A Conversation With Ryan Sullivan

In this episode of Only Human, host Yohance Harrison welcomes Ryan Sullivan, founder of Podcast Principles, to discuss the intersection of podcasting, AI, and financial advisory. Listeners will hear actionable advice on how financial advisors can launch their own podcasts, leverage AI to streamline processes, and build sustainable marketing and client engagement strategies. Key highlights include a deep dive into the "marry, divorce, date" tech segment, practical tips for getting started with podcasting, and a candid discussion about the role of AI in modern financial practices. This episode is a must-listen for advisors looking to stay ahead in the digital age.

Links Mentioned:

Podcast Principles

Forward Focus Forum

Linkedin-Ryan

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Transcript

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Yohance: Welcome to the Money Script podcast. It's your host, Yohance Harrison. So happy to be with each and every one of you today. It's been a long time. I took a little bit of a break. I'll tell you all more about it later. But let's just say I have good news to share. But we'll share it later. I'm gonna save that. So you're just gonna have to wait to hear it. I am here with a friend I found online, Mr. Ryan Sullivan. He is the founder of Podcast Principles. So he's probably going to teach me some game on this podcasting thing. I already see. He's already set up with him. His mood lighting, with the red lighting. He's got the little bonsai tree up there, a couple action figures. I mean, I got my Black Panther guy right there. So, yeah, I got a little something. Okay, we're cooking. Okay, I'm cooking. Let him cook. So. So I. I wanted to bring Ryan to the Only Human channel so we can talk about how he is working with advisors in this digital world, in this increasing AI world, and helping them find their voice on podcasting and using that as a tool to help them be able to continue to grow their practices. Practices. Because I know you mentioned, Ryan, that you started kind of broad, but now you've niched down, or niched, however you want to say it. Niche makes you rich. We're going to go with the niche. So you've niched down to working primarily with financial advisors. Can you just tell us a little bit about that journey and how you chose us as your number one clients?

Ryan: Well, it's just I love advisors, you know, they're my favorite people. I do love it. Well

Yohance: said nobody my money.

Ryan: I hired so many advisors. No, the real story, man. So my cousin is an advisor, so that's cool. So I got to see a little behind the scenes. He's a little bit older than me, so I got to see him kind of step into that and take a book of business and run with it. So that was cool. But I met an advisor at a networking event. It was an entrepreneurs organization networking event I got invited to and I met him and we. He was in his late 60s at the time, and he said, I have an AM radio show that I've also turned into a podcast, and it does really good for lead generation. You know, we should talk because I know you do podcasts. So I was like, okay, yeah, let's talk. And so we, you know, I helped him with the podcast. I was a guest. We. We Kind of restarted it, restrategized it, kind of moved it around. And now still to this day, you know, a couple years later, I work with his VA and I help her build out the sales and marketing system for, you know, his firm and so he can acquire more clients.

Yohance: Can you give a shout out to that, to that show?

Ryan: Yeah. So Mark Bernstein, you can look him up and you know, on LinkedIn, Google all that stuff and you'll find the podcast and it's a Forward Focus forum it's called, and he has that, like I said, as an AM radio show and a podcast where he interviews business owners and talks about their vision. And I think that's the coolest part because that's also why he's an advisor. He's an advisor for business owners. So he really gets to lock in on the vision, which happens to be his expertise, which is the exit. Exit plan. Right. He specializes in helping people, business owners exit their business, which, as you know, we think it's going to be a certain thing, then it's nothing like we think and it takes 10 times as long and. Right. So shout out to Mark Bernstein probably wouldn't be working with advisors without him. He has much younger guys at the firm who still aren't fully bought into the online presence while he's out there, you know, crushing it on his podcast and LinkedIn. So that was my first, you know, kind of my start with working with advisors. I had a couple more advisors along the way who became clients. I just, they were the right fit, personality wise for this. Right. For content, for podcasts. I didn't know anything about the space. You know, I knew what they did. I had an advisor. I had a Northwest mutual advisor, right. Like out of college. He contacted me. You know, he's a good friend, he's been on my podcast. So I had a general idea. Um, but in the last six months, I have six months, you know, to a year I have dove fully into this niche and, you know, we can talk about why and you know, my goal with this niche and my vision and you know, advisors broadly and why, you know, I think I'm, you know, uniquely positioned to help them. But, you know, that was my foray into, into advisors.

Yohance: Love it. We're gonna take a quick pause because I forgot to put my headphones in. I usually don't get a lot of feedback, but it's probably best that I put them in.

Ryan: Yeah, why not, man? Why not? All the engineers out there are clapping right now, so.

Yohance: Yeah, they are. They are like, oh, okay. All right, Mike, the speaker change to. Come on.

Ryan: Check.

Yohance: No, not yet. It doesn't.

Ryan: You're getting there.

Yohance: Doesn't know I'm here yet.

Ryan: Oh, you might have to switch to my sponsor.

Yohance: Come on. There we go. Who's your sponsor?

Ryan: Riverside.

Yohance: Yeah, everyone. That's what everyone tells me is go to Riverside. Go to Riverside.

Ryan: Hey, I won't tell you what to do. I'll just tell you that they are sponsored.

Yohance: Actually, Alex, leave that in because I'm talking to a podcast guy.

Ryan: So.

Yohance: Yeah, leave that. Don't even take that out. Yes, I just switched on my headphones and he's telling me to leave stream yard and go to Riverside.

Ryan: Hey, I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just making.

Yohance Give me a reason. Anyway, no, every, every. So. So actually, let's talk about that a little bit because there's a lot of folks on LinkedIn and a lot of individuals that I. That I hear from Stages at different financial advisor conferences and they put starting a podcast like at the top of the list. So first question, you know, should there be a fear of over saturation in the podcasting world as far as financial advisors? Question 1. And then let's get into. So if you're going to do it, what are some of the basic tools that you'll need in order to create a podcast? Let's start with the first one. Like, is it true? I mean, is it okay if everybody has a podcast?

Ryan: Yes. If you are worried about saturation, you shouldn't be a financial advisor and you shouldn't post on social media if you want to know what's saturated. It's financial advising and social media. So, so let's already like, hey, I mean, that's just the facts. Like if, if you look up financial. How many financial advisors in my city go see that number and tell me if it's saturated? I. I don't know. It's a matter of opinion. There could be 8, 000 and that could be saturated. Or there could be 800,000. Maybe that's saturated. But what is saturated is social media.

Yohance: Oh, yeah, that's true. Everybody's like the guru financial advisor on Instagram and Tick Tock. Half of them don't have any credentials and they're just spewing lies. So that's.

Ryan: Well, I was gonna say. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about that problem. That's a whole thing. But okay, so number. So, so saturation is a mindset and belief. It is not a fact.

Yohance: Right?

Ryan: Because you could be like, there's too many rappers out there. Too much music. Okay. That's a belief. It's not a fact. That's. You believe there's.

Yohance: I would actually say there's not enough rap. Rap needs help right now. Shout out to J. Cole trying to bring it back. Fact. You know, we had that whole Kendrick and. And. And Drake thing that went on, and we were excited about hip hop for a minute, and then it was just dead for months.

Ryan: Don't get me going on that, because I would get going on that too. But. But that's the thing. So I'm just. So for the dura. For the remainder of this conversation, let's just all agree that it's not saturated.

Yohance: Okay, great. Okay.

Ryan: That just helps us be in the right mindset to then learn about what to do. Not worry about what everybody else is doing, because that's what's talking about. What's saturated is talking about what everybody else is doing. And why do we care? So now let's talk about what we can do. Okay. Yes. Should you worry about starting a podcast? Yes. Not worry about what everybody else is doing. Worry about yourself, because that's the barrier. The barrier is maybe I don't like podcasting. Maybe I don't have the personality for this. Maybe. Maybe I'd ma. I'd much rather write. Maybe I'd much rather write a book or go on the morning news or. Or ho. Or send steak dinners in the mail and get people to show up for that. You know, I'm not against any of those things. Good. I like it. But here's the thing. Does. Do it. Does it work? No, because if it did, everybody would be talking about it. So they don't. Those things don't even work anymore. But that's a whole nother conversation. But the reality. So next step is, what do I actually do? What I would do is try it. Test it out. Interview Johans. You know him. Interview him. Don't even release it. Tell him, hey, listen, do you mind? I want to try this podcast. And then you mind if I interview you for 30 minutes? We might not even put it out, but I'd like to just test it. I guarantee he's going to do it. Right. As long as you're somebody, like, you have a business, you're a normal person.

Yohance: Right.

Ryan: And you're just do it with your cpa, who you work with closely with your other clients. Right. Do it with a vendor. Don't worry about compliance. Just do it like it doesn't have to be out there. We have a program for this, right? We have a program where we don't. We. It's literally trying a podcast out before you launch one. Right. That I designed specifically because of this. Because I don't want people jumping into it.

Yohance: Right.

Ryan: I don't want you to go, well, the podcast guy said four episodes a month, so that's it. Like, no, start podcasting. Try it out. There's three core formats. Try one of them, try two of them, or try all and then see if you like, don't.

Yohance: Don't bury stuff. What are the three formats?

Ryan: Why do you think I bury stuff? Come on. No, this is not so three formats.

Yohance: Oh, yeah, you bury it. So I asked a question. I get it. You are a podcast master. I'm sorry, forgive me. I. I fell for it. You said, oh, what are the three formulas?

Ryan: Oh, my God.

Yohance: Boom.

Ryan: Thank you for making me that clip. I need. Needed that. No. So three formats. Guesting is what. Or having guests. That's the Rogan vibe. Like, it's not going to be three hours long. But that's one format. Second one is what I really like. What we've done in life insurance that has worked really well is. And what I mean is like selling life insurance, marketing. Life insurance is the co hosted. So that's where you have either somebody else, another advisor, or you have a CPA and advisor, and they do it together. Right. For example, so that's the second format. And then the third format is the big scary one, which is looking at the camera, you know, solo. Yes. Staring into, you know, so, but. So there's that. So those three. I have advisors who do one, I have advisors who do two, I have advisors who do all three. It's up to you, you know, but those are the three to test, to test out before you go into any one of them.

Yohance: So I guess this is number two, then. We are co hosting. Right? Would that be.

Ryan: No, this is a get. Because I'm a guest.

Yohance: You're a guest.

Ryan: So a co host would mean every week, think about, like, ESPN or whatever, you know, like, they're all hosts.

Yohance: Okay, so got it.

Ryan: But every week it's the same people. Right? So that's what co hosted would be. Yeah, you go into it with somebody else and you have a similar clientele and similar audiences, but different personalities. That's the benefit of that.

Yohance: So, so what about since this is only human, we. I got to bring AI into this somewhere. So what about all of these? Oh, my gosh. All these messages I get on LinkedIn, where they're saying, hey, we can help you create a avatar of yourself and it can do your podcast for you. I mean, that seems really. No, to me. It just seemed. It doesn't seem genuine. I. I mean, I've seen some of them and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's cool. But I. I don't see how. And there's also. I mean, you can have your whole podcast written for you in AI. I don't know. I. I feel like that. That takes away from the. The genuine aspect of being able to listen in on a real conversation with real people. It just becomes. It's almost like that would be the version of an audible. You know, like listening to an audible book. Great. I'm just listening to whether it's a computer reading or a person in. I'm just listening to it versus listening to an audible book with an author that actually will do the voices of different characters, or if there's multiple people in there doing the different voices. I feel like that's. Those are more fun and more genuine. What have you found in your research in that area?

Ryan: I have not came across a podcast that is created by AI or is even spoken by AI that people listen to.

Yohance: Oh, okay. That people listen. So there you go.

Ryan: I create podcasts that people listen to. That's my job. So that's my domain. To your point, only human. I only work with humans. Now, if you sell to AI, if AIs are the. Are the. Not people, are the things buying your stuff, then I guess use AI. But we sell the humans. So I make human stuff with humans.

Yohance: So what role do you think AI can play in podcasting? Like how. How can AI help a podcaster? I know some things I use AI for, but since I have you here, I'm just going to learn from you.

Ryan: Yeah, sure. I mean, so the sky's the limit, right? I mean, whatever you can think of using AI for, that's the limit, right? Like, you could use it for so many things. What I personally use it for is I create four episodes. I do solo podcasts, right? So I'll just start with me, and then I can talk about clients too, and what they do. But I create solo podcast episodes that I put on YouTube and my podcast. I take my ideas, right? I give my GPT that I made, I give it my four ideas, and then I give it my three kind of pillars within each idea, like my bullet points, and then I have it create four episode structures, slash formats for me. Then in 60 minutes, I go and record all four. And now I'm done for the month. I did my four episodes for the month in an hour.

Yohance: Oh, wow.

Ryan: But it's about the input. So that AI is trained on organizing my ideas. It does not create new ideas. And that's what AI is great for. Right. I'm still using. People are like, my editors are incredible. I can't do what they do. They AI can't. Now AI allows me to offer services that I wouldn't be able to offer for a price I wouldn't be able to offer it at. Right. So it can do some of the editing. And I. And that's great. But I'm doing the input AI is giving, reorganizing my ideas for me. I'm recording the podcast. I'm writing the LinkedIn post that promotes it. If you're a financial advisor, you're writing that LinkedIn post to promote your podcast. Or somebody, a marketing assistant or a VA or somebody's writing it, but a person is writing it again because we sell to people and we market to people. So, yeah, there's a million ways we can use AI as long as at the end of the day, it's contributing to my goal, which is to add more ideal clients, then great. That's. That's what I use it for. And then there's automations and things that I have set up too. But, you know, that's just one example.

Yohance: Yeah, that's one thing I had to learn is prompting for. For my AI in making it understand my voice. So part of what I did is I put into my GPT dozens of. What do you call them? Not scripts. The words that we're saying. What's that called?

Ryan: Like example or prompts or examples?

Yohance: No, not prompts. No, the words we're saying. And I say, I want the transcript. Transcript, that's the one. Yes. I put dozens of transcripts in so it could understand my voice, because the transcripts are what I say. And then I do something similar to you. As I'm planning through the podcast, I'll just go and plug in. Here's who I'm talking to. Here's some of the key points I want to talk about now. Using my voice because you understand my voice, you know, the things I'm going to say. Create an outline for me for the interview that I'm walking into. So. And I feel it works great now. It did not work as well when I first started, and I was like, hey, build me an outline. And every single outline it was building was different. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, this is the outline I want. This is the structure I want. These are the things I say. I don't say that. So don't have me say that, because I'm not going to do it. And I found out that I was very helpful in just getting. Helped me get my thoughts organized and similar for my solos. I know for my true, true listeners out there, you haven't seen the solos in a while, and I know you keep asking for them, but I was busy. I'll tell you about it later. But I do have some more solos coming up, and AI has helped me plan out and script out those solos, because I'll just speak into my AI and just say, hey, here's what I'm trying to say in general now, you know the format. I want to make it to be edutainment, as I like to call it. Help me format this into some edutainment. And the biggest thing that I. I've learned with my AI prompter is I tell it to ask me questions. Don't just give me the answer. Don't just tell me, say this, ask me, give me a choice. Do you want to say it this way? You want to say this way so that I can still have that human element in the process versus just being a robot and reading the robot's words?

Ryan: Yep. No, that's it. That's how it's supposed to be. You know, I like it.

Yohance: Indeed. All right, so you fell into my DMS on LinkedIn. Goes down in the DMs. I don't have the rights to that song, so. And I believe you. You probably saw that I had a podcast. I think you came across one of my interviews. It was probably with Mod Madre or Madre. Excuse me, Harper. I think that was the one that you fell in my. My. My DMS on. And you were talking about your services, but you were speaking more from a position of lead generation. And I got to be honest with you, Ryan, I don't use my podcast for lead gen. I like to use it just as my. I like to call it billboard. You know, you drive down the street, you see a billboard. So you're scrolling through podcasts, you come across my podcast. And I find that most of my listeners are my clients or my wannabe clients or soon to be clients. I should call them. And again, it's just there for the general financial literacy edutainment. Give people something wholesome that they can listen to and maybe learn a little bit from. So again, I've never viewed mine as a lead gen tool, but tell me a little bit more about why or how you're finding that podcasting can be a lead gen tool and how it stacks up to some of the other lead generation aspects out there. Not steak dinners. We're not going to talk about that one.

Ryan: I love that we're just marking that one off because it's such an insane concept to be like, I will buy you dinner, then let me manage all of your wealth.

B: Hold on. Not gonna lie. There was a time in my life, I've been an advisor since 2001. I never did the steak dinners. We would do what we called lunch and learns.

Ryan: Okay, this is good. I want to know about lunch.

Yohance: Yeah, yeah, let me buy you lunch. So it would. So you. But you would do it more with a. Well, I like to do it more with the person I already knew. There were also advisors that used to set up fish bowls at restaurants, drop in your car and get a free lunch. And so every person that you call gets the free lunch. So you tell them to come back to the restaurant, bring some friends, and you do a financial presentation in the middle of Chili's. I prefer to do it where I would say, hey, client, I know you work at Microsoft. I've learned your benefit system, your benefit plan really well. Would you like to grab two or three friends and I meet you at Microsoft and I'll bring some, some Jersey mics and offer lunch?

Ryan: That makes sense.

Yohance: Well, but that kind of gets more into. I'm. I'm presenting it more as a referral lead generation than a cold call. I'm just going to drop these mailers and invite.

Ryan: Well, this is good. This is good because this relates to the podcast. So everything we do online just supplements the rest of what we do in the business. So somebody meets you at the Launcher Network event. Or maybe they are a referral or, you know, or they just. What happens with our clients? They stumble in on LinkedIn. You know, they. We have a LinkedIn strategy that attracts these types of people, and now they're in the network every day. They're seeing five seconds of you, 10 seconds of you, maybe 20 in a 60 second video. But they're seeing short bursts, right. And they're seemingly random. Right. There's a strategy behind it, but it's mostly random. Then you put out some sort of something like this, a podcast, a YouTube video, an interview, something longer, a webinar.

Yohance: Right.

Ryan: And now a few of those people click on it and they go through and they're listening to you now for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30, you know, maybe an hour.

Yohance: Right.

Ryan: That is why we would have a podcast. It's not that they're gonna listen, you know, they're gonna find you, they're gonna listen, they're gonna buy. It's not, it doesn't typically work like that, though. It can, but in this case, if we're selling, you know, if we're offering financial advising or even plans or insurance, it doesn't really matter what it is these were building. The podcast gives them the ability to get to know like, and trust you without you having to physically be there. At the networking event. I spent the five minutes to talk to you. So now you have the know like and trust. So when I need somebody to do SEO, and I met this SEO guy. Well, I met him at the thing. I already trust him because now I know him and okay, do my SEO. But that's how, that's how it works. We're trying to replicate that and not trying. That's what we actually do is we replicate that online. But it's not only that, it's also people you would have never gotten as a client, going from I don't even know you to becoming a client because they were seeing your posts on LinkedIn, listening to your podcast episodes, watching your YouTube videos, subscribing to your email list. So it's an. And not an or. It's a supplement to everything else.

Yohance: But doesn't it create just a very wide funnel of people? Like, I mean, what, what's done it? Wouldn't it take a lot of input of people into the, listening into the mailing list to then actually get the sale? I mean, it seems like it's a longer, a much longer sales cycle than quite simply just saying, hey, Brian, it's a pleasure working with you. You mentioned that you have a brother. Would you be open to introducing me to him?

Ryan: Yes, but it's just. And you do the brother and. But then you spend 30 minutes on LinkedIn in the morning, you comment for 20 minutes, you post, maybe you comment and then you do DMS for another 10 or 20 minutes and you just micro dose that every single day. And 18 months later, you have seven new clients from that, that if you just didn't do that 30 minutes or an hour every day, you just wouldn't have those seven. You still have the brother, you just wouldn't have the extra seven. Or in our client's case, 150. You know, so, I mean, I could run through all the Numbers, too. But it's, it's. Again, it's. It's not a. The funnel is. What is the funnel? You make most people just start creating content, which is not a funnel. So in your point, it's like, no, it doesn't work. If you come to me and you're like, we have no idea how to get clients from anything online. Okay. Then we have to build a funnel. We don't start posting, you know, so that's. Most people just post. If you go to a networking event, you just don't tell people what you do, then you'll never get any clients.

Yohance: Right?

Ryan: So there's all. There's these extra steps that if we do this as a strategy consistently over time, it takes longer, it costs more money because it costs you more time. But three to five years from now, your. Your firm has a sales and marketing system that doesn't rely on buying leads, dinners, or an agency. That's. That's what this does.

Yohance: What do you mean by agency?

Ryan: Well, you can hire a marketing agency.

Yohance: I mean agents at that agency.

Ryan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, you don't want to have it be what I would call like a faucet agreement? Well, which would be. I'm. I'm Ryan from Podcast Principles. Right. I come in, I go, yo, Hans, we're going to take this over. We're going to get you X amount of leads in this time. It's going to take 12 months. And you're like, okay, great. You give me a hundred thousand dollars and say you. I give you. You give me a hundred thousand. You make X amount. You have X amount of new aum now. Right. And. But the second you turn off my retainer, everything stops.

Yohance: Yep.

Ryan: You still have the original clients, but there's no new ones. And guess what? You have no idea how I did it. That's what I'm fighting against. I want your firm to have this ip. I don't want you to rely on me. I don't want you buying leads. I don't want you to rely on Forbes. I don't want you to rely on PR books and morning news. I want you to rely on you. That's.

Yohance: That's what this does. Okay. Okay, Ryan, I gotta admit, I came in with a bit of a chip on my shoulder because. And you gotta understand, right again. I've been in business 20 plus years. As you see, I post on LinkedIn often. I spend a lot of time. I'm that person that, you know. I do my 10, 15 minutes a day. I comment on the comments. I like the likes. Etc, I try to post something personal. I try to post something, but not try. I do. My assistant is posting on my behalf. So I'm, I'm on LinkedIn daily. But again it's my intention is really just to raise awareness from my profile for more public speaking. And I, I co authored a book that just came out, well is coming out in July. Pre orders were yesterday. So I'm raising my level of exposure for those other big hits. I've started writing 30 minutes a day for my own book. So I know that having that profile on LinkedIn, having more listeners on podcast will just make it that much easier. When I say, hey, the book is dropping, go pick up the book.

Ryan: You're already doing it. You're already doing all of that. That's. This is the highest level as it gets for advisors and, or even, even RIAs, like most of them don't have a podcast. So it's like you, like, you're already almost basically the highest level as it gets. You know, most, most advisors spend less than 2% of revenue on marketing.

Yohance: On marketing. Yeah, I know. I, I've been, it's not, I've had that argument with kids. Yeah, that's the thing.

Ryan: I'm not telling you to spend more. I'm literally saying don't actually just go on social media. It's free.

Yohance: Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm about, I think last I checked I was about 7 or 8% of revenue on marketing.

Ryan: Well, think about that. You're 4X.

Yohance: Yeah, but it's still.

Ryan: Here's another crazy stat too, is if you just have a marketing plan, you will make more money. You don't even have to stick to it, just have a plan. That's what the data shows. So like it's. So it's not that hard. Like, you know, this is not like groundbreaking stuff. It's just the question is how to actually do it. Because we have so many things that will stop us. Mostly time, mostly compliance. You know, I mean there's a lot of barriers, but mostly not.

Yohance: Yeah, now you mentioned, so you mentioned something. Like I said, it's giving me a different impression of your business. But you mentioned that a lot of times advisors, ras will go hire a firm that's a faucet. That's a very good way to describe it. But once they stop paying that faucet, everything stops. And I don't, I don't only see this in financial advising. I see this in consulting. I see, I see this Happening with a lot of different. Also some of my clients, and they're always hopping from marketing firm to marketing firm to marketing firm because none of them are truly teaching them how to build their own ip. So it's a repeatable process. Ryan, I'm not gonna lie to you, man. I've been podcasting for six years. Like, this is. It's not that hard to me. And I feel like if I really wanted to, I could turn into some lead generation type thing. But it's not. That's not my purpose. I'm getting enough from my other sources that I don't really. I'm not looking for that there. So advisors, if you are looking for that, Ryan might be able to help you with that. But, but what I'm hearing from you is that what you're actually creating, which is different from what I assumed is a sustainable marketing plan, which was a little bit of the tit for tat we had when we were messaging and agreed to have the show. Because I was saying referrals are sustainable and a lot. And you're not the only one, Ryan. A lot of folks in marketing tell people that their referrals aren't sustainable, they aren't scalable, and, you know, and eventually the pool dries up. And I completely disagree because I agree with what you said. It's all about the funnel. If I create a process and I have a funnel and I repeat that process every single time the same way, tweak it where I need to. If it needs to be tweaked. The problem is not the source. Excuse me? The problem is not the sources. The problem is me. If it's not working, I'm the problem. And that's what I tell advisors about referrals. Like, if you're not getting referrals, you are the problem. It's not your clients, it's not the market. It's not. It's you. Your, your system. You haven't created a repeatable system that you can work every time. That works.

Ryan: That's my indicator too. Like, I don't. You're not going to work with us if you don't get referrals. Oh, well, because think about it. Why aren't, why aren't you getting referrals?

Yohance: Because it's you. Exactly. It's just a human. That's all problem.

Ryan: Right?

Yohance: You know, my AI, my AI can't get referrals. My AI, my AI will spot referral opportunities I may have missed. Like, hey, where did I miss the referral opportunity? No, tell me you probably could have asked Ryan about his buddy.

Ryan: Well, here. Here's another aspect to it. You, okay, you're an advisor, even if you're an ria. You can't. You maybe you, I don't know, maybe you can tell me. Could you go on social media and say, would you like to hire me? Here's my link.

Yohance: Can you say that as an ria? Yeah. Okay.

Ryan: Okay. Why don't they do it? Imagine that's the thing. Advisors are posting for other advisors. Yeah, they're literally posting like, Mark, I literally. I do this every single day. I go on the post, I go, hey, I don't understand any of this. Is this for advisors? And they go, yeah. I go, why? I'm interested. But now I'm not. Right? You just turned me off. And another one is, here's an article and I comment and I say, what's your opinion on this article at Johans? Then you give me a whole book and I go, make that the post. Right? That's the post.

Yohance: Yeah.

Ryan: They're posting. They never once go, hey, do you want to, like, you need an advisor? Here's who I work with. I work with this. Here's the ideal. Are you somebody who needs this in this amount of time and then have these struggles? Well, that's what I do. Like, that's the thing you. You need. Same thing with the referral. You don't get the referral unless you ask.

Yohance: There's that, right?

Ryan: It's amazing. Part of it.

Yohance: Amazing. What happened? Closed mouths don't get fed.

Ryan: If you just text one person a week, you're gonna have an extra five.

Yohance: That's part of my part.

Ryan: And I know that's a system. I have a system. You have a system. Imagine it all working in tandem. That's what it's supposed to be.

Yohance: Yeah. Got it, got it, got it. This was. This was good. Hey, you know, I'm actually, I'm feeling a little bit better. Ryan, this is. This is good, man.

Ryan: Yeah, it's both, it's both. It's fine. We get to. We get to have our cake and eat it too.

Yohance: Indeed. All right, let's move on to some. Some quick hits. So I'm a brand new advisor. I want to start a podcast technology. What do I need?

Ryan: Do you have a phone?

Yohance: Okay, so phone could work.

Ryan: Okay, phone, phone, phone. If you want, get a webcam. Either way is fine. Okay, then we have a mic. I don't have it on my desk. I usually do. It's a. It's called The Hollyland Lark. M2.

Yohance: Oh, Hollyland. I got the Hollyland.

Ryan: You got the Hollyland too, right? Clip that on your shirt. Cool. We're good with the audio. It's 67, right? They keep dropping the price, so now you're set up with your audio.

Yohance: Wait, what? 67. I paid 100.

Ryan: I know, me too. But here we are. Okay, so. But yeah, so that's your tech. And then if you want to do online like we're doing, I have a webcam and a mic that's also inexpensive now. And I.

Yohance: You.

Ryan: You use Squadcast. I think I use Riverside. But you know, you can. I don't care. Just use whatever you want to use and that's it. Like what I'm saying. Let's summarize. You're a financial advisor. You're getting started. You already have everything you need because

Yohance: state allowed it for the people in the back. I don't think they heard you. One more time.

Ryan: You're an advisor. You want to get some new clients in the door. You already have everything you need. You have a phone. That's your social media. That's your referral center. That's your marketing. You have a LinkedIn account. Guess what I can do on LinkedIn. I don't really want to pay for sales. Navigator. It's $120 a month.

Yohance: Cool.

Ryan: Get the 30 day free trial, print out all of your leads lists and then cancel it. God damn, they're so easy.

Yohance: So don't shut me down. Don't shut me down.

Ryan: All there. I'm not supposed to say this, but I have worked with LinkedIn before and they're. They're cool. We're good.

Yohance: We're good. Okay.

Ryan: And we left on a. On a good.

Yohance: I'm always bashing on teams anyway, so it's.

Ryan: I'm ripping my list. That's the other thing. Advisors.

Yohance: Why are we.

Ryan: Can we use Google? Like let's use Drive. Anyway, so no Dropbox. No. Like no SharePoint. Let's use Drive. But, but yeah, that's it. Like LinkedIn. What I say, here's my platforms. LinkedIn, YouTube, email, podcast. You're going to post three to five times a week on LinkedIn. You're going to mix it between personal, tactical and. And to what extent you can. Case study. But mostly like, yeah, I had a client that. That's the post, right? You're going to mix those up. That's going to be LinkedIn. What you're going to do on LinkedIn is replicate what you do in person. You're going to develop relationships. Look at that. Right. Let's look at the word conversion. Where does that word come from? A very similar word called conversation. Right. Conversions come from conversations. Right. So our marketing metric as an advisor in the first five years is how many conversations am I starting or maintaining every given day or week? That's it.

Yohance: I use. I used to measure. I don't do it. I don't anymore. I don't have to, but that's what I used to measure conversations.

Ryan: That's it, man. So that's it.

Yohance: There's no where money came up.

Ryan: You don't gotta. You don't gotta hire me. You don't gotta hire Johans. You don't gotta hire anybody. You can just get started and do it. And then if you think I need a. I want a strategy. I had advisors today. Multi generational business. They've been around for over 50 years. They're stepping into the online space. They have a podcast. Okay. Now it's time to hire a company and develop a strategy.

Yohance : Right.

Ryan: But you can get started yourself. It doesn't take that much.

Yohance: Got it. All right. I appreciate all of the tips you've gave today. This. This was great. I. My favorite thing that I heard was conversion comes from conversation. Like, that is. That's gold right there. That is. I'm. I mean, I could be my idea, but just know that I heard it first from you. That was good. So with the Only Human podcast, there is something fun that we like to do. And by the way, you've made it this far through the show, if you're all the way to this part, you might as well do the whole, like, subscribe, share all those fun things. You know, click the button and subscribe. And you're not doing it for me, you're doing it for someone else. By you liking subscribing, sharing, that sort of thing, you're just raising our profile so that other people are able to see it. Okay, so do a friend a favor. But at the end of every show for Only Human, we like to play a little game called Marry, Divorce, and maybe date on the side. And we're talking about technology, so don't bring your girlfriend and wife into this. We're talking about technology. So tell me one piece of tech. It can be an application or a software that you are absolutely married to and you think you're going to always have in your arsenal forever. Tell me one piece of tech that you are probably going to file some separation paperwork soon because it's not really fitting the bill Anymore. And because of that, there's probably something you're starting to date on the side. And as you can see, he wasn't ready for this. See, I like it when he gets. Got to think about a little bit. That's what makes it more fun. All right, so, Ryan, what piece of tech or software are you absolutely married to?

Ryan: Man, this is hard. I'm. This isn't. Not the longest term one, but it's the one I now cannot live without, which is fathom. AI NoteTaker doesn't have to be fathom. For me it is. But AI NoteTaker changed my business.

Yohance: I've changed mine too.

Ryan: Changed my life.

Yohance: My yes. I got so much time back.

Ryan: Imagine people in the 80s, like, calling cold, calling to sell. Like, come on, man, can you imagine writing? No, I'm still a psycho. I still take.

Yohance: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ryan: But yeah, they're worthless. These are worth. You can't even read them. But yeah, so that's my Mary. Okay, my man. This is. This is. I didn't see this one coming. My divorce is chat GPT.

Yohance: Oh, you know what? Mine too. I actually said it from stage. I was giving a presentation and I said some stage and said, I'm divorcing chatgpt.

Ryan: Yeah, I am. Okay. And well, okay, I'll give you mine, but then I want to hear your reason why. And then my. My side chick lately, for. For in that realm has been Gemini, but I think I'm. I haven't explored Claude, but I think Claude is probably going to be the end all. Be all. But I'm loving Gemini, man. Like, it's giving me in a lot of cases without a lot of prompting, the same or even better answers.

Yohance: I find that is more consistent.

Ryan: I found that's more thoughtful in the sense of like, you could put GPT on thinking mode, but it's still very mechanistic and like robotic. And I feel like Gemini talks more like a person talks. But yeah, that's my Mary divorce and got it.

Yohance: So it looks all yours are kind of in.

Ryan: In the.

Yohance: In the realm of. Of. Of AI Just a bit. So true for my Mary. I am. I'm married to Hazel. Hazel's not a woman. It's a woman's name, but it's the name of a AI tool for financial advisors. Okay. And so it's built by financial. By a custodian platform. And the reason why I'm divorcing ChatGPT is because Hazel is actually built using Claude, Chat GBT and Gemini, so uses all of them. So I'm able to get kind of the best of all of them. So I don't need Chat GPT solo anymore because I can do it all right inside of Hazel.

Ryan: Okay. And that's you're saying like, how is it accustomed to advisors? It knows the compliance. Or like, why is it Exactly.

Yohance: Okay, it knows the compliance. Got it. It understands things. It knows not to say go buy all Apple because you're going to make a bunch of money in it. And that was not a recommendation. That was just me giving an example. So, yeah, it knows not to do that. It knows that if it's giving any sort of advice that could be construed as tax or legal advice to give the disclosure say, okay, wow, that's good, man. That's really good. That's really good. And I can. Similar to what I used to do inside of Chat GPT, I can load my documents, my voice into it so that it starts to interpret things the way I want it. Just this morning I wanted to rewrite a. So when I'm giving a portfolio recommendation, I like to give the reasoning behind that portfolio recommendation. And so I like to go through there, the client's investment policy statement. So long term, short term, high risk, low risk, all that stuff. And so I wanted to hand that off to my assistant and let her do it. Well, she's not up here. So I had to create a GPT if you was not. They called a mode on GPT. I had to create a mode for her and I instructed it go pull and it's attached to my CRM. So go pull Ryan's information from this from the CRM and his IPS and build me a template that says for Ryan's Roth ira, we are recommending the ABCDEF fund and here's the reasons why. Here's how it's going to support you to your goals. So the templates there. So all she has to do is click, click, click, click, click, click, click next, click, click.

Ryan: That's how you're supposed to use AI Next. Yep.

Yohance: Okay. And it's written in again, going back to the point earlier of telling your prompting your I keep talking my hands. I've been told not to do that Prompting your That's fun. Well, because I cover up the camera.

Ryan: Oh, whatever.

Yohance: I'm prompting your AI tool to ask you questions. So mine when I said, hey, I want a template, it said, here's three ideas of a template versus in the old days before I knew to do that, I go in GPT. Here's your template yes. And yeah, I might say, oh, it's done copy paste. But then after a while I'm like, oh, that's kind of stale. So it said, all right, here's a template that's in your voice based on documents that you've written. Here's a template that adds a little bit of flavor, if you will. And here's a template that's just bare bones, strictly compliance. You know, I usually wind up doing blend them together. Yep, you did great. And then it blends together and then I have exactly what I want to use. So. So yeah, so that's, that is my. So yes, I'll be divorcing GPT and then dating on the side. Shout out to Zox AI. It's another financial advisor AI tool, Z O C K S. My good friend Matt Halloran is their chief evangelist. I think that's his title over there. So I did finally get a subscription. They they, that's the thing with these AI some of them do things others don't do, especially in our business. So Zox has a integration with the financial planning tool. So I can upload a statement and it'll automatically put it into my financial planning tool. And every now and then I have clients, they're not comfortable with connecting all of their accounts, which is okay, that's their business. But I'm not going to sit around anymore and type in, you have 8 shares of Apple, 7 shares of Microsoft.

Ryan: Oh my God.

Yohance: Nope.

Ryan: That's literally what AI designed for.

Yohance: It cost me $67 a month and all I did was just load in the statement and it said, does this look right? I was like, it better. You just copied and paste.

Ryan: Can I, can I make an observer about advisors real quick? That I just think is this is different than what I've seen before. The best advisors that I see, like the most successful ones, they. They're successful in their life and their business. They go, can I swipe? Like, can I, can I buy it? Because that 67. You don't think about that 60. Like, because you think about in the moment on I'm doing it and now I'm. And I'm just not doing that task anymore. Ah, my life.

Yohance: The most valuable advisors do for people. Most valuable non renewable resource. Time.

Ryan: Yes, man, yes, yes, I will spend

Yohance: money for more time.

Ryan: Yep.

Yohance: I love it all day because also once I have the time, I can say, hmm, let me go spend some time on LinkedIn. Maybe I'll get a lead out of it.

Ryan: Who knows? I love it, man. That's great.

Yohance: Ryan, you have been amazing. Thank you so much for spending some time with us on Only Human, the Channel for Money script podcast. We are back. This is season. I don't even know what season is. Eight, seven, season a lot. I think it's season seven. It better be season seven.

Ryan: Oh, you're a veteran.

Yohance: Then I'll correct you. You'll correct me in the comments or I'll correct myself on the next show. We have a lot more in store for Only Human coming up. I've I did some traveling, talked to a few different advisors that said they want to be on the show. We are going to have some fun. We want to continue to stay human. AI is just going to become more and more and more a part of our lives. And if you are an advisor, which you probably are, if you're listening to this and you have not taken steps to start to integrate AI into your practice, stop what you're doing and either do it now or go into that fancy little calendar of yours and schedule in an hour to just do some research and investigation and then schedule another hour to do some implementation. And if you're so bold, click the buy button, implement it into your practice and watch it start saving you time. So much of what we do is redundant. So much of what we do is the minutiae and the paperwork. The most important thing that we do is to be a human being, to be there to listen to your clients. Show empathy, show love, show support, help solve their problems and not filling out a freaking template. We'll see you next time. Take care.

Ryan: Peace. Damn. One.