Transcript: "A Chat with Hank" with Richard Heft, President of Extension Marketing

SPEAKERS

Hank Multala, Founder Adviser First Partners

Richard Heft, President, and Co-Founder Extension Marketing

Hank Multala 

Well, welcome to the podcast. There's a chat with Hank. And I'm Hank Multala. All right, well, thanks for taking some time to listen. It's always great to connect with industry professionals, and to share with the listeners, the content that can create greater awareness. And when we have guests that have developed a distinct solution by either recognizing a trend or a want within an industry, and then creating a solution to address those ever-growing needs, while simultaneously setting themselves apart from the typical, those are the conversations I really enjoy. Today's guest is no exception. Though today's discussion is about marketing, it has a much broader application across all industries just due to the subject, but we're gonna center our conversation specifically around finance and financial services industries. So whether you're an RIA and OSJ, wealth manager, broker dealer, investment manager, hedge fund or a multi partner practice or any number of the other financial businesses or institutions or business models, one of the principal challenges that those businesses are facing, as well as other businesses is marketing, and specifically, who to work with. How does one integrate all the marketing efforts into a message that is both cohesive and accurately reflects a business? How do you bring unique and fresh ideas to the forefront and what are the ideal methods in delivering the content that is thoughtful, that is insightful, and that is representative of the business? So today, I'm joined by Richard Heft. Richard is the President, Co-founder of extension marketing, and he's given me the opportunity to bend his ear for a little bit. Richard co-founded the firm in 2010, with CEO Jillian Bannister, and they have offices in Toronto and New York City. Extension marketing is dedicated specifically to financial services companies, which includes all those I mentioned just a second ago and focus specifically on delivering a wealth of thoughtful experiences, and countless fresh new angles and approaches, really to make an engaging impact to your target audience. So, Richard is also the co-author of the Ascendant Advisor, which provides financial and insurance advisors with marketing and content strategies they can easily use to grow their business. Richard grew up in Montreal, and with the conversations I've had with him, and the substantial number of people I've met from Canada with all the times I've spent up there, I can honestly say Richard also carries the burden of the Canadian curse. And for those of you who don't know what it is, it's the inherent ability to be nice and polite, which is really refreshing conversation beyond just a podcast so, but we talk about his personal journey, why there is a need for an industry specific marketing solution. We go into trends and the future of marketing. And through the years, I've built a good working knowledge of marketing but my time with Richard really expanded my knowledge base, and I came to a personal realization that my marketing knowledge was lagging in some areas, and I'm sure you like myself, will get some high-quality takeaways from our time together. And now we bring your chat with Richard Heft.

Hank Multala 

Well, I'm here with Richard Heft. Richard, thanks for joining me and taking some time out of your schedule the chat.

Richard Heft 

Thanks for having me on, Hank.

Hank Multala 

So we'll jump into Extension marketing in a moment. As I always like to start off on a personal note. You're in Toronto, and  we live just a stone's throw across Lake Ontario. And since my family emigrated from Sweden to the Finger Lakes region in New York, I think from my youth until the end of 2019, I estimate I've been in Canada 200 times from playing hockey and visiting friends and motorcycle touring and rowing and NHL games and countless other reasons. I almost feel like I'm a self-adopted Canadian , we even have Nexus cards. And, you know, we've had our share fare of poutine and beavertails . If it's okay, would you mind sharing just a brief history, just, you know, growing up in Canada, as well as your background?

Richard Heft 

 I grew up in Montreal. So I was a Montreal Canadiens fan. I you know, I know you have some Canadians paraphernalia down there. So yes, I moved to Toronto, about 30 years ago after traveling abroad finishing school, got an opportunity to work in financial services and marry a Toronto girl and I never looked back.

Hank Multala 

So I got to ask you and I know Canadians are loyal are Canadians your favorite hockey team?

Richard Heft 

Canadians are still my favorite hockey team. I still can root for the Toronto Maple Leafs. I've raised both my kids as loose Montreal Canadiens fans to the detriment of their well-being in in grade school, but we are still, and my wife and her family are all Toronto Maple Leafs fan so I'm even more unpopular than usual in that crowd.

Hank Multala 

Well, my wife's a Detroit Redwings fan so It's challenging in this household. And I got to ask you, do you have a favorite rock band at all?

Richard Heft 

I am a massive music fan. I have a ton of favorite rock bands; they range from Van Halen to Genesis to some of the heavier

Hank Multala 

I was going to ask about Canadian rock bands, specifically Rush

Richard Heft 

Canadian rock bands. Yes, of course. I'm a Rush fan of course. I do love our Canadian rock up here. But I am a major fan of the British Invasion rock because I'm a little older and a lot of the good old US rock. I'm the biggest probably Springsteen fan on the planet. So  I have a pretty broad range of passions when it comes to rock and roll. But for sure, Rush and the Tragically Hip would be my two favorite Canadian bands.

Hank Multala 

 My question was just gonna be who's your favorite I know the loyal who's your favorite Canadian hockey team and in your rock band. So mine  Canadians and Rush. So again, just so we're all kind of on the same page. So can you give us an overview of Extension marketing, perhaps take us back to how you and Jillian Co-founded, who I had a chance to chat with,  when and how the two of you recognized just this increasing need in financial services marketing?

Richard Heft 

Well, Jillian and I both hail from the financial services marketing side of the business. I've worked at Franklin Templeton, John Hancock, in a number of different communications and marketing roles and Jillian was the same. When we were in on the client side, what we found was, if we needed to outsource good writing to another to a marketing agency or to freelancers, you got a very disparate level of quality of service of scalability from sort of freelancers or agencies,  you go to a lot of the big brand agencies and they'll say, we have a financial services specialist that will be somebody who wrote a Bank of America ad, they will be their financial services comm specialist. We felt that we needed especially in the asset management space, we needed a  deeper depth of knowledge when we when we shopped out our  comms requirements. And I said to Jillian one day, there's nobody that's really doing it as well as we could, We had been working we've been both working as consultants outside of the industry, and still had that passion and that we saw the need for this type of marketing service. So we decided to become that agency that would provide these types of services. We brought in our favorite writers and editors and graphic designers and account managers. We brought in  CFA Level writers. We brought in a   Bloomberg terminal. I think we're the only marketing agency on the planet with a Bloomberg terminal and an analyst. If you know we do 1000s of portfolio manager commentaries a year for their investment products, whether it's traditional mutual funds, equity, fixed income, ETFs, alternatives, any private equity, private debt, any type of product, we write commentaries on whether it's monthly, quarterly, annual, we do for some big banks, daily commentaries, we really leverage our Bloomberg terminal and analysts to give us a type of macro insight that no other agency could provide. And then we'll work with the portfolio managers to produce these commentaries, saving them a ton of time. On a more traditional marketing, if somebody wants to do a white paper, or a thought leadership piece, or blog, or website, or branding the company, we can do all that kind of stuff, and we'll focus solely on financial services. So we have the only company that we know of that can do this type of work.

Hank Multala 

Right, right. Well, I appreciate your review of that. And since I'm kind of a novice to marketing if anytime if my statements or assumptions are inaccurate or simply wrong, do me a favor and stand me up. Perhaps we start just with a basic question. So our business is also committed to the same industry and what we've seen, and let's look at wealth managers, specifically, it looks as if most attempt to build businesses through word of mouth and I'm not assuming their efforts are fruitful. So why should wealth managers consider marketing themselves and or their firms Or is there a balance that they should be focusing on?

Richard Heft 

Everybody starts a business going, I can call friends and family contacts, prior contacts, and centers of influence, build those relationships up and bring in a lot of business, bringing their first billion dollars in AUM. So we get that, and that really does help a lot of businesses get from point A to point B, get to a threshold where they're profitable, where they can go out, and if their performance is good they can build a nice, strong business. Our clients tend to look at things like I'm focused on product and sales at the beginning of their evolution. But as that evolution continues, it's often hard to build to scale to really put your  business into hyperdrive, unless you start to focus on the brand. Because if you have a bad quarter of performance, it isn't first quartile, you could your message go, you know, may have to may have to shift and adjust. If a founder who's a big personality decides to retire or some key portfolio manager decides to go to another firm, a lot of businesses have to shift if they don't have a brand that really revolves around their key differentiators, their value proposition, their investment philosophy, and all of those types of things that are super key to building a proper brand. And a brand  will take you to that next level. After you've tapped out of all your friends and family, your centers of influence, word of mouth, those types of things, they'll get you to a certain level, but they won't take you into hyperdrive.

Hank Multala 

Gotcha, Okay. So when I look at all the services that Extension  Marketing  provides, I know it's not a complete list but some of the services you provide and forgive me I'm reading this because you don't want to listen to me you know fumble through my memory. But you offer corporate branding, creative campaigns, content and strategy, video podcasts, social media, email marketing, pitch books, client experiences, commentaries, fund sheets, as well as an outsource CMO. Recognizing that implementing a marketing strategy can be quite an undertaking, how does someone or some firm begin the process of knowing where to start?

Richard Heft 

Right, great question. I mean, for us it's really starting at the beginning. It depends where the company the client, whether it's a dealership RIA, asset manager, hedge fund, private equity,  whatever type of firm it is, we always start with  where's your brand? Where's your key messaging? Do you really know what makes you different? What makes you special? What makes you stand apart from your competitors? What does the competitor landscape look like? All of those types of things are things that a business has to look at as they're building out their brand. So I usually say don't start building a new website or a new presentation or a new white paper, unless you have the core materials which to me are do a brand diagnostic, does your logo, does your  tagline, does your messaging to all these things really reflect what your business was five years ago when you may have started out or 10 years ago, but today, has it evolved with your business because businesses evolve? A company has one fund when they start and then  after five years, they may have five or 10 different mandates, and they're going to be different investment strategies. There may be different approaches and there may be a different team working on these different mandates, with    different philosophy. So, the brand five or 10 years ago may not be reflected properly today. So we'll do those essentials. If it's fine, and you just go, we want Extension Marketing or because we need a new website, but we know exactly who we are and it's our brand is really reflective of who we are, we can help with the website, we'll build you a reliable website. But I always say  start with that and then build out the components. I'll have somebody come to me and say, I want brand, I want a new Pitchbook, I want a new or capabilities deck, I want a new website, I want all our fund sheets and new materials and everything  tomorrow. And I say, let's look at it a little more dramatically, exactly what I'm looking at tomorrow, so we try to build a schedule. In Q1, what do we want to achieve in Q2? Our accounting  are our magicians and sort of bringing and putting together a work back schedule, and really scoping out what the requirements are. Because we also have to resource, we're a scalable business, but we want to make sure  this writer is a specialist in real estate,  equity, or real estate, private equity. So REITs, why don't we  put this team together to help manage that client's brand, help manage that client's material marketing materials, all that kind of stuff. And then that could evolve into what is our digital marketing strategy? Who's their ideal client? What's that persona look like? Where do they who do they want to be in front of him? Now we can help them because we launched a digital agency about a year and a half ago. And now we can offer that type of the type of distribution  if you have a product you put in front of the right people.

Hank Multala 

Gotcha. So being in this industry for quite some time, it appears to me that a sizable number of wealth managers do not have a structured marketing approach, right? Or a well thought out course, but rather haphazard tactic of seeing what others are doing, they recognize, hey, we should do that and then you just piecemeal numerous notions together, kind of synonymous with baking a cake, not having all the ingredients and the right amount of each, then your kids taste it, they spit it out and say that this tastes like shit, you should you should have someone do this for you next time. But when a practice or firm comes to realize that their marketing recipe is not working as expected, where should they go from there?

Richard Heft 

Well, I mean, the first step is we should be speaking to, there's a couple of things. Let me take a step back, there are a couple of things they could do. You can hire a senior marketing strategist and go put together a marketing strategy for our business, a Chief Marketing Officer, CMO type individual, that is, if you have a budget for that that person, but that person. It's not you don't just need one portfolio manager when it comes to marketing, or one sales manager when it comes to marketing, that even a chief marketing officer is probably not going to be a graphic design expert, a web design expert, a coder for web design, maybe not a very great writer. So it takes us team when it comes to marketing. A lot of people don't really understand that there are multiple functions within the marketing space. And they'll say, okay, I'm just gonna hire a marketing person and it's not as simple as that. So  I usually say you could build a marketing team, but that is super, super expensive to bring in incredibly talented people with experience in the space. So I say use a marketing firm like ours, or you can go to a bunch of freelancers. I genuinely, genuinely think freelancers aren't the best approach, because they may have differing levels of knowledge about your type of product, about your distribution, whether advisors, what type of advisors, what type of investors are looking for mass affluent, high net worth, ultra-high net worth, accredited, whatever that is, the writers, the graphic designers, they may never have written to that audience and then never done a fund sheet for that audience. So I've genuinely said a marketing firm is the best way to go until you until you have the budget to build out a marketing team. I would obviously say come to our firm because we are the experts in the space. We have all the writers they've written to your type of product they know how to market your materials, they probably worked with a competitor so they can position you separately and the good graphic design will be a blend of knowledge of the industry, plus a good creative band. Because we do hire from both financial services firms and large marketing agency,  you do get a good blend of functional with creative through us, we can get you to a point where maybe a marketing manager can get  you to run your marketing function until you need us again.

Hank Multala 

Right. It seems , if you hired enough freelancers, you still get the same end result, you just get this kind of hodgepodge together and it's still not working as perhaps as intended. So we talked about someone not having no marketing strategy, and then when it's not working as anticipated. So, logically, I wanted to discuss the other end of the spectrum, which you just briefly touched on. Some of them have a developed marketing strategy, for example, they made commitments  into an in-house marketing department, perhaps they editors, writers, and digital marketing associates, and so on. How has Extension Marketing, been able to open discussions and bring solutions to their needs?

Richard Heft 

Well, the good thing about collaborating with us is, even if you have that strategy in place, and you build a studio, you have a couple of great graphic designers, if you want to just come to us for the copy, that's a wonderful way to engage us because we have great copywriters for this industry. They understand your products, your services, your distribution channels, all of that kind of stuff. So for us, we can step in, that's why we called ourselves Extension Marketing, because we truly do see ourselves as an extension of our clients team. So we could do top to bottom,  full strategy run through to execution and distribution, or you could come to us and say, I need a whitepaper, I have a studio just write me a five-page white paper, here's out topic, here's our thesis, and we could do all the research. We have the writers may take an interview or two with key members, key subject matter experts on your team. Conversely, we've had clients say we're the best writers, we are writers really understand our audience and understand our products and all of that kind of stuff, could you just lay it out as we know you have a good studio. We've done work with some of the big banks that just come to us periodically to do layout work. So we have that full spectrum of services, and that helps our clients get the job done where it's needed, and that's really beneficia . Again, a lot of marketing agencies, you go to them, and they're gonna  want the full gamut. Jillian and I, when we started this company, we're willing to take  the scraps, the individual little components, because we want to build long term relationships and many of our clients have been with us for well over 10 years.

Hank Multala 

Right. Well, thanks for that  oversight of   firms that are various aspects of developing their marketing. So, I want to talk a little bit about , social media. I see some companies using, I would say, the least amount of effort for sharing something dull, like a cookie recipe. I don't know what it is with the baking analogies today, so forgive me for that. I recognize a marketing strategy should have a business and personal content, perhaps a ratio to it, but some just think, hey, I'm utilizing social media and, what I view as being completely out of place, and I'll give you an example. There's a   broker dealer that I'm remarkably familiar with, that has made a deliberate choice, and I would call it a prehistoric one, besides an inactive LinkedIn page, they believe social media posts and created content detracts from who they are. And I said, well, to me who they are, they're unseen they're undiscoverable. To a great degree, and I know I'm not being myopic on the subject. So, tell me  =what digital marketing means and why is it worth the effort for, let's say, an investment or a wealth manager, and such to effectively utilize the tools that are available?

Richard Heft 

Well, again, especially we saw the trends happening before COVID, certainly the last couple of years, people are making  , it's quite simple to the answer that question and I can talk for hours on this topic. The simple answer is,  that's where people are. People are making investment decisions online  and advisors going out, it's not as easy as it used to use to go into people's houses and sit around the table and show them brochures and talk about your value proposition and all these types of things. A lot of that isn't available to advisors anymore these days because of COVID and  the additional challenge of like robo advisors to the Robinhoods and the Redit are well, as other examples,  have shown that advisors still need to add value and a big part of that is education, educating  and informing individuals. So when you're online and you're sharing essential information, whether it's being shared from other sites, you see an article that Warren Buffett wrote and you love it, and you think it's really helpful. So you share it. You know what I know a lot about estate planning, maybe all I'll do an article about estate planning. Every client asks you the same question about estate planning, you answer the same way every single time, so you can you feel like you're an expert at it, you can write a  200-300 word article or whitepaper, and then  , you write a social post based on that white paper that you put on LinkedIn, and Facebook or Twitter, whatever you want to drive traffic back to the whitepaper. These types of strategies a lot of advisors go, well, I didn't see an uptick in my AUM, I didn't get that great engagement. They do take time, because you people read it, they don't always even to base your decisions on likes or shares, that’s not always   what's reflective of the success of your content that you're creating and sharing on social media platforms. People do see it, they do read it, they  do start thinking of you as an expert in that space. If you're consistently posting and sharing useful content then one day, they may go, okay, I need some input on  writing a will and or I'm thinking about my estate and philanthropic efforts and that type of thing. Who do I talk to you? Well  I saw Hank authored an article on this topic, maybe I should just give him a call, or fire off an email. So it does happen, it does help, and people are going to the spaces. Even things like Tic Tok and Reddit was able to do for the stock price of like AMC, and GameStop. These people are active on social media platforms, and they act on social media. They're highly engaged, whether the information is valued or not that's another question. But you want to be there because that's where a lot of your clients are, and you could say, well, my clients are all in their 50s and 60s and 70s. they don't spend that much time there. Well, we've all seen the stats on intergenerational wealth transfer, we know where the assets are going, we know who's accumulating assets today. And if you don't access those audiences, and that's all to say that I still think people in their 50s 60s and 70s are spending a ton of time on social media platforms. So   let's assume that the whole idea that you don't have to be there because your target audience skews a little older, I think that's a misconception to begin with. Plus the fact that a lot of the people who you want to start building your business around are on the social media platforms, taking advice and doing a lot of reading, it really builds a compelling case for actually putting in some effort into creating content and sharing that content through different social media platforms. So I'm a major fan of that. I think it's super important for especially for financial advisors in  continuing to build the value of their businesses, if you are not there and people start going well, somebody else's error, I could just go to Robinhood and do my trading there or any other online platform, you're   missing a massive opportunity. You do not want people to start sort of roaming around and looking for other cheaper alternatives or what they deem is cheaper. You want people to still value the advice you're giving, and the advice you're giving should be available on social media platforms. I strongly believe that  it's imperative,  if you want to build a business that continues to add value to your clients lives. That eventually you can sell that book to another younger advisor or a family member, you can continue to build the value of that business  if you  put a little effort into your social media strategy.

Hank Multala 

And I know you kind of talked around it, but if you do a lot of that, that's how you can address this influx of  robo advisors and how you can actually compete against them. I've seen numerous breakaways and practices become independent in the RIA, BD, or hybrid space and when they go to market, it necessitates the need to have a brand in place that's, engaging, fosters attention and I guess eventually   promotes retention. So kind of a multiple part question. What should be in place when a wealth manager opens the door and when do you think they should start that marketing plan, and what have been some of the common mistakes, you've seen that, those practices have made in their new ventures?

Richard Heft 

Okay, I'm highly forgetful. So the second part about what are the common mistakes do you may have to remind me, but on the first part of the question, I would say, 1,000%. the earlier the better, , because it doesn't have to be super onerous, your marketing efforts. But I think the earlier you start building your brand, engaging with an audience, creating useful content that you that helps tell your story and the value proposition you offer your clients, the better. Again, your friends and family and contacts and you know, shorter term, ad campaigns and those types of things. They'll take you far, but they won't take you forever, they you do want to start building a brand that is bigger, frankly, is bigger than you as an advisor. You want to start building a brand that really reflects that because, and I see this a lot where an advisor has a team, but it's people know them, and they promise that they'll always have to be the one to answer the phone. But then they want to go on vacation, somebody on their team is helping  manage the relationships with clients, it's reflective of how the primary advisor would  have spoken to the client, the client experience is different with different members of the team, starting to build the brand, create something where people don't have to talk to Hank every time they call. The team understands what the dealership does, what the team does, what everybody should, what everybody's responsibilities are, and reflect more what you're trying to convey. And even content if you understand what you do. If you think about like a blog article, or a social media post, you can share the wealth the way everybody can. Everybody can write content that reflects the overall business and the strengths of the business and its key differentiators. If people understand what the business does and understands what you're trying to accomplish from the business, what type of client experience you're trying to create, so it actually gets everybody aligned and helps you build a better, stronger, longer-term brand that ultimately leads to a better a longer-term business with more assets.

Hank Multala 

Okay. You answered it all. You talked about it, what should they focus on, what should be in place, and what some of the common mistakes ? Advisors just try to do too much too soon and assume that  this is what we need to have in place right away, as soon as we open our doors, every single blog every, everything in place already.

Richard Heft 

The other thing I'll just add to that. One of the most common mistakes I hear is an advisor says, Okay, I'm gonna ]get on social media, and I'm going to write articles on education, how to get you how to save for your kids’ education, what you should do, how to talk to your kids, even if it's the advisors intergenerational wealth strategy is to engage kids by helping their parents save for their education, setup savings plans, all of these types of things, be involved in the investment decisions, all of that, I love that kind of stuff. So the advisor starts writing content and posting content on LinkedIn or Facebook and start saving here and here's what I recommend. And this is what a client asked me this. And it's great. And they publish two articles a week. After about four weeks, they run out of ideas, and they just stopped. They stopped posting because they say, well, you know, nobody called me that it wasn't that great of a strategy. Next, I'm gonna just try another strategy that doesn't involve social. I would say that's not you needing to think long term. The biggest mistake is thinking short term and expecting people to all of a sudden really be engaged and be calling you and all that kind of stuff. It doesn't happen that way with content, so you have to think a little bit longer term when it comes to engagement strategies from marketing and content and social and then really think about how you could do it, what the cadences is,  how often can you post or publish content, what type of content will engage your audience whether it's infographics, video, articles, those types of things, e blast, and there's a wide variety of content strategies and types that you can you can engage your audience with. Some work better with some people and others work better with others. Like I always say, a lot of us say videos are great. 30 second video tells a story, lots of stats and tables and that type of stuff. People watch that kind of stuff. But if your audience is a group of individuals who love reading, maybe they're all doctors who love having their heads in textbooks, you can probably watch in your writing, you can probably run a nice long white paper that there was like there would be very engaged with. So people take in several types of content differently. And you should think about your audience, create a strategy around what you think your audience wants, and oftentimes, it's really a variety, some video, some color, some copy, and those types of things.

Hank Multala 

Right. You talk about content, what you created in the doctor analog. When I was an advisor, a lot of clients who are engineers, if you don't give them 20-25 pages, they were like you're not doing anything, don't give me one page, give me stuff that I can read, absorb, and learn. But, you know there's a lot of marketing tools I enjoy, obviously I enjoy podcasting, and I utilize a transcript for marketing. You briefly mentioned blogging, so what can you offer to keep a blog going or just getting over writer's block. I know you talked about , graphics and other things, but what's some other things in what someone says, I'm caput with ideas I can't think of anymore. Well call Extension Marketing obviously.

Richard Heft 

Yes, well besides calling Extension  Marketing, which I always encourage being your first step, your first logical step is there's a couple of pretty straightforward tips. We have one thing that we do this for our own clients, which is called  an editorial calendar, where, where you put together a schedule of what you're going to write, what to talk what the topics going to be on. There'll be some overarching thoughts on it, and what day are you're going to publish it. So if you publish every Wednesday, so Wednesday, March 3, Wednesday, March 10, Wednesday, March 17, what are you going to publish? Like, what's the topic that can give you a very, very solid outline of  how long you can write on these topics, what you can write, and oftentimes, it helps you because you're the only person on your team who see that editorial calendar. So when they're leveraging the editorial calendar, you go, well, I was supposed to draft an article on education planning today. Nobody knows that. So you if you have writer's block, and you just think I have nothing to say on that today, you can move on to the next topic, and then return to the education planning when the ideas are flowing a little better. So it also helps you to figure it. I always say a good tip for writing blogs is think about series. If you have a topic, keep blogs between 300 to 500 words. If I see a blog that's 1000 words, which is pretty much two pages of word in a word file, break it up into two or three or four blogs, because you really only want to get across one major idea in each blog, because people don't have an incredible memory. And if you can break it up into four blog articles that runs as  an original blog article, then you've got a month's worth of content if you publish once a week. So that's awesome. And it also keeps people coming back to your website or your LinkedIn page. So it that's an effective way to create engagement as long as you say, Okay, this is part one of a series, this is part two of a series. And often the types of stuff we talk about in financial services. If they're big enough topics, like if you talk about inflation, there's about a zillion things we can all talk about when it comes to inflation and interest rates and central bank moves and all these types of things. That will help you really stretch out that idea and take it forever. You could break it up with other ideas or people see another idea, come back, and try to follow along. That  a very, very good engagement strategy. So once you have that editorial calendar, what we also recommend is create what's called a work back schedule. So if you have an article being published on March 10, think about if you're going to write it, if somebody else is on your team is going to write it and the steps  required of you to take to get that article posted on your website for Wednesday, March 10. Do you have to get a client approval? Do you want to get somebody to double check it for typos and all of those types of things? Give  yourself a couple of days each, your compliance department will love you because they'll get back to you. . So you get them March 7 and then ask them  back by March 9, and then you can make their updates and it gives them enough time, so they don't get frustrated that you're leaving it until the last second. And that way, if you have writer's block you can say let me write something else, get it to compliance, get it to somebody else on my team to edit, and maybe pass it on, if you have somebody in your family, or who might be interested or a friend, say, take a quick read would this be interesting to you? Because it's that kind of additional feedback.

Hank Multala 

Right, Well, thanks for that. So certain marketing projects, it can be one of those expenditures of time that may be  challenging to understand exactly what the ROI is for the project, there's not always a direct correlation. I spent 10 grand, and it  gave me 200,000 in revenues, or 300 clients, or I had 250 visits on my site in three days when I typically get five. So for certain work, the results are not fully quantifiable, which is that's part of marketing and marketing is an investment in your business. How do you address this initial; I would call it maybe an apprehension and help owners, business owners and wealth managers recognize that, that the money is not being spent in vain?

Richard Heft 

A lot of owners, managers, see the budget on marketing, and they go, that's a lot. It's a lot to have a professional financial services writer, graphic designer, account manager, manage the workflow, you know, senior thought being put into it. I always say, this is an investment in the business,  the ROI on marketing is a little harder to come by than sales, right. I do a lot of business development and I know last month, I did X number of dollars, that's my contribution to the business. Marketing is a contribution not just today, but to the future of the business. It builds brand, it builds credibility, it builds all of these types of things. So  if you want to start marketing, every company needs to market, it's a key component. I look at it as it becomes a sales product. I see marketing as the third leg of the stool, but people who are focused on product only  really want to talk about product. And then they get to an inflection point in their business where they go, how do we take it to the next level, we can’t hire any more salespeople, there's only so much more we could do to build out this business, that's when marketing becomes part of the of the conversation. I speak to a lot of executives and owners who say, why should I market? Do you market because you have to market? Right? Marketing isn't a nice to have any more in this day and age, if you don't market your business, effectively, I think you're going to I personally think you're going to go the way of the dodo because your salespeople are challenged as they can't go to conventions anymore, then they're not traveling for business, they're not driving to their clients houses anymore. There's no handshakes or lunches or coffee meetings. Similarly,  I'm making this a bit of a time sensitive piece, because hopefully we're at the tail end of this pandemic, although nobody really knows for sure, but it's proven that social media marketing, marketing in general, all these things, digital marketing, are super important for a business as prosperity and it requires an investment. If a person is serious about marketing, they can't say, I don't want to spend $10,000 on a website and I'm making that number up  because I have to spend the $10,000 on it hiring another salesperson it has to be that you spend on both, and you take both as seriously as one another.

Hank Multala 

Yes, so if you're not growing, you're dying so  invest in a business. As a business’s grows and becomes larger hey become a bit more complex and at times I would say, a little bit less nimble. One challenge that some don't really bother to address in development is how do we continue to provide an elevated level of service. So, as Extension Marketing has grown, how have you proactively been able to continue delivering the superior quality of service that your clients in the industry have grown accustomed to?

Richard Heft 

 I would say about three, four years ago, probably closer to four or five years ago now, we were growing rapidly, and our business has grown pretty much every year since our founding about 13 years ago. What we found was we had to invest in processes, we had to invest in a team and bringing in more people and in training those people and then training them on not just the processes, but also the culture of the company. Jillian and I built this business from scratch. We had an innovative idea and we pursued it. We had a lot of people in the industry who knew us and liked us and we felt similarly to them with these people who we considered friends. They've been clients, coworkers, friends, family members, since day one, and we value every single one of them. And because of that, we don't take anything for granted. It could be a 200-word blog article, the smallest possible project or a massive initiative start to finish, I can tell you that we and everybody on our teamwork with on these projects almost identical. We want our clients to be happy because we only work in this sector, we only work in financial services. So to us, it's not a question of if we lose one bank, we'll get another but it's not like that. We value  these relationships. Some of them and much of our business development, especially up in Canada,  these relationships are multi decade relationships. For me, these are people who I who I genuinely like and value and so when they come to me, they  put their trust in me and I turn to my team and say you got to give these guys great copy  a great overall experience. And I can tell you, we've been lucky in a lot of ways because our team is exceptional. Our account management team now is   people who, who really feel the same way about our clients as we do. Our writers, this is a writing team with so much experience in the space. So when we're handing in a copy deck, now I know the clients are gonna love it. I know that there's gonna be one round of changes, and then they're gonna go splendid work. This is all we needed from you guys. We feel like we're giving the clients what they want from a quality and from an experience standpoint. I want them to come back and say I really like him or her that account manager. I emailed them, you know, at 5:30 at night, and they got back to me within 10 minutes,, not saying we're trying to kill our employees that way and have them work 24 hours a day, but our team really bends over backwards for our clients. That reflects Jillian and my hope for this business that we treated our clients our way and our expectations.

Hank Multala 

Now it sounds like you treat every client like they're your only client when they get that message. It's like well, I'm important to treat me nice. So what do you what do you think the future holds for marketing in this industry? I know it's a broad question.

Richard Heft 

The future is increasingly digital. The future is increasingly social. I always joke that when Jillian and I first formulated this business, I remember one of our early conversations was, how much do we charge for a brochure? How much should we charge for a brochure? That was 13 years ago. So in under a decade and a half, I can't even think of the last time we used to go to the printer rooms and look at the printing of the stock, is this is high gloss, is gloss, is this matte, we did all these things that we haven't done in years. That was just 13 years ago. The last brochure we did wasn't just a PDF put on somebody site that actually went to print was I bet  six, seven years since we've done an actual print brochure. So the evolution has been pretty fast in marketing. I would say that it is increasingly social, I would say it's increasingly webinars, it's increasingly podcasts like we're doing right now, these are the ways that you're going to gain exposure that you need to grow your business. These are ways that you're going to engage an audience that may be motivated to collaborate with you. So to me  It's probably video, it's probably voice, it's zoom, Microsoft Teams, it's Google Meet, it's all of these tools that are gonna make advisors lives easier because they don't have to hop in a car with a bunch of brochures and sit at a table and then go to another meeting. I said I do a lot of our business development; I could tell you  I'm doing more meetings now than prior to COVID because I'm not running from coffee to coffee to lunch to coffee to coffee. It's really just clicking off and clicking on to another meeting and it's a highly effective way to have more conversations and probably better conversations and not standing in line. Waiting for coffee for 45 minutes or an airport waiting because your flights been delayed due to a snowstorm. Well, maybe there's been a good benefit the COVID it's kind of expedited everything. So, I think that's probably the only benefit. But you know, so couple of conferences that we did, we've done a couple of online conferences, I could tell you, in my individual experiences, the in-person is still better for a lot of that kind of stuff, when it's available. And if it's available, I still prefer, you know, shaking hands and looking people in the eye a lot of the time because it's a real in person experience. But, you know when it's not available, you have to you have to pivot.

Hank Multala 

Yeah, I still think it's gonna be a contact sport in some areas so the last question before we finish on a, on a personal note. Is there anything you would like to highlight or discuss that we did not go over or we're unable to go into greater detail during our discussion?

Richard Heft 

When you're looking at marketing, think about it as you're not just selling products, if we're talking to advisors, the name of the game isn't going, okay, this is what I could sell to you, this is what I can do for you. This is our services. If you want to engage people, you have to think of it as educating them, enlightening them, enriching their lives showing your value through the knowledge you can build  and how you can help them if an engagement strategy isn't your products. You need to understand that the other big mystery because we are going back to our earlier question...I'm going to do a series on the several types of mutual funds I can sell my clients and the differences between ETFs and mutual funds. It can help and it could  fill out your engagement strategy or content strategy. The better plan is to is to go, what questions do I get from the majority of my clients or even every third client? What do they ask you why are they coming to you? And use  those discussions you have with your existing clients and prospects and other people because I can bet that a lot of other people will ask the same questions. You want to leverage the experience of answering those questions and where your expertise comes from it to engage other individuals and to help build your brand.

Hank Multala 

Cool. Okay, so I thought we could end the way we started on a personal side You cool with that?

Richard Heft 

Sure.

Hank Multala 

So what do you do to relax?

Richard Heft 

I'm usually watching whatever somebody told me to watch on Netflix with my wife and I invested about a year ago in a peloton. So that's my exercise.

Hank Multala 

Not stock you're talking about the physical...

Richard Heft 

I'm trying to stay somewhat fit and I'm trying to watch everything that is being produced by Netflix or Amazon or Apple or Disney.

Hank Multala 

So what's your greatest joy?

Richard Heft 

My greatest joy is watching my kids  grow into the younger adults... my two passions are my family and Extension Marketing?

Hank Multala 

Okay, so either living or dead? Who would you like to have as a dinner guest?

Almost always goes back to like rock and roll, it would it be John Lennon or would it be  Jimi Hendrix probably John Lennon.

Hank Multala 

Okay. If you would have said Neil Peart  from Rush, I would have hugged you. So who's your favorite comedian?

Richard Heft 

Right now it's John Mulaney. I was gonna say Chappelle, but I   just watched a documentary on the Comedy Store in LA and going back to Letterman and all the people who came up through that, I have a lot of favorite comedians, but probably right now the guy who's sharpest to me is an I am huge fan of Chris Rock, but probably John Mulaney would.

Hank Multala 

Gotcha. So who's your favorite writer?

Richard Heft 

That would be lifelong J.R Tolkien.

Hank Multala 

Okay, so if you weren't doing what you're doing now for profession, what do you think you'd be doing?

Richard Heft 

The dream has been to write a movie script that's, that would be that'd be living the dream.

Hank Multala 

And what quality do admire and others?

Richard Heft 

Probably honestly, I like people who are who are straight up.

Hank Multala 

So besides, this being the last question, what are you thankful for?

Richard Heft 

What am I thankful for? I would say respectively you and I  live in societies that are free, and they give us the opportunity to have these types of open and honest dialogues. I think this business has been one of one of the greatest or maybe the greatest professional achievements on my life. And I'm thankful that I've been able to grow a business and give our clients  great service to build a space of financial services, marketing. And on the on the family side, you know, I got to two great kids and a great wife. And so what else can I ask for?

Hank Multala 

Yeah, I was gonna ask you, you better at that wonderful wife.

Richard Heft 

She knows. She tolerates me and has for I guess, almost 25 years. So if you could tell anybody who tolerates me deserves maybe sainthood.

Hank Multala 

Okay. I'm at 31. So Well, Richard,  thanks again for your time and providing  just a lot more detail and  educating the audience about Extension Marketing and impactful solutions that are accessible to those  in the financial services industry. For those who wanted to find out more, you can find him at ext-marketing.com. And don't forget to subscribe to our podcast "A Chat  with Hank " wherever you listen to programs. Richard, thanks once again for carving out some time and sharing your knowledge and insights along with  just a wonderful overview of marketing and being opened to sharing   some  personal thoughts.

Richard Heft 

Thanks Hank Great to talk to you.

Hank Multala 

I appreciate it. Take care.

Richard Heft 

Take care. Bye