we did a group discussion, I think, for FPA about this. I remember one of the advisors was saying that most of his referrals actually come from his assistants. Or the assistants are the ones who get the clients to refer, because he would be in a meeting with the client, and there would be an assistant or a paraplanner there. He would leave the room to do something, and the para would say, we just love working with people like you. We just love working with people just like you. The opportunity for really good targeting and a niche experience to create that kind of thing is so much more powerful.

Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. It’s interesting.

Steve Wershing:
I wanted to ask you also about the issue of active versus passive loyalty. This is something that I heard another interview recently with Rohit Bhargava who wrote a book called Likeonomics, about people who are actively loyal and are more likely to refer and people who are passively loyal, meaning they will continue doing business with you because the economics of switching are more than they would want to have to go through. The difference both, what may happen when the circumstances change, the market goes down, robos get more popular and less expensive, whatever, but that might flip the switch and lower the barriers. Can you talk a little bit about all of the components of this process and its effect on active versus passive loyalty?

Julie Littlechild:
The basis of the engagement research that we’ve done focuses on these different segments, two of which are content versus engaged. The fundamental difference between the two is just as you point out. Content clients are the ones that are very satisfied, wouldn’t say a bad word about their advisor, but they’ve never provided a referral, whereas the engaged are even happier statistically with the relationship, but they provide all the referrals. That’s the core definition of passive versus active as it relates to the segmentation. The problem is, we look at these as one group, and we call them all satisfied. Satisfaction doesn’t necessarily, well doesn’t at all really, drive referrals. Engagement does, because it’s a deeper, more active relationship. Definitionally, it’s important that we understand who those active clients are and understand the client experience that they’re receiving and what’s different about it. This also kind of ties into a slightly different definition of active versus passive that we use in the book, which is around the experience itself and client appreciation, for example.

The notion that a lot of us do client appreciation, which is quite passive, and it’s not bad. It’s just passive. Sending someone an invitation to an event or an article, things that are nice but really don’t create an engagement, don’t necessarily lead to a difference. Whereas what I’m seeing is a more active experience. If we looked at appreciation, for example, that might be helping me teach my kid about making good financial decisions. Or something where you’re actually helping me make a change in my life. That to me is active appreciation, active education. I think those are the kinds of things that drive engagement and ultimately drive referrals, because I’ll talk about that to people. I don’t usually say I went to this nice wine and cheese last night, but I do say, my advisor had my son in—not mine, because he’s seven, but an older kid in to talk about finances and credit cards and decisions they need to be making. That’s powerful stuff.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah. Well, Julie, there’s so much more in this book that we could talk about and so much more that advisors could get out of this, but we are sort of out of time. Tell us, where can we find the book?

Julie Littlechild:
It’s on our site, which is AbsoluteEngagement.com/book, and there is information there. You can download the first chapter to take a sneak peek. Or, of course, you can buy it right there on the site.

Steve Wershing:
Excellent. Well, the book is The Pursuit of Absolute Engagement, Intentionally Designing a Business that Supports the Life You Really Want to Live. Julie, thanks for spending a little while talking with us about it. I hope that your experience on the road helps you inspire lots of advisors to become absolutely engaged.

Julie Littlechild:
Thank you. It was great talking to you about this.

Steve Wershing:
Yeah, it was fun to talk with you about it, too. Take care.

Hey, folks. Steve again. Thanks for joining us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing, please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It really helps. You can get all the links, show notes, and other tidbits from these episodes at BecomingReferable.com. You can also get our free report, Three Referral Myths that Limit Your Growth, and connect with our blogs and other resources. Until next time, so long.