Read The Transcript Below:

Steven (00:49):

Hello everyone and welcome to the next episode of Retirement Tax Service Podcast, Financial Professionals edition.  I’m your host, Steven Jarvis, CPA, and with me today on the show, I’m really excited to have a conversation around writing about taxes. I realize this is a podcast, but joining me today is Derek Pollard of Constellar Creative who works extensively with financial planners on all sorts of things, including copywriting. So Derek, welcome to the show.

Derek (01:18):

Well, thanks so much for inviting me on. I’m really, really excited. We had such a great conversation off air. I’m excited to have a chance to continue it on air here and hopefully we’ll be able to provide some insight and some help for your listeners.

Steven (01:32):

Before we dive in, I’ll go first and it’s not going to be nearly as impressive, but let’s both share a little bit of background of our writing experience so that people know where we’re coming from. As we talk about this, I’ll go all the way back to I mostly came close to failing every single one of my English classes I ever took until I got to college. So I do not have extensive formal training in writing. Most of what I have learned is through a lot of trial and error, through a lot of practice and repetition, and I’ve become really convinced that regardless of your training, that if you want to be good at writing like anything else, you’ve got to get in and put in the reps. Now I’ve written a book, I write extensively online. I get published all over the industry as we’re recording this, I’m wrapping up my next article for kitches.com, and so I’ve been able to accomplish a little bit through writing, but it wasn’t because I had any formal background or any natural talent for it. It’s really that I’ve worked really hard to get there.

Derek (02:27):

Well, it’s interesting. I would probably say that’s not entirely true in terms of not having an aptitude. I couldn’t agree with you more. Putting in the reps makes all the difference, and this is why in terms of social media marketing showing up has so much value because you build the confidence by simply getting in and doing, and the stakes are such on social where that is a rewarded activity and it is a rewarding activity because ultimately you’re entering into dialogue with others and that is the greatest surest pathway to being able to write effectively is to get out of your own way and think about what you’re doing as a conversation. But to your other point, I think it’s really important to go back even further than that, to that point where our memories become much vaguer. I’m sure that there are going to be those moments of profound clarity because we have them even as children.

(03:35):

I would say, and this has certainly been my experience as a university professor, so that’s part of my background, is I’ve taught the fundamentals of writing. I’ve taught creative writing, I’ve taught publishing over the course of the past 20 plus years to thousands of students at colleges and universities around the United States, and one of the common experiences that students bring to a college classroom is exactly the one that you’ve pinpointed. They have either forgotten their enthusiasm for playing with language, which most of us have, and I think that that’s a very important distinction. Not everyone, but most of us we’re fearless in our play as kids. We’re all of us artists and writers because we’re not in our own way yet. We’re not reflecting as it’s happening, and that’s one of the sure signs and one of the greatest obstacles I can speak from firsthand experience.

(04:38):

I’m sure you and many of your listeners will know, one of the hardest things to overcome is a blank page or an empty screen. It’s by just simply starting that you establish that incredible trajectory that you have established over the course of your career, right? I mean, you were being quite modest, but that’s an incredible portfolio of content and copy that you have created. I think one of the most valuable things that we can encourage advisors to be doing, whether they’re looking to find a marketing partner that they can trust to do this work alongside them or whether they’re invested in taking ownership of showing up in their marketing collateral, is to play much more often than we give ourselves permission to not worry about the perfect draft, to not worry about editing and copy editing and proofing while you’re in the midst of writing. Just start to get the ideas on the page if it’s easier for you to do that using a voice recorder if you’re comfortable. I certainly want to stress the comfort level there of exposing yourself to the risks that using AI can generate. By all means, use the tools at your disposal, but let the spirit of the activity be a spirit of play because that is when you are going to be your most yourself and you are what your ideal client is tuning in for.

Steven (06:12):

Derek, there’s so many great insights in that and it really reminded me that I’m probably taking this whole conversation a little bit out of order because for my audience who tunes in to learn about tax planning and tax advice and all these things they can do to add value to their clients, there’s a very specific reason that I was so excited to invite you on this show, and it’s a combination of my own experience and what I’m hearing from advisors just in the last few weeks. I’ve gotten numerous questions from advisors who are seeing the need to write about taxes, and some of them it is from a standpoint of marketing or building their brand, they see a lot of pain around taxes, and so they want to be able to speak to it to attract prospects and convert prospects to clients. But this also comes up, and honestly this is where some of my writing experience started coming from is just having to communicate with existing clients about these complex topics because whether it’s in an email, it’s in a client meeting, you need to figure out how to put it on your agenda.

(07:09):

We often encounter these situations where we’ve got to take an incredibly complex topic and boil it down in a way that someone else can interact with it and make it somehow engaging and relatable and all of these things that are not inherently associated with taxes. So that’s why I wanted to bring you on the show today. So for advisors listening, even if of you think, Hey, I never want to write a book like Steven or write articles, I’m not interested in taxes from a marketing standpoint, we’ll have a different conversation about why you should be interested in it, but whatever you are doing, I promise there are takeaways from this conversation about how you can improve the quality of the writing that you are doing because I know we’re all doing it.

Derek (07:47):

Well, it’s absolutely true, and I think one of the things, again I want to highlight for advisors who are moving into this space recognizing the importance and value of showing up is empathy, right?

(08:02):

I mean, I think that you had said something so incredibly important about expertise just a moment ago in that we often associate expertise as the end result of an entire process. We put in all of the time, effort, and energy to understand something that a lot of people just don’t get. That is I think, the common understanding of expertise, but you then said something else that is even more important, and I think recalibrates our understanding of expertise and also allows us to approach writing more authentically with greater impact and greater value to the people we’re trying to connect with. And that is our expertise isn’t about the sophistication of our thinking. It’s not caught up in our being able to understand all of these complex ideas so much as it is in being able to walk them back so far that somebody who is coming to you with what seems to you like a softball question is going to understand exactly what it is, the insight that you are providing, the tool that you are giving them, the new knowledge and awareness that’s going to build their confidence and the trust in relatability that you’re gaining by being able to take all of those steps back and at the same time being able to empathize with somebody who is brand new.

(09:37):

I don’t care if they’re a high net worth individual and they seem to understand how money works pretty well, whether they’re a retiree, whether they’re a millennium, I don’t care what the demographic or the psychographic is, you are going to be able to help your current and prospective clients by showing up, being patient, understanding and drawing on all of the skills, expertise, time, energy, efforts, sacrifice, everything that’s gone in to making you the go-to advisor for your book of business in being able to create the connections and provide the insights so that it’s even simpler and easier for your client when you sit down and talk about the idea. And the other point that I don’t think we can possibly avoid skipping here is that there is one emotion that people associate with taxes, whether you’re an individual, whether you’re an advisor, it’s fear. People bring fear and anxiety to any conversation that is the one three letter abbreviation that everyone is familiar with.

(10:49):

And so you have an incredible opportunity. I know that our conversation is ranging a little wider than this, but one of the ways you can recalibrate your understanding of the value of marketing, not that you need to be doing it, et cetera, et cetera, but you have such a wonderful opportunity to be the person your clients know who you are out loud on social, on your website, in your newsletter, in whatever other content you’re creating. You get to be the person that your current clients already recognize and know to be the exact advisor for them. And really, if you wind up doing that consistently, genuinely over time, what you’re doing is you’re allowing all of your prospects to do discovery so that by the time they pick up the phone, they’re not asking what you do or they’re not asking what’s the process they’re asking you when you can start.

Steven (11:50):

Such a great way to articulate that. Derek when I think about the tax content that I see most often, it seems like it kind of is on two ends of the spectrum. The majority of the time you either have the overly technical tax documents or tax content that’s out there that maybe somebody hoped it was for an end consumer, but really it’s only going to be meaningful for someone who’s already at a pretty high level of understanding. It’s deep on details. The IRCs are quoted everywhere, and it’s just kind of going down this rabbit hole. And especially with taxes, it’s easy to do that. It feels like there’s all this nuance we have to cover. And then the opposite of the spectrum, which is way too common when it comes to taxes, is clickbaity fluff. That’s either at such a high level and really just designed for the algorithm or to grab that attention and then doesn’t include anything meaningful or even worse when it’s just flat out wrong or deceptive. But I see a lot of content on both ends of the spectrum, and I’m trying really hard to be somewhere in the middle, but as advisors are listening to this, I mean when someone’s going through the writing process, what should they be on the lookout to identify for their own writing? Okay, I’m skewing towards one end of the spectrum or the other, and here’s how I bring it back in.

Derek (13:03):

Yeah, what a wonderful way of asking that question because it really is a case of, again, putting yourself in your prospective client’s shoes. I think the thing to do at the start certainly has been true over the course of my career and in my experience, just start to get the thoughts on the page. If you’re analyzing a particular set of data, if you’re responding to an article, if you’re engaging in a conversation with another advisor or with a firm, get your thoughts on the page first and then start to look for those places in which being the pro you are, you’re leaning on jargon, you’re taking some shortcuts that your colleagues are going to understand. They’re not going to get lost in terms of following where you’re going, but look out for the jargon that we wind up using unthinkingly, so writing becomes such a reflective process. This is why I encouraged advisors at the start to play more often because that’s going to allow you to bring in editor’s objectivity to your own work. Hardest thing in the world to do. You know this, for all of the writing that you’ve done in our doing, the hardest thing for us to do is to look at our own work as if it were the work of someone else.

Derek (14:27):

This is one of the ways in which we’re able to do that. Look for the jargon, look for those shortcuts that you’re taking because other advisors are going to understand, other tax professionals are going to understand, begin to pull those out and replace them with the language your prospective client is going to recognize and respond to. Now, to your other point, I can’t tell you how hard, if gently I will push back against this concept of baiting, hooking and reeling in prospective clients because we don’t work in that economy anymore. I am so heartened that more and more advisors, clearly based on what I am seeing, the conversations I’m having, the clients that I’m working with have gotten the memo. It’s no longer the case that conversion leads to connection. It’s just the opposite. So the sooner that we recalibrate that equation and emphasize connection, relatability, the personal narratives that we respond to, the who, how, and why behind what the quicker we’re going to wind up being able to reach the people we know we can help. And so this whole notion of hooking a prospective client sends the exact opposite message to them than you intend in most cases because a word like hook has connotations surrounding it. It brings to mind images. 

(16:06):

If you have ever fished in your life, I grew up on a lake in Michigan, one of the innumerable lakes in Michigan, I can’t tell you how many hooks I’ve put through my finger, they hurt, and that’s not what we want to do with the people we’re intending to help thrive. We’re not interested in causing them any further anxiety. We’re not interested in baiting them to reel them in. We’re interested in offering them an invitation. And so doing that requires us to just listen deeply and mindfully to the ways in which they’re expressing the frustrations, questions and concerns that they have so that we can be there to help answer them, to provide them with the advice, the expertise that we’ve accrued and to do so in a way that they’re going to see and hear as being part of a conversation that they’re already having.

Steven (17:04):

Really appreciate how much perspective and insight you can bring to this conversation. Derek, I could just hit stop on the recording and take the next couple hours of your time to improve my own writing process, but we will keep sharing these great insights that you’re offering here. I have this fascination with asking people with more expertise than I have with more background than I have to validate things that I’ve come up with anecdotally, and I try to be really transparent with people that most of the things I do, I figured out through trial and error and then confirming with smart people like you. So a couple of things come to mind that I would love to know if I am on the right track here, if I’ve just stumbled upon something that’s really correlated and not causation, A couple of things that come to mind.

(17:44):

One, I’ve noticed in my own experience in working with other people that it be hard to accept that you’re not going to go from blank page to perfect product and that they really, filling that blank page tends to be the harder part, and that once you can get something down on paper, and I think you were already speaking to this a little bit, that revising it is where the power comes in, and so I think we just got to go in accepting that my first, my goal is not to sit down type something that I can then publish. Like I said, that’s a mindset that shifted over time for me through a lot of painful experience. As you teach people about writing, how do you help them maybe skip over some of the painful repetitions and get to the impactful repetitions?

Derek (18:28):

Yeah, again, what a wonderful way of framing that question. The short answer is there’s no shortcut, right? I mean, I think that generative AI is proving that over, and again, for those of us who have been exploring it ForThe past six to eight months, it seems to be the hard sell we’re getting is that our marketing budgets have dropped to $240 a year. That’s the $20 a month subscription fee for chat GPT plus. 

(19:00):

To your point, the most that you are going to get by using tools like that are those frameworks, those ideas, those outlines, it’s a wonderful opportunity. Again, we’re going to set aside all of the privacy and security issues that we’re seeing over, and again, setting that aside. This is a great way for people who are daunted by that empty screen or that blank page to just get started because that is the key, and I think that that’s the way in which it doesn’t shorten the experience, but it takes the pain out when you recognize from the start that it is a process that takes time, and this is one of the things that I have learned. One of the assumptions that I brought to my entire teaching career, to my entire career as a published writer to my 30 plus years in the editing and publishing industry was that everyone could do this.

(20:01):

Everyone’s kid just takes practice and everyone can do this, and I think we do such a disservice by reinforcing that assumption because it’s not true. Not everyone can do this simply by dent of a lifetime’s practice. We can get better if we have that particular skillset in place. It’s a talent that we can develop or even more accurately, it’s a skill we can develop. If you’re not good at it, if you feel intimidated by it, we can absolutely work to find ways to make it a more comfortable process and provide you with greater confidence in being able to say what you mean exactly like you mean it, but I think everyone wins when we acknowledge the fact, despite at times writing seeming easy, it’s really tough. It takes time, it takes practice, and for all of the shysters out there who are going to tell you in 30 days, we’re going to 10 x this and a thousand times that, right?

(21:06):

The truth is you need to be able to reward the patience that’s required. Again, whether you’re working with a marketing partner, whether you’re taking on your marketing yourself, whether you’re doing the work of copywriting on social, this is something that you need to be aware. You’re going to have days no matter how good or bad you are at it, you’re going to have days where it’s the easiest thing in the world for you to do and your thoughts, it’s like they’re already on the page when you sit down and there are going to be days more of them than the other days. There’re going to be days where it seems like it just doesn’t make sense. The words, even when you put them together in the right ways, don’t add up to what it is you’re trying to say. Knowing that that’s the case, knowing that that’s the challenge all of us are facing.

(21:55):

Again, whether we do this for a living or whether it’s something we’re starting to put as one of our priorities, whether it’s something we already know we don’t enjoy, we don’t want to do, all of us have the opportunity to show up, and the truth is we’re all reading and writing every day. All of us are sending text messages, voicemails, whether we realize we’re scripting in those cases or not, we’re writing all the time. The thing is, again, regardless of how you rate yourself as a writer, becoming more conscious about that and doing the work that you already do in your field, spending a little time on the Grammar Girl website Mignon Fogarty’s outstanding resource, another excellent series of podcast episodes. For those of you who are like correlative, conjunction,

(22:44):

Why are those commas important? Why might I not want to use three exclamation points at once or why didn’t I 10 years ago but now want to, right? It’s a wonderful, wonderful opportunity to just again, rethink your approach so that it becomes a source of enjoyment and not yet another chore that you have to get done each day.

Steven (23:06):

Yeah. Wow. So much good stuff in there, Derek. Let me share a few things that I’ve found that have been helpful in my process that I think have helped improve my writing, at least based on the feedback that I get, and then you let me know if I’m off track on any of those and then add anything else that comes to mind for you. A couple of things that stand out to me, one thing that’s really improved my writing is as I look for the words and phrases that my clients use and then incorporate that into my writing, so for example, anytime I’m talking to a client, anytime I’m writing about tax refunds and tax payments, the amount of tax that somebody owes, I stop on a very specific line of the 1040 and I say, this is the amount of your hard earned money that the IRS kept last year, and so I wordsmithed a little bit, but that came from clients telling me that’s where the pain came out.

(23:55):

That’s where the emotion came out is ah, the IRS kept so much of my money. They might say steal or other dramatic words too, but that was a consistent one that I kept hearing, so I started incorporating into my writing. Thinking in terms of, and you spoke to this earlier, you’ve really got to have your audience in mind. You’ve got to try to put yourself in the shoes of your audience, of your prospects, of your clients, and something I’ve found that can be helpful with this is make sure that you’re having other people who aren’t advisors or CPAs also help you with the process. This could be a team member, this could be a family member, and maybe it’s not even the whole article. Sometimes I’ll take just a paragraph and say, Hey, could you just read this for me real quick and let me know if it makes sense to you, and especially out of context.

(24:36):

I found that to be very valuable feedback. And then the last one I’ll throw out, and again, I think you’ve both directly and indirectly spoken to this one is we’ve got to make these complex topics relatable. I mean, if we talk about social media just for a second, and it bleeds into my other writing as well, the more I can tie taxes into everyday experiences, I get really hung up on people who think when they get a refund from the IRS that they’ve somehow won. They’re so fixated, and there’s a whole marketing and advertisement push that has created that feeling in people, and so…

Derek (25:11):

I was going to go there. I totally am glad you said that.

Steven (25:15):

And so one of the things that I’ve found that’s really helped people think about this differently is I was at Costco one day and I usually don’t pay with cash at Costco, but I happened to be paying with cash that day and I thought, there is no way anybody gives the cashier at Costco an extra thousand bucks that the cashier turns around and gives back and then walks out of the store going, Hey, I won. I won. Costco gave me this massive refund. How cool am I? And so by using those relatable experiences, it helps those really key points stick in a person’s mind. And as you talk about prospects converting to clients, what I love to see is when my audience can repeat things back to me that I’m including in my content because they see the theme over and over again and it’s written in a relatable way.

Derek (25:59):

There’s so much to talk about there. But the first thing I want to say is in my ideal world as a small business owner, this is how business works for SMBs. It’s referral based. Again, this is my ideal world. This is me when I’m dressed up like Don Quixote chasing windmills is that’s how this works. And I’ll tell you why, because the best marketing team you are ever going to have are your current clients. If you help someone become more knowledgeable, make them feel like an expert, build their confidence, make them feel as though they’re doing it right, and they can then go out in the world and share that knowledge with other people. You have just created somebody who is going to do everything your marketing is designed to do for you because what you have done is you have created buy-in. You have created so much value over and above the financial advice that you have provided that that person is going to go out and tell everyone they meet, not just friends and family, but they’ll slip that into conversations at Costco because they know they have the person that’s going to help the person that they’re connecting with do what they do even better.

(27:15):

So in an ideal world, your clients are doing all of this for you. Now, we all know we don’t live in that ideal world and thus the need for you to market, and again, this is just a change in mindset, but it gets us away from, okay, everyone’s telling me I have to do this. I can’t tell you how often advisors come to me saying this, well, I got to do it, but there’s so much pressure on me to be marketing and marketing here and market in this channel, and I need to integrate. It needs to be multi, and suddenly we’re at that point where there’s so much on their plate again that they can’t take the next step that’s going to lead them to do the one thing that’s going to allow them to connect with the one person. That’s something else that’s so important, and you’ve spoken to this in the examples that you’ve given.

(28:04):

You are always in your marketing regardless of where it is, whether it’s digital print in person, you are always attempting to connect with your next client, not an entire demographic. Not everyone under 50, not single women, not divorced men. You are attempting in every instance to reach the next person that you can help. And so to your earlier point about showing up in ways that your clients and your prospects are going to understand, that’s one of the ways that you build that relatability, that personal ability, the awareness about the care and concern, the enthusiasm that led you to have the career and build the success that you’ve built. That’s what people are most interested in. I’m not going to dismiss because listen, you know this better than so many others. The tax code in this country is byzantine, right? It takes, I can’t even speak to it.

(29:09):

You can. You’re sighing right now. That’s how complicated and overdetermined it all is. But to your point, if you can begin to help people understand that’s not to be feared, they have a trusted partner, you can begin to explain in cases like that refund, again, it astonishes me, but the question I ask often is this, okay, how do you respond to the prospect? You’re having that call, they want to work with you, and that’s their attitude toward taxation and that tax return that they get. A lot of people are going to roll their eyes. A lot of advisors are going to think not again, that is such an extraordinary opportunity to help somebody understand the misstep they’ve made in their thinking and all of what they’re missing in terms of being able to utilize that money on their own in terms of investments and savings during that time.

(30:10):

We have opportunities like that at every moment in every engagement and interaction we have to do the better thing to not roll our eyes, but to say, oh, what an extraordinary opportunity for me to empower someone else who hasn’t made the connection. They haven’t had that light bulb moment yet, whether it’s at that level or whether it’s three steps beyond that, whether we’re starting to talk about custodial Roth IRAs, whatever the case may be, if you’re able to encourage or invite that aha moment, again, you’ve just created somebody who is going to sing your praises to everyone they meet, and I mean if you do that genuinely, not just for the benefit of gaining a testimonial, not just in terms of being able to add a new client to your book of business, but to create a relationship and an opportunity over time to help somebody who was starting there become financially savvy and build toward financial independence.

(31:13):

It’s one of the coolest things in the world. Those “aha” moments, I always draw on them from my career in teaching. There’s nothing like that because at that point you know that person’s perfectly fine. It’s like being a parent. That’s the point at which you know your kid’s, okay, right? Because they’ve had that moment. That’s something that they’re enthusiastic about, that new knowledge and awareness that colors everything and it puts them in a position to succeed going forward. One other quick point you have also at the top of that series of questions come to one of the biggest reveals in terms of digital marketing, and that has to do with the difference between authenticity and SEO because what you described is authenticity marketing, that’s you speaking to that one person you know can help. Next SEO is finding all of the keywords and phrases that are going to bring that person into your following.

(32:11):

You are not showing up as yourself. You’re not respecting, dignifying and honoring the person that you’re reaching out to at that point. You’re just looking to game the metrics, and that is such a different approach. So just to put a stamp of approval on that, you really want to make a difference. And again, I am not suggesting because we’re in the numbers business. I’m not suggesting we turn a blind eye to all of the analytics we have available to us, but what I am suggesting, just like the very best baseball managers, there’s a blend of gut and analytics that’s going to get you to the next level and the next step in terms of how you are reaching out to your audience and your perspective clients.

Steven (32:53):

Derek, I appreciate so much all the time you’ve spent sharing your expertise and insight today. We’re both way too excited about this topic to have a time-bound conversation. We’re going to be doing this for hours, but I originally was introduced to you because of advisors who’ve worked with you and had such great things to say about the work you do for advisors. We’re really running up on it here, but I want to make sure I give you 60 seconds to say, Hey, here’s what I do, and here’s how you can learn more. For advisors who are listening, thinking, Hey, I need expert help. When it comes to copywriting, when it comes to marketing, how do people learn more about what you are doing?

Derek (33:25):

Well, I certainly encourage you to connect with me and I want to make that distinction. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Just let me know where you’re coming from. I am more than happy to work alongside you in terms of determining what you need to be doing or want to be doing in terms of leveling up your outreach. Again, shifting the mindset from conversion to connection. LinkedIn is the channel where I seem to live, so you’ll have the best luck in terms of reaching me there. I’m relieved not only because Meta just announced, of course, that they have been scraping all of your personal data to train their AI systems, so Microsoft hasn’t announced that yet. I’m sure it’s going on, but LinkedIn is where you can find me. Also, please feel free to visit the Constellar Creative website. You’ll learn more about the particular services and packages that I offer, whether that’s email, newsletter, marketing, copywriting, editing, in terms of thought leadership. I know you had mentioned a process of going through writing and publishing a book. Again, that’s something that I absolutely love working with advisors on, so those are some of the services that I offer. Again, you can hop over to the Constellar Creative website, and then I seem to be making the rounds right now in terms of podcasts, so if you’re on LinkedIn, you’ll have other opportunities to connect with me and the other exceptional hosts that I’ve had a chance to have conversations with, and I really can’t thank you enough for opening up some time on your calendar and letting us have this conversation on air. Like I said, it was a wonderful conversation off air, and I’m sure we’re going to continue this after we hit stop here.

Steven (35:02):

Absolutely. For everyone listening to wrap up with action items really quickly, huge takeaway from this is you have to be practicing. It doesn’t matter what you think your skill level is, whether you’re a beginner or an expert or somewhere in between. Practice is what’s going to continue to push you forward, and then of course, for our regular listeners, this will not come as a surprise, although based on the conversation, you might not be expecting it. You have to be getting tax returns from all of your clients every single year, not a better way to narrow down the areas you need to focus on. So thank you everyone for being here. Until next time, good luck out there and remember to tip your server, not the IRS.