From Potomac Fund Management, this is the Conquer Risk podcast. Join us as we discuss the business of running an RIA firm and the practice of investment management. And now, our hosts. Welcome to the Conquer Risk podcast.
I'm Christopher Norton, Director of Marketing, and I'm joined today by Johnny Sandquist, the founder of Three Crowns Copywriting and Marketing. Johnny, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Christopher. Happy to be here.
I feel like this is a long time coming. We've wanted to get together at conferences and always ended up putting client interest first. So I'm glad that we finally get a chance to have this conversation today. Yeah, absolutely.
In the previous podcast that I did with Manish, where we talked about sort of the top ideas for marketers this year, there are two things I mentioned in that podcast that I want to talk about today. The first of which is sort of this idea that when you can't afford to hire a CMO, what do you do? And one of the things that we suggested was find people in this industry who are uniquely talented at helping advisors with their given craft, and one of those people is you. So I'm excited to have you here because, first of all, I've known you for a decade.
Definitely a decade now, yeah. We worked together on things at Orion. We've worked together in agency types of settings and then directly with advisors. And the thing that I've always appreciated about you is big firm, independent advisor, you have this ability to really dig in and understand their voice and the uniqueness of the way they establish relationships with their clients and how to articulate that in written word, in media, in social media.
And that's what I want to get to today because we talk a lot about the importance of establishing a unique voice. Don't sound like everyone else. And I've said that. I've said that on this podcast.
I've heard you say it. I've heard you say it in webinars. I've said it in things that you quoted me in that you've written for your blog. Yes.
But what I want to get to today as I swap my microphone here is that sounds great, and it is sage advice. But beyond telling someone to be yourself, establishing your voice in your blog, on social media, in written word, how? How does somebody even begin to think about that in an intentional way? Right.
That's a big question, man. You want to tackle that in like 20 minutes? This is what we do here on the Conquer Risk podcast. We ask the big questions.
The big questions of life. We're going to answer it all. Let's go do it. Yeah.
I mean, that's the question everybody wants to know is how do you voice? Everybody wants to know. And so it's not that complicated. Maybe just like from a process standpoint, kind of how you, yeah.
Yeah, it was basically like I did in the last podcast. Let's work ourselves out of a job. Yeah, absolutely. But just, yeah, just kind of take us through the process of how you begin to sort of build a structure around how you do that.
Right. Right. Before I say that, what you just said, like talk yourself out of a job. What a great summary of inbound marketing, right?
Like this is the job. That's the idea. It's just give freely, open-handed, give people advice, give them knowledge, give them financial education. And they realize they need somebody to work with when they come to you.
It's the same for everybody. But that's what we're doing here, right? It is. And I have always believed that the mark of any good leader is that you should be able to vanish one day and the work continue.
Yeah, absolutely. So that translates down to being a marketer, to being an advisor. You should be training your people and your clients in such a way where it's not that you're working yourself out of a job, it's that the mission continues. Right.
Okay, so let's talk about voice. Where do you start? That's kind of the key question, right? I think that you've got to understand, we keep throwing this word around, what is voice?
I think let's tackle that first. The easiest way that I try to describe a brand voice to people I work with is literally think about your speaking voice and how you talk and how you operate because that brings it back to authenticity and grounds that a little bit more in some tangible things for people. So what I try to get people to think about is that when someone's reading something you've written or when you're watching you in a video or whatever other kind of medium you choose if you're posting things on social media, that's your brand voice coming out through your company, right? Or if it's your personal account, you're representing your company, you're still taking on that professional voice.
But there shouldn't be a divide between who you personally are and who you are professionally. You're the same person no matter where you are and there can be some variants in how you behave because of social constructs and expectations, right? But at the core, if you're writing something for your company and someone's reading that, the feeling that they should take away from it should be the same as if they're talking to you in person. So I really try to get people to understand that authenticity just needs to be the same person regardless of where you are or regardless of who you're with and having that common.
I think that's brilliant advice. And we can pick on Potomac here and I'll just, for full disclosure, say that Johnny and I worked together when Potomac did a little refresh of their brand and messaging at the beginning of 2019, launched a new website last summer. And that conversation, what you just laid out is one that we had with Potomac. And we made the point where if you watch this podcast, you know our owner and CIO, Manish, has a very distinctive, dare I say, somewhat unfiltered voice.
And I saw that as an asset for the company to be distinct. It's not what everybody should do, but it's Potomac. And there is no reason to have Manish get out there and say, that's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard, and then turn around and be like, we don't think that that made a lot of sense. Like, that's just not who the organization is and there's no reason to pretend it not to be.
Absolutely. Now that's not giving everybody advice to necessarily be that distinctive or brash, but it's true to the firm. And I think that that, it's a bold example, but it's an accurate one. I think it's great because again, it's just a reflection of Manish's personality.
So, you know, like if you read a blog of Manish's and then you meet the guy in person and those two things sync up perfectly. But some people are more timid. Some people are more reserved. Some people have like super weird senses of humor.
Some people don't like think jokes at all. All those things build up to form your personality and voice. And all of those things matter in a way that I think a lot of advisors don't think about because they think, Oh, well, I can't put a sense of humor in my writing. That's not professional or I can't do this.
Well, but think about the way you built your relationships with your clients. They got to know you. However, they got to know you and whatever you, they saw is the basis for how you should create your persona. And I think FinTwit or financial Twitter, for those of you who aren't as plugged into it and should be, is a place where you really see that shine.
You see people not be afraid to show who they are. And I think that that has had a positive impact on the industry as a whole because it has changed the perception of suit and tie behind a desk has to be the answer to everything. Like if you're that guy or gal, be that person, right? But if you're not, don't pretend that you are.
Right. And I think that's a problem that people run into when they're trying to cultivate that voice and how they want to present themselves is either they water it down. Like maybe in person, they are that brash, sort of like no bullshit type of personality, but they have this fear that if they present that in a professional sense, like this is what you're going to get and work at our firm. They're afraid that they're going to turn people off from that if they present it in that outward manner in their communications.
And then the other side of things, you've got people who create a false voice because they're just trying to be someone that they're not. Like they have somebody they look up to, like Josh Brown or somebody big like that, that they see what he does socially. They see what he does on his blog and they're like, I want to be that. So they try to emulate it, but that's not who they are either.
So you run into kind of these two paths that you can go down instead of that middle path, which is just embracing who you are, what you're like, and making sure that that's actually conveyed in the communications that you send out. Right. So assuming you can do that, which is, it's not, I think it's fair to say that that isn't something that just happens. Right.
Cultivating that voice in your written content and things that you're putting out in media, even the way you speak in front of a crowd, that is something that is genuinely cultivated. Right. Not, not just a switch that gets flipped. Right.
But, but important that people keep that in their minds, that that's what they're working towards. Yeah. So if that's been accepted, if, if people understand, okay, I understand I need to be myself. I need to let my personality shine in what I do.
What, what are actionable steps that people can take to start working that into, if that's, if that's, if that's the, if that's the understanding of how, let's talk about Yeah, it's a bit off-topic, but an important note in, and I don't want to get into design because we're talking about voice, but it is voice, exactly, and I don't think people think about that. Yeah, no, not at all. And the thing about that, like I said, one of the other foundational things I talk about when I work with people is I want them to think about what sort of emotions and feelings they want people to have when they are receiving communications from them. I think people don't, first of all, that helps you get into another's mindset so that when you're writing or filming videos, you're always thinking about what is the person receiving it going to take away from it?
And it should be some sort of emotional reaction when it's done best, right? Like the very best Apple commercials are never the commercials where they just show the phone. It's like the Christmas commercials where you've got the granddaughters. They show the impact of the phone, not the device itself.
So if you're not... You don't watch that and think, wow, I need an iPhone because I can Instagram and Google pictures on it. You're thinking like, well, I need an iPhone because I feel uplifted right now. I'm going to connect with my loved one better as a result of it.
So really that emotional impact, like what do we want people to feel? Like when I see people, when I have people reading my content, like I want them to feel how I would want them to feel if I was interacting with them in person. So I want them to come away from that engagement feeling optimistic. I want them to plant some humor in it.
So I always try to look for opportunities to like make jokes and just bring some levity to what's going on. And those are the types of things that you can structure your voice around. You can ask yourself, you can read a piece of your own and say, are there opportunities here where I brought some humor and some levity? Am I being optimistic or am I being a rain cloud?
Because if you're being a rain cloud and you want to be somebody who's optimistic, like maybe you're giving bad news, but you can do it in a way that's not just gonna have somebody read it and just be sacked, right? So those are things you can... It's an important, important point. And one of the things that I think is interesting, people talk a lot about behavioral investing.
And I understand that behavior goes deeper than emotion, but we don't talk about the behavioral side of the impact of the work and how that is an important tool of marketing and how people's emotions and their behaviors impact the way they respond to the way they are marketed to. And I think our industry tends to focus so much on the financial aspect of it and less about the impact of the financial. And understand that's the world that advisors live in, but I think that's a really important thing that people should hold onto when they're thinking about building their voice is that impact side. Yeah.
And I think that that is having a slow turnover, right? We all talk like daily about how advisors core value prop is not investment management anymore. Now it's financial planning and advice and consulting. And when you are focused on that, your core value to someone is just conversations and advice guiding them towards using their money as a tool to achieve whatever goals that they have.
And that becomes a lot easier to get into their lives and speak into those frustrations and pains and emotions that they're having and how you can help them with those things. Which is ultimately about showing the value, right? Absolutely. It all comes back to that.
Yeah. Well, thank you, Johnny, so much for joining us on the podcast today. I feel like this was a very insightful kind of breaking down of not just that you need to establish a voice, but about how you go around building a structure around implementing your distinctive voice into the way that you market it. I do not want to neglect our recommendations on this podcast, as we sometimes do with guests.
So I'll lead. I'm going to geek out for a minute here and say that my strong recommendation is to watch Star Trek Picard. I mentioned it in, I think, in the show notes of one that we did before, but not on camera. You don't have to be a fan of anything Star Trek to appreciate this show.
It is so unique in that you have an 80 year old as the show lead. And it is it is such a unique, thoughtful, really strong character driven kind of a show. You know, everything is kind of go into big and action and flashy and I enjoy that, too. And it's fun.
But but just just the the approach of the show is so different. If you are a Star Trek fan, everything that came before it makes this that much better. Yeah. But if you're not, it's it's still just a super, super good show.
So you have to be a CBS all access member to see it, which, of course, is its own subscription fee. But it's worth it. It's worth the six dollars for the price of admission. The great thing about subscription services is you can always just grab it for a month and watch the show and then binge the show and get out.
Yeah, absolutely. Patrick Stewart. Such a good actor. Yeah.
Amazing. So what do you got? What do you got for us? OK, well, you know what?
Since you started us down like a sci-fi, sort of genre trip, I will stay within the sci-fi fantasy sort of feel. And I'm going to recommend a show on Apple TV plus called Mythic Quest. You read this? I've heard about it.
I haven't seen it. It's hilarious. Is it good? It's from the creators of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
OK, so it's that level of humor. Got it. Yeah, it's about it's almost like a an office or parts and rec style without the without the cutaway confessional type of thing. But it's it's a workplace humor show.
But the workplace that they're in is a video game production company. And so it's just if you're into gaming or technology or like software development programming, like any of those sorts of things, it delves into just the ridiculousness of of all those things. And that sounds right up my nerd alley. Yeah, that's awesome.
It's great. I love it. Yeah, it's got a great cast. Very cool.
I recommend it. Awesome. Well, thank you again for joining us on the podcast this week. I will include in the show notes a link to Johnny's social media profiles as well as his website so you can check out his work and connect with him.
And we'll see you again next time. Thanks. Thanks, Christopher. All opinions expressed by podcast guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Potomac Fund Management.
This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment decisions. Clients of Potomac Fund Management may maintain positions in securities discussed in this podcast.