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Suzanne Siracuse is the founder and CEO of Suzanne Siracuse Consulting, a company that specializes in advising financial services firms on business strategies, marketing programs and advocacy initiatives.

Our conversation includes:

  • Lessons from Suzanne’s personal journey from CEO and publisher of InvestmentNews to starting her own firm
  • The essential components of content marketing
  • The mistakes advisors make when working with the media
  • Best practices to help you leverage relationships with the media
  • The role and value of press releases and a formal PR strategy

Suzanne is the creator and host of The Big Reveal podcast series and a true thought leader, sharing insights on topics ranging from marketing to financial literacy.

Take away quote:

“When it comes to the media, be a resource, not just a source. Make sure that you’re there for them, that you are not afraid to talk to them, that you give them an opinion and that you are mindful of their deadlines.” –  Suzanne Siracuse

Links:

Website:                 https://www.suzannesiracuse.com/
The Big Reveal:    https://www.envestnet.com/thebigreveal
Twitter:                  https://twitter.com/suzsiracuse
LinkedIn:              https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzanne-siracuse-722b777/

Want more?
Stephen Wershing: http://advisorchecklist.com/blog/
Julie Littlechild: http://www.absoluteengagement.com/blog

Episode Transcript:

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Julie Littlechild:
Welcome to Becoming Referable, the podcast that helps you become the kind of advisor people can’t help talk about. I’m Julie Littlechild, and on this week’s show, Steve and I are joined by the wonderful Suzanne Siracuse. She’s the founder and CEO of Suzanne Siracuse Consulting, a company that advises financial services firms in three core areas, strategy, marketing, and advocacy initiatives. She’s the creator and host of The Big Reveal podcast series, which is a great podcast, and a true thought leader. Speaking on topics that range from marketing and leadership to financial literacy and FinTech. During the conversation, Suzanne shares a really interesting journey from the time she left her position as CEO and publisher of InvestmentNews, through a personal rebranding and starting her own firm.

Julie Littlechild:
I love to hear these kinds of stories. And she shares some very powerful and very practical ways for advisors to amplify their message through content marketing. And we examine how advisors work with the media – the mistakes they make and the best practices they can employ to ensure they build meaningful connections. With that, let’s get straight to our conversation with Suzanne. Suzanne, welcome to the show. So happy to have you here.

Stephen Wershing:
Welcome, Suzanne.

Suzanne Siracuse:
Well, thank you so much for having me. It’s great to see you even though it’s virtually, but hopefully we’ll see each other in person soon enough.

Julie Littlechild:
Oh, I miss it. I really, really do. You know what, I was thinking it might be helpful to start because I think what’s interesting with your role is for so long, everyone knew you and your role at InvestmentNews and that role. But can you maybe just start with an update on the work that you’re doing right now?

Suzanne Siracuse:
Absolutely, and thank you for asking, and yes, my name was synonymous with InvestmentNews and vice versa. It’s been, if you can believe it or not, almost two year since I left InvestmentNews and started Suzanne Siracuse Consulting Services. Basically, how I like to explain what I do now is I took the parts of my role that I absolutely loved at InvestmentNews that I found myself gravitating more towards and wanting to spend more time doing. Essentially, took those pieces and start at my own firm so that I could do it exactly the way that I wanted to. So I bucket it into three different areas, all focused on the wealth management, financial advice industry. So very, very niche and we’ll probably talk about niche marketing at some point, but very, very niche in my approach.

Suzanne Siracuse:
I started falling more in love with the industry than I did with media, which was one of the things that prompted me to consider doing something else, quite frankly. Even though I still work with InvestmentNews all the time and all the rest of the media, I feel like sometimes I haven’t left. But the three areas that I really specialize in are working with firms that want to do business with financial advisors or the firms that serve them. And three specific areas, business strategy, marketing strategy, and advocacy initiatives. What I mean by advocacy initiatives are my passion projects, like they were at InvestmentNews. Anything surrounding DEI, innovation, next-gen talent development, financial literacy.

Suzanne Siracuse:
Things that I would classify as game changing important topics, and because I launched so many initiatives with my fabulous team around those things, I now am in a pretty good position to help either large companies launch their own or enhance or amplify their own, or help small companies figure out how to position that within their own firms.

Julie Littlechild:
It’s interesting to hear the journey. I love understanding what got people from here to there and-

Suzanne Siracuse:
You’re very cerebral Julie, that’s why.

Julie Littlechild:
I know, it’s a problem, right? I know it’s an illness. But you explained it really well there and I think it sounds like you just evolved into learning different parts of the business. Did that involve understanding also where your natural skillsets lay and your passions lay? What did you learn in that process?

Suzanne Siracuse:
That’s a great question. I think, first of all, the journey was longer than most people probably know. I’ve said this publicly a couple of times, but I had started my soul searching of what I wanted to do when I grow up years before I actually left InvestmentNews. And had sought out the advice of a coach, Greg Friedman, who I know you will both know very well. One time said to me we, were having lunch and I was frazzled and checking my phone and messages and distracted as we all can be. He just looked at me and said, “Are you happy? What are you going to do next?” I never really thought about what I was going to do next.

Julie Littlechild:
This was going to be the deepest lunch I’ve had in a very long time.

Suzanne Siracuse:
Exactly, but it made me sit back and think, “Was I happy? Did I love what I was doing? What was he seeing that maybe I didn’t see myself?” I sought out a coach who I went through several months of exercises with and answering her questions and came out of it with you’re not ready to leave. A month later, the Crane family who owned InvestmentNews, up until a few years ago, said, “We are going to be selling InvestmentNews. We’re buying out one of our brothers and we need you to help us sell it.” That’s when I realized that, that was actually what I was meant to do, was to get it ready to transit it to someone else. A different owner, a different CEO, publisher, what have you. That’s exactly what happened, and so I stayed, I transitioned it to the new firm and the rest is history, so to speak.