How Data Helps Grow Your Business in the Financial Services Industry with Kate Healy

Kate Healy  00:22

Thanks so much for having me, Doug. I'm excited to speak today.

Douglas Heikkinen  00:25

Me too. As I mentioned in your prior job you spent a decade working with and for financial advisors, Malcolm Gladwell would most likely give you your 10,000 hours certificate as a master in this industry. What are some of the big changes you've seen over that time?

Kate Healy  00:42

Yeah, absolutely. And it's been more than a decade. It's been a couple decades. So it's definitely changed. But one of the things that I see and that I love is we're on this journey towards really becoming a profession. You know, I spent a ton of time talking to advisors about what that next generation looks like. And we know that we've got a talent shortage advisors are really getting interested in hiring more talent, and they're having some trouble finding it. And what I'd like to say is that some of it just about developing the talent, I know, we'll get into it further in the conversation, but really thinking about how do you develop the people who are already on your team. And then this team's approach, right, many firms are starting to really look at how they're coming up with the best client experience. And a lot of times that is making sure you have a team to support the client. So they don't just have a one on one relationship with an advisor, they've got a team of advisers that can help them. And that also helps from a development perspective in many ways. And it also helps people as we move towards this demographic shift that we have already moved to and will continue to move towards in this country. Having more diverse people make up a team and having them on the team that's helping your clients really helps make sure clients feel like their needs are being heard. They're they're more likely to find someone that they're going to feel feel a comfort level with. And then finally, just this career, pathing, right, as we talked about development is as we become a profession, it's really making sure that that next generation knows what they need to do to get to the next level, we can't expect people to join this profession if they don't know what they need to do to be successful. So really coming up with and sharing career pathing all the way to take you from graduating with a degree in financial planning. That's how you came into the career up to becoming the legal adviser owner, if that's something that you want to do.

Douglas Heikkinen  02:34

Wow, that's a way different view than I was expecting. And I'm one who thinks that this industry doesn't move very fast, whether it be compliance, or who's getting paid or lack of innovation. Sometimes it can just take a month to get a meeting, it seems like we're behind. Are you in my boat? Or do you have a different view?

Kate Healy  02:55

Well, I do think that we do tend to move slow. And yes, we are a little bit behind. But the world is moving much quicker. And so it's imperative for us to just begin to move fast. You know, I like to say that, for the last 10 years, I've been talking about the demographic shift. And I will tell you, Doug, that for the first 567 years, people would say to me, you know, whatever, Kate, we hear you bow, it doesn't it doesn't affect me. Why? Why? Why are you telling me about this? And the last three years, that conversation has shifted from Why is it so important to? Oh, my gosh, how do I do it? What's the how now? How can I address this looming change in demographics? How do I make sure that my business is prepared to take this on? So yeah, we are moving slow. But I think we're realizing that we have got to make our metabolism much faster, because the world is not slowing down.

Douglas Heikkinen  03:49

So, let's move to your sweet spot marketing. And let's group everyone in here, institution, product providers and advisors. Why is marketing so important? Becoming even more important, and how can it be successful?

Kate Healy  04:04

I mean, you know, I love that you just lumped everyone together, because that's what often happens when a client or prospect sees us, they feel like we're all lumped together, they cannot see the differentiation between different brands, and frankly, what different people do, what does a product provider do, that a broker dealer doesn't do? Or does do or how is an advisor different? And so, marketing is so important to tell your story. And you know, I always like to tell people I started out in economics and accounting, and people say, Well, what are you doing in marketing? Well, marketing is a science. It's everyone thinks of the creative piece, and that's a big part of it. But you know, generally you hire creative talent for that marketing itself. What we do many times is that scientists looking at the data, data and analytics are hugely important. And what has happened in the past, you know, five to seven years. That's been phenomenal. for marketers is there's so much more information than we ever had before it can be overwhelming but it can also help us just get so much smarter it allows us to become more efficient we're not throwing money away with messaging or to audiences that aren't going to listen and don't care and when we think about practice management one on one what do we say get to know your client and prospect and work with the people that you like well we're now allowed to do that we have the tools to analyze who are the clients that we work with that we really like to work with that are profitable for our company now we know what they look like we can match that data set to prospects out there whether it's through facebook or a google search we have the ability to find people more efficiently that will match the people that we want to work with and so when you think of efficiency in a practice marketing is one way to help you really help you define your target audience when you're looking at all this data you're going to be able to figure out who are the ones that i want to work with and how do i find more of them who is engaging with me in my marketing whether it's through social media or it's email marketing because that still works all of those different things you're able to find who's engaging with you and i'm sorry go ahead no i was gonna say and then you know just the the evolution of branding and this is where it becomes especially important for advisors is to really digital marketing social media marketing those are ways that you can actually become personal in today's branding is personal you look at social media it's about influencers who do the big brands look to they look to influencers on social media to connect with their prospects and clients and for advisors who are facing that uphill battle maybe competing against national brands this is one of the best ways that they can get through creating that personal marketing that really lets a prospect get to know who they are

Douglas Heikkinen  07:04

I'm so glad you mentioned data being this is the Data Possible Podcast, are there specific data points or things that marketers should look at in terms of data that should be most important to them?

Kate Healy  07:17

Sure you know data is everything and it can there is so much data that's you know we try to get advisors to also focus right because you can know everything about everything and then it can be paralyzing so really looking at the important things right that can be depending on how you're running your business that can be demographics whether it's gender whether it's geography whether it's socio economic or what people are doing for a living there's different data points that are going to help you really hone in on who you're going to work with and then really when you look at your marketing efforts look at the efficacy of what you're doing are your emails getting opened what's happening after they open them so click through rates open rates you can test your taglines your headlines the email headline that you're leading with the subject line is it getting open it's a great way to really become more efficient at your marketing and then look at the engagement how much time are people spending on your website but probably the most important is how are they then working with you are they taking that marketing that you got say that was an email or social media you know twitter posts that got them to your website how are you converting them to a lead are you collecting that information are you then following up with it is it being sent to your sales team so that they can follow up if you've got that to make sure that you are being fresh with your audience you know i'm laughing just today i reached out to a firm that i wanted to do some business with and they have a chat function so i started chatting with them and they answered me once and then they never answered me again well now i'm not going to do business with them because they put that out there for me to use and yet they weren't actually using it and now i'm gonna have to go call someone on the phone which wasn't my ideal way to work with them and you know i had a need that could have been filled today and now i'm going to move on to someone else because they couldn't they weren't responsive to the marketing that they've that they put out there so if you're not going to be concentrating on social media marketing or on email marketing or on your website then number one you're not going to be successful in today's world but also then don't put it out there because you're just going to create a negative client experience

Douglas Heikkinen  09:34

That's great insight and we'll be right we'll be right back after this.

Welcome back to the data possible podcast we're here with Kate Healy.

Kate as you grew in the industry you earned your way to a very high level at TD, what's your perception of the number of women in the industry and do people have an accurate view of it?

Kate Healy  09:57

This is where data is so important you know i tell people When I started out in this industry, I didn't see a shortage of females at all, I turned around and you know, it was it seemed half and half. But as I grew in my career, and I moved into different roles, that's when I turned around, I looked, and I realized that there were many fewer women, and that we weren't doing a good job of retaining them, people were leaving, for whatever reason, having a starting a family, moving, whatever, but they weren't making their way back into this industry, because we weren't making it easy for them. So I think that we do have a shortage of women. But the the way I like to flip that a little bit is, is to play with the data a little bit, right, that's the great part about data is you can use it to tell the story that you want. Sorry about that. was not expecting that, anyway. So, you know, the greatest part is that you can tell a story with data. Now we all have here, we have all heard the stories about the number of women financial advisors in this industry certainly tells us somewhere between 15 and 16%, depending on the business line, the CFP board tells us that 23% of women are see 23% of cfps are women. And that's true. But in actuality, 46% of the profession is made up of women, they're just not advisors. So we don't talk about them as much. But their client service associates, they're the marketing team, the legal team, the Operations Manager. And so when we think about the shortage of women that we have in this profession, and the lack of development that we sometimes do, I think that we can bring more women into the advisory side of the business, just by looking within our own firms, and talking to people and creating those career paths and creating development opportunities for people that want to maybe go there, you know, when someone starts out in this career, it's it's very overwhelming, right, depending on the business model, you go into the way we introduce this to the next generation, it's kind of the same way we did it before. And it's all about sales and cold calling and referrals. But as firms are growing today, if they can hire beyond that, right, they can create a career path. So bringing an intern in college, get them exposure to clients, then they can join the firm as a client as an advisor, sorry, then they can join the firm as an advisor, or maybe as a client service associate and build on their knowledge to become an associate planner, which can lead to them becoming a lead advisor or an owner. But we have to think about the fact that not everyone needs to be an advisor in this industry, as we professionalize our firms and they grow larger, we have this real need for professional talent, whether that's running HR, whether that's running marketing, or the trading desk, or the legal department. So we have this opportunity to continue to bring more women into this profession. But also turn around and look at the folks that are already in our firm and look at ways that we can better develop that talent. It takes some work, but the payoff is really worth it. Because everyone that I talked to is looking for their next perfect hire. And that's always someone who has three to five years experience. And there's a shortage of that talent. But you're going to spend three to five years looking for it. I have an advisor who came up to me last year and said, Kate, you've been telling me for five years to hire someone out of college. And I didn't do it. And now it's five years later. And now I'm going to hire someone out of college. And if I just done that five years ago, I would have that someone that advisor who has five years experience, which is exactly what I've been looking for. But I've got to start from scratch now. So I think it's you know, it's just so important to think about the development of this talent. Because women are here, we just need to give them that voice. Give them that seat at the table and showcase them so that more women become attracted to joining this fantastic profession.

Douglas Heikkinen  13:59

I'm gonna throw something else out there that I'd like your opinion on. Could efforts in financial literacy and financial education, both be bridges to building a pipeline for talent? And if you agree with me, how do those efforts help bring in a diverse workforce?

Kate Healy  14:14

Yeah, I do agree with you. Absolutely. Right, because one of the reasons people don't come into the profession is because they don't know about it. Only 25% of this country actually works with a financial advisor. So if you didn't grow up in a family that did, how do you even know this exists? You don't know that you can go to a financial planner for help. We don't teach financial literacy in 30 countries in 30 states in this country, so there's no exposure to it. So absolutely. The efforts around educating people on getting smarter about their finances, then also leads to the discussion of Oh, by the way, there are people that can help you with your finances, and introducing that to a broader base of people is going to engage more people with this profession and so i talk to people often about financial education efforts as a pipeline for more diverse talent the more you are doing to educate everyone about this we're going to expand that pipeline of talent we're going to get those more diverse voices we're going to bring this to a more diverse audience and that is going to help bring up that workforce because we're going to create that interest if you talk to a lot of students who are in financial planning programs they didn't choose this until their sophomore or junior year and the way they did it was because they found an a professor who taught it who spent some time with them show them an interest in it or they got a financial literacy class given to them at college that was provided by the financial planning program themselves but it really is a way to for us to expand this there is such a lack of knowledge that this profession exists that we it's so important for us to do everything that we can to create that awareness and to make sure that we're getting out there into all of the school systems everywhere you can get to talk to whether it's the boys clubs or the girls clubs that's going to create the interest and that pipeline for more diverse talent to join this industry

Douglas Heikkinen  16:23

I've been on a couple of club clubhouse calls talking with investors about the value of having a financial advisor and the lack of knowledge around finance in general and the benefits of even talking to a financial advisor is alarming, so how do we as an industry do a better job

Kate Healy  16:40

It's all about us telling our stories right this podcast is a great way i tell all advisors right you should go to every career day you can talk about what it is you do talk to your clients kids they're the ones who get the value of what it is that they do and then we always tell all the students that we used to bring in and award scholarships for for financial planning programs tell your friends it's so important for us to to create the awareness you know just this week the cfp board is launching a campaign to create more awareness about cfps those are the kinds of programs that are great they cost a lot of money there's a lot that we can do as advisors to just tell the story i mentioned career days get on college campuses get into financial planning programs and if you if there's not a local financial planning program then go to the economics department also go to the social sciences people who become great financial planners are the helpers right they want to do something they want to help people and many people are going to school for social work or teaching or psychology they want to help people but they don't know that this career exists and once they find out about it realize they can make a good living it becomes a much better story it becomes a better way to bring them into this industry

Douglas Heikkinen  18:05

So how can advisors themselves do give back within the industry? Have you seen some great things happening?

Kate Healy  18:15

Yeah, you know mentoring right is number one but none of us none of us got to where we are today without someone helping guide us so mentoring is a big piece and you know mentoring people i think get overwhelmed by mentoring because i think it's always going to be part of a big program i like to use what i call situational mentoring i might mentor people for a month just to maybe talk them through a situation what's the right way to pick a college degree to get into college or how do i get myself set up in my first job so it can be quick interactions that you have but it's so important for advisors to get involved to get onto the college campuses you can mentor you can teach a class every financial planning professor would love it if you came and brought your expertise to be a guest lecturer in a class bring lunch when when everyone's back in school bring them lunch and also think about giving back from say a scholarship perspective you know a $5,000 scholarship to a financial planning student can make such a difference in their lives many of the financial planning programs especially the ones that are really recruiting more diverse talent have a very large percentage of first generation college students and they're struggling they're working they're you know trying to finance their college education themselves go to school and all that and a $5,000 contribution from an advisor can really help ease that and then the other way is to give back through pro bono financial planning right well recent cfp survey showed 75 70% of cfps provide pro bono services today i think it's a fantastic way for us to really as i talked about before you know continue on that evolution to profession, a profession gives back to everyone. And through the foundation for financial planning, there are opportunities for advisors to find pro bono financial planning engagements, they can be a one time engagement, you can engage with someone long term, you can help people who are affected by cancer, you can help people who are in the military victims of domestic violence, older people who are subject to, you know, lots of misinformation. There are many ways that people can give back. But it is so important to showcase how great this profession is.

Douglas Heikkinen  20:35

I like all those, especially mentoring. I had a mentor at my time at Schwab for 13 years. And let me tell you that mentoring is not always a pat on the back. It can be difficult messages sent.

Kate Healy  20:46

I think it's best when it's not a pat on the back, right. It's someone who really tells you as it is and and makes you grow.

Douglas Heikkinen  20:54

As I mentioned at the top, you're on the board of invest, and others talk a little bit about that and why it's such an important foundation.

Kate Healy  21:02

Yeah, you know, I've been on the board for about five years now. And it is such an important. It's such an important organization. It's the only organization that's dedicated to amplifying the charitable work of financial advisors, and 2021 is a milestone for us. It's our 15th anniversary. We started as a conference theme for LPL in 2006. And it's really grown now into what many people know as this great awards program that provides money to nonprofits. But over the past several years, we've grown even past that. We've come up with multiple programs. We've got events were really making a a bigger financial impact on nonprofits in our communities. And so when we started 15 years ago, we had our flagship invest in others awards. And that first year we awarded $65,000 to 14 charities. Well, fast forward 15 years and this year, we're shooting to award almost a million dollars to 100 organizations in need. And if you've never been a part of invest in others, and you haven't gone to one of the galas I tell you go It is one of the most life changing events. You know, some of the speakers some of the winners that we've had in the past, like Mary Lou Adler says she lost her son to suicide. But she decided to brighten that situation by dedicating her time to create a local branch of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in Utah. And as a result, she saved numerous lives. And today, they're one of the most successful chapters in the country. Richard brown met the co founder of the Starkey Hearing Foundation at an event, and he asked us to meet up with them to learn a little bit more about the organization. Well, long story short, Richard went home that night and packed his bags. And he left on a two week international trip to really get immersed in their work and get a better understanding of the mission of the nonprofit. And today, he's the president and chairman of the board. And then Lillian gray used her own experience as the daughter of immigrants to become involved with an organization that helps close the gap for Latino students so they can graduate from college. There are so many more stories like this, I come away from that event every year in tears, and thinking, wow, I don't do enough. There are so many fantastic advisors that do great things, and they can win money for their charities. So it's really important for, for advisors to to get involved with invest in others. And what one of the great changes that we've made that I really like is that we have started. So I mentioned that we give away grants during the year, we've got several different grant programs. And for the first time now it's it's not just for advisors, it's for anyone who's in the industry. So it's really important for all of us in the industry, even if you're not a financial advisor, to to look to invest in others to look at ways that you can help get money for your own nonprofits that you support.

Douglas Heikkinen  24:09

What can people do to contribute to invest in others?

Kate Healy  24:12

I'm so glad you asked that. The best ways really to spread the word about invest in others and all of its programs. So get on social media, follow us like us share the content on Twitter, on LinkedIn on Facebook, nominate an advisor for the invest in others awards. Once a year there's a nomination period open for the larger awards that get awarded in the fall, and then apply for grants. And they just talked about on behalf of a nonprofit. And that's Oh again, that's open to anyone working in the industry. And then donate whether it's a personal gift or if you help with a corporate sponsorship. The funding is critical to our efforts to make a meaningful impact in our communities. So lots of ways to get involved with invest in others.

Douglas Heikkinen  24:57

That's great. Kate, you are awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.

Kate Healy  25:00

Thanks so much for having me Doug

Douglas Heikkinen  25:02

For everyone at Discovery Data and the Data Possible Podcasting Team, thank you.

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