In this episode of the Trusted Adviser Podcast, Rob Pyne interviews David Newson, Founder and CEO of XNW Digital and a marketing expert specializing in the financial advisory sector, about how financial advisory firms can rethink marketing in an increasingly digital and AI-driven world. David shares insights from decades of working with independent advisory firms, explaining why positioning, authentic messaging, and deep understanding of clients are more powerful than traditional marketing tactics.

The conversation explores the difference between tactical marketing and strategic positioning, the role of professional marketers in advisory firms, and why many firms misunderstand marketing altogether. David also discusses how AI is transforming content creation and digital engagement, while emphasising that technology should amplify human strategy rather than replace it.

Rob and David also examine practical tactics such as website positioning, chatbots, measuring marketing success, and using long-form content to build trust and inbound growth. The episode concludes with actionable advice for advisory firms looking to build a sustainable digital marketing engine.

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SHOW NOTES

Topics Discussed

Why many advisory firms misunderstand the role of marketing.
The difference between tactical marketing and strategic positioning.
Human-centred design thinking in financial advice businesses.
Building brands that clients emotionally connect with.
Common mistakes advisory firms make on their websites.
The role of professional marketers versus internal coordinators.
The growing importance of data analytics in marketing.
How AI is reshaping marketing productivity and content creation.
Why publishing deep expertise builds long-term trust and visibility.
Using website chat tools and AI chatbots for client engagement.
Measuring marketing success through leads, clients, and revenue.
Understanding client behaviour through analytics tools and user data.
Identifying ideal clients and the life events that trigger financial advice.

Episode Highlights

(Timestamps are approximate)

[00:00] – Introduction to David Newson and XNW Digital
[03:20] – David’s background in marketing and financial advice firms
[06:45] – Why most advisory firms misunderstand marketing
[10:12] – Human-centred design thinking in financial services
[14:30] – Building meaningful positioning and brand identity
[18:15] – Why most advisory firm websites look the same
[22:10] – Creating messaging that makes prospects feel understood
[26:40] – The difference between professional marketers and internal marketing roles
[31:05] – The growing importance of data and analytics in marketing
[35:50] – The impact of AI on marketing productivity and content
[41:30] – Why firms should publish their knowledge freely
[45:10] – Using AI chatbots and website chat for client engagement
[49:20] – Measuring marketing success with real business metrics
[52:30] – Using website analytics and behavioural data to refine marketing
[55:10] – David’s advice for firms wanting to improve their marketing strategy
[01:01:02] – The Evolving Role of Marketing Leadership
[01:06:15] – Data-Driven Marketing: The New Imperative
[01:09:34] – AI in Marketing: Opportunities and Challenges
[01:18:32] – Digital Engagement: The Power of Chatbots
[01:24:43] – Measuring Marketing Success: Key Metrics
[01:28:10] – Taking Action: Steps for Better Marketing Strategy

Quotes from David Newson

“Really good positioning and messaging is baked into everything you do. It becomes a feeling that people can’t quite explain.”

“Marketing follows from good business decisions.”

“Your value is not in your knowledge. It is in the application of that knowledge on behalf of a client.”

“Content is fuel for the engine. Without it, a digital growth strategy simply doesn’t work.”

“At the end of the day we measure leads, prospects, clients, assets and revenue.”

“AI is an amplifier. It is not a strategist.”

Key Takeaways

Marketing is not just about tactics; it’s about understanding your audience.
Good marketing plays on positive emotions rather than fear.
Consumers often prioritize emotional connections over credentials when choosing a financial advisor.
Trust signals must be authentic and pre-existing, not fabricated.
Affluent consumers have specific expectations for service and communication.
Effective marketing requires a clear understanding of who your firm serves and who it does not.
Communications should not be conflated with marketing; they serve different purposes.
Magnetic marketing focuses on attracting clients rather than pushing messages.
Understanding the affluent consumer’s lifestyle can inform marketing strategies.
Investment decisions are often influenced by emotional factors rather than purely logical ones. Engaging conversations require active listening and genuine interest.
Building a magnetic brand is about understanding core competencies.
Referrals are crucial, but firms should also develop direct channels.
Financial advisors must master conversations with new clients.
Active listening is essential for meaningful client interactions.
Human connection is irreplaceable in a technology-driven world.
Firms should aim to be conveners of community.
Strong brand positioning resonates with clients on a deeper level.
Marketing coordinators need specialized training to effectively position brands.
Authenticity and vulnerability in branding can create strong connections. Leaders historically undervalue the marketing function.
Professional marketers bring discipline and understanding of data.
AI can enhance productivity but requires a solid strategy.
Content creation is essential for effective digital marketing.
Understanding client needs is crucial for marketing success.
Time on site is a key indicator of user intent.
Marketing must align with business goals for effectiveness.
Chatbots can improve user engagement on websites.
Publishing knowledge freely builds trust and authority.
Measuring leads and revenue is vital for marketing evaluation.

Resources & Links

The Trusted Adviser: https://thetrustedadviser.com.au/
XNW Digital: https://www.xnwdigital.com/
Connect with Rob Pyne on LinkedIn
Connect with David Newson on LinkedIn
Follow The Trusted Adviser Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

Rob Pyne (00:01.634)

Welcome David Newson to the Trusted Adviser podcast.

David Newson (00:04.824)

Thank you, Rob, happy to be here.

Rob Pyne (00:06.968)

Happy to have you here, David. I’m looking forward to this conversation. I’ve actually, despite the fact that I think of us, financial planners are all technical and sort of quant driven guys. I’ve always had a fascination for marketing and understanding how to actually, I guess understand consumer behaviour, how people would perceive things that we put into the market. And so this is your area of expertise, David. You’ve got deep expertise in marketing, especially for the IFA market we call it or the RIA market in the US that you call it. So I’m really keen to get into this conversation with you today and learn a lot of what you’ve picked up along the way that you can share with us. But before we get into tactics, David, I’d love to start with a bit of philosophy. You’ve spent your career studying consumer behaviour. What do independent advice firms most often misunderstand about how people actually choose a financial advisor?

David Newson (01:01.496)

I think perhaps the most misunderstood thing. And by the way, I want to go back and say one thing before we get into tactics, marketing is not just about tactics. Marketing is about truly understanding who you are serving and who you are designing a product or service for. And it’s about creating, you know, demand. It’s about giving rise to, you know, an emotion in another human being that drives action.

Rob Pyne (01:09.046)

Okay. Okay.

David Newson (01:31.95)

That’s really good marketing and really good marketing is, you know, playing on positive emotions, not fear-based emotions, even though that is a, that is a, that’s in our toolkit. But I would say in the financial advice business, be careful how you deploy, be careful how you deploy certain, giving rise to certain types of emotion that drives consumer behavior.

Rob Pyne (01:44.963)

Yes.

David Newson (02:00.374)

Okay, now ask your question one more time and I’ll get to that.

Rob Pyne (02:03.628)

Okay, so it sounds like there is maybe a message before we get into tactics, but you talk about their fear-based or more positive motion driving behaviour. So let’s get back to that whole consumer behaviour piece, because this is something you’ve just touched on, that consumer behaviour is what you’re trying to really understand and you’re trying to think who you’re trying to serve such that they actually are drawn to the message and actually they get an emotional reaction to what you’re saying and thinking, that’s for me, that’s what I’ve been looking for. So what do independent advice firms misunderstand or most often misunderstand about how people actually choose a financial advisor?

David Newson (02:48.546)

Yes, I think they naturally go into credentials. know, I’m smart and I’m educated and I’ve been doing this for a long time. And my goodness, like here I am. I have a shingle hung outside, like we’re open for business. what’s very interesting there is that’s not how consumers move through the world, especially in the financial advice business. This is actually perhaps one of the most well-guarded aspects of a human being’s life, right? And I’m not talking about money. It’s what money can do for you, but it’s also the exposure of how do I think about how money interacts with the various pieces of my life? Those are well-regarded, almost secrets, if you will, right? Like those conversations aren’t even happening sometimes between friends. And so I think many advisors think more about their credentials than it is about, my goodness, someone is going to make a decision about me really based on, gosh, could I see myself having these types of intimate in some way discussions with this human being? And if the answer is no, you will never win.

Rob Pyne (04:13.249)

Yeah, I love that. It’s actually, it’s such an important point you’re making there, isn’t it? Because it’s so much credential based or, and I think very heavily in the US it was, I’m a fiduciary, I’m a fee only fiduciary. And that was kind of the gold standard of how you would attract someone to come and see you as an advisor. You can trust me, I’m the most trustworthy person you want to come and see because I’m the most qualified and the most trustworthy. But what you’re saying goes much deeper than that. It’s actually looking for the ability to connect with someone at a level where they feel they could trust that person, not just in a technical sense, but in a human sense, that actually it can, yeah.

David Newson (04:48.078)

In a very human sense, in a very human sense. I think, and how this ties back to, you know, marketing in this space and for financial advisors is that what we need to be building are trust signals, right? How do we build trust signals? That’s, we should be intentionally designing trust signals. And when I say intentionally designing, I don’t, what I don’t mean is we’re creating things, right? In the hopes that people will trust me. No, no, no, no, no, no. These are things that you already have, right? Trust cannot be invented or created with amazing marketing. That’s actually how you set yourself up for doom and gloom in the future. If you actually say that you are something, then you absolutely must be. And it must go very, very deep. So when I mention signals of trust, you know, what I’m talking about is something that already is pre-existing that we want to shine a light on or perhaps, you know, plant in some good soil so it grows.

Rob Pyne (06:05.731)

Yeah, you just said something there that triggered a memory in me just having just read recently. In fact, I think it literally is their latest episode. You’d be very familiar with some big names in the US and Michael Kitsis and Carl Richards. They have their own podcast, Kitsis and Carl podcast. their latest episode was, and I haven’t seen it yet. I just saw the actual transcript this morning. It pops into my inbox. And they talked about the fact that people make a decision in a logical quantitative framework when they’re looking for an advisor. So I’m keen to get your perspective on this, but they say, often, and what we know as practitioners of advice is that they don’t stick around for that, save me some tax, get me a better investment return, know, all the sort of technical and quantitative elements. But beyond that initial getting my house in order type work. What clients will talk about when you ask them what it is that they get value from. It’s much more in the emotional qualitative sense of feeling confident about their finances now feeling they’ve got someone they can trust and talk to and just that peace of mind. I know that’s a cliche it seems almost these days, but it’s there’s much more of an emotional connection to the person that’s helping them through these really important life decisions that isn’t about that initial quant. So how do you think about that? Mean, I haven’t read the full transcript of the episode yet. I’m gonna, I’ll pick it up and have a listen through, but it certainly resonated with me because we kind of know that from experience. People use their logical brain to make a choice as who it is they will go with perhaps because they can justify the decision on logic framework, but they stick around for something far beyond that initial logical decision-making about how do I get my house in order and get my super in the right place and save some tax and so on. So how do you think about that?

David Newson (08:05.4)

So I think at a base level, what you’re describing is, do you have the credentials? Does your firm have enough AUM that meets a level of credibility for me as a potential client? All of those things, like, are clients making logical decisions based on a set of criteria that include those details? Yes, absolutely, they are. What I’m saying is, that’s at the level of table stakes. That is where you begin. Like if you don’t meet, you’re automatically filtered out, right? So, but then beyond that, how is a consumer left to make a decision? It can’t be like, you have two years extra experience. You have a billion dollars more of, you know, assets under advisement or management. Like, do those things really matter? What it comes down to is, and I’ve heard this over and over and over in my roles, you know, you know, once upon a time I was a partner at an RIA in the U S based in San Francisco. And my role was marketing and business development. When I was building things there, part of my role was to have introductory conversations with every single prospective client that was coming through the programs that I was building. And I’ve had hundreds, actually more than a thousand of these conversations. And what’s really, really interesting is when you meet another human being exactly where they are and like, you might be wondering, well, how do you do that? Well, you ask questions, right? You listen and you listen intently and you’re asking very, you know, you’re sitting in the seat of like, I am being an active listener and I want to really make sure like, and I would usually begin with like, hey, you know, most people don’t wake up and suddenly have an epiphany that they need a financial advisor today. Like said, no one ever. Like, so what’s happening in your life that’s giving rise to this question for you, right? Like what intersection do you find yourself at where you have some of these questions? And that’s a really great way to start to peel back the layers of the onion and to understand, you know, where are they at? So you can then begin to, you know, you have to listen to seek to understand first before you then start to prescribe, right?

Rob Pyne (10:25.891)

Indeed. Yeah, absolutely, and I couldn’t agree more. And you say that ability to sit with people and really try to really understand what it is that’s motivating them to take action. Because as you say, they’re not waking up and having an epiphany and thinking, I need a financial plan. But something is triggering that need in them that they want someone to talk to that can they can trust that can work them through the right decision making because they’ve got life decisions to make. And they want to make sure their finances are actually pointing in the right direction for that. So you in our previous chat before this episode, you said your real specialty is understanding the affluent consumer. So how does that shift the way firms should think about marketing in our profession? How should I mean, everyone’s got a different target market, I guess. But what you describe is really, the affluent consumer has a, and they’re not homogeneous, obviously. But how do you think about the affluent consumer and trying to actually be a firm in the marketplace that they would look to and say, because I think you even said that a lot of websites look the same. It’s sort of very, the way that firms are positioning themselves is very homogenous. How do you differentiate, sorry, very safe, not trying to go too crazy and be seen to be a bit different in the market. So how do firms…

David Newson (11:42.702)

It’s also safe.

Rob Pyne (11:54.766)

… do a good job of differentiating themselves to better meet where that person is that’s the affluent consumer. What’s your insight there?

David Newson (12:05.57)

I think what’s interesting and I know it’s in polite social settings, it’s impolite to make mass generalizations. In marketing, sometimes it’s essential, right? Because we need ways of segmenting populations, right? And we need descriptions and words to describe how they move through the world. And so what I would invite listeners to do is to imagine how they move through the world. And just take a day in the life of, for example, like you wake up, okay? What does your day look like, right? Does someone make coffee or tea for you? What type of vessel is that drink in, right? Is it a paper cup? Is it a piece of fine china? Is it glass, tempered glass? You know, what is your general style? You know, and what’s interesting is we can start to begin to see different ways, you know, does someone drive you everywhere that you go? Okay, well, maybe not. And I don’t think most affluent people are being driven around. That’s not what I’m saying. But what kind of car do they get into? Right? Like, and then that can go down a whole, you know, like, well, okay, well, some folks are inconspicuously inconspicuous consumers. And then there’s also the conspicuous consumer. Where I guess what I’m saying here is if you take a day in the life, the affluent, certainly the ultra high net worth consumer, and I think it makes sense for us to, for me anyway, to describe what I mean. Affluent here in the United States is a million dollars or less, right? Like, or let’s call it, you know, I don’t know, a $250,000 portfolio to a million dollar portfolio, okay? And then let’s say the high net worth consumer probably starts somewhere around 1.5, maybe $2 million of AUM to about, gosh, to about probably 10 or $15 million. And this is all US, right? So then you don’t really cross into the ultra high net worth mindset or head space until you are approaching $25 or $50 million. And that’s even up for debate. Some firms will say, we have a, you

Rob Pyne (14:32.769)

Yes, sure.

David Newson (14:44.91)

A multifamily office service offering starting at the $10 million asset mark. Well, and then there’s others that are like, well, no, that’s 25 for us. And you have some more elite. They regard themselves as more elite, but based on the number being $50 million or more. so when we’re thinking about squarely the high net worth consumer, we’ll call that the 1.5 to $5 million.

Rob Pyne (15:02.637)

Sure.

David Newson (15:14.798)

U.S. How do they move through the world? And let’s be real about how they move through the world. In order to have that type of wealth, and I’m speaking in generalizations, generally they have committed themselves to some element of work that generates this type of income that results in them having this portfolio. So I’m naturally excluding intergenerational wealth. Like, let’s just exclude that. do they? Because they move through the world in a completely different way. Maybe they do. Maybe they are driven around by other people. Right. But then there’s others where it’s like, wait a minute. They work really, really hard. There’s a work ethic at play. They’re also very busy. So what does that mean? If you’re very busy, it means you have less time than others, perhaps to do certain types of tasks because they have decided to invest their time where they’re getting the most return financially, which has generally been their work. Okay, well, what does that mean? It means they’re limited to the types of publications that they can read, the types of information and how they can process it. It means maybe that they’re spending time in the car if they are driving, listening to a podcast, perhaps they’re listening to a podcast like this, right? If they are actively engaged in making a decision, then it’s like, yeah, I wanna consume information on this topic and understand the landscape. How they move through the world means, well, guess what? If they’re reading The Economist, for example, or they’re reading the ft.com, well, the words, the type of language that’s being used on the ft.com and The Economist is very different than you might find, you know, than someone who is consuming information via a television, for example. And so I think when we’re designing for this group of human beings, they naturally are moving through the world in such a way that people begin as the one thing I’ve observed in my lifetime is as your wealth increases, the way people interact with you also changes, right? If you suddenly are able to afford better hotel accommodations, you are treated differently, right? And that is a, that’s a service fact. That also goes through other parts of their life. Let’s say, you know, instead of seeing a regular doctor, they achieve a certain level of wealth and they want to have the fancy scans, you know, and like this concierge medicine, people are now talking to them differently than your regular primary care physician would be interacting with you where you get 15 minutes. It’s like in out, are you okay? Like, okay, get out of here, right? Whereas concierge is like, yeah, let me take your time. let’s take our time. Really want to talk to you about like what we’re doing here today and blah, blah, implications or this or that or whatever. so the way people are actually interacting with them matters, which then how does that impact financial advisors? They need to be cognizant that this group of people like expects a certain level of service. So for example, if they reach out to you, like, I think it’s pretty standard. You should probably get back to them in

Rob Pyne (18:33.037)

Yeah.

David Newson (18:39.502)

24 hours or less. If you’re getting back to them in a couple of hours, right, even better, right? Like it’s like, this is a high quality. The speed to the return of communication is also a proxy for the level of service they might expect in your practice. So if you compound that across a lot of different categories, you can imagine, my goodness, they have expectations that are either going to be met, exceeded or unmet by how I meet them in the moment as an advisor. And that even gets extrapolated to, well, what does my brand look like? Does my brand hold water relative to all of the other brands that they are experiencing in their daily lives? And that’s the bar. It’s not just, what do financial firms look like? It’s no, there’s all of these service providers and product manufacturers…

Rob Pyne (19:14.487)

Yeah.

David Newson (19:36.792)

… car manufacturers, like all these things that they’re consuming or whether it be products or services. And I think we need to have more of an eye towards, are we really meeting their expectations?

Rob Pyne (19:51.086)

Yeah. So I just want to touch on something you mentioned there. Do you think that there is a different approach from a firm that would be effective if you were trying to appeal to the, and I get your point about the fact that those affluent or high net worth consumers are used to a certain level of service because that’s what they experience in their life. But just go into this conspicuous versus inconspicuous consumer point that you just made about. Do you think that therefore a conspicuous consumer would expect a level of experience, a different type of experience working with an advice firm versus the inconspicuous consumer? And can you actually position yourself to represent one or the other? And should we even try to do that? Is that a distinction that’s so significant that you should try to actually lean into one or the other?

David Newson (20:43.426)

I don’t think so. I think in that way, you can do both. And it doesn’t mean that you go middle of the road. You just choose one and stick to it. Because what’s interesting is, and I would probably, if it were me, for example, I would probably stick to a more low key route. If it were me, but I think that’s my…

Rob Pyne (21:10.115)

Okay.

David Newson (21:12.684)

… personal minimalist kind of taste.

Rob Pyne (21:16.461)

So low key in the sense that you would be looking for wealthy people that are looking for advice services, but they don’t want to be ostentatious about it. They want to keep it. It’s a private conversation. They want to keep it kind of, is that what we’re talking about?

David Newson (21:28.492)

That’s exactly what we’re talking about. We’re talking about, my goodness, I’m a member of a private club that nobody knows about, right? And that’s okay. That’s one way to position it versus the opposite of that would be, my goodness. And a good example of that in the United States would be like, I’m a client at Goldman Sachs, right?

Rob Pyne (21:36.749)

Yeah. I thought of that straight away. Before you even said it, I thought you were gonna say Goldman’s…

David Newson (21:53.175)

Yeah, yeah. So it’s like, I’m a client of Goldman Sachs. And it’s just like, And what’s interesting is in the United States and even anywhere, because Goldman’s just about everywhere, if someone were to say that, they would expect both reactions. Like, great. So am I. Or, all right, good for you. I’m glad that’s for you. It’s not for me. Right. Yeah.

Rob Pyne (22:19.875)

… conspicuous consumer would be looking for Goldman’s on their in their wheelhouse that sort of maybe that’s is that the point you’re making there is that that they would want to be able to say that because it actually helps to position them or if you like It puts them in a level of status if you like amongst their peer group

David Newson (22:40.29)

That is correct. I think it’s hard to defend paying a premium for just about everything, right? Like as is the case with Goldman. I think it’s really challenging to justify that. And to be clear, let me just be perfectly transparent. Like I don’t have an ax to grind with Goldman whatsoever. The only thing I’m saying is that I was brought up.

Rob Pyne (23:08.961)

No, sure. No, it’s just a…

David Newson (23:13.428)

Inside of the RIA, independent RIA space in the United States, that very much felt that minimizing of investment fees mattered a lot and our clients cared a lot about that. So I grew up that way. That’s not ever going to change. That’s how my personal investment style. I care a lot about the underlying fees of even the investments that I am placed in. So I want to know that an eye towards the minimization of those fees is happening because I know by paying for advice that works in the opposite direction of compounding, right? And so it’s like, my goodness. So I wanna make sure that there’s a value. I’m capturing a premium of value on the advice to help overcome that drag on fees, know, or drag on performance over time. Yeah, so.

Rob Pyne (24:05.377)

Yeah. Yeah, no, I totally get it.

David Newson (24:10.222)

But I have met people, I’ve met personal friends that are just incredibly, they feel almost as if I have made it and I have been able to hire Goldman Sachs and I am so proud that I’m here. And it’s like, you know, other people will say like, yeah, congratulations. And I’m like, yeah, congratulations. That’s great for you. That’s good. Not for me, but it’s great for you.

Rob Pyne (24:29.667)

Yeah, congratulations on paying top tier pricing for a similar service, But yeah, I get it. it’s, that’s, branding is such a powerful thing, isn’t it? I mean, branding is a, it exists in cars, in every walk of life, people are paying a premium for a brand because a brand carries status and people are looking for that status and they want to attach themselves to it. So I totally get that, but let’s just change tack a little bit because I think this is something that I’ve often thought about and I’m sure others do too. It’s this distinction between marketing and communications because they are different things. Many people will do communications to clients and out into the social media landscape and I think they’re doing marketing. But from your perspective, what’s the difference between activity such as communicating a newsletter to your client group or doing the socials and true marketing strategy. What should people think about before they just go and start pumping content out there into the world and trying to attract their ideal client?

David Newson (25:39.2)

It’s a great question and one that I think more advisors are beginning to consider because hindsight, and hindsight’s always 20-20, right? You can always look in the rear view mirror and be like, yeah, yeah, like, okay, I should have, I should have, could have, would have done it a different way. If you wanna get ahead of that though, there’s ways to get ahead of that. Communications is a tool. And what’s also interesting too here is in the financial advice space, there’s a lot of things that get lumped into a single category. So communications and marketing get lumped into a category, right? So it used to be marketing and business development or sales were like two opposing things. And even a decade ago, those two functions really existed, you know, quite far apart from one another. And what I have found even today, like there are times where they still operate far apart from one another, but the firms that are really winning is when marketing and business development or sales are part of maybe not the same organization, but they have embedded teams between them. Or in my case, know, the RA in San Francisco is like, it was me, marketing and, you know, business development. And we did both of those things. But when it comes to communications, like communications is the way in which, the way in which you show up as well as where you show up. And I think a lot of people conflate, I want to push my message out in every single channel so I can, and I think it’s in the right spirit of, I want to meet my potential client or my existing clients where they are. And sometimes they conflate that with like, yeah, that’s a marketing strategy because it’s, it’s not, marketing, really good marketing goes with an understanding of who you are designing for. And then the way that communications and positioning work is like, and you know, you would start with positioning statement, like who is this firm for? what are we willing to die on that Hill for? who are we not for really knowing and understanding who your target consumer is and knowing who you are not for. And I think it’s really hard for any firm to say, well, who are we not for? Because it’s like, well, wait a minute, we’ve been taught to be very inclusive of the types of clients we want to serve. It’s not like we only want to serve one type of client. And I get that. But where it goes awry is one of the easiest ways to tease this apart is, OK, so are you the firm that’s going to turn every single DIY investor into someone who delegates? And it’s like, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, great. So you’re not for the DIY investor who is closed minded to advice, right? You know, and that’s a clear one to start with and say, okay, we’re not for potentially these types of clients. You know, if someone really wants to just do it themselves and be tinkering with the machine all of the time. And you and I both know as professionals that the more you tinker, right, your outcomes are going to suffer.

Rob Pyne (29:07.457)

Yep, indeed. Transaction costs and people think that investment is like everything else in life where the more you try, the better you get. And the answer is not true in investing. And smart people are often the ones that are most trapped by it because they’ve got a high capacity in a particular field. I find this is very true of engineers. I’ve got a brother’s engineer.

David Newson (29:21.678)

Correct.

Rob Pyne (29:35.725)

So they spend a lot of time, they become highly skilled at understanding the technical elements of their role and they think it applies to investing and they give it a good shot, I’m sure, but it doesn’t translate quite the same.

David Newson (29:48.877)

Yeah, I mean, what’s interesting is if they wanted to spend the amount of time that they invest in engineering and investing, that investment would pay off and they would probably do just fine. But what’s interesting is from a, know, there’s finite resources that we all have as human being and time is one of them. So if time is a finite resource, like the question becomes, do I really want to be doing this? And that’s what I found with engineers in my experience where it’s just like, my goodness, yes, you’re smart enough to do this. Absolutely. Should you be and do you want to be spending your time in this way? Those are other questions.

Rob Pyne (30:37.687)

Yeah, and that’s a different question, isn’t it? Is DIY a delegator? And essentially someone who’s prepared to pay for advice and wants to spend their time doing other things and not following the market and applying their intellect to that, then that it makes sense. So there is a distinction there to be made. Talk to me a bit about this concept about being sort of magnetic versus push marketing. So that, you you talked about magnetism is what you’re really trying to create is a sense of… I mean, you can do both. I guess it’s not mutually exclusive, but ideally, how should an independent firm think about becoming magnetic rather than promotional?

David Newson (31:16.607)

My goodness. I think we’ve all experienced different types of people the longer we live on the planet, right? So imagine meeting someone for the first time that never shuts up about themselves, right? Just always, just keep sharing and sharing and sharing. And it’s like, gosh, you feel like you’re having, yeah, yeah, enough already. Or you’re having a one-way conversation. Like it just keeps coming at you.

Rob Pyne (31:45.23)

Enough already.

David Newson (31:52.205)

And then I want you to also hold in your mind, you know, the type of person that you’ve met that, you know, kind of gazes into your eye and is listening and hanging on your every word, not in a weird way, but like they’re really engaged. They care. you’re getting the sense that they really care about what you’re saying. And then when they actually engage with you, the conversation is, you know, has permission to get depth, right? And by depth, don’t mean vulnerability get sharing too much. I’m not talking about that. I’m just talking about simple interactions. Yeah. And you just like, you’re like, wow. And you come away from that conversation wanting more. You’re like, I like this person or like we connected, like we clearly connected on some level. And I like, I really appreciate that. That’s the difference between magnetism. Okay. And push marketing now.

Rob Pyne (32:30.563)

We get weird.

David Newson (32:51.638)

What’s interesting is those two have, they have their own place. So when you’re building a brand, you want to be designing for magnetism. Magnetism is only built upon what you’re good at, right? Like you can’t say like, I want to be an engineer tomorrow, but I’m a financial advisor today. And then expect that that’s going to happen relatively quickly. So you would focus on like, well, gosh, what are my core competencies as a financial advisor brand. So now I’m talking about like, okay, well how do you build a brand? Well, I mentioned positioning before. Positioning is like, what are you willing to die on the hill for? Who are you for? Who are you not for? From that, we test messaging, right? So, and positioning, by the way, is not a marketing exercise. It’s a business decision, right? Good marketing isn’t developed in some fancy agency. Good marketing is the interpretation of a firm’s DNA, right? And then building on that DNA, a mansion or a very large home, a container for which people can thrive in. It invites people in, it keeps certain folks out by design. And so when we start thinking about, my goodness, magnetism versus push marketing. So we make the decision, the business decision around positioning, messaging, okay, so think the headline of your website, for example, messaging is how you’re testing your positioning, right? So you might go with a headline on your website and test it, like, okay, this is what we think, this is what we’re expecting to get. Let’s say it doesn’t work. Well, okay, so maybe your positioning isn’t quite right, or maybe the message needs to change to better support your positioning. We go further down the line into marketing and then it’s like, okay, magnetism or push marketing. Well, guess what? Push marketing has its place in a marketing stack, right? In a marketing funnel. So the way that we like to think about it is, you know, there’s awareness at the top of the funnel, you know, consideration in the middle of the funnel, conversion at the bottom of funnel where someone becomes a client. You know, if you talk to McKinsey, they flip it on its side. They call it the, you know, McKinsey’s consumer decision journey. And then they have this lovely little like infinite loop in the middle that’s like, know, consideration can go on for a long time. People are constantly educating themselves, talking to people, like, and maybe not becoming a client right away because these are long life, you know, the life cycle, the sales cycle in the financial advice space can be short, can be a month with high intent. It could be three months, it could be six months, it could be years. And so when we get to the magnetism versus push. We get down to, if you have magnetized someone to your site, for example, and they are performing a search, they see, they’re like, I’m choosing this path. They land on your website. There is an understood exchange that happens when they land on your website. They’ve basically given you permission to talk to them, right? So then I think it’s okay to go on the interrupt cycle. It’s like, the next time you’re on Instagram, you know, maybe they see. you know, a piece of your content or, know, something, you know, maybe they were on a part of your website and consuming content about how do I manage my restricted stock units or my stock options or my equity compensation? And then they start seeing, you know, push marketing for the very things that they were magnetized to. So it’s like magnet to go ahead.

Rob Pyne (36:29.985)

Yes, this is retargeting. This is this ability. Once someone’s come to your site, there’s a cookie there that identifies who they are. Cookies have to be accepted. And then you retarget them with content because you’re now just reminding them about your brand that they’ve visited and it’s taken them to your site in the first place. Yeah, okay. Well, this is, I wanna…

David Newson (36:37.89)

Yes. That’s right.

Rob Pyne (36:56.033)

I mean, we all know that referrals are the primary source of new business for advisors. This is something that’s commonly understood. I think every firm would say that if they were tracking their stats and we do ours and we know that that’s still true for us too. We still get direct inquiries and we do generate some new client work from just direct inquiries, which is nice. But it’s about two to one ratio, referrals to direct. At what stage does a referral led model start to limit a firm’s potential? What needs to change for a firm who wants to really dive into this ability to be attractive to people that are not coming by way of my friend, my work colleague, you know, that word of mouth thing, which is a powerful thing. And it’s a great thing that you become referable and you’re doing great work for people and they’re talking to their friends about you. It’s a wonderful thing. And we don’t want to dismiss that. It’s still our core approach to getting new clients, but what does a firm need to do to really say, I’m gonna go all in on trying to actually build that direct channel where people are finding me, where do they start David? Where should they begin?

David Newson (38:10.67)

I think it makes sense to start with, if a firm isn’t generating a lot of their growth from referral. Something’s wrong. Right? So like something’s wrong with, you know, client service. Like there’s something wrong. Right? So like, let’s start from there. The next piece of that is my goodness. I think financial advisors in this way are, are quite spoiled. They have a history of closing basically pre-sold leads. Right? Like someone else has leveraged their own social capital on your behalf in order to make an introduction. So they’ve skipped a whole part of the funnel. Right? So like they went from awareness to consideration right down to the bottom of the funnel. There’s like all of those other activities are gone. And because another human, and this is why human beings are so very important, the power of human connection cannot be underestimated here because when someone actually like provides a referral, they are literally putting their reputation on the line for you. this is like, anyway, and I think financial advisors know this and they take this very seriously. But one thing, the muscle they haven’t been exercising is the ability to actually have a conversation who knows nothing about you and then be able to take it from there to a new client. I think many advisors don’t know how that works.

Rob Pyne (39:48.76)

Different conversation isn’t it? It’s a different one when someone’s coming to you that doesn’t come by way of word of mouth that trust transfer has occurred already. You’re coming, you’re meeting someone who’s just chanced upon your site, maybe found you by way of just a Google search or whatever it is. These days possibly even a chat GPT search, but they found you and so it’s a different conversation and advisors have to get good at being able to have that conversation which is a different type of conversation with that new potential client.

David Newson (39:55.79)

That’s right. It is, I mentioned active listening before. It’s literally the fine art of active listening, knowing and understanding who you’re speaking with. And I will also say, you know, once upon a time I was a Mormon missionary in Brazil. was 19 years old and that experience taught me some incredible lessons. the less that real, the massive human lesson that I learned was in order, to have a deep conversation with someone about religion, money, like name all your taboo topics, right? In order to actually have permission to talk about one of those topics, you have got to engage your empathetic powers, you know, like, and we all have them as humans. And some folks have even asked me, well, I hear you, I like intellectually understand what you’re saying, but I don’t know how that plays out in practice. And so perhaps we’ll just get into like when I was at my previous firm in San Francisco, how I would open some of these conversations when someone like booked a time on my calendar, however they came in. And I literally would say what I told you earlier and joke like, you know, I’ve never met anybody who woke up and said like, I need a financial advisor. So like, I would love to know and understand what’s happening in your world right now that’s giving rise to like this conversation because like I said, I’ve never had somebody say like, yeah, it was just on my list of things to do, right? Like generally not. And then what’s very interesting there is you have opened up the door and acknowledged that what they’re about to say is very different than the service that you provide.

Rob Pyne (41:54.328)

Yeah

David Newson (42:11.852)

I basically kicked the door open for them to say like, gosh, know, one of my parents just died and my mom is having a challenging time, you know, organizing and blah, blah, blah, know, whatever the issue might be, or, you know, something on the other side, maybe perhaps, you know, not so morose, you know, where it’s like, someone’s dying. It’s something very exciting, like, my goodness, I’m so excited. My company is going to IPO or there’s a tender offer at work. My gosh, there’s all of these things that I need to consider and I’m realizing I’m panicking a little bit because there’s decisions and deadlines that I have to meet at work and I’m realizing I’m ill-equipped to make a decision about this alone. Wow, okay, cool. Those are the kind of signals that I wanna be hearing and instead of me jumping in and saying, yeah, yeah, we can help you with that. No, no, no, no, no, no. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no. Slow down. Create space. In woohoo world, we would say like, hold space for the other human being. And the act of holding space just means to keep your mouth shut a little longer than you otherwise would in a situation that has some gravity to it. And allowing someone, allowing awkward space to not be filled. Like just let it, let it just pause. Like give it some space. And what I found in those conversations is that, my goodness, the slower I went, the more keen my listening ability was. And also coming at it from a, mentioned Mormon, my Mormon mission, because if you approach these conversations from a place of, I want to be of service, a service mindset only, like I am here to help you get where you’re meant to be. And that might be at another advisory shop. It might not be here. But what I wanna do is listen and understand. And through my understanding, I wanna become your thought partner and advocate. Because guess what? You called the place that actually knows and understands an industry that perhaps you don’t. So, you know, I can explain to you the difference between a wire house, a broker dealer, an independent RIA and the like. I can explain to you how… You know, sometimes retitling your account from one place to another might result in 60 basis points of savings, right? Like there’s things like that that can actually happen, but like even just educating folks that that are asking for the education, right? If they’re asking for it, like, that that’s like, my gosh, I have this problem and I’ve been talking to someone like this, like this, like this, and I’m confused, right? Or maybe they don’t tell you they’re confused. I’ve talked to this person and they said this and someone over here said something like this. And then that’s, okay, wow, okay. Step into that space and help them make sense of that. Be of service. And many times in my experience, it’s been to send them somewhere else and that’s okay. Like maybe you need Vanguard’s 1-800 CFP service.

Rob Pyne (45:29.101)

Yeah. I love the way you, I mean, that’s really great advice for someone listening to this, I think. And I just want to double down on it just to start that conversation with no one wakes up with the epiphany of I need a financial planning. Tell me what it is that’s brought you to have this conversation today. And then, and the point that I really want to emphasize here is the point you made about just slow down. Don’t be ready to jump in there and tell them what we can do to solve that problem that they’re just about to articulate. So allowing them to share what it is that’s on their mind, that’s brought them to this conversation. And then when they share that, not jumping straight into saying, yes, we can solve that, but actually slowing down and saying, and really asking them to go further and say more and tell me more about that. And really being that really active listener. That’s the point you’re making really strongly here. And I think I just want to emphasize it because I think it’s such a powerful way to engage with someone in a conversation because they will think that’s the best conversation they had if you do very little talking.

David Newson (46:35.822)

Well, what’s also interesting too is when we start contemplating a future with AI everywhere, the one thing it can’t take away, the AI gods can’t take away our humanity. So in the future, advisors goal should be to be more human than ever. And what’s fascinating about that to me is, my goodness, wow. What a cool solution to a technological future, you know, or a tech, you know, or a, an uncertain future with so much technology that is commoditizing my craft. The one thing it’s not going to commoditize and cannot commoditize, is what it means to be a human. So as much as, you know, advisors, you know, love their spreadsheets, you know, perhaps one of the best tools to train themselves would be to, you know, pick up a walking habit without listening to anything.

Rob Pyne (47:41.848)

That point that is gold and I’m so glad you said that because that ability to have a genuine human connection for people who and I’ve been listening to podcasts about this stuff and about what AI might do to the way the world works and and and there’s some pretty far-fetched ideas as to what it might mean in the way we gather as humans

David Newson (48:05.282)

Yes.

Rob Pyne (48:05.899)

If we have flying cars and you’ve got Starlink giving you internet access wherever you are on the planet, you can have property in a far outflung location. But it actually fails to recognise the desire for humans to belong and connect and to gather together. And I think people sometimes are missing the point about what humanity will always be looking for, I guess, as opposed to just purely answers to questions. They’re looking for a connection with someone that they can trust. And I think it’s such a powerful point. And I’m glad you said it, because many people would be thinking about, as you say, I’m a technician, I’ve got great spreadsheets, I can give you the answers, but really leaning into this ability to slow down, listen and connect with someone and understand what’s on their mind and what’s really causing them to make that call and have that conversation. So beautifully put, David, and I think that’s one for people to will be possibly on our promo on the LinkedIn post.

David Newson (49:05.262)

I actually, along the same lines, I think the firms that will have an outsized share of gains in the future will be those that have built the ability to be conveners of community. You know, one of the things I’ve thought long and hard about my career, and there’s been, and I’ve had some existential crisis moments where it’s like, my gosh, am I really helping the rich get richer and that, like, you know, because like, well, what’s my superpower? I don’t actually serve clients. Like I actually help firms grow. And so there’s been a few times where I’ve had that moment of crisis. And what’s very interesting, I thought, well, gosh, you know what? Yeah, that might be true on the surface. But deep down, what’s interesting is like, I have never done work with or for a firm that I don’t personally believe in. Right. So the firm has to be a type of firm that I would feel comfortable being a client of myself. And so, and then when I’m giving advice to these firms about, gosh, how do we, how do we move through the world, you know, with all of these things happening? And I make this convener of community comment, you know, in this way, like…

Rob Pyne (50:13.219)

Yeah.

David Newson (50:35.896)

Well, gosh, if I can use my superpower, right, of, you know, design centered, human design centered design thinking skills on behalf of firms and then help them be better conveners of community knowing that yes, it will help them grow, but it’s also helping humans become more human, then I’ve, well, I’m good with that.

Rob Pyne (51:04.941)

Yeah, as you said, it’s purposeful work for you because you feel the connection to the people that are doing the work and helping them to have greater impact, which actually it amplifies your work. It amplifies your capacity to touch more people. So yeah, I love that. I wanna go into something very, very practical for every firm that’s in the marketplace. They’ve all got a website. They all look a little bit similar, perhaps.

David Newson (51:14.53)

That’s right.

Rob Pyne (51:32.449)

What tells you when you go to a firm’s website and you’ve given me some examples that are impressive, you shared some with me that I look at them, yeah, they are good websites. I can see you’ve used your magic touch on them. So what tells you immediately whether the firm’s positioning is strong and where do firms, most firms fall short here?

David Newson (51:54.199)

I don’t want to pick on anybody, so I’ll pick on very specific examples of my past. So when I joined this firm in San Francisco, their logo was a sailboat. A sailboat is a classic wealth management moniker of the 1980s. And what’s interesting is you can even extend this out into the future, even to today.

Rob Pyne (52:00.644)

You’re gonna say me. Okay.

David Newson (52:26.616)

How many times do we see sailboats, a compass, a landscape, a mountain, someone on top of beautiful vistas, mountain, whatever, people on a beach, right? There’s a lot of things that are sending people signals, right? Now what’s interesting was I don’t care that you have a compass or a boat or people on a beach. That’s not what I care about. What I care about is, does it mean something? Right? So if you have people on a beach and you’re in Vermont in the United States where, you know, like you get a fair amount of snow all winter long, you know, they’re not known for their, you know, they don’t have a coast, you know, like with, you know, an ocean on it, maybe some lakes, but like if you’re using an, ocean scape, you know, beach, that’s, that’s, that’s not great marketing. Same thing when I arrived at this firm, asked, do all of our clients, like, are they all yachters? Like they all have, you know, big boats, right? And I was like, and I was told, well, no, one of the founders has a boat. Okay, all right, great. Is he still here? No, he’s not still here. Okay, great. So we’re gonna, I was known as the guy who sank the sailboat. I was just like, okay, it’s gotta go. Off it goes. And let’s come up with something that’s a little bit more meaningful. And that’s not to say you need a logo that has to be meaningful. In this space, actually, we’re not trying to create global brands with immediate name recognition. This is not an exercise in a Fortune 100 brand kind of a thing. That’s not what we’re talking about. What we’re really designing for is, gosh, when someone lands on the homepage of your website, can they see themselves there? Right? Are you speaking to some element of who they are? I talked about, you know, magnetism. Like, do they feel like, gosh, and I’ll share the example. When we built this website for this firm in San Francisco, the number one comment that we received, that I received from speaking to leads coming through our program was, you know, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I just knew you guys got me.

David Newson (54:48.024)

And I’m like, whoo, high praise, love it. I love that you put your finger on it. I love that because like it isn’t any one single thing that you do. It’s not a tactic. Really good positioning and really good messaging is so baked into everything that you do that it’s a feeling that’s evoked, an attraction that is happening that people can’t quite figure out.

Rob Pyne (54:51.565)

Yeah.

David Newson (55:21.08)

I’ll stop there. Did I answer your question?

Rob Pyne (55:22.925)

That yes, you did. it’s just not one thing, but being able to resonate with someone who hits your website and it speaks to them in a way they can’t quite describe, but they think you get me. I can see this as a firm that really understands me. Can you think of an example, and it doesn’t need to be in financial services, but could think of an example of a brand that’s doing really well. It’s got maybe a recent sort of campaign that’s working for you in the US. This is a question that’s kind of a bit off topic, but I’m really curious, because I’ve got one in my mind here in Australia that seems to have just nailed their positioning. And I’ll share it after I get you to answer the question. If you’ve got one that comes to mind, who’s really nailing it in the market? When they put their brand out there, they’ve got some, it’s a bit off topic, because you don’t see financial planning firms doing much advertising on TV and the like. Can you think of a brand that’s doing a great job of positioning themselves in the market and representing who they’re really trying to attract? Who comes to mind for you?

David Newson (56:26.799)

I don’t even know that I want you to air this, you know, me naming a firm out loud.

Rob Pyne (56:33.099)

We can cut it out. We can not ask that question. I was just gonna say that the firm that’s in, and you might even have them in the US, you probably do. Are familiar with Aldi, the German retailer? The German, yeah, yeah. I don’t know what they’re doing in the US market, but they’ve got this sort of ad campaign. Like it’s kind of like, there’s a quirkiness and an awkwardness and a nerdiness to the way they…

David Newson (56:45.358)

yeah, totally. Yes, yes.

Rob Pyne (57:00.195)

… position themselves in the market. And their tagline is good different. So we’re different, but we’re good different. And there’s kind of this quirkiness and there’s like a almost like a, you know, as people going through the checkout, there’s something kind of weird happening, some sort of, know, we’re humans, we can be weird people, humans can be kind of weird. And there’s kind of this weirdness to the way things are happening. And you just kind of like, you’re like, it kind of really sp-

David Newson (57:19.822)

Totally, sure. Yeah, yeah.

Rob Pyne (57:27.875)

… speaks to me because I love the authenticity of the fact they’re sharing something that’s kind of looking, we’re a bit weird, but we’re kind of good weird. Like you kind of can relate to the humanity of the person being a bit good weird. And I’ll share something else here that actually I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve heard about it. That’s actually kind of become a bit of a news item is that I didn’t see Harrison Ford’s accepted speech for his lifetime achievement award, but it’s it’s blowing up in different channels that I follow.

David Newson (57:39.502)

That’s right.

Rob Pyne (57:58.434)

And he spoke about how he struggled through being a carpenter, trying to get a gig, trying to get his acting career going and how it sort of stops, starts, stops, starts. And I wanna watch it because I read newsletters and a couple of different newsletters are commenting on it saying, you’ve gotta watch this speech. And it occurs to me again, he’s kind of like, it’s a very relatable story. It’s a very human, very, you know, kind of like it wasn’t always easy, it wasn’t always, because we’re so used to the glossed up version of people’s lives on social media. When someone speaks authentically and nobody does it with this quirkiness in the way they do people going through the checkout, it speaks to the humanity of all of us and thinking like, we’re all a bit weird, we’re all a bit quirky and just seeing that and seeing people be vulnerable or a little bit quirky, I can really relate to that. And so, yeah, I just wanted to share that one because it came to mind when you were talking about this ability for brand to be authentic and people just going like.

David Newson (58:34.99)

That’s right. That’s right.

Rob Pyne (58:56.033)

I can see, they just get me. That’s kind of, I can relate to that story that I’m seeing there. So I don’t know if they do similar thing early in the US if it’s a similar campaign there, but I just, I loved it.

David Newson (59:06.018)

I haven’t, I have not seen an LD campaign. Although I have to say for as much, for as much media that I see and touch, I consume very little of it. And the reason that’s kind of, I need to not consume it. Yeah, yeah, like it’s just like, can’t, I can’t. I don’t know, maybe it’ll spoil the pot or something, I don’t know.

Rob Pyne (59:34.006)

No, it won’t. But I wanna touch on something that you said when we spoke earlier about the fact that many in-house marketing coordinators were kinda, grew up in the firm, they were once a different role and they kinda just had a bit of an interest in marketing and also now they’re the marketing coordinator. But you said, that’s very, very common. That’s actually the most common scenario you’ve encountered in financial planning firms, financial advice firms in the US.

David Newson (01:00:02.191)

Absolutely.

Rob Pyne (01:00:04.941)

Capabilities does a trained marketing professional bring to a firm that firms might not even know they’re missing it. They don’t even really realise the difference between that person that’s grown up through a client services role or reception role, now they’re the marketing coordinator, to what someone who’s been trained to better appreciate how to actually position a brand and how to connect with their ideal client.

David Newson (01:00:33.486)

A few items I want to call out first. So what you’re describing is absolutely true. We see it everywhere across the United States. And I don’t mean any disrespect to people who have grown up with a firm, right? That’s what you’re describing. Like, oh, okay, I had this role, I tried that role. Oh, the firm was growing. Finally, we’re at a stage of growth where we needed a marketing coordinator. Okay, now there’s a marketing coordinator and then promoted marketing director. And then, you know, some have even like, you know, arrived into the seat of chief marketing officer. but what’s also very interesting there is I think it goes back to, you know, leaders of firms historically have not very few have valued the marketing function. Right. So and if we think about it, like these are the same leaders who were probably advisors, right. Not professional CEOs. Right. So there’s also like professional leadership versus, you know, kind of the advisor that kind of grows up the same way. And so leaders many times were like, well, gosh, you know, the way that our firm used to grow was through referral. Right? I own the client relationship. I also own growth. Therefore, you know, like, what can they possibly contribute? well, I need a PowerPoint presentation. I need tear sheets. I need, you know, an RFP done. need, you know, like I would commonly a joke that like, don’t talk to me if you want to talk to me about tear sheets and PowerPoints. Cause like, I’m just not that interested in those things. It’s not that good professional marketers certainly need to be in the business of doing those things. It’s not that, but if that’s your mindset that marketing equals tear sheets and PowerPoints, like we have a mismatch of, know, the minds aren’t connecting. And I think it actually starts there on the leadership side. But then I have come across firms that have leaders that value the marketing function. And now what I find fascinating today is like, gosh, you know, it’s what, 2026 and all the rage is organic growth. And then they start wondering, like they being leaders, start wondering, well, where am gonna get organic growth? Like, my goodness. And this is where it’s been separating out the professional marketer from the homegrown, internally promoted. And I think we also see this in the US and private equity backed. In the private equity consolidation wave that’s happening right now, what we’re even seeing is even the advisor that became the CEO of his firm that maybe is running, you know, with private equity backed investments at some time, you know, at some point there are times where you need a change and they decide to bring in somebody else that has a different level of expertise because you’ve arrived at a certain level of scale that requires a different type of person running it. We see that. I think that also happens in marketing as well. know, like full disclosure, like I never, I was a CMO, but I never aspired to be one, right? Professional marketer, but I never viewed my end state as being a chief marketing officer. I always viewed my end state as being an entrepreneur, because that’s who I am. Before I’m a marketer, I’m an entrepreneur. And so I think when we start to peel back the layers of that, it’s important for that framing that, gosh, the role of a marketer has been largely misunderstood. And now there’s a lot of attention on what marketing can do for you because there’s this spotlight on organic growth. But then that’s also separated kind of the professionals from those that have grown up differently in the firms. And what a professional marketer brings to the table is a lot of discipline. What I mean by that is knowing and understanding how a marketing plan is built. And I think the very first place, like clients of ours will say like, okay, well, we need a marketing plan. It’s no, no. Well, the first thing we need to understand is like, what are the goals of the business? Marketing follows from good business decisions, right? So, and hopefully the marketing, you know, your marketing leader is in the room and you’re making business decisions because they hold the voice, really good ones, hold the voice of the consumer, right? They hold the voice of the client. They know and understand the existing client base as it is today. They understand where the business wants to get clients in the future. They understand the broader business context that we’re all operating in. They know and understand, and this is much more important in the last decade, they know and understand data. Like marketers 20 years ago never had to, know, CMOs would come and go based on, you know, very large bets, not agile environments that are based on testing, learning, refining, you know, incrementality, like being able to iterate over time. And tech and data has allowed, given marketers some incredible tools.

Rob Pyne (01:05:51.491)

Yeah.

David Newson (01:06:15.918)

And so I think even the, marketer today really needs to have a handle on like, you understand technology as a base layer? Like you must, do you understand data analytics on some base level? You must, you have to be able to be just as, just as a killer in a spreadsheet as financial advisors, but with marketing data, right? You need to know and understand who your target audiences. You need to know and understand platforms, how to reach them. Messaging. I mean, like you start going and it’s like, wow, this is a body of knowledge that a solopreneur can’t possibly have in a single person. And you’ll know that when you get to a certain growth trajectory, where you start asking your questions the same way you would want your client, your potential clients asking their self themselves this question. Yeah, I’m smart enough to figure this out, but I don’t have enough time to do it. That’s when you start thinking, gosh, there’s got to be a professional there that can.

Rob Pyne (01:07:15.585)

Yeah, you’re really talking the language that advisors will resonate with when you started saying data is key now and how important it’s become in the toolkit of the marketing professional who actually can analyze, interpret and iterate to improve the way in which the firm positions itself and puts its message out there. And so there’s so much potential there. And I’ve only, I’m that former advisor. CEO now that has played around and tried to understand the world of marketing. And it’s, it is like an onion. You start peeling back the layers and thinking, my God, there’s so much in here. And I have got no bandwidth or experience or training to become a professional at this, in this space. And, nor to the, to the, you know, to not dismiss the fact that people are coming up through the ranks that may not have come out of a marketing college or a training program. But there’s no way they could be expected to be at the level of professional market unless they go through that training because there’s just so much there to know. So data, as you say, becomes a really powerful way to help determine what’s working and how to actually improve upon what isn’t working. And while we’re talking about technology, we’ve touched on it a little bit already, but I wanna just dig into it bit further. Artificial intelligence is the hottest topic on the planet. It’s moving at a speed that’s gonna change the way we live that is unprecedented in terms of technological change in history. And I listened to the podcast and read the content and they’re saying the greatest concern is just the pace of change will…

David Newson (01:08:46.892)

Absolutely.

Rob Pyne (01:09:05.531)

… it’ll mean people will find it hard to adapt. Because the pace of change, if it happens over decades, people can adapt. But when it happens over months or even very short periods of a year or two, it actually does create disruption at a level that takes a fair bit for people to kind of pivot and determine how they’re going to adapt their skillset in the new world. So let’s just talk about that and what you’re seeing and how is it… How is AI reshaping how firms are producing content, engaging online, in the marketing world? Where do you see AI genuinely enhancing marketing outcomes, not just doing what they call AI slop, just like punching out lots of content that is just generated without any real thought or purpose or meaning behind it. Where do you think AI has its place and where is its limitation?

David Newson (01:09:49.131)

Yeah, so much AI slump.

Rob Pyne (01:10:03.969)

Where human creativity is still matters most. Big question, tough one.

David Newson (01:10:09.94)

That’s the question. Yeah, it’s a tough one. Let me start by issuing a couple of warnings. Let’s start there. Because these, I think, are important. Once upon a time, right, think the dawn of the internet, right? And then everyone like web 1.0, which I was lucky enough to be on the planet and experience firsthand. Yeah, okay. So web 1.0, this thing called SEO, search engine optimization was like all the rage. at the time, at the time people were trying to find ways of air quotes like game.

Rob Pyne (01:10:39.287)

Me too.

David Newson (01:10:54.382)

The system, basically meant how do I get Google to recommend my site, based on search? And there was a tactic at the time called keyword stuffing, right? Which meant like, oh, you do financial planning, make sure financial planning is on your homepage 150 times, right? So you know, blah, blah, blah. And then when you would read it as a human being, you’d be like, what the hell is going on here?

Rob Pyne (01:11:18.509)

Yeah.

David Newson (01:11:20.718)

And you’d be like, what? And then some are hyperlinked and they’re sending you to just really weird stuff. And then as the algorithm got smarter, which basically means the human beings at Google that were designing a better search experience for the consumer, remember, it all comes back down to designing for human beings. Then their algorithm started getting better and it started penalizing people for the very tactics that people were saying, this is how you do it. I have had a point of view for like forever and it is being tested again in the AI era. And when I say forever, I literally mean since I’ve been working with independent financial advisory firms, which goes back to 2004, like specifically financial advisory firms, I have maintained a point of view that you must accurately capture what it is that you do and be honest about it. And I’m not trying to say people are being dishonest, but really, need to be in the, what some firms would say is, no, I want my website to not say that much because I want some mystery. And if that’s your thing, there are some firms that are so elite, so exclusive, they have their logo, and then that’s it, that’s the page, right? Okay, cool. Thumbs up, knock yourself out, you’ve done a good job if that’s what you’re going for. But then there’s the rest of us, right? And for the rest of us, think the view, my view has been, my goodness, you need to take all of your knowledge and give it away for free. Publish it as if you’re an author, give it away for free. Your value is not in your knowledge, it is in the application of your knowledge on behalf of a client. And what does that mean? That means like, well, my goodness, publish it all, like have a blog, have a website, just… Okay, wow, your financial planner, literally write the manual on how to do financial planning for your target audience. Like who do you want to serve? Where do you want to go deep? Just publish it all. And my point there is you’re going to be getting points for publishing over time, right? So now you have a history of publishing over time, right? As a brand. You also have depth of knowledge. as Google is getting smarter, and this is paying off for firms today. The firms that have been publishing for a decade really deeply, not just surface level 500 word blogs. And I’m talking about in different varying lengths, long form content, know, really deep, like what we used to call white paper content, three to 5,000 words, as well as that thousand to 1500 word piece. Now in this new world that we find ourselves in, now we need to be short form video, long form video, like. There’s lots of different channels. And so in some ways, I think my view is, my goodness, in order to meet the consumer where they are, we are increasingly feeling the need to be in new media channels because like, I mean, I have my own podcast and someone said, hey, David, I love you, but I’m never gonna listen to you for an hour. But they will listen to my shorts on YouTube that are distilling my thoughts on a conversation that I had. Okay, cool. And then those are all algorithmically determined, know, audience size, some get a thousand, some get two, you know, like, but I think firms of the future, and this is where AI comes in, firms of the future, AI has the ability to make you incredibly productive, right? So if you do the hard work on the marketing strategy, on the positioning and the making of your business decisions, knowing that like, okay, maybe in 10 years, I wanna 10X my firm. And whatever your goals are, right? Like, I wanna 10X my firm, I wanna have multiple locations, I wanna do this, I wanna do that. Start with the goals and then back into, okay, well, then what’s the target? Who do I wanna serve? Who do I serve today? Who do I wanna serve? Are those things the same? Building out your plans appropriately. And then AI on the edges will help you get there with a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the head count. And that’s just today. You can do that today. One other word of caution on that. You know, I mentioned the SEO gaming the system. All the rage, I hear it every single day. David, what about answer engine optimization, right? What do we do? How do we get ChatGPT and Perplexity and Claude recommending our firm? And my view is the same, absolutely the same. I’m seeing it with our existing clients today. Those have been publishing for 10 years, are seeing, you know, lots of answer engine recommendations and they’re warmer than they ever have been. And it’s because, well, guess what? It’s called a large language model for a reason. It knows language. And that is how human beings communicate, right? So if you know the very basis of how humans communicate, well then my goodness, you have an advantage there. What I would guard against though is, folks raising their hand and saying, well, this is how you make sure that the answer engines are referring to you. Beware my friends. If you are chasing, you know, the AI gods, you’re only one algorithmic or code update away from being obsolete. And so my view remains the same. Be and say who you say you are. Publish like, you know, your life depended on it. Don’t think you have a corner of knowledge. Like knowledge is commoditized at this stage in this space. It’s all about the application of that knowledge. So give it away for free. Those who actually give it away for free in a way that humans can consume easily and readily will still win. You know, we’re seeing that now. Answer engines, crawl websites, right? So… If you’ve published all of your knowledge, then it’s aware of all of your knowledge. And if that is paired with a question from a real human about that, you could see a wave of inbound leads that aren’t cold anymore. They’re going to feel like referrals, but the social capital that you built isn’t through another human being. was through your own knowledge of human beings and publishing that appropriately.

Rob Pyne (01:18:09.633)

Yeah, you make a great point. That is that you still have to get the strategy and the work has to be done upfront. AI can help you become more effective, get more productive with what you are doing, but you can’t use it to be the strategiser at the front end necessarily. You’ve got to have the, yeah.

David Newson (01:18:26.796)

It’s an amplifier. It’s an amplifier. It’s not a… I mean, we use it in our work and there are times where, you know, I’m looking at my screen and to chat GPT, it doesn’t matter which one. And it’s just like, my gosh. for all of its knowledge about how humans communicate via language, it still can be incredibly formulaic and how it provides responses. And that’s where the human starts to wonder, is this human? Like, like, because humans don’t structure things this way.

Rob Pyne (01:19:02.307)

Yeah, while we’re talking technology, I wanna touch on another area that AI has become a really powerful tool for engaging with visitors to your website. You were one of the early adopters of the website chat in wealth management firms. And I think when we spoke originally, you said, well, I had a bit of resistance on the part of some of the other firm principals going, oh, this seems a bit risky, David. Putting a website chat on our website where people could ask questions and so on. But it’s come a long way in very short time in the last couple of years where now the website chat can be quite intelligently answering all the questions someone might have when they visit someone’s website. So they can ask about their investment philosophy, how they charge, any number of questions. And rather than browsing around and trying to find the answers, they can just ask the question straight on that tool.

David Newson (01:19:29.198)

I don’t think.

Rob Pyne (01:19:54.69)

How should firms now, in your view, think about that digital engagement where they’ve got maybe a web bot on their website that actually can be quite an intelligent, engaging tool to answer the questions they have?

David Newson (01:20:13.678)

That’s that one.

Rob Pyne (01:20:15.693)

So I was one of the original sort of someone who I was working with at the time said, let’s put Drift Chat on your website. And it was a very basic Drift Chat. It was just gonna pop up when someone lobbed onto our website. They would ask a question, it would alert me on my mobile phone. There was someone on there asking question. I would then respond. You said the same, you were doing that. You were the guy that was the other end of that chat when someone jumped on the site. But these days, the opportunity is there now to put one of those web.

David Newson (01:20:35.566)

Okay, totally.

Rob Pyne (01:20:45.313)

Bots, you like, a web chat bot on your website. And it can just be a way for people to go and ask lots of questions rather than browsing around. How do you think firms should be thinking about using these sorts of tools where someone visiting your website now can ask questions of a tool there as opposed to simply browsing around trying to get their answers?

David Newson (01:21:06.636)

I think it has its place and we also need to understand it’s not for everyone, right? So I remember when I put it on site, yeah, my partners thought I was frankly probably crazy. They did call me the mad scientist though. So I mean, they’re not entirely wrong. I think the way that the tools are today, I would spend a lot of time thinking through what does a consumer really want out of that experience? So I immediately go to, well, some consumers might want an answer to a very specific question. So think like, gosh, I can’t find where their fee schedule is. I just want to know what their fees are. Like, boom, there’s a great way like, boom, here’s a question. Now, what I would also challenge you, like challenge anyone, is if you had a chatbot, instead of just delivering the answer, it’s also an, you you could also design an experience to invite someone further into your site to expose them to a point of view that you might have on fees that they have not considered, right? And instead of dumping that all into chat. What it could also do is you could program that thing to make sure that it’s also hyperlinking to pages on your site, where, you know, and also making some, Claude does this well. You know, sometimes Claude’s like, hey, can you answer these quick questions? And it’s like multiple choice. Like you just, you know, click, click, click. And then it gives you a better response because it needs a little bit more information. So, you know, maybe you put something like that in there where you’re like, hey, I need a little bit more information so I can really get you a great answer. And then maybe you’re starting to separate the different types of people that you know, and your unique experience as a financial advisor. Well, gosh, what path are they trying to go down? Like, are they just hyper-focused on what the fee actually is? Or are they trying to know and understand is it a value question, right? If it’s a value question, then, you know, maybe that recommendation is to like, hey, let’s dig, like, here’s the answer, like, brrrr. But if you want to delve into how we view value for fees my goodness. Here’s three articles that were written in the last six months blah blah blah You’re accomplishing two things there, too You’re meeting the user where they are on your website in real time And you’ve also made sure that you’ve created content that an answer engine Who’s also probably fielding very similar questions. You’ve now built your site to provide those answers like that

Rob Pyne (01:23:45.806)

Yeah, that’s great. That’s actually, that’s a tactic. David, we’ve gone into tactics there, but I like that one. It’s a, there you go. It’s a mic drop moment. No, I like that one. I like that one. That’s something that people can take away that have got this far through the episode because you know, some people they’ll get 20 minutes in and then they’ll get distracted or their drivers, their commute’s short and they’ll listen to the rest. But for those that have stuck around, that’s a good one. I like that one. Yeah, so I’ve got…

David Newson (01:24:07.182)

Sure, I love it. Thanks for sticking with me.

Rob Pyne (01:24:15.043)

… couple more questions for you. Marketing, how do we measure it? I’ve got a sense of this obviously, because ultimately people still wanna be able to measure the success of the marketing activity that they’re engaging in. And how do you think about that? If you’re working for an RIA firm, are the key metrics that you’re showing them to measure the success of the efforts you’re putting in to do that strategy work upfront, and then follow through with it. Campaigns or magnetic sort of attraction strategies, what is it that you’re measuring? How do you point to the success of your efforts?

David Newson (01:24:52.535)

At the end of the day. We, and I’m speaking personally here of my firm, are willing to die on the hill of leads, prospects, clients, assets, revenue. How many leads, how many leads turn into prospects, how many prospects turn into clients, when you measure how quickly people move through that funnel, that’s velocity through the funnel, and then what is it producing? Is it producing what type of asset numbers are we talking and how much revenue is that? And those, think, are the core numbers that you must always be watching. Now, what’s also interesting is if you don’t have, if you’re going from zero to that state, well, you can’t measure any of that because like you need to build the foundation, you know, the foundation to actually generate leads. So like there’s a lot of different numbers that we can measure. But some people get very excited like, yeah, you know, our website traffic is increased. Well, I don’t give a shit about website traffic. Yeah, yeah, because at the end of the day, it’s like, well, you could increase traffic to your website and it might have zero effect on leads, prospects, clients, assets, and revenue, right? So, and what I would rather see is fewer visits to the website and more leads, more prospects, and more clients, and assets, and revenue. Like that’s, and that’s what happens over time. So in the beginning, when we’re running testing, we want to see increases in website traffic.

Rob Pyne (01:25:55.857)

I love it, yep.

David Newson (01:26:22.21)

But one of the things that we really wanna watch are one of the things I know to be true in working in the financial advice space is that, my goodness, it’s time on site that matters. And one of the things we realized in San Francisco was one of the filters was greater than six minutes on site matters a lot. You have someone who is engaged or looking for a job and you need to figure out who’s who, but. Like more than six minutes on site was a great proxy for intent. And then, okay, once you have six minutes on site, and these are simple Google Analytics reports, once you have someone’s time on site, okay, well then what pages did they visit? What type of content did they consume? If they were on your careers page, well, now you can segment out that population of job seekers. And then, well, what content are they consuming on site? You need to have the right technology on your site. I remember and still make this recommendation to clients. Make sure that you have a tool like Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar on the site where you can actually watch users interact with your site. Watch a video. This is the study of human behavior that I’ve been talked about earlier, but these are the actual ways we do it. Watch it. You can actually see the hot and cold zones of your home page and different pages of content to know are your calls to action, are people clicking on your contact us button, are they interacting with the forms on your website, are they getting all the way to the bottom of your content. And by the way, most won’t and that’s okay, you should still write it.

Rob Pyne (01:28:02.36)

Yeah, you know, I’ve such enjoyed our conversation. I’ve lost track of time. I’ve taken tons of your time, if you permit me, I’ve got one more question for you to wrap us up. Advice business owners listening today. They want to take one meaningful step towards becoming better at professional marketing. What should they do first?

David Newson (01:28:10.343)

Yeah, yeah, go for it, go for it, go for it. Woo. I think they should take, set aside a lot of time and know and understand who their existing clients are today. That’s the first step. Now for those that have graduated from that step, and I know there are those who have, the next step is, well my goodness, are these the type of clients I want in the future? That’s a decision tree. Fork in the road, yes or no. If the answer is yes and, which I’m assuming it may very well be the case, what might those other types of clients, that expansion of the client base look like for you? And then I want you to imagine what their day is like. I want you to really think through, maybe journal about it even, and really attempt to know and understand how they move through the world with an eye and a lens for what pain points do they have? What parts of their day might give rise to frustration? And then I want you to narrow your focus into, my goodness, what are the trigger points happening in their lives that give rise to financial advice? And now we’re starting to get into the zone of, my goodness. If we all assume people don’t wake up, needing a financial advisor, well then what are those things happening in their life that, and itemize those things. And you know, these are probably things that they’ve thought about before. You know, just write them all down. And then I want you to think about that new audience that you’ve been considering. And I want you to think about these points in their lives. And then I want you to think about, gosh, could I help solve some of these challenges or issues. And if you can, then I want you to think of how you would do that. And then I want you to start writing about it. And I want you to start publishing that. The number one thing that feeds a digital program, like if you don’t have it, we’re gonna have to build it, is content. Content is fuel for the engine. There’s not another way to do it credibly, reliably. That has the right amount of trust signals for you to get the kind of growth that I think you’re gonna want. Because what will wind up happening is if you do the shortcut and you run a bunch of tactics, you’re gonna start closing a bunch of clients or not closing clients. So either closing clients or closing a bunch of clients that will leave later.

Rob Pyne (01:31:26.893)

Yeah, yeah, I love it. David, how can people get in contact with you if they wanna touch base and they hear this episode and think, this is a guy who understands us. He’s a marketing man, but he actually understands the independent advice firm. How should people touch base with you?

David Newson (01:31:43.726)

They can go to our website. It’s xnwdigital.com. Or I’m on LinkedIn. Just reach out on LinkedIn. It’s, you know, linkedin.com slash in. You know, by the way, if you don’t have your own custom name on LinkedIn, you should do that. So it’s not some gobbledygook number, but it’s linkedin.com slash in slash nuusen. And N-E-W-S-O-N. And I’m gonna just double check it to make sure I didn’t just lie. And it’s true.

Rob Pyne (01:32:21.923)

It’s N-E-W-S-O-N, I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation, David. It is an area, as I said, right at the outset that I have a bit of a fascination for, understanding how consumers make their decisions. And it’s sort of something I think everyone kind of can relate to. So David Newson, N-E-W-S-O-N, thank you for joining me today on the Trusted Adviser podcast.

David Newson (01:32:29.09)

Likewise. Thanks, Rob. Appreciate it.

Rob Pyne (01:32:48.429)

Thanks, David.