Why Marketing Is Crucial for Advisors Seeking Practice Growth With Greg Banasz

 

Greg Banasz  00:24

Thank you, Doug. Great to be here.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  00:25

I've talked to a lot of people today about your firm. And if I didn't ask anybody, and I was saving this for the marketing person, tell me about the firm in your old words.

 

Greg Banasz  00:37

Oh, the firm is built on some key principles, which are independence with infrastructure, a great culture, a place where everyone has a voice in the firm. And I remember those because I joined 10 years ago, and they were some of the three key themes and, and phrases that were used. And here we are 10 years later. And I still use some of those words and catchphrases. Today, when I'm telling people about Steward. I have plenty of examples, which I'll give throughout this podcast. But you know, you think about those key differentiators where people have a voice, that culture is defined here. It's not just a tagline or some sort of empty phrase. And then that independence with infrastructure has a lot of meaning around it too.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  01:25

Well you kind of bled into my next question. So I was gonna ask you about today, describe it today. And then looking back 10 years and what you were trying to accomplish when you started this, have you done it?

 

Greg Banasz  01:37

Yeah. And you know, when I look at where we are today, the image, the brand - much different than it was 10 years ago. 10 years ago, we came here and did this. A bunch of guys and gals, there was only 12 of us 10 years ago. And we were looking at this and saying, all right, what would we like to create and have as an opportunity for people to come join us. Good people, good people that can appreciate a culture where we're all rowing in the same direction, that's the whole equity piece of it too where we're all kind of in this together. But in the beginning, you know, there were certain struggles, right, we didn't have private equity money, we didn't have all sorts of big paychecks, we we did what we needed to do to survive. But we were we were definitely creating something we knew was going to have values, value. And for me, I was old enough and but yet young enough, that makes any sense. I was 20 years into the business started a great firm, you know, back in the 90s called Legg Mason, who also had a great culture. And then when we got here, I was still in my 40s. And I'm like, Okay, I've got enough experience. But I'm still young enough to I could take this entrepreneurial risk with Jim and Hy and, and some other folks that were here. And there were only three advisors at the time. You know, you fast forward to tape to today. And there's 550 of us. And I just I blinked in we're here, but but again, that that, that part of building it all, having a stake in it, creating a culture to where it felt small and cool. It still feels small and cool. Today, we're just a much bigger organization.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  03:23

So with 550 people, and I don't know how many of those are actually advisors. When you look at the advisor set, is there a commonality that you see to help them grow their practices?

 

Greg Banasz  03:36

Yeah, that's a great question. And so the numbers are about 550 total partners, about 225, 230 of them are financial advisors. Now they could be sole practitioners, part of teams. And and the one very interesting part about marketing, and I'm sure we'll we'll dig deeper into this is no one is coming here, looking for that cookie cutter marketing plan. Everyone's saying, you know, I love that we have resources, tools, and a big menu of options. I don't know what I don't know. But I know where I want to start. And where I want to start is, let me just talk. Let me give you an idea of what we do, how we do it. And then help me figure out you know, some of them will come in with no idea how to start. And I'm like, Great, we'll just start with what you want to do what your goals are. And I always tell people, let's just start with the basics. And for those who don't know what they want to do the basics are we're going to talk about marketing from a branding perspective, a client communication perspective, and a growth perspective. Now you're going to probably see me I won't do it all but you know, let's let's pick and choose how we're going to start. But then I have other advisors come to me with some real specific items, real detailed thoughts on what they want to do like I really want to focus on working with your PR from I never had access to that where I came. So I want some media coaching, I want some ability to get into press, you know. And they'll have these thoughts and ideas that just need us to help customize and build it and expand on it.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  05:19

The biggest question I get when people say they want to be on the platform is what's working. And I always say, be true to what you do and that's going to work if you're writing about what you do. And when you're dealing with so many different advisors, and you say you start with them, isn't it really hard with that many advisors to figure out what the puzzle is for each one?

 

Greg Banasz  05:42

It is and it isn't. And so I what I start with is this huge menu of options. And over 10 years, you know, in the beginning, it was, this is what we have let's just work with that. You know, as we've evolved over time, we became our own broker dealer. So we own things like our social media platform, we own things like the compliance review process. So we we built a little bit more around it. So the last four years have really created the full strength and power of the the options. But what's what's not hard, is when you say listen, instead of me giving you the 20 or 30 tools that I have, tell me what you're interested in. And Doug, what'll happen is, I'll start getting people say, Well, you know what, Greg, in my household, social media is a four letter word, I don't don't give me how great social media is when people I just don't want to talk about it. Okay, great. So let's talk about something else, I really want to talk about my website, or my brand, or how does Google Ads work? And, you know, I want to learn a little bit more about that. So we'll basically start with, what's your genuine interest? You know, what, yes, the goals are important, I want to grow, I want to brand, I want to do you know, X, Y, or Z. But what do you have a genuine interest in doing because whatever I suggest, or whatever I give you client testimonials of advisors have made it work, you're going to want to keep score, you're going to want to see if this thing really has some sort of return on my time or my capital. So that's, that's really where I start, you know, what are you genuinely interested in doing? And then we'll help you accomplish what you want to accomplish.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  07:16

Are there certain things that you see are working better than others? Or is it just advisor specific?

 

Greg Banasz  07:24

Yeah, I'll say this. If there is one, if I, if I could give every single advisor the same piece of advice, I usually pick up my phone and hold it. And I don't care if you're the greatest asset gatherer, if you got center of influence campaigns, or, you know, your referral strategy is better than everybody else around you. Make sure your digital presence, make sure how you describe yourself digitally, is professional, sharp, and somebody could be proud of, you're not going to drive people to a website, if you're just genuinely not proud of it, you're not going to end up you're not going to end up pushing it out as a campaign saying, come check us out on our website, if it's not something that is not sharp. And I think it all starts with that digital brand, that digital representation of who you are. And it starts with a website. So if if you did nothing, as an advisor, you just ignored marketing altogether. You got to make sure that when someone Google's you, or someone looks up your name, that website is at least something that shows up and it's an impressive way.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  08:31

How about content creation? Is that something that you're encouraging from a written and or podcast sense.

 

Greg Banasz  08:38

You know it again, it gets back to what their genuine interest is, if they're not, if they're not writers, okay? Then I'm not going to put put them into the white paper or the byline and, and getting them all sorts of press around stuff that they don't want to write. Now, if they can say, well, I'm willing to try it, then then let's explore it. But outside of the website, you get much more into what I said earlier, it's what do you generally have an interest in? And so I get back to what I said at the beginning of this, which is, I show them a spice rack of logos. And um, like, just pick and choose what you have a genuine- is it social media? Is it merchandise? Is it logo? Is it? Is it ad campaigns? Is it social? Excuse me? Is it website content, and then we'll go from there, but you know, help me understand what you want to do. And then tell me what you don't want to do but we'll back into some sort of customized plan. And what happens is because they have an interest Doug, they start looking into more, okay, I really like social media. So let me teach myself and let me get certified or let me get, you know, other people to help me with this. So they get the ball rolling. I just helped them get started.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  09:51

And I guess the same thing goes to the boomer sandwich, silent generation and the transition to next gen. It's gonna be a whole new thing to look into.

 

Greg Banasz  10:01

It is and the digital tools now that exist in marketing are much different than they were back when I started 30 years ago. You know, one of the one of the, I guess key drivers to people who are entertaining marketing today is that everything is trackable. I've got a digital, excuse me, I've got a business card with a QR code on it that I could see each month, how many people scan my QR code, how many people over the year which events etc, etc. So I know plus, it's a, what's called a recyclable QR code. So I can update my information without having to change the style of the QR code. So it's pretty cool that you can get everything these days, you know, some sort of digital scorecards, so I could see what's working, what's not working, what I need to either abandon or edit. So the new generation, the next gen advisor, who is deeply engaged in digital tools, tracking the success and seeing how it's going there. They're, they're having a field day with all the different things we're doing. But but very, very, I'll say diligent and tracking what they're doing.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  11:09

We've spent so much time on helping advisors market themselves, you also have to market the firm.

 

Greg Banasz  11:15

I do. Yes. Yeah. So it's, it's very interesting. So my responsibilities are split right down the middle. Half of its the firm engagement, firm, brand firm communication. The other half is working with the advisors. But it's funny how they they tend to, to cross into each other where I also have, back in that original component, original aspect I mentioned about the firm having a voice in the firm. We've run monthly focus groups. So we have an advisor and a cam Council, which you'll hear about I'm sure through Kirstie. But we also run little mini mini focus groups, I have a marketing group, I have an organic growth group, I have a recruiting group, I have a next gen group. And it's built of advisors and cams: client administrate managers support, who get together with me once a month, and we moderate, we even have a board member sit on these calls. And we say let's talk once a month, I have an agenda. It's a goals and stuff like that we set out. So part of that was each month, we get a chance to talk about subject matter, themes, suggestions, and our advisors have a voice in what we're going to do in that. And it bleeds into like some corporate agenda. So one of the things that came from our marketing group years ago was, you know, we're going to move away from at the time we were full service, Raymond James, and they were we were using their social media platform, and it was very good platform. But when we were going to do our own broker dealer, we had to go out and find our own social media platform. So we leveraged a company, we utilized a company, after we looked at a number of firms, a firm called HootSuite. And my social media manager at the time said, you know, we want to look at a firm, or a company that doesn't necessarily focus on financial services firms, we want to get the true power of what social media is. So there's no taint of all of the things that you lowest common denominator that some of these firms have that, oh, no, you can't do this on social media, you can't do that. So my advisors come in here, and it's like, yes, we have our guard rails, we have our compliance reviews, but we utilize an AI compliance system that HootSuite has, so everything goes out in social media instantly. And oh, by the way, you have LinkedIn, you have Facebook, you have X and Instagram and branded YouTube channels, you know, going, Okay, now, I don't know where to start, because I can't do this where I am. But it sounds like I could be using this stuff in some way, shape, form or fashion. So it's, it's very exciting to see all that evolve and grow and see how the voice of the advisor helps on both sides of the equation, what I do at the firm level, and then how I can help execute on the advisor level.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  13:56

I was going to ask you about your optimism for the future. But that's, that's gonna be wasted airspace, because just looking at you. That's not - you are. So lastly, what does the next 10 years hold for Steward Partners?

 

Greg Banasz  14:13

Outside of a marketing perspective, I will say, you know, it's it's definitely got to be the fact that we've become much more diverse of a firm. So like I said, when we started, and I don't know if you had a chance to see our video that we produced here with over the last 10 years, we had a nice 10 year kind of chronology of the firm's, a five minute video. And it started out that you know, we this was on the back of a napkin. And there were only 12 of us and we evolved into where we are today. And some of those voice of the firm the culture, the equity component, the ability to have independence with infrastructure, but then it from the advisors and teams that were joining us saying - You know what, Greg, for five, six years into this, you only have a W2 option. And we have a 1099 option. I want to join only as an RIA or an IA our only option. We added that Freedom Street was a reconnect recent acquisition. That's the advisor ownership or proprietary model that was so so we become this multi chassis platform. And Jim Gold said in an interview not long ago, I'm not even sure if he said this to you. But he said it several times. Like we're making it very hard for people to say no to us. But as we grow over the next 5, 10 years, and this goes to $100 billion company, or $1 billion company 100 billion in assets, excuse me, revenue I want to clarify. It's it's going to be seeing this place continue to grow, but keep that culture keep that happiness you walk around the symposium, and you meet with arbitrary or random advisors. And to hear them say their excitement now grin everything isn't always perfect. But to see how everyone is genuinely happy and friendly with each other. It's it's very rewarding. And we have a kind of a newer tagline. It's really been been the tagline we've utilized for last three or four years. And it's we're not just partners, we're family. So if you can go from a 12 person organization, to a 550 person partnership, to a 2000 people partnership and still feel like your family. I think you've you've done something remarkably well. And it all, it's it's, it all starts with having good people and keeping to some of the core culture pieces.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  16:42

It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for joining us.

 

Greg Banasz  16:44

Thank you, Doug.

 

Douglas Heikkinen  16:45

To learn more about Steward Partners, please visit Steward Partners.com. Please follow us for timely updates on X, LinkedIn and Facebook all at Advisorpedia. For everyone that Advisorpedia, our producer Julia Smollen, our engineer Tory Miller and the Power Your Advice podcast team. This is Doug Heikkinen.