Participants:
Steve Wershing
Julie Littlechild
Steve Sanduski
Julie Littlechild:
Welcome to Becoming Referable, the podcast designed to help you become the advisor people can’t help talking about. I’m Julie Littlechild. Today, Steve and I are thrilled to be speaking to Steve Sanduski. Now if you’re a fan of podcast, you probably already know Steve for the three, count them, three great podcasts he delivers to this industry. Now, it’s fair to say that Steve wears a few hats. He is the co-founder and CEO of ROL Advisor, which is a software and training company for financial advisors. He works directly with many top advisors to help them run a more effective businesses. He’s a speaker, and workshop facilitator.
He also brings these very deep insights from past roles in the mid-1990s, Steve helped launch and build a multi-billion dollar AUM, RIA for 11 years in the 2000s, he was the managing partner of PEAK Advisor Alliance, which is now Carson Group Coaching. So we talked to Steve about what it really takes to excel in this industry. He takes a really interesting journey that focuses at first glance on how the famous runner, Eliud Kipchoge, and you’ll know him for breaking the sub 2-hour marathon barrier, but Steve ties what it took to do that directly back to the lessons that we can learn about doing great things in our businesses.
With that, let’s get straight to the conversation with Steve. Steve, welcome to the podcast. So happy to have you here.
Steve Wershing:
Welcome, Steve.
Steve Sanduski:
Yes. Well, I am excited to be here. It’s great to have a conversation with you two. I’ve known both of you for a number of years now. I’m a big fan of the podcast, so it’s a real thrill for me to be on the show.
Julie Littlechild:
Thank you. I know you’re used to asking the questions, but we’ve got you in the hot seat today, so you’re ours for the next 30 minutes.
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah.
Steve Wershing:
That’s right.
Steve Sanduski:
The tables are turned.
Steve Wershing:
That’s right. You’re on the other side of the microphone today my friend.
Steve Sanduski:
That’s right.
Julie Littlechild:
Hey look, I’ve got a ton of questions to ask you, but can you just start by telling us a little bit about the business and the work that you’re doing with advisors?
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah. So, I would say the simplest way to describe what I do is I’m in the business of helping financial advisors be more successful. There’s really three ways that I do that. One is through one on one business coaching. So I work directly individually with advisors or partners, and on one-on-one business coaching. Second is I do media, and content marketing work. So in addition to the podcast that I host for my business, I also host several other shows, or co-host those shows, and we do content marketing, blogging on their behalf as well.
Then the third piece is I co-founded a software business with my business partner, Mitch Anthony. Company is called, “ROL Advisor,” which stands for Return On Life Advisor. So I run that business on a day to day basis. What we do there is we’ve created a series of digital tools for financial advisors that help them become life-centered planners as opposed to money-centered planners. Then we’ve wrapped marketing support around that. We’ve wrapped training around that, and it’s been a great business that we’ve had going here, pretty much under the radar for the past couple years or so. So that’s been very exciting. So yeah, so ultimately, all about helping advisors be more successful in three different ways that I do that.
Steve Wershing:
Steve, you mentioned that you have a podcast. We should let everybody know, it’s the Between Now and Success Podcast. It’s fabulous. Everybody should listen to it. I love a lot of the stuff you do on there.
Steve Sanduski:
Appreciate that. Thank you.
Julie Littlechild:
It’s interesting too how as you’ve been working with advisor, some of these opportunities have emerged I guess as you start talking about content and media. I guess that created an opportunity where advisors are looking for a lot more support. I wanted to really focus in on some of the fundamentals. I read everything I can get my hands on that you’ve put out, because one of the things I really love about your work, I mean, I find it really thoughtful first of all, and I appreciate that, but I love how you bring in outside insights and experience, and then really connect the dots to our industry. I just find it incredibly interesting.
I was intrigued by one of the articles that you wrote recently, which on the surface was about when Kipchoge broke the sub 2-hour marathon barrier. That was what you wrote about, but what you really found was some incredible connections between how he and Nike prepared for that run, and how advisors can build referable businesses. So I thought it might be interesting to just structure some of our talk around that, because there were so much in there.
There was this five-step process that. So first of all, can you just tell us what those five steps are, and then maybe we can dig into some of them.
Steve Sanduski:
The five steps that Nike went through, or how I related those to what we’re doing?
Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, just overall and then maybe we can peel back the onion, and deep dive into each of them.
Steve Sanduski:
Sure. Yeah, so I’ve got a little background in running myself back in high school and in college. I took a little bit of an interest in what Kipchoge, and Nike and any of those we’re trying to do here to break that sub 2-hour marathon. As I did some research around it, I discovered that they really went through a whole process, and I really identified five steps in the process that they went through to try and break this 2-hour barrier. The first thing that they did was they had to find the right athletes, okay? So they had to select who are the athletes that even have the potential to break a 2-hour marathon. That was step one for them.
The second was they really had to create an environment that made it as easy as possible to break that record. So things like the course that they chose, the set-up, the weather, the location, those types of things was number two. Third of course was training. What kind of training plan do we need to put in place that is going to give this athlete the highest probability of breaking the 2-hour marathon. Fourth was nutrition and hydration. Of course, if you want to be a great athlete, you’ve got to eat the right foods, you’ve got to hydrate, you measure all these things to know for your particular body what is the nutrition and hydration formula, and timing that’s going to work best for you.
Then fifth was, and this is where Nike played a huge role was in the equipment. The running shoes that you use, the clothing that you wear, those types of things that can reduce even if it’s a fraction of a percent increase your efficiency, because if your equipment over the course of 26-miles, that can make a huge difference. So I really looked at those five steps that Nike went through, and realized that there’s really a corollary to what advisors do in each of those five steps.
Steve Wershing:
Yeah, and so you started with, and you said Nike started with athlete selection. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Then how you translated that into what it means for advisors?
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah, so Nike, they really started with a list of hundreds of distance runners, many of whom that they had worked with over the years, and they, based on some analysis, they narrowed it down to a list of about 18 runners, and then they invited those 18 to come to Nike’s headquarters. They did a variety of different tests with them, and then as part of that, they ultimately chose three of those athletes to try and break the sub 2-hour marathon. That was back in 2017 was the first time they tried, and they identified three of those 18.
So really went through a thoughtful process to identify who are the ones that we think are capable. Then from those, let’s narrow it down to an even smaller number that we think really are the ones that can make this happen.
Julie Littlechild:
So you relate that to team in the article. Can you talk about how that connects for advisors?
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah. So just like Nike was trying to select the athletes that had the highest probability of breaking the 2-hour marathon, advisors have to do the same thing in terms of building their team. They’ve got to identify who are the candidates that we think are going to be the best fit for our organization that are going to be able to do the kind of work that we need them to do to be successful here. I think there’s a direct correlation there between Nike trying to find the best runners, and advisors or any business for that matter trying to find qualify higher and train the best people for the jobs that they have available.
Julie Littlechild:
Huge challenge, right? I mean, you talked about on your team how was that you, everybody needs to be at least an 8 out of 10 or something, I think you said, but and I’m a 7.4 so it’s a bit of a problem.
Steve Sanduski:
We’ll have to work on that, Julie.
Julie Littlechild:
some coaching.
Steve Wershing:
We’ll get you some Nike shoes for that.
Steve Sanduski:
There you go.
Julie Littlechild:
What do you think advisors can do differently? Are there some fundamental mistakes that you think they make that they don’t end up saying, “I’ve got everybody I need, or I can’t find the right people,” for example, we hear a lot.
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah, I see a couple things that advisors need to think about. One is in the hiring process itself is often times advisors are trying to scramble. Maybe somebody quit, they want to hire someone quick, because it’s a small business and just be in short one person could be 30% of the employee force. Just this one person, you’re down one-third of your employee for. It could be a big hit, so I think sometimes it’s tempting to try and find the first person who looks like a reasonable fit, but I always encourage people to be thoughtful about the process. Have a rigorous hiring process. Use some type of assessment as part of your hiring process, whether it’s a DISC assessment, or a Kolbe index, there’s a number of different ones out there.
I’m currently using the DISC profile in the hiring process in what I coach on. So I think just again be thoughtful about it, think about what your culture is, think about the kinds of people who are going to thrive in the environment that you have. When you’re hiring people, you hear people talk about, “Well, we’re trying to hire for cultural fit,” and yeah that’s important, but I’d also say you want to hire for cultural compliment. So you want to hire people that are going to compliment your culture in areas where maybe you’re a little weak right now, but you know that this is a part of our culture that we need to improve, we need to enhance for us to be an organization that’s going to be firing on all cylinders.
I think that’s really step one is the hiring process, have that rigorous process, and be intentional about that. Then the second part is if you have someone on your team, you have to think about, “Do we have the right people?” Because often times, if your business is growing fast, the people who got you to where you are today are not necessarily going to be the ones who are going to take you to where you want to go tomorrow. I’ve got a couple of questions that I’d be happy to share with you if you’d like on how.
Steve Wershing:
Yeah, absolutely.
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah, so if you have people on your team, I’ve got two questions that I coach on. So okay, these are two questions that you need to ask yourself about each member of your team. The first one is ask yourself on a scale of one to ten with ten being they are a rock star, and one of course being the opposite of that, how would you rate them just in their overall performance and contribution and value to the organization? If you rate them a seven or lower, then I say, “You need to figure out, how can you get them up to an eight within the next say 60 to 90 days?” If you can’t get them up to an eight, then you need to move them out of the organization.
Then the second question is if one … Look at each of your team members and ask yourself, “If that person voluntarily cane to me today and said, I’m leaving to take another job,” what would your immediate reaction be? Would you breathe a sigh of relief and say, “Thank goodness.” Would it be, “Oh shoot man, what can I do to keep you here? I really don’t want to lose you.” I think when you ask those two questions, you’re going to know if this person is a keeper or whether this is someone that I need to help find another opportunity that’s going to be a better fit for them.
Julie Littlechild:
You mentioned culture as you were talking about team. Obviously, they go hand in hand. This is a conversation that has come up a few times on the podcast recently. Can you talk to us a little bit about the role of culture, the importance, and maybe how advisors need to think about that?
Steve Wershing:
Julie, if I could jump in too. Steve, if you could define for us what you mean by culture first, and then answer what Julie was asking.
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah, so a lot of people think of culture as this squishy thing, and it’s hard to get your arms around, it’s hard to define. So when I think of culture, I think of the norms, the expectations, the behaviors, the way people behave when no one’s looking. It’s all those types of things that are just wrapped into one that make up the environment. I’ve been in a variety of cultures that are very strong cultures where there are very specific norms on how you do things. Some cultures are very high performance cultures, so it’s all about high performance. It’s a meritocracy.
For example, they may have compensation programs that are heavily weighted toward incentive compensation, because they want to give low based salaries, have high incentives, because they want to reward people who are very high achievers and pay them a lot of money. There’s other organizations I’ve worked with that are just the opposite. They definitely want to be a high performing organizations, but they have a different philosophy of, “We don’t pay bonuses. We pay high salaries to everybody, because we want top performers, but we don’t want to give someone an incentive to not work with someone else on the team, because that’s not going to help me get my bonus.” So they just pay straight salaries to everybody, and they want to create an organization that’s all about the team.
There’s an infinite number of ways that you can pull levers and create an environment that create your culture, depending on what your personal philosophy is. That’s why one of the things that I’m a big fan of is for the leader of the organization to take some time. I’ve got a number of things that the questions that I ask them to go through to understand what your philosophy is. Just like, “Am I someone who wants to create a high incentive culture? Am I someone want to create a culture of we’re all in this as one team, and I want everyone to work together as one big happy team.”
I think you just have to be really intentional and thoughtful about how you create that culture in your organization.
Julie Littlechild:
Honest, right? I think there’s some element of, “This is what the culture should be,” but you know what? It can be anything. It’s just being consistent from there, right?
Steve Sanduski:
Right. Yeah. You take someone like Amazon, we’re all familiar with Amazon, and I would even argue that as your organization gets larger, the one remaining mote that a company could have is the culture that you create. Let’s take Amazon as an example. This is a company that has what? 800 billion in market cap these days. I think at one point it was up to a trillion. They have a very unique culture. A lot of people have written about it, and one of their things is they think of every day as day one. They want to have this start-up mentality.
So they drill that into people’s heads and every day is your day one. We want you to be innovative. We want you to break norms. We want you to be creative here and think like a scrappy start-up even though we have what? 750,000 employee.
Steve Wershing:
Yeah, right.
Steve Sanduski:
They also have what they call their 14 leadership principles. These are things that Jeff Bezos and his leadership team have come up with over the years where they very clearly define these are our 14 leadership principles. Again, they drill that into people’s heads. So when you get hired by Amazon, you’re going to learn this stuff, and your business is going to be structured that way, and you’re going to work that way, and it’s worked for them.
Steve Wershing:
To add to that, and to add to what Julie just said, Julie talked about being honest about it. I think the two things that come to my mind, things that I’ve heard out there also is first is that you are what you do. One of the challenges is a lot of business leaders like to pick up on these phrases, or slogans, or those kinds of things that sound really good. In the end, it’s actually what people do that is the culture, not so much what you say or what you say it is.
Related to that is that your values are what you’re willing to tolerate. It’s not just what you say they are, but if there are things that go on in your office that you don’t jump right on top of and actively work to change, then that is what your value is whether or not you really want to admit to it.
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah, that’s so true. Yeah, your point there about your values, or what you tolerate, or you get what you allow, those types of things for sure. So if you do have corporate values, or a value system or philosophy, which I really encourage everyone to really have that and be thoughtful about it, is you have to live it. You have to support it. You have to reward it. You have to recognize it. When people are exhibiting those values and living the philosophy that you’re trying to instill, you need to recognize that individually and in front of the organization so that people can see by example, “This is what we mean when we have this corporate value of being obsessed about the client.”
Here’s an example of what Mary did that showed how she was obsessed about taking care of the client. We just want everyone to see what a great example, Mary. Thank you. That kind of thing.
Steve Wershing:
Go ahead, Julie. I was going to expand on that a little, but I think you probably are thinking the same thing.
Julie Littlechild:
No, I just wanted to talk about some of the other points from the article, but if you wanted to finish, was there something on this you wanted to finish off.
Steve Wershing:
No, that brings us around to the whole idea of a toxic culture, and when we talk about those kinds of things. How could an advisor recognize if they have a toxic culture? Then if they do, what kinds of things can you recommend that they do about it?
Steve Sanduski:
Well, I think if you have a toxic culture, you’re going to know. Examples are people are leaving the organization, you’re having trouble hiring people, people aren’t doing a good job taking care of their customer. If you’re not treating your employees well, it’s unlikely that they’re going to treat the clients well. I think most folks listening to this know if they’ve got a toxic culture. Again, I think it can get back to the philosophy. Since we’re talking here about sports and running, if you think about sports coaches, there are some coaches who are all about fear, and terror, and yelling and screaming and just trying to get people to perform well based on fear of, “Well, if I don’t perform well, there’s going to be heck to pay here.”
There’s other coaches who are more about support, positivity, building people up, and yes we’re all going to make mistakes, and I’m going to correct those mistakes, but it’s all in the form of, “Hey, I love you man. I know you can do this. Let’s go out there. Let’s make this happen.” Those are two different philosophies. Both of which can get great results. There’s coaches where you can have great examples of the second type of coach, and both of them had one Super Bowl.
It’s not that one is right or one is wrong, but they’re just different. So when you think about a toxic culture, some people would say, fear-based cultures where it’s all about, if I don’t do this right, I’m in big trouble. Some people would view that as a toxic environment. Some people might thrive in that, but yeah. I think toxic cultures for the most part are pretty easy to see when you’re in one.
Julie Littlechild:
Let’s talk about some of the other aspects that came out in that article that you wrote. You talked about learning. I think again, all of these connect if we’re trying to grow and learn, I know we all love learning, but how did they talk about that with Kipchoge and what are you seeing as a corollary for advisors?
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah, so for Kipchoge, it was really about the training, and in his Nike and Ineos who were the two organizations that were really supporting him through this, they were really pushing the envelope in terms of trying to figure out what are the best training methods, could they test new training methods. What’s the best technology that they could use? Like the shoes for example, which I think we’ll probably talk about here. That’s number five on my list here.
Yeah, so it’s just about continuing to learn and improve. It’s the same thing with financial advisors is that we all know, the world is just changing so darn fast. If we’re not keeping pace with the rate of change, if we’re not learning faster than the world is changing, we’re going to be falling behind immediately. So one of the reasons why I do podcast is because I want to talk to people, and I want to continue to learn. So usually, when I identify a podcast guest, it’s someone that I’m really curious about. It’s someone that I want to learn from.
I have to pinch myself, because I get to spend an hour with you folks, and learn from them, and then I get to share it with all my listeners. So that to me is one of the best ways that I learn is through doing the podcast, and just trying to make sure that I’m continuing to push myself to learn new skills, and I think advisors need to do the same.
Julie Littlechild:
One of the things I wonder about is getting more intentional about that I’m sure a lot of people I find that learning starts to take a backseat the busier we get. Like a lot of things, it demands that we just hit pause and say, “How am I going to deal with that?” Is it reading a certain number of times a week or what have you. Do you try to encourage advisors to set some specific goals around learning?
Steve Sanduski:
I do. I’ve also spent a lot of time here recently learning more just about motivation. There’s a whole bunch of different theories on motivation, and you can choose to believe whichever theory you want to believe. I tend to believe that there’s a lot of different things that can motivate people. It’s not just two or three things that everyone falls into these buckets. I think there’s lots of different things that can motivate people. One of which is curiosity. That’s something that I’m very high on. I’m someone who’s very curious. I love to learn. I love to see new things, do new things, try new things, but not everybody is that way.
So while I can say to people, “Hey, you really need to spend some time learning, because if you don’t, you can get complaisant. You’re going to fall behind. These younger start-up organizations, they’re just going to pass you by if you don’t learn.” That can go in one ear and out the other. I think somehow, you need to … If someone’s not interested in learning or taking the time to make it happen, I think the key is we got to connect this idea of learning if we think that’s an important aspect of them continuing to be successful, we’ve got to connect the idea of learning with something else that’s important to them.
We don’t need to get too psychological there, but from a more tactical standpoint, simple things that I like to do is I like to attend a conference that I’ve not been to before, that’s outside of our industry, because I want to get exposed to different things. Just like this Kipchoge example we’re talking about, I like to connect the dots. So I went to social media marketing world one year, which was really interesting. I went to Adobe’s 99U conference one year, which was pretty interesting. You just meet different people, you hear different things, and then I try and bring those back to what we’re doing in our industry.
I think learning a new skill is important too, and that’s a question I’ve been asking a lot of my guests on my podcast recently is what’s a new skill that you’re learning? Because I’m just curious if people are making the effort to try and learn a new skill. I think writing is important. Having a journal. You may have seen, I was at the Schwab conference here recently. Julie, I saw you there. It was great to catch up with you there.
Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, we ran into each other.
Steve Sanduski:
I took 14 pages of handwritten notes at the conference. I think handwriting, which is something I’ve been doing more of in recent years instead of just typing on my computer, I think there’s just a different connection you make with your brain and a different level of attention that you pay when you’re handwriting versus typing. So I’m a big fan of taking the time to actually write things down as well.
Steve Wershing:
Interesting. I don’t know if we’re going to get to all of the points in the article that you wrote Steve, but I would really like to hear before we have to close up, I’d really like to hear about the tools, because you talked about Nike playing a significant role in providing tools to Kipchoge, and you relate that to an advisor’s technology. So could you elaborate a little bit for us on how you see the connection there?
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah, so when it comes to the technology that Nike was using, in their case, one of the big things was their shoes. So they created a new shoe that they called, “Vaporfly.” Supposedly based on their research, it enabled Kipchoge to run somewhere between four to five percent faster with this shoe, this technology than he would over the previous type of shoe that he would’ve worn. Of course, four or five percent improvement over the course of 26 miles is huge. So that was a big thing.
Then as we think about in our business, as an advisor the kind of technology that we are using here, this is such a big question and we could talk for hours, but the way that I maybe would frame it, and you can let me know maybe what direction you want to go here, but I always ask advisors, when you think about technology, I want you to think about your business model. For example, if your business model is like mass marketing, then you’re probably going to have a high-tech business model, and you’re going to be betterments.
So their betterments business model is we want as many customers as we can get, and we want to have as little human communication as possible with them. So that’s all about technology. There are technology company first who just happens to do investing. Then you’ve got the opposite end, you’ve got a family office, which is a high touch business, a boutique high touch business that works with very wealthy people. They’re an advisory firm, a wealth management firm first who happens to use technology to support what they do, but they’re all about the human to human interaction.
So those are the two extremes. As an advisor, I think you need to ask yourself, “Where do we want to fall on that spectrum?” Most advisors who are working with consumers, and want to charge reasonable fees are going to be toward that end of the high touch. I think of technology as use the technology to make your back office more efficient, use the client facing technology to make things easy and efficient for the customer, but don’t just try and offload your back office work to a customer by having them input a bunch of information, because you don’t want to do it. That’s not customer service to me. That’s just pushing your work off to the consumer.
Only use technology client facing when it makes their life easier and more accessible, but then ultimately focus on doing everything you can to make that human to human interaction as amazing as possible. The whole client experience thing that you two talk about I think is just more and more important. I’ll just stop there and see if there’s any direction that you want to go with it from there.
Julie Littlechild:
What’s interesting to me is also as you talk about that is the need to really draw a line in the sand, which I think we struggle with. So you could for example build the infrastructure for a low touch business, and then have the opportunity to work with a high net worth client and think, “Oh, that’s great. We can do that,” but you can’t do that, because you’ve built a business to service a different group or similarly, you build a high touch technology and business platform, which means any other client us unprofitable.
Just making that decision I think we want to do it all, right? Do you see advisors who are struggling with that?
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah, because no one likes to turn away a client, right? So it’s hard for you to put that line in the sand as you talk about there. I think it’s just critical that we do that. So I encourage advisors as to think about what is it that you are really trying to accomplish in your business? I’d rather have you start narrow with that, because we can always go wider down the road, but let’s start with narrow. Let’s get really good at what we do there, then you can decide if you want to expand that and start branching out in a different area, but don’t bite off more than you can chew initially.
Master what it is that you’re going to do first. Get really good at that, and then we can look at expanding that down the road.
Julie Littlechild:
Can you give any quick example of firms that you think have really knocked it out of the park in terms of using technology well or using their tools well?
Steve Sanduski:
I wish I could give you a great example. I certainly hear of companies that say that they are doing a great job with technology. When I get a chance to talk to those companies and start asking some questions, it reminds me of that picture where you’re on a lake and you see a duck or a swan, and they’re just gracefully gliding through the water. You don’t see is below the water, they’re just massively paddling crazy, that image or can know what that image looks like.
I think that’s the case with a lot of organizations out there. On the outside it looks like everything is just going, working seamlessly, but behind the scenes, it’s not quite that way. One of the reasons why I think this happens is because sounds cliché, but technology just changes so fast, and what that means is that businesses are always in a state of becoming when it comes to technology. Just when we get to the point where we’ve mastered the CRM system, they come out with a new version, which is a totally different interface, and I have to learn it all over again.
When I get comfortable with this piece of software, it gets acquired by some other company, and now I’m connected to this portfolio accounting system that I haven’t used before, and now I got to use that. It’s like we’re always beginners when it comes to technology. We’re always having to change things, and so I don’t think anybody ever gets to a point where we say, “Man, we’re just crushing it with technology.” If you do get to that point, it’s going to be temporary, because there’s either A, going to be another company that’s going to come along and do it better than you, or B, something’s going to change with the technology, and you’re going to have to redo it or relearn it.
Julie Littlechild:
Yeah, I think it’s a great point. I’d love to just before we let you go, so I wanted to talk about something else that I read from you. It’s really the counterbalance to the state of becoming I suppose, and that is also about pausing, and looking at what we have been successful at, because I think we can get into a head space where everything does feel like it’s in constant flux. I saw this idea about writing a press release that describes your success in the last year. We’re getting pretty close here, so can you tell us about that particular idea and you think the impact that it can have?
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah, appreciate you bringing that up. This is something that I’m talking to my clients about. It’s an idea of really trying to help you get clarity on what you want to accomplish over the next 12 months. You can do this anytime whether it’s at the end of the year or middle of the year if you’re just hearing this idea for the first time, but the idea is to write a press release as if it’s 12 months from now. I have three paragraphs in this press release. In the first paragraph, it would start off with your firm name. So let’s say it’s Smith and Jones Advisory Firm.
So you say, “Smith and Jones Advisory Firm is pleased to announce that we,” and then you fill in what you have accomplished over these past 12 months. So this is what you’re really proud of. So that first paragraph is all about helping you clarify what is it that would have to happen for you to define. This was a successful year, okay? So that’s the first paragraph, “We’re pleased to announced that we achieved blank.”
Then paragraph two starts with, “Our client,” and then you say, “Pete Jones. Our client Pete Jones said,” and then you write a testimonial from Pete Jones. So this is an example of the amazing work that you’ve done for your clients, and Pete Jones is an example. This is the glowing testimonial that he gave us this year, because we’ve done such an amazing job for him. So that helps you clarify the value that you are delivering for your clients.
Then the third paragraph starts with, “We couldn’t have achieved this without the,” and then you fill in the blank, which is you basically describe the support that you received this year. It could be from your team. It could be from some other resources. It could be from a technology partner, whoever it is that has helped you achieve what it is that you achieved. So those are really the three paragraphs. Again, it just forces you like you said, to pause, to think about what does success look like over the next 12 months, that’s the first paragraph.
Paragraph two is what is the value that we deliver for our clients that they are so thrilled about, that they would write us this glowing testimonial? Then paragraph three is who are the people that supported us in making all these happen?
I imagine that connects pretty nicely to the theme of the podcast about becoming referable, because as much as this is about taking stock. It feels like you’ve just written stories that you can share with others.
Steve Sanduski:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. Go ahead, Steve.
Steve Wershing:
No, finish that.
Steve Sanduski:
Well, I was just going to say, I think you can even take this press release idea even further. So when we talk about being referable, so I mean, the way I think about your podcast, I love the name Becoming Referable, because to me it’s about building a business that is referral worthy. I think the things that we’re talking about here are becoming referral worthy, becoming referable. I think you can take this press release idea, and don’t you try one glowing testimonial. I would say, take a look at your top 10 clients. Write a testimonial that based on what you have done for those top 10 clients over the past year or past two years, or the time that you’ve been working with them.
So that is going to force you to ask yourself, “What have I really done for my biggest clients? What impact have I really made in their lives?” If you’re struggling with coming up with a glowing testimonial for your top 10 clients, then you probably don’t have a referral worthy business. If you can’t come up with 10 glowing testimonials then I would say, “Oh my gosh, let’s do more of this. How can we do more of this for more people? Where can we find these people? How can we get these 10 people that we’ve done this amazing thing for to go out and sing our praises to other people just like them?”
Steve Wershing:
That’s a great idea. I really like that a lot Steve. There’s a lot more that we would love to talk with you about, but I think we’re up against time, and I think that would be a natural place to wrap up. First, I should say, as I’ve done advisory boards around the country, some advisors have been evaluating or signed onto your Return On Life product, and we’ve actually shown that to advisory boards, and people love it. So all of you listeners out there, if you have not seen the ROL system, I would encourage that.
Steve, if people want to know more about you and what you do, where can they look?
Steve Sanduski:
Yeah, appreciate that. I would say couple things. So one is go to stevesanduski.com. That’s my main site where you can get all my info. That’s S-T-E-V-E-S-A-N-D-U-S-K-I dot com. When you go there, I would think the first thing that I’d like you to do is just register for my free letter. So every Tuesday, I send out a letter. It’s a curated list of the things I’m thinking about, my latest ideas. I typically have three links that I share as well based on things that I’ve read that week. It’s just a nice way to stay in touch with what I’m doing. You can always reply to that email and get directly to me as well.
So would love to have you go there. Of course, would love to subscribe to the podcast, and then you mentioned ROL Advisor. Thank you for that. You can just go to roladvisor.com, and get all the info there too.
Julie Littlechild:
That is wonderful.
Steve Wershing:
Yeah. Steve, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been great talking with you. Hope to see you out on the conference circuit sometime soon. Thanks so much for being a great guest.
Steve Sanduski:
Appreciate it guys. Again, thank you for the great work that you two are doing in the industry. Love the podcast. Just appreciate the opportunity to be on the show today.
Julie Littlechild:
Take care.
Steve Sanduski:
Thanks.
Steve Wershing:
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, free referral myths that limit your growth, and connect with our blogs, and other resources. Until next time, so long.