Welcome back to the 370th episode of the Financial Advisor Success podcast!
My guest on today’s podcast is Tim Goodwin. Tim is the founder of Goodwin Investment Advisory, an RIA based in Woodstock, Georgia, that oversees $275M in assets under management for 370 client households.
What’s unique about Tim, though, is how he leaned into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Google Reviews in particular – coupled with paid search ads to capture consumers actually searching for “financial advisor near me”, and in the process has created a robust prospecting pipeline, which has generated so much demand that Tim has had to triple his minimum fee requirements in the last 2 years.
In this episode, we talk in-depth about how Tim built a pipeline for growth by systematically asking for reviews online, which has resulted in almost 50% of his clients posting Google Reviews, how Tim leverages those 150+ Google Reviews, alongside signing up for Google Screened, and investing into paid search, targeted, and remarketing ads, to build prospects’ trust and get them comfortable in reaching out over the internet, and how Tim has reallocated his marketing dollars from third-party lead generation platforms and instead invested more deeply in his firm’s own SEO and Google results, driving a 2.5X return in new onboarded client revenue for every $1 spent in marketing.
We also talk about how Tim’s marketing success led to a level of growth and in-flow clients that created significant capacity constraints, and why he ultimately decided to decrease the quantity of prospects and increase the quality of prospects by increasing his firm’s minimums (and then crafted an options-focused framework to ‘graduating’ clients who didn’t meet those new minimums and ensure they could transition in an empowering way), how Tim navigates the sometimes contradictory pull between running a profitable firm, preventing employee burnout, and a desire to serve clients… (who may no longer meet the firm’s growing minimums), and why Tim has made the health and happiness of his employees, not his clients, his priority as a founder and leader – because as Tim highlights, a cared-for and happy staff ultimately give better a better client experience anyway.
And be certain to listen to the end, where Tim shares why he has found that clients – who already enjoy and understand the company culture and objectives – can yield great dividends as a place to find new employees, how, as a 22-year old tackling the hurdle of not just finding, but also establishing trust with older prospects, Tim was able to get over the initial painful ramp-up by giving himself a 2-year deadline to make the firm pay for itself, and how Tim has intentionally sought out and created 2 of his own Mastermind groups as a way to cope with the challenge that as a founder, it can be lonely at the top, and helps to have peers who understand and can empathize with the weight of being in charge and having team members rely on you for their livelihood.
So, whether you’re interested in learning about how Tim’s ongoing investment into a healthy and a SEO-reputable website resulted in a multi-dimensional prospecting in-flow, how Tim manages SEC marketing compliance while still consistently asking clients for referrals, and how Tim has built a ‘fireproof’ hiring process putting people in roles that matched their natural aptitudes and inclinations, then we hope you enjoy this episode, with Tim Goodwin.
