SPEAKER_03 0:00

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And you show how much you care by showing like who are you and what your passions are and what you love in life and what you're you know you're you're focusing your energy on and things like that. And once they're like, yep, oh man, Ashley, like, okay, she's passionate. I get her. This is what she's all about. Is she qualified to help me? What does she do? What's her experience? Like, that's the second question.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

Typically.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Welcome to Planning and Beyond, the show where financial planning meets human understanding. As an exceptional financial advisor, you know that financial planning is about more than just numbers. It's about giving clients the clarity they need to align their money with what matters most, which is why each episode is designed with that goal in mind. You'll learn how to uncover the psychology behind client decisions and gain insights and behavioral strategies needed to create deeper, more meaningful client relationships. You'll discover techniques for navigating emotional client situations drawn from conversations with leading industry experts in behavioral finance, psychology, communication, and more. Whether it's mastering discovery meetings, handling sensitive client conversations, or understanding what is truly keeping your client stuck, you'll walk away with not only strategies that you can use in your next client meeting, but also the confidence to do so. Oh yeah, hi. I should probably introduce myself. I'm your host, Ashley Kwame, a therapist who somehow wandered into the world of financial behavior and kind of decided to stay. My mission is to help you bridge the gap between financial planning and human understanding. Because remember, finances don't have feelings, but your clients do. Let's dive in. Welcome to Planning and Beyond, the podcast where financial planning meets human understanding. I'm your host, Ashley Kwame, and today I am joined by Derek Knotman, founder and CEO of Coupler. And we're gonna talk a little bit about that, but more today about lead generation, the psychology behind it, what works, what doesn't work, all of those things that help you as an advisor to be able to show up differently and to be able to serve your clients well. Derek, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. I'm excited to have you here, my friend.

SPEAKER_03 2:29

Great to be here with you, Ashley. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 2:31

Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's start out a little bit. We were talking before we hit record. I thought I knew some things about you, but clearly, clearly I don't. A little bit of insight for those of you. I thought Derek lived in the Midwest and he shared that he no longer lives there. In fact, he moved from there quite a while ago to now in Florida. And so I just kind of left him there in my brain and felt pretty bad about that. I felt pretty bad about that. So clearly, I don't know as much about you as what I think about you. Or it's a wrong narrative. Uh, I have the wrong narrative about you. So, Derek, before we get into just kind of the meat of what we're talking about today, I would love for you to share a little bit about you, your journey. How did you get to be a founder, CEO of Coupler?

SPEAKER_03 3:16

So I was gonna be Indiana Jones. Um that's what I went to.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

I was not expecting you to start. Sorry, I was not expecting you to start there. Okay, all right, I'm here. I'm here.

SPEAKER_03 3:28

I just derailed the entire conversation. So that's what I went to school for. Uh anthropology and archaeology. That's my my degree is in. Turns out though that Harrison Ford wasn't going to give that job up. And um I wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

And Disney wasn't hiring, I guess. I don't know. No. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

And I have absolutely no acting ability whatsoever. I couldn't do that out of college. And so I initially I was working at a treatment center for at-risk youth, a residential treatment center. Now I've always had a fascination with money from a very early age and investing in all that stuff. And then out of college, I needed a job. So worked with kids for a number of years. It was a really tough job. But what I ended up learning from that experience was I really loved working with people and like really understanding like these were kids, you know, that come from really broken homes. We had murderers, rapists, drug dealers, arson, like the list goes on and on. Really tough, tough situations. And so just learning how to connect with them on a real deep human level and establish trust and all of those things was really fascinating for me as you know, went behind the ears right out of college, didn't know anything about the real world. And so did that for a couple of years. And then my wife and I got married, ended up moving out to New England. And um, at that point, I'm like, all right, I got an opportunity to do something new. I like money and working with money, and I like helping people work and I go do both. And ended up putting my resume on monster.com and uh got recruited by New York Life. They barely hired me because I didn't know anybody, but I convinced them. Ended up having a lot of success there as an advisor, and then eventually just got like more again, I guess, the entrepreneurial itch, which we can get into, but I just saw this whole lead generation situation, and the number one problem advisors have is organic growth. Like, where's my next client coming from? And I'm like, there's gotta be a better way to fix this. And so I thought it was a good idea to um change my hat and go become a founder and CEO of a technology company.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:23

So that's that's where I'm at today. It's been a fascinating journey so far.

SPEAKER_02 5:27

I love that. And there's definitely some nuggets in there. I did not know the working at a residential treatment center with at-risk youth. You and I share that in common. Those were my uh origins as a clinician, and they teach you a lot. It teaches you so much, a lot of you know what to do and a lot of what not to do when it comes to how to build rapport, how to build trust with others. And teenagers, they are about the hardest ones to build trust and rapport with. And so I feel like if you can do it in that setting, you can probably do it anywhere. Okay, so I appreciate you. Thank you for sharing that story there. And in that vein of kind of the residential treatment center, what's coming to mind for me, I guess, is the word barriers, maybe barriers to reaching out for help or connecting. And so I'm thinking more specifically in the context of maybe clients who know that they need like a financial advisor or the curiosity there around like maybe I kind of want to work with one, but I don't really know how to do that or how it works, or who's like the best fit there. Tell me maybe just a little bit from your perspective, life perspective, professional perspective. Like, what do you think maybe are some of those barriers when it comes to asking for help or reaching out for help?

SPEAKER_03 6:47

So money is a very private topic, societal. Like very few people feel comfortable opening up and talking about their income, their assets, their debts, mistakes they've made. And so very rarely is it talked about. And heck, I even grew up in a family where money was not discussed. And so I think a lot of us share those types of relationships with money, but we know we need help to do all manner of things with it, whether it's to break bad habits and set new good ones so we can retire, send the kids to school or whatever, or get into the weeds and more advanced, you know, planning. Those are all things we want to do, but because it's not something that's talked about regularly, I think there are a lot of us have this fear of opening up to just anybody. Like one now, like think about it. If I'm a consumer and I'm looking for an advisor, never had one before, or I had one, but it was a bad experience. I have a lot of trepidation because now I'm like, well, is someone just gonna try to sell me something? Like, is this a used car lot that I'm walking on to here? Or am I gonna get the right advice? Or am I gonna feel like I can open up and share my financial skeletons? These are these are like kind of internal dialogues that people are having and feeling and thinking when they're presented with like a financial choice they might have to make and they would like help with. And so a lot of times we just don't. We just don't because it's scary and I don't know who to trust and I don't know where to go find the right person. And how do I know it's the right person and all of these things? And so then we don't, and either like we ask like our uncle or a friend at the water cooler, or we Google something, or now with AI, we try to get some AI answer, and nothing wrong with doing some self-education. I encourage people to do that first, but there's at a certain point where like we need professional help. That's like why we hire a plumber, an electrician, a doctor, and the list goes on and on and on. We need professional help with all these things that we are not experts in. I can go on and on and on, but I think those are some of the initial barriers that come to mind when we're looking for something like this.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

Yeah, I would agree. I would agree with you. There's a vulnerability piece and big time, you know, for most people admitting, hey, I need help with this, or I don't know all the things like about this, that can be very vulnerable. And so those thoughts are just that barrier in and of itself, like, whoo, gosh golly, that can be a big one, you know, to first kind of jump that hurdle. Now, okay, you mentioned like the problem of organic growth. And I know I'm I'm I'm kind of switching over here, but I'm gonna connect the two. Tell me a little bit about you said you saw kind of that problem, like with being concerned about like organic growth. Can you tell me a little bit more about what that problem was? Like, what was your experience or thoughts just kind of with it? Why did you feel like it was a problem to solve?

SPEAKER_03 9:30

Nine out of 10 advisors fail within the first three years, give or take. So really high failure rate, which causes a lot of problems for clients and advisors and even the companies that they represent. And so I'm like, man, this just doesn't make sense. And like, I didn't fail. I was one of the lucky ones. It wasn't easy. I got gray hair because of it. And you know, I would work 70 hour weeks to try to pay the bills. And there were times where I was looking through my baseball card collection to see what I could sell just to pay the bills.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

All of a sudden, Indiana Jones became Indiana Jones felt a lot more possible.

SPEAKER_03 10:04

Yeah, right. Yeah, for sure. Like, wow. And I saw so many advisors fail out of the business. And we were all taught like, here's your cold calling script, here's the list of people you should call. And first it was your friends and family, and then it was try to get referrals, and then it was your buying cold lists or you're knocking on doors, your business canvassing, you're going to BI meetings, you're doing seminars, snail mailers to thousands of people. The list goes on and on and on. And I'm like, man, this just doesn't work well. Like, we're we're helping people make life-altering decisions when it comes to their money, but the foundation of that relationship is not doing is not being built correctly. So I I just saw that. I'm like, man, there's got to be a better way to solve this problem. And then like I'm putting on my my residential treatment hat for a little bit. I'm like, well, geez, I got to build relationships with kids that didn't trust anybody. You know, these were kids that were abused, had a lot of trust issues, had been bounced around a lot. I think the kids that we were working with had been in like on average, like it was like 17 placements beforehand, foster care, all that kind of stuff. So I'm like, well, people connect on human levels first. And so I think that's really where like organic. So it's funny because organic growth is the new buzzword now. It's being talked about a lot. It's been the same problem as long as this industry's been around. I don't know. It's I find it interesting that it's being talked about more right now. I think maybe like there was this technology flash in the pan thing that we had for a while where it was going to solve organic growth. But really, what's happened, in my opinion, is that a lot of technology just digitized the old cold methods.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

Yeah. And some of those companies, too, like organic, the ones that have and go the organic growth route, they end up being the ones that are sustainable.

SPEAKER_03 11:46

Yeah. That's it. That's it. I mean, we are in a human business. We are in a people-to-people, belly-to-belly business. So if we're and and I'm nothing against technology. Heck, I have a technology company, but one of our deep philosophies is let's have let's let's use technology to facilitate better human connection instead of creepy or cold or transactional type of interactions. So that was really what it all spurred for. I'm like, I'm like, I made it through the fire and I found some success as an advisor, but a lot of them didn't. And a lot of clients, you know, felt that pain because the advisor failed out, and et cetera, et cetera. So how can I fix this and use technology to do it at scale?

SPEAKER_02 12:27

I love that, right? And tying kind of those experiences together, your experience will with the residential treatment, right? That people connect and they're willing to be vulnerable when there is a human-to-human connection, you know, there, like knowing, like, okay, that if, you know, what's helpful in maybe diminishing that barrier, I'll call it just a vulnerability barrier, but if we can diminish that, right, through human-to-human connection, and on the advisor end, if we can help create something that is more sustainable, right? So that one and nine, you know, we can kind of decrease maybe the likelihood that advisors fall into you know the eight out of nine, then maybe, right, maybe we can help that foundation, right? On on kind of all ends.

SPEAKER_03 13:12

You're right. That's it. We can we can help both sides at the same time. More like altruistically, like what what happens then? Well, in si society improves. And that that's like that's like a bigger, you know, thing that's great that happens when we do that. You know, it's a little bit pie in the sky, but and I realize that. But ultimately, I'd love to be able to impact society in a positive way, even if just a little bit by trying to do some of these things on a granular level.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

Yeah. Well, every little bit helps. Uh so you can't see right now, but I have a mug uh behind my desk, behind the computer. It says small things done often. And so it is, I see it as like one of those small things, right? And if we can get like a bunch of small things and do them like more often than, you know, I believe, not only just in our relationships, but also across humanity, right? Then we can elevate humanity there.

SPEAKER_03 13:56

So I think you're doing your part, Derek.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

I think you're doing your part.

SPEAKER_03 14:00

Trying.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Just well, my friend. So, you know, we have kind of maybe this a better sense of, I have this better sense of now, like kind of the problem end, like on both sides, right? For the clients and and also for the advisors. What have you found that works though, when it comes to being able to build like trust? We have like the human-to-human connection, but you know, can we maybe break that down a little bit? Like, are there some specifics that you've found that really do work?

SPEAKER_03 14:30

So people are wired to connect with other people like them. It's inner DNA. You could call it tribal, you could call it birds of a feather flock together, whatever you want to call it. It's just like, you mean like I studied culture, right? As an as Indiana Jones wannabe. And in there, there we have cultures and different subcultures and tribes because we just flock together with people like us. And so the thought behind a technology solution with incorporating that is like, okay, well, what are what's more granular? What are things people connect on? Well, they connect on shared commonalities, shared interests. Hey, we're both dog people. Okay, cool, we have that connection point. Hey, we're both parents. Oh, we have that connection point. Hey, we went to the same school. Oh, cool. Oh, we speak the same language, et cetera, et cetera. And so when you meet somebody at a cocktail party, a networking event, a conference, whatever, and within the first couple of minutes, you're like, oh yeah, I have that commonality with you. I have that commonality with you. You just feel, you feel like I know this person and they know me. Technology can facilitate that by matching up based on upon those different variables. And so those are some of the things that we try to uncover through our platform. And it's also the basis of just, you know, interpersonal trust. Like, how do we trust each other and having those things there? And so that was one thing that was really instrumental that we worked on that we wanted to make sure that that was like core to our product. Like we're we're getting away from cold data scraping, we're getting, well, we've never used it, but we don't want to ever use it. We aren't going to ask and match based upon just your 401k balance and your zip code, things of that nature. And so we go much deeper because if you do, if the relationship starts off on the right foot, what happens? Well, customer feels great and opens up. An advisor can only give the best advice possible if they're given the best information possible. If I'm given limited information, I can only give you limited advice. If I get all the information from you, I give you better advice, which means I'm probably gonna make better product and service recommendations for you, which means I'm probably gonna sell those things to you, and they're probably gonna stay on the books longer. So now that relationship is more profitable for me and the company, clearly for the client. And I'm gonna do it faster than working with somebody who doesn't really trust me, and now I'm trying to convince them. So that all goes back to trust, share commonalities, like, yeah, we have all these things. I I love pizza, dogs, and surfing and cars. Oh, cool, me too. We could talk about that all day. And then next thing you know, you've talked about business for five minutes, and the other out part of the hour is all just fun stuff, but they just love and trust you where they want to work with you.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

Yeah. So our our mutual friend, Megan Lurts, I'm gonna call her out and she is going to roll her eyes and laugh at me when she hears this. But this reminds me of the importance of small talk, and she would disagree. Um, in fact, has she hates it. But my argument is that similar to kind of what you're saying, is that disclosure piece, that personal like disclosure of you know, small talk, if you want to put it under maybe that umbrella. I don't know if that's quite fair to say. In fact, she would probably find a way to tell me that I'm wrong that, you know, personal disclosure is not small talk, but it is so helpful, like in building in building that trust. And sometimes it might feel on, I would imagine like the advisor end, like pretty meaningless, like spending that time talking about commonalities, maybe early on, like in the relationship. It might feel like, oh gosh, like we're spending like so much, you know, I'm spending like 10 minutes of like the meeting, like talking about, you know, hey, how was the game? What did you think about, you know, the new quarterback? Like blah, blah, blah. That might feel like meaningless, but to your point, like it does help to build bonds and to build trust, like on that psychological, emotional level. And so, you know, I think that that can be you know a really important part. They're just once clients, you know, kind of are starting to go through and starting to work with you. But I'm also curious though, Derek. So you talked about like coupler and like matching, right? And there is that, like that's kind of how you guys have been able to build technology to support that. But I'm also thinking like other ways, maybe that advisors can show more of themselves. Like, how can they show more of themselves, maybe out there a bit more publicly that could help when it comes to lead generation?

SPEAKER_03 19:08

I always found this a funny maybe I don't know if dichotomy is the right word here, but we were taught early on, at least in my day, that you needed to be out there in the public, visible, so people could get to know you as like that trusted life insurance agent, financial planner, or whatever it is. And so you would, whether you were on the phone or you went to that weekly networking event, all these different things, like we were basically telling be out there, be in person, let people see you, don't just be in a cube all day. And so a lot of advisors would do that, big some begrudgingly, but a lot would get out there. And what's happened is that like we've got this whole digitization of so many things in our lives now. And I see a lot of advisors missing an opportunity to be even more out there and vocal than they ever could have in person by being active on social media and having a great website and producing video content, being on podcasts. Remember, people want to get to know you and they want when they contact you initially, whether it's through like a coupler experience or LinkedIn or your website, they when they contact you, they want to be like, hey, Ashley, I feel like I already know you. I've listened to this podcast episode, I've watched your video, I saw some of your social media posts, I read your website, you help people like me, all buying signals. And remember, humans, for the most part, we buy emotionally. Our our emotions drive our buying. Now, yes, there are like the engineering type people that want to get into like, let me see the 40-page report, let me see how this thing works. And I'm not gonna buy until I understand that. Like, there are folks that are like that, but a lot of people buy on emotion and how they feel. Like it's I call it the gut reaction. And so that's that's where I think advisors are missing the boat is like, get on social and start telling your story. Who are you? What are you passionate about? What are your interests? What do you do outside of work and have some of that stuff on your website? Like your credentials are important, but they're not everything. There's a there's a phrase, and I would love to know who actually said this phrase initially. I I don't know. I heard I've heard it 20 years ago. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:14

And you show how much you care by showing like who are you and what your passions are and what you love in life and and what you're you know you're you're focusing your energy on, and things like that. And once they're like, Yep, oh man, Ashley, like, okay, she's passionate. I get her. This is what she's all about. Is she qualified to help me? What does she do? What's her experience? Like, that's the second question, yeah, typically. Or they go hand in hand, like, okay, they got a CFP, that's cool, but do I like them?

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Yeah. Well, and I think that's where these, and I see this on the mental health side of things. I know that it's on the finance side, but these influencers that do not have credentials that are out there on social media, and it drives me frigging bananas seeing someone who does not have the level of, and it's not. Just education, but it is like credentialing and they're putting out things and oftentimes making a lot of money, you know, off of the stuff. But some of it is exactly what you're talking about, is that they're out there putting themselves, you know, out there building trust. And you might think it's kind of silly, like or ridiculous, but other people gravitate to that. They feel like they know them and there's that trust equity that starts to build, even if it is digital and even if they don't have the credentials.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

They just feel familiar as a familiarity, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

I know kind of what I'm getting, right? I know, you know, if I jump on a call, what that person is gonna sound like. I know what they're gonna look like. I probably even know a little bit of like what they're gonna say too. Some of my favorite websites are the ones where advisors have like their pets as like the like chief. I can't think of anything creative right now, but they'll have a creative title for like the like office, like pets or one of the websites uh for one of the firms that I work for, they have like on the small one, they have like our baby pictures. Like the team like has their baby pictures and like a few things. And then if you click on the bio, it has our grown-up pictures.

SPEAKER_03 23:12

So smart. That's really smart.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

So smart, but they're to that point of like allowing someone to get to know you. Like there's a lot of small things that even just on your website, I think that advisors can do to build that trust and attract leads, you know, there.

SPEAKER_03 23:28

Yeah, I I sum it up basically is stop being a creeper and become a creator. Stop creeping, stop scrolling, doom scrolling and watch what people are doing.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Stop creeping and create. Yeah, please, can you put that on a t-shirt or just some kind of merch?

SPEAKER_03 23:45

That is a good t-shirt, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

It is like I I would absolutely buy it. I would buy it and I would wear it. And I could see a few other people also being early adopters of of that sl of that slogan.

SPEAKER_03 23:59

That is good. I should, I should look into that actually. I like that idea.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Hey, if you do, I'll put it up on the planning and beyond website and start and and advertise, and you can receive all of the pro, but I will absolutely advertise this because I think it's brilliant. I think it is brilliant. Okay, so we've talked a little bit about just things that advisors can do, dare I say should. I know should has a judgment piece to it, but let's maybe go just kind of the opposite end and maybe some, maybe it maybe it's obvious, but let's talk about the creeper side. Like, how can advisors not be like a creeper? Like, what are some of the things from your experience and what you've learned that maybe things that you see them do, they should they should stop. Like, don't do this. It doesn't work any, it does not work, it's not getting the thing that you think it's getting.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

Well, I I I I don't think any of us like spam cold emails, DMs, whatever that that feel like clickbaity. And I love LinkedIn and I have had a lot of success drumming up business through LinkedIn, but how are you using it? Are you just spamming a hundred messages a day, or are you actually doing a few minutes of research and sending a thoughtful note that's personalized and individualized? Yes, it's more time, it's not as scalable. But what do you want? Like, do you want do you want warm inbound leads, or do you just want the shotgun approach that really doesn't work? And I think a lot unfortunately, like just stay away from that type of stuff. I mean, think about it. If you're approached by a financial advisor and the first interaction you've ever had with them is cold, salesy, cheesy, creepy, does that instill a lot of confidence or trust or even interest to have a first conversation? No, not really. You know, and I always joke like a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while, but I I don't know if it's really a great, a great way to do business. And I think because of technology and and the way we can do things today, we we actually have a real opportunity to leverage it for more human connection again, as I've said before, versus just the old cold list methods. So again, even if you're looking to like bring on a technology vendor to your practice for some type of organic growth, where are they getting their leads from? How are they generating all of that? Like, is is it a cold, creepy data scraping model, or is it something a little bit more actually organic, warm? Trying to be nice here because I think there is a big difference. I think the advisors that are truly successful are the ones that know how to focus on relationships at scale.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

Yeah. Well, I think that that's a good point. And maybe something that I haven't thought about, right? Is if you are using a vendor, like even understanding that vendor and where they receive their information from, like how are they, how are they getting that and connecting you? Not all vendors are created equal.

SPEAKER_03 26:45

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

And I think that's a great point, doing some research there in the same way that I know, at least in slightly, slightly different, but like I encourage any time a client or someone has said, Oh, well, I heard this on TikTok, or I heard this person, and I'm like, have you looked into this person? Like, what are their credentials andor experience? And how have they come to, you know, share that? And do you know about that the field and profession in terms of like the ethics and what they can and cannot say because ethical, you know, practitioners, they're not gonna say some of those very bold, attention-grabbing statements sometimes. So doing that research, I think is is important, even with your vendors.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

Definitely. Yep. Spend a little bit more time. And no, I don't care what vendor you get for any part of your business, it's not an easy button. There's it's gonna be like a learning process and you're gonna have to use it, understand it, and so forth. So keep that in mind too.

SPEAKER_02 27:38

Yeah. Okay, Derek. So we've talked about a lot of great stuff in my mind. And I would love to know just kind of before before we wrap things up, what else is kind of on the table here? Loaded question. Like, what have we maybe not talked about when it comes to lead generation, organic growth, things that you think that advisors should know, maybe some myths, if you will.

SPEAKER_03 28:00

Lead generation is actually not the problem. Lead conversions is the problem. I think there's a big differentiation that whether you have a large national multi-you know, tens of thousands of advisors firm, or you're a solo shop, you tend to not have a problem with lead generation. So, what is lead generation? Lead generation is creating blog content, video, podcasts. You have a good website, you have some SEO, maybe you're doing some paid advertising, email campaigns, print campaigns that get pushed back to digital, all of these different nurturing things. You have this digital footprint, if you will, and it's working for you. So that's lead generation. And I would argue that actually most firms, small and large, do a pretty good job of that. They've got that dialed in, whether you're spending $1,000 a month or $10 million a month. I think you probably have a pretty good idea of what you're doing there. And you probably have some really smart people on your team helping you. But the lead conversion bit is where I see things continue to break down, is that whether it's organic traffic from consumers or paid traffic, we have people are looking up financial topics related to topics like 100 million times a month, tons of interest. People want help with their money, whether it's insurance, college planning, investing, and whatever. And so don't focus so much maybe on the lead gen stage, which is your top of funnel. But how are you interacting and converting those leads into actual leads and conversations that you might be able to work with those people? And that's what I would encourage you to think about is like, okay, we got all this marketing, it's all going on. Are we just pushing them to like a contact us form? Or is the call to action to sign up for a newsletter? Like, what are we offering them to come get advice from one of our advisors when we're ready? And so that that's what I would I would ask, you know, whether you're you have a $40 million a year marketing budget at a large company or you're a solo shop, like what does that next stage look like? What does that experience feel like? Does it instill trust? Does it feel like me? Does it give the consumer some control and power over the process? And does it convert? Right. That's that's what I would say.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

I think that's a great distinction. It almost makes me wish that we had kind of started there. That would have been like a great place to just kind of start an open of the conversation. That makes a lot of sense to me in that it's the conversion piece that we really need to be focused on and how are we doing that and understanding that there is a psychology to it, right? Showing up you know more transparently, like as yourself. Um, talking about the personal side. No one wants to feel like it's a one-sided relationship. So I would have, when I was seeing clients more full-time, one of the things that they would discourage in therapy a lot, and there's some, you know, back and forth here around opinions on it, is self-disclosure. It's there's some strong opinions kind of on both sides. So I fall a little bit more just kind of in the middle. Sometimes I would use self-disclosure and I would share things. Um, and I had this actually most recently with an advisor that I was coaching to. And they said, you know, I actually really appreciate that you shared kind of that personal story about that. And that makes me just feel like you understand me a little bit more, like you kind of get this. Bingo. So I think that, you know, self-disclosure, personal disclosure from the conversion side, right? If we're gonna focus on lead like conversion, like considering some personal disclosure there as well.

SPEAKER_03 31:24

You don't have to say everything, right? Like, don't like tell them everything and all your skeletons, but open up a little bit, right? Open up a little. I mean, this person is can is potentially going to tell you everything about their financial life, which means they're gonna tell you about the affair that they're having or had, right? About the kid that no one else knows about, about the massive amount of debt that they're in that they haven't told their spouse about yet. Like all of these things, like we hear as advisors some pretty crazy stories, right? So if if someone's contemplating opening up to you with all of that, maybe share a little, right? Try to build some rapport, try to try to share a little bit. You know, it's it's gonna go a long way.

SPEAKER_02 32:03

Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree with you. Okay, Derek. So talk to us a little bit just about, I know we've kind of thrown coupler in here or there, but a little bit about a little bit and coupler's kind of helping with like the matching and like the you know, the lead gen conversion, right? Kind of piece through connecting around shared interests, shared likes. What else would you like maybe just people to know about how coupler is helping advisors and clients to that respect?

SPEAKER_03 32:31

So it's a white label tool, which that term is thrown around a lot, but we embed in an existing environment. So we've said a recent meeting actually with a large national company where they a lot of these companies have what's called a find an advisor experience, but they tend to be either contact us forms or like zip code-based lists. And they're all starting to come to the realization like, why, there could, there's a massive opportunity here. So coupler can power an experience like that and help speed up that conversion quite a bit. And we do it by leveraging their brand, their marketing efforts and so forth instead of trying to compete with it. I think something also that's also fun and makes us different is that so I'm happily married, but I signed up for all the online dating websites. I had to do some market research.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

Okay. Again, not entirely where I thought we were going with this conversation, Derek. Like we have Indiana Jones signing up for dating websites. Okay, I'm here. I'm here. I'm on my job.

SPEAKER_03 33:27

All right, we're good, we're here. But it's interesting because I wonder like how do these things work? Like they're they're connecting, arguably, one of the most important relationships you will ever have in your life, and they're using technology to do it. So, how does that work? And so, just doing all of that research, one of the things I really liked, one of the platforms I really liked was Bumble, in that, and I don't know why they did this because they've recently gotten away from this. But for years, their whole thing was let's empower the woman to make the first move. I'm like, that's really cool because one of the founders of Bumble was at Tinder and left because they didn't like how transactional and there's always guys reaching out to girls and creepy.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

It's the creeper. It was the creeper, yeah. Totally, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:05

So it's like, let's flip this around and let's let's put some power back into the women's you know side of the equation. And so we did that a couple of, we stole that play out of their playbook. And so we know that consumers are going down this funnel from lead generation activities, paid and organic. Well, why not give them control of the process? Let them go through, let them get matched. And when they are ready, let them reach out to the advisor. And when you have them do that, it shows that they have high intent, they're ready to take action, they're willing to go through the process. And what happens to the advisor? They have a warm inbound lead that contacts them. They're the advisor's not fighting other advisors for running around at you know 8 p.m. on a Sunday night because they know some other advisor might get to it first. It just feels good. It feels it feels like hey, like, hey, like we I got matched with you, we have similar interests, you help people like me. I'd love to love to have a conversation. What a great email to get, you know, to start things off. So that's one of our differentiators.

SPEAKER_02 35:03

Yeah, I love that. I love that. I think that's fantastic. Okay, Derek. So other than leading coupler, other than being Indiana Jones, and what you didn't say, and I'm a little disappointed, is that you're also Cupid.

SPEAKER_03 35:17

Now that's Meg's fault. That is all Meg's doing.

SPEAKER_02 35:21

It might be my favorite brand, branding, like ever. I think it is brilliant.

SPEAKER_03 35:26

And it is chief cupid officer.

SPEAKER_02 35:29

I think it's I think it's fantastic. Where else can maybe folks find you? Where can they hang out with you? Where can they learn more about you?

SPEAKER_03 35:36

LinkedIn is great. You can catch all the stuff I'm up to on LinkedIn. That's where I'm most active. And anyone listening who is a dad, definitely check out Rebel Dads, which you can find through my LinkedIn profile as well. We're doing some pretty cool stuff there with Richard Branson. So if you want to learn more there and you're a dad, definitely check that out. But yeah, LinkedIn's probably the best place. That's where I'm most active.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

Yeah. Awesome. Well, we'll make sure that we include that and all of the other links mentioned uh here. Derek, thank you so much. This has been such a valuable conversation. I really appreciate the time and the wisdom, the laughs for sure. Um, interesting to hear the editing, I guess. Uh probably some good sound bites for you. I think so. Yeah. And some of them might be just more funny and comical for me. I don't know how valuable they'll be for others, but there could be some good. Is it is it gifts, gifs? I don't know. I don't know. There could be a few there. Gifts, yeah. Gifts. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 36:32

That's that's outside of my wheelhouse.

SPEAKER_02 36:34

No, not mine either. Not mine either. Well, thank you for coming on. Thank you for sharing. Remember that finances don't have feelings, but clients do. Until next time, keep planning, keep growing, and keep going beyond. Thanks for joining me on this episode of Planning and Beyond. I hope you found today's insights valuable and inspiring for both your practice and your personal growth. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more advisors like you who are dedicated to making a difference. For more resources, tips, and to continue the conversation, visit our website at beyondthefp.com. You'll find articles, tools, and information about upcoming episodes designed to support your journey and practice. Stay connected with us on social media and never miss an update. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. And remember, the best way to grow is to keep learning and sharing. Until next time, keep planning, keep growing, and keep going beyond.