FourStar Wealth Advisors Decision That Fueled Growth: FMG Testimonials

Hi, everybody, and welcome. Thanks for tuning in for another LinkedIn live where I am lucky enough to talk to some of the advisors working with us at FMG, and in this case, through FMG testimonials to talk about what’s working for them with their marketing in 2026 and where we are looking where the puck is headed for 2027. So I’m so excited today to be joined by Brian and Evan from Four Star Wealth Advisors, which you can see their website up here on the screen. If you come in late, this is being recorded and you’ll be able to watch it after the fact. So good afternoon or good morning, I guess, depending on where you’re joining from, gentlemen. How are you both?

Excellent. Great to be here. Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Great.

You in Chicago?

We are both in Chicago. Yes.

Okay. I…

Well, the bean kinda gives it away, but I wasn’t sure if The bean gives it away.

It’s our headquarter city, but we’re in 24 states.

So we have advisers all over the Well, that’s a great segue.

I’d love for you to just tell us a little bit about four Star Wealth Advisors before we dive into the particular marketing questions.

Sure. We’re a network of independent advisors. And the idea is to be the most flexible firm on the street and take advantage of every opportunity, which is why we jumped right on FMG testimonials among other things. So we have the largest platform in America.

We’re one of the fastest growing in America. The Financial Planning Survey list us in the top 25 as far as growth. So a lot of advisors want to be a four star. And part of the reason is all the innovation along with what we’re doing with you guys.

I love it. So that jumps right into one of the things that you’re doing is, you’ve implemented a testimonial program. So we’ve been talk… If anybody’s been paying any attention to what I post on LinkedIn, they see I’m talking all the time about now that we’re all using these LLMs to search, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, that having reviews and testimonials, which has always been great social proof for your clients, people wanna read reviews, but it’s more important than ever now because these LLMs use those client reviews to decide which advisors to surface.

So you all decided to partner with F and G testimonials to roll out a program to allow some of your adviser… I should say, your… To allow your advisers to collect them. So tell me a little bit about that choice. What made you decide to, go all in on this?

Well, first of all, the SEC finally got smart and allowed advisers to, do endorsements and testimonials. And that was a couple of years ago, right, the big, SEC marketing rule. And I like to say that once they did that, then everybody was ready to do testimonials and endorsements. So what happened?

Nothing.

No one did it. And we came to realize is because no one had a system that was organized enough to get it done, what are you going do? Send a letter, send a bunch of emails? It wasn’t organized.

You have to go through compliance. Is it approved? All those kinds of things. So having the system now to be able to do the testimonials and possibly also endorsements, we can do it as well.

And that’s a great way to do it. So we’re very pleased that you guys figured this out, and we can partner with you.

Yeah. So if anybody’s listening, just before we go any further, F and G acquired Testimonial IQ. And we rolled out this program that allows you to collect feedback from your clients, first and foremost, as a client survey. Then you get to decide and be in the driver’s seat how you use that in your marketing.

So some people just collect it. Some people that push it out to websites, which we’ll get an example of here in a second. And then some people push it also to Google in the form of Google reviews. But every step of the process, there is compliance in the back end being managed along the way, which is obviously one of the top reasons why people have not instituted this.

And our team is there to support you as you build out this program. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you all at Force Start Wealth, because you have so many advisors, how have you started to roll this out? Did you provide the advisors with a template of how to collect the feedback, give them guidance on when to do it? What does that look like?

Sure. So we created a process. We interviewed to try to find what the best way to do the testimonials was. And then we decided, let’s talk to our top marketing advisors that want to use a system like this to be able to garner feedback from their clients.

And so we had a number that were very, very eager to do it. And so now we made it available for all advisors if they choose to. And so now as you go through the process and register all the names and all the people that are in your client base, you can send out information, offering them an opportunity to make comments about what you’re doing. But then it should be about the timing of when you do it.

That’s when you get the best testimonials, right? So that we have to talk about that. Like, how do you decide when is a good time to ask for testimonials?

Yes, yes. That’s such a good point. We’ll come back to that in one second. And if anybody’s watching and has any questions for Brian or Evan who’ve been in your shoes and had to think about how we’re gonna roll this out, please put them in the chat and we’ll answer them if we can see them.

There’s sometimes a little bit of a delay from the system we use, but this is just an example, right, of one of your advisors’ websites. So each adviser, you know, can have their own branding, obviously, their own website. But what you’re seeing here is the reviews that have been collected pulling in automatically to the website. So this is not a manual process where every time a review is left, you have to go in and press some button, get it added.

There’s two things that can happen. On the back end, the review comes in, and you are able to review it first before you push it to the website. So if somebody is mentioning something to do with performance that is gonna go against rules or anything like that, you’re able to suppress some of those. But otherwise, the reviews go live.

They are listed on here, and people can actually scroll through them. So this is a widget. The other thing, and I don’t know, Brian, if you’ve gotten this deep into it yet, but as you build out the program, you’re also able to put…

Sort and tag reviews. So if you have three advisers under one company name on one website, you can tag the reviews by advisors. So each advisor on their bio page has the reviews. If you offer estate planning and you want only reviews that mention estate planning to be on that page, you can do that.

So from an AI search best practice, that really is gonna help your chances of showing the search engine, showing the AI tool that you have social proof for that either particular person or subject area.

Yes.

Well, and the systems allow that to be all capable now. Even if they would have allowed testimonials or endorsements years ago, there still wouldn’t have been an organized way to do it. Your system is really key to the whole thing, the whole thing.

Well, I love hearing that. So tell us a little bit about your, you know, tips or how you’re collecting the reviews. Because you mentioned when you ask is really important. We do not suggest that you start a campaign and email every single client, by the way, on day one and ask every single person for a review. So how are you doing it, Brian?

So I’m still an advisor. I’m the CEO and founder of the firm, but I still run one of the largest book actually in our firm. And so we do reviews with clients like every other client, every other advisor. And so we do some clients once a year, others a little bit more often because they have tax issues and different things, maybe twice a year. And so as built into our long agenda of items that we cover in the meeting is at the end, we talk about their networking, their relationship, and possible referrals and possible testimonials. So we talk about all those things. But that’s usually after you’ve had a long meeting with a client, and the client is generally happy with you.

So when the client expresses, gee, this has been a really great review, oh, I’m very happy with our results, everything’s going along well, And that’s when the time you to ask them and say, gee, we’re going to send out this email about testimonials. Would you mind filling that in and give us your thoughts? We’d love to hear from you on that. So you ask them at the most advantageous time. And that’s usually when they’re liking you a lot.

And most of the time, like you after you do a long review because you’re taking care of them. You bring out a lot of maybe tax ideas, other things for them to think about. And so they really like you when you do reviews with them, and you should pay them a lot of attention. So that’s a great time to ask for those testimonials.

Agree. And I’ve actually had folks say that they just even have like a laminated QR code on their desk that someone can just take a picture and right then and there, you know, they can leave the office and have it ready to go. Or, you know, there’s other folks who have kept it in their email signature, so they’re not doing an email campaign, but they have it in their email signature year round. There’s lots of different ways you can do this.

From a compliance standpoint, I always just wanna remind people, the main thing is that all clients need to, it needs to be proven that every single client has the ability to leave a review. That’s what makes it, going to pass an audit. So you have to prove that everyone has the ability to leave a review. But I agree.

Most people, you know, they can go…

They can see the review, in your email signature or maybe on your website to leave a review. But are they gonna do it? Not usually unless you ask them. So when you ask is so important and doing it right after a time when you’ve shown value such as a biannual meeting is a fantastic time to do it.

Now I wanna ask you, Brian, one of the things we get asked all the time is, well, what if somebody leaves a bad review? That’s the thing holding people back. Right? They’re so worried about getting a bad review.

And I don’t know if this is something your advisers in your network have come to you with. We find that in all the firms we’re working with, the average review is a 4.9. So it is incredibly high. And I always like to say the exception proves the rule.

So, you know, if I go to Amazon and I’m looking at a product and there’s 585 star reviews and not a single person even had the tiniest complaint, it feels like it’s a bot. But if I see one or two that are three or four stars, I think, okay, this is a real product, a real company. How have you helped advisers think through that? Has there been any pushback about what if we get a bad review?

Well, some people are a little worried about that. And that’s just a legacy thing in the industry that if a client ever sent you a negative email, all of a sudden compliance says it’s a complaint. And you got to put it on their record and everything. But they’ve obviously changed some of those regulations.

So it’s not as onerous as it used to be. Somebody can say, hey, maybe this could have been done better. Maybe that could have been done better. But my experience is the same, Samantha.

We have not had virtually any of those at all.

People aren’t going to say anything nasty usually. They’re going to say only good things about you.

You’re going to prompt them to do it. Most often, they’ll only do it if you prompt them to do it. And you’re going to prompt those that you know are give you good reviews. Now everybody has the opportunity to do it, but there would be no reason to have someone be nasty in a testimonial. So I don’t think that’s a real issue. I don’t believe it.

And I love what you said about they’re only gonna do it if you ask them to do it, especially for the good reviews. The thing is we’ve had firms come to us who got a terrible review from a real client, and it was something like they didn’t feel like they were communicated with enough or had enough meetings. So it’s nothing that’s gonna, you know, issue a, you know, a complaint where they’re gonna get their hands slapped, but it looks bad on Google or it looks bad to the LLM that they have one review that’s one or two stars. And now all of a sudden someone’s in a frenzy, hey, can you help us get good reviews to counteract this?

That’s what you need to remember is that if you have a business and it’s on Google Maps, you can find it on Google Maps. Anyone can leave a review for you there. Google is the publisher. You can’t control that. What you can control is proactively collecting the good reviews.

Yes. Absolutely. And then as you said, there are certain filters you can apply to it as well if there’s some compliance issue of what was said in that, like like performance and things like that. So, you know, there is a way that you can avoid some of that. But still, everyone has the right to write a review. And if there’s not a great review, well, hopefully, there’s 500 really good reviews.

Yeah. So how long ago did you start this program?

We started about four months ago. This one advisor who is here up on the screen has done a really good job, got things very, very well organized. Everything feeds in and the systems matter. The systems are really the key to the whole thing. So this is the Sharifs, the Sharif Wealth, which is an affiliate of the four star network. And they’ve been very, very forward. OSMI has been very, very forward about being out there and being very successful bringing in testimonials.

We are now encouraging a lot of our other advisers to do it. Now, the reality is not a lot of advisers are as tech savvy as they probably could be, right? So some of them get a little intimidated by this. So we’re putting folks through some training to teach them how to do it and make sure that they understand it. They know how it’s going to work.

But this is all available to every advisor that’s out there. One of the things that we try to push at Forestar is we try to be on whatever the cutting edge is. As long as it’s legal and ethical and it’s the right thing for the client and the right thing for your business, we wanna go as fast as we can and do a great job with it. And so your system allows us to do that. So that’s why we’re so excited.

I love what you said there. And if somebody’s listening and they’re thinking, I’m not very tech savvy either, we certainly do provide training and support. We help you get set up on the system. And once you’ve got it in place, and I don’t know if you’re hearing the same thing from your advisors, you really can’t set it up once and then let it run-in the background.

It’s not like a program you need to log into all the time. You can create the link for people to leave a review. And then if you want to run, you know, an email campaign asking people, you can, but not everybody does that. I’m thinking of another firm, they just put the ask in email signatures, and over the course of a year, they got 200 reviews.

And one thing I just wanna make sure people are aware of is that when it comes to these, you know, testimonials, they really do help with conversions because someone is being referred to your firm. And when we think about referrals for, you know, all of time driving growth in this industry, we haven’t all thought about the fact that digital referrals now are just as powerful. Right? So somebody might be referred to one or two advisors or one or two firms.

What do they do? They go look them up. So if I look up two firms and one has no publicly available reviews or testimonials and the other has 50, I see all these other clients besides just my friend who had a good experience. That’s really gonna help me.

So it’s not just from the getting a boost in your ranking in AI. It really helps with the conversion aspect because it is truly social proof that this is a great firm to work with.

Absolutely. And in a sense too, Samantha, you know, the the program that you guys have is like a… It just kind of fosters the voting mechanism, which I call your clients being with you. So every day that your clients are with you, they’re voting to be with you. Otherwise, they were unhappy and they would leave, right?

Yes.

So if they’re voting positively because they’re with you, the likelihood that you’re going to get negative feedback is very, very slim. It’s possible. We’ve heard of a couple, right? But for the most part, you’re going to get really great testimonials. Because by being with you every day, they’re voting every day to be with you. So they’re gonna give you really good referrals and really good information.

And I love that you talk so much about those referrals because that’s the last thing I wanna just point out is that a lot of firms know they do grow through referrals, but they have a really hard time or they feel awkward asking. It feels a lot easier to ask for someone to leave you a review because everybody understands how reviews work.

We all use Amazon or

You know, TripAdvisor. We read the reviews. So it feels very natural to ask for review more so than, hey. Do you have any friends or family you can refer to me?

Some people struggle with that even though that’s still a good marketing strategy. So this is…

You can ask once, and then that information is publicly available for everyone to read forever. So think of it as a digital referral instead of it being a one to one. It’s a one to many. And that really helps people unlock the value in these referrals.

Well, and when you write testimonials and they write testimonials and they mention certain things that you’ve done for them, like tax mitigation or protection in market or doing something unique, you can cite those to clients and say, look, this is an example of the things that we’ve done and look what this client had to say about what we’re doing. So when you show them good things and good programs, good investments, good results, that’s the time that you’re going to be able to get people who are interested in what you’re doing. Who else do you think would be interested in this kind of a program?

Do you think your cousin would? And you should know. And if you’re networking properly, you should know all the people that your clients know. You should be asking lots of questions.

I feel like I could ask you a million questions about that topic too. It sounds like you guys have unlocked some great growth strategies. But really honing in on that, that’s such a good point. And actually, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that that’s the exact same way AI search works.

If somebody is searching, you know, does four star wealth or does Brian, you know, incorporate estate planning into his financial planning because they were referred to you. The AI tool is gonna go look and see, did any other clients mention this? Does it say it on his website? And then it corroborates the two.

So yes, it’s good that you say it on your website, but you also wanna have clients that mention it in those reviews.

Right. And it’s great corroboration. And then it just builds the credibility. And then the clients come. You get lots of referrals.

It’s a great way to get referrals is to make sure you have great testimonials about things that you’ve done really well for a client. That’s what they want to hear. They want to know, yeah, somebody else had a great experience with these folks in this particular area. And I’m interested in that. So I think I’ll join four star.

I love it. Well, we’re almost at the top of our time. Is there anything else that you want to share? If someone’s considering either passing like, nope, this isn’t for me, I don’t wanna set this up for our firm and allow the advisors to have testimonials and reviews, or they’re thinking I want to, but I’m just not sure. What would you… Any advice you would give?

Well, first of all, your firm has to be willing to do it. And some firms are not. They’re still nervous about some of the new programs. So maybe you wouldn’t leave your firm necessarily because they won’t do it.

But maybe you would if you want to have the right capability.

And then just make a point of getting out there and trying this and getting everybody interested in making comments about what you’re doing.

That’s the only way that you can really build your practice. If you’re spending your days cold calling all the time, new people you’ve never met, that’s a really inefficient way to build your business. The best type of way to build a business is through people who know people, people who give testimonials, people who give referrals. And so if you’re not maximizing that, you’re not maximizing your business. So that’s a good way to do it.

You should really make every effort to do testimonials. It’s a great opportunity for everybody.

It’s such a good point. I always say the difference between inbound and outbound. When somebody comes to you because maybe you had all these great reviews and testimonials and now an AI tool recommended you, they said, hey, you should go give Wealth Advisors a call. Think about how much more likely the person is to listen to what you have to say, hear you out everything versus you call them, interrupt their day and try to get their attention.

It’s a totally different experience. And we’re actually…

There’s all this research that shows the conversion rate from a lead that’s coming from AI, even just from, let’s say, a blog, an email, other inbound from AI search, it’s 4.4 times more likely to convert. So much, much warmer lead there. And the thing you mentioned about would somebody be willing to search just because maybe they’re constrained with marketing?

There was a recent, City Wire, research study that showed that the number one reason an adviser would leave one firm for another was because of fees. You know? They’re they’re Money that’s being taken in. But the second was marketing.

They felt like their marketing was handcuffed. They couldn’t use certain tools or capabilities. So I think you’re on to something about that.

Well… And and the the reality is, Samantha, the advisors really run the business.

Clients listen to their advisor. They don’t know the firm all that well. We’re proud of our firm. But people are with their advisor because they like their advisor.

That’s the reality of it, right? And so firms have to be very competitive in what they do. And if they’re not going to offer all these new services, then people are going to leave and go to other firms. That’s just how it is.

We’ve seen big changes in the industry. I’ve been in the industry for forty years. And we’ve seen the wirehouses were dominant. Now they’re not so dominant.

Why? Well, maybe they’re not doing all the things that advisors want to do. The independent space offers a lot more opportunity. And so we see that.

And this is one of those tools that the independent space has really embraced. And you guys have created it easy for us to embrace it.

So thank Well, thank you for that.

And thank you so If much for anybody wants to learn more about FMG’s testimonials tool, you can just go to fmgsuite.com and under products, you can go to manage testimonials. And then you’ll be able also to just click this twenty minute consult page and tell us a little bit about your business and sign up to talk with us and we’d be happy to share more. So thank you so much for joining us, gentlemen. And we’re so happy to partner with you as you roll out this program to all your advisors.

And I guess, Samantha, this is an endorsement of FMG. So there’s my endorsement.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that, Brian. All right. Have a great rest of your day.

Thanks, everybody. Take care. Bye.