ARE YOU GIVING YOUR CLIENTS SOMETHING TO BELONG TO?

"We have a strong desire to belong to small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding." 

-Sebastian Junger,in his book Tribe. 

  
 
Our modern society leaves a void of disconnectedness in many of us. This provides a unique opportunity for us to bring more meaning to our work and meet an unfilled need in our clients.  

 
 
Let me start by sharing a story. 
 
I very distinctly remember the last client event I did to pitch a product. I can't remember the date, but I remember the feelings perfectly.  
 
I would say it was between 8-10 years ago. I was with my previous Broker Dealer and the sales manager declared that we were doing an LTC seminar. He assigned each advisor a number of clients we were to bring and set us to work.  
 
I didn't want to do it, but I was a team player, so I gave in. We made of list of clients to call/hound. I think I personally had 24 "yesses." Yay! 
 
The evening of the seminar came and we eagerly awaited our guests. We had the big room with a projector and fancy speaker flown in from some product provider.  
 
7…7 of my 24 people showed up.  
 
And of those 7, all of them were Ideal Clients with whom I had already had the LTC conversation. Everyone of them either had LTC insurance that I had sold them or could not get it. I realized they only came because I asked them to, not because they wanted to be there.  
 
What an embarrassment. 

Everyone else had similar show numbers as well. The room was 25% full and the evening was a bust. But hey, there was a surplus of cheesecake to take home!  

 
 
I swore I would NEVER do another product-based seminar again. 
 
For years, I didn't do client events at all. But then I started feeling like I wanted to have a deeper connection with my clients. I wanted to engage with them on a more personal level and more frequently than our semi-annual client meetings.  
 
I re-imagined what client events could be. I made a list of tenets that would define my new event series that would guarantee that I would never feel the way I did in the vast empty room years before.  
 
We created a few rules to guide us.  
 
Discover Denver events would not be… 

  1.  Designed to sell a product or service. 
  2.  Related to finance.  
  3.  Things we don't ACTUALLY want to do. 
 
Discover Denver events must be… 
 
 1.  Something in our community that we would do if we were tourists.  
 2.  Scalable, we could have a successful event with 5 clients or 50.  
 3.  Easy to execute 
 4.  Reasonably priced per head 
 5.  Something we could co-host with a Key Partner 
 
That’s it..those are the rules.  
 
Since we implemented those rules, we have had a completely different experience with our events.  
 
We used to do 11 events a year. We now do 6-8 because we also host the women's Creating Connections event monthly (see the last post for more details). 
 
 🌟We get between 20-40 people per event.  
 🌟We have a 95% RVSP to show rate. No more empty rooms. 
 🌟We spend $250-500 for most events. 
 🌟We almost always invite one of our Key Partners to participate and bring their own guests.  
 🌟We have a philanthropic component to about 1/4 of our events. 
 
 💖Our clients bring their friends and children to our events. 
 💖Our clients act as natural advocates if someone else brings a guest. 
 💖Our client send us event ideas. 
 💖Our clients have built meaningful friendships with each other.  
 💖Our clients feel like they KNOW us as friends instead of just business people.  
 
  

Through our Discover Denver program, we have built a community that serves many different purposes. It supports the business, it gets us in front of our clients more often, it engages our Key Partners and it is generally a lot of fun.  

 
 
Being a client of our practice feels like being a member of a community. The community has a set of values to include learning, integrity, giving, support and openness. 
 
We all have that underlying desire to belong. Are you giving your clients something to "belong" to? What would your community look like? What would it stand for? 

  
 
The Intentional Advisor 
 
I have tried to design The Intentional Advisor along the same lines. Advisors feel isolated and I wanted to give them a place to come together to learn, share and connect with one another, regardless of Broker Dearer or affiliation. That is the purpose of The Intentional Advisor Mastermind.  
 
But there is another community within that community; those advisors who are committed to building their practices with PURPOSE and on PURPOSE.  
 
Until now, if you wanted to learn to build your practice The Intentional Advisor way, you had to hire me 1:1 for consulting. Not anymore! 
 
The Delivering on the Promise Online Course is now available at about 1/4 the cost of working with me 1:1. You learn the exact came material, but you can do it at your own pace and at a significantly lower price point. You become part of a private FB group just for advisors in the course. You get a ton of support from me and the entire community of Intentional Advisors.  
 
If you want to find out more about signing up for Delivering on the Promise, check out the details here: