Welcome to the Retirement Tax Services podcast! Advisors often ask, “Where do I get the next client?” In response to that question, Steven’s guest for this episode is advisor Taylor Schulte of Define Financial. Taylor is a financial advisor who has found tremendous success focusing on tax planning in his digital marketing..
Taylor started advising with a wirehouse. In time, he opened his own practice. Consequently, he was able to get creative—and discover his gift for marketing. Today, most clients seek him out. His show, The Stay Wealthy Podcast, often ranks well among Apple’s top 100, too.
Planning strategies are important. However, good marketing is essential for landing clients. Through trial-and-error, Taylor learned his primary podcast audience. To his surprise, it wasn’t people who naturally wanted someone else to just handle everything for them..
Instead, he learned from research that do-it-yourself investors are his ideal target. Many have spent years handling things 100% on their own. Nevertheless, after listening—and discovering how complex taxes can get—they seek his tax-planning services.
Steven sometimes jokes that “The only good thing about the tax code is job security for CPAs.” It’s an ever-changing set of regulations. Therefore, it can challenge even experienced preparers, at times.
That complexity also means job security for tax-planning advisors: No one is able to do a single session, get advice, and be done. Therefore, as long as new laws keep coming out, advisors can keep delivering value.
Few people are willing to reorder their life around tax codes. Therefore, they must rely on an advisor. It’s just easier. So, in this sense, tax planning almost markets itself.
It still boils down to value. In other words, good tax planning can save people hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. As a result, though marketing tops your sales funnel, what you’re delivering is ultimately what matters.
If you’re not delivering value to clients, gimmicks won’t matter. Consequently, seek what’s important to them and focus on that. Getting their attention alone is worthless, if you can’t convert prospects and deliver value to clients.
Work to define your target demographic more and more clearly. Just because advisor Taylor Schulte has success talking to Boomer clients doesn’t mean you shouldn’t offer younger professionals tax planning services, as well.
Research where your ideal prospects spend their time, whether or not they’re married, their income… Similarly, use that homework to identify 2-3 of their biggest needs.
Next, craft your marketing toward those key areas. Don’t just put “tax planning” into your site’s list of services and call it a day. Certainly, a precision approach always beats being generic.
Steven and advisor Taylor Schulte have more for the financial advisor who does tax planning in this episode of the Retirement Tax Services podcast. Do you have suggestions? Would you like to share a retirement tax planning experience on the podcast? Drop us a line at advisors@rts.tax.
Thank you for listening.
Taylor :
Hello everyone and welcome to the next episode of the Retirement Tax Services podcast Financial Professionals Edition. I’m your host Steven Jarvis, CPA, and in this show, I teach financial advisors how to deliver massive value to their clients through retirement tax planning. On today’s episode, we are going to talk about using tax planning in your digital marketing. And I’m so excited about our guest today, here with me on the show I have Taylor Sheltie, who is a CFP, the founder and CEO of his own firm Define Financial, the hosts of the Stay Wealthy and Experiments and Advisor Marketing podcasts, co-founder of Advisors Growing As A Community, which is an online community for financial advisors. So, Taylor, welcome to the show. And let me know what I missed. Because I know you do way more than that too.
Steven:
Steven, thanks so much for having me. I don’t know if you missed anything. Maybe I own a small RIA out here in sunny San Diego; we work with about 70 clients around the country. I think the most unique thing about us is most of our clients these days, they find us through our digital marketing efforts. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. So yeah, I’m excited. Thanks so much for having me.
Taylor :
Yeah, welcome to the show. That’s, that’s really exciting that you found what works for driving that new client base. Obviously, advisors spend a lot of time on planning strategies, which are really important, but it seems like that really nagging question is how do I get the next client that just keeps coming back up and up. So thanks for coming on today. And I’m just going to let you go ahead and start and tell me how you found success, not just with digital marketing, but specifically with leading with tax planning.
Well, it was a journey, you know, it’s taken me a long, long time to kind of find my groove here. And I probably think I found it but 10 years from now if we’re talking, I’ll you know, everything will look completely different. But I feel like we’ve kind of found our groove, it’s taken me 14 years to get here. I started my firm seven years ago, six, six years ago; prior to that I was in the wire house world. But what was great, starting my firm six years ago is I finally had the opportunity to kind of do things my way and really get creative with our marketing. And that’s when I really kind of found my passion and my superpower for marketing. And so I experimented with a lot of different things, you mentioned the Experiments and Advisor Marketing Podcast — it’s a marketing podcast that I produced once a month, we go do a deep dive on different marketing topics. And these are just things that I’m doing in my practice to grow — things that have worked, things that haven’t worked, to help other advisors. And through all these different experiments, you know, one of the big things that works for us and growing the firm is the retirement podcast, you can see it behind me here. One of our good mutual friends Ben Brandt sent me that and on the podcast, as you can imagine, in digital marketing, you end up attracting a lot of kind of ‘do it yourself’ investors, right, like who’s going to go to Google and do a Google search for Roth conversions, who’s going to listen to retirement podcasts about, you know, nerdy financial planning topics, like probably not your person that wants nothing to do with this and just wants to completely delegate and outsource those are not typically the people that you know, are massive consumers of podcasts. And so, as the podcast has grown, and now it’s an Apple Top 100 Investing Podcasts, we have a really big audience around the country, I’ve learned that it’s a lot of ‘do it yourself’ investors, you’re kind of vanguard boggle head type people. And they’re there just to get free information. One of the unique things that I’ve kind of figured out is that all the podcast listeners that reach out to our firm and inquire about our services, although they are DIY-ers traditionally, and they have been in the accumulation phase of life, they’re now realizing through the content that we’re producing that taxes are going to be a big issue for them. So I’d say 9 out of 10 that reach out to us, they mentioned that they’ve reached out to us for tax planning, because I’ve talked about it, I’ve gone deep into some of the different topics in just about every episode, I try to make a reference to taxes and tax planning, I can share more about kind of the strategy and we can go deeper. But that’s kind of what it is, is that just in digital marketing, you just end up attracting a lot of people that are looking for information, that are trying to do things themselves and taxes are one of those things — it’s just it’s hard to navigate yourself, especially as a high net worth, you know, investor, you’ve saved millions of dollars, and all of a sudden you’re like ‘Oh no, I’m realizing now that at age 72, I’m going to have a tsunami of RMD’s that are going to hit me and my tax bill is going to be giant and I have no idea how to combat this.’ So again, a lot of trial and error, but kind of figured out our messaging at this point, and it’s working really well for us.
Taylor :
Yeah, there’s so much great stuff in there, Taylor, I really loved how you describe that process. I think it’s really important that, you know, I’m sure it was a progression for you, but identifying really what your audience was after that you weren’t just sitting back and saying — ‘hey, here’s what’s most interesting to me and then sticking with that for five years and seeing what works’ — it started with things you’re passionate about, but you were listening to your audience to say, ‘okay, what’s actually impactful?’ So I really like hearing that, making sure you’re refining your process. The tax code is certainly very, very complicated. I like to tell people, the only good thing about the tax code is job security for CPAs but that only helps a few of us. So yeah, you’re right it’s a very intimidating topic for many people, because not only is it complicated now, it constantly changes.
Steven:
Yep.
Which again is job security for CPAs but there’s only so many of us.
Well, I mean, it’s also job security for financial planners that do tax planning, right, because it’s hard to go to a financial planner and do a one-time plan and get some tax planning advice when we have, you know, new tax laws that are coming into play every year, every few years. So, you know, it’s always a moving target. And yeah, it’s a great reason to hire a financial planner and work with them for a long period of time, because things are always changing and evolving and it’s not just a one-time answer – ‘here’s the plan, and you can go implement.’ So yeah, it’s great from a marketing standpoint. And I know, we’re talking about marketing today, but let’s not, you know, forget that tax planning is massively valuable, you know, earning a couple extra percentage points on your investments is great but when you can literally save somebody, hundreds of thousands of dollars, or in some cases, seven figures, I mean, it is really, really impactful. So, you know, tax planning works great from a messaging and a marketing standpoint, for sure but you know, behind the scenes, doing tax planning work for clients’ is really impactful.
Taylor :
Yeah, I mean, you’re totally right, I’ll have to come back to what is valuable to the client, because no amount of marketing gimmicks will set you up for success if you’re not also delivering value. I have to confess I was recently listening to another podcast you were on where I think you talked about it as the three different parts of the funnel, you know, the part where it sounds appealing, that’s the top of the funnel, that gets people interested, but the bottom of the funnel is actually delivering, right, is having, to give them something valuable. And I’m probably butchering that, but general idea –
Steven:
No, no, yeah, you nailed it. I mean, yeah, you can, you can get attention from people but if you can’t actually convert them, once you have their attention, then you know, your marketing is pretty much worthless. But you know, I mean, you know, that is a really good place to start and thinking about using tax planning in your marketing, which is really getting clear on who your target demographic is like, who is your perfect client, and try to get as crystal clear as possible, just because we work with, you know, baby boomers over age 50, that have saved a lot of money and have you know, RMD issues and tax issues in retirement, doesn’t mean you can’t offer tax planning to younger professionals. So I think a really good starting point in your marketing, you know, today, we’re talking about tax planning, so we’ll stick with that but in your marketing is to just really get a piece of paper, and get really crystal clear on who your ideal client is and what they look like, where they spend their time, do they have kids, are they married, what’s their income, and really nail that down, and then from there, you can really identify two to three of their biggest pain points, and just craft your marketing and messaging around that. But if you’re trying to cast a wide net, and serve everybody, from young professionals to retirees, it makes your marketing and messaging really difficult. So I guess just let’s just highlight that tax plan is just not for, you know, rich retirees, this can apply to just about every demographic, you know, who doesn’t want to save money on their tax bill?
Taylor :
Yeah, I’m totally with you. Please send me all your ideas afterwards about how I can save money? Well, I’ll add them to the list that I’ve already got. I love that point about, you know, you can’t just say tax planning generically, right? Putting tax planning is one of your services on your website isn’t enough and the better you can define your target market, the more specific you can get and honestly, the better you’re going to be as an advisor, if you’ve identified those tax planning things that you really should focus on. And so if you don’t work with a bunch of C level executives, maybe don’t spend a lot of time on the tax implications of stock options. Maybe that’s not relevant to your audience. If it is, great, that’s where you should be spending your weekends. If you’re not spending weekends on the beach, they’re in San Diego. So for you, what’s that look like? What are those two or three tax planning things that as you said, the people from your podcast said – ‘hey, I came to you 9 or 10 times’ — it’s tax planning, but I’m sure they had specific concerns not just – ‘hey, taxes’.
Steven:
Yes the biggest concern that people start to realize and again, it’s part of the content that I’m producing so I’m sharing everything in the kitchen sink with them just talking about this stuff and their, you know, little light bulbs are going off, like, ‘oh, I didn’t realize that, I didn’t know that.’ So one of the big pain points for people, whether they know it or not, or learn it through our content is again, at age 72, you know, RMDs, right, required minimum distributions, the IRS is going to come knocking on your door, and the millions of dollars that you’ve saved in your IRA accounts in your 401k accounts — well, the IRS wants that money to be taxed. And so, you know, these potential clients start to realize ‘I could be in a higher tax bracket at age 72, than I was as a working professional and I don’t know how to combat that’ or they’ll say something like ‘I realized that to combat that, one thing that I can do is annual Roth conversions’ during what we call your gap years, your gap years being the you know, for the date you retire until age 70-72 and some of these bigger events happen. So they know that Roth conversions can be impactful during their gap years when they’re in a low tax bracket but they also realize that there’s a lot of moving parts, we mentioned tax laws changing, they’re not quite sure how to implement it, and they’re scared to implement it on their own. So that’s really the big pain point in terms of tax planning. I think second to that is just knowing that there are tax planning opportunities, most CPAs out there are not proactive about it, right. They’re just filing tax returns and doing it for hundreds and thousands of families. So they know that there’s tax planning opportunities out there that they’re just not taken advantage of. And like you said, like, the tax code is complicated, it’s hard to understand and so they’re just looking for somebody to help them implement, and you know, and guide them through it. So that’s like the big tax planning, you know, opportunity or pain point for our ideal client, our ideal client is not coming to us saying, ‘can I retire? have I saved enough money?’ — that’s not what they’re coming to us for. So again, knowing your target demographic, your target demographic might be like, ‘do I have enough money to retire?’ Again, like tax planning can play into some of that marketing, but it’s really important to understand who that ideal client is, before you start to go out and do your marketing. And one last thing here, just because it’s on my mind, in the marketing world, one of the biggest things that I see advisors do wrong is we kind of put the cart before the horse, we’re so interested in pursuing marketing tactics, but we haven’t yet put together a plan or a strategy first and you know, that’s akin to a stranger on the street walking up to any of us and saying, ‘hey, what do you think about Tesla stock’ or ‘what do you think about vanguard mutual funds?’ And any of us would say, ‘well, I don’t know, it depends, like, why don’t we sit down and go through a comprehensive planning process? First, let’s diagnose you, and then we’ll figure out what solutions or tactics make sense for you.’ And your marketing works the same way. So before you go start that retirement podcast, and just start aimlessly putting content out there, which is what I did in the beginning, really, you know, figure out, you know, your plan first, and then, you know, stack on those tactics that are going to support that plan.
Taylor :
Yeah, there’s some really great advice in there, Taylor. So you just admitted that when you started, you did in fact, just start kind of putting content out there and then figuring out as you go, so if you could look, you know, speak back to yourself in the past, what would you have told yourself to do different?
Steven:
Yeah, that’s exactly what I would have done. So when I started the podcast, I didn’t have a strategy or a plan. I just thought, wow, this podcasting thing is pretty cool, I’m comfortable behind a microphone, so let’s just put content out there and I’m sure magically, clients will show up. Didn’t happen, right? Downloads were close to nothing for, you know, a year, year and a half and it wasn’t until I got crystal clear on who the heck I’m talking to, on the other end of this microphone, what are their pain points, what’s important to them? And as soon as I get really clear about that, I mean, really, I can go back in the analytics and show you like this, the podcast just skyrocketed. So you know, I wish going back in time, I would have just sat down and done the hard work first, before I got all excited about you know, what, what microphone should I buy, and what platform should I record on and all the fun stuff that people love to focus on, what’s the name of the show, and the branding and the cover art — put all that aside, and you know, do the hard work first, do that comprehensive plan first, so that when you go and implement, it’s really effective. And then from there really paying attention to the content and the topics that you’re getting the most traction with and what I’ve noticed is everything that had taxes in the title or taxes in the description, had the most downloads, again, people calling our office, they mentioned taxes in the emails I’m getting, they mentioned taxes, and so you know, pay attention and listen. One of the strategies I use with podcasting, since we’re on the topic, is anytime a listener reaches out to me from the podcast, even if it’s just like, ‘hey, I love your show, thanks so much’ — I’ll respond to say, ‘hey, thanks so much for listening, while I have you, what questions do you have, is there anything I can help you with?’ and just kind of leave it open ended and I get to collect feedback from that listener and it’s time consuming to do that one by one with each person but man, like you learn a lot about your audience, why they’re listening to your podcast, and what their pain points are, what’s on their mind and I have like a giant file of just, you know, topics that I can record and explore on the podcast, if I’m ever short of content.
Steven:
Just from that feedback from your listeners. That’s awesome. Yeah, we started and focused really on digital marketing here and you’ve talked a lot about your podcast, but honestly, what you’re saying really seems like would apply regardless of what delivery method we’re talking about, or what whatever marketing approach you’re taking, taking this advice of, ‘okay, let’s, let’s start with who are we actually trying to reach, what problem are we actually trying to solve for them?’ and not ‘hey, what do I think the problem is’ but getting in touch with really where’s that value going to be — we could apply this same advice to probably a lot of other marketing approaches as well, that clearly you found the most success with that comfort behind the mic that you have.
Taylor :
Yeah, you know, I would like to say that it doesn’t matter what platform you’re producing content on or what medium, you know, you’re pursuing marketing, you can, you can be snail-mailing physical pieces of mail to your target demographic and as long as you’re speaking to the right person, that you’re messaging is on point, you’re addressing their pain points, I promise, you can find success. The problem is either two things: one, we’re doing something in the marketing world that’s not natural and authentic to us, or we’re forcing it, right, people feel that on the other end; or two, you know, we really haven’t thought through our marketing, we’re just like casting this wide net and then three, I guess would be we try to do too many things at once. So we’re starting that podcast, or starting that YouTube channel or starting a blog, you know, we’re on social media, we’re not just on social media, we’re on every social media platform, it’s just really hard but if you find just one thing to start with, and you know that your target demographic lives there and consumes content there, and you craft your content accordingly, and you just obsess over that one thing, and that one marketing medium, you’ll find success, but we have to be really careful about all these shiny objects, it’s fun, but if we want success, we have to be really honest with ourselves, and you know, kind of take it one by one. But you’re right it doesn’t have to be digital marketing. Heck, I mean, it could be in person seminars, or public speaking, or, you know, shaking hands and networking one by one through your community. So it can be applied really, in any marketing method.
Steven:
I think the only other thing I’d add, there’s lots of really great points in there about how this is going to be successful, is you got to stay committed to it, you can’t, maybe you did go into your first episode thinking, ‘hey, I’m going to put this episode I’m going to get 10 new clients’, right, I mean, this, this stuff takes time and so you’ve got to make sure you’ve got reasonable expectations and that you’ve got the commitment to follow through on it long enough to get that feedback to refine the process, to see the results.
Steven:
Yeah, it takes time. The magic number in most things in life is three years; it often takes three years for something to start working, whether it’s your business, whether it’s a podcast, or a blog. Daniel Crosby is an author and a speaker in our industry and he just tweeted something out, it took three years for his book to really reach the maximum amount of sales and so three years is this magical number, so you do need to kind of commit to it for the long term. The other thing that I realized to this process is — we do have to be crystal clear about what we want people to do. It’s one thing to build your audience and add value and put content out there and not just be a salesperson, right? We don’t want to start a podcast and just like ask for something in return. There’s this balance there, but I kind of lied to myself for a period of time saying, ‘I’m just doing this podcast for educational reasons, just trying to help more people’, which I am trying to help more people, because I can only work with so many families but I never for, the first couple of years, I never once went to my audience and said, ‘hey, I’m a financial planner, I specialize in tax planning for retirement savers over age 50, if you’re interested in learning more about what we do, go here’. It took me two years to just have that confidence to go on the microphone and say that, and the second I said that and the second I got crystal clear about we specialize in tax planning for retirement savers over 50 who have saved a million dollars or more, if you’re interested, go here, like the phone’s just started ringing. So you know, it is a balancing act, right? We don’t want to just go in with a sales pitch. But we do need to be crystal clear about what we do, who we do it for, how we can help and then how they can take action if they want to take action, because if you don’t make it clear, then they’ll just end up doing nothing at all and again, that applies to podcasts, to blogging, to public speaking, you name it. So you need to have some sort of call to action to help people take action.
Taylor :
Yeah, I love that. Well, and to make sure that I’m not telling my audience to listen to you and that I’m not listening to you. Let’s go ahead and start with the getting feedback part. So I love that piece in there about getting feedback from your audience, so people who have been listening this podcast, whether this episode or another, if you have questions or comments or things that you would prefer I focus on, go ahead and send me an email at advisors@rts.tax, I would love to hear that feedback, so I can keep applying this great information that Taylor sharing with all of us and apply it for myself. So Taylor, let’s shift gears just a little bit and we focused really on the marketing side but as you talked about your background, I didn’t hear your 10 years of tax preparation experience or the Master’s in taxation that you got, what was that process like for you to feel comfortable putting out the world, ‘hey, I do tax planning’. What led up to that?
Steven:
Well, I mean, your brother, Matthew Jarvis has been a huge influence on me. And, you know, I’ve learned a lot from him. And he’s shared a lot of great resources to help, you know, further educate. But yeah, I mean, it’s really about I guess, you know, at least having a passion and an interest in this stuff to want to, you know, sit down and read through really boring information. But you know, I did have an interest in it, I also say too, that my, my role at my firm is to grow the firm and get people to show up and inquire about our services, I have a lead planner here that specializes in tax planning and he’s the one that spends most of his days, you know, keeping up to speed with this stuff, so he stays in his lane and does what he’s good at what he enjoys, and I stay in my lane and do what I’m good at what I enjoy. So I think a big part of it is sure educating myself, I need to be able to sit in a client meeting and ask questions and be intelligent with this stuff but when it comes to like, the real tactical stuff, you know, I’m fortunate enough to have a great lead planner in here that’s here to keep up with everything and be able to walk clients through step by step. So you know, I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I know everything you know, about taxes and tax planning, I’m certainly not like the big tax planning expert that’s out there but there is enough information out there, you know, and I think you can kind of take it step by step and, you know, there’s plenty of credentials and plenty of resources that you can lean on.
Taylor :
Yeah, there definitely are a lot of really cool courses and credentials that you can get and that like formal education piece, but I think part of what you’re talking about in there is just making sure the resources are available and maybe I’m adding words a little bit here but making sure you’re clear in your communication to your clients of what it is you’re offering, if you don’t feel comfortable saying, ‘hey, I’m a tax expert, and I’m going to see this all the way through to the end’, which that’s totally fine there’s plenty of experts out there you can partner with to do that, just make sure it’s really clear that — ‘hey, tax planning is a key part of any financial planning we do so we’re going to help identify the opportunities and questions we should be asking in your situation and we’ll make sure that if we need an expert or specialist to finish this out that we’re going to help you through that process.’
Steven:
Yeah, absolutely and I mean, one of our favorite pieces of technology and if you’re kind of new to tax planning, you want to add this to your practice, we’ve recently adopted I shouldn’t say recent, it’s been over a year now, there’s a platform out there called Holistic Plan, take a client’s tax return, send it to Holistic Plan, they turn it into a one page summary that’s in plain English that anyone can understand and it also pulls some key points and observations and opportunities out for that client, so we collect tax returns from every single one of our clients, when we collect that tax return, even if they bring it to the meeting, it’s not as if they expect or we don’t set this expectation that during that meeting, I’m going to go line by line and answer every technical tax question right then and there, we take that tax return, we run it through Holistic Plan to kick off our process and then we have time, right, to get up to speed and find those opportunities and educate ourselves if there’s something that we don’t quite understand, and then come back to that client. So there’s nothing wrong with telling a client, ‘hey, I’m not really sure, I’m going to follow back up with you on this.’ But Holistic Plan has been a great support system, at least at the beginning of that tax planning process. The last thing I’ll say to your point about partnering with people is we tell every single one of our clients that it’s our job to uncover these opportunities, we will make a recommendation, we’ll talk about it with you, if it makes sense and you’re on board, we’ll go to your CPA, who we have an authorization on file to talk with, we’ll go to your CPA, we’ll validate it with them, make sure we’re not missing anything, and then we’ll come back to you to formally make that recommendation and implement. So now we have this team approach where we’re in the lead not the CPA, I know you’re a CPA, Steven, so nothing on you but we want to be that lead person, that relationship, and that’s how we structured so we have the CPA to kind of back us up as well and vice versa too you know, we review and look over the shoulder of what the CPA is doing. Just the other day, we found a $30,000 mistake on a client’s tax return, it was just an honest mistake that the CPA may made, so it’s nice to have, you know, more people looking at the stuff and involved and helping the client.
Taylor :
Yeah. And if you’ve proactively established that relationship with the CPA, you’re probably able to address that issue without being combative or someone getting defensive. I really like how you said that it’s our job to uncover these opportunities. That’s a great approach to take. And I will just real quick on behalf of CPAs, I do think that part of the reason there’s such an opportunity here for advisors is just that the industry models a little bit different, right, for tax preparers — typically they’re meeting with a client once a year, maybe twice a year but usually just once close to tax time, there’s a lot going on, you kind of mentioned it earlier, they usually have a lot more clients they’re dealing with than a financial advisor, and so really advisors are in a much better position to uncover those opportunities, and so, being proactive and making that part of your process sounds like you just have that written into your client meeting process of, ‘hey, bringing your tax return in and here’s how you’re going to do it, here’s what we’re going to do with it, setting those expectations and having that real communication is just so so key for it to add value to the client because, right, at the end of the day, that’s what we want, it’s not –‘hey, am I smarter than the CPA?’ Or maybe you are, there’s plenty of instances where I’m sure that’s the case. But really, it’s how we add value to the client.
Steven:
Yeah, yeah. When does a CPA, I mean, I know there’s some good CPAs out there that structure their practices differently, but you’re just traditional mom and pop CPA like, how often are they really sitting with the client for multiple hours asking them like, ‘what are your thoughts on charitable giving, is charitable giving important to you, right?’ Like, if you don’t know that charitable giving is important to a client, then how the heck are you going to have a conversation around charitable giving and tax money in there, just doesn’t really come up. So we spend a lot of time with our clients asking really important questions and really learning about them, and what’s important to them and the different moving parts in their life and yeah, I think uncover is a good word. I didn’t really plan on saying that, but yeah, you know, it’s our job to ask these hard questions and good questions and uncover these opportunities that, you know, a CPA just might not have time to tackle and uncover.
Steven:
Yeah, totally, totally agree with that. There’s so much opportunity there for advisors to add value, without having to either pretend or actually be the final say, on taxes, you’ve delivered so much value just by asking those questions and knowing those things about your clients, whether they’re charitably inclined, because if they’re not charitably inclined, why would you bring up, you know, qualified, charitable distributions? And why would the CPA bring that up? And to your point, when would they have had the opportunity to even know that? Taylor, one of the things we always try to make sure we do is focus on action. And what can advisors actually do from all these things that we’re talking about and the first action item I always start with, and you already covered it: it was, hey, make sure you’re getting tax returns for every single client, because how else are you going to uncover these opportunities? So I mean, you kind of already took that one, but I actually set it as an action item, so I’m going to kick it back to you. What’s something advisors can do from what we were talking about today?
Taylor :
I would add, again, I’m repeating myself here, but I would add, getting really crystal clear on who your ideal client is. Now, maybe you have multiple client demographics, fine, who is your perfect client, and just write out on a blank piece of paper, who they are, what their ages, what their income is, what’s important to them, how many kids they have, what profession, what, you know, the income levels or revenue, if it’s a business, and then from there, I would just try to, I would try to nail down three bullet points of their three biggest pain points. And just with that alone, you’ll see how much easier your marketing and your messaging and your content creation becomes.
Steven:
Yeah, I love that. And I’ll just add to that to that, once you’ve defined you who your target audiences, who your niche is, make sure that there are three to four tax specific opportunities that are generally relevant to that niche, that you’re comfortable talking to, not that you have the final say on, but that you’re comfortable talking and if you’ve done the first part of what Taylor’s suggesting there, of identifying your audience, and you don’t know what those tax opportunities are, send me an email, I’d be glad to help you with what are those tax opportunities: advisors@rts.tax — because I would love you tell me what your niche is, I would love to give you what some of those tax opportunities are.
Steven:
Yeah, I love that. And I think there’s a lot of power in asking open ended questions, especially before that person becomes a client, right, through that interview process, however you structure your sales process, asking them really pointed questions, to your point about knowing what to ask and what opportunities are available, so you know, one of the questions that we ask everybody is: ‘have you calculated what your RMD is? What your required distributions are going to be at age 72?’ or ‘what’s your process for determining how much you’re going to pay the IRS from the date you retire until end of life?’ And a lot of times you’ll get blank stares or ‘I don’t know, I’ve never calculated that’, you know, ‘what are you doing with the charitable giving to maximize the tax impact of those donations?’ ‘I don’t know.’ So, you know, just having those open ended questions to ask during that process, just little light-bulbs start to go off in these clients’ heads. Again, if you know who your ideal client is, you know what their pain points are, and what’s important to them, these questions become a lot easier.
Taylor :
Yep, that’s great. You know, talk to me more about that, how do you go about doing this, not do you do this or do you do that, you know, how do you go about, you know, your year-end tax planning, you know, talk to me about some of the tax planning things that you and your CPA have done together. And you think about these things ahead of time and again, we ask the same five or six questions over and over and over again, because you know, we only work with one demographic.
Steven:
Yeah, it’s not, ‘hey, did you get a refund last year’ it’s a ‘were you happy with the amount of refund that you got last year’ or ‘were you okay with the amount that you paid at the end of the year to the IRS’ it’s not ‘did you get a refund’, ‘did you make a payment’ — open ended questions, I love it. Anything else you want to add for our listeners, Taylor?
Taylor :
I would just say you know, through this exercise from a marketing perspective, once you nail down that target demographic, again, just pick one, pick your ideal client, once you nail down their pain points, I would challenge everybody to come up with a slogan, the very top of your website, we call it your hero space, is the most important area of your website and most advisors have something that just says like you know, ‘wealth management firm’ or you know ‘boutique wealth management firm : helping individuals and families’ — scrap all that and once you know who you’re talking to, and your ideal client is come up with a tagline, you know, our says, you know, ‘helping retirement savers over age 50’, you know, you might work with business owners maybe, it’s you know, ‘helping prevent business owners with eight figure revenues from overpaying the IRS’, but come up with a really simple short tagline that speaks to that demographic that you can use in your marketing. So the more specific you can get that speaks to that pain point, the better. So I would come up with a really targeted tagline that you can use on your website in the hero space and in all of your messaging and marketing.
Steven:
Yeah, and you can go to definefinancial.com to see Taylor’s, and I just I just pulled it up. It says ‘retirement planning for individuals over age 50’ and then I love that the very next thing is ‘reduce taxes, invest smarter, optimize income.’ That’s so just shortened, to the point and speaks to exactly you’re talking about. I love that.
Taylor :
Yep.
Well, Taylor, I really appreciate you being on the episode today.
Thanks, Steven. I appreciate you having me and really appreciate everyone listening in.
Good luck out there everyone. And until next time, remember to tip your server, not the IRS
