Welcome back to the 368th episode of the Financial Advisor Success Podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Thomas Kopelman. Thomas is the co-founder of AllStreet Wealth, a financial planning firm for millennial business owners and those with equity comp based in Indianapolis, IN, that has quickly grown to more than $500,000 of run-rate revenue generated from serving 70 ongoing client households.
What’s unique about Thomas, though, is how he’s been able to use social media, and Twitter in particular, to attract over 170 new prospects this year alone by educating, nurturing, and making a lasting impression on his followers, with relatively short blog posts that seem rather ‘simple’ but hit his specific prospects’ pain points, so that they when finally decide they need a financial advisor… they wouldn’t think about going to anyone other than Thomas for Financial Advice.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Thomas has built his social media strategy around generating a steady cadence of relatively short but directly-relevant-to-his-ideal-prospects blog posts that allow him to sustainably create content in less than an hour and without getting stuck trying to make it “picture perfect”, how Thomas’ ability to maintain his ongoing flow of relevant content compounds his social media impressions and has led to an influx of qualified prospects that maintain through both busier and slower months of the year, and how having a hook in the title of Thomas’ posts – that isn’t click-baity but truly relates to his target audience through set-up, context, and contrasting – is key to getting conversions from potential clients on the fence about whether they really want to have a planning relationship.
We also talk about Thomas’ growth in leads led him to create an increasingly stringent filtering process to ensure he only spends time with the most qualified prospects, and minimize discovery calls that would otherwise turn out to be a bad fit, how Thomas’ planning process builds up to what can be a 20 to 40 itemized list of recommendations but uses a quick-wins approach to prioritize just a few upfront and spend literally years helping clients through the rest, and how Thomas used the design platform Canva to craft his own customized financial plan template, rather than using financial planning software output, that not only lay out relevant graphics and action items for each client, but are much more visually appealing and easily digestible than traditional Word or Excel documents.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Thomas shares his journey from barely using social media and forgetting his own Instagram password to leaning heavily into Twitter to generate explosive growth in his firm, how Thomas learned the financial planning process in his early years and used social media to seek out and work with advisors that had leveraged the exact techniques he wanted to emulate while growing their businesses, and why Thomas initially planned to be a solo firm but changed his mind and ultimately chose to hire staff, that he enjoyed being around, to get the support he needed to sustain his firm’s growth.
So, whether you’re interested in learning about creating content that resonates with your target audience, implementing a social media strategy that will effectively turn readers and impressions into real client prospects, or creating a financial plan that not only is attractive, but also contains actionable items of advanced value to your clients, then we hope you enjoy this episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast, with Thomas Kopelman.
