I love this career and want to help more people but I feel like I really suck at marketing myself to help more people. People don’t pick up the phone or reply to electronic communications. Continued.

Man you need a real mentor.
Someone to take you under their wing and show you how it’s all done.

In my first 2-3 years in the business I did it all...cold call, door knock, bring coffee and donuts to businesses, and seminars.

Which one worked the best?? Looking back, I got results from all of them but there’s no substitute for hard work. Not long work...just the right kind of work. What are you doing until 9 pm at night?

If you make 20-25 good contacts daily with a mix of current clients and prospects...then you’ll be successful. Just keep after it and it will “happen all of a sudden”.

But you need to be opening at least 2-3 new quality households per month.

Trade shows can cost a thousand too. Go knock on doors if you want predictable consistent leads.

FA1 - 1000% know I need a mentor. I’m in a bit of an odd situation. In a 2 person practice with a family member, with the experienced advisor in another office in another city and not really willing to dedicate time to helping mentor/guide me on the marketing side of the business. I have a relatively small marketing budget, which is very appreciated, but I have no real help or guidance past the money. So I’m doing the best I can with the little guidance I have. I don’t have other advisors in my office so it would take me sparking up a relationship with a random advisor in this city to possibly get a mentor. My question to you all is....if some random advisor reached out and asked you to be their mentor, what would you say?

The networking last night was an alumni happy hour/speaker series at my graduate school. I actually enjoy meeting new people but getting home late often gets pretty tiring but I’m trying to meet more people(see the next paragraph).

Re: seminars, What time of day did/do you do your seminars and on what topics to drive attendance? I’ve done a couple of seminars and a couple of happy hours with mixed results on attendance. I only have my clients and linked in network to invite so I keep trying to grow my network by attending other events. Seems like my clients don’t even come to my events bc of work travel or kids or prior commitments, so I can’t even get them to come to bring a friend or colleague. The Lunch and learns seem to limit the people that can come to a specific area of a big city I live in and after work events seem to have failed due to folks wanting to get home, avoid traffic, go be with their kids, etc.

Also, when you’d drop off coffee and donuts at businesses would you just walk into random businesses or businesses where you have connections? I’ve done this for one company I used to work at but would like to do it for more companies.

I actually have been getting roughly 2 households a month except for August. I keep hearing the “it will happen” but I think I’m in a rut lately when people are super non responsive. I feel like I’m in a hamster wheel lately! I know this wasn’t supposed to be easy but damn this sucks right now! 😬

OP - do you have an email? I think I can help you. I’d be happy to schedule a call with you and see if I can offer any advice that may be helpful for you, I’ll email you my contact info if you want to take me up on that.

If not, no worries, but there’s too many things that could be said here for me to type it out

I struggled with no support, so I feel your pain. In your one I played in traffic and tried everything I saw anybody else doing. My brakes came when I first connected with a CPA who was upset with the EJ advisors in the area. I tried networking with dozens of CPAs, but got connected to the one that paid off by accident through my church pastor. She worked with a lot if small business so I decided to specialize in small business retirement plans. I targeted businesses who or unlikely to have retirement plan and showed them how cost-effective a simple IRA plan to be for the business. I signed up all the participants in commission-based accounts, and signed up the business owners in fee based accounts. Then I did financial planning with the business owners for free and got the spousal accounts. It was a lot of cold walking, but it's what worked best for me.
There are a lot of ways to make money in this business, the key is to find the right approach for you. In the end there is no substitute for smart hard work, and time. The longer you are in the industry the more money will fall in your lap at unexpected times.

OP, May I ask what city you are in? I'd love to get together and discuss ideas if we are in the same area. I would ignore your colleague and just do some door knocking

OP please let me save you the time and hassle that I had when first starting out when it comes to marketing. Flat out, it takes money to make money. Unless you want to spend the next ten years barely scraping by doug networking and cold calling and door knocking and happy hours, you’ve got to spend some money. Putting on a good seminar which is really the only proven method to acquire clients quickly, costs me around $3-4,000 in total. I know this can seem like a lot when starting out, but literally that amount will get you in front of 20 people that are all 55+ and can do rollovers and are interested in what you’re talking about. You have to be smart in this career. Don’t market to young people with no money that’s a waste of time. Don’t market to every random person at a networking event as they aren’t interested. Hold a seminar on a topic like social security where you know people are interested and also the right age to do rollovers and have money. As long as you are halfway decent you will convert one into a client and that should make you 2-3x what you invest in the seminar at minimum.

I use Facebook advertising to target only individuals 55+ and with certain net worth and a few other demographics. Cost for one night to get 20-25 registrants using it has been around $1500 for me. Then I do the events at decent restaurants with private rooms in my area so cost of dinner is another $1,000-$1500. I literally put all of these expenses on a credit card the first time I did it years ago and when I closed my first annuity case I made about 5x my investment. Now I have enough recurring revenue and am consistent enough with my closing ratio that I do about 3 seminars per month every month of the year and my average return is in the 7-8x range typically. I am in a fairly affluent area and am on pace to do $500k plus in production this year. You just have to be able to take some commissions up front to pay for the marketing and dinner and then the rest can be put into recurring revenue.

I’ve planted a lot of seeds but a lot haven’t produced anything yet. I feel like I’m growing at a snails pace and i have about a year and a half before I’m on my own. It’s frustrating when I’m being questioned on progress and I have nothing to report. I don’t know how to find more people to get in front of at this point. I am not with Jones but suggested to my lead advisor I’d even be willing to door knock and he basically said don’t do it. I ask for referrals from current clients who I know appreciate what I do and I get nods and smiles but never any actual referrals. I network like crazy. Got home at 9pm last night. I want to do seminars and trade shows but I’ve done a few seminars where 1 person showed up with no interest in actually working together. I look up trade shows and I’m not sure what type of trade shows an FA can set up at. I have very limited marketing dollars so I can’t pay for direct mail or services that cost thousands to execute. Any help or advice is appreciated.

True...FA2. I didn’t have much money when I started so I didn’t do anything that cost a lot of money. Seminar cost were around $13-$15 per head. They were good ways to get a warm introduction to existing clients best friends or colleagues. They always paid off.

Thank you for all of the responses!

FA3 - moneyandmarty@gmail.com. Would love to take you up on that!

FA4 - that’s a great story! Small business is the next thing I want to work on. What type of businesses would you approach? Business in office buildings? Strip malls? Just trying to get an idea of what the target has been for you that worked. I’m obviously not going to walk into a Baskin Robbins expecting to talk to the owner haha. I also want to set up some continuing education for CPAs to get in front of more of them in the hopes that I have a success like yours. I’m a CPA but I’m only willing to do relatively simple tax returns in the hopes that it’ll lead to business on the advisory side.

FA5 - I’m in Texas. Any chance you are too?

FA6 - definitely know it takes money to make money. My problem is that I have a monthly marketing budget of about 25% of the amount you’re talking about for a seminar. I would love to put my own money into it but I’m making the bare minimum to live while I get this thing going. How often do you do seminars that cost you that amount and what type of venue do you do it? I could probably swing that quarterly but not on a monthly basis. My second question is how do I get butts in the seats for my target age range? The seminars I’ve done have gone out to my LinkedIn network, which is pretty extensive (1000+) but you’re right in that it seems like going after the young folks is hard bc they don’t think they need it or think they know it all and don’t have as many assets. if I could be more targeted in who I invite, I’d love that. I just don’t know how to get a list of names to get twenty 55+ year olds to come listen to me.