Participants:
Steve Wershing
Julie Littlechild
Heather Fortner
Speaker 1:
Learn everything you need to know to form and benefit from a successful client advisory board from the man who has led more client advisory board meetings than anyone in the financial services industry. Steven Wershing, CFP, has been helping financial advisory firms create and utilize client advisory boards as a business building strategy for over seven years. And now you can get his best advice for a small fraction of the cost by attending this one-day program held just before the NAPFA 2018 Conference on October 15th in Philadelphia. By the end of this one day program you will have a complete and thoughtful plan to make your client advisory board a reality or make a bigger success of the one you already have.
What you’ll learn includes how to choose the right participants for your board, creating an effective board meeting agenda, choosing a venue, what restaurants won’t tell you, choosing the right person to run your meetings and upgrading the client experience with your board’s guidance. The program also includes guest speaker Marie Swift, President and CEO of Impact Communications, a thought leader for thought leaders. She is known for bringing some of the industry’s best and brightest voices together for dialogue and debate. She’ll teach you how to leverage your advisory board and your marketing. You’ll walk out with a complete action plan for getting your advisory board together or to make your current board a bigger success. Go to napfa.advisoryboard.solutions. One day, October 15th in Philadelphia, can show you how to deepen your client relationships and engage them like never before. Having a conversation with some of your best clients may be the fastest way to referrals and more clients. Don’t miss this opportunity. Go to napfa.advisoryboard.solutions to sign up for this event today. That’s napfa.advisoryboard.solutions. Now, Becoming Referable.
Steve Wershing:
Welcome to Becoming Referable, the podcast that shows you how to become the kind of advisor people can’t stop talking about. I’m Steve Wershing. In this episode we talk with Heather Robertson Fortner, Chief Compliance Officer and Chief Operating Officer of SignatureFD in Atlanta. The firm manages over 4 billion dollars for more than 1800 clients and was awarded the Charles Schwab Best in Business Impact Award in 2016. When you have grown to as many advisors as they have, some through acquisition, it’s hard to maintain a focus on a single target market. SignatureFD has met the challenge of multiple constituencies with a unique strategy. They’ve developed client initiatives. These groups, which are in addition to the firm’s advisory services, offer client experiences tailored to the particular client groups including senior partners of law firms, corporate executives and physicians. They find that they can attract referrals through these initiatives as well as for the underlying wealth management services. Heather walks us through the development of these initiatives, how they grew and what they mean to the firm’s growth. She describes the role of the initiatives in the firm’s marketing and the future she sees for these groups as well as the firm overall. They’re an impressive firm with an innovative approach to a common marketing problem. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Heather Robertson Fortner.
So Heather Fortner, welcome to The Becoming Referable podcast, it’s so good of you to join us.
Heather Fortner:
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Steve Wershing:
We’ll talk a little bit about where SignatureFD came from in a minute but I just want to start out with the interesting thing that we want to talk about most today which is that you have a series of initiatives that you’ve created around different groups of your clients. Can you tell us a little bit about that idea and where that came from?
Heather Fortner:
Sure, absolutely. It was, I would say, really the collision of two things that happened in the business over time. And one of those was the fact that we had advisors who either were already with our firm and their books had evolved over time or they had joined our firm with books of business that were already pretty homogenous around a particular community of clients. But really these advisors ended up with a passion around serving a particular niche of clients. That collision really hit our vision when we were doing a lot of planning and work and thought around what is it that we really want to do long term. What do we want to be when we grow up?
And we had a very clear vision of we want to enhance the lives of 10,000 families. At the end of the day we want to be 10x. What drives us as a firm, what drives us as people is the impact that we can have on people’s lives. And what we saw was really a collision of those two things where we knew we wanted to be 10x and we knew that we wanted to serve clients well and we had a group of advisors who were extremely passionate about very specific groups of clientele. And those two things really started to come together into a space where we were just curious about what could happen and how it could happen and out of that I will say that I think the idea of community was born and out of that has come a really interesting differentiator and quite frankly a platform to serve a lot of different clients extremely well.
Steve Wershing:
Now we should really set this up for the listeners because they may not know who SignatureFD is but how many advisors do you have?
Heather Fortner:
So right now we’re at about 20.
Steve Wershing:
Yeah. So you’re a pretty big firm. And so you’ve got clients that are from all kinds of target markets and have all kinds of needs and those kinds of things and so you’ve set up these sort of, almost special interest groups within the firm. And can you list off for us where you stand? What are the initiatives that you have now?
Heather Fortner:
Sure, absolutely. So we’ve got Signature Exec which service executives in companies. We’ve got Signature Generosity which really goes across all of our client base but really is focused on philanthropic and transformational giving. Signature Health, Signature Law, Signature Women, Signature Entrepreneur and Signature Pro which services professional athletes and entertainers.
Julie Littlechild:
A couple of questions actually. You’ve talked about this, we’ve used this word initiative versus niche. Is it the same thing or is that different?
Heather Fortner:
I think so and I think really initiative to us is really synonymous with community and the reason that we like the word initiative and community more than niche, quite frankly, is that community implies that there is a giving and a taking type of relationship. When people are in community they are actively engaged in the community and they are not only receiving value but they’re also giving value as well. And I think that that’s a different connotation than just the word niche.
Steve Wershing:
And the initiative is not, even the community is not the same as the service you provide. So they get the advisory services that SignatureFD provides and then this community idea layered on top of that right?
Heather Fortner:
Yeah. So the way we like to think about it and it’s complex in order to actually make this happen, there’s a lot of things that have to go into that. But the way we like to think about it is that financial design really is a combination of art and science. And the technical science of what we do, the financial design piece, that’s the fundamental technical aspect of financial advice. You have to understand the taxes, you have to understand the estate, you have to understand the cashflow needs. You have to understand all of those things and those things have to be sound and they have to be strong and they form the base. And then what the communities really allow us to do is to build the art that is really specific to each of these communities on top of that really strong base. And so when we’re thinking about the firm and we’re thinking about how to build a firm that can deliver well in each of these communities, we try to build the structure to where 80 percent is the technical and it is strong and it is sound and it is similar across the initiatives. But then what the advisors that are passionate about each of those communities are doing is delivering an art specific to that community and building on top of that financially technical strong base.
Julie Littlechild:
It’s interesting because there’s two issues that often seem to come up with advisors that I’m sure you can explain because first of all you have multiple initiatives and I’ve often been asked about “Can I have more than one focus?” And my response is always, “It becomes a lot easier when you’ve got scale.”
Heather Fortner:
Of course.
Julie Littlechild:
So I assume that scale leads into that but I’m also really interested in how this works when I come to your site for example and I’m a female entrepreneur who is interested in philanthropic giving for example. How do your clients find themselves in the right community?
Heather Fortner:
I think it’s an evolution. So typically when a client is introduced to the firm through a community, they’re coming because they’ve had contact usually from some word of mouth influence. Someone in their community has connected them with us because “Hey listen, they’ve got something specific to us.” So depending on how they come through, if the entrepreneur community is how they come to us then that really is their first introduction to SignatureFD, to the available community to them.
But as they become part of us and part of our firm they get introduced to the other communities through contacts, through events, through just being told about it through our Web site, learning more. “Oh I didn’t know you had this.” Or “I didn’t know you had that.” Or “Oh, let me introduce you to this person.” Or “I met this person at one of the events you had.” And so the neat part about community is that you get to participate wherever you want to at the time. So I’m a Female Exec. At some point in my life Signature Exec may resonate more with me, that may be more of the community that I would like to participate in. Where at another point in time in my life maybe Signature Women is where I would like to connect. That free floating, giving the client the ability and opportunity to connect across the firm in multiple different communities at their wishes and at what’s comfortable to them is also important.
Steve Wershing:
You’ve got 20 advisors there, how consistent is the planning experience, the advisory experience from advisor to advisor?
Heather Fortner:
I would say we have a process, it’s our Impact by Design process. And that is the scale that Julie was talking about earlier. That 80 percent that’s delivered by the core of the business is similar. It’s similar deliverables, it’s a similar process. They’re similar systems, they’re similar technical expertise. What allows us to really connect with each specific community is the art. So Signature Entrepreneur those entrepreneurs have very different needs than maybe a woman in transition. And so being able to layer those additional needs on top of the Impact by Design process that we already have in place for all clients is the difference.
Steve Wershing:
And then does SignatureFD have a target market across the firm?
Heather Fortner:
I think that’s a great question. I would say at the highest level you’re looking for, I believe that the thing we’re most looking for are people who want to have an impact with their wealth and our delegators because that is where we excel the most. Being able to help people find the right community to plug in to, to have the impact with their wealth. And we define wealth as time, money and relationships. That is the highest impact that we can offer our clients. But it requires the client to want to be somewhat of a delegator because the full financial services are what we offer. So yeah I would say at the highest level yes but then each community has their own … For example Signature Pro. They’re currently focusing, they have a passion around current and former NFL players and how do those NFL players make the transition from their former career to their next career. So being able to connect those people together into other resources that will help them create the game plan for the next phase of life that they need, that is Signature Pro’s focus.
Julie Littlechild:
Just so I dig right into this could you maybe pick one of your communities and give us a couple of examples of the art? What you do differently for that group that you don’t do for others?
Heather Fortner:
Sure. So I think Signature Pro is a fantastic … And I don’t think it’s what we don’t do for the others, I think it’s just done differently for the others. So Signature Pro currently they’re hosting a series of, they’re called locker room events and they are a series of educational events for current or former NFL players who are looking to transition. They’re looking for information about real estate investing, they’re looking for information about networking, about how to create a plan for the next phase of their life. And so this series is actually very specifically geared to these people around issues that are on their minds. A lot of them want to understand real estate investing or they want to understand how to network better or mentor better or how to get into a second career, so career coaching. Those types of things that locker room series is really geared specifically to that group.
Now Signature Women may have a series of events geared around educational or health issues or wellness issues or how to care for elderly parents or how to pick nursing homes or things that their community is thinking about and are rising up to the level of concern for that community. And I think one of the ways that we really have enjoyed getting some leverage about tapping into these communities to figure out what they are thinking about and what’s on their minds is through client advisory boards.
Steve Wershing:
I have to add before we pick up on that. I love the term that you gave for the Signature Pro ones because the locker room series I’m picturing you in a business suit taking your PowerPoint into a room with a roomful of 300 pound sweaty guys just coming in after a game thinking about what the next phase is.
Julie Littlechild:
We don’t need that visual. Thank you Steve.
Heather Fortner:
Exactly, exactly. I’m sure the majority of people listening to this podcast do not need that visual.
Steve Wershing:
Well I had it so I had to share it. But anyway.
Heather Fortner:
I can guarantee you I am not the person in the locker room giving that education.
Steve Wershing:
So anyway, you refine these and you sort of clarify or develop what the specifics of each of these initiatives are with the series of advisory boards you were just starting to say, what kinds of things came up in those meetings and what kinds of things did you learn from them?
Heather Fortner:
Well I think there have been many. First of all I think the intentional act of bringing these people together and saying “Here’s what we’re thinking. Here’s what we know, here’s what we don’t know. Can you please help us figure this out?” I think that insight from those people is incredible. It immediately gets you to a place where you have access to information that you can make a difference on fairly immediately. If the advisory board says “This issue is really important and this is something that most people in my network are talking about or thinking about.”
Immediately you have a topic that you didn’t even really have to think of that you can go and become a content expert on, you can create content around, you can market around. Which then gives your advisory board who are usually your biggest advocates, material and content and something to go back to their network with to say “Hey listen, look at what these people are doing. Look at what my advisor’s doing. I trust these people and I know that you’ve been thinking about this and this has been on your brain. Maybe you should come to one of these events with me.” So, it’s a real warm way to get good information, to drive content, to get boots on the ground quickly, to be able to give resources to the people who are driving your word of mouth influence which I think we all agree is probably one of the most powerful tools that we as advisors have.
Steve Wershing:
Sure. Excuse me. I was there for many of those advisory boards. Is it OK if I share one or two things?
Heather Fortner:
Please do.
Steve Wershing:
Because I think what you’re saying is exactly on point. And there were a couple of specifics that I can share about those that just gives you an idea of how powerful these things are. One was we were doing Signature Exec and one of the thoughts that you folks had was, well maybe one of the things we need to do is to provide some kind of a service for people who are coming up on retirement, to help them make that transition out of their corporate role and into whatever is coming next. Because we all know there are lots of statistics about retiring executives and business owners having a real struggle when they go to retire because their role changes so dramatically and that kind of stuff. And so we put all that up on the table and we said here’s one thing that we were considering doing as part of this initiative is helping you figure out what the next act is going to be all about and that kind of stuff. And it was funny because the whole board immediately came back and said “Nope. No problem. It can’t happen fast enough, we’re totally ready for it.” And we’re like OK, on to the next idea. But that was so valuable to know because then when you designed the initiative you did not have that in it because we knew that it was just going to totally misfire with the group.
Heather Fortner:
Right. It’s a brilliant way. It truly is a brilliant way not only to get the information that you need that can really streamline your marketing efforts but to build those relationships. I mean building the relationships with the people in the community and creating raving fans and advocates of the community to go out there and to spread the word, I mean that is what this podcast is about. That is about how to get people to talk about you and that is an extremely good way.
Julie Littlechild:
A very granular question that I often hear with advisory boards is “Will people really participate and I feel almost awkward asking them.” But what’s your experience in inviting people onto that board and how long are they participating?
Heather Fortner:
We’ve actually had really good experiences with that. You do leverage your relationship a little bit in asking people to commit to that. But if it’s around the sense of community and building community and finding people who are aligned with your vision of impacting people’s lives and growing something bigger than yourselves I think you have better success. I do think that you have to have enough people on the board that you can accommodate calendars and schedules and not everybody will be able to be there all the time. And very similarly to community in general, you have to be intentional about fostering the group. Because community is a living, breathing thing. And it requires nurturing, it requires engagement and it requires progress in order for people to see that what they are doing and the time that they are investing is making results. So I think you just have to be intentional about it and thoughtful about what you’re asking them to do and then be sure that you’re showing results.
Steve Wershing:
And really just to emphasize that point Heather, as a couple of examples you’ve got Signature Law which is populated largely by senior partners at very large Atlanta law firms. You got Signature Exec which is high level corporate executives, many of Fortune 100 firms. And Signature Health which is physicians. Three populations that are notoriously tightly scheduled and very busy and you get those folks coming to those meetings pretty regularly.
Heather Fortner:
We do. But we’re intentional.
Julie Littlechild:
I would love to switch gears a little bit and ask, I still wanted to focus on these initiatives and the various things that you do, you’ve mentioned so many different things that you do. As a firm how do you promote the different activities that you are doing. Is that down to individual advisors? Do you have a centralized effort to do this?
Heather Fortner:
So we do have a marketing team. Each community is branded as a community of the larger brand. But it is our goal that we as a firm continue to be centralized in our marketing efforts. To be sure that we are consistent to our brand. We’re consistent to our message. We’re consistent to our core. So having a team that is built around “Okay, what is the content schedule and when is this stuff going out and what is the process and how are we highlighting these initiatives and communities and what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.” But allowing each of them within their own community of SignatureFD brand to build marketing materials and content that is specific to that specific group that they’re working with.
Steve Wershing:
And how do those communities get promoted? I mean apart from the referral activity, do you have content generation for each of those communities or are there particular marketing campaigns organized around specific initiatives?
Heather Fortner:
Yes, each initiative has their own marketing practice and development budget. They choose what content they’re wanting to promote. They can create their own content. They leverage the marketing resources of the firm in order to get it out. But they create their own events. So really the community is driving what they believe will resonate most. And then what we like to do is to be sure that we’re sharing across the communities at the leadership level, okay well this community did this and this is either really working or it’s not really working or we learned this. Let’s be sure that we take that over here and if this didn’t work or if that did work let’s share those best practices so that everyone is getting the benefit of what all the other communities are trying.
Steve Wershing:
And so overall marketing, what proportion of the outbound communications do you think is about initiatives and how much is about promoting the firm overall?
Heather Fortner:
I would say the majority of it is around the initiative.
Steve Wershing:
Oh interesting. Okay.
Julie Littlechild:
That drives them back to the firm, to understand what… I mean it makes an enormous amount of sense to me in terms of what’s going to grab people and draw them in.
Steve Wershing:
Yeah. Well I’m fascinated by the balance between promoting what is essentially the value prop of the communities versus the value prop of the firm overall. And I think for a larger firm this is a fascinating way of dealing with a diversified group of clients. You’ve got individual advisors who have specialties within target markets but you’ve got different advisors with different target markets incorporate into the firm which creates some interesting marketing challenges. And I think the development of this series of initiatives is a fascinating way of dealing with it.
Heather Fortner:
To your question I think a lot of the overall firm marketing is more geared towards who we are. So that 80 percent core of what we do, the Impact by Design purpose driven financial design, this is who we are and this is what you will get no matter what community of SignatureFD you choose to participate in or you belong to or you want to associate with, this is who we all are at the core. Purpose driven financial design, impact by design. We know you want to have an impact with your wealth. And this is what we’re going to help you do. And so that is the message of SignatureFD. I think also it is around- that message helps recruit the talent that then becomes the people in these communities who are servicing the client needs. So in my brain yes the majority of the marketing is around each of these specific communities, how they impact the people that they are living, breathing, eating with, being around. But then at the firm level, at the core brand level. Who are we? What are we about? What is every community about? And why if you are talent why do you want to be here?
Julie Littlechild:
And as you’re describing these initiatives it feels like it’s a core part of your value as well. I mean do you see that?
Heather Fortner:
Absolutely and I think the reason that we believe that is because if you go back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, people need to belong. And so one of our core beliefs is that we want people to belong. We want people to feel connected because relationships are part of their wealth. And if we can help free them up in the other areas of their life so that they can have more focus and more intention around the things that actually matter to them, that only gets us to our goal of being able to impact that many more people’s lives for good. And that is our vision. That is what drives us on an everyday basis. And so we recognize that we need to grow 10 times to be able to have the impact in the world that we want to be able to have. And these communities we believe are the way to do that.
Julie Littlechild:
And at what point do you think this is an option for advisors? You have achieved a lot of success. You have scale. If I’m an individual advisor with a team behind me with grand visions to grow, where would you have that person think? Or what can they take away perhaps from your experience that would be applicable in their business today?
Heather Fortner:
I think it’d be interesting to … I think everyone has to be able to step back and out of their current circumstances and to be humbly curious. And so I encourage … Now granted I have a little bit of a different background than most financial services individuals in the industry. So I like to step back. I like to think more about “OK. Where do you really want to go? What are you truly passionate about and what matters most to you?”
Julie Littlechild:
You have to tell us what your background is.
Steve Wershing:
Yeah I was going to say. You can’t just leave us hanging on that one.
Heather Fortner:
Sorry. So my formal training is in finance at an undergrad level and at a graduate level it’s in counseling. So I think a lot around systems and humans at their core. And so as I think about our shop when we were much smaller and I think about what drives people at their core. And I think somewhere in there, advisors have to say “No, you know what, this is what I’m most passionate about. This is where I am as an advisor, as a human, as a professional uniquely gifted to serve and to provide the most value to others. And if I can build around that, around the place where my unique talents and my passions overlap, that’s your sweet spot.” So, I’m constantly encouraging everybody that will even give me 10 seconds to listen to me. “Please get to that spot because that is where you will be most fulfilled as a human and it will be the place where you will add immense value and where you will have immense impact with your life.”
And it doesn’t matter how many times you fail, if you throw 10 things at the wall and nine of them fail it will not stop you because that is what you are uniquely talented to do and what you are passionate about. So you would do it regardless. So I encourage people. But it takes a minute and it takes a lot of self-awareness and a lot of curiosity and authenticity and honesty with yourself to get to that place. And so I encourage people “Be innovative, be creative, try as much as you possibly can because it’s okay if it doesn’t work because the next thing might.”
Steve Wershing:
Interesting.
Heather Fortner:
And so I just think that for advisors who want to get to this place I think the first question I would ask them is “What is your unique talent and what are you uniquely gifted to give to others and where are you uniquely gifted to provide value? And what are you most passionate about?” And then layer that on to a very authentic look at your business. Because what you may be uniquely gifted to do somebody else may be passionate about something else. And I think that that is the brilliance and the genius and the most exciting thing behind these communities is that we have such amazing talent at SignatureFD and this talent, these people they are uniquely gifted to serve the communities that they are a part of. And I really believe that a large part of the success of this is because of those people. They are driven to be the best. To be the thought leaders in their spaces, in their communities. They live and breathe in those communities no matter what, they live with these people, they serve with these people. These people, these communities are the people that they are most passionate about. And that passion, you can’t buy that passion, you can’t fake that passion. It is real and it resonates at a core innate level with clients and prospects. And I believe that that is what draws people in.
Steve Wershing:
And so let’s close the circle on that. So since you’ve developed these initiatives what kind of an impact has that had on your ability to attract more clients and more referrals?
Heather Fortner:
It has had a significant impact. So I believe in two things there. One, I believe in tracking data. So we as a firm over the years have made significant progress in being able to actually track that data so that we can make good decisions and sound decisions and data driven decisions based on the information that we’re seeing. So every opportunity, where it comes from, how it comes to us, have they been to events, have they been part of a marketing campaign, who do they know on our team, how many times have we met with them. All of that type of information we’re able to get to. But then I also believe in and I have absolutely no data to prove this but I believe that momentum is a real thing and that once momentum starts to pick up it is the snowball effect and once people start to see the community building and the word of mouth influences out there and you really start to get some success in a community I do believe that success breeds success. And I believe that teams that are operating at their highest efficiency, their mindset changes, their actions change, their diligence changes and it breeds more success.
Steve Wershing:
We’re running up against our time but I didn’t want to let you go before I asked, what’s your vision of the future of these initiatives? Where does SignatureFD go from here?
Heather Fortner:
Well I think we’re just getting started. And I think that that’s the most exciting part about all of this is this is who we are, this is not a project or a campaign. This is what we believe at the core. And I’m extremely fortunate to work with some incredibly gifted entrepreneurs and innovators and people who see the larger picture. And being able to take that vision and execute on it in a way that is going to significantly grow and impact the lives of thousands and thousands of people, that is our future and that is I believe the exciting future that we are all aligned to and that is really drawing incredible talent to us because I believe that good people want to do the same thing.
Steve Wershing:
Well that’s just amazing. And so Heather Fortner thank you so much for joining us on Becoming Referable. It’s a fascinating project and we really appreciate you taking some time to share the story of it with us.
Heather Fortner:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Julie Littlechild:
Yeah. Thank you.
Heather Fortner:
Absolutely.
Julie Littlechild:
Hi it’s Julie again. It was great to have you with us on Becoming Referable. If you like what you’ve been hearing please do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It really does help. You can get all the links, show notes and other tidbits from these episodes at becomingreferable.com. You can also get our free report, Three Referral Myths That Limit Your Growth, and connect with our blogs and other resources. Thanks so much for joining us.